Guild Wars 2

What are the best sigils for Staff/DF PVT MM ?
I’m using water and frailty to increase my minions survivability and dps. What are your thoughts ?

I feel like hydromancy and energy are the best ones.
water heals for 370 hp (550 with 1200 healing power) while frailty is not a bad choice.

Minions benefit a lot from CC, be it cripple chill or immob.
So hydromancy and ice are both good sigils.

Energy and Leeching by far

Bhawb.7408:

Energy and Leeching by far

Bhawb.7408:

Energy and Leeching by far

I’d not be sure about that as the minions benefit ALOT from CC, so chill might be a good option.
For sure it’s a viable option tho.

You have more than enough CC that the 2 seconds of chill doesn’t come close to comparing to an extra dodge or 926 healing + damage.

The total hard-CC chain of an MM is:
12.5s of immobilize
1s knockdown
1.5-2.5s fear
2-3s daze
For a total of 17-19 seconds of hard CC

On top of that Locust Swarm is more than 100% cripple uptime, Dark Path is 33% chill uptime, Chillblains is 25% chill uptime, Flesh Golem is 83% cripple uptime, Unholy Feast is 33% cripple uptime.

There is no need for more soft CC on top of that.

Bhawb.7408:

You have more than enough CC that the 2 seconds of chill doesn’t come close to comparing to an extra dodge or 926 healing + damage.

The total hard-CC chain of an MM is:
12.5s of immobilize
1s knockdown
1.5-2.5s fear
2-3s daze
For a total of 17-19 seconds of hard CC

On top of that Locust Swarm is more than 100% cripple uptime, Dark Path is 33% chill uptime, Chillblains is 25% chill uptime, Flesh Golem is 83% cripple uptime, Unholy Feast is 33% cripple uptime.

There is no need for more soft CC on top of that.

But won’t 400 AOE heal per 6 sec be better than selfish 900 heal per 10 sec ?
Frailty is the only way to inflect nearly perma vulnerability, didn’t mention axe as it’s much weaker than dagger and it doen’t cleave.

Soldier builds don’t have enough healing power to make healing minions worth it, 400 heal is absolutely meaningless when it doesn’t stack with other heals, and PVT MM won’t be getting good heals. So the most important thing is to stay alive and deal damage. The whole point of PVT is to be selfish, so yes obviously the selfish choice is best.

And in a soldier build you should have both axe and dagger, so that is irrelevant.

Bhawb I’d like to see more videos of you in action

Bhawb.7408:

Soldier builds don’t have enough healing power to make healing minions worth it, 400 heal is absolutely meaningless when it doesn’t stack with other heals, and PVT MM won’t be getting good heals. So the most important thing is to stay alive and deal damage. The whole point of PVT is to be selfish, so yes obviously the selfish choice is best.

And in a soldier build you should have both axe and dagger, so that is irrelevant.

Well , but as you know, MM should also keep their minions alive as much as possible , that’s what sigil of water is for. Staff is much better than axe to keep them alive.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Bhawb.7408:

Soldier builds don’t have enough healing power to make healing minions worth it, 400 heal is absolutely meaningless when it doesn’t stack with other heals, and PVT MM won’t be getting good heals. So the most important thing is to stay alive and deal damage. The whole point of PVT is to be selfish, so yes obviously the selfish choice is best.

And in a soldier build you should have both axe and dagger, so that is irrelevant.

Well , but as you know, MM should also keep their minions alive as much as possible , that’s what sigil of water is for. Staff is much better than axe to keep them alive.

Sadly, it doesn’t matter unless you’re healing for thousands as zerker opponents will just chip them to death anyway.

Bhawb.7408:

You have more than enough CC that the 2 seconds of chill doesn’t come close to comparing to an extra dodge or 926 healing + damage.

The total hard-CC chain of an MM is:
12.5s of immobilize
1s knockdown
1.5-2.5s fear
2-3s daze
For a total of 17-19 seconds of hard CC

On top of that Locust Swarm is more than 100% cripple uptime, Dark Path is 33% chill uptime, Chillblains is 25% chill uptime, Flesh Golem is 83% cripple uptime, Unholy Feast is 33% cripple uptime.

There is no need for more soft CC on top of that.

Immob isn’t a hard CC.
That assumes you’re using dagger/wh, you don’t miss any hit and the enemy just collaborates.
If by chance you want offhand dagger and use mainhand axe plus a staff, the quick, immediate, pbAoE chill can do the difference.

It’s just preference really.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Well , but as you know, MM should also keep their minions alive as much as possible , that’s what sigil of water is for. Staff is much better than axe to keep them alive.

The only thing staff does is provide regen, and you get that with Mark of Blood, and if you want to keep minions alive you use Cleric, not Soldier, the entire point of using Soldier is trading off keeping your minions alive for more damage.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Immob isn’t a hard CC.
That assumes you’re using dagger/wh, you don’t miss any hit and the enemy just collaborates.
If by chance you want offhand dagger and use mainhand axe plus a staff, the quick, immediate, pbAoE chill can do the difference.

It’s just preference really.

Immobilize is absolutely a hard CC, arguably the strongest in the game right now, and yes it is in ideal situations, but with that much CC innate to the build there is no reason to take an extra tiny bit of soft CC; if you aren’t landing any of those other CCs the sigil won’t magically make the difference, in addition to the fact that it can be missed as well. There is never a time where dagger/WH should be left out of a minion build.

I’m not saying Hydromancy is garbage, but it is suboptimal. If you are doing your job correctly it doesn’t really provide anything.

Well, in this condition heavy enviroment i prefer to run with dagger offhand over warhorn.
But why is it so useful for MM? As you mentioned we already have enough CC to allow our minions to attack, the daze is very good but so is the condi transfer and i already regen big bulks of life force so i don’t require the extra LF gain off the warhorn 5.

So yeah, i’m losing swiftness in exchange of weakness and i’m swapping a daze for condi transfer.
In wvw, i’d surely pick the WH as mobility is too important, but in pvp i don’t mind being slow, especially since i have the 25% bonus speed while in shroud trait.

By the way, what i like about chill is the cooldown debuff as it is really detrimental for my opponents.
Any good thief who knows how to fight an ele will tell you how important it is to save the stolen skill for when they swap out of water.

Regarding immob, it is a very though condition to deal with, that’s for sure, however hard CCs have the capability of interrupting a skill/preventing skill casts.
This is a common explanation of hard CC which applies to many games.
For example stun, daze, knockdown, knockback, float and sink are all hard CCs.

How does PVT armor stack up since the patch? I find myself pushed toward precision gear pretty frequently, now. Some used to be free with condition builds. Suddenly, Rabid is looking better; not great but better.

Celestial seems better, too, with the Blood Magic rework but I admit to playing a lot of zerk-scholar. Power builds are so much more capable. When I take Curses, i seem to do it for the weakness and not for condition damage.

Sinister-mad king is a mixed bag. I think about making a zerker mad king.