Guild Wars 2

This signet is never used in pvp ranked queue and almost never used in wvw.

The BASE passive healing is too weak. I think the way it scales with healing power and the active effect are on par with healing signet and signet of restoration but the base is just too kitten low to make it viable.

Its cast time is also to high for a signet. Should be 1s like signet of restoration.

Signet of malice is also harder and riskier to triger than warriors’ or eles’ signets. On thief you have too keep offensive and doing dmg to get the signet to proc. On ele and war you can go defensive/kiting and the signet is still working.

Well, thief also hits a lot faster than ele and warrior, so I guess that counts for something. The signet is pretty weak, but tbh there are way bigger problems with thief right now and every class has heals they never use, I’d rather they fix the other issues first.

Considering only the autoatk thief hits faster, but not that much. Ele auto on dagger is only 1/2 s and ele also has some insta cast skills too.

Signet of malice base:
132

Signet of restoration base:
202

Healing signet base:
362

To heal the same:
as an Ele: Thief would need to LAND 1.5 atk for every time the ele simply CAST an atk.
as a War:Thief would need to LAND 2.72 atks for second to heal the same as healing signet.

In my opinion the signet base should be around 180 base. Or maybe they could make it proc with iniciative usage instead of hits.

Malice is fine the way it is. A thief can get better healing per second using AoE’s with Malice than Signet of Restoration and Healing Signet combined- you only factored in autoattacks. Use Dagger Storm in a zerg fight sometime- it’s a full health heal. Very few people use Signet of Malice as a sustained heal anyway. Malice’s true potential is with Signets of Power and Signet Use, which gives you a free 5 might, initiative and heal every 12s. Pair that with Shadow’s Rejuvenation and you probably won’t die very often. Cruuk (a semi top tier thief) made that build popular in PvP for at least a year and a half. Malice is perfectly fine in PvE too- it’s in the current thief meta build (66002).

180 per attack wouldn’t be too bad imo- a buff is a buff, but I really don’t think it needs changing.

CobOfCorn.6352:

Malice is fine the way it is. A thief can get better healing per second using AoE’s with Malice than Signet of Restoration and Healing Signet combined- you only factored in autoattacks. Use Dagger Storm in a zerg fight sometime- it’s a full health heal. Very few people use Signet of Malice as a sustained heal anyway. Malice’s true potential is with Signets of Power and Signet Use, which gives you a free 5 might, initiative and heal every 12s. Pair that with Shadow’s Rejuvenation and you probably won’t die very often. Cruuk (a semi top tier thief) made that build popular in PvP for at least a year and a half. Malice is perfectly fine in PvE too- it’s in the current thief meta build (66002).

180 per attack wouldn’t be too bad imo- a buff is a buff, but I really don’t think it needs changing.

If you actually use the signet to heal, the passive effect goes away. If you use it every 12 seconds, you’re burning both your emergency heal (active) and passive heal in one go and you get 5 might, 1 init, and ~3500 heal (that is to say, nothing useful now that you’ve burned all of your healing and the condis are piling up). The main passive effects of the other 3 signets aren’t much worth burning up for the might either, except for the power one. If you’ve got the trait but you’re not going active with the signets, you’re wasting a trait. The main problem with signet of malice is that it has no condi clear and the second you run out of initiative you’re living on borrowed time.

That said, with P/P unload and initiative, its free HP all the way.

Signet of malice doesn’t really need a buff. I believe it has potentially the highest heal per second , which makes it great in PvE, provided you don’t need the extra evade from withdraw. A substantial buff to the heal per hit would make thieves a bit too good in PvE, since you’d be able to proc the scholar effect trivially.

And even if you buffed the heal on malice, it’d still be underused in PvP/WvW. The reason isn’t because it doesn’t heal enough (which it does), but rather because it relies on landing hits. This is fundamentally different from signet of restoration, which only requires using a skill. Blinds, confusion, and/or good kiting would still destroy someone running signet of malice.

mango.9267:

Signet of malice doesn’t really need a buff. I believe it has potentially the highest heal per second , which makes it great in PvE, provided you don’t need the extra evade from withdraw. A substantial buff to the heal per hit would make thieves a bit too good in PvE, since you’d be able to proc the scholar effect trivially.

And even if you buffed the heal on malice, it’d still be underused in PvP/WvW. The reason isn’t because it doesn’t heal enough (which it does), but rather because it relies on landing hits. This is fundamentally different from signet of restoration, which only requires using a skill. Blinds, confusion, and/or good kiting would still destroy someone running signet of malice.

In pve the bosses are a HP spong that doenst dodge, move and dies in less than 5 seconds. Pve is just a side effect of the balance they make focusing spvp and a bit wvw.

It relying on landing hits instead of just on cast is a good reason to make it stronger or at least heal the same, because landing skill is harder than casting a skill.

I think signet of malice needs a buff because it is impractical for a thief to choose it. The opportunity cost of losing an evade with gap opener/closer and 3 movement impairing conditions cleansed or gaining stealth and removing 3 DoT is too much for a theoretical “op” heal. Its a neat idea, but the heal just needs to be tweaked to fit a build that would bother using it which will always been a heavy offense build with quick attacks (either s/p or d/x or p/p with ricochet).

I’d suggest something like this for such builds:

[Signet of Malice]
Passive- Heal yourself when you attack.
Active- Heal yourself and gain additional health for every point of initiative missing.
Passive heal: 180(.08) increase in base and slight scale increase
Active Heal: ~4750(.15) + 220 per inititive; health per initiative is taken at the start of the cast. increase to base and scaling and added health per initiative to reward a heavy offense attack
Cooldown 15 seconds.

Considering the active now has a high potential heal (w/ 300 healing power and 0/15 initiative you can get over 8k) the cast time seems fitting and worth interrupting. Given the trait line that gives you 15 initiative (trickery) you can also trait for hastened replenishment, another trait hardly ever used.

I know this game isn’t tailored to my expectations but I believe that would be a huge fix to the signet while preserving what seems to be its original idea. Of course its all a numbers game and none of the above are what I would call “balanced” for all game modes.

Even my full healing power P/P on-proc bunker unkillable thief in sPvP went HiS because malice is just bad. The base heal is bad, it lacks condition cleansing, and unlike some other unique heals (like the mantra one) which all have low base heals and are not very effective overall unless traited into, it cannot be used while CC’ed.

I don’t even recommend using it on signet stab because the damage gained isn’t worth the inability to cleanse any conditions whatsoever, and with the metagame we’re in with immobilize and condi pouring in the PvP modes, the signet is just bad. Increases to health gained would make it situationally powerful, but still nothing great. I think the only way to make this heal compete is to just give it the best cleansing effects and a shorter or instant cast, seeing as the class lacks it elsewhere. This way, it can still be used as an engagement/DPS tool on signet builds, it lacks evasion and the better heal of Withdraw, and lacks the stealth and regen from HiS. It now has uses, and good ones, but the other options are still definitely good contenders depending on what type of build you’re playing.

I also feel that SoM needs something. A larger base healing stat would be nice, seeing as how thieves are typically the most fragile class. Also, I think adding a condition cleanse to it would make it more appealing to activate the signet (i.e. cure your conditions at the cost of a CD where you can’t heal with every attack would make for a nice trade-off situation).

Admittedly, I still run SoM, because I do lots of dungeons where trash mobs are quite prevalent, so it has its use for me at least.

PVE-wise, I think SoM is at a good place as it is. PVP-wise I would have no opinion on it. I never play as a Thief in PVP. I have seen 1 condi Thief using SoM and he/she looked like he/she was doing a fine job.

As far as Iám PVE concerned, I use SoM when solo-ing/duo-ing some certain bosses in dungeons. SoM seems to give a me better healing per second than Hide in the Shadows or Witdraw.

Should SoM be improved (healing pet attack wise) I would really feel overpowered during thise boss fights.

But.. this is just personal experience.

KevinB.9643:

PVE-wise, I think SoM is at a good place as it is. PVP-wise I would have no opinion on it. I never play as a Thief in PVP. I have seen 1 condi Thief using SoM and he/she looked like he/she was doing a fine job.

As far as Iám PVE concerned, I use SoM when solo-ing/duo-ing some certain bosses in dungeons. SoM seems to give a me better healing per second than Hide in the Shadows or Witdraw.

Should SoM be improved (healing pet attack wise) I would really feel overpowered during thise boss fights.

But.. this is just personal experience.

They could split the healing:

healing per hit on mob= X
healing per hit on player= 1.5X

Thats the way how I would like to see how this Skill should work to get more on par with the other Healing Skills of the Thief, as each Skill is special for something else.

Hide in Shadows is good for Extra Stealth, Condition Clean and Regeneration
Withdraw is good for Extra Dodge, Quicker/more often Recoveries and Stun Breaks
Signet of Malice on the other side offers not really two good things, but just only one, while the other two are especially good for 3 things, because Quicker/more often recoveries is already covered by Withdrow and Withdraw has for that a better base heal, so there is no reason to take SoM over WD for that positive effect, when if fact WD beats SoM in it.

I think also the Skill should be renamed, I find it simply unfitting for the effect of what it does, there is absolutely nothing malicious about this skill….
So here is my version:

Signet of Twilight

Passive:
Whenever you deal any kind of damage, either by a physical hit or by a conditional pulse youwill receive Heals of 150 instead of 132, which scale with HP by 0,1 instead of 0,05 now.

This means you get a heal, when you hit a foe for example with an AA.
But you will also receive heals now, whenever for example your dealt pposion triggers for damage, then you will get now a heal too. Currently you get that Heal only for the initial Condition Apply. But Conditions deal Damage over time, so the Signet should heal then also over time as long the Conditions deal damage, what should make this Effect more useful for Condi Thieves then.
Active: The Base Heal gets increased to the same amount of Withdraw, so its now 4344 instead of 3275 and it scales now also like WD with 0,6 with HP instead of 0,5.
The Active receives also a new Side Effect.
With the Activation you can perform now a Ground Target Shadow Step (like the Utility) to use it to give the Thief under this Healing Skill the speciality of having a slightly bit more Moveability and that Shadow Step should be bonded also with an Attack Move, so that Signet of Twilight becomes the only Healing Skill, with that you can attack a foe also and deal damage with, what would be its other speciality together with the passive healing so that it would have 3 special goodies, like the other Heals.

Then would be SoT good for Passive Healing, Mobility and an Extra Attack Move as only Healing Skill, that can deal also Damage when activating it, that comes from its Mobility.

This Attack would be the Skill “Twist of Twilight”, which is an attack, that removes a Boon from your foe and gives it you and in return gives a Condition from you to your Foe. This effect happens, if the foe has more than 50% Health, is it under 50%, then the Damage will be just higher and the Skill works then basically like a Heartseeker
——

The other Healing Skill left over – Skelk Venom should get completely removed and exchanged with an other new better Healing Skill. I see basically absolutely nobody ever use this Healing Skill since it got introduced!!
it has the longest CD, even when Traited with Venom CD Reduction and for that its effect is even worser balanced, than SoM.
Its only effective, if your are heavily traited for Venoms, which makes this healing skill a bad special snowflake under the Thief Healing Skills. Healign Skills need to be more universal useable and should be just only good, when heavily traited for one single Utility Skill Type.

So I think this SKill should get replaced with something like:

Assassin’s Remedy (old nostalgic Sin Skill from GW1 reworked for GW2)
Your next 5 Attacks each remove 1 Condition and when you cure a Condition with this skill, you get healed by 250 Base, which skales up by 0,6. Recharge: 30s
When you cure a Condition through Assassin’s Remedy, the cured Condition will turn into its Counterpart Boon for you.
Assassin’s Remedy is a two part Skill.
After using AR, the Skill will turn for the next 5 Seconds into the Skill “Dash”, which will give you for this time Quickness, Stability and Super Speed at the cost, that the Condition Clean Effect will stop then if you haven’t already cured 5 Conditions before the 5 second timespan for the second skill is over.

This way AR/Dash would have these 3 specialities for the Thief Build
- Condition to Boon Conversion
- Quickness/Stability on Demand for 5s
- Super Speed for quicker follows of foes or easier flees for 5s

basically the drug pill for sins lol