Guild Wars 2

Is there a minimum toughness or vitality/health for Necromancers when it comes to WvW? How much Tougness and Vitality do you recommend?

I don’t use any. It depends on what you are planning to do, and with what build.

Are you going to be zerging, small group, solo? Are you using a staff/scepter or are you going to be closer range than that?

I’m thinking of Dagger/Focus and Staff roaming.

Then I would suggest finding a balance that you like. You don’t “need” a minimum amount to do it, but find the amount that suits your playstyle best. Some people are fine with having little to none so they can max their damage (enemy can’t kill you if he’s already dead), and other people like more stats so they have more leeway to make mistakes.

Otayz, thank you.

Due to the way the game mechanics work and the necros base stats the most effective way is to keep toughness and vitality as equal as possible.

nachtnebel.9168:

Due to the way the game mechanics work and the necros base stats the most effective way is to keep toughness and vitality as equal as possible.

could you explain that please?

The damage formula is as follows:
Power * Weapon Strength * Skill Ratio / Armor = Total Damage

Power*Weapon Strength * Skill Ration can be seen as damage done or “Raw Damage” of an attack.
Raw Damage / Armor = Total Damage

The effecitve HP (amount of raw damage a char can take before he dies) is
EHP = Armor * Health
since Total Damage equals the maximum health of our char.
1 point Vitality gives you 10 HP and 1 point Toughness gives you 1 Armor and, since EHP is the product of Armor and Health it is best to keep these two factors as equal as possible.
Example:
10 × 10 = 100
now we increase one factor by 10
20 × 10 = 200
but if we increase both factors by 5
15 × 15 = 225

So, basically this would mean that we should have 10 times much Health as we have Armor. And since the necros bast stats in lvl 80 endgame gear are 1836 Armor and 18372 Health this means we should always have as much toughness as we have vitality.

nachtnebel.9168:

The damage formula is as follows:
Power * Weapon Strength * Skill Ratio / Armor = Total Damage

Power*Weapon Strength * Skill Ration can be seen as damage done or “Raw Damage” of an attack.
Raw Damage / Armor = Total Damage

The effecitve HP (amount of raw damage a char can take before he dies) is
EHP = Armor * Health
since Total Damage equals the maximum health of our char.
1 point Vitality gives you 10 HP and 1 point Toughness gives you 1 Armor and, since EHP is the product of Armor and Health it is best to keep these two factors as equal as possible.
Example:
10 × 10 = 100
now we increase one factor by 10
20 × 10 = 200
but if we increase both factors by 5
15 × 15 = 225

So, basically this would mean that we should have 10 times much Health as we have Armor. And since the necros bast stats in lvl 80 endgame gear are 1836 Armor and 18372 Health this means we should always have as much toughness as we have vitality.

Well said, but only true for direct damage. Conditions ignore toughness, so maybe a little more vitality than toughness should hit the sweetspot..?

flow.6043:

Well said, but only true for direct damage. Conditions ignore toughness, so maybe a little more vitality than toughness should hit the sweetspot..?

In a normal fight you will suffer way more direct damage than condition damage and as a necro we can easily get rid of conditions if we want to.

In fact there are a lot more factors you have to consider (spike damage, constant healing, healing spikes, …) so it’s almost impossible to tell which ration would be the best. But, as far as I can tell, keeping your vitality and toughness roughly at the same level works pretty well.

My rule of thumb is to base it off of how much healing you expect to get and how much cleansing you expect to get. Toughness makes healing more efficient. Vitality makes it less efficient. If you have a lot of healing sources then you can probably get by with less toughness. If you only have one, then you will probably want as much toughness as possible so you can squeeze every ounce of heal efficiency out as possible. You’ll also want as many cleanses as you can get (Consume Conditions does double duty here as both heal and cleanse), because bleeds will hurt way more.

Like Pin said, toughness scales much better with healing, while vitality protects against burst damage and conditions.

On that note, you have to realize that DS will also scale with vitality, so if you have more sources of LF generation then vitality scales well.

what pin and bhawb said. there are way more variables that just toughness, vita and dmg.
nec has 1836 armor, 18372 life and ~10800 DS-health base and all healing, soulreaping, life force (de-)generation and cond.-removal has to be taken into account.

since necros have rather good condition removal, i focus more on toughness and barely put anything into vita.
so far that served me really well.

If you are getting bursted down before you can activate defenses, or get away, I would add Vitality, perhaps even without losing toughness.

If you are in a lot of long fights where you survive a long time, toughness is going to save you more life in the long run. Personally, I like toughness more, because with death shroud we can eat burst so that our life doesn’t have to. Toughess also makes healing and life steal better.

Rule of thumb defensive stat for necros by build:
Minions, Condition damage on crit, Secondary condition spread- toughness
Crit zerker and true hybrid – vitality
Supportive well (and probably siphoning when they fix it)- healing power