Guild Wars 2

Anyone considered this? I spent some time thinking about it (yeah dangerous I know). I’m sure I’ve done something wrong so please bare with me.

The stats you get form JUST AA armor is: 224 Power, 315 Precision. Zerker is the opposite (224 Pre, 315 Pow)

You get approximately 1% crit increase for each 20 Precision you get so the difference in crit rate is about 4% increase for AA.

IIRC, damage due to power is just linear so the damage you lose from a 315-224 = 91 difference in Power will be 91/Attack.

So AA is better than zerkers for damage when the increase due to 4% crit rate is better than the loss of 91/Attack. I will normalize this to 5% crit rate and use 114/attack, just because it makes using the wiki chart easier

You can determine the damage increase due to a change in crit rate (for a constant crit damage) using the wiki damage chart. Therefore, for a given attack, you can determine what value of crit damage you need before Assassins makes sense.

If you stuck around this long, my point is, I’m running around in some build with 3350 attack, 48% crit rate and 80% crit damage with zerkers. If I were to swap to full Assassins, I would lose 90 power (approx 91/3350 = 2.7% decrease in damage), gain 4% crit rate and go from 67% to 72%ish damage increase, giving a net total of about 2.5% ….

So, does anyone care to verify my calcs please? I have assumed that damage is a linear function of your attack.

I think rampagers would be quite good for you.

Lol noooo, power/attack all the way for damage. You have to think about it, critical chance is nothing but a potential outcome. Power/attack on the other hand is an actual damage increase. Just because your chance of landing a critical are higher it doesn’t mean your damage is higher, it just means you have a higher chance of landing a critical

Some things look better on paper than when actually put to use. Stick with berserkers

I’m really looking for someone to valid the approach. While I understand the difference between playing and doing excel playing around, there are no tricks here … if you get damage increase from using a specific set of gear vs. another, it’s not dependent on how you play. The chance to crit is averaged out over time so it’s a real increase to damage. The difference between probability and statistics.

Unless my assessment of how damage scales with power and attack is wrong, there seem to be definite DPS advantages of using assassin’s in situations where you can crit your target once you reach a certain amount of power.

I can’t really see assasin’s helping but… http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable/

Attack is not used at all, you must use power: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attack_

mrauls.6519:

Lol noooo, power/attack all the way for damage. You have to think about it, critical chance is nothing but a potential outcome. Power/attack on the other hand is an actual damage increase. Just because your chance of landing a critical are higher it doesn’t mean your damage is higher, it just means you have a higher chance of landing a critical

Some things look better on paper than when actually put to use. Stick with berserkers

That’s not entirely accurate even though I would estimate zerker being better anyways, otherwise there would be a minute difference between zerker and soldier and knight. More crit chance and crit dmg increase your damage done over time, aka more dps. We’re not just looking for the biggest numbers.

OK. That definitely ups the impact power has on damage but is still in a range where a power loss from swapping zerks to AA armor can be break even. When I have access to excel, I’m going to play with this more and get a more accurate set of values.

The way I see it power gives the only sustainable damage. In the end critical chance is just a probability. You’re going to crit for less than what you would have if you had more power. You talk about breaking even, but that’s up to chance too. If you’re trying to burst something down you’re not necessarily aiming to just strike a critical, you’re aiming to do a lot of damage. If damage is what you’re aiming to do you want power. Critical chance doesn’t affect damage. Critical % does. You get Critical % from both berserker and assassin gear, but only berserker really increases your damage.

You have to remember, critical % is based on your power. I’m not trying to disregard critical chance, because you need it to make use of critical % damage, but I’m arguing that power should be the focal point

Edit: If you really want precision there’s plenty of ways to gain it through traits, the fury boon, and food. I think you’d perform better using berserker armor, but if you disagree with me that’s fine. In the end you’re going to play the way you feel most comfortable

Mathematically, power is better than precission even with maxed crit damage. At first Power is waaaaaaay beter, though after a lot of atribute investing (like full ascended/exotic) it scales (there is a point where you’ve added so much power that the other stat starts to get better returns) and precission gets closer to power, but Power is still better even then.

At the end Berserker is beter than Assassin for damage (counting the average damage you get per critical hit based on chance per attack), though the increase if I remember was something like +6’5% with ascended gear, I don’t remember the exact number.

Assassin gives more critical hit chance, but given how most on crit effects have inner cooldowns, at the end Berserker will trigger all those effects at the same rate than Assassin that can’t exploit its higher chance to trigger them.

So basically Assassin is a slightly washed down version of Zerker that serves basically for the same pourpose but doesn’t surpass it.

IMO it was a missed chance to introduce the PvP version of Knight (Vit as primary stat) that would be super useful to Guardian’s low tier HP in mix and match combinations. Instead we got the mathematical little brother of Zerker.

Not when you can get 100% crit. At 100% crit rate you are always using all 3 of your gear’s stats. Power is always there. Precision accounts for 50% more damage on crit. Crit damage is always there.

I’m guessing going AA is for the desire to be able to control when you crit (from chance to always).

I’m just going to resolve this right here and say that Assassin is bad for Guardians. The reason is because any Guardian with 30 in Radiance and RH Strength already caps out at 100% crit chance (base 40% in Berserker + 15% from RH Strength + 14% from Radiance + 20% from Fury + 8% from Banner of Discipline + 7% from Spotter = 104%). Trading power for precision is literally a loss. You are gaining nothing for the power tradeoff.

Otherwise, though, there isn’t really any significant difference between Assassin and Berserker. Berserker is a few percentage points more damage but Assassin has higher proc rates on crit effects, so it’s basically a wash.

Are you looking at this for pvp, or pve. I use assassins in wvw for a specific build. If it’s PvE, then yeah whatever you want works I guess. If it’s wvw you can actually make the procs as mentioned by Guanglai Kangyi work for you.

That’s a bit more involved though, and if you are going for a crit wvw build unless you just like guardian you are better off going with a warrior. Compare the difference below in the two setups.

They are completely the same, no traits, same exact gear. The difference is a huge amount of base health, along with a huge amount of ehp.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.0.1g.0.1c.0.1g.0.1c.0.1g.0|1g.0.1c.0.1c.0.1g.0.1g.0.1g.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.0.1g.0.1c.0.1g.0.1c.0.1g.0|1g.0.1c.0.1c.0.1g.0.1g.0.1g.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Well duh!!

Let:
- f(x) is a function of EHP
- a is guard’s base hp
- b is warr’s base hp

If a < b
Then it follows that f(a) < f(b)

Seetoo.9316:

Well duh!!

Let:
- f(x) is a function of EHP
- a is guard’s base hp
- b is warr’s base hp

If a < b
Then it follows that f(a) < f(b)

I don’t think you quite got the point.

If your crit chance is terrible and you need to increase it, Assassin may be worthwhile. Otherwise, Berserker is clearly the better choice.

On-crit effects are not enough to justify Assassin’s gear. Practically all on-crit effects have an internal cooldown. Their uptime will approach the maximum asymptotically; in other words, the return on uptime per crit chance quickly gets less and less after a large initial growth.

I run Zerker Helm/Shoulders, Clerics chest/legs, and Assassin’s gloves/boots.

I run some Valkyrie accessories/weapons, so I needed extra crit%, and it was a nice way to acquire it without sacrificing too much.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m just going to resolve this right here and say that Assassin is bad for Guardians. The reason is because any Guardian with 30 in Radiance and RH Strength already caps out at 100% crit chance (base 40% in Berserker + 15% from RH Strength + 14% from Radiance + 20% from Fury + 8% from Banner of Discipline + 7% from Spotter = 104%). Trading power for precision is literally a loss. You are gaining nothing for the power tradeoff.

OK, under that specific scenario, I would agree but I’m talking about something more generic.

The basic question is: At what point does gaining 91 precision give the same damage than 91 power? My interest is simply knowing the stat conditions needed to achieve this balance.

There is actually a point where that happens. It’s when your power is so large that losing 91 is a smaller damage loss when compared to the damage gain you get from additional crit from 91 precision.

Again, a realistic example to illustrate:

If I have 2250 power, 45% crit rate and 80 crit damage in zerker armor. If I swap to Assassins armor, then:

1. I lose 91/2250 damage due to a power drop = -4%
2. I gain (according to the chart on wiki here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit) almost 6.5% damage

My net is almost 2.5% increase. Does anyone see if I have made an error with that approach? If not, then you can see that as your power continues to increase, the percent damage loss continues to drop, making assassins armor even greater net gain. There are some stat combinations and scenarios (provided you aren’t capping crit rate) where using Assassins will give a greater damage increase than zerkers, if I haven’t overlooked anything.

There’s no specific break-even point. particularly because damage from crits is affected by two different stats and not just one. At any given point on the spectrum, however, you can easily calculate whether power or precision will add more damage.

Formula for power multiplier: Total power stat/916
Formula for precision multiplier:
- Crit Chance = (Precision-916)/21 + 4)
- Crit Damage % = 50 + current crit damage %
- Precision multipler = Crit chance / 100 x Crit Damage / 100 + 1

So to make it simple, let’s say you’re currently at 1832 power, 1882 precision, and 50% extra crit damage.

Power multiplier = 1832/916 = 2
Crit chance = 50%
Crit damage = 100%
Precision multiplier = .5 × 1 + 1 = 1.5

- Add 100 power, power modifier becomes 1932 / 916 = 2.109, which is a marginal gain of 5.45% damage.
- Add 100 precision, precision modifier becomes 1.548, which is a marginal gain of 3.17%.
- Ergo, power > precision in this case.

OK I will follow through with your method:

I start with 2251 power, 1838 pre and 80% extra crit damage in zerkers armor

Power multiplier = 2251/916 = 2.45
Crit chance = (1838-916)/21 + 4% = 47.9%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .479% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.622

Now I swap to Assassins, lose 91 power, gain 91 pre:

Power multiplier = 2160/916 = 2.36
Crit chance = (1927-916)/21 + 4% = 52.1%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .521% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.677

I lost 91 power, power modifier gives a difference of -.09, a loss of 0.09/2.45 = 3.7%
I added 91 presicion, presicion modifier gives a difference of 5.5%
So here, I get a 1.7% gain in damage swapping to assassins.

So basically what I’m getting at: there is some curve in the (power, precision,crit damage) space where increases in precision give the same damage increases for an equivalent amount of power. For the example I provided, I’m in the region where precision is favoured for maximizing damage over power. Would you agree with that method or have I missed something?

What you have to remember is that damage is also influenced by all your other damage multipliers, and your crit chance/crit damage.

i.e. If you did 100 before, and now do 110 with 10% more damage, you have to factor in the fact that you also do slightly more damage because of other multipliers like burning foes etc, and also that your crits are now higher.

That’s the way I think about it anyway idk if it’s right but it makes sense to me.

If you REALLY want plain old graphs, check this out -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/first#post2041178

But it doesn’t take everything into account.

Yes, that’s true. All those multipliers still work regardless of my armor. They even still apply when I crit or not, so for my purpose of assessing the difference between Assassins or Zerkers, I don’t need to worry about multipliers. I’m only interested in a straight swap of stats.

I think you actually do need to worry, that was my whole point, if you want to compare crit to just pure damage, because the extra damage itself will be multiplied up by your other multipliers,

e.g. if you already have a 20% multiplier, an additional 5% damage actually becomes 6%, and then that 6% additional damage, let’s say has an 50% chance to crit for 100% additional damage (12%), giving an average damage of +9%.

On the other hand with crit chance, your base damage is the same as before, all you’re gaining is a greater chance to do critical damage. And you calculate the average damage increase by multiplying the crit chance by crit dmg.

e.g. If you had a 50% (crit) chance to do 100% additional (crit) damage, and you gain 5% crit chance, you go from 50% chance to do 100% damage (50% more damage) to 55% chance to do 100% damage (55% more damage), meaning a gain of 5%. I don’t think multipliers apply here, because they affect the base damage before crit calculation.

This is how I compare power and precision, as well as using gw2guildcraft to some extent. It could be horribly wrong but it makes sense in my head.

Obtena, you’re doing it wrong. Berserker’s is better for any realistically achievable stat numbers. What you’re forgetting to do is factor in the loss of power when you have the higher crit chance + crit damage. With more precision, you crit more often, but the loss of powers means less damage per crit.

In the berserker’s set, you have +4% damage from power, so we’ll call that a 1.04 multiplier from power. To calculate the effective bonus from criticals, it’s 1.04 * 1.622 = 1.687

In the assassin’s set, you don’t have the +4% damage from power, so that’s only a 1.00 multiplier from power. To calculate the effective bonus from criticals it’s 1.00 * 1.677 = 1.677

Berserker’s wins.

Obtena.7952:

OK I will follow through with your method:

I start with 2251 power, 1838 pre and 80% extra crit damage in zerkers armor

Power multiplier = 2251/916 = 2.45
Crit chance = (1838-916)/21 + 4% = 47.9%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .479% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.622

Now I swap to Assassins, lose 91 power, gain 91 pre:

Power multiplier = 2160/916 = 2.36
Crit chance = (1927-916)/21 + 4% = 52.1%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .521% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.677

I lost 91 power, power modifier gives a difference of -.09, a loss of 0.09/2.45 = 3.7%
I added 91 presicion, presicion modifier gives a difference of 5.5%
So here, I get a 1.7% gain in damage swapping to assassins.

So basically what I’m getting at: there is some curve in the (power, precision,crit damage) space where increases in precision give the same damage increases for an equivalent amount of power. For the example I provided, I’m in the region where precision is favoured for maximizing damage over power. Would you agree with that method or have I missed something?

I think the best way to look at it is by multiplying the power multiplier with the precision multiplier because your final damage is made up of power and precision.

So berserker case: 3.9739
Assassin: 3.95772

Berserker wins!