Guild Wars 2

Haven’t been able to find a great answer for this.

I’m trying to figure out a sigil for a torch (trapper build) and am looking at the superior sigil of smoldering… but am not sure whether that additional duration actually increases damage or not. To make it worse, using the build editor in the PvP lobby, it seems to indicate that the figure for Throw Torch increases, but not Bonfire.

So, if anyone knows – would it be useful or just a waste of time/money?

Damage per tick no, damage over duration yes. It increases duration, so any downtime will be reduced it’ll last longer. Bursting will increase damage with more “condi damage” stat.

There was some discussion about this in the condition ranger thread. Bottom line is don’t trust the tooltips – the extra burn duration from smoldering is usually helpful even if the tooltip doesn’t reflect it.

1) Flame trap’s damage is nothing like the tooltip says. You get an extra free burn pulse at the beginning (i.e. it actually pulses 4 times if the tooltip says 3.0 sec). But that first pulse doesn’t follow the normal damage scaling. I’ve tried about 4 different configurations, but haven’t yet found an exact pattern to how its damage is calculated.

2) Anet added fractional damage pulses. i.e. If Flame Trap’s tooltip says it’ll burn for 3.5 sec, you will get the above initial free pulse, then 3 burn pulses, then one more pulse for half your regular damage. I haven’t tested yet to see if Bonfire’s tooltip adds these fractional pulses to its damage – I don’t think it does. (Bonfire lists total damage from all the burn pulses. Flame Trap lists damage per burn pulse.)

Yeah, it didn’t look like Bonfire did. Maybe these tooltips are still in need of fixing…

Since a trapper has damage from multiple condition types, Bursting may give the better DPS increase… though it’s also something like 30x as expensive. Since this is an ascended weapon I’m talking about though, perhaps I should just suck it up and pay for it.

superior sigil of bursting is 14 gold and definitely worth it.

GussJr.1643:

superior sigil of bursting is 14 gold and definitely worth it.

+1 on this. <<<< 12 chars >>>>>>

In long fights you’re better off with condi duration. In short fights, you want all out damage with faster cooldowns.