Guild Wars 2

I get the impression that Anet is looking at our “metagame” and seeing that we have ignored Vitality as an attribute pretty much since launch.

Necros’ condis are absolutely wrecking people, sure, but is it because they’re overpowered or because we are ignoring the attribute that reduces conditions’ effectiveness?

Do we have any conditions or effects that reduce the health pool? No. There is no deep wound in GW2 and health can only be reduced by damaging.

Do we have conditions that reduce healing power? Yes. You can interrupt heals, poison reduces their effectiveness to 66%, and they the attribute does nothing to help against conditions.

So why do people want 1200 healing power and barely above their minimum health against a class that can bypass that strategy entirely that everyone and their poodle is bringing to organized matches at the moment?

(Clarification: most bunker guardian and ele builds utilize their healing power, which scales very well with those classes, and have been mainstays in pvp for months. I thought this was well known and a given, but it seems it’s news to some people LOL)

I think we’re missing the value of having that cushion of health we can use to keep putting pressure on Necromancers. What do you think? Have you tried that?

I think you’re making silly assumptions that no one uses vitality and everyone is running 1200 healing power with base HP.

I know I don’t.

Implying people don’t run vitality wot.

You could try reading the fifth paragraph again the everyone bit was about necros not the healing power builds ^^

If you’re implying you run higher HP has it worked for you, assuming you bring good cleanses?

Yes you’re missing something

Soldiers amulet is a decent choice for ele’s, but the problem has always been we can’t sustain as well. Our heals heal for less, meaning sure we have a high health pool. If its an all condi cleave team, ill run it for sure. But just because they have 1 necro means nothing. Once my health gets below full, it’s almost impossible to get back up. The healing power builds have more EFFECTIVE health pool as opposed to default health pool.

If a necro gets you low with condis and a thief shows up, you’ll be missing Valk’s healing power. Plus it’s less damage as you lose 15% crit damage. Which is a LOT for ele’s.

I think it comes down to replenishing the hp pool. That is what you see with elementalists. Who cares if I have 30k hp if I can’t replenish it. But if I can replenish my 15k hp regularly, it is the equivalent of having more hp in the long run.

Outside of soldiers amulet, Vitality sucks. Srs.
Died more playing with Knight amulet than with Berserkers. A good offense is a better defense than a mediocre defense. If it’s not soldier runes no thanks jefferson Vitality does me few favors. Take all that damage and then can’t bring it up, you kill slower which means the battle lasts longer on both sides, yet your heals aren’t % based.

If I’m missing something by questioning the strategies we’ve been using for a long time when they’re not working against one class, potentially one dude in a 5v5 match, then what does that make people who are not? lol

Also, let’s say you put 300 healing power into traits and add another 160 from runes, and put a cleric’s jewel on a soldiers amulet. Now you have about 600 healing power and much higher health, which seems a lot better than trying to roll with 13k health against a Necro.

Vitality does not reduce condition damage keep your crap to yourself.

That was mature lol. Also looked up some of your other posts Fenrir you provide almost nothing productive to the forums so you might need to take your own “advice” lol.

jmatb.6307:

That was mature lol

You want mature responses?, post mature content, like recognize that there is no stat that reduces condition damage, then we can talk about mature.

Very MATURE try of a necro to not get nerfed, but i have to tell you that the devs already stated that they are going to tone them down.

jmatb.6307:

If I’m missing something by questioning the strategies we’ve been using for a long time when they’re not working against one class, potentially one dude in a 5v5 match, then what does that make people who are not? lol

Also, let’s say you put 300 healing power into traits and add another 160 from runes, and put a cleric’s jewel on a soldiers amulet. Now you have about 600 healing power and much higher health, which seems a lot better than trying to roll with 13k health against a Necro.

Great now where is the damage?

The builds played this way are this way for a reason. Valk’s is the most balanced for damage/EHP in tPVP. It’s been proven mathematically.

I can do 60 from runes. 160 is too high for a dps Ele

Berserker jewel is the best for ele’s. as is Valk amulet. It’s been proven. Highest EHP.

300 healing from traits is also 30 water, which isn’t good for dps ele’s anymore. 200 yes. Not 300.

I wasn’t clear my bad. I was talking about point defense, not Ele Burst.

jmatb.6307:

You could try reading the fifth paragraph again the everyone bit was about necros not the healing power builds ^^

If you’re implying you run higher HP has it worked for you, assuming you bring good cleanses?

Every time I have experimented with running significantly more vitality than normal (meaning trading my toughness for it) I have had poor results. Conditions still just eat through it with the limited condition removal available (without going into a spec I think is trash just to have removal) and I become exponentially more vulnerable to burst and lose sustain in longer fights.

Fenrir.5493:

jmatb.6307:

That was mature lol

You want mature responses?, post mature content, like recognize that there is no stat that reduces condition damage, then we can talk about mature.

Very MATURE try of a necro to not get nerfed, but i have to tell you that the devs already stated that they are going to tone them down.

If you don’t have anything productive to add then please stop posting. You are just wasting yours and anyone who reads your posts’ time.

jmatb.6307:

I wasn’t clear my bad. I was talking about point defense, not Ele Burst.

Ah well in that case, no….same issue unfortunately

The best reason to run a bunker Ele is the heals. It adds heals/rezes/team support. If you become selfish might as well run a more effective back point bunker. Believe me we tried. Now I play ranger :p

ATM, dps Ele is the only viable build. Ultima have up on bunker Ele of all people O.o

Velron.3729:

jmatb.6307:

You could try reading the fifth paragraph again the everyone bit was about necros not the healing power builds ^^

If you’re implying you run higher HP has it worked for you, assuming you bring good cleanses?

Every time I have experimented with running significantly more vitality than normal (meaning trading my toughness for it) I have had poor results. Conditions still just eat through it with the limited condition removal available (without going into a spec I think is trash just to have removal) and I become exponentially more vulnerable to burst and lose sustain in longer fights.

If they have a burst player on their team of course they are going to have their way with a low toughness target. I have never said trading vit for toughness is the way to go, or that we need to go all out with vitality.

For example, what if we used Wurm runes, which give 6% crit damage and 3% more damage, instead of more power? What if on our bunkers we used Soldiers with clerics jewel and Dwayna runes with 2 Monk if you use Signet of Restoration on Ele?

I’m just thinking that Toughness and Vit are more important than Toughness and Healing Power, now that conditions are so brutal.

Fenrir.5493:

Very MATURE try of a necro to not get nerfed, but i have to tell you that the devs already stated that they are going to tone them down.

The OP does not play Necro. Just check his post history and you’ll clearly see he plays warrior.
Your point is completely invalid and you just look like a moron.

DXIEdge.2789:

jmatb.6307:

I wasn’t clear my bad. I was talking about point defense, not Ele Burst.

Ah well in that case, no….same issue unfortunately

The best reason to run a bunker Ele is the heals. It adds heals/rezes/team support. If you become selfish might as well run a more effective back point bunker. Believe me we tried. Now I play ranger :p

ATM, dps Ele is the only viable build. Ultima have up on bunker Ele of all people O.o

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmgbyxzgjDAEFnYyQhIjUeMDO2A-ToAA1CmIuRdj7GzNSvseN+Y2A

I use this pretty effectively against Necros, Mesmers, Engis, and Thieves. Taking 8 seconds off the cooldown for cleansing wave and frost aura makes a big difference. I switch Cleansing Fire for Arcane Shield if they have Necros.

sorrow.2364:

Fenrir.5493:

Very MATURE try of a necro to not get nerfed, but i have to tell you that the devs already stated that they are going to tone them down.

The OP does not play Necro. Just check his post history and you’ll clearly see he plays warrior.
Your point is completely invalid and you just look like a moron.

I don’t post actively on the forums. I’m too busy, you know, playing the game. I have Champion Legionnaire, Shadow, Genius, and am about 30 games away from Magus. If you want screenshots I’ll send them to anyone.

Again, like the other child who posted, if you have nothing productive to add just leave please.

jmatb.6307:

I don’t post actively on the forums. I’m too busy, you know, playing the game. I have Champion Legionnaire, Shadow, Genius, and am about 30 games away from Magus. If you want screenshots I’ll send them to anyone.

Again, like the other child who posted, if you have nothing productive to add just leave please.

I don’t want any screenshot proof. I don’t care about your titles and everything.

It’s the GW2 forum. You should get used to random useless and unproductive posts.

You have a bright future in all of your endeavors sir

running around with base HP in this day and age? You kittenes be CRAZY!!!

jmatb.6307:

Velron.3729:

jmatb.6307:

You could try reading the fifth paragraph again the everyone bit was about necros not the healing power builds ^^

If you’re implying you run higher HP has it worked for you, assuming you bring good cleanses?

Every time I have experimented with running significantly more vitality than normal (meaning trading my toughness for it) I have had poor results. Conditions still just eat through it with the limited condition removal available (without going into a spec I think is trash just to have removal) and I become exponentially more vulnerable to burst and lose sustain in longer fights.

If they have a burst player on their team of course they are going to have their way with a low toughness target. I have never said trading vit for toughness is the way to go, or that we need to go all out with vitality.

For example, what if we used Wurm runes, which give 6% crit damage and 3% more damage, instead of more power? What if on our bunkers we used Soldiers with clerics jewel and Dwayna runes with 2 Monk if you use Signet of Restoration on Ele?

I’m just thinking that Toughness and Vit are more important than Toughness and Healing Power, now that conditions are so brutal.

I’ve used Wurm runes, there is really nothing wrong with them….but for a different environment. 1.7k health is a nice buffer for any single condi/stack now when multiple are on you, that 1.7k health is basically a 1s buffer if that then disappears vs the 3+s it’ll buy you against an ele/war/guardian. Sure any little bit helps but taking Divinity over Scholar has felt like the more practical trade.

So if i dont agre with your nonesense im not beign productive, do i need to agre with all your crap so you say im productive?.

Very mature indeed.

Fenrir.5493:

So if i dont agre with your nonesense im not beign productive, do i need to agre with all your crap so you say im productive?.

Very mature indeed.

Just shut up please.

I know the build btw OP. I’m not saying its not good, I’m saying ressing in this condi cleave meta is bad. against a good team having one person doing the team ressing results in you dying. at this moment, you have to double res, which reduces the efficiency of the ressing ele.

On top of this, back point is easier held by someone who can actually KILL necros/engi’s 1v1. Sure, thieves and other ele’s come to your point your fine…except S/D thieves. Ele back point right now is countered by the classes being used in the meta. Therefore its no as effective as other options.

For soloqueue? Bunker Ele has one me many a games. However, in team settings there are just stronger options

Wow, this devolved quickly into a poo fight. Now, for something more civilized than chimpanzees in a cage.

On Vitality and Toughness: In general, you can find out how much more survivable one will make you over the other by comparing your starting HP or your starting armor, and then how much HP/Armor you end up with. Ultimately, your survivability is going to be a ratio of what you start with, so you can see how much more damage you can take, or how much less damage you receive.

So, lets say you go just nuts and invest 1000 Vitality/armor. For each base HP

10,805 becomes 20,805 HP, resulting in a 92.5% increase in survivability.
15,082 becomes 25,082 HP, resulting in a 66.3% increase in survivability.
18,372 becomes 28,372 HP, resulting in a 54.4% increase in survivability.

And for armor, we get
1836 Armor becomes 2836, resulting in a 54.5% increase in survivability.
1980 armor becomes 2980, resulting in a 50.5% increase in survivability.
2127 armor becomes 3127, resulting in a 47% increase in survivability.

Ultimately, investing in vitality gives greater starting survivability for every class except for Necromancer, where toughness and survivability are equal.

On Vitality and Conditions:

Vitality doesn’t help against conditions insomuch as vitality doesn’t discriminate against its source of damage. A necro in sPVP with 1300 malice is doing 107 damage per tick with bleeds no matter what you’re packing. Vitality gives you a bigger health pool, meaning it will take more damage to bring you down no matter what that damage is. It is true that conditions take off less of a percentage of your HP, but that is just because you have more HP. There is another way to view things:

On Vitality and Healing

And that is with how much you heal. The thing with vitality is that the advantage vitality gives is limited: It is only worthwhile at the beginning of the fight. After that initial 10,000 HP is gone, you are in the exact same boat as everyone else. Now, heals can be considered a subtraction from the damage you were dealt, and it is here that toughness gets its arguing points. Toughness reduces the direct DPS by a fixed percentage, and healing subtracts from this damage, resulting in an overall increase in healing effectiveness as well as a survivability advantage that never leaves the fight. Of course, this does nothing against conditions, who hit the same regardless of armor.

The appropriateness of toughness and vitality changes between PVE and PVP. In PVE, fights are longer duration due to enemy’s insane HP pools, so long term survivability is important. Also, sustained conditions are less common, so toughness’s lack of mitigation there isn’t a problem. In PVP, fights are often very quick and short term, so the extra initial HP is a great boost to survivability, making or breaking a fight in a few seconds.

As for what people run in sPVP, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that I prefer vitality to toughness in sPVP. But in the end, the best way to stay survivability is to have a 1:1 ratio of vitality and HP.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I think it comes down to replenishing the hp pool. That is what you see with elementalists. Who cares if I have 30k hp if I can’t replenish it. But if I can replenish my 15k hp regularly, it is the equivalent of having more hp in the long run.

Exactly. Vitality really doesn’t matter at all as it doesn’t effect the ability to sustain in a fight.

The problem with replenishment though is that you can do so much to people that disrupts that “sustain” as a Necromancer. They can fear you, poison them, stack more than enough condis to outpace any regen you put on yourself, and take away your endurance with weakness.

That extra 5 to 6k HP isn’t useless at all.

Blood Red thank you for contributing something thoughtful.

The way I see it is vitality is a better defense stat for glass cannons while healing and toughness is better for basically everyone else.

Vitality is static and gains nothing from the time spent alive. Its valuable in preventing situations of getting 100-0’d but if your already past that critical point where you have the ability to react it isn’t very valuable. Aside from the basic vitality from berserkers any additional vitality taken is at the cost of damage which isn’t really the direction most dps want to go.

Healing is increasingly effective the more cooldowns you reach and scales with time. Toughness is similar as it acts as a multiplier to any health gained. Just superior if your plan is to survive for any lengthy period of time.

Against conditions I don’t see having a bit of extra hp really meaning much. More offense is a better defense than vitality. 800 power almost doubles physical dps, 8k hp won’t be even 50% more survivability when taking into account how much health a person gains over a fight.

Maybe vitality needs to do more than just add health to be useful in PvP.

The trick though is what else it could do without screwing the game up.

If you’re running vitality in PvP you’re running very little healing power. It doesn’t matter how large your starting HP pool is if you can’t upkeep it properly during a fight. This is known as the “Warrior sustain problem”. Sure, you might be able to survive that initial condi burst but then what? You’re going to be at around middling health with no real way to heal back up between the opponent’s burst cooldowns and you’re going to lose that battle of attrition.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I think it comes down to replenishing the hp pool. That is what you see with elementalists. Who cares if I have 30k hp if I can’t replenish it. But if I can replenish my 15k hp regularly, it is the equivalent of having more hp in the long run.

The difference is you as a warrior can run berk amulet and not get 2-shot by a burst combo whereas if a d/d ele goes berk instead of valkyrie he blows up.

Your traits as a warrior can be alotted to damage traitlines. No elementalist can ever skip 20 water 20 arcane. You just can’t stay alive.

Elementalists don’t have all that sustain baseline. In fact, most of it doesn’t exist if you don’t put 20 in water.

The ele is also very boon reliant to do his damage. There’s simply no competition between a warrior can do on someone versus an ele with berk amulet and 20/20 air and fire traitline investment. The gap is huge.

So they’re forced to go the water/arcana heal sustain/boon spam route to make up for their base deficiencies.

I’ll grant that this annoyance may pale in comparison to being a warrior or necro and just getting worn down. My berserker necro can try as many strips on a d/d ele as he wants and he’s still getting outsustained. My warrior needs shield stance and endure+berserker stance to have any semblance of staying power.

But the ele is not all rainbows and sunshine either.

Godofallu.2935:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I think it comes down to replenishing the hp pool. That is what you see with elementalists. Who cares if I have 30k hp if I can’t replenish it. But if I can replenish my 15k hp regularly, it is the equivalent of having more hp in the long run.

Exactly. Vitality really doesn’t matter at all as it doesn’t effect the ability to sustain in a fight.

Vit effects the ability to sustain in a fight where lots of conditions are present. That extra 5-7k HP is the difference between dying or getting an extra heal/condi clear up which could mean you get yet another up.

The problem is that large vit only seems to come with kittenty amulet/rune choices OR trait points and a carrion amulet.

Carrion seems to be the only decent choice with a large amount of vitality. I’ve run carrion quite a decent bit on my engi when up against multiple condi classes. A difficult 1v1 becomes a breeze. The only problem is that you sacrifice sustain against physical DPS classes, a problem bemoaned by many in this thread.

Overall people seem to misunderstand defensive stats. High vitality is excellent for classes with lots of mobility as it gives them the potential to survive a burst then reset.

Another thing to consider is that in a very large majority of fights all parties immediately start with their heal off cooldown giving them an effective health increase (outside of negative effects like poison/CC to the point where they won’t get their heal off). Vitality becomes less important when you can pop your heal for a quick 6k and get far more out of that 6k with toughness.

It also depends on each classes base stats. Guardians start out with the highest base armor in the game but the lowest health pool in the game making it wise to stack more vitality than other classes becasue each bit of vitality gains more efficacy from their high base armor.

Overall, until you see compositions run more than one-two condi classes (something that will never happen until team-fight and until you see a change to how conditions work) I don’t think it’s wise to make major sacrifices for vitality…

I personally play a warrior and some of my builds have upwards to 24K HP. Not that I necessarily want it that way, but that is the nature of how the stats are allocated on the amulets and the traits that I believe to be the most effective.

Having high vitality is only good for 1v1s and buffering an initial damage burst a little bit. Since in PvP you are likely getting hit by many sources, most of the vitality you have will be gone and if you are a class like a Warrior with high health pool but virtually little healing, you are rarely going to see that HP bar full. So, condition damage isn’t really buffered all that much by stacking vitality. Sustain becomes extremely important when it comes to teamfighting and taking damage from multiple sources.

In the grand scheme of things in teamfights, things like evades, blocks, invulnerabilities, condi cleanses, sustain heals, protection are going to save you alot more than 3000 extra HP would. At least from a warrior perspective. For other classes it might be different because they have inherent mechanics, i.e stealth that allow them to avoid damage altogether.

And many times, the best defense is to apply loads of AoE condi pressure on the enemy team so that way they can’t touch you and are hestitant to trying and attack you.

Bunker guards have a lot of built in defenses against direct damage, but have to spec specifically against conditions. A vit/healing/power amulet and jewel would provide some versatility to spec against ‘condition burst’, at the cost of being more vulnerable to power builds and having less sustain in general.

I think a better option would be a vit rune that actually provides some decent bonuses for water eles though.

Losing sustain is relevant, losing damage is relevant, but if you’re complaining about dying to condition bursts and fear chains and still unwilling to put on some vitality or slot another stunbreak, well, too bad. You can’t have it all. If your issue is with sustained condition damage, that’s another story.

killahmayne.9518:

I personally play a warrior and some of my builds have upwards to 24K HP. Not that I necessarily want it that way, but that is the nature of how the stats are allocated on the amulets and the traits that I believe to be the most effective.

Having high vitality is only good for 1v1s and buffering an initial damage burst a little bit. Since in PvP you are likely getting hit by many sources, most of the vitality you have will be gone and if you are a class like a Warrior with high health pool but virtually little healing, you are rarely going to see that HP bar full. So, condition damage isn’t really buffered all that much by stacking vitality. Sustain becomes extremely important when it comes to teamfighting and taking damage from multiple sources.

In the grand scheme of things in teamfights, things like evades, blocks, invulnerabilities, condi cleanses, sustain heals, protection are going to save you alot more than 3000 extra HP would. At least from a warrior perspective. For other classes it might be different because they have inherent mechanics, i.e stealth that allow them to avoid damage altogether.

And many times, the best defense is to apply loads of AoE condi pressure on the enemy team so that way they can’t touch you and are hestitant to trying and attack you.

That 3000 HP on a class with 10k base HP (vs 18k for warriors) makes a pretty big difference

The one thing I noticed on my warrior is that I am able to eat so much crap and still be at half health. While that might not seem great, so long as I’m able to get out of the fight it’s alright. Warrior mobility allows resets that blow my mind. It’s kinda broken TBH

Ostricheggs.3742:

Overall, until you see compositions run more than one-two condi classes (something that will never happen until team-fight and until you see a change to how conditions work) I don’t think it’s wise to make major sacrifices for vitality…

I think EU meta is a little bit ahead since 90% of the top teams play with at least 2 cond classes (necro + engi or necro + spirit ranger). Even denial who was playing a full power comp rerolled and is playing with 2 cond classes now. So since 2 cond classes are the minimum for many teams it’s not rare seeing teams with 3 cond classes like 2 necros + 1 engi etc.
But yeah I do see still more power classes in na than eu teams but I guess that will change sooner or later as well.

you have a point. I run carrin on my necro as I feel much more survivable than rabbid. the conditions still hurt, but theyre more manageable.

the best way to test your theory would be to duel a condition class with both set ups andsee how you get on.

Vitality isn’t a popular stat option because after you lose the initial extra hp in a fight, it becomes dead weight. It helps with that first push or the beginning of a 1v1, sure, but in any prolonged fight it is not going to be very effective. I think the way to fix this is make healing skills % based, with healing power just increasing that %. This would require a decent amount of work to implement correctly, though.

Bull Zooker.1672:

you have a point. I run carrin on my necro as I feel much more survivable than rabbid. the conditions still hurt, but theyre more manageable.

the best way to test your theory would be to duel a condition class with both set ups andsee how you get on.

Though and vita are not the only difference of these two amulets. And power is the better dmg stat for sustained damage (at least if you do not have any on crit procs) so 1on1’s wouldn’t be too crucial when you only want to test tough vs vita.

How about make Vit work like Power?
That when you double your current Vit you double your health pool.
It will grant those with high base hp pool class(War and Necro)massive amount of hp to compensate there lack of sustain.

SisiXuan.4178:

How about make Vit work like Power?
That when you double your current Vit you double your health pool.
It will grant those with high base hp pool class(War and Necro)massive amount of hp to compensate there lack of sustain.

???
Every class starts with the same amount of power = 916. So every class profits the same from adding a certain amount of power. It’s nothing like “some classes profit more than others” which is what you suggest with vita…

Ceraldor.3160:

SisiXuan.4178:

How about make Vit work like Power?
That when you double your current Vit you double your health pool.
It will grant those with high base hp pool class(War and Necro)massive amount of hp to compensate there lack of sustain.

???
Every class starts with the same amount of power = 916. So every class profits the same from adding a certain amount of power. It’s nothing like “some classes profit more than others” which is what you suggest with vita…

You did not read that correctly. Doubling your power doubles the damage output you produce, that’s how the scaling works for it. He is suggesting that vitality scale in such a way that doubling your vitality doubles your base HP as well, so Warrior and Necromancer will benefit more from vitality due to having high base HP. Personally I still don’t think that high HP does anything at all for “sustain”.

Jzaku.9765:

Ceraldor.3160:

SisiXuan.4178:

How about make Vit work like Power?
That when you double your current Vit you double your health pool.
It will grant those with high base hp pool class(War and Necro)massive amount of hp to compensate there lack of sustain.

???
Every class starts with the same amount of power = 916. So every class profits the same from adding a certain amount of power. It’s nothing like “some classes profit more than others” which is what you suggest with vita…

You did not read that correctly. Doubling your power doubles the damage output you produce, that’s how the scaling works for it. He is suggesting that vitality scale in such a way that doubling your vitality doubles your base HP as well, so Warrior and Necromancer will benefit more from vitality due to having high base HP. Personally I still don’t think that high HP does anything at all for “sustain”.

Necro pops lich form. His HP doubles. He still goes down faster than a prom dress.

Avoidance will always be superior to straight up tanking damage. It’s been the case in pretty much every game where the casters with mobility (mages) do far better against getting trained than the casters that have to tank it (warlock types).

Ostricheggs.3742:

killahmayne.9518:

I personally play a warrior and some of my builds have upwards to 24K HP. Not that I necessarily want it that way, but that is the nature of how the stats are allocated on the amulets and the traits that I believe to be the most effective.

Having high vitality is only good for 1v1s and buffering an initial damage burst a little bit. Since in PvP you are likely getting hit by many sources, most of the vitality you have will be gone and if you are a class like a Warrior with high health pool but virtually little healing, you are rarely going to see that HP bar full. So, condition damage isn’t really buffered all that much by stacking vitality. Sustain becomes extremely important when it comes to teamfighting and taking damage from multiple sources.

In the grand scheme of things in teamfights, things like evades, blocks, invulnerabilities, condi cleanses, sustain heals, protection are going to save you alot more than 3000 extra HP would. At least from a warrior perspective. For other classes it might be different because they have inherent mechanics, i.e stealth that allow them to avoid damage altogether.

And many times, the best defense is to apply loads of AoE condi pressure on the enemy team so that way they can’t touch you and are hestitant to trying and attack you.

That 3000 HP on a class with 10k base HP (vs 18k for warriors) makes a pretty big difference

The one thing I noticed on my warrior is that I am able to eat so much crap and still be at half health. While that might not seem great, so long as I’m able to get out of the fight it’s alright. Warrior mobility allows resets that blow my mind. It’s kinda broken TBH

I was talking mostly from a warrior perspective as I had mentioned but I don’t disagree that 3,000 HP makes a big difference for a class that has access to a lot of protection, regeneration, blocking and healing b/c if a Guardian were to stay at 11K HP they would be overhealing many times and at the same time may not be able to survive that initial wave of damage very well. It is about finding that balance between your HP and Sustainability (I find 15-18K HP sort of a sweet spot for a Guardian). Vitality is also great for a necro because of Death Shroud, Thieves and Mesmers as well because they have a lot of damage avoidance abilities.

While for a class like a warrior, who already at base 18K HP overshoots what they can sustain after popping the first heal. For 30 seconds, unless you spec into shout heals have very limited sources of healing, no protection and have to try and rely on utilities like endure pain, zerker stance which do not absolve damage completely but they still help but really isn’t the answer to sustainability issues, that other classes (not just the warrior although they seem to suffer from it the most).

Vitality is effective for some classes, but it just seems that for Warriors stacking vitality is one of the least effective ways to increase survivability.

Now Warrior resets might seem all dandy and everything, when you consider WvW, but since this is an sPvP forum you have to consider it within a s/tPvP context. IMO, having played tournaments, “resetting a fight” is only slightly better than dieing.

When you have to reset a fight, it puts your team at a disadvantage b/c often you have just effectively wasted time engaging the enemy and ultimately having nothing to show for it. No points are captured, nobody died, the point probably wasn’t even neutralized. When having to disengage, especially as a warrior you are pretty much a sitting duck, doing no damage and applying no pressure. Even with Warrior mobility, it will still take quite a bit of time to get to the next point. Resetting a fight ultimately is the best case scenario and sometimes you can’t even do that.

Sometimes you might run into another enemy so pretty much you trying to reset failed. Or, you can’t actually reset your HP and probably most of your utilities are on CD because you blew it trying to survive last fight.

Not all warriors build mobility but lets just say somebody uses a GS. Whirlwind is a decent escape tool, except if somebody, chills, cripples or immobilizes you from 900+ range, which isn’t very hard to do. Rush is decent too but of course you can’t compare it to a leap and also suffers from what Whirlwind does too. Or a sword. I will admit Savage Leap is a very good escape tool but it is only 1 escape tool.

Other classes also have access to escape tools to reset fights, such as Eles, Thieves, Rangers, Mesmers and to some degree Guardians. Whether they use it is up to them, but you can’t say a Warrior’s ability to reset fights is broken based on the options other classes have for disengaging, especially when it falls as a disadvantage to your team in general for having to reset the fight in the first place because you couldn’t capture any points or kill anybody.

The biggest problem with healing is that healing isn’t guaranteed. It can be interrupted, controlled over, burst down, and degraded by poison.

EDIT: Also, vitality gives a better starting investment for every class that isn’t a necromancer. That includes warriors, too.

Something I do hate is that in sPVP there’s no way to achieve a golden ratio, when armor = HP/10. The best way to build for durability is undoubtedly to gain vitality until your HP is roughly 10x your armor, then increase them at the same rate. For some classes like the thief and guardian, it is nigh impossible to reach the golden ratio. For other classes like the Warrior or the engineer, it is fairly easy to reach the golden ratio. The necromancer starts out at the golden ratio… lucky ducks.

You could say that I “run with vitality” as a thief. One of my builds … which has some damage, but a focus on survivability, especially conditions … 0 / 15 / 30 / 25 / 0 … leaves me at 17.5k health, 35% crit damage, 50% crit chance, and a lot of room to clear conditions through hide in shadows, repeat / duration stealthing, runeset of lyssa on basilisk venom, shadow step utility, infiltrator strike and return …

And even with all of the above, I find that necromancers are relatively absurd, so no we’re not really missing anything with extra vitality / toughness / healing / condition cleansing compared to simply trying to burst them down as fast as possible before they generate tons of life force and have a massive health pool to work with their insane damage. (Totally balanced for a glass & condi spec combined to have that much health / survivability with no investment in sustain)

Even outplaying them, fighting from a range, avoiding spectral wall, and making sure their conditions don’t stack really high doesn’t stop them from an enormous amount of pressure that comes through spam of conditions they can apply all too quickly and easily.

I don’t feel like any class should be given every condition in the game. That’s easily game breaking, forces design in which some classes have too much condition cleansing to survive, which leaves other wanna be conditions classes, such as thief, to be under performing because they can’t even hope to compare to the amount of cleansing some have. And that’s not even looking at things like Automated response, which as a low-end condi class, is a nightmare / insanely hard (if not impossible) to bring down.

I think a big factor in what makes Necros so faceroll is burning. Burning is quite literally about the strength of 12.42 stacks of bleeding. Meaning on average I would say it takes about 1/4th the effort (not including RNG elements / evasions / battle predicaments) to get damage out of burning that it does bleeding. On top of the fact they get this delicious trait at the end of a damage / condition duration line, which only helps them apply more pressure and burst hard as a CONDI class / spec.

So on top of gaining that, they also gained torment, as if they needed both. Now it quite honestly feels like bad players can pick up a Necro and do well simply because of how they have too much available to them.

My thoughts.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The biggest problem with healing is that healing isn’t guaranteed. It can be interrupted, controlled over, burst down, and degraded by poison.

EDIT: Also, vitality gives a better starting investment for every class that isn’t a necromancer. That includes warriors, too.

Something I do hate is that in sPVP there’s no way to achieve a golden ratio, when armor = HP/10. The best way to build for durability is undoubtedly to gain vitality until your HP is roughly 10x your armor, then increase them at the same rate. For some classes like the thief and guardian, it is nigh impossible to reach the golden ratio. For other classes like the Warrior or the engineer, it is fairly easy to reach the golden ratio. The necromancer starts out at the golden ratio… lucky ducks.

You can have health = 10 (armor) pretty easily on every class in PvP, but the question though is whether or not it works.

Here’s an example of that:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmgbxR5gjDAEFvYyQhIhUeMDO2A-ToAA2CmIuRdj7GzNSvseN+Y2A

The armor is terrible against burst, but if you see Mesmers and Thieves on their team then switching to Arcane Shield is a good idea. Necros and Engis keep Cleansing Fire.