Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow elementalists!

Disclaimer: I am expanding my analysis to damage and buffs. This is work in progress and I am editing this thread continuously

I have been working on theory crafting and modelling healing. It is a much more complex task to analyse healing than damage because it requires to take into account specifically what spells we are using. What I call passive defence is the survivability granted by the combined passive actions of your vitality and toughness (Effective Health Points). I am focusing my analysis on direct damage survivability from stats for the moment.

What is survivability

Once all your proactive defence has failed and that you are going to take a hit, I distinguish two aspects in survivability:
-Short term threat: you are subject to high damage in a short period of time, you may not have the time to heal in the period, so you are in danger of being “one-shot”.
-Long term sustainability: you are receiving damage over a long period of time during which you can unfold your full healing potential; while your health may often be not full, your life is not in imminent danger.

In practise, you may never clearly distinguish these two aspects. This is because a lot of the combat output occurs in bursts. It is also very rare to be one-shot, you almost always have time to throw a heal. But the idea remains the same: if you get hit very hard your health will be low and you will change your gameplay until you can heal up, or you will have to “burn a cooldown”; in any case you get diminished to some extent.

How are stats affecting your survivability

The three stats that increase your chances to stay alive are vitality, toughness and healing power.
-Short term: only your passive defence matters. To survive in the short term you must have a high enough number of Effective Health Points (EHP), given by the product of your health and your armor. The stats involved are vitality, toughness and defence from your armor type (wich is just toughness with a different name).
-Long term: the level of your health matters less, instead it is your ability to heal and sustain yourself that is prominent. If your are continuously getting damaged and healing it, then the stats involved are your armor (toughness) and your healing power.

In practise the two aspects are linked.
You get damaged and then heal up. If you do not have enough healing potential to heal yourself sufficiently until the next time that you get damaged then you are not sustaining yourself and your life is under threat. If you heal yourself too easily and spend most of your time at full hp while your maximum effective hp is low then you are sustaining yourself but your life is more likely to be in danger.
Therefore you must get the right combination of stats that help you to best respond to the situations to which you are exposed.

As elementalists we build our survivability on the following base:
-Armor (toughness): 916 base + 920 from armor = 1836 base total
-Vitality: 916 base + 164.5 from class = 1080.5 base total (or 10805 hp)
-Healing power: there is a base healing specific to each spell, and in addition they benefit from a coefficient of your healing power (0 total base) [ skill data ]. This is why it is complex to model healing: in order to determine how much base heal and coefficient of healing power you can put out you must first determine what spells and traits you are going to use.

Analysing

So far, I find that the clearest way to analyse direct damage survivability is to compute maximum effective health points (short term response), and effective health points healed per second (long term response).

Max EHP = vitality . 10 . armor
EHP/s = (base heals + coefficients . healing power) . armor / offtimes

How you value each of these aspects is up to your judgement. There are no reliable metrics for it.
For example you may be fighting Giganticus Lupicus so you are not sustaining much long-term damage but rather you want to avoid being one-shot from missing a dodge on his projectiles, so your max EHP is more important; or you could be tanking the flame legion mobs in Citadel of Flame path one to keep the gate open, so your EHP healed per second becomes more important.

Notice how you base vitality is much lower than your base armor. This means that to increase your max EHP is it easier to focus on vitality.

Example of analysis

let’s take two popular builds since the 9th of July: 0/30/0/10/30 and 0/30/0/20/20

For this analysis we are going to completely ignore the choice of weapons. This is relevant because you may use each build with any weapon. Also each weapon is balanced and has very few differences in term of healing and passive defence (not proactive defence). Remember that a weapon is a response to a situation while a build is a response to a playstyle. I am also ingnoring the gear, since both build are often used with a gear that provides only toughness in term of survivability, toughness is a common factor in both aspects of direct damage survivability and can therefore be factored out for the comparison of these builds.

1. 0/30/0/10/30

-Smoothing mist
-Elemental attunement
-Lingering elements
-Evasive arcana
-Ether Renewal

100 healing power, 100 vitality
30% boon duration, attunement recharge time: 9.4

Survivability in terms of base survivability:
-Max EHP = 1.09 . base max EHP
-EHP/s = 6.06% of base max EHP per second

(The way I measure this survivability is not important, they are just numbers, what matters is the comparison between the two builds)

2. 0/30/0/20/20

-Smoothing mist
-Healing ripple
-Elemental attunement
-Lingering elements
-Ether Renewal

200 healing power, 200 vitality
20% boon duration, attunement recharge time: 10.7

Survivability in terms of base survivability:
-Max EHP = 1.19 . base max EHP
-EHP/s = 6.17% of base max EHP per second

3. Comparison

The second build provides
1.19 / 1.09 = 9.2% more max EHP
6.17 / 6.06 = 1.8% more EHP/s
than the first build.

Conclusion
The second build 0/30/0/20/20 provides more short term survivability for the same long-term sustainability.
Does this makes it a better build? In terms of passive defence, yes. But this is just one aspect of a build.
Once you know this you can make more educated choices regarding the other aspects of the builds, like less condition cleansing, lower attunement recharge rate and less blast finishers for example; but I will leave this to your appreciation with the guidance of the theory crafters who advocate the use of these builds.

To get the actual values of survivability of these two builds simply multiply the values given here by the ratio of armor of the stats with the gear to the stats without the gear (ratio = 1.58 for full knight gear)

Direct Damage

In order to analyse the direct damage potential of a build, I compute a direct damage index. To produce this index I compare the raw damage from the end build (with in action self buffs) to the raw damage from the base stats. Raw damage is never used in game, it is simply a measure of your damage before weapon strength, skill coefficient and target armor.
Raw damage = power * (1 + precision / 21 /100 * critical damage / 100)

So the Direct Damage Index is:
DDI = raw damage of the build / base raw damage

This shows your overall damage potential, independent of your targets’ armor, weapon damage and skills used. It is only useful for comparison. It is not a damage per second calculation.

Damage from Conditions

Evaluating the condition damage potential of a build is a completely different process. This is because condition damage can take two forms for elementalists: bleeding and burning. In addition, these conditions have a fixed base damage (dependent on your level), so the increase in average damage from more condition damage is not linear (as opposed to direct damage and power).
The Condition Damage Index is computed by dividing the damage per second from the end build (with buffs) of each condition by their respective base damage per second.
For convenience, I am currently computing this index under the assumption that burning and bleeding are used equally. This gives at most a 14% error margin on the index: if you use more bleed then your index will be higher and if you use more burn your index will be lower, by at most 14% in extreme cases. In regard of the simplicity this assumption provides, I believe this error margin is acceptable.

CDI =
1 + (condition damage * (0.05 / base bleed damage + 0.25 / base burn damage) / 2)

To provide a perfectly accurate Condition Damage Index I would have to know the average amount of bleed stacks and the average uptime of burn a build is able to achieve.

- reserved for future use -

- work in progress -

Analysis of current popular builds

Builds taken from Daphoenix’s guide.

Max EHP expressed as an index of base Max EHP, EHP/s expressed a percentage of base max EHP healed per second, Damage increase (from stats only) expressed as an index of base.
No runes, no sigils, no buffs.

Previous gear
Knight armor, knight weapons, and ascended celestial trinkets (cavalier back)
Stats from gear:
———Power: 603
———Precision: 568
——Crit damage: 34
—Condition: 216
—Vitality: 216
————Toughness: 766
—Healing power: 216

Direct damage: 2.50

-0/30/0/10/30
Max EHP = 1.83
EHP/s = 9.5%

-0/30/10/0/30
Max EHP = 1.77
EHP/s = 8.2%

-0/30/0/20/20
Max EHP = 1.96
EHP/s = 9.6%

New gear
Celestial armor, celestial weapons, ascended celestial trinkets but cavalier rings (cavalier back)
Stats from gear:
——-Power: 521
——Precision: 350
———-Crit damage: 67
——Condition: 350
——Vitality: 350
———Toughness: 612
——Healing power: 350

Condition damage: + 10.7% on average, depending on whether you use more burn (closer to 8.8%) or more bleed (closer to 12.6%)

Direct damage: 2.33 (- 9.4 %)

-0/30/0/10/30
Max EHP = 1.89 (+ 3.3%)
EHP/s = 9.4% (- 1%)

-0/30/10/0/30
Max EHP = 1.84 (+ 5.6%)
EHP/s = 8.2% (no change)

-0/30/0/20/20
Max EHP = 2.01 (+ 2.5%)
EHP/s = 9.5% (- 1%)

After I include runes, sigils and buffs the results may change.

- reserved for future use -
- end -

Let me know what build and what gear you use and I will tell you your survivability!

I will add talks about conditions in the near future.

These matters are very new to me, and there has been little work on this in the past, so I am not completely confident about everything. If you find mistakes or if you have any remarks I would be pleased to hear you!

_

Currently working on:
-how to measure defence against conditions without making the model too complex (I like to give no more than 3 values to reflect survivability)

Awesome stuff much appreciated.

I currently run

D/D

0/10/0/30/30

Full knights armor and weapons
Divinity runes
Trinkets ascended all stat trinkets w/ 2 healing infusions 3 power infusion
Backpiece: Ascended Cavalier
Food: superior sharpening stones and +45 to all stats and +5 crit damage

Heal Skill: Ether Renewal

Air: Zephyr boon

Water: soothing mist, cleansing wave, cleansing water

Arcana; renewing stamina, elemental attunement, evasive arcana

Also I am wondering if you happen to have it figured in terms of survivability is aquamancer’s alacrity boosts survivability enough to make it a trait worth considering.

Thanks for all your work on the elementalist

P.S. on my phone currently so pardon any errors

0/10/0/30/30 is still the best

Also you need to consider the additional 180 toughness from signet of earth

Add omnomberry bread

Add variable of signet of restoration

Add arcane shielding that reduces 5 blows every 30seconds to reduce burst damage death chance

Add evasive arcana dodge roll heal

Add elite elemental glyph pet from water that heals as well.

“Ah, what a fine day for science!"

0/0/30/30/20 cleric amulet with soldier gem and runes of the forge.
This is what I run in pvp and quite frankly, I don’t get killed in 1v1’s.
Ran it for 3 weeks and only got killed in 1v1’s 3 times because my face-rolling failed.

The numbers do make sense because celestial items are giving you more vitality and healing power for a sacrifice in only toughness from the mix of knight/zerker/cavalier items.

The thing is the offense trade-off since you lose power/prec and gain crit damage/condi damage, the net loss/gain of your offense will be based a lot on your weapon set/combat situation (zerg/1v1/small squad/pvp).

I am not much of a numbers guy but off the top of my head I say that S/X will be the best weapon set for a celestial setup. Next will be D/X and lastly staff (conditions on staff is nearly 0).

I wont be able to test celestial effectiveness in pve/wvw for a long time (I am poor )
but I will do some testing with the amulet in pvp with d/d and s/d with different builds and see what I come up with.

Thanks for making such a thread (and for messaging me /blush)

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

@oZii
Thank you!

Analysis of your build:
D/D
0/10/0/30/30
Full knights armor and weapons
Divinity runes
Trinkets ascended all stat trinkets w/ 2 healing infusions 3 power infusion
Backpiece: Ascended Cavalier
Food: superior sharpening stones and +45 to all stats and +5 crit damage

Stats from gear, traits, and food:
————Power: 889
———-Precision: 673
———-Critical Damage: 61
—-Condition: 321
———Vitality: 621
————-Toughness: 871
———Healing Power: 629
—-Boon Duration: 30%

Unbuffed:
Direct Damage: 2.81
Condition: 1.31 (index to base, assuming equal use of burn and bleed)
I am not completely confident about my condition calculations
With perma fury and 10 might on average:
Direct Damage: 3.87
Condition: 1.65

Max EHP: 2.32
EHP/s: 14%
Cleasing/s: 0.74 (measure of the number of conditions you are able to cleanse per second on average, not completely confident)

Note that these numbers are particularly high compared to the numbers currently displayed in my original posts because I included runes, food, and infusions here

With your healing spells from D/D:
EHP/s: 15.6%
Cleansing/s: 0.76

With Aquamancer’s alacrity (if you use your spells perfectly on cd, optimistic):
EHP/s: 16% (+ 2.3%)
Cleansing/s: 0.77 (+ 1%)
So I would say Aquamanacer’s alacrity is not that useful in term of just healing and cleansing for your build (but again I am not completely confident).

I hope this is useful
(it probably isn’t just yet, but once I finish my calculations on popular builds you can benchmark yours)

@Fuzzion
Are you asking me to analyse your build? If yes please give me all the necessary info like oZii did.
I do not take proactive defence into account.
Signet of restoration is tricky because it requires to estimate the average number of casts per seconds (I usually use 0.75 to 0.95 depending on the weapon and traits, arbitrary so far).
The water elemental elite is too random for me too reliably compute any metrics, but if you are interested I can try to come up with something.

@Swimsasa Stoon
Are you asking me to analyse your build? If yes please give me all the necessary info like oZii did.

@Demon
Thanks for your interest!
I believe conditions are not that bad on staff! There are quite a number of builds about it and people seem to say it has a decent output (I never worked on it so I cannot confirm).

@ARM
The question, as always, is “how much?”.
And as you can see from my analysis of Daphoenix’s builds, more healing power does not necessarily mean that you will sustain direct damage more easily.

__

I should probably include the stats from traits in my stats summary/diagrams.
19/07/13 Edit: now including them.
Sharpening stones are a headache to work with

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

thanks Zelyhnn
15 char

Yes , please let me know how effective the elite water attunement pet is, esp. after the buffs to ele pets.

And if you could tell me what this provides, i would be very grateful

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.1k.h8.8.1k.h1h|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.b1g.1n.b1g|211.0.211.0.311.0.211.0.311.0.3v.0|0.a1.0.u53b.u56b|3t.7|1n.1u.1t.1v.0|e

oZii.2864:

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

I think he did. He was just distilling the thread down for humor. The fact is the analysis is fun but is not a measure of much of anything. There are so many variables left out and assumptions made that the conclusions lack merit. Combat is so fluid that the value of the constants change during battle which means they are not constants anymore. The OP acknowledges this but then does not, because he cannnot, account for it in his calculations.

It’s all very entertaining but elaborate nonsense. Or, as he said, if you have more healing power you heal more.

For example, his methods would tell us that the elementalists’ three healing skills have a ranking of effectiveness and are constant. Yet, any elementalist knows they each have their uses and all are better than each other under different circumstances and/or builds. Under certain circumstances, they each are also almost entirely useless and have no value at all.

Baladir.2736:

oZii.2864:

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

I think he did. He was just distilling the thread down for humor. The fact is the analysis is fun but is not a measure of much of anything. There are so many variables left out and assumptions made that the conclusions lack merit. Combat is so fluid that the value of the constants change during battle which means they are not constants anymore. The OP acknowledges this but then does not, because he cannnot, account for it in his calculations.

It’s all very entertaining but elaborate nonsense. Or, as he said, if you have more healing power you heal more.

For example, his methods would tell us that the elementalists’ three healing skills have a ranking of effectiveness and are constant. Yet, any elementalist knows they each have their uses and all are better than each other under different circumstances and/or builds. Under certain circumstances, they each are also almost entirely useless and have no value at all.

This statement is correect!

You two are missing the point. Like I say in all my guides, I am just doing the maths. I don’t teach you how to play, I just help you to make the right decision.

If there are variables that I have left out when it comes to measuring survivability through healing and passive defence them I am eager to hear about it
Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

I agree that it is not easy for everyone to understand how all this is applicable in practice. That’s why you keep saying “when you have more healing power you heal more”. While it is true, this sentence has no gameplay application.
Stats are capped. So adding more somewhere means having less somewhere else. Sometimes adding healing power means having less toughness, like with Daphoenix’s new gear. In such case you do heal more, but these heals are less effective, so you heal less.
Therefore sometimes more healing power means less healing.
It is all about stats optimization.
It is all about making the right choices for what you want.

@Fuzzion
Thanks, I will give you my analysis tomorrow morning!

Baladir.2736:

oZii.2864:

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

I think he did. He was just distilling the thread down for humor. The fact is the analysis is fun but is not a measure of much of anything. There are so many variables left out and assumptions made that the conclusions lack merit. Combat is so fluid that the value of the constants change during battle which means they are not constants anymore. The OP acknowledges this but then does not, because he cannnot, account for it in his calculations.

It’s all very entertaining but elaborate nonsense. Or, as he said, if you have more healing power you heal more.

For example, his methods would tell us that the elementalists’ three healing skills have a ranking of effectiveness and are constant. Yet, any elementalist knows they each have their uses and all are better than each other under different circumstances and/or builds. Under certain circumstances, they each are also almost entirely useless and have no value at all.

Really couldn’t have said it better myself.

@ Fuzzion
I need more data on the Ice elemental: I cannot find any information on how many times it is able to cast its heal on average, and its script (does he always prioritize healing you, or nearby allies, or itself?). I will try to do some testing, but at the moment my TC time is more focused towards gathering cast times and aftercast times for the skill data thread.
If what I suspect is correct, the elemental heals you twice during its lifetime, so the healing output per second (180s cd) is equal to that of a water trident spammed on cd (with no healing power: skill EHP/s = 0.7%). The Ice elemental heal does not scale with your healing power, so it becomes less useful as you increase this stat.

Analysis of your build:
Thanks a lot for the buildcraft link, this makes the whole process much easier because I don’t have to entirely compute the stats myself

0/10/0/30/30 – D/D
Stats from gear, traits, and food:
———Power: 603
———-Precision: 703
——-Critical Damage: 44
———Vitality: 616
————Toughness: 785
————Healing Power: 761
——Condition: 216
———-Boon duration: 70%
Estimated casts per second: 0.85

Direct damage: 2.20 unbuffed / 3.43 with 16 might and perma fury
Condition: 1.21 unbuffed / 1.75 with 15 might
Max EHP: 2.24
EHP/s: 14.8%
(reminder: those numbers are computed from the stats only, keep in mind that your trait choices further enhance your character significantly)

If I can give you an advice it would be to reconsider your food (focus on power rather than precision) and your boon duration runes (major runes of the monk isn’t the best choice). But WvW build TC is not my area of expertise

I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have any remarks.

_

If anyone is interested I would be glad to share with you the spreadsheet that I use to make these calculations. It is simple, but home-made, so not easy to understand right away.

Zelyhn.8069:

@ Fuzzion
I need more data on the Ice elemental: I cannot find any information on how many times it is able to cast its heal on average, and its script (does he always prioritize healing you, or nearby allies, or itself?). I will try to do some testing, but at the moment my TC time is more focused towards gathering cast times and aftercast times for the skill data thread.
If what I suspect is correct, the elemental heals you twice during its lifetime, so the healing output per second (180s cd) is equal to that of a water trident spammed on cd (with no healing power: skill EHP/s = 0.7%). The Ice elemental heal does not scale with your healing power, so it becomes less useful as you increase this stat.

Analysis of your build:
Thanks a lot for the buildcraft link, this makes the whole process much easier because I don’t have to entirely compute the stats myself

0/10/0/30/30 – D/D
Stats from gear, traits, and food:
———Power: 603
———-Precision: 703
——-Critical Damage: 44
———Vitality: 616
————Toughness: 785
————Healing Power: 761
——Condition: 216
———-Boon duration: 70%
Estimated casts per second: 0.85

Direct damage: 2.20 unbuffed / 3.43 with 16 might and perma fury
Condition: 1.21 unbuffed / 1.75 with 15 might
Max EHP: 2.24
EHP/s: 14.8%
(reminder: those numbers are computed from the stats only, keep in mind that your trait choices further enhance your character significantly)

If I can give you an advice it would be to reconsider your food (focus on power rather than precision) and your boon duration runes (major runes of the monk isn’t the best choice). But WvW build TC is not my area of expertise

I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have any remarks.

_

If anyone is interested I would be glad to share with you the spreadsheet that I use to make these calculations. It is simple, but home-made, so not easy to understand right away.

Thanks mate. Why pre over pow stacks since pow increases more linearly while pre has better returns sincs its a bell curve.

Also go for boon duration since boon duration increases fury(crit) and heals.

Also i think the pet is too unbstable to calculoate. From exp. it heals for crap but applies freeze condition damage on the enemy very well and has around 2200 hp

Major runes of the monk
If my calculations are correct, your fury uptime with 70% boon duration is:
1.7 * ( 5 / 25 + 5 / 40 + 2 / 9.4 * 4 ) * 0.75 = 150%
And that includes a human error factor of 25% (the 0.75 in the calculation) !
With 60% boon duration it becomes 141%

As for regen, your boon duration from Elemental attunement with 60% boon duration is:
1.6 * 5 = 8s
With 70% boon duration:
1.7 * 5 = 8.5s
So you gain 0.5 seconds of regen from the major runes of the monk. But the game only takes integers into account, so you gain nothing.
However you could argue that your regen uptime is :
1.7 * 5 / 9.4 = 90%
So that the extra boon duration can help you keep perma regen. This is true, but I am pretty sure that since your cantrips give you regeneration you are likely over 100% uptime already (I did not compute that, I may be wrong).
In my build analysis I assumed you are keeping perma regen.

As for power, the maximum extra power from might you can gain from 10% extra boon duration when you are already at 60% is around 52 (if you can virtually maintain about 14.7 stacks on average without bonus duration).

As you can see the major runes of monk do not provide you much, even if you manage to buff allies with Elemental attunement. You would certainly be better off with superior runes of strength for example.

Power VS Precision
The pattern of returns of the two stats does not matter.
Your food (master maintenance oil) gives you 163 precision, but you could get 163 power from superior sharpening stones.
Without your food you stand at:
Power: 2079 with 16 might (1519 unbuffed)
Precision: 1876 with perma fury (1456 unbuffed)
Critical damage: 94 (44 + base)
At this point, the gain in direct damage from 163 extra precision is 4.96%, while the gain in direct damage from 163 extra power is 7.84%.
Note: you would need 111 more critical damage to make the the increment in precision as worthy as the increment in power.

Zelyhn.8069

Nice read! I like all of the analysis that you’ve done and for this community :]
I’m going assume all your math is right because I can’t double check all those values lol

I did have a question though on your analysis, something that I haven’t really put a number too

“Max EHP = vitality . 10 . armor
EHP/s = (base heals + coefficients . healing power) . armor / offtimes”

A value for “offtimes” is something that is somewhat difficult to put a value to. Depending on the situation, it might be never, or it might be every few seconds if your extremely pressured / in a heavy terrain jungle.
As you stated earlier in your post, sometimes the situation will be too easy, and hence you’ll waste your EHP/s when it could have been fulfilled with more DPS.
Sometimes the situation will be too hard, in this case EHP/s has a higher priority over DPS.

I usually like to build my setups to fight most, if not all situations. I like to focus on EHP/s because I realize that you can simply stack might in combat when the need for more DPS arises. Max EHP just needs to be satisfactory enough (through experience) that I can react fast enough and not get instagibbed by burst thieves.

On a different topic, I’m not entirely sure why you did a stat analysis between 0/30/0/20/20 and 0/30/0/10/30. For science is always an obvious answer :P. But really the most significant difference between these two builds is the traits, Evasive arcana and attunement CD vs. Water15’s passive heal trait.
edit: I can see why you did the analysis to do analysis on the gear setup after.

“I need more data on the Ice elemental: "
I’m fairly positive that ice elemental offers a full heal, at maximum once per summon. I can’t really remember the exact conditions for it to happen, but I’m sure someone like Zoose would know, or another sPvP’er.

I think the biggest question is this:
What is the optimal amount of damage traits vs. defense traits for common situations?
We can easily do the calculations to figure out the right mix of precision, power, and critical damage with the right assumptions. But how do you compare that vs. max EHP, and EHP/s?
Toughness affects both max EHP and EHP/s which is why I assign it a high value for a stat. It does have diminishing returns though.
On my guide I stated 1600 toughness is a good number by experience. But there must be some estimate you can make for toughness (at the very least) vs. offensive stats. If you can determine this value by some means, then you can figure out how many cavalier (power ,toughness, critical damage) items you should optimally have over celestial items.

daphoenix.4283:

…….

I think the biggest question is this:
What is the optimal amount of damage traits vs. defense traits for common situations?
We can easily do the calculations to figure out the right mix of precision, power, and critical damage with the right assumptions. But how do you compare that vs. max EHP, and EHP/s? …….

Ah lol. the Holy Grail…for common situation only, oh shoot.

Let’s simply this as much as possible. This morning I went and bought a Coundrum of Malt necklace 126 Pwr 67 Prec 18 Vit 9% Crit Damage to replace Gwen’s Necklace 85 Pwr 126 Tough 9% Crit Damage. Damage vs. Survivabilty. Which is best?

For me I gained 3% Crit Chance, 1% Attack, 1% Health and lost 7% Armor. I don’t have the precise figures here because I do not have them with me. I didn’t intend to post this. I also rounded off lol preferring not to calculate fractions of a percent. I have just shy of 16,000 Vitality so we can rule out spike damage (variable) getting one-two-three shot (variable). I have high Vigor regen (variable)and am above average on the movement (variable)and dodges (variable) anticipating incoming damage (variable), but still get hit of course. My Vigor is dependent on Crits (variable), however, so I have to remain engaged (variable). I run support (variable)often with a staff in Wvw but often without an effective overpowering zerg (variable)so have to often fend for myself. Prefer s/d for pve but can wield a d/d ok. d/d is especaily effective for soloing and duoing supply camps and of course solo and small group Wvw. I prefer Glyph of Elemental Harmony. I only have 15 in water but still can generate alot of regen (variable). I prefer to have a big heal when it is needed (variable)and run with Glyph cooldown reduction for that and Glyph of Elemental Power (variable). I run with the Elite Elemental. Ice is fine in Wvw (variable), but I will also use fire for dps in WvW (variable). I run with Runes of Lyssa so the Elemental clears all conditions and grants all boons on use. I like that alot, except I often use it as a desperate last measure and die before I can cast it (variable).

Common situations? Against what classes and popular builds?

My answer is that I am just going to try out the new necklace and see if I notice much difference in my loss of armor. I’ve been squishier. I found I was forced to take alot more toughness with the ascended items than I had before with crafted items. I was able to fine tune every stat, not anymore with ascended. I use a rule of thumb. Carry only as much defense as I need to survive until I can defeat the other guy the way I like to play. If that doesn’t work, change the way I play and/or change gear. Very scientific

Zelyhn.8069:

You would certainly be better off with superior runes of strength for example.

Ahh Runes of strength how I have waited for so long for them to fix the 6 piece bonus. That rune set would be the best rune choice for a dps elementalist and becomes stronger the more might you can stack. Only set I would consider dropping my runes of divinity for.

Zelyhn.8069:

Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

Zelyhn, I very much appreciate this input, and it is very awesome of you to run these calculations. One thing I would suggest is that you should try to include protection in your calculations as it is an important part of boon duration. In other words, you are currently penalizing boon-duration builds builds that reach higher protection uptime.

To modify the calculations, we say that protection makes
damage = 0.66*(opponent dmg)/armor = (opp dmg)/(1.5*armor)

Where opp damage is a function of power, crit. chance, and crit damage. Thus, the simple modification is:

armor_modified = prot_dowtime*armor_unmodified+prot_uptime*1.5*armor_unmodified = (1.5-0.5*prot_downtime)*armor_unmodified

where armor_unmodified is the base value you are using, and prot_uptime is the percentage of time that protection is up. Prot_downtime = 1-prot_uptime.

From here, you simply plug in the armor_modified where your old “armor” values were.

Zelyhn.8069:

You two are missing the point. Like I say in all my guides, I am just doing the maths. I don’t teach you how to play, I just help you to make the right decision.

If there are variables that I have left out when it comes to measuring survivability through healing and passive defence them I am eager to hear about it
Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

I agree that it is not easy for everyone to understand how all this is applicable in practice. That’s why you keep saying “when you have more healing power you heal more”. While it is true, this sentence has no gameplay application.
Stats are capped. So adding more somewhere means having less somewhere else. Sometimes adding healing power means having less toughness, like with Daphoenix’s new gear. In such case you do heal more, but these heals are less effective, so you heal less.
Therefore sometimes more healing power means less healing.
It is all about stats optimization.
It is all about making the right choices for what you want.

@Fuzzion
Thanks, I will give you my analysis tomorrow morning!

No, you are missing the point.

“Calculating” survivability by adding up numbers showing minor differences would only be relevant if this were a 16th century British war where everyone lined up and shot on command. The redcoats lost for a reason, and no one has gone back to that method since.

ARM.3912:

No, you are missing the point.

“Calculating” survivability by adding up numbers showing minor differences would only be relevant if this were a 16th century British war where everyone lined up and shot on command. The redcoats lost for a reason, and no one has gone back to that method since.

Or it could be a thread for theorycrafters that enjoy theorycrafting

You understand that it is calculations that doesn’t mean the numbers are law and will be correct in every single scenario we all know this. It’s not like this thread is some detriment to elementalist and spreading false information unless someone reading it is a person that believes everything they see on T.V. You read the thread give to the discussion or not and take away from it what you will you aren’t required to play by it nothing more nothing less.

Example Zephlynn gives an example in one build that his fury uptime is 150%(with 60% boon duration) he states that he gave a human error factor of 25%. We all know that doesn’t take into account if the guy has a keyboard with keys that get stuck, if he has 10 kids running around his house screaming at him etc. It’s an example not the law of the land.

BlackBeard.2873:

Zelyhn.8069:

Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

Zelyhn, I very much appreciate this input, and it is very awesome of you to run these calculations. One thing I would suggest is that you should try to include protection in your calculations as it is an important part of boon duration. In other words, you are currently penalizing boon-duration builds builds that reach higher protection uptime.

To modify the calculations, we say that protection makes
damage = 0.66*(opponent dmg)/armor = (opp dmg)/(1.5*armor)

Where opp damage is a function of power, crit. chance, and crit damage. Thus, the simple modification is:

armor_modified = prot_dowtime*armor_unmodified+prot_uptime*1.5*armor_unmodified = (1.5-0.5*prot_downtime)*armor_unmodified

where armor_unmodified is the base value you are using, and prot_uptime is the percentage of time that protection is up. Prot_downtime = 1-prot_uptime.

From here, you simply plug in the armor_modified where your old “armor” values were.

Conditions have been ignored in the calculations execpt for a Cleansing Per Second notation. It could be argued that because conditions affect all armor ratings the same, it is a constant. But, there is a definate correlation between condition damage, total vitality, health regen, and the ability to eat some conditions with that vitality and regen while cleansing the only most damaging conditions.

One can look at HOT regen and large heals generally as all healing, but what is generally accepted is that HOTs are the best defense against DOTs and large heals saved when needed to counteract spike damage, and only to bring ones health above one two shot etc range. Consequently, the weighted values of the HOTs and large heals vary and are more or less important in different situation.

Against a condition spec’d class or player, an armor value is worthless. Against a direct damage dealer it is everything.

A realization by a player that he often needs just one more condition removal or just 1000 hit points to stay engaged and continue dealing damage vs. retreat is worth more than any series of calculations.

You may recall that the big uproar over RTL was not so much about chasing down other players, but was about escaping from combat because the builds needed to exit stage right. All of a sudden, the glorified damage builds are not (variable) dealing damage. Another variable unaccounted for. Hold on for a second guys. I am off in a corner healing up or dead. Sorry the might we stacked up is Gone! (another unaccounted for variable) Or the reverse end of that, the bunker builds do so little damage they can be ignored.

I have to agree with ARM on this one. Testing in game and making adjustments is the only way to truly evaluate the relative values of all these variables and how they apply to an individual player. If you are wondering, OP, why I seem to have a kitten against your methods, it is because they are fundementally flawed and lead players to false conclusions if they buy into them.

Baladir.2736:

BlackBeard.2873:

Zelyhn.8069:

Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

Zelyhn, I very much appreciate this input, and it is very awesome of you to run these calculations. One thing I would suggest is that you should try to include protection in your calculations as it is an important part of boon duration. In other words, you are currently penalizing boon-duration builds builds that reach higher protection uptime.

To modify the calculations, we say that protection makes
damage = 0.66*(opponent dmg)/armor = (opp dmg)/(1.5*armor)

Where opp damage is a function of power, crit. chance, and crit damage. Thus, the simple modification is:

armor_modified = prot_dowtime*armor_unmodified+prot_uptime*1.5*armor_unmodified = (1.5-0.5*prot_downtime)*armor_unmodified

where armor_unmodified is the base value you are using, and prot_uptime is the percentage of time that protection is up. Prot_downtime = 1-prot_uptime.

From here, you simply plug in the armor_modified where your old “armor” values were.

I have to agree with ARM on this one. Testing in game and making adjustments is the only way to truly evaluate the relative values of all these variables and how they apply to an individual player. If you are wondering, OP, why I seem to have a kitten against your methods, it is because they are fundementally flawed and lead players to false conclusions if they buy into them.

Exactly! you really know your stuff!.

oZii.2864:

Or it could be a thread for theorycrafters that enjoy theorycrafting

You understand that it is calculations that doesn’t mean the numbers are law and will be correct in every single scenario we all know this. It’s not like this thread is some detriment to elementalist and spreading false information unless someone reading it is a person that believes everything they see on T.V. You read the thread give to the discussion or not and take away from it what you will you aren’t required to play by it nothing more nothing less.

Example Zephlynn gives an example in one build that his fury uptime is 150%(with 60% boon duration) he states that he gave a human error factor of 25%. We all know that doesn’t take into account if the guy has a keyboard with keys that get stuck, if he has 10 kids running around his house screaming at him etc. It’s an example not the law of the land.

I want to say that I actually read and enjoy all the posts talking about math, real numbers and facts of an Elementalist rather than the hoodoo voodoo assumptions and superstition about what was the best way to play an Elementalist.

However leaving out important parts of the over all equation is faulty and it skews the numbers to show a very favorable position. For example it was previously brought up that 3% is 3% and no matter how you scale the numbers 3% will always be 3%. While that’s true on a level it’s also talking around the point that 3% of 10 is a hell of a lot of different than 3% of 5000.

This is why leaving out factors such as Protection, despite having a fixed value, is faulty and shouldn’t be overlooked. When you do punch in real numbers into the equation and you do see real results in game what you theory crafted as “better by 3%” actually equates to a difference of 10 more damage (taken or mitigated) but then you apply protection and that’s only 6 damage you can then really evaluate the the value of that 3% increase.

I do not have time to reply to everybody today, but I certainly will tomorrow.
I would like to thank Daphoenix and BlackBeard for their interest and appreciation.

To ARM, Kodiak, LightningBlaze and Baladir, I do not understand what is it that you have against this thread. I just compute the numbers for direct damage survivability from stats and I present them to you. You draw your own conclusions.
If you have any remarks on how I make these calculations then please be specific, otherwise please keep the discussion on topic.
You may also want to reread this sentence from my OP:
“How you value each of these aspects is up to your judgement. There are no reliable metrics for it.”

Edit: Of course I want to expand the scope of my analysis to conditions, buffs, etc. But I would like to keep this initiative humble at first, make sure I get things right, and on this base we can build more complex and comprehensive models.

Only go prec>power if you’re high in power+crit damage, or rely heavily on things that proc on critical (our most important of which, renewing stamina, has a cd anyway, so you can get away with a lowish amount of precision while upkeeping it thanks to fury).
At 50crit damage, 21 prec= 1% damage increase, at 0 crit damage 1% damage increase =42 prec.
1% damage increase for power on the other hand, is just 1% of what ever your power is (including might stacks).

Now I have some time to reply

@ Daphoenix
Thanks again!
I agree that offtimes (cast+aftercast+cd) are a bit tricky to evaluate in practice, because like you said they are quite dependent on the situation. It is almost impossible to spam everything on cd. But my figure for EHP/s simply shows the maximum self sustainability of a build (maybe I should emphasise the idea that it is a maximum potential in my OP). It is still useful as a measure of long-term direct damage survivability. Then is it up to the player to evaluate whether he is able to pull it off, and at what cost (EA cost you one dodge, ER is a long channelling, etc).

From what I can see in your videos, I completely agree that EHP/s is most important for your playstyle.

Could you give me a buildcraft link of your old gear VS your new gear? This would help me a lot!

I wish I could compute what are the most optimal stats in a given situation, but the game is just way too complex for this. I will try to get as close to this as possible (see last paragraph of this post), but in the end it is up to the player to decide how he wants to respond to a situation.
My goal is simply to measure what most people estimate intuitively, so they can make more educated decisions.
For example, a lot of people want to follow your move to change from your old gear to more celestial stats. What my calculations seem to show is that this would result in a substantial shift from direct damage to conditions, and more EHP.
However this is just the beginning. I intend to make my model more comprehensive so that it is easy to evaluate the output of a build at one glance.

@ Baladir
In a way you are right: it is almost impossible to model the most optimal stats and build and other choices for a given situation, and it would not make much sense anyway.
But it is possible to provide guidance on the effects of changes in stats. For example if you give me your complete build I can tell you the effect of such change in necklace, in terms of the effects of your stats.

@ oZii
You know what? I have put runes of strength on all my gear before finding out that it is bugged, but I believe in it so much that I refuse to change them! The day they fix it I am a happy man

@ BlackBeard
Yes, protection is crucial in order to evaluate direct damage survivability. I will definitely try to expand my model and make it more complex to reflect this (see last paragraph of this post).

_

It seems my methods are generally accepted (when they are understood). I appreciate this. Now I would like to expand this model.
So far I have been focusing only on direct damage survivability from stats. My next step would be to include conditions in model (I have made some attempts at this, as you can see in the analysis of oZii’s build). Here are the figures I think would best reflect survivability:
-Maximum hp
-Maximum hp healed per second
-Average direct damage reduction coefficient (armor and protection)
-Average maximum condition cleansing per second.
Notice that just including conditions implies displaying two additional figures. More figures is not always better, because it makes reading an analysis harder.
This is still not taking into account all survivability factors available (apart from the proactive defence, which I do not plan on modelling), but it is a step forward.
If you have any remarks or advice on how to go about this, I would be very pleased to hear you

Zelyhn have you looked at Ether Renewal vs Signet of Restoration vs Glyph?

I run ether renewal but I feel like Signet is the best heal for D/D since it allows you to maintain constant pressure and reduces the time you need to heal. Then you condition bombed by a necro ……

Update: I am in the process of editing the thread to show the complete analysis of builds rather than just survivability.

_

@ oZii
Yes, but it is very complex to compare these three heals.
This is because their effectiveness is dependent on your healing power, they have base heals, and SoR is dependent on the amount of casts per second and is different in PvE and in PvP. Also, GoEP total heal (add regen) is dependent your boon duration. And then the practical aspects have to be taken into account: cast time, cleasing, versatility, etc.
I can compute their effectiveness, and what it requires to makes them equivalent, but I definitely cannot rank them for any situation.
Currently I tend to run ER with stab from earth in PvP (playing offensive support), and I really like SoR too, but in PvE I rarely use SoR because mobs don’t back down when they are in difficulty
In WvW I mostly use GoEP (roaming) with my PvE build (Fresh Air), because I have glyph cd reduction and for its versatility.

Hello. I was wondering if you could help me analyze my current setup (I know some gear needs improvements, especially the accessories portion).

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.5|8.1g.h1m.8.1g.h1h|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71b.1g.71b.1g.71b.1g.71b.1g.71b.1g.71b|1k.68.1p.61.1p.61.1n.64.1n.64.8c.68|0.p16.0.f6.u16b|39.1|1n.0.1p.1r.0|e

@ Aaedhros Encalius

Thanks for asking! I think there is one utility skill missing from your build.
One major issue I see with your build is that you chose two sigils that proc on weapon swap. The mechanics are such that only one of them can occur when you swap attunements, if I am not mistaken this would be the main-hand sigil.
I have done my analysis of your build assuming you would proc sigil of battle.
I assumed a cast per second amount of 0.80 (for Signet of Restoration), an average of 8 might stacks, and perma fury. The factors taken into account for the analysis are the stats from gear, traits, buffs and food. Non-stat trait choices and sigils are ignored.

Analysis of your build:
Direct Damage = 4’.55
Condition Damage = 1.27
Direct Mitigation = 1.14
Max Health = 1.27
Sustainability = 6.6%

A few comments:
-You seem to want to do direct damage with some defense, so you go for zerker armor and some defensive trinkets. I think you should do the opposite. The critical damage bonus ratio of the trinkets is better than that of the armor and weapons, so if you want to have zerker pieces it is better to focus on the trinkets first (for the same amounts of power and precision you will have more critical damage). You can then tweak your armor with the defense pieces that you want.
-You decided not to take elemental attunement (arcane trait). This is quite detrimental to your survivability (no access to regen or protection) and to your damage (you could get at least 2 mights stack on average).
-You probably have little cleansing (condition removal) with you build, isn’t this a problem for you?

I hope this was helpful, let me know if you have any questions!

I marvel at the amount of work you put into this, and how well you communicate. I do my own data collection and analysis, and our numbers match. The effort you have put into supporting Elementalists with enough information to find some strength in our disadvantageous position in the meta is commendable. You have two threads stickied as a result. Thank you for your support.

What we do differ on is what EHP should represent. I believe that it should represent hit points, since it is effective hit points. Your calculation creates a survivability score that is not hit points. It is useful for comparison between scores, but it does not translate into hit points. You cannot calculate EHP without considering damage because damage reduction is a percent of damage based on this simple equation Damage = Offense / Armor.

In answer to those who questions the worth of this type of analysis, it is useful to find an optimal range of values because the effectiveness of each stat is not linear. There are disproportional trade-offs when allocating points, so it is about getting the most bang for your buck.

It does seem a little bit complex for what it tries to convey though. The main issue with GW2 is that it’s so much more active than other MMO’s. Where a WoW tank could pretty much predict how a fight will turn out, GW2 is more about reaction times, dodging at the right times and ultimately, has too many factors for theories like these to hold up. It’s nice to be able to compare the effects of heals but it’s easily thrown off by the actual game. For example, if you are skilled enough to dodge the strongest hits instead of random weaker hits, your toughness will be less useful because the reduction per hit you take is less. Same goes for dodging while protection is up vs. while it’s not up. Then there are of course conditions, which go directly against the long-term survivability effects (i.e. invest in healing/toughness instead of vitality for long term survival works against conditions) and finally, being a team game means that sacrificing a little self heal for the group can be much more effective.

You just can’t theorize all, no matter how complex you make your theory.