Super-tryhard Staff DPS WvW question: Sigil of Impact vs Sigil of Fire

[solemn.9608]

Now that ele can wield 2 weapons and switch out of combat, I've been making use of some extra damage modifiers via sigil of impact on a secondary staff while zerging in WvW. So it looks like this:

Staff 1:Sigil of ForceSigil of Bloodlust

Staff 2:Sigil of ForceSigil of Impact

After reaching 25 bloodlust stacks I switch to staff #2.My question is: Is 3% damage (+7% vs stunned) better than being able to hit roughly 1k+ to 5 targets every 5 seconds (about ~1k extra DPS in ideal situation I think?) with Sigil of Fire, instead of sigil of Impact?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Impacthttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_FireThe flame blast cannot critically hit. The flame blast has a 0.85 damage coefficient and uses the unequipped (690.5) weapon strength value in damage calculations. The effect originates at the target with a range of 240 and affects up to 5 foes.

I've done some tests but it was inconclusive. Anyone else played around with this?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

You can do a calculation to figure out how good each sigil is as a comparison between each other. I don’t know much about your build but the calculation is roughly this;

Take the total potential damage of Fire Sigil, which let’s just say as an example, does 5,000 damage on proc (1k damage per target). Now, it procs every 5 seconds, so in a 3 minute fight, the Fire sigil will contribute a total of 180,000 damage. [(180s/5s)(5000)]

For Impact Sigil, the calculation is considered a multiplicative damage modifier. So let’s just assume that all damage you do, will approx be 3% or 10% more effective. If you are doing 10k damage then you will either be doing 10.3k-11k,ranging from least ideal to most ideal situations.

So in order to “break even” on sigil of impact, that 180,000 number from the Fire sigil calculation needs to be 3% of your total damage, so your damage has to come out to 6 million(in 3 minutes) in order for impact sigil to be considered better (this is close to 33kdps)

Now the above means that number is if you never had any situations where you hit stunned units, so you can consider the above as the minimal potential, or break even value between the Fire sigil and the impact sigil. Let’s say now, that every time you do damage, you're hitting stunned targets. We can consider this the maximal potential for impact sigil:

This time, the value 180,000 needs to be 10% of your total damage, amounting to 1.8 million damage total in 3 minutes, which means you need to only be hitting 10k DPS.

In summary, you need to be doing anywhere between 10kdps to 33kdps with sigil of Impact, in order for it to become comparable with Sigil of Fire. The lower value represents our most ideal situations (where you are always hitting stunned foes), while the higher value represents our least ideal situations (where you are never hitting stunned foes).

In other words:At the 10kdps mark, Sigil of Impact beats Sigil of Fire, so long as you are hitting stunned targets 100% of the time.At the 33kdps mark, Sigil of Impact beats Sigil of Fire, when you are hitting targets that are never stunned 100% of the time.

Now I took an arbitrary time frame of 3 minutes, but you can choose any time frame you like. If you are focusing on trying to maximize a burst sequence, choose shorter time frames that come close to the length of time it takes for your burst to do it's damage. For more sustained, longer fights, like huge zerg battles, use longer time frames.I also used rough estimates and assumed values. You would of course calculate for your build how strong Sigil of Fire is, and follow the same procedure to find out how much DPS you need to do before Impact sigil becomes comparable to Fire Sigil.

[steki.1478]

I think that sigils that increase your stats all the time (or keep them maxed) have higher impact overall compared to these sigils which rely on very specific situations and give you that extra burst when those situations happen. Considering that ele relies a lot on rng (average meteor shower hit can vary from 3k to 8k, based on a bit too many factors), these sigils will rarely make a visible impact. You'll do more damage on a lucky MS hit against foe with most boons stripped and some vuln than you'll ever get with your sigils/runes etc. There's some things that need to be considered though.

Accuracy sigil gives 7% crit chance (on average my crit chance per fight is 75-80%), so higher chance = higher average damage per MS. Strength sigil basically secures that you always have ~23+ might (worthless if you have more than 1 rev per party and can really stick to comm tag) and it reduces the downtime on getting those stacks back when they get stripped.

Fire sigil stacks with power only and I'm not even sure if it's only base power or might+traits buff it as well. On top of that, it's heavily countered by toughness and protection, it cant crit, has 5 sec icd and doesnt guarantee you 5 hits. Impact sigil on the other hand stacks well with other ele modifiers and has at least 3% buff by default.

Alternative is sigil of blood (lifesteal) which ignores enemy armor, helps with scholar uptime, but only hits one target (should be tested, but probably has 1 target cap). Leeching sigil is another option with lifesteal and the way it's worded it's more likely to hit more than 1 target, but still requires testing and it has quite big cooldown.

[Virtuality.8351]

1. As @steki.1478 suggests, depending on your current critChance and critDamage values, it is possible that Sigil of Accuracy yields higher and more consistent damage output. Although, I'd speak against the application of Sigil of Blood, for that, if my memory serves, it is single target.

2. Instead of calculating the general damage potential over an extended period of time, which simulates your output in a prolonged engagement as @JusticeRetroHunter.7684 demonstrated, I'd like to shift your focus toward short term damage potential.Meteor Shower, which is your major source of large scale burst damage, lasts for only 9 s, which means Sigil of Fire would proc only twice during its span, which really does not seem a lot to me. On the other hand, Sigil of Impact adds to all offensive spells you cast during the time frame, including everything you throw at your enemy, after finishing casting Meteor Shower and before the Shower ends. If you are running a Weaver build, that might be, for example, Lava Font, Pyroclastic Blast, Unsteady Ground, Eruption, and, depending on whether your allies require healing, Stone Tide or Earthen Synergy. I'd suggest a 3% to 10% damage bonus for all the skills enumerated above would easily outweigh the damage a five-target AoE unable to critically hit enemies could provide.

3. That being said, Sigil of Impact requires a well coordinated squad that can strip off Stability and CC at a designated spot (which is also where you land your Meteor Shower) to perform at its maximum potential. So you might also want to take the squad composition and organization into calculation.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The truth is you'll be wasting your time, most of the time. This level of min/maxing requires coordination and small group play, which is much more common in PvE/PvP than it is in WvW due to the zergy, messy, noisy nature of the game mode.

The reality is that even with extreme coordination in squads, most battles come down to luck and skill. This is the kind of game mode where hitting the right skill at just the right time, and getting lucky that they don't block, evade, etc. will do 10,000 times more damage than min/maxing, because you can't just think about physical damage you have to keep in mind psychological damage like pressure, which leads to mistakes.

How dangerous an enemy is, is determined by how resiliant and adaptive they are, not their DPS. Because you can have all the DPS in the world and if someone figures out how to counter it, you're dead meat because there goes your whole game.

That's why hybrid builds that can do everything are optimal in WvW and always will be, so in the specific case taking sigils that have a guaranteed effect all the time will trump taking sigils which have situational conditions, even if they're less efficient. Individual battles will show some suprising results but when you average out all your battles you'll find there's usually a net loss rather than gain.

Its hard to explain, but you can't go by theorycrafting and benchmarks because they aren't real world results, and WvW is much closer to "real world" than any other game mode in GW2, even PvP which is designed to be highly artificial on purpose.

Sorry for the overblown explanation, but I hope it helps to understand.

[Virtuality.8351]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:The truth is you'll be wasting your time, most of the time. This level of min/maxing requires coordination and small group play, which is much more common in PvE/PvP than it is in WvW due to the zergy, messy, noisy nature of the game mode.

The reality is that even with extreme coordination in squads, most battles come down to luck and skill. This is the kind of game mode where hitting the right skill at just the right time, and getting lucky that they don't block, evade, etc. will do 10,000 times more damage than min/maxing, because you can't just think about physical damage you have to keep in mind psychological damage like pressure, which leads to mistakes.

How dangerous an enemy is, is determined by how resiliant and adaptive they are, not their DPS. Because you can have all the DPS in the world and if someone figures out how to counter it, you're dead meat because there goes your whole game.

That's why hybrid builds that can do everything are optimal in WvW and always will be, so in the specific case taking sigils that have a guaranteed effect all the time will trump taking sigils which have situational conditions, even if they're less efficient. Individual battles will show some suprising results but when you average out all your battles you'll find there's usually a net loss rather than gain.

Its hard to explain, but you can't go by theorycrafting and benchmarks because they aren't real world results, and WvW is much closer to "real world" than any other game mode in GW2, even PvP which is designed to be highly artificial on purpose.

Sorry for the overblown explanation, but I hope it helps to understand.

I see your point on this, though I'd still disagree.

First, on min/maxing. I'd argue that min/maxing, as long as ones does not take it as far as building a glass cannon and so on, still to some extend helps. To me the discussion we had in this thread makes sense and only makes sense if the OP has already attained a certain degree of survivability, etc, that is, being hybrid to some extend. And we can always take the latter as the foundation and min/max on top of that to achieve desired result.

Secondarily, I do not agree that functions with a guaranteed effect always overweigh functions with situational conditions. Let's just take the case posed in this thread for example. The prerequisite of Sigil of Impact is successful movement-inhibiting CC, and when it comes to attrition, movement inhibition is in my opinion the single most important factor, because it isolates the target from its allies and prevents it from receiving stunbreaks and cleansing. And thus, exploiting on the opportunity seems to me crucial, because of course with a constant, guaranteed effect one may eventually end up outputting more overall damage, while downing and killing fewer, while maximizing (within a certain scope of trade-off) the chance of downing and even killing a target already hampered might actually create an advantage in sheer number. Damage, eventually, must translate into kills. If the way it is applied does not generate downed enemies, there's no point of such, and it must be taking into account while accessing loss and gain.

So, yeah, during the flux of an engagement, there are of course full of factors that we cannot control. That being said, it does not mean the the soundness of min/maxing or other approaches of theorycrafting is completely negated. There's still plenty that we can do to engineer for the best result under the given circumstances.

[Yasai.3549]

Staff is about consistent Power Pressure.

Stuff which works for bursts shouldn't be yur focus. (Stuff like Fire and Air)

Just run Force + Bloodlust.

Prey on Guards or ambient mobs for Bloodlust stacks.

If yu can kill other players go for it too.

[solemn.9608]

@Yasai.3549 said:Just run Force + Bloodlust.

All due respect but I don't think you understood what I was asking in my original post.

@Hannelore.8153 said:The truth is you'll be wasting your time, most of the time.

@Virtuality.8351 said:So, yeah, during the flux of an engagement, there are of course full of factors that we cannot control. That being said, it does not mean the the soundness of min/maxing or other approaches of theorycrafting is completely negated. There's still plenty that we can do to engineer for the best result under the given circumstances.

Situational vs theoretical damage is a good point but as Virtuality pointed out already, I think Steki said it best:

@steki.1478 said:I think that sigils that increase your stats all the time (or keep them maxed) have higher impact overall compared to these sigils which rely on very specific situations and give you that extra burst when those situations happen. Considering that ele relies a lot on rng (average meteor shower hit can vary from 3k to 8k, based on a bit too many factors), these sigils will rarely make a visible impact. You'll do more damage on a lucky MS hit against foe with most boons stripped and some vuln than you'll ever get with your sigils/runes etc. There's some things that need to be considered though.

ExactlySince my main is on a T3/T2 server right now and we rarely have a proper comp which includes might generation for the party, I've been using sigil of strength instead of impact and it has seemed to be very useful.

@Virtuality.8351 said:On the other hand, Sigil of Impact adds to all offensive spells you cast during the time frame, including everything you throw at your enemy, after finishing casting Meteor Shower and before the Shower ends. If you are running a Weaver build, that might be, for example, Lava Font, Pyroclastic Blast, Unsteady Ground, Eruption, and, depending on whether your allies require healing, Stone Tide or Earthen Synergy. I'd suggest a 3% to 10% damage bonus for all the skills enumerated above would easily outweigh the damage a five-target AoE unable to critically hit enemies could provide.

3. That being said, Sigil of Impact requires a well coordinated squad that can strip off Stability and CC at a designated spot (which is also where you land your Meteor Shower) to perform at its maximum potential. So you might also want to take the squad composition and organization into calculation.

Well said, I agree.

I will use sigil of impact on my T1/T2 account where might uptime is better, and probably sigil of strength or leeching on my T3/T4 account where might uptime/incoming buffs in general are worse.

Hannelore, I appreciate your detailed response, and your perspective, but I can only partially agree.I just want to mention that I think you underestimate how survivable a glass weaver is -- even in t1 SMC fights -- if the player is both careful and clever/aggressive all at once. I don't know you too well so maybe it sounds like I'm babytalking to you and that's not my intent, I'm just not sure if you understand or not; that glass staff weaver is not very forgiving, and understandably a lot of people give up on it / begin considering it a joke because they were not able to do it. With good positioning and implementation of burning retreat/lightning flash/dodge/twist of fate, glass weaver following close to the commander and taking strategic position when possible, becomes just as viable as non-glass. Every time I die on glass weaver it's because I made a mistake, I then simply try again, and do not make the same mistake again (until I forget/become tired and start slacking).

The reason you may feel like hybrid builds work better when looking at the average outcome of fights is because hybrid builds allow less talented players to survive longer and contribute more to the group. Note that extremely talented players can play a hybrid build too - I'm not saying they don't/can't. But: take any competent t1 guild running glass cannons and full minstrel healbots and pit them against the group running hybrid, you'd see which is better in less than 20 seconds of combat. Min/maxed is always better in the hands of talented guild members IMO.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@solemn.9608 said:The reason you may feel like hybrid builds work better when looking at the average outcome of fights is because hybrid builds allow less talented players to survive longer and contribute more to the group. Note that extremely talented players can play a hybrid build too - I'm not saying they don't/can't. But: take any competent t1 guild running glass cannons and full minstrel healbots and pit them against the group running hybrid, you'd see which is better in less than 20 seconds of combat. Min/maxed is always better in the hands of talented guild members IMO.

Well said. 100% agree with that view. There's maybe like a very small select few builds that can fill more than a single role effectively (Like Jalis+Glint Revs that are Full zerk damage but also provide damage mitigation for your party), but for the most part, specializing each person to a single more dedicated role, when each person plays to the capacity required for it to be played properly, will yield significantly better results in my experience. The more roles they can fill that don't conflict with their main role, the better the build is in my opinion.

For example, if you use energy sigil instead of sigil of impact, technically, you allow yourself to survive longer. But also technically, if your group was providing you with proper/better support, you should be able to survive anyway; In this sense, the jobs of others are giving you the opportunity to do your job properly...and when you can do your job properly (exploding the opposition) your party can in turn support you better.