Guild Wars 2

Hi you all,

I’m trying to max DPS on my phantasm (0-20-0-25-25) Mesmer.

Right now, I’m going with sigils of accuracy and force. As might and bloodlust charges does affect phantasm I would like to change my sigil. But I’m undecided and looking at different guides there are different options:
i) mainhand: strenght —offhand: bloodlust.
ii)mainhand: bloodlust —offhand: battle.
iii)mainhand: battle--offhand: force.

I went to the mists: —-battle : 6 stacks of might, but 3 with strength.
---strength: 3 stacks of might.

SO questions:
i) In a real dungeon and with pve gear, can strength stack more might than battle?
ii)Why sigil of accuracy is never considered?
iii) Why sigil of perception is never considered?

Many thanks

i) Haven’t tried strength, but apparently it’s only good on classes with a fast attack like necro with daggers.

ii) Accuracy is just poor, plus I don’t think it applies to phantasms.

iii) I remember being told Perception is a slight DPS increase over Bloodlust.

Personally I use off-hand sigils of battle and then mainhand bloodlust, but i’ll probably just pick up another sword and use perception on it.

I prefer battle. 3 stacks last about 40 seconds on boon support builds, which gives 12 perma might if you continoously swap.
Sigil of strength mightl last maybe 5 second base.

I only use sigil of perception on high defense pvp build where i need some crit chance. I like keeping it atleast 40%, but thats personal preference.

edit: im too tired tothink properly >_<. I always use perception in pvp. Better proccing sigils, better burst damage etc.

So, it should be like using bloodlust and perception at the same time, get the stacks, and then change to battle and force(?)?

Sigil of Battle is always better than Strength if you swap constantly.
Battle is 3 stacks of 20 second might, so 6 permanent if you swap on cd.
Strength is 1 stack of 10 second might, with 2s icd, so you can only ever max out at 5 stacks if it procs immediately when ready every time. In practice that never happens so you’re more likely to get ~3.5 stacks with reasonable crit chance.
(edit: above calculation disregards boon duration, but the relative amounts hold steady regardless).

The other nice thing about Battle is you can run a single one on Sword/x + Sword/y builds (just put it on the mainhand sword), and it’ll proc every time you switch. Saves some cash…

You only wouldn’t want to use Battle if you tend to stick with one weapon set for long periods, since then you’re losing efficiency.

Perception isn’t bad at all, particularly for mesmers since it boosts your reflect damage and your phantasms’ crit chance (more crits and more bleeds with Sharper Images).

You can’t stack more than one type, so you need to pick one of Bloodlust/Perception. I like to put my stacking sigil on my focus since I tend to get a lot of quick AoE kills with that.

you can only stack one of them.

Nice readout , thanks.
By the way: perception: 1 gold—-bloodlust: 6 gold

Final question. Currently I run with centaur runes on my berserker armor. Anyone has tried traveler’s?

I think all sigils/runes that affects your stats (actually changes your power/prec/etc numbers) will apply to phantasms. This does include the Accuracy sigil. I did a few tests and Force/Night sigils, Solar rune damage multipliers don’t carry over to phantasms. In fact, the only damage multipliers that carry over are the Empowered Illusions and Phantasmal Strength traits.

There’s a couple bits of information to note here.

Firstly, you can stack up sigils and then swap to a weapon with a different sigil. The stacks will remain.

Secondly, direct boosts such as damage % or crit % will not transfer to phantasms. Phantasms only gain a bonus from basic stats: power, precision, toughness, crit power, condition damage, condition duration, boon duration. This means accuracy or force sigils will have no effect on phantasms.

With regards to bloodlust vs perception: the damage boost you get from a higher critical chance is directly related to your critical power. Depending on your gear, etc, you may or may not get a higher overall boost from perception compared to bloodlust.

I tend to use energy sigils on much of my gear. This is primarily because I use my gear primarily for pvp, and secondary for pve. Sigils of battle will definitely provide the biggest damage boost for your phantasms as might on you does have a normal effect I the damage they deal. For your secondary sigil, either accuracy or force are fine. Since on swap sigils share cooldowns with on crit sigils, you can’t use two actually effective sigils on the same weaponset.

Pyro is right with everything he said and he said to most important things I guess. +1

I just want to add that phantasms allways are related to your current stats and not the stats when they have been created.

Yep, did some testing in HotM and even with 100% crit chance (75% + Phantasmal Fury + 5% from Accuracy) iDuelist at times stacks 7 bleeds, not 8, which means the accuracy sigil didn’t apply. Time to rethink the sigils I use for my dungeon armor, again

Pyro, how should I do the maths to calculate it (bloodlust Vs perception)?

Here is an interesting read on Power vs Precision.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/first#post2749730

Ty Xavi, I know about this post XD

Problem is when you put phantasm and bleed on crits on all this stuff.
I’m also still diciding between travelers or centaur runes (DPS wise)…

Oh! Nevermind. I just realized that with a proper group you should be near 100% crit chance.

Thank you all.

That’s no excuse not to use ruby orbs/scholar runes.

what do scholar runes grant? and ruby orbs? my wiki is blocked here :P and i’m not sure about the stats without checking ^^

Set of ruby orbs:
120+ Power
84+ Precision
12%+ Critical Damage

Set of scholar runes
165+ Power
8%+ Critical Damage
10%+ Damage while health is above 90%

For most classes, scholar runes are the best, for mesmer it doesn’t really matter which one you pick.

For Mesmer, particularly a phantasm build, ruby orbs are significantly better because the scholar 10% bonus will not apply to phantasms.

Colesy: about group granting crit chance, when I typed I was thinking about bloodlust Vs perception issue.

About runes. How much are you really losing but not using ruby orbs and going with traveler’s or centaur?

You’re mainly losing crit damage, along with some power/precision.

I use centaur runes in my zerker gear, and this is again a function of pvp>pve. They work fine, they’re just not optimal.

I run traveler for my WvW set; I find it invaluable there for solo roaming, and it lets me run without a focus when I want to without being slow as molasses.

For dungeons I use ruby orbs – you generally have a focus equipped for the utility anyway, and the party has enough other sources of group swiftness that it’s up constantly regardless.

Traveler is 6.5g compared to 0.09g for Centaur. Base dps-wise I think 165 Power is better than half of Divinity. Also, +33% speed is a must for roaming in WvW where +25% is enough for PVE. If I did a lot of solo pve and I had money to burn then I would consider Traveler.

As it stands, Centaur runes are possibly the most valuable rune in wvw group play. Rune of Altruism might be second. Mesmer has the most need for Centaur runes, so we end up being the only one to take them. Yet, they provide a huge amount of value to the group. With my build, I provide 15 seconds of swiftness every 16.25 seconds. If I run Signet of Inspiration I can dish even more swiftness out.

Thanks guys!

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