Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately after taking some time off and decided to look into using zerkers. We all know that offensive gear + offensive traits/runes/sigils (aka no attempt made to mitigate any damage) = on the floor. Let’s just get that out of the way right now, that is not what this thread is about. The following is some interesting math. Also, my perspective is coming from mainly running dungeons (fractals =/= dungeons).

So let’s say we want to compare the effectiveness of zerkers with some other armor set. The damage formula is:

Damage done = weapon damage * power * skill coefficient / target armor

Now since we are theory crafting for the same weapon against the same opponent (Heavy Golem in the mists perhaps), the skill coefficient, weapon damage, and target armor will be the same for all calculations. This means (along with the fact everything is multiplication/division) means we can relate the damage between builds by comparing power. This will be a fictional number which is only useful for comparison purposes and will not reflect the exact damage you would do in game (you need to actually use skill coefficient, weapon damage, and target armor for this).

Now, what about crit chance and crit damage? Well, the theoretical average damage can be represented by:

Avg Dmg = damage done * (100% – crit chance) + damage done * (crit chance) * (150% + crit damage)

Also: precision from stats / 21 + 4 = % crit chance; and any % increase in damage from traits will be simply: Avg Dmg * (100% + % increase from traits)

So according to the wiki exotic armor combined major stats are 1003 points, minors are 698 points, and minor percent’s are 62 percent

Edited due to errors and for clarity. I now have a google doc up which you can see the comparisons between zerkers, knights, and soldiers at different specs. The last set of comparisons is for you to do some figuring on your own if you wish, the green and grey zones are editable if you choose to download the document and try. Link (may have to copy and paste into your address bar for it to work): https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_plfQ-9x-xjNENZWmg1ZThocFU/edit?usp=sharing

This proves that full offensive armor with full defensive spec is similar damage to full defensive armor with full offensive spec. The difference is: provided you can survive with the defenses of fully devoted traits to survival (and, who can’t under most circumstances? I mean, guardians get a ton of great ways to survive, and the common 30 valor 30 honor spec is common for a reason) zerker would be a better option for growth. Because as you grow and get better, you can drop defensive things and pick up offensive ones. Zerker is also less restrictive, with the other sets needing to take swords (or for a dip in damage, one handers) for the same amount of damage. Sigil and rune effects weren’t included due to the nice comparison without them, but you can obviously put them in for yourself in the custom spot.

Now I understand some people wanna play “healer” or whatever. This isn’t for you. This is for the average guy that wants to run around, not be on the floor the whole run, do some good damage, and learn how to play better as he goes. So what is the point of this thread? Education. Such as: Don’t write someone off when you hear they are using zerkers, they could do just as good as you in your knights with damage boosting traits. Save yourself some money when you hit 80 on ur guard alt, just use your zerker farming gear for dungeons. Set yourself up for growth, wear zerkers, spec tank, and as you get better slowly mix in some damage stuff till you hit your cap.

Sorry some of the percent signs don’t want to show up

No need for math, common sense would agree that full beserker with 30 Valor and 30 Honor would tell you it’s the best.

(Apply might to allies on crit, heal when applying boons…. valor increases crit damage)

These values can be seen in the Gw2BuildCraft, and there’s some stuff off in your math, Berserker with 10/0/30/30/0 + 10 still does more damage than Soldiers in 30/10/0/0/0 + 30, a 300 points increase in Power wouldn’t nearly double Knights and Soldiers Attacks, even if you count the 5% modifier…

Why would you run zerker warrior and then go AH? That doesn’t make any sense. You’d only be running a defensive spec if you were full knights or full soldier’s to begin with.

If you want the DPS breakdown:

DPS zerker guardian, 20/30/0/20/0: 3810 DPS
DPS knight guardian 20/30/0/20/0: 2737 DPS
DPS soldier guardian, 20/30/0/20/0: 2643 DPS

Tank zerker guardian: 0/0/30/30/10: 2544 DPS
Tank knight guardian: 0/0/30/30/10: 1894 DPS
Tank soldier guardian, 0/0/30/30/10: 1728 DPS

In other words, next time you see a guardian claiming to be DPS but he’s in knights gear or using AH, you know he’s either lying or doesn’t know what DPS is. Boot his kitten .

I love how theory crafting forgets that dead people do no DPS. Keeping yourself and your group alive at the cost of some DPS is a good trade-off.

Dead Water.2715:

I mean, guardians get a ton of great ways to survive, and the common 30 valor 30 honor spec is common for a reason) zerker would be a better option for growth. Because as you grow and get better, you can drop defensive things and pick up offensive ones.

This is a great technique that I have implemented across my toons, and my third and latest toon happens to be a guardian!

My warrior for example, started with shout healing trait build and clerics armor and over time I implimented more and more DPS (offense) into first my gear, and later even my traits.

I just finished my zerker gear set for my guardian and I must say, the DPS is great and the sustain is more than enough. It takes awhile to learn cast orders, utilities to use in certain situations, how to best support other classes and playstyles, etc.

Great thread, mate!

Exedore.6320:

I love how theory crafting forgets that dead people do no DPS. Keeping yourself and your group alive at the cost of some DPS is a good trade-off.

That depends on when you die.

If a DPS zerker guardian dies halfway through the fight and stays down, he will still have done more total damage than a tank soldier guardian who is alive the entire fight.

In practice, a good zerker guardian simply won’t die that much, primarily because guardians are naturally tanky even without the help of armor or traits.

For a bit of advice, there’s a couple of shortcuts on the math side that will let you make easier and more universal calculations. To do this, you have to consider all damage as relative in two ways:

#1: Any damage you do will be compared to the the damage someone else does on that exact same target. Because of this, specific damage done in any circumstances is irrelevant. If you wanted, you could use the tooltip for the auto attack for a benchmark, because you’ll end up with the same proportions.

#2: All damage can be expressed as a ratio of base damage. That is, the amount of damage done by attacks at 916 power, or basically if there were no investment at all in anything. So, for example, if you doubled power and added 916 points, then you would get a ratio of 2.0 (1832 / 916), meaning that you do twice the damage if you had no points at all.

It is here that I’ve lost you on these numbers. You start pulling out some damage number without any clear indication of what it means and where it comes from. It would be far easier to actually list the stats acquired instead of just a fictional “damage” number that grows out of some not clearly listed gains. Because of this, I find it hard to check your math. However, if I were to “assume” a few things, I could get the total points added to each stat via the following:

Zerker:
1003 Power
698 Precision
92% crit damage

Damage ratio from Power: 1919/1003 = 2.09
Crit Rate: 37%
Total critical modifier: 2.42 × 0.37 + 0.63 = 1.53
Overall Damage ratio: 2.09 × 1.53 = 3.20

This overall damage ratio can have any of the % modifiers attached to it, like 5% from some trait or whatever. However, it is easier to just attach these modifiers on the power level, since the crit modifier won’t change. Doing it at the power level also lets you account for things like stacking might. But regardless I digress:

Soldier’s:
1468 Power
100 Precision
30% crit damage
Additional Mods: 4% from Ogres, 5% from sigil of force, 5% “weapon trait” or whatever that is.

Damage ratio from Power: 2384/916 = 2.60
Additional Mods: 2.60 × 1.04 × 1.05 x 1.05 = 2.98
Crit Rate: 8%
Crit Mod: 1.8 × 0.08 + .92 = 1.064
Overall damage ratio: 3.17

I’m going to assume your analysis on knights is incorrect because the wiki is wrong on knight gear: the jewels from trinkets prioritizes precision and not toughness like other jewels do. This requires you to start from scratch.

Either way, the proposition that you list is fairly one-sided and unrealistic. Basically it is purporting that someone would use zerker gear without having a build or any equipment that would capitalize on zerker gear in any way whatsoever. The thing with zerker gear is that people do not run cookie cutter sets together with soldiers and zerkers. When they switch over, they change their traits based on what is needed for the upcoming situations and play accordingly.

To be fair and balanced, there are several things you need to do to compare the stats of the different sets:

#1: Zerker gear with offensive traits made for zerker gear
#2: Zerker gear with defensive traits not made for zerker gear
#3: Soldier’s gear with offensive traits made for zerker gear
#4: Soldier’s gear with fensive traits not made for zerker gear
#5-#6: Repeat with knight gear.

And then you can get a good picture of something like how little damage soldier’s gear does in a fully defensive build, and how much damage zerker gear does in a fully offensive build. Be sure to list the final stats and modifiers used so everyone else can follow along with the math you are doing.

Chase.8415:

No need for math, common sense would agree that full beserker with 30 Valor and 30 Honor would tell you it’s the best.

(Apply might to allies on crit, heal when applying boons…. valor increases crit damage)

Since we’re talking about effectiveness, shift that 30 in valor to radiance and you have a much more effective build.

Exedore.6320:

I love how theory crafting forgets that dead people do no DPS. Keeping yourself and your group alive at the cost of some DPS is a good trade-off.

The problem is that the most popular build out there atm, the Altruistic Healers, doesn’t trade off DPS to help keep yourself and your group alive, it only keeps yourself alive.
If you take away the 30 points in Valor and put them in either Zeal or Radiance, you’d be keeping all of your group/party support prowess (or perhaps having even better support since Radiance has an abundance of blinds and vulnerability) while dishing out more damage, ending the fight earlier and saving your teammates some damage. The logic is there if you choose to consider it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

For a bit of advice…..

I feel like an idiot now, I’m pretty sure I forgot base power =( Thanks (and dannico) for not being a jerk about it. I swore my results skewed way towards zerkers before when i fiddled with it at work but I assumed I just did it wrong there. I’ll have to fix it when I got some free time this evening and see how things replay out.

And Guanglai, sure a zerker armor set has synergy with damage traits etc just as a magi guard has synergy with some crazy healing stuff. But our zerker has to live some. Start tank spec, work towards more damage if you can live easily. If ur pro and live in full zerkers with all traits for damage then congrats. Everyone is different, the point is for your average guy, he can do zerkers and it will be just as good as or better than anything else he tries.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#1: Any damage you do will be compared to the the damage someone else does on that exact same target.

With the caveat that all players are using the same weapon.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

All damage can be expressed as a ratio of base damage. That is, the amount of damage done by attacks at 916 power, or basically if there were no investment at all in anything. So, for example, if you doubled power and added 916 points, then you would get a ratio of 2.0 (1832 / 916), meaning that you do twice the damage if you had no points at all.

That only works if you assume that Power is added to final damage.
Wiki has the formula for damage which is pretty accurate, Power is multiplied by Weapon Strength and a Skill Coefficient (that’s why different skills growth differently as you invest more Power), divided by the target’s Armor.

So even if you double your Power, it doesn’t mean you’ll deal twice the damage.

I’m going to use as example the Greatsword #1 and #2, Strike & Vengeful Strike

Tooltip Damage = (Average Weapon Strength) * Power * (Skill Coefficient) / Armor

Armor in the tooltip is 2600, Weapon Strength for the GS is 1047.5, and both skills growth the same so they share the same coefficient. Skipping math, we get:

Coefficient for Strike & Vengeful Strike: 0.801

We can check this with:
295 = 1047.5 * 916 * 0.801 / 2600 (tooltip damage naked in the Mists)

How we get base damage:
Damage * ((1 – Critical Chance) + (Critical Chance * (1.5 + Critical Damage)))

I’m using the numbers from here for Berserker, 2018 Power, 40% Critical Chance, 91% Critical Damage, no Runes or Sigils and here for Soldier, 2218 Power, 17% Critical Chance, 48% Critical Damage.

Berserker Damage = (1047.5 * 2018 * 0.801 / 2600) * ((1 – 0.4) + (0.4 * (1.5 + 0.91)))
Berserker Damage = 1019
Berserker Damage = 1019 * Fiery Wrath = 1121 (1233 if you count Elusive Power)

Soldier Damage = (1047.5 * 2218 * 0.801 / 2600) * ((1 – 0.17) + (0.17 * (1.5 + 0.48)))
Soldier Damage = 835
Soldier Damage = 835 * Fiery Wrath * Greatsword Power = 964

Anyways, this can all be found in this calculator, the Effective Power is this value that measures a build’s Attack prowess (but it always assumes all modifiers, for example Elusive Power always grants 10%, so does Fiery Wrath).

The math’s already done there, no need to redo it again…

Updated the OP, now includes a google doc excel doc with comparisons and a couple slots for custom comparisons. Fixing my original errors brought the skew towards zerkers a little more. Bottom line: if you can survive with a tanky trait spec and still run zerkers armor, do it! You’ll have more damage overall and when you get better you won’t need to buy more armor, you will just have to retrait or pick up new sigils and runes.

I love when people claim opinions as facts

Exedore.6320:

I love how theory crafting forgets that dead people do no DPS. Keeping yourself and your group alive at the cost of some DPS is a good trade-off.

Before I went into tournaments only and quit PvE I was running fractal 28 in December with full beserker and I had no troubles staying alive.

mrauls.6519:

I love when people claim opinions as facts

Yeah totally, math is so relative, I say that Cleric’s armor does more DPS than anything else, who are you to oppose me?!

So what sort of party are we in and what are we doing? Because I think that matters more than anything else.

There is structured PvP
There is WvWvW – which is unpredictable
Then there is PvE

Also, let us add in another missing piece called “SKILL” Let us face it there are people that can stay alive playing their avatar / character with nothing on but a loin cloth vs. people decked out in armor and maxed stats. Just how it goes. Some people on the other hand need a bit more mitigation than others to make up for the lack of skill. No, gear still doesn’t matter but it does help if they make a mistake, miss a click, skill, etc. I’m not even going to go down the road of when to use what skill, etc.

Right now in WvW the match up for ebay is dragonbrand which is a mother of all zerging server. I don’t think if I switched out to full zerker gear I’d last 2 seconds. Heck, in clerics I don’t last more than 4 probably. However, I do get in a few skills off to punt those who don’t understand the use of stability….fun watching the lemmings getting punted over cliffs and off bridges

Anyway – wall of text aside I think there is a time and a place for the various gears and please remember. You can’t factor in skill…

Danicco.3568:

With the caveat that all players are using the same weapon.

Considering that we are comparing damage output inside of a single class with different equipment sets, this is not an issue. Each weapon has a listed attack power and each skill has a coefficient, however tooltip damage already takes this into account. The skills, therefore, are judged based on their own merit, which operates independent of power. They can be considered constant.

Danicco.3568:

That only works if you assume that Power is added to final damage.
Wiki has the formula for damage which is pretty accurate, Power is multiplied by Weapon Strength and a Skill Coefficient (that’s why different skills growth differently as you invest more Power), divided by the target’s Armor.

So even if you double your Power, it doesn’t mean you’ll deal twice the damage.

The entire damage formula is multiplication, so it abides by the distributive property of mathematics. If power were “added”, then it wouldn’t abide by this property. It also isn’t added at the end, either. I demonstrated two examples of how to calculate an overall damage ratio, and the power ratio is only the first step. To demonstrate the distributive property, lets look at the formula

Damage = Power x Weapon X skill coefficient / Armor

We can assume that weapon strength, skill coefficient, and armor are constant, since doing otherwise complicates things needlessly. Why would anyone want to compare their damage by arbitrarily switching the weapon, or the skill used, or which enemy they are targeting? So, with that, we can reduce those three variables to a constant for comparison: C.

Damage = Power x C

Now, if we were to pick any value of power, and twice that value, we can divide them to find out how much bigger one is than the other. For example, lets choose 3 and 6

Damage = 3Power x C
Damage = 6Power x C

6Power x C / (3 Power X C) = 6 / 3 = 2

So doubling power will always double the damage output. Now, if you say “but if I change the weapons used…” then you are not doubling power. You are doing multiple things that have a much bigger impact overall on the build than just doubling power, both statistical and non. After all of that, doubled power will still double the damage done with these new weapons when compared to how much damage those new weapons would do without power.

The effective power used on that calculator doesn’t even account for weapon attack strength. It wouldn’t need to, though, since ultimately a weapon’s tooltip is the culmination of the weapon’s attack strength and coefficient, and since the coefficients wholly dependent on the skill used, weapon attack strength can’t be used to represent damage at all. Single handed weapons can have higher or lower coefficients, making the entire point of weapon attack strength to be rarity tiers and nothing else. “Effective Power” also isn’t clear on how much damage you’ll be doing in layman’s terms. You can see that you have 3206 effective power in a build, but what does that mean? Well, it means you do 3.5 times as much damage as if you didn’t have any offensive stats. The ratio is much easier to understand in this way.