Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys, kinda new to wv3; I have a 80 Mesmer, up to now have been focusing on a direct damage/shatter build (pwr, precision, crit). My question is do you guys think that having a full set of this vitality & toughness gear is worth the loss of dps, or will it be for naught because it’s still light Armor?
Thanks!

Depends on your build. I almost have the entire set on my ele for bunkerelementalist. It helps a ton since it is the only full set to have power/vit/toughness.

Ascalon Catacombs also has a power/vit/tough set.

Gorefiend.9678:

Ascalon Catacombs also has a power/vit/tough set.

Crap, well I used a lot of badges, but it still looks sexy on my ele.

You can get 5 out of 6 pieces of power/tough/vit armor from exotic karma vendors in Orr, and the last piece (legs) with badges. That’s what I did, and it’s probably the easiest way to get it (210k karma and 370 badges).

As far as whether or not its worth it, I can’t help you there since I’m wondering the same thing which is why I bought them for my mesmer. Sadly I still need a boatload of badges to get all the jewelry for the whole set, until then it will sit in my bank. It also kinda sucks how there is no orb that has power/tough/vit.

Or you can just buy orr power/vit/tough armor pieces.

My main is an 80 mesmer and I run a combo of knights and berserker gear. I found the damage without the berserker gear to be kind of lackluster, but so much will depend on how you are traited. I have 25 points in the tree that gives vitality, so I don’t need to stack so much of this stat on gear (I still have over 18K health), though I do have vitality items I swap into if I need to jump off high cliffs, e.g., when porting supply runners. For me, the crit is necessary for endurance regen (Critical Infusion, which leads into clones off dodge) and bleeds.

Honestly, I’d go with the gear you currently have and see how it feels and then adjust accordingly depending on what you like to do. Then build up different items for different situations, just like you re-trait for different situations.

Thanks for the replies. I am feeling quite squishy in WvW, and I would like to be a bit more durable. I am traited 20/25/5/0/20 or something similar (not much in vit or toughness). My HP pool is 16k. To those of you who have gone the route of obtaining vit/toughness gear, how does it “feel”? Do you feel more survivable? Do you feel that your DPS suffered alot, or just a little? I am spec’d to pop 1-2 phantasms at a time, let them do 1 or 2 attack cycles, then mindwrack or (f2) them, rinse/repeat doing direct GS/Sword attacks all the while. Thanks!

teh wvw set is the worst grind in the game.

which is made worse if like me/some of us, no matter how many kills you get/loot bags from player kills/claiming npc’s/etc you get very low rate of badges.

i guess some people get a lot of badges(compared to me). but i get so few once my toons hit 80, i’ve come to consider to stop saving mine and just spend them on siege instead, since teh gear stat spread isn’t a huge priority for me, and at the current rate of badge drops i am getting, guidl wars 3 will be out and old before i can afford even a single piece of wvw gear.

As long as you only care about stats just figure out what pieces of power/vit/tough you can’t obtain from Karma and buy those pieces with badges. The rest with Karma. For me I went 3 and 3 (Karma/Badges) and it got me a full set much faster.

I like PVT. As a mesmer I like survivability and I run a confusion build so I slapped runes of the undead on them (for the 5% T to CondDamage) and then the 25 traitpoints into the toughness line for another 5%
Add to that tuning crystals and you end up with 16% of your toughness to condition damage plus 4% of your vitality to condition damage.

Might be a crap build to some people but I enjoy it at the moment.

ele starter armor looks sexey too !

Power+Toughness+Vitality armor is sold by the AC and HotW dungeon vendors, so WvW’s Invader gear is not the only set. In my build I have 3 pieces of AC armor, HotW leggings, Arcon (Dwayna) shoulders and invader boots (though the leggings, headpiece and coat are transmuted with what i like, priory garb/noble pants/feathered headpiece).

AC, HotW, and SE all have the same stats.

No, it is not worth the badges.

Another thing to try out, is to just try out a few builds/armor combos in the mists. I’ve been leveling my mesmer mainly only in WvW. I just went into the mists tonight, for the first time on it, and really learned what works well, for me…armor-wise, which runes i prefer, weapon sets, sigils, etc. Personally, i feel a mesmer can sacrifice some toughness/vit, because they have a lot of get-away slot skills/traits handy. I spec’d mainly into power/precision/vit/crit% and killed much more, than I died. I also found myself coming up with better strategies for 1v1/1v2/1v3 situations, which can be common in WvW. After some practice, I was starting to win most 1v2 situations, and downing at least one person in 1v3, something I was not the best at in WvW.

It depends on the play style you like. My mesmer is 70 right now, and has about 22k hp in WvW, but still does plenty of damage. I mainly use a combo of Knight’s/Berserker’s armor, and my jewelry is all knight’s with beryl gems, i believe. i go with a greatsword main, and sword/pistol swap. focus is also great when travelling for the runbuff, and when attacking towers/keeps, to pull enemies from their comfort zone off of the walls For slot skills, they’re mainly all to get myself out of the terrible situations i generally run headfirst into. decoy, blink, null field, and moa as the elite. not sure on my traits, not signed in to check ;0

While the invader/AC/etc etc armors are decent in most regards, i’d look for a karma alternative. It’s much easier to come by, at least for me, and you’ll be a little less likely having buyers remorse. I like the pow/prec/vit armors, stacked with a main weapon with a bloodlust sigil, and swap weapon with an accuracy one. once you rack up some kills, and start stacking, you can do some pretty serious damage/crits, while having some great survivability.

hope my post, and personal experiences help you out! have fun

It’s interesting how you all make comparisons of the time spent in wvw vs pve as if pve gets you gold/karma and wvw gets you badges only. You have to remember that your time spent in wvw doesnt only get you badges, but heaps of karma and gold as well. Badges are just an extra. If you spend 500 hours in wvw farming the badges for a full set of invaders gear, youll also have made 700-800k karma (which is enough for 2-3 sets of exotic armor) as well as a pile of gold.

If you make gold in WvW you obviously aren’t contributing enough to siege and upgrades.

objection! I dropped perhaps 50% worth of catas, ballistas and rams during our zerg (about 2 hours) in EB today, and I’m making gold. (this is, of course, including drops. in fact, I was surprised that tahlkora’s mask [sold for 3 gold] dropped off an invader…haha).

Sounds like you still ordered about 0 fortified wall upgrades :P

Nope, I ordered only 2 though (my guild left the server the morning before so I’m a bit reluctant).

Can buy almost full set from world karma vendors in Orr except (i think) pants. Rest you can get from one them dungeons. Also like to note you can get this full set outside of Wv3 with considerably less time/effort spent.

4.5k kills so far and 313 badges….not like I need any gear from Wv3 anyways; I got vit/power/toughness set in like 3 days doing PvE.