Guild Wars 2

I’m currently confused on which sigils can effectively be used in offhand. I’ve heard the sigils that proc should go into the MH weapon, and the OH should only contain passives… But the old BWE discussions indicate various changes throughout development.
Anyway, at the moment I’m using an MH sword/OH axe combination; the sword contains a Superior Sigil of Fire (30% for a fire AoE on crit every 5 seconds) and the axe houses a Superior Sigil of Accuracy (5% critrate). Would it be viable to go for an Air sigil on the MH and a Fire sigil on the OH instead? Would both of them proc, or would the OH one be wasted? Do you folks have any better sugestions for a crit build?

I’ve tried using the sigils that promote effects upon weapon switch. I believe there is one that applies 100% crit chance on the next attack after weapon switch. It’s pretty useful in sPvP. I haven’t looked at sigils much for wvw or pve.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I really question the usefulness of the sigil you mentioned. Being already at around 50% critrate (unbuffed, level 80), I would get a 1/2 chance of dealing a crit after swapping anyway. I very much prefer a constant increase, which I already have.
I’d really appreciate more suggestions and a proper explanation on which sigils work/don’t work in offhand.

As a Sword/Axe bleed n’ burn Warrior, I just put “Earth” sigils on both of my weapons. I prefer it over the “Accuracy” sigil because having two Earths increases my bleed proc chance. If one fails, the other may activate.

From what I understand, if you have two proc sigils, only one will activate, which is why people are doing the ‘proc’/passive combination. Having two of the same proc sigils, however, increases the chance that that specific ability will proc. Do you get what I’m saying? I dunno’ how to explain it with numbers…

I see, so two identical sigils increase the proc chance… How about different ones? For example, If I used an air sigil and a fire sigil, could I trigger both in quick succession, or would they share cooldowns?

The procs from the main weapon only apply to combat styles that use your MH, the procs from the OH only proc from styles that use your OH. Since most OH abilities have quite a long CD, usually you wont be proccing that often, meaning you’re better off using a passive

That’s what I forgot to say! XD

They share cooldowns. Which is why (imo) it’s best to go ‘proc1/passive’ or ‘proc1/proc1’ rather than ‘proc1/proc2’.

Shadowgurke.5813:

The procs from the main weapon only apply to combat styles that use your MH, the procs from the OH only proc from styles that use your OH. Since most OH abilities have quite a long CD, usually you wont be proccing that often, meaning you’re better off using a passive

Are you sure this is true? Last time I checked, they were linked. Have you tested it on a golem in The Mists? That’d be the easiest way to do it.

As I recall, when I had an Earth Sword/Blood Axe my Sword attacks sometimes triggered the life steal of the Blood sigil.

I’ve currently got 2 5 crit chance sigils slotted. Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to tell if they work, as my crit chance on my character screen remain unaffected. I assume it means EACH weapon has 5 more chance to crit when it’s used on an attack, meaning I have just an overall increase of 5% across my character.

From what I understand of the last change to sigils before release, the proc/swap sigils all share a global cooldown. Unless this has changed, you can only gain one swap effect every 9 seconds and you can only gain one proc effect every 2 seconds.

In other words, if you have a ‘gain x on swap’ in one weapon set and a ‘gain y on swap’ in the other, even if you have a 4 second (minimum possible in-combat swap time) cooldown time on weapon swapping, you can only gain a swap effect every 9 seconds.

If you have 2 on-proc effect sigils equipped, you can only gain the effects of one proc every 2 seconds. This is not to say that two of the same proc chance sigils on one weapon set is useless b/c every 2 seconds it is calculating a chance to proc on either; its just not nearly as good as having two that work independently of one another.

This was put in place to balance the fact that two-handed weapons only have one sigil slot and some builds can swap weapons at more than twice the rate of others creating overpowered effects in combat.

Edit: Let me just add that prior to the aforementioned change, dual wielding the same sigil would double your ‘effect on swap’ duration. People had the ability to generate 6 seconds of chill every 9 seconds with Hydromancy runes.

@Shadowgurke: That’s a bit outdated. My OH axe skills often trigger the fire sigil, even though it’s in my MH sword.
@Redscope: One proc effect every 2 seconds? This just got even more confusing. My fire sigil can trigger once every 5 seconds, so you’re saying a second fire sigil(or,say, an air sigil) could trigger after 2 seconds have passed since the first one’s activation, not 5? The only sigil I’m aware of that actually has a 2 second cooldown is the lifesteal one…

The way I understand it is that on a critical hit the chance of your main hand proccing is checked first, followed by the offhand if that fails.

So, for example, my war has 70% crit chance, so with Sup Earth in main and Sup purity in offhand chances would look like this on any hit.

Bleed from Superior earth (MH) = 70%(crit)60%(MH proc)= 42%
Condition removal (OH) = 70%(crit)40%(MH proc fail)*60%(OH proc)= 16.8%

Of course you need to factor into that the ICD of a sigil proccing, which will alter the frequency of procs depending on attack speed.