Guild Wars 2

Power has a somewhat ambiguous effect on skill damage, due to varying levels of effect depending upon both how much of it you have and each skill apparently scaling differently.
But on average, it looks like Assassin’s Signet’s passive effect now out-performs the active. It should grant somewhere between 9-16% overall damage, putting the median close to even with the active effect, except that it works on ALL attacks ALL the time.
Considering the passive is no stronger than any other Signet, this means the active is terrible.

I had the same thought myself… We should test specific builds and get actual numbers.

The Passive and Active effects are a bad match, since they both do exactly the same thing in different amounts.
I’d like to see them change the Active effect to something like “The next X attacks have 100% Critical Chance,” or like the Warrior’s “The next X attacks are Unblockable.”

Grimwolf.7163:

The Passive and Active effects are a bad match, since they both do exactly the same thing in different amounts.
I’d like to see them change the Active effect to something like “The next X attacks have 100% Critical Chance,” or like the Warrior’s “The next X attacks are Unblockable.”

Or “The next 3 attacks steal 1 boon”, for those thieves who don’t want to go S/D but still want to be part of the bunker busting party.

Hmm the active should be a damage gain numerically (I avoid utilizing % damage gains in straight power calculations as the % varies wildly depending on the base comparison numbers, much better to compare actual damage numbers) once your past the 1200 power mark at the base level.

Im sure if you factor in might on signet or criticals it becomes better at lower power levels for damage per hit (for those hits its active on)

Again it may take a bit more before it beats it overtime (how many hits you get with the 180 power and how many you get with the 15% boost for example) but it shouldn’t that far off.

The functionality of the signets are lame since it turns the passive off when activated. It should have function as a boost in between CDs. The activated effect should be a small number to be added on top of the passive effect, otherwise it wouldn’t even be worth it to activate it since it is a DPS loss when in CD.

What’s the point of gaining 15% damage when you lose 180 power for 30s?

I wouldn’t mind it if they do this;

“Passive: Grants increased power. (+180 Power)
Active: Deal 7% more damage on your next five attacks. Maintain the passive effect.”

All signets should work like this and they should remake Earth Elementalist’s trait to something else.

Yeah, active and passives should fill different roles.

Damage passive = defensive/utility active, Defensive passive = damage/utility active, etc…

I like the new buffed passive, but personally I would like to see the active grant 2 block charges or some other kind of reliable avoidance.

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea. Though to be perfectly honest, if we want purpose to match the signet name, I’d do this:

Assassin’s Signet: (30s cooldown)
Passive – Grants 180 Power
Active – Shadowstep to your Foe

Infiltrator’s Signet: (45s cooldown)
Passive – Regenerates one extra initiative every ten seconds
Active – Steal a boon on your next three attacks

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

Blacksarevok.8104:

Yeah, active and passives should fill different roles.

Damage passive = defensive/utility active, Defensive passive = damage/utility active, etc…

I like the new buffed passive, but personally I would like to see the active grant 2 block charges or some other kind of reliable avoidance.

Ooooh, I like that.

So something like this?

“Passive: Grants increased power. (+180 Power)
Active: Gain regeneration. Cures burning, poison, and bleeding.”

not to mention it would reduce burst more AND would be useless in most of PvE and any fights against non-heavy boon users.

Assassins signet is fine currently, yes you loose upto 180 power by using it but you should be gaining far more actual damage than that 180 power would give anyway.

Dasorine.1964:

not to mention it would reduce burst more AND would be useless in most of PvE and any fights against non-heavy boon users.

Assassins signet is fine currently, yes you loose upto 180 power by using it but you should be gaining far more actual damage than that 180 power would give anyway.

Not really, because the 15% damage boost doesn’t last for 30s, if it does, then sure that would be worth it. You’re better off with the passive in the long run and it’s not even worth popping for a spike either.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

Umm, it’s not able to already? S/D #3 is spammable – having this signet ability on a 45 second cooldown does not massively increase the already high rate S/D is capable of while opening the utility to more weapon sets.

well it still sort of depends, if your popping it for spike then your aim is to do all your damage in those 5 attacks (longer than most burst chains) in which case its much greater gain than the 180 power for your specific use. Even more so if your running with signets of power or such.

And tbh if its really that bad that could be an easy solution, change it from next 5 attacks to something along the lines of for the next 10-15-18 seconds all attacks deal xx% more damage.

But it really does come down to what your using the active for, its very much a burst booster and for them it can add quite a considerable amount of damage over the passive 180 for that short period of time.

And I’d love to know where people get the idea that any skill on a thief is any more spammable then face rolling over 2-3-4-5 on anyone else.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

Umm, it’s not able to already? S/D #3 is spammable – having this signet ability on a 45 second cooldown does not massively increase the already high rate S/D is capable of while opening the utility to more weapon sets.

It’s only “high rate” because of exploiting an obvious bug. S/D #3 shouldn’t cost 1 init to boonsteal on the first strike.

I personally always take Signets Of Power for the 5 stacks of might when I pop the signet. Most people don’t live past 5 attacks anyways…

signets of power is really quite a changer for it, sure you have to trait for it but it essentially negates the loss of the passive (before it used to actually increase the amount) as long as you aren’t running with max stacks anyway (which as a thief you most likely wouldn’t have been/won’t be unless your S/D and against an engi or such).

That it, at least for burst builds, which are arguably the ones that would really be using the active anyway.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

You can already go 20 points in trickery for Bountiful theft and get almost the same functionality – it’s about choices. If you wanna roll 20 trickery, assassins sig (my boon stealing version), and S/D, you’ll be a boon stealing monster, but you’re dedicating a utility slot, 20 points in trickery, and your weapon set to just being a boon thief.

The idea was to give players who don’t want to roll S/D or 20 points in trickery a way to steal boons – Anet has mentioned (and with this patch proven) that they want warrior and thieves to go in a different direction – losing a bit of their “general damage” in favor of abilities that specifically target bunkers – boon stealing and boon hate.

Still just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion though, would perhaps need tweaking.

I like both the defensive active/aggressive passive and the next X attacks crit on activate suggestion.

The latter would certainly open up some more defensive thief builds and leave us a little less reliant on critical strikes tree for damage.

Dasorine.1964:

well it still sort of depends, if your popping it for spike then your aim is to do all your damage in those 5 attacks (longer than most burst chains) in which case its much greater gain than the 180 power for your specific use. Even more so if your running with signets of power or such.

I guess it would be useful in WvW or PvP to activate the signet, because it really only takes 3-4 solid hits to take down anyone in those settings.

And tbh if its really that bad that could be an easy solution, change it from next 5 attacks to something along the lines of for the next 10-15-18 seconds all attacks deal xx% more damage.

In PvE or dungeons, typically you only pop this when trying to burn down a boss and the cooldown wouldn’t matter anyway because the fight is over. But now with +180 power, it’s better to keep the passive because of haste and other buffs.

But it really does come down to what your using the active for, its very much a burst booster and for them it can add quite a considerable amount of damage over the passive 180 for that short period of time.

Yeah I agree. 180 power is not easy to drop though, before when it was 90, I drop it in a heartbeat because 15% is significantly greater.

well 15% is still significantly greater on those 5 attacks with 180 power once your past the 1200 base power mark and of course its for a completely different situation.

If your clearing trash or starting a boss fight that 180 power will be more damage over a longer period of time, however once they are in that butter zone where burst then becomes key (last bit of a end boss health for example) the active suddenly becomes worth loosing that 180 power for the 36-45 seconds because ideally the fight should be over in or close to those 5 hits (and at a reasonably high base power level that 180 power could require 20+ more hits to achieve the same “bonus” damage)

If you get signets of power then for 5 seconds while your doing your 5 attacks you only loose 5 power (granted before you used to gain a lot of power instead) meaning its even more handy for burst situations.

Dasorine.1964:

well 15% is still significantly greater on those 5 attacks with 180 power once your past the 1200 base power mark and of course its for a completely different situation.

If your clearing trash or starting a boss fight that 180 power will be more damage over a longer period of time, however once they are in that butter zone where burst then becomes key (last bit of a end boss health for example) the active suddenly becomes worth loosing that 180 power for the 36-45 seconds because ideally the fight should be over in or close to those 5 hits (and at a reasonably high base power level that 180 power could require 20+ more hits to achieve the same “bonus” damage)

If you get signets of power then for 5 seconds while your doing your 5 attacks you only loose 5 power (granted before you used to gain a lot of power instead) meaning its even more handy for burst situations.

It’s not 20+ more hits, the difference is actually ~200 damage so they are not far off from each other, but that’s only comparing 5 swings with 180 and 5 swings with 15%. After that, our damage drops by ~500 dmg for the duration of the cool down.

But like I said, I agree with you in a burst situation.

did you calculate in critical damage factors? and what base power did you use?

(yes you agree with me, but now you got me doing maths your not allowed to escape! :P)

Dasorine.1964:

did you calculate in critical damage factors? and what base power did you use?

(yes you agree with me, but now you got me doing maths your not allowed to escape! :P)

lol.

No, I didn’t include critical and I use a full zerker build and 30/30/10 traits. I used that sexy spreadsheet made by Puandro.

ahh right, cos criticals should push the signet damage a bit further ahead (so more hits with 180 power needed to catch up) buts its all academic

With 1600 Power, after adding Assassin’s Signet all my dagger attacks gained 10% more damage.
3 extra hits and NOT activating Assassin’s Signet will already put your damage ahead.
You effectively gain 5% damage for 5 attacks, followed by 30 seconds of 10% less damage. There’s no good reason to ever activate it. Not even for burst.

Dasorine.1964:

ahh right, cos criticals should push the signet damage a bit further ahead (so more hits with 180 power needed to catch up) buts its all academic

Even without the critical, it is greater within that 5 attacks, but the down time is my main concern.

If it doesn’t drop the 180 power on activation, it would be a nice increase of DPS every 30s, which is useful not only when bursting.

well with 1600 base power the 180 power should equate to around 11.25% increase, compared to the actives 15%

In that situation it wouldn’t take long for the passive to overtake the active, but that is a) quite a low base power b) ignorable if the target dies in the 5 15% boosted hits but survives the 5 11% boosted hits (as thats the point of burst)

Ideally you shouldn’t be popping the active until you know the active is going to acheive what you want, aka kill/finish the enemy faster with the knowledge that your not going to be fighting anything the 180 power is crucial for in the cooldown period.

and yeah if it didnt drop the power it would be a nice boost of damage, though then you’d have to factor in the extra damage from signets of power for some builds which would then take the burst even higher and such.

Perhaps a good compromise would be to half the passive on active use, so you can sit with 180 constantly or you can burst for 15% more for the next few attacks at the cost of 90 of your power for that duration (effectively reverting the “penalty” of activating it back to pre-boosted levels)

Dasorine.1964:

well with 1600 base power the 180 power should equate to around 11.25% increase, compared to the actives 15%

In that situation it wouldn’t take long for the passive to overtake the active, but that is a) quite a low base power b) ignorable if the target dies in the 5 15% boosted hits but survives the 5 11% boosted hits (as thats the point of burst)

15% of 1600 is 240, that’s only 60 power difference. But the loss of 180 for 30s is a loss of 11.25% damage.

indeed, but its technically meant to be a loss of 11.25% damage AFTER the enemy is dead.

Situational I know, but thats sort of the point of signets, you have a nice passive boost or an active thats better in a specific situation at the cost of that boost for a duration after.

granted assassin signet is fairly weak situational outside of burst situations/builds but its not the only signet like that.

Low base power? The only way I could get any more would be to spec into Deadly Arts. I have Power as the primary attribute on literally every piece of equipment I own. I have full Exotic armor and weapons, an Ascended amulet, two Ascended rings, and an Exotic accessory. The only power lacking on my gear is from my back piece being only Rare instead of Exotic, and my other accessory being Celestial type.

And even if the target does die within those 5 strikes, are you not expecting to attack anyone else in the next 30 seconds?

-Edit- Oh, something was wrong with my UI before. I have 1740 Power, not 1600.

Grimwolf.7163:

Power has a somewhat ambiguous effect on skill damage, due to varying levels of effect depending upon both how much of it you have and each skill apparently scaling differently.
But on average, it looks like Assassin’s Signet’s passive effect now out-performs the active. It should grant somewhere between 9-16% overall damage, putting the median close to even with the active effect, except that it works on ALL attacks ALL the time.
Considering the passive is no stronger than any other Signet, this means the active is terrible.

The main issue is Assassin’s Signet got nerfed so hard, you would of thought Anet Hiroshima’d it just to troll thieves in general. It gave us the ability to erase certain players in spvp, tpvp, and in pve. Thus acting like an assassin if we specced to it.

Small scale battles don’t win towers or keeps, so “assassinating” doesn’t make that big of an actual difference to you wvw griefers.

The signet used to give a meager amount of power but the active boosted your damage by 150% on the next strike. The next version had a boosted damage for next 5 strikes but at a lower bonus rate. Now it’s this: some 15%. Thief can’t put up a number over 10k anymore, so honestly i don’t see why such a comparably small percentage buff is so pivotal compared to signet of shadows or shadowstep.

Lastly, for exact answers i’d suggest you look up a damage formula, but in concept your skills have a base damage then power added onto it and crit is a percentage of the current damage total added to the final total. So in pve, 1,9k backstab + 2,2k power + 99% crit —→ about 8k to 9k backstab. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or go as detailed as you like. I’m just using estimates to illustrate a concept.

hmm strange with 2 power primary exotic weapons, full power primary exotic armour and accesories and a masterwork back item you should be hitting the 1700’s thats before traits, upgrade slots, food buffs etc.

never mind you editted :P

but yeah if your using the active on the signet your deciding that you want that extra damage fast, you use it fully aware that for x amount of time after your going to be weaker just like all signets.

If your not a burst build or never encountering burst situations where this active is useful then your not really meant to be popping it, sure it means it would mostly go unused for your build, but others might be popping it every time they can (pvp burst shots for instance).

Its the same way you wouldn’t pop signet of malice unless you desprately needed the 3k healing now or signet of agility unless you need the cure/endurance fill.

Yes signet is weaker across many builds and could possibly do with a look at but its not totally outclassed by its passive in the situations its sort of meant to be used in.

With some rough calcs in a mid-high power set up with a rough crit rate+damage (can’t guarantee complete accuracy these are fairly rough calcs) over those 5 attacks you could see upto 1k more damage over that 5 attacks, that could be a difference between something dieing and something surviving, and if I went to extreme glass cannon levels I dare say the difference gets more pronounced.

and thats with a mid tier heart seeker damage coefficient as well I’d add.

So yeah its still great for burst if you absolutely want to maximize your chance of killing someone in as few hits as possible, with the downside your going to be weaker afterwards.

And all my theory crafting is fairly weak to a point where the numbers are probably lower than they would be and this doesn’t factor in utilizing 5 big hitting skills and burning your init which is more effective with active (5 boosted big hits followed by subsequent weak hits that aren’t boosted any compared to 5 less boosted big hits followed by boosted weak hits)

Dasorine.1964:

hmm strange with 2 power primary exotic weapons, full power primary exotic armour and accesories and a masterwork back item you should be hitting the 1700’s thats before traits, upgrade slots, food buffs etc.

I edited that into my last post; apparently my UI was screwing up before. After equipping and un-equipping the Assassin’s Signet it started displaying the proper 1747.

Ekemeister.8905:

The signet used to give a meager amount of power but the active boosted your damage by 150% on the next strike. The next version had a boosted damage for next 5 strikes but at a lower bonus rate. Now it’s this: some 15%.

Man, why do you have to open old wounds.

Jeeze!!!

Now I’m hurting again — Thanks A Lot!

As I suggested a while ago, makes it steal life for the next 5 attacks would be the ideal solution. This way, every single one of Thiefs can use it no matter which weapon they are using.

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

You can already go 20 points in trickery for Bountiful theft and get almost the same functionality – it’s about choices. If you wanna roll 20 trickery, assassins sig (my boon stealing version), and S/D, you’ll be a boon stealing monster, but you’re dedicating a utility slot, 20 points in trickery, and your weapon set to just being a boon thief.

The idea was to give players who don’t want to roll S/D or 20 points in trickery a way to steal boons – Anet has mentioned (and with this patch proven) that they want warrior and thieves to go in a different direction – losing a bit of their “general damage” in favor of abilities that specifically target bunkers – boon stealing and boon hate.

Still just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion though, would perhaps need tweaking.

They’ve basically done it. The only thing missing is boon removal on utilities. To provide the option there otherwise it’s fine.
You have a weapon set for it, a trait for it, just missing utilities which they could probably do with traps for instance.

If you go S/D you trade general damage for your boon prot. If you go trickery you do the same, even more so since S/ and D/ (except blossom spam) get basically no effect from trickeries condition damage.

If you’re interested, I put this together using buildcraft’s coefficients (still has the old flanking strike in it). I think it’s accurate, shows that even at fairly high power, the active benefit is fairly small.

I wasn’t 100% sure of how the active boost works in formula, I assumed it applies before the armor is taken into account. Check for errors, I did this very quickly…

Edit: I didn’t calculate critical hits in this data set, just base damage

Pixels.6532:

If you’re interested, I put this together using buildcraft’s coefficients (still has the old flanking strike in it). I think it’s accurate, shows that even at fairly high power, the active benefit is fairly small.

I wasn’t 100% sure of how the active boost works in formula, I assumed it applies before the armor is taken into account. Check for errors, I did this very quickly…

The activated effect scales up as power and crit damage goes up compare to a flat 180 power from the passive.

We also have identified that 1200 or less base power is better off not using the activated effect since it will not result to a more damage, instead it will only reduce your total power by 180 while the signet is in CD.

At 1600 power, activating the signet will net you roughly 4%-5% damage increase for your next 5 hits, then after 5 hits, a loss of roughly 11%-12% damage for 30s.

So even without factoring armor, we can see what our base damage is going to be.

So the question is; when do you activate the signet? And the answer is; when you want to burst something that will result on your target’s death so that the damage loss at the end will be negligible.

Grimwolf.7163:

The Passive and Active effects are a bad match, since they both do exactly the same thing in different amounts.
I’d like to see them change the Active effect to something like “The next X attacks have 100% Critical Chance,” or like the Warrior’s “&” The next X attacks are Unblockable."

guardian slaying signet

Drawing Guy.3701:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

Umm, it’s not able to already? S/D #3 is spammable – having this signet ability on a 45 second cooldown does not massively increase the already high rate S/D is capable of while opening the utility to more weapon sets.

It’s not able to be already while keeping enough initiative for the fight itself.

Traited Signet for reduduced CD > Trickshot x 3 > traited Steal > FS + LS x 4

That’s a grand total of 13 boons stolen from an opponent, spaced out properly that is the equivalent 100% boon denial no questions asked. Removing 3 boons with the signet would be insanely OP.

EDIT: Factoring in the Sigil of Nullification (I think it is?) as mentioned by Pearl below me is a total of 14 boons if it crits.

60% chance on crit to remove a boon, we can pretty much already do this with all our tools used.

PearlGore.7419:

60% chance on crit to remove a boon, we can pretty much already do this with all our tools used.

So the question stands: Why do we need more boon-hating-skills?

Siva Mira.3546:

As I suggested a while ago, makes it steal life for the next 5 attacks would be the ideal solution. This way, every single one of Thiefs can use it no matter which weapon they are using.

This makes a lot of sense, would add to our “staying power” which is something Anet wants Thieves to have…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

PearlGore.7419:

60% chance on crit to remove a boon, we can pretty much already do this with all our tools used.

So the question stands: Why do we need more boon-hating-skills?

Internal cooldown: 10 seconds.