Guild Wars 2

Its time to end this debate on which set up is better once and for all with your host Yumiko Emi Ishida the elementalist! I will be basing this off of stats alone using exotic and ascended gear only with power infusions to make it fair. Traits will not be used as result will vary per class and build. The idea is to maximize power and survivability in PVT and max critical rate and damage in Zerker.

These are the factors I’ll be basing the judgement on which set up is better:

Base max equipment power:
PVT: 2131 (2130)
Zerker: 2131 (2130)

Base max Equipment Vit:
PVT: 1600
Zerker: 916

Base max Equipment Tough:
PVT: 1600
Zerker: 916

Base max Equipment Precision:
PVT: 916
Zerker: 1600

-Raw pure Power and in essence, your raw Attack stat. Conclusion: PVT wins with between 2698 to 2710 power fully geared and with proper trait bonuses.
-Critical Hit Rate and Damage: Zerker wins.
-Survivability PVT wins

Without further ado, lets begin!

PVT or soldiers or invaders if you wvw, this stat distribution is GW 2’s bruiser. They can take the damage and dish it out. PVT stands for Power Vitality and Toughness in the distribution of ~1.4x major vs minor for exotics and ~1.5x major vs minor for ascended in stats respectively.

According to wiki http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_Nomenclature, you get a total of 1095 power and 600 vitality and toughness with PVT gear if using all ascended trinkets with power infusions.

Note: these totals above are with two one-hand weapons— as a 2-handed weapon adds 179 (one point short of 2 one-hands combined) power and 128 vit and tough (64 × 2) vs 180/128/128.

Using crests of the soldier and orbs, (there are no pvt orbs for jewels for trinkets, only sentinel (not the focus here) exists. PVT Trinkets only exist as karma or rare dungeon recipes that use 200 tokens or as Ascended.) You can get more soldier stats for your armor better than runes can, yet crests do not come in exotic or ascended varieties.

Note 2: you still need to add a random Power based jewel or a sentinel jewel (less power more vit and same level of tough) to get close to pure soldiers on trinkets. You might as well get full ascended instead. This is what makes PVT pale in comparison to Zerker in getting raw output.

With crests, you get 120 power and 84 Vitality and Toughness respectively for a total of 1215 power and 684 vit and tough.

Now for base stats at lv 80: A character no matter the class, has 916 in power, vit, and tough with 0 traits added. Precision is also at 916 and will come into play when discussing zerker and comparing critical.

this should equal to 2131 power and 1600 vit and tough base stats with all best equipment on. A zerker will see 2131 power and 916 only for vit and tough.

Based on this alone we can see the PVT user will live longer.

PVT wins the Survivability part of this debate, but what about damage and crit?

I will discuss Crit later in my second post in respect to PVT. I am discussing damage below and in this post for now. For all intents and purposes, Zerker base damage is capped at 2131 for (2x 1-hands) or 2130 (2 hand weapon) and whatever 916 vit and tough equals

For raw base damage, both are tied at this very moment, but what is this? Superior Sharpening Stone and Food says hi and get consumed by the player in PVT gear!

A superior sharpening stone adds bonus damage (base damage = power) based on how much vit and toughness the player has during its duration and is recalculated each time something changes this (boons/traits/conditions/food/environmental effects including wvw and guild effects).

Adds power equal to 6% of your toughness and 4% of your vitality

that 1600 toughness above becomes an additional 96 power and that 1600 vitality will come out to 64 more power. This will be 160 more raw damage!

The power now is at 2291.

Now what if you eat a Plate of Orrian Steak Fries, you gain 100 power and 30 extra vitality!

Power is now 2291+ 100 + (30 × .04) or 2392.2 power rounded down to 2392.

If you add in 70 traits:

+300 power, vit, tough, or prec for each profession in one trait line.

+300 in vit or tough or precision or power for another

+100 in vit or tough or prec or power for a third, sacrificing one stat.

or 300/200/200 sacrificing one.

or 200 200 200 100 sacrificing none and only diminishing the least favored stat.

For PVT, you’d go 300/200/200or 300/300/100 in power vit tough.

what we are looking at here is

2692 power + the extra vit and tough converted to power

300 trait vit equals 12 power
300 trait toughness equals 18 power
200 trait vit and 200 trait tough 8 and 12 power respectively.
100 is 4 and 6 respectively

so we are looking at 2698 to 2710 power depending on traits in vit or toughness.

Thus max power by a pvt user is 2710.

Continued in next post by me.

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

Current meta game for yah

Full beserker armor and accessories no matter the class you run, well except for guardians they are heavily focused on support as a class , learn to dodge and play smart.

anything else is as of current game mechanics detrimental and under performing.

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

The issue isn’t as much with the players, though, but with the poor design implemented by ArenaNet. By making dodging so proheminent, ArenaNet has made a large part of support irrelevant (all the interesting kinds of active support that help the entire party to withstand damage), and has created a mentality that leads to a lot of elitism.

Latinkuro.9420:

Current meta game for yah

Full beserker armor and accessories no matter the class you run, well except for guardians they are heavily focused on support as a class , learn to dodge and play smart.

anything else is as of current game mechanics detrimental and under performing.

My Guardian hasn’t worn her Knight’s gear in over a month. All the guardians in our guild run full berserker nowadays.

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

The issue isn’t as much with the players, though, but with the poor design implemented by ArenaNet. By making dodging so proheminent, ArenaNet has made a large part of support irrelevant (all the interesting kinds of active support that help the entire party to withstand damage), and has created a mentality that leads to a lot of elitism.

Funny, because I’ve done every single dungeon path in the game in a team in full Berserker gear (except for Arah p1.. I should really just do it to get my DM).

Not to mention, I don’t run CoF out of principle and haven’t done it in like 2 months.

Well I usually run with knight armor + zerker acessories on my warrior and pvt armor + zerker acessories in my guardian. It is true that learning to dodge will allow you to feel more comfortable with zerker gear or a more dps focused build but I rather eat some damage and feel less squishy than getting destroyed in 1 hit because i had no endurance for a dodge.
You have to take in account on that speech you said OP that PVT and Knight users tend to take an enemy aggro way more than a zerker player, so if you’re playing a class or can’t handle damage incoming quite well I’d advise to stay away from PVT or Knight.

Come to WvWvW and laugh at those zerker people.

Bright.9160:

Not to mention, I don’t run CoF out of principle and haven’t done it in like 2 months.

I wasn’t saying you farm CoF. Only that CoF is one of the best examples of how, despite a strong foundation, the combat system in GW2 is so shallow that it allows berseker gear to be the best for any profession.

Zerker – Dungeons
Knight – Solo
PVT – WvW

Yay.

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

Guess i’ll do it for Weth this time, not sure if he reads the general discussion thread or not.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTj6IHLTMuY3dF1fP8XoZvQ

Now of course this conversation is going to differ from different forms of the game.

Dungeons should be done in full zerker, if your good enough. There is no situation in any dungeon that cannot be handled with a full zerker team thus making any other gear completely useless (aside from high level fractals)

wvw and spvp/tpvp are completely different and completely situational.

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

Not to mention, I don’t run CoF out of principle and haven’t done it in like 2 months.

I wasn’t saying you farm CoF. Only that CoF is one of the best examples of how, despite a strong foundation, the combat system in GW2 is so shallow that it allows berseker gear to be the best for any profession.

To be honest, it’s not. There are plenty of other, more clear examples of how DPS or gtfo is trivializing the content.

I’ve seen Subject Alpha die in 12 seconds. Spider queen in 12 seconds, Nightmare tree on any path in <40 seconds, Destroyer boss in CoE p3 before the shield even started flickering (so that’s in 15 seconds) etc etc.

People think CoF is the problem, but as someone who runs Berserker teams in dungeons all day, I can honestly tell you that every single dungeon is a joke as long as you know the mechanics.

Who cares what’s best, play whatever you like and laugh at those poor kitten doing what others tell them to do (I bet they really enjoy playing the way others want).

Continued from above.

For Zerker, base damage is 2130 or 2131 based on weapon and then you have 916 vit and toughness.

Seeing that trait bonuses will be set to 300 power and 300 precision most of the time, that leaves 100 toughness in favor of vit as its 6% vs 4% when using the best sharpening stone.

2131 (for sake of best total) + 306 (300 power+ [100 tough x .06]) = 2437 max power with zerker! Still not bad! It will always be 2131 (or 2130) maximum base power from equipment because of power being the major stat in all equipment with Power first!

Now with raw power out of the way, lest discuss precision critical and critical damage!

Precision is a tricky little stat as in wiki discussions it was found to have a sort of DR in respect to your level. Power seems to be 1:1 in respect to attack as attack is power + weapon rated damage (highest value in your weapon range).

And I paraphrase from wiki,
“At lv 80, you need 21 precision to raise critical rate by 1 %. This is rounded down when calculated.”

Your base 916 precision is accounting for 4% base crit rate.

You will need a minimum of 937 to get it to 5%! (Wiki says 927 and is wrong.)

As we are working with lv 80s and lv 80 gear, I will draw the equipment values down from my first post:

Equipment is 2131 or 2130 power, 1600 precision, 916 vitality, and 916 Toughness

Traits are: 300 power 300 precision 100 toughness.

We are now at: 2431 power 1900 precision 1016 toughness.

Food used will be:
Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup – Double-click to gain +100 precision, +10% critical damage, and +10 Experience from kills. Lasts 30 minutes.

You reach: 2431 power 2000 precision 1016 toughness 916 vit.

-or-

Plate of Truffle Steak – Double-click to gain +100 power, +70 precision, and +10 Experience from kills. Lasts 30 minutes.

You get: 2531 power 1970 precision 1016 toughness 916 vit.

And then Master Maintenance Oil for your tool. 4% Vit is Precision and 6% of Toughness is Precision.

2431 power, 2097 precision, 1016 toughness, 916 vit, and +10 Critical damage.
-or-
2531 power, 2067 precision, 1016 toughness, and 916 vit.

Lets see how much of a crit rate we have:

2097 – 916 (needed for 4% base crit rate) = 1181 precision /21 = 56.24% or 56%!
-or-
2067- 916 = 1151 precision /21 = 54.81% or 54%!

Now for Critical damage. This is a bonus % damage added on whenever a critical hit happens. It only comes from traits, skills, food/tools and equipment.

Note 3: No matter how much precision you add, it does not make more critical damage. Precision != more critical damage.

With your exotic armor and weapons and ascended trinkets and back… you expect to see: A max of 72% extra critical damage. a Critical hit does 150% damage alone. Do this a max of 222% extra damage! Trait bonuses account for 30% more for a total of 252%!

As for PVT: The critical rate is 4% (916 precision) + 1600 vit x .04 precision + 1600 Tough x .06 precision.

64+96= 160 extra precision /21 = +7.6 % critical rate! Which is only 11% rounded down!

You will only see 150% critical damage from a such a small critical hit chance as you used no traits to get critical damage from traits or food/tools as PVT user.

In conclusion: for pure survival use PVT and still have the best raw attack power in the game, but no ability aside from skills/traits to add more than 150% bonus damage 11% of the time.

Or if zerker, have 200 less damage and heck of a lot less survivability and do up to 2.5 times the damage nearly 60% of the time!

I presented the raw data its up to you all to decide what to use when and where.

alcopaul.2156:

Come to WvWvW and laugh at those zerker people.

But I’m a thief with zerker. I usually do the laughing.

While PVT and PPC gear may have the same power stat, power is not the real issue. The real issue is ~2 to ~2.5 x damage ~80% of the time (assuming ~60% crit chance from gear, plus Fury). 4 attacks in 5 doing 2 to 2.5 times the damage, while PVT’s crit chance and multiplier are pitiful and cannot compete. Filter all that through attacks with high damage coefficients and you will see the reason for the prevailing belief in the meta.

Defense in the game is based around invulnerability, not passive defenses. Invulnerability is a limited resource. Killing things before the resources run out yields an easy run. Living through 1-3 more hits means almost nothing if the mobs live long enough to ablate one’s defensive resources.

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This. All your math also ignores traits that grant might on crit, which VASTLY increases damage output for zerk vs pvt

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

The issue isn’t as much with the players, though, but with the poor design implemented by ArenaNet. By making dodging so proheminent, ArenaNet has made a large part of support irrelevant (all the interesting kinds of active support that help the entire party to withstand damage), and has created a mentality that leads to a lot of elitism.

Uh where??? All the dungeon content in this game is absurdly easy and can be completed with just the traits + weapon/utility skill available. Learnto use your evade skills properly!

I wear full zerker gear in in all my pug teams and my dungeon runs consist of 95% pugging. I am THAT good.

My guild is so expert that we do speed runs on 5x Power Necros, faster than most 3xwarrior 1xmesmer 1xguardian PUG berserker speed runs.

And in all the above-mentioned, only one thing was true. Guess which part?

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

• Run full berserker
• Stack
• Time Warp + Hammer Protect + (Hallowed Ground + Chaos Armor when needed)
• Profit

Learn to dodge for Lupi and sometimes Alpha.

alcopaul.2156:

Come to WvWvW and laugh at those zerker people.

we’re talking PVE sir,
of course going into WvW with zerker gear is a moronic idea imo, unless you plan to hang back and nuke only from a far all the time.

Latinkuro.9420:

alcopaul.2156:

Come to WvWvW and laugh at those zerker people.

we’re talking PVE sir,
of course going into WvW with zerker gear is a moronic idea imo, unless you plan to hang back and nuke only from a far all the time.

You haven’t played tPvP. Zerk is the primary armorset for mesmers, thieves, and is viable for builds on ever other class.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

In conclusion: for pure survival use PVT and still have the best raw attack power in the game, but no ability aside from skills/traits to add more than 150% bonus damage 11% of the time.

I think you meant either 150% damage or 50% bonus damage:)

Anyway, I think most of us know that zerker outshines pvt by far, but thanks for the math. I suggest you also include the EHP values of PVT vs zerkers damage output in your conclusion.

Isn’t that what happens in all games? Once you know the mechanics it becomes easier?

I’m not sure what the point of all these numbers are. Is there a goal here, or is this thread just to publicly chart down your musings and exploration on the matter?

Two huge walls of text with lots of math to show the fact that PVT has more survivability than Zerker and Zerker has more dps than PVT? Gee, who would have guessed!

I was gonna say, stating the obvious much?

Yocairo.4257:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

In conclusion: for pure survival use PVT and still have the best raw attack power in the game, but no ability aside from skills/traits to add more than 150% bonus damage 11% of the time.

I think you meant either 150% damage or 50% bonus damage:)

Anyway, I think most of us know that zerker outshines pvt by far, but thanks for the math. I suggest you also include the EHP values of PVT vs zerkers damage output in your conclusion.

A critical hit multiplies damage by 1.5 before crit damage stat is factored in.

The extra HP from PVT vs zerker’s 916 lv 80 base vit alone is hard to do in game as you have wvw affecting your HP. You need an overflow or I need to find the formula for vit -> HP in wiki as vit isn’t directly 1:1. I’ll add those values in. I do know tough = extra armor at 1:1.

@blood: I mainly wanted to show the math and let people decide whether they want to use steady hits of max non varied damage (more wittering away at an opponent using pvt and surviving hits or a bit less base damage and hitting hard using a random roll checking for high crits.)

IMO the Zerker would be flawless if we could get 100% crit rate.

To get 100%, you need lv 80’s 916 + 2016 extra precision or 2932 or more precision. This is currently impossible without perma fury or without ascended armor and weapons. This is probably what a majority of players fear will happen.

I think fire sigil adds up to 180 precision which is less than 9% more crit rate. For a max of 64% or so.

As for HP, I found it every one vit is 10 hp. So 1600 hp is 16000 extra health and 916 vit is 9160 extra health. You need to add this to max health at level 80 based on profession after that. 300 vit in a trait line is another 3000 hp.

Khal Drogo.9631:

• Run full berserker
• Stack
• Time Warp + Hammer Protect + (Hallowed Ground + Chaos Armor when needed)
• Profit

Learn to dodge for Lupi and sometimes Alpha.

Actually, you should use Hallowed ground before timewarp, because field effects don’t override, and blasting Hallowed ground stacks might, which is a lot more useful than the Chaos armor from TW.

Well, the effect of the field overrides: you’ll get both the stability and the quickness, but the effects you get for blasting/leaping etc don’t override and whatever you use first has priority.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

• Run full berserker
• Stack
• Time Warp + Hammer Protect + (Hallowed Ground + Chaos Armor when needed)
• Profit

Learn to dodge for Lupi and sometimes Alpha.

kitten I am so jealous because of all those pros that know how to dogde

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Yocairo.4257:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

In conclusion: for pure survival use PVT and still have the best raw attack power in the game, but no ability aside from skills/traits to add more than 150% bonus damage 11% of the time.

I think you meant either 150% damage or 50% bonus damage:)

Anyway, I think most of us know that zerker outshines pvt by far, but thanks for the math. I suggest you also include the EHP values of PVT vs zerkers damage output in your conclusion.

A critical hit multiplies damage by 1.5 before crit damage stat is factored in.

The extra HP from PVT vs zerker’s 916 lv 80 base vit alone is hard to do in game as you have wvw affecting your HP. You need an overflow or I need to find the formula for vit -> HP in wiki as vit isn’t directly 1:1. I’ll add those values in. I do know tough = extra armor at 1:1.

Unless I’m missing your point, 150% or 1.5x is not 150% bonus damage.
The base point is already 100%, 1.5x that does half the base damage extra.

If you somehow meant damage with zerker gear included then I guess it would be ..about right.

By the way, It shouldn’t be that hard to calculate the damage vs EHP differences, I assume you have a full zerker and PVT set to test this? You don’t even need to step into wvw, just calculate it from the values you can get. Health pool x 1+(mitigation percentage) without traits is just that.

I.E 20k health and 60% mitigation would result in 32k EHP.

Good luck in your quest, I’m just suggesting to do this because without that conclusion your wall of text is nothing more than that:P

Edit: just added a plus sign:)

x per fection x.2096:

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTj6IHLTMuY3dF1fP8XoZvQ
—

You really want those views, huh?

l2dodge. good guide to newbies though, but zerker is just what you only need for pve.

Troll club is out on full force, I see. Thanks for the analysis!

Thank you for taking time and writing this analysis.

I think that the “best” gear is very circumstential. Generally speaking – the smaller and more contolled envirornment the more berserk you can go. Also some classes with a lot of invulnerabilities (mesmer and thief being a perfect example) can go more berserker than those that have to rely on dodges and rare skill usage to mitigate damage. Again, this is very generally speaking.

My WvWvW viewpoint (Why I run PVT):

As staff ele in WvWvW I can’t run in anything that doesn’t have loads of vitality or toughness. Why?

When I cast Meteor Shower and Glyph of Storms and enemy pops retaliation you are a toast in 3 seconds unless you have 20k-ish health. Switching earth for Protection and then immediatelly to water for regen + using heal skill is necessary too. I end up usually at round 2-3k health after that. (I am FULL PVT – 22k health) I can’t see a zerker surviving this…

I also need toughness for occational pushes in tight spaces – for example castle sieges or or tight spots (you can double dodgeroll through enemies AoE but you’ll take loads of damage even afterwards). Also I often suppress enemy walls and destroy sieges which makes me a very popular target of enemy ranged dps and sieges. Way to the wall + casting Meteor Shower + Glyph of Storms + getting away alive. Again, this would be impossible in zerker gear. You have to stand and cast there while under fire.

After having enough vitality and toughness to survive when it counts I can increase different stats.

Another thing is that some vital skills are not significantly (or at all) affected by critical chance / damage. Static field or waterfields for example. I do try to have decent crit though – I use heal on crit food.

Errant Venture.9371:

Erasculio.2914:

Bright.9160:

• Run full berserker
• Learn how to dodge
• ???
• Profit

This doesn’t always work, of course – there are many situations in which dodge is not enough.

CoF1 is not one of those situations, so people don’t see any point in defensive gear these days.

The issue isn’t as much with the players, though, but with the poor design implemented by ArenaNet. By making dodging so proheminent, ArenaNet has made a large part of support irrelevant (all the interesting kinds of active support that help the entire party to withstand damage), and has created a mentality that leads to a lot of elitism.

Uh where??? All the dungeon content in this game is absurdly easy and can be completed with just the traits + weapon/utility skill available. Learnto use your evade skills properly!

Outside dungeons, whenever you face a lot of enemies with imobilize (which prevents dodging) who can apply it in a shorter cooldown than your condition removal skills.

@Yumiko Ishida.3769

% crit chance (from precision) is math. rounded so that means that the best to have is X.51 % you dont see that in game stats but it works like that because it will be rounded up to X+1
On the other hand X.49% will be rounded down to X
SO
in the first case the excess of crit over 0.50% you can “convert” those by lowering precision and rising other stat (example i dont need 40.49% crit chance when 39.51% is the same. So you can get rid off 20pts of precision and get 20pts to other stat)

Huzzah for Necros… That said, thread is somewhat relevant, so let’s roll with it.

I like math posts, but this gets quite… messy. And not just small details like:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Base max equipment power:
PVT: 2131 (2130)
Zerker: 2131 (2130)
[…]

-Raw pure Power and in essence, your raw Attack stat. Conclusion: PVT wins with between 2698 to 2710 power fully geared and with proper trait bonuses.

Wat

Both Berserker’s and Soldier’s gear have the exact same amount of power. In raw power neither wins, it’s even.

…But then you start mixing in different foods, traits… I though we were talking about the “pure” stats. What you’re going into here is heavily influenced by builds… Which makes this completely irrelevant. The best stat distribution depends heavily on your build. Some builds benefit more from burst damage than they do from raw survivability, others work the other way around, etc. Additionally, in WvW your build has a lot more “stat freedom”, so you’re free to min max, to the point where it’s usually a bad idea to go full anything, instead tweaking your gear to maximize your desired stats.

And all of this is irrelevant for PvE, because the way PvE is currently designed the only right answer is Berserker’s, as non-offensive stats are trivial and can be discarded in favor of better offense. Sad but true. If you’re PvEing with anything but Berserker’s, you’re doing it wrong.

Honestly, as someone who has done gear analysis in various games in the past, I find this to be bad math. Here’s the short list of things I found:

1. You used a Sharpening Stone and a food that gives vitality, then proceeded to claim that the extra vitality from the food would also give extra power from the Sharpening Stone. This is not how those items function.
2. You talked about crit chance, but you failed to notice that you had the wrong formula. You start with 4%, but it turns into 5% at 927, after which you get 1% for every 21 points.
3. You never did proper survivability analysis on the Vitality and Toughness

As others have said: Way to point out the obvious.

Also, I think that your analysis got way derailed when you started adding foods and traits.

And let’s be truthful for a moment: No one cares about how much better the Berserker stuff is, all that matters is that it is superior.