Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to know what the benchmark is for a balanced build rather than a glass cannon build. So how many points should be invested on vitality/toughness to avoid a glass cannon build?

It’s a very qualitative, subjective problem. Being “not a glass cannon” isn’t really the goal, in and of itself. The idea is that stacking all your points into offensive stats actually reduces the damage you contribute to the party: You’ll likely spend a lot of time Downed/Dead, you’ll actually subtract from the damage that the rest of the party can do since they have to stop attacking to revive you, and you aren’t putting anything into the party to make up for what you’re costing them. The more time you spend alive and actively fighting, instead of being downed, dead, running back from a waypoint, or kiting enemies around, the more you contribute to your team. For most people, glass cannon builds don’t help with that.

The exact investment that you need to put into defensive stats depends on you, your own playstyle and skill level, the difficulty of the dungeon that you’re playing, and how well you can trust your party to cover you if things start to go sour.
If you want to find out exactly how much investment you need, start by building entirely into defensive stats, and fight with that build until you’re no longer getting smashed into the ground on a regular basis. Once you reach that point, then slowly start to introduce more and more offensive stats to your build. You’ll probably find that there’s a sweet spot that maximizes your effectiveness – too many offensive stats, and you’ll get plinked to death by everything, but too many defensive stats, and your mediocre damage will start to shine through making everything slightly more tedious. At some point you’ll find a happy medium between being able to deal damage and being able to survive. Where exactly that medium exists, nobody can really tell you. You kind of just have to play with it until you find a stat spread that works for you.

Depends on Class

For me as a guardian i was litterally a glass cannon with full berserker for the whole start of being 80, also all raits were in offense (power + precision)

But then I tried the much talked crithammer build and it literally makes me survive 10longer in fights => So much selfhealing
=> it gives me 30 points in toughness 20 in vitality

=> I get the same dmg as with my previous glass cannon if played right. with 0 points in power and 15 in precision…

Really depends on class and what synergys you can find between traits/skills etc (btw im still using full berserkers)

traits alone do not make a glass cannon build.

My warrior is full power with some toughness.
But what really makes a difference is using mace/shield.
doesnt matter how much toughness I have if I take no damage.

my ele uses scepter/focus and generally only dies when the party wipes.

Thanks for the feedback all! I’m about to venture in the realm of dungeons.