Guild Wars 2

Ever since the 4/15 balance patch I’ve been trying out a lot of secondary sigils in combination with Battle but am having a hard time choosing. I’ve gone between Energy and many others back and forth. The ones I’ve tried and know to be good are Energy, Doom, Force, and Air/Fire. Strength and Hydromancy seem borderline-good but not good enough. Accuracy and Generosity seem to be more dependant on what the build is lacking.

Doom is what I’m currently using and seems to be great against Guardians/Warriors/Elementalists when I’m solo roaming but I wanted to know if anybody had any other sigil suggestions that I’m not giving enough credit to or a good case on what is most logical to use.

I’ve never been completely sure on how Force’s damage modifier applies in relation to Might or other damage modifiers either.

Sigil of Energy is extremely useful in any build. If you survive longer you’ll be giving out more damage.

Air.

Intelligence, Energy or doom for roaming would be the only others I would consider, probably intelligence. I suspect sigil of intelligence will be nerfed down to 2 attacks at some point because of how much it’s being abused on warriors.

There’s no way Force even comes close to air or intelligence for damage.

I run Energy + Intelligence

I’d say energy or air. Personally using air at the moment, lightning whip melts people like never before.

Leeching is often overlooked. In duels that are very hit-and-run (think S/D thief and mesmer) it provides a very substantial boost to both healing and damage. On crit sigils are often wasted since elementalists typically spend a lot of time disengaging to regenerate, to channel ether renewal or just to run away from a zerg or an outnumbered fight. Your sigil of leeching however doesn’t go to waste, and gives you a strong re-engage. A 975 heal and armor ignoring damage every 9 seconds(goes through endure pain and everything) is very strong.

I really don’t like intelligence on ele. The stacks get burned on random stuff in combat far too often since attunement swap doesnt cancel animations(fire trail for example).

Hydromancy is the best sigil for a d/d ele. Other sigils can deal more damage reliably or provide more reliable and specific utility, but hydromancy is the only sigil that is going to provide both quality utility and damage.

- The only sigil besides ice that snares
- chill extends enemy cooldowns
- hydromancy deals very good damage and it’s one of the few aoe damage sigils and it can actually crit
- it is instant, untelegraphed damage

I’m currently favoring hydromancy and leeching. 2 sigils that are effectively hybrids just seems logical for a weapon set that is almost always built like a hybrid.

I’m not a fan of hydro because of warriors hardly noticing it, thieves hardly noticing it. I think doom is good but same concept with hydro it does give good cover for burns though.

I like energy myself though we can get perma vigor thieves with s/d can apply weakness and still the vigor, necro’s and pu mesmers have a lot of weakness uptime. Those are some of our worst enemies. The on death trait pu mesmers run is almost perma weakness

I’m finding it entirely depends on what you’re up against.
power/crit mesmers and thieves – I find the sigil energy a must.

Against healing signet users such as another d/d ele, warriors and the increasing number of high healing rangers the sigil of doom is very strong.

That being said I haven’t used the sigil of intelligence at all nor the hydromancy since it was nerfed.

Speaking of the sigil of intelligence: has anyone tried building around it?
Something along the lines of having lots of cav/valkyrie gear (not much in the way of precision stat at all) and relying on the sigil to proc your crit dmg. I ask because I know a thief that used to use a the 100% crit chance from stealth trait thus using valk/cav gear they could be super tanky and hit like a truck.

Flux Qemist.6712:

Speaking of the sigil of intelligence: has anyone tried building around it?
Something along the lines of having lots of cav/valkyrie gear (not much in the way of precision stat at all) and relying on the sigil to proc your crit dmg. I ask because I know a thief that used to use a the 100% crit chance from stealth trait thus using valk/cav gear they could be super tanky and hit like a truck.

Pretty much every “good” warrior in OS has done that since it’s ideal for warrior skills in 1v1, almost cheese. They can’t usually do much until you’re out of stun breaks and get caught in a stun. It can take a while, but then they win. I don’t see it working with ele because D/D’s spike in fire is not reliable like that and also attunement swaps would proc it at random. 1-trick spikes don’t work against any decent player. You’ll still need precision because ferocity in general is the weakest offensive stat, by a lot.

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

Other viable options:
_Leeching (very good, a good replacement for Energy, not good for Strength if you need to Mightstack)
_Air (if you have decent crit chance): the damage spike is huge and the 3s CD are really good for bursting
_Doom (I’m not a fan of this, any decent player will cleanse it if it troubles them. Also, the random proc because of Attunement Swapping could waste its “healing disabling” potential, making Leeching/Air better choices in terms of pure DPS)
_Hydromancy: the nerf bat hit this (and it didnt need it IMHO). Still it’s decent for fighting some classes, but again, it can proc when you are away from your target, wasting the effect

Other nice things to consider:
_Fire (good for Staff builds)
_Generosity (even if it is uncontrollable, it’s very good against classes with limited condition application and it helps mitigate some damage against condi heavy users).

Not a fan of Force/Accuracy, as I prefer utility over a small damage increase, even if they mean higher DPS overall.

I looked foward for this topic. Personally was using doom, but changed to air for more dps. I would say doom is nice in duels etc, but in larger fights this poison gets on random guy caught in aoe. Air gives you dps soo much needed in unbalanced fights. For other sigils I wanted to try hydromancy, but after using initial combo rtl+updraft+fire combo it wont hit after swapping atunement after updraft. Energy seems nice, but for me it is overkill – vigor is enough. Same thing with leeching – I dont need more sustain. So summing up – doom for duels/pvp, air for roaming/unbalanced fights.

Hydromancy radius: 240

D/x normal skill range: 300~600.

I’m curious about the damage on this that would justify using a 9 second ICD sigil that would be out of range much of the time.

At least it’s is useful on my trident since it’s whole reason to exist is to get out of water ASAP.

Bloodlust and battle

Przemek Pro.1309:

Bloodlust and battle

Doesn’t an on-crit sigil like air or fire add more dps than 250 power from the stacking sigil (which you lose as soon as you’re downed)? Assuming you have a decent crit-chance, of course.

Probably not more DPS, but more burst damage while also being more consistent assuming you do not get stacks before you fight anyone. It is still possible to use a Bloodlust stacking weapon and swapping it out even with all the changes to it, but it’s a pain in the kitten to do.

I would think air adds more DPS unless you’re something close to full zerk.

Saturn.6591:

Przemek Pro.1309:

Bloodlust and battle

Doesn’t an on-crit sigil like air or fire add more dps than 250 power from the stacking sigil (which you lose as soon as you’re downed)? Assuming you have a decent crit-chance, of course.

Before every roam i stack 5x vitality wvw buff 5x wvw power buff and bloodlust on mobs x25.

Show me maths about that air is better. 250 power gives u more dmg on every skill.

250 power gives in the range of a 10% damage increase for a balanced ele build (will vary with stats).

Air probably procs every ~ 1/8 hits but will depend on attunement, play style, and crit chance. In theory if you’re not hitting often it can go up to every 1/4 hits assuming good fury uptime and normal precision (= ~50% crit chance). When it procs it does close to what a lightning whip critical does (slightly less).

To be equal in a 1v1 in this case, it would need to proc every 1/10 hits and do identical damage to an ‘average damage hit,’ whatever number that may be.

So it depends on frequency, crit chance, and average damage/hit relative to a proc. I don’t know an accurate average damage/hit which of course depends on play stayle and skill use but just in my head, it would seem to me air is considerably more than a +10% increase, closer to the range of +15% or easily higher.

But this is considering single target damage excluding the possibility of cleaves on clones or minions. If looking at AoE, of course 250 power would become better. Then again, with bloodlust, you do have to get the stacks before you see the benefit. I would much rather use air.

Lastly tasted abit. With fury it comes to 1,66 activation of sigil per 10 sec, without fury it is like 1,165 per 10 sec using lightning whip (every half second – hit). With mathematical point of view, consiering hit every second (i dont know the mediocore hit/sec of ele in duel) it would be one hit every 7 sec with fury and one hit every 9 sec without, considering having around 33% base crit chance. Knowing timers can make sigil more efficient using burst/fire breath etc every 3 sec. Taking sigil of doom into consideration – it deals about 864 dmg every 9 sec with my build (600 condi dmg), with around 11 stacks of might (about 1000 condi dmg) it deals about 1104 dmg every 9 sec (but depends when you change attunement). Sigil of air deals around 1000 dmg (with my build), so i took sigil of doom because of utility – someone said that someone can negate the dmg from it cleansing condition, but he wont cleanse for example burn (with single condition cleansing condi removal).

Sigil of air scales with power, not condition damage.

Since this is PvP and not PvE, activation per 10 seconds is meaningless because you’re not doing constant hits. With fury up it will be roughly 25% chance to proc per hit with 3 a second cooldown afterwards. You have to model that with how you’ll actually be landing attacks.

This means against a very evasive class like a thief where you don’t get hits in that often, it could easily add around +20% damage because ICD becomes less important. Against a guardian where you may be hitting them almost constantly so the ICD becomes a much bigger factor, the % damage increase will be much lower.

I agree you can’t discount sigil of doom just because it can be cleansed. The cleanse itself is usually a resource.

so with basic 1900 power better is bloodlust or air? And what about Sigil of Fire AoE Blast.

Przemek Pro.1309:

so with basic 1900 power better is bloodlust or air? And what about Sigil of Fire AoE Blast.

Made more math. With my build sigil of bloodlust gives me 15,5% more dmg with basic 1611 power vs 2500 armor (with my build, crits makes no difference), and considering 15 stacks of might 11% more dmg. Air has 1,1 dmg coefficient, so it would deal 836 (920 dmg if traited for 10% more dmg) (avarege) with 1900 base power vs 2,5k armor (with 15 stacks of might 1067, traited 1174). For example difference between burning speed would be 418 dmg considering crit (with 25 stacks of bloodlust and without). To sum – sigil of air is better only if you consider cooldown and will make bursts in 3 sec cooldown (best for thieves), in every other way bloodlust is better. About sigil of fire it has little lower coefficient (1,0) and longer cooldown (5 sec), so i wouldn’t reccomend it. Personally I dont like stacking and enemies with high sustain/defence are worst for me, so I use sigil of doom.

Since ya’ll talking about D/D in WvW already, is there a standard build floating around for that these days? I’m too kitten casual these days to experiment enough with it myself.

02066 with 2400-2600 armor, 1600-1900 hp, 2k power, 30-35% crit chance and ~500 healing power is the standard. Different setups to achieve this general spread, all of them work.

Gokil.2543:

02066 with 2400-2600 armor, 1600-1900 hp, 2k power, 30-35% crit chance and ~500 healing power is the standard. Different setups to achieve this general spread, all of them work.

Great, thank you, stat targets are especially helpful

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

scerevisiae.1972:

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

lol?

scerevisiae.1972:

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

Check the patch notes more often. Basic info bro.

On the original topic, hydromancy is amazing and you need to at least give it a shot. It’s cheap as hell on the tp, and it’s so good i’m just going to let it speak for itself.

scerevisiae.1972:

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

Post of the year.

Energy is good for defensive purpose.
But if you play an aggressive build, nothing beats air+battle imho.

P.S. leave the bloodlust on the staff builds.
If you roam could take some time to charge it, while with staff 1 aoe and you are done

I actually run battle/strength. Might makes me right!

LordByron.8369:

Energy is good for defensive purpose.
But if you play an aggressive build, nothing beats air+battle imho.

P.S. leave the bloodlust on the staff builds.
If you roam could take some time to charge it, while with staff 1 aoe and you are done

U will lose stack when u change weapons so u cant stack with staff and change to d/d

What about sigil of strength and sigil of intelligence

Przemek Pro.1309:

LordByron.8369:

P.S. leave the bloodlust on the staff builds.
If you roam could take some time to charge it, while with staff 1 aoe and you are done

U will lose stack when u change weapons so u cant stack with staff and change to d/d

While that’s certainly true, it’s not what he actually was talking about. In his opinion (and I agree there), Bloodlust works much better if you’re using staff. He wasn’t saying anything about using the staff only to get the charges and then switching back to D/D.