Guild Wars 2

Given the changes (not so recent?) to how deathshroud soaks up damage, as well as how vitality and toughness affect necro sustain, I would like to have an up-to-date discussion about defensive stat priorities for non-glass cannon necros.

-Is it currently better to stack toughness, or vitality?
-Which scales better with deathshroud?
-How can a necromancer maximize their Effective Health Points?

Arguments supported by math would be highly appreciated

You get extra health, max life force, and life force from skills from vitality (somewhat mitigated by extra life force degen)

You get extra power from toughness with the Death Trait.

Vitality unless you need the extra power from the death trait?

If you actually want to be tanky, you need both. There’s no way around that at all. That’s why necromancers right now in general only use celestial or soldiers.

Condi necro sucks because it only has burst pressure, while carrion still leaves it to be quite frail overall. Condi necro would be better in pvp if we had a dire amulet, then it would be tanky enough to justify it’s total lack of sustained damage pressure when it fails to terror burst down high HP targets.

you could do worse than a basic celestial setup
with death perception your crit will be good and with deadly strength both vit and toughness will help power, the additional healing power will make wells useful and make you a little more tanky.

In recent experience, dolyak runes and the knight’s amulet have been working pretty alright for me—the results are that I’m rather tanky and sometimes, one (sometimes two) person(s) isn’t enough, it’d take 3 ppl to take me down. I have more odds facing a 2v1 with my current build as I did before when I ran a very basic power necro.
My playstyle is still very power necro’y, but now I can effectively sustain against focus fire while still doing what a necro should: droppin the dps, debuffing, and strategic cc.

As for the math, that’s just cruel to ask for -.-
I was extremely nervous to even try something other than what I usually ran for my necro, but it was no more than 10 seconds to just click (in pvp) the knight amulet and dolyak runes. I saw the stats and was slightly impressed. The damage is slightly lack-luster, being that your atk stat is at 2k (compared to zerker amulet, we know, that’s low); also, your health will be at a lil above 20k (if memory serves). Your armor rating will sit at a pretty 3.2k though, and your crit rate is 43% which is arguably not too bad.
This is a really low-quality description of the build thus far; however, I don’t want to give everything away, there’s definitely plenty of room for variation.
Still with me? If I still remember correctly, (with the doly/knight build) your crit damage is at 150%. Again, not as high as zerker’s but that’s not what the build is made to do. With all these factors considered, here’s what you/we’ve made: your necro regenerates health constantly thanks to the runes, your health and toughness are high enough that you can withstand some damage without having to be concerned with disengaging for a decent amount of time. Furthermore, your utility on the battlefield sums up to being a tanky nuisance to the enemy—becoming a perfect target to soak up a decent amount of damage and allow your high damage teammates to really shine.
I’m not tryin to write an article though, (I apologize if it’s already gone past that) so I’m gonna end it here. Glhf with your theory-crafting and cheers for the build that works for you!
p.s Sorry, I will not be linking full build because that’d take away from the fun of trying out new stuff on your own.

Personally, I run Soldier gear and Brawler/Fighter(pvp) runes. Granted, the runes are a bit unfulfilling, granting only 3 stacks of might for ten seconds when you use your heal, but a little extra oomph when presumably more of your skills are on cooldown is relatively helpful. Also, Brawler runes are the only ones that have Power and Toughness, at least with Power primary. So both play well into a tanky necro power build. While I don’t have crit chance except in shroud, I will say that I can get up to about 3k power in shroud (max bloodlust, plus the DM trait) so it’s very hard to take down, but still deals enough damage to cut down an enemy (or 2, sometimes) in a 2v1, depending on the classes and builds. With 28k hp and 22k lf, with 2888 armor, it can take a few hits

Vydahr.4285:

Personally, I run Soldier gear and Brawler/Fighter(pvp) runes. Granted, the runes are a bit unfulfilling, granting only 3 stacks of might for ten seconds when you use your heal, but a little extra oomph when presumably more of your skills are on cooldown is relatively helpful. Also, Brawler runes are the only ones that have Power and Toughness, at least with Power primary. So both play well into a tanky necro power build. While I don’t have crit chance except in shroud, I will say that I can get up to about 3k power in shroud (max bloodlust, plus the DM trait) so it’s very hard to take down, but still deals enough damage to cut down an enemy (or 2, sometimes) in a 2v1, depending on the classes and builds. With 28k hp and 22k lf, with 2888 armor, it can take a few hits

I run this build. It can bunk quite well.

I suffer in winning 1v2+ because I just get chained CC’d. Which prevent my damage from surpassing their healing unless they have pure glass builds.

In team-fights where I can get a skill off, I do significant damage. In team fights where I get focused, we usually win those cause focusing the tank is dumb.

The principles of the two stats are still the same. Toughness is aimed for direct damage while Vit is aimed for conditions. Now if you look at the class though, necro has pretty high base armor (relatively speaking) and the class is designed to sustain conditions better than other classes: hence the life force pool that only scales off vitality. You can go toughness and stand off decently against dps. But if you stacks vit and go for condition tanking, the effectiveness is far greater in that area. Plus you also have to consider that for every reduced DPS due to higher toughness, you also generate greater amount of life force which also acts as a pseudo shield if you go for vit.

In the end though, it’s up to your style. But personally, I would say Dire condi necro is the most optimal build regarding the necro’s design because it utilizes and augments everything (amped armor, amped life force which is used to soaked up conditions before sending them back, tough/vit % into condition damage etc.).

Malchior.1928:

-Is it currently better to stack toughness, or vitality?
-Which scales better with deathshroud?
-How can a necromancer maximize their Effective Health Points?

Vitality
Vitality
Vitality

Necromancers are in the rare spot where toughness and vitality both have the same efficiency for maximum effective HP. If you want to go with the biggest health per toughness ratio, raise them evenly. If you are fighting a lot of condi builds, prioritize vitality over toughness. If you are going with a healer build, toughness over vitality.

As Arachnid said: Soldier has the most balanced stats for eHP.

On a side note: on my first attempt of a bunker build based on Cleric (blood, death, SR) using SoV passive as much as possible, being healed for 300 per sec in Shroud, receiving another 2.5k heal and protection on exit (possibly every 7 sec), dodge rolls for regen with 2 energy runes, using dagger 2 on CD (with dagger trait).

I lasted indefinitely in a 1v3 (given they weren’t coordinated), surviving Rampage without Plague and so on, it was nice being told you’re OP as kitten. For reference: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAoYWn0IC12gF3A+0A83gDohS2ABwyOrgauZptQQ8CA-TJxHwACOFAD3fAZZAAPBAA

Your worst enemy: burning followed by a strong CC chain when you either run out of your 5 stun breaks or out of condi transfers.

Using plague form at 100% life is also dangerous! No kidding! No more DS healings, no more condi transfers: I felt squishy in plague form!! Try it, it’s a lot of fun!

Key to remember is that if you’re using blood magic toughness goes way up your priority list.

Test: Use “Damage = weapon strength * power * skill coefficient / armor” to create a qualitative answer to whether Vitality or Toughness is more effective as a Defensive trait.

Base numbers:
Vitality = 1000
Health = 19212
Life Force = 13257
Toughness = 1000
Armor = 1888

Weapon Strength will be kept at a value of 2445 as is consistent with the Power given by a Staff while I was wielding it with arbitrary specs in Heart of the Mists.
Skill coefficient will be kept at a value of 1.
Power will be used to find the needed power to 1-hit a Necro test subject. The point of this is simple, higher Power needed, the more resilient the build is.
Shroud offers a 50% direct damage reduction and since the formula is all multiplying and dividing I simply add it to starting Life Force with a multiplier of 2.

Base Power needed (zero added Vitality, zero added Toughness):
19212 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 1888
Power = 14835.3

Power needed Toughness (zero added Vitality, 1200 added Toughness):
19212 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 3088
Power = 24264.5

Power needed Vitality (1200 added Vitality, zero added Toughness):
31212 = 2445 * power * 1 / 1888
Power = 24101.5
_______________________________________________________

Life Force is similar and will show similar effects to Protection

Power needed versus Life Force Toughness (zero Vitality, 1200 Toughness)
2 * 13257 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 3088
Power = 33486.8

Power needed versus Life Force Vitality (1200 Vitality, zero Life Force)
2 * 21537 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 1088
Power = 33261.2
_______________________________________________________

Conclusion:
Against direct damage Vitality and Toughness function almost exactly the same on a 1 Vitality : 1 Toughness scale. Downside to Toughness includes zero extra protection against Conditions. Downside to Vitality includes less relative healing compared to Toughness (honestly not even a downside, it just means your health bar doesn’t go back as high while still giving the same health).

Notes:
If you want me to do some further calculations including particular builds or give actual condition differences I might do it if I’m bored enough. If there is an error please correct me, there’s nothing worse than false information floating around. Guild Wars Wiki for damage calculation page.

meow one twenty.4376:

…

You’ve made these calculations more complicated than they needed to be.

To calculate effective hp (EHP) let’s take the classic rabid vs carrion example:

900 extra toughness means you have 2788 instead of 1888 armor.
1888/2788 = 0.67718…
That means rabid’s higher armor reduces the amount of direct damage that would be taken without extra toughness by about 32.3%, giving it an EHP of 28378.
Carrion: 28212 hp.

However, this slight advantage of rabid is completely meaningless when you factor in condition damage (which you will always take in pvp) and life force.
Of course toughness works in DS just like vitality affects the size of our lf pool. But the whole point of having toughness in the first place is because it improves healing effectivness against direct damage. Life force regeneration, however, is always percentage based. And even after some buffs to Blood Magic, our healing is no where near how well we can generate life force.
Plus, the 50% damage reduction in DS still exists, making our lf pool effectively 138% (or 158.7% with Soul Reaping) of our regular hp, not factoring in natural degenartion of course.

And keep in mind, this initial ehp advantage of rabid only works as long as you don’t have any additional toughness.
For example, once you take Death Magic you get +180 toughness in Shroud, which then means a 36,4% dmg reduction for rabid and a 8,7% reduction for carrion.
In that case the effective lf would be 41686 for rabid and 42642 for carrion. (47939 vs 49038 with Soul Reaping)

Bottom line: for necros vitality is better than toughness, period.
However, if your build allows you to mix in some toughness, do it.