Guild Wars 2

I’m levelling an ele now and have met with good success balancing out the profession’s natural glassiness with defensive gear and accessories. My question now for more experienced ele players is how should I prioritize toughness, vitality, and healing power?

Toughness>vitality>healing power, I would avoid investing in healing power.

Experienced players that are running the right build, are familiar with their class’s mechanics and the game mechanics are able to do most, If not all PVE content in glass cannon gear.

If we’re talking about WVW or PVP the priority in defensive stats stays the same but you obviously wouldn’t want to run full glass cannon unless you want to play a s/x burst build.

petyr baelish.9675:

Toughness>vitality>healing power, I would avoid investing in healing power.

Experienced players that are running the right build, are familiar with their class’s mechanics and the game mechanics are able to do most, If not all PVE content in glass cannon gear.

If we’re talking about WVW or PVP the priority in defensive stats stays the same but you obviously wouldn’t want to run full glass cannon unless you want to play a s/x burst build.

Vit>tough>*

Really? I always assumed that reducing the amount of direct damage you take has better synergy with all of our heals, compared to just increasing your health pool. On the other hand vitality does improve your resilience to both direct and condition damage but I’m not so sure that that means it’s the better stat to invest in. Of course you do need some vitality so you don’t die to conditions before you can cleanse them.

If we have to consider gear choices knight>valkyrie/cavalier. Soldiers and sentinel make you hit like a wet noodle, celestial is pretty much out of the picture post ferocity, aside from those I don’t see any other useful gear that gives defensive stats.

Please note that a lot of my argumentation is from a PVE perspective.

It depends on the type of build you run. For tanky D/D, I feel that toughness is more important, while glassier S/D appreciates vitality more to live an enemy burst and blow your enemy up before they can burst again. Or so I’ve heard.

^ good point, didn’t think of that. I suppose the same logic considering vitality can be applied to PVE: make sure you have just enough health to kill the enemy before it kills you, assuming you don’t use active defenses properly. Then again, we are limited by the available stat combinations and knights is the best ‘tanky’ gear damage wise.

edit: Apparently I’m wrong and valkyrie has higher dps potential. So if you’re looking for ‘training gear’ for PVE you should opt for valkyrie.

There is not final answer to vitality or toughness. But here so point you need to ask you

- Vitality help you the most against burst and condition, while toughness is better for constant direct dmg. This is mainly for PvP, but that’s kill you the most is what you better prepare for. If you have a lot of condi removal and know how to dodge the big hit, then toughness could be better. If condition is your nemesis, vitality could be the way to go. In PvE that apply, but not as much as in PvP.
- The right ratio. You can calculate the effective HP of your toons. At some point one stat will bring your EHP higher than with the other stats. Reach a equilibrium between those two stats for the maximum return of investment.
- With experience you know what level of HP and Armor you feel comfortable with. In PvE i want as little as i can. For WvW? I want between 18-21k hp, while having between 2800 and 3100 armor on my frontline guardian. I know that i can do my job within those limit. But that’s different for each role and for each person.
- Toughness give agro so watch out. Of course, toughness is only 1 or several reason for someone to have agro. But toughness on an Ele can be a bad thing if you are in a party with only full dps guys. There is a chance that your Ele will have more mobs bashing the hell out of you.
- Basic amout of HP? I always want vitality over toughness on my Ele or Guardian. While i always what toughness on my Warrior and Necro.

Healing Power scales awfully IMO, so it’s the least favourite of them. I tend to prefer toughness over vitality, though.

Like Thaddeus said, toughness (together with your low base health & light armour) makes you a NPC magnet. You have to be aware of that. It happens to me a lot when entering a camp with one or two other players. I get the aggro of every NPC there and they will not lose it by getting hit by others or running by them. You have to accommodate to that fact.
When getting hit by siege, I think toughness is slightly better than vitality.