Guild Wars 2

If I took 900 toughness vs 900 vitality, which would allow me to endure more damage?

Are the statistics interchangeable? (As in, if I have enough of Vitality, do I not need any toughness?)

Same with power and precision. Do I need power if I stack a lot of precision? Can power alone be enough to not need precision?

Can someone please clear up the exact uses for the statistics? Especially since toughness and vitality seem redundant.

Power = direct damage increase
Precision = increase critical hit chance

Stacking power vs stacking precision depends on your character’s traits and the type of skills you use. For example, I am a shatter mesmer with full berserker set, so I benefit greatly from increased critical hit chance because I have +85% critical hit damage. My critical hit damage will not be effecitive unless I can achieve a critical hit. So I try to max precision. Alternatively, when I have very low critical hit chance or am using a build with very few skills that rely on critical hits, then I stack power to increase my base damage. The general rule to follow for increasing damage, first priority is power, then crit chance (precision), then crit damage.

Toughness = decrease % of incoming direct damage + increases healing effectiveness
Vitality = increases health pool

Both toughness and vitality increase your effective health pool (EHP), however they do so in separate ways. Toughness prevents you from taking a portion of direct damage while vitality increases your total health pool. This has several implications. First, toughness does not help you against condition damage, but vitality will. However, if you go pure vitality, you will have a “squishy” health pool which is easy to burn through and as a result of the large health pool, will be harder to fill back up.

Toughness essentially applies a resistance against direct damage. Instead of taking a 5,000 dmg hit, you may only take a 4,500 dmg hit. Toughness does not prevent condition dmg though. If someone puts a 5,000 dmg condition on you, you will suffer 5,000 damage. In this case, vitality would be a better option.

However, as your health pool increases in size, then your heal becomes less effective. For example, a 5,000 health heal for a 15,000 health character is a 33% heal. A 5,000 heal for a 25,000 health player is only getting a 20% heal. Therefor the latter player will have to heal more often to keep their health maxed, and this channeling time prevents you from using your damage skills.

Basically at low vitality and low toughness, your effective health pool benefits more from increased toughness. After a certain amount of toughness, your EHP will benefit more from an increased vitality.

General rule: If you have condition removal skills or utilities stack toughness up to 1,100 or 1,300, then get vitality. If you only face condition damage, stack vitality first, then get toughness later. If you have both condition removal and are good at dodging/evading direct damage, then drop both vitality and toughness and get berserkers (pure dmg).

You need a good balance of toughness and vitality to endure the most damage.
example:
2 × 8 = 16
5 × 5 = 25
However when you have lots of vitality you heal less of your max health pool.
That why cleric gear (healing power, toughness, power) is populair on guardians.

Same for Power/Precision

You need a good balance, however if you want to proc your runes/traits on crit, you might need a little more precision.

Wow, thanks a lot!