Toughness vs Vitality for Guardians

Toughness vs Vitality for Guardians

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Posted by: maniamsmart.7981

maniamsmart.7981

Hey guys,

I am trying to make my guardian a tanky support healer. However, I am not sure which stats I should be focusing on. I know need to be focusing on Healing Power, but then should I also be focusing on Toughness and Vitality? Or just Toughness and some Power? I don’t really understand why getting Vitality would be necessary if you have a ton of toughness. Toughness brings damage down, so then you would have a bunch of health left still because of reduced damage, but then why not just go full Vitality, because then you have tons of health and even high damage can still sustain yourself well with heals and the ton of health. So I guess I am asking if I should go HP/TGH/VIT or HP/TGH/PW or what?

Thanks.

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Posted by: Paulytnz.7619

Paulytnz.7619

Personally I always go PVT for anything that I want to be tanky. You are right that toughness does lower the damage you take but the extra Vit can help that by also making this true for any cond damage or environment effects that make be taking it’s toll. So having both just makes them both better and they both support each other is what I guess I am saying I guess.

You want to be a better healer tho so I can see your dilemma you want to have that extra healing power so you have to choose between Toughness and Vit. That’s not for me to answer so I hope I helped somewhat lol…

Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?

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Posted by: maniamsmart.7981

maniamsmart.7981

Personally I always go PVT for anything that I want to be tanky. You are right that toughness does lower the damage you take but the extra Vit can help that by also making this true for any cond damage or environment effects that make be taking it’s toll. So having both just makes them both better and they both support each other is what I guess I am saying I guess.

You want to be a better healer tho so I can see your dilemma you want to have that extra healing power so you have to choose between Toughness and Vit. That’s not for me to answer so I hope I helped somewhat lol…

But I could go Healing Power / Toughness / Vitality no? Because I know there is a gear set out that supports those stats? Or do you that wouldn’t be a good idea then because I do no damage? I mean for groups it would be great, which is what I intend on using my Guardian for.

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Posted by: Paulytnz.7619

Paulytnz.7619

Personally I always go PVT for anything that I want to be tanky. You are right that toughness does lower the damage you take but the extra Vit can help that by also making this true for any cond damage or environment effects that make be taking it’s toll. So having both just makes them both better and they both support each other is what I guess I am saying I guess.

You want to be a better healer tho so I can see your dilemma you want to have that extra healing power so you have to choose between Toughness and Vit. That’s not for me to answer so I hope I helped somewhat lol…

But I could go Healing Power / Toughness / Vitality no? Because I know there is a gear set out that supports those stats? Or do you that wouldn’t be a good idea then because I do no damage? I mean for groups it would be great, which is what I intend on using my Guardian for.

It is an option and certainly one I would look at if I wanted to be a “true” healer in a group I guess. But I would want to take into account what my role/purpose will be and where and what I would be doing this for.

Example are you someone who plays a lot with certain friends or guildies in parties, or runs with regular people in dungeons/WVW/PVP? Are they are aware you are building specifically for this role and will be happy with it, and the less damage you will be doing? If so then yes go for it, I certainly would. But a lot of other people would not accept it, I know it’s a shame. Heck look at the situation with “zerkers only”. If that is not a problem for you then yeah again its certainly worth looking at.

You could even test a few of these stat combos out. Go to pvp and try the dif gears and look at your hp value changes by equipping them. See the difference in the armour/defence rating in the numbers and then see the difference in actual damage you take from the npcs there. Also look at the healing skills in the tooltips and see just exactly how much extra healing you are getting for that extra heal stat. WIth a bit of time, testing and math you can see which is best for you I’m sure.

I know you cant get an exact idea from pvp since there are no stats on the armours. But it should help somewhat. If you want a TRUE idea get each of those stat combos in cheap armours, go with fine or masters whatever is cheapest but make sure they are all the same quality and test them out in PvE as I recommended in PVP, do the same tests.

Good luck with it all!

Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?

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Posted by: Randulf.7614

Randulf.7614

Think my guardian is a mix of power, tough, healing and healing, vit, tough.

His damage is extremely poor, but he offers a lot of support and healing options

The point is, dont focus on a stat set, but mix up to get what you need

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Posted by: Paulytnz.7619

Paulytnz.7619

You can also cover a stat with food and other buffs that you are not covering with runes or gear stats. Lots of options tbh.

Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?

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Posted by: starlinvf.1358

starlinvf.1358

You don’t “need” a lot of healing power, as many of the guardian healing skills tend to work off of pulse frequency (Like Writ of Persistence, Shared Virtues and Sig of Courage).

But here is your conundrum (and it finally makes sense now). Toughness only reduces Direct Damage, but not Condi damage. Most classes can self sustain by dodging, or internal healing traits to boost the overall effectiveness of their heal skills.

However, most classes can’t sustain good condi cleansing…. This is of critical importance with the new Condi meta actually being viable, as they now focus on frequency application; But Condi cleanse skills are mostly burst oriented.

This is where it gets extra weird for Guardians. Guards have relatively low base stats across the board, but they more then make up for with their Boon cycles and very, very strong AOE cleansing ability. But that alone can’t save you from a rapid condi stack if you aren’t in a clear spot to purge.

Thats where Vit comes in. Its an HP buffer that lets you soak a few seconds of condi stacks, or keep you alive between some of your cool downs. You really don’t need a lot… but based on several hybrid builds prior to the update, 15k Health is actually enough to absorb bleed over damage from your defenses; and is easily refilled through your healing link traits. Thats about ~350 Vit over your base which you can gain pretty easily with most gear that includes toughness.

If you want to be a good support guard, take a small amount of healing (around 200, don’t really need more then that) and focus on group cleanse (pure of voice) or group buffing (Writs or Virtues). If balanced right, you would only need around 2500 Defense to soften rapid hits while your Prots and Aegis helps with the big ones. You can then dump the rest of the points into offense.

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Posted by: yakuza snowdragon.4639

yakuza snowdragon.4639

Personally I always go PVT for anything that I want to be tanky. You are right that toughness does lower the damage you take but the extra Vit can help that by also making this true for any cond damage or environment effects that make be taking it’s toll. So having both just makes them both better and they both support each other is what I guess I am saying I guess.

You want to be a better healer tho so I can see your dilemma you want to have that extra healing power so you have to choose between Toughness and Vit. That’s not for me to answer so I hope I helped somewhat lol…

But I could go Healing Power / Toughness / Vitality no? Because I know there is a gear set out that supports those stats? Or do you that wouldn’t be a good idea then because I do no damage? I mean for groups it would be great, which is what I intend on using my Guardian for.

I’ve done this full spec from gear weapons traits and skills, you can keep the worst pug group alive its amazing but you cant kill anything and groups always complain about your low dps even though the whole teams HP doesn’t drop below 70% the entire battle, fun and helpful but looked down apon by anyone remotely elitest.

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Posted by: Tman.6349

Tman.6349

First things first, where are you planning to use this build? Pve Group content (such as events and World bosses), PvP, WvW, Dungeons/Fractals, or just general Open World? Do you have a group of friends that you are planning an playing together a lot with this build or just kind of a ‘solo hero’? Answers to these questions will make a huge difference in how you build and will also help us a lot to be able to give you more constructive advice.

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Posted by: Gulesave.5073

Gulesave.5073

Should this be moved to the guardian subforum?

I should be writing.

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Posted by: Tman.6349

Tman.6349

It’s fine in general. I’m OK with any thread that’s pushing the daily QQ into obscurity, so I guess I have a bias.

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Posted by: Khristophoros.7194

Khristophoros.7194

Vitality adds more effective health which means it’s better against burst damage. This is true even for high health characters like necros and warriors. Guardians have very low base health so you probably need some vitality in order to survive burst.

Toughness is always better for sustain. You’ll last longer the more toughness you have because it makes your healing more effective by reducing damage. It’s actually more effective for sustain than healing power.

Healing Power is good for supporting allied characters, but inferior to toughness for your own personal sustain even if you have a lot of toughness.

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Posted by: Vizardlorde.8243

Vizardlorde.8243

If you really want to heal w/o being dead weight go clerics or better yet zealots, nomads makes you a burden yo your party that makes fights longer.

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Posted by: SlayerSixx.5763

SlayerSixx.5763

Healing power is poop. To be honest, I don’t know why it exists. You either have it do nothing like it does now or have its power scale like…power and then have immortal bunker guards and watch cele eles solo entire zergs. For tankiness, you want, like others have suggested, PVT. My problem is that even with the vitality and toughness, the new patch would see to it that those stats are useless. If you’re a primarily pve player, then do whatever since none of it actually matters (speed clear heroes will stress zerk).

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Posted by: DroidDreamer.2861

DroidDreamer.2861

As others have noted, it depends what your intended game mode and role is. I run a WvW frontline support guardian. My roll is to crank out boons and heals to the front line while staying alive with the guardians low health pool. For that role, I run Sentinel’s weapons (primary stat: Vitality), half Nomad’s armor (Primary: Toughness, plus Vitality and Healing Power), half Sentinel’s armor and a mix of Cleric’s and PVT trinkets.

Over time I’ve reduced the amount of Nomad’s in favor of Sentinel’s gear because I needed the extra health to survive with the frontline. I’m down to 666 Healing Power after the 6/23 patch stat conversion and I have monstrous survivability. That’s key to keeping up with the frontline and spamming Protection, Regen, heals and other support boons on them. It’s also key to clutch plays like rezzing the commander while standing in red circles which I do several times a night. Between Battle Presence, Healing Symbols, Mace 3, Pure of Heart and Signet of Courage, I am pumping out a hose of green healing numbers. And with a higher health pool, I can live long enough to do that.

Asides:
—I suspect Altrustic Healing is super powerful right now if it’s true that shouts have no target limits.
—Healing Power does not scale well with lots of abilities but it scales great with Selfless Daring dodge roll heals and Staff Empower.
—Someone will respond that I should be rocking the meta stat build instead of this support build but, while I respect that view, I don’t care.

Check out my Guardian WvW Mace/Shield & Staff Support Build:
http://goo.gl/VftpD3

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Posted by: starlinvf.1358

starlinvf.1358

Healing related anything tends to have low coefficients but high base healing. The skills and traits are designed around one of two conflicting ideas. Burst heals (generally one per class), have to be decently effective at 0 Healing power. Healing over time (regen and passives) tend to look at sustained healing, thus have low base and equally poor coefficients.

So the source of the problem is primarily caused by the combat mechanics. In both PvP and PvE, burst damage is king. Even condis, a DoT focused mechanic, only becomes effective if its capable of high enough degen to mimic a burst attack. So its no surprise that burst healing is more popular, as HoT can’t keep pace, nor can it aid as a buffer without a massive HP pool.

If sustained damage was an actual thing for players, healing would actually be good stat to have for passives. But in our world we only experience burst damage… PvP, WvW, and criminally so from PvE. Mechanically, Mordrem actually have a diverse kitten nal of AOE, DoT, and controls that rival that take many hints from Player class builds. But because they use the idiotic HP/Pow only difficulty scaling, what should be multiple examples of diverse builds to combat them is completely undermined by their raw damage, massive AOE and HP oceans.

If mordrem mimicked player builds in how we utilize attack speed, burst combos and mobile defense; they’d not only be more fun to fight, but also Vit/Heal/Tough would have significance.

But if the Boss HP buff is any indication, the player community does far more math then the Devs do with their own internal numbers. And with Teq and TT being narrow windows of attack, it means pre-update those fights were grossly broken in the player’s favor, or they’ve severely miscalculated Condi in the 3 days between update and buff.

Now while I could see Guard symbols skewing this (before anyone realized the bug), but reading any of the battle logs should had made it obvious Guard skills were doing well over double normal. Guards had a tendency to use GS Wrath during burn phases….. that alone would had been enough to make the damage numbers stand out in the logs.

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Posted by: Julie Yann.5379

Julie Yann.5379

I prefer vit on my Guard builds. Wearing heavy armor and having plenty of access to protection, aegis, and blind makes toughness seem kind of pointless since you mitigate a lot of direct damage. Vit helps a lot vs conditions and there is no shortage of that being thrown around.

Be careful what you wish for, Anet might just give it to you “HoT”
“…let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die;.”

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Posted by: ArchonWing.9480

ArchonWing.9480

Mostly toughness, with some vitality as a baseline to buffer condis and other unexpected events. Healing power is good if you can fit it in, but most of the time I’d rather not.

I usually don’t find condis a problem if going for a tankier build.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.

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Posted by: CMF.5461

CMF.5461

Great post Starlinvf,

You kind of reaffirmed an “ah hah!” moment for me from prior video games. While I am under the firm understanding and concurrence that there are no “tanks” in this game. Self survival is still a key department of concern.


Thats where Vit comes in. Its an HP buffer that lets you soak a few seconds of condi stacks, or keep you alive between some of your cool downs. You really don’t need a lot… but based on several hybrid builds prior to the update, 15k Health is actually enough to absorb bleed over damage from your defenses; and is easily refilled through your healing link traits. Thats about ~350 Vit over your base which you can gain pretty easily with most gear that includes toughness.

In your above comment, it re-occurred to me that you only need enough vitality to take a hit. After that the replenishment of life and mitigation of damage prevail and bring the needed vitality requirement down.

That said, a good measure of how much life you need would be how much life can you replenish and how long would it take to have those heals up again.

So if you anticipate incoming damage to come in bursts of 5k every 10 seconds you need at least 5,001 hp to survive.

You additionally need to heal at least 5k every 10 seconds to maintain after survival and/or have enough HP as a buffer to survive until additional heals are available.

So if you have 20k health, but can only heal 5k every 10 seconds, the additional 15k is simply a buffer and could be replaced/mixed with additional mitigation systems such as dodges/blocks/heals.

This is less helpful here in GW2 because incoming damage and outgoing healing will never be on par with each other, in circumventing the trinity development. Still good theory crafting thinking to help spread stats out effectively.

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Posted by: RevanCorana.8942

RevanCorana.8942

In theory toughness is better than vitality simply because reducing incoming damage, improves your heal to recieved damage ratio.

However a bit of vitality is mandatory because guard’s low base hp, to prevent insta-down events like backstab thieves or mesmer daze burst etc…
That’s why I like using rune of vampirism for my cleric guard (auto mist form when low health)
Also it helps with conditions since they aren’t affected at all by toughness.

(edited by RevanCorana.8942)

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Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

I dont know, but after patch when playing frontline build PVT+knighs/pvt trinkets, looks like im playing a frontiline zerker, no matter how much “jumpdodges” i have or blocks i melt if something hits me :|.

I imagine the game hasnt been fixed yet, so IMO its hard to know how much toughness will be good after game (IF) gets fixed or some very high damage values for easy gameplay are here to stay, anet wants zergs to wipe each other very fast.

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

(edited by Aeolus.3615)

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Posted by: Zepher.7803

Zepher.7803

since toughness does nothing for condi damage and just about everything leans towards condi then vitality would seems like something to have more of than tough/armor,

but as always you gotta find a balance for the situation…which always changes…so there ya go

Sincerly, Me.

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Posted by: starlinvf.1358

starlinvf.1358

Great post Starlinvf,

You kind of reaffirmed an “ah hah!” moment for me from prior video games. While I am under the firm understanding and concurrence that there are no “tanks” in this game. Self survival is still a key department of concern.


Thats where Vit comes in. Its an HP buffer that lets you soak a few seconds of condi stacks, or keep you alive between some of your cool downs. You really don’t need a lot… but based on several hybrid builds prior to the update, 15k Health is actually enough to absorb bleed over damage from your defenses; and is easily refilled through your healing link traits. Thats about ~350 Vit over your base which you can gain pretty easily with most gear that includes toughness.

In your above comment, it re-occurred to me that you only need enough vitality to take a hit. After that the replenishment of life and mitigation of damage prevail and bring the needed vitality requirement down.

That said, a good measure of how much life you need would be how much life can you replenish and how long would it take to have those heals up again.

So if you anticipate incoming damage to come in bursts of 5k every 10 seconds you need at least 5,001 hp to survive.

You additionally need to heal at least 5k every 10 seconds to maintain after survival and/or have enough HP as a buffer to survive until additional heals are available.

So if you have 20k health, but can only heal 5k every 10 seconds, the additional 15k is simply a buffer and could be replaced/mixed with additional mitigation systems such as dodges/blocks/heals.

This is less helpful here in GW2 because incoming damage and outgoing healing will never be on par with each other, in circumventing the trinity development. Still good theory crafting thinking to help spread stats out effectively.

Toughness was originally broken, but now functions correctly (as least as far as we can tell).

Because burst heal skills tend to be decently strong with no healing power, toughness and armor’s damage mitigation actually increases the effectiveness of that base healing value. Vit without Toughness means you need to healing power to replenish….. Thats 2 non-combat stats that need to be taken in large amounts to be effective. But with Toughness, thats all you really need in large amounts to get decent defense against direct damage. Being a class that has access to a lot of condie cleanse, you don’t need nearly as much Vit to deal with condi damage….. just enough to not be burst down.