Guild Wars 2

I am convinced that after nearly 30 ranks of PvP, multiple hundreds of specs and amulet tinkering among other things that toughness (for light and medium classes) doesn’t make a significant impact.

Why? Tradeoffs.

Typically to run a high toughness build, you sacrifice either DPS or Vitality. So either you have a tremendous HP pool and get hit hard, or no HP and get hit ‘less’, or neither and hit like a wet paper napkin. I put ‘less’ in quotes because I do not feel that, on my thief or ranger, that I am any more durable with a full toughness build than I would be with simply 2x the HP.

The exception here is the soldiers amulet which provides pow/vit/tough – great. Well, I typically run a condition build and there is no cond/tough/vit amulet with similar stats.

What I would like to see is someone with empirical evidence on how toughness affects damage taken. For example

With 1000 toughness – ‘Slice’ hits for 943
With 2000 toughness – ‘Slice’ hits for 865

You get the idea. Has anyone done this before and/or can link to similar data?

Everything about PvP seems to push the user towards toughness but the armor values and impact to overall DPS seem to lend themselves much better to heavier support classes than lighter damage classes. Just looking for data to back that up instead of just ‘my gut says’.

Thanks-

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

Each attribute point put into toughness increases the armor of the character by one

Not sure if it helps, but it is some data.

toughness makes a huge difference

/thread

This thread has some good info

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/35556-weaponskill-damage-formula/page__hl__damage%20equation

“My conclusions:

adding 916 power through traits/runes/amulet will double the damage done.
adding ~1835 toughness will reduce all damage taken by 50%.
adding 916 toughness will reduce all damage taken by 33%.

constant protection boon equals 916 toughness.

Quite imbalanced isn’t it? "

-Enfanger Guild Wars 2 Guru Forum

That’s the closest thing I’ve found to an answer.

As an ele I personally prefer the protection boon over toughness for non-bunker builds. I can maintain 70-100% protection uptime (depending on build) while still having a 67% crit rate. Just messing around on a target golem I was able to achieve 30 seconds of protection using only auras and earth attune swapping. I’ve gotten 1 minute duration before but it might be capped as I couldn’t get any higher.

That’s good info thanks teapot

Great info, thank you Teapot.

As an ele I personally prefer the protection boon over toughness for non-bunker builds. I can maintain 70-100% protection uptime (depending on build) while still having a 67% crit rate

And THAT…is just ridiculous…btw. You effectively have better protection than a tank, higher crit than a thief, and (im assuming) neigh infinite survivability by way of water.

Should have rolled an ele…good lord.

Revelstoke.8924:

Great info, thank you Teapot.

As an ele I personally prefer the protection boon over toughness for non-bunker builds. I can maintain 70-100% protection uptime (depending on build) while still having a 67% crit rate

And THAT…is just ridiculous…btw. You effectively have better protection than a tank, higher crit than a thief, and (im assuming) neigh infinite survivability by way of water.

Should have rolled an ele…good lord.

shatter mesmer

Revelstoke.8924:

And THAT…is just ridiculous…btw. You effectively have better protection than a tank, higher crit than a thief, and (im assuming) neigh infinite survivability by way of water.

Should have rolled an ele…good lord.

Just make an ele, I just made a fresh one this morning took 15 min.

Here’s my D/D build, standard evasive arcana build. If you want 100% percent protection uptime just take prot on auras, use auras when off cd, and make sure to use fire ring + magnetic grasp combo.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/aura-cantrip-aura-cantrip-7804.html

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

This thread has some good info

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/35556-weaponskill-damage-formula/page__hl__damage%20equation

“My conclusions:

adding 916 power through traits/runes/amulet will double the damage done.
adding ~1835 toughness will reduce all damage taken by 50%.
adding 916 toughness will reduce all damage taken by 33%.

constant protection boon equals 916 toughness.

Quite imbalanced isn’t it? "

-Enfanger Guild Wars 2 Guru Forum

That’s the closest thing I’ve found to an answer.

As an ele I personally prefer the protection boon over toughness for non-bunker builds. I can maintain 70-100% protection uptime (depending on build) while still having a 67% crit rate. Just messing around on a target golem I was able to achieve 30 seconds of protection using only auras and earth attune swapping. I’ve gotten 1 minute duration before but it might be capped as I couldn’t get any higher.

Depends on what your starting armor is… or what we are referring to as “base” damage.

Also, protection always reduces damage by 33%, so it works synergistically with higher toughness. Stack toughness and reduce damage 50%, add protection for 33%…and you end up only taking 33% of the base damage. They work together well, toughness and protection.

But regardless, protection is indeed a very potent boon, stat wise equivalent is pretty large numbers. If you can run a more dps oriented build while maintaining protection… you got yourself a potent spec.

Revelstoke.8924:

I am convinced that after nearly 30 ranks of PvP, multiple hundreds of specs and amulet tinkering among other things that toughness (for light and medium classes) doesn’t make a significant impact.

Why? Tradeoffs.

~snip~

Toughness makes a huge impact, but it is also true that power scales better than toughness (in a vacuum).

If you look at the damage formula you can see why (it is already posted above).

Say I do 10 damage whith base power vs target in light armor and base toughness. (916). Well, I can add 916 more power to double that, and do 20 damage. Lets say the guy im fighting decides he wants to go tankier, and adds 916 toughness. Well, now I’m only going to hit him for around 13 damage. But we both added the same number of stats! And I’m still hitting harder than before.

Power just simply scales really well in this game. But that doesn’t mean toughness is useless and should be neglected either! In that example, the extra toughness he added made a pretty big impact still, even if the power outweights it point for point.

Now, your spec is going to determine what is right for you, in s/tPvP everything comes in preset packages, and customizing your stats to the optimum for your build takes a bit of finessing.

My general rule of thumb though, is never to sacrifice too much power, unless it gets you something really good that stats alone cannot compensate for… ie traits, rune bonuses, etc. There are a few builds that don’t need it much too, but those are the exception and not the rule.