Guild Wars 2

Signet of Illusions has, as most of you know, the following effects:

Passive: Grants more health to your illusions (50% increase).
Active: Recharge your shatter skills.
90-sec. cooldown.

Does anyone see what’s I’m getting at?

I don’t have any problem with either of these effects individually (and the cooldown time is fine), but I find them very strange to be together on the same utility.

For the passive effect: More health to illusions clearly supports a non-shatter build, in which case you would take traits such as Compounding Celerity, Compounding Power, and Illusionary Defense, and concentrate on using your illusions to stack conditions and bleeds with Sharper Images, while keeping up as many illusions as possible at all times.

On the other hand, the active effect would seemingly support shatter builds, as their health wouldn’t matter since most shatter mesmers (assuming they’re playing their build right), summon their phantasms and clones, allow them to attack, then immediately shatter for extra burst or other effects (typically confusion when you trait Illusionary Retribution). They’re not typically around long enough for their health to matter.

My main point is that the two effects, active and passive, simply do not synergize well and should be reworked, probably to two separate skills.

For example:

Signet of Illusions (revised)
Passive: Grants more health to your illusions (50% increase).
Active: Summon a clone on your target. (1200 range)
Cooldown 60-sec.

-AND-

Signet of Shredding (made up for the sake of argument)
Passive: Shatter abilities inflict 1% more damage for each illusion.
Active: Recharge your shatter skills.
Cooldown 90-sec.

I would be quite happy if it were something like that. As is, Signet of Illusions, though I like its passive effect for my particular build, is ultimately not worth it because the active effect goes against my build type… basically meaning that I lose an active use of my third utility slot. That is to say, the active effect is not worth losing the passive for the duration of the cooldown.

Does anyone else agree with me?

Yeah,i agree they don’t synergize at all.

I would agree completely with the OP, but the signet isn’t useless imo. For a shatter build in WvW against a number of opponents, shattering can be problematic as the clones/phantasms may not live to reach the target as they run through AOE and whatnot. Without those shatters hitting, stacking confusion/vulnerability/direct dmg/etc, a shatter mesmer is kinda meh. With the refreshed shatters every 90 sec, the signet is not that bad.

Outside of that very situational use outlined above, though, the synergy just isn’t there.

Edit: Bottom line, I wouldn’t replace one of my favored utilities (decoy, blink, mirror image) with the signet, that’s for sure.

More hp means your illusions can actually “reach” the targets before dying uselessly. Those things get killed just by being sneezed on, remember?

The marginal 50% isn’t going to make your illusions last that much longer even if you go full defensive on illusions. So it’s more like, at least now they can get through two ticks in aoe and shatter on your targets instead of getting killed at the first 0.000001 sec they enter aoe ring.

For that marginal situation of sending illusions through aoe: that only really applies to you if you’re some squishy long ranged mesmer. If you’re built of nails you’ll be shattering immediatly on ground zero in the thick of the zerg. Extra illusion hp is throwing the passive away.

As is, the passive is better for phantasm builds because it’s bugged to do between 150 and 200% more health instead of 50%. Unless this was changed in an extremely recent bug fix patch, I have no reason to believe this has changed; I tested it right before the last big balance patch and don’t recall an announcement of it being fixed.

The passive is almost completely useless because it does not apply to your Illusions immediately, I believe it is applied in 10s intervals that is global and independent of when an Illusion is conjured. The majority of your Illusions will never get the buff.

The signet is unfortunately bugged. It takes up to 10s for it’s effect to be applied to illusions, which makes it rather useless as a clone-survival mechanism.

They need to fix the passive. An active like illusions attack timer reset would be nice. If you know they are about to be wiped, they could do an extra attack before dying.

Okuza.5210:

The signet is unfortunately bugged. It takes up to 10s for it’s effect to be applied to illusions, which makes it rather useless as a clone-survival mechanism.

I agree. My OP was made under the assumption that that signet’s passive effect is fixed sometime in the future.

I find it viable no matter what you run.

For shatter – Passive effect gives you more time to pump out clones to shatter.

And Phantasm – gives another emergency diversion.

Tbh IMO- I run shatter and I don’t even find myself using the active all that often, because for the most part I don’t really need it. I find long living clones to be more handy.

I agree with the OP, one possible suggestion is to have the active ability give the phantasms quickness but increase their damage taken by 50%.

Jasher.6580:

I agree with the OP, one possible suggestion is to have the active ability give the phantasms quickness but increase their damage taken by 50%.

That might be a good suggestion for an entirely new signet.

absolutely true and guess what? game been out for what? 4 months and sig of illusion still not applying its passive to illusions on their creation rofl anet.

Jasher.6580:

I agree with the OP, one possible suggestion is to have the active ability give the phantasms quickness but increase their damage taken by 50%.

I don’t think quickness reduces the cd between the phantasm attacks so it would be wasted most of the time imo.

Sabyne.6329:

Jasher.6580:

I agree with the OP, one possible suggestion is to have the active ability give the phantasms quickness but increase their damage taken by 50%.

I don’t think quickness reduces the cd between the phantasm attacks so it would be wasted most of the time imo.

You don’t understanding… activating it would give them quickness. So even if it doesn’t now… it would do it with the suggestion.

I know I’m the minority view point on this, but I think the signet is well put together, aside from the delay. That bug is the reason I stopped using it, not the functionality.

If you look at the design of mesmers, we were made with illusions AND shatters. A lot of people are playing the profession with illusions OR shatters and then frustrated that the game isn’t made that way. In this signet we have one utility that supports both sides of our profession mechanic – which it should.

In any phantasm build, having tougher illusions is very important. So important that you will seldom activate the signet no matter what the active effect is. The passive is just that good for a phantasm build that you never want to give it up. Still, every build should be shattering frequently, since illusions die on target death, you might as well.

In a shatter build the active is clearly what you’re after, but the passive is a big help for those glass cannon builds where illusions are easily killed before they can get to their target. The active is what shatterers are really after – with shattered strength as it is, it can be flat out obnoxious.

For a balanced build you make good use of both the passive and active. When you have the passive up your illusions are tougher, then when you need a shatter that is on cool down, it’s there for you. Really, the only thing to not love about it is the bug that keeps it from kicking in right away. Frequently illusions aren’t around long enough for it to hit them, so until its fixed, it’s generally a waster.

Jasher, he understands. Quickness does what he is saying – it speeds up attacks but not cool downs. If your phantasm has a one second attack and a 5 second cool down, giving it quickness speeds up the one second attack but not the 5 second cool down.

This signet is just bad design and bugged.
How about a group heal depending on the number of illusions up as active effect.

I actually like the signet’s design as it is, although I don’t use it. But I think it speaks to the nature of the Mesmer. That is; a profession that’s unpredictable.

The way I see it, the active effect of the signet is suppose to work as a finisher. Meaning, that you use the 50% health gain to keep your illusions alive for as long as possible, to keep pressure on your opponent, and then when your opponent is at low life (or your illusions are) you quickly do a double shatter on him, using the active part of the signet. It’s basically a tool that allows you to switch up your playstyle at the last minute, to finish an opponent off with shattering.

they dont care what u think they gonna leave it the way it is

Voodoo Tina.4180:

Jasher, he understands. Quickness does what he is saying – it speeds up attacks but not cool downs. If your phantasm has a one second attack and a 5 second cool down, giving it quickness speeds up the one second attack but not the 5 second cool down.

Hrm… okay. Well then the activation could decrease the cooldown and the abilities of the clones, speed up the attacks while increasing all incoming damage to the Mesmer and the clones by 50%.

I sincerely love signet of illusions for BOTH effects. I run a shatter heavy build and this signet gets me out of more than a few sketchy situations. Think of it like this you can drop your illusions and keep them alive then boom shatter. within a split second you can have like 3 more up playing your cards right. then switch to phantasms and if it gets sketchy use f4 which is awesome. and if its still sketchyACTIVATE the signet recharging all skills while dropping more clones then shatter again. and you have EIGHT seconds of invuln in a row… so this signet is the absolute best signet a mesmer can have IF they run shatter heavy.