Guild Wars 2

Hello . I am new to the game and I recently started playing in WvW and PvP. I am a bit confused on how skills etc work
I run condition build for wvw roaming, and on duelling I have “phantasmal fury” and "sharper images " for bleeds (Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits. ). This comes mainly from duelist (pistol)
I am a bit confused about the critical damage and precision. I have quite high precision because I thought this will give more bleeds. Is that right? I read in wiki that it affects only direct damage. Is that mean that if I run a condition build (staff, sceptre/pistol) the precision will work only for duelist? Also is that mean that if I put on staff sigils type" 50 % on critical -x effect" they wont work?
help !

Hi rainbow, welcome to the game. Taking the Sharper Images trait means that all your illusion attacks will cause bleeding on a critical hit. Illusions can be phantasms or clones. When you’re in staff and have a couple clones out, their auto attacks can really stack up the bleeds if you have decent precision. Precision and critical chance are two different stats. Though precision directly affects how high critical chance can go, it’s not the only thing that can boost it. This is where phantasmal fury comes in.

All illusions use your base precision, so the higher that is, the more often sharper images will proc on their attacks. Taking phantasmal fury gives your phantasms an additional 20% more critical chance, so if your base critical chance is 50%, your phantasm’s base crit chance is 70%. As you mentioned, this works great with the duelist to stack bleeds.

As for sigils, they work a bit differently. They do not work on your illusions and are rather based on your personal attacks that land a critical hit. If that occurs, the sigil has a chance to proc. Using superior sigil of earth as an example, if your personal winds of chaos attack crits, there is a 60% chance to inflict one bleed on the opponent (with a 2 second internal cooldown).

Hi skcamow, thank you for all the explanation, I understand much better now

Since you also mentioned critical damage, I’ll clear up a couple more things for you.

So firstly, we have 4 stats that we’re going to talk about here: precision, critical chance, ferocity, and critical damage.

Precision and ferocity are basic stats. Critical chance and damage are the secondary stats. Increasing your precision results in an increased critical chance. Likewise, increasing ferocity results in an increased critical damage.

Now, what do these stats do? Critical chance makes it more likely that a hit will be a critical bit. Critical damage makes critical hits hit harder. Critical damage, as you read, only applies to normal direct damage, it doesn’t affect condition damage.

Lastly, how do these stats affect illusions? Illusions inherit your base stats, but not your secondary stats. This means that they inherit your precision and ferocity and power and condition damage, but not critical damage and critical chance. This becomes important when you look at certain buffs.

Fury increases your critical chance by 20%. Because it affects the secondary stat only, it means that fury on you won’t affect illusions. It also means that fury on illusions does properly increase their critical chance by 20%. This is why phantasmal fury is a great trait.

Might increases your power and condition damage. This means that might on yourself will increase the stats that the illusions inherit. On the other hand, since illusions inherit their base stats from you, might on illusions has no effect.

Lastly, sigils do not apply their effects to illusions, they are only applied to you. This means that stacking sigils (that increase your basic stats) will have the result of boosting illusions, but any other type of sigil doesn’t work on illusions.

hello Fay. Thank you a lot for the explanation!

Reading this stuff just reminds me how much I miss the original sitting on a couch mesmer focused pod cast.
You a and ur buddy Kylia had the most awesome synergy of any of the others I’ve ever comeacross.
Supremely informative and entertaining a the same time.