Guild Wars 2

When players discuss builds, they tend to focus on the the traits and utilities while often ignoring the stats (pow/vit/tou/healing…), which I’d argue determine at least a third of how the build plays and its effectiveness.

In PvP, excluding the gem and runes, the amulet locks you into one choice of 3 stats. In PvE, it’s costly to build every set, so it’s wise to think about your investment beforehand. So, let’s discuss stat choice.

I’m a casual player and tend to play D/D in every format, but I switch it up. I love to attunement swap and I like to survive. My thoughts:

Power: Almost always useful with any weapon, though scepter only has weak auto-attacks affected by it. Crit damage need it to scale. I almost always want power on every item. When does it make sense not to, excluding scepter builds where condition damage is your only offense?

Crit Chance: hard to compare to power due to procs; seems to require significant traiting to be worth it. However, this seems to be the primary way to increase burst in addition to power.

Crit Damage: Why would you ever choose this over more power or more crit chance unless you’re going beserker’s? How does Valkyrie gear make any sense? Arcane power builds? Having a ~50% crit chance still makes this seem like adds little compared to more power or more chance to proc. Given that you have to invest in both precision and crit damage to seemingly get the same amount you would from power or condition damage, I rarely choose this stat. Why choose it?

Condition Damage: Drastically increases your condition damage output (seems to scale better than power) but only affects about a third of our abilities.

Crit Chance + Condition Damage: Is the entire point of getting these 2 stats together to leverage traits like % chance on crit to burn or bleed? Does this come anywhere close to power?

Vitality vs Healing Power: Burst survival vs sustained survival. Both scale well with toughness and protection, at least better than the offensive stats which tend to require at least 2 stats to be the equivalent of power. I prefer sustain if I have enough health to survive burst (thieves, boss 1-shots, etc).

Vitality vs Toughness: toughness seems to provide less burst survival, but pairs better with healing power than vitality because more vitality means you need to heal more health while toughness means that health is worth more. If I’m going double defense, I’ll grab enough vitality to survive most burst (maybe 15k health) and then focus on healing power and toughness.

Offense vs Defense: it seems like toughness, vitality, and healing power are close to on par with power while offensive stats tend to be half as valuable as power. Also, for me not dying tends to be more fun than killing and then dying. Hence, I’m often picking soldier’s, cleric’s, and maybe a bit of carrion or knight’s. Auras often provide enough crit chance to proc things I need (vigor) and otherwise, investing in crit or crit damage seems to add little to my chance of winning (or at least surviving).

TLDR: defensive stats seem to be more equivalent to power than other offensive stats; I’d like to hear opinions or evidence otherwise.

I was planning to go Power/Toughness/Vitality on my armor, w/ boon extension runes, and get both Carrion and perhaps Cleric’s sets of other gear (offense vs. support). This for S/D and Staff.

But of course with the Staff nerf, I may not play my elementalist at all any more.

valkyrie gear indeed always struck me as being useless. Crit damage is so weak that it’s only worthwhile if you’re going glass cannon and already have extremely high crit chance and as much power as you can get

Crit chance itself also strikes me as a glass cannon stat. Power is almost always better for damage than precision. With no traits, and with minor investment in either offensive stat, precision adds roughly 1/5 the amount of damage that power adds. It’s not until you have +1200 power and +50% crit damage that adding precision (up from +0!) has equal returns. And that’s with 0 precision, so if you already have, say, +800 precision, adding more only gives 70% as much damage as power. And also without fury. Fury is basically 420 precision.
That’s all ignoring on-crit stuff, but most of the stuff that actually matters has enough of a cooldown that you don’t gain much from addional crit rates once you have a decent crit chance.
Side note: with the given stats (+1200 power, +800 precision, +50% crit dmg) and a 50% uptime on fury, 1% crit damage gives the same damage increase as 7 power.

but yeah, the only reason I’d get crit anything on builds that balance offense and defense is itemization restrictions. can’t always pick and choose my stats

CurtMonash.3498:

I was planning to go Power/Toughness/Vitality on my armor, w/ boon extension runes, and get both Carrion and perhaps Cleric’s sets of other gear (offense vs. support). This for S/D and Staff.

But of course with the Staff nerf, I may not play my elementalist at all any more.

Soldier’s P/V/T seems like a great place to start in PvE, if only it were craftable. Instead, since it isn’t, clerics + carrion gives you a good mix of defense/support with some offense, especially as DD.

As a Staff and Scepter user, were you planning only using Cleric’s with Staff (only Fire 3 and Earth 2 to deal condition damage, hard to keep more than 1 up) and only using Carrion with Scepter (which has the poorest synergy with healing builds)? Or am I missing something where you might want Cleric with a Scepter or Carrion with a Staff?

Gareth,

You got the general idea.

Carrion is for DPS builds, Cleric’s for support builds. When I switch to staff in landscape PvE I just go with whatever I have for my scepter/dagger build, except that I may take the time to swap in the Blasting Staff trait.

Actually, if I solo in Staff, which I do mainly inadvertently on my way to a DE, Eruption isn’t bad.

reikken.4961:

valkyrie gear indeed always struck me as being useless. Crit damage is so weak that it’s only worthwhile if you’re going glass cannon and already have extremely high crit chance and as much power as you can get

Crit chance itself also strikes me as a glass cannon stat. Power is almost always better for damage than precision. With no traits, and with minor investment in either offensive stat, precision adds roughly 1/5 the amount of damage that power adds. It’s not until you have 1200 power and +50% crit damage that adding precision (up from +0!) has equal returns. And that’s with 0 precision, so if you already have, say, +800 precision, adding more only gives 70% as much damage as power. And also without fury. Fury is basically 420 precision.
That’s all ignoring on-crit stuff, but most of the stuff that actually matters has enough of a cooldown that you don’t gain much from addional crit rates once you have a decent crit chance.
Side note: with the given stats (1200 power, +800 precision, +50% crit dmg) and a 50% uptime on fury, 1% crit damage gives the same damage increase as 7 power.

but yeah, the only reason I’d get crit anything on builds that balance offense and defense is itemization restrictions. can’t always pick and choose my stats

This is exactly the sort of analysis I was looking for; I had similar thoughts on the math.

When is it that you can’t pick and choose your stats? Is it something like you want toughness + more offense, and there’s no power + toughness + condition damage, so you go power + toughness + precision? What do you typically go with?

Did Anet explain why the combo of toughness + power + condition damage isn’t offered? I know Anet said some stat combos were ‘too powerful’, but this doesn’t strike me as gamebreaking… whereas toughness + vitality + healing power or condi duration + condi damage + X or healing power + boon duration might be. Anyone know?

It’s more like, I want toughness + more offense, and there’s no power + toughness + condition damage, so I… get less toughness. because precision is just that much of a waste stat without a dedicated build. I don’t actually get any precision. I did consider it, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. I dunno if that’s best, but that’s how I see it.

I’d like to some toughness + healing power + condition damage. That would fill in a lot of holes. Or really just toughness + condition damage + anything not precision, the stat that synergizes least with toughness and condition damage.

And as far as I know (which isn’t very far), Anet hasn’t explained anything related to balance, or stats in general. If they have, I’d certainly like to see it.

I’m a defensive player— I usually play a healer so I like to be at full health. Just because I wasn’t sure what to go for I ended up with a mix of stats. I almost always play staff.

I use all arcane utilities so I didn’t want to get critical chance, because it would be wasted on them. It seems like for critical chance to be meaningful you need a lot of it and then need the critical damage modifier to really make it count.

Basically I have vit/toughness/healing and then power/condition damage (carrion gear/clerics accessories). I’m lacking condition duration so I carry around a stack of rare veggie pizzas but I usually use omnomberry creams in groups.

Honestly I like it, even though I feel a bit spread thin statwise. I feel pretty sturdy and I like having condition damage because I can apply conditions and it applies consistent damage even if I’m moving around/ using support abilities/ dodging. Obviously in pve cleansing isn’t usually an issue but even in pvp I’m surprised by how often people don’t remove conditions. I’m planning to get a full set of clerics gear to try that out.

reikken.4961:

It’s more like, I want toughness + more offense, and there’s no power + toughness + condition damage, so I… get less toughness. because precision is just that much of a waste stat without a dedicated build. I don’t actually get any precision. I did consider it, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. I dunno if that’s best, but that’s how I see it.

I’d like to some toughness + healing power + condition damage. That would fill in a lot of holes. Or really just toughness + condition damage + anything not precision, the stat that synergizes least with toughness and condition damage.

And as far as I know (which isn’t very far), Anet hasn’t explained anything related to balance, or stats in general. If they have, I’d certainly like to see it.

In PvP, Shaman’s gear provides toughness + condition damage + healing power. From what I can tell, there is no equivalent in PvE. Odd.

yeah, I meant for PvE/WvW. using toughness+healing power+condition damage in combination with other gear to fill in the stat holes

Gareth.2615:

In PvP, Shaman’s gear provides toughness + condition damage + healing power. From what I can tell, there is no equivalent in PvE. Odd.

Crafted Apothecary gear added in yesterday’s patch is Tough/Cond/Healing Power.

i always feel to go full power/toughness and a bit of vitality with Staff builds ignoring everything else
and kinda like going power/toughness with S/D to, but i prefer to change the bit of vitality to change into a bit of precision when using those weapons :P

maybe try for example some gearpieces from AC exp. and combine that with some aggresive jewelry and then maybe go for invader weapon or something
i dont like condition dmg though, neither do i like going alot for healing. Atm those are only good if you fully fully going for those things. But you will be very weak at all other roles… very weak

cant say alot anymore though now that some Ascended pieces are making their way into the game :P

Cruzz.1297:

Gareth.2615:

In PvP, Shaman’s gear provides toughness + condition damage + healing power. From what I can tell, there is no equivalent in PvE. Odd.

Crafted Apothecary gear added in yesterday’s patch is Tough/Cond/Healing Power.

WHAT. IS THIS FOR REAL? If so, this is the greatest news.
unless crafting it is like getting a legendary. ie stupid amounts of work

Reiken did nice explaining and let me try to add on it from my perspective.
I play mainly WvWvW only and in a guild group. So condition damage is quite irrelevant for me as targets dies very fast due to focused melt. So stat comparing boils down to playing around with the direct damage formula, that Reiken used there aswell. What needs to be understood however is that best stat upgrades depend on your current gear and spec. Excell table to play around with the stats is simple to make.

The formula tells us that Power is the most cost effective stat for long time. Making Invader type P/T/V very cost effective set when you need heavy survivability and good damage.
Precission comes slightly better than Power at high Power and crit damage.
For example for me using crit damage runes, and food and often having high stacks of might getting 1.94 crit modifier (40% crit damage) and 2700 power. Precission is better than Power upgrades, so I could concider using Sigil of Perception instead of Bloodlust.
However Power is the safer option.

If I changed my spec to have 30 Air, getting upto 2.24 crit modifier Precission againg be better upgrade than power, this time more clearly tho.

I remember one check I did about setups that I was intrested. Going from full berserker gear with invader bling and crit damage runes, with old traditional 0/10/0/30/30 into full invader all with rune of strengths and Emerdal Jewel.
Resulted in: 28% survivability increase and in 14% direct damage decrease.
Againg with 30 air spec the damage decrease would have been more dramatic.

So after this quite random post. For berserker to be worth it vs the survivability loss you want to be using heavy Air build with near 2.2 crit modifier. P/T/V is great way to go if you need to be safe and do good damage.
For soloing I like to use (or would like to) Carrion type gear, as condition damage rocks ofc. Howeve deeper comparing direct damage sets with Carrior for soloing purposes would require information about your target and about your skill rotation.

On the Valk armor, I use it on my Thief since I wanted to not be super squishy while still being able to crit hard. I rolled a constantly stealthing build that also traited the automatic crits coming out of stealth, so the relatively crappy critical chance wasn’t really a big deal at all for me.

On my Ele, I rolled full Knight’s gear in PvE (Tough/Power/Prec). Although it’s weird to not have Power as a main stat, I wanted gear that both gave me a high crit chance to combo with the Arcane major trait that can proc 5 seconds of vigor on crit, as well as gave me a high amount of Toughness so that I could stay in melee range. This way, I could basically sit in the front with the group and AoE spam 21 stacks of might with full +boon duration via Scepter/Focus (YEAH I USE A FOCUS), and have the ability to negate any projectiles at their source. The Toughness + high protection uptime from runes/traits also made it so that using the Hammer conjure for additional blast finishers (YEAH I USE A CONJURE) and its actually pretty good base damage wasn’t actually suicidal. The hammer auto attack can do some pretty stupid stuff – I got 4 blast heals out of the Ranger’s water field once before I finally lost my hammer. With Evasive Arcana water rolls + blasts and water/earth attunement AoE buffs I didn’t really lose all my other utility either, especially since I usually blew most of my normal useful group spells while doing my might dance already (fire 4/2/3 – roll while attuning to water + arcane blast – water 3/5 – roll while attuning to earth – earth 4/3/2 – summon hammer). By the time my first hammer was done, my CDs would be back up and I could refresh the stacks of might before picking up the second hammer.

Without that toughness, I probably wouldn’t be able to melee so much, and the pretty much constant 25 stacks of might meant that I (and everyone else) still did a lot of damage even though I had Toughness as my primary stat on my armor. I could easily poop out streams of 3k autos while wielding my hammer and still constantly attunement swapping while wielding it for the Fury + random boons. If need be, I could even facetank for a pretty long time even though I wasn’t like a staffie constantly rolling into water fields.

The removal of blasts from Evasive Arcana did mean that I lost 6 stacks of might, though. I might end up getting myself a Sigil of Battle to make up for it – before I was experimenting with a life leech one to help me stick it out while up in melee.

Paper napkin math suggests that 40 Power is roughly 3% more damage, wheras 40 Precision is roughly 3% more critical.

So yeah, you’ll need some +crit damage to make precision worth it from a dps standpoint. However, if you’re interested in burst for PvP then it’ll give you a chance to do a bit more in critical conditions. Combined with ‘on crit’ traits, it seems like a fair tradeoff.

ThiBash well that is very paper napkin math. 40 power is equal to 3% more damage (direct) if you have 1333 power, which is not common.
It’s simple x% boost in power equals x% boost in damage (direct) in all cases.

And 40% precission should be 1.9% crit. Which of those is better depends on your total power, total crit and total crit damage.

Loosing EA was big dps loss cos of the might stacks lost thru that idd.

Has anyone looked into a Shaman D/D water/X build that tries to line up Earth/Fire conditions with cantrips and then kite/heal while they tick?

Not sure why anybody would hate on a Valkyrie amulet. Trait 20 into air while using it with a D/D build and perma fury with really nice heals+vigor on crit. Only thing you really have to watch out for is spike damage, but preemptive shock aura can stop that most of the time.

Leuca.5732:

Not sure why anybody would hate on a Valkyrie amulet. Trait 20 into air while using it with a D/D build and perma fury with really nice heals+vigor on crit. Only thing you really have to watch out for is spike damage, but preemptive shock aura can stop that most of the time.

Not hate; I admitted a lack of understanding as to when it’s useful and asked. You’re helping me reconsider it. This forum has enough Ele hate; I’m glad this thread has been constructive.

If we could pick stats freely in sPvP, I’d think that even at 50% crit chance you’d still want more crit chance over crit damage especially if you include procs, but I haven’t done the math, . However, as I review the amulets out there, I see that Valkyrie is similar to Cleric’s, but with +284x2 moved from Healing Power to Power and Crit Damage. These are the only two choices that have power, toughness, and healing power and none of them add precision but Valkyrie does add crit damage. So… I now see that Valkyrie is a good choice if you want to focus less on healing and more on offense… It sure makes me wish there were more amulet stat combos, like Valkyrie’s with the Crit Damage changed to Precision.

Side question: what’s required to hit perma fury? 30 Arcana, +20% boons on runes, 20% air CD reduction?

Gareth.2615:

Has anyone looked into a Shaman D/D water/X build that tries to line up Earth/Fire conditions with cantrips and then kite/heal while they tick?

If you wanted to do that, it would make a lot more sense to go S/D with it’s ability to apply burning and bleeding at 900 range.

I’ve been using it in sPvP for awhile now and it works well. 0 0 30 30 10. Arcana for fast attunement swapping isn’t that important because you’ll be using auto attacks a lot to keep your stacks up.

~14k health, close to 3,500 armor, ~1,250 condition damage before might, and a good chunk of healing (I would have to check, but I’m thinking 1,100ish). Only really weak against heavy condition removal guardian/ele (they probably can’t kill you either) and high spike damage thieves with quickness and poison for -healing.

If you use Signet of Restoration and Written in stone trait , Healing Power will be the best survivability stat to focus on specially when wielding a dagger.

Gareth.2615:

Side question: what’s required to hit perma fury? 30 Arcana, +20% boons on runes, 20% air CD reduction?

20 arcana, 10 air
done

Sabull.5670:

ThiBash.5634:

Paper napkin math suggests that 40 Power is roughly 3% more damage, wheras 40 Precision is roughly 3% more critical.

ThiBash well that is very paper napkin math. 40 power is equal to 3% more damage (direct) if you have 1333 power, which is not common.
It’s simple x% boost in power equals x% boost in damage (direct) in all cases.

Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true in this case. You’re assuming that 1 power equals +1 damage but that’s not true for all skills. The skill I used to compare it for were staff skills, and the actual % varied even between the various skills.

However, on average, all the skills gained about 3%, so that’s what I went with.

As for the critical hit, I just added 40 and then it went up by 3%.

Gareth.2615:

Leuca.5732:

Not sure why anybody would hate on a Valkyrie amulet. Trait 20 into air while using it with a D/D build and perma fury with really nice heals+vigor on crit. Only thing you really have to watch out for is spike damage, but preemptive shock aura can stop that most of the time.

Not hate; I admitted a lack of understanding as to when it’s useful and asked. You’re helping me reconsider it. This forum has enough Ele hate; I’m glad this thread has been constructive.

If we could pick stats freely in sPvP, I’d think that even at 50% crit chance you’d still want more crit chance over crit damage especially if you include procs, but I haven’t done the math, . However, as I review the amulets out there, I see that Valkyrie is similar to Cleric’s, but with +284x2 moved from Healing Power to Power and Crit Damage. These are the only two choices that have power, toughness, and healing power and none of them add precision but Valkyrie does add crit damage. So… I now see that Valkyrie is a good choice if you want to focus less on healing and more on offense… It sure makes me wish there were more amulet stat combos, like Valkyrie’s with the Crit Damage changed to Precision.

Side question: what’s required to hit perma fury? 30 Arcana, +20% boons on runes, 20% air CD reduction?

The only thing I’m not using on your list is the runes; I use divinity. However, with two auras and additional fury on attunement swap; I pretty much almost always have fury up during a fight. By the time Shocking Aura has recharged, I’ve probably done a complete cycle through my elements, adding another 8-9 seconds of fury, and possibly activated Frost Aura. With 20 into Air and near-constant if not perma fury, your crit chance is effectively more than 40% while in combat.

ThiBash.5634:

Sabull.5670:

ThiBash.5634:

Paper napkin math suggests that 40 Power is roughly 3% more damage, wheras 40 Precision is roughly 3% more critical.

ThiBash well that is very paper napkin math. 40 power is equal to 3% more damage (direct) if you have 1333 power, which is not common.
It’s simple x% boost in power equals x% boost in damage (direct) in all cases.

Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true in this case. You’re assuming that 1 power equals +1 damage but that’s not true for all skills. The skill I used to compare it for were staff skills, and the actual % varied even between the various skills.

However, on average, all the skills gained about 3%, so that’s what I went with.

As for the critical hit, I just added 40 and then it went up by 3%.

the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.

And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power

reikken.4961:

the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.

And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power

The I guess my fireball’s tooltip must be broken, because 3 stacks of might don’t add 105 damage to it. They only add 36 (603->639 while in town).

As for the crit, you’re probably right. Must have been a roundoff error on my part. My apologies.

I tend to rely on tooltips, despite their bugginess, because I don’t see a lot of data from steady weapons in the Mists, and I’m too lazy to create that data myself.

ThiBash.5634:

reikken.4961:

the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.

And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power

The I guess my fireball’s tooltip must be broken, because 3 stacks of might don’t add 105 damage to it. They only add 36 (603->639 while in town).

As for the crit, you’re probably right. Must have been a roundoff error on my part. My apologies.

Do you, perhaps, have around 1760 power? because 3 stacks of might (at 80) would add 105 power, aka an increase of 6%, and increasing 603 by 6% results in 639.