Guild Wars 2

Been playing ele since the sad downward slide ever since bwe2, and recently with finishing up my warrior I’ve been trying to add survivability.
Here’s my problem though. Just bought a full set of knight’s gear. Full emerald orbs. Got to 2600 toughness.
Damage I take dropped a couple hundred for every thousand I take, which seems like nothing. 20-30% damage reduction absolute tops.

For that the sacrifice is a couple hundred power and a ton of crit damage. I went from 2300 crits to 1100 crits for a very minor boost in damage reduction.

Do we get less benefit from toughness? Hell my warrior with almost identical gear and a mace for perma weakness can face tank and sit auto attacking champions and be fine. And do good damage. More than the ele in the same gear, with more passive healing, better passive defense and better utility.

I really love my asuran ele but I can’t help feeling like a second class citizen compared to my warrior, engineer or ranger. Or even my thief for that matter!

Is there some secret I’m missing or is ele just ten times the effort for half the reward?

Even that supposed awesome build on the forum here with the video of soloing a champion, it’s way less damage and way riskier than most other classes to do the same thing.

TLDR: don’t see how the small gains in toughness compare to the huge damage loss, seems like ele is severely undergeared in solo pve.

Vitality all the way, man. Even points in Water are much more beneficial than the toughness for Elementalist now. At least it will help you heal more efficiently so you can survive more, and toughness doesn´t reduce condition dmg, so it´s somewhat lackluster.

I just tried a new build yesterday and I was surprised by my survivability and even the dmg (It´s not like when I log on Thief, but I can take on groups of mobs pretty nice and even survive it )
0/25/0/15/30 – Abusing evasive arcana for might stacks/healing (this is where the dmg comes from), Valkyrie armor and amulet (for crit dmg, power and some vitality too), berserkers accesories and rings for more crit and power. Going with staff with 4 major eagle/2 major mesmer runes (Don´t have exotics yet) and sigil of energy (for more evasive arcana use).

It would be amazingly easy to know what you wanted to go for and what was mathematically the best if the insane Anet would actually give real tooltips and information about items and stats in this game. Right now we have no idea what anything even does.

How much damage does 1 power give you? How much % reduction does 1 armor or 1 toughness? What is the rate of reduced effectiveness as it climbs higher?

Sigil: Steal some health on critical hit.

What does that even mean? Some health? Who wrote this stuff?

Kietay.2345:

It would be amazingly easy to know what you wanted to go for and what was mathematically the best if the insane Anet would actually give real tooltips and information about items and stats in this game. Right now we have no idea what anything even does.

How much damage does 1 power give you? How much % reduction does 1 armor or 1 toughness? What is the rate of reduced effectiveness as it climbs higher?

Sigil: Steal some health on critical hit.

What does that even mean? Some health? Who wrote this stuff?

This.
I did some tests and I may be crazy but I swear my warrior has a higher base damage reduction, more than should be accounted for by the heavy vs light armor level alone.

Vitality is nice, but I was hoping to reduce my incoming damage. I bring the 4 second heal in dungeons that need condition removal, works like a charm.
I run a power precision build so 30 air is pretty much mandatory, and since it’s dungeon focused I need blasting staff too. There’s 50 down.
I suppose the last 20 could go in water, but it seems ridiculous to kitten my damage output for that little health in a situation where if I was going to get one shot before, I probably still will.

That’s why I tried toughness armor, works wonders for my warrior. Mindblowing how nice it is, even on my girlfriend’s guardian. The actual damage reduction seems to be a lot less on cloth though.

How much damage does 1 power give you?

DamageMultipliers* WeaponDamage*SkillCoefficient / OpponentArmor

SkillCoefficient ranges from 0.09 (each of the first 3 ticks of Arc Lightning) to 3.25 (Churning Earth)

How much % reduction does 1 armor

Doubling your armor reduces the damage you take by 50%. Work it out from there.

What is the rate of reduced effectiveness as it climbs higher?

Each point of toughness provides the same amount of effective health.

Mindshard.3572:

Been playing ele since the sad downward slide ever since bwe2, and recently with finishing up my warrior I’ve been trying to add survivability.
Here’s my problem though. Just bought a full set of knight’s gear. Full emerald orbs. Got to 2600 toughness.
Damage I take dropped a couple hundred for every thousand I take, which seems like nothing. 20-30% damage reduction absolute tops.

For that the sacrifice is a couple hundred power and a ton of crit damage. I went from 2300 crits to 1100 crits for a very minor boost in damage reduction.

Do we get less benefit from toughness? Hell my warrior with almost identical gear and a mace for perma weakness can face tank and sit auto attacking champions and be fine. And do good damage. More than the ele in the same gear, with more passive healing, better passive defense and better utility.

I really love my asuran ele but I can’t help feeling like a second class citizen compared to my warrior, engineer or ranger. Or even my thief for that matter!

Is there some secret I’m missing or is ele just ten times the effort for half the reward?

Even that supposed awesome build on the forum here with the video of soloing a champion, it’s way less damage and way riskier than most other classes to do the same thing.

TLDR: don’t see how the small gains in toughness compare to the huge damage loss, seems like ele is severely undergeared in solo pve.

That guy in the video, aside from stacking toughness, is also stacking quite a bit of Vitality to the point where he has 18k HP, he’s specced for various boons and at all times has either protection or healing boon up, he dodges around a lot, he gets low and heals himself a lot, etc. He’s not in any way just tanking the damage. He’s playing smart and using all the Ele’s tools which you have to do in any weapon set.

As for the 2600 toughness, I personally think it’s too much and I’m not sure you’re even getting enough extra benefit after a certain point. Stack more Vitality in addition to the toughness and also realize Ele’s can’t just tank damage, we’re a more complicated class. We have to work harder for everything. Use dodges, use CC and blinds, make good use of our Cantrips for defense and the Elite Elementals, etc.