Guild Wars 2

Which is more valuable to you/your build and why? If you have some math to back up your choice, please include it.

Basically, I’m crazy and I’m trying to figure out which defensive stat to spend large amounts of money on for +5 stat infusions. I have 2,950 armor (1,749 Toughness) and 15,515 health without infusions. Halp. :>

I will only be using two defensive infusions, the rest are offensive.

I can’t really remember, but I think toughness scaled better with Guardian, and that’s why Guardians got such a low healthpool from the start, having more toughness.

However, both are good to balance out, so no one is really better than the other.

No math, sorry.

since damage mitigation is dependent on attackers power versus defenders armor rating, it all depends on how much armor you have.

General consensus seems to say that past 3k armor you don’t need as much, which would make sense if most players have a power rating of around 3k-3.5k.

After that as I know you are aware of, conditions wreak havoc on our low life pool if we can’t cleanse them fast enough. That in conjunction with readily available dodges and blocks, it would seem that vitality would help us more in the long run if you are near 3k armor.

Did math in another thread based on the damage formula on the wiki
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Vitality-and-the-Guardian/first#post1866593

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

min maxed vitality versus toughness and vitality gained more survivability by a small margin.

Extreme examples but worth a note I think. In the long run balance seems to be the key word.

As far as the scaling better with toughness, warriors and guardians are both heavy armor users so they get 291 more armor than a light armor wearer and 147 more armor than a medium armor wearer.

Take into account that warriors are heavy armor and highest hp and guardians are lowest armor and lowest hp.

What we are “supposed” to have is better health regeneration and that’s why our hp is low.

I remember in Beta 1 Guardians had the highest HP at lvl 13 in WvW a friend and i had around 25k HP it was insane to have that much hp we where gods in WvW then they changed it i think in Beta 3 dont remember but the HP went down alot but i love my guardian since beta 1 and yes balancing Vit and Toughness is your best bet to survive

Really depends on your personal preference imo. Most guard’s sweet spot is around 3k armor and 15-17k vitality which you already have so…

Also, big WvW guilds are running high armor/low vitality gangs as of late to optimize aoe heals and all that. Just something to think about.

Guardians tend to run Toughness and Healing and don’t pick up a lot of Vitality. Any mainstream guardian build has a lot of ways to heal, which increase the value of those two stats, whereas vitality is static.

Using http://gw2buildcraft.com/ I found my damage reduction, which is used to calculate effective HP (don’t use the number on the site). Then from your max HP, add in how much healing you think you’ll do over the course of an average fight. Then divide by (1 – Damage_Reduction_From_Armor) to get true effective HP. When I did the math for myself, I estimated that vitality was either equal or just slightly ahead of toughness at the 3100 toughness mark. However, if fights went a little longer, Toughness came out ahead.

I run a 0/5/30/30/5 build, though. If you do Healway, you have a lot more healing, which changes the outcome. In short, you’ll have to do the math yourself.

Personally if I’m commanding I’m running PVT gear so you get both. Clerics is also very nice for the group too.

+10 Toughness = +10 Armor
+10 Vitality = 100 HP

So depending on the damage threshold, either one is valuable. There was a discussion about which is better and the concensus agreed that Vitality should be prioritized over Toughness — even more so in the case of Guardians.

For me, the best balance is 2600 Armor and 20k HP.

Let me preface by saying I tend to think high toughness is more valuable for a guardian.

That being said, there’s a misconception that vitality isn’t as good because it can be only used once so to speak. Vitality allows you to use your heals earlier in the fight and by result, more often as well.

For example, if my base HP is 17k, I can pop my first minor heal skill (Usually a shout through AH), at around 15.5k. That bumps me back up almost to full health again leaving my opponent 17k to chew through before I’m dead. Now because I used my heal so early and have a decent health pool, I’ll likely be able to use it a second and possibly a third time before I’m dead. If I only had 15k HP to start with, popping that first heal at 13.5 then only brings me back up to 15. This leaves less HP to chew through which = less survival time which means I may not get to use those heals for that third time.

Again, I think toughness is more important, but you should not neglect Vitality either. Especially if you’re going for a tanky spec.