Guild Wars 2

zexion.5842:

Soo what you are saying is 200 toughness reduced your damage by 10%. Um sorry but that is extremely good for 200 toughness.

Even if 200 toughness gave 10% damage reduction, and I’m pretty sure it only gives a fraction of that, it would be terrible. Woohoo, I can use 66% of my level 40’s trait points to negate one of every 10 attacks! It looks especially bad considering that my base armor and toughness are 284 and 332, making for 616 base armor. I could gain maybe 125 more toughness if my armor increased that stat. So if I put everything towards toughness, assuming 10% reduction per 200 armor, I might attain just over 1000 armor base. Plus 155 from Rock Barrier for 1155. Plus 43 for being attuned to earth, so about 1200. So that’s about 60% damage reduction.

That’s sub-par even before I consider that 200 toughness only seems to give about 3% DR (I’m not sure where you pulled the 10% from). I guess I’d get about 20% actually.

Or I could put those 20 points into vitality and turn my 4191 base HP into 6191, nearly a 50% increase without even taking into account any vitality from gear. And vitality works against condition damage.

I think the answer is clear to me.

But I’m not sure that toughness works in a straightforward manner at all. I was reading an article on GuildWars2Guru where it was stated that toughness worked on some weird exponential curve. I can’t seem to locate that article again.

Okay. I randomly can’t edit my post or reply to anybody. Again. So I guess they’ll just have to deal with a double post.

I’m going to spend a bit of time doing a test with my 42 elementalist. I’m going to walk out naked with no traits spent and record the damage taken for about 50 hits. Then I’m going to put on a full set of +toughness armor of my level and record an additional 50 normal non-crit hits from the same monster. Then go naked again and put 20 points into my toughness trait and record another 50 hits. Then I’ll put on the armor, have the traits, and do everything I can possibly do to raise my toughness, then record another 50 hits.

It’ll all be from the same type of enemy (probably something easy like a drake or a raptor). I’ll record crit hits, but I’ll keep going until I get 50 non-crit hits. I’d like to see if i get hit for crits less with more armor, but I seriously doubt the sample size is large enough to have a good conclusion. Let me know if you guys think 50 is too small.

For science!

… as soon as the TP is back out of maintenance.

I can’t quote you drake since the page appears broken.

So, you want to be ignorant and attempt to tell me what I did or did not read? Like I told you I read your post, do you understand why I mentioned up dedicated healer? Simply put, if healing power was a attractive stat on par with vit, toughness it would create them. Thus, they would in time become mandatory. You would have players who spec for burst damage, those who spec to be tank like and then you would have those who spec to heal.

But anet clearly stated they do not want a healer in this game. So what is the point of taking healing power as a stat? Tbh, I don’t even understand why it is the stat, given the way healing works in this game. I suppose its to give the player the illusion of choice. But its not really a logical stat to take.

One of the only solutions I see is for the devs to re-evaluate how much healing power is worth as a stat. So when it comes to allocating item value, healing power should not be the same value as the other stats. It should be far less.

Okay, the data from letting a level 43 Lynx just inside Dredgehaunt Cliffs hit my naked level 42 elementalist. The Lynx’s normal attacks are called “Bite” and “Slash”, and they appear to be roughly identical in damage. I have a base toughness and armor of 332.

780, 834, 854, 822, 789, 853, 844, 779, 821, 844, 816, 819, 802, 794, 780, 837, 838, 833, 816, 816, 804, 777, 855, 775, 832, 825, 783, 786, 838, 854, 854, 798,
839, 839, 805, 793, 813, 799, 855, 794, 786, 812, 787, 848, 808, 802, 798, 844, 834, 774, 828,
1267, 1234, 1161, 1206, 1236, 1194, 1242, 1236, 1195

So an average damage of 799 from the 51 non-crit hits. Any data I could have gotten from the crits is probably thrown off by the fact that the Lynx is 1 level higher than me. I want to do the toughness gear with no traits next, but it’ll have to wait until Anet fixes the TP.

Well, the TP went up for about 5 minutes, then died again. In that time, I learned that a full toughness set at my level (which is to say, at level 35, since that’s the highest crafted toughness set my character can wear at 42) would give 407 toughness. Both armor and trinkets. The TP died before I could buy a set, but I can emulate it by wearing all of my normal armor set except for the shoes and then using a defensive skill, which should give me 409 additional toughness. The data:

379, 363, 366, 362, 382, 380, 354, 351, 354, 354, 351, 374, 361, 355, 373, 366, 363, 366, 365, 372, 355, 371, 367, 356, 367, 380, 376, 350, 363, 360, 375, 379, 363, 361, 370, 369, 350, 366, 376, 364, 374, 357, 354, 370, 378, 376, 371, 366, 356, 350, 364, 367, 360, 357, 370
540, 533, 555, 546, 555, 562, 553, 527, 561

Well, well! This is most unexpected! Going from 332 armor and toughness to 487 toughness and 741 armor has made quite an impact, cutting my average non-crit damage from 799 to 365 on the same Lynx. That’s a 54% reduction in damage. Time for the naked, but with 20 points in toughness traits, test.

And here are the results for the 20 points in Earth while naked test. Toughness and armor at 532.

514, 528, 516, 511, 529, 499, 516, 493, 491, 493, 483, 501, 531, 526, 531, 484, 527, 502, 532, 489, 529, 493, 528, 523, 508, 521, 518, 516, 534, 523, 502, 527, 490, 490, 520, 494, 504, 502, 488, 500, 518, 510, 518, 510, 515, 496, 524, 510, 523, 506, 532, 519, 484, 527, 496, 492, 506, 491, 496, 490, 508, 515, 521, 524, 513, 488, 532, 531
799, 756, 794, 733, 786, 791, 796, 799, 799, 798

An average of 510.3 for the normal hits. About a 36% damage reduction, and about what you’d expect from something slightly more than half way between the first and second test. It seems like it might scale linearly. If that’s true, I should be able to anticipate the damage I’ll take when I decide to go all out.

332 base armor, plus 407 from armor and trinkets, plus 200 from traits, plus 42 from being attuned to earth, plus 155 for Rock Barrier for a total of…1136. So like 80 to 82% damage reduction. So he should hit me for about 160 damage per hit. I’ll find out… just as soon as I catch the trading post when it’s out of maintenance again.

Looking forward to more of that data. Good effort!
Informative thread here.

Aza.2105:

I can’t quote you drake since the page appears broken.

So, you want to be ignorant and attempt to tell me what I did or did not read? Like I told you I read your post, do you understand why I mentioned up dedicated healer? Simply put, if healing power was a attractive stat on par with vit, toughness it would create them. Thus, they would in time become mandatory. You would have players who spec for burst damage, those who spec to be tank like and then you would have those who spec to heal.

But anet clearly stated they do not want a healer in this game. So what is the point of taking healing power as a stat? Tbh, I don’t even understand why it is the stat, given the way healing works in this game. I suppose its to give the player the illusion of choice. But its not really a logical stat to take.

One of the only solutions I see is for the devs to re-evaluate how much healing power is worth as a stat. So when it comes to allocating item value, healing power should not be the same value as the other stats. It should be far less.

I can’t believe that it would “create” dedicated healers. I know Staff Elementalists, without being specced into +healing traits or wearing +healing gear, that can keep their entire party “topped off” in Expo dungeons, thus completely mitigating non-major damage. They don’t need +Healing to be effective at healing.

So it’s really null and void – they can stack boon duration, toughness, and vitality, be impossible to kill, and be amazing at healing the group.

For that matter, I’m not sure you understand what a dedicated healer actually is.

The important thing here is that there’s no incentive to get +Healing even when you build for support. It’s a worthless stat.

StarlightGamer.9560:

And here are the results for the 20 points in Earth while naked test. Toughness and armor at 532.

514, 528, 516, 511, 529, 499, 516, 493, 491, 493, 483, 501, 531, 526, 531, 484, 527, 502, 532, 489, 529, 493, 528, 523, 508, 521, 518, 516, 534, 523, 502, 527, 490, 490, 520, 494, 504, 502, 488, 500, 518, 510, 518, 510, 515, 496, 524, 510, 523, 506, 532, 519, 484, 527, 496, 492, 506, 491, 496, 490, 508, 515, 521, 524, 513, 488, 532, 531
799, 756, 794, 733, 786, 791, 796, 799, 799, 798

An average of 510.3 for the normal hits. About a 36% damage reduction, and about what you’d expect from something slightly more than half way between the first and second test. It seems like it might scale linearly. If that’s true, I should be able to anticipate the damage I’ll take when I decide to go all out.

332 base armor, plus 407 from armor and trinkets, plus 200 from traits, plus 42 from being attuned to earth, plus 155 for Rock Barrier for a total of…1136. So like 80 to 82% damage reduction. So he should hit me for about 160 damage per hit. I’ll find out… just as soon as I catch the trading post when it’s out of maintenance again.

Good to hear that Toughness is actually prettykittengood. It also helps to highlight just how worthless Healing is as a defensive stat. If I can get 80% damage reduction from maxing out on Toughness, what’s the point in getting Healing? After all, no matter how much Healing I get, I can’t get my self-heal to heal up 80% of my total HP.

Frankly, I’m surprised that our 6-slot skill heals for a flat amount, instead of healing for a percentage of our total HP, which then can be increased by +Healing. Wouldn’t that make it effective, without allowing it to be OP?
It would also serve the purpose of our 6-slot skills not becoming useless when we stack up tons of Vit.

Yes Drake, its quite hard to comprehend what the word dedicated means. I’ve noticed that each reply you have wrote to me that you have made the attempt of trying to be condescending in a sly manner. Is that necessary?

Perhaps I should agree with everything you are saying, so it can confirm what you already think you know. I’m sure that would make you much happier.

Aza.2105:

Yes Drake, its quite hard to comprehend what the word dedicated means.

I’m emphasizing that word because your posts suggest that you don’t. You understand that a dedicated healer means a person that heals, and does nothing else, right? Except maybe, say, cleansing off conditions from allies. All he does is sit in the back, throw out healing water, maybe cleansing conditions, and nothing else. Applies no conditions, deals no damage, strips no boons.

This would not happen just by making Healing Power actually scaling well on the 6-slot skills. The result of Healing Power actually scaling so that it’s worth using as a defensive stat would do nothing more than give players a viable alternative to Toughness and Vitality for defense – a defense that’s less passive and more active.

Drake,

I think its your reading comprehension that needs work, not my post. I also find it absolutely comical how you even go on to explain what a dedicated healer is to me. As if I didn’t know that.

You have a flaw in your observation, healing isn’t a defensive stat its supportive. Defensive would be a skill or stat that helps you mitigate damage in some form. Healing does not do that. Block is defensive, Protection boon is defensive, Weakness is defensive, Toughness is defensive and Vitality is defensive. All of those skills either negate damage entirely or allow you to mitigate it in some form.

Healing does not do this at all, so regardless of your perspective that healing is defensive, it makes no sense. Since even if it scaled very high it would not save you from blows that could potentially kill you in a few hits quickly.

Another mistake you have made is putting healing power on par with toughness and vitality, that makes no sense neither since neither toughness nor vitality affect skills. If anything healing power would be compared to a stat like crit damage, which needs another stat in order for it to be effective. But on its own the value is much less.

Healing power becomes more valuable with the higher mitigation or ways to negate incoming damage. Regardless, even if they changed the scaling of your self heal so that it had 2x the potency it would change nothing. If a mob kills you in one shot, having a 2x heal would do nothing since you are dead.

Does Healing Power make a difference when you have regeneration and skills like Signet of Healing or the Guardian’s healing Virtue?

I was generally planning to go toughness + healing power on my armor before. But should I have gone vitality instead?

Aza.2105:

You have a flaw in your observation, healing isn’t a defensive stat its supportive

It’s specifically stated in a developer blog that they added Healing in order to add a viable alternative to Toughness. There’s also the simple fact that self-healing is, in many MMOs a viable form of damage mitigation that many players do enjoy as a defensive option.

You have to be really naive to believe that self-healing is not a form of active defense.

Kain Francois.4328:

Does Healing Power make a difference when you have regeneration and skills like Signet of Healing or the Guardian’s healing Virtue?

I was generally planning to go toughness + healing power on my armor before. But should I have gone vitality instead?

That’s what this thread is trying to point out. Others have chimed in to note that Toughness is dramatically better, numerically, than Healing, as well.

Okay, and the TP is back up. And on second thought, I’m not going to spend 30s to get a whole set of hearty green level 35s that are only slightly better than what I have. So I just bought the heartiness trinkets instead and used my regular armor set, which will give me 360 instead of 407 armor, for a total of 1089, according to the character screen. Expected 76.8% damage reduction for hits of around 185. The data:

258, 241, 248, 258, 248, 245, 250, 242, 245, 252, 248, 236, 235, 237, 256, 254, 252, 235, 235, 236, 235, 242, 257, 246, 237, 257, 258, 234, 239, 234, 258, 241, 247, 241, 248, 243, 255, 247, 239, 237, 235, 249, 248, 234, 246, 239, 252, 239, 254, 241
379, 365, 387, 364, 351

Average of 244.86.Okay, so about 25% more damage than I was expecting. 245 is about a 70% reduction from 799, which either means that 70% is the cap of damage reduction or that I’ve hit diminishing returns. I’m going to assume that 70% is the cap. For a level 42 elementalist, that percentage of damage reduction would be hit at about 992 or 993 armor (let’s just say an even 1000?).

So I guess anything over 1000 armor is better spent elsewhere at level 40. For me, a full set of heartiness armor and trinkets and 20 points in earth would bring me to just under 950. So 990 when attuned to earth. So I can pretty much go all out on toughness and not worry about wasting stats.

So all in all, toughness doesn’t look nearly as useless as it did before. It’s strange how completely my experiences differ from the actual data. I have to wonder just how much damage event bosses are dishing out to have been able to hit my thief, toughness spec’d at the time, for over 1600 damage. And that Hyena that only did 100 damage less to my thief after changing to toughness? I can only assume that a Hyena’s opening attack is largely composed of condition damage. Normally condition damage is delivered over time, but I guess it doesn’t always have to be so.

At 300 healing power i would not be surprised if it was useless. I am lvl 62 warrior and have 852 healing power before I get 25 stacks of life from my major sigil of life on my hammer(which then puts me over a thousand.) I run a rather unique tanky/support build though. I have found at that much healing power my healing signet rarely needs to be popped as the Regen I get is pretty good. Also in my traits I have the traits that reduce the cooldown of my shouts by 20% as well as the one that makes my shouts heal(which I have found is affected by healing power). Essentially giving me 4 heals(healing signet+the 3 shouts). In addition the shouts with my traits heal everyone in the shout radius, and can be popped while CC’d and rezzing.

Healing power I do not think is completely useless it is just not a stat I would recommend for ALL builds and classes. Also I have found it affects regeneration, rejuvenation, healing skills and abilties, and I am pretty sure it affects rezzing.

Edit,

posted this after reading page 1, and was completely oblivious to the other 2 pages. Have since skimmed them to find another person was running a support warrior build w/ healing power, and liked it, and that toughness has a fairly good damage reduction.

jpnole.2476:

There is no dedicated healer class. It has been discussed in many threads so far. Even if you only want to heal yourself, the combat system isn’t designed for you to always be able to heal your way out of trouble. Working as intended.

Then why even put the stat in the game? I mean I get what you’re saying…but it seems like a waste to have it in there. It just confuses people into thinking stacking it is a good idea.

Also I wish I would have read this post earlier today before building a self healing set for my guard…..fml

Thanks for this thread Drake. I was planning on rerolling a water elementalist and it helps to know that this stat is best to avoid for the time being.

So, i did some checking for the ranger heals and they actually seem to be scaling about 1:1 on all of them (Healing spring i can 100% confirm scales 1:1 on the raw heal, not to mention the regen), so with my nice sexy clerics set i’m actually able to heal myself and friends for a fairly large sum!! Same goes with the scaling on my Natures Spirit (granted tooltip doesn’t show how much he ACTUALLY heals for, but it goes from about 320- somewhere around 460), now this is only with healing power on my gear, NOT runes, i could get more if i wanted, but i personally went with more health due to the whole saccing tons of health in exchange for super healing…

Maybe it got stealth buffed?

Much like the original poster, not sure where to put this so I’m going to put this in this thread as I’m not sure about other classes but I wanna give my 2 cents here when it comes to Warrior and Healing Power and Cleric gear. Big post incoming.

Before buffs, I have 1494 healing. All math done with stuff from the GW2 wiki.

Healing signet passive (ticks once a second):
200 + (1494 × 0.0325) = 248.555
Adrenal Health passive (ticks once every 3 seconds):
3 Bar of Adrenaline – 360 health every 3s

So before anything else added in, I’m getting about 360 HP back a second. That’s pretty good, but we can do more.

Banana Cream Pie: 30 HP a second
Healing shouts do about 2.4k aoe heal, I have 2 set on at most times, one which are on a reasonable 25 second cooldown. Shake it off shout always aoe removes conditions.

Warhorn trait will flip the poison condition into regeneration. How much would regeneration tick for on top of everything else?

Assuming level 80,
(1.625*80) + (0.1258*1494) = 317.9452

Dwayna Runes give aoe regen for 5 seconds to everyone near me when I use my healing signet, which heals for around 4.9k and due to the reduced signet cooldown trait, I have only 16 seconds before it’s up again and the passive signet regen is ticking.

Add on top of the fact that Cleric gear gives toughness to help mitigate damage and warrior’s huge HP pool, you get an extremely survivable warrior that can pretty much take a long term beating from anything. This doesn’t even count the fact that I have 2 endure pains due to the trait and the actual skill and then a shield to help block any incoming direction damage. Any warrior looking to play tanky should stack healing power with signet and healing shouts.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/rei_happycat/gw015.jpg

Picture is pretty much the highest Healing bonus I could get with sigils, pure cleric exotics, 6 superior Dwayna runes and +100 food. Would really like to see if anyone has gotten any higher on warrior as I’m not trying to boast but would honestly like to ask how as well as I am addicted to healing power.

Curious to see what necro can do as well with cleric gear as well since it shares the same huge hp as warrior.

TL;DR healing power is fine but it’s for survival, not for killing

Mougen.6702:

Also I wish I would have read this post earlier today before building a self healing set for my guard…..fml

Healing necromancer, sup.

Hold me ;_:

@Timothy,

I agree, however according to the wiki healing signets passive grants regeneration, which also according to the wiki follows this formula;

1.625*Level + .1258*Healing Power

so that gives you 318 healing a second from healing signet

also healing signet has a passive of 200 health per sec at 0 healing power so now we have 418

add 120(the 360 health per 3 seconds from adrenal health)
and you get 538 healing a sec

add 30 for the banana cream pie and you get 568 health per sec.

but we can do better!

let us say we have a superior sigil of life and it has 25 stacks.
that is +250 healing power.

assuming all buffs I listed above (food and adrenal health) are also active you get

600 healing per second, which means in roughly 10 seconds he will have gained 6000 health in regen alone.

I would like to point out that 32 health per second more is big.
It is essentially 162 more health every 5 seconds.

for comparison let us look at the warrior skill healing surge which does 8,440 healing at lvl 80 without healing power and has a 30 second cooldown, so essentially 8440 health per 30 seconds. Now with said healing power build you get 18000 healing per 30 seconds through pure regen.

THIS MATH IS ALL ACCORDING TO GW2 WIKI

The Stats in this Game are kind off weird anyway. Critical damage is meh too,a s you need power (and in most cases precision to make use of it, and it synergizes with nothing else.

I actually think non-self heals are kind of fine currently scaling wise. (overall, solo abilties might still be off)

Tick based healing from abilities (regeneration, Signet of Malice Passive, Ele Signet Passive) seems quite okay too. Signet of Malice goes from 100 to roughly 150 in 950 healing power, which is quite okay considering how often it triggers if you use something like unload)

Tick based healing from Items seems meh. Dolyak Runes heal a low static amount, Lifesteal on crit is miniscule, while lifeleech on weapon swap and Vampire Runes don’t scale at all.

But the self heals are quite bad.Especially considering this is the place were you could actually use the stat without trying to be a dedicated healer. As an interruptable survival tool. Some self heals don’t even use it at all ( Signet of Malice active doesn’t scale o.O)

Active Self heals could actually gain healing of slightly less 2 per point in healing power. (that means you would need to use a self heal 5 times to reach the strength of Vitality and would still be interruptable, lowerable through poison, etc.) You could also create
percentage based heals (heals 40% of your health, increases by 0,01% per healing power, for 60% at 2000 HP)

Selfheals with varying Healing (Adrenal Surge) should probably also have varied amounts of benefits form healing power.

Perhaps heals (that aren’t self heals, since it would be way to annoying) should also be able to crit. makes them more potent (if too potent nerf it) and would give another use to silly critical damage.

Some people swear by vit but im probably one of d few people who would swear by toughness. While i still take alot of dmg at dungeons, i love taking on 3-4 mobs in cursed shore. Tbh i was kinda expecting toughness to be useless as i keep hearing scary stories about 80 map, but with full rare set and exotic accessory set on medium armor, i take about 500-800 dmg per hit on mobs, which is nice given i only have around 14k hp and how easy it is to kite the mobs.

Wrt to healing power, i agree the increment isnt big but i think its sufficient for what it does. While healing is and certainly will be helpful (i love u necro who heals mr even for just 1-2k when we did se story with no prior knowledge abt it!!) Imo the game rewards dmg mitigation over healing. I think some article said something about healing is only something that you do when youre about to lose.

I may be looking at it the wrong way, but in my opinion Healing power is viable stat for guardians, if they want to go defensive.

It doesn’t scale well with everything – it barely adds anything to mace 3rd attack heal. It adds aroun ~15% to 4tsh skill from staff, and around 5% to 2nd skill from staff.

But for virtue of resolve, adding around 500 healing power adds 31 per tick. That’s 25% increase on our passive healing (at 80). It also adds around 25% to Hold the Line regen, and 33% to Save yourselves Regen (respectively 300ish and 700ish healing).

I’m not saying it’s an awesome stat. But it’s not as useless as you try to make it right now. Just like toughness isn’t. At least for a guardian. With full Cleric gear, runed with superior soldier, 0/0/30/20/20 build I can tank (as in keep their attention on me, stay in melee most of the time, and survive) everything that doesn’t use conditions. And most of the thing that use conditions as well, since I get rid of them in the blink of an eye with purity, signet of resolve, Absolute Resolve, 6th bonus from Soldier runes and combo field light from symbols .

Perhaps it’s not working well with other classes, but as far as guardian goes – it’s viable.

You need to look at this in the scope of other stats as well. Toughness also greatly improves the effectiveness of healing. If you want to maximize your healing you need to also maximize your toughness.

For example. If you 0% damage reduction a 1000 point heal is worth 1000 points of damage taken. If you have 50% damage reduction that same heal is now worth 2000 points of damage taken. This is of course an extreme example of how + heal and + tough can be combined to make yourself beefy.

You also need to look at it in the scope of game mechanics. * In general* there is not mana, just cooldowns. This means if you can survive your opponents first 10 or so spells their spammable “one” skill does very little damage comparably. This makes your last few HP more valuable than your first few.

I really don’t think people are taking into account the utility value of vitality or toughness vs. healing either though. They necessarily don’t have to scale the same because in this game the ability to heal is more potent then just having a large HP or an initial guard that the vitality and toughness provide. I prefer not being able to panic when my health is low, knowing the boosts I get from all the healing benefits of my build come more into play in the heat of a battle.

I also play a guardian which is very beneficial from a wide arrange of heals and support heals. So it might also come down to being profession dependent.