Guild Wars 2

Thankyou Arenanet for fixing the signet of illusions. tooltip to correctly state 200% health bonus as working and intended.

The problem I run into is a known bug but after some testing I have worked out why. Signet of illusion currently works on a global 12ish second cooldown. It applies the 12 second passive every 12 seconds to every illusion alive at the time. But if an illusion dies or is replaced within that 12 second cooldown it misses the buff and has to wait until the next 12 second cycle comes around to be benefitted with the signit passive ability.

This is out of character with the traits Phantasmal Fury and Vengful Images which grant fury and retaliation upon the illusion being created and each individual illusion then has it’s own 9ish second cooldown cycle running.

Please fix this as it is annoying to try and keep illusions alive for 12 seconds or spawn illusions close to the signit cycle coming around so they don’t insta die or get the benefit of the signet when almost dead.

Thanks.

I’m pretty sure that those traits work different than the signet, as a few people have said the traits make a “new” skill available where as the signet just gives a buff, the signet can -not- work the same way as the traits because the signets buff needs to be removable when/if the mesmer activates it.

I’m surprised they haven’t made it so that when you make an illusion it resets the CD IE “casts” the passive and put it back on its 12s CD before it refreshes itself and then make the active strip the buff.

shrugs i’m not a programmer though so idk if what i just said is even possible for them to do or how difficult it is.

So THAT explains why sometimes my Clones/Phantasms can take several hits from enemies, and other times they die like they’re made out of balloons!

To me it’s a little odd why the refresh needs to be so long. If the buff just keeps on applying itself, couldn’t they just lower the refresh rate?

So instead of applying it every 12s, it would apply every 3s or something? That way you could still have an occassional illusion missing the buff, but the rate at which the buff gets applied will be a lot faster.

Ofcourse giving them the buff at the same time they’re created would be a LOT better. But if that proves to be technically impossible, shortening the refresh rate should at least make the signet perform a little better.

This is the bug i’ve been waiting 7 months for them to fix and its not fixed yet… ill give them another 3 years hope its done by then.

Aveneo.2068:

To me it’s a little odd why the refresh needs to be so long. If the buff just keeps on applying itself, couldn’t they just lower the refresh rate?

So instead of applying it every 12s, it would apply every 3s or something? That way you could still have an occassional illusion missing the buff, but the rate at which the buff gets applied will be a lot faster.

Ofcourse giving them the buff at the same time they’re created would be a LOT better. But if that proves to be technically impossible, shortening the refresh rate should at least make the signet perform a little better.

why would we need to wait any kind of refresh rate? You’re running the sig to give your illusions more health, if it fails to do so then its a waste of utility slot even if refresh rate is 2sec. Should be instant as you’re equipping signet of domination.

It should simply summon a different version of the same illusion which has more health. Just as with traits.

No refresh rate, no server load, no problem.

i remember seeing similar post before, and I think (not really sure, cant remember) someone answer that it has to do with server load or something, because someone suggested won’t it be more logical to have it reapply every 1s.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Aveneo.2068:

To me it’s a little odd why the refresh needs to be so long. If the buff just keeps on applying itself, couldn’t they just lower the refresh rate?

So instead of applying it every 12s, it would apply every 3s or something? That way you could still have an occassional illusion missing the buff, but the rate at which the buff gets applied will be a lot faster.

Ofcourse giving them the buff at the same time they’re created would be a LOT better. But if that proves to be technically impossible, shortening the refresh rate should at least make the signet perform a little better.

why would we need to wait any kind of refresh rate? You’re running the sig to give your illusions more health, if it fails to do so then its a waste of utility slot even if refresh rate is 2sec. Should be instant as you’re equipping signet of domination.

You misunderstand. I would very much like it to be instant (just like the other buffs that apply to illusions through traits). But if that would not be possible, the least I expect them to do is shorten the refresh rate.

Carighan.6758:

It should simply summon a different version of the same illusion which has more health. Just as with traits.

No refresh rate, no server load, no problem.

And what about when you activate the signet? Are all your illusions going to just blow up because you can no longer summon that type of illusion? Or are you going to be left with super sturdy illusions until you need to resummon them?

You -can’t- have signets work as with traits because you lose the passive to gain their active.

And 200% health was the chosen value because…? The only thing this signet encourages is tanky Phantasm 1v1 builds which take absolutely no concentration on the part of the player using them. What they should have done was change the value to 100% and made the signet refresh every second with buff that lasts 3 seconds to avoid utility swap abuse.

Leuca.5732:

And 200% health was the chosen value because…? The only thing this signet encourages is tanky Phantasm 1v1 builds which take absolutely no concentration on the part of the player using them. What they should have done was change the value to 100% and made the signet refresh every second with buff that lasts 3 seconds to avoid utility swap abuse.

Nothing changed, actually. And your idea for how to handle the refresh is no better than the current implementation.
But really, nothing changed. Signet gives the same HP as before, it just says so in the tooltip now. Your point was? You died to a Phantasm? We feel for you. Really do. /hug

Btw., is it really a 200% bonus (i.e. 300% actual health) or is it just 200% health and ANet is still incapable of doing proper percent calculation?

Carighan.6758:

Nothing changed, actually. And your idea for how to handle the refresh is no better than the current implementation.
But really, nothing changed. Signet gives the same HP as before, it just says so in the tooltip now. Your point was? You died to a Phantasm? We feel for you. Really do. /hug

My idea for how to handle the refresh almost guarantees that an illusion will receive the buff and will continue to receive the buff for as long as it is alive. You solve the application problem with this. You don’t think (nearly) guaranteed application +100% more health on your illusions is balanced?

I’m aware that the current mechanical value has not changed, but a tooltip change means Anet has officially deemed 200% a valid, balanced value for the skill. This is a signet PASSIVE and essentially triples the HP of spammable AI that receives pretty much all of your stats barring HP.

My point is not that I died to a phantasm; I actually defeat most of them because they don’t even learn how to play due to leaning on their AI so much. Stop avoiding the argument and address why 200% is healthy for PvP. If that passive doesn’t encourage tanky 1v1 phantasm builds, what does it do?

Iruwen.3164:

Btw., is it really a 200% bonus (i.e. 300% actual health) or is it just 200% health and ANet is still incapable of doing proper percent calculation?

It is the former. If an illusion started with 2k health, it would have 6k after signet. Somehow this is ok.

Leuca.5732:

Stop avoiding the argument and address why 200% is healthy for PvP.

See the legions of Mesmers all running Phantasm-spec with SoIllusions instead of shatter-variants?

No, you don’t. Because the signet is actually pretty weak, despite it’s on paper solid concept. Even if not, compare the base health for a moment. Phantasms (and less so, Clones) are incredibly fragile. Plus easily replaced. Hence few see the need to try boost them, instead you simply summon new ones (and that thinking then leads to the Shattercat variants).

Your entire perspective only makes sense if this were, say, a signet on a Ranger. But it isn’t, it’s a signet on a Mesmer.

(edit)
I feel like I should take a further step back on this and go big picture:
Given the system of limited hotbar space, unlike in other MMOs GW2’s skills need to be really really powerful for the meta-balance to work. Assuming a fully-passive SoIll (not the 1s-tick stuff you mention, that’s actually worse than the current implementation, more server load, still die in the AE before they get the +HP), it’d be quite good. Solid HP boost, amazing active, but it robs me of the quite good passive. Exactly what signets need to be long term (see the recent dev post).

But, Feedback is also very powerful, and nearly must have. Mimic is an upgraded Feedback in many situations. Decoy, plenty would say you can’t PvP without it. Blink, you want it. Null Field is a game-changed in group fights, Portal is nearly a necessity in WvW, and … so … on.
And this is still massively imbalanced, because the other skills aren’t up to par.

A lateral-power system like GW2 needs to make you want all your abilities, at all times, because they’re all very powerful. Then it needs to limit you, badly so. 3/30, 1/3, and such. For our healing abilities this basically works already, one heals the most, one reflects, one is instant cast. You will always be in plenty situations where you’d want the other ones, but don’t have them.

Ignoring that Signet of Illusions, even once debugged, would still be that amazing (though quite balance in it’s passive vs active), the goal here is to supercharge every ability to the levels of Feedback, Healing Sprint, Supply Crate or Well of Power. Only once you rage at having to pick 3 out of the huge list of awesome stuff you have does the meta-balance of such a setup even begin to work.

But again, this is ignoring the part where I don’t get what your issue with 4800 health on Phantasms is. So they die in 2 hits instead of 1 tick from one AE, the problem being? Someone using this signet committed to Phantasms, those cannot be truly freely be regenerated, why not just kill them, /point, /laugh and walk away? They still die in the blink of an eye, they just no longer die to random single AEs. That’s ignoring how due to the amount of AEs, they’re still instant-dead in proper PvP.

Carighan.6758:

Leuca.5732:

Stop avoiding the argument and address why 200% is healthy for PvP.

See the legions of Mesmers all running Phantasm-spec with SoIllusions instead of shatter-variants?

No, you don’t. Because the signet is actually pretty weak, despite it’s on paper solid concept. Even if not, compare the base health for a moment. Phantasms (and less so, Clones) are incredibly fragile. Plus easily replaced. Hence few see the need to try boost them, instead you simply summon new ones (and that thinking then leads to the Shattercat variants).

Your entire perspective only makes sense if this were, say, a signet on a Ranger. But it isn’t, it’s a signet on a Mesmer.

Actually they are more than common in SPvP. It will take a lot of working to make them largely viable in team fights, and HP buffing will not solve that.

If you are constantly replacing your phantasms in a skirmish situation when using a phantasm builds, you’re doing it wrong. They inherit pretty much all of your stats (see toughness) and are often traited to receive boons.

Again, please address the 200% health value instead of telling me that the signet sucks. You don’t see anybody starting threads complaining about how it still sucks after the tooltip change and there’s a reason for that.

Carighan.6758:

I feel like I should take a further step back on this and go big picture:
Given the system of limited hotbar space, unlike in other MMOs GW2’s skills need to be really really powerful for the meta-balance to work. Assuming a fully-passive SoIll (not the 1s-tick stuff you mention, that’s actually worse than the current implementation, more server load, still die in the AE before they get the +HP), it’d be quite good. Solid HP boost, amazing active, but it robs me of the quite good passive. Exactly what signets need to be long term (see the recent dev post).

But, Feedback is also very powerful, and nearly must have. Mimic is an upgraded Feedback in many situations. Decoy, plenty would say you can’t PvP without it. Blink, you want it. Null Field is a game-changed in group fights, Portal is nearly a necessity in WvW, and … so … on.
And this is still massively imbalanced, because the other skills aren’t up to par.

A lateral-power system like GW2 needs to make you want all your abilities, at all times, because they’re all very powerful. Then it needs to limit you, badly so. 3/30, 1/3, and such. For our healing abilities this basically works already, one heals the most, one reflects, one is instant cast. You will always be in plenty situations where you’d want the other ones, but don’t have them.

Ignoring that Signet of Illusions, even once debugged, would still be that amazing (though quite balance in it’s passive vs active), the goal here is to supercharge every ability to the levels of Feedback, Healing Sprint, Supply Crate or Well of Power. Only once you rage at having to pick 3 out of the huge list of awesome stuff you have does the meta-balance of such a setup even begin to work.

But again, this is ignoring the part where I don’t get what your issue with 4800 health on Phantasms is. So they die in 2 hits instead of 1 tick from one AE, the problem being? Someone using this signet committed to Phantasms, those cannot be truly freely be regenerated, why not just kill them, /point, /laugh and walk away? They still die in the blink of an eye, they just no longer die to random single AEs. That’s ignoring how due to the amount of AEs, they’re still instant-dead in proper PvP.

They don’t have 4800 health. They have 6k+ health and receive benefits from your traits/basic stats. That’s almost half the HP of a bunker ele and possibly more toughness, with moderate spammability. We have seen other signets receive buffs and they are still not on par with this skill’s passive; this fact alone pretty much addresses your entire argument about how skills should function. Its passive is so strong that mesmers don’t even use the active, which looks good on paper, because its recharge is not even close to worth losing the former effect.

I was wrong btw, it’s 4300 HP, not 4600. Had to look at the wiki quickly. :P

I also don’t get where this signet is strong than a +180 stat passive one. It’s so weak, people slot it for the active and use that on CD. Great passive that one is!

Mind you, your nemesis, the Phantasm-specced Mesmer: Kill his Phantasms, and you can heal faster than he can damage you. The signet never stops you from killing the Phantasms, because even buffed, they are fragile as hell either way. They no longer die from the damage caused by random bystanders, yes. But since the Mesmer is completely committed to them, just commit to them and kill them and the Mesmer becomes a non-issue. It’s a really easy spec to overcome (by comparison to shatter builds) because you can dictate the fight rather well.

Aveneo.2068:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Aveneo.2068:

To me it’s a little odd why the refresh needs to be so long. If the buff just keeps on applying itself, couldn’t they just lower the refresh rate?

So instead of applying it every 12s, it would apply every 3s or something? That way you could still have an occassional illusion missing the buff, but the rate at which the buff gets applied will be a lot faster.

Ofcourse giving them the buff at the same time they’re created would be a LOT better. But if that proves to be technically impossible, shortening the refresh rate should at least make the signet perform a little better.

why would we need to wait any kind of refresh rate? You’re running the sig to give your illusions more health, if it fails to do so then its a waste of utility slot even if refresh rate is 2sec. Should be instant as you’re equipping signet of domination.

You misunderstand. I would very much like it to be instant (just like the other buffs that apply to illusions through traits). But if that would not be possible, the least I expect them to do is shorten the refresh rate.

Why wouldn’t it be possible? Like if they comment about SoL and say “we can’t do it” this is just laughable. What i think is, they don’t even consider this as a bug… If you run a phantasm build in pve, those 3-5sec is enough to crush your phantasm 3 times. Major bug that they just don’t want to address for some reason.

Guys, any signet that does any passive other than buff you the player is done in 10 second intervals. That is just they way the game is, so this is not a bug and is not going to be addressed as a bug.

I understand how you can feel that this makes SoI useless, but it is not a bug and don’t act like it is. Now if we feel that this power is still unusable then we need to make a suggestion on how to change it.

Also the reason the buff is 200% and not something like 50% is exactly because of the internal cooldown, so don’t gripe too loudly or you might get it nerfed.

why do they need to fix buggs when new players do not know they exsist until they buy the game. in a free to play game they are more concerned with getting someone to buy the game then keeping them playing that game. soo….. new content that looks interesting to someone who has not played the game= good. fixing a bug they wont know about until they pay 60$= who cares.

i have an idea.. put a patch taht fixes the mesmer buggs into the gem store..

i would buy it. maybe it would get some people off thier butts.

Carighan.6758:

I was wrong btw, it’s 4300 HP, not 4600. Had to look at the wiki quickly. :P

I also don’t get where this signet is strong than a +180 stat passive one. It’s so weak, people slot it for the active and use that on CD. Great passive that one is!

Mind you, your nemesis, the Phantasm-specced Mesmer: Kill his Phantasms, and you can heal faster than he can damage you. The signet never stops you from killing the Phantasms, because even buffed, they are fragile as hell either way. They no longer die from the damage caused by random bystanders, yes. But since the Mesmer is completely committed to them, just commit to them and kill them and the Mesmer becomes a non-issue. It’s a really easy spec to overcome (by comparison to shatter builds) because you can dictate the fight rather well.

You were wrong again. 200% more health is essentially adding the base health twice, which is multiplying it by 3. That brings phantasm base health from 2150 to 6450 before any other effects come into play due to traits, etc. If I’m correct, the trait adds 20% based on the health the phantasm had before any other effects were in place, so it adds 20% of 2150 for a grand total of about 6880 health with signet + trait active. If you wish to tell me that spammable AI with that health and bunker like base toughness is ok even without their ability to be traited for fury/constant regen, there’s something wrong there imo.

you have issues killing phantasms?

Leuca.5732:

Carighan.6758:

I was wrong btw, it’s 4300 HP, not 4600. Had to look at the wiki quickly. :P

I also don’t get where this signet is strong than a +180 stat passive one. It’s so weak, people slot it for the active and use that on CD. Great passive that one is!

Mind you, your nemesis, the Phantasm-specced Mesmer: Kill his Phantasms, and you can heal faster than he can damage you. The signet never stops you from killing the Phantasms, because even buffed, they are fragile as hell either way. They no longer die from the damage caused by random bystanders, yes. But since the Mesmer is completely committed to them, just commit to them and kill them and the Mesmer becomes a non-issue. It’s a really easy spec to overcome (by comparison to shatter builds) because you can dictate the fight rather well.

You were wrong again. 200% more health is essentially adding the base health twice, which is multiplying it by 3. That brings phantasm base health from 2150 to 6450 before any other effects come into play due to traits, etc. If I’m correct, the trait adds 20% based on the health the phantasm had before any other effects were in place, so it adds 20% of 2150 for a grand total of about 6880 health with signet + trait active. If you wish to tell me that spammable AI with that health and bunker like base toughness is ok even without their ability to be traited for fury/constant regen, there’s something wrong there imo.

In all fairness, bunker-like toughness is there only if you decide to use toughness gear yourself.

I, for one, would not have an issue with it being only 100% bonus, IF it would work instantly. However, since it is not the case, I find 200% value to be completely reasonable, since if the enemy decides to not keep phantasms in check ASAP, then he can’t really complain about them escalating into an issue 10 seconds later.

Besides, giving up an utility slot on Mesmer for that is not a small price, considering you are already expected to use one at least on team related stuff. If you hotjoin, then it means that you either lose one stun breaker/escape or condition removal. Not an easy choice either.

Gaidax.7835:

In all fairness, bunker-like toughness is there only if you decide to use toughness gear yourself.

I, for one, would not have an issue with it being only 100% bonus, IF it would work instantly. However, since it is not the case, I find 200% value to be completely reasonable, since if the enemy decides to not keep phantasms in check ASAP, then he can’t really complain about them escalating into an issue 10 seconds later.

Besides, giving up an utility slot on Mesmer for that is not a small price, considering you are already expected to use one at least on team related stuff. If you hotjoin, then it means that you either lose one stun breaker/escape or condition removal. Not an easy choice either.

What I’m most concerned about is the possibility of them changing the actual functionality so that it properly applies while keeping the 200% value. I can kill a phantasm mesmer with an ele any day, and a BM/Bunker ranger can at least stalemate, but not all professions have the defensive options that those two have; not with the inherent killing capability anyway. They don’t need to help illusions by overbuffing them with an absurdly strong passive; they need to fix base functionality.

Does persisting images stack with this? Or does it result in diminishing returns?

Signet alone we’re looking at 6500ish HP, IMO this is fine for zerker phant builds but the tanky ones who run toughness add so much that they are insane after the 12 seconds

However if this is to be changed I would like to see more work into removing uber 1v1 specs like BM roam ranger, including additional changes to phant, ect, ect. And more skillful play being introduced.

But I feel like this wont happen, or is a long time off, problem is the game is balancing for the meta and less build vs build. Which is half good, but then we also end up into a lot of bad habit play.

I don’t think the game should be balanced 1v1 but I think there should be options as any build to beat any other build on a flat even ground, even if the balance slightly favours one build.

iMHO: hard counters = bad. Soft counters = better.

Leuca.5732:

You were wrong again. 200% more health is essentially adding the base health twice, which is multiplying it by 3. That brings phantasm base health from 2150 to 6450 before any other effects come into play due to traits, etc

Eh, I said that. 6450 – 2150 = 4300.

Leuca.5732:

They don’t need to help illusions by overbuffing them with an absurdly strong passive; they need to fix base functionality.

But they can’t do that, because then people will be right back here complaining about them. Take the PZerker: People whine about it now. It’s damage is completely useless due to the hit bugs, unless the target stands against a wall so the Berserker gets stuck in them.

Fix the damage, and people would go mental over the 6k-8k critting Berserkers when against a wall (but nerf the damage and it becomes useless in a not-walled situation again).

And it goes on and on like that for us. We have dozens upon dozens of power-ruining bugs, which right now balance against the handful of really powerful abilities we have (signet of illusions not being one of them, but I think we’ll need to agree to disagree here or something :P ). Fix the bugs = we explode in power. Nerf us first = yeah, kick’em while they’re down! Do it at the same time = won’t work anyhow. :P