Guild Wars 2

Toughness does help you with condition damage. It might not mitigate the damage, but your heals will heal back the health lost much more efficiently. Using condition damage as a reason to take vitality is a poor arguement unless we had a very low base hp pool.

@Blaine
I never said toughness is 100% better than vitality for DS. I was talking about the necromancer in general. And in that case toughness is better. You cant rely on DS survivability to keep you alive, there are too many variables.

spoj.9672:

Toughness does help you with condition damage. It might not mitigate the damage, but your heals will heal back the health lost much more efficiently.

No, toughness doesn’t help at all with condition damage.

spoj.9672:

Using condition damage as a reason to take vitality is a poor arguement unless we had a very low base hp pool.

It is not poor at all. Conditions are huge in any pvp environment, ignoring that on the basis that our hp pool is big to begin with is just wrong.

flow.6043:

spoj.9672:

Toughness does help you with condition damage. It might not mitigate the damage, but your heals will heal back the health lost much more efficiently.

No, toughness doesn’t help at all with condition damage.

spoj.9672:

Using condition damage as a reason to take vitality is a poor arguement unless we had a very low base hp pool.

It is not poor at all. Conditions are huge in any pvp environment, ignoring that on the basis that our hp pool is big to begin with is just wrong.

Read my post again. Ive bolded the important part for you. Just to expand on it, your heals will heal back a higher percentage of your base hp = better sustain. Therefore toughness still benefits you when taking condition damage because of healing. Its difficult to explain what i mean exactly over a forum.

Our hp pool is big enough to survive plenty of conditions and cleanse them. If we have it any bigger we lose even more effective healing, which is not acceptible. I tried a PVT bunker build in the new condi meta in tpvp and I just couldnt sustain myself. I could last a long time, but i was slowly getting warn down and losing fights against eles and such which werent even built full bunker (and they didnt even have to disengage). My high hp pool was what was causing the problems. I guarantee if I used a clerics amulet instead I would of had a much better experience. Even a rabid amulet would of allowed me to sustain better.

I was especially referring to the part you bolded. That is just not true, your heals are not more effective.

Rabid and Carrion take 10k in conditions. That’s 55% hp lost for rabid and you’re left with 8k hp. 40% lost with carrion, 15k hp left.
So after that you have almost double the amount of health with carrion. If you heal back 6k with Consume: 14k rabid (78%), 21k carrion (84%).

And your cleric’s vs soldier’s example… they both have the same amount of toughness, the exact same amount of damage mitigation. How on earth would the extra healing power on cleric’s have made a difference? Considering how bad healing power interacts with our heals, you would have had to use Consume Conditions a million times before you could catch up to those 6440 extra hp you get from soldier’s.
Besides, there could have been many other reasons why you lost that fight…

flow.6043:

I was especially referring to the part you bolded. That is just not true, your heals are not more effective.

Rabid and Carrion take 10k in conditions. That’s 55% hp lost for rabid and you’re left with 8k hp. 40% lost with carrion, 15k hp left.
So after that you have almost double the amount of health with carrion. If you heal back 6k with Consume: 14k rabid (78%), 21k carrion (84%).

And your cleric’s vs soldier’s example… they both have the same amount of toughness, the exact same amount of damage mitigation. How on earth would the extra healing power on cleric’s have made a difference? Considering how bad healing power interacts with our heals, you would have had to use Consume Conditions a million times before you could catch up to those 6440 extra hp you get from soldier’s.
Besides, there could have been many other reasons why you lost that fight…

Because instead of healing back 15% of my hp i would be healing back 30% of my hp. The vitality made it impossible to get back to 100% hp. Which is quite important when you have traits like full of life. I would of lost that fight no matter what gear i ran on a bunker build. Necro bunker is terrible, my point was it was counter productive taking vitality in that build.

Like i said its difficult to explain what i mean by toughness still helping with conditions. So I wont bother over a forum. However even when taking condition damage you will still be taking some direct damage so toughness still plays a role.

spoj.9672:

… your heals will heal back a higher percentage of your base hp = better sustain. Therefore toughness still benefits you when taking condition damage because of healing. Its difficult to explain what i mean exactly over a forum.

Our hp pool is big enough to survive plenty of conditions and cleanse them. If we have it any bigger we lose even more effective healing, which is not acceptible. I tried a PVT bunker build in the new condi meta in tpvp and I just couldnt sustain myself. I could last a long time, but i was slowly getting warn down and losing fights against eles and such which werent even built full bunker (and they didnt even have to disengage). My high hp pool was what was causing the problems. I guarantee if I used a clerics amulet instead I would of had a much better experience. Even a rabid amulet would of allowed me to sustain better.

I have a hard time with any argument along the lines of low vitality being somehow good because it increases heal effectiveness relative to your total health pool. That’s not to say I couldn’t be convinced.

Arguing that rabid would sustain better than soldier’s seems crazy. Clerics I could maybe believe, or maybe Valk’s or Shaman’s. I do not see how lowering vitality without achieving compensation in healing power equals more sustain.

I suspect the reason that you are getting worn down in your bunker build is the same reason we all get worn down – we can’t heal through DS, and we can’t get enough of a combination of healing and LF generation enough out of DS to effectively rotate in and out of DS without being worn down.

I’m curious about your bunker build though – is it not DS-based?

I would agree… if our heals really could be trippled in effectivness (which they can’t).
And Full of Life :/
As if 5 seconds of regen would make a big difference.

This is all situational btw, I could also tell you a hundred stories how I lost to someone because I didn’t have enough vitality… doesn’t mean anything.

Back on topic: healing doesn’t scale if you take condition damage, because it isn’t mitigated by anything. As simple as that.
Healing with toughness is only “more effective” because you take less direct damage in the first place. The size of your hp pool is irrelevant to that, triggering certain traits is an entirely different matter.

sas.6483:

I have a hard time with any argument along the lines of low vitality being somehow good because it increases heal effectiveness relative to your total health pool. That’s not to say I couldn’t be convinced.

Arguing that rabid would sustain better than soldier’s seems crazy. Clerics I could maybe believe, or maybe Valk’s or Shaman’s. I do not see how lowering vitality without achieving compensation in healing power equals more sustain.

I suspect the reason that you are getting worn down in your bunker build is the same reason we all get worn down – we can’t heal through DS, and we can’t get enough of a combination of healing and LF generation enough out of DS to effectively rotate in and out of DS without being worn down.

I’m curious about your bunker build though – is it not DS-based?

It was DS based. I believe i had it as 0/0/20/20/30 just to try it. The high hp pool from PVT didnt do anything to help. Just having toughness would of been more beneficial. Unfortunately knights gear in tpvp is vit instead of toughness.

Ive come accross plenty of situations where my heals werent good enough for my high hp pool. But ive never had a situation where i didnt have enough hp… 19k hp is plenty.

Engels.8537:

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

I’d rather do both.

Molch.2078:

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.

I read it, I just think your conclusions are specious. I’ve posted many examples already showing that the ratios matter.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

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.

Ah, but it’s this very fact that makes LF generation notable: in the case of health bars, a Vit-heavy bar will fill up more slowly than a Toughness-heavy bar, which means in cases of equal EHP, Toughness wins out because your heals count for more. With DS, Toughness loses this advantage.

And while it’s true that there’s no guarantee of gaining LF, it’s a lot harder to stop a Necro from gaining LF (most of which happens incidentally while performing a myriad of other actions) than it is to watch for CC’s animation and then interrupt them. Both scenarios should still be considered mathematically, of course.

flow.6043:

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%.

Ahh, see I wasn’t giving 33% as the Rabid Necro’s absolute damage reduction, just the advantage he has over a Carrion Necro. In other words, a Rabid Necro takes 33% less damage than a Carrion Necro, if we treat the Carrion Necro as having “base” EHP (even though he technically doesn’t, it makes a lot of the math simpler for our purposes). Sorry for the confusion!

The Boz.2038:

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.

Percentile generation causes Vitality to interact with DS more favorably than it interacts with regular health bars, though.

If Rabid has 33% better damage mitigation, then a 6000 heal for a Carrion Necro will act as an 8000 heal for a Rabid Necro. However, if the Carrion Necro’s heals were boosted by 33% or more as a result of Vitality scaling, then Rabid’s typical advantage in attrition fights would be nullified for DS, possibly even turned on its head. This is why DS cannot be discounted as merely a second HP bar.

spoj.9672:

Toughness does help you with condition damage. It might not mitigate the damage, but your heals will heal back the health lost much more efficiently.

As far as conditions are concerned, a 6000 point heal is a 6000 point heal. If you’re taking a mix of damage, you’re right that Toughness will help mitigate the direct damage leaving more HPs left over for conditions to work on, but you’ve chosen an extremely misleading way of putting it.

spoj.9672:

@Blaine
I never said toughness is 100% better than vitality for DS. I was talking about the necromancer in general. And in that case toughness is better. You cant rely on DS survivability to keep you alive, there are too many variables.

I wasn’t arguing the effectiveness of DS. I just wanted to get the math straight before getting into holistics. Have we cleared all that up?

spoj.9672:

Ive come accross plenty of situations where my heals werent good enough for my high hp pool. But ive never had a situation where i didnt have enough hp… 19k hp is plenty.

This is purely perceptual.

Let’s say you had 1,000,000 HP (not on your Necro, just a general GW2 character), but all your other stats stayed the same. Your heals would add the exact same amount to your time-till-death number as they would with only 10,000 health, even though using them wouldn’t even register on the UI. Having lower or higher HP isn’t inherently meaningful with respect to HP heals as far as EHP goes. It only makes the bar appear to jump more or less, but the amount is the same.

Toughness does make your heals more powerful against direct damage, but having lower Vitality doesn’t necessarily mean having higher Toughness.* The two are in a zero-sum game but they aren’t the only two competitors.

*This is why the Necro is interesting: for DS, Vitality also makes your LF generation more powerful against DD as well as increasing your base mitigation.

Blaine Tog.8304:

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.

You made two mistakes. First, you can’t set vit scaling to 0:1. Zeroes in multiplications are bad^^

And second, if you assume vit scales 1.000.000:1 you cannot ignore base hp. If you, for example, say, vit scales 1:22, because it scales 1:10 normal and 1:12 in ds, well, then you dont have 18.000 hp but 18.000 (normal) + 18.000 × 1.2 (DS) = 39.600 base HP. In my calculation, that would be (39.600 + v x 22)x(…) = 22 x (1800 + v)x(…) – and the 22 would be as irrelevant as the 10, same conclusion.

And if vit would scale 1:10^34, Anet would give you 18000 × 10^33 base hp. But since vit scales 1:10 and we have 18.000 base hp, thats off topic

@Blaine
True. But seeing as we cant mitigate condition damage in anyway. Id much rather have control of the damage i can mitigate.

And that was partly what i was trying to say about toughness and condition damage. But I was also referring to percentage of hp healed back. But then ofcouse like you said, thats also just perceptual.

But when you factor in traits and damage boosts which are triggered at certain levels of hp, it becomes important. Also mentally its going to be more encouraging for you to reset back to a high percentage of hp and if you cant, your opponent will feel they are winning, which could help them close out the fight. Also you have to take into account many damage boosts are triggered at below 50% hp. So its not wise to allow your self to be so easily kept low percentage wise.

This is an interesting topic. But as far as im concerned, theres not a single situation I would pick vitality over toughness. Unless I was going for some sort of sacrificial build where i had no interest in healing after doing whatever I was supposed to.

Molch.2078:

You made two mistakes. First, you can’t set vit scaling to 0:1. Zeroes in multiplications are bad^^

Why is this a mistake? I’m saying 1 Vitality = 0 LF (in that scenario), kinda like how 1 Power = 0 LF (in the game currently).

Molch.2078:

And second, if you assume vit scales 1.000.000:1 you cannot ignore base hp. If you, for example, say, vit scales 1:22, because it scales 1:10 normal and 1:12 in ds, well, then you dont have 18.000 hp but 18.000 (normal) + 18.000 × 1.2 (DS) = 39.600 base HP. In my calculation, that would be (39.600 + v x 22)x(…) = 22 x (1800 + v)x(…) – and the 22 would be as irrelevant as the 10, same conclusion.

And if vit would scale 1:10^34, Anet would give you 18000 × 10^33 base hp. But since vit scales 1:10 and we have 18.000 base hp, thats off topic

The Necro’s base health at level 80 is 9,212. I’m positing an implausible scenario where DS scales off Vitality very strongly but still only scales off Base Health by 1:1. 9,212 extra HP on top of 916 million can safely be ignored.

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Necro’s base health at level 80 is 9,212. I’m positing an implausible scenario where DS scales off Vitality very strongly but still only scales off Base Health by 1:1. 9,212 extra HP on top of 916 million can safely be ignored.

Well, okay then, but if you pump up scaling with additional vit, but not with base hp, what has this to do with reality? And maybe I am wrong here, but my necromancer has 18000 base Health, not 9121. Is this different in DS?

I’m new to necro but this thread is awesome I always love threads like this regardless of the class. Anyway didn’t mean to interrupt awesome stuff guys.

A lot is made of that Necros are good with conditions so less need to fear toughness only. But can’t forget in Death Shroud you have no access to those condition clears. I don’t think many Necro’s are exiting out of a Life Transfer / Shackles rotation just to clear some burning or poison, and then lose DS for 10 seconds. So while in DS you are actually more susceptible to conditions than even weak clearing classes. Same with Plague. It’s something of a balancer for how many tools we have to deal with them in normal form.

As someone said early on, I think Vit vs Toughness is about a wash for necro and which one you want is more about if you want the attached power or precision that comes with either stat.

Like Ara said, I also use a carrion/spectral/heavy life force generating build and I feel that build has a lot more sustainability and survivability than anything else I’ve ever played on my necro outside of full melee soldiers.

The way I look at it is that with my build specifically I have a lot of ways to take advantage of life force so vitality is the better choice. That being said I still have around 2300 armor overall.

Molch.2078:

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Necro’s base health at level 80 is 9,212. I’m positing an implausible scenario where DS scales off Vitality very strongly but still only scales off Base Health by 1:1. 9,212 extra HP on top of 916 million can safely be ignored.

Well, okay then, but if you pump up scaling with additional vit, but not with base hp, what has this to do with reality? And maybe I am wrong here, but my necromancer has 18000 base Health, not 9121. Is this different in DS?

I was making a point about scaling.

Also, your Necro has base 9,212 health and base 916 Vitality (all level 80 characters have the same base Vitality), which come together to 18,000 total health minimum for the profession at level 80.

Pendragon.8735:

As someone said early on, I think Vit vs Toughness is about a wash for necro and which one you want is more about if you want the attached power or precision that comes with either stat.

Yeah I gotta say, this really does seem to be the case. The one thing that all the math seems to agree on is that for the Necro, Toughness and Vitality are largely equivalent and stacking one or the other isn’t as effective as getting some of both (whereas most other professions only want enough Vit to survive burst and condis and then prefer Toughness).

Interesting. Makes me wonder if Celestial gear would be good for hybrid builds.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Interesting. Makes me wonder if Celestial gear would be good for hybrid builds.

Maybe the ascended celestial. But the new exotic celestial armour has terrible numbers for all stat gear. You lose too much of everything except crit damage.

Bah, so much numbers and math, can’t we just go with what feels best? ^^

This is an interesting discussion. I’m running a toughness build for quite a long while now. I figured the more vitality you have, the longer it takes to heal back up to full health (this was the case in GW1), so I went for damage reduction instead. Necromancers have a high health pool in general, especially with Death Shroud. Of course this doesn’t help you against conditions, but when have conditions ever been a problem to a necromancer?

Anyway, I don’t know the math. But it’s been working out for me so far. I noticed my necro is a lot more durable than most of the other necros I see in pugs.

In GW2, your health is restored to maximum between fights. Because of this, you have to look at the stats on a fight by fight basis.

In PVP, fights can be over in as little kitten seconds in some circumstances, but usually last anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds. In these fights, the big survivability boost that other classes get from vitality is ideal, since there is no long term combat there. The fight can be determined by what you start with. For bunker builds that plan to use their heals over and over again, toughness increases efficiency overall, so if you plan to last long enough to get multiple heals out, toughness might be your man.

In PVE, a different dilemma exists. PVE is more about the bare minimum durability needed to survive an encounter. For most classes, running around in full berserker or rampager gear is sufficient enough. Arguably it is sufficient enough with necromancers, too, but much harder due to necromancer’s lack of active defenses. In PVE, fights can sometimes last a few minutes, letting you heal up multiple times. With extra heals from teammates + enough time for regen to actually matter, toughness becomes superior to vitality on most classes. The exception to this is when you fight an enemy that can sometimes bowl a player over in 1 hit even with a ton of toughness. There, since you’ll spend most of your time dodging and blocking attacks, you’l need that vitality to take the big hit when it comes, and then you can probably heal back to maximum from there. So really, what you need is “enough” toughness, and then vitality starts to really pay off.

All in all, it is more about what you plan to do more than which stat you should invest in.

Outside of sPVP where unfortunately you are forced to choose, I would definitely recommend the golden ratio which Necro’s start with. 1:1 increases of both. Or Armor x10 should equal health. I have tried both full Rabid and full Carrion and neither is as balanced as a mix. I’m sitting at around 1500 Vit and Toughness usually and I’m very tanky with neither of the drawbacks of going all the way with one or the other.

More Toughness makes Vitality better, and more Vitality make Toughness better. Imo, either one is more valuable to a Necro than any single offensive stat, due to how our defense is almost entirely face-tanking, and we get two health bars. Other classes get one health bar, and rely on other defensive mechanics like dodges, boons, mobility and invulnerability stuff. Defensive stats are worth twice as much to us.

Outside sPvP I do agree that you want to mix toughness/vitality as best you can (assuming you aren’t stacking toughness for undead runes+buffs for highest condition damage), as it gives the best overall effect.

I would say toughness for organised wvw. You’ll have stacked guardians spamming heals, take advantage. For zerging, soloing, or less organised play, yes, balance the two.

I was in a CM pug recently, and noticed that my toughness specced necromancer lost 50% of her life from some of the sniper shots…. while a warrior was instantly getting downed by the shots. The value of high toughness. I really notice what a big difference it makes to have high toughness on a necromancer. You’re just a lot more durable.

I suppose you could also substitute this with lots of health, but wouldn’t it take longer to heal back to max?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I suppose you could also substitute this with lots of health, but wouldn’t it take longer to heal back to max?

Not if you used Deathshroud to take the hits. That’s a big part of what makes this an interesting question.

Toughness also doesn’t make that dramatic a difference on its own, and this becomes more pronounced the higher the two toughness values are. If you had a Rabid amulet and the Warrior had a Zerker amulet, it’s be roughly 2400 armor vs 2100, which means you’d be taking 12.5% less damage than that Warrior. Even if we say you had something crazy, like 2800 armor, that would only be 25% reduction. Because of the way the formula works, you would need twice that Warrior’s armor to reduce the damage by half, so I’m guessing what happened was that you either had Protection on you while the Warrior didn’t, the Warrior had a lot more stacks of Vulnerability than you, you blocked part of the shot with DS, you had more health than him, or your estimation was off. Mathematically speaking, at least one of those things must be true.

I can’t be sure on what the warrior was suffering from at the time. Some of the bandits do spam vulnerability, but I do know that I didn’t have protection on me at the time. All I noticed was one sniper shooting both of us. I instantly lost 50% of my health, and he instantly went to the ground (from full health). And yes, I do carry an absurd amount of toughness. So maybe he was running full zerker gear (although the DPS in our group was still pretty pathetic). I didn’t catch the hit with my deathshroud. It’s also possible that the sniper scored a critical hit. There’s some randomness in there.

All I know is, I was the most tankiest character in the party, next to a guardian, a warrior, a ranger and an elementalist. Which says all sorts of things about the party I suppose.

Toughness: 1,966
Armor: 2,886
Vitality: 1,020
Health: 19,412

You’re right, a crit would also explain it. If the bandit had base crit damage and the warrior had no extra toughness anywhere in his build, he would’ve taken twice the damage you did just from that alone, enough to kill him if he also didn’t have any vitality. That crit would’ve taken 75% of your health, though.

Incidentally, you would be even tankier if you dropped some of the toughness and swapped in some vitality until both were about equal, as we’ve discovered in this thread.

In PVE where DoT almost doesn’t exist, toughness is the way to go, as your heal doesn’t scale with your vit/hp. So the extra hp only save you before you heal. After the heal, your max hp is actually your heal hp, so all that vit is wasted. Toughness tho, works 24/7.

PVP has many more factor to consider. Condition and there maybe interrupt to your heal. These two makes Vit better than it’s in PVE. But the “less heal” is still there. So, you decide.

Afya.5842:

In PVE where DoT almost doesn’t exist, toughness is the way to go, as your heal doesn’t scale with your vit/hp. So the extra hp only save you before you heal. After the heal, your max hp is actually your heal hp, so all that vit is wasted. Toughness tho, works 24/7.

PVP has many more factor to consider. Condition and there maybe interrupt to your heal. These two makes Vit better than it’s in PVE. But the “less heal” is still there. So, you decide.

Actually, I might suggest preferring Vitality even more in PvE because nearby deaths are far more common, which means you tend to get a massive amount of LF back all the time (which scales with Vitality). I remember this one time when I was doing the Lyssa event and decided to just stay in DS for about 90% of it, tanking through everything except the champion gorillas (I hate those guys) because of how many mobs were dying to AoE.

Furthermore, bosses in dungeons don’t tend to dish out as much sustained damage as they do single high-damage blasts with a delay before the next one, so in general it’s more important to be able to live through burst, which Vitality is better at. It’s still ultimately down to personal preference and playstyle, but there are still arguments to be made for all three options (stacking Toughness, Vit, or a blend).

Blaine Tog.8304:

…which means you tend to get a massive amount of LF back all the time (which scales with Vitality).

Blaine Tog.8304:

… so in general it’s more important to be able to live through burst, which Vitality is better at.

These are untrue, as has been proven by this thread.
On a necromancer, both vitality and toughness provide equal additional EHP per point, and they’re both equally effective at soaking burst damage, either to the normal bar, or to the death shroud one.

This thread has shown that Necros should aim for a roughly equal split between Toughness and Vitality if they want the highest overall durability, but Vitality still holds a slight edge against burst damage and still scales slightly harder with DS. The math shows Vitality (especially in builds with Soul Reaping) has a particular advantage when it comes to LF generation, which means Vitality would be better if you routinely fight near a lot of dying mobs, which was my main point. It’s a niche situation and it differs from the overall response by a small bit in this way.

An even split is still probably best because most people don’t just do Lyssa over and over.

Blaine Tog.8304:

…but Vitality still holds a slight edge against burst damage and still scales slightly harder with DS. The math shows Vitality (especially in builds with Soul Reaping) has a particular advantage when it comes to LF generation…

Nope. Please show me that math. Because percent is percent, and percent multiplied by vitality or toughness equals the same effective percent of HP. Even with Soul Reaping accounted for, the net effect is exactly the same.
Bottom line:
Vitality: better vs conditions
Toughness: better with heals

The Boz.2038:

Blaine Tog.8304:

…but Vitality still holds a slight edge against burst damage and still scales slightly harder with DS. The math shows Vitality (especially in builds with Soul Reaping) has a particular advantage when it comes to LF generation…

Nope. Please show me that math. Because percent is percent, and percent multiplied by vitality or toughness equals the same effective percent of HP. Even with Soul Reaping accounted for, the net effect is exactly the same.
Bottom line:
Vitality: better vs conditions
Toughness: better with heals

The first post.

Based on assumptions that are not true, with values that are not realistic.