The Res Sig

There's a lot of talk about balance with the World Campionships being over. The one skill that has people talking a lot on both sides of the nerf fence is Res Sig. I'll lay out as plainly as I can why I think the sig is unbalanced as it stands. One of the end purposes to game balance is to encourage variety in builds, both team and character. Without variety a game ultimately degenerates into a glorified game of "heads or tails".

A skill is unbalanced when it gives your team such and advantage that whatever build you come up with, you have to find a way to work that skill in. Of all the viable team builds in all levels of the game (and there are a lot, tally them up if you wish), there are none where a res sig doesn't give an advantage over at least one skill that would take its place. Most of those team builds have not one, two or thee copies of the skill, but four or more. In general if your character is not packing a res sig, you're either a monk, a flagger, or a liability to your team.

Is there any other skill in the game that comes any where near the effect that a res sig has? It virutally negates the efforts most or all of your opponents made while killing the player it's used on. Imagine a Monk skill called "Reversal of Time". When you cast it on a party member, all effects that they encountered for the past 15 seconds are negated. They have all the energy, hp, hexes, enchants, conditions... everything is exactly the same for them as it was 15 seconds ago. It's like an after-the-fact interrupt for anything that's happened to them - and it's available only to monks.

Is this skill balanced? It's a counter for all other skills and effects. If this skill entered the game we'd see a huge surge in monks because of this power. To "balance" the skill, ANet decides to allow all classes to have access to it. So now we don't see a million monks bringing this skill, we just see everyone bringing the skill. The effect is that almost everyone's skill bar has gotten one slot smaller and everyone has this overpowered skill.

Is that so much different from what we currently see with res sig?

I'm not suggesting a way to balance the skill, I'm just trying to open a dialog about whether the skill is unbalanced. It seems that people have come to think of a res sig as an inherent part of every build instead of realizing that it's one of around 140 skills you can put on your bar. I think the game would benefit if the choice of bringing a res sig was an actual choice instead of simply remembering it.

Of course it will be in everyones skillbar, only monks have hard rez. Rez sig is perfectly balanced the way it is and I don't understand why so many people want it nerfed.

It's difficult to deem what's 'Balanced' and what's not.
Isuppose the fact that it's universal;can be used by anyone,makes it balanced in one sense. It does favour Warrior classes more however: use it on a warrior, you have a full strenth ally back from the dead, firing off adrenal skills. Use it on a monk and you have a an easy target,capable of casting one or two 5 energy spells before being beaten back into the ground. It's often said that the Ressurection Signet is an IWAY team's most powerful weapon.
To amend this arguable imbalance though, you'd have to tweak the skill so that it not only brings you back with full health, but also full energy. And in GvG and alter maps,where Morale Boosts are frequent, that'd be just plain unfair..
Anet, you decide what's best for us.

We have 2 arguments so far. The first: "I don't understand why so many people want it nerfed" - does anyone mind if I ignore that one?

The second is "the fact that it's universal;can be used by anyone,makes it balanced in one sense." At first this seems to make sense. I mean if everyone has access to the skill, no one can claim an unfair advantage over anyone else right? But that doesn't at all solve the problem of a degenerate game invironment. It just means that instead of everyone playing the one class that has the overpowered skill, everyone plays whatever class they want and takes the overpowered skill. I agree it's less of an impact, but it's degenerate none the less.

That one skill is powerfully unbalanced, meaning that everyone has to take it. If there were a couple more such skills, everyone would take those too. No one would have an unfair advantage over everyone else, but there would be 3 skills you knew everyone had and 5 that they actually chose to take. You can see how an unbalanced skill, even if everyone has access to it, is still unbalanced and hurts the game overall.

I'm not sure I'm convinced they even need to nerf it. I mean the game is still pretty good even with 7 skills to choose, and they certainly have more important balance issues to worry about, but that doesn't change the fact that res sig is the single most unbalanced skill in the game.

Basically what I can see from this is some people want it nerfed and some don't. I on one hand don't want it nerfed but on the other hand can see the other point of view about it being powerful.

Look at it this way, if it was nerfed what could they do to it? Give it an energy cost....Longer casting time....Res the person with only 50% hp and energy. All these things would pretty much make res signet pointless.

Look at it as it is now. 2 second casting time....You only get to use it once...The person who was ressed still has a DP...They are brought back right next to the battle they died in so they are likely to die again.

See my point? This skill doesn't need nerfing before its fine as it is, there are enough draw backs from its current state without a good seeing to with the nerfing stick.

Personally, I would like to see this "Ressurection Signet" not dominating all form of ressurection in "PvP".

In PvE, everyone know rebirth is godly. In PvP, there was only ONE time in the old tomb, where I was able to use it and turn the entire battle upside down.

However, even if it does get nerf really badly (cast speed mainly)... what will happen? Fast Cast Mesemer will dominate the ressurection, no doubt. Still domination of one way to play ressurection in the end. So what would be the purpose of balance for variety?

Now if they done nothing to the cast speed, but lower the health/energy... The nerf serve almost no purpose for vareity, it will still be the most widely use res.

If the recharge upon morale boost is removed, the biggest effect is on GvG strategy, then HA, then PvE. However, anywhere else... it won't matter. If there are more limitation/situation needed to recharge a ressurection signet (such as it take only positive morale Boost to recharge, or it require morale boost twice to recharge), things might then get more interesting, for a short while before this topic come up again.

If anything, I call for a buff in other ressurection skills.

I too, would like to see some changes to the way of ressurection as well.

I believe res sig should recharge over time....something very slow though.

well i dont think they should nerf it in any way, but i think they should change it so that it favors casters more then warriors and rangers. Maybe change it to rez with 50% health and 50% energy or if thats to low of health 75% health and 50% energy. That way a caster, after being rezzed, can actually do something to help his/her team, which is what the warrior can already and to some degree the ranger.

So your idea of Unbalanced is if every build works it in?

How many rangers work in Troll Unguent? All of them basically...Is Troll Unguent unbalanced?

Wow.

Bugeater, should only monks take res? What happens if they die? You call them noob and rage quit?
Res sig is a monk's godsend because they know if they die and the tank doesn't - which happens quite frequently - then the party isn't royally screwed.

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