Guild Wars 2

Hello, all. The purpose of this thread is to determine mathematically whether Necromancers should prefer stacking Toughness or Vitality, how strongly we should preference one over the other and whether that changes from build to build.

Here was my post from another thread attempting to tackle the issue:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ok, so let me see if I can get the math straight. This assumes DS is 120% of our max HP.

30/30/10 hybrid build. S/D + Staff, no utilities that give LF. I’m using Carrion and Rabid amulets here but all that really matters for our purposes here is Vitality and Toughness.

Vitality
24,812 HP, 0% damage reduction (for our purposes), 24,812 EHP.
DS: 29,774 EHP, lose 1,191 per second, gain 893 per condition with Feast of Corruption and 1,191 per target struck with Staff’s autoattack (up to 3,573 per cast).

Toughness
18,373 HP, 33% damage reduction, 24,436 EHP.
DS: 22,048 HP/29,326 EHP, lose 881/1,173 per second, gain 661/880 per condition with Feast of Corruption and 881/1,173 per target struck with Staff’s autoattack (up to 2,643/3,515 per cast).

So in a low-LF regen build, it looks like it’s pretty much a wash between the two from the perspective of the raw numbers. Normally, this would mean Toughness is simply better than Vitality in the long run, but there’s a wrinkle: Toughness has no effect on Life Force while DS is down and ideal DS usage involves only using DS for relatively short periods of time. As a result, DS amounts to pure burst mitigation for ideal playstyles, which means the Toughness-vs-Vitality debate is indeed a wash when it comes to DS. Both stats provide a roughly equivalent amount of protection there.

This means that in a low-DS build like this, the question becomes exactly the same as with other professions: how well can you heal? This particular build doesn’t have great healing, but the numbers are also so close that I’m inclined to give the edge to Toughness anyway with the caveat that DS being used to buy time for a heal could skew things a bit more towards Vitality, but probably not very much.

Now, let’s look at a power build: 30/0/10/0/30, Dagger/Dagger+Axe/Focus

Vitality
24,812 HP, 0% damage reduction (for our purposes), 24,812 EHP. (The same as before.)
DS: 38706 EHP, lose 1,548 per second, gain 3,406 per Dagger autoattack chain, 5,109 per Axe #2, 6,386 per Focus #4, and 3,406 per second from Spectral Armor (assuming Gluttony works with it).

Toughness
18,373 HP, 33% damage reduction, 24,436 EHP. (Also the same as before.)
DS: 28,662 HP/38,120 EHP, lose 1,146/1,525 per second, gain 2,522/3,354 per Dagger autoattack chain, 3,783/5,031 per Axe #2, 4,729/6,290 per Focus #4, and 2,522/3,354 per second from Spectral Armor (again, assuming Gluttony works with it).

At this point, the loss/second is much closer but all the other gains are notably higher for the Vitality build. A build that relies on rapidly gaining LF and entering DS frequently is going to get a lot more damage mitigation over time by stacking Vitality than by stacking Toughness, simply because those 100s from all your regen sources are going to add up much more quickly than your meager healing effects when outside of DS. I can’t find the numbers for how much LF you get back from dying foes, but in a PvE situation with a lot of nearby deaths, Vitality builds will almost certainly blow Toughness builds out of the water in DS survivability, potentially to the point of overkill.

Furthermore, a build that spends a significant amount of time using Axe #2, Dagger #2, and DS#4 and makes use of the Dark Armor trait will drop the damage mitigation disparity from 33% to 27% while channeling, pushing the meter even further in a Vitality amulet’s direction. You also want to emphasize a rugged LF bar to take better advantage of Strength of the Undead: a build that allows you to stay above 50% LF for even one more hit will give you better damage as well as better defense.

(Continued on next post)

Blaine Tog.8304:

Conclusion: When it comes to simple damage mitigation, Toughness should generally be preferred in builds that don’t dip deeply into Soul Reaping and don’t have very good LF generation while Vitality is better for builds with heavy SR investments and more LF generation sources. As usual, how much healing you expect to get plays into this decision as well (a 30/0/10/0/30 Necro who focuses on autoattacking in Dagger while facetanking a dungeon boss running with a Water Ele and support Guardian to heal him may prefer Toughness anyway regardless of its inferior LF generation).

However, unlike with other professions, both stats will still give a roughly comparable amount of tankiness regardless of build. While one stat may be a bit better or a bit worse for your survivability than the other, the other two stats on the Amulet should be what informs your decision, not whether it has Toughness or Vitality. We would need a different set of calculations entirely to compare Power and Crit Chance for condi and hybrid builds to decide between Rabid and Carrion.

I took the 120% estimation because that’s what a number of community members were estimating, but now we have a red response:

BillFreist.1527:

Your Life Force pool is still the same as it has always been. 60% of your maximum health while alive, plus an additional 0-30% of that base value for Traits, meaning you can have a maximum of 78% of your max health.

Consequently, this deserves its own topic. I’ll see if I can find the time later to update my math, but I’d like to start the discussion now and see what comes of it.

I don’t have any math to support it, but 60% just feels wrong. With the build that I use in PvP, that is 12k HP, which is not much at all to go through when you consider that LF also degens and you aren’t healing yourself.

However, I’ll grab someone from my guild later to test it out.

Like I said in the other thread:
If you have 0% with carrion you can’t have 33% with rabid in the same build, and vice versa.
If you have 33% with rabid, then you have 10% with carrion. 0% carrion, 25% rabid.

I believe a Dev said toughness reduces damage taken in DS aswell. Was at some point in the last few months. That makes toughness a clear winner due to healing. Even if toughness didnt help DS, I would still always take toughness to be able to heal up more efficiently. The only time id use any defensive thats are in WvW or PvP, so having vitality to absorb boss burst is not relevant.

Ok, 60% is definitely not true. Or if it is, some sort of unmentioned damage mitigation is happening with DS.

I hopped on my Necro, filled up my LF bar, and tried dropping from the cliffs behind the 60-80 Glory Vendors in the Heart of the Mists. I was packing a Carrior amulet, so my full health was at 28,312

The fall from the spot I dropped from dealt 15,338 points of damage, or about 54% of my health. I then went and dropped from that same spot, only this time I flashed into DS at the last moment (natural degen, therefore, did not kick in). I took a screenshot of my DS bar after the fall and compared the pixel size of the area I’d lost with the pixel size of the full bar. The fall only took about 43% of my Life Force, which implies my full LF total is 35,670 with 0 in Soul Reaping, or 126% my health. If we assume my estimation of how much LF I lost was only approximatelly correct, that puts this roughly in line what other people have been saying: that DS still appears to be 120% of our max health.

(Cross-posting this to the thread with the Red post in the hopes of clarification).

I got soldier armor set for my MM necro ( P\T\V ).
I land all my marks then switch for dagger\focus and use 4th skill , spaming 1st one then transform to a shadow (DS) ( use all the 5 skills ).
I find my self an immortal in PvE and kind of in dungeons .
http://tinyurl.com/mw4pqgj

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ok, 60% is definitely not true. Or if it is, some sort of unmentioned damage mitigation is happening with DS.

I hopped on my Necro, filled up my LF bar, and tried dropping from the cliffs behind the 60-80 Glory Vendors in the Heart of the Mists. I was packing a Carrior amulet, so my full health was at 28,312

The fall from the spot I dropped from dealt 15,338 points of damage, or about 54% of my health. I then went and dropped from that same spot, only this time I flashed into DS at the last moment (natural degen, therefore, did not kick in). I took a screenshot of my DS bar after the fall and compared the pixel size of the area I’d lost with the pixel size of the full bar. The fall only took about 43% of my Life Force, which implies my full LF total is 35,670 with 0 in Soul Reaping, or 126% my health. If we assume my estimation of how much LF I lost was only approximatelly correct, that puts this roughly in line what other people have been saying: that DS still appears to be 120% of our max health.

(Cross-posting this to the thread with the Red post in the hopes of clarification).

I’ve made the fall test too and, regardless the fact that I’ve got a little bit of variance on the fall damage, any possible result don’t fit the possibility that LF pool is 60% of the max HP.

We should try another test, maybe something with steady weapon. Why would developers spread false informations?

I bet something in the formula is doubling LF health that the Anet code writers didn’t catch.

spoj.9672:

I believe a Dev said toughness reduces damage taken in DS aswell.

If this is true, it doesn’t matter how much hp you have in Deathshroud.

Your EHP are HP * Armor
HP = 18000 (base hp for necro) + (additional vitality) x 10 (bc 1 vit = 10 HP)
= 18000 + v x 10

Armor = 920 (base defens from exotic light gear) + (additional toughness)
= 920 + 916 + t

EHP = (18000 + v x 10) x (920 + 916 + t)

If we interpert 18000 base hp as 1800 base vitality, we can rewrite this as

EHP = 10 x (1800 + v) x (1836 + t)

Now we can maximize this function. Remember: f(t,v) is max if and only if 10 x f(t,v) is max. And since this 10 was the amount of hp we get out of 1 vit, DS doesnt matter. If DS is 120% your HP, then 1 vit would grant 22 HP – and nothing would change. If one vit gives you 1.000.000.000 HP, the optimal vit/tough-ratio would not change.

Something like a x b (under the domain a + b = constant) is maximized for a = b. Since 1800 ~ 1836 this means – to achieve the maximal amout of EHP – you have to balance tough and vit.

PS.: Probably bad english^^ go ahead and ask questions if something is not clear.

spoj.9672:

I believe a Dev said toughness reduces damage taken in DS aswell.

I recall this too. Steady weapon test would clarify.

I did some calculations like Molch did. For these calculations, I used my build which has 20 points in Death Magic and 10 points in Blood Magic. I am assuming the choice is between Rabid and Carrion stats.

Basic Information:
Base Health: 18372
Base Armor: 1836

From exotic weapons, armor, and ascended trinkets you can acquire a total of 728 stats. I will assume from runes (undead or necromancer) you will also receive 50. Since I have 300 stats from traits, I will add that in for a total of 1078 available stat points.

The formula for calculating how much ‘attack’ it takes to bring you from full health to zero (no healing) would be:
[total health] = [# of hits] * [weapon damage] * [power] * [skill coeff] / [armor]

I will simplify this to
[total health] = z / [armor]
[total health] * [armor] = z

And we want to maximize z.

Let
V = Vitality from stats
T = Toughness from stats

Subbing in the base stats, we get
(18372 + 10*V) * (1836 + T) = z

And we know
V + T = 1078 or V = 1078 – T

Subbing for T:
(18372 + 10*V) * (1836 + 1078 – V) = (18372 + 10*V) * (2914 – V) = z
k + V*10768 – 10*V*V = z

To maximize, we take the derivative and set to 0:
10768 – 20*V = 0

V = 538.4
T = 539.6

Conclusion: If you want to maximize the amount of time it takes to get you from full health to zero with no healing, you basically want an equal amount of vitality and toughness from your weapons, armor, trinkets, runes, and trait points. Take that for what it’s worth.

Since I have 200 toughness and 100 vitality from traits, I would want to achieve about 438 vitality and 340 toughness from the other sources.

My own tests lead me to conclude that armor:health ratio of 1:10 is your best bet. This is not only limited to necromancers.
I don’t want to infest the thread with even more math.

1:10 has always been the case for other classes. But with Necromancers, it is vitality, assuming you are getting enough LF generation, because vitality becomes a sustain stat as well, instead of toughness having full reign over it.

But… LF generation and ticking is percent-based, and damage taken while in DS goes through armor just like damage taken to your normal HP…
If anything, even MORE toughness could theoretically work if you can consistently use full DS in fights, thanks to DS increasing effective HP.
Is there something I’m missing?

Nope your not missing anything. Your right.

Vitality is only good for low hp classes that need to survive a bit more burst.

The Boz.2038:

But… LF generation and ticking is percent-based, and damage taken while in DS goes through armor just like damage taken to your normal HP…
If anything, even MORE toughness could theoretically work if you can consistently use full DS in fights, thanks to DS increasing effective HP.
Is there something I’m missing?

DS doesn’t simply increase your EHP, though. Unlike with your health bar, Vitality both increases your base Life Force total and also increases your DS’s “Healing Power.” LF also scales off Vitality at a rate other than 10:1 (6:1 according to the dev post, ~12:1 according to community tests).

What this means is the values of Toughness and Vitality are likely different to the Necromancer than they are for the other professions. You can’t simply follow the 10:1 rule of thumb because Vitality is pulling double-duty and appears to scale harder. Toughness may still win out, but that comes down to Necro-specific math.

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Boz.2038:

But… LF generation and ticking is percent-based, and damage taken while in DS goes through armor just like damage taken to your normal HP…
If anything, even MORE toughness could theoretically work if you can consistently use full DS in fights, thanks to DS increasing effective HP.
Is there something I’m missing?

DS doesn’t simply increase your EHP, though. Unlike with your health bar, Vitality both increases your base Life Force total and also increases your DS’s “Healing Power.” LF also scales off Vitality at a rate other than 10:1 (6:1 according to the dev post, ~12:1 according to community tests).

What this means is the values of Toughness and Vitality are likely different to the Necromancer than they are for the other professions. You can’t simply follow the 10:1 rule of thumb because Vitality is pulling double-duty and appears to scale harder. Toughness may still win out, but that comes down to Necro-specific math.

Vitality doesnt increase your “DS healing power”, it doesnt effect lifeforce generation, it just makes you get more hp per 1% lifeforce. But toughness reduced damage in DS so its more beneificial to both your base hp and your lifeforce seeing as you can heal your base hp up faster and DS is always the same rate of lifeforce generation. Vitality is for burst but we definately dont need anymore burst absorption when we have 19k hp and a second health bar.

I tanked a Jade maw laser again today in full beserker. Last time it took me down to 40%, this time it took me down to about 3%. I suspect i might of had last gasp active the first time and some mobs died around me immediately to put it back to 40%.

There is some ratio, but as Blaine pointed out it is likely to be much more heavily towards HP than armor than the 10:1. Also, when I’m talking vit/toughness I’m thinking more PvP, where you can’t afford to do both, whereas in PvE you can do just fine having a little of both.

@spoj, yes it does. If you have twice the HP, then each 1% LF you gain is now double the eHP gained. So it therefore effectively increases the HP you gain.

Bhawb.7408:

There is some ratio, but as Blaine pointed out it is likely to be much more heavily towards HP than armor than the 10:1. Also, when I’m talking vit/toughness I’m thinking more PvP, where you can’t afford to do both, whereas in PvE you can do just fine having a little of both.

@spoj, yes it does. If you have twice the HP, then each 1% LF you gain is now double the eHP gained. So it therefore effectively increases the HP you gain.

Yes thats what i said, but poorly worded. But toughness has the exact same end effect as you lose less when your hit. So vitality over toughness is a bad choice unless you need to absorb ridiculous burst and have no interest in healing yourself.

I believe you are making a deductive error, spoj.
If you promote toughness to be better because heals are more effective, then vitality makes lf regen for your lf pool more effective because it’s percentage based… simple as that.

flow.6043:

I believe you are making a deductive error, spoj.
If you promote toughness to be better because heals are more effective, then vitality makes lf regen for your lf pool more effective because it’s percentage based… simple as that.

But in what world does lifeforce generation heal your base hp….

Toughness makes your lifeforce generated more efficient because even though the amount of EHP gained isnt as much, you also dont lose as much. Its balanced. Not sure how you guys are failing to see that.

It doesn’t… but that has nothing to do with lf regen giving you more hit points in shroud if you have more vitality.

I see where you’re going with this, but toughness isn’t overshadowing vitality to the point that you can take more hits without healing. In fact, with vitality alone you have a higher EHP, therefore healing in and out of DS is relevant.

Let me put it like this.

Imagine that your total LF weren’t governed by Vitality at all. Let’s say you have 10,000 “HP” worth of LF as the base, with 0:1 Vitality scaling. In this scenario, Toughness would be far and away the best Necro stat because it would give the Necro everything everyone else gets (increasing health bar’s EHP) but it would also increase your DS’s EHP. Vit gear’s 6500 HP does nothing for you, whereas Toughness gear’s 400 Armor gives you +33% EHP, or +3,333 EHP while increasing all LF gains by 33%.

Now, let’s imagine that DS had ridiculous Vitality scaling, like 1,000,000:1. Base Vitality is 916, so at a base you would get 916 million HP, with +92 million per 10% regen (a few thousand more from the Necro’s high base health, but base health only scales at 1:1 so it’s ignorable for our purposes).

Stack Toughness gear and your DS gives you 1.22 billion EHP with +120 million per 10% gain. Stack Vitality gear and it would give you 2.4 billion EHP with + 240 million per 10% gain.

The point is, scaling matters. Toughness’ effect is static: +33% EHP. Vitality’s effect, however, is magnified greatly based on how well it scales. You can check the first post for my math about how the two stats break down at 12:1 Vit scaling.

spoj.9672:

Toughness makes your lifeforce generated more efficient because even though the amount of EHP gained isnt as much, you also dont lose as much.

Making 10 points more efficient by 1 point wouldn’t give you as much as simply adding 10 points to 10 points. Efficiency doesn’t inherently give you more mitigation. It depends on the specific numbers.

And Id still take toughness. Because DS is not going to heal me. Effective healing is way more important than effective health points. Like I said before, vitality is only useful to absorb burst (we dont need any, we can absorb enough with our base hp + DS)

And yes it does depend on the numbers, so vitality could grant more sustain in DS. But thats not the point is it. The point is which is better for a necro and that is toughness without a doubt.

spoj.9672:

Effective healing is way more important than effective health points.

Exactly… vitality makes life force regen more effective.
Life force can be regenerated more reliably than our regular hp pool can be healed, also our lf pool is now 120%. Clearly you can generate more hitpoints with vitality instead of toughness, and by that I mean more than armor could mitigate without extra vitality.

spoj.9672:

And Id still take toughness. Because DS is not going to heal me.

First of all, you’re not going to sit in DS. You’re going to use it for burst mitigation, then you’re going to get out and regen it. Generating a full LF bar takes the exact same amount of time for every stat configuration, but with some scaling you’d end up with 11 Effective Points for Toughness and 20 for Vitality whereas with others it might be the other way around.

Second of all, DS doesn’t heal you, but it does heal itself based off its total amount, which means based off your HP. So if it’s 20 for Vit and 11 for Toughness but you can regen it to full every 10 seconds, then that 9-point difference between the two will only grow as time goes on, not shrink like it does with regular health. Because with regular health, healing is not proportional to your Vitality. Increasing your Vitality actually increases the amount of time it takes to heal to full, but that’s not the case with DS regen.

Here’s another example:

Let’s say you’re running a college club. You get a certain amount of club funds, and those funds are refreshed each semester.

Your club does something for the school that the school’s president thinks is noteworthy, so she gives you a choice: either you get a special club credit card that gives you a discount on all club spending, or your club’s budget cap can be increased.

What you need to know to make the decision is the size of the discount and the size of the cap increase.

If the cap doubles but the discount is only 5%, then obviously you’d go with the cap increase (you’d be getting twice as many dollars per semester whereas the card would only give you 1.05 times as many dollars per semester), whereas if your cap were increased by 5% but the discount were for 50% then you’d go for that. Regardless, it depends on the specifics. The card isn’t always better here because of the direct relationship between dollars gained and total cap size.

Again, I would urge you to look at my math in the first post. For the DS-heavy build I threw together as an example, using Axe 2 would grant you 5,109 EHP with Vit stacking but only 5,031 with Toughness stacking.

flow.6043:

spoj.9672:

Effective healing is way more important than effective health points.

Exactly… vitality makes life force regen more effective.
Life force can be regenerated more reliably than our regular hp pool can be healed, also our lf pool is now 120%. Clearly you can generate more hitpoints with vitality instead of toughness, and by that I mean more than armor could mitigate without extra vitality.

Effective hit points. What Spoj is saying is that toughness also raises the ehp gained from lf generation skills, and he is correct.

However the numbers in the first post do show that vitality is 1-2% more effective than toughness despite this. They don’t include any heals though.

Say you FoC 3 times on recharge, that’s a 2640 gain for toughness, and a 2679 gain for vitality. In the same amount of time you can CC once for around 6k for vitality, and 8k for toughness. Even if you’re spamming staff1 for some reason, and consistently hitting 3 targets, the difference is still outdone by a single heal. That’s before we get into regeneration, stacked healing power, selfless daring guards, water eles, engi turrets, so on and so forth.

You guys are assuming you never take damage out of DS. Thats not the case. There is literally no benefit to kittening yourself over with your main hp pool just to make your class mechanic a bit better at sustaining. If you take damage on your base hp your going to need to heal it back up, but if youve stacked vitality your heal skill is gonna heal you for a lower percentage of your hp. You will get slowly warn down because you cant sustain your main hp pool properly. Your primary health bar is more important than your class mechanic, dont forget that.

I understand what you guys are saying, but in practise its a stupid way to build. Its good in theory if you can avoid all damage except when in DS, which just isnt possible in most cases.

And +1 to Mammoth.

I know what spoj meant to say, but vitality EHP is higher than the one you get with the same amount of toughness.

Also, your example

Mammoth.1975:

Say you FoC 3 times on recharge, that’s a 2640 gain for toughness, and a 2679 gain for vitality. In the same amount of time you can CC once for around 6k for vitality, and 8k for toughness. Even if you’re spamming staff1 for some reason, and consistently hitting 3 targets, the difference is still outdone by a single heal.

I don’t know why Blaine always uses an extra 33% damage mitigation for rabid, that amount is false. The difference is about 8-10% less depending on the build. Worst case scenario: 25%. That means a 6k heal on carrion without any toughness at all is worth 7,5k with rabid relative to the total hp pool.

Anyway, you assume that your lf regen is the worst possible. First of all: Necrotic grasp can hit up to 5 targets. You could also have Spectral skills equipped. Dagger main, Locust Swarm, Ghastly Claws.. maybe even traited for lower cds.
It is circumstantial but theoretically you can max out your lf bar many times over by the time you get to use one measly 6-8k heal to your regular hp pool.

And let’s not forget that there are also conditions, which ignore armor completely.

Even if you were hitting 5 targets. Even if you were hitting 10 targets. Even if people were spamming into your spectral wall. 2% is 2%, and it’s not 8%, 10%, or 25%.

Just quickly, the difference between 2000 and 2500 armour is 20-25% vs an attack from a 1000 damage weapon with 2000 power and a .5 coefficient. I’m fairly certain that’s constant. Looking at the damage formula would suggest so, and it remains constant whenever I plug in different numbers. The only way I can see for rabid to be as low as 8% less incoming damage than carrion is if 569 armour is 8% of your total, which would be a build I’m interested in

spoj.9672:

If you take damage on your base hp your going to need to heal it back up, but if youve stacked vitality your heal skill is gonna heal you for a lower percentage of your hp. You will get slowly warn down because you cant sustain your main hp pool properly.

Like I said, an extra 1,5 k effective health per main heal on a 18k (rather than a 25k pool to begin with) doesn’t prevent you from getting warn down eventually.
Our heals are just incredibly ineffective, period.
Lf regen is a better way of sustaining hitpoints than having a high amount of toughness and bank on a slightly better heal every 25 seconds.

flow.6043:

spoj.9672:

If you take damage on your base hp your going to need to heal it back up, but if youve stacked vitality your heal skill is gonna heal you for a lower percentage of your hp. You will get slowly warn down because you cant sustain your main hp pool properly.

Like I said, an extra 1,5 k effective health per main heal on a 18k (rather than a 25k pool to begin with) doesn’t prevent you from getting warn down eventually.
Our heals are just incredibly ineffective, period.
Lf regen is a better way of sustaining hitpoints than having a high amount of toughness and bank on a slightly better heal every 25 seconds.

What you’re saying is definitely worth considering, but the thing is that for this particular case you have to be generating about 140% LF before the extra benefit DS seems to gain from vit over toughness matches up to the benefit tough gains over vit from a single consume conditions. If you can reliably generate more than 140% LF every 25s, yes, you’ll get more benefit from vit.

Yes our heals are ineffective but that means you should avoid making them even more ineffective. In PvP/WvW that small difference translates to a much bigger difference in sustain during a fight. In PvE its irelevant as taking any survivability stats are just a waste.

spoj.9672:

You guys are assuming you never take damage out of DS. Thats not the case. There is literally no benefit to kittening yourself over with your main hp pool just to make your class mechanic a bit better at sustaining.

Hold up. I’m not saying that DS is the only consideration. I’m saying it’s a consideration, and that the way it differs from your health bar needs to be taken into account. That’s all. And in that regard, it scales slightly better with Vitality than it does with Toughness. One may prefer Toughness anyway for other reasons and that’s totally valid, but you’ve spent the better part of this thread arguing that Toughness is unequivocally better for DS than Vitality, but that’s simply not true, which you seem to be tacitly acknowledging in your response here.

flow.6043:

I don’t know why Blaine always uses an extra 33% damage mitigation for rabid, that amount is false.

My math is in the first post, and I came up with a difference of 33% between a Carrion amulet and a Rabid amulet for a Necro with 10 points in Death. If I made an error, please show me where. I’m trying to be as analytical as possible here so any math errors we can uncover will help in that goal immensely.

spoj.9672:

Yes our heals are ineffective but that means you should avoid making them even more ineffective. In PvP/WvW that small difference translates to a much bigger difference in sustain during a fight. In PvE its irelevant as taking any survivability stats are just a waste.

Of course. What I’m trying to say is that you have to take everything into account before making a determination. Your healing sources, your LF regen, your LF pool, the (sometimes hidden) ratios involved, how you’ll be using DS, your build, etc etc, but we need to get each piece straight individually before we can put them together.

Toughness without any doubt,

Our sustainability is crap, our damage avoidance is crap, our base health is high and our condition management is excellent,

Stacking vitality will give you literally two seconds at most before you are helpless in the ground,

Life force in my opinion is an offensive asset and it should not be used to suck damage,

Unfortunately no vigor, no blocks, no invulnerability, no stability, no regen, no life steal and light armor make us to use it that way,

Engels.8537:

Toughness without any doubt,

Blaine Tog.8304:

Hello, all. The purpose of this thread is to determine mathematically whether Necromancers should prefer stacking Toughness or Vitality

;)

If Vitality and Toughness are pretty much on par for mitigation (calculations based on 100% direct damage) Carrion is clearly better because of conditions. We may be the best at taking care of them, we still eat alot of burning, poison and bleed stacks…

Having Last Gasp and running Spectral Armor most of the time, I generate a substantial amount of LF. And I tend to be in DS as soon as possible while being “spectral” to preserve health, using DS #1 to fill that extra time, thinking I also take advantage of the Power provided by Carrion. But am I right ?

Now, I wonder which one is better damage wise. But that could be tricky and depends on builds and alot of other things.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Engels.8537:

Toughness without any doubt,

Blaine Tog.8304:

Hello, all. The purpose of this thread is to determine mathematically whether Necromancers should prefer stacking Toughness or Vitality

;)

There’s nothing that can be proved mathematically in this game except critical chance // critical damage // power ratio (at some degree because there’s a lot of factors involved as well) and stats distribution on the equipment,

The vast majority of the damage that I receive comes from direct damage, damage I can’t avoid due no vigor, no blocks, no invulnerability, no stability,

Sorry If i destroyed your math bubble, but countless hours playing worth a little bit more than “math theory”, and vitality on necros will just delay our death a couple of seconds,

On the other hand toughness, condition managment and smart use of our few dodges with plage form right after our first heal will make us last a bit longer and be usefull in a group // solo fight,

Ara.4569:

If Vitality and Toughness are pretty much on par for mitigation (calculations based on 100% direct damage) Carrion is clearly better because of conditions. We may be the best at taking care of them, we still eat alot of burning, poison and bleed stacks…

Having Last Gasp and running Spectral Armor most of the time, I generate a substantial amount of LF. And I tend to be in DS as soon as possible while being “spectral” to preserve health, using DS #1 to fill that extra time, thinking I also take advantage of the Power provided by Carrion. But am I right ?

Now, I wonder which one is better damage wise. But that could be tricky and depends on builds and alot of other things.

They’re not though. As soon as you heal once, toughness is better. This is where this debate always ends though, because it’s simply not possible to figure out what percentage of the damage you take is going to be condition damage in every situation, or how much other healing you will receive based on your group composition and location etc.

If you’re stacking healing power with well of blood and siphons, running with a guard ele and engi, only facing power builds, you’ll get more sustain from toughness (although sustain is less important than EHP when facing pure power comps). If your only healing is coming from your 6 skill and mark of blood regen, plus you have really high LF generation and you’re facing necro engi spirit ranger, you might want to look into carrion for sustain.

As far as damage goes, carrion is better, which keeps builds running dhuumfire, and more to the point, sigil of earth, in check a little bit, being crit procs.

Personally, on my 30/20/0/0/20, I’m running rabid with carrion jewel. I feel like geomancy overextends me too much, and carrion with rabid jewel still isn’t enough crit for fast sigil of earth procs. I’m pretty sure my overall damage would nonetheless be higher with that setup, but I want armour ignoring damage, and I want to restack bleeds fast after each cleanse, to put more pressure on their ability to cleanse. Once you have the rabid amulet though, carrion jewel is both more offense and more defense than rabid jewel (because you want to balance vit and tough as much as possible for the best defense), so it seemed like an easy choice. If you have the carrion amulet, rabid jewel is more defense, but carrion jewel is still more offense (because the amount of power required to make crit equal it in value is unattainable), so it becomes an actual decision.

I’ll add my vote for Toughness. Let me list out my reasoning (sorry not much math but the EHP equation is already listed so consider work sited lol)

1. With both vitality and toughness your EHP is similar (devs are not dumb)
2. With a lower total HP but equivalent EHP you are able to sustain a lot better (heals do a larger % of yiur life pool)
3. Even though conditions are not affected by toughness we have so many tools to get rid of or convert conditions this is not an issue
4. Our naturally high HP makes gearing for toughness easy

Just my 2c I’m willing to bet its an even wash, a lot depends on your build and how skilled you are.

Good post btw +1

I’ll put it even more easy,

You want enough vitality to not overextend on your heal, after that point toughness is going to be better, specially on necros,

Some classes and play styles may favor vitality instead of toughness for example burst classes as thieves,

That’s because vitality scales much better than toughness (10:1 vs 1:1) and classes like this needs to be alive just enough to burst down an oponent and run,

Plus this classes has a lot of mitigation tools as stealth, vigor, dodges, etc

And this classes are fast enough to retreat if things go bad,

The necro (supposedly) is an attrition class, with no movement at all, with a huge base vitality and awesome condition control,

The biggest problem with any anecdotes is perception bias. For me, vitality has almost always outpreformed toughness, even on necromancers. What makes me wrong and the other guys right, then? Also, I notice people bring up toughness and healing, but they never bring up the faults of toughness and healing. I don’t think the evaluations are being very fair at this point.

The whole “EHP” thing is a good starting point. I say this because EHP is the overall durability you start the fight with. Often times, where you start can determine where you end, given all things are equal otherwise. Other people have done the calculus to prove EHP, but I’ll give the highschool example of this problem:

What is the maximum volume of a rectangle of any dimensions, but a perimeter of 100?

Should look familiar. The answer is a square of 25 × 25, which gives an area of 625. How does this apply to the tough/vitality debate? Well, it’s quite simple: toughness reduces all of your damage by a certain fraction, and this fraction is applied across all of a players HP. The more HP you have, the more toughness can reduce. They multiply each other, and this creates an “area” that is the EHP of any player. The overall effectiveness, therefore, is maximized simply by making the two sides of the rectangle equal in scale. 1 vitality = 10 HP, and 1 toughness = 1 armor, so you should have HP that is 10 times armor, given equal investment.

The necromancer is in a unique place because their HP and their armor are already at that ratio at base. No other class is like that. The most effective way to build for defense on a necro is never to say “one or the other” but “both”. It is always “both”.

Now, a lot of people bring up healing and toughness, saying you should stack wholly in toughness. There are certain advantages and disadvantages to this.

Advantages:
*Heals are more effective

Disadvantages:
*Start with less durability
*More vulnerable to condition damage
*Heals are not guaranteed

The big question is, are those disadvantages worth the advantage of having a higher heal. To that, I’m not so sure. Building for EHP already increases your healing potential, so it isn’t like you are losing too much in the first place from healing. My biggest caveat with banking on heals is that your heals aren’t guaranteed. There are times innumerable where I have managed to kill another player by bursting past their heal, interrupting their heal, or stun locking them to prevent their heal. Necros can do it all the time with terror bursts and the Flesh Golem. It has also happened to me time and again, even on the necromancer. You just get ambushed, get stomped into the ground, or get chain-stunned to death. Sometimes you’ll even use your heal on the enemy disengage, where they’ll reset the fight and now leave you heal-less for round 2.

The second issue is that toughness does nothing to mitigate conditions. While it is true that necromancers have some good condition cleanses, the bad news is that they’re only packing 1 or 2 at most. Consume Conditions, and then the recently nerfed Putrid Mark. Deathly swarm fails as a condition cleansing mechanic. When Consume Conditions is on cooldown, those enemy conditions can become painful. While it is true that necromancers are in a better spot against conditions due to their already high hit points, having more HP to absorb those conditions will still help all the more.

So, how much does each buy you? Well, using Kipler’s numbers of 1078, putting either all into toughness or 539 into into both toughness and vitality, we get the following:

Splitting stats: 23,766 HP, 2375 Armor, EHP = HP x (2376/1836) = HP x 1.294 = 30,756 EHP. Heals are 29.4% more effective.

Stacking into ttoughness: 18,376 HP, 2914 Armor, EHP = HP x (2914 /1836) = HP x 1.587 = 29165. Heals are 58.7% more effective.

Difference = 1591

Consume conditions base heal of 5,240. Maximized EHP has an effective heal of 6781. Toughness has an effective heal of 8316.

Difference = 1,535

So in the end, the increased healing efficiency of a pure toughness only puts it at around the same durability as an EHP maximized build. Whether it is less or more depends on how many conditions are consumed. When we compare this to the fact that the EHP build has 29.3% more raw HP with which to absorb condition damage, and that you may not always get to use consume conditions in the battle, then raw toughness stacking doesn’t have much going for it.

There is a case you can make for toughness stacking, and that is assuming there are battles where you can get to use Consume Conditions multiple times in the same battle without stats resetting. Though I find them to be quite rare, it still must be brought up for fairness sake. It is here that, if you are in one of these battles and the opponent is not using conditions, then the extra healing will outpace the maximum EHP standard.

Engels.8537:

There’s nothing that can be proved mathematically in this game except critical chance // critical damage // power ratio (at some degree because there’s a lot of factors involved as well) and stats distribution on the equipment,

Nonsense. The defensive side of the direct damage paradigm works off formulas as much as the offensive side.

Engels.8537:

Sorry If i destroyed your math bubble, but countless hours playing worth a little bit more than “math theory”, and vitality on necros will just delay our death a couple of seconds,

On the subject of play time, try typing /age into chat the next time you log on.

You’re free to sneer but anecdotal evidence is notoriously inaccurate. It’s good to start with as objective a foundation as possible when trying to make determinations, and in this case, math can go a long way towards helping derive general principles. I don’t necessarily disagree that Toughness is a better stat, I just want to be able to say whether it is or not with more certainty than “some guy on the internet said he lives longer with toughness gear.”

@Blood Red Arachnid,

Thank you, that was a very interesting read.

It’s pointless to argue the ‘best’ stat to choose, because it all depends on the build, the game mode, the meta, blah blah blah – it all changes what you might need.

In general if I was forced to choose however, I would say vitality.

As everyone knows, a 10:1 health:armor ratio gives you the best EHP, but you have to remember that’s only against direct damage, on top of the fact that EHP might not be what’s ultimately needed.

Toughness reduces direct damage only, making it good for sustain against direct damage, as it makes all heals more meaningful. It does nothing to help against condition damage.

Vitality will make it take longer to kill you with both direct and condition damage but will give you no improved sustain against direct damage. having LF generation % based further improves condition damage sponging of vit investment.

Lastly, we have terrible sustain anyway, so building that way isn’t terribly competitive in the first place.

Also to talk about the current PvP meta, which is a heavy condi meta, looking at the normal burning/terror builds you can see why there is little reason for people to change the meta. We have a rabid amulet, that’s toughness. We (typically) have undead runes. More toughness. Some people still have investment in death magic, or atleast almost no terrormancers have investment in blood magic. So (sometimes) more toughness. That means we have zero defensive investment against condition damage (atleast stat wise), but a significant amount of resistance to direct damage. That is to say, beat condition builds… with more conditions.

Of course then you can argue that we have good access to condition removal so we don’t need to worry about conditions stat wise, or you might with your team have perm protection so not be so worried about direction damage. There’s a lot of factors, many of which are out of your control, so while you should still think carefully about which one to invest in (if you have the luxury of choice), but you should also remember that neither one is simply ‘better’, they are simply different.

As far as death shroud goes, I have two problems before I go on:

#1: I have no idea how DS works at the moment. What the devs say and what the players experience are opposite to one another. For now, I’ll assume players are right.
#2: Much like healing, I have no guarantee that Life Force will be readily available.

And with that, I do have to re-state that I am pretty sure that toughness and vitality are roughly equal to each other in DS as well as in direct HP. The reasoning for this is quite simple:

With DS being around 120% of a player’s HP, while vitality does increase this pool by 20% more than usual, there is 20% more HP for toughness to reduce damage upon. While vitality gives you more raw DS HP with life force gain, toughness makes the DS HP from Life Force that much harder to take down.

Most of the math explorations I’ve done on this reflect on this sentiment. For example, lets take a theoretical 20K HP, 2000 Armor class, and give either 500 points in toughness or vitality in DS.

20k HP x 1.2 for DS = 24K Health in DS
+500 Vitality gives 25K HP x 1.2 for DS = 30K Health in DS
+500 Toughness gives 25% more survivability, and 24K x 1.25 = 30K effective Health in DS.

Unless you are going by build specific specs, if we assume that toughness or vitality are independent from Life Force Generation (which works as a percentage), then life force will fill up at equal rates on both a toughness stacking and vitality stacking build.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Engels.8537:

There’s nothing that can be proved mathematically in this game except critical chance // critical damage // power ratio (at some degree because there’s a lot of factors involved as well) and stats distribution on the equipment,

Nonsense. The defensive side of the direct damage paradigm works off formulas as much as the offensive side.

Engels.8537:

Sorry If i destroyed your math bubble, but countless hours playing worth a little bit more than “math theory”, and vitality on necros will just delay our death a couple of seconds,

As far as play time, type /age into chat the next time you log on.

You’re free to sneer but anecdotal evidence is notoriously inaccurate. It’s good to start with as objective a foundation as possible, and in this case, math can go a long way towards helping derive general principles. I don’t necessarily disagree that Toughness is a better stat, I just want to be able to say whether it is or not with more certainty than “some guy on the internet said he lives longer with toughness gear.”

As you wish, obviously we got different ways to approach a problem, I’d rather to test than theorycraft,

I’m saying that we have the best condition control in game, that we start with a lot of hitpoints, and that we have almost no tools to avoid direct damage,

I’m telling you that hitpoints that are gone are useless, on the other hand toughness will help you the whole fight, i’m telling you necromancer has no way to regain hit points as a guardian, ranger or elementalist, i’m telling you that a necromancer can’t burst his oponent no matter the build (even if you focus that way there’s other classes more suitables to burst down enemies)

You are trying to calculate the best way to stop a cannon shot with your face and i’m telling you how to avoid it,

I’m out gl with that,

Anyone read my post, where I proofed, that it doesn’t matter if vit scales 1:1 or 1:100.000.000?

Yes, if you have more HP, the % based heal of DS gives you more total HP, but with more toughness and less vit, those lower hp are more worth, because you have more toughness to protect them.

Blaine Tog.8304:

flow.6043:

I don’t know why Blaine always uses an extra 33% damage mitigation for rabid, that amount is false.

My math is in the first post, and I came up with a difference of 33% between a Carrion amulet and a Rabid amulet for a Necro with 10 points in Death. If I made an error, please show me where. I’m trying to be as analytical as possible here so any math errors we can uncover will help in that goal immensely.

Tbh I always used build calculators to determine EHP and damage reduction. But assuming that they calculated correctly: 10 points in Death Magic w/o any additional toughness means 5,17% damage reduction. In sPvP a pure rabid amulet (+644) will total 1660 toughness, according to the calculator that gives you 28,8% damage reduction. So without any toughness from runes, 10 in DM and the only difference being the amulett: 23,6% more damage reduction for rabid, not 33%.
That means: 23664 EHP for rabid, 26094 EHP for carrion (10% higher, not just 2%)… if you only take direct damage, which absolutely never happens in a pvp environment.
Extreme example: a necro can fear/burn lock you into taking 5-10k damage in conditions, claiming that our cleanses are effective and conditions are therefore negligable is basically pretending that this damage is mitigated by armor…
So the EHP of carrion is actually a lot higher if you take conditions into cosideration as well. But for direct damage only: Rabid has a lower EHP and 1 main heal doesn’t put it ahead of carrion, which means the more lf you can generate (which is alot more reliable than healing your regular hp pool) the further ahead you’ll be with carrion.

….looks like I have to use weapons of math instruction…
Oh well.

Practical tools:
Necromancer in basic armor, no relevant runes, with a stat comparison between Toughness, Vitality and Health while using Rabid, Carrion, Soldier, Knight and Shaman amulets, no trait lines at all.

Theoretical tools: Attacker with a 1000 damage weapon with Power stat equal to lowest Armor (1836) for simplicity, attacking using a 1.0 ratio skill every 1.0 seconds.

All numbers rounded to nearest integer.

Case #1 – Brainded player with no bonus Vitality or Toughness
Total Armor: 1836
Total Health: 18372
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 18 seconds.

Case #2 – Rabid amulet
Total Armor: 2480
Total Health: 18372
Total Damage: 740 damage every second. Time to kill: 24 seconds.

Case #3 – Carrion amulet
Total Armor: 1836
Total Health: 24812
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 24 seconds.

Case #4 – Soldier Amulet
Total Armor: 2480
Total Health: 24812
Total Damage: 740 damage every second. Time to kill: 33 seconds.

Case #5 – Shaman Amulet
Total Armor: 2759
Total Health: 18372
Total Damage: 666 damage every second. Time to kill: 27 seconds.

Case #6 – Knight Amulet
Total Armor: 1836
Total Health: 27602
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 27 seconds.

From these simple tests, we can conclude that… on the necromancer, it is a toss-up. The necromancer already starts with the ideal health:toughness ratio, and buying any stat in the same amounts increases his staying power in exactly the same way….
HOWEVER, let’s muddy up the waters a bit. Enter the dash a cases! For these, we will be using one heal and a full, unmodified Life Force bar of 60% life, no traits. The heal used will be Consume Conditions, because it is significantly easier to calculate that one flat burst than the regenerating effects of the other heals. Regardless of the TTK, only one heal and one Death Shroud will be used for these. With no healing power and no conditions, Consume Conditions heals for 5240, and will be used only after five seconds of combat, after the necro has taken 6000 damage. Since I do not want to get logarithmic here, and simulating degeneration normally is bothersome, I’ll just ignore it for now. It is a non-issue, since we have previously demonstrated that both toughness and vitality are equally effective at increasing life expectancy against power damage, the expectation is that in all toughness-or-vitality cases, the DS duration will be the same.

Case 1-a – Somewhat less stupid necro
Total Armor: 1836
Optimally Expanded Health: 34635
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 34 seconds.

Case 2-a – Rabid expanded
Total Armor: 2480
Optimally Expanded Health: 34635
Total Damage: 740 damage every second. Time to kill: 46 seconds.

Case 3-a – Carrion expanded
Total Armor: 1836
Optimally Expanded Health: 44939
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 44 seconds.

Case 4-a – Soldier Expanded
Total Armor: 2480
Total Health: 44939
Total Damage: 740 damage every second. Time to kill: 60 seconds.

Case 5-a – Shaman Amulet
Total Armor: 2759
Total Health: 34635
Total Damage: 666 damage every second. Time to kill: 51 seconds.

Case 6-a – Knight Expanded
Total Armor: 1836
Total Health: 49403
Total Damage: 1000 damage every second. Time to kill: 49 seconds.

Death Shroud is irrelevant as an argument, the interaction with power damage is exactly the same as normal health, and it doesn’t take a genious to figure out that percentile generation works effectively identically in both cases.
Without heals, toughness wins by a small margin, and the difference is less than a single hit with the theoretical attacker. However, the more heals there are, the more effective toughness becomes. Similarly, the more conditions there are, the more effective vitality becomes. As necromancers, we have fairly mediocre heals, but we eat conditions for breakfast, so I’ll let you gather your own conclusions.