Guild Wars 2

Hi everybody! I’m finally about to reach 80 on my mesmer and I already decided to go for a phantasm build after reading Chaos Archangel’s mesmer guide since he says it’s recommended for mesmer beginners and dungeon running.

I have no idea what sigils should I put on weapons. I know that on critical sigils don’t work on phantasms attacks since I’ve been experimenting in pvp for a while. I also read permanent bonus sigils don’t work either. Nevertheless, I’m very tempted on Superior Sigil of Fire since I will have very little aoe.

Considering I’ll run with Sword+Focus/pistol and Scepter+Sword/Greatsword, I was thinking to put sigil of fire on sword due to it’s fast attack rate even if it doesn’t affect phantasms. I’d also like to have Superior Sigil of bloodlust and I think it would be better to put it on Focus/Pistol since most of the time I’ll be using the first set. I’m about as clueless as I can get about sigils for other weapons.

What do you suggest, considering I’ll run dungeons most of the time and occasionally WvW?

For mostly dungeons / fractals:

Perception can work better than Bloodlust stacking for mesmers since precision boosts your reflect damage while power doesn’t. Unless you’re at 100% crit already from your party comp (unlikely) I’d go with that. I like to have a sword + focus with perception for faster stacking (it’s our best AoE set).

After you’re stacked:
Fire is generally less dps than Force I think — can’t recall where I saw the math, but it’s been checked iirc. You do want to boost your multipliers as much as possible for personal damage, even if it doesn’t affect phantasms; that means Scholar runes, Slaying potions, Night / Force sigils.

Force is reasonable everywhere, if you want to optimize you can carry an extra weapon with Night for +10% in several of the dungeons. If you want to get crazy about particular dungeons you can carry extra offhands with specific slaying sigils (Undead Slaying, Flame Legion slaying, etc.).

Battle sigils are great for permanent 6+ might stacks on yourself, if your team isn’t might-capping already. You can share them out (along with doubling whatever your party is giving you) with the Signet of Inspiration, so you add to everyone’s dps.

I actually do like Fire for open world events and for WvW tagging, but on the greatsword — the triple-attack from 1200 range is amazing at triggering it, so you get a lot more tags than you would otherwise in zergs.

So, to sum up:
Swords with Force, Battle (offhand sword), Perception (stacking).
Focus with Battle, Perception (more stacking).
Pistol with Battle.
GS with Fire.
Extra offhands with Night or Slaying if you want to optimize or are in a group that can might-cap without your help.

Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated. Also, thanks for the tip about precision boosting reflect damage, I wasn’t aware of that!

Lucky Shot.7650:

Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated. Also, thanks for the tip about precision boosting reflect damage, I wasn’t aware of that!

Just to clarify.

Precision boosts your crit chance, which increases the chance of critting on a reflect. T doesn’t directly boost the damage itself.

That boost to precision also will increase the critical chance of your phantasms, since they do inherit base stats, just not secondary ones.