Guild Wars 2

I was just curious what do you guys think is better? Battle has the benefit that is buffs Power and Condition damage but not to the extent that using a stacking Sigil can. Lets assume you aren’t using Sigil of Strength or Rune of Strength.

What would you guys pick? At the very least you should have +105 Power and Condition damage, +140 if you swap into Fire with Elemental Attunement. Within say about 10 seconds you should have increased that to +210 (245 if for Fire)

What is the highest you have managed to get with it, without using any outside Might buffing runes/sigils/food. Lets assume you have 20% Duration. That would mean that the Might would last 24 seconds. I think ignoring Fire line for now that You could swap 3 times before the stacks start falling off. That would take around 30 seconds of fight time to gain a possible 315 stat increase.

So it comes very close to that of the stacking Sigils but they have the benefit of working right from the start of the fight. No need for you to be slowly gain them but of course they come with the downside that you lose them on downed. They take time to gain the stacks as well and only affect 1 stat vs the 2 of Might.

Is their one you prefer?
I am thinking about dropping Geomancy as a Sigil as i look into a more Hybrid build. I currently when fully stacked with Guard Buffs and food have around 1500 Power and Condition damage but even that isn’t enough to actually make using things like Fiore Grab worth while, rarely hits above 1k (non-crit) damage even with nearly 1,500 Power.

Stacking Sigil’s still lose their stacks when you go underwater right? If so, I feel like battle would be more useful in general.

I dont think that would be a problem. I rarely fight under water so having on on the under water weapon would be a decent option as well.

An interesting fact – Having a stacking Sigil on Under water weapon and gaining stacks they stay after you leave the water. The only problem is it takes SO long to gain the stacks under water that it is not really viable.

I could go with Battle on Land and stacking for water, at least that way should i get kills under water i would have both Battle and the stacking sigil stacks.

In a prolonged fight (of about 1 minute, and in any case longer than 20 seconds) and with 30 in arcana, Sigil of Battle guarantees 6 stacks of Might(210 power, 210 condition damage), with a 70% uptime of 9 stacks of might(305 power, 305 condition damage). If you have Might Duration Runes (Hoelbrak, Pirate, Strength) you will gain 100% uptime of 9 stacks of Might. Of course, this is assuming no one corrupts, steals or removes your might.
Overall, I think that Battle is >>>> than any stacking sigil. Some situations favor the stacking sigils though, but they are really, really rare.

I discovered that it is possible to stack up on land, go into water (having that sigil on underwater weapon too) and then you can swap the land weapon and have all stacks.

You don’t even need 6 into Arcane for pretty much 100% uptime on 6 stacks. I think you could have up to 9 stacks with just 4 into Arcane though it wouldn’t be as long. Though as i stated in the OP. Assuming you dont run 6 into Arcane and you don’t run any other sigils or runes that increase Might Duration or anything.

What would be the better option?
I am kind of leaning towards Battle as no need to farm monster kills or player kills to get stacks and then having to do that every time you are downed.

@Rudy – Ah, so they changed it back. I remember a week or so ago when doing that removed all the stacks. That is even better. So i could have both Battle AND stacking Sigil stacks. Now which stacks to go with.

Testing in the Mists i managed to top out at 16 stacks but that was using Fire, blasting Fire fields as well and even that 16 lasted only a few seconds.It was Normally around 10 stacks which is 350 Power and Condition Damage

Rudy.6184:

I discovered that it is possible to stack up on land, go into water (having that sigil on underwater weapon too) and then you can swap the land weapon and have all stacks.

Just so you are all ware do NOT use ANY gathering when you have gained 25 stacks and swapped it out as you will lose the stacks the moment you gather from a node meaning you will have to gain the stacks again.

They were removed from a Veg node. I will gain some more stacks and try the other type of nodes and see if that happens. I am pretty sure it will.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Rudy.6184:

I discovered that it is possible to stack up on land, go into water (having that sigil on underwater weapon too) and then you can swap the land weapon and have all stacks.

Just so you are all ware do NOT use ANY gathering when you have gained 25 stacks and swapped it out as you will lose the stacks the moment you gather from a node meaning you will have to gain the stacks again.

They were removed from a Veg node. I will gain some more stacks and try the other type of nodes and see if that happens. I am pretty sure it will.

Further testing. This method is VERY unreliable. Going into some water will remove it while going into other water won’t remove it. Gathering ANYTHING will also remove it. I am not sure if it is worth it considering just how unreliable it is to actually keep.

Gathering removes it. This is easy don’t gather. However the fact that SOME water removes it while others don’t makes it VERY hard to be able to keep up as you have no idea if it will stay when you go into the water.

So if it is like that I would stand with battle since it gives additional comdi dmg and I dont like stack to begin with. Other thing stacking sigil as a secondary one – would it be better then air or doom? I think not.

Rudy.6184:

So if it is like that I would stand with battle since it gives additional comdi dmg and I dont like stack to begin with. Other thing stacking sigil as a secondary one – would it be better then air or doom? I think not.

Thinking Battle and Doom with stacking one, once i see everything that you can and can not do with with the stacks or lose them. So far the list is:

1) Gathering. You can’t gather ANYTHING or you lose all your stacks
2) Water. This is the hardest one, it removes from SOME water but not others.

It would really help both us and Engineer if we had a 3rd sigil slot. This would be something for a stacking sigil. Seeing as others can have stacking sigil and THREE spare sigil slots.

I found a number 3:

3) You cant use ANY siege once you have gained the stacks and swapped the weapon out. Just like Gathering it seems to unequip your weapons or something for you to use them.

I am guessing this would mean using Transformation Elites, Golems and such would all also remove the stacks.

Going with Corruption gives me nearly 2,000 Condition damage but the fact you cant gather, cant use siege and cant go into certain water means that the stacks are VERY unreliable and i doubt anyone would want to have to gain the stacks again. Go under water, swap the weapon out to keep the stacks EVERY time they are lost because you forgot that you can’t do something.

^Hold on; I must have missed something. Because I actually noticed that I do GET stacks while using an arrowcart for example, if I have the shortbow out with my Thief (the bow has the stacking sigil) while using it. I’ve also never noticed them going away except when actually unequipping the weapon with the sigil, or going for a swim (the first being working as intended and the latter a bug).

That being said; before the feature patch I wasn’t really a fan of stacking sigils. But since they now give 5 stacks for each player, they can actually be quite nice. Still, for classes/builds that trigger weaponswap often (and Elementalists are usually among those), Sigil of Battle is much better imo. With Air/Fire/Doom/Leeching/whatever as the second sigil.

Yeah if you have the sigil on your land weapons, so do i. The thing i was testing is if you gain stacks using a weapon with the sigil (say Corruption) and then go into water which has a weapon with the same sigil and swap the land weapon out for something else you keep the stacks.

The problem is, Anet stealth “fixed” this so pretty much doing ANYTHING will remove the stacks because you don’t have it on your land weapon anymore – This affects Ele and Engineer pretty much seeing as we only have 2 sigil slots Vs the 4 of everyone else.

Before the “fix” you could do anything after swapping them out, such as use Siege, do gathering, go into water and still keep the stacks. This has now changed making it VERY hard to keep the stacks because ANYTHING could just remove them. I went into water, kept the stacks went into a different bit of water and no understanding why – lost them.

Well, you’re supposed to lose the stacks if you don’t have the sigil equipped, so that’s indeed working as intended… actually it’s a bug that they stay after leaving the water if you do what you’re describing (unequipping the weapon with the stacking sigil while being underwater). As for the reason why you lose them if you go into water again… this might be because to get into the water, you need to go through the water surface, where you have no weapon equipped (thus, no stacking sigil). The exception (maybe) being if you go underwater fast enough for the game to directly switch to underwater weapons (like when you’re falling into water after a jump for example). Though… that theory doesn’t work well with the fact that you keep the stacks if you have the sigil equipped on land and underwater weapons. Hmmm… anyway; I’d say working as intended.

I agree that it can be a bit of a drawback for Eles and Engis that they can only use two different sigils at a time. But on the other hand, almost all builds for Ele and most builds for Engi can make much better use of weaponswap-sigils than the other classes, unless they really build for it (which usually comes with some other drawbacks for them). And I’d say that kinda makes up for it.

Before it was “bugged” but like all HELPFUL bugs it was fixed fast while we are still suffering from issues that were in the BETA…

You do know that ALL classes have the same cool down on Sigils right? The ONLY class that gets a real benefit is Warrior as they have 4 sigil slots and a trait for a 5 second cool down. Meaning they can proc the first set the moment they get into battle, proc the second set after 5 seconds and by the time the cool down is off the first set will have been off cool down so can proc again.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Before it was “bugged” but like all HELPFUL bugs it was fixed fast while we are still suffering from issues that were in the BETA…

There also were a lot of non-helpful bugs fixed. And I’m sure there are still lots of “helpful” bugs around (aka bugs that are heavily abused by some people… which technically isn’t allowed, but Anet seems to be tolerating it since so many do it).

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

You do know that ALL classes have the same cool down on Sigils right?

Yes they do. But they can still only have two sigils active at a time. And for the weaponswap-sigils, they need to… well, actually swap weaponsets. That means they might end up using a weaponset that’s not appropriate for the given situation, if they swap just to trigger the sigil. Or they build with the same weaponset twice, but then they lack something if they encounter an opponent who kinda counters that weaponset. Elementalists and Engineers with kits on the other hand will trigger weapon-swaps all the time anyway, without running into those problems. Thus, they benefit the most from them.

And yes, Warriors are the only class that can proc on-swap-sigils every 5 seconds. I’m not sure if they can for example use two Sigils of Battle or not, though. Anyway… they have this little advantage over all the other classes; not just those with only one weaponset. They also face the problem of being swapped into a suboptimal weaponset if they want to trigger the sigils all the time, although for them it only lasts 5 seconds… but then again, they will need to switch back to it again after 5 more seconds passed, so yeah… but the frequent on-swap-sigil-triggers might partially offset this disadvantage in some situations.

Everyone in PvE/WvW needs a full set of pirate runes, so that everyone is sharing 15+ stacks of might with a 70% uptime.

And all the birds. The swarms of birds, the birds that attack for nearly 2k damage, and that evade, and can eat AoE off your stack/zerg, and that respawn every 60 seconds.

Sigil of battle is already better after 9-10 seconds. And way better after the next swap.

Sigil of Battle.

Also, I haven’t had my stacks disappear from gathering or going underwater since I put the same stacking sigil on my underwater weapon as well. I know I had that problem in WvW when defending or attacking Bay, I’d lose all 25 stacks before going to inner, which was awful. Once I put the same sigil on my underwater weapon, that stopped.

I use Sigil of Battle. Granted, when I’m just doing open world PvE, I tend to just stay in Fire/Earth so I don’t get that much benefit out of it, but when it comes to dungeons/Fractals/WvW and the attunement juggling comes to the fore, that’s when it really shines.