Guild Wars 2

Hi guys! Im a pretty new level 80 engineer and I’ve been looking at and theorycrafting many different builds (condition damage that is) and I keep seeing the Sigil of Geomancy come up and I was wondering why? What makes this sigil so much better than the others? I understand the synergy between using kits and this sigil, it allows for easy switching and such, but still doesn’t seem to make it better than say another on switch sigil. :P

P.S. This is my first forum post so if theres anything wrong with this please let me know. Thanks!

it helps to burst someone, often condi engis will build to throw out 3-5 condis with 1-2 hits, and during the opening hit you can swap kits and have another 3 bleeds at the same time, cuz burn + poison + torment + 5 confusion + 6-7 bleeds + 1-3 soft ccs for covers is really scary

personally im not a fan cuz its short range and often youll engage from long range and you need to be careful not to waste it. you can just use some other sigil that isnt risky. but its good when used well.

Geomancy is not great. There are A LOT better ones depending on the game mode.

Rather post your build and tell us which game mode its for, and we can help.

It’s the best for condi builds in pvp.

It’s the best sigil for condition engineer in pvp because you fight on node, so chances are your foes are close to you.
Also it’s a freaking AOE 3 stacks of bleed with instantaneous activation. As engineer, you have the most free will of activating this proc thanks to kit.

geomancy is kinda meh.

does no direct dmg, the bleed lasts barely as long as the cd, giving your 6 stacks of bleed for not more than 4 sec, given that you actually hit and your oponent did not clear the last 3 stacks away already. and tbh, bleed in general is only useful if you go down the condi-bunker route. which is bad. On top of that we only can slot 2 sigils anyways, and energy is kinda mandatory in pvp, so filling my last slot with 3 useless stacks of bleed every 9 seconds? nope.

yes, bleed is a condition, and can cover up the useful ones, but then again, we already have easy bleed-access on hybrid / power builds, via nades #2, or minor trait 1 in firearms.

so, what should your second sigil be?
ofc something that either disrupts your enemy or covers your weak-spots. purity and generosity are always worth a shot if you struggle with condi-clears or run without EG. hydromancy pumps out a decent dmg-tick and chill. battle increases your overall dps, even tho it got nerfed heavily recently (lost roughly 40% effectivity, due to the general might-nerf and the number of stacks applied.) strength still works wonders on crit-heavy builds, fire and/or air are decent dps. leeching gives you 1k healing every 10sec, and also deals 1k fixed dmg, regardless what stats you or your opponent has.

And then there is the perfect alrounder: sigil of doom. even going full zerker, this sigil ensures that your opponent can’t outheal you and/or is one of the best ways to bait early condi-clears out of people.

there are so many good options, and to this day I don’t understand why people still go for geomancy.

I personally prefer runes of grenth + sigil on hydromancy + nades #4 to pump out chill to everything in range. sometimes I even switch energy out for doom, so I can proc doom with the dmg-tick from hydromancy, delivering insta-chill to up to 5 targets, and 1 unlucky guy that receives poison on top of it.

Arantheal.7396:

geomancy is kinda meh.

does no direct dmg, the bleed lasts barely as long as the cd, giving your 6 stacks of bleed for not more than 4 sec, given that you actually hit and your oponent did not clear the last 3 stacks away already. and tbh, bleed in general is only useful if you go down the condi-bunker route. which is bad. On top of that we only can slot 2 sigils anyways, and energy is kinda mandatory in pvp, so filling my last slot with 3 useless stacks of bleed every 9 seconds? nope.

yes, bleed is a condition, and can cover up the useful ones, but then again, we already have easy bleed-access on hybrid / power builds, via nades #2, or minor trait 1 in firearms.

so, what should your second sigil be?
ofc something that either disrupts your enemy or covers your weak-spots. purity and generosity are always worth a shot if you struggle with condi-clears or run without EG. hydromancy pumps out a decent dmg-tick and chill. battle increases your overall dps, even tho it got nerfed heavily recently (lost roughly 40% effectivity, due to the general might-nerf and the number of stacks applied.) strength still works wonders on crit-heavy builds, fire and/or air are decent dps. leeching gives you 1k healing every 10sec, and also deals 1k fixed dmg, regardless what stats you or your opponent has.

And then there is the perfect alrounder: sigil of doom. even going full zerker, this sigil ensures that your opponent can’t outheal you and/or is one of the best ways to bait early condi-clears out of people.

there are so many good options, and to this day I don’t understand why people still go for geomancy.

I personally prefer runes of grenth + sigil on hydromancy + nades #4 to pump out chill to everything in range. sometimes I even switch energy out for doom, so I can proc doom with the dmg-tick from hydromancy, delivering insta-chill to up to 5 targets, and 1 unlucky guy that receives poison on top of it.

You do realize geo is AOE and the duration, in combination with trait and rune, gives you roughly 13 seconds of 3 stacks bleed on switch (which you can activate anytime.)
For doom, it’s only useful for Rifle Engi since you already have great poison access compare to some other classes (warrior and guardian), so mostly it’s not needed.

However, Sigil of Torment is a pretty nice choice for engi too because it’s another cover up condition to mess up your foes.

For life leech one, I feel is kinda meh for just 1k damage on 1 target every 9 seconds.
The dps is not comparable to 3 stacks of bleed for 13 seconds on everyone around.
(which is roughly 4k damage over 13 seconds on 3 targets)

ps: Energy is not an absolute need for Engi because they have easy access to vigor and block. I personally prefer more condition application, or even condition transfer to cover up my weakness.

Geomancy is one of the best sigils for condition classes and condi Engi is no exception! There’s a reason why pretty much every single condi build in the game runs Geomancy! Combining Shrapnel Grenade, Geomancy, and Shrapnel and Sharpshooter procs can stack over 10 bleeds on a target in about 2 seconds! That’s over 1200 damage per second and that’s not even counting your 650 damage per second burns, confusion, poison etc!

Geomancy also combos very well with Magnet! What I like to do is Magnet > Prybar > swap to pistols to proc Geomancy Sigil > Static Shot for an undodgeable 3+ stacks of bleed, 7 stacks of confusion, blind, and burning!

Basically if you are playing a condi Engi, Geomancy will really help you to perform well against good players and just absolutely destroys not so good players!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Aomine.5012:

Arantheal.7396:

You do realize geo is AOE and the duration, in combination with trait and rune, gives you roughly 13 seconds of duration on switch (which you activate anytime.)
For doom, it’s only useful for Rifle Engi since you already have great poison access compare to some other classes (warrior and guardian), so mostly it’s not needed.

However, Sigil of Torment is a pretty nice choice for engi too because it’s another cover up condition to mess up your foes.

For life leech one, I feel is kinda meh for just 1k damage on 1 target every 9 seconds.
The dps is not comparable to 3 stacks of bleed for 13 seconds on everyone around.

1st: ready my post again.
I already said you get 6 stacks for 4 seconds (1st proc: 13sec 3 stacks > 9sec cd → 2nd proc: 4sec 6 stacks, rest 3 stacks until the next proc.)

2nd: even tho geomancy is aoe, hydromancy is as well, a superior choice in all regards, inculsive dmg-wise. also long-duration condis are useless, considered that they get cleared pretty fast. bleed & torment only exist to cover useful condis like burn, chill, cripple, immob and poison. the difference is that you need time to stack bleed and torment up to significant quantities, and one cleanse gets rid of the whole stack. so instead of slotting a sigil that increases your stacks only to minor proportions you should really consider slotting something that really helps you or really disrupts your opponent. geomancy does neither.

3rd: have you ever seen a zerker engi going for pistol!? ofc it is awesome for rifle. But then again, condis get cleared fast, so you don’t want to waste too much attributes of your build in simply lengthening the duration of the condi-sources you already posses, but increase the number of applications per minute. re-applicability is key to overload targets, not plain duration. one cleanse and the duration falls to zero instantly. It is wise to up condi-duration a bit, but ultimately you want to be able to spam them properly. that is one of the reasons why grenth and balathazar are so powerful rune-choices. they both offer controlled, additional sources of 2 very powerful conditions that don’t require frequent application in order to scale their magnitude.

4th: you will really value leeching once you come into a 1v1 situation. the dmg may be mediocre, but the 1k heal every 9 seconds is not. together with backpack-regenerator you posses both a very powerful passive healing, and a small burst healing, almost reaching the magnitude of rifle #5 + healing mist. just on a much lower cd. the dmg it brings along is just a bonus.

Grenth rune lel. Bleeds are cover condis? Since when? Bleeds used to cover cripple? Bad troll is bad.

Yea you gotta chill them enemies. They can’t run away when chilled. Too bad they got nothing to run away from because you deal 0 damage. Who needs crazy burn uptime when you got chills. Hydromancy is another story and it has its uses.

Bleeds do get cleansed and that’s why geomancy is good among other reasons. More applying potential. More stacks, more sources. More overall bleeds. Bleeds, surprisingly to nobody but you, deal damage. A lot.

To restate the obvious. Geomancy is mandatory. The 2nd sigil can be leeching, doom or energy if you really need it. Energy is not mandatory/needed in any way but I admit it can help.

Another nice choice for the 2nd sigil is torment. The damage it deals is quite weak but it’s another condi that ticks away and also covers the rest giving you access to every condition except fear(and reliable immobilize if you don’t have bomb/offhand pistol).

Did I mention geomancy has no counterplay? It’s a reliable way to get some damage done to a fast moving target like thief!

tl;dr Some sigils have dominated pvp for a while now. Geomancy, doom, battle, intelligence and strictly for zerker specs fire and air. They are the best choices in various builds.

robertul.3679:

Grenth rune lel. Bleeds are cover condis? Since when? Bleeds used to cover cripple? Bad troll is bad.

Yea you gotta chill them enemies. They can’t run away when chilled. Too bad they got nothing to run away from because you deal 0 damage. Who needs crazy burn uptime when you got chills. Hydromancy is another story and it has its uses.

except that chill also increases the cd’s of of all weapon and utility-skills from enemies, which utterly disrupts the combat for them.
and yes, bleeds are cover-condis, simply because they get applied way more often than say confusion or burn, therefore are usually higher in the cleanse-order which is the sole reason to call them “cover”-condis. they do indeed cover the less frequently applied conditions.
Additionally I never said that bleed does no dmg, I said that they are way to easy cleansed, due to them being cover-conditions, therefore rarely reach their full dps-potential. Also I said that the 3-6 bleed stacks you get out of geomancy over a period of !18! seconds (implying that no cleanse exist) are simply not worth a sigil-slot imo.

also, where does it say that grenth does 0 dmg? Do you even understand how conditions work?
last time i checked grenth had the same condi-dmg bonus as balthazar, therefore also boosting the dmg you get from burn directly, but simply features other, chill-focused procs and chill-duration (which is – again – due to cleanse pretty pointless). yes, you loose burning uptime, but due to cleanse that gets reseted frequently anyways. Regarding the missing proc on HT: you still have ICP to re-apply burn, and optionally pistol #4, bombkit #2, FT, flame-turret, and a couple of tool-belt abilities that come along with them.

It is quite funny to see you contradicting yourself by admitting hydromancy (which only has a minor dmg-proc, and is valued for its chill before anything else) is useful, but trying to let appear runes of grenth as completely worthless. It really seems that you are unaware of what grenth actually brings along, so I recommend you to read up on that, reconsider your understanding of the term cover-conditions and then try to make a comprehensible and reasonable refute of the above said.

Hydromancy has its uses as an on demand chill and secondary sigil. Grenth doesn’t because it has the same condition damage as balthazar but instead of giving +45% strong and damaging burn duration it gives 30% of mostly useless chill. You see there is a difference between chill on demand and rng chill.
People take hydromancy for the chill not for the damage. Chill which only really hurts eles and gives you some chasing potential which you don’t really lack as engi with pulls, immobilizes, your very own chill grenade and 1500 range.

I have no idea what people in hotjoin use these days but i doubt there is so much cleansing going around to constantly remove conditions. Yes there are still eles, shoutbows and whatnot but balthazar is pretty much the strongest option for a condi engi right now.

Again, I said hydromancy is good just because of the chill. That’s the whole point. Nobody takes it for the whatever damage it does.

and then you have the proc of chill your healing-skill triggers from grenth runes, making the rng-factor actually quite controllable and allow you to controll your oponent not only in his movement, but in his skill-usage reliably as well.

If I chill people almost constantly, they simply don’t have their defensive cd’s ready in time to deal with the other loads of condis that the engi has access to, increasing the effectiveness of all applied conditions drastically, making the usage of stability / stunbreaks against our cc’s quite difficult and therefore boosting the advantage for your whole team drastically.

but if grenth is to one-sided for you, try to run the cele rifle build with rune of the elementalist. you loose the proc on the healing skill, but gain +20% duration for both burn and chill. for me it’s too big of a compromise, but still a viable one.

In the end, I can just recommend you to actually try out hydromancy + grenth in a 2kit build and see for yourself what it does for you and your team.