Sigil of Hope is neat except that it falls down in a few cases, and I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do about it by way of current specialization. Here’s the problems I have with it.
Sigil of Hope on-kill proc rate stinks
Manually casting Sigil of Hope stinks in boss fights, where you are also attempting to move out of dangerous mechanics; not to mention usually will drain the player’s mana pool making moving out of or defending against dangerous mechanics, without mana, even more dangerous
Sigil of Hope will either proc a few times (less often) or not proc at all (very often) when spec’d for getting a CHANCE at a charge add on kill. Perhaps a way to fix this would be to add to the on-kill specialization: If you currently have no charges, you receive maximum charges. What happens is I end up having to manually cast it and manually casting it 3 or 4 times is a real drag compared to other skill options: There’s so many downsides to the current state.
Sigil of Hope needs a better way to proc during boss encounters without requiring manual casts. Perhaps if built into the skill it had something like “80% chance to add a Sigil of Hope charge on a skill hit that you have cast yourself, if you have not gained a Sigil of Hope charge recently”.
Further, perhaps some of the mana cost should be reduced OR if the decay time was something more like 2 minutes that might make it feel a ton better.
If the intent is for Sigil of Hope to be manually cast, then it needs to have some compensation by way of even longer duration for charges and/or for the mana cost to be reduced. I’ve also seen a few cases where I’ll have 4 stacks and the stacks drop down to 2 (sometimes!). I can file a bug if that is a bug, but if not: that behavior stinks. IMO: All the charges should always follow the longest duration. By adding another charge, the total duration for all charges should follow rather than have staggered duration.
Holy Aura? Procc? What? I checked and doubble checked and I don’t know what you are talking about. Holy aura is either in passive mode aka always on or you put it on for doubble benefits. I can’t find a procc in the skilltree but maybe I’m blind.
No problem I thought you mean SoH but I just wanted to wait to look if I’m right. 6% chance on kill is crap in the beginning but in the monolith it works well as long as you play solo. If you play in a group you are shafted depending on your build.
That’s wwhy I want to intigrate Volitile Reversal into my build. Cast sigils, VR, move on.
Ok so i can get behind the proc rate on kill. if it was on hit then 6% wouldnt be bad at all.
However the rest on the manual cast and such doesnt hit home with me. If you are wanting to have these and not break a channel skill like Warpath, then just taek the node that turns SOH to an instant with a 1 sec cooldown. Still plenty of time to keep max sigils going and should the proc happen hey more time to do other things.
However i do think there are quite a few skills that might not work as well MP vs solo. Especially with proc on kill effects.
Hopefully with much more exposure to the game and people complaining in general who have no history of the game and generally defend some poor mechanics some skills can get reworked
First thing I would do is add a node that toggles Sigils on somehow and reserves the mana cost so you dont have that mana to use…like an aura, give it a -20% effectiveness node if its an issue and I guarantee almost everyone would still take it
I do not really feel this an issue. It is a strong buff that needs be refreshed. I never have any issue with SoH at all - even without instant cast. Running maps you almost never need to cast it manually. There is a reason why idolls exists that increase the duration of SoH by +5 seconds.
I mean tbh: As paladin you mostly press one button beside movement skills. It’s not that hard to press a second one.
There are a lot of trash skills in the game but sadly I have no idea how to make them better that won’t lead to complete redesign of the skills.
SoH is a good example of it. I’d like SoH to reduce mana per sigil you can have so you trade in constant less max mana vs constant boost to whatever the skill offers. Even when EHG want’s to make the game more active an whatnot SoH is just a skill that screams “Make me passive” like Malstrom for example as well. If SoH was an attack that spawn a sigil it might make sence to keep it like it is but right now this skill is terrible by design but sadly very potent. On top of it the pala has only 4 class skills and not 5 so SoH is for most pala builds kind of mandatory.
SoH definitely needs just adjustments made for MP. It feels really bad when playing Warpath in MP due to constant mana issues from pressing Holy Aura, SoH, Lunge and Smite procs while channeling Warpath. Having no mana regen while channeling Warpath is one of its main downfalls, at least as a paladin, haven’t played the Void version yet.
If you play with a Range friend, good luck trying to get SoH on kill proccs. Not to mention the game already has density problems in MP since even with a full group, the density stays the same as if you were solo, leaving you less chance to kill stuff as melee.
I’ve been playing around with different combinations including instant cast and the mana reduce but it still isn’t great for bossing: which is where it would matter the most. The cast part of instant cast is nice (you can use it while channeling a skill) but the 1s cooldown combined with the super high mana cost negates the benefit. I’m using Vengeance to reduce my damage taken and apply some stacks of fire-shred along with Warpath(with Smite proc) and Holy aura. Warpath makes it so you can’t regen mana while it’s being channeled, so it ends up being a bit of a mess for fights where you need to constantly move… what ends up happening is I end up not casting Sigils because I know I won’t have mana or enough time to regain mana before I have to move or perform some other action.
I’m not running a one button build, sorry. If using Warpath concurrent with Sigils you end up boned for mana if you want to also cast anything else. I’ve been compensating by using Vengeance with mana regain on use/hit (which Vengeance also applies several other complimentary benefits).
Yeah in the few times I did MP it felt even worse. Another interesting quirk is needing to have it on your skill bar, even if you just wanted to use it as a passive on-kill proc. Where triggered skills (Warpath+Smite) do not need to be on the skill bar, to gain the benefits of specialization into Smite.
It might make this a lot better if there was a node on the Sigils tree to make Sigils of Hope work like Smite does with Warpath, with an on-hit proc rate.
Oooh or even better: combining it with Smite hits even for non-direct-cast instances of Smite. That would be a killer combo I’d invest in: Warpath triggering Smite which triggers on-hit Sigils.
So here’s several suggestions of ways I would try to make this feel more interesting and less messy:
Sigils.Specialization1: If you currently have no Sigils and cast Sigils, you gain up to your maximum Sigils.
Sigils.Specialization2: Channeled Attacks have a 3/6/9% chance to proc Sigils on hit and this chance is (50%?) lower if you have gained a Sigil recently.
Warpath?.Specialization1: If you have gained a Sigili recently, you have a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to recover the mana cost of gaining that sigil on hit with a Channeled Attack
Smite.Specialization1: If Smite hits an enemy and you have not gained a Sigili recently, gain a Sigil
Sigils Functional Rework: Sigils are now orbs that appear on the ground (like potion drops). You gain Sigili orbs by hitting or killing mobs (with Channeled Skills). You can run around and collect the Sigili orbs. Maybe in this case: On hit has some chance to proc an orb and on-kill has a chance to proc 2 orbs or something.
Pressing Q every 5 seconds to keep a passive buff online is not quality gameplay nor is it quality user experience. If the skill can be redesigned to make it tactically interesting, sure, go ahead and do that… but in its current state it’s the worst of all worlds: a passive, constant buff (not tactically interesting) with a huge experience cost in player interface klunk.
I would like SoH to be treated similar to Endurance Charges for the Jugg in PoE. They have a spec that lets them summon up to the max.
I would like nodes in SoH to be moved around a bit. Have a line starting with Last wish. Reduce the bonus, but make it a 4 point node that gives 2 or 3% chance on kill. Next node in the chain have a 1-point that gives you half as much (4 or 6%) chance on hit to summon a sigil. The last node in the chain would be a 1-point that lets the previous 2 nodes summon up to your maximum sigils when triggered. Maybe even at the cost of half duration.
That would make it a somewhat heavy investment but you get to not worry as much about manual summoning of sigils. Maybe even make it so you can’t manually cast sigils anymore if you take that final node.
Could even add a node after that that doubles the chance on hit against rares/bosses.
A lot of solid suggestion in this thread. I’m also wondering if maybe EHG should go another rout e and add an extra effect to change how Sigils feel ON CAST, keeping Holy Aura as the pure passive-instant cast skill, and making Sigils something more active.
For example, they could make it a channel, the longer you channel the more sigils you get (up to three sigils at 1,5 seconds, or 4 at 2), and when the casts end you also deal large amount of AoE damage based on time spent casting.
As @Macknum has suggested, it makes sense to tie it to an attack/spell unless they want to make it purely passive, but from what I’ve gathered discussing it on the other thread (the one I opened something like 3 months ago? maybe earlier), devs aren’t particularly fond of giving Paladin yet another purely passive skill since they already have Holy Aura.
And since we’re talking about this again, I’d like to also point out that the green timer ring is completely useless because it shows lifespan of your newest sigil instead of your oldest. I don’t need to know when my last sigil is going to fade, I need to know when my next sigil is going to fade.
