Signets

I have been pondering this for a while now, so I thought I should bring it up.

Signets are free energy skills, effect for no energy. However, the effect on signets is seemingly either too weak, or has too large of a recharge tinme to be effective. Take Ether Signet for an example: Energy Gain for free, but has 90 second Recharge time.

Now what if there was some other effect to give the skill a negative effect, and yet not increase or reduce recharge time, or reduce effectiveness? My proposed answer to this is give all signets a -20~40 armor Penalty. Say Ether Signet had a -40 armor snapped on it, now then Anet could give it a 20-40 second Recharge, and maybe even a buff, now wouldn't that be a good thing? How about Purge Signet, with -40 armor, we could eliminate the Energy Consumption on it.

However, some Signets have practical uses, like Blessed Signet. The only Downfall of it is the 10 second recharge time, which could be a killer for a bonder (in FoW for example). Now, put -20 armor on that, and the recharge time could be reduced. Signet of Devotion has always been a good Signet (most used signet in my book), but it has been lacking in high powered heals, if we could put -20 armor on that, then it could recieve a buff for 100+ at level 12 instead of 15 Divine Favor. To put this into perspective, lets use Healign Signet as an example. Without the -40 armor on it, it would heal for roughly around 80 health and have a 10~15 second recharge at 12 tactics. Now would we see so many Warriors using that skill? I don't know about that one...

A lot of Signets have sufffered from reduced effectiveness because of energy-less casts, and the potential use of Keystone Signet, or Mantra of Inscriptions/Signets. This idea might sound crazy, in fact I forsee little support of it, but I think it might be a good idea for the game's improvement.

All signets are fine. None of them are overpowered (IMO, either leech signet or SOJ is the strongest one), and the weakest one (purge signet) sees use on pve war/mos.

purge signet is quite good if you're running only adrenaline skills on a Warrior (obviously for PvE)... you can always use mantra of inscriptions to reduce your recharge time or use keystone signet as your elite to instantly recharge it... ^_^

what they said... it actually states that sigs are free but tend to recharge at a slower rate.

oh god no, leave the armour penalty for healing signet only. Makes the target a squishy while that person is activatin it, which i like.

Actually Ether Signet is a perfectly useful skill without the need of reducing the rechage time and making it overpowered.

When I play spirit spam on my ritualist I use Signet of Spirits for my elite. I dont see a problem with this one.I gain 18 energy when I use it and it has a decent recharge time. Thats why they have such high recharge is because your essentially getting a free skill.

Some signets are fine like Blessed Sig, Devotion Sig and Healing Sig. The catch in those signets is with the cast time.

Your solution won't work for fast casting signets like leech sig or those crappy assassin signets.

Yeah I tried to make use of signet of shadows using a Mesmer signet build... but it doesnt do enough damage...

Signets are fine the way they are; making them all give ou -40 armor like healing signet makes them all more boring, because they're all more similar.
I wouldn't mind new skills, but some signets make no sense at all like that. What would Dolyak Signet do? +20 armor and -40 armor?

Never thought about Doylak Signet...it would seem kind of redundant. Also i had though of Leech Sig, and Sig of Disruptions, armor penalty wouldn't do anything about those. I had just thought of this as a way to increase effectiveness of signets, so they might be able to better compete with spells. How amny builds are there that don't use any signets compared to those with a signet? Just thought I'd throw this out there and see the reaction (it was as I had expected).