Guild Wars 2

Was procrastinating today and wanted to share my findings:

First of all, traits are of course more important than the bonus stats you get, however, if you can’t decide (Their are sweet traits in both lines), this might help you make your choice.

Assumptions: steady weapons are scaled multiplicatively with their real counterparts

Note: don’t take the DPS value as a literal number, use it as a comparison with the other DPS values.

w/o fury

Amulet Max DPS (not a literal value)
Berzerk: crit is 1.02 times better 120.69 crit setup
Soldier: power is 1.04 times better 97.66 power setup
Cleric: power is 1.06 times better 83.64 power setup
Barbarian: power is 1.03 times better 96.35 power setup
Valk: power is 1.02 times better 97.66 power setup

with fury
Berzerk: crit is 1.14 times better 149.85 crit setup
Soldier: crit is 1.09 times better 115.92 crit setup
Cleric: crit is 1.08 times better 98.81 crit setup
Barbarian: crit is 1.11 times better 115.92 crit setup
Valk: crit is 1.12 times better 124.74 crit setup

So basically, with fury, the crit is better, w/o fury, power is better EXCEPT for zerkers.
If you aren’t a class that has crit damage and precision in the same trait line, power will most likely be a better choice no matter what unless you’re using zerker gear in which case its probably pretty close (haven’t done the math).

another note: without fury, soldier = valk, with fury valk > soldier. Also, without fury soldier > barbarian and with fury soldier = barbarian.

tested on a medium armor target

more debate
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/37607-attack-vs-precision/#entry1464490

From a pure math perspective Power is more heavily weighted in the damage formula than precision and crit damage (only slightly so, but it does have more impact on damage). If you are looking at just the pure damage output from attacks, then an equal proportion of Power is ALWAYS better than precision and crit individually, and USUALLY better than both.

With that said it really comes down to an aspect that the OP ignores in his analysis. Crit Proc’s of traits and/or sigils can be frequent enough and mathematically meaningful enough to tip the scales in favor of Precision/Crit Damage over power for some builds. This kind of analysis needs to be done on a build by build basis though if you want it to really be accurate.

I agree with most of your first paragraph: even with fury, 300 power is about 2% better than 300 precision and 300 power is about 5% better than 30% crit damage. However, if your trait bonus gives you both prec and crit dmg, and you have steady fury uptime, crit will always be better by a pretty large margin (even with a soldier or cleric ammy).

I agree with your second paragraph, this was a very shallow study albeit hopely useful for at least a few people.

Even with a Cleric amulet? That’s an interesting tidbit.
Do one for Celestial amulet.

so I was playing around with the #s from the gw2guru article and put this together:

5 Runes of Eagle, 1 Divinity = 10% Crit Damage
Valks or Zerker Ammy = 20%
30 Traits points into Crit Damage

That establishes your base of 60% crit damage, which will give you the highest base avg. damage for power builds.

From there you already have the minimum required power for the highest curve in the chart that pvp itemization allows from gear, so everything you do from there goes to Precision to get that crit % up, since you’ve already hit the point before the slight diminishing returns from adding more power.

Example builds by class:

Warrior LB/Hammer Variant

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJATSjkOxwpQyOMxBE0jvgLqiTBlQ9AP2w4A-ToAg0CnIwRhjDHDOScs1MIYhA

Arcane Surge S/F Ele

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmKbkxzgjDIkCmg4hF4AcY5xMED1AA-ToAA0CnIwRhjDHDOScs1MIYaB

Tricky Burst D/P Thief

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKUo4JvHk1YZWaFoJA-TsAg0CnIwRhjDHDOScs1MIYZx0CA

Big Scary Lich

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW4djMaV6hbabM8JkpCeT0jhRZYGqHlT68hA-TsAA0CnIwRhjDHDOScs1MsYRw2CA