Guild Wars 2

So recently I noticed that sigil of accuracy now displays in the hero panel. A few patches ago it used to be a hidden 5% crit chance buff. Since phantasms inherit our crit chance, I was wondering if they now inherit the sigil bonus.

2nd question: Do sigil of accuracy and force now stack? I tested this while ago and they did not stack. After testing today, they still don’t stack. They do seem to stack but it can be buggy

Back to the first question. I used 2 sets of weapons. A steady sword of force with a steady pistol and a steady sword of accuracy with a steady pistol. Side note: even with steady weapons, phantasms are not “steady.”

I recorded 264 attacks (33*8 per pistol volley) for each weapon combo.
The crit chance was about 3.4% and 7.58% for the force vs accuracy. Since you have a 4% inherent crit chance, it looks like a sigil of accuracy does work with phantasms now.

So comparing the volleys that had no crits proc, I looked at the average damage. 1216.64 (Force with 25 volleys) and 1233.4 (Accuracy with 16 volleys). Sigil of Force does not work with phantasms. Sigils like air also work for attacks/shatters but not clones/phantasms. So Accuracy seems like a clear choice for a mesmer. Perception and Bloodlust are good choices but once you have a full stack, what do you guys use? Especially for phantasms builds? From most phantasms builds that I’ve seen in action, proc on crit sigils don’t look like a good idea but I see those sigils in the builds.
Edit: Conflciting results seem to indicate that sigil of accuracy does not work for phants =/

I’ll have to test out that sigil myself. If it does indeed work, then it will be a fantastic choice for phantasm builds

Pyroatheist.9031:

I’ll have to test out that sigil myself. If it does indeed work, then it will be a fantastic choice for phantasm builds

i feel sad for all the victims that are used to test your build.

RIP Pyroatheist guinea pigs

loseridoit.2756:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I’ll have to test out that sigil myself. If it does indeed work, then it will be a fantastic choice for phantasm builds

i feel sad for all the victims that are used to test your build.

RIP Pyroatheist guinea pigs

Hahah, for technical tests I tend to use target golems :p

That, or Kylia. Kylia works too.

force and accuracy stack, and they’ve stacked since a patch in May iirc, would have to dig out the thread where it was discussed to figure out exactly when though, and I’m too lazy for that.

anyways to answer the question of which sigils I use → I use accuracy and bloodlust on my mesmer~

Now that Accuracy actually shows up in the panel, it is even easier to prove that they don’t stack. Don’t take my word for it though. Go to the mists. Equip a steady sword of accuracy. Then equip a steady sword of force. Look at the dmg a single auto attack does to a light golem and look at your crit chance. It will be 4%. Now equip those same swords but in opposite order. First force, then accuracy. Your crit chance will now be 9% BUT your damage will be lower. I tested this a long time ago and I’m pretty sure it never stacked. I only tested this again since the accuracy is no longer a stealth buff.

How about you do that yourself? XD

The crit chance does not change with switching out the order of the weapons in the way you described. The damage dealt to the golem was exactly the same no matter what the order of equipping was.

For the sake of potato I even tested the dmg with only force equipped and only crit equipped and the dmg only decreased when I was using only the accuracy sword.

the test results are (using only mind slash, waiting for vuln to go off etc)

force MH / accu OH – normal attack 143 – crit 284
accu MH / force OH – normal attack 143 – crit 284
force MH / no OH – normal attack 143 – crit 284
accu MH / no OH – normal attack 136 – crit 270

take that as you wish.

edit: managed to find a thread of previous testing done by some players that post on gw2guru

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82874-resource-dungeon-and-fractal-pve-meta-builds/page__st__30#entry2200573

I rest my case.

The first time I tested this was before May. Never realized it changed until now but all that is the past. What matters is if it does now…
My testing set up: have 4 swords, 2 with accuracy, 2 force but in opposite hands. Swap between the set and mess with equipping them. As long as you have 1 of each sigil on a swap, you should always have 9% crit chance. This does not happen for me. When I have the 4% crit chance, I do 69 dmg on my first swing. When I have 9% crit chance, I do 66 dmg. I’ll look at how the Guru guy tests this but I think there is either something buggy, or they don’t stack.

Edit: It seems that if I only have 1 swap to test with, I will hit for 69 with a 9% crit. This only works when you are dealing with 1 weapon set. The second I equip the swap set is where it gets weird. If I equip accuracy then force in the swap set, it goes back down to 4%.

Edit2: After more testing, this seems to be a bug with equipping items in very specific orders. Like I’m using 4 swords. Both main hand swords are accuracy, both offhands are force. Still only 4% crit.
Once you get bumped down to this 4% mark, a script seems to over ride how it “should” work. In fact, once you unequip the 2nd set and only have a force/accuracy set up, the crit chance is still 4%. Equiping a 1 or 2 handed accuracy weapon and swapping sets doesn’t correct this.
Edit3: 1 sword of accuracy and nothing else. Still 4% crit chance. I swear I’m not making this up. Need to figure out how to post screen shots.

This might not be a problem for most builds, but since I swap/shift weapons around a lot depending on each fight, this is an annoying bug.

Im not sure but i think the force sigil only applys to the weapon its on. So in main hand only skills 1-3. And 4-5 on offhand. If crit is universal now maybe put force on main hain and crit on offhand if your testing with auto attack

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…Since phantasms inherit our crit chance, I was wondering if they now inherit the sigil bonus….

According to the wiki this is not true. They inherit our precision, not our crit chance (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion).
Thus Sigil of Accuracy does nothing for our illusions

kaunt.8275:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…Since phantasms inherit our crit chance, I was wondering if they now inherit the sigil bonus….

According to the wiki this is not true. They inherit our precision, not our crit chance (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion).
Thus Sigil of Accuracy does nothing for our illusions

Have you tested this yesterday? My results indicate it does now affect phantasms. The wiki is a good reference but is often wrong and/or outdated.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil
Even the sigil page has adjustments on what the correct time for sigil cds are. Like most oddities noted on the wiki, these are player tested.

I could probably spend another 30 minutes when I get home so that I have about 1000 of each phantasm attacks instead of 264 but if the trend hold up, the number don’t lie.

The last time I checked only base stats (like Precision) are inherited by Illusions, derived stats like CritChance are not (so Fury on yourself doesn’t give your Illusions extra CritChance, and +% damage doesn’t apply to Illusions either).

So here is the build I started testing with:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQFg6EN1LqpQPSYmBAAAaGAAAlUAgcD-TgAg1CpIoRpkTJDNyusdB
So I wanted to test if fury, phantasm fury and the sigil of accuracy stacked. 2 staff clones and boon duration for permanent fury on me. Then I would let a p.duelist volley a golem and count the bleed stacks.
This 45% bonus +55% crit chance should equal 100% if they did stack. After a few “quick” (10 volleys or less) tests I quickly realized they did not all stack. Furthermore, despite reading in several places that mesmer fury affects phantasms, I did not see this. However, the test groups were too small to figure out the sigil of accuracy so I refined my methods. From here on out, I used this equation in excel:
=average(A3:A76)/8*100
So the average bleeds of 74 volleys / 8 shots x 100% or 592 shots per each parameter.
So continuing with the base 55% crit chance:

With no sword and a pistol offhand with no sigil and no p.fury : 55.23%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with S.Accuracy and no p.fury : 56.93%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with no sigil WITH p.fury : 78.04%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with S.Accuracy WITH p.fury : 71.79%

So 55.23 and 56.93 are close enough that it looks like my initial testing (30 volleys) were inaccurate.
However, losing a 6.25% crit chance when you use a boosting sigil was a red flag for me. Since I had been experiencing that bug I previously described, I had made sure to only use a offhand pistol and check that my crit chance read as 60% or 55% and no sigil of force. So it was not that bug.
My initial testing had a sigil of accuracy in the sword instead of pistol. Furthermore, I visit other areas like the engineer section and I know that traits can mess things up (turrents are big on this).
So I did some more tests:

With a sword(Empty) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no p.fury : 55.74%
With a sword(Accuracy) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no p.fury : 53.38%
With a sword(Accuracy) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no Dueslist Discipline : 51.18%

I haven’t plugged these into any programs yet but a trend I noticed was that when I used the sigil, crit chance went down and it looked like a significant difference (especially after 600 shots per test) which seemed odd. It also was not what I saw two days ago so out of stubborn hope/completionism I repeated my very first test. No armor/traits at all. Just a 4 or 9% crit chance. Look at crits on the duelist instead of counting bleeds since those don’t happen.

4% base = 5.57%
9% w/ Sigil (sword) = 4.79%
9% w/ Sigil (pistol) = 4.56%

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I recorded 264 attacks (33*8 per pistol volley) for each weapon combo.
The crit chance was about 3.4% and 7.58% for the force vs accuracy. Since you have a 4% inherent crit chance, it looks like a sigil of accuracy does work with phantasms now.

So very different results than the first test. Raw data if anyone else wants to look at it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AohSpGgKCVZ7dGQ1d0Jrd0RCazFLUDExWVg2bDg4SWc&usp=sharing

The sigil decreasing accuracy and the conflict between my first and second test N of 264 vs 592 has me conflicted about saying this but it does look my original conclusion was wrong. Or given that the sigils seem a bit buggy.. IDK

After looking at my quote I just realized a problem… I used a comparison of force vs accuracy on my first test. I’m too tired to do more testing now though.

I’ve been following this thread diligently for the updates – just wanted to say thanks for all the testing and effort you’ve been putting into this, Duck (or do you go by Boom?).

Seriously, though, appreciate the work.