Guild Wars 2

There are so many threads that include lengthy dialogue about these value comparisons I thought it was time we dedicated a thread to this subject. There are two parts to this discussion, and both are viable – offensive ramifications and defensive ramification.

The obvious comparison, defensive ramifications, is what I will put forth with this short 4m video that is a spreadsheet view of the variable changes.

For those unable to use the link:
http://screencast.com/t/JKoBSs0ZbkF

Even if you posted your thoughts in another thread, post a link to your words there or restate them here. Also, keep it relevant. This is analysis about what is and what will be.

Great topic and nice video demonstration. The problem is that I believe your example is still too linear. It does not take into account ele’s primary survivability through healing (not healing power, just healing). Just take water’s 15 trait as an example. Let’s say it heals for 1500. 1500 hp would be more effective hp for someone with more armor than the person that is stacked with more vitality. I have no idea what the number would be if we are to compare these 2 scenarios, though I’m sure some Excel jockey could figure that out. And it would be good to get a back of the envelope comparison of this factor and, if it really even matters since armor does not negate conditions. Healing through our skills with more armor vs. more vit may just cancel each other out as a general rule of thumb due to conditions and if that is the case, then you simplified chart is probably the best way to view defensive gearing.

Well your math is immediately off because you set 916 as base armor. If you set base armor to what it actually is, the % reduction from 1000 points in armor would be much higher than 17%. The additional 776 toughness from my gear gives me close to a 30% damage reduction.

Also, getting 1000 toughness is easier and more realistic to get than 1000 vitality in all formats. There are only 2 gear types, sentinel’s and shaman’s, that give vitality as a primary in pve/wvw. Sentinel’s sucks for adding any damage. Shaman’s isn’t even a good combo. Healing power and toughness just have more synergy than healing power and vitality. If you want an ascended accessory that boosts power damage and defense, you have no real vitality option. There’s the rather trivial vitality from the beserker/valkyrie, and then you have celestial and soldier’s, which still gives toughness. Spvp has 4 amulets that give 560 or more toughness. There are 2 amulets that give more than 560 vitality, and one gives an equal amount of toughness. 2 other amulets give about 260 vitality. Talking about the benefit of 1000 hp vs 1000 toughness in a vacuum doesn’t do much good when you have restrictions to work with.

Really it isn’t even hp vs armor because you need both to be sturdy to any real degree. Low armor just means your large hp pool melts quickly. High armor just means your small hp pool depletes slower except to conditions. It’s really a question of what the ratio should be for whatever build.

Sabull.5670 reminded me of this link:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

You will find a couple numbers similar to ones in my chart, Effective Health (EHP), and Damage Reduction. They are useful, but Tei.1704 is correct, in that, they are normalized by an arbitrary divisor. That website uses the base Armor for each class. My chart was normalized by the minimum stat, 916. I can show you both normalizations side-by-side in another short 2m video.

This video replies to Bhima.9518 and Tei.1704:
http://screencast.com/t/n51MRHLjA0e

I liked it have you thought about doing a series or something on youtube? I don’t know why but personally I love reading theorycrafting threads even if it’s not on a class I play. (guardian forum have really good reads)

There are alot of variables like condition modifiers on a attack even if the build isn’t condition based it still adds up. It would still support your theory though that vitality is better.

With the possibility that people will put 30 points in earth with the new trait. This is good for people not going conditions to think about going valkyrie gear.

The gear choices are limited though so going Vitality means Sentinel(with lower power) and Shaman(with no power) the best middle ground is Soldier’s gear for survivability and damage if you have the critical chance valkyrie though many know this already.

I would put a disclaimer to avoid the thread being derailed that this is based on simulation of 2 people trading hits.

Good demonstration and the video is a nice touch there really isn’t any Videos on Theorycrafting for GW2 I think many people would like them.

Nice Job!

Tei.1704:

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Really it isn’t even hp vs armor because you need both to be sturdy to any real degree. Low armor just means your large hp pool melts quickly. High armor just means your small hp pool depletes slower except to conditions. It’s really a question of what the ratio should be for whatever build.

Yes. For Elementalist the direct damage numbers are:
- Pure burst survivability, aka no healing scenario, aka crowd controlled to hell, what keeps you alive the longest
First get 18360 health (1671.5 total vitality) after that point to point Toughness is equally valuable as Vitality. So if 1000 points are spent on these 2 stats (lets round for even), would be 1794 Vitality and 1038 toughness.

Then adding healing into the mixture. You have to think of the scenario that you want to optimize for. I would not recommend adding Healing power into the equations from this approach, rather use rough numbers.
Let’s say I’m still getting heavility bursted, I would be able to survive and disengage in my scenario (wvw staff elementalist) if I get my main heal off so it won’t be added cos I want scenario where I die. Let’s say I will get water swap+dodge off, for 3k healing before I die.

This simply moves the cutoff point 300 vitality less. To 15360 health and then add vitality and toughness equally. Vitality: 1644, Toughness 1188 with first 1000 points.
It’s best to not to model too much healing in than that unless really long D&D regen style duel is concerned. For my use it is the offguard burst that kills.

For my Wvw purposes, gladly PVT armor with full bers/valk trinkets with 10 air 30 water and correct details in runes&food gives near perfect balance on BOTH T&V and the direct damage stats.

@Sabull or Pro

Doesn’t condition damage also sway the importance of vitality or toughness. If for example you had 30 in water with also 30 in arcana with EA. You take the best condition removal trait setup. Elemental attunement, soothing disruption, cleansing wave and cleansing water, you also slot cleansing flame.

Say you sit at 17660 HP you then run Lemongrass poultry soup to bring you to 18360 doesn’t those utilities, traits and food allow you to move some of your vitality points toward toughness, healing or both? In this case you could drop a few PVT pieces for knights or clerics if you want.

New 4m video disputing the theory of increasing effectiveness of more Armor:
http://screencast.com/t/ukCGiTClyxt

oZii.2864,
Your suggestion about a YouTube video series is a good one. Thank you for supporting my hobby time. To answer your question, even high health characters die to focused conditions dumping. The great thing about conditions is that they are often free, ranged, and hard to avoid. Health means the most versus condition damage, but every character should be specced to cleanse amply.

Sabull.5670,
I enjoy your participation in these mathy topics. Let us not forget that there is something this math supports – gameplay. Ultimately, I hope to get a good value comparison between Earth and Water.

ImProVocateur.5189:

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Sabull.5670,
I enjoy your participation in these mathy topics. Let us not forget that there is something this math supports – gameplay. Ultimately, I hope to get a good value comparison between Earth and Water.

Why compare Earth and water? Thats useless. Those 300 points are just a small portion of the total stat pool and their value totally depends on the total stats.
And traits overshadow the passive stat points totally, because you prolly can get the perfect balance in V and T no matter which you spec….

Video 1:00, you have normalized to 1836 right? Going under it obviously gives lower than base health EHPs (with low vit). Tool above simply has [Number below]*1836/916. Longevity, EHP, hits to kill. However you want to call it, it is the same thing (assuming calculations are correct). Which the tool seems to be doing, calculating EHP in bottom right.

Video 2:00, thank you for showing a user friendly example case of the cutoff point I told about.
And after the cutoff point the optimal path ratio of total health and armor is idd 10.
Because cut off point is 10/1, and then we add point equally to both.

However problem is ofc before the cutoff point, you cannot reach the 10:1 ratio.
So I guess you could say, add to vitality untill you reach 10:1 ratio in health and armor. Once reached, keep it!
Problem in that is ofc, we do not gear building up point from point.
We have stats x and y, and then we wanna know, is this good? Can we improve f(x,y) by changing x and y but keeping x+y constant? Aka can we increase EHP while keeping the same stats constant.
Hence I concider the V&T partial derivates of EHP, or Longevity in your case ( same thing), more useful than the EHP or L.

You video doesn’t concern “New 4m video disputing the theory of increasing effectiveness of more Armo” though. Ofc armor is better than vitality if you skew above the 10:1 ratio in your total stats. You ending conclusion is totally off.

Personally I’ve tough of making a theorycraft serie for the pure nerds who just want to see how the calculations are made, step by step. School style. Results have been known for long, but just for those who enjoy “the pleasure of finding things out”.

As has been pointed out, offense versus defense is heavily situation dependent and there are many, many variables!

Since you ask for links, I have collected some math of vitality and toughness .

About picking gear considering trade-offs between effective health and effective power, here is a post on that (pre-dates Assassin gear).

As you can tell, I love the topic :-) Your video is certainly a neat idea, less dry than just text.

I personally feel like it’s important to balance vitality, toughness and healing power. Vitality and toughness together protect you against instant physical burst classes like bs thief. Vitality also helps against burst conditions. Toughness and healing power help you in most standard battles against non-super bursty enemies. Vitality is imo the least important once you reach a good enough threshold to survive most instant bursts in the game (18k health seems to work well for me).

This is why celestial gear is quite good, especially since it gives you enough offense to actually kill enemies.

EDIT NOTE: I recorded several times through. I did forget to say in the posted recording that the gear stats shown do not factor trait points or the upgrades to the six worn armor. That gives us plenty of room to discuss Earth v Water options, and the upgrades that compliment them.

I had an important XNA assignment that kept me from replying. That will probably happen often, but this thread will live on.

Abraxax.7135,
I spent some quality alone time with your detailed posts. If only the world was full of people who would appreciate it. The downside would be the endless debates. I said it in the video and I will repeat it here, you have gems of knowledge in those threads. That is exactly what I want to bring together into this point-of-access thread.

Four minutes turns out to be the right amount of time to show something. Here is another video. It might appear a bit rushed, but use the pause button to your advantage.
http://screencast.com/t/q4dETlDM

Be good to each other. Oh, one correction in the video. I tried to vocalize an equation for the Combat Rating. It is (1 – ((L + eP) / (L * eP)) – 0.9) * 1000. I did not simplify it, so everyone could see the reasoning in the steps. The LEep score you see is L * eP / 1000.