Guild Wars 2

I’m working on a a build with a high critical hit chance, and would like to take advantage of that as much as possible by using a lot of on-crit skills. So as an engineer, in my traits I have the chance to apply burning, bleeding, and vulnerability on crits. These all seem to be independent of each other and so for each crit, a few of these conditions can be applied at the same time and they all stack nicely.

However, I recently just started using a sigil of strength (30% chance to gain might) and sigil of blood (30% chance to steal health). I know that they share a cooldown so both of those can never go at the same time, but I did all the calculations and determined that for each toss (of 3 grenades each, each able to get a crit independent of each other) I should be stacking up might pretty quickly. I have noticed, however, that I rarely ever gain might during combat. Like instead of having 6 stacks for each fight, I get 1 maybe once every couple of fights. I also don’t think that steal health is working either, though to be honest I’m not sure I would notice if it was. I’m wondering if anybody knows why? I’m thinking that these on-crit sigil skills might be competing against the on-crit trait skills.

What I mean is that I have a 50% chance to apply vulnerability on each crit, 33% chance to apply bleeding, and 100% chance for burning every 10 seconds, all based on my traits. This means for every crit, there’s a great chance at least one of those will be applied. What I’m thinking is that if one of these is applied, then it puts my sigils on cooldown or something so they are basically never applied. This is the only thing I can think of that would explain my sigil conditions occurring so infrequently. Is this possible? Anybody else have any other ideas? I appreciate the help.

I should update everyone that I did some experiments and there is definitely a weird interaction between the sigils as a few of you mentioned as a likely possibility. There is nothing in the description either sigil (or just sigils in general) that would indicate this, but basically these two sigils just don’t work together. I’m not saying they aren’t good together because the second only rolls if the first fails, but actually just that it really does not work at all and neither function. It may be this specific combination, or two on-crit sigils in general, but at least for this exact case, it’s not an issue of cool-down or something that we could calculate, and is probably a bug. I’m now using sigil of corruption instead of blood, and I now I quickly stack 5-6 might as expected based on the numbers, and sigil of corruption functions as expected. Thanks to everyone for your input in trying to figure this out.

On crit things have an ICD. Blood has a 2 sec, strength has a 5 sec i think. Wiki is very helpful with these kinds if things.

Blood has an ICD of 2 seconds, but strength should only be 1 second according to the Wiki. I took these into account in my calculation

Get rid of blood or put strength on your mainhand

Carpboy.7145:

Get rid of blood or put strength on your mainhand

Strength is on my main hand, but still doesn’t trigger as often as I’d expect based on the numbers.

Sigil is 30% chance to steal health/give might per crit, not per attack. If your critrate is 60%, your actual chance of getting might is less than 18% (because of the chance Sigil of Blood is overwriting it). Even with 3, your chance of getting might is still 45% on an optimistic estimate, given all grenades hit the target(s).

If your critrate is only 30% for instance your chance of getting 1 might is only 25% if all 3 grenades hit.

Not sure whether or not you already accounted for this, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

Hayashi.3416:

Sigil is 30% chance to steal health/give might per crit, not per attack. If your critrate is 60%, your actual chance of getting might is less than 18% (because of the chance Sigil of Blood is overwriting it). Even with 3, your chance of getting might is still 45% on an optimistic estimate, given all grenades hit the target(s).

If your critrate is only 30% for instance your chance of getting 1 might is only 25% if all 3 grenades hit.

Not sure whether or not you already accounted for this, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

Yes, thank you for the suggestion but I’ve taken that into account. Based on my crit rate, my chance of getting AT LEAST one (could be two or three) might per toss is about 50%. Sigil of blood will not override it because that is in my off hand, and according to other posts, main hand always goes first. If I make roughly 1 toss per second, after 10 seconds, statistically I should have about 5 stacks of might but I’m usually seeing 0 or 1 if I’m lucky.

I’m pretty confident that I did the numbers correctly, my real question is if there is another, less obvious, game mechanic that is not advertised that anyone else has noticed… specifically whether or not the cool-downs for traits influence your sigils. This would change the calculations greatly.

I just did an experiment and found out that my theory doesn’t work. I got rid of my traits except for 100% burning on crit. On throws where I know only there was only 1 crit based on the combat log, both burning (from trait) and might (from sigil) were applied for that 1 crit.

Maybe it’s something else, like there is a limit of 2 on-crit conditions applied per crit. So if traits get calculated first, I would get 2 of burning, bleeding, or vulnerability, and only in situations where none of those are applied, will the sigil even have a chance to go.

Odie.5061:

Hayashi.3416:

Sigil is 30% chance to steal health/give might per crit, not per attack. If your critrate is 60%, your actual chance of getting might is less than 18% (because of the chance Sigil of Blood is overwriting it). Even with 3, your chance of getting might is still 45% on an optimistic estimate, given all grenades hit the target(s).

If your critrate is only 30% for instance your chance of getting 1 might is only 25% if all 3 grenades hit.

Not sure whether or not you already accounted for this, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

Yes, thank you for the suggestion but I’ve taken that into account. Based on my crit rate, my chance of getting AT LEAST one (could be two or three) might per toss is about 50%. Sigil of blood will not override it because that is in my off hand, and according to other posts, main hand always goes first. If I make roughly 1 toss per second, after 10 seconds, statistically I should have about 5 stacks of might but I’m usually seeing 0 or 1 if I’m lucky.

I’m pretty confident that I did the numbers correctly, my real question is if there is another, less obvious, game mechanic that is not advertised that anyone else has noticed… specifically whether or not the cool-downs for traits influence your sigils. This would change the calculations greatly.

You would get at most 1 stack of might per toss not up to 3. Once any of the hits procs the timer would be started and you would not be able to get any more stacks from the sigil.

Khisanth.2948:

You would get at most 1 stack of might per toss not up to 3. Once any of the hits procs the timer would be started and you would not be able to get any more stacks from the sigil.

Correct. Assuming a 70% critrate and assuming mainhand has priority, tossing 3 grenades at once gives you a 50% chance of getting one might per throw or a lifesteal, which will block might activation for another throw.

In 1 throw you have a 50% chance of might.

In 2 throws, the possible outcomes are as follows:

Where M is Might, B is Blood, N is No effect, X is any sigil (blocked) and Y is either B or N.

MM = 2 might, 0.25 chance
MY = 1 might, 0.25 chance
NM = 1 might, 0.125 chance.
NY = 0 might, 0.125 chance
BX = 0 might, 0.25 chance

That gives you 0.875 might in 2 seconds, or 0.4375 might due to sigil blocking.

In 3 throws,

MMM = 3 might, 0.125 chance
MMY = 2 might, 0.125 chance
MNY = 1 might, 0.0625 chance
MNM = 2 might, 0.0625 chance
MBX = 1 might, 0.125 chance
BXM = 1 might, 0.125 chance
BXY = 0 might, 0.125 chance
NBX = 0 might, 0.0625 chance
NMM = 2 might, 0.0625 chance
NMY = 1 might, 0.0625 chance
NNM = 1 might, 0.03125 chance
NNY = 0 might, 0.03125 chance

Total 1.28 might per 3 seconds, or 0.427 might per second due to sigil blocking.

It get increasingly complicated as time passes, but we’re still expecting at the end of the day like 0.4 might per second on average. In 10 seconds you should still get 4 might, not <1. Knowing your critrate will help.

As far as I know all sigils share internal cooldown, but sigils, food and trait cooldowns all should not interact at all. That makes your situation a bit strange.

Another possibility – are your attacks actually more frequent than one per second? We know grenades are ‘approximately’ one per second, but if it was actually say 0.99 seconds, then the might’s cooldown would actually last for 2 throws rather than 1, and the blood’s cooldown would last for 3 throws rather than 2. That would drop the expected rate further.

Hayashi.3416:

It get increasingly complicated as time passes, but we’re still expecting at the end of the day like 0.4 might per second on average. In 10 seconds you should still get 4 might, not <1. Knowing your critrate will help.

As far as I know all sigils share internal cooldown, but sigils, food and trait cooldowns all should not interact at all. That makes your situation a bit strange.

Another possibility – are your attacks actually more frequent than one per second? We know grenades are ‘approximately’ one per second, but if it was actually say 0.99 seconds, then the might’s cooldown would actually last for 2 throws rather than 1, and the blood’s cooldown would last for 3 throws rather than 2. That would drop the expected rate further.

Thanks a lot for your analysis- it matches well with mine. I’ve added my build to my sig so you can see the details for yourself. Crit rate is 65%. I could boost it higher with a different set of runes but don’t want to spend the money if it’s not helping by applying might like I was counting on.

Last night I also tried switching hands, just to see if anything happened… it made no difference, which was odd because frequency of might should have gone down if anything. I should also point out that through all of this, I have no idea whats going on with Blood because I can’t tell when it goes, if ever, which is why I’m just focusing on Might as an example because its much more obvious.

I have also done some attack-rate experiments in the past, and have found that I get about 9 throws in a timed 10 second interval, just throwing as fast as I can at the ground in front of me (if I remember correctly). In combat, this drops significantly because I’m moving and dodging and have to actually aim at moving targets.

I’ve also noticed that if I do get might, it seems to have a better chance of occurring with my first throw, which indicates some cooldown preventing it in subsequent attacks.

I never found sigil of strength to be that good with the few times experimenting with it. Might on swap from battle sigil is the way to go. In general though, I wouldn’t use two on crit sigils, as they interfere too much with one another.

When sigil of blood procs green numbers pop up but only if your health is not full.

Cyricus.2981:

I never found sigil of strength to be that good with the few times experimenting with it. Might on swap from battle sigil is the way to go. In general though, I wouldn’t use two on crit sigils, as they interfere too much with one another.

I agree, I think I might switch as well based on my issues. If I can understand why it’s not working so well, though, maybe I can fix it, like maybe boost crit rate even higher, or get rid of another skill thats putting it in cooldown. So far though it seems I may have to follow your advice and just give up on it.

Khisanth.2948:

When sigil of blood procs green numbers pop up but only if your health is not full.

Thanks! I figured it was something like that, but I have literally never seen that happen since I got the sigil of blood. I’ll keep an extra eye out for it, but I think I would have noticed by now. I guess its just not going at all…. The mystery continues.

Odie.5061:

Maybe it’s something else, like there is a limit of 2 on-crit conditions applied per crit. So if traits get calculated first, I would get 2 of burning, bleeding, or vulnerability, and only in situations where none of those are applied, will the sigil even have a chance to go.

I’m ~95% certain that i’ve had 3 on-crits proc from the same crit hit, 2 of which were from traits.

afaik: trait procs all have a separate CD, sigils share one(except for Torment which currently has its own(bug))

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Odie.5061:

Maybe it’s something else, like there is a limit of 2 on-crit conditions applied per crit. So if traits get calculated first, I would get 2 of burning, bleeding, or vulnerability, and only in situations where none of those are applied, will the sigil even have a chance to go.

I’m ~95% certain that i’ve had 3 on-crits proc from the same crit hit, 2 of which were from traits.

afaik: trait procs all have a separate CD, sigils share one(except for Torment which currently has its own(bug))

Probably not a bug since they are going to be removing the shared timer from all sigils in a future patch. That might just be testing out some of the changes on a smaller scale.