Guild Wars 2

Hi All,

Not asking for a nerf to thieves.. i think they are fine and i play one myself. I do think toughness needs to be looked at in detail by the dev team. Obviously i was hit by an extreme glass cannon BS build… but with 2k+ toughness, i should not get hit for 14846 damage in under 1 second…. let alone almost a 7k backstab.

Again – i think thief damage is fine.. if the wind hits the guy that hit me he would die so they need to do a bunch of a damage. I think the toughness stat itself needs to be looked at.

To all replies – this thread is not about what I could have done or wore or traited differently. Its also not how i should/could have dodged. This is not my normal spec and was testing the toughness stat out itself. The point I’m trying t convey is that if someone maximizes toughness (2k is extreme), they should not take this much damage.

You are only wearing one defensive stats, toughness. He is wearing full offensive gear. I mean, I don’t understand what you guys want for a game. That thief dies in 4 hits against a greatsword warrior. He dies from random shatters, autoattacks, traps, ae damage etc. in a team fight. He used all on you: Steal and probably assassin’s signet. For the next 45 seconds he can sit back and spam cluster bombs or die a horrible quick death.

I mean, what exactly do you want? Should everyone be wearing bunker stuff and so duels would never finish? Or buff toughness that much so that direct damage is complete kitten? He put everything on that card: One dodge or your “Roll for Intitiative” would have made his burst gone.

(You should wear carrion anyway against burst classes).

EDIT: Also is that shaman’s pendant? With toughness, condition damage and healing? You should go for carrion. Thieves don’t have enough uptime on regeneration to make healing power good sadly .

Toughness alone doesn’t make someone tanky. Investing so much in toughness and nothing in vital is not an effective way to maximize your effective health pool.+healing if you have good regen uptime and healing skills that scale well works wonders with toughness. See guardians and ele’s for examples. I think toughness doesn’t do a lot by its self because if it did, applied with some of the things i mentioned, some people would be impossible to kill even 1v3.

Try vitality instead. That’s how you have to counter ap burst in LoL. Stack a lot of hp. Toughness isn’t worth it unless your going to be purposefully taking a lot of damage. It’s funny, though. Try playing other classes that need to build survivability and still get stomped fast by glass thieves. They don’t have stealth and can’t match the burst.

Tanicus.8270:

To all replies – this thread is not about what I could have done or wore or traited differently. Its also not how i should/could have dodged. This is not my normal spec and was testing the toughness stat out itself. The point I’m trying t convey is that if someone maximizes toughness (2k is extreme), they should not take this much damage.

And the point of my post was that you are not testing the effectiveness of toughness by testing just toughness. Like all builds, stats and traits need to work with each other. You wouldn’t take all +crit damage if you have no source of fury, high precision or traits/utilities that give x% chance of higher crit. Have you not run into bunker specs? They run high toughness but also healing. Together the are very strong, but by themselves they are both kind of weak. If you ran without the toughness you would be complaining that you took 20k damage. As others have said including me, too much toughness not enough vital. Shaman’s is great for necro’s because they already have high hp, not so much with thief’s. Base of 18k compared to ele,thiefs and guardians 11k. Toughness is fine, thief’s are fine, your test build is not.

Is this the end of the test?

Show please screen, when glass cannon like that guy will hit u when u’ll be 2k armor and that’s what story about.

900 toughness is worthless.

2k toughness is a beast.

maybe try alternating and play against the same person, cause for me on my guardian with 2k toughness a glass canon thiefs burst will definitely do a lot of damage but far from one shot me, where as my 900 toughness warrior can be downed by thieves in 2-3 hits if theyre also glass canon.

toughness does make a difference, end of story.

Nikkle.4013:

Tanicus.8270:

To all replies – this thread is not about what I could have done or wore or traited differently. Its also not how i should/could have dodged. This is not my normal spec and was testing the toughness stat out itself. The point I’m trying t convey is that if someone maximizes toughness (2k is extreme), they should not take this much damage.

And the point of my post was that you are not testing the effectiveness of toughness by testing just toughness. Like all builds, stats and traits need to work with each other. You wouldn’t take all +crit damage if you have no source of fury, high precision or traits/utilities that give x% chance of higher crit. Have you not run into bunker specs? They run high toughness but also healing. Together the are very strong, but by themselves they are both kind of weak. If you ran without the toughness you would be complaining that you took 20k damage. As others have said including me, too much toughness not enough vital. Shaman’s is great for necro’s because they already have high hp, not so much with thief’s. Base of 18k compared to ele,thiefs and guardians 11k. Toughness is fine, thief’s are fine, your test build is not.

You’re still criticizing his build, though, when he’s criticizing the effectiveness of the Toughness stat. Even if he had 18k HP to go with that 3k armor, he’s still losing 14k of it to a single combo.

That said, OP, I’m not really sure how he hit you for so much. My Guardian half-bunker runs with 17.5k HP and 2996 armor, and a typical Backstab will hit me for 4k damage. The full combo may hit for closer to 7-8k, but I’ve never gotten hit for over 14k damage like your Thief. Even my glass cannon Mesmer build typically tops out at getting hit for around 11k BS damage. What was the damage breakdown between the skills in the combo, and are you sure there weren’t other factors that may have influenced the result (multiple hits of BS, maybe)?

It would be nice to see the math of that hit, but I agree soemwhat, toughness seems the most effective vs autoatacks and does not seem to mitigate abilities as much as I might expect.

I think toughness and power should both have their impact on the damage equation reduced in order to normalise the extremes slightly. Base health difference between classes might need to be reassessed though as health would get a small increase in effectiveness. On the other hand, eles, thieves, and guards are not exactly struggling right now.

I don’t really have a problem with someone who specs into all damage stats hitting someone who specs into only one defensive stat hard, but instagibs are a little over the top in such a situation.

Soryuju.8164:

You’re still criticizing his build, though, when he’s criticizing the effectiveness of the Toughness stat. Even if he had 18k HP to go with that 3k armor, he’s still losing 14k of it to a single combo.

I was really criticizing his test. I thought this was clear in my +crit damage example. If someone posted data from a test golem saying +crit damage as being a bad stat and had only about 15% crit everyone would say something like “you have no crit, of course its a ‘bad stat’, get more crit”. Same here. I believe armor is the opposite to power which means a 50% increase in toughness is not going to counter a 50% increase in the enemy’s power. This is due to armor being the aggregate of toughness and base armor. 50% increase of toughness is a <50% increase in armor. This does not mean toughness is a bad stat or that everyone should go glass because “power is king”. Anyone who plays this game knows the strength of a good guardian or ele bunker. Defensive stats are strong, they just are not 1:1 counters. They require a proper setup.

Toughness right now isn’t scaling properly in regards to power and critical damage bonuses because even if you reduced their damage by 50% it’s still high numbers. I have numerous screenshots ranging from 9.4k Kill Shots to 6.8k Backstabs + Eviscerates while having 3,200 armor. Numerous times I’ve been literally instant gibbed by Warriors and Thiefs in a matter of seconds by them popping haste.

I play a “bunker” Guardian stacked Vitality, Toughness, and Healing Power and sometimes I just feel like a cardboard box. There’s only so much your build + stats can protect you.

Also, what is ridiculous is the huge hits are all coming from physical abilities. Literally every other class in game outside of Warriors and Thiefs doesn’t hit me for more than 4k including siege weapons.

It’s like we’re in a situation where those who stack high on offensive stats gets to giggle when they plow “tanks” over like they’re wearing cloth and those who stack high in defensive stats sigh in frustration because they aren’t getting what they would expect. High toughness should be a counter to high offense, not the opposite.

Why did you black out his face? :P

Hammerheart.1426:

Why did you black out his face? :P

He had a pretty face that no one should be able to copy from.

1.) Concentrate on “Damage to Kill” not toughness, what only contributes to DTK. Means getting a bigger HP pool or regeneration is mandatory when stacking toughness, since it’s senseles otherwise.

2.) Use defensive CDs when your Opponent uses Burst CDs. Damage Mitigation alone
is not sufficient and this is good.
Example: Greatsword-Warrior uses 100b, you dodge. He uses Bola, You remove
conditions. He uses Knockdown, you use a “shield wall”

3.) With your low HP, your thieve opponent gets a big damagebonus to you, since
you are fast under 50% life.

4.) At ComeAndSee. I can only disagree. My Bro is playing Guardian and i dont even
kill him nearly as you described. I dont kill him at all in 1vs1, although i oneshot a
lot noobs in sPvP. Anything with your skills or playstyle is flawed.
Having 3,3k Armor and Protection with a huge amount of reg is in one-one nearly.

5.) “Toughness right now isn’t scaling properly” In spvp the terminal value of stats is
predetermined. I cant see any unbalanced scaling of stats with those scopes.

6.) This is no kittening WoW. If two people are on you, you’re passive abilities wont
help. Movement, Positioning., Help from your mates, and preventive measures
do. As a result a lot of people have problems with mesmers, cause they are really
strong in “evading attacks” instead of mitigate them.

7.) Thiefs are simply not good in getting a high DTK, since their lack in regeneration
and damagemitigation is counterbalanced by cc.

8.) If you really want to play a tanks-thief though, get 16k HP and play it with dagger /pistol, not pistol / dagger. YOU CANT SIMPLY MITIGATE THE DAMAGE, You have no reg and no protection.

9.) Imagine Symbol-Guadians, Earth-Water-Elementals, S-Elixier-Engineers or Mesmers with even stronger damage mitigation through toughness. Some kinda stupid. Your plan of playing a tanky thief is not dumb, though, you’re just using a wrong approach.

This is no Im-the-teacher-and-you-are-the-pupil-response. I just want to help out and protect structured pvp in gw2. I have rarely seen another mmo-rpg, even just an mmo, which has such a good approach to balance. Gw2 is really good, and the more you cry the bigger the chance this game will become a wow-clone.

PhilKingz.4809:

This is no Im-the-teacher-and-you-are-the-pupil-respond. I just want to help out and protect structured pvp in gw2. I have rarely seen another mmo-rpg, even just an mmo, which has such a good approach to balance. Gw2 is really good, and the more you cry the bigger the chance this game will become a wow-clone.

GW2 is far away from being eSport worthy at the moment. We’re going to need several patches before we can even think about it.

SWTOR (a great PvP game) had a lot of burst issues early like this game, but after several patches they really ironed out the gameplay. Battles were always consistent length without excessive burst and you needed perfect synergy in your group composition to win. Getting a proper build that had balance between damage and survivability was a constant struggle.

ComeAndSee.1356:

PhilKingz.4809:

This is no Im-the-teacher-and-you-are-the-pupil-respond. I just want to help out and protect structured pvp in gw2. I have rarely seen another mmo-rpg, even just an mmo, which has such a good approach to balance. Gw2 is really good, and the more you cry the bigger the chance this game will become a wow-clone.

GW2 is far away from being eSport worthy at the moment. We’re going to need several patches before we can even think about it.

SWTOR (a great PvP game) had a lot of burst issues early like this game, but after several patches they really ironed out the gameplay. Battles were always consistent length without excessive burst and you needed perfect synergy in your group composition to win. Getting a proper build that had balance between damage and survivability was a constant struggle.

I cant really disagree, since i didnt play swtor, just my Bro did. But the argument “Battles were always consistent length without excessive burst and you needed perfect synergy in your group composition to win.” makes me suspicious. How many groups with perfect-synergy and compostion are out there? Maybe you meant it differently, but the premise of having a good composition and a good teamplay to win can also relate to a very unbalanced game. You have this exactly in wow, which a lot of “not-so-intelligent” people call an E-sport. If you consider WoW an Esport, then Gw2 is a lot more than that. Having a high burst-capability says actually nothing about balance as long you can counter it 1 to 1. The inverted problem is that you cannot kill someone in 1vs1 with “normal DPS”. Then people trade cd’s. “Actuall-Killing” just occures when two man stay on one person which also leads to unbalance, since cc and faster classes always outplay tanks. In addition, only a game with normalized stats can be balanced.

But we deviate alot from our the thread’s topic, sorry.

Nikkle.4013:

Soryuju.8164:

You’re still criticizing his build, though, when he’s criticizing the effectiveness of the Toughness stat. Even if he had 18k HP to go with that 3k armor, he’s still losing 14k of it to a single combo.

I was really criticizing his test. I thought this was clear in my +crit damage example. If someone posted data from a test golem saying +crit damage as being a bad stat and had only about 15% crit everyone would say something like “you have no crit, of course its a ‘bad stat’, get more crit”. Same here. I believe armor is the opposite to power which means a 50% increase in toughness is not going to counter a 50% increase in the enemy’s power. This is due to armor being the aggregate of toughness and base armor. 50% increase of toughness is a <50% increase in armor. This does not mean toughness is a bad stat or that everyone should go glass because “power is king”. Anyone who plays this game knows the strength of a good guardian or ele bunker. Defensive stats are strong, they just are not 1:1 counters. They require a proper setup.

But you’re kind of missing the point. The point is, toughness as a stat is secondary to your setup. If you took high power, crit, and crit damage, your setup wouldn’t matter much – you would hit comparatively hard with any weapon. A high toughness doesn’t do much for you unless you spec around it, and some classes just cant.

Take Thief as the perfect example – everyone complains how “one note” thieves are, as they tend to go full glass cannon, or somewhere close. The issue there is, thieves don’t have a choice. I’ve run almost the exact setup in OP’s picture, and it’s laughable how little difference an additional 1k toughness matters when you don’t have any access at all to protection, stability, immunity/block skills, or KB/KD/Launch, and your access to cleanses and regen are limited to how much you can stealth(which isn’t as accessible as say, switching to water, or using a utility which cant miss).

Your ability to bunker in this game is directly tied into your access to defensive boons (as well as immunity skills, blocking, and KB/KD/Launch) – toughness is a secondary stat. Your ability to do damage is directly tied to your power, crit, and crit damage, with offensive boons and particular skills as a secondary booster.

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong angle. What would happen to all other situations if toughness were adjusted? Judging from what you’re saying, it seems you want toughness to mitigate more damage, but we already have issues with bunkers being too able to outheal even multiple attackers because of how much mitigation they have. If toughness is scaled up more, those builds will need to be adjusted quite a bit in other ways again so that they’re not overpowered.

I don’t think toughness can really be scaled up any more at this point without breaking more things than are fixed.

without thoughness amulet/jewel/runes, you would get hit with backstab for +-11k, you got hit for 7k, thats 36% dmg reduction, its more then protection buff, also it stacks together, so you can get almost 70% dmg reduction if im right… what more you want? problem is obviously in thief, not in thoughness…

MaXi.3642:

without thoughness amulet/jewel/runes, you would get hit with backstab for +-11k, you got hit for 7k, thats 36% dmg reduction, its more then protection buff, also it stacks together, so you can get almost 70% dmg reduction if im right… what more you want? problem is obviously in thief, not in thoughness…

Ehh no look,

X ammount of toughness reduce damage by 50%
Xpower increases damage by 100%

Once 100%+100% damage is reduced by 50% its again just same old 100%

However thief invest also into critical damage and precision

lets say 50% crit dmg and 50% crit rate adds 100% attack 50% average damage on hit.

Meaning Toughness alone does not counter burst you also need 50% more health to counter that burst tottaly.

Healing and regeneration does not help against burst at all, its a long term defence not a short term.

In conclusion toughness is counter to power.
Berserkers amulet gives also crit dmg + precision. Your healing does not lower or help against burst, nor it does add any migtation. You will not survive a full out burst accordingly, unless you get some migtation or more defencive stats.

Just for reference, this is how toughness currently works:

Wiki

Each attribute point put into toughness increases the armor of the character by one, which improves the character’s ability to withstand direct damage.

Wiki

Armor is a value that is listed on the hero panel. It is equal to Defense plus Toughness attribute, and will determine how much incoming damage will be reduced. Armor does not mitigate Condition Damage or falling damage.

Wiki

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

So essentially, increasing toughness decreases damage at this rate: (Toughness Increase)/[(Previous Armor)+(Toughness Increase)]. For example, someone with 2000 armor adding an additional 1000 toughness will reduce the damage they take by 1000/(2000+1000) = 1/3

You have 12k HP. Point being is, this is why Tanky Thieves will never work because even if you had 3k toughness, you will still get burst down by another Thief easily considering you don’t have protection or any reliable sustain to back that toughness up.

The only thing your build is good at is probably dueling some characters. Against good teams and team fights, it does nothing.

Syeria.4812:

Just for reference, this is how toughness currently works:

Wiki

Each attribute point put into toughness increases the armor of the character by one, which improves the character’s ability to withstand direct damage.

Wiki

Armor is a value that is listed on the hero panel. It is equal to Defense plus Toughness attribute, and will determine how much incoming damage will be reduced. Armor does not mitigate Condition Damage or falling damage.

Wiki

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

So essentially, increasing toughness decreases damage at this rate: (Toughness Increase)/[(Previous Armor)]. For example, someone with 2000 armor adding an additional 1000 toughness will reduce the damage they take by 1000/(20001000) = 1/3

Which is (roughly) the same amount that protection mitigates. A defensive boon that (roughly) mimics having an additional 1k toughness. There is no offensive boon in the game that does anything comparable.

Toughness should be changed to offer more mitigation, and protection should be reduced – not extreme changes, maybe 8-10% more mitigation for toughness, and cut protection roughly in half. It’s silly that the ability to truly Bunker is limited to classes who have constant access to a defensive boons.

evilapprentice.6379:

Which is (roughly) the same amount that protection mitigates. A defensive boon that (roughly) mimics having an additional 1k toughness. There is no offensive boon in the game that does anything comparable.

Toughness should be changed to offer more mitigation, and protection should be reduced – not extreme changes, maybe 8-10% more mitigation for toughness, and cut protection roughly in half. It’s silly that the ability to truly Bunker is limited to classes who have constant access to a defensive boons.

“Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage and can stack in intensity up to 25 times. The effect of might is determined by the following formula:

0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack

At level 80, this would equal 35. "

Since Armor does not mitigate condition damage,and Might is allowed to be stacked in intensity,Protection is essential.

kittenon.8572:

evilapprentice.6379:

Which is (roughly) the same amount that protection mitigates. A defensive boon that (roughly) mimics having an additional 1k toughness. There is no offensive boon in the game that does anything comparable.

Toughness should be changed to offer more mitigation, and protection should be reduced – not extreme changes, maybe 8-10% more mitigation for toughness, and cut protection roughly in half. It’s silly that the ability to truly Bunker is limited to classes who have constant access to a defensive boons.

“Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage and can stack in intensity up to 25 times. The effect of might is determined by the following formula:

0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack

At level 80, this would equal 35. "

Since Armor does not mitigate condition damage,and Might is allowed to be stacked in intensity,Protection is essential.

Might can give at best 875 attack + condition damage. Stacking 25 mights beeing alone if you arent a warrior is next to imposible.
Protection is a single skill, stackable few times easier. I actualy think they should reduce protection to 25% and incrase toughness effects by some 5%

Toughness is one of those stats like +crit damage or something like that that is of marginal use if you don’t stack it with other defensive stats, boons and active mitigation.

The problem is if you tune up toughness significantly current bunker builds become too powerful, so you’d have to nerf some of the active defense or the boons.

I agree protection is a questionable boon, especially on classes like guardians who can keep it up almost all the time. Toughness probably needs a boost and protection needs a bit of a nerf.

kittenon.8572:

evilapprentice.6379:

Which is (roughly) the same amount that protection mitigates. A defensive boon that (roughly) mimics having an additional 1k toughness. There is no offensive boon in the game that does anything comparable.

Toughness should be changed to offer more mitigation, and protection should be reduced – not extreme changes, maybe 8-10% more mitigation for toughness, and cut protection roughly in half. It’s silly that the ability to truly Bunker is limited to classes who have constant access to a defensive boons.

“Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage and can stack in intensity up to 25 times. The effect of might is determined by the following formula:

0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack

At level 80, this would equal 35. "

Since Armor does not mitigate condition damage,and Might is allowed to be stacked in intensity,Protection is essential.

You are comparing a fixed duration, intensity stack offensive boon (might), to a duration stacking, static 33% damage reduction defensive boon (protection).

I know for a fact my P/D conditions thief can reliably keep up around 10 stacks of might for your average length fight- through use of multiple abilities, or multiple actions (like stealthing or dodging granting might via thief traits). Thats 350 power, and 350 condition damage. There are no specs I’m aware of (that doesn’t mean they don’t exist) that can take full advantage of both Power AND Condition damage – your spec generally takes full advantage of 1, and the other matters to a varying degree (not very much, generally). Regardless, lets assume you roll a spec that takes full advantage of both – that’s 700 additional “DPS” stats by gaining 10 stacks of an offensive boon which stacks intensity rather than duration…compared to the (rough) equivalent of 1k toughness for 1 defensive boon…which stacks duration.

As others said, toughness takes 1 stat from you, and you expect to mitigate his burst passively without doing anything when all the 3 stats he can have are invested into full glasscannon?

Cant buff defensive stats because thief burst(and other burst) is out of control then other classes would never have a hope of killing anyone outside of condition specs.

Wiki

Toughness should be changed to offer more mitigation, and protection should be reduced – not extreme changes, maybe 8-10% more mitigation for toughness, and cut protection roughly in half. It’s silly that the ability to truly Bunker is limited to classes who have constant access to a defensive boons.

I like this idea

I’m not sure there’s an easy fix to the issue the OP is concerned about. It does explain the burst/bunker meta. Toughness is just not worth it unless you spec to survive indefinitely, in which case it is extremely valuable.

thouhness does not work on a warrior that’s for sure tryd evrything stil die as fast if i was using a glass cannon build.

Guardians however it works to good on because they got so mutch healing power.
stil think the healing guardians do is to mutch there basicly a hybrid class.

and like anyone know’s hybrid classes are op.

thougness on ranged now that’s a hard one becuase there extremly extremly though to beat when specd and stil do tons of dmg.

I dont think they wil ever balance things right.
all i see are minor fixes that diden have to be fixd in the first place.

i would also like to see when they fix the ability lag because people can say alot i stil got like 0.5 to 1 sec delay on evry skill i use. its not instant like guild wars 1

and plz dont tell me it’s my internet im running 60mb thats more then plenty

like guild wars 2 because i was a fan of guild wars 1 but the system is to random and luck based. i know they wanna make it fun for evryone but luck is not the way.!

Toughness does almost nothing.
Don’t bother with it, unless you have:

• Alot of condition removal
• Alot of passive regen
• Alot of small burst healths

For a thief that means, don’t bother with toughness unless you are speccing into shadow arts. Then it can become good, by using stealth traits which remove conditions while in stealth and gives you passive regen while in stealth (not the boon regen).

On your screenshot, with that toughness and healthpool, even a ranger pet can kill you in just 3 skills (sad isn’t it).