Guild Wars 2

Since somewhere around lvl 15, when I realized Signet of the Locust doesn’t stack with swiftness, I haven’t found a use for them. Am I alone in this? Does anyone out there find the signets useful?

Plague Signet: Used to be a good “get out of jail free card” before the patch, but no longer. The condition transfer from allies is still broken, so at best you’re spending a precious utility slot on an extra staff / dagger #4 with a longer cooldown

Signet of the Locust: The passive 10% speed boost doesn’t stack with swiftness or the dagger +movement speed, so you’d be using this for the mediocre AoE heal. Not worth the long cooldown, I don’t think

Signet of Undeath: 1% life force every 3s is okay, I guess, and the active effect not bad if I was on a tourny team. But again, 3min cool down?

Signet of Spite: Passive effect is a solid +power boost, and the active effect stamps a foe with every condition in the game which theoretically could work well with epidemic, but again — 90s cool down? Personally I never take skills just to sit on my bar

Okay, my main problem it seems has to do with the super long cooldowns on all of them. I know there are traits in the Spite line that reduce that, and also grant might on usage, but I feel like there’s always a better option

Does anybody out there use signets?

locust doesn’t stack with the dagger?! For real? wtf dumb!

As you said yourself… rest of signets were bad to begin with. Plague signet was condition necro stun break with extra condtions… long cooldown but it was a stun break that meshed in with condition necro.
Now…. I dropped it because its garbage and a waste of time and space utility.
If im getting hammered by a thief in stealth its useless. I can’t even use it to break the stun… And considering the fact that since beta all it did was copy conditions on allies… instead of removing them and giving to necro… it really doesn’t do jack worth having another 60+ sec cooldown utility.
If we were a normal class as every other… and our utilities were… well utilities. Then maybe it would have some values. But necromancer as class is completely dependent on utility skills. They make up 70%+ of our output. Be it measly damage or the worst of the worst support heals.
Anyway… I detest cooldowns with more then 30 seconds. I don’t play games to sit for 3 minutes waiting on the miracle to happend to use 1 of only 10!!!! TEN… skills to finally get off cooldown.
The tiny amount of skills add to that that half of them have longer cooldowns then any fight ever lasts. Meh…
Back to topic. Signets are now completely worthless.
Add to it the flunky at best mechanics behind similar skills… aka CB/PG/BIP and so on… more ofthen then not they fail and don’t do anything because there was a leaf floating betwen you and target.
If i had a penny for every time CB failed point blank right in my face… id be rich now.

I haven’t used them since week 1, they’re far too weak, and their CD’s are bitterly long.
Plague signet would be alright if it worked as intended.
Locust’s passive would be good if it stacked, but it’s active is pathetically weak.
Undeath I seem to remember not actually being very reliable, on top of a long CD, and a passive which is a little lacking.
Spite could be alright with target the weak, but the duration is a little short, and the CD needs to be cut in half atleast, I don’t know how they justified a 90 second CD for a handful of 5 second conditions.

The signets are very sad state. Even if you pick the major trait to reduce cool down they are still horrible because they still take forver to come back up and the passives are very weak already. The other trait for 3 stacks of might when using a signet is just so pointless as well since the might is such a small boost and does not last long ether.

So the traits are weak and the signets are weak so they are pointless to use.

valid points. signets are not used because the only good utilities skills we have (maybe 3-4) would be wasted if we used signets that are complete garbage.

If they are so worried about speed, hard cap it at 25% increase (i think that is the top end boost a thief can enjoy). That is basically what we would reach if we stacked signet and two traited daggers, and would drop by 10% for a minute each time we used the signet to heal.

This would make us the supposed inescapable death they claim we are designed to be.

Also note that a thief can reach 25% with a single signet, while we would have to stack traited melee weapons and a signet to keep up.

Edit: oh dear, looked into it and thiefs get 33% (same as swiftness boon) while stealthed via trait. No wonder they appear to rock PVP against anything short of a bunker build. If the target do not drop from the initial burst, go stealth and outrun them…

digiowl.9620:

If they are so worried about speed, hard cap it at 25% increase (i think that is the top end boost a thief can enjoy from time to time). That is basically what we would reach if we stacked signet and two traited daggers, and would drop by 10% for a minute each time we used the signet to heal.

This would make us the supposed inescapable death they claim we are designed to be.

Except they dont stack, signet speed and daggers do not work on top of the other to make us run faster.

YUp thanks OP for making this thread.

1. kitteny passive effect. (WORSE even than a flat 90 stat point increase, were it possible. the movement speed is kinda useless. I could see the life force being situationally useful if you are expecting to fight a long time as in pve. annoying that it is in combat, though i can see why.)
2. Long cooldowns (so I guess, whatever the passive effect is, it’s irrelevant since it will never be active)
3. Long cooldowns are not really justified by the active abilities. a tiny heal? a bunch of kitteny conditions (even if u can use them to try to trick an idiot to condi cleanse, or to mask, the cd is just perverse).

@Gamefreak

I know that. What meant was that rather than not having it stack, they should hard cap the max total boost at what the single highest boost is at present (33% from swiftness or a adept thief trait apparently). And allow us to stack the various boost until hitting said cap. Meaning that signet plus dual traited dagger would land us around the same as a signet thief or a elementalist staying in traited air attunement for 5 seconds.

We have Signets?

I find Signet of Undeath helpful, including the active in DEs, but CD is too long.

I would use Plague Signet if it weren’t bugged.

Signet of Spite active followed by Epidemic would be great but CD is too long.

I agree that the CDs are overall waaaay too long on these to be really useful.

Signet of Undeath: Has a very long cast time, I stopped using it in dungeons because all the squishy classes would downed-teleport out of my cast AoE. Even when I screamed in mumble for them to stand still. they moved, it’s pretty much reflexive for them.
1% LifeForce every 3 seconds is nothing really, every staff hit grants me alot more than that.

Locust: I use Horn so the passive is already underwhelming, the AoE life-steal is negligible and the CD is too long for anyone to consider using it as a reliable heal skill.
Since the health stolen is dependent on the number of enemies around you, recovering a large amount of HP usually means you’re only postponing the inevitable.
Any burst build will damage you for what you healed in a single attack.

Plague – Bugged, long cd, enough said.

Spite – Our only good signet passive (BECAUSE IT’S JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER PROFESSION’S STAT BOOST!!!) has a 90 second cd for ONE STACK of 6 conditions for 5 seconds, is this supposed to be a joke or something?

Look at the other professions, signets are supposed to be small effects with short cooldowns because half the point is the passive effect, NONE of our signets has a base CD below a full minute and NONE of them has a particularly impressive effect, with the exception of Undeath I suppose, but good luck getting that to happen.

Just like every other utility we have, they feel underdeveloped and badly designed. I really think that our mechanics and effects were developed late in the game cycle and were rushed out the door with very little QA, the amount of class bugs is a big indicator of this.

It almost seems as if the cooldowns are leftovers from GW1, where they had long cooldowns because they did not cost energy to use.

I do actually use the Signet of Undeath for dungeons when in pugs or story for guildie help… sometimes even in general node running for the DS while running but in general no not a single one of em.

The only signet i ever use is Plague, with the Master trait in spite tree, using BiP, Plague sig, then Epidemic totals to 13 stacks of might. Giving some hardcore Extra bleed/power dmg boost. But i find that i’m always waiting on plague sig to get off cd to use it… very annoying.

Yeah, Signet of locust doesn’t stack with dagger. Is it bug or normally?

Hangis.6573 – except for swiftness, movementspeed increases dont stack, only the strongest is applied, so 33%>25%>10%>5% (both the dagger traits parts and a part of it and locust dont stack, as in you dont get 15% if dual wielding daggers nor 15% or 20% if 1 dagger and locust).

They’ve all been pretty useless for me. Sometimes I use signet of undeath in dungeons, especially if I know a tough part is coming up where a boss can wipe multiple people at once.

Other than that, I avoid them like the Plague.

Actually right now in my build I use signet of locust and it works just fine, specially if I have more than 3 people around me.
There are times where it can heal you for up to 6k if you use it right,it’s like a second heal,plus it does a good 1k dmg per target, and if you trait for it, it gives you 3 stacks of might.

the signets are very situational utilities that only have a strong side if you trait for them or rely on them to execute a specific chain of attacks.