...and what about Signets and Shouts?

Since our posts are focusing on buff DH in battle, I just want to remember that our Signets and Shouts are just..."meh";both have the same issues: too long recharge time, not so good effects (Stand Your Ground is the only good after all...) and 2 Trait who do not give so much effort, since we've mantras now

What do you think?

Pretty much the same issue you run into as a Warrior. The majority of Signets and Shouts are hard to justify a utility slot over be it PvE or PvP - far more important/impactful skills exists and slots are at a high premium.

Shouts in particular. I know that Guardians are already loaded up the butt with FX abilities, but making Shouts not use utility slots and instead somehow rework them somewhere else would probably be the only way to see them used, ever...

it is sad when ic a guardian with the elite signet......

@"Aeolus.3615" said:it is sad when ic a guardian with the elite signet......

^THIS

Explain me: why and when, a Core Guardian is usefull with a"passive healing" build. C'mon, why a "core guardian" should use a "passive healing build" with Signet of Courage + VoR passive healing, when a FB with ministrell or cleric armor overperform this kind of build?.Even in a PvE contest is...completely useless.

Bane and Dolyak signets are pretty good. The others, not so much. The elite would be much better if it's radius was incresaed to something useful, like at least 600.

Shouts though? HA! That's my new shout. HA! It makes my opponents roll over laughing when they see my build.

Signet of Courage should pulse every 3s, not every 10.Signet of Wrath should be instant cast.Signet of Mercy cast time may still be a little too long, though it's hard to say. Or it could use a lower cd? I'm not sure how much use it sees in WvW/PvP at the moment so I can't really comment there."Save Yourselves!" needs a lower cooldown."Hold the Line!" needs a lower cooldown and/or an extra boon or two. (Maybe resistance? A single stack of stability?)

"Retreat!", "Stand Your Ground!", Bane Signet, and Signet of Judgment are all fine IMO.

Add Aegis to all Shouts as baseline, "Retreat!" can get 3 seconds of Resistance. Lots of synergy with different things but not too powerful. Would provide meaning to some under-utilized current traits, like Shattered Aegis and Pure of Voice.

PS. I'm also a fan of doing this for Shouts on all professions. Giving them something baseline. Warriors could be something as simple as Might.

Another "Core isn't bad, its just isn't as good as (insert Espec)". its getting hard to have one half of this argument without the other.

@"Darter.7862" said:Since our posts are focusing on buff DH in battle, I just want to remember that our Signets and Shouts are just..."meh";both have the same issues: too long recharge time, not so good effects (Stand Your Ground is the only good after all...) and 2 Trait who do not give so much effort, since we've mantras now

What do you think?

As you mentioned, with the exception of Stand your Ground, and I will add Feel My Wrath, shouts are dead. Ironically, some of the shouts were actually nerfed somewhere in 2015 for being to powerful... lol... To not be totally negative, I have the following suggestions, with the intention of making it possible to use shouts instead of mediation in PvP:

Retreat, CD reduced from 30 secs to 25 secs. In addition, provide 2 secs of super speed to allies.Hold the line, on top of what it does, it also reduces damage from all incoming sources by 10% for 4 secs to all allies.Save yourselves, complete remake. CD 25 secs. Breaks CC, provide 2 sec resistance to all allies and converts 2 condis in 2 boons for all effected allies.Receive the light, remake. Change it to kind be like ranger, we heal as one, heal. CD 20 secs, cast time 0.75 sec. Heal the guardian for 1K per sec for 10 secs. Improve healing received by all allies by 10% for 10 secs.

Signets on the other hand.. they could buff the active parts of them somewhat to be more usable in PvP. I think for PvE, the power and condi bonus serve their boring purpose (passive extra stats). The heal and elite one are the big offenders. The heal has long CD and long cast time. The elite is garbage passive and useless active. Ironically, both were buffed in the last year or so, but Anet (as usual) performed zero due diligence to understanding why these sucked so, they remained sucky.

@Darter.7862 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:it is sad when ic a guardian with the elite signet......

it's useful for people that want to get most of their damage mitigation from passive effects. What does it have to do about being 'useful', especially in a game that is targeted to playing how you want? The idea that everyone should only play optimal builds is a fallacy. There are LOTS of reasons people do the things they want and they aren't limited to 'the best' way to do something. Believe it or not, most people I've played with do so for theme or style of play, not for optimized.

Frankly, I can see lots of reason to this passive, non-FB approach. One primarily being that I wouldn't want to be locked into a mode for achieving lots of access to healing by taking Tome of Resolve to do it. It be honest, The all or nothing manner that FB Tomes works kind of sucks. Just standing there firing off Tomes until you are out of pages is a VERY un-optimal gamestyle concept in the first place, so it's odd that's your example against passive healing style builds.

Shouts and signets are meh for DH in PVE? I don't see a problem with that ... you have LOTS of other choices. Sure Anet could improve them, but then again, the choices we have aren't just about taking the best ones, so the premise they aren't 'good' for anything is a non-starter anyways.

Honestly, if you are going to make a case for improving Shouts and Signets, you aren't making a strong one slamming the very thing that Anet sells this game to the market on.

Speaking of Signet of Courage, I don't think it's bad in principle. It's just bad at what it does.The passive is weak and its interval is too long. Cut the healing in half(maybe more) and reduce the interval to 3 seconds. Would proc more frequently increasing its reliability. Would also increase the amount healed by around 40%.

The active part is non-sensical when you look at other Signets. Signets usually don't do the exact same thing on the active as opposed to the passive. SoC does. The passive is healing and the active is... more healing? It's kind of a neat idea having basically a second healing skill that also heals your allies but maybe it should be a bit more... functional. The 2.5 second casting time just doesn't work. A 5-6k heal with a 1 sec cast time would work much better IMO. In any game mode too. The cooldown should be dropped to 45 seconds as well.

I don't think these changes would change the flavor of the skill, just make it better suited to what the game is these days.

I could say a lot about the other skills in this category but I wanted to focus on this as I think it's that one skill that needs the most attention. All the other skills I have used within the last year but never Signet of Courage.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Darter.7862 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:it is sad when ic a guardian with the elite signet......

Would Anet listen?

Everything ends in boons anyway, there no real diferencing in utility type, just some placebo branding to some spam more boons than others,It is not that a shout is a shout , it just ends in boons just like other utilities are something else to puff boons as well.

Anets big problem is they've powercreeped guardian virtues so much DH was a straight +1 to vanilla virtues. FB is even more there's almost no way to strengthen vanilla builds without making FB even strongerThey've painted themselves into a corner

@LetoII.3782 said:Anets big problem is they've powercreeped guardian virtues so much DH was a straight +1 to vanilla virtues. FB is even more there's almost no way to strengthen vanilla builds without making FB even strongerThey've painted themselves into a corner

They could give base virtues an ammo system. They could tweak the numbers on them. They could give them additional boons or condis. There are plenty of options for buffing base virtues without buffing the elite spec ones.

Well if they made vanilla virtues into mantras I'd certainly drop firebrand.

@LetoII.3782 said:Anets big problem is they've powercreeped guardian virtues so much DH was a straight +1 to vanilla virtues. FB is even more there's almost no way to strengthen vanilla builds without making FB even strongerThey've painted themselves into a corner

For power builds PvE, DH and core guardian builds are on nearly equal footing. Gurdian is the only class where this statement is true for. Also you can mix and match between zeal/DH and virtues (radiance is a must) and getting similar results. My issue with power builds is lack of weapons flexibility. In terms of lines diversity, guardian is the best class.

Core Condi builds can be strengthened by buffing VoJ passive in PvE to match PvP. This would not buff FB, but compete with it.

In addition, the FB top line skills see no use anywhere, cuz they do nothing (except the bleeding on axe). These could easily be used to provide alternatives.

For PvE, if anet buff sword and hammer a bit, And do the above, we could see epic diversity in lines and weapons. PvP? Different ball game. Outside of FB bunker, core dominates all builds.

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Darter.7862 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:it is sad when ic a guardian with the elite signet......

Honestly, I'm not sure what Anet would listen to. If being 'underpowered' is a compelling argument for Anet, then why aren't there massive efforts to make everything 'equal' to begin with? I don't believe complaints that "X isn't very good compared to Y" actually register for the devs because clearly, making X things equal to Y things is not their goal.

Personally, I think signets can't get much better. There are factors at play on signets that people don't consider; the most significant being that they ALWAYS work for you because they have both passive and active effects. They even have a trait that makes them even better than that.

Shouts aren't deficient and we now have significant ways to get the most from them with Concentration stat. If anything, shouts as a family of skills are much better off now than they were prior to HoT. It's a hard sell to claim that NOW they need a buff. Just like anything else, you need to build around them if you want the most of what they have to offer. I think Pure of Voice needs a look but the base shouts themselves are fine where they are.

@Oglaf.1074 said:Pretty much the same issue you run into as a Warrior. The majority of Signets and Shouts are hard to justify a utility slot over be it PvE or PvP - far more important/impactful skills exists and slots are at a high premium.

Shouts in particular. I know that Guardians are already loaded up the butt with FX abilities, but making Shouts not use utility slots and instead somehow rework them somewhere else would probably be the only way to see them used, ever...

Both shake it off and healing signet is the meta for warriors though. Warriors probably had the best variety, they use signets, shouts, physical, stances.Edit, even meditations vs some comps. Mostly in the last meta though.