Guild Wars 2

I want to better understand why there is a defined armor soft cap at 2750. I was told this by a guildie but after doing my own research the opinion on the matter is all over the place.

Where did this number come from and why?

Oh and don’t withhold the math.

Soft cap as in where it starts to curve off and diminishing return comes into play?

Yes. Softcap where it starts to diminish returns.

Edit: I’ve been researching the formula for damage from what I saw on the wiki.

Damage = (power * weapon damage * skill multiplier) / (armor)

If I plug in numbers for the constants of power, weapon damage, and skill to see what increasing armor does to the damage taken I get this graph

Google the function
(300 * 3000 * 1) / (3000 + x)

If you zoom it out it’s a 1/x style of graph. That shows a diminishing return for the additional damage reduced by increasing armor. But…

Research into what this means adds that this damage has to apply X many times to a person’s HP to kill them. This means the real formula:

(hits needed to kill) = health pool / (damage taken per hit)
(hits to kill) = hp / ((power * weapon damage* skill multplier) / armor )
That graph is linear. I assumed HP as a constant as well at 30k (honestly it’s high but its an easy number to work with)

google the function
30000 / ((300 * 3000 * 1) / (3000 + x))

That graph means no diminishing return in the survivability gained from increasing armor.

Let me know if i’m understanding this wrong.

Edit: Google ate the graphs. what the kitten

I do not believe there are any diminishing returns in GW2. I know for a fact there isn’t on skills. I don’t think there is on stats either. I haven’t once seen any talk about diminishing returns on any one discussing a build.

Edit: Counter point below makes this wrong.

I think what some latch onto is the difference between two armor ratings (difference given the same damage). For example:

(806 * 2.4 * 2500) / (2000) = 2418.0
(806 * 2.4 * 2500) / (2500) = 1934.4 / 483.6 reduction +500 toughness
(806 * 2.4 * 2500) / (3000) = 1612.0 / 322.4 reduction +500 toughness

This makes it appear that the first 500 toughness is more effective than next 500 toughness. However vary the power and the numbers are very linear:

(806 * 2.4 * 2000) / (2500) = 1547.5
(806 * 2.4 * 2500) / (2500) = 1934.4 / 386.9 increase +500 power
(806 * 2.4 * 3000) / (2500) = 2321.28 / 386.9 increase +500 power

This leads a lot of players to conclude that toughness has a decline in value somewhere around 700 which is around the place where toughness reductions are less than power increases.

I personally think this is an overly simplistic look at the numbers since in many cases power going out is generally less than damage/heals coming in but it really depends on the situation.

What these numbers do illustrate is that one hit/one kill backstabs don’t happen without a lot of mitigating factors or REALLY low toughness. In fact 5k hits on 3k toughness are near top of the BS mark (without some heavy mitigating factors such as buffs/condis).

Zikory.6871:

I do not believe there are any diminishing returns in GW2. I know for a fact there isn’t on skills. I don’t think there is on stats either. I haven’t once seen any talk about diminishing returns on any one discussing a build.

I have seen talk on gw2guru.com there was a discussion about stats and that the returns received from power start to drop off at 2000 and returns start to diminish the more power you go and that it would be more effective to put the points into precison and or crit damage instead of power if you want to increase your damage provided you are at 2000.

oZii.2864:

Zikory.6871:

I do not believe there are any diminishing returns in GW2. I know for a fact there isn’t on skills. I don’t think there is on stats either. I haven’t once seen any talk about diminishing returns on any one discussing a build.

I have seen talk on gw2guru.com there was a discussion about stats and that the returns received from power start to drop off at 2000 and returns start to diminish the more power you go and that it would be more effective to put the points into precison and or crit damage instead of power if you want to increase your damage provided you are at 2000.

Well kitten…that changes things lol I’m now interested in seeing where this discussion gos.

oZii, would you happen to have a link to that thread, I would be very interested in reading it.

This is actually a very interesting thread. I’m bad at math, though, so some more prosey examples would be appreciated.

oZii.2864:

Zikory.6871:

I do not believe there are any diminishing returns in GW2. I know for a fact there isn’t on skills. I don’t think there is on stats either. I haven’t once seen any talk about diminishing returns on any one discussing a build.

I have seen talk on gw2guru.com there was a discussion about stats and that the returns received from power start to drop off at 2000 and returns start to diminish the more power you go and that it would be more effective to put the points into precison and or crit damage instead of power if you want to increase your damage provided you are at 2000.

thats because the multiplicative increases from crit start outpacing the additive increases from power… not because returns diminish.

Power and toughness (really attack and armour) are directly equivalent in function. An attack made at 2000 attack vs 2000 armour will do the exact same damage as the same attack at 3000 attack vs 3000 armour. There isn’t really a ‘damage reduction’ stat in the game because of how attack and armour interact. Your ‘damage % taken’ could be modelled as a function of the minimum armour value for your class divided by the armour value you’re actually using and to the untrained eye this could certainly appear to have diminishing returns, but to then model it in terms of effective hp/healing you have to divide your hp or heal per second by the damage taken function. When you divide by a fraction you’re really multiplying by the inverse of that fraction, meaning that your effective hp/healing multiplier is your current armour divided by the minimum value of armour for your class. This function is linear.

The easiest way to look at the effect of armour is to remember that 1 point of armour counters 1 point of attack; every point of armour over the base is effectively subtracted from their attack.

There aren’t really any diminishing returns in how stats are applied but you can consider the fact that each new point added to any stat is a smaller percentage of the total than the one before it; adding 50 power to 500 power is a larger percentage than adding 50 power to 1000 power. In fact if you were to model power in terms of how long it takes to kill a certain target it would appear to have diminishing returns in the same way toughness gets called!

The only exceptional stat is healing power, which has exponential scaling if you look at the effect it has in combat. It directly raises your hps and with enough it is entirely possible to outheal an enemy’s dps, however most classes can’t get anywhere near enough healing power for this effect to be noticeable. Generally this will only start to happen when you put multiple guardians and/or eles in one place and let them all aoe heal each other.

Zikory.6871:

oZii.2864:

Zikory.6871:

I do not believe there are any diminishing returns in GW2. I know for a fact there isn’t on skills. I don’t think there is on stats either. I haven’t once seen any talk about diminishing returns on any one discussing a build.

I have seen talk on gw2guru.com there was a discussion about stats and that the returns received from power start to drop off at 2000 and returns start to diminish the more power you go and that it would be more effective to put the points into precison and or crit damage instead of power if you want to increase your damage provided you are at 2000.

Well kitten…that changes things lol I’m now interested in seeing where this discussion gos.

oZii, would you happen to have a link to that thread, I would be very interested in reading it.

It was a really old thread I don’t think I would be able to find it but insanemaniac.2456 explained the reason people think that and that it isn’t because of DR.

It is what I was thinking that there is no Diminishing return because of what the function looks like. Now a true softcap i would think looks like this would be something like
damage = (power * multiplier * weapon) / (armor * (armor > power)?(power):(armor)

Such a function would create a soft cap that limits the armor to be less than or equal to power. In such a case a maximum established available power would create a soft cap in the armor rating. Since the function document is not in fact this there is no soft cap or at least a more complicated soft cap. Either way 2750 is a very specific number and in light of where it goes I believe it is more of an arbitrary figure than an optimal one.

Can someone here calculate the effective armor of a guardian with 3k armor running signet of judgment? It gives a flat 10% direct damage reduction.

A guardian with exotic armour as its only source has 2127 armour. At 3000 that means effective hp is 141%. Add a judgement signet and it’s around 157%. That means your armour is effectively 3333.3 or 3000*10/9.

Coldtart.4785:

A guardian with exotic armour as its only source has 2127 armour. At 3000 that means effective hp is 141%. Add a judgement signet and it’s around 157%. That means your armour is effectively 3333.3 or 3000*10/9.

So it’s just a 10% bonus to armor, then.

Here, take a chart: http://i.imgur.com/3SKkP2R.png

Y axis is % reduction over base light armor
X axis is total armor amount