Guild Wars 2

so first and foremost I am a Flaming engineer! …. whoa wait that doesn’t sound right, a flamethrowing engineer!.

I use pistol/shield as my primary weapon and I like might … alot. my pistol already has Superior sigil of perception on it for the extra crits because i likes them big numbers too!

my question is should i get superior sigil of bloodlust for the stacks of power or should i get superior sigil of strength for the might chance? which would be more beneficial? my issue is do i want to get the sure things with the stacks of power or roll the dice with the chance to gain the might over time.

The biggest improvement you can make is stop looking at your sigils, and look at your weapon.

But, the question is about sigils, so I’ll say this – Bloodlust if you know how to play. Superior Sigil of Precision actually gives more overall damage if you use berserker gear, however. The might sigil isn’t bad, but it isn’t that great. Sigil of Flame is /amazing/ however.

Sounds like a matter of opinion to me.

Go with Sigil of Strength since with 30 points in Firearms you’ll have pretty good critical hit chance. If you’re like most FT/EG builds and you’ve got Emerald with Knight’s/Berserker’s, all the better.

If there’s an internal cooldown, I don’t notice it.

Just to be clear, you can’t run Sigil of Perception and Sigil of Bloodlust. I’m not sure if that’s what you were suggesting, but the two won’t stack. In that case, you can have either Perception or Bloodlust, and Strength.

For what it’s worth, Bloodlust gives +250 Power at 25 stacks. Strength will give you, at most, 175 Power—that is, 5 stacks of Might—if you crit every 2s without fail.

However, because Perception and Bloodlust don’t stack the question, then, becomes Perception vs Bloodlust. From a strictly direct damage point of view Bloodlust will always be superior to Perception, at least within the range of 150% crit damage (base crit damage) to 200% crit damage (+50% crit damage on gear). I can’t recall what the max possible is in sPvP, and I haven’t looked at the numbers greater than that for WvW/PvE.

Once you start factoring in on-crit effects from traits, sigils, food, and other sources… well, things get very difficult to model. I’d say you can either run Bloodlust/Accuracy if you need the extra crit, or Bloodlust/(Some On-Crit effect) if you don’t need the extra crit chance. Perception, at 25 stacks, gives about 12% crit chance… if you’re absolutely married to that, you can throw Strength on the other weapon/shield for some free Might when that extra 12% makes itself worthwhile.

Bloodlust hands down. With the Sigil of Perception at 25 stack of perception (+250) your only going to see an 12% crit chance increase. (edited, forgot it was 21, not 31 per %)

The reason why bloodlust is so much better is because the Power is maximized 100% of the time whether you are crit built or not.

Goloith.6349:

Bloodlust hands down. With the Sigil of Perception at 25 stack of perception (+250) your only going to see an 8% crit chance increase.

The reason why bloodlust is so much better is because the Power is maximized 100% of the time whether you are crit built or not.

250 / 21 = 11.9, with berserker stats that’s a ~12-13% damage increase, more if you’re an axe warrior with the 10% crit damage trait or somesuch. Having a full stack of bloodlust for most weapons usually results in an 10-11% damage increase (from normal full-berserker setup).

From a situational stand-point, I personally use Sigil of Battle most. It’s more consistent through out battles, even accounting for death (losing stacks on Bloodlust), while also making me more powerful right off the bat; also assuming that you’re running kits. I use Bloodlust if I know I’m with a component enough team for the situation, but when running solo I find that Battle is more reliable.

Strength is a tricky one and I only use in specific set-ups that use a lot of precision. The problem with relying on crit chance is that it’s, plainly, chance. You need to understand that having 50% crit chance isn’t consistent. Meaning that you won’t being getting a crit every other hit. As an encounter extends that 50% chance become more and more random, effectively losing it’s reliability. That’s why if you’re going to be running strength for extended periods of time you need to have a fairly high crit chance (What % of crit chance to have, varies with length of time per encounter). In which case, you’re better off with Bloodlust for it’s consistency.

Engineers make better use of crits than flat out damage in my opinion.

As someone who runs a Carrion attribute layout, I disagree that crit is essential to damage output.

Well, I’ve been stacking 25 Precisions plus Flame, and then switching to Force plus Flame (or Night plus Flame at night). After rereading the Strength in /wiki, I’m wondering if I should be switching to Strength plus Flame. As a static discharge GC Grenadier, I get a lot of crits every attack.

Kamahl.3621:

Goloith.6349:

Bloodlust hands down. With the Sigil of Perception at 25 stack of perception (+250) your only going to see an 8% crit chance increase.

The reason why bloodlust is so much better is because the Power is maximized 100% of the time whether you are crit built or not.

250 / 21 = 11.9, with berserker stats that’s a ~12-13% damage increase, more if you’re an axe warrior with the 10% crit damage trait or somesuch. Having a full stack of bloodlust for most weapons usually results in an 10-11% damage increase (from normal full-berserker setup).

If that’s really that big of bonus and tying in the engineers ability to proc abilities off this crit maybe your right the perception stacking is better. kitten there goes 7g haha. I will have to do more math on this. Thanks.

Been running Bloodlust sigils since low level. I’ve got my crit % up to almost 60% base anyhow, and it actually seems to proc crits more like 3/4ths of the time, so the extra 250 power is what I need to make my crits even have any force behind them.

I think that Strength would be better than Bloodlust. One stack of Might nets you 35 extra power and condition per stack (which is double damage bonus for engineers), while bloodlust only gives you 10 power per stack.

The temporary bonus is much better than the permanent bonus. Not to mention anytime you go down, you lose all stacks that you gained through your fights.

With FT out (And the Juggernaut major trait active) you should be able to maintain 10 stacks of bloodlust, which nets you 350 power and condition extra, while the most that Bloodlust will give you is only 250 power.

If you want Might to last longer, grab two runes of Strength. This will boost your Might duration, netting you more benefits and higher constant Might stacks.

FYI you can actually do both. Build up bloodlust stacks and then switch to a weapon with the sigil of might in it.

That won’t apply to tPvP of course, but you can get the best of both worlds in other gameplay modes if you really want to.

That’s true, Yams. And if you are doing it that way, having two runes of Strength or Fire along with Alchemy will up your Might stacks to 30 seconds (or 34 if you pack both 2-rune sets!) instead of just 20 seconds.

Destroyer.1306:

Well, I’ve been stacking 25 Precisions plus Flame, and then switching to Force plus Flame (or Night plus Flame at night). After rereading the Strength in /wiki, I’m wondering if I should be switching to Strength plus Flame. As a static discharge GC Grenadier, I get a lot of crits every attack.

You don’t want Strength plus Flame, as the one CD resets both CDs. If your Flame procs before your Strength, then you have a 5 second CD on both. The same goes for when you mixing weapon swap and proc-on-crit sigils.

I think if you are a FT engineer, as I am testing this build recently, I am almost 99% sure that the best is to go for sigil of Strength specially if you take the HGH trait from alchemy.

I was testing my new build yesterday in heart of the mist and depends on how many mobs you have, it can be really quick (was testing it on dummies, maybe will be dead if testing it on real mobs), to reach 20+ stack of might, which is by far more power than 25 stack of bloodlust sigil.

P.S: still need to test it on real mobs or in instance. probably tonight

I have both and like them both but if i would have to chose i would go with Bloodlust.

zugly.9035:

I think if you are a FT engineer, as I am testing this build recently, I am almost 99% sure that the best is to go for sigil of Strength specially if you take the HGH trait from alchemy.

I was testing my new build yesterday in heart of the mist and depends on how many mobs you have, it can be really quick (was testing it on dummies, maybe will be dead if testing it on real mobs), to reach 20+ stack of might, which is by far more power than 25 stack of bloodlust sigil.

P.S: still need to test it on real mobs or in instance. probably tonight

Careful; the question isn’t “Are 20+ stacks of Might better than 250 power?” Clearly, the answer is “Yes!” Of those stacks, at most 5 of them will come from Sigil of Strength, assuming you crit every 2 seconds without fail. In other words, Sigil of Strength will range from 0 to 5 stacks of Might, depending entirely upon how often you crit on 2s intervals. 5 stacks of Might is still only 175 Power at level 80. Refreshing the duration of Might from Strength will not refresh the duration of Might from HGH, or from any other source.

However, Strength and Bloodlust are not mutually exclusive, and if you want to run a FT build with P/P or P/S—or swap out rifles—you can reach 20+ Might in addition to 25 stacks of Bloodlust. If you’ve got 25 stacks and 20+ Might, you’ll range from 950 to 1125 Power on top of whatever you’ve got from other sources. That’s… substantial.

Now, if I recall correctly, FT damage scaling is pretty poor, and most good FT builds take advantage of crit-proc stuff, especially food. I don’t have the skill coefficient on hand, but I’ll take a look later to see just how much that Power actually affects the output of FT.

thanks Maullus for the clarification
and grrrr Anet for session timeout !!! I was typing my reply and now I have to write it again and I don’t remember exactly what I wrote there !

I was saying that I use mainly sigil on str on rifle when running FT build with juggernaut (gain might for 15 seconds every 3 seconds, as long as you remain in this weapon kit.) and HGH trait, and while using skill 1 in FT and having many mobs in front, it will be easy to reach 20+ stacks of mights.

from the other side, I didn’t know that those 2 sigils (bloodlust and strength) work together if put on P/P or P/S. This something worth trying.

and did anyone try 2 sigils of strength on P/S or P/P ? will u get 60% chance on crit to gain might ?

Khallis.5708:

so first and foremost I am a Flaming engineer! …. whoa wait that doesn’t sound right, a flamethrowing engineer!.

LOL it’s my birthday today and this made me laugh so hard when I saw this, good one!

Personally I’ve found that stacking might really didn’t help much, seems there’s a diminishing returns on might once it reaches a certain amount you really don’t keep received the benefits. I found that stacking might is fine but prolly no higher then 15 would be needed to really work well.

I also make use of discharge on my builds now because it helps to do that extra damage and helps with AOEs, I’ve also found that cone attacks continue to miss (tho not as often so it’s less noticeable but it’s still there) So I try to use the #1 only once on the FT kit.

So when i use FT it’s only to use the #1 once to use the AOE from refined kits or to charge up my might before I use other weapons like the Rifle.

Buuuuut I play pve so… maybe not such a good plan for pvp i’ve heard.

Hey all,
I tried yesterday FT build with HGH trait and It was so easy for me to reach 20+ average stack of might.
my attack reached many time 3850 and with a good tank who succeed to pull all mobs to it … FT skill 1 is just nice. If it crits well, I was doing frontal AOE damage up to 5K on each mob. So I kinda enjoy it.

From another side, indeed there is a small problem (maybe I have to get used better to the range) with misses, which are higher on static objects.

but I enjoy it if u ask me

I lied i dont use Strength sigil i use Battle sigil, so i use Blood lust on one gun and Battle sigil on the other gun.