Guild Wars 2

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

Plague Signet is incredibly useful.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Plague Signet is incredibly stupid.

I fixed that for you

It makes the necro even more immobilize I feel like im so useless when I run it. Cause you eat all the immobilizes/chills/cripples of your teammates.

So as a personal preference I hate it. But as a dev stand point it ‘should’ be what the necro is built around as support. Taking in teammate condis and transferring it over.

If the signet didn’t transfer immobilizes/chills/cripples I’d love using it.

Question: does anyone happen to know if -Condition Duration affects the conditions you pull? I’m just curious if a Melandru / Lemongrass Poultry Soup combo could turn you into an actual condition tank for your team.

Edit: To be on topic, I really love the idea of the passive / active combo. Pull conditions from friendlies, throw them back at enemies if you’re truly overwhelmed / need a stunbreaker. But the execution makes it frustrating to use. Sometimes I pull the wrong condition (1s cripple instead of the 7s poison) and sometimes I just can’t pull enough conditions. (I am nearly at full health and my teammate is dying beneath a stack of 8 bleeds)

I can’t wholly recommend buffing / nerfing the transfer rate either, because it’s such a double-edged sword either way.

Berullos.6928:

It makes the necro even more immobilize I feel like im so useless when I run it. Cause you eat all the immobilizes/chills/cripples of your teammates.

So as a personal preference I hate it. But as a dev stand point it ‘should’ be what the necro is built around as support. Taking in teammate condis and transferring it over.

If the signet didn’t transfer immobilizes/chills/cripples I’d love using it.

Get 6 seconds of immobilize, transfer. Problem solved.

It’s not an easy thing to learn, but I swear by it, especially in the current meta.

Plague Signet is awesome. Conditions have been and always will be huge in PvP meta because of how strong they are. Plague signet not only is a stun breaker, but has the potential to destroy someone with a large burst of conditions, and lets face it your standard condi build has Putrid Mark, Consume Conditions, Deathly Swarm and now Plague Signet you’ll have essentially 4 full condition wipes/transfers in team fights, as well as pulling them from teammates, who I guarantee will not be so lucky as you.

Also with the new Signet trait, you can spend a measly 10 points in Spite and pull that recharge down to 48.

It’s by far the best condition transfer in the game; for 2 reasons. It’s instant, and it’s a stun breaker! It’s increcly handy against other necromancers as it also transfer fear. The only downside to it is it’s long cooldown. Also, it’s always funny to watch a thief trying to fear us just so we could break to send back the fear he stole from us.

XD

Plague signet is somewhat useful, but I’ve only used in dungeons etc. harder pve content when team needs condition removal.

I can see it could be useful in premade tpvp team, in wvw maybe not so much because “lol” you eat immobilize in middle of slugfest and die.

Anyway it’s far from being totally worthless, situtational a lot maybe.

3 problems with plague:
Its pulsing (not all conditions on allies instead apply to you but pull every 3 seconds condis off – could be 10, was 3 when it was 1 condi)
The cleanse/transfer depends on the enemy being there so obviously except the blind (to that it sometimes still misses for some reason), you must not being knocked down/blowouted or pulled (its transfer projectile fails if you shoot it off from the ground)
Its seperate effects could be very strong, but are blergh as a combination since the need for one or the other effect swaps like every few seconds, even in pve.

A stun breaker + condition transfer in one skill = amazing

It’s ok, I like Signet of Spite more now for certain situations since the power boost and enhanced conditions. I usually run SWalk for stun break, so plague is usually redundant.

ive been running well of powere lately myself. lower cd+1sec of stability to assure u not getting instantly cc-ed te moment u stunbreak the 1st, and its effects seems to last for a couple sec after u walk out of it(haven’t checked to see if it actually still cleanses but it keeps the buff on my boon bar for abit).

and it provides good team cleanses and access to boons we cant normally get

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

I used it in beta and a bit after release until I noticed it was copy and pasting conditions instead of removing them from allies. I traded for wells after that.

I wouldn’t say its worthless but not as good as some other utility skills that could be used instead.

Tears.5627:

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

I used it in beta and a bit after release until I noticed it was copy and pasting conditions instead of removing them from allies. I traded for wells after that.

Does it still do that?

I tried it in dungeon and i believe its bugged… I had it on for 3 minutes, i didnt even get ONE condition from my teammates… Not a single one and i were litteraly standing inside them

Poplolita.2638:

It’s increcly handy against other necromancers as it also transfer fear

Actually, it doesn’t transfer fear because the first function that the Plague Signet provides is breaking stun which breaks the fear before the transfer function runs.

Tested this.

Tenderly.7019:

Poplolita.2638:

It’s increcly handy against other necromancers as it also transfer fear

Actually, it doesn’t transfer fear because the first function that the Plague Signet provides is breaking stun which breaks the fear before the transfer function runs.

Tested this.

My bad, I just tested this as well. Well, it’s still a decent utility skill imo ^^

RockonHarder.7235:

Tears.5627:

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

I used it in beta and a bit after release until I noticed it was copy and pasting conditions instead of removing them from allies. I traded for wells after that.

Does it still do that?

It hasn’t done this for months and months but people still keep bringing it up.

Poplolita.2638:

My bad, I just tested this as well. Well, it’s still a decent utility skill imo ^^

Definitely one of the best utilities right now in tPvP/sPvP. I use it.

It’s the only utility we have that removes immobilize and stun at the same time.

It’s very potent when you can epidemic and plague signet during the epidemic cast.

Softspoken.2410:

RockonHarder.7235:

Tears.5627:

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

I used it in beta and a bit after release until I noticed it was copy and pasting conditions instead of removing them from allies. I traded for wells after that.

Does it still do that?

It hasn’t done this for months and months but people still keep bringing it up.

Don’t mean anything by it. I simply gave my reason for removing it from my skill bar and not going back. =)

In theory it’s a great idea, in Practice in some tweaking to actually be useful.

It’s actually a pretty good skill… I sometimes take it when I roam and it saved me on more than one occasion. It’s especially useful when fighting other necros or condition based people cuz they fill you with condis and you promptly transfer them back. Sometimes the transfer of condis back to a person is enough to kill them because it scales off of your own condition dmg (especially when transfering back a Pin Down from a warrior, that thing can do over 10k bleeding dmg).

I’ve started using it more lately now that they fixed it so that your own conditions aren’t cleansed immediately like it used to (which made it pointless to bring) and found it to be very useful. The fact that it’s a stun break as well as a condition cleanse/transfer makes it pretty versatile. I wouldn’t ever use it without the new signet trait though. I found it especially useful when running multiple minions because you can pull the conditions off them pretty regularly, making the signet actually useful beyond a stun breaker and actually benefiting your minions (especially now that staff won’t pull the conditions off them anymore). I would however recommend against using it in wvw if you zerg-surf because the sheer amount of conditions that fly around will get you killed faster than you can transfer them off at times. My only real complain besides that is the slow rate it pulls the conditions (or seems to) in smaller fights. I don’t know if it’s simply choosing one target at a time to pull from or what but sometimes it just seems a little sluggish (scenarios like MethaneGas mentioned aside, of course).

RockonHarder.7235:

Tears.5627:

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’ve played around with Plague Signet a bit in zergs and it seems pretty worthless overall. It pulses a bit slowly and doesn’t seem to really draw enough conditions to be beneficial to the team. If anything, it seems to do more harm than good, as you need to wait a while to get enough conditions drawn before you can unload them.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to make this more useful. I’d suggest changing Plague Signet’s passive effect to something like: increase boon duration by 20%, or increases critical strike chance by 3% or the like. For the active, I’d make it draw “x” conditions per player around you, up to a total of “y” (e.g. 3 per player, up to 20 conditions). Activating the signet again within “Z” (5?) seconds transfers the conditions.

I used it in beta and a bit after release until I noticed it was copy and pasting conditions instead of removing them from allies. I traded for wells after that.

Does it still do that?

No, that bug along with another after it where it would pull the conditions then immediately cleanse them off you as well, were what made this a bad signet to bring. Luckily those bugs have been remedied and hopefully it won’t happen again.

I am sure it is better now but, in dungeons, when it was not on CD I was thinking, ‘Holey doughnuts, do I spend it now… do I?’ Use Consume Conditions with it as a reward for your masochism. In PvP, it should be fine but I developed an aversion to it early.

This post reminds me to dust it off and see how it works, again. Thanky.

Hows Plague Signet working now? Any one know how often it pulls conditions from allies? I have used it before and it didnt seem to work to well?

I was wondering about durations of condition transfers (not just Plague Signet but Deathly Swarm and Putrid mark too). Does it transfer the remaining duration? The original duration? Or is it just a fixed duration? Does your own condition duration affect the transferred condition at all?

PS. I strongly agree with the OP that the functionality should be redesigned. I love the concept but I would like it to be more “active”. I don’t mind getting all the disabling conditions as long as I can choose when.

It always transfers remaining duration. It essentially “copies” the condition with remaining duration onto the person transferred to, then removes it from you. Your own condition duration has no effect.

Absolutely wonderful in SPvP. Great stunbreaker, and essentially makes other conditions builds drop when they think they have you. I use it with corrupt boon and signet of spite. Basically giving myself 3 ways to turn a fight. In a team fight, I can focus down three separate people and then drop my bleed AoE’s to win the fight.