Guild Wars 2

Hi. I never was a fan of glasscannon builds, so i decided to build my necro with at least a defensive stat in dungeon and PvE.
Since I didn’t like minions, I avoided the Death Magic Traits and moved for Blood. So i raised up vitality.

However I was still curios. Necromancer have a big pool of base Hp. So what is better (if there IS a better)?
raise vitality for having a bigger pool of Hp? Or raise Toughness and have a balanced defense?

Our HP pool is so large already before even considering the secondary HP pool of DS that I rarely ever put points into vitality.

I don’t do much PvE but I will say this, toughness is better against direct dmg and Vitality is better against conditions. In the limited PvE I have done, I rarely came across a lot of conditions.

If you look threw some of today threads someone said that the number one rated player in spvp is a necro and when i looked up his build it was alot of Vitality. Unfortunately he didn’t have gear on the page just jewelery and runes.

In the end though it’s all about your play style.

I’ve often asked the same thing myself. We already have a high base HP pool, so toughness SEEMS like it would be more effective.

Then you consider the fact that our vitality not only increases our health, but our DS health as well, so vitality actually helps you more than it would on other classes. I still can’t answer which would be better though

I’ve tried vitality as a main stat before out of the two, and I admit that being able to boast about having 28k+ HP is nice….without defense to supplement it….your still going to see it drop like a rock.

There is perks to high hp as it does affect your life force slightly, but overall..I don’t see a big use to it beyond being a complementary stat to ur arsenal.

I would say go toughness ( for what its worth on a light armor character ) as it’ll go farther in the long run for PVE and PVP Imo. Adding some Vit stat on top of that and you can still hit around 22k HP anyhow…..which is nothing to sneeze at as a light armor character.

Well healing is so poor in this game you’r gonna spend the majority of your fight below 50% if you do that. I really am a fan of toughness for Necros since we have an already high amount of hp. There’s a world of a difference between 2k and 3k armor. TOo bad you can’t have primary Toughness then Crit/Power in PvP like we get in PvE.

I stated toughness as a priority over vitality but that is because I would rather have a robust HP pool (20k) with solid toughness of between 12-1300. I still focus mainly on Power and Crit but am able to boast some solid surviability to withstand some focus while you spent 12 minutes unloading your full arsenal of cast time abilities.

Vitality is good against damage over time (conditions), while Toughness is good against burst damage.

I run with toughness, mainly because I like the traits better. I remove conditions with my heal, and I can outlast a decent amount of them with deathshroud. However, I did use to have a vitality heavy build, and it worked pretty well.

Really, whatever you think kills you more often is better to be resistant against. If your build depends on stacking conditions upon yourself, probably should go for vitality. If you’re a power necro, and constantly on the front line, should probably go for toughness.

The best idea is to focus on both ( balance between them ).

I personally ran a high defense/toughness build for PvE and WvWvW. In pve it seems that high defense/toughness makes you an agromagnet but I have yet to find information confirming this, so I dropped my defense to 1868 from just over 2100 and I can say I dont pull agro near as much and take about the same amount of dmg. In WvWvW I built a pure conditionmancer set stacking toughness with just over 20k hp and it works well vs glass cannons who would otherwise 2 shot you. ( remember to take first hit, DS and fear to break their attack chain then heal. )

Everyone is right though its all personal preferance.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

The best idea is to focus on both ( balance between them ).

This is what i aim for as well. My armor is power, vit, and condition damage. My accessories are prec, toughness, and condition damage. I found this setup works best for me.

Go with toughness, the armor favors the necro more our base health is fine and we remove conditions easy the bane of low health chars is conditions. The bane of low armor chars is burst.

Or go with something balanced. If we are talking pure stacking toughness > vit for a necro IMO.

Theres always ways to make the most of a toughness set up I would like to mention. For example, I recently went full Knights set, Toughness based accessories and weapons and I’m floating right around 2.3k toughness and 3k armor. As a light armor character..that’s not to shabby.
To help supplement that, I Go MM for a additional 100 toughness ( Full 5 minion’s ), Vampiric Master Trait to get life from my minions, Fetid consumption to keep conditions off me and finally 6 set Dolyak Runes in my armor.
All that put together and I’m a PAIN to take down.

You notice the difference though honestly. The amount of hits you can take from something, being able to sit in different types of spam and notice little health drop. It’s a far cry from having say 6-8k more HP but no toughness and seeing your bulb drop like a rock in midst of damage; Compared to say 22k Hp and soaking damage like a sponge;)

Vitality is important if your build relies on DS, toughness is important if you want to survive lots of direct damage and both are important if you plan using Plague.

I run Power/Vit/Toughness DS necro and in plague form I hit almost 50K health and 6K armor. Combine this with Spirit Armor (plague, unlike DS doesn’t cancel protection)and you will NEVER die.

Levian.6742:

I’ve often asked the same thing myself. We already have a high base HP pool, so toughness SEEMS like it would be more effective.

Then you consider the fact that our vitality not only increases our health, but our DS health as well, so vitality actually helps you more than it would on other classes. I still can’t answer which would be better though

Its true that vitality also effect our DS, but so do Toughness. I find a mix of both to be the best. But like other have already said it comes down to the player behind the keyboard.

Defense in this game heavily favors player reaction time (“skill”) over stats and traits.

as long as you maintain at least 23k hp, invest the rest into toughness or more sources of mobility and/or active damage mitigation (dodging mark of blood, DS mechanic, etc.)

Both of them are quite useful. Considering Death shroud scales off of vitality as well, vitality benefits us more than it does other classes. So a good mix of vitality and toughness would be best in my opinion.

I made a pretty extensive post on this here. Basically, Vitality and Toughness both add to effective HP (how much damage you can take) equally, but there are pros and cons to Vitality and Toughness. Vitality protects more against conditions, which aren’t much trouble for necros, and toughness makes your healing proportionately better. In my opinion, Toughness is the way to go if you’re building just one stat. Of course the most efficient way is to build each one equally, but then you can’t really get the offensive stats you necessarily will want.

And to the people who are saying that Vit is better for DS builds: I know that Death Shroud HP is based on Vitality, but surely armor still has an effect when it comes to damage reduction, so why not build toughness for DS?

RockonHarder.7235:

If you look threw some of today threads someone said that the number one rated player in spvp is a necro and when i looked up his build it was alot of Vitality. Unfortunately he didn’t have gear on the page just jewelery and runes.

In the end though it’s all about your play style.

Eh, sure, but not for this conversation. For this conversation it’s a lot about the math. What gets you the most bang. Playstyle choices may derive from getting traits or runes that benefit from toughness, but aside from that it’s straight math. Which I haven’t done. If I had to guess I’m guessing a balance of both gets you the most for your money. But as necros already have high base HP, I’m not sure what the magic numbers are.

Mackster.9726:

And to the people who are saying that Vit is better for DS builds: I know that Death Shroud HP is based on Vitality, but surely armor still has an effect when it comes to damage reduction, so why not build toughness for DS?

Since life force is increased in percentages, you get more “health” per % of death shroud recovered. So in a way you gain not only base health, more death shroud health, but you also “increase” the amount of health recovered in life force and allow yourself to absorb more condition damage. Toughness only essentially increases the amount of direct damage you can take to your base health and death shroud.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

RockonHarder.7235:

If you look threw some of today threads someone said that the number one rated player in spvp is a necro and when i looked up his build it was alot of Vitality. Unfortunately he didn’t have gear on the page just jewelery and runes.

In the end though it’s all about your play style.

Eh, sure, but not for this conversation. For this conversation it’s a lot about the math. What gets you the most bang. Playstyle choices may derive from getting traits or runes that benefit from toughness, but aside from that it’s straight math. Which I haven’t done. If I had to guess I’m guessing a balance of both gets you the most for your money. But as necros already have high base HP, I’m not sure what the magic numbers are.

You can not even stack vit over toughness in Spvp/Tpvp unless you go the terrible carrion path…. Every high rank 40+ or tpvp necro that impressed me I have talked to runs with 1600+ toughness at least.

Xom.9264:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

RockonHarder.7235:

If you look threw some of today threads someone said that the number one rated player in spvp is a necro and when i looked up his build it was alot of Vitality. Unfortunately he didn’t have gear on the page just jewelery and runes.

In the end though it’s all about your play style.

Eh, sure, but not for this conversation. For this conversation it’s a lot about the math. What gets you the most bang. Playstyle choices may derive from getting traits or runes that benefit from toughness, but aside from that it’s straight math. Which I haven’t done. If I had to guess I’m guessing a balance of both gets you the most for your money. But as necros already have high base HP, I’m not sure what the magic numbers are.

You can not even stack vit over toughness in Spvp/Tpvp unless you go the terrible carrion path…. Every high rank 40+ or tpvp necro that impressed me I have talked to runs with 1600+ toughness at least.

This is right on the money. As i said before, the good sweet spot for HP is around 23k hp, and figuring our base at lv 80 is 18k hp, you’ll only really need to find about 500ish vitality points to add on. Pick up an amulet with that stat in it, and then find toughness.

I’ve stated in another thread that 2700 armor vs. 1800 armor(our base) equals roughly 50% damage reduction. And that’s only the medium area of how high you can get it through toughness. Necros can manage 3100+ armor through toughness and other sources in the trait lines but there is only so much toughness you need before you start unbalancing your build.

~2700 armor (or 1600-1700 toughness) is an amazing way to double the lifespan of your character. LITERALLY.

just make sure your HP pool is high. I’ve currently specced in to hold a 31k hp pool in PvE and that’s the highest it can go right now w/o ascended gear. (I’m not saying you should stack vit though, it’s just something i challenged myself with)

A very strong baseline for Necro tPvP is 2700 armor and 23-25k HP. That alone will make you last over twice as long as any Necro glass cannon build.