Guild Wars 2

Although I did this as a Mesmer, the application applies to any class trying to run full zerker.

I have been going through forums and Guru and Wiki trying to find out what is better to put stats into and I could find nothing definitive. So I made my own excel calculation and broke it down, and here are the results.

Theory and Thoughts
So most of what I have read has said that for pure damage, go for Power. It’s true that it has a Direct Linear increase effect on the damage done, but the catch is in Critical Damage. I figured there would be an optimization where the % increased chance for critical hits would be worth more than the increased base damage from Power. That is to say, Doing double Dmg more often makes up for doing less Base Dmg.

I play a Zerker Phantasm Mesmer so everything needs to be full zerker for maximum damage, but the runes/sigils/consumables are up to you. Zerker armor/trinkets treat precision/power/crit as non-exclusive so it is the most useful for high damage, but the runes/sigils/consumables do make them mutually-exclusive so this is where changes can have effects (with exception of Ruby Orbs).

Why Zerker?
I mostly do dungeons(fractals), and with a few exceptions, more damage is more useful despite being squishy. I find its more of an L2P issue when you down a lot and not to do with having no toughness. So when you learn, the Damage speaks for itself.

Disclaimer
These stats apply to these traits only as changing the traits will change the Optimization of your choices. I will explain further down in the calculations part.

Traits
I run a lot of fractals and I find running more Utility is better for the team and therefore better for the run, Glass Cannon traits could be useful in a group you run well with, but in Pugs I like being safer. So I use 10/30/0/30/0. Dueling, although I don’t like any of Grandmaster traits, the extra 10% Crit Damage and 100 precision is so hard to say no to. 25 of the Inspiration Phantasmal Strength (15% damage on phantasms) and I just put it to 30 because of the extra Utility you can bring with it. 10 in Domination is for Empowered Illusions (15% more damage for phantams!!).

Weapons and some formulas…
Doesn’t matter what weapon you use for this calculation as long as it is Zerker stats. The Sigils do matter, but we will explain them below. The reason the weapon doesn’t matter is it’s damage is exclusive to the changes in Power or Precision. The damage for each weapon is fixed in a set range and can not change. The formula for Damage is Damage =(weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor). In the formula Power is made up of your Stat Power and your Damage Bonus Multiplier. These are the only two things we can drastically change (Stat Power is directly increased by more power, and Damage Bonus Multiplier is increased by Rune bonuses, Sigils and Critical Damage % which is increased in chance by Precision).

Sigils
Stacking Precision or Power, Force for 5% Dmg, Accuracy for 5% Crit Chance. Which to choose? Well, when i was running a shatter build, i liked having a sigil of Energy for the added dodge clone production, but for Phantasm, I chose the sigils of Force and Accuracy for my main and offhand and Accuracy for my two handed weapons. Running Zerker I don’t Down too often, but enough that stacking sigils don’t get the chance to add up. That means they’re out, especially when you can get the 5% bonus right up front all the time. This can be up to you, but again, it will change your optimization. For my calculations I ran with the added 5% of each stat.

Runes
Goal is Damage, so the only real choices are Runes of the Mesmer/Scholar/Eagle/Ranger and Ruby Orbs. I don’t like/need the 6th trait from Mesmer or Ranger so I would just stick a Ruby Orb on one piece (For calculation purposes I left Ranger out as having Eagle gives way better 6th trait and is same stats without it). Considering the condition to get the +Dmg Bonus on Scholar and Eagle, I factored them in separately too (hard to keep over 90% as a zerker…) The majority of the calculations revolve heavily on these runes.

Consumables
Utility and Food! but do you want power or precision? Sharpening stones or Maintenance Oil. Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup or Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup. It has to be one of these foods as the +10% Crit Dmg is essential! Remember we are going for Dmg, not worrying about the cost of the consumables. High level fractals offer enough returns to make up for cost and I only use them on when I really need to DPS.

How I did the Calculations
Everything really boils down to this formula: Average damage = Base damage * (Bonus Mutiplier + Critical Hits) . The Base Dmg is changed by the Power, the Bonus is changed by the Runes and Sigils and the Critical Hits are based on Crit Dmg and the chance it will hit (Factoring = Base Dmg * Critical % Bonus / Critical Chance). Big thing to notice is the Bonus Multiplier adds to the critical instead of multiplying to it. So Sigil of force adding 5% dmg means when you Critical for 200% Dmg, you do 205% of your Base Dmg. The same goes for the Rune of the Scholar/Eagle bonuses too.

I didn’t Factor in Armor of your enemy so the Dmg will be way higher than what you will actually do, but that falls under the same assumption as Weapon Dmg and isn’t really needed to do this comparison. It effects all the Dmg evenly so the increased Dmg still applies.

I used http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator to calculate the changes on each set so Huge thanks to them for the ability to do this without spending a fortune in game or spending hours writing down the stats to add them up.

I put everything into an excel sheet and calculated it based on the Runes, and then which Consumables to use. The sigils of Force and Accuracy are already built into the stats. Here is the sheet in PDF format: https://www.dropbox.com/s/chgj7ay2e1a3ynl/Mesmer%20Damage%20Stats.pdf

I notice I didn’t calculate the the Utilities without the +10% Crit the food gives, but since nothing changes drastically in the end results, Essentially if it comes down to having food or utilities, the food with +10%Crit makes it worth way more.

Quick Reference
Upower = Utility Power and so on
Fpower = Food Power and so on

Conclusion and Summary
Highlighted in Yellow is the Highest Dmg possible for that set of Runes. It’s not really surprising that the highest Dmg set without consumables is also the Highest with, but what is surprising is the consumables needed to balance out the set.

In Absolutely no circumstance was it better to use both Power Utilities and Power Food. You either need high precision to balance the Power from the Runes, or a mixture of both.

So what I plan on using from now on. I am leaning heavily on the Rune of the Eagle for a few major reasons. I rarely spend a lot of time above 90% HP, so my first spike would be nice with Scholar runes, but more consistent with Eagles 5% for enemies under 50% HP. The overall increased Crit chance is nice for have Critical Infusion (Vigor on Criticals) as well as Sharper Images (Illusion Bleeds on Criticals). With Phantasmal Fury, my phantams would have a 93% chance of Crits, and seeing as 2x Precision consumables is not very far behind in the Dmg, 98% Chance of Critical with Fury would make up for it with the bleeds.

As for the Sigils, I tinkered around with it, and have Accuracy and Force still are worth more to me then others, but hey if you can get 25 stacks of either and keep it, then its definitely worth it.

Lastly, the reason I say this might not apply to you, is because of the Optimization of it. Notice some require 2xPrecision, but others need both Power and Precision. If you trait more into Domination, or less into Dueling, your Optimal point might change. Especially in Dueling with the loss of the Crit % and that devalues the effectiveness of Precision.

I would love to hear what you guys thought about this, and feel free to PM me in-game if you have a question or so on.

Shinigami Curse.5940
Guild – [SotD] Shadow of the Darkside
Server -Darkhaven

This looks really cool man, good work putting it all together. Perhaps some people who are more patient than me will take some time to help contribute as well

Sigils of Force and Accuracy do not (did not previously) affect phantasms. The grandmaster trait from dueling to give % damage bonus for each readied mantra did not when I tested in the mists. I imagine the % damage bonus from Eagle runes also does not work.