Guild Wars 2

I like to use a 30/0/0/20/20 Build with Axe/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn. I was doing dungeons yesterday with Rare Berserker’s Gear and I didn’t like how squishy I was, so I’m wondering if it’s okay to use Soldier and Knight gear to boost my survivability. So I’m basically how would I affect my party if I replace my Critical Damage Bonus for Toughness and Vitality… Would I be a burden to them?

Would this be allowed in Fractals?

Squishyness (thats prob not even a word) doesn’t matter in the slightest. If your a good enough player you can compensate with skill. Personally I like going glass cannon in my builds. I can compensate for the lack of survivability with skill and not to mention your party will constantly have boons up so that helps with survivability. Toughness is nice but increases your agro so keep that in mind.

What these people are not saying is that you probably should start off with gear that has some defensive stats until you learn all of the mechanics of your profession and the fights in the content you want to do. Gradually replace that with gear that provides higher damage as you get better. If you’re running the content you want to run and are rarely getting into health trouble, it’s time to start considering doing more damage.

Ok thank you all. I really appreciate it

For PvE you can do whatever but never go full glass cannon Necro in PvP – you will get owned.

Definatly avoiding taking much vita. 1-2 soldiers max imo. You have 20 in bloodmagic on your build so already have +200 vita. Maybe avoid soldiers altogether.

Vita isnt a good stat in PVE. You get a bigger health pool but your heal still heals for a small amount, in a long battle this wont help much. Getting damage reduction from toughness is a much better idea. Heck even healing power seems more useful than a big hp pool. As someone also said agony is based on % damage. Atleast 1 of the fractals has unavoidable agony so having a massive hp pool will be a burden for survivability.

I would recommend going mostly berserkers with some knights. If you plan to buy with karma to save gold there is cavaliers accessorys.
Your build already seems kinda defense so i wouldnt take many defensive stat items. Try to learn to use deathshroud better and when to avoid attacks with dodge.

It maybe best to learn the hard way. Going into a low level fractal with 30k hp and high toughness you may feel you can facetank stuff but that will quickly change as you do higher levels. And if you arent doing good dps you are kinda slowing your group down. Better to go in normal gear and learn from those times you get downed.

I was using full Berserkers everything all the way up to level 80. I even used it for about 100 hours after reaching level 80.

As I started doing more WvW, I noticed that it wasn’t cutting it. Sure I was doing good damage, but even with the 18K base health I would still die fast to backstab thieves and other surprise burst builds. I could still survive using “skill”, but it only goes so far.

I should write a guide called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Use Soldier Armor”.
After picking up a set of exotic Soldier armor from the Grenth karma merchant, and getting the Soldier leggings from WvW tokens, I now see a 4.5K effective health increase, and I am still doing awesome numbers – comparative to full Berserkers.

I now see why so many people recommend Soldiers – the damage lost is miniscule compared to the survivability achieved.

I use Soldier armor with Rune of the Thief, with Berserker everything else. Awesome damage.