Guild Wars 2

At the moment I am using the sigil of bloodlust, which is really a good sigil if you get to benefit of the 250 power…

But if I’m honest to myself, I think it is “useless” for me most of the time, because I get downed quite often (in WvWvW as well as the high level fractals). And in my opinion it’s a wasted slot, if you run around with only 4-8 stacks of power.

So I decided to try out another sigil and would like to get your opinion, which works at best (under the perspective of giving a constant bonus):

a) Sigil of Force: 5% damage
b) Sigil of Battle: 3 Stacks of might
c) Sigil of Air: Lightning strike

My problem is that I can’t calculate the numbers of each sigil – how much bonus is an extra 5% damage or 3 stacks of might? How much damage does the lightning strike do?

Anyone here who did the math so far?

Depends on your runeset honestly and playstyle. If you have points on alchemy, and swap kits a lot, it’ll be hard to beat sigil of battle – however, sigil of air/fire are very potent.. but admittedly, the larger your DPS is pre-sigil, the less appealing fire/air is and the more appealing battle/force is. If you’re running berserker stats, accuracy gives more benefit than force – but battle gives more than force by a small chunk if you’re keeping up 6 stacks. To be honest, for WvW purposes I’d go with fire/air, but for PvE purposes I’d probably go with battle, since in those situations you can far more safely land prybar/acid bomb/etc, while in WvW it’s a far more ‘I want them dead now’ situation, so bursty sigils would be more appropriate than ones that take 10 seconds to wind up to full power.

Thanks for your answer! Can I summarize it that there is very little difference between those three sigils?

Kamahl.3621:

the larger your DPS is pre-sigil, the less appealing fire/air is

Why is that? Doesn’t the lightning strike benefit from power as well?

Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle Battle

Seriously, battle. This is the best Swap Sigil for engineer. 3 stacks of 20s long might before any +boon dur with only 10s CD. It shines REALLY well with out ability to swap in/out kits with 1s CD just for the buff.

Second sigil (if you use p/p or p/s) can be anything. Corruption, Lightning, Earth etc. Just not another swap.

20 seconds of 3 stacks, 10 seconds of 6 stacks. More with longer Boon duration.

105 condi dmg and 105 power / 210 power & 210 condi dmg.

Neato!

Actual lil bit of math

5% increase from 1000 hit is 1050.

Hip Shot gets ~60% bonus from power. With 6 stacks of might you get 126 more dmg with 210 power. 1000+ 126 = 1126. 1126 > 1050

With 3 stacks you get bonus 63 dmg and 63 > 50.

BUT! Do you ever hit 1000 on hip shot? How often really? More like 600 right?

600+5% = 630

So it’s 30 dmg vs 63/126 bonus dmg just on auto attack.

Blunderbuss hits harder OFC but it also has a lot higher Power coefficient than hip shot.

That’s not all! We get condition dmg from might! +%dmg does NOT work with condition dmg.

In the past i did far more detailed breakdown. Battle is the best thing we can get for pretty much every spec.

Might scales the best.

Thanks for that detailed explanation, I’ll switch to BATTLE!

:)

Well, it’s expensive for a reason Think i paid 13g for mine.

The good thing with kits is because we share sigils with kits it does not matter whether we switch to weapon or to kit. Either way we get those stacks.

edit; seems they are far elss expensive now

Tobkilla.4612:

Why is that? Doesn’t the lightning strike benefit from power as well?

Let’s say you can do 13k in 5 seconds. Adding fire/air to that will tack on another 1-2k. Adding a sigil of battle will give you an ~8% damage increase (assuming six stacks, given 250 power via bloodlust increases my grenade damage by about 10.5%). 8% of 13k is about another 1k, so at this damage point, air/fire wins out.

Now let’s say you’re doing absurd amounts of damage – you’re juggling blunderbuss, prybar, jump shot, elixir F, shrapnel grenade, etc. Probably 20-22k every 5 seconds as a rough average, spiking at 30k-ish frontloaded (grenade barrage + other stuff in that first period of time), pre-conditions. Air/fire is still a flat, static increase – bumping us up 1-2k every 5. An 8% increase on our coefficients however (this isn’t always true – sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but I’ve found it a good average across engineer skills for 210 power) is about 1.6k gain. I’m sure you get it by now – but if you’re in situations a lot where you just auto attack from a distance, I’d go with fire/air, like WvW. If you’re in PvE, where you can freely juggle all those abilities and utterly decimate mobs in dungeons, Sigil of Battle.