Guild Wars 2

They both have the same 3 stats but one focuses on Precision while the other on Power.

Has anyone done the math? I suspect that it doesn’t even matter which you choose since if you have to you can compensate for whichever stat you need with other gear.
Unless of course Power far exceeds Precision in DPS increase?

If there is no difference in DPS or that difference is really small, which is cheaper to make (light):
Saphir or Zojja?

Cost wise the only difference is in the Assassin you use Vicious Claw (40s each) and in the Zerker you use Vial of Powerful Blood (50s each) , the price difference is almost non existent.

The difference on DPS depends on your trait setup and trinkets, if in your traits you have low precision then Assassin make up for that, but if you have other sources of precision like foods, trinkets, sigil, runes … then Zerker will give better DPS.

Generally berserker deals more damage than assassin, unless you use a lot of on-crit traits /runes/sigils. It’s complicated.

Damage: (21x + 0.01)(y-1) + 21/21(x(y-1) + 1) per point precision
Damage: z/9.16 per point power.

This is where x is precision, y is critdmg%, and z is power.

Don’t ask about the math unless you’re really serious about it…

Hayashi.3416:

Generally berserker deals more damage than assassin, unless you use a lot of on-crit traits /runes/sigils. It’s complicated.

Damage: (21x + 0.01)(y-1) + 21/21(x(y-1) + 1) per point precision
Damage: z/9.16 per point power.

This is where x is precision, y is critdmg%, and z is power.

Don’t ask about the math unless you’re really serious about it…

Where can I find the full models?
I come from a game where we had to use nonlinear regression on collected data to find equations that convert stat #s into actual %s and then figure out DPS increases (Neverwinter Online).

Is it the same here? How does Precision #s affect crit %s? What about Ferocity and crit damage?
And is Power # just a straight conversion into damage? Does every skill has its own coefficient? That is, will 100 additional power increase DPS by a static % (after considering existing attack dmg) for all skills or will it vary?

This wiki page can answer those questions (or links to the answers):
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

One other note is that Assasins gear on the TP can be significantly less expensive than Zerker gear so if buying (rather than crafting) some coin can be saved by going with a few pieces of Assasins gear rather than full Zerker.

Also, builds that use a lot of reflection and/or “on critical” upgrades can benefit from Precision over Power to some degree, but it’s hard to argue with the benefits of MOAR POWER!!!! when you look at he bare numbers.

Veril.9408:

Where can I find the full models?
I come from a game where we had to use nonlinear regression on collected data to find equations that convert stat #s into actual %s and then figure out DPS increases (Neverwinter Online).

Is it the same here? How does Precision #s affect crit %s? What about Ferocity and crit damage?
And is Power # just a straight conversion into damage? Does every skill has its own coefficient? That is, will 100 additional power increase DPS by a static % (after considering existing attack dmg) for all skills or will it vary?

Since it DOES appear you are serious:

Damage per second = Power * Weapon Strength * Multiplier * (Critdmg% * Critrate% + (1-Critrate%) * (1 + 0.01*Vulnerability stack count )/ (Target Defense * Attack Speed)

Also, all damage multipliers from traits, runes and whatnot stack multiplicatively, from what I’ve heard – that is, +5% and +5% is not +10%, but (105%)^2 or +10.25%. These go on top of your damage per second calculations from earlier.

21 precision adds 1% critrate. 9.16 power adds 1% damage (relative to base damage). 15 ferocity adds 1% critdmg. ‘Base’ precision is 822: critrate = (precision – 822)/21. The base power is 916. The base critdmg% is 150% at 0 ferocity (that is, +50% damage relative to normal damage on crit). The multiplier is an innate attribute of the skill – the values for each skill are available on the GW2Wiki. Percentage wise adding power always increases your damage by the same percentage, but multiplier per second is a critical piece of information that determines how much that is worth in the first place.

If your skill damage multiplier is 0.6 per second, you can forget about using that as a direct damage skill. The warrior’s axe autoattack rotation has a power multiplier per second of 1.39 (higher when the full rotation is considered), as a ballpark. The Thief’s Pistol Whip is 1.5 per second. Rangers using their longbow deal 0.5-0.9, and their sword deals 1.1… you can see now why rangers speccing into power can never, ever match warriors, even if all other stats were identical. There’s traits and all that, but the story doesn’t change much.

To obtain final damage per second numbers, write out your entire skill rotation, sum all their multiplier numbers together, and divide this by the amount of time in which you do the skill rotation (‘attack speed’) to obtain the multiplier per second values. You can then compare these to other multiplier per second values for alternate skill rotations to figure out which rotation does the most damage. The ‘effective power’ model some players use is oversimplified and gives wrong conclusions when applied between builds with very different skill rotation lengths, though it has its place in comparing between two gear types for the exact same skill rotation and trait placement.

If comparing across different builds entirely which have different damage multipliers or base power or base critrate, etc… you MUST get the final damage per second values for your entire skill rotation in order to make a meaningful comparison.

Also take into account the various damage mechanics of Cleave (3 targets within the front arc), Pierce (3 targets max in a straight line) and AoE (5 targets per damage tick). While the Warrior’s autoattack rotation of 1.39/s may appear to be superior to a bomb engineer’s 1.25/s, in actuality when used at full potential a warrior may do 4.17/s when Cleaving and a bomb engineer does 6.25/s. Conversely, a necro’s Life blast (used for power necro builds) does only 1.4/s to one target, while its dagger autoattack does 1.33/s to one target – the complete lack of Cleave weapons for the necro class means their power-based builds are on average 33-50% the damage output of warriors. They’re even weaker than rangers when specced into power. A Berserker necromancer in PvE is inferior to a Cleric Guardian in terms of damage output in the average dungeon scenario.

Lastly note that objects cannot be critted. An ‘object’ is anything that never moves – turrets, certain bosses, defensive structures, etc. On these, PVT gear does as much damage as Berserker – and Berserker has a clear advantage over Assassin. Some objects can take condition damage, others can’t.

With these numbers and examples you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. I played Neverwinter as well… and it certainly was a lot harder to calculate for that game than Guild Wars 2.

Just note that most players here can’t actually calculate, and often blindly follow the builds others created some time before for reasons different from what their original buildmakers intended – then as they cannot defend, they insult everyone who does not agree. That is the reason I ask if you are serious or not before committing to a proper answer.

Hayashi.3416:

With these numbers and examples you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. I played Neverwinter as well… and it certainly was a lot harder to calculate for that game than Guild Wars 2.

Just note that most players here can’t actually calculate, and often blindly follow the builds others created some time before for reasons different from what their original buildmakers intended – then as they cannot defend, they insult everyone who does not agree. That is the reason I ask if you are serious or not before committing to a proper answer.

Thanks for the info I will followup on it.
As for those people that come up or follow builds just because it feels good, they are usually called baddies.

Just a quick question before I actually delve into the math. What are the 2 optimal sigils to have for an ele in terms of DPS? Would it be bloodlust/250power and accuracy? (ignoring the water weapon trick)
Speaking of the water weapon, would having a passive sigil like accuracy on it affect the main weapon or not?

Veril.9408:

Hayashi.3416:

With these numbers and examples you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. I played Neverwinter as well… and it certainly was a lot harder to calculate for that game than Guild Wars 2.

Just note that most players here can’t actually calculate, and often blindly follow the builds others created some time before for reasons different from what their original buildmakers intended – then as they cannot defend, they insult everyone who does not agree. That is the reason I ask if you are serious or not before committing to a proper answer.

Thanks for the info I will followup on it.
As for those people that come up or follow builds just because it feels good, they are usually called baddies.

Just a quick question before I actually delve into the math. What are the 2 optimal sigils to have for an ele in terms of DPS? Would it be bloodlust/250power and accuracy? (ignoring the water weapon trick)
Speaking of the water weapon, would having a passive sigil like accuracy on it affect the main weapon or not?

bloodlust is highest dps sigil if you dont die often

simply because skill have diferent scalings with power for low scaling skills 5% from force sigil is ok but for back stab 100b meteor etc kind of skills 250 power is a masive damage gain i havent played but if it is true you gain 5 stacks per kill on stack sigils now bloodlust is the way to go by default on any build

I heard that the only profession that benefits from it is the mesmer, is that still true?

Besides that I never bother with assasins because in a group situation I am almost always above 90% critchance

Last I had heard, berserker has both higher initial DPS, and higher post-buff DPS. With the right buffs, berserker gear can hit 90% crit chance, making the bonus precision from assassin moot. But, since power scales quite linearly, it is always beneficial to have more power.

The recent changes to ferocity have hit assassin gear harder than zerker gear.

Depends on classes as well. Warriors can reach 100% critchance in pure berserker alone making assassin completely pointless because of a few (frankly overpowered) traits. Thieves and mesmers on the other hand cannot do the same.

There are 6 sigils that can add damage reliably. Bloodlust adds 250 power. Force adds 5% damage. Strength adds approximately 6 constant might (210 power). Battle adds 6.67 might (233 power).

Air adds a single target multiplier per second of 0.367. Fire adds an AoE multiplier per second of 0.17. Of the two, the sigil of fire’s effects cannot crit while the sigil of air’s effects can, so consider Air’s as an actual multiplier. Fire’s multiplier needs to be downscaled relative to your current crit term; that is, 0.17 / (Critrate * Critdmg + (1-Critrate)). Assuming 100% critrate and 250% critdmg, its effective multiplier per second would be 0.17 / (2.5) = 0.068. But if you were a full PVT character, it would be 0.17 / (0.04*1.5 + 0.96) = 0.167. Multiply these by the average number of enemies you fight, up to the AoE limit of 5.

On characters that already have very high multiplier per second values, adding additional multiplier per second wouldn’t be as effective in terms of raising overall damage. If we were to talk about a zerkwar who only autoattacks, his base multiplier per second is 4.17/s, adding 0.34/s (assuming the flame blast hits all targets) is an increase of 8.15% damage. Assuming an unbuffed power value of 2634 in a full 6-6-0-2-0 zerkwar, adding 250 power via the bloodlust sigil is an increase of 9.5% damage. The sigil of force is always 5% damage. Assuming no might duration, the rest of the sigils at 210 and 233 power does not match the bloodlust sigil’s ability, and also proc their effects through might – which will have its effects capped at 25 might. Clearly, you will want the bloodlust as your first sigil. Now assuming full effects, your next sigil is either 210/2884, 233/2884 (weaponswap required) or + 0.367 mult/s. Or 7.28% 8.08%, 8.8% damage respectively. Since the current zerkwar build does not swap weapons in the middle of a fight, even though it gives slightly more might/s in constant swap, the superior sigil of strength ends up as more useful than battle as swaps are not desired. So we have the result of either bloodlust + strength or bloodlust + air for a zerkwar, of which the Air option does not hit diminishing returns in groups where you can reach 25 might permanently, and the strength option requires taking some kind of boon duration buff.

If we talk about a dagger backstab thief in wvw, the multiplier is 2.4 for the backstab. Damage per second isn’t a very relevant discussion because after a backstab they generally disappear back into stealth (or use heartseeker if the single backstab removes enough HP for HS to down the target). Now among these sigils, the most useful becomes the sigil of air, which adds 1.1 to that half the time – which is an increase of 23% damage on average (but practically, a 46% increase half the time depending on your luck). The second most useful sigil is bloodlust, since permstealth thieves simply don’t die, and player kills grant 5 stacks of bloodlust. Some use air-rage instead for the 50% damage increase for 3 seconds – which is all they need to bring down a target.

On berserker power rangers (it’s nowhere near ‘optimised’, but some people like the gameplay) who have a multiplier per second of 3.3 in cleaved sword mode, to compensate for this bad multiplier, a superior sigil of air would add 0.367 mult/s (a damage increase of 11.1%). Relative to this new value of 3.667, a crit-suppressed sigil of fire would add about 0.346 mult/s to this (which now becomes a damage increase of 9.44%), relative to the 9.5% increase from bloodlust. Since these two values are very similar, one would wish to consider if it is more likely that one fights 5 enemies nearly constantly, or more likely that one can achieve and hold 25 stacks of bloodlust quickly. Someone roaming in WvW for a long period of time would want the bloodlust option. Someone speedrunning a dungeon would probably want the fire option. So now berserker rangers use air + fire or air + bloodlust. Of course if they have boon/might duration, it may actually be air + strength or air + battle instead.

Since you ask specifically about an elementalist – elementalists swap attunements nearly all the time, but they also have the ability to mightbuff themselves a lot. In certain builds, they can AoE perm 25 might on the whole party. Clearly in those builds it does not really do much credit to add an additional weaponswap sigil, but if your build is not one of those, the sigil of battle would add 233 power unbuffed – in the very likely scenario that you have at least 2 arcana (and the boon duration that comes with it), this already becomes 256.3 power from might – superior to bloodlust’s effects. Also, consider your multiplier per second again. If running either a lightning hammer or staff 2-1-1-1-2-1-1-1 rotation build, your multiplier is going to be relatively high (in the region of about 1.4 mult/s); if running a Fresh Air build it will be about 1.2 mult/s, both of which are cleave-type. If you’re going to run a suicidal berserker build on the Fresh Air, the 0.367 multiplier addition from air will lead to a +10.2% damage boost, while the sigil of Battle adds the power at 9.6%. While if running a LH/staff build, battle adds the most at 9.6% damage, while bloodlust would add 8.67%, while air would add 8.73%. So on an FA build you would want air + battle, while on an LH/staff you would want battle + bloodlust or battle + air.

To summarise them all into general (but not always true) principles,

The sigil of air is most appropriate in very high critrate, critdmg, especially if your multiplier per second isn’t high.
The sigil of fire is superior when used in AoE/cleave builds with lower critrate/critdmg and lower multiplier per second. Such as in PvT builds.
The sigil of battle is next on the power list if your character swaps weapons and has some kind of + boon duration trait.
The sigil of bloodlust is next unless your party can maintain 25 might, in which case it is better than the sigil of battle.
The sigil of strength is next. When battle is unusable because of your skill rotation this becomes second tier to bloodlust – or superior if you possess + boon/might duration boosts. For instance, sigil of strength + full runes of strength (+ 45% might duration) gives effective power of 304.5 from the sigil component which is much greater than bloodlust if your mightstacks never reach 25.
Then there’s the sigil of power, which adds 5% flat. Generally speaking this is almost always inferior to some other option, but people still use it a lot anyway. Prior to the patch when air, fire and strength weren’t as strong, sigil of power + sigil of bloodlust was optimised in dungeons where 25 might can be guaranteed or in builds that do not use weapon/attunement swaps in their rotations, but it’s somewhat lackluster now.

To end it all off there’s a 7th sigil called the Superior sigil of the Night that adds 10% damage at night. Some people keep this on a weapon they use ONLY for night dungeons for min-maxing purposes. It’s utterly useless in the day however, so if using it you have to be prepared to change weapons to something else in the day. Since ascended tier weapons overpower the 2% difference between the night sigil and alternate sigils, only do this if you are prepared to craft 2 copies of the same ascended weapon.

And for your final question only your active weapon set’s sigils affect your current damage EXCEPT stacking sigils whose effect persists after a weapon swap. The purpose of the aquatic weapon trick is to keep stacks even after changing a weapon (not swapping, rather completely removing it and replacing its slot with something else). Min-maxers often swap a weapon with a bloodlust sigil with one with a night sigil since both involve a swap anyway – and use the night weapon after achieving full bloodlust stacks on a night dungeon. In day dungeons, they just keep the bloodlust one on. Though usually people like this only run night dungeons.

Sigil calculations have their own mathematics involved.

Before the path, with sigil, good, oil and gear you could reach a good balance of power and precision from several combination. During the last month a lot of people were using 3 pieces of assassins and 3 of berserker. But with the patch and the nerf to crit damage, assassins become less and less attractive so most people simply stop using it.

Like Hayashi said, if you are serious about it, you need to calculate it. He gave you a lot of information to do so. A nice little shortcut was the golden ratio of precision over power. The ratio help you to balance the two stats quickly to reach the best damage. Its not perfect, but its a quick way to do it if you don’t want to do the math over and over for several character and several build. Didn’t do the math since the path and I don’t know if someone posted a new version of these ratios yet, but i’m sure someone will.

Does strength count as an attribute modifying sigil?
Can you use both Strength and Bloodlust together?

Also what about sigils on the water weapon, do they affect your land weapon at all?

Veril.9408:

Does strength count as an attribute modifying sigil?

Not really, the might it provides end modifying your power and condition attributes.

Can you use both Strength and Bloodlust together?

Sure.

Veril.9408:

Also what about sigils on the water weapon, do they affect your land weapon at all?

Nope, unless you equip bloodlust sigil in an underwater weapon, stack it underwater and then go to land. (BTW I know the trick to have stack sigil in underwater weapon and stack in land but I don’t approve it and I hope Anet fix it soon)

The short answer is that Berserker and Assassin used to be about equal, with Berserker being better against non-crittable targets (obviously) and Assassin being better on classes with good proc-on-crit effects like the mesmer. With the Ferocity nerf, you get comparatively less damage per point of precision so now Berserker is almost unilaterally better for raw numbers, although depending on the above Assassin may still be comparable DPS.

Belzebu.3912:

……(BTW I know the trick to have stack sigil in underwater weapon and stack in land but I don’t approve it and I hope Anet fix it soon)

I agree. Just hope it does not take as long as the fix to remove stacks on weapon change did…..(wasn’t that bug in the game since release?).

Belzebu.3912:

Veril.9408:

Does strength count as an attribute modifying sigil?

Not really, the might it provides end modifying your power and condition attributes.

Can you use both Strength and Bloodlust together?

Sure.

Veril.9408:

Also what about sigils on the water weapon, do they affect your land weapon at all?

Nope, unless you equip bloodlust sigil in an underwater weapon, stack it underwater and then go to land. (BTW I know the trick to have stack sigil in underwater weapon and stack in land but I don’t approve it and I hope Anet fix it soon)

You don’t need to kill stuff underwater. You just need to start with 2 bloodlust and after getting 25 switch sigils on land weapon (switch weapons).

I assumed that because Strength and Bloodlust count as attribute enhancers they don’t stack (it says it right in the tooltip). Are you sure they both stack together?

Veril.9408:

You don’t need to kill stuff underwater. You just need to start with 2 bloodlust and after getting 25 switch sigils on land weapon (switch weapons).

I assumed that because Strength and Bloodlust count as attribute enhancers they don’t stack (it says it right in the tooltip). Are you sure they both stack together?

It don’t work since the patch, they changed that. You need to have the weapon with the bloodlust equip on your character if you want to keep your bloodlust.

Veril.9408:

Belzebu.3912:

… (BTW I know the trick to have stack sigil in underwater weapon and stack in land but I don’t approve it and I hope Anet fix it soon)…

You don’t need to kill stuff underwater. You just need to start with 2 bloodlust and after getting 25 switch sigils on land weapon (switch weapons).

I know …

Veril.9408:

I assumed that because Strength and Bloodlust count as attribute enhancers they don’t stack (it says it right in the tooltip). Are you sure they both stack together?

Only sigils of the same name and stacking sigils won’t stack.
Sigil of Force and Accuracy stack, but 2x Sigil of Force won’t.
Sigil of Bloodlust and Perception won’t stack.

The attribute stacking ones are those that say ‘add 10 power/10 precision/5 toughness etc per kill up to a maximum of 25 stacks’. The superior sigil of Strength does not add Sigil stacks, rather, it adds stacks of the boon Might, so it can stack with Bloodlust.