There are threads complaining about the gameplay feel of Sigils of Hope going back to 2019. Having the timer count down on the newest sigil instead of the oldest one makes that interface element useless. Having to press Q every 5 seconds to maintain a passive buff feels horrible. The mana cost of the ability is atrocious- you can’t run Sigils along with any other mana-hungry ability. And double that for Divine Flare builds which make you spend the mana cost twice to get one nuke off.
There have been several good suggestions about what to do about this: Make casting a sigil refresh the duration of all sigils. Add a node which makes sigils permanent but apply a mana regen penalty. And so on.
I understand the balancing concern- you don’t want skills which act as passive buffs, and you don’t want skills which are mandatory grabs for every build. But here’s the thing: in the current state, Sigils is a passive buff, and it’s a near-mandatory grab for every Sentinel build, and it’s an unpleasant skill to play with. You already have the situation you didn’t want, and it feels bad at the same time.
The very least you could do to make this a better play experience is give us a node that applies a 5 second cooldown to the ability, so that we can autocast it. There are certainly more interesting things you could do- for example, make it a more tactical ability by giving it huge bonuses for a short duration followed by a minute-long cooldown- but if nothing like that is in the works, please at least throw us a band-aid.
I really agree that’s the thing I hâte about my sentinel and disturb me about real combat things, and mainly to try to dirige my MA where I want and hit it with my shield. It so annoying to always stupidly buff with no added value to gameplay that I was trying to program it with my keyboard
This caused all the troubble because it worked like that from the start and made the skill an always pick. Back in the day I said: “Make the skill less potent and keep it the way it works.”. The devs want active gameplay but I still don’t understand what maintaining a skill with a button press every 5 seconds brings to the table.
Sigils are in a bad state like forever and I think we’ll see final changes if there is ever a pala rework happening. Use the time to give feedback is all left to do.
Biggest reason why I don’t use the skill. It was also a big reason why I didn’t use Maelstrom prior to 0.8.4. I am hoping they find some ways to make the skill feel better in reactive gameplay or applying more stacks in a single cast like they did with Maelstrom and the Beneath the Waves node.
What’s odd is that the auto-proc node “Last Wish” works just fine to keep me at Max Sigils against trash mob packs or Arena nodes (or actual Arena), but that’s not when I really want the Punch of my Sigils. I want it against bosses, when that node does nothing.
I’d prefer if that node either added or swapped to: “You also gain this chance to summon a Sigil when hitting Bosses.”
I think they should change sigils to have an active component. Perhaps mergeing it with the heal. Or maybe have nodes on other skills that activate sigils. I generally dislike flat buff skills making the passive bonuses more creative could also be an option (if it being passive is the reason it isn’t being changed).
I think the skill could have the sigils literally float around our character and do something, similar to ring of shields or devoring orb. Seeing something happen when you press it will also make it feel good to press. Having an additional bonus visually represented when you have max stack is also a good insentive to keep casting it. Like having each sigil gleam with light damaging enemies and when you have all of the sigils a big burst of holy light shines and damages everything in a huge radius.
I just want to start by saying that this is a great thread. You’ve managed to gather a lot of points regarding Sigils of Hope into one thread. You’ve got my support.
I like the idea of there being a node to make them permanent but at a cost, though perhaps it should be a little heavier than just mana regen penalty. Using a mana reserved system (permanently capping mana pool based on cost while active) would be, in my opinion, a good way of going around it.
I like passive buffs and tend to favour characters that build around them. I typically like to build pure support as often as possible and would love to see this skill more functional by the time multiplayer drops.
Random idea, not thought through, instead of having a chance to cast on kill, you could change the node to chance on hit. This could contribute to keep up sigils more reliably by simply playing the game.
