Guild Wars 2

Listening to the SOAC podcast the other day, someone said that toughness does not affect Death Shroud. I’m not sure if this was fixed with today’s patch or not, but my testing from today showed toughness does actually affect Death Shroud.

Methodology: I did two types of tests in a custom arena. For both tests, I started with full life force and had an engineer with no gear attack me with the rifle auto-attack. In the test with toughness, I wore all my gear and a rabid amulet. In the test without toughness, I took off all my gear and amulet.

Results with toughness: It took about 18-19 attacks to get me down. The displayed damage was about 30 percent lower (about 270 damage). My life force bar went down in noticeably smaller chunks.

Results without toughness: It took about 12 attacks to get me down. The displayed damage was about 40 percent higher (about 350 damage). My life force bar went down in noticeably larger chunks.

Conclusion: Toughness definitely affects Death Shroud. Whether it does so better than vitality remains to be tested, but this should make the toughness vs. vitality debate a lot closer than previously assumed. (Regarding that debate, it’s worth noting that vitality still makes death shroud much better for dealing with condition damage, but this testing shows that toughness should have an advantage against direct damage.)

Wait… there was a time when it didn’t?

I’m not sure if there was a time in which it didn’t, but, for some reason, some structured PvP players assumed it didn’t work. This should correct that misconception.

Did you take off your armor? Could it be that the innate armor values do influence damage taken during DS, but the toughness stats don’t?
Just thinking of all the angles.

As someone who used to run with soldier/knight and recently switched to zerker, I can assure you DS has been always affected by toughness.

BadJas.5178:

Did you take off your armor? Could it be that the innate armor values do influence damage taken during DS, but the toughness stats don’t?
Just thinking of all the angles.

That doesn’t make sense because all toughness does is add armor rating, but I did take off all my gear. Still, from what I’m seeing right now with some quick testing, the damage pop-ups are still higher without toughness even with my armor equipped. Maybe I’ll do some more testing with it tomorrow.

But there’s really no reason to think toughness wouldn’t affect Death Shroud to begin with. Death Shroud is not a transformation like Plague, meaning it doesn’t alter stats. All it does is enable an extra health bar and abilities.

I agree that it would be weird if Toughness didn’t affect Death Shroud. I was just playing devil’s advocate//science guy. Cool that you tested this by the way, I bet if the guys from the podcast read this they’ll be grateful too.

Stats pre 5 Fireflies north of LA:
In ds no toughness on armor
240 – sting
320 – charging strike
91 – sting flurry

In DS with toughness
220 – sting
290 – charging strike
87 – sting flurry

Naked with amulets
435 – sting
604 – charging strike
160 – sting flurry

Naked without amulets
530 – sting
620 – chargning strike
213 – sting flurry

Funny thing trough, i took more damage in DS with soldier gear than out of ds with soldier, but took more damage in glass cannon out of ds than in ds with glass cannon.
My guess something is kittened up with armor scailing to ds, but its just 10% average damage increase from just soldier armor.

Disclaimer: only 92 fireflies were harmed during this test.

Andele.1306:

Stats pre 5 Fireflies north of LA:
Naked with amulets
435 – sting
604 – charging strike
160 – sting flurry

Naked without amulets
530 – sting
620 – chargning strike
213 – sting flurry

That settles it for me. I assume these are also in Death Shroud.

Andele.1306:

Funny thing trough, i took more damage in DS with soldier gear than out of ds with soldier, but took more damage in glass cannon out of ds than in ds with glass cannon.
My guess something is kittened up with armor scailing to ds, but its just 10% average damage increase from just soldier armor.

Disclaimer: only 92 fireflies were harmed during this test.

And this is where it got weird again. The damage increase in DS with soldier’s gear could be explained by you not getting the stat bonuses from weapons, right? Or were you not wearing weapons during all of this?
But a damage decrease when going into DS is completely unexpected. I can’t explain that. Bug, i guess?

BadJas.5178:

Andele.1306:

Stats pre 5 Fireflies north of LA:
Naked with amulets
435 – sting
604 – charging strike
160 – sting flurry

Naked without amulets
530 – sting
620 – chargning strike
213 – sting flurry

That settles it for me. I assume these are also in Death Shroud.

Andele.1306:

Funny thing trough, i took more damage in DS with soldier gear than out of ds with soldier, but took more damage in glass cannon out of ds than in ds with glass cannon.
My guess something is kittened up with armor scailing to ds, but its just 10% average damage increase from just soldier armor.

Disclaimer: only 92 fireflies were harmed during this test.

And this is where it got weird again. The damage increase in DS with soldier’s gear could be explained by you not getting the stat bonuses from weapons, right? Or were you not wearing weapons during all of this?
But a damage decrease when going into DS is completely unexpected. I can’t explain that. Bug, i guess?

Yep the naked ones are also in DS and with weapons (since they do actually influence DS unlike a lot of other “transformations”) on same PVT staff.

For the second part even i dont know, maybe fireflies just like green black tentacle blobs more so they hit for less? Either way same thing on cursed shore, only in 200-600 damage changes instead of 50~ that would translate to around 400~800 damage increase from 350 toughness loss when upscaled to 80.

All that above for short, yes toughness works in ds, no it still has kitten scailing and the only thing you need to care about for using DS as a damage soak is that you actually have armor on for your current level.

Toughness works with DS, always has as far as I know.
If you do want to test it however, get someone with a steady weapon in pvp, not random npc’s.

Lopez.7369:

The displayed damage was about 30 percent lower (about 270 damage).

[…]

The displayed damage was about 40 percent higher (about 350 damage).

Uh… but… a… what?

War Mourner.5168:

Toughness works with DS, always has as far as I know.
If you do want to test it however, get someone with a steady weapon in pvp, not random npc’s.

You know the list of random kitten that works in pvp and doesnt in pve is about 5 pages long also i really dont care about pvp stuff (yes i know i just kicked 80% of the people that care about balance in the balls or labia with a iron stick), its just broken stuff has to be fixed, also i cant be bothered trying to find another person that has time and is willing to sit for about 20 minutekittenting me with basic attacks while i swap gear/traits around.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t PvP, you test with steady weapons before anything else because there can be no confusion about damage when it comes to them. If you use steady weapons and damage doesn’t vary with toughness then it becomes obvious that there is an issue throughout the game, no other testing needed. If not, then you can go on to other testing.

Also the whole toughness doesn’t work in DS thing was a theory when people assumed DS LF was 100%+ of regular HP, to try explain why you would lose LF so fast.

Edit: sorry, double post. Post glitched.

And 30 seconds of testing in PvP with a steady rifle, does same damage to me in and out of DS while I was using a shaman amulet, so if nothing else, it works in PvP, and I’m willing to bet a thousand gold it’s the same in PvE. People on the stream who were specifically talking about pvp should check these things.

Never didn’t work that I know of. Tested it months ago in the mists and its pretty easy to see in the logs that toughness affected DS.

Which is why I never get why a lot of people say Carrion is more survivable than Rabid gear, both are giving you just one defensive stat and both affect both your health pools. If anything toughness would be better due to scaling with life regained and our numerous ways to deal with conditions make having tons of vit less important.

Pendragon.8735:

Never didn’t work that I know of. Tested it months ago in the mists and its pretty easy to see in the logs that toughness affected DS.

Which is why I never get why a lot of people say Carrion is more survivable than Rabid gear, both are giving you just one defensive stat and both affect both your health pools. If anything toughness would be better due to scaling with life regained and our numerous ways to deal with conditions make having tons of vit less important.

Carrion is more hybrid and pvp survival (with how many fights get a reset), rabid is condition carry and kinda better protection vs most bursts (since it comes in multi hit abilites pretty much all the time).

Andele.1306:

Carrion is more hybrid and pvp survival (with how many fights get a reset), rabid is condition carry and kinda better protection vs most bursts (since it comes in multi hit abilites pretty much all the time).

Not getting the difference you are seeing between ‘survival’ and ‘burst’ sounds like the same thing. Mitigation is a percentage, so it doesn’t matter if its many hits or one big hit, you reduce the same amount.

I.e. let’s say my mitigation is 50%

One enemy hits me for 2000 damage one time, it becomes 1000 damage total.

A 2nd enemy hits for 500 four times, each hit is mitigated to 250 damage x 4, still 1000 damage total.

The major factor in deciding what helps you live longer between vitality and toughness should be how much condition damage you expect to take in a fight against how much healing you expect to receive. If you receive more healing, toughness is better because it makes your heals go farther, giving you more EHP. If you are taking way more condition damage, then vitality is better, since toughness is worthless against it.

Also, if for whatever reason, a player finds themselves frequently being spiked down before they are able to use a heal or defensive measure that is still available (say DS) then they should add Vit instead of Toughness. But this should be extremely rare.

Maybe the reason you get hit for more in Soldier’ gear in DS is because you have more Lifeforce with more Vitality (Rabid doesn’t change your Lifeforce value), so toughness acts like a % buffer of your total lifeforce?

Don’t know if I sound like a madman but that would explains it a bit.

I think it works like this (It changes alot cuz of dem necro bugs):

Each hit gets rounded since damage gets converted into life force . We have a certain amount of health in DS (around 70 percent of normal life give or take depending on how far you invest in soul reaping). So if you have 20k life, you may get around 14k Death shroud life. It will take that 14k number and convert it to life force % :Each percent of life force would be 140. The damage you take gets converted into rounded life force % which does take account your toughness. But on small consecutive hits or condition ticks, the damage may get rounded up making it seem like toughness isnt helping. The last hit that gets you to 0 life force will never cut into your health pool. That is why we can jump off cliffs and survive no matter what % life force. These complicated mechanics make bugs rampant with our class and balancing a nightmare.

Pendragon.8735:

Andele.1306:

Carrion is more hybrid and pvp survival (with how many fights get a reset), rabid is condition carry and kinda better protection vs most bursts (since it comes in multi hit abilites pretty much all the time).

Not getting the difference you are seeing between ‘survival’ and ‘burst’ sounds like the same thing. Mitigation is a percentage, so it doesn’t matter if its many hits or one big hit, you reduce the same amount.

I.e. let’s say my mitigation is 50%

One enemy hits me for 2000 damage one time, it becomes 1000 damage total.

A 2nd enemy hits for 500 four times, each hit is mitigated to 250 damage x 4, still 1000 damage total.

The major factor in deciding what helps you live longer between vitality and toughness should be how much condition damage you expect to take in a fight against how much healing you expect to receive. If you receive more healing, toughness is better because it makes your heals go farther, giving you more EHP. If you are taking way more condition damage, then vitality is better, since toughness is worthless against it.

Also, if for whatever reason, a player finds themselves frequently being spiked down before they are able to use a heal or defensive measure that is still available (say DS) then they should add Vit instead of Toughness. But this should be extremely rare.

What i mean is (example only) warrior manages to get on you and you dodge after the third hit of his 100b, in that case you managed to migrate a nice bit of the damage youd have to absorb and in general can tank stray shots easier since you have to heal up for less to get to 100%, on carrion the 3 hits would do full damage, but since you are on a higher hp pool resetting fights/wasting enemy resources gives you a edge.
So going for long fights- rabid, going for skirmishes – carrion.

Panhauramix.2784:

Maybe the reason you get hit for more in Soldier’ gear in DS is because you have more Lifeforce with more Vitality (Rabid doesn’t change your Lifeforce value), so toughness acts like a % buffer of your total lifeforce?

Don’t know if I sound like a madman but that would explains it a bit.

That actually makes a lot of sense since it seems DS rounds up damage by %.

Andele.1306:

What i mean is (example only) warrior manages to get on you and you dodge after the third hit of his 100b, in that case you managed to migrate a nice bit of the damage youd have to absorb and in general can tank stray shots easier since you have to heal up for less to get to 100%, on carrion the 3 hits would do full damage, but since you are on a higher hp pool resetting fights/wasting enemy resources gives you a edge.
So going for long fights- rabid, going for skirmishes – carrion.

Ok I’m getting your point now better. Longer fights definitely favor the toughness due to more healing expected to receive.

Hmm, couldnt Lifeforcegain be viewed as a special form of healing?
Because if you look at it from that angle, you deal with % healing instead of flat healing which makes the whole arguement of “toughness for sustained fights; vit vs condis or burst” a bit more complicated than expected at first.

Let me provide an example:
A necro runs noticable LF-Gain, lets say soul marks trait (3% LF per mark).
If you have ~17k DS hp (14k+20% from SR traitline) 3% LF equals 510 DS hp.
Now you run vit gear instead of toughness and have 25k normal necro hp pool instead of ~20k. Which leads to roughly 21k DS hp.
In the “vit-gear-scenario” 3% LF would equal 630 DS hp.

The point im trying to make it is: LF generation skills and traits scale with vitality.
In that case using vitality gear in a sustain type build is of comparable effectiveness to toughness gear.

Or does it not work like that? Are there any flaws in that line of thought?

Yes, that is why most high level PvP Necros you will see run with Carrion. If you are using DS well, it completely changes the formula for Necros. It does depend on build as well, the more LF you get, the better Vitality scales.

Last two posts don’t make sense to me, it doesn’t matter if 3% LF is 500 or 600 HP you still lose 3% per second regardless, or 4% untraited. And when you actually get hit in DS, your 500 DS HP with more toughness will go just as far as your 600 DS HP with less toughness, just like it does for normal HP.

Say you have more Vit, therefore 3% LF skill just gave you 630 effective DS health, well when you get hit for an attack that does 630 damage, its only going to hit my DS health for 500 or whatever the normal mitigation ratio is because I have more toughness. The LF you are generating is not better because it mitigates worse.

It’s just a second green life bar with the same mechanics of a normal life bar as far as Vit and Toughness are concerned.

Only lucid argument I can see for Vitality in DS, is it will absorb conditions even better than normal health, since you can’t clean conditions in DS. But generally if you are flashing DS that shouldn’t be a problem, just come out and clear conditions with a normal skill. If you are getting bursted to a degree that you actually have to use all your DS at once, chances are its dropping so fast that a couple condition ticks are irrelevant.

Pendragon.8735:

Last two posts don’t make sense to me, it doesn’t matter if 3% LF is 500 or 600 HP you still lose 3% per second regardless, or 4% untraited. And when you actually get hit in DS, your 500 DS HP with more toughness will go just as far as your 600 DS HP with less toughness, just like it does for normal HP.

It’s just a second green life bar with the same mechanics of a normal life bar as far as Vit and Toughness are concerned.

Except that unlike the health bar the “Heal” (LF gain) is a percentage increase instead of an absolute number. Absolute healing makes Toughness >> Vitality for incoming direct damage (Vit being better than Toughness for managing condition damage). Percentage Healing negates the superiority of Toughness over Vitality for direct damage.
Thus, for defensive DS purposes, Toughness is inferior to Vitality.

Due to the above, where DS should really shine having more vitality than toughness is in absorbing conditions, as its giving you more sustain vs them via vitality than toughness, due to the % heal.

But the weird counter point to that is DS is used almost exclusively to absorb direct damage bursts, where the normal mitigation of toughness is virtually equal if not better than vitality at helping you survive.

So the free HP gap your gaining via LF regen with higher vitality is very rarely going to be put to use where it has its biggest advantage, because you simply rarely sit in DS for long periods while conditions tick. For burning or confusion perhaps somewhat, less so for bleeds the most prevalent condi damage.

In practice it probably comes out very close to a wash. As you still have to balance your sustain time in normal form, where you want toughness for longer fights where you will be healing a lot via real health.

I would agree that build would play a big role. Power builds have more reason to want to sustain inside DS as they still do good damage in it, and then might want to consider vitality more. Condi builds don’t want DS other than a sponge for burst, and flash offense, and thus would prefer to sustain in normal form where they maintain pressure, and where toughness is going to help them more vs direct damage, and where they have plenty of means to shed conditions. Also because there is no stat gear that gives Vit/Prc/Cond, and power is wanted less than precision, which you are forced to take on if you want Vitality.

With a normal health bar Tgh > Vit because Vit doesn’t affect how much you heal back up.
1000 damage incoming
High toughness: 800/8000 health lost (health @ 90% 7200/8000)
High vit: 1000/10000 health lost (health @ 90% 9000/10000)
use heal skill: 400 healing
High toughness: 7600/8000 health (95%)
High vit: 9400/10000 health (94%)
then they get 1 burn tic (200 damage)
High toughness: 7400/8000 health (92.5%)
High vit: 9200/10000 health (92%)

Say the same thing happens in Death Shroud.
High toughness: damage —> 7200/8000| LF gain (5%) —> 7600/8000| burn(200) —>7400/8000 ending at 92.5%
High Vit: damage —> 9000/10000| LF gain (5%) —> 9500/10000 | burn(200) —> 9300/10000 ending at 93%

So Life Force Gain makes it so that the size of the LF Pool (Vitality) and damage reduction (Toughness) are interchangeable when handling direct damage. However, armor-ignoring damage such as from conditions is still unaffected by Toughness.

So, it’s better to have a large Life Force Pool than to have big damage Reduction. When it comes to DS.

Thanks, I think I worked it out on my own after some thought, but it only opened up more brain camps as far as what you want in total, not just considering DS.

Haha!
Every time I try to clarify something, you have edited your previous post by the time I post my reply! You keep answering your own questions, and now it looks like I’m just pulling useless information out of thin air.

Nah, your examples are still helpful I think to illustrate the math and for anyone else reading.

Necro can be complicated to figure out. Just ask Anet!

In any case, we answered all questions that came up in this discussion.
Conclusions:
- Vitality is (slightly) more important for Necro’s than for other professions.
- Toughness increase DOES affect Death Shroud, but because of the way Life Force Gain works it has the same effect as Vitality increase.
- The above statement could be the cause of the myth that toughness doesn’t affect Death Shroud.

Torqky.3682:

I think it works like this (It changes alot cuz of dem necro bugs):

Each hit gets rounded since damage gets converted into life force . We have a certain amount of health in DS (around 70 percent of normal life give or take depending on how far you invest in soul reaping). So if you have 20k life, you may get around 14k Death shroud life. It will take that 14k number and convert it to life force % :Each percent of life force would be 140. The damage you take gets converted into rounded life force % which does take account your toughness. But on small consecutive hits or condition ticks, the damage may get rounded up making it seem like toughness isnt helping. The last hit that gets you to 0 life force will never cut into your health pool. That is why we can jump off cliffs and survive no matter what % life force. These complicated mechanics make bugs rampant with our class and balancing a nightmare.

This is more or less what I theorized seven months ago, but never confirmed due to becoming inactive;

Edited in; Actually Red, that might be -exactly- what it is. If a number is over some sort of threshold, it rounds up to 1%, regardless of how low the damage may actually be in comparison to what percent of Death Shroud it may have actually taken out. I recall that while doing my test, the Orrian used the one multi-hit skill with the same animation as Necrotic Bite. That’s ~5 hits of semi-low damage, which may very well have skewed results drastically if each one of those hits accounted for 1% of my Lifeforce bar every time. It would also explain why my Lifeforce seems to drain so rapidly while under heavy Conditions. It would even explain why low-damage, many-hit channeled abilities seem to destroy us (Or at least me).

It’s good to see that people are getting back into the hard numbers though.

BadJas.5178:

With a normal health bar Tgh > Vit because Vit doesn’t affect how much you heal back up.
1000 damage incoming
High toughness: 800/8000 health lost (health @ 90% 7200/8000)
High vit: 1000/10000 health lost (health @ 90% 9000/10000)
use heal skill: 400 healing
High toughness: 7600/8000 health (95%)
High vit: 9400/10000 health (94%)
then they get 1 burn tic (200 damage)
High toughness: 7400/8000 health (92.5%)
High vit: 9200/10000 health (92%)

Say the same thing happens in Death Shroud.
High toughness: damage —> 7200/8000| *LF gain (5%) --> 7600/8000*| burn(200) —>7400/8000 ending at 92.5%
High Vit: damage --> 9000/10000| LF gain (5%) —> 9500/10000 | burn(200) —> 9300/10000 ending at 93%

So Life Force Gain makes it so that the size of the LF Pool (Vitality) and damage reduction (Toughness) are interchangeable when handling direct damage. However, armor-ignoring damage such as from conditions is still unaffected by Toughness.

So, it’s better to have a large Life Force Pool than to have big damage Reduction. When it comes to DS.

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

I’ve been running on the theory there’s a ‘true’ life force value that’s a static number, which is never shown to the player. All interactions with damage work from that, and act like a normal health pool. (With the exception of the 4% degen, which I bet the game just calculates out and subtracts as a static number)

Then the display is always shown rounded to a full percentage point, even if there is a fractional percent. One of the reasons I’m so sure of this is Gluttony. If we can gain life force in increments besides whole percentage points, why not be able to lose them similarly?

Anyways, I’ll keep watching this space, and possibly test it myself a bit.

Softspoken.2410:

Then the display is always shown rounded to a full percentage point, even if there is a fractional percent. One of the reasons I’m so sure of this is Gluttony. If we can gain life force in increments besides whole percentage points, why not be able to lose them similarly?

Gluttony allows a skill to gain a fraction of a percent instead of rounding up? Which one? I’m honestly curious.

Arianna.7642:

Softspoken.2410:

Then the display is always shown rounded to a full percentage point, even if there is a fractional percent. One of the reasons I’m so sure of this is Gluttony. If we can gain life force in increments besides whole percentage points, why not be able to lose them similarly?

Gluttony allows a skill to gain a fraction of a percent instead of rounding up? Which one? I’m honestly curious.

All of them except spectral grasp? 110% of any percentage that isn’t a multiple of 10 will give a fractional percent*. Again, I think gluttony makes, say, ghastly claws give 8.8% for the full channel, but it’ll display as 9% if you hover over the bar before / after because of rounding. Otherwise gluttony wouldn’t work at all, and we already went through that phase.

*-People of mathematics, I have no idea what the correct terminology was for that sentence, please advise.

Andele.1306:

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

Could you explain what this means?
LF_degen = maximum(LF_degen_natural, Cumulative_condition_Ticks)
Is that right? If so, how did you obtain this info?

Thanks for the info!

BadJas.5178:

Andele.1306:

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

Could you explain what this means?
LF_degen = maximum(LF_degen_natural, Cumulative_condition_Ticks)
Is that right? If so, how did you obtain this info?

Thanks for the info!

All damage ticks that are condition/effect based tick on the same timer, so lets say first tick is right on application 0.1, second will be at 1.1, thing is DS degen happens at the same time and during the calculation of it, all condition damage is added under it
So if LF degen > condition damage that would tick = No damage taken from conditions during that tick, bu if LF degen < condition damage delt during that tick = additional LF lost based on condition damage. Usually burning and 4 stacks of bleed from someone with no condition damage can be consumed that way. Found it out by checking agony ticks with and without AR while in DS (and its kinda the reason why necros are the only profession that can finish level 50 or higher fractals without doing the death trick)

Long story short, condition damage form someone who doesnt spec for it can be eaten by DS for really small or even no loss.

To sum it up:

Get the stat that you need. I am not talking about maxing a stat, just doing a collection on what you should get if you feel you need something.

Get vitality if you…
- make a build where you need a fat shroud (and go deep in Soul reaping)
- need to survive more condition damage
- are going continuosly in and out (which can be hard as a necro)

Get toughness if you…
- need to survive more direct damage
- have high healing power
- need more overall sustain (remember to have condition removals!)

BadJas.5178:

Say the same thing happens in Death Shroud.
High toughness: damage —> 7200/8000 90%| LF gain (5%) --> 7600/8000 95%| burn(200) —>7400/8000 ending at 92.5%
High Vit: damage --> 9000/10000 90%| LF gain (5%) —> 9500/10000 95%| burn(200) --> 9300/10000 ending at 93%

I’ve added the other precentages in bold in the quote, because I want to note the following:

• There is no difference between vitality and toughness for direct damage
• There is a (small) difference for condition damage, favouring vitality
• BUT, due to how natural degeneration works, DS is very bad at ‘tanking’ conditions. Take a 12k DS pool for example (60% of 20k, seems like a fair number): 4% = 480 damage per second, roughly equivalent to 4 bleeds (4×120).

TL;DR If you’re trying to take conditions with DS, you’re actually adding a significant amount to your opponent’s DPS. While for burst, there is no difference between toughness and vitality. (Thus, toughness and vitality are roughly equal in DS and you shouldn’t base yourself on DS to decide which one you need more of.)

Andele.1306:

BadJas.5178:

Andele.1306:

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

Could you explain what this means?
LF_degen = maximum(LF_degen_natural, Cumulative_condition_Ticks)
Is that right? If so, how did you obtain this info?

Thanks for the info!

All damage ticks that are condition/effect based tick on the same timer, so lets say first tick is right on application 0.1, second will be at 1.1, thing is DS degen happens at the same time and during the calculation of it, all condition damage is added under it
So if LF degen > condition damage that would tick = No damage taken from conditions during that tick, bu if LF degen < condition damage delt during that tick = additional LF lost based on condition damage. Usually burning and 4 stacks of bleed from someone with no condition damage can be consumed that way. Found it out by checking agony ticks with and without AR while in DS (and its kinda the reason why necros are the only profession that can finish level 50 or higher fractals without doing the death trick)

Long story short, condition damage form someone who doesnt spec for it can be eaten by DS for really small or even no loss.

I have some doubts about this, to be honest. In all the test I’ve ever done, if you would take say 1% bleeding damage, you will take 5% (4+1) on the tick. Not, 4% because 1<4.

Also unlike what some are claiming here, I’m pretty sure the game rounds to full percentages for display purposes only, take gluttony + necrotic grasp as example.

EDIT: Just did a quick test to confirm. With 22779 base health (22779*0.6=13667.4 DS health) I used Corrupt Boon to self-poison me for 136 DPS (~1%). Starting at 100% DS and dropping out after 1 tick, I end up at 95% (4%+1% loss). Doing the same with 2 ticks, I drop out at 90%…

It only shows % for display/obscuring the true number purposes. All the actual maths is done with the actual numbers, and stays that way. You can easily test it with gluttony and repeated use of LF gaining skills such as scepter 3 or dagger 1.

Torqky.3682:

Andele.1306:

BadJas.5178:

Andele.1306:

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

Could you explain what this means?
LF_degen = maximum(LF_degen_natural, Cumulative_condition_Ticks)
Is that right? If so, how did you obtain this info?

Thanks for the info!

All damage ticks that are condition/effect based tick on the same timer, so lets say first tick is right on application 0.1, second will be at 1.1, thing is DS degen happens at the same time and during the calculation of it, all condition damage is added under it
So if LF degen > condition damage that would tick = No damage taken from conditions during that tick, bu if LF degen < condition damage delt during that tick = additional LF lost based on condition damage. Usually burning and 4 stacks of bleed from someone with no condition damage can be consumed that way. Found it out by checking agony ticks with and without AR while in DS (and its kinda the reason why necros are the only profession that can finish level 50 or higher fractals without doing the death trick)

Long story short, condition damage form someone who doesnt spec for it can be eaten by DS for really small or even no loss.

You got me interested. How does this work in terms of the first degen tick. I thought it takes like a while for the first degen to kick in. Lets say 100 health was equal to 1% of my life force DS health. So each degen would take 4% or 400 health. What if i were to tick a bleed for 53 damage. That would be 453 damage and i assume that would round up to 5%. What if i ticked two bleeds for 53 in the time of the degen time? Would that be 506 which would be rounded to 5% or would it round up to 6% as soon as it passes 500? Or would it round each tick/source of damage individually like 400=4%(degen), 53=1% , 53=1% which all equals 6%? What if the bleed tick was 49? Would that round to 0%?

Until we fully understand the mechanics, the way life force %/vitality/traits converts to DS health, and how the rounding of damage (both white and condition damage) works this math is just all speculation.

Very interested to know if all condition damage ticks only apply at degen time as i feel the time of degen is delayed and the way conditions are applied at different intervals etc. Very confusing stuff and i bet the majority of arenanet’s employers dont even know exactly how this works haha.

Arvid.3829:

I have some doubts about this, to be honest. In all the test I’ve ever done, if you would take say 1% bleeding damage, you will take 5% (4+1) on the tick. Not, 4% because 1<4.

Also unlike what some are claiming here, I’m pretty sure the game rounds to full percentages for display purposes only, take gluttony + necrotic grasp as example.

EDIT: Just did a quick test to confirm. With 22779 base health (22779*0.6=13667.4 DS health) I used Corrupt Boon to self-poison me for 136 DPS (~1%). Starting at 100% DS and dropping out after 1 tick, I end up at 95% (4%+1% loss). Doing the same with 2 ticks, I drop out at 90%…

God i hope that it isnt true, since if they did fix it, it would be quite the ninja neft to necros…

Torqky.3682:

You got me interested. How does this work in terms of the first degen tick. I thought it takes like a while for the first degen to kick in. Lets say 100 health was equal to 1% of my life force DS health. So each degen would take 4% or 400 health. What if i were to tick a bleed for 53 damage. That would be 453 damage and i assume that would round up to 5%. What if i ticked two bleeds for 53 in the time of the degen time? Would that be 506 which would be rounded to 5% or would it round up to 6% as soon as it passes 500? Or would it round each tick/source of damage individually like 400=4%(degen), 53=1% , 53=1% which all equals 6%? What if the bleed tick was 49? Would that round to 0%?

Until we fully understand the mechanics, the way life force %/vitality/traits converts to DS health, and how the rounding of damage (both white and condition damage) works this math is just all speculation.

Very interested to know if all condition damage ticks only apply at degen time as i feel the time of degen is delayed and the way conditions are applied at different intervals etc. Very confusing stuff and i bet the majority of arenanet’s employers dont even know exactly how this works haha.

One little note, despite how much a-net insists that all actual condi ticks are at the same second, bleeds aint, 25 stacks kick in one after another rapidly instead of 1 big number popping up, thats why 4~ 21 damage bleeds or 1 burning were consumed by degen, but with what Arvid.3829 said im not sure if its still so…

The way I see it, the natural degen is just like a condition that happens on top of whatever other damage you are taking (it even shares it’s timer with the other conditions). In this way, it’s not different than for example taking both bleeding and poison damage: one doesn’t consume the other either, they may happen very close one after the other, but you still just take damage from both (and I don’t see why you wouldn’t).

@Andele: Bleeds do work the way the developers say they do, but the numbers show up in succession. You can see when the bleeding damage is applied if you give a relatively weak creature a couple of bleeds without dealing it too much damage. Then stop, and you’ll see that although the numbers show up one at a time, the health bar goes down in bigger chunks each second.
Why would developers even lie about this? What would be the point?
About degen in DS: I can find no documentation on condition damage buffering. If it ever worked the way Andele said it worked, it must have been a bug, because it makes no sense (to me) if it worked like that. Calling it a nerf is a bit much.

Torqky.3682:

I think it works like this (It changes alot cuz of dem necro bugs):

Each hit gets rounded since damage gets converted into life force . We have a certain amount of health in DS (around 70 percent of normal life give or take depending on how far you invest in soul reaping). So if you have 20k life, you may get around 14k Death shroud life. It will take that 14k number and convert it to life force % :Each percent of life force would be 140. The damage you take gets converted into rounded life force % which does take account your toughness. But on small consecutive hits or condition ticks, the damage may get rounded up making it seem like toughness isnt helping. The last hit that gets you to 0 life force will never cut into your health pool. That is why we can jump off cliffs and survive no matter what % life force. These complicated mechanics make bugs rampant with our class and balancing a nightmare.

I will never understand why ANet felt the need to do LF math in percentage terms, rather than simply have it as a second health pool and apply the damage unconverted.

digiowl.9620:

I will never understand why ANet felt the need to do LF math in percentage terms, rather than simply have it as a second health pool and apply the damage unconverted.

Maybe to make our profession supercomplicated and interesting. No other mechanic in the game can raise my left eyebrow to such heights while pivoting my head ever-so-slightly.
Love it.