Sigil question

I am currently in full viper gear, and I know the standad sigil choices is sigil of malice and sigil of geomancy. My poison is at 100% duration, Torment is at 97.19%. But I could not see a listing for burning, so i tried to replace geomancy with smoldering. Then burning showed up at 97.19% on the screen. So my standard burning must be 20% lower. So I wonder, does geomancy really outclass longer burning? Especially since it benefits both our searing fissure and diabolic inferno.

I think its based more on the fights. If you are in melee and swapping a lot then geo is stronger, or something along those lines...can't recall exactly but am sure someone knows for sure.

I know geo triggers on both legend swapping and weapon swapping. But surely optimal geo use doesnt require you to swap to offset constantly? That would loose you a lot of dps moves from equipping staff.

@LucianDK.8615 said:I know geo triggers on both legend swapping and weapon swapping. But surely optimal geo use doesnt require you to swap to offset constantly? That would loose you a lot of dps moves from equipping staff.

Geo triggers off of both, but it has a global cooldown, so you can't double proc a geomancy sigil twice in the same 9 second period--even if it's from a second sigil. So if you have it on one of your weapons you can get maximum procs from just legend swapping and never even have to swap your weapons.

But you're right that double swapping is a powerful mechanic that should be taken advantage of, so most raiding rev's use Mace/Axe with malice/geomancy and then have a second axe with a hydromancy sigil for double swapping.

You should be getting near 95% for torment AND burning with smoldering and geomancy.

The meta build doesn't use malice. At the very least, that's what i get: 95% torment, % poison, and 95% burning with geomancy and smoldering sigils with 4 nightmare/ 2 trapper runes and rare veggie pizza (i don't use furious crystal as toxic is actually higher dps gain)

Edit: so apparently the meta build does actually user malice but i disagree wth it. When running malice you only gain about 5-6% on torment (because it should be over capping with malice) for a 10% loss on burning.

Since burning actually makes for only a couple percent less damage than the torment from the build, mathematically it doesn't make sense to run malice...

as I said, I have full viper gear, 4x nightmare runes and 2x trapper runes. With malice and smoldering, my poison is at 100%, my torment and burning is at 97.19% - removing malice and my torment and burning drops to 87ish.

Do remember they removed +condi duration from consumables, i think its there the disconnect is. I use rare veggie pizza and toxic focusing crystal, and neither has +condi duration anymore.

@LucianDK.8615 said:as I said, I have full viper gear, 4x nightmare runes and 2x trapper runes. With malice and smoldering, my poison is at 100%, my torment and burning is at 97.19% - removing malice and my torment and burning drops to 87ish. Do remember they removed +condi duration from food, i think its there the disconnect is.

Right, but are you running any exotics? I rechecked my build in game and i get 93.83% burning and torment without malice. What do use for food? There's something funky going on

Actually fyi rare veggie pizza still gives Condi duration in the form of expertise. Roughly equal to 6.67% that May actually be the disconnect

If this is the case i recommend dropping malice still for geomancy. The sigil alone is like a 3k dps increase

all ascended gear. Let me have a look. yes, rare veggie pizza adds 100 expertise, had missed that. With rare veggie pizza, i reach 100% on torment and burning with malice and smoldering. Without malice and using rare veggie pizza, my torment and burning drops to 93.86%

Yeah. That's the problem though. Cuz now you're over capping on duration and wasting stats. That's why i don't run malice.

Makes me wonder why QT advocates malice and geo with nightmare+trapper then.

Most likely because in their hands, played at its absolute max in a speed clear guild it isn't really able to make records. Therefore they don't really play/ care about until anther balance patch comes.

I think malice + smoldering is the way to go for me, I dont do raids and is mainly open world these days. I recently -finished- with fractals and have little incentive to go back to them now that I finished Ad Infinitum. I mainly save my consumables for hard encounters, than having them up constantly. So im better served with higher uptime on conditions permanently.

The short answer; Geomancy should as far as I know produce more damage per second than Smoldering would, as long as you can maintain its application. For the longer answer let us look at the numbers. Note that these numbers are going to be based on using the Renegade trait line with added Bleed damage and duration, and increased stacks of Kalla's Fervor. The equipment will be of the full Ascended Viper's variety with every slot that can be filled, with Malign infusions. They also assume the use of the Corruption trait line for Poison application and increased duration, as well as increased Torment damage and duration. The latter are honestly not of much importance for the Geomancy vs. Smoldering question, but I have included the numbers nonetheless and wish to clarify for anyone wanting to do their own math and/or are wondering what the percentages are referring to on some of these entries. I am doing the math with Might x25 in mind as I find that to be commonly achieved in most PvE game modes. Oh, and this is with PvE numbers in mind for the calculations I've done.

I am not including modified numbers while under the effect of Embrace the Darkness here, nor am I adding in such things as the Ranger Spotter buff. These would of course serve to increase the damage numbers further across all conditions. EoD would also increase the durations by aprox. 5% (unless capped).

So with the damage numbers per second per condition at hand, we can start to look at some common skills that are in play while playing a Corruption Revenant. I will mainly focus on the Superior Sigil of Geomancy itself, as well as Searing Fissure, as both can be permanently kept up through skill rotation. Through testing, I found that Searing Fissure will maintain 8 stacks of Burn at 100% duration when maintained in rotation, and when dropped to aprox. 84% duration, it goes down to 7 stacks (to be fair, there are minute brief moments where it will flicker into 8 seconds, but for the sake of consistency, I will calculate using 7 stacks). Superior Sigil of Geomancy will maintain aprox. 6 stacks of Bleed when kept in rotation while having 100% duration.

Even before reaching it's ideal 6 stacks, the Superior Sigil of Geomancy is beating out the Searing Fissure's differences in damage (and keep in mind that there is some buildup time on SF's ideal stacks as well). After 9 seconds, the Superior Sigil of Geomancy is capable of maintaining over double the difference's damage for as long as it is kept maintained. Personally, I'll stick to using Geomancy. If it is of interest, by not having Renegade boosting the Bleed duration and damage, the initial triggering of the Superior Sigil of Geomancy loses out by roughly 7 damage to the difference between the 84% and 100% Burn duration on Searing Fissure, though once it reaches 6 stacks, it does again provide better damage. There will also be a slight impact on Diabolic Inferno, which can't fully reach its potential of being capable of a 100% upkeep. When that is taken into consideration, with a duration of 83.87% on Burn, the last tick of DI will hit for 186.9263005 damage, meaning it has lost a potential 352.2841795 damage as opposed to when under the effect of 100% Burn duration. Adding that to the Searing Fissure difference means we are now looking at a combined total of 891.4946595 damage potentially lost, which.. is still less than Superior Sigil of Geomancy when at 6 stacks of Bleed. Disclaimer: I have not ran the numbers on all skills and traits that may apply to the question of Geomancy vs. Smoldering, and certainly not when it comes to all future skills that may find its way into common rotations. I am also only human, and there may have been mathematical errors, though I do believe these numbers to be correct. Hopefully it can be of help to someone.

And what would your second sigil be, beside geomancy? And what about Sigil of Bursting with its 6% increased condi damage?

@Absconditus.6804 said:

You misunderstand me. I use smoldering over malice not geomancy

I ended using smoldering and geomancy. I learned bursting only affects the base damage and not taking modifiers into account.

Don't forget that when you channel Embrace the Darkness, you are also receiving a 10% bonus to your expertise...