Guild Wars 2

title says it all , lets get it started

It really depends.
You don’t have to necessarily chose between one set or the other. For example, I do mostly PVT as a Guardian, but a few of my pieces are berserker’s.

The way I look at it: soaking up damage is great and all, but you’re holding yourself back from being effective if you can’t do much damage to help down other players.

But then again, this all depends on the build, profession, group size, server, tier, etc etc etc.

If your actually part of a zerg or blob gear stats are irrelevant hence you will find many up leveled characters and poorly geared lvl 80’s at the heart of the zerg it’s whole function is merely to flood opponents with players to win an encounter so to that end tbh the size of the zerg outweighs gear stat choice.

Honestly you really need to look at what role you want to play within the group/zerg.

If you stay back and range then yeah DPS gear is totally a great idea. But if your a stack buster/front line runner your just gonna need to gear for taking the beats. Roamers and small groups will also gear accordingly as well.

If your going out with your guild and your able to figure out what the group needs then go with that but if your joining up with a mindless zerg of randoms i will always prefer to be more tanky.

just my 2 cents.

PVT is not the gear you want on any class. That said, you will most certainly want toughness and/or vit depending on the class.

Knights, Valkyre, Cavalier, Apothecary, etc. Only time you don’t need toughness is if you’re roaming in groups smaller than 10 where heavy burst could make a difference. In zerg on zerg though? You’ll want toughness.

Simply put, the more skilled you are, the “glassier” you can go. Unless your in a guild that has specific builds rotated around specific cooldowns this is how it is. WvW in most cases of organized guilds hitting unorganized zergs, its all about shock and awe. Initiation is huge in zerg battles and in most cases decides the victor. In other cases Valkyrie/PVT gear is sometimes picked up in organized groups when large amounts of protection uptime are involved. This is because Vitality > Toughness when you have protection up.

kiazma.8721:

It really depends.

The way I look at it: soaking up damage is great and all, but you’re holding yourself back from being effective if you can’t do much damage to help down other players.

But then again, this all depends on the build, profession, group size, server, tier, etc etc etc.

This is how I feel too. If you can find a build that does decent damage with PVT, then that’s great. However, I feel that having enough offense to finish fights rather than drawing them out longer is of greater benefit in the long run.

I prefer using set that are mostly offensive with a defensive stat thrown in, but If I absolutely had to choose between zerk and PVT, I’d choose zerk.

yeah guys seems you dont know kitten of wvw, just theory. In zerg p t v gives you best from both ability to soak dmg and time to do your dmg,you can play with the earing amulet ect. but p/t/v or knight armor are a must. In zerg even upscaled chars when is 100 blob whole zone can kill you in seconds if you go zerker or glass build.

Yeah im inclined to say pvt really.
The damage an organised group does come from quantity of people hitting the same area at the same time not from gear (also 25 stacks of might goes a long way to covering up a lack of stats).
Basically if you have 10 people hitting the same spot doing 2k damage each then you’ll hit everything in there for 20k damage killing most classes / specs. Thats the simple version, i know im leaving out aoe cap and all that stuff but i think you get my point.

Wouldn’t go full pvt as its just unnecessary but I would aim to be tanky.
There is a sweet spot with survivability and going beyond that is kind of a waste. No point surviving situations that the rest of your group / zerg cant and sometimes killing stuff fast is the best defence.

Hold on how big is a zerg? because if were talking about 40+ my original post is relevant if were talking less then like others say your group needs a balance.

(its been a long time since i herd of a zerg in tier 1 we have Blobs much bigger lol)

Support orientated builds with classes tend to take PVT as their damage output takes a back seat to their need to stay alive long enough to support others.

If your build is damage orientated but you require more survival then you can mix stats going full with any gear is highly discouraged as with putting all your eggs in one basket with offence you have compromised any defense outside of skills or utilities.

My guardian is full PVT with Knight jewelry he doesn’t need to kill fast but merely survive long enough to support allies. On the other hand my Necro is full precision toughness and condition damage im condition spec so power is not needed but some of my traits proc of crit like my guardian hence precision and my base health is quite high so don’t need vitality but the guardian does due to low base health compared to warrior.

My best advise is to look into what you really want from your class mix and match stats to achieve those goals do you require crit chance well aim to hit the 50% mark then slot the remaining slots with more defensive stats like toughness and vitality etc, really there is no cookie cutter way to gear your character you gear it to do the job you want it to do.

Atherakhia.4086:

PVT is not the gear you want on any class.

In case anyone was wondering what that strange sound was, it was Atherakhia’s credibility leaping out the window after it read this line.

PVT’s a solid option. Of course, one can also (as with my Thief) work a mix of Knight/Valkyrie/Soldier. Of course, my Mesmer/Necro are condi specs, and thus Rabid (slightly modified with Rampager weapons), which is good against direct damage, but less so versus conditions. Hello, Lemongrass By contrast, my Ele is Cleric Armour/Magi trinkets … more of an “experimental” heal/precision build.

Arkanfel.8403:

Atherakhia.4086:

PVT is not the gear you want on any class.

In case anyone was wondering what that strange sound was, it was Atherakhia’s credibility leaping out the window after it read this line.

:(

Guess I’m alone in choosing Knights, Cavalier, Valkyre, or Apothecary over PTV gear on my chars. My bad guys. Stick to PTV.

I see quite a bit of zerker gear in WvW. For example, when I get hit by a backstab that does 6k (regular 2-3k), I know that thief is using either zerker gear or trinkets. Does it make him more effective? Probably. But in that case, he’s a glass cannon and so can die easily if properly handled. I prefer PVT or Valk for survival myself. Whatever floats your boat, I guess

Atherakhia.4086:

Arkanfel.8403:

Atherakhia.4086:

PVT is not the gear you want on any class.

In case anyone was wondering what that strange sound was, it was Atherakhia’s credibility leaping out the window after it read this line.

:(

Guess I’m alone in choosing Knights, Cavalier, Valkyre, or Apothecary over PTV gear on my chars. My bad guys. Stick to PTV.

It’s not the only viable set, but to suggest that it is “not the gear you want on any class” is silly. PVT is a solid armor set, to say the least. I’ve run Knights and PVT on my guardian fairly extensively, and I can say with some authority that PVT is better probably 85% of the time.

I might check out Knights again after the patch, though. I might need that precision back after they nerf retaliation for reasons that I’m sure make sense to someone…

I run PVT armor and Zerker trinkets/weapon on my staff Ele. Along with 30 in Water it works well for me.

I’d suggest full soldier’s gear to no one except a freshly minted 80 who needs to cash out on their karma. There’s almost always a better option for every slot but the goal is still the same and however you choose to get there fine.

My goal regardless of class I play is:
Maximize power over all stats.
Get 2.5k armor at a minimum.
Get 15k hp at a minimum.

Most classes can do this without any real effort. Thief is tricky, but still can be done without soldiers. If you can get the above though you aren’t going to be 2 shot by glass cannons and you aren’t going to be killed in 2 conditions.

But aside from that, you’ll need to decide on what type of role you want to play. If you want to be a hammer warrior you’ll obviously want more toughness. If you’re a ranger you may want consider condition and ignore power and crit completely (that’s the advantage condition damage has as you don’t need 3 stats to make it effective) and go with Apothecary. Ele’s may want a lot of Clerics.

Depends on your play style and class. Are you trying to rush in, blast them, and rush out? Are you trying to rush in and… stay in? Are you trying to attack from range?

In my opinion, if you have to ask this question, run PVT. I would say that at least 100 hours at max level when geared is required to really make an educated decision regarding deviating from the standard PVT.

imo PTV gear wins outright in zerg vs zerg. In this gear the dmg is actually not that much lower than full zerk. And you can take a couple more hits which is game breaking since most zerg battles end pretty shortly.

Berserker? Free rally guys!

PVT over zerker any day. The only thing you have to do to keep your damage up is depending on how good your raid is at healing/buffing/staying alive etc, you then start swapping out bits of gear for knights/cavalier’s etc depending on what role you play. You always need defensive stats up high otherwise your going to be damaging your raid/guild more than helping them.

As a necro I run with 26k hp and 2.8k armor

i’ve also heard about organised guild groups all in PVT gear 25+ , before battle stack might so the PVT gear gets a little bit more crit% change , so basicly then they are zerk tanks.

Fights are decided by Coordination,CC, Conditions and Boons. Not damage. Run zerker if you like losing fights.

PVT gear was intended to best gear to go for wvw unfortunately people are not enough clever to find out how and why.
PVT all the way !

Zerk is good if you know when to dodge, how to place yourself in the zerg and if you can react fast ( and if you have no lags xD)

Knight/cavalier/zerk mix gives you better toughness but you still get melted as fast as a zerk by conditions.

PVT is the best for front line tanking and soaking up damage, the added vitality really helps a lot against conditions which can stack really high in front of the zerg.

JudgeD.5673:

I see quite a bit of zerker gear in WvW. For example, when I get hit by a backstab that does 6k (regular 2-3k), I know that thief is using either zerker gear or trinkets. Does it make him more effective? Probably. But in that case, he’s a glass cannon and so can die easily if properly handled. I prefer PVT or Valk for survival myself. Whatever floats your boat, I guess

It’s very possible to hit that hard or even harder with a small amount of zerker stuff and a large HP pool. I hit for 6-8k backstabs with 20k HP with my thief.

With berserker you may do 50% more damage than Pvt but the problem is will you survive long enough to do that damage. Once Massive AE’s drop all uplevel and berserk players drop. You will only survive 2 sec in multiple AE’s with berserker vs the 5-6sec with Pvt gear. Berserker gear is only good for the small scale fights not the big ZvZ fights.

A dead glasscannon does zero damage. And has probably rallied a dozen enemies.

This is a false dichotomy, there are more than two options.

Depends on the class, the player, the way your guild plays…
Pvt is usually great for a start though.

You can craft zerker gear, buy it on the TP; you can’t craft PVT, you need to spend lots of karma or badges. There’s a reason for that.

Healing power > vitality

PVT toughness in my opinion is extremely valid for specific builds and setups, and maybe necessary for specific roles within a group.

The zerg’s blanket use of PVT is the same as the over use of stacking before every fight, it is a way for unskilled players to organize around simple to understand instructions. Can’t rely on your zerglings to know what gear is best for them, just tell them all run PVT.

What everyone should do is evaluate their role and thus stat needs, determine what would be ideal. Then find a happy medium between that and enough survivability so you are not dying, well before anyone else does, you always die

Personally I think it is funny to stack weakness on a PVT zerg, so I hope they all keep running PVT.

Please run all zerker. I like badges.

I personally run clerics, vitality is rapidly negated but clerics just keeps on giving.

PVT gear, although I run multiple stats on my armor/trinkets. I know of some guilds who even require toughness builds because when you die you also rally the enemy players, so most of the time you do not want to run a glass cannon in groups, for roaming it is probably ok.

Lord Titan.3791:

Simply put, the more skilled you are, the “glassier” you can go. Unless your in a guild that has specific builds rotated around specific cooldowns this is how it is. WvW in most cases of organized guilds hitting unorganized zergs, its all about shock and awe. Initiation is huge in zerg battles and in most cases decides the victor. In other cases Valkyrie/PVT gear is sometimes picked up in organized groups when large amounts of protection uptime are involved. This is because Vitality > Toughness when you have protection up.

this is so wrong
1. No Skilled player would take the risk to be 1 shot
2. make an comparation 100% protection uptime
case a ) 25000 hp 2300 armor
case b ) 15000 hp 3100 armor
player a will take 35% more damage that player B and will have 65 % more hp
Considering that group is organized and area heals are constant (Water/dark fields) that 65% extra hp will help only against initial burst and player A will never be able to stay at full hp. Meantime player B will take 35% less damage on the entire battle ( maybe 5-6 minutes)

Florgknight.1589:

Berserker? Free rally guys!

^

If you’re not on fort aspenwood, run berserker. If you are, run pvt (or really anything with defensive stats). Simple as that.

PVT and zerker orbs. Trinkets and weapons as needed.

There ya go.

In a Zerg your just a jumbled mess of PvEers, PvPers(who actually have any semblance of skill), and of course the lowbies/noobs, so it really doesn’t matter unless you run in an organized guild with a specific gameplan that you have practiced many times over. If your a warrior, I’d say its pretty much a good bet you’ll want atleast nearly full zerker for those awesome #1 Crits Support classes would probably want to be tanky however. It all depends on how your ORGANIZED group likes to do things, emphasis on organized because if it isn’t than it just wont matter one way or the other.

Well, I guess this debate is as good as banging on the table and insisting someone like the particular beer you’re drinking.

Different tiers field different numbers and different metas. Zerk armor would work well in small skirmishes.

However if you are talking of 50 v 50, 80 v 80 clashes, PVT is almost de rigeur; zerk gear means you are part of a rally train. You can have all the damage in the world but that being dead in a matter of seconds means all your fantastic damage is for naught. Just imagine how much damage you are receiving from 50 players in a matter of seconds.

Best suggestion. Keep 2 separate sets if you are roaming in small groups and expecting small skirmishes and another for huge clashes

BenL.5312:

Well, I guess this debate is as good as banging on the table and insisting someone like the particular beer you’re drinking.

Pretty much. This thread is just an exercise in people being myopic.