Guild Wars 2

OK I wont do a long post with facts lined up. Instead I drop a suggestion that I think might be a solution for our swiftness situation for mesmers.

Atm we use rune of air or centaur in wvwvw most of the time, this for swiftness, our other way is focus. This lock us down to a rather narrow gear setup. Several good suggestions been up last weeks but I have one of my own who not would need alot of changing to the game.

Let signet of inspiration apply the random boons in combat, out of combat it instead simply only give swiftness 10s.

In combat = random boon like now http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Inspiration

Out of combat = swiftness 10 s prioriticed every 10 sec.

/Osicat

This should be posted in the suggestions section of the forum.

Regardless, I’d rather have it be +25% movespeed speed while out of combat and then random boons while in combat.

I like both suggestions!

I would love to have a reliable non-combat swiftness! Thanks.

I agree it is the most straightforward method.

The only downside would be missing those times when for example a random aegis saves you from a sneak attack.

But that’s hardly a big deal, and on a positive note it would get rid of the constant “Go ahead, hit me!” and other dialogue that randomly triggers while you’re standing around out of combat – this is the main reason I don’t like using the signet.

EDIT: I have a different solution for SoI
- gives you 20s of swiftness on activation, along with the usual effect of boon sharing.
I feel 10s every 10s passive effect is a little too much (yes I appreciate how some other classes can also get effective “perma swiftness”.

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

I think the first one is a bit difficult to implement. Do any signet skills at moment give boons based on out and in combat mode or based on passive/active mode?

The 2nd one with the +25% movement speed is easier to implement. Necros and thiefs have a passive +25% movement speed, why not mesmers

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

Not very useful unless you have swiftness/boon duration. Trust me. If you have 100% boon duration, you can MAYBE get 100% uptime on swiftness, but even that’s not a guarantee.

I feel furious!

I want Blink to be a signet with a 25% speed increase as a passive, teleport as active. That makes perfect sense to me.

+1 to Crossplay’s idea.

Want to adress Anet with the following quotation:

“Just give me a reason
Just a little bit’s enough
Just a second we’re not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It’s in the stars […]”

Especially after several >patches< and so called improvements

Curunen.8729:

But that’s hardly a big deal, and on a positive note it would get rid of the constant “Go ahead, hit me!” and other dialogue that randomly triggers while you’re standing around out of combat – this is the main reason I don’t like using the signet.

It’d be “Accelerating!” instead. Every time.

Crossplay.2067:

I want Blink to be a signet with a 25% speed increase as a passive, teleport as active. That makes perfect sense to me.

Then I would hate to blink because I’d go slow.

Actually Crossplay’s idea makes perfect sense going by the “Signet design idea” the devs posted about a bit ago.

Much like Signet of Inspiration makes, while Midnight, Illusions and Domination do not.

Design ideas:

Signet of Inspiration
Largely leave this one alone. It already works, the passive gain is solid, the active is very powerful but you ofc lose the passive. One issue is how it only has a group benefit to the active effect and only a personal-benefit to the passive effect. I would add to the active that it also gives you 5 more boons as per the normal signet rules (can be the same effect multiple times), but increase the CD slightly.

Signet of Domination
Active and Passive do quite different things. Make the active apply a Condition which causes a random condition every time the target cleanses a condition!

Signet of Midnight
Remove entirely.

Signet of Celerity
Passive effect is +25% movement speed.
Active is the current Blink effect, with the +range baked in (as it’s no longer affected by Far-Reaching Manipulations).
Blink removed.

Signet of Illusions
Passive is kept the same.
Active becomes “Your illusions ignore all damage for 8 seconds. Conditions are still applied but no longer have any effect until this protection ends.”

But I like the 10% boon duration…

Esplen.3940:

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

Not very useful unless you have swiftness/boon duration. Trust me. If you have 100% boon duration, you can MAYBE get 100% uptime on swiftness, but even that’s not a guarantee.

If you think you’re going to get 100% swiftness duration, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, you’re kidding yourself.

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

I’ve actually been running several minutes without getting swiftness at all yesterday. And when I do, I sometimes get it in the worst moments, e.g. right before a jump.
I see the element of randomness (say chaos) that’s inherent to our class, but signet of inspiration is actually just stupid, among other things that should be less random.

Kasama.8941:

If you think you’re going to get 100% swiftness duration, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, you’re kidding yourself.

…which is completely unrelated and a really weak argument. Other classes have it on top of other abilities as well. It’s not a balancing issue. It would probably even improve balancing if the signet only and exclusively applied swiftness when out of combat, considering we already have good in combat mobility.

Still like my Decoy idea best.

Passive: 25% Swiftness
Active: Gain stealth and summon an illusion to attack your foe.

Duration: 3 s
Breaks stun
Range: 1,200

I would argue this would have less negative impact on most Mesmer builds. Having Swiftness on Blink would suck because I would never want to blink while out of combat.

Iruwen.3164:

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

I’ve actually been running several minutes without getting swiftness at all yesterday. And when I do, I sometimes get it in the worst moments, e.g. right before a jump.
I see the element of randomness (say chaos) that’s inherent to our class, but signet of inspiration is actually just stupid, among other things that should be less random.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that. Sure it’s possible to go one minute, without the swiftness triggering. But several minutes? That has never happened to me. I usually get swiftness so often, that I have to be mindful of when I cast Temporal Curtain. So basically once every 30-50 seconds, and sometimes twice in a row.

Kasama.8941:

Esplen.3940:

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

Not very useful unless you have swiftness/boon duration. Trust me. If you have 100% boon duration, you can MAYBE get 100% uptime on swiftness, but even that’s not a guarantee.

If you think you’re going to get 100% swiftness duration, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, you’re kidding yourself.

I currently have 100% swiftness uptime, clones, stealth, and teleportation. You jelly bra?

Nice I will try this with another mesmer build I’m thinking up.

Crossplay.2067:

I want Blink to be a signet with a 25% speed increase as a passive, teleport as active. That makes perfect sense to me.

OMG yes please!!

/schwing

Xavi.6591:

Still like my Decoy idea best.

Passive: 25% Swiftness
Active: Gain stealth and summon an illusion to attack your foe.

Duration: 3 s
Breaks stun
Range: 1,200

I would argue this would have less negative impact on most Mesmer builds. Having Swiftness on Blink would suck because I would never want to blink while out of combat.

it’s not about the most useful thing, you can’t just get a skill that everyone uses and add an even greater ability to it. That’s not how balance works. You might as well say: “Well every Warrior is using 100b, let’s give it an AoE root and let Warriors run around, because they’re ALL using that skill, anyways.” “Oh, and Ele’s should have their Ride the Lightning reduce all other skills cooldowns by half the base cooldown because they pretty much all use it, anyways.” “Thieves Guild should now be permanent and when you activate it, you get 2 more thieves for a short period of time.”

You see where I’m going with this? You NEED to give a skill drawbacks if you’re going to buff it, unless it’s blatantly underpowered. Take Mimic for example. Nobody runs it. Why? It’s effect is subpar. If they were to change it, they would try to make it useful for players. Now look at Decoy. Everyone runs it. If they were to change it, they wouldn’t make it more powerful, they would probably give it a drawback so people don’t always run it.

Xavi.6591:

Still like my Decoy idea best.

Passive: 25% Swiftness
Active: Gain stealth and summon an illusion to attack your foe.

Duration: 3 s
Breaks stun
Range: 1,200

I would argue this would have less negative impact on most Mesmer builds. Having Swiftness on Blink would suck because I would never want to blink while out of combat.

This. Now this is good.

I’m not too keen on the “blink signet”, because of the imbalance in manipulation and signet skills (5 to 3), and then having to trait for signet cooldown reduction which is in a horrible place.

But passive 25% on decoy is amazing, although it might need a longer cooldown because let’s face it, virtually everyone will use decoy if this happens.

Edit: on reflection it is overpowered.

Maybe the speed buff should just be a simple trait choice?

Well my suggestion for signet of inspiration is a buff to the mobility for the skill, but atm the randomness of the skill make it wery lackluster in terms of passive. Any randomness in a skill open for the devil of fate to kitten you over. You in a open world chase situation, I bet my pants on the fact I will be guven regeneration with 100% hp.

Thing is for a swiftness skill to be effective it cant be random, this is why we atm have Rune of air or Centaur for wvwvw. To give us a option for effective swiftness out of runes would open for new builds and mindcrafting. And we would need to give something up, decoy blink and portal is my core setup atm for roaming, witch one would be worth swiftnes?

Random boons to mabye get swiftness is like if our dodge was random, Sometimes a dodge would roll forward, backwards and sometimes it would give regeneration or do a hard attack. It would be horrible.

/Osicat

I’d be fine with Signet of Inspiration only giving Aegis and Swiftness out of combat. Both last 10s and both are actually useful when out of combat.

Iruwen.3164:

I see the element of randomness (say chaos) that’s inherent to our class, but signet of inspiration is actually just stupid, among other things that should be less more random.

FTFY

The change to Engineer Elixir U to remove one effect from the drink and toss each was lame. Maybe SoI needs a buff to the individual effects, but having it give random boons is pretty nifty.

I have an idea:

Signet Passive: Grants a random boon every ten seconds. ( like now)
Signet Active: Copy all of your boons to nearby allies and then Grants you a 25% increased movement speed during the recharge time (as long as you have the sign activated or your passive in cooldown).

This will give you the oportunity of have 25% increased movement all time activating the signet after each recharge time, but with the sacrifice of not get boons from it. At the same time, your allies still will be happy to see that you share the boons you have, perhaps from traits or from other allies ; )

I think that is a fair compromise.

What do you think?

If the idea likes most, I will make a suggestion in the corresponding subforum. Or if a moderator reads us and if they like the idea, perhaps they could give us a signal.

I actually like that idea as well. It would give you a permanent speed increase in combat as well though, not sure about that. I’m mainly asking for out of combat speed personally.

It will Copy all of your boons to nearby allies and then Grants you 25% increased movement as long as you have the sign activated or your passive in cooldown, inside or outside the combat. You decide when you have the 25% increased movement or the random boons without the increased movement. Of course the boons in passive mode are the same and idem duration , cooldown in the signet, etc.

I edited the explanation and tried to explain it better : )

Ethics.4519:

Kasama.8941:

Esplen.3940:

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

Not very useful unless you have swiftness/boon duration. Trust me. If you have 100% boon duration, you can MAYBE get 100% uptime on swiftness, but even that’s not a guarantee.

If you think you’re going to get 100% swiftness duration, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, you’re kidding yourself.

I currently have 100% swiftness uptime, clones, stealth, and teleportation. You jelly bra?

You have 100% swiftness duration at the loss of something ells that’s significant, like changing your runes, which is fine.

Osicat.4139:

Well my suggestion for signet of inspiration is a buff to the mobility for the skill, but atm the randomness of the skill make it wery lackluster in terms of passive. Any randomness in a skill open for the devil of fate to kitten you over. You in a open world chase situation, I bet my pants on the fact I will be guven regeneration with 100% hp.

Thing is for a swiftness skill to be effective it cant be random, this is why we atm have Rune of air or Centaur for wvwvw. To give us a option for effective swiftness out of runes would open for new builds and mindcrafting. And we would need to give something up, decoy blink and portal is my core setup atm for roaming, witch one would be worth swiftnes?

Random boons to mabye get swiftness is like if our dodge was random, Sometimes a dodge would roll forward, backwards and sometimes it would give regeneration or do a hard attack. It would be horrible.

/Osicat

It never occurred to you that it might be random, to balance out everything ells the Mesmer can already do?

You’re simply repeating that over and over, and it doesn’t get more true or even reasonable because combat balancing and ooc runspeed still is completely unrelated.

PS: the word is "else".

Iruwen.3164:

You’re simply repeating that over and over, and it doesn’t get more true or even reasonable because combat balancing and ooc runspeed still is completely unrelated.

PS: the word is “else”.

It’s only unrelated of your ‘out of combat’ run speed is lost, once you go into combat. Swiftness stays on you whether you go in or out of combat, so therefor it becomes one and the same.

But the problem here is that everyone just wants an easier solution, while totally disregarding the negatives from the perspective of an opponent. The Mesmer already has an easy time escaping opponents with all it’s tricks, or hitting opponents safely from a distance with illusions. Having permanently improved run speed without any draw back, on top, would just be too much of a good thing.

It’s more like you’re totally disregaring what other classes can do. Regarding escaping from a fight for example, or catching up with an enemy that tries to escape.

Every other class has the same problems. Anyone that claims otherwise, L2P other classes. So you don’t like running after you get owned. Don’t get owned.

This particular suggestion is extra kittened, since the OP wants a fully automatic perma-swiftness with a 10 second CD. No other profession has anything close to this out of combat.

Obvious troll post is obvious.

ExZee.8109:

Obvious troll post is obvious.

Yeah, so why did you post it at all?

Kasama.8941:

But the problem here is that everyone just wants an easier solution, while totally disregarding the negatives from the perspective of an opponent. The Mesmer already has an easy time escaping opponents with all it’s tricks, or hitting opponents safely from a distance with illusions. Having permanently improved run speed without any draw back, on top, would just be too much of a good thing.

Since, you know, a Thief with permanent MS increase isn’t already doing exactly what you’re describing here…

Mesmer really does need more roaming ability for WvW, most likely in the form of more reliable access to Swiftness. If you don’t understand why, try running around in WvW without either a traited Focus or sub-par Runes taken only for gaining Swiftness.

Iruwen.3164:

ExZee.8109:

Obvious troll post is obvious.

Yeah, so why did you post it at all?

Throw the Q right back at you.

So make the swiftness 5 sec, 10 sec cd out of battle, Its not perma swifntess who is the main issue, its the fact mesmer are keyholed into 2 rune setups (Air and Centaur) to have reliable swiftness. We need to have another option aswell, this to make more different builds viable. A more open field of runes would make other builds pop up and this is what develop a class.

/Osicat

Iruwen.3164:

It’s more like you’re totally disregaring what other classes can do. Regarding escaping from a fight for example, or catching up with an enemy that tries to escape.

I play both a Mesmer and other professions, I know the difference, and I still think the low amount of movement speed is fair. Mesmers I fight against kill me from range, or escape me by using a combination of skills, all the time.

Fuschia.6573:

Kasama.8941:

But the problem here is that everyone just wants an easier solution, while totally disregarding the negatives from the perspective of an opponent. The Mesmer already has an easy time escaping opponents with all it’s tricks, or hitting opponents safely from a distance with illusions. Having permanently improved run speed without any draw back, on top, would just be too much of a good thing.

Since, you know, a Thief with permanent MS increase isn’t already doing exactly what you’re describing here…

Mesmer really does need more roaming ability for WvW, most likely in the form of more reliable access to Swiftness. If you don’t understand why, try running around in WvW without either a traited Focus or sub-par Runes taken only for gaining Swiftness.

That would be a valid point, if that was the only difference between a Mesmer and Thief. Stealth is what makes the Thief powerful. Once you can see where the Thief is running to, it becomes a lot more easy to catch. They also have even less swiftness uptime then the Mesmer. Not to mention 4,277 less base health then the Mesmer, and next to zero boons.

Why would you not use the options you have available? You make it sound like it’s a huge controversy. All you do, is switch in the focus with a double click in your inventory, cast the Temporal Curtain, then switch it out again. If you use hot-keys, it might take you a total of 4 seconds. You can run with Signet of Inspiration out of combat, and as soon as you see an opponent, you switch it out (this will take you even less time then 4 seconds). In combat, you have a combination of clones, stealth, and/or teleportation skills to get away with. You can get 15% more movement speed with Compounding Celerity, while you have three illusions up. Or you can use Sigil of Speed, which stacks 10 seconds of swiftness each time you kill a foe (without any internal recharge time). All of this at an absolute minimal loss of effectiveness.

There is no argument that would really justify the lack of ooc swiftness availability, and you also can’t name one except "they’re good at other things". Well, other classes are good at other things as well. There’s no balancing reason because it’s about ooc capabilities. You can’t really argue against quality of life improvements, except you’re just arguing for the sake of argument.

Kasama.8941:

But the problem here is that everyone just wants an easier solution, while totally disregarding the negatives from the perspective of an opponent.

Oh, let me be clear about my personal PoV: Before the portal-nerfs, countering my high in-combat and strategic group-mobility with lower personal mobility was mighty fine.
Also, having lower crossing-zones speed was ok in turn for being able to have a checkpoint for Jumping Puzzles and some back-and-forth shortcuts.

But then Portal CD was increased to 90s (and it was already way too long before the nerf…). Now, no point arguing higher strategic mobility. It’s not there. Portal is something a raid has, not the Mesmer.

OTOH, I also don’t like universal 25% / 33% access. Remove out-of-combat perma-swiftness from all classes, remove all 25% signets, increase the OOC runspeed buff everyone already gets. Problem solved.

Ooc speed has nothing with class balance here. The problem I have is that when i play in WvW and coordinate with my team, my mes is just too slow to get to certain places to respond timely when events occur. And this is critical as one more mes in a group fight can turn the tide of a battle. Unfortunately, more often than not, i usually arrive to the scene too late.

In addition to what people have already suggested to improve ooc combat, my own idea is to add to Signet Mastery trait, something like increase movement speed by 7% under the effect of each signet. You lose this effect when the signet is activated or under cooldown. Do not stack with Swiftness or Compounding Celerity.

Thought this would be common knowledge.

Run a focus
2 Sup monk runes, 2 sup water runes. Use 2 of whatever runes, i dont care.
Use +20% Boon duration food

Temporal Curtain = 22 seconds of swiftness.
20 seconds CD ( + 1 second for the delay between int othe void)

Enjoy perma swiftness.

Archemist.4362:

Thought this would be common knowledge.

Run a focus
2 Sup monk runes, 2 sup water runes. Use 2 of whatever runes, i dont care.
Use +20% Boon duration food

Temporal Curtain = 22 seconds of swiftness.
20 seconds CD ( + 1 second for the delay between int othe void)

Enjoy perma swiftness.

Another bandaid solution that we shouldn’t have to use.

Regarding balance, actually being 25% faster even in combat will only help us in escaping an opponent. That’s because even when we are faster, our illusions are not and will always be lagging behind while we are chasing the enemy trying to figure out how to actually do damage.

/edit: This won’t apply for GS builds that much as their damage mostly comes from autoattacks but is still true for all other weapon sets.

So i don’t really see how a permanent +25% movement speed (either signet or trait) would make us THAT much better than we are now.

Xavi.6591:

Archemist.4362:

Thought this would be common knowledge.

Run a focus
2 Sup monk runes, 2 sup water runes. Use 2 of whatever runes, i dont care.
Use +20% Boon duration food

Temporal Curtain = 22 seconds of swiftness.
20 seconds CD ( + 1 second for the delay between int othe void)

Enjoy perma swiftness.

Another bandaid solution that we shouldn’t have to use.

Its not really a band aide if you use those runes for your build. Balancing for mesmers currently means you either run a sustainable build or you sacrifice a small portion of it for more mobility.

I’ve been commanding with my Mesmer for a really long time and i can honestly say that we don’t need a swiftness buff.

For those who say that mesmer is too slow to use without using a temporal curtain speed buff have you ever tried just having a focus in your back pack and switching to it out of combat? Or dropping a chaos storm on your self?

With blink and stealths we’re already an overpowered class, pushing for extra swiftness is really pushing it.

Kasama.8941:

Esplen.3940:

Kasama.8941:

Signet of Inspiration gives swiftness more often then you think. Sometimes it even stacks swiftness two times in a row.

Not very useful unless you have swiftness/boon duration. Trust me. If you have 100% boon duration, you can MAYBE get 100% uptime on swiftness, but even that’s not a guarantee.

If you think you’re going to get 100% swiftness duration, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, you’re kidding yourself.

Spoken like a true thief.

Changing blink to a signit is a terrible idea. As a manipulation skill I can easily trait for the 20% reduction, which benefits my arcane thievery, mimic, and on the rare occasion Illusion of Life. Nobody wants to run signet mastery, and signit of illusions is 45 seconds untraited. Blink works because it’s on a fair cooldown, better if traited. That’s a hell of a lot of escapes. It’s not worth increasing that just to attach swiftness to it.

You people are mad. Mad I say! Just change signit of midnight from an AoE blind to an AoE swiftness on activation. Blinding is useless for mesmers now anyway.

Mad I say!