Should Signets grant auras again?

Back in the good old days of release, there was a fire trait that made signets grant a fire aura, and it made an aura spec actually playable, and was pretty fun.

I hated when they removed it only to implement it again for tempest basically (auras on shouts).

But now that (I guess) most of us are playing weaver, I'm really missing auras actually doing anything (and getting them from skills instead of leap finishers). Auras were once the class defining thing of eles. No one else had weapon skills or traits that gave auras, they only had access to them as combos. Like how Mesmers always have some phantasms and illusions. I think eles should always have some auras and some interaction with them, no matter what core or elite spec.

I'd love for Signets to be able to grant auras again, what do you think about it?

I don't think it would unbalance Tempest, since they have shouts anyway which are usually better than the signets, and signets force you into earth anyway.

This would Be good quality of Life change. Not game breaking.

Nope. Auras are kind of tempest's thing now.

Why would anyone pick shouts if you can go powerful aura + signets?

@Razor.6392 said:Nope. Auras are kind of tempest's thing now.

Why would anyone pick shouts if you can go powerful aura + signets?

Because shouts are better than signets? The only really useful signets are heal, fire and maybe air for convenience if you don't have much swiftness, while every aura-giving shout is great. Also shouts give magnetic aura and ice aura, while signets needed the fire trait to give fire aura exclusively.

I'm not proposing to have signets grant auras by default like shouts. But it would fit into one of the adept fire traits (maybe the one that gives cleaning fire on condis? It's really bad since they removed the might gain from it) and of course only give fire auras. Or make it a water trait that gives ice auras, I don't care. So with tempest you'd be forced into an additional (bad for damage) traitline just for signets, which would make the auras from shouts still better (than they already are since they're different auras). Hell, add it onto soothing power so you can't have signet auras + powerful auras if it's needed for balance. And if you want the passives while on cooldown you'd additionally need earth of course.

The point is they basically gutted core ele by making tempest so much about auras as a last minute design change (remember in the first beta not too long before HoT release neither shouts nor overloads gave auras and none of the tempest traits did or cared about them). Now if you want to play core ele or weaver all the aura traits get way less value since you'll only ever have 1-2 auras on long cooldowns from weapons. We have so many traits that care about auras in all traitlines, but since they removed the option to have auras on signets, they lost a lot of value for non-tempest specs.

Also, a lot of our old utility skills including signets could use some help anyway.

@Razor.6392 said:Nope. Auras are kind of tempest's thing now.

Why would anyone pick shouts if you can go powerful aura + signets?

rune of radiance

I'd rather keep the permanent signet passives -- that's more useful since we already have sources of auras.

Offtopic. I would love rework for signet of water. There is so much potential in that signet for our second(?) Utility condi clean. It is worthless signet atm.

I would prefer for signets to be re done in general as they’re all rather boring, bland and offer very little exception being restoration and fire passive. Would be nice to have a few more trait interactions especially in the earth line, maybe have signets grant protection added onto elemental shielding or earths embrace and signets grant stab on rock solid trait. Reduce the cool down on water passive to 5s and you might see a signet build that’s useful.

Most ele signets are not used now . In wvw most people just use signet of restoration passive. In pve signet of fire passive.

A good buff for signet of water would be make the chill aoe and/or make its active a ground target skills.

Buffing ele signets is like buffing guard spirit weapons. It makes bad skills not so bad, but still there would be better options around.

I would love for Signet of Restoration to somehow become useful again.

It should be the aura of the atument your in if any thing and not just fire. I think you can start polls now though this to a vote.

What I'd rather see is an Elite signet -- it's missing from our list of elite skills. Most of our elites are garbage kittens so having an elite signet working with "written in stone" would be great.

Again we have lots of aura generation so no need to really add it to signets. I also think the current signets are good except for water which is useless in the current condi-meta. Rework water active to "remove all conditions" or if you prefer OP then go "convert all conditions to boons". Then water signet would be viable compared to something like the fire cantrip.

I feel like if the Earth Signet Grandmaster added Barrier on Signet cast in addition to its current effects, you'd see signets used a bit more frequently. Maybe with a small buff to Resto Signet.

Now that auras are a tempest/shout thing, i think it would be nicer to have something new/unique, but I guess since it's eles we're talking about it's going to be same old thing. More burn for fire, more chill for water, more bleed for earth, more vulnerability for air. How imaginative.

Edit:Maybe something like a mark/hex system on activation:

• Mark of Rodgort: Fire spells do 33% more damage on target
• Mirror of Ice: Conditions applied to you by target are also reflected on said target
• Earthen shackles: Marked target can not move more than 300 away from you.
• Glimmering mark: Lightning strike that inflicts Blindness on target if it's using attack skills on you. Ends if you use a skill on the target.

Just let water signet cure one condi/5sec and activation cures/convert 5 condis and im Happy :) something that let us cure some conditions without water traitline

Signets as a bonus element skill with a passive is fine. But i would like that fire signet would increase power instead of precision. But maybe thats just me. Water signet should cure condis or convert condis, that would improve the water signet heavily.

Personally, I was very disappointed when they removed that trait. I could see them adding that now to improve Elementalist QoL and "build diversity" but I think the Dev team have their hands full trying to "balance" PoF specs.

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:Just let water signet cure one condi/5sec and activation cures/convert 5 condis and im Happy :) something that let us cure some conditions without water traitline

If they don't buff other signets, I think it would be better if:

A.Passive: Increase Healing Power by 180.Active: Convert 2 conditions to boons.CD: 25 secs

B.Passive: Increase Boon Duration by 10%.Active: Convert all conditions to boons.CD: 40s

I don't think the passives and actives are game breaking and are not impossible nor complicated to implement dev wise.