Guild Wars 2

Setting Power vs. Precision

Since critical strike chance is directly determined by the precision stat, if we remove the variable of critical damage we are left with an equation affected by only power and precision. We do this by modifying the equation for different critical strike damage levels. For example, a character at base level 80 will have 0% critical strike damage, yielding the following equation:

Damage = (Power * 1.5 * Critical Strike Chance) + [Power * (1 – Critical Strike Chance)]

We can produce a similar equation for every imaginable critical strike damage level. In the interest of saving time, I used increments of 5% critical strike damage (from 0% up to 105%) for a total of 22 separate equations. Each equation was subjected to a vast array of power/precision combinations, where power and precision add to a constant sum. When done in sequence, this reflects the outputs that correspond to trading a point of power for a point of precision. For each output, I calculated the ratio of power to precision (a ratio of 1.5 means that for every 1 point of precision there are 1.5 points of power). I also calculated the effect on the total damage output level for each point in the sequence.

The sequential array of combinations yields the same ratios for each data set, and this serves as the x-axis. The y-axis depicts the change in the damage level for each point, in percentage terms so as to keep things standardized as I overlaid the data for the different equations. I broke the data sets into groups in order to highlight some things and minimize the clutter.

The Data

The parameters of these graphs may seem a bit cryptic, so let me explain how to read them. Each line represents a critical strike damage level, as specified by the legend. When a line is below the x-axis (i.e. the y-value is negative) this means that, at that power-to-precision ratio, sacrificing a point of power for a point of precision will reduce your overall damage output. When a line is above the x-axis (positive y-value), sacrificing a point of power for a point of precision will increase your overall damage output. The point where a line crosses the x-axis (y-value of 0) indicates the “golden ratio” at which power and precision are in optimal harmony for the given critical strike damage level.

Here are links to the graphs (also attached to this post):

http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q783/Shane_Hampton/0-35_zps9bf48c28.png

http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q783/Shane_Hampton/40-75_zps9ee0bcc0.png

http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q783/Shane_Hampton/80-105_zps69a6c319.png

This is a chart of the “golden ratios” (also attached):

http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q783/Shane_Hampton/goldenratios_zps3c8c8345.png

Implications

The first thing we can draw from this is that when at critical strike damage of 35% or less, it is NEVER beneficial to choose precision over power. Again, this does not mean it is not beneficial to add both precision and power; it simply means that, if you are choosing one or the other, you ALWAYS choose power if you want to maximize damage. We can also see, as expected, that precision becomes more important at higher levels of critical strike damage. This is signified by the inverse relationship between critical strike damage and golden ratio.

This data shows that it is NEVER optimal to have higher precision than power (i.e. a ratio less than 1) when trying to maximize direct damage output. Even in cases of extremely high critical strike damage (such as 105%), power is more important than precision (and thus critical strike chance). If your run a build in which precision exceeds power, perhaps it depends upon additional bonuses garnered from critical hits. If so, you must consider the relative value of those bonuses as compared to being at peak damage. If not, you should consider shuffling your stats.

For any specific character that you want to maximize damage, you can apply the data as follows: (1) look at your critical strike damage level, (2) refer to the golden ratio for the closest level, (3) calculate your power-to-precision ratio by dividing power by precision, and (4) compare the 2 ratios. If your current ratio is below the golden ratio, take points out of precision and put them into power (if possible) until you get to the golden ratio. If your current ratio is above the golden ratio, take points out of power and put them into precision (if possible) until you get to the golden ratio. You will need to re-evaluate this whenever your critical strike damage changes if you want to remain at optimal direct damage output.

Conclusion

This analysis is far from perfect. The number of variables in play makes it difficult to make universal claims about damage, but when defining parameters and assumptions SOME claims can be made. The numbers prove that power is more important than precision, as many probably expected, and the data displays exactly how much more important it is at varying levels.

Unfortunately, the relatively small variation in stat combinations found on gear may limit the utility of this information. It is not always possible to achieve desired ratios efficiently, which is a flaw of GW2, but that is a topic for another discussion. I imagine this information will be most beneficial to those who spec primarily into survivability and only have a limited capacity to add to power and precision. At any rate, I hope this analysis proves helpful to at least some players.

bump for those who might want to read

That’s a very detailed write-up. Thanks for the breakdown.

Interesting data. I can see why you normalized it by leaving out other complications. Weapon choice and thus skill damage is also going to factor into things. From a simplistic view it would seem that weapons with higher damage (GS, for instance) and skills with higher damage are going to benefit more from higher CS Damage and Chance (thus, Precision) than weapons (Dagger) and skills with lower damage.

It makes sense that Power is very important in the damage equation. That said, the optimal damage gear choice (Berserker’s) ensures that you don’t really get Power without also getting Precision and Critical Damage percentage. Also, the meta-think about damage seems to focus heavily on critical damage. You never see high damage claims that are not crits, for instance, doubtless because people like bigger numbers. I agree with your assessment that this information will likely be of more benefit to those rocking survival builds, since the dps builds’ gear choice has already been set in stone.

Very nice. I suppose what bothers me are the things that weren’t listed, such as

#1: The stat total that was used in the calculation
#2: The specific equation for the Y axis, or how it was solved to show a Damage decrease or increase when exchanging power for precision. This is a big one, since I just received help on another thread solving this issue, and I came here to check the numbers and our numbers aren’t the same.

For example, using the formula from the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/first#post2040924), I would find for a crit damage of 100%…

Pow – Prec + 832 > 2100 / 1.5
Pow – Prec > 568
Power > 568 + Prec

So, at the threshold where adding to power and precision are equal, that would be when Power is 568 more than precision, or starting at 1484 Power and going from there. The problem is that 1484 Power / 916 Precision = 1.620 in the Power:Precision ratio. The ratio you have listed is 1.397.

I suppose the biggest issue between our numbers is that the derivations I have show a static difference between the numbers: As long as the difference between power and precision for 100% crit damage is 568, then that value is maintained no matter how high the numbers get. Because of this, I can get a ratio of 1.397 if I assume that there is 1431 Precision and 1999 Power. Your numbers show a dynamic difference between the numbers, where once the ratio is achieved the two stats do not have the same growth rate as each other.

One of us messed up somewhere, and it bugs the crap out of me.

This thread deserves to be read by more people – it’s extremely well written and the arguments are logical and compactly presented.

In particular, I imagine these calculations will become a lot more relevant now with the introduction of the ‘Assassin’ stats on gear (Precision, Power, Crit Damage – with Precision as the main stat). This means that players will be able to combine Berserker and Assassin gear to get as close as possible to the golden ratio, as detailed above.

Either way, excellent post!

If my Statistics professors had just taught my classes via Guild Wars analysis, I would have enjoyed the courses a lot more.

Nice work, Citizen Shane!

Does he say “critical hit damage” when it should have wrote critical hit chance? Because critical hit chance is very powerful. Critical damage additions are not.

According to the wikia: Critical hits have a base damage multiplier of 150%

Knowing that x1.5 and the critical hit “chance” on the character tab, it is fairly easy to figure out how many strikes need to land to get the extra critical damage. Then compare that damage from crit-alone from how much damage adding Power would give over those multiple strikes.

My low level thief has over 33% crit chance. That is like to adding +17% weapon damage per attack, although it comes in bursts of crits. I am assuming my character sheet crit chance is actually the real chance per swing, rather than some other math.

Since Ferocity changed Crit Damage amounts on armors, should we assume that the ratio for Power/Prec stays the same but the Crit Damage Ranges should be lowered according to the new Ferocity/Crit Damage Ratio?

IE – An Exotic Beserker Staff used to give 9% Crit Damage, it now gives 128 Ferocity or 8.533333% Crit Damage which results in Crit Damage being reduced by a little under 95% on some items. However, you only get 1% of Crit Damage for every 15 points of Ferocity. So, you would truly get 8% if you only had this particular staff on and no other Ferocity modifiers. Thus the reduction would be 88.8%.

Ultimately, it depends on the previous Crit Damage modifiers on all of your equipment compared to the Current Ferocity modifiers.

My math is not that good. Can someone help me to balance between power, precision and ferocity, please?

Many thanks!

Oh My God.8423:

My math is not that good. Can someone help me to balance between power, precision and ferocity, please?

Many thanks!

It is kinda easy.
Depending in your crit damage you’ll use one of the 3 graphs, if you have between 80~105% crit damage (230~255% in your window after the update) you’ll use the 3rd graph.
In the 3rd graph you see that around 1.3~1.5 power to precision ratio is the best return of your damage, you get the ratio by making power/precision (I.E 2500 power / 1800 precision = 1.38 ratio), your goal is to have the ratio exactly at the zero line

ugh this hurts my head. I wish Fury applied a bonus to precision rather than adding a plain 20% to the crit chance, would make this a lot easier.
Atm i have 2100 power, 40% crit chance, and 215 ferocity.
However, i have perma fury. And i am thus wondering whether to take some precision away in place of power. Can anyone confirm whether this would give an over all boost to dps, my maths says it would, but i don’t trust myself :P.

Trepidation Lost.3469:

ugh this hurts my head. I wish Fury applied a bonus to precision rather than adding a plain 20% to the crit chance, would make this a lot easier.
Atm i have 2100 power, 40% crit chance, and 215 ferocity.
However, i have perma fury. And i am thus wondering whether to take some precision away in place of power. Can anyone confirm whether this would give an over all boost to dps, my maths says it would, but i don’t trust myself :P.

Using the data and the suggestions provided, what you need to note is what your critical hit bonus is. If it based entirely off the number you gave for ferocity then it is about 14% (check your toon’s panel and subtract 150%). I point this out because I think there are builds using this with rune of rage, and you may have other crit damage bonuses.

at that point the charts can be used as suggested, but keep in mind the author intentionally avoided all the what-ifs associated with crit procs being part of a build.

Addendum: This really confirms my position that ferocity is absolutely the least desirable stat to place points in. It kills celestial builds because the overall extra points are essentially wasted, and in berserker builds it works in spite of itself.

I would say zealot’s is far and away superior to berserker, at ascended levels. I’d say the only overall worse is valkyrie, and that is a toss up based on niche builds.

TL;DR Ferocity enhances the value of precision only slightly. If you have a choice and are focused on DPS, choose power first precision second. Niche builds aside.

This is a prime example of over-thinking something…..

If your build has lots of crit procs and the enemy you will be fight can be Crit, then Assassins MAY give you some overall advantage (tho it will not necessarily be pure DPS advantage). In all other cases, it’s been proven over and over that Zerk is the way to go for pure DPS superiority.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This is a prime example of over-thinking something…..

If your build has lots of crit procs and the enemy you will be fight can be Crit, then Assassins MAY give you some overall advantage (tho it will not necessarily be pure DPS advantage). In all other cases, it’s been proven over and over that Zerk is the way to go for pure DPS superiority.

I ran the number on my engineer and a pure power zerk build is about 1% higher damage than full assassins weapon and armor (both using a strength/force in the weapon and both having scolar runes and both having zerk trinkits). But, like you said, that doesnt include “x on crit” procs. His charts are +-<1%. I think, like you do, that the main takeaway here is that the difference is so small as to be overcome by whether or not you are running with alot of x on crit. In other words, engineer with lots of x on crit might lean to assassin while guards with very very few x on crit would lean to zerk.

Engineer, again for example, can slot extra vuln on crit. In a dungeon, that should more than make up for that 1% less personal damage and in open pve, that 1% personal damage likely wont change the number of hits it takes to kill a normal mob.

I’ll take zealot over berserker all day. The slight DPS increase for the ferocity is nothing that a sigil of force can’t deliver and then some. Again, niche builds aside.

Imagine if celestial were revamped to give something, anything, in place of the ferocity. Boon duration comes to mind.

If crit bonus were lowered to 100% and ferocity effects doubled, then yeah it would have a place.

This should be stickied.

It’s pretty old and somewhat overly simplified. Direct damage calculations should first take into account the average amount of might and vulnerability stacks generated by the character per second, both of which in some builds are dependent on precision. After that apply average might and bloodlust stacks to get effective power, work out the average power multiplier per second for a given rotation, then plug the numbers into the master equation:

Damage per second = E.Power * (critdmg% * critrate + (1 – critrate)) * Mult/s * Weapon attack * (1 + vuln * 0.01) * x * y * z / target armor.

Where x, y and z are damage multipliers from traits, sigils and runes. For instance sigil of the night has a value of 1.10. Crit attack sigils like Air and Fire modify the value of multiplier per second. Also you may want to do a second calc set for the assumption of 25 might, perm fury and 25 vuln to see how the build performs under conditions of optimal parties. Seeing how might and vuln affect this should affect how you think about the 4th and 5th direct damage stats: condition duration and boon duration.

In addition to this consider these three caveats:

1. Against Epic targets and objects, crit rate = 0%. They’re not the same thing though most players confuse them: Epic targets always have more than one hitbox and can be affected by conditions like Vuln, while objects always have exactly one hitbox and cannot be affected by conditions – so damage calcs for those assume zero might zero vuln on crit, while for objects specifically vuln is always zero. Lastly any form of retaliation damage scales only off E. Power. In these cases power is the only relevant one of the three sets of stats.

2. Any reflected projectile uses the power of the initial user, but the critrate and critdmg% of the reflector. For this cause builds where projectile reflection is a thing (primarily focus offhand traited feedback mesmers) deal more damage via precision and ferocity, while power has precisely zero effect on the reflection effect.

3. Any critrate above 100% has precisely zero effect. After factoring in fury it is possible for some classes to reach or go over 100% even with only berserker gear. Warriors with unused signet precision and the banner of discipline can do this for instance.

Aside from the caveats the extended equation should work most of the time for direct damage. For overall damage you’ll need to add average bleed, burn, torment, poison, confusion per second, multiply their variables by condition damage’s multiplier and add it to the derived direct damage value. If you want to simulate weakness (relevant for testing roaming builds for soloing towers and camps), multiply final direct damage per second value by 75% before adding to condition damage value.

The hardest part about optimising a build is getting an accurate value of multiplier per second. All other values can be obtained purely by calculations, but this value in particular depends on your ping, skill rotation and your ability to consistently maintain it – disrupting the rotation can be as large as a 30% loss in dps.

Optimising builds is serious business, leaving an important factor out can be a lot worse than going by gut feel in terms of the results you get from it.

I have a quick question to ask you.
The “gold ratio” you mentioned, does it include the base 150% crit damage in it already?

For example, when you mentioned 20% crit damage, does that mean you add 20 to that base 150%, so it’s actually 170% crit damage?

The current tool tip is a little confusing in that matters, because it shows 219% crit damage, so does that mean I’m at 70% crit damage according to your gold ratio table?

If you notice, that post was made 2 years ago … crit damage is the old name of ferocity.
But answering, yes 20% crit damage in the equivalent of 170% crit damage
And yes again, if you have 219% crit damage, that means you have 69% extra crit damage and you use that value to use the chart.

After the patch, how much damage is 150 ferocity on a zerker stat character with maxed crit chance via traits?

At level 80, 15 ferocity add 1% crit damage.
So an extra 150 ferocity is +10% crit damage, give you a damage number is impossible because it depends on A LOT of variables (skill modifier, target armor, might, protection, vulnerability and so on), but knowing your power, precision and converting the ferocity to crit damage as I showed you can use the tables posted in this thread.

Very informative analysis but if ferocity was the new multiplier, is the information applicable now?. Critical damage is important but not the only factor. If you consider condition builds, since conditions do not critical, high critical damage is pretty much useless. High physical damage can be negated far easier than negating multiple condition stacks since they ignore armor stats, and most condition removal skills do not remove every stack every time. I believe in balance and the ability to adapt quickly far more valuable than high damage numbers. It’s not about how hard you hit, but about how hard you can be hit (by physical and condition damage) and still be standing at the end of it all. Ask yourself this: how valuable is your “extreme critical damage” if you are downed? Well let’s explore that shall we?
You get downed, which means you are doing less damage, if any, and someone else has to stop doing damage to help you up. If you do the math, balanced damage and the ability for every party member to keep doing it results in better over all party wide damage output. There is one thing we should all consider: If it’s dead, it can’t kill you.
I can ramble on about how full Zerker makes me cringe, I hate it personally, but if it is your style I say go for it.

MiloIsMilo.1586:

Very informative analysis but if ferocity was the new multiplier, is the information applicable now?. Critical damage is important but not the only factor. If you consider condition builds, since conditions do not critical, high critical damage is pretty much useless. High physical damage can be negated far easier than negating multiple condition stacks since they ignore armor stats, and most condition removal skills do not remove every stack every time. I believe in balance and the ability to adapt quickly far more valuable than high damage numbers. It’s not about how hard you hit, but about how hard you can be hit (by physical and condition damage) and still be standing at the end of it all. Ask yourself this: how valuable is your “extreme critical damage” if you are downed? Well let’s explore that shall we?
You get downed, which means you are doing less damage, if any, and someone else has to stop doing damage to help you up. If you do the math, balanced damage and the ability for every party member to keep doing it results in better over all party wide damage output. There is one thing we should all consider: If it’s dead, it can’t kill you.
I can ramble on about how full Zerker makes me cringe, I hate it personally, but if it is your style I say go for it.

Overall Direct damage builds still have a significant DPS and TTK advantage over most condi builds due to how its delivered. This is mostly due to Pow/Prc/Fer all scaling off each other, and being the only set that has a prefix that includes all of them by significant scaling order. When you get deep into the math- the across the board boost to stats, and the larger amount of Pow/Prc/Fer stacking potential with the new gear values, Zerk builds got a significant boost to damage potential. When you consider damage mitigation was always poor, and damage negation is extremely powerful, defensive stats count for less now then they did before the patch.

Condis fixed part of the raw DPS problem, closing the gap significantly. But the usability problem of most condi skills needing both ramp up time and heavy upkeep, and can be nullified easily by other skills, DD builds still offer superior personal freedom. However, condi builds now scale a LOT better in big groups, allowing you to factor their soft CCs in addition to DPS to weigh effectiveness.

So while you might believe in balance…. thats not how the game works in practice. They also tweaked the condi damage formulas for a higher baseline (which means we start below it), but only tweaked the skill damage coefficients for the extra ~40 (?) points added to baseline power.

In short….. that entire blurb about condi damage is mostly wrong. And with condi cleanse being smarter now, if it only clears half thats on you, it’ll prioritize the more dangerous half.

Well I constantly pick up lopsided players who can’t keep themselves alive due to their concentration on damage output. DPS is important, which is what I meant when I said “if it’s dead it can’t kill you”. All I was pointing out is that a party not being able to handle sustained damage is also not effective.

To imply that I do not understand the mechanics of the game is totally incorrect on your part.

Not all condi removal skills remove multiple stacks. Read the descriptions associated with them.

Necros can remove party wide condi, Mesmers can transfer conditions and steal boons, Guardians have contemplation of purity and POV…yadda yadda. Condition cast times times can be easily interrupted, this is true. I wasn’t stating that full condi is better, simply that physical damage can be negated by blocking, or other absorption skills and that it is not always the best choice in every situation.

Those charts were made to offer the most optimal direct damage, and for that it is still ideal.