Guild Wars 2

Out of sheer curiosity and petty arguments I started doing some math regarding the way damage is handled in the game, and I have come to several conclusions that toughness and vitality are ultimately inferior to straight up damage. For this, I will be operating on a few assumptions:

*The formula listed on the wiki for damage is an accurate representation of how stats interract with one another:
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)
*The changes in tooltip damage for skills is an accurate representation of damage change ratios.
*This is in regards to PvE. In PVP and WvW these are far from the case.

If any of these are incorrect then my conclusions will be incorrect.

Now, while looking at the damage tooltips I noticed though much experimentation in the mists that if you increase your power by 916 points, you’ll have double the direct damage. Since the base amount of power at level 80 is 916, I put 2 and 2 together and saw that power is directly reponsible for how much damage you are doing. This is simple enough. Factoring in other things such as precentage increases and precision are far more complicated, so I’ll be getting into that later.

I noticed that the armor attribute is used instead of the toughness attribute for determining how much damage is reduced when struck. To anyone half decent at math, this means that toughness has a proportional decrease in effectiveness per point. But, how much of a decrease in effectiveness? Well, lets get to some maths for that. First, the basic toughness at level 80 is 916. Second, the basic defense supplied by exotic equipment at level 80 is the following:

Light armor: 960
Medium armor: 1064
Heavy armor: 1211

Adding in base toughness of 916, you get a base armor rating of…

Light: 1876
Medium: 1980
Heavy: 2127

These numbers are important, since it represents the base for how much damage is being divided by. The effectiveness of toughness is a proportion of that base armor rating.

Now, for an example I will use my level 80 engineer. My engineer is equipped in full knight equipment (which, in PvE, gives Toughness, precision, power). Ignoring the backpack, with exotic orichalcum emerald jewelry and armor and rifle, my toon has 920 bonus toughness from equipment. Add that to the base armor attribute, and I get a new armor attribute of 2900 armor. With armor being inversly related to the damage received, we can find out how much of a change this is with the following equation:

1 – 1/(new armor / base armor)
= 1 – base armor / new armor

Putting in the numbers…

1 – 1980 / 2900
= 1 – 0.683
= 0.317

So I am taking only 68.3% of the damage I would’ve taken without the toughness, or ultimately a 31.7% reduction in damage. You may be wondering: “That seems alright. What is the problem here?” Well, the problem here is that 920 power would’ve roughly doubled my damage output. A doubled damage output means an enemy would’ve been alive for half as long. An enemy alive for half as long does only half the damage it would’ve done, ultimately resuling in an indirect 50% damage reduction from the enemy. And therein lies the rub: by speccing more heavily in damage you end up taking less damage.

If you repeat this example and equation with light and heavy armor stats, you get the following ratios of reduction:

Light: 1 – 0.671 = 32.9%
Heavy: 1 – 0.698 = 30.2%

Know that these are ratios representing the change within that class, and are not viable for comparing to different classes. Each class has the same damage increase from power, though, so there is no additional math to be done there. It is also worth noting that toughness increases the efficiency of heals by those percentages, but whether it is an advantage is up to debate, because with double damage you’ll also only have to heal away half as much damage.

But what of vitality? Well, that works on a similar principle. If we were to say that the 920 toughness were 920 vitality instead, then this would add 9200 HP to the character. Going off of the different base HP of each class:

Warrior, Necromancer: 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer: 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist: 10,805

And using this forumla:

1 – Base HP / New HP

We would get the following:

Highest base: 1 – 0.666 = 33.3%
Medium Base: 1 – 0.621 = 37.9%
Lowest base: 1 – .540 = 46.0%

So on a short term basis, vitality investment is either more effective than toughness or a lot more effective than toughness. For the lowest base HP, vitality is almost as good as investing in power. Vitality comes with the advantage that it can mitigate condition damage better, but heals remain steady in their effectiveness, although they heal less as a percentage of health. It is for this reason that vitality is often called ablative, for once the extra HP is worn away the effectiveness is gone. This, again, isn’t a problem for damage, though, since an enemy that is alive for half as long will inflict half as many conditions.

A final advantage to high damage builds is that they also reduce the damage for teammates as well. Killing an enemy twice as fast means that teammates also take half as much damage. Because of this, high damage is ultimately a cooperative form of defense, which is something neither toughness nor vitality can claim (unless you count standing around and taking hits while rezzing someone as cooperative).

This is all well and good, but you’re probably thinking that in practice it isn’t as simple as “if the enemy lives half as long, it’ll only do half the damage”. And this is correct to a certain degree: stats do not exist in a vacuum by themselves, and enemies have bursts of damage and may live for very long amounts of time despite being dealt more damage. However, it is by the game’s very design that the tools for mitigating the various problematic portions of a pure damage build are built into nearly each and every class. Taking a look at the various problems:

1) Burst damage from enemies. A lot of vets and champions may have an attack or two that is capable of bowling over a pure damage build in one hit, and toughness/vitality letting you survive that hit would be crucial. However, this is what dodging was made for: when that OHKO attack starts coming your way, you get out of the way. With copious blocking skills and reflecting skills and dodging skills with control effects, immobilizes, blinds, and vigor, the only barrier to a pure damage build surviving an encounter is how well they can read enemy patterns. Because of this, toughness and vitality become like a safety net until players get good enough that they no longer need them.

2) Conditions. Enemies can apply conditions in one of two ways: either steadily or in bursts. Steadily applied conditions benefit greatly from an enemy dying sooner, since they act like regular damage output. Burst conditions follow the same dodging mechanics as in #1, but with the added bonus that condition curing abilities can get rid of the problem before it escalates into something severe.

It is because of #1 and #2 that, eventually, players will upgrade to pure damage builds as they learn enough about the game. In the long run they survive better while accomplishing tasks faster. There is one unavoidable caveat, though:

3) High sustained damage and thresholds. There exists many enemies in the game that are incredibly durable while having high non-burst damage. They are rare, but nonetheless they are encountered on occasion. Often they are champions that seem to only have a ranged auto attack. It is here that a pure damage build suffers, since there needs to be a certain survivability threshold that they need to achieve. This threshold, of course, is how much damage the enemy does (considering all mitigation techniques like dodging and control) compared to how much the player can heal in the timeframe between healing. It is here that toughness shines, since vitality lasts but for a moment. High damage builds often have to contemplate where this threshold is when building traits, since it will allow them to beat those elusive but very difficult bosses, or they have to develop specific tactics to get around those bosses.

Keeping in mind #3, pure damage will eventually have a diminishing return. If you can kill an enemy 3 times as quickly, it isn’t nearly as much of a jump in survivability than killing them twice as quickly. What also must be considered is that stats always work in groups of 3, and never alone. You can achieve an overall greater survivability, in theory, though the correct combination of stats. This does have one issue, though: any survivability above necessity is inefficient, since killing an enemy quicker does far more than contribute to survivability. It also contributes to income and free time. But, only if you are a skilled enough player, since failure at a task is time consuming and income consuming.

It is also here that this analysis falls apart in PvP and WvW. In PVP, pretty much everyone you encounter has high sustained damage that is nearly unavoidable, and so the point of maximizing survivability through damage and other traits becomes a necessity, and not something that less skilled players do to survive.

As for a way to make toughness and vitality more efficient… I have not come up with a solution yet. This is mostly because I don’t think this analysis is fully complete yet, and I’m afraid that I would break the system further with anything I suggest. But, unless I am missing my guess, toughness and vitality are overall fools errands to invest in anything but the minimum required to survive certain encounters.

I suppose that ends the bulk of this analysis on toughness. For reference, I will list a few extra formula for anyone who wants to pursue this further.

Factoring in critical hits:

1 x (chance of not hitting crit) + (1 + 0.5 + crit damage) x (chance of hitting crit) = total crititcal multiplier of damage.

So, for example, berserker armor, weapon, and jewels (not factoring backpack) give 58% crit damage and 667 precision (36% crit chance), so…

1 × .64 + 2.08 × .36 = 1.39

Or a 139% damage multiplier to power. So if power does double damage, that’ll be 2 × 1.39 = 2.78 total increase in damage. Things become more complicated when factoring in the presence of fury or other things that increase crit rate.

Condition Damage:
Bleeds do double damage 850 condition damage.
Poison does double damage at 840 condition damage.
Burns do double damage at 1312 condition damage.
Confusion does double damage at 867 condition damage.

Factoring damage increases by percentage: Things such as 5% bonus to damage when endurance isn’t full, 10% increase to rifle damage, 5% damage while under the effect of might, etc. For now, I assume a geometic relationship, multiplying the damage ratio from power by 1.05 then 1.05 then 1.10 and so on. An arithmatic relationship would be to just add them together (1.05 + 1.05 + 1.1) and multiply them afterwards. I’ll need clarification on this.

Darn, I can’t believe I forgot this:

The decrease in efficiency of toughness is = 916 / base armor. The decrease in efficiency of vitality = 9160 / base health. Interestingly, the class that benefits the least from any sort of toughness or vitality is the warrior, and the class that benefits the most is the elementalist.

EDIT: If you want a five sentence version:

1) Toughness sucks.
2) Vitality sucks.
3) Pure damage is awesome.
4) But only if you are a good player.
5) I do math to prove it.

yay – stupid people rejoice!

Any ways, Ya I was not going to read all that, but from your summary.

I can understand why ele would benefit from health since they are so squishy. while it makes no sense for the toughness aspect to affect the ele.

Math is fun for those who love it, and it has its important uses, but clearly shouldn’t be the sole factor when we make gear/build choices, or todetermine how we should play GW2. It doesn’t speak for personal preference and playstyle differences, which may render an otherwise “effective” DPS build less effective; any given player could actually be more effective NOT going “math-way”, but more “fun-way.”

No offense intended, as this is not math’s fault. I just don’t feel it doesn’t justify for people to choose to play any “mathematically proven” way-especially if it doesn’t suit them.

People can do whatever they wan’t. I just don’t want anything but maximum efficiency, therefore I am incredibly thankful there’s people like BRA (killer initials btw) who do these calculations.
What further promotes this reasoning is that DPS gives you a lot more loot if you find yourself in a DE with no group around.

@Star Ace: It is real useful for min/maxers, though. Sometimes you just wanna push it to the limits, and see how far you can go.

@Salicious:

Looking at the point deficits, you can see that an elementalist has 7,567 less HP and 251 less armor than a warrior. So in a statistical point of view…

Elementalist + 251 toughness + 757 vitality = Warrior.

Nice job on the math. Sorry to tell you that about half your work is already done on the Wiki. Now to address your conclusions:

1) Toughness sucks – this is sort of true in that the raw amount of damage PvE mobs deal in dungeons (open world mobs deal piddly damage even in packs) is so high that toughness can never mitigate to a point where you can face tank an enemy and never dodge. But to be fair, the game’s combat engine WAS built around the dodge functionality… so no surprises here.

2) Vitality sucks – again, you can never have enough health to just eat endless shots from heavy hitters like champions.

3) Pure damage is awesome – this only partially true. While pure damage allows for faster killing, and by way of that less damage taken, the sacrifice to survival by gearing raw damage is pretty heavy. If a group consists of 5 max DPS glass cannons, they will tear through enemies… unless one of the enemies hits them. Then they will all die. Being that we can only dodge so often via endurance, and that sometimes there is no safe spot to reach before the red circles get you, pure DPS means you tank the floor more often than a more balanced build.

If your group is racing through a fairly easy run like CoF or AC, sure a load of dps is nice. However, pure dps in a higher level fractal…well you’re gonna have a bad time.

The biggest flaw in your logic comes from the fact that additional damage stats are far easier to gain through boons than defenses are. Since protection and regeneration only stack in duration but not in intensity, and there is no + vitality boon, the amount of mitigation that can be added by boons is capped much lower than damage.

Conversely, might stacks up to 25 (875 power/condition) times and a well constructed group can easily maintain 15-20 stacks with bursts to 24-25. Additionally, vulnerability can be rapidly stacked potentially adding 25% damage. Not to mention the glory of a group that can keep lots of fury uptime (20% crit = ~400 precision).

So hopefully you see that while pure damage is awesome, even good players make mistakes and toughness/vitality is your wiggle room for mistakes. Compensating for damage stats lost to survival is easier to do than compensating for defenses lost to damage.

TL;DR – Good job on the math, but you’re wrong.

1) Toughness and vitality do not suck.
2) Pure damage comes at a cost.
3) No one is THAT good all the time. (Nobody)
4) Good group composition and mutual supportive builds far outweigh selfish raw dps in the long run.
5) I didn’t need a lot math to do this.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

@Star Ace: It is real useful for min/maxers, though. Sometimes you just wanna push it to the limits, and see how far you can go.

As long as you keep it to yourself, and don’t make it as a rule others must follow in order to play “effectively”, because it’s backed up by “math.” I don’t mind DPS-minded people at all, but I do mind intolerance-mathematical “evidence” shouldn’t be used as a excuse for the latter.

I have been considering Berserker stats for another character of mine, BTW-I am not “anti-full DPS” but more anti close-mindedness. People must not play the way I prefer, no matter if I have all the best reasons in the world to play the way I do.

Couple things I would add:

The efficiences here will all move based on how much you’ve added already. Sure the first 916 power gives you 50% damage mitigation through killing. The next 916 only gives 33% above that. The next 916, only 25%.

Somewhere in there, it becomes more efficient to add toughness (or as you said vitality first).

In addition, it’s important to know that Precision and Crit Damage are typically far less efficient ways to add damage than Power, until Power gets really high.

Because gear comes with 3 stats, a tanky PVT build can have just as much or more power as a glass cannon.

So, saying power is potentially the most efficient investment makes sense. Pure damage however, is a completely different thing (i.e. glass cannon) since it typically incorporates Precision and Crit Damage as well, which will compare very differently with Vit and Tough.

I love the math-crafters, they are like theory crafters without proper abstract thinking techniques…

There is almost no example of any game system that on paper puts output of damage anywhere but in the “over the top” end of the scale, I’m not going to lecture on reasons but OP should know this (assuming this isn’t the first ‘craft they’ve done).

You’ve taken one set of variables out of the whole, dumped them in a vacuum and then used a subset of the possible events to crunch out some numbers that COULD support the illusion you’re painting, but all it takes is one group boon or dodge roll and your house-of-cards math-craft falls down.

Didn’t expect to get as much hostility as I did. Anyway, I get the feeling that a lot of the issues I’m getting come from people reading the 5 sentence version, like someone adding the diminishing returns on damage dealing when I’ve already mentioned it, first sentence of the third post. I like to use dialetic reasoning in order to come to a conclusion, so points and counterpoints are contained within the text.

That said, I completely forgot to factor in boons. I’ve always had a hard time factoring in boons because they are extremely dependent on the group dynamics, and are almost never something that can be counted on in a stand-alone setting. To this date, I have only achieved the might cap once, and it was in a large group while I was running an HGH + Juggernaut hybrid engineer. It was all well and good, except for having to use the flamethrower against a champion to achieve those numbers. But regardless, I’ll take your word for it.

When looking at relevant boons (regeneration, protection, vigor, might, and fury), the ease at which defense is obtained has to be considered. Looking at the armor levels above, the protection boon can be considered a virtual additional amount of toughness added on to the player. For low armor, it is 966 toughness. For medium, it is 1020 toughness. For heavy, it is 1096 toughness. This is assuming the base armor amount, since more of the real toughness stat will cause protection to give an even higher virtual bonus to toughness. With this knowledge, it is safe to say that defensive stats are not far harder to gain through boons than offensive stats. It is very similar to how weakness and vulnerability work, in that weakness provides a 25% damage reduction to the enemy (roughly) immediately while vulnerability needs to be stacked up to a maximum of a 25% damage increase. The bonus from weakness can be, at maximum, 625 toughness on light armor, 660 in medium, and 709 on heavy.

So, from a comparative standpoint of might vs. protection for building stats, you’ll really have to ask yourself what will be easier to maintain, a 15 stacks of might for when you need it, or protection for when you need it? The hardest part about this is that no two classes seem to have the same ability to stack up might or protection, so this decision will have to be made on a class by class basis, further complicated on a group by group basis in which might would be sustained. Then you have to look at what is lost in order to have these boons: do you sacrifice a reflection move so you can get might, or immobilizes to get fury? To get these boons to compensate for damage lost in defenses, you may very well be losing the defenses that would’ve been had otherwise. Then you also have to consider if you stacked might while still running a damage set, and how effective that would be from a survival standpoint as well.

I prefer to build on an individual basis; an inevitable constant that will always be there with every group you play with in any mission you play is the fact that you are there playing it. Other people’s presence or competence is always up in the air.

Man I wish this browser had a spell checker… anyway, it would really help to give more thorough and honest evaluations of the issue instead of calling DPS builds selfish and ending on that note (especially when they ultimately aren’t).

What I’d like to see is the effectiveness of investing in toughness adjusted so that, for the low armor group, investing in toughness results in about a 45% or so increase in survivability. It doesn’t have to be on par with investing in damage for every class, but for those who would benefit from it the most I’d like to see a better return. I have yet to figure out how to go about doing this, however. At least not in a matter as inelegant as just throwing on a multiplier to light armor classes…

Anyway, the thing with pure damage builds (berserker, mostly) is that their bonuses tend to scale together well. After increasing power, increasing precision to get higher crit rates gives an overall higher damage boost off of the higher power. The higher crit rates combine well with higher crit damage which combines with higher power to get an overall higher return. This, of course, stacks even further with vulnerability, and also grows further with percentage increases garnered through traits. On another forum I once did a calculation regarding the damage done with grenades in a rampager set made with a full build, and the overall damage of each grenade breached a damage ratio of over 6 times damage before vulnerability was factored in. It gets scary after awhile with how much damage a pure DPS build can really inflict.

Really nice job with the math, and the whole analysis overall. I do have to agree with the points PraetorMortis made, especially with the boons part. Certain classes have it easier to achieve the might cap than others. My main is a D/D Ele, with full boon duration stuff and a Sigil of Battle, and even while playing solo I hover around a permanent 18-20 stacks of might, often peaking at 25 for certain periods of time. In dungeon groups, I easily stack 12 AoE stacks of might to whatever melee characters are with me on my first rotation, and a few less on the next ones. With that, you just need a staff Guardian to Empower or a Mesmer with Signet of Inspiration so most of your party reaches near-max Might stacks.

Just wanted to chime in to say that, but overall I really like this thread and the kind of discussion it brings

Don’t forget to factor in that damage while dead = 0 (plus you’re lowering another person’s damage if they rez you).

Blood red Arachnid…thank you, going to adjust some builds very soon based on your math……and i wouldnt worry about the hostility, you get it in every game where very casual players dont like hearing that their builds are less than perfect.

They like to think their 30 tough/30 vit warrior is king of the battlefield and is somehow equal to high DPS output builds…and constantly tell you “well, im still alive” even though they barely contributed to the fight, and fail to see that if they had a decent build the fight would have been over long ago.

Now im not saying for one second that everyone should have the cookie cutter builds, or that everyone should be min/maxing builds….but if you are a warrior with max tough/vit firing a longbow as standard, then you simply do suck and should avoid gimping groups with your woeful presence….or find a guild that is willing to carry you as baggage through quests/dungeons etc.

Again, thanks BRA….outstanding analysis.

You’re absolutely right…but you’re partly wrong too. That’s because when you run dungeons a lot, or do fractals, vitality and toughness do play a role, where as in the open world, that happens very rarely.

Toughness stops you from taking spike damage, when combined of course with vitality. If you have everything in power, precision and damage, let’s say, and nothing in toughness and vitality, there are times when you will be one shotted. At which point, you will go down.

No matter how well you dodge, no matter how good you are, eventually it happens. Which means in a party situation that someone has to rez you. Which means everyone else in the party is risking their life for you, because rezzing people in dungeons is often when people do go down. A lot of bosses focus downed players.

I’ve run enough dungeons with enough people who think this way, including my son. Consequently he’s down 2-3 times more often than I am. Sure, when he’s up, he’d doing a boatload more damage. But there are times when he wipes and people try to get him up that the entire party ends up wiping, which means a long run back from the rez point And it’s not just him. I’ve seen this again and again over the years….even in Guild Wars 1 which has a similar situation.

Guild Wars is really designed around a balanced build, as opposed to a glass cannon build. Sure there are certain players who play glass cannon really really well, but they are definitely the minority. It doesn’t help that many (if not most) players think they’re better than they actually are. Actually I’ve found this true with a lot of glass cannon players (again including my son).

In the end, if you can get one shotted, you will, and if that happens the entire party is in danger from it. In the world, it’s not likely to be a big deal. In a group situation, it’s a bit different.

It depends a lot on the specific dungeon, the specific boss, the specific event but there are times when you want that toughness, because even if you kill a boss twice as fast as you normally would, it still takes many minutes, during which you can’t afford a single mistake…and that’s what gets most people.

I’ll stick with my balanced build, because I’ve tried it both ways. I play much better with some points in toughness and vitality (though most in power).

Something I would like to point out is how I’ve noticed agro working. With alot of toughness you can get agro quite easily, by specing just dmg as a player with lots of vitality and toughness anyway are you really going the right route by letting everyone else with less of those stats fend for themselves, while you do your thing and tell yourself you’re cool because of the numbers poping up? I suppose if anything goes wrong you can simply blame other members of the group, because you have done the math and they obviously haven’t.

Here is an idea, instead of saying things like this is the best you all should do it, simply tell us what you have done, how it works and the short commings you have found (did you put that in anywhere, as you can tell I didn’t read it?), and if we care enough to try it we might. But I think you’ll find that most of us play this game without the need for reasurance.

If this comes across as hostile, excuse me. But maybe you should consider how you engage people if you want us to take you more seriously than a troll. There is no hard math for that, and you might have to think about your envioroment, which is where I think some people have a problem with your reasoning, because it’s just maths and justification, not reasoning at all..

Example:-
If I drive around at 120mph I’ll get places faster than if I drive at 60mph. But if anything goes wrong, I’m in a world of trouble and putting others in harms way. If nothing goes wrong, I’m fine. I should drive at 120mph because I’m good enough at driving, regardless.

Science is – Aim, method, hypothosis, experiment, results, observation, conclusion, evidence.
Math is – 1 + 1 = I’m right, unless 1 is a variable or is assumed or both. For the purposes of this 1 is 0.5 and the answer is 1, unless 1 is a variable or is assumed or both.

Maths is inferior to science becuase you can’t draw accurate conclusions from maths, just assumption based on the numbers you have. Go do science.

In a game where you just hit each other until one falls, your math would be correct. However toughness makes that bosses hit you for less, which means your healing skill is proportionally far more effective. Since you’re not down nearly as often your damage is proportionally higher too.

A glass cannon often loses a third of his damage on downtime.

Bottomline … it depends. I personally wouldn’t go without at least some toughness or vitality because for all the power/precision, … a defeated player does zero damage.

The only reason zerker warriors are viable, is because they have the highest possible base health and armor. They need less defensive points to achieve the same effect

Thought about this a while back and decided to balance out my spec/gear on my engineer.

I used to be close to full SD, rifle GC (10/30/0/0/30) in mostly berserk gear with a few valkyrie trinkets or beryl orbs. I’m now 0/20/10/10/30 in PVT armor with ruby orbs and rest is berserk gear or equivilent ascended gear.

I lost 100 power, around 8% crit chance and 12% crit damage, I gained 400 armor and a bit of health. The difference in damage output is small. Crit chance is at 46%, attack is close to 3.3k and crit damage is at 96%.

The spec still allows me to insta gib GCs, but gives me enough of extra survivability to last longer in slower fights. That is really the only thing that matters in WvW, taking out GCs asap. There is no reason to overkill people, they cant become deader than dead.

Boss fights are also alot easier, since you dont have to dodge everything.

@Blood Red Arachnid:
What I am saying here has already been said before, but I am structuring it in a more formal, logical sense.
—-

One of the things you are saying is the following argument:
1. Dead monsters do not deal damage to player characters.
2. Having higher Power (and/or Precision, Critical Damage %) results in killing monsters sooner.
3. Therefore, having higher Power (and/or similar stats) results in monsters dealing less damage to player characters.
Let’s call this ARGUMENT 1.

However, you do not invoke the corollary to this argument:
1. Dead player characters do not deal damage to monsters.
2. Having higher Toughness, Vitality and/or more play skill helps to prevent or postpone player character death.
3. Therefore, having higher Toughness, Vitality and/or more play skill results in player characters dealing more damage to monsters.
4. Therefore, ARGUMENT 1 is only true if players possess sufficient Toughness, Vitality and/or play skill.
Let’s call this ARGUMENT 2.

However, in your 4th concluding statement, you invoke a slightly similar argument:
1. Dead player characters do not deal damage to monsters.
2. Having more play skill helps to prevent or postpone player character death.
3. Therefore, having more play skill results in player characters dealing more damage to monsters.
4. Therefore, ARGUMENT 1 is only true if players possess sufficient play skill.
Let’s call this ARGUMENT 3.

In my opinion, your reasoning is inconsistent to the extent that you invoke ARGUMENT 1, but ignore ARGUMENT 2. Instead, you only invoke ARGUMENT 3, which is an incomplete (and therefore flawed) version of ARGUMENT 2.

This does nothing to diminish the value of your mathematical calculations, however. Only the conclusions attached to these.

Darque Intent.1674:

Something I would like to point out is how I’ve noticed agro working. With alot of toughness you can get agro quite easily, by specing just dmg as a player with lots of vitality and toughness anyway are you really going the right route by letting everyone else with less of those stats fend for themselves, while you do your thing and tell yourself you’re cool because of the numbers poping up? I suppose if anything goes wrong you can simply blame other members of the group, because you have done the math and they obviously haven’t.

Here is an idea, instead of saying things like this is the best you all should do it, simply tell us what you have done, how it works and the short commings you have found (did you put that in anywhere, as you can tell I didn’t read it?), and if we care enough to try it we might. But I think you’ll find that most of us play this game without the need for reasurance.

If this comes across as hostile, excuse me. But maybe you should consider how you engage people if you want us to take you more seriously than a troll. There is no hard math for that, and you might have to think about your envioroment, which is where I think some people have a problem with your reasoning, because it’s just maths and justification, not reasoning at all..

Example:-
If I drive around at 120mph I’ll get places faster than if I drive at 60mph. But if anything goes wrong, I’m in a world of trouble and putting others in harms way. If nothing goes wrong, I’m fine. I should drive at 120mph because I’m good enough at driving, regardless.

Science is – Aim, method, hypothosis, experiment, results, observation, conclusion, evidence.
Math is – 1 + 1 = I’m right, unless 1 is a variable or is assumed or both. For the purposes of this 1 is 0.5 and the answer is 1, unless 1 is a variable or is assumed or both.

Maths is inferior to science becuase you can’t draw accurate conclusions from maths, just assumption based on the numbers you have. Go do science.

Maybe try learning to read, its really helpful not just on forums but in life as well……he most certainly DID reason out his findings, and fully explained how and where he did his “experimentation”, he gave very clear and concise explanation and conclusion for everything he did, you are just not smart enough to understand it, but trust me, its all there.
Also i have to laugh hysterically at your ridiculous statement that math is inferior to science….math is the basis for ALL science….honestly, what are they teaching kids in school nowadays.

As someone who has mostly gc chars i wholeheartedly support the argument that
more dmg=better (in dungeons you just need 1 heavy built for tankyness and everyone else should just go pure dps-like a usual mmo group minus the healer)
One thing you are wrong about tho-toughness is much better on classes with more base hp since it provides much more ehp (effective hit points) since it is a percentage increase.Lets say that a ele and a necro get extra toughness to give them a 10% dmg taken decrease-the ele would only get an extra 1k ehp while the necro would get 1,8k
(a whooping 80% more)

@Windwalker:
You are wrong. Extra Toughness provides a percentage decrease of the absolute damage figures that are dealt to you. It has no direct relation to the number of hitpoints you possess.

Not reading this tower of text, sorry, but it’s good to see it up, from a distance.

Robbyx.1284:

Blood red Arachnid…thank you, going to adjust some builds very soon based on your math……and i wouldnt worry about the hostility, you get it in every game where very casual players dont like hearing that their builds are less than perfect.

They like to think their 30 tough/30 vit warrior is king of the battlefield and is somehow equal to high DPS output builds…and constantly tell you “well, im still alive” even though they barely contributed to the fight, and fail to see that if they had a decent build the fight would have been over long ago.

Now im not saying for one second that everyone should have the cookie cutter builds, or that everyone should be min/maxing builds….but if you are a warrior with max tough/vit firing a longbow as standard, then you simply do suck and should avoid gimping groups with your woeful presence….or find a guild that is willing to carry you as baggage through quests/dungeons etc.

Again, thanks BRA….outstanding analysis.

-What’s the problem with casual players, and how are non-casual players “better players” just because they are not casual and “work” at playing GW2? (Nothing “wrong” with that per se, but the attitude is indeed horrible and inappropriate-elitist.)

-How is saying “you can use any build you want, and do not need min/maxing” and then following that by effectively saying “BUT if you don’t play with my cookie cutter max DPS build, you are gimping the party, thus playing it wrong” any semblance of open-mindedness and tolerance? You are clearly contradicting yourself.

Play with your numbers all you want, if that makes you happy, but math won’t make you “the better player”, as much as you’d like to think that about yourself. It just isn’t all about calculations, but about what really works for different people and groups.

All this arguing falls when you have to face more than one,two,three? mobs at the same time.

If it wasn’t for the vast majority of players following this reasoning and constantly dying in Orr, it would’ve never been nerfed the way it was. “Tank/support” builds never had issues playing in overpopulated Orr.

@Mesket:
Hence my structured argument why the original post by Blood Red Arachnid apparently disregards Toughness and Vitality, and ostensibly postulates that these may be entirely replaced by play skill.

That pure damage does nothing without a little meat and potatoes to take hits, and target priority due to toughness. If everyone is a glass cannon, they’ll fold quickly once they run out of Endurance.

Dead dps is no dps.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

@Windwalker:
You are wrong. Extra Toughness provides a percentage decrease of the absolute damage figures that are dealt to you. It has no direct relation to the number of hitpoints you possess.

That’s why he called it “Ehp”. Effective health. It’s a combination of your base health, and whatever damage mitigation you possess.

10k health + 33% damage reduction = Effectively 33% more health, 13.3k health.

@John Widdin:
Ah, now I understand. I retract my disagreement with Windwalker.

Star Ace.5207:

Robbyx.1284:

Blood red Arachnid…thank you, going to adjust some builds very soon based on your math……and i wouldnt worry about the hostility, you get it in every game where very casual players dont like hearing that their builds are less than perfect.

They like to think their 30 tough/30 vit warrior is king of the battlefield and is somehow equal to high DPS output builds…and constantly tell you “well, im still alive” even though they barely contributed to the fight, and fail to see that if they had a decent build the fight would have been over long ago.

Now im not saying for one second that everyone should have the cookie cutter builds, or that everyone should be min/maxing builds….but if you are a warrior with max tough/vit firing a longbow as standard, then you simply do suck and should avoid gimping groups with your woeful presence….or find a guild that is willing to carry you as baggage through quests/dungeons etc.

Again, thanks BRA….outstanding analysis.

-What’s the problem with casual players, and how are non-casual players “better players” just because they are not casual and “work” at playing GW2? (Nothing “wrong” with that per se, but the attitude is indeed horrible and inappropriate-elitist.)

-How is saying “you can use any build you want, and do not need min/maxing” and then following that by effectively saying “BUT if you don’t play with my cookie cutter max DPS build, you are gimping the party, thus playing it wrong” any semblance of open-mindedness and tolerance? You are clearly contradicting yourself.

Play with your numbers all you want, if that makes you happy, but math won’t make you “the better player”, as much as you’d like to think that about yourself. It just isn’t all about calculations, but about what really works for different people and groups.

Seriously, what is it with you people being completely unable to read or comprehend ?

No where at all did i mention “better players”. I am a casual player and have a real life etc.
I also specifically said " im not saying you must play cookie cutter builds"…i was obviously saying that in any game where you can “build” characters, there will always be “ideal” class builds, there will also be bottom end “gimped” builds, for example a warrior that puts not trait points into power at all is going to be gimped, that is a fact and you seriously cant even attempt to argue against that.

There is plenty of leeway for different builds here, some are going to be good, some are going to be awesome, but by the same token some are going to be horrible.

The OP put forward a very good argument for more DPS and less tough/vit, and i posted a reasonable unbiased reply…you simply misunderstood, took my words out of context and misinterpreted their intent.

Honestly people….LEARN TO READ !

Jornophelanthas.1475:

@John Widdin:
Ah, now I understand. I retract my disagreement with Windwalker.

However, you were correct in the case of Conditions, as conditions bypass toughness/armor.

I won’t dispute any of your maths…

But

I have found if you stack first vitality and then power, at low levels 1-30, you virtually never die and can tackle foes upto 5 levels ahead of you pretty ok’ish.

I also think toughness is to be avoided at low levels because low level critters really don’t do that much damage, so reducing it isn’t so effective beyond your armour anyway. However, at higher levels like 80, toughness becomes ALOT more important unless you like spending your time downed or dead…

Meglobob.8620:

I won’t dispute any of your maths…

But

I have found if you stack first vitality and then power, at low levels 1-30, you virtually never die and can tackle foes upto 5 levels ahead of you pretty ok’ish.

I also think toughness is to be avoided at low levels because low level critters really don’t do that much damage, so reducing it isn’t so effective beyond your armour anyway. However, at higher levels like 80, toughness becomes ALOT more important unless you like spending your time downed or dead…

Hmmm interesting…i pretty much go the opposite, almost all of my 9 characters all went to 10 power straight away before any other traits, and they were all wrecking balls at low levels. and i routinely run at about 2 levels over most of the time.

At 80 i always max out power with toughness as a dump stat and i seem to last longer than most guardians….i think what the OP was trying to say was you dont need to sacrifice as much as you think for survivability, and thats been my experience as well, i guess its just down to play style.

Except 40+ fract isn’t CoF1 ezmode OP. A full zerker team will go down.
So you either go with a full zerk team and a Guardian who usually gives you permanent 33% DR/healing, or you go with a balanced team that isn’t all zerk.
Also:
1) You don’t want to go full-out insert stat.
You get to a point when min/maxing where you either pick 5% more damage or 20% more damage reduction; it’s pretty inefficient to pick the 5% damage in terms of your overall efficiency.
2) I’m tired of hearing people justifying their full zerk with “but I dodge”. You cannot dodge everything. The game gives you a lot more damage than you can dodge in high-end fract, so I prefer a guy who deals 5% less damage (which has little impact on the final outcome) but 20% more damage reduction.
3) Min/maxing is awesome. On a Warrior for instance through min/maxing you can get:
50% damage reduction while still sitting on 4500 effective power.
30% while sitting on 5500 E.Power.
13% while sitting on 6000 E.Power.
In hard content the 13% Warrior is going down without Guardian regardless of his skills (unless he kites a lot at which point he’s dealing a ton less damage), the other two don’t.
This means classic zerker loses all 25 stacks and stops dealing damage while the other 2 keep dealing it (or rezzing the dead and avoiding a wipe).
4) While dodging/kiting to avoid damage because your DR is too low to stay in the fight, you’re dealing very low DPS than you would by staying in the fight and dealing full DPS.
Full zerker with 0 defense means you’re forced to disengage/dodge/kite and thus lose all the mega DPS that you gained. Full zerker with Cavalier trinkets means you’re staying in the fight and DPSing at your full power all the time.

To me it seems people try the easy dungeons or lower fracts with full zerkers, see it works and then think it can work anywhere.
Well, it can’t.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

@Mesket:
Hence my structured argument why the original post by Blood Red Arachnid apparently disregards Toughness and Vitality, and ostensibly postulates that these may be entirely replaced by play skill.

Agreed, I was just theorycrafting.

Nevertheless, tanking builds + skill can bring more challenge up to the task. Pull half the map if you want to.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

When looking at relevant boons (regeneration, protection, vigor, might, and fury), the ease at which defense is obtained has to be considered. Looking at the armor levels above, the protection boon can be considered a virtual additional amount of toughness added on to the player. For low armor, it is 966 toughness. For medium, it is 1020 toughness. For heavy, it is 1096 toughness. This is assuming the base armor amount, since more of the real toughness stat will cause protection to give an even higher virtual bonus to toughness. With this knowledge, it is safe to say that defensive stats are not far harder to gain through boons than offensive stats.

Protection multiplies toughness, while Might adds to Power. That is the key difference.

As for the rest of the analysis:

1) You can not ignore the increased effectiveness in healing from toughness, unless you can burn through your enemy without the need to heal (given boss hp pools and damage this is unlikely in many situations).
2) You assume that you are the only one doing damage.
3) Having toughness/vitality to not be “one shot” is important.
4) Once your additional power exceeds your armor rating, even by your analysis, toughness becomes useful.
5) Gear comes with 3+ stats, meaning you need to compare Toughness with other stats than Power before declaring that it “sucks”.

The reality is:

1) Your Healing/Toughness must be sufficient to keep you optimal in a sustained fight. The moment your warrior kites is the moment you have forgone your advantage from stacking Power.
2) Having one slightly Tough guy around can be useful to draw fire from your DPS.
3) You need a minimum Toughness/Vitality or you can not use your Healing before being downed. Warriors have no real worry about this but ele’s might.
4) Once your total Power + expected Might Power exceeds your Toughness + Armor, Toughness is worth considering.

The result is that in general you want a lot of Power from your gear (unless you can pull off a pure condition build), but you may very well want some Toughness mixed in. For example, trading a few select pieces of Berserker’s gear for Knight’s might work out well, especially if you are already stacking some Might, have offensive traits, or are stacking bleeds. However, gear that does not provide Power can be considered special purpose… Power is important enough that it almost always in the top 3.

Anet please give me warrior protection buff in the defensive or vitality trait line, take those buffs to rez faster away, they only add +1 healing to each revive tick ¬¬

/T-T

What about the hits you eat, that don’t bring you down instantly ? I’d say, that toughness or vitality to sustain one ore two more hits before you have to roll out of combat, allows you to hit the enemy one ore two times more, and with that, provide additional damage.

In other words, a player can go full GC, but he will have to dodge more often, and spend more time withdrawing, dealing zero damage.

Maybe there is a middle ground for maximum damage in the maths ?

Timberwolf.2413:

What about the hits you eat, that don’t bring you down instantly ? I’d say, that toughness or vitality to sustain one ore two more hits before you have to roll out of combat, allows you to hit the enemy one ore two times more, and with that, provide additional damage.

In other words, a player can go full GC, but he will have to dodge more often, and spend more time withdrawing, dealing zero damage.

Maybe there is a middle ground for maximum damage in the maths ?

I found that (for me at least, of course this is subject to play stile, class and traits chosen) on PVT gear using Axe (dps weapon). Highest power you can get, easy to self buff fury, high survivability due to build stats and play style as well. This is my in-between slightly biased towards defense.

Timberwolf.2413:

What about the hits you eat, that don’t bring you down instantly ? I’d say, that toughness or vitality to sustain one ore two more hits before you have to roll out of combat, allows you to hit the enemy one ore two times more, and with that, provide additional damage.

In other words, a player can go full GC, but he will have to dodge more often, and spend more time withdrawing, dealing zero damage.

Maybe there is a middle ground for maximum damage in the maths ?

Exactly what I was saying.
I throw two 20k dmg HB with another 15k worth of attacks in between then whirl away with 9k whirl = total dmg 64k.
A normal glass cannon throws one 21k HB, throws 10k worth of damage before whirling away for 10k whirl = total damage 41k.

Staying power is underrated.

Is it wrong that I find it more interesting what people are doing here instead of what people are saying here?

I suppose the big thing people seem to forget is that I didn’t write this as some kind of justification for making all power builds, or as an act of condemnation for anyone who doesn’t run a glass cannon. I wrote this because I sincerely believe that toughness (and by extension vitality and healing power) need to be fixed so they provide the same efficiency in attribute investment. It would help if I had come up with a solution to this problem, but unfortunately one still eludes me.

Now, as to where I came to the conclusion about tactics and dodging being capable of sustaining an active defense even on glass cannons, it stems from a video I saw:

When I watched this, it melted my paradigm. For those who do not want to click on a link, it is a video of a berserker build warrior soloing Arah path 2. Long story short: he succeeds. This knife into the heart of what I believed made me curious: why is it that someone would run an incredibly frail setup to solo dungeons? Were I crazy enough to even attempt the task, I wouldn’t have done it unless I were in full soldier’s gear under the belief that it would take so much just to survive basic enemy encounters. It brought me back to some theorycrafting I read about in City of Heroes awhile ago, and then it clicked that offense = defense and vice versa.

So I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler… was stuck in second gear at late night, so I wrote this whole thing as I came up with it, not knowing what would happen as I was writing it. It was a peculiar thing I had witnessed in game a few times, where I was capable of soloing certain champions in yellow magic find gear just as well as I could in exotic knight gear.

In my musing I had already come up with most criticisms levied against me. I’m not sure most of them are even worth a response when I can just refer to one of the three topic posts where I covered it already. Though there is still plenty to add:

On the increased efficiency of heals, I have only very briefly touched on it, so now I will elaborate more on survival thresholds. The best formulas I can come up with are these:

(Heal amount – damage sustained ) / (heal recharge) = adjusted enemy DPS

It is healing per second minus DPS sustained from an enemy. If this is greater or equal to zero, then there is a limitless amount of fight time in which you can be engaged to the enemy; barring any mistake they will never kill you. If this is less than zero, then the total fight time is

maximum health / adjusted enemy DPS = Player survival time

Which actually tells you how toughness and vitality truly interact with an enemy encounter. Toughness reduces the damage sustained from direct attacks, letting you get a longer survival time and also lets many builds reach a certain threshold when they are undefeatable by an enemy. Vitality never pushes the adjusted enemy DPS, so a finite fight time stays finite, but the duration for for which you can stay in the fight can be increased greatly depending on the class. This makes coming up with my “solution” even more difficult, since the change in healing power has to be considered.

There are two problems when factoring in healing changes with toughness in the offense vs. defense debate. First is that there is no circumstance in which you will realistically know how much damage you’ll sustain in a fight. It is all an abstract, and all we can say about it is that player skill decreases it and toughness decreases it. The second problem is that there is another important factor to include: enemy survival time.

Player survival time – enemy survival time = success factor.

Where enemy survival time is their HP / player DPS. If the success factor is above 0, the player wins. Below 0, the enemy wins. At 0, it can go either way or even tie. The end of the line in the DPS debate is this success factor: all it ever needs to do is be above 0. Any toughness or vitality higher than what is necessary to make it positive for the majority of relevant situations is just excess. Since players are fully healed between fights, all that matters is survival and not really how well a player can survive.

I suppose a side effect of improving the effectiveness of toughness and vitality would be that less is needed as an investment before going full DPS. But… this all hinges on whether or not there are a sufficient amount of enemies in the game that can still pose a threat to a player with improved toughness stats. We don’t want to make it too easy to just tank champions, but we also don’t want to make players who invest in durability to be little more than handicapped distractions while the real DPS players get the job done.

It is actually quite hard to accomplish, so I applaud arenanet for coming as close as they have.

Now, there comes another side of the offense = defense and vice versa part. It is true that a dead player does not contribute. Thresholds and survivability and all that jazz I’ve covered before and just covered again now.

But, in a given theoretical group of players, when an enemy has singled out a player and has started attacking him, that players survivability is dependent on the total DPS of that group. If everyone goes for lower DPS and defensive builds, then the enemy has an increased survival time, which means it deals more damage overall, which can result in more players being killed by it. There are many bosses in the game with just absurd amounts of damage, so much that investing 900 toughness does little more than just going with the minimum needed to survive an attack, if any is needed at all. We’ve all seen those world events where the champion does some attack, and then 5 people nearby are all kissing pavement. So, a situation like this wouldn’t be unheard of.

Then it gets a bit more complicated when including how overworld bosses gain power and hit points depending on how many people are around. Every player added to the group has to be able to pull their own weight, lest the group be better off without that extra player. Due to the general inefficiency of defensive attributes, adding durable players won’t accomplish as much, since they’ll be just be tissue paper before the boss like everyone else.

It is actually really hard to wrap one’s head around all the ways that offense and defense compete for the same attention. Now, the final thing worth discussing is using statistical bulk to use more offensive tactics. In an ideal world this will work… if defensive attributes gave roughly the same efficiency per point as offensive attributes do. Since they currently do not, survivability allowing for more reckless and damaging tactics is currently an extremely situational strategy. Unless built for stupid high durability, most bosses and champions will bring players down in a few hits regardless of what their build is. On the other end of the spectrum are bosses that can’t do very much damage at all, which in those cases even DPS builds don’t have to do much dodging. So there is a very fine point in which a DPS build can’t take too many hits, but a more durable build can take enough hits where to compensate in in more damaging tactics for the raw statistical power they’ve lost. These situations are, as per my experience, quite rare. As someone said before, the game is built around the concept of dodging instead of tanking.

What I would like to see is more discussion on where it would be good to put the theoretical new efficiency of toughness, vitality, and healing power, and a method to do so without throwing classes out of balance or drastically changing how damage is dealt with. That right there is the hard part.

Interesting read, and seems to put numbers to the feel of the game i have been having for the last few months.

Btw, not only is dodge a powerful defensive mechanism in this game (you can dodge once every 10 seconds, 5 seconds with vigor boon up) but you can also trait it to do various effects. Notice how one popular elementalist build appear to be as much about dodging as it is about the weapon skills. I think some players claim that their least use skill on D/D builds are #1, meaning that they spend very little time purely attacking.

I wonder what would happen if bigger mobs were given heal skills rather than simply massive health pools and nuke level area attacks.

Oh my, this thread really got interesting… heheh…the one thought that popped into my head was: “my math teacher would really love this, but maybe might disagree with a few things…he always had to play devil’s advocate in class.”

I am not big in math…I am more a let’s see what works and tweak it until it fits my play style. I am by no means a very good player, but I do have fun. My son thinks it funny to see his mom playing a guardian and a ranger and an elementalist. In fact I just started a necro and am having a blast.

Sure, I am defeated a lot, but I am having the time of my life playing this game. I just love the fact I can roll away from things and live. BTW, I recently learned how to kite. Woot …what a great mechanic. I am using it in everything I do now and am not dying so much.

Also I want to let you all know that I have started researching gear and weapon stats for each of my characters and have finally started to understand them. You all have helped me a lot.

I love reading all these threads since they offer so many differing opinions…so I wish to say to all of you …THANK YOU !!! :=)

lynspottery.6529:

BTW, I recently learned how to kite. Woot …what a great mechanic. I am using it in everything I do now and am not dying so much.

Maybe i am an old grouch, but my default reaction to kiting is that it is an abuse of game mechanics.

So what is the math on the all-stats items like Rune of Divinity and Triforge Pendant? Seeing as how the elementalist in many ways uses a mix of all playstyles (conditions, burst, dps over time, healing, etc.) you’d assume that going for a mix of all stats would limit the effects of inherent diminishing returns. Also, since the total amount of stats granted by those items is higher, that would be a double gain. Or not?

digiowl.9620:

I think some players claim that their least use skill on D/D builds are #1, meaning that they spend very little time purely attacking.

The first skill is often the auto-attack, which I can say at least for the Elementalist, is often the weakest attack. But not the only attack (though admitted, Elementalists have a fair amount of non-attack skills as well).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But, in a given theoretical group of players, when an enemy has singled out a player and has started attacking him, that players survivability is dependent on the total DPS of that group.

That, and any healing that the group may give him/her.

Robbyx.1284:

Also i have to laugh hysterically at your ridiculous statement that math is inferior to science….math is the basis for ALL science….honestly, what are they teaching kids in school nowadays.

Math is a language and a tool. Science is doing something with it. It’s like saying a hammer is inferior to a carpenter…they’re both needed to build a house, and they both have their own part to play.

ThiBash.5634:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But, in a given theoretical group of players, when an enemy has singled out a player and has started attacking him, that players survivability is dependent on the total DPS of that group.

That, and any healing that the group may give him/her.

Something ANet specifically designed the game against, thanks to no targeted healing spells.

Mesket.5728:

All this arguing falls when you have to face more than one,two,three? mobs at the same time.

If it wasn’t for the vast majority of players following this reasoning and constantly dying in Orr, it would’ve never been nerfed the way it was. “Tank/support” builds never had issues playing in overpopulated Orr.

I have zero issues surviving in orr with my 100% glass cannon warrior but im also not a idiot though and know when its time to run and when its time to fight, i noticed lots of people in this game dont know when to pull the ripcord and retreat and will stand there ground and die much more often than they should, or try and run but way after when they should and by then its to late.

Also if you agro more than three mobs at a time thats on you and a player skill issue not a gear issue, its not like mobs are super tightly grouped in this game its very easy to control agro if you look where you are going and dont run blindly then stop out in the open while you have 30 mobs chasing you.