Guild Wars 2

I read a post early on about signet warriors and it had me wary of running a 5 signet build. That post pretty much dared anyone to run 5 signets …because that OP said you would spend most of your time in a downed status in pve dungeons. I tried to heed his warning and I stayed away from 5 signets for a while. I got bold enough to try 5 signets anyway and sure enough..he was right.

The passive benefit from some signets is overly weak compared to the active benefit you get from the non signet slot skills. I try to strike a balance now between useful signets and useful shouts/banners. I stay away from abilities with overly short durations or overly long cool downs. If I’m going to put something on my bars…I want to get some bang for my buck. I want it to be useful, effective, and available when I want to use it.

I have replaced healing signet with mending due to the poor performance of healing signet. Healing signet is great for solo pve grinding, but horrible in any spike damage situation. The heals per second are just too low and it provides zero secondary benefit. Mending is just flat out superior as it heals for more than the signet, has a low cooldown, and removes two conditions when you use it every time.

I replaced signet of fury as it only provides 23 precision…which is nothing at max level…as its passive. The active ability of signet of fury was pretty nice, but in my build where I accumulate adrenaline rapidly anyway..it was a wasted slot. I replaced SoF with “shake it off” for a while, and that was very effective in solo play and decent in group play. I fell out of love with “shake it off” due to the fact that it only removes one condition and you don’t get to choose which one that is. I love that it breaks stuns, but I hate that when I need to get a damage dealing condition off (like poison or bleed) and it removes immobilize instead. When you’ve got a whole row of conditions on you and it only pops one off..that’s a problem for me. Signet of Stamina was way better for that, but it has a longer cooldown. Ultimately I decided to just rely on mending to pop two conditions off of me at a time and go with a banner in that slot..banner of discipline specifically since I enjoy dps and my crit rate isn’t up to par yet.

The signets I do run and will keep are signet of might, dolyak signet, signet of rage. I’m on the fence a little about dolyak as I have not personally evaluated how good toughness is going to be in the long term…and whether or not I will eventually get enough from gear to drop this too.

To answer your question, I started dropping signets around level 50-60. It coincided with multiple deaths in dungeon runs, where I was dying rapidly to condition damage. Being able to support your party is pretty nice too. Currently I refuse to spec tactics at all because I hate all those situational filler traits (blah blah blah…while reviving) to get healing shouts, but I do use at least one banner in most groups.

I don’t run a GS either…I’m always guilty of trying to be different from the unwashed masses lol. I currently run dual axe/long bow.

http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/1925-dual-axe-deeps

I tend to store up adrenaline on my axe/axe spec as the benefits of keeping full adrenaline tend to massively outweigh the benefits of using the axe burst skill. I only unload with axe burst when its clear that I won’t be taking a large amount of incoming damage. I’d love to see eviscerate buffed to the point where you really want to use it every time its up with full adrenaline though.

I’d rather they just bake warhorn into the warrior class. I love the weakness debuff/vigor buff, but they are both way to short in duration. I also hate having to waste a weapon slot on warhorn just to get that. Warhorn should be an extra slot in our character sheet and just work like vulnerability…a weapon proc effect.

Please change axe #4 into a utility skill of some sort, preferably into a survival booster. I’ve tried out the various weapon combinations and I’ve settled into axe/axe as my favorite. I’m happy with every mechanic of that set except axe #4. I can’t see anyone not having a fury buff from either FGJ or SoR, so the extremely short fury buff gained from using axe #4 is very low on my priority list. We also have plenty of attacks from axe/axe, so the extra attack is of minimal value as well. I think this slot would be much better filled with a group survival utility.

Ideas:
1. a group or self only toughness buff
2. a group or self only heal
3. Add option here…..

Btw….please remove cast times from warrior abilities. I know they are minimal (1/4 seconds, 1/2 seconds, 1 seconds etc) but it does not make any sense to have cast times on melee attacks and abilities. I can even see the animation taking that long on some abilities..but I’m only talking about the actual activation of the abilities themselves. Its really irritating having to stop all other actions except movement to wait on signet of rage to actually apply its buffs.

It sounds like the OP is talking about eviscerate damage with full adrenaline. The OP is saying that eviscerate should deal more damage ..considering the trade off of losing the bonus damage from berserker’s power, the extra healing from adrenal health, and the bonus critical chance from heightened focus. It sounds like the OP is running a similar build to mine, in which I have all three of those traits.

I still have pretty garbage gear as I’ve only recently reached 80 and have yet to participate in pvp, but I’ve noticed that eviscerate only hits marginally harder than a few swings of my axe #1 attack. I’ve been reading that it hits up to about 5k when properly geared…not sure if that’s really the max or not, but that seems pretty weak for the trade off.

Sure, the other weapons do have bonus effects that make F1 worthwhile in pvp apparently. This is what makes me assume that the OP is talking about eviscerate. Considering the other F1 attacks seem to incorporate some sort of bonus effect (stuns, immobilize, fire combos) and all eviscerate really gives is extra damage (non traited)…I can see where the OP is coming from.

caveslug.5934:

WoW’s success and the influx of 12 million players many of which were new to mmo’s, along with the anonymity of the internet destroyed WoW’s social aspects not some Dungeon finder.

I agree. The LFD tool did not kill WoW, it was the developer’s decisions in attempting to please everyone. They were on this mission to increase the player base so much that they did not see a problem with sucking in immature (age or attitude) players who had no concept of how to behave in a group setting. I applaud Anet for strictly enforcing behavioral rules so far as the language in and frequency of zone wide posts. This, in itself, makes the game immensely more tolerable than WoW. I am generally against global chat channels just because of how I saw them abused and not moderated properly in WoW, but if Anet sticks to a strict moderation policy…I can see that working in GW2. If they apply at least half that level of moderation to behavior in any LFD tool they implement, then it will be a success.

A group finder for this game would not have the same effect that the dungeon finder in wow had. The primary reason being the lack of the “holy trinity” in this game. There are no healers or tanks in GW2. That is one of several reasons that the WoW dungeon finder made that game worse. When one or two roles is valued dramatically over another, then they feel privileged to be kitten-holes. Those over-valued roles also got instant groups in that dungeon finder system due to high demand. The profession system in this game has successfully prevented that from happening here.

The loot system in GW2 also prevents that as there is no shared loot to fight over.

I would definitely not want any global chat channel for group finding as that is just a soap box for kitten-holes anyway (Trade Chat in WoW or Barrens chat in WoW).

If they implement a group finder, I’d prefer it to be a posting board instead of an automatic match making tool that just sucks randoms in together. So long as my above points stay unchanged…I would welcome a party finder in this game. I just spent 4 days camped out in fireheart rise waiting on someone to finally agree to do story mode CoF. I would have much preferred to go about my gaming experience while waiting on a group. I vote yes for a group finder so long as the game conditions I listed above don’t change.

@Sorry.8627 Honestly, that’s what war horn offhand is for. #4 skill for war horn removes those statuses . I initially resisted using a war horn, but just like others have posted in different threads..once you go war horn…you don’t go back. I’ve been looking for the trait that causes healing signet to remove crippled, chilled, immobilize and weakness…I have yet to find one that changes healing signet in that way.

I just checked and I see what you mean Sami. I wouldn’t have expected any cast time on a melee profession’s buff ability. That seems like either bad design or a bug in itself :-). I can’t believe they intended for a melee player to stop everything and just wait for an ability to go off during combat. Hopefully they change this as it makes no logical sense to me. The ability should not even be capable of auto cast if it has this kind of limitation on it.

10 seconds + the heal itself + the cooldown from having to actually click it (at which point you have zero healing from the signet until the cooldown is expired), is forever in a pve dungeon and and I assume it is way too long in pvp. This is compared to just one click of the button and its cooldown from either of the other two options. Add the fact that after this same or less time frame with mending, you no longer have conditions applied as well. It would be different if the healing ticks were enough to counter at least the condition damage you get in a pve dungeon, but they are not.

I run superior sigil of purity on my main hand weapon, shake it off, and use axe/warhorn as my primary weapon set…and even this is not enough sometimes in pve dungeons with all the conditions rapidly and repeatedly applied. I do have adrenal health…I sacrificed most of the strength traits I had to get 3 traits into defense just for adrenal health. My spec is 10/25/15/0/20…pretty much a general spec with decent dps and a few survival traits (a non weapon specific build). I don’t use banners currently because I despise the mechanic of having to pick them up and carry them with me every time I move. I’d rather not depend on something like that to compensate for weak healing from my healing slot, especially since I am already compensating for it with adrenal health.

It is pretty obvious by popular choice that healing signet is lacking compared to the other two options. I don’t think there should be a problem with improving the worst of the healing options we have.

Please show healing signet some love. The passive healing from healing signet seems very weak considering that it has no other passive effect besides minimal health regen. Even the active effect is very weak, but that is understandable considering its passive effect is also healing.

My main issue with it is the comparison with other abilities for the same slot. You have mending that actually out heals healing signet, while also removing two conditions…this is extremely beneficial. There is healing surge that out heals both other options due to its adrenaline based scaling. I don’t think healing signet should out heal either of these two alternatives, but it needs to bring something to the table other than the absence of micro management.

Ideas:
1. Add some passive armor/toughness to healing signet
2. Add some periodic condition removal
3. Add an adrenaline based booster to its passive healing
4. Increase its passive healing, but replace the on demand healing with remove all conditions and/or temporary immunity to conditions

This may be related to the signet bug listed above, but this seems to be a separate issue. I have signet of rage set to auto cast, but it will not apply its three active buffs if I have other abilities queued up. If I am actively attacking or using other manual abilities, then it will not auto cast. I have to actually stop everything else (with the exception of movement) for it to retry its auto cast. The whole point of setting this ability to auto cast is so that I don’t have to micro manage it.

I have also confirmed the crazy number of obstructed bugs with rifles for warriors too. I have given up and gone to long bows as they also have superior effects…just not damage.