Need help understanding..

Need help understanding..

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Posted by: Cassy.6315

Cassy.6315

I would be very grateful if someone could explain to me how to tell which stats are best for which class? I know there’s a lot of info online, but the more I read trying clarify it the more confused I get.

For instance: I’ve been told shortbow is a condition damage but longbow isn’t. Sword is condition damage but axe isn’t. I just see weapons and just don’t know how you work out which is which.

I know when it comes to traits and stats on armor and weapons it helps if they boost each other but to do so I need to understand so I can make informed choices.

Please help.

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Posted by: Meglobob.8620

Meglobob.8620

Condition damage is when you literally inflict a condition on another player like bleeding or burning for example. They can be removed instantly via condition removal, so do no damage or little damge. However, if not removed they inflict damage every second. If you read the tool tips for SB(Ranger) its obvious most of its damage is done via inflicting conditions. LB(Ranger) inflicts few if any conditions and does direct damge, direct damage is mitigated by armour/toughness…

Basically if you want to do high direct damage then high power, prcesion, crit damge.

If you are running a condition damage build, obviously go power, condition damage for highest damage.

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Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

There are no stats that are literally useless, they all do something and having any kind of bonus is better than none. But what you really want is stats that work with the weapons and skills you’re using.

Here’s a brief run down of what each one does:
Power – Increases the damage done by direct attacks.
Precision – Increases your chance of getting a critical hit, which does more damage.
Toughness – Increases your defence against direct damage.
Vitality – Increases your health.
Condition Damage – Increases how much damage conditions do.
Condition Duration – Increases how long conditions last.
Boon Duration – Increases how long boons you apply last.
Healing Power – Increases how much your skills heal for.
Critial Damage – Increases how much damage critical hits do.

(There’s also magic find which gets you better loot, agony resistance which is only for Fractals, and 4 ‘derived attributes’: attack, critical chance, armor and health, which are important but don’t come into this discussion because they’re generated automatically from other factors. Mainly the attributes above.)

Just to be clear (this confused me for a long time) power and precision affect ALL weapons. It’s not like some games where different weapons are tied to different stats. If you want your attacks to do more damage you put points into power, if you want more critical hits you put points in precision. Simple as that.

The part where it gets complicated, which is what you’ve encountered, is that some weapons (like the rangers short bow) don’t do a lot of direct damage. You can pile everything you’ve got into power and you’ll still be coming up short compared to other weapons. But what they do instead is apply a lot of conditions.

So if you want to use a short bow you’re better off putting points into condition damage and condition duration instead of propping up the direct attacks with power. The arrow itself won’t do much damage, but the bleeding it causes will last longer and be worse that way.

I strongly recommend you take the time to read this page, and some of the others it links to sometime: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute
Even if you’ve already got a good idea of how some things work it’s really helpful to have it all laid out clearly.

The really tricky part is working out which is best. It’s tricky because it depends a lot on what your opponent is doing. If they’ve got very high toughness (and therefore armor) and/or a lot of defensive skills then you’re better off getting around that by using conditions. But if they’ve got high health and low armor and especially if they’ve got condition removal skills then you’re going to spend a lot of time chipping away at them while they kill you (especially if they’ve also got high power).

For general PvE it doesn’t matter too much. You can get away with almost anything so decide what you like doing and do it. But for dungeons it’s often a good idea to find out what you’re going to be facing before you go in (and this applies to both offense and defense, if you’re using a utility slot for condition removal in an area where you’ll hardly ever be hit with a condition then it’s a waste and you’re better off swapping it) and for PvP you’ll want to try and follow the meta-game – find out what your opponents are going to be using and try to stay one step ahead.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

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Posted by: Esplen.3940

Esplen.3940

Also, Attack is a useless stat that doesn’t explain anything. The derived Attack is Power * Weapon Damage not Power + Weapon Damage (which is what Attack shows you).

However, I’m not sure if you looking at a number like 1,632,585 when you deal ~1000 is really helpful. (And that number is my current derived attack on the character I’m on right now.)

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Posted by: Khisanth.2948

Khisanth.2948

For general PvE it doesn’t matter too much. You can get away with almost anything so decide what you like doing and do it. But for dungeons it’s often a good idea to find out what you’re going to be facing before you go in (and this applies to both offense and defense, if you’re using a utility slot for condition removal in an area where you’ll hardly ever be hit with a condition then it’s a waste and you’re better off swapping it) and for PvP you’ll want to try and follow the meta-game – find out what your opponents are going to be using and try to stay one step ahead.

This part needs to be in 72pt font, bold, and maybe some neon flashing colors. :P
My necromancer is using scepter/dagger + staff but have mostly power. No problem killing or surviving.
My ranger uses berserker but I tend to do a large chunk of the damage with sword/torch.

Also not all weapons are necessarily one type of damage or the other. Many can do both.

Not sure why anyone would think ranger’s sword is anymore of a condition damage weapon than the axe. They are about equal with the axe having an advantage in terms of potential damage.