Guild Wars 2

Pretty straight forward question. In a solo pve or pug group setting, where critical hit chance will not reach 100%, is it better to have zerker or assassins gear? By gear I am referring to only armor and weapons, both sets would use ascended zerker accessories because there is no ascended assassins variant. What I’ve come up with so far:

Berserker gear has roughly 200 more power than Assassins.
Assassins gear has a roughly 10% higher crit chance than Berserker.

So which set has the higher theoretical dps? Its been too long since my high school math classes for my to figure this out

The difference is so minor that details like: Do you have a Warrior with banners? Do you have Might? How much? What about fury? What buff food do you use? become important enough to make a difference.

But in most cases Berserker should come ahead by a bit.

tboneking.2531:

Sorry, I excluded that information on purpose because if the traits, utilities, weapons, runes, and sigils are present in both variants, then the damage they contribute should remain constant should it not?

No. If you have for example +100000000 power (somehow), than precision is better, because those extra 200 power are almost not noticable. If you have only 100 Power (again, somehow), then 200 power will triple your damage.

Molch.2078:

tboneking.2531:

Sorry, I excluded that information on purpose because if the traits, utilities, weapons, runes, and sigils are present in both variants, then the damage they contribute should remain constant should it not?

No. If you have for example +100000000 power (somehow), than precision is better, because those extra 200 power are almost not noticable. If you have only 100 Power (again, somehow), then 200 power will triple your damage.

Good point. Here you go then
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJMQNAneUnckC1kilkC2eAElilfATJN09KDGLgAQD495Wd/uA-TBSBwAXOCAmVCeV53N1f6cCAmt/AK9BAeEAAA-e
Zerker numbers are 2463 power, 48.5% crit and 221.33% crit damage (without banner)
Assassins numbers are 2274 power, 57.5% crit chance and 221.33% crit damage

I noticed a negligible increase in crit damage from Zerker to Assassins when coupled with Blood Reaction (precision to ferocity conversion trait)

^numbers taken before I added runes of the Eagle

The idea is quite simple, even if you are not good in math. Your damage is proportional to your Power. Now if you crit for lets say 100% bonus damage with 50% chanche its the same as if you’d crit with 100% chance and 50% bonus damage, which is an easy to apply 50% increase in damage. And since power is proportional to damage it doesnt matter if you get 50% more power or 50% increased damage.

So with 2463 Power, 48.5% chance and 121.33% (Extra!) damage, you get a so called effective power of:

(The power you normaly have) + (The extra power you get through crits) =
2463 + 2463 × 0.485 × 1.2133 =
2463 x (1+0.485*1.233) = 3912

and for assassins
2274 x (1+0.575*1.233) = 3886

In this case Berserker wins.

You can now modify this formula with average might and if you have fury or not.

Edit: Okay maybe the idea is not so simple, but in the end you take your power, multiply by 1 + your critchanche times your critical extra damage and compare numbers.

Firstly, thank you Molch that makes sense, I was ALMOST there on my own.

Secondly, whenever I do a google search of “GW2 Hovis” I get company that sells tires. Seriously people help me out here.

depends on the class. I think currently ele and thief make the best use of assassin gear, and possibly one or two other specs for certain classes. Warrior, which it looks like you are using has zerker being slightly better in every current spec I believe.

Some classes never use high crit gear like necro since they have traits that up their crit chance. Some necro builds can drop precision entirely, and take a defensive stat and still do just as much damage as a zerker build.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

depends on the class. I think currently ele and thief make the best use of assassin gear, and possibly one or two other specs for certain classes. Warrior, which it looks like you are using has zerker being slightly better in every current spec I believe.

Some classes never use high crit gear like necro since they have traits that up their crit chance. Some necro builds can drop precision entirely, and take a defensive stat and still do just as much damage as a zerker build.

I am curious as to why certain classes make better use of assassins than others. Is it because of on-crit traits (especially ones that cause vulnerability with no icd)? Because I have also heard that assassins is quite good on engineer (which with grenades and vuln on crit can be very effective). However because Warrior mainly has damage modifiers and not on-crit traits, could that also be why zerker is superior?

Edit: I suppose it is also worth mentioning that the Intelligence sigil can give you the crits where it counts- on those massive Primal Bursts. So the increased crit chance isnt as necessary?

tboneking.2531:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

depends on the class. I think currently ele and thief make the best use of assassin gear, and possibly one or two other specs for certain classes. Warrior, which it looks like you are using has zerker being slightly better in every current spec I believe.

Some classes never use high crit gear like necro since they have traits that up their crit chance. Some necro builds can drop precision entirely, and take a defensive stat and still do just as much damage as a zerker build.

I am curious as to why certain classes make better use of assassins than others. Is it because of on-crit traits (especially ones that cause vulnerability with no icd)? Because I have also heard that assassins is quite good on engineer (which with grenades and vuln on crit can be very effective). However because Warrior mainly has damage modifiers and not on-crit traits, could that also be why zerker is superior?

Edit: I suppose it is also worth mentioning that the Intelligence sigil can give you the crits where it counts- on those massive Primal Bursts. So the increased crit chance isnt as necessary?

As far as I understand it I think it has to do with attack speed and damage modifiers. Ele’s have slow attacks that hit really hard, meteor, lava font, etc. having it hit for 4000 or 4200 isn’t a big difference but having it for 4000 or 9000 makes a big difference when your attacks are slower. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with traits as well as you suggested. It certainly does in the case of Necro.

I haven’t seen any detailed analysis for Bezerker yet. It may be that assassin is better for certain bezerker builds.

Can you post me the build you’re going to use? I can do the calculation for you.

Edit: Just saw that you already posted the build further up. Here’s the calculation for your build:
With 7% precision to ferocity
You want to have 1602 precision and 2859 power for max damage.
With 14% precision to ferocity in Berserker mode
You want to have 1891 precision and 2570 power for max damage.

If you want to know how I got these formula: Here is a link where I calculated it for elementalist.