Guild Wars 2

With condition damage scaling more after the patch, i.e., starting lower for those who do not invest, will other stat’s like toughness do the same?

If so, will that mean not investing in toughness will make Necromancer even squishier out of DS than it is now?

We have learned to ignore toughness as an investment but I do wonder if it will stay that way or if the change will make it scale more, too.

Start your speculation!

I haven’t heard anything about changing the way other stats work, but If you took Death Magic at any time and don’t have primary toughness gear, those builds are going to lose some toughness damage reduction. This goes for other stats you traited for but didn’t invest in of course.

Toughness is ignored because the viability of sustain builds currently is questionable. So vitality is favoured because hardly any necros built healing power and power necros benefit more from vitality so condis don’t eat them up.

However, with more damage reduction becoming available, sustain becoming more viable and siphons working through shroud, the toughness + healing power combo may become a lot more popular due to it increasing effective healing/health.

Remember toughness also affects shroud. The logic being the more damage reduction you have the less damage you take from foes. Less damage from foes means less damage for heals and regens to restore over time. Which means more effective health and healing. The drawback? Poison kills healing and DPS condis ignore armor/damage reduction.

Regardless, the closer you get to canceling out incomming damage with incoming healing, the better this combo becomes compared to vitality. If you get close to net 0 damage you will never die, while a vitality and even a vitality+toughness toon would.

The added benefit of healing through shroud is that your effective net healing within it is 100%. So as longer you stay in shroud the better. Toughness will go a long way in reducing damage from power builds and in some cases will allow you to stay in DS longer than more vitality. Once condis get into the mix that fails though and vitality wins out.

Edit: Another thing to consider is that currently its hard to build for sustain and have DPS as Necro. Changes to condis, the addition of Reaper, the extra trait points and the baselining/merging of traits will help with this. It will be much easier to pick up traits to counter balance taking toughness and possibly healing power as stats.

I dont recall seeing changes to toughness, so i highly doubt that toughness changed in any way. So i would say no to your question.

Though toughness may become a more desireable stat with the rework of bloodmagic.

If I remember toughness is going to be baseline for all, but it will be more dependant on the gear you wear. I’ve already invested into Ascended Dire gear (Precision, toughness, condition damage) so I’m set.