Guild Wars 2

They could easily change every trait or utility in the game by giving them their own unique value or play style, without completely replacing the other core utility items in current meta builds.

For Example
Guardian Signets The common denominator between these 5 signets, with the exception of Judgement is that they focus on one target. If i’m trading a 2k heal medi that cleanses and offers a stunbreaker for a Signet that has neither except a 1 target knockdown, then it better be a darn good effect to it. Right now their actives suck; the Line of Sight error needs to be removed and their icds needs to be reduced. The Signet trait… it should have been a Fire Field Aura instead of a Retal Aura that’s already easily achievable with GS#3 Leap Finisher.

Spirit Weapons It’s proven that AI can be incredibly unhealthy to the game UNLESS the AI require some form of skillful play, like constantly activating their Command abilities. One of the hardest Guardian builds to manage is a Staff Alturistic Healing build with Spirit Weapons. Reason being is, you have to manage the health pool of all spirit weapons + constantly issuing their Commands on queue + managing your staff #4 Empower + Staff #2, while also weapon switching and dodge healing appropriately.

I feel the spirit weapon’s Command abilitie’s CD should be halved. If you can keep them up and command them on key, every time, you should be rewarded.

Not everyone will use Guardian signets over Meditations because Medi offers sustain heals, cleanses, stunbreakers, while Signets are obviously meant for 1v1 type variants. I’m not even sure if a hybrid would work either as they both are two seperate builds for two seperate roles. Same goes for the Spirit Weapon concept, not everyone would like to micro manage 3 additional AI weapon sets.

Thoughts?

First of all, I’m pretty sure by guardian sigils you mean signets, so I think you would do yourself and everyone a huge favor if you called them signets. Sigils are what you put on your weapon. I finally understood what you meant by the end of your post.

My thoughts are that spirit weapons and all pet like summons across all professions should have short cd’s, not on command abilities, but the summon itself. That might open up some build potential at the very least and it would certainly be a great QoL update. Atm all summons are inferior in most situations.

Ouch.. not sure how i made that mistake. Edited the eye-sore. But yea, they could easily make spirits icd recharge right when you summon them… but i feel they’ll be in the same spot.

Honestly guardian signets could be a viable and competitive choice if they were to get some good changes, all of which I and others have outlined in the past.

As for spirit weapons, nothing short of a complete overhaul will really make them worth while.
And many people I know don’t want them to just buff the AI and health because the game already has enough AI dependent classes/specs which are a C_A_N_C_E_R on the game.

Since I’m sick at home I’m extremly bored so I started writing class overhauls. I don’t feel like posting them (yet) because of the lack of information regarding the incoming patch. But my thoughts on Spirit weapons and Signets:

Spirit Weapons

I’m all against buffing AI too much because it quite often makes them too powerful. What makes Spirit Weapons so unappealing – at least for me – are the high cooldowns and that they die so fast even when facing the HotM NPCs. However, I do believe that the active effects are quite nice. Some changes I think would make them more attractive (but not meta… that’s not the goal):

• Equalize their duration and their active cooldowns (e.g. 40s duration, 15s active cooldown to leave some room for error). Adjust their effects/damage accordingly. Remove the cooldown reduction from the trait.
• Significantly reduce the AA damage from spirit weapons to emphasize active use.
• Reduce the utility cooldown by 33% – 50% (Sword = 33%, Hammer = 50% etc.). Shaving the cooldown makes it less disastrous if they happen to die very early on. If you are able to keep them alive for 40s we are still talking about two active skill uses within 60-90s which doesn’t feel like too much to ask.
• The trait now also grants Spirit Weapons a 33% chance (5s ICD) to blind nearby targets when they are hit. This increases their survivability but enables counterplay through range. It also synergizes nicely with, for example, Binding Jeopardy.

I’m not a fan of the idea of halving the cooldowns of the active effects, though. They are quite powerful. This can easily become a DH Trapper scenario were you just throw all your cooldowns at someone to burst them down. That’s neither skillful nor fun to play against. The cooldowns on the active still have to be relevant.

Signets

Signets could be more interesting if they finally buffed Radiant Retaliation and actually enabled us to use both at once. The Signet trait being placed on the same tier as Radiant Retaliation is one of the dumbest things which were done during the trait rework. Most of the Signets actually aren’t that bad for either an offensive CC centered build or a healer build.

My suggestion:

• Merge Healers Retribution and Retribution
• Move Perfect Inscriptions to the Master tier
• Change Radiant Retaliation to be affected by Power and Condition damage. Consider Radiant Retaliation granting a unique effect, which pulses damage to nearby foes while affected by a Light Aura.
• Add a new crit or Fury centered trait to the GM level (e.g.: Incomming condition duration is decreased by x% while affected by Fury or cast Signet of Judgment when hit by CC. Also gain additional 20% crit chance while affected by Retaliation).

Regarding specific Signets:

Signet of Mercy

Considering the incomming changes regarding rezzing in WvW and in raids etc., why not finally make related traits actually revive fallen enemies [Edit: allies… ]? There was no point in doing it untill now but at this point this actually makes sense and would finally make those skills useful.

• Slightly shave the casttime
• Slightly shave the cooldown
• Make it revive someone actually dead. Done.

Signet of Courage

• Adjust the interval to heal more often but for less.
• Make the active castable while moving. I mean… seriously. It already got a 4s casttime.

For spirit weapons:

Replace their health bar with a break bar so they can’t be CC, don’t die in PVE and need to be focused in PVP to be destroyed.

Cooldowns need to be rethought. I personally would like to see them be like traps where the cooldown starts after summoning them, but would be reset if you use the command skill for them.

Their trait Expeditious Spirit needs to be rethought since burning on hit only helps half of the spirit weapons.

For the weapons themselves, the hammer and shield aren’t too bad. The hammer just needs to knock down instead of back, and the shield needs to stay next to me not shield an area I was in 5s ago. For the sword, I would like to see it become a staple in condi DPS builds. Increase attack speed, lower base damage to allow higher Expeditious Spirit procs meaning more burn stacks. Spirit bow is awful and can be change to anything else at this point.

For Signets:
In my mind Signets are exactly like Virtues and should be treated the same way. Strong personal passive buff and once activated that buff goes to all party members for a limited amount of time.

For example
Bane Signet: (passive) +10% damage; (active) +10% damage to 5 allies for 5s; 30-40s cooldown.

Signet of Judgement: (passive) -10% incoming damage; (active) Frost Armor to 5 allies (7s of -10% damage and chill on hit); 30-40s cooldown.

The trait Perfect Inscriptions changed to 20% cooldown reduction and personal passive buff remains active during the activated buff. So for example Bane Signet would give 10% personal damage, and when activated give +20% damage for 5s then lose the passive completely until the cooldown was reached.

@ Indure:

Your reasoning behind how signets should be treated like virtues is due to virtues strong passive effects? This one seems like an oxymoron to be honest lol. Virtue’s passives(for the most part) are a joke, especially Courage.

I do agree with change to signets and the trait itself, seems nice overall.

Edit: Signets should be self-empowering(Warrior signets) on both fronts unless the actives offensive part is incredibly effective(Necro signets as an example).

^Agreed, more of a problem with me liking to add adjectives to words for the sake of wanting more adjectives.

Indure.5410:

^Agreed, more of a problem with me liking to add adjectives to words for the sake of wanting more adjectives.

This legit made me laugh a little too hard. I’m sure you mean well just I have a bad habit of nitpicking like that. I apologize.

One thing I would hope they would keep in mind if doing a rework is that skills with low cool downs tend to be more useful then the ones with long cool downs unless the latter are so insanely powerful that there is no chance of getting hit with CC or dying before you can get the full use out of them. (which is bad for balance)

So looking at any rework of signets or spirit weapons one would hope they have low-moderate CD’s . (something in the 20 to 40 second range)