Guild Wars 2

…eliminate need for precision? I know it sounds odd, and I wish I could math this up on my own, but I cannot.

If I spec purely for power (say.. Cavaliers) without precision in a build that can maintain 15+ stacks of might, will I be able to do enough damage to not need precision?

If it helps this is from a Mesmer perspective, so if we can use Sword as an example that’d be awesome.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

…eliminate need for precision? I know it sounds odd, and I wish I could math this up on my own, but I cannot.

If I spec purely for power (say.. Cavaliers) without precision in a build that can maintain 15+ stacks of might, will I be able to do enough damage to not need precision?

If it helps this is from a Mesmer perspective, so if we can use Sword as an example that’d be awesome.

It won’t do as much dmg as it would with precision, since you can still might stack with precision gear. And crit dmg is completely useless with no precision

The only way to burst is through Crit Dmg. Max might adds about 30 percent more damage while a crit power of 100 means 250% more damage on target. No amount of achievable power can match that. Then there is the secondary sigil effects which can add a lot more damage to the equation.

The balancing factor to critical damage is that it requires three stats to work well and players have to trade toughness, vitality, etc to get it.

If your a damage build, you will need precision to really up your output (and boy does it rack up nicely). But you can make some short cuts with your stats if your build can do it for you.

Take a warrior in pvp for example (pvp is a good example as there is a total amount you can put into any stat that is easy to do), most people who want to do a lot of damage want the crit chance to be above 50% (how much more is up for debate and depends on the class). So in some warrior builds you can sit on 30% crit, and simply put the fury buff (+20% crit chance) and use the stats for other things, maybe more power to make those crits hit even harder, or something more defensive. It opens up lots of choices.

If anything, you can stand to drop some power and make up for it with might stacking. Its all about what can you do with stats + what can you do with your spec and build.

Try to get your stats focused on only 3 key stats (eg. if you want the most damage that would be power, precision and crit damage), and then use your build and skills to augment that with some more defensive leaning. You cannot get a high damage high armor from the stats alone*, you have to make a choice. Makes it fun though, as you tend to be a more active player.

*unless of course you are the golden love child that is a warrior, in which case you can have ahigh health pool, good armor, and lots of damage and condition removal, all in one build :P

The flip side to these answers is that if your character will mostly be fighting world bosses, precision and crit damage are useless, so power and might stacking thus become much more important.