Guild Wars 2

Just curious if anyone specs power into their builds without precision. If so, how much power is a comfortable amount for you and what kind of strategies (weapons/traits) do you revolve around it?

I know how crucial Precision/Condition damage can be for a Mesmer, and Toughness works for everyone, but Vitality, Power, and Healing Power seems to barely get mentioned.

Yes useful for shattering clones as its boost f1 damage and general damage.

For a direct damage build (i.e. sword/greatsword) Power is going to give you the best DPS increase per point under most circumstances.

The way mesmer talents work it’s hard to come up with effective builds that would use power but not a large amount of precision.

Point for Point power gives the largest damage boost (assuming a dd build), however, trait wise, Dueling (Precision/crit damage) gives a larger damage boost per trait point than Domination does in a DD build.

I believe precision outscales power depending on how high your Crit multiplier damage is. If youre in full exos precision and crit damage % are huge huge huge

SuburbanLion.8095:

For a direct damage build (i.e. sword/greatsword) Power is going to give you the best DPS increase per point under most circumstances.

But can you make a power build with little/no precision?

Staff with sharper image is the best example of precision/condition damage build while not requiring any power. You want your clones to crit to inflict bleeding as much as possible everytime, but the crit damage and raw damage of your clone is irrelevant.

Edit: The other way around is also possible for, say a more tanky support build. Something along the lines of taking stat conversion trait could lead to a decent result, however, do not expect as much damage as you otherwise would have.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

But can you make a power build with little/no precision?

Can you?
Sure.

Would you want to?
It depends.

One reason for crit oriented builds is that Power/Precision/CritDamage have such great synergy. As your power goes up, Precision/CritDamage looks better. As your Precision/CritDamage goes up, Power looks even better. This makes “Berserker” gear a no-brainer for direct damage.

The other reason you see so much focus on Precision is because there are some arguably overpowered traits in the Dueling line. Deceptive Evasion (clone on dodge) is practically a must-have in any shatter oriented build, so you essentially get Sharper Images (bleed on illusion crits) for free. Sharper Images opens up a variety of different build options, all of which tend to be crit-centric.

If you prefer being being a “tank” over a “glass cannon”, Pow/Tough/Vit is a viable option. It’s just that a lot of people on these forums prefer the play-style of the latter. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that’s the only way to play. It’s up to you how to balance your survivability with DPS and decide where that DPS comes from (Direct damage vs. Condition Damage). There is no definitive “best build”; each build has its strengths and weaknesses.

With 0% crit dmg yes. But it is really easy to gain enough crit dmg to mack crits worth while so there is no real build/point into a pure power build.

I’ve got a build focused on Cleric’s gear (Healing/Power/Toughness) and I’m having trouble traiting for it beyond 30 Inspiration. I like the idea of having Regen/Protection enough to tank anything I run into, but I’m doing next to lousy damage.

I’m looking at the Magi set (Healing/Precision/Vitality) and it’s looking a lot more promising right now, but I’ve been told Toughness is much preferable over Vitality.

I don’t think that’s really true (tough being much better than vit) for mesmers. Mesmer tanking is focused more on avoidance than mitigation so toughness isn’t as useful for the class as it is for some other classes.

My understanding is that healing power does not scale very well at all. Trading Power for Precision will be a net loss of damage. If you want to be Tanky, but still do decent damage, I would go with Knight’s (Toughness, Power, Precision), and just rely on your traits in inspiration for Vitality and Healing power.

Since the improvements to phantasmal regeneration and stuff playing a tanky mesmer is more viable than ever since now you can reliably maintain regen (With significant protection uptime), if you wanted take tankyness to a ridiculous extreme then packing power without precision might well be a fun idea.

Why would you pick power over precision if you want a tank spec? Vigor on crit is an excellent tank talent. By comparison there is really not much way +power helps a tank spec.

I mean I can see the argument taht toughness/vitality gear is better than the options with precision but that’s because of the toughness/vitality not because of the power that happens to come along with it.

Yukishiro.8792:

Why would you pick power over precision if you want a tank spec? Vigor on crit is an excellent tank talent. By comparison there is really not much way +power helps a tank spec.

You have a good point i overlooked that detail.

Power/prec/crit damage is the way to go. Never sacrifice crit damage for power when you can have prec/crit damage in the same item.

Your returns from the dueling traitline are much better. The caveat is that you want 55%+ crit chance for a crit damage build to shine, but then it outpaces power in frontloading damage, which is what you need for PvE.

From my experience and testing, power > precision > crit-damage = condition. Where condition fits into that hierarchy varies by build and class. And, as other pointed out, traits matter. So, too, do food, sigils, and runes. Many things are triggered on criticals. A higher critical rate often trumps everything for those reasons.

For reducing the effects of damage, it’s awareness > active skills > passive traits. Toughness > Healing > Vitality for improving the relative effect of healing. Vitality > Toughness > Healing for mitigating conditions and surviving a spike.

Vitality and Condition Duration are not shared with clones. If you want tanky clones, Toughness is the only way to get it. IIRC, they share your healing stat, but I think that’s only applicable if you have the “phantasms give regen” trait.

Simplistically, the more damaging stats your armor has, the more damage you’ll do. Passive defensive traits may or may not actually help you much. That depends a LOT on your own skill at avoiding damage.

Also, I’ve not actually tested this, but I have a suspicion that Rampager (power/precision/condition) sets are much better damage in lower level dungeons than Berserker (power/precision/critdamage). When you’re down-leveled, your crit-damage stat is severely reduced — almost eliminated completely in AC. Condition damage is gently scaled down like the other stats.

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BTW, my “tanky” set is the Rabid set (Condition > precision = toughness) — the one you can’t craft and that mostly only comes from running the less commonly run dungeons. The play using this set in PvE is VERY relaxed. Kill rate is pretty slow, but the clones and phantasms can tank seemingly forever.

If you don’t want to be as hyper as you need to be to use Berserker, this set does work in PvE. You’ll amost never get a kill in WvW, but you’ll also be much harder to kill. If your goal is to slow the enemy down, especially multiple enemies, this set works much better for that than a DPS set.