Guild Wars 2

Also, how much damage reduction is it and how effective is it at tanking? How many “additional hits” can a player take on top of the active defenses? I know it’s defense from class armor (heavy I guess now) and toughness.

It turns out I am horrible at timing things lately due to some injuries and need the buffer. :p

Thanks.

The maximum armor rating is 1271 according to this page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor#Defense_rating

That is of course on a full set of ascended heavy armor. Maximum for full exotics is 1211.

I couldn’t find a simple answer to how toughness adds to that and what the maximum defense rating is but that page would be a good starting point to find out. I doubt you could get an answer to how many additional hits you can take because that depends on a lot of other factors, like the stats of the player/creature you’re fighting and any additional effects on you and them.

But basically all you need to know is ascended armour always has the best stats, heavy armour always has the best armour rating and toughness adds to it. So what you want is a set of heavy ascended armour with toughness as the primary stat.

Well, if there’s no easy answer then it’s probably not worth investing in; I can honestly say I’ve no idea how armor (toughness + defense) actually performs even if I understand it’s equation so without that it is worthless for me to use.

Bugger.

But thank you since if there is no one who actually uses the stat (and few do) it’s somewhat worthless to me without some kind of experience in it’s implementation and deployment.

Double bugger.

Don’t get trapped in the MOAR armor line of thinking.

Armor/Toughness is great upto 2800.
After that, you are looking for -% dmg, the protection boon and weakness condition.
It is evades/blocking/blinds/invulnerability that do the real heavy lifting.

My Warriors armour is 3200 and Hp buffs to 37k. I have no doubt it is overkill and likely inefficient, but from a psychological standpoint, it feels wonderful not dying to stuff. I was in a team of 2 in Mai Trin with a zerker warrior. The zerker Warrior obv did most of the damage, but kept getting knocked down, but my Warrior could just rez w/o taking much damage.

Remember though – his dps is pretty much awful. So he stays alive, but it takes an age to kill stuff. It took 45 mins to take down Mordy regardless to the fact he barely took damage. I don’t bother taking him to pvp since he would be dead weight on the team.

I suppliment all this with shield blocks/reflects, interrupts and banner regen as well just to add to the defences.

So it can work, but I generally find toughness requires commitment, since a small amount doesn’t really gain any benefit over dps or the more skill based defences Justine lists

Justine.6351:

Don’t get trapped in the MOAR armor line of thinking.

Armor/Toughness is great upto 2800.
After that, you are looking for -% dmg, the protection boon and weakness condition.
It is evades/blocking/blinds/invulnerability that do the real heavy lifting.

I had forgotten about the boon thing. I should see if I can create more protection for myself and use that as a supplement. My dodging and blocking will be a bit slower until my hand heals but that doesn’t mean I can’t use buffs.

thanks.

If you look at the damage formula, damage is inversely proportional to defense+toughness (not a linear relationship). As Justine alluded to, the benefits of each additional point of armor diminishes as your total increases.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Also, condi damage (which HoT is full of) totally ignores armor.

Depending on what class you play, pets/minions and CC/chills/cripples also increase survival by keeping mobs away from you.

Armor is linear.

Proof:

I could give Necromancer a try. Never was good at it. Maybe my bum wrist needs some minions to keep it safe and relaxed.

Boons are a more important component of a defensive build than armor. While Anet added an aggro control role to raids, the true GW2 archetype for the bulky character is the bunker. Boons such as protection, as well as vigor and regen are important to sustain, which is what makes a bunker build.

When HoT was released it was possible to reduce all direct dmg to 0 . ( It got nerfed by now)
You just had to stack as much dmg reduktion as possible.
I think it was possible to get over 93% reduktion back then (without armor/toughness).

[URL=http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4405/6wxyhptf_png.htm][/URL]

DanAlcedo.3281:

When HoT was released it was possible to reduce all direct dmg to 0 . ( It got nerfed by now)
You just had to stack as much dmg reduktion as possible.
I think it was possible to get over 93% reduktion back then (without armor/toughness).

[URL=http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4405/6wxyhptf_png.htm][/URL]

When they nerfed it how did they change it? Is it no longer additive or something?

I have to disagree about your assessment of toughness’ relationship to damage:
You are correct about power, it is linear. But toughness isn’t linear.

I find the easiest way to see linear relationships are to actually graph out the equation. I’ll stick to the numbers you used to make the comparison easier to see.

Power:

Toughness:

You can even look at it via damage reduction instead of damage:

You can plug in other numbers to check, but the damage formula won’t give you a linear relationship between damage and toughness.

You actually proved the opposite.

A/AX represents the damage taken, not damage reduction.

Doubling Test:

Econ. Proof: Deadweight Loss

Basically it is easier to reduce damage in this game than it is to buffer it.

Simpler Proof:

[spoiler][spoiler][spoiler][spoiler]

I think we’re going too far into the theory and it’s confusing the issue.

The original premise of the discussion was armor/toughness exhibits diminishing returns (as is commonly believed) or if its just an illusion caused by proportions (as your 1st reply to me indicated). I’ll point out that your toughness example there only had 2 data points; there needs to be more to see the relationship (BTW, there’s a typo: your .05 should have been .5)

To avoid confusion with proportions, I’ll just use absolute numbers
Take a hypothetical situation: power x weapon x coefficient = 10,000
At 10 toughness:
10,000/10 = 1000 damage
Damage reduction = 10,000-1000 = 9000
On average, each point of toughness reduces damage by 900

At 100 toughness:
10,000/100 = 100
Damage reduction = 10,000-100 = 9900
On average, each point of toughness reduces damage by 99

At 1000 toughness:
10,000/1000 = 10
Damage reduction = 10,000-10 = 9990
On average, each point of toughness reduces damage by 9.99

Another way to look at it
Going from 1 toughness to 2 toughness
10,000/1 = 10000 damage
10,000/2 = 5000 damage
+1 toughness here reduced damage by an additional 5000

Going from 10 toughness to 11
10,000/10 = 1000
10,000/11 = 909.09 (make it 909)
+1 toughness reduced damage by an additional 91

Going from 100 toughness to 101 toughness
10,000/100 = 100
10,000/101 = 99.009 (make it 99)
+1 toughness reduced damage by an additional 1 point

Going from 1000 toughness to 1001
10,000/1000 = 10
10,000/1001 = 9.99
+1 toughness reduced damage by an addition 0.01 (effectively zero depending how rounding is handled.)

That shows that: given a constant attack, adding excessive toughness is not cost effective in terms of additional damage mitigated.
The caveat: if the attack power/coefficient increases, the absolute benefits of toughness increase too.

Toughness and armor are subject to diminishing returns. Eventually it’s going to get to a point where adding more vitality, as an example, is going to provide a higher buffer than what an equal amount of toughness would give (IE there’s a point that 50 vitality, 500 health iirc, is going to be BETTER than 50 extra toughness).

I just discovered something far more frightening thanks to this conversation. I owe you one. Thanks.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Toughness and armor are subject to diminishing returns. Eventually it’s going to get to a point where adding more vitality, as an example, is going to provide a higher buffer than what an equal amount of toughness would give (IE there’s a point that 50 vitality, 500 health iirc, is going to be BETTER than 50 extra toughness).

That’s not proof of diminishing returns so much as it is proof of value limits. Let’s say you could have enough toughness to reduce damage by 99%. At what point is vitality greater? There actually is an answer to this.

Vitality > Toughness when Your HP is less than 1% of incoming damage. It’s that simple. So 500 Vitality is better when whatever Damage Reduction is less than incoming damage. Basically they’re not actually “competing”. Their both just calculated proportionally to incoming damage.

100 damage incoming:

If you’ve 99% DR from 100 toughness you take 1 real damage.

If you’ve 100 vitality you proportionally take 10% damage ( 10 × 100 = 1,000, 100 / 1,000 = 10% ).

Which is best depends on more than just additional values. Armor class for instance greatly effects this as do base stats.

There’s no real “eventuality” or dedicated rule because they’re not competing stats. Same with power and precision or healing power in with vitality and toughness.

Conditions are different.

This is GW2 there is no tanks nor healers except for versions of it in raids, but not even there you find the tanks and healers as they are in other mmo’s.

There are only a few bosses in raids that are tankable. Any class with the highest toughness can tank them. BUT this does not mean you should collect toughness. You are still a dps/support if you will be one of them tanking a boss.
There are no tank specs in the way you probably thinking about this. So you can not taunt or do anything tanky that you might have done in other games.

So unless you do not plan to raid, tanks are not needed in this game. And even in raids, you should not be stuck with only one role. This will most likely keep you from getting in to raids. Make sure you can play your class in many different ways.

Leaa.2943:

This is GW2 there is no tanks nor healers except for versions of it in raids, but not even there you find the tanks and healers as they are in other mmo’s.

There are only a few bosses in raids that are tankable. Any class with the highest toughness can tank them. BUT this does not mean you should collect toughness. You are still a dps/support if you will be one of them tanking a boss.
There are no tank specs in the way you probably thinking about this. So you can not taunt or do anything tanky that you might have done in other games.

So unless you do not plan to raid, tanks are not needed in this game. And even in raids, you should not be stuck with only one role. This will most likely keep you from getting in to raids. Make sure you can play your class in many different ways.

You’re absolutely right. I’m starting to see that running knights was unnecessary. I was afraid my reaction time would be too low but really i just needed to change gears and play support and bon management.

There really isn’t much need to attack toughness.