Guild Wars 2

Signet ranger can be a pretty decent build but some of the signets lack any utility when paired with the Signet of the Beastmaster trait. Other signets have useless passive abilities.

Signet of the Hunt – The active is garbage. 50% more damage on next attack isn’t significant enough to activate the signet. Signet of the Wild increases damage by 25% for 8 seconds which is enough for ~5 attacks, making the damage buff more than twice as useful as Hunts. Not to mention Wild provides stability. Since the Hunt passive is so weak it serves no special purpose to signet rangers

Signet of the Wild – As stated the active for this signet is great. But the passive is kind of bad. While passive regeneration may be useful for beastmaster rangers, who gain traited healing, it isn’t viable for signet rangers who build around physical damage longbow builds. Additionally when Wild is active and the ranger is signet specced, they gain stability for the duration. However it appears bugged that enlarged rangers cannot interact with any objects or even ressurect/down players in PvP. Considering the very popular stealth and mistform finishing, it would make sense to let rangers use their signet stability to finish off players.

Signet of Stone – Great signet. It’s the only reason I’m still a signet ranger. Keeps me alive when I most need it.

Signet of Renewal – It’s decent. However it gives a signet ranger no benefit unless the signet ranger pulls conditions to itself which would defeat the purpose of its passive. Since most pets are melee and many times rangers are ranged, it makes no sense for the pets to consume conditions from nearby allies but not even its own master if the ranger is only a few hundred range away. A huge problem with rangers is that some pet skills have a limited range so the ranger must choose to keep their pet passive all the time, or to not use that skill.

I constantly pop signet of the hunt before a -edit: Hilt Bash- (GS). Incredibly, incredibly useful and fantastic damage. To expand, since I had to edit anyway; I pop signet of the hunt while my Jaguar is in stealth attacking, then after it is used, I activate hilt bash. Ideally, all while the jag is in stealth (guaranteed crits). Ideally, one of them will activate for Bite, which isnt too hard to guarantee if you mentally keep track of the CD (8s untraited).

Its the only signet I run though, so, no comment beyond that

They should change “Signet of the Beastmaster” back to an Adapt trait again, like it was before they changed it to a Grandmaster trait. I could use the active effect of Signet of Stone, but I’m not going to put 30 trait points into it. I might consider 10 points though.

But to be honest, Signets should simply affect the ranger by default. Shouts already only effect the pet, why Signets too? I think it’s a really really bad decision on Anet’s part. Too many of our utility skills don’t affect the ranger.

Here I am writing another hopeful message, but I know I’m wasting my time.