Guild Wars 2

whats the best and worst sigils?

I see many choices, but not sure of their value to use. I see a sigil that heals on crits, but not a lot of people use it for some reason.

same with many other sigils.

so share with me the useless/lesser useful Sigils

and which are better for the avg build?

depends on what your doing, always, they each have their uses, usually the more expensive the most popular, though doesnt necessarily mean its the best choice. So always depends on purpose. If your build doesnt rely on crits, no purpose using crit dependant sigils.

As far as I can tell, sigils that boost damage the most are favored in PVE so
Bloodlust, Night, Force, Strength. Its because you dont really need extra heals or other support in order to complete most PVE content so you might as well max dmg and complete it faster.

Least favoured seem to be the ones that boost dmg against a specific enemy. I assume this is because they have a such a niche use its not worth having a weapon take up an inventory slot just to dedicate to them. Especially for the ones that have no corresponding dungeon. e.g ogre.

I dont really pvp much :|

zombyturtle.5980:

As far as I can tell, sigils that boost damage the most are favored in PVE so Bloodlust, Night, Force, Strength. Its because you dont really need extra heals or other support in order to complete most PVE content so you might as well max dmg and complete it faster.|

This tends to be the mindset of most players. Kill it, quick. But it’s also a little short-sighted, no offense intended, if you’re going for the longer and bigger fight. Where surviving is more important if you can’t kill it quick. You tend not to do any damage dead.

But that’s another topic again.

As far as your question, Zomby is right. Definitely those runes.

PvE: Night, Force, Bloodlust, Frailty, Strength, Battle
WvW: Energy, Bloodlust, Force, Battle
PvP: Energy, Doom, Battle

^ most useful I think. The slaying sigils with no dungeon use eg. Ogre/Krait are probably most useless.

I would say Sigil of Mischief looks kinda useless . . . Sigil of Luck is also kind of useless now.

I actually have been enjoying using my Sup. Sigil of Life during extended event work such as the Temple chains in Orr. Or for Claw of Jormag since healing is kind of nice to have for outlasting some of those icy DoTs.

Well IMHO there are usefull and more usefull sigils with few excpetions.

generally I tend to find most have uses:

USEFULL:

Fixed bonus:
PvE:
Force (5% dmg),
Accuracy (7% crit chance),
Bursting (6% condition dmg),
Dungeons:
Night: +10% dmg while night,
X-slaying: +10% dmg vs x type enemies

Other sigils
Stacking (only 1 type of stacking sigil can be equipped)
PVE:
Bloodlust up to 250 extra power,
Corruption up to 250 extra ciondition dmg.
Cruelty up to 250 additional ferocity
WvW:
Life 250 additional healing,
Momentum, up to 125 extra toughness,
benevolence max +12.5% addition healing to other players
Dungeons:I’d advise against stacking sigils as a down will destory all stacks

Sigils of Condition duration…
Generally lengthening specific conditions by 20%, or all conditions by 10%
tbh if you need more condition duration take some food. usefull though in pvp IMHO.. mostly usefull for condition users, but they will have more use for othersigils

On hit
WVW
Water, 30% chance for a AOE heal,
purity 60% chance to remove a condi
PVE/Dungeons
frailty, 50% chance on a vulnerability, tion

Chance on crit
PVE/WVW/Dungeons
Fire: AOE Flameblast
Air: lightning strike
Strength: might
(Torment: aoe torment)
WvW:
Generosity: transfer a condition…
Nullification: remove a boon. <- nice!

On kill
Restoration: heal on kill
Stamina: refresh endurance on kill

I personally do not favor sigils on swap. as they have an almost automatic 9 s cooldown… even if you’re and ele or engineer or traited warrior.

MOST USELESS:
sigil of demon summoning (at 25 stacks summon a fleshreaver)
sigil of celerity (gain 3 seconds of quickness at 5 stacks)
Sigil of mischief (snowballs, cause blind at swap)
Sigil of speed (swiftness on kill)-except for mesmer where it’s very handy, unless you have a condi mesmer like I do. If you hate staff and shouts as a guard you might also want to consider it…-
Sigil of Incapacitation (cripple on crit)
Sigil of Ogre slaying

One which is surprising (but mostly useless)
Sigil of luck, 75% giving a boon on kill

Does the sigil work only when the weapon set is used? (most likely yes)

Does the sigil work only if the weapon is used? (1-handed, skills 1-3 and skills 4-5)

Does it matter if I place Force to sword and Accuracy to focus, or otherway?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

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Sigil of speed (swiftness on kill)
…

Thanks for such a well thought out and detailed post, but…

I play mostly open world pve and I love using the sigil of speed on the focus of one of my mesmers. I keep her in her melee gear (sword and focus) most of the time and kill most every mob in her way. After big fights she’s usually carrying 3 + min of swiftness. My main, a mesmer with superior traveler runes, seems so much slower in comparison.

Best Sigil: Sigil of Night during the Night
Worst Sigil: Sigil of Night during the Day

AnniMira.2506:

Does the sigil work only when the weapon set is used? (most likely yes)

Does the sigil work only if the weapon is used? (1-handed, skills 1-3 and skills 4-5)

Does it matter if I place Force to sword and Accuracy to focus, or otherway?

Sigils only function when you are using that particular weapon set. The exception are those that build stacks. You can’t gain more stacks when not currently using that weapon, but the stacks themselves (and benefits) will persist.

Sigils will work on any skill, regardless of if it’s a weapon, utility, elite, or even generated by a Rune or another sigil! As such, there is no difference between having a sigil of strength on a sword and nullification on focus compared to a sword with nullification and a focus with strength.

Lazuli.2098:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

…
Sigil of speed (swiftness on kill)
…

Thanks for such a well thought out and detailed post, but…

I play mostly open world pve and I love using the sigil of speed on the focus of one of my mesmers. I keep her in her melee gear (sword and focus) most of the time and kill most every mob in her way. After big fights she’s usually carrying 3 + min of swiftness. My main, a mesmer with superior traveler runes, seems so much slower in comparison.

And you’re right. I corrected it, hope you are satisfied with my additional comment.
I thought boons only stack for 5 or 10 times max though so 3 min could be a bit much?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

AnniMira.2506:

Does the sigil work only when the weapon set is used? (most likely yes)

Does the sigil work only if the weapon is used? (1-handed, skills 1-3 and skills 4-5)

Does it matter if I place Force to sword and Accuracy to focus, or otherway?

Sigils only function when you are using that particular weapon set. The exception are those that build stacks. You can’t gain more stacks when not currently using that weapon, but the stacks themselves (and benefits) will persist.

Sigils will work on any skill, regardless of if it’s a weapon, utility, elite, or even generated by a Rune or another sigil! As such, there is no difference between having a sigil of strength on a sword and nullification on focus compared to a sword with nullification and a focus with strength.

Actually, if you are using many different weapon sets, you may want to stay consistent. Say you are planning on running force/accuracy. Put all of the force sigils on your main hand and all of your accuracy on your offhands (or vice versa). That way you don’t end up with a main and an offhand with the same sigil when messing with your weapon combinations.

PvE: Night (direct only), Air (crit+power only), Strength (crit only), Earth (condi only), Battle (low crit only), Frailty (low crit only), Corruption (condi only).

Between Air and Fire, Air procs on one target for 1.1 every 3 seconds, for a 0.37/s multiplier per target. Fire procs on up to 5 targets for 0.85 every 5 seconds, for a 0.17/s multiplier per target. If you find yourself attacking single or dual targets more often Air would be more appropriate, if you find yourself attacking three targets or more more often Fire would be more appropriate. Given that the only time in my dungeon experiences I’ve ever fought three champions at once is SEp1’s triple golems, I find Air to be far more advantageous from a PvE perspective (arah p1 doesn’t really count since those champs all have reduced HP and die in two rotations). Outside champs, nothing else has enough HP for it to really matter which sigil you use. Also note that neither Air nor Fire’s sigil attack can crit. I’m not sure if Air’s ever did, or whether it was hearsay that persisted for some time, but both definitely do not crit now.

Night sigil works on the majority of dungeons and minority of fractals. It doesn’t work on Arah, HoTW and CM, of which the first two people don’t generally run often and the third is inadvisable to run without a thief, so for the purposes of most people you could just ignore these three dungeon types. Or if you have more than one character, run these three on your Fractal character. Or, have an alternate weapon with Night on it. Your call.

Force is actually one of the weakest sigils for damage at a pathetic 5%, and its only viable use is against targets immune to crit and either immune to or capped at 25 vuln nonstop – essentially it has some utility against Epic-rank world bosses being zerged by 60 players, otherwise you can consider the sigil as good only to sell to players unfamiliar with other sigils. Strength accounts for 8.5% dps increase assuming you never go above 25 might, air accounts for 7%, fire can be anywhere from 3%-15%, night is always 10% at night, and frailty is 5% AoE damage buff for your whole party (2.5% aoe on champs, 12.5% increase if vuln never goes above 25 on champs). Bloodlust is 6.5% DPS at full stacks, but you must maintain full stacks. Sigil of battle is iffy since how good it is depends on how often you can swap and swapping early to break a rotation reduces dps more than the slightly earlier swap will give, but it’s about 7% ish in general. For high power and high crit go Night/Strength|Night/Air, unless you already have perm 25 might in which case you’ll go double Night/Air. For power stats with low crit go Night/Bloodlust|Night/Battle. If you don’t want to be limited to night dungeons, replace the day set with the next highest damage in rotation – strength, battle, air, fire or frailty in that approximate order. For condition stats with high crit go Strength/Earth|Strength/Corruption, and for low-crit condition builds go Geomancy/Frailty|Geomancy/Corruption unless you can maintain 25 bleeds without the rune, in which case Battle would be your replacement for Geomancy. Your personal damage won’t go up when you take frailty as a condi build, but it will help the direct damagers on your team – and if you’re soloing, you’ll have your own build already.

Rangers have a special mention that power-based rangers should run air+fire on both weapons, because their generic power multipliers are so bad that air and earth get 11% and 6-30% increases to dps instead.

WvW: All the above except Night, plus sigils of Generosity (high-crit only), Purity (low-crit only) and Water (low-crit only).

There’s a ton of worthless sigils. Stacking-to-25-before-single-cast sigils are all bad, more than half of the specific creature ones are worthless given Night supercedes them on the dungeons, anything that increases condition length on any non-intensity stacking condition is fail by default. Though the most useless of all the useless sigils in existence is probably the newest Sigil of Mischief.

Special mention goes out to the Sigil of Speed, which is utterly useless in most contexts except world exploration, in which it suddenly becomes a zero effort way to stack swiftness at a heart to run to the next heart – especially good on guardians and mesmers that don’t already have full runes of Traveler – and by itself increases world completion speed faster than anything else you can possibly slot in a sigil slot.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Lazuli.2098:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

…
Sigil of speed (swiftness on kill)
…

Thanks for such a well thought out and detailed post, but…

I play mostly open world pve and I love using the sigil of speed on the focus of one of my mesmers. I keep her in her melee gear (sword and focus) most of the time and kill most every mob in her way. After big fights she’s usually carrying 3 + min of swiftness. My main, a mesmer with superior traveler runes, seems so much slower in comparison.

And you’re right. I corrected it, hope you are satisfied with my additional comment.
I thought boons only stack for 5 or 10 times max though so 3 min could be a bit much?

Superior sigils of speed gives 20 seconds of swiftness (+33% to speed) for each kill. All you need to do is edit: 10 kill to get three minutes +. These big fights with many mobs don’t come around that often but I have stacked over 3 minutes regularly, not every day but it’s not unusual. Mostly I just run along until I’m about out of swiftness and just look for some random something to kill along the way to keep up the speed. When I run out I then use focus 4.

I’m considering putting a sigil of speed on a profession that has aoe damage and could really stack up some time, maybe a longbow ranger or a staff guardian. Then I wouldn’t have to use a utility slot for a speed boost on them.

And I didn’t mean to criticize what you had posted. I just wanted to point out that some sigils that may not be that great in general can be useful in certain situations.

Posted this in another thread awhile back, ill also +1 sigil of speed for open world perma swiftness is always nice.

Force- Awesome sigil I have it on all my none specialized weapon sets

Night-Great for many dungeons, but useless everywhere else, I wouldn’t put it on a general set

Slaying- For organized speed clears or if you run Arah alot.

Fire- The farmers best friend amazing at tagging mob, sometimes it can accidentally aggro mobs in dungeons though so be careful, also good for burst in WvW.

Air- A good companion to Force for all around usefulness, also good for burst in WvW

Accuracy-A good companion to Force for all around usefulness, good if you have on crit traits.

Frailty-A good companion to Force for all around usefulness, better for champs than trash, might be redundant if you have an Engi in your party.

Bloodlust- Good for your off hand set, not great in dungeons, good in WvW and Open World

Might-A good companion to Force for all around usefulness, can become redundant with a good ele/PS war in your party. Great for a PS warrior if you don’t have strength runes.

Energy- More dodges!!!!!

Battle- Good for unorganized pve for classes that swap alot engi, ele, war, maybe mes. Also useful in WvW on the first 3