Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I was wondering what do you guys think of the stat Vitality and its uses for the Guardian. I’m currently at 17k HP and I’m considering dropping to 15k HP, but in the process I plan on gaining more Toughness

Same use as every other class – compliment to Toughness to improve durability (see wikia or something regarding how they work), direct counter to condition damage (like toughness is to direct damage). Obviously if you’re going for a bunker more Vit on top of high toughness is always good, but depends on what you’re sacrificing. You gotta do some maths (or use a good build calculator) to see whether it’s worth sacrificing something else for more or not. Depends on your build as well…

whats your toughness at with 17k hp?

depends on where your toughness is at, after 3k you start to see diminishing returns for adding more into toughness.

Irena.1062:

depends on where your toughness is at, after 3k you start to see diminishing returns for adding more into toughness.

^^^ This!! Losing 2k health is probably worse then adding a bit more armor after 3k.

Including two screenshots. The first one is a bit older, but it shows what my toughness was (3,039) and my old HP value. I wanted more precision so I could possibly deal more damage from criticals.

Irena.1062:

depends on where your toughness is at, after 3k you start to see diminishing returns for adding more into toughness.

What do you mean?

i do mass vitality and power thats it and it take like 7 people to take me down ill sit at about 20k hp without WvW bonuses after WvW bonus the most ill get is 25k hp and i just soak dmg like a sponge may i also add my 3k dps is salt on a wounds especially if they are dumb enough to sit in my whiling wraith

What I mean is, that more than 3k armor is a waste, very much like more than 1k healing is a waste. You need a good balance of stats to be succesful. This is related to trinity death.

Irena.1062:

depends on where your toughness is at, after 3k you start to see diminishing returns for adding more into toughness.

Diminishing returns don’t start after 3k, they start from 0…

This is why the first few toughness points are so important. At 1836 defense (lowest possible) you have 0% damage reduction (means you take full damage from everything).
Guardians from using Heavy Armor have their lowest at 2127, which is roughly 14% damage reduction.

So the first 300ish points grant 14% reduction, the next 300ish points grant only 10% (to a total of 24%), the next 300ish only 8% (32%), etc…

Irena.1062:

What I mean is, that more than 3k armor is a waste, very much like more than 1k healing is a waste. You need a good balance of stats to be succesful. This is related to trinity death.

Healing Power doesn’t suffer from diminishing returns and is an excellent stat to invest, and there’s hardly any “waste” when focusing on a single attribute.
The way the game is designed is that even if you do focus only in 1 single attribute, it’s still a significant increase (unlike some other games) and you can’t pick only 1 attribute, always having a balance on 3.

Arguing that X toughness is worth more or less than Y power can’t be quantified because they serve totally different purposes, so even if you’re getting diminishing returns from an attribute it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

This is very well designed if you think about it, points from builds don’t make such an impact to define roles, meaning even bunkers get to do “decent” damage (but still the lowest damage if you compare it inside the damage tiers), putting down the weight of min-maxed build point crafting and instead granting effects (such as traits) and player skill to be more important than points.

Sorry about the long post, but what I mean is, spend the points wherever you see fit, where you think it’ll work best for your play style. It won’t be wasted if you’re making use of it.

So i guess my 3622 Armor with Shield and Mace is a waste?? i didnt know that armor didnt work above 3k armor or am i not understanding. The way i understand it is anything above 3k armor is a waste is this correct or not?

Vet.3726:

So i guess my 3622 Armor with Shield and Mace is a waste?? i didnt know that armor didnt work above 3k armor or am i not understanding. The way i understand it is anything above 3k armor is a waste is this correct or not?

… and this is what happens when people talk in absolute terms to people asking legitimate questions about game mechanics …

There is no ‘waste’. Your defense values always work and as you get more defense from increasing toughness, your defense continues to increase in damage prevention value. The diminishing return that people are referring to is the decrease in the rate that defense prevents damage. It must be this way because if there was no diminishing effect on the rate of increase for defense, there would be some defense value that would prevent 100% of damage.

well thats good to hear cuz i love my stats
3622 Armor
38% Crit Chance
63% Crit Damage
16407 HP
and i believe Attk is about 31##
with Shield and Mace

Vet.3726:

well thats good to hear cuz i love my stats
3622 Armor
38% Crit Chance
63% Crit Damage
16407 HP
and i believe Attk is about 31##
with Shield and Mace

used to have similiar stats until i started to fight packs of boon haters , a good necro outruns that easily doesnt matter how much RC you have

Vet.3726:

well thats good to hear cuz i love my stats
3622 Armor
38% Crit Chance
63% Crit Damage
16407 HP
and i believe Attk is about 31##
with Shield and Mace

Can you share how your getting those numbers?

Vet.3726:

So i guess my 3622 Armor with Shield and Mace is a waste?? i didnt know that armor didnt work above 3k armor or am i not understanding. The way i understand it is anything above 3k armor is a waste is this correct or not?

It’s nto exactly a waste but after 3k, the bonuses on damage reduction get decreased by a lot. (If you have played League of Legends you will know what I mean)

Well, Vit is pretty nice on a guardian, since we can potentially have so many heals.

Lunatic.9314:

Vet.3726:

well thats good to hear cuz i love my stats
3622 Armor
38% Crit Chance
63% Crit Damage
16407 HP
and i believe Attk is about 31##
with Shield and Mace

Can you share how your getting those numbers?

Im also interested in how you got those values and kept attack att 3100, mind to share?

I have full ascended and a variety of rings including cavalier and cant get there.

Isslair.4908:

Well, Vit is pretty nice on a guardian, since we can potentially have so many heals.

Its infact the other way around. The smaller the healthpool and the more toughness you have the more effective heals become.

Having a lot of toughness isn’t a bad thing. Diminishing returns start to get worse around 2900 – 2920 but it isn’t as huge as people make it sound. (I run 2813).

Having a lot of Vit isn’t a bad thing either. It really depends on how your guardian is built and your own personal gameplay.

Just like healing power. Really investing in healing power comes with the use of our dodge roll trait. Outside of that it doesn’t scale the best.

Brutaly.6257:

Its infact the other way around. The smaller the healthpool and the more toughness you have the more effective heals become.

Of course, vitality without toughness is kinda waste. But, unlike warriors, guardians actually have a way to fill up that large health pool. So it is worthwhile to get vit if you want bonus survivability.

The less healing you have, the less health you want, focusing more on toughness and damage mitigation. The more healing you have, the more health pool you can sustain without overhealing.

as for my stats attk was incorrect its 3022 Crit Chance is 42% and Crit Damage is 56% sorry checked it yesterday once i got home
but im 0/10/30/25/5
full ascended tinkets with Knights set and soldier runes

Edit: these stats are with food

Aeolus.3615:

Vet.3726:

well thats good to hear cuz i love my stats
3622 Armor
38% Crit Chance
63% Crit Damage
16407 HP
and i believe Attk is about 31##
with Shield and Mace

used to have similiar stats until i started to fight packs of boon haters , a good necro outruns that easily doesnt matter how much RC you have

When i go to WvW i usually run with my friend Necro full bunker build his HP can hit i think 28k or 30k his defense is about 3200 both of us run around and its funny he just stands there while i pull them in i love it ya but necros are tough thats for sure i stay away from them most of the time

Vet.3726:

So i guess my 3622 Armor with Shield and Mace is a waste?? i didnt know that armor didnt work above 3k armor or am i not understanding. The way i understand it is anything above 3k armor is a waste is this correct or not?

Diminished returns =/= no effectiveness

With 3,622 armour you’re a beast.

Back to the topic at hand: I find that vitality is less effective than healing power as a guardian. As a guardian you have incredible damage mitigation, giving you effective health similar to that of a warrior. Add healing power on that and you can really make use out of things like your F2 (mine heals 2,500 with just a little bit of boost from my rings… and it cures conditions because I got the trait).

And, pound for pound, toughness is worth more than vitality any day as a guardian. Even after the 3k mark when you get less benefit for what you put in.

Provost.6210:

And, pound for pound, toughness is worth more than vitality any day as a guardian. Even after the 3k mark when you get less benefit for what you put in.

That’s not true, toughness is weaker than vitality point by point from 0 from the survivability perspective, if you got the heals to support that (and Guardians can).

A full Toughness Guardian with 10k health can still get 3~4 shotted (imagine 3 guys critting at once a high damage skill), when a Vitality Guardian would survive at least 1~3 hits more.

The difference between base defense (for Guardians) and 3600 defense is 35% damage reduction. Base to 2800 is 20%.
800 points is 8000 Health, much better than a 15% damage reduction if you think about survivability only.

But in the end they provide survivability differently and their effectiveness is related to healing, so none is better or worse than the other. Balance is what works best here.

Indeed both toughness and vitality are very important, just in different ways. I cannot seem to think of a good way of comparing them, as while they both increase your defense they attack the problem in very different ways.

Vitality is the length of your fuse, toughness is how slow your fuse burns. I don’t think having an extreme amount of either while having little of the other is a good approach.

If anyone here knows some calculus, what I’m really interested in is a chart that plots the rate of change of damage reduction w.r.t toughness vs. toughness. Please and thank you.

Stop doing so much math, try it out and see what you like better.

lolynot.1928:

Stop doing so much math, try it out and see what you like better.

Math is good and incentive improvements, better than reading reading someone’s opinion on the forums and assuming it to be an absolute truth.

If everyone was like that, we wouldn’t have Guardians claiming that “AH is the best support build”, “Guardians can’t DpS”, “AH provides synergy and versatility”, among other gems…

And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!

3400 armor and still getting hit for 5k+ by thieves. lol

This is why you have to balance Armor / Health w/ Damage Negation, as there truly is no “Tank” in this game. It’s all about Damage.

Amins.3710:

And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!

If we used math, we could actually determine if that was true.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage :
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Lets assume the attackers power is 3000 and we will use whirling wrath as our attackers skill damage coefficient which is 3.389855239 (rounding it up to 3.39)
Also the weapon will be exotic quality so weapon damage is 995-1100. This is averaged out for the formula resulting in 1047.5

Now the variables. Lets say you, the defender, has 3600 armor and 10,805 health (no vitality at all).
(1047.5 * 3000 * 3.39) / 3600 = 2959.19

With 10,805 health you would need to be hit by 2959.19 damage about 3.65 times.

Lets flip that around and say you have 2127 armor(stated lowest stat for guards) and 25,000 health
(1047.5 * 3000 * 3.39) / 2127 = 5008.50

25,000 health / 5008.50 damage = 4.99 hits till death

So it seems that vitality will help you survive longer in general. These are pretty obscure and extreme examples though.

A more balanced set up would provide a larger HP pool to survive being hit, and a good armor rating to slow the reduction of that HP pool, while also providing healing that would replenish your HP at a rate that is sufficient to continue fighting.

I also disagree with the statements that a low health pool makes healing better. Your heal will still heal the same flat number. If you argue that it heals for a bigger percentage of your health pool, then I would respond back by saying:

If I gave you a really small pie on big plate you would be disappointed.

If I gave you the same pie on a tiny plate, you would think the pie is huge!….but your perception of reality distorts the truth that it is still a tiny pie, thus is your healing still exactly the same.

If anything toughness would accompany healing power better to reducing incoming damage to assist healing to keep up with the damage being taken. Health is just a buffer to survive being hit in the first place.

HP = Fuse Length
Armor = Water to slow the burn
Healing = Some guy frantically patching extra lengths of fuse to the bomb before it explodes in his face.

Obtena.7952:

Amins.3710:

And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!

If we used math, we could actually determine if that was true.

Do you really belive the 250 armor difference between Light -> Heavy is significant?
…http://oi50.tinypic.com/24uzr6w.jpg

We’re looking at a whole 5% and that’s being generous.

Please….

That number should be 15-20%… we’re ~HEAVY ARMOR~ kitten

[edit] 4 faux sakes… yeah. that’s right.

Amins, I agree for the most part. I would hope that we could feel the difference with heavy armor vs light armor, but the argument on the general forum has me thinking.

A lot of the game is focused around avoiding damage and “playing smart”. Further into the game you run into more one shot deaths that down you.

In PvP you can’t help but get spammed on and again knowing how to avoid a lot of that damage will go a far way.

So in that post they state “berserker is king” with the logic of, you shouldn’t get hit in the first place. While I disagree with that, I do see some merit in what they say.

As far as DR on armor past 3k. There doesn’t seem to be any hard coded DR that prevents higher armor from being as effective, but you have to take into account that it is the attackers “attack” rating versus our “armor” rating that determines the damage we take. So based off stat limitations with what gear you can acquire, 3k armor has been the observable magic number for most players to defeat the attackers “attack” stat.

If someone with a higher attack rating comes around, all of the sudden your 3k armor doesn’t feel like enough again. Just depends on who is attacking you to see how effective your armor stat is.

Vet.3726:

as for my stats attk was incorrect its 3022 Crit Chance is 42% and Crit Damage is 56% sorry checked it yesterday once i got home
but im 0/10/30/25/5
full ascended tinkets with Knights set and soldier runes

Edit: these stats are with food

Could you maybe describe a little better what you’re wearing. The build is perfect but I was trying to recreate on gw2buildcraft and I was able to really reach what you described. A screen shot would rock too.

This is about as close as i can get…
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|1.1n.0|9.1n.0.e.1n.0|1n.7x.1n.7x.1n.7x.1n.7x.1n.7x.1n.7x|21j.0.21j.0.31j.0.21j.0.31j.0.2u.0|0.a6.u69b.p29.5|3t.1|0.0.0.0.0|e

Cheers

CMF.5461:

If I gave you the same pie on a tiny plate, you would think the pie is huge!….but your perception of reality distorts the truth that it is still a tiny pie, thus is your healing still exactly the same.

If anything toughness would accompany healing power better to reducing incoming damage to assist healing to keep up with the damage being taken. Health is just a buffer to survive being hit in the first place.

The important thing to note with the first point, is the presence of effects based on health. i.e., with 5 in Valor, you get Aegis when you hit 50 health. If you can bounce around 50% hp, you can keep proccing that aegis (as with other effects, internal cd notwithstanding).

However, point 2 is spot on. As I’ve seen it, Power = Vitality, as they provide base improvements to offense and defense respectively. Toughness pairs best with Healing Power just like Precision pairs with Prowess (Crit Damage). From what I remember, 1 point of Vit roughly equals 10 in Toughness. However, that number gets a lot smaller with the presence of healing, and healing power. I don’t have actual math on those ratios unfortunately (too bad its not as somewhat simple as Prec and Prow, which pair best at equalish numbers)

CMF.5461:

If anything toughness would accompany healing power better to reducing incoming damage to assist healing to keep up with the damage being taken. Health is just a buffer to survive being hit in the first place.

I kinda don’t understand the logic behind this one.
If you have a lot of toughness and a small health pool you don’t need healing power. Your base heal will recover most of your health anyway and your fisrt concern should be about minimizing the damage taken.

Vitality on the other hand benefits from healing power greatly. Because the larger your HP pool is, the more healing you need to keep it full.

That’s why there is absolutely no point in stacking vitality on a warrior – he has a very ineffective heal skill that recovers around 8k hp on 3rd stage of adrenaline. With 18k base health it’s not much.

Guardian on the other hand, especially the AH one, can have so much healing that he actually can support even 20k health (if such health even possible to reach on a guard).
And if you run a guardian with base hp pool or maybe something around 16k you dont even need AH and healing power – the signet heals for half of your HP anyway. That’s really nice. So stacking toughness and blocks would make more sence in that case.

@Ghotistyx:
Last I timed it, the aegis on 50% health was a 60s cool down. So if anything you want more life to buy more time till 60s is up and you can proc aegis again. Same goes true for shimmering defense which gives ae burn on 25% life, it has a 60s cool down.

Realistically you are not going to rely on hovering at 50% to stay alive though, regardless of a big or small health pool.

@Isslair:
If you are thinking purely on a healing skill scaling level, yes the higher vitality you have the more healing power you want to maximize that cool down.

If you are thinking about the influx of healing versus the reduction of life rate then think of it like this.

Your regeneration boon heals for 250
Someone hits you for 500 damage
At that rate you can not maintain life versus the incoming damage due to it doing more than you are recovering it.

Now add toughness in,
You heal for 250
Incoming damage is 500
You have 50% damage reduction
Incoming damage is mitigated to 250

Now you are healing at the same rate as the incoming damage so your health should maintain an equilibrium due to toughness assisting healing power maintain the health pool. Of course if your healing power out weighs the incoming damage, then you achieve over healing which is a waste. At that point you start moving stats to another location to better performance.

This does not directly translate into the game since attacks happen faster and hit harder than a majority of our healing skills. Add in poison conditions and heals become some what lackluster. Which is the original intent of the game, there are no healers, and we are meant to play actively (avoid damage not tank it).

To that end, the mechanics of the game defeat the stated mechanics of guardians…we are supposed to have lower health because we heal well, but we struggle against the “there are no healers” paradigm, so it puts us in a tough spot sometimes.

Amins.3710:

Obtena.7952:

Amins.3710:

And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!

If we used math, we could actually determine if that was true.

Do you really belive the 250 armor difference between Light -> Heavy is significant?
…http://oi50.tinypic.com/24uzr6w.jpg

We’re looking at a whole 5% and that’s being generous.

Depends on your context. Considering that everyone wears some kind of armor and we get the best of the three types, I find it pretty hard to complain about any increase we get from it. What do you compare armor stat to in order to claim 5% isn’t a significant difference? There is too much bias in using our own experience in making such claims. It must be something reasonable to have a standard level of gameplay over all the professions. 15-20% would be ridiculous.

Now of course, if there weren’t so many people around that felt math was some kind of witchcraft to be avoided because this is a game, you might have a better understanding of why that light-heavy difference is 5% and not something else.

CMF.5461:

@Isslair:
(..)
To that end, the mechanics of the game defeat the stated mechanics of guardians…we are supposed to have lower health because we heal well, but we struggle against the “there are no healers” paradigm, so it puts us in a tough spot sometimes.

Thats when i feel guardian forces all to use very similiar build and that imo is a bad design, if you wont have healing power your vit will stay low and wont heal.

edit2: guardian is the worse class concept, the way that sacrifices health for a stat that you might not be using as healing power or event boon duration.

is it wrong to play guardian w/o these two components while your health pool also low?