Guild Wars 2

And by extension armor vs health.

My general rule of thumb for games is that high health is better than high armor/defense because there are usually type of damage which ignore your armor but it’s rare to see one where having more health doesn’t help. But I wanted to check whether this holds true in GW2.

Obviously both together would be best, but in situations where I need to choose between a boost to vitality or a boost to toughness (when assigning traits for example), all else being equal am I best off choosing vitality?

I’d like to know this too. Does GW2 have a concept of damage that ignores armor (magic or conditions, maybe)?

Condition damage ignores armour yes

In other mmorpg your generally better off with armour and mitigation because even if there are some armour/mitigation ignoring attacks they are usually rare and its much better to reduce the amount of healing you need than to try up the amount you can tank as in any real dangerous situation you will have a healer.

In this there are few people that play as healer meaning your only source of healing comes from yourself, now is armour better than vitality still? Yes it actually probably is.

For similiar reasons, while conditions ignore armour regular hits are far more common and with the limited healing you want your heals to be as effective as possible so taking 25% less damage but healing the same amount would be the same as having 25% more health and healing 25% more.

With conditions being the only real source of armour ignoring damage (the other being fall damage) they are much better negated by carrying around a condition removal skill.

Now having said all that this is just my personal opinion and theory, I am sure others have their own and of course their are most likely people that feel the opposite or have reasons to go vitality over it (say presence of vitality % converted into another stat trait or such)

Oh one other little nugget of information, while we don’t know every thing that effects it we do know that having a higher toughness/armour score increases your chance of gaining aggro in group situations so that might effect your decision also.

Condition damage automatically bypasses your Armor value (which is based on your Base Armor score from gear and the multiplier that Toughness applies to that Base Armor). While having a high Vitality score does normally help against condition damage, the Fractal’s agony condition damage is based on a % value of your maximum health score. So in that specific case, having a high Vitality can be a penalty since it’s harder to keep up with healing the damage.

All things being equal, Vitality tends to be more useful in a variety of builds. Yet having said that, my PvE Thief has constant sources of incoming healing through my traits and gear. Due to the incoming healing rate, I’ve found it quite successful to run Knight gear (aka Power/Precision/Toughness). Once you’re in full Exotic armor, Toughness starts to be actually useful. While I fear dealing with lots of conditions, I’m otherwise pretty hard to kill. The character is basically like a crab because he has claws and a hard outer shell, but is pretty squishy on the inside.

If you’re running a build that is high on Toughness, you’re better at dealing with incoming alpha strike hits and quickly healing yourself back to full. It’s only viable on a build that gets a lot of healing and condition removal through your skills, traits, gear, and/or other players. That’s a specialized situation, which is why people tend to avoid Toughness heavy builds unless they’re running something like Power/Vitality/Toughness.

Thanks both, that’s really helpful.

It doesn’t give me a simple answer on which to pick but at least I have a better understanding of what it is I’m deciding, so I can hopefully figure something out.

Danikat.8537:

Thanks both, that’s really helpful.

It doesn’t give me a simple answer on which to pick but at least I have a better understanding of what it is I’m deciding, so I can hopefully figure something out.

Armor is important for direct damage but, Vit > armor in any case.

As a guardian, I can say that Toughness is way more important for me. I boost vitality in my traits, but not on equipment at all. Damage reduction goes a long way overall and yes conditions hurt my health pool, but I have so many ways to remove them it’s a moot point.

As a theif? Toughness is next to useless. More health, more healing, more vitality. The more the better. I’d lower my toughness to sub par levels to get more vitality.

Many of the arguments for either toughness or vitality have already been noted above, but one that often gets overlooked is that toughness is part of the game’s aggro formula, which Dasorine touched on.

If you are playing a character where you want to avoid aggro, focus on vitality. If you are playing a character where you want to have a better chance to draw aggro, focus on toughness.

If you’re playing a DPS character and you find yourself drawing aggro from your tankier group members, you can try trading out toughness for vitality to see if it helps.

They are both equal. Its nice to have both but if you have to pick one, any would be fine as long as it helps you in survivability =)

So after debating this with myself for about 1/2 a day I think I’ve finally decided on toughness over vitality and then condition removal skills to deal with condition damage.

Although I’ve also just realised since I’m going to be getting the toughness from my armor I should hold off on any changes until after I’ve fought my way into Orr to get it from the shrine.

I find that having a mix of Toughness and Vitality has served me well; although the exact mix seems to be different depending on which character I’m on. It also depends on what other stats I’m pushing. Once I get acceptable damage, how much fudge room do I have to put into defense. Also, trait lines which offer major traits that fit what I’m going for will influence which I choose — assuming I’m not just building a porcelain cannon.

It really depends on the class. For my Mesmer, I go for vitality because they have so many ways to avoid direct damage but only a few condition removals. With more life, I can easily remove major conditions and outlast minor ones.

For my Elementalist, I take both because, though they have so many ways to remove conditions, they are just so freaking squishy for the sheer amount of aggro they draw. PVT stats plus several ways to regenerate health makes them quite beefy!

For my Warrior, I don’t bother with either. Her base stats, good condition removals and high damage potential makes her perfect for stacking on the magic find.

So, again, it’s really a matter of covering your profession’s shortcomings, as well as your own.