Guild Wars 2

I’m finally rolling a necro and was looking over the utility skills which seem to be substantially better than some other classes. In particular, Signet of Undeath sounds almost too good to be true or am I overestimating the impact of 1% per three seconds? Is this signet commonly used by other necros? Are there particular builds that favor it?

It’s actually almost never used. 1% per three seconds is quite slow, and the active is rarely useful anymore (since they increased the cast time to 3 seconds).

The passive is pretty weak, literally anything can give you more LF/s, and the active is difficult to use since the cast time is as much time as it takes to be stomped. Plus, IIRC, poison + some damage on the body can actually block your skill from working, its on a massive CD, and its rare that you get a good death-grouping to use it.

I know some people have had success with it in PvE with pugs (who often will die all in a cluster from trying to res), but that’s all because of the active.

It would have been useful if it could actually revive a dead teammate (as its name implies) as opposed to 3 downed ones. Necromancers being the masters of death should have such a mechanic. Anyone can revive a downed person anyway.

Bhawb.7408:

The passive is pretty weak, literally anything can give you more LF/s, and the active is difficult to use since the cast time is as much time as it takes to be stomped. Plus, IIRC, poison + some damage on the body can actually block your skill from working, its on a massive CD, and its rare that you get a good death-grouping to use it.

I know some people have had success with it in PvE with pugs (who often will die all in a cluster from trying to res), but that’s all because of the active.

this.

Or it would be good if it could geneate life force while in Death Shroud. In fact all our signets would be way better if the passive worked in DS. I guess I shouldn’t overstate. It wouldn’t be good, but it would be niche to useful in certain builds if it persisted into DS.

I have used signet of undeath extensively trying to find a situation where it actually has an advantage. The truth is, if you are in a group where allies get downed, SoU has such a long CD that bringing it is almost a total waste. It is often easier to res people by hand than target an area and the passive is ineffectual because Necro has plenty of LF generation. Getting DS and its skills off CD is a far more common problem than being short of LF.

For SoU to be attractive to me, it needs half the current CD, a larger AoE, and maybe another, minor ability like trimming DS transform cooldown or adding a regen to its active. Signets have only one trait associated and no synergy for running multiple signets in a build.

I use it, if I know I am going to be doing events like the dragon Tequatl the Sunless.
That is about the only time I’ve gotten any real use from it.

Because you can trait to regain more life force from your abilities, and because many of your weapons generate life force with their attacks, 1% per 3seconds may not be much but it adds up. Although I agree with what others are saying, it’s rarely used and, it’s kind of a waste of a utility slot ~ if you’re a death shroud build it can actually be pretty awesome for sustained life force. You gain life force a lot of different ways meaning you don’t really need this signet, but at the same time, if you use it it just means you’ll constantly be refilling that bar. So if you’re using DS as your primary means of defense or offense, it’s a pretty decent signet. If you’re not using it very often, then yeah it’s pretty much useless. And because the cast time is so long for the active, it’s only real use is the passive.

So here is a question: Does SoU generate LF when on CD? When someone goes down, is the choice whether to res someone or keep the signet from going on CD? The problem is no build goal favors the signet for both LF and res’ing over another utility, not even the non-existant signet build.

Anchoku.8142:

So here is a question: Does SoU generate LF when on CD? When someone goes down, is the choice whether to res someone or keep the signet from going on CD? The problem is no build goal favors the signet for both LF and res’ing over another utility, not even the non-existant signet build.

Signets lose their passive while on CD (unless you’re on a class that has a trait that overrides that effect), that’s their special “thing”. In this case, it doesn’t really ever mean much since if the active is going to work, it is always better to have a teammate over the LF generation, but in some other cases its an actual choice.

Anchoku.8142:

So here is a question: Does SoU generate LF when on CD? When someone goes down, is the choice whether to res someone or keep the signet from going on CD? The problem is no build goal favors the signet for both LF and res’ing over another utility, not even the non-existant signet build.

No, because like any signet, it has 2 parts: a passive and an active. Once the active is activated, the passive ceases to work until the cooldown is up. That is the tradeoff for signets

I really don’t get why they nerfed the active: it had a massive cooldown, it had a small aoe which made it tricky to use (downed ally could get knocked out of the area), and its cast time was long enough that you had to cast it pretty much IMMEDIATELY in order to pre-empt a stomp!

Plus the way they nerfed it pretty much took it out of the game: I would have preferred they lowered the maximum number of targets (even down to 1), or lengthen the recharge, than to lengthen the cast time by that much – it renders it completely useless! I know it’s still short enough to get someone up provided the original stomp is interrupted, but if the stomper has stability then you’re gonna need to use corrupt boon to save your teammate from the original stomp, and if you try to use the signet after corrupt boon your cast time is STILL longer than the SECOND stomp attempt! OK, maybe you have a thief or mesmer cloaking them to save them from the stability stomp – but if there’s 2 of you trying to get a downed teammate up then it’s DEFINITELY faster to revive normally than to use the signet!

Honestly, I would rather it were brought back down to its original cast time and made an elite skill than use it in the state it is now! I’d expect a buff to the active or a reducction to the cooldown if that were the case though.

It was nerfed because it was good enough that it was pretty much single handedly making Necros viable in high tier PvP. Once it was nerfed Necro play dropped off massively.

I agree they took it from always used to never used, but they did have a reason to nerf it.

Bhawb.7408:

It was nerfed because it was good enough that it was pretty much single handedly making Necros viable in high tier PvP. Once it was nerfed Necro play dropped off massively.

Back then I hated that people expected pretty much nothing from us other than being a rally bot on a 3 min cooldown. I even got asked a few times why I wouldn’t run Signet of Undeath, like it was as shocking to see as a condi necro without Terror today. But this signet sucked hard back then, and of course it sucks even harder today. People would’ve stopped using it either way, necros got significant buffs in general and to their other utility skills, some of which just don’t have a place in pvp.
Besides, I wouldn’t use Signet of Undeath if it was instant cast. For the most time you’d be giving up a utility slot for basically nothing, that’s a no-go not only for yourself but for the team as well.

There is one small use for it. Temporarily put it in your bar and take a little bit of falling damage. Wa-la! you begin building LF. Before the fight, remove the signet. It’s honestly the only use I have ever found for it.

What do you all think of this suggestion: Change SoU to curse one NPC so that, when it dies, its ghost becomes your ally and attacks your target for 20 sec drawing aggro just like a minion. It could be given a sacrifice option like with BF to res 1 player within an AoE. Developers could add a spectral glow to help differentiate it and reuse a lot of existing code. The signet would remain useless in in PvP and minimal effect in WvW. Bosses and high value NPCs would be immune, of course.

The passive would still generate LF, although I could also see it changed to support spectral skills.