Guild Wars 2

Now before we start, I’ve been playing the game since beta and have had my share of WvW, PvP and PvE. I’ve mained a Guardian most time and have watched the community grow through PvE with dungeons, events and general play.

Before the endless responses of “Zerk this, Zerk that, Go ZerkZerkZerk” that I have read on countless of other threads involving Toughness, back in 2013 even, I really just want people to reply to this with BOTH OF US knowing about Zerk.

Think of it this way, I have full ascended Zerk armor and I would still like to ask the question.

Is there a difference with how much Toughness a character can have? Could all out toughness that leads to high armor go from being 2-shotted to actually taking multiple hits from the > PvE < content?

Now I do know the fine line of ‘Survival’ and ‘Damage’ and how the two are quite similar. But this is where I view > PvE < content. If I wanted to be a high Damager, I’d of gone a Warrior. For example, if I am in a dungeon, my main goal is not about MY damage but my allies. I want to keep them alive with decent damage of my own. So if I want to keep them alive longer, I want to be tough and not die in 2 shots which seem to happen to me often, but I do enjoy giving a lot of boons + might out.

Please read closely before anyone mentions about the game centralizing on Damage being the best defense, skilled dodges, blocks, and blinds only matter as well as saying ‘Go Zerk or Go Home’. I just want to better understand this from people who actually have an answer and know about toughness by their own experiences.

And yes, I do admit, I just want to see Toughness not being so pointless.. because if it is, why hasn’t Arenanet done anything with it?

Well I play a war with knight/rabid stats.

Just to give you an example from the other day, my friend and I joined a CoE run and the champ wolf at the start pounced on us. All 4 other party memebers went down (my friend’s a zerker ele, no clue what gear the others were using, but I do remember at least one of them being another war) and I still had about 50% hp.

I’ve looked at my DR compared to my zerker ele friend and it’s somewhere around 47-57%. So what 1 shots him, only really tickles me. Other times, my friends are dying thanks to some DoT or quick attack and I don’t even notice it. Or if I lose some toughness and spec for healing, I can heal myself for 1k/sec thanks to the regen from banners.

That being said I do a LOT less damage per hit. My sword AA does about 450 per hit compared to the ~3k my zerker ele friend does.

So I could show you a lot of calculations if you’d like, but here’s the results using level 80 exotic gear:

A character with a full set of equipment with toughness as the primary attribute takes 65%/66.5%/68% (Light/Medium/Heavy) of the damage that a character with 0 extra toughness would take. Or, to put it another way, they have 35%/33.5%/32% damage resistance compared to a berserker character of equal armor. In the example of being two-shotted as a berserker, if each hit did exactly 50% of your health and no more, they would instead do 32.5%/33.25%/34% of your health. Or in other words, the two-shot skills would become three-shot skills.

And now, extra commentary:

Interestingly, this is comparable to having the protection boon on you at all times. Or in other words, to a berserker protection is worth something like 1000 toughness. (To someone in toughness-primary gear, it’s worth more like 1400)

If you choose Toughness as your secondary stat consistently, your damage taken rises to 72.5%/74%/75.4% for a damage reduction of 27.5%/26%/24.6%. Full celestial armor is 79.6%/80.8%/81.9% for reduction of 20.4%/19.2%/18.1%.

If you used Ascended, the numbers improve, but only slightly. About 1-2% overall.

I don’t know if this makes toughness worth it to you, but I think it’s a good characterization of exactly what it can do.

Edit: After the post immediately above, I wanted to look into the 47%-57% DR comparison. Heavy gear has a base DR advantage of around 14% above light, so if you also take full exotic equipment with toughness primary you’ll have something like 41% DR compared to a no extra toughness ele, by my calculations. Granted, there’s also stats from trait lines, runes, nourishment, and probably a few other things that still need to be accounted for.

I just want to say, this is a great great topic, the full zerker craze in pve, especially dungeons is really irritating for so many reasons.

First of all, zerker is actually not for everyone for the reason you mentioned, you can easily get two shotted. No matter how much damage you cram in to a build you can’t stand still and trade blows with champs and bosses, you still need some defense.

I do pve on necro and i typically use dire and dire/rabid or a damage/condi hybrid but i make sure my armour is at least 2400. Too many times ive been in groups, everyone else is glass of course and when we get to champs and bosses we cant exploit in some way, downed symbols pop up everywhere. Now because of my set up, im alive and i now have to risk my neck rezzing. In my mind, im like seriously, if you cant dodge, blind or block chain, don’t go glass!.

This is why zerker is not for everyone. All that zerker damage is only useful if you are alive long enough for it to be useful. However that does not mean you have to stack toughness. Certain classes have skills and traits that can block/blind/stealth/invluns/dodge while using pure dps builds. It takes skill to be able to use these effectively without needing toughness, for instance dps guard and applying aegis and blinds.

If you are the sort of player that cant time the blocks, blinds e.t.c properly or don’t have enough available to the class, then you should stack more toughness because dead dps, is not dps.

On the question of toughness being useful or not, it absolutely is, it is best to have one or 2 people who are likely to survive to rez or aggro than have everyone be likely to die. I think this will become very clear with HoT, lets see how full zerker works on the wyvern with Anet talking about challenging content.

dead dps, is not dps

This phrase has always bothered me. It wouldn’t surprise me if some fellow in zerk gear/setup does more damage then the Nomad Staff Guardian over the course of the whole battle even if he ends up dying halfway through. Especially with the sort of DPS your average pug kicks out, I don’t think that dying halfway through a fight prevents you from outDPSing other people in the party.

Fermi.2409:

dead dps, is not dps

This phrase has always bothered me. It wouldn’t surprise me if some fellow in zerk gear/setup does more damage then the Nomad Staff Guardian over the course of the whole battle even if he ends up dying halfway through. Especially with the sort of DPS your average pug kicks out, I don’t think that dying halfway through a fight prevents you from outDPSing other people in the party.

Thats quite an extreme, using nomads as an example, not really what i was getting at. I was talking more from a balanced perspective. Player A who does 70% of the damage a zerker player B does survives a whole boss or event fight, is more valuable than the zerker player that gets 2 shotted every 10 seconds and then has to run back. Player A can risk rezzing other downed players or being the bait, player B can’t without using some skill with a long cd

I should probably say again zerker is important yes but having some demi tanks around is also pretty important

Ragion.2831:

Player A who does 70% of the damage a zerker player B does survives a whole boss or event fight, is more valuable than the zerker player that gets 2 shotted every 10 seconds and then has to run back.

Which is itself a pretty huge exaggeration.

And even if it was, the general idea of the post is sound.

Ragion.2831:

I should probably say again zerker is important yes but having some demi tanks around is also pretty important

Eh. 4 scrubby zerkers with a decent Ele will be able to clear most stuff before lack of skill causes issues, so I’d honestly rather have that.

The problem here is how armor is calculated.
Toughness and Defense are simply added, and the resulting value is the divider of the incoming damage.

You have a base toughness of 926 and a base defense of 920/1064/1211 for exotic (967/1118/1271 for ascended). Which means you have at least 1846 armor for scholar professions.
To half the incoming damage from there you would need another 1846 toughness. You can get flat 300 toughness from the trait line and 1003 for exotic (1087 for ascended) equip. Which means you still have to come up with 459 points of toughness (through consumables or skills or specific traits) to just reduce the damage in half from the damage you would get anyway.
Also the difference between light and heavy armor is just 1/6th of the damage, but you need exponentially more points to achieve higher results, also 2600 armor is used for the tooltips.
So to double your armor you have to double at least 1846, while doubling your damage requires you to just double 926, which again can be increased by at least 1.5 by crits.

The thing here is that both the points needed double each time and the effect diminishes by half each time. Thus the curve of needed points for armor is a power of 2 or 4 (I’m bad at math sometimes, can’t go through the numbers in my head) while the curve of points needed for damage is a power of 1.

Softspoken.2410:

Interestingly, this is comparable to having the protection boon on you at all times. Or in other words, to a berserker protection is worth something like 1000 toughness. (To someone in toughness-primary gear, it’s worth more like 1400)

This actually isn’t quite true. Protection reduces incoming damage by 33%. It doesn’t boost toughness. This makes protection a higher value boon for zerkers as they inherently take more incoming damage. That being said, the rest of your post looks good.

My suggestion, if you’re having issues surviving in a zerker group, consider grabbing some pieces with Vitality or healing power (former if you die to spike, latter if you die to sustained damage). Do not go for toughness, it will frequently make you take a higher spot on the aggro tables gw2 has. Good pieces for this are Zealot and Valkyrie pieces as they will have minimal impact on zerker dps.

That being said, boons and active defenses are better for survival than any non-major stat change you can make. This leads me to: a few Guardian specific suggestions:

Ensure you are properly using blinds. Guardians have a large number of good sources of blinds.

Try out hammer. The auto attack can provide permanent protection uptime. If you or your group has problems using active defenses, this can be a great help.

Understand when to use your virtues and renewed focus. These can drastically change a fight. Blowing them all when you hit low health isn’t a very good tactic.

Fermi.2409:

Ragion.2831:

Player A who does 70% of the damage a zerker player B does survives a whole boss or event fight, is more valuable than the zerker player that gets 2 shotted every 10 seconds and then has to run back.

Which is itself a pretty huge exaggeration.

And even if it was, the general idea of the post is sound.

Ragion.2831:

I should probably say again zerker is important yes but having some demi tanks around is also pretty important

Eh. 4 scrubby zerkers with a decent Ele will be able to clear most stuff before lack of skill causes issues, so I’d honestly rather have that.

In the end it really is very situational, we could sit here for the next week and compare where pure zerkers will have trouble surviving and where toughness stacking becomes unuseful. Lupi is a classic case, one mistake by a zerker and its back to respawn if lucky there is someone who can risk taking a hit or 2 to rez. On the flip side zerker is a lot more useful for trash mob clearing than non pure zerkers.

Interestingly, this is comparable to having the protection boon on you at all times. Or in other words, to a berserker protection is worth something like 1000 toughness. (To someone in toughness-primary gear, it’s worth more like 1400)

This is funny and makes you think. Should we buff Toughness ? When will it become better than Protection? How to balance Active defense (Protection) and passive (toughness)? If you can maintain Protection for ever, Toughness is obsolete… Will buffing Toughness make content faceroll (if Toughness is just so good it negates over 50…60…70% of damage)? Will Protection then be useless? Combine both for 100% damage mitigation?

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Other times, my friends are dying thanks to some DoT or quick attack and I don’t even notice it.

DoT is not reduced by armor.

BarnabeJonez.6023:

Softspoken.2410:

Interestingly, this is comparable to having the protection boon on you at all times. Or in other words, to a berserker protection is worth something like 1000 toughness. (To someone in toughness-primary gear, it’s worth more like 1400)

This actually isn’t quite true. Protection reduces incoming damage by 33%. It doesn’t boost toughness. This makes protection a higher value boon for zerkers as they inherently take more incoming damage. That being said, the rest of your post looks good.

He’s actually right by the numbers, the problem is as stated in my previous post that the bigger the numbers the effect still diminishes. You just forget to take into account that the effect is quadratic instead of linear.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Well I play a war with knight/rabid stats.

Just to give you an example from the other day, my friend and I joined a CoE run and the champ wolf at the start pounced on us. All 4 other party memebers went down (my friend’s a zerker ele, no clue what gear the others were using, but I do remember at least one of them being another war) and I still had about 50% hp.

I’ve looked at my DR compared to my zerker ele friend and it’s somewhere around 47-57%. So what 1 shots him, only really tickles me. Other times, my friends are dying thanks to some DoT or quick attack and I don’t even notice it. Or if I lose some toughness and spec for healing, I can heal myself for 1k/sec thanks to the regen from banners.

That being said I do a LOT less damage per hit. My sword AA does about 450 per hit compared to the ~3k my zerker ele friend does.

did you have a guard? if yes, then he was bad.

why did none of you dodge it? if youve done the dungeon even only once before, then you know to dodge the wolfs first hit. like, of all things to dodge, that is one of those things thats wayyyyy up there on the priority list, because it has a huge cd and every icebrood wolf and rock dog always opens with it.

Fermi.2409:

dead dps, is not dps

This phrase has always bothered me. It wouldn’t surprise me if some fellow in zerk gear/setup does more damage then the Nomad Staff Guardian over the course of the whole battle even if he ends up dying halfway through. Especially with the sort of DPS your average pug kicks out, I don’t think that dying halfway through a fight prevents you from outDPSing other people in the party.

A player that uses knights armor and jewlery still does 77,6% of the damage
somebody in full zerker does.
With celestial its 73,5% and with soldiers its 72,9

So its not that zerker do 300% more damage like some people always want to
make us believe .. its more just around 25% … and if you just use defensive armor
and zerker jewlery its only 12-14% less.

Toughness is a passive stat that allows a high-toughness character to make a mistake that a low-toughness character cannot afford. Passive defense stats are the same in every game, they allow you to survive more hits than would otherwise be the case. That’s all the defensive stat does in other games, that’s all it does here.

Why hasn’t ANet “done more” with Toughness? They’ve done what every game does with their defensive stat. Why would anyone expect them to make a passive defense stat do anything different?

Beldin.5498:

Fermi.2409:

dead dps, is not dps

This phrase has always bothered me. It wouldn’t surprise me if some fellow in zerk gear/setup does more damage then the Nomad Staff Guardian over the course of the whole battle even if he ends up dying halfway through. Especially with the sort of DPS your average pug kicks out, I don’t think that dying halfway through a fight prevents you from outDPSing other people in the party.

A player that uses knights armor and jewlery still does 77,6% of the damage
somebody in full zerker does.
With celestial its 73,5% and with soldiers its 72,9

So its not that zerker do 300% more damage like some people always want to
make us believe .. its more just around 25% … and if you just use defensive armor
and zerker jewlery its only 12-14% less.

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

When you have 5 toons doing full zerk damage the “small increase” ain’t so small.

Ragion.2831:

I just want to say, this is a great great topic, the full zerker craze in pve, especially dungeons is really irritating for so many reasons.

Ignorance is bliss.

There is no “zerker craze” in Open World PVE. Go into any open map chat and ask people to ping the gear they are wearing and you’ll see there’s a VAST array of geared toons out in Open World. Then ask them what their build is. I know from my own asking (randomly) that the ones I have asked (randomly) just run whatever they think is good, no meta. The only place there is a “zerker meta” is in dungeons/fractals. That’s it.

Ragion.2831:

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

It means a champion that a full zerk team kills in 15 seconds your knights + zerk team will kill in 17 seconds.

If you’re a very experienced group that knows how to use all the reflects / aegises / etc to stay alive, those 2 seconds could be a big deal since they’re on the tail end of your defensive abilities – but if you’re in a pug group that isn’t doing all that stuff, the extra defense, and the extra hit you can take, can substantially increase the reliability and speed of a run.

Ensign.2189:

Ragion.2831:

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

It means a champion that a full zerk team kills in 15 seconds your knights + zerk team will kill in 17 seconds.

Come on man, theres way too many variables to make a call like that

Ensign.2189:

If you’re a very experienced group that knows how to use all the reflects / aegises / etc to stay alive, those 2 seconds could be a big deal since they’re on the tail end of your defensive abilities – but if you’re in a pug group that isn’t doing all that stuff, the extra defense, and the extra hit you can take, can substantially increase the reliability and speed of a run.

Agreed, but that is a pretty big if. Often times not the entire group is on the same skill level. Often times there isnt enough party blocks and reflects to defend against a sea of elites and projectile shooters. At the end of the day and you will probably agree with this but success of a run is heavily dependant on each players ability to survive on his/her own. Each player to a certain degree has to watch their own backs and not be dependant on a constant stream of second hand blocks which there probably wont be enough of if you are too squishy.

The only thing to make toughness much more worthwhile than all out zerker is to make the death penalty punish a lot more and depend on the amount of damage of the killing strike after mitigation by toughness.

Therefore in the case of someone who takes 18k damage and dies but mitigates 6k due to toughness, not armour, finds one piece of armour damaged. The person who only mitigates 1k finds 5 pieces of his armour damaged. The cost of repairs should also depend on the quality of armor to reflect how the increase in stats makes it easier to alllow for more toughness so ascended is more expensive to fix than exotic. This also allows for the cost of repairs to be meaningful to someone who can afford the better armour.

I really dont know the core values of damage mitigation by toughness well. Ive been away from the game awhile and my memory sucks plus my maths is poor so please consider the basic notion here rather than the figures.

After reading all of these, I must say I learned a thing or two. Perhaps I will try out Knight’s gear blended with Zerk weapons/jewelry and see where it takes me.

Thank you all for actually putting in feedback and not just tossing the question off as if it were nothing.

My zerker warrior giggles at the thought of stacking defence. I suppose it would be a requirement if I were playing a lower class, like a Thief or an Engineer. A lower class worries about such things and inevitably, gets hit and dies. When the Warrior gets hit, she merely resolves to hit back harder.

Try doing fractals 50 with all toughness. Your runs will be slower and your extra defense from toughness will not help that much.

Reasons for toughness:
- Less dmg when hit
- better scaling of certain traits and utility consumables (tuning crystals, maintainance oils, sharpening stones
- Easy lengthened endurance, mostly usefull when running conidtion builds as you need to have the patience to create your stacks and need to be able to act on clears.
- no need to rely on protection or other buffs to mitigate dmg…
- better way of lengthening lifespan then vitality, as you would also need healing to compensate for the additional hitpoints when healing.
- taking toughness as main stat does limit damage or condition as main stat. some truly tanky stat combinations levae no power to speak of and leave dmg being a forgotten option…

Reasons against toughness
- you could take other stats to be more powerfull, or heal more, crit more, or do more condition damage
- protection if if can be applied with a good amount of uptime will leave you with the same dmg reduction as full main-stat toughness and will allow you to do generally over 40% more dmg continously
- you can always dodge, if you cannot, you might benefit from blinds/aegis or evades locked in skills.
- It only helps against DPS not against condition dmg, it even makes you more vulnerable vs conditions as most ppl tend to check less for conditions.
- It draws aggro.

IMHO toughness is a welcome if not neccesary attribute in WvW or PvP , but in PvE only world bosses and other instances with -nearly- unavoidable dmg it has a use. problem is those things are generally very small parts of the world… Making other chooices in PVE probably better,

Khorthall.1682:

After reading all of these, I must say I learned a thing or two. Perhaps I will try out Knight’s gear blended with Zerk weapons/jewelry and see where it takes me.

Thank you all for actually putting in feedback and not just tossing the question off as if it were nothing.

I’m not sure if it’s applicable to you or not but majority of players don’t bother with the +10% damage/-10% damage taken slaying potions.

A potion that lasts for 1 hour only costs 1 token so it’s pretty affordable and that 10% damage dealth/taken is worth alot if we’re talking about raw Power/Toughness.

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Reasons for toughness:
- Less dmg when hit
dodge

- better scaling of certain traits and utility consumables (tuning crystals, maintainance oils, sharpening stones
this is bad food, use +-10%

- Easy lengthened endurance, mostly usefull when running conidtion builds as you need to have the patience to create your stacks and need to be able to act on clears.
what?

- no need to rely on protection or other buffs to mitigate dmg…
why wouldnt you rely on instant cast shouts or autoattack chains that give prot? you arent going out of your way

- better way of lengthening lifespan then vitality, as you would also need healing to compensate for the additional hitpoints when healing.
tough vs vit when comparing tough vs dmg?

- taking toughness as main stat does limit damage or condition as main stat. some truly tanky stat combinations levae no power to speak of and leave dmg being a forgotten option…
this is a reason for toughness?

hmm…

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

insanemaniac.2456:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Reasons for toughness:
- Less dmg when hit
dodge

- better scaling of certain traits and utility consumables (tuning crystals, maintainance oils, sharpening stones
this is bad food, use +-10%

- Easy lengthened endurance, mostly usefull when running conidtion builds as you need to have the patience to create your stacks and need to be able to act on clears.
what?

- no need to rely on protection or other buffs to mitigate dmg…
why wouldnt you rely on instant cast shouts or autoattack chains that give prot? you arent going out of your way

- better way of lengthening lifespan then vitality, as you would also need healing to compensate for the additional hitpoints when healing.
tough vs vit when comparing tough vs dmg?

- taking toughness as main stat does limit damage or condition as main stat. some truly tanky stat combinations levae no power to speak of and leave dmg being a forgotten option…
this is a reason for toughness?

hmm…

Hmm. I think I made a point as final sentence:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

IMHO toughness is a welcome if not neccesary attribute in WvW or PvP , but in PvE only world bosses and other instances with -nearly- unavoidable dmg it has a use. problem is those things are generally very small parts of the world… Making other chooices in PVE probably better,

I do not find people who run toughness any less then zerks. IMHO it has a function. any zerk run with 1 wipe is AUTOMATICALLY SLOWER then runs with people who wear a bit of toughness armor, be it cavaliers, knights or soldiers. Even clerics can have it’s niches.

If you ONLY care about High DPS don’t bother posting in a toughness thread.

Lets make it clear a game like an mmo which is supposed to be about diversity of professions, skills and playstyles is broken if their is only one really effective way to play it. In the case of GW2 conditions and toughness mean nothing as raw dps is just so powerful.

Why is this? Because if a zerker group is running a dungeon they can do it so fast because they can gamble that if they die they just respawn fast and get it right next time which is only a small time blip compared to a more balanced build taking twice to four times as long on their first attempt.

The reason I have moved on to another game is partly because of this flawed game design amongst other reasons. Its a joke. I’ll be back to experience Heart of Thorns probably at some point but I do hope some day Anet make zerker if not less powerful, more of a gamble, with harsh death penalties for instance based around the playstyle choice as I mentioned in my previous post here. Heavy damage per hit on expensive equipment needs to mean more damaged items faster and should be expensive to fix. So toughness would mean less expense and less time.

By making armour repair free Anet just made zerking more attractive and the lackof a need for the trinity has made it so every class can be played as a zerker (though obviously there are preferred professions)

Still curious why toughness has DR

Scoobaniec.9561:

Still curious why toughness has DR

Mainly to make sure that people never get invincible ?

I remember we had problems with that in EQ2 at some point before they put in DR.

Beldin.5498:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Still curious why toughness has DR

Mainly to make sure that people never get invincible ?

I remember we had problems with that in EQ2 at some point before they put in DR.

Toughness does not have “DR”. One point of toughness nullifies one point of power.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage
Since weapons and skill coefficients exist, damage will never be 0, unless it’s in PvE, you’re level 80 and are using a level 1 weapon.

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

You are forgetting banners, might stack(this is not multiplicative, might adds a fixed amount of power and not a damage modifier), fury and possibly spotter.

Also, having 7% crit chance on weapons favors only celestial and soldier because that can be replaced with a 10% slaying sigil for builds hitting over 100% crit rate with crit chance sigil.

Fermi.2409:

Eh. 4 scrubby zerkers with a decent Ele will be able to clear most stuff before lack of skill causes issues, so I’d honestly rather have that.

lack of skill causes issues even in cof. That’s why you see zerker parties having leavers and joiners ALL THE TIME on all phases.

Skilled zerkers > all else. However that’s not that kind of skill level that 95% of the population can pull off. And in that case everyone else > no skill zerkers, as I can take a run being 5-10 minutes longer, but I won’t stand for having to solo each encounter.

Izaya.2906:

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

You are forgetting banners, might stack(this is not multiplicative, might adds a fixed amount of power and not a damage modifier), fury and possibly spotter.

I didn’t forgot it. Precision and critical works multiplicative, so in the end the difference will be the same in percentage. The total numbers differ, but the
percentage is the same.

It doesn’t matter if you compare
100 * 100 against 100 * 75 or 1000 * 100 against 1000 * 75 .. the difference is 25%

Beldin.5498:

Izaya.2906:

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

You are forgetting banners, might stack(this is not multiplicative, might adds a fixed amount of power and not a damage modifier), fury and possibly spotter.

I didn’t forgot it. Precision and critical works multiplicative, so in the end the difference will be the same in percentage. The total numbers differ, but the
percentage is the same.

It doesn’t matter if you compare
100 * 100 against 100 * 75 or 1000 * 100 against 1000 * 75 .. the difference is 25%

This guy knows things. “Zerker” is not just armor. It’s the entire build. If you still have all the damage boosting traits/utilities you will not magically do 1/3 of your damage just by swapping armor to knights. Maybe you would if you swapped to nomads, but not to knights.

Xhyros.1340:

Beldin.5498:

Izaya.2906:

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

You are forgetting banners, might stack(this is not multiplicative, might adds a fixed amount of power and not a damage modifier), fury and possibly spotter.

I didn’t forgot it. Precision and critical works multiplicative, so in the end the difference will be the same in percentage. The total numbers differ, but the
percentage is the same.

It doesn’t matter if you compare
100 * 100 against 100 * 75 or 1000 * 100 against 1000 * 75 .. the difference is 25%

This guy knows things. “Zerker” is not just armor. It’s the entire build. If you still have all the damage boosting traits/utilities you will not magically do 1/3 of your damage just by swapping armor to knights. Maybe you would if you swapped to nomads, but not to knights.

Yeah .. traits will in the end have a much bigger inpact on the total damage than
what armor your wear. Using 0,0,6,6,0 instead of 6,6,0,0,0 will of course mostly
result in a much lesser damage.

I always wonder when people notice they have to make a trait-check instead
of a gear-check

Beldin.5498:

Izaya.2906:

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

Ragion.2831:

This is precisely why i never use full zerker. You will often benefit more from the damage reduction from the toughness stat mixed in than doing 14% more damage when you are already doing high damage.

Its not like doing 14% more damage than a hybrid means you will be able to two-shot everything and everyone so sacrificing survivability for that small increase is really pointless.

A hybrid that only does 14% less damage than a zerker is barely a hybrid…

Its not so easy to just look at a single stat. Zerker is about power, precision, ferocity, sigils, runes, skill and traits. Compared to your average hybrid, a zerker maybe only have 20% more crit damage, true… but he will also have 20% higher base damage, traited to do 20% more damage, choose weapons that do 20% more base dps and have 20% more crit chance to use that ferocity. etc and so on. It adds up to alot more damage.

Wearing knights or soldiers armor and zerker jewlery and weapons for me is a hybrid.
And 12-14% is the total difference in damage after calculating critchance and
crit-damage on the numbers that gw2skills.net calculated for that build.

23-27% is the total difference if you only have a zerker weapon.

And since everything here works multiplicative the difference will also not change
with might stacks and other buffs or debuffs.

You are forgetting banners, might stack(this is not multiplicative, might adds a fixed amount of power and not a damage modifier), fury and possibly spotter.

I didn’t forgot it. Precision and critical works multiplicative, so in the end the difference will be the same in percentage. The total numbers differ, but the
percentage is the same.

It doesn’t matter if you compare
100 * 100 against 100 * 75 or 1000 * 100 against 1000 * 75 .. the difference is 25%

I hope this clears it up:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdA5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEUMA5B-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-TxRBABXt/QZK/wTHQjKBHV9n8uAAA8AAEDQeA-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-TxRBABXt/Qlq/gnOgsU+dmSw8uAAA8AAEDQeA-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-TxRBABXt/AkKBxTHAXK/wU9n8uAAA8AAEDQeA-e

Zerk
Power 2568
Precision 2161
Ferocity 995

Cele(Zerk weapon only)
Power 2081
Precision 1962
Ferocity 796

Soldier(Zerk weapon only)
Power 2568
Precision 1550
Ferocity 384

Knight(Zerk weapon only)
Power 2280
Precision 2161
Ferocity 384

Buffs:
Might: 750 Power
Fury: 20% Crit rate
Banners 170 Power
170 Ferocity
170 Precision

Buffed Stats:
Zerk
Power 3488
Precision 2331(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 1165
Effective Power = 3488 * 91% * 227.66% = 7226.11

Cele(Zerk weapon only)
Power 3001
Precision 2132(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 966
Effective Power = 3001* 81% * 214.4% = 5211.65

Soldier(Zerk weapon only)
Power 3488
Precision 1720(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 554
Effective Power = 3488 * 62.28% * 186.93% = 4060.72

Knight(Zerk weapon only)
Power 3200
Precision 2331(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 554
Effective Power = 3200 * 91% * 186.93= 5443.4

So, Celestial is 27.8%, Soldier is 43.80% & Knight is 24.6% less damage respectively given Berserker weapons and party buffs.

Beldin.5498:

Izaya.2906:

I hope this clears it up:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdA5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEUMA5B-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-TxRBABXt/QZK/wTHQjKBHV9n8uAAA8AAEDQeA-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3JD1e29hfHciGAIQMfIwirpyorNA-TxRBABXt/Qlq/gnOgsU+dmSw8uAAA8AAEDQeA-e

Zerk
Power 2568
Precision 2161
Ferocity 995

Cele(Zerk weapon only)
Power 2081
Precision 1962
Ferocity 796

Soldier(Zerk weapon only)
Power 2568
Precision 1550
Ferocity 384

Buffs:
Might: 750 Power
Fury: 20% Crit rate
Banners 170 Power
170 Ferocity
170 Precision

Buffed Stats:
Zerk
Power 3488
Precision 2331(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 1165
Effective Power = 3488 * 91% * 227.66% = 7226.11

Cele(Zerk weapon only)
Power 3001
Precision 2132(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 966
Effective Power = 3001* 81% * 214.4% = 5211.65

Soldier(Zerk weapon only)
Power 3488
Precision 1720(+20% Crit rate)
Ferocity 554
Effective Power = 3488 * 62.28% * 186.93% = 4060.72

So, Celestial is 27.8% & Soldier is 43.80% less damage respectively given Berserker weapons and party buffs.

And now take the damage you see on 100 blades and calculate it with crit chance
and crit damage and this will be the result :

again, factor in might, fury and banners…

your projection of soldier damage is way off…

Edited the post to also calculate the soldier armor, since your numbers simply are
much too different. You see celestial and soldiers are very close and not so difference
than what you postet.

And like i said before, might and banner change the total numbers but not the percentage.

I really really hope my warrior will never do 10k dmg with a HB… I still hope to see 17-21k with zerk as normal…

Back on toughness and defense…

I heard that shields are unique and give more baseline Defense which other weapons do not give. I looked but couldn’t find it in the wiki.

Can anyone confirm?

Beldin.5498:

Edited the post to also calculate the soldier armor, since your numbers simply are
much too different. You see celestial and soldiers are very close and not so difference
than what you postet.

And like i said before, might and banner change the total numbers but not the percentage.

Question.

Your chart does not factor in Condi damage for celestial. How much dmg would that add? I wonder for solo play for certain mob types in Silverwastes or high toughness.

I’m not sure but I think full toughness gear makes little difference because you only take about 30% less damage.

And most of the time you are in more danger because you kill too slowly and all your defensive skill is on cooldown.

If you want to play defensively, I think it’s better to trait or use defensively utility instead.

I didn’t read this entire thread but I believe toughness, much like other stats, has it’s place in WvW.

Zerkers is viable in WvW but you’re going to have a really hard time when you encounter larger groups.

I think all build diversity comes into play in WvW, but in PvE there’s not much reason for it at the moment.

petespri.6548:

Beldin.5498:

Edited the post to also calculate the soldier armor, since your numbers simply are
much too different. You see celestial and soldiers are very close and not so difference
than what you postet.

And like i said before, might and banner change the total numbers but not the percentage.

Question.

Your chart does not factor in Condi damage for celestial. How much dmg would that add? I wonder for solo play for certain mob types in Silverwastes or high toughness.

Can’t say that since condition works over time. For bleeds however its not that big
difference i noted. Have a sword warrior with celestial armor, amulet and rings
and the bleed on Mobs in Dredgehaunt cliffs was 53 while my other warriors
with zerker / knights stuff have a 46 bleed there i think.

Gw2skills.net says 76 instead of 55 per bleed btw. .. never really checked the number there.

Does anyone even get a sense of class role when deciding on stat setups?

depsite the any class any role design of the game I still get a sense of roleplaying when it comes to what stats im choosing and what class im playing

I have 2 warriors at lvl 80 with full Exotic gear
one is a Zerker and the other is a Regen Tank in Soldiers

without question my Regen Tank Soldier is extremely more useful than my Zerker.. in a lot more circumstances..

My Zerker can get by ok against most mobs in Pve which is my preferred game mode but against tough enemies like elites, champs or silver rings.. My zerker warrior will get dominated badly..
spending most of my time dodging or avoiding combat waiting for heal cooldowns etc.. it defies the point of Raw dps..

I still beleive Gw2 has a class role of melee, rouge, range and I believe that stats do complement these roles specifically

Zerker and condition stats are mostly for Ranged based roles.. high dps while being out of danger
Necromancer/Ranger/Ele/Engineer mostly

Soldier and Knights are for Melee based roles.. considering Melee is the role of tanks
Warrior/Guardian mostly

and the precision stats are for the rouges.. the high crit get in and dps stab in the back while the enemy is distracted kinda guys
Thief/Ranger

I’ve played with a lot of stat combos on different toons but I find this works best for me
Zerker on Melee just doesn’t work for me.. the Dps is fine.. not arguing that.. but without any survivability I just don’t find it that useful.. specially in group content where most people just stack up to counter the survivability flaw in the build

petespri.6548:

Back on toughness and defense…

I heard that shields are unique and give more baseline Defense which other weapons do not give. I looked but couldn’t find it in the wiki.

Can anyone confirm?

Look at any shield. They all give a small amount of defense.

Hmm, so this brings up my next question.

If I were to do a combination of Zerk + Knights.. would it be better with Soldiers? I suppose this would lead to the Toughness vs Vitality.

Then again I hear that conditions are not affected by armor, so Vitality (Soldiers) would be better yes? Hmm.