I think nerfing Sigils of Hope of was completely warranted. However making a long-uptime relatively low mana-cost buff into a varied up-time high mana cost buff seems like a strange way to go about nerfing a skill.
Frankly the change to Sigils of Hope has made my paladin vastly less smooth to play and causes me to constantly have mana issues no matter how I decide to use the skill. When I attempt to utilize the skill as a short-term buff it consumes a huge portion of mana and as I am playing a paladin I do not have strong methods of mana recovery from gear/talents so even were I to drop damage and defense to aquire mana efficiency or +mana on gear it would barely help the problem and make other aspects of my character much weaker.
When using the skill as a long-uptime buff (trying to keep full charges 3-5 doesn’t matter how many) I find myself facing the same mana issues I have when attempting to use the skill in the short-term but now I am constantly OOM. One would then think that clearly the spell is not meant to be used as a long term buff then but many of the skill nodes seem as if they were designed for a longer uptime buff such as the additional charges and many nodes that scale ever higher with the more nodes you have up. Constantly going OOM while trying to keep up as many sigils as possible also seems to go against the idea of the skill being for long-term use.
In my opinion the best answer to this terrible gameplay experience is to give the players a choice via Sigils of Hope’s skill tree. Either they can spec into a strong short-term buff with a decent mana cost attached to it (more nodes like Word of Power/Alacrity) or what is basically the pre-nerf version but with lower numbers or a redesign on what Sigils of Hope as a 100% uptime buff actually provides via the changing of the skill tree.
Third super secret option btw is to make other skills that sentinel players actually want on their bar. Maybe it’s a good idea to not look at how STRONG Sigils of Hope is but rather how weak their other options really are.
Forgot to mention the annoying aspects of this skill are less noticeable in arena than in monolith runs. This is only so because of your ability to chain kill many more mobs and proc Last Wish node (6% chance on kill to generate a sigil). Still that means in order for the skill to feel decent AT ALL you MUST have this node taken and be in arena.
Yeah man i AGREE. It is indeed a strange feature that so many skills in this game almost REQUIRE you to spend 5 or more skill points on mana reduction/efficiency…
+1 Imo they need to cut the mana cost by 15-20%, right now if you want to you use 4 sigils and any other skill that costs >20 mana you either have to spec into time reversal or go for 2h staff with t5 mana regen , and its fucked up that you are forced to do that.
I have quite simple suggestion. Return the thing that sigil refreshes duration of other sigils, but instead make mana cost more for each active sigil
I agree with all of this. Not refreshing all stacks is a huge quality of life issue. Feels super clunky and not fun. Honestly I prefer the stacks last even longer. Even the refresh before the nerf was a bit much. Id rather the skill be slightly weaker but the refresh was every 30 seconds and it refresh all stacks with the most recent application like before
Mana costs and general nerfs are choking this game already
Theres almost no way to fix mana issues except don’t use spells that cost mana or spend 1/4 of your skill setup to have it cost less
Infact Sentinel is almost unplayable to me since the last patches, I have Void Knight/Paladin and Forge Guard I don’t even want to play as they are just useless or irritating to play
Lately I just only play Beastmaster with pets, using 1 skill only as buff/debuff or I play Shaman who just auto casts spells but once again I have every mana efficiency node possible just to cast them.
To be honest if mana issues aren’t addressed in some way my play time is going to be vastly limited as I just don’t have patience for it now
why not using time reversal, its pretty good and enables to sustain everything+huge damage buff, the problem is that not all builds have a space for it, but most of builds do.
I wouldnt say that mana issues are as extreme as you said
As soon as I saw the change on the patch notes I was puzzled. I’ve now tested Sigils since both on and off stream. The fact is, Sigils is a pain to use now, and many builds simply can’t maintain uptime on it with even 3 sigils (here’s looking at you Warpath). There are some that can, but they are usually builds that require low mana costs everywhere else (i.e. I have a vengeance Forge Guard that doesn’t have Holy Aura and uses the always on Juggernaut stance, so mana use is small). One problem is we can only see the uptime on the Sigil with the longest uptime, not the least, so deciding when to refresh Sigils is pure guesswork. However, even resolving that problem won’t make Sigils much more enjoyable to use, and it won’t fix the mana issues for so many builds. Like others here, I understand why the devs thought that Sigils was too strong, but in hindsight it seems like this change wasn’t the way to go.
Yup, I completely agree with you. I wish I could basically just use them as another aura that I get from naturally killing mobs or as something that refreshes itself over time. I don’t mind it being weaker. Maybe like a node that increases chance to gain a sigil on kill but makes it so they can’t be consumed would be cool? Then following that node would be further increases to that amount.
So, node 1: 12% chance to gain a sigil on kill, sigils can no longer be consumed by other effects. Then following that, node 2: 6% chance to gain sigil on kill but life regen from sigils is reduced by 25% (up to 4 points). Basically you would have a set of nodes that keep the ability up 100% of the time, BUT you lose the regen from it and the synergy the nodes that consume sigils. Also, my numbers might be inflated or something idk lol, they just kinda sound nice without being absurdly broken.
That’s just one way of doing it though, I’m not saying it’s perfect but something like that would be nice. As it is now, Last Wish is too inconsistent, even with increased duration on your sigils. My idea could be modified to be like, maybe you have a small chance to get sigils on hit BUT you can’t summon them yourself or you get sigils upon taking X amount of damage, etc. Just other ways of casting the ability without actually having to cast it myself so that it feels less clunky and unsatisfying.
1 to this, ressing topic cause im getting alot of mana problems on my paladin already, and i have 3 points on quiet mind (+30 % mana Efficiency, cost reduction, etc), they need to take a look on this, and some sentinel/paladins skills, costs too much mana, some kind of mana regen would help too, or crafting mana regens on equipments.
