Guild Wars 2

Picked Warrior for my class and my idea was double swords and tough as nails at first. Then i realized that the ax off hand skill whirling blades was awsome so i’ve been doing sword ax combo ever since. But when your spinning into a massive mob i know your bound to be hit so I put points into Toughnes but I still get squished even from the lightest of hits.
When i switched over to Vitality at lease I could take a bit of a beating without dropping imidiatly.
So the question is dose toughnes even do anything? Is it bugged, innaffective, not working right, or was I doing something wrong.
Granted I do tend to lag a bit but I have been dodging the big attacks pretty well.
So anyone focus on Toughnes find it affective? Let me know.

I’ve gave my necromancer toughness and vitality stated gear recently and I have become a tank. I rarely die unless I get 4-5 enemies on me. I would expect toughness on a heavy armor wearer would naturally be higher than my light armor? It would help you a lot in my opinion.

As for it being bugged, I don’t think it is. Like I said, since I started using gear with toughness I’ve rare died since. I am currently level 42.

Maybe a silly question, but have you repaired your armour if it is damaged? what about keeping your gear near your level? maybe you are going up against mobs too far above your level?

The direct damage formula that the guildwars2guru.com people figured out through testing in beta is basically:

power * weapon strength * skill multiplier / armor

(where armor is the sum of toughness and defense)

So, if you double your armor, you will cut direct damage intake in half. Increasing armor by p% in general will reduce damage intake by a factor of 1-1/p%.

Note that toughness does not reduce condition damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toughness

I recently did a test with Toughness in the Mists. There’s an area with NPC enemies to fight—I tested my Mesmer’s damage reduction on both the Elementalist and Engineer NPCs.

With no extra toughness (base 916) and 1800 armor:
- Elementalist’s Vapor Blade hit for around 900 each time
- Engineer’s rifle shots hit for around 2000 each

With Shaman’s Amulet and Jewel (total toughness 1800) and 2800 armor:
- Elementalist’s Vapor Blade hit for around 600 each time
- Engineer’s rifle shots hit for around 1250 each

What this says to me is that every 1000 armor is ABOUT a 30% damage reduction at level 80. Or, at least, the difference between 1800 and 2800 armor is a 30% damage reduction. It may scale differently past that—I’d have to test with a medium armor and then a heavy armor character, which I’ll probably do when I get home from work.

Of course, PvP’s a tough thing to judge since you don’t have a lot of stat flexibility. To get that much toughness I’d either have to sacrifice a ton of vitality (almost 10,000 health’s worth) or a lot of damage potential, whereas in PvE I could balance between vitality and toughness—not having to 100% commit to either—without hurting my damage potential by mixing and matching pieces.

EDIT: In response to the mention above that toughness doesn’t reduce condition damage—that’s it’s main weakness for sure. Vitality helps you soak more damage of all kinds, conditions included, but toughness doesn’t help at all against conditions. The nice thing about toughness is that it makes your healing stronger indirectly. If your healing skill restores 5000 health, that’s a bigger deal when you have 15,000 health and a ton of armor than it is when you have 24,000 health and no armor at all.

Good rule of thumb is that you should pack tons of condition removal in PvP anyway, and at least one condition removing skill in PvE.

SaucE.7803:

I’ve gave my necromancer toughness and vitality stated gear recently and I have become a tank. I rarely die unless I get 4-5 enemies on me. I would expect toughness on a heavy armor wearer would naturally be higher than my light armor? It would help you a lot in my opinion.

As for it being bugged, I don’t think it is. Like I said, since I started using gear with toughness I’ve rare died since. I am currently level 42.

Thats fine for a necro I guess cause they can have a lot of health regeneration due to their blood skills and so forth but for a Warrior that dosn’t have a lot of regeneration it dosn’t seem to do a lot. I’ve tried banners but everytime I use one It gets used in one fight and its gone before I can pick it back up again. People like to steal it too much so i switched to shouts.
The Shout Heal Trait on Grandmaster Defence dose jack all. Only heals for 100-200 health and even if you use all three shouts for utility its not very effective.
Seems for a warrior at least you still need a good support behind you to survive. But going straight vitality seems a better option.

Intrinsic.2758:

Maybe a silly question, but have you repaired your armour if it is damaged? what about keeping your gear near your level? maybe you are going up against mobs too far above your level?

Yhea I always keep up with repairs and im in an area that is actualy below my lvl at the moment. 65 now and working in 40-50 area trying to get down to my story quest. Maybe I was just trying to take on too many at once.

Agent Noun.7350:

EDIT: In response to the mention above that toughness doesn’t reduce condition damage—that’s it’s main weakness for sure. Vitality helps you soak more damage of all kinds, conditions included, but toughness doesn’t help at all against conditions. The nice thing about toughness is that it makes your healing stronger indirectly. If your healing skill restores 5000 health, that’s a bigger deal when you have 15,000 health and a ton of armor than it is when you have 24,000 health and no armor at all.

Good rule of thumb is that you should pack tons of condition removal in PvP anyway, and at least one condition removing skill in PvE.

I did notice a difference in my heal when it came to using Healing Surge with a high toughness. I usualy got up to full health with the one heal but I instintly droped down again as though the toughness wasn’t giving me any extra protection anyways. Lot a good info in your post though I appreshiate the help. Perhaps I’ll put more points back into toughness but mainly focus on vitality and percision as I do a lot of bleeds and their is a trait that give me more damage against bleeding foes. Its what I based my warrior on is to do bleeds and a lot of damage but be able to at least take a few hits. So I’ll just balance my triats a bit to give me a nice heal for when I get into trouble. Thanks for the responce.

I’ve just started running a shout heal build. My shouts heal for a little over 1900 a pop. I also use mending for just over 6500 on a short cool-down. Coupled with the removal of conditions and the tactic ‘Restorative Strength’ makes it so you can stay up and get away if needed.

This is in the mists of course…

I thought the same when I tried a toughness/Vit spec at around lvl 45. All that seemed to happen is I killed things slower. (my armor was still mostly the lvl 35 Norn yellow set)

However, I changed back to the same toughness/vit spec after reaching lvl 80 and bought all green/yellow lvl 80 armor and my god, what a difference.

Anything less than 3 mobs on me, can’t scratch me. I can kill veterans and stay on 100% hp the entire time. I can run into group events and stay above 80% hp most of the time.

Ofc you still need to move from the big charge up attacks, they are put in the game to make you dodge.

But for group events (such as the Shatterer or Claw of Jormag) I find a toughness/vit spec far better.

I’m playing a warrior btw.

Yes, you really need to find a balance between toughness and vitality. Also look at you play style, try other classes. Maybe a warrior isn’t for you. On my thief, I have noticed that have a bit of toughness really does help my survival rate.

I can vouch for toughness on a thief making a big difference.

Two days ago I decided to completely re-do my thief to have as much crit as possible. In doing so I took 0 toughness, so it was the base 916 or whatever. It was fun hitting people so hard, and critting on over half my attacks, but I died so quickly I never really got any kills in.

Yesterday I switched back to taking a good chunk of toughness and I doubled it to 1800. Playing sPvP after that felt like a world of difference as I could leap into the fray get some attacks off, get hit a few times, and not be dead 2 seconds later.

Toughness gives my thief the staying power he needs to keep stealthing, and dodging, and attacking. Without any extra toughness all it took was one stun and then a large attack and I was down. Now I can withstand that large attack, dodge away, heal, and keep coming at them.