Guild Wars 2

I was just wondering about this during some tests I did with Blood is Power on my Bleeding Necro build. Using a Superior Sigil of Corruption at full stacks, the bleeding lasts for 52 seconds and does 13,000 on the spot after the full duration. If I were to swap out Corruption for a second Sigil of Agony, (One on my scepter and another on my Staff) then the duration would be increased by 5.2 seconds, making it 57 seconds of bleeding. Then end result damage would be 12882. This is just a couple hundred shy of the damage that a full stacked Corruption sigil does. So then, in areas of the game like dungeons where you can do down often and lose your stacks, wouldn’t a second Agony be better for me? The general damage would be higher, but Corruption has a higher peak. Getting 25 stacks for the Sigil though is quite a challenge in most aspects of the game. I’m also assuming that the sigil of Agony on my Staff is still in affect even though I’m using my Scepter. Can someone clarify this for me?

Just to add on this does two sigil on both weapons stack? Or just 10% per weapon? So if I have agony on scepter the other 10% from my other weapon would not stack?

Dual Agony does stack on weapons allowing for 20% additional Bleed duration.

Dual Corruption will also give 2 stacks per kill and you keep stacks even if you swap weapons (So you can have a couple of weapons with Corruption on, and once reaching 25 stacks swap them out for 2 weapons with Agony on for 20% Bleed duration)

As far as sigils on off-sets go, they don’t work (So you will only get the Agony boost from your staff when you have your staff out)

Turns out I did my numbers a little wrong. Using Blood is Power as the testing bleed, the new numbers are:
With 25 stacks of Corruption – 48 seconds resulting in 12000 damage.
With Agony – 52 seconds resulting in 11752 damage.

Also, In regards to Superior Sigil Geomancy, paired up with Agony it does 2486 damage over 11 seconds. Paired up with a fully stack Sigil of Corruption it did 2500 damage over 10 seconds.

If you scrapped Geomancy and went with a fully stacked Corruption and Agony combo, Blood is Power would then do 13,000 damage, but you lose the 3 stacks of extra Bleeding that switching Weapons would give.

Also, running two Sigils of Agony does stack, giving you 20% more Bleed duration. Blood is Power last for 57 seconds and did 12882 damage during these tests.

In my personal opinion Sigil of Corruption is not worth it to my build. Getting 25 stacks for it can be harder when running a Dungeon or another instance that the chances of going down are increased in. By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

Lucas.9162:

By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

It depends, the 20% duration is amazing for Blood is Power (Due to the small percentage of a large base duration still provides a significant increase in duration, at least enough to provide multiple extra ticks of damage)

But for other, shorter duration abilities it can be less effective (20% on top of a shorter duration bleed such as Barbed Precision will provide no additional ticks of damage unless already at 80% duration)

25 stacks of Corruption (250 Condition Damage) will increase the damage that bleeds do by 12.5 per tick.

20% duration will only provide more damage if the skill gets another tick of damage off (Conditions tick once per second, if the increase doesn’t bump the duration by at least 1 second it provides significantly less benefit)

That said, it’s entirely possible to get 100% (133% with Sceptre) bleed duration without the use of Agony Sigils (20% from Hemophillia trait, 15% from 2 Krait Runes, 15% from 2 Afflicted Runes, 10% from 2 Lyssa runes, 40% from Rare Veggie Pizza) which would vastly increase the effectiveness of Geomancy/Earth + Corruption Sigils and negate the usefulness of Agony sigils.

Next question for me is, would scrapping Geomancy in favor for three Sigils of Agony do more damage?

Since when using Geomancy I always put it on my dagger, we can figure out how much damage we gain/lose if we duel wield Agony sigils instead.
With Geomancy, if we swap to S/D we can get an automatic 2486 damage over 11 seconds to 5 targets. So using my build, Sigil of Geomancy has a potential of 12430 damage. This is without using any skills whatsoever, just switching weapons. This means that I get an extra 12430 damage added on top of using my normal Scepter Rotation. So what skills would I have to activate and how many times would I have to use them to make taking another Agony over Geomancy do more damage?

We’re going to use my normal Scepter Bleeding rotation as the example, which is: Blood is Power, Dark Path, Evade(Mark of Evasion), Grasping Dead, Enfeebling Blood, and the first two swings of the Auto-attack combo.
So now we add up all the bleeding damage from these attacks and compare Agony/Geomany vs. Agony/Agony. Also, I know that Blood is Power does 2 stacks of self-bleeding that could easily be transferred, but the damage and duration is too hard to calculate, so we won’t be including it in the rotation.

Anways, the results.
Agony/Geomancy does 32996 damage over 52 seconds to a single target with 4 seconds of casting time, or 96276 with the rotation’s maximum AoE potential.
Agony/Agony does 33561 to a single target over 57 seconds to a single target with 4 seconds of casting time, or 92231 with maximum AoE potential.

The verdict?. Geomancy does provide 12430 damage, but once you swap the weapons, you can’t do it again for another 16 seconds. During that time, you could pop another Grasping Dead, Dark Path, or switch to your Staff and hit them with a Mark of Blood. If we do all three of these using dual Agony we see that we gain an extra 4396 damage, and combine it with the extra damage in the original rotation, the calculated total is 12781. This is 12781 damage that we get just from using the rotation and the 3 above mentioned skills with an 10% extra Bleed duration. So using a second Agony gets us 12781 damage on a normal rotation and the three skills, and using Geomancy would get us an extra 12430 if we used at the start of the rotation, and another 12430 if we switched weapons as soon as we could. So Geomancy gets us 24860 in 16 seconds, And a second Agony gets us an extra 12781 over the same amount of time. So if it hit 5 targets or was used in Epidemic, Geomancy sounds like the way to go. Most targets will die before their bleeds are completed, so stacking more bleeds faster would probably be more efficient. Also, if you’re in a group with others that can stack bleeds as well, then you’ll want to stack as fast as possible to get in the most damage before it caps. In any case, I will keep testing these two combos to see which is more efficient in PVE combat.

Taril.8619:

Lucas.9162:

By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

It depends, the 20% duration is amazing for Blood is Power (Due to the small percentage of a large base duration still provides a significant increase in duration, at least enough to provide multiple extra ticks of damage)

But for other, shorter duration abilities it can be less effective (20% on top of a shorter duration bleed such as Barbed Precision will provide no additional ticks of damage unless already at 80% duration)

25 stacks of Corruption (250 Condition Damage) will increase the damage that bleeds do by 12.5 per tick.

20% duration will only provide more damage if the skill gets another tick of damage off (Conditions tick once per second, if the increase doesn’t bump the duration by at least 1 second it provides significantly less benefit)

That said, it’s entirely possible to get 100% (133% with Sceptre) bleed duration without the use of Agony Sigils (20% from Hemophillia trait, 15% from 2 Krait Runes, 15% from 2 Afflicted Runes, 10% from 2 Lyssa runes, 40% from Rare Veggie Pizza) which would vastly increase the effectiveness of Geomancy/Earth + Corruption Sigils and negate the usefulness of Agony sigils.

But does it cap at that number? If it doesn’t then wouldn’t you want to increase Bleeding Duration as much as possible for maximum damage?

Lucas.9162:

I’m also assuming that the sigil of Agony on my Staff is still in affect even though I’m using my Scepter. Can someone clarify this for me?

When you swap weapons, sigils on the other set become inactive.

If a lot of your damage is bleeding, and/or you have high crit, you should consider Sigil of Earth.

Lucas.9162:

But does it cap at that number? If it doesn’t then wouldn’t you want to increase Bleeding Duration as much as possible for maximum damage?

100% Condition Duration is the cap, yes.

It’s only possible to go over with the Lingering Curse trait that gives sceptre 33% extra duration (I don’t know why that’s the only thing that allows this, but it is what it is)

So if you can get 100% duration from outside sources (Runes/Food/Spite trait line), then Sigils of Agony will give 0 benefit.

I am a Rabid build traited fully into Precision. I think my Critical Chance is 43%. Would Earth get me to 25 stacks faster than Geomancy? After taking the advice on Agony, I started running a Geomancy and Geomancy/Corruption combo. Right now I can peak at 25 and maintain 20 stacks of bleed. Sigil of Earth is a 60% chance to stack a bleed, right? Do you know how long it lasts?

Lucas.9162:

I am a Rabid build traited fully into Precision. I think my Critical Chance is 43%. Would Earth get me to 25 stacks faster than Geomancy? After taking the advice on Agony, I started running a Geomancy and Geomancy/Corruption combo. Right now I can peak at 25 and maintain 20 stacks of bleed. Sigil of Earth is a 60% chance to stack a bleed, right? Do you know how long it lasts?

Sigil of Earth lasts for 5 seconds base (10 seconds with 100% duration)

It also has an cooldown of 2 seconds (Whilst Geomancy is 3 stacks for 7 seconds base with a 9 second cooldown (If I recall correctly DS will proc “On swap” sigils when leaving it))

Sigil of Earth with 100% Bleed duration = Up to 5 stacks of Bleeding (1 stack per 2 seconds, assuming 100% proc rate)

Sigil of Geomancy with 100% Bleed duration = Up to 6 stacks of Bleeding (3 stacks per 9 seconds duration of 14 seconds, so 5 seconds with 6 and 4 seconds with 3 stacks if maintaining a proc per 9 seconds)

Sigil of Geomancy has the benefit of also providing AoE Bleeds, which synergises better with Epidemic (Along with the higher duration, which also synergises better with Epidemic) allowing the stacking of up to 12 Bleeds in an AoE, which will outstrip what Earth can do.

In the end it depends, for PvP and Single Target encounters Earth would probably be beneficial whilst for Trash + AoE Geomancy would win out.

I can’t stand the range on geomancy, 240 radius, its like a mark placed at your feet. As a conditionmancer I rarely want to be that close to my target, and in something like sieges, its just never going to hit anything. I don’t run a lot of dungeons but can imagine that there are a lot of equally dangerous situations you don’t want to be in melee range for.

The range is kinda good for me. I usually roll in with Mark of Evasion or chain it with Dark Path then roll backwards whenever I switch. Assuming no crits, I believe that’s a 9 bleed combo.