Guild Wars 2

When setting up my Ranger builds, I have trouble in the area of which trait to plug in. Which has more health benifits and damage benifits? I am looking to set up both a top damage build and a top survivability build. Two sets of armor, weapons, traits, etc.
Any number crunchers out there that can point me in the right directions?

From the wiki:

“Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)”

Armor in this case = Defense + Toughness

So, if you have some actual numbers to plug in (and know how that’s going to work in terms of increased toughness vs. increased vitality; +1 vitality = +10 health IINM) you could do a comparison there.

Of course the other thing to remember is that’s just direct damage. Condition damage ignores armor (wiki has a table: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage)

Again, if you have numbers to work with try them out and see what you come up with.

Just depends which you wish to go for.

Toughness defends against direct damage. Vitality defends against condition damage.

Condition damage is consistent damage over time. Critical damage is occasional spike damage though more often if crit rate is high.

So it just a choice of which you want to work on.

My personal preference is Toughness and high crit damage but I’m sure many will have arguments for or against that. Whichever way you choose is definitely viable.

SanctumSyte.5019:

Toughness defends against direct damage. Vitality defends against condition damage.

But there is one very important difference:
– Toughness reduces incoming damage. Allowing you to outheal a higher amount of incoming DPS.
– Vitality only increases your health buffer. If incoming damage is greater than your ability to heal, vitality only increases how long you have to deal with the enemies before you die.

Vitality and toughness are useful for surviving spikes which would kill you quickly. But, in longer fights, any vitality beyond what you need to survive spikes is of very little use compared to toughness and healing power.

one thing that could perhaps help make the decision a little easier is if you run into condition dmg against yourself a lot, and what type of conditional removal you have. if you have a lot of condition removal, and have good healing, you can then afford to have a slightly smaller pool of HP and focus more on toughness. that’s what i personally go for as well.

@OP
You should post this in the Ranger forum for more detail relating to how the class functions.

I play a ranger, and traiting the class is always a trade-off between damage output and survivability. You cannot do both and expect to have an effective ranger. Furthermore, the class has poor conditional removal traits/utilities. So, for this class I focus on vitality rather than toughness.

For leveling I went the ‘glass cannon’ build, all power, precision and crit chance/crit damage. My kit (armour & weapons) are all Berserker, my accessories are all Valkyrie

Yes, I am squishy, but I can kill things at range (longbow) before they close enough to do much or any damage. When I do go into melee (greatsaword) versus vets and the like, I need to watch my health, but with high trap damage, quickness and signet boosts I can easily survive.

bri.2359:

@OP
You should post this in the Ranger forum for more detail relating to how the class functions.

I agree completely. We could go on about comparing vitality, toughness and healing power* all we like. But the truth is that GW2 doesn’t let you take the stat on its own, the comparison will always be the stat, plus the other stat it comes with, plus the traits it come with.
For gear, you have to consider the other stats on the same gear.

*Why do people always leave out healing when talking about survivability ?

Lets take GW1 PvE as an example. There taking +hp gear would let you take 1 or 2 more hits before dying than +armor gear, while +armor did nothing vs various attacks. So a lot of people were saying that +hp gear was better.
Thing is, without someone healing you, you weren’t going to live long either way. When you add healing into the equation, +armor reduces how often you need a heal, +hp just let you live for maybe a second longer if your healing was insufficient.

confused about cond damage. I put it on every piece exotic trait in it and the damage per tick is 10 points more then it was, and the shots and burns don’t seem to change anything. so why is cond damage in here if it’s not really going to increase the damage beyond ten points?