Guild Wars 2

If I have 5 points in curses that gives me a 66% chance on crit to stack a bleed. If I have a Superior rune of earth on my scepter and on my dagger, does that give me 3 chances per crit to stack bleed? Will I stack anywhere from 0-3 stacks of bleed per crit?

3 Chances to bleed yes, but Earth Sigil has an internal CD of 2 seconds, so you cannot proc it twice until that CD is up. So 0-2 bleeds.

Edit: This post isn’t entirely accurate; the second sigil can proc if the first doesn’t. See Pendragon’s post for an accurate explanation.

Original left so the conversation makes sense:
Two chances to bleed.

The cooldown Bhawb mentions is correct, but in addition, on-crit sigils don’t stack. So one of your on-crit (and on-swap) sigils is doing nothing (technically, the one on the dagger, but replacing either will remedy the problem). I’d recommend replacing one of the on-crit sigils with a Superior Sigil of Corruption to stack condition damage or Superior Sigil of Agony for bleed duration (there are plenty of other useful sigils as well; of note though, the +X% damage ones do not affect conditions last I heard).

See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil#Sigils_with_cooldowns for an in-depth explanation (and feel free to ask questions if that doesn’t make sense).

Disclaimer: I haven’t tested this in-game, there’s a slight possibility the wiki is incorrect; I recommend testing this in the mists if it is important to your build.

Bhawb is right, and never use dual sigils of earth, as though it makes your chance to bleed very high on crit, it is already high enough without giving up an all important sigil slot (could be on-kill or stacks, which both work with proc sigils).

% Damage do not work with conditions as was mentioned so those are no good, but you could take the extra 5% crit sigil if you hated on-kill and stack effects.

I routinely see my sceptor auto attack give 3 bleeds right off the bat. 1 from the sceptor, 1 from the crit 66% chance trait, 1 from sigil of earth. Remember though that if you have AOE attacks, the sigil of earth can only proc on one of those targets hit, even if you crit 5 people at the same time. Barbed precision has no cooldown and can hit as many people as you crit and proc on.

Barbed precision is actually a very powerful trait, even in a hybrid build. It gets a lot of bad press because as far as bleed on crit traits go (across all classes) it is fairly weak, but it works a lot like siphon traits in that it is a little damage that is hard to mitigate, and adds up over time.

I wouldn’t downplay dual sigils of Earth. While it’s true they cannot both proc on the same hit, they up your chance for any single crit to proc from 60% to 84%. Over 20 attacks at 50% crit rate that’s the difference between 6 and 8.4 procs. Even if you only get one extra earth proc out of it (the other 1.4 say gets eaten by cooldown) it just added 500-1000 damage over that span depending on your bleed duration. What other sigil is giving you that much additional damage every 20 attacks?

5% crit chance sigil is 1 more crit every 20 attacks. Condi Necro average attack is likely to be no more than 200 damage, great you just picked up a weak 150 damage. When you factor additional average damage of that 1 crit from barbed and your 1st earth sigil, still looking at around 500 damage tops.

PVE/WvW, You can carry an extra weapon to pile up your stacks, when they hit max put your bleeder back on.

Pendragon.8735:

I wouldn’t downplay dual sigils of Earth. While it’s true they cannot both proc on the same hit, they up your chance for any single crit to proc from 60% to 84%. Over 20 attacks at 50% crit rate that’s the difference between 6 and 8.4 procs. Even if you only get one extra earth proc out of it (the other 1.4 say gets eaten by cooldown) it just added 500-1000 damage over that span depending on your bleed duration. What other sigil is giving you that much additional damage every 20 attacks?

5% crit chance sigil is 1 more crit every 20 attacks. Condi Necro average attack is likely to be no more than 200 damage, great you just picked up a weak 150 damage. When you factor additional average damage of that 1 crit from barbed and your 1st earth sigil, still looking at around 500 damage tops.

PVE/WvW, You can carry an extra weapon to pile up your stacks, when they hit max put your bleeder back on.

Good points on all…. i tend to prescribe to not farming up stacks, but rather to let them happen naturally, which means i have a stack sigil on 100% of the time. Not ideal, but I can see the merits in the above. There is indeed no other sigil that provides the same damage effect (especially in PVE without a capped bleed mob)

Pendragon.8735:

While it’s true they cannot both proc on the same hit, they up your chance for any single crit to proc from 60% to 84%.

Has this been tested at all, or is it derived simply from doing the maths? If the latter, would it not rely on the assumption that if the first sigil fails to proc, the program then checks to see if the second one does. If the program instead applies the CD straight after the first sigil is checked regardless of whether it procced or not, this increased chance would not then be the case. In essence, do sigils not go on CD if they fail to proc?

If a sigil fails to proc, it does not go on CD, so yes having both there would increase the chances.

I’ve tested it as well. Obviously its difficult to count individual stacks over a set time period to average them out, but there are two very easy methods to test. Put two different short cooldown proc signets on, such as Earth and Life Steal, you’ll see that either one can proc, but the one on the 2nd weapon will proc far less, due to it only checking if the first one fails.

More simply just go out and beat on a mob with high HP something like a vet, using only auto attack, and compare one sigil with two sigils, after a few fights it quickly becomes apparent you are sustaining 1-3 more stacks of bleeds while using two sigils. Best tested with long condi duration.

Thanks for the info.

Seeing as we are talking about sigils, how does the Sigil of Battle compare damage-wise? If I’m looking at it right, 3 stacks of might would equate to (very) roughly 5 extra damage for each stack of bleed. It will depend of course on how many condition stacks you can apply and how often you weapon swap, but at a 20 second duration there should be plenty of overlap. I guess if you can do 20 scepter attacks in 10 seconds, you’d need to exceed 10 bleed stacks for the duration to even come close to base parity, although the might would also be boosting the power damage from those 20 attacks as well.

Battle Sigil on your scepter or dagger will put any other proc sigil on a 10 second cooldown. So it only makes sense with a stacking sigil. But doesn’t come out to the damage of Earth Sigils.

I like Sigil of Battle on my staff, because you are only on staff usually for a few seconds, and Earth Sigil there is wasteful (I also find it is bugged and stops working). Because its only going to have 4 chances (4 marks) to proc, before you likely switch. But the 20 second Might stack from the Battle Sigil is going to carry over to your Scepter/Dagger even after you swap and you get that 105 power and malice over your entire rotation, it ends up adding a lot of damage. Also the might stacks will affect every single target hit with your Staff AoE, while a bleed proc will only hit one person and then go on cooldown.

For roaming around alone I like leeching sigil for a little quick burst of damage and health.

Danger with any on swap sigil on staff though, you might lose the effect some of the time if your earth sigil(s) on scepter/dagger have just procced immediately prior to swapping. Which case some might just stick a stacking sigil there like corruption or w/e.

I stand corrected, thanks for all the good info guys!