Guild Wars 2

Toughness seems to be a much better attr to build around, especially if you have a lot of the corruption skills, but at what point do you have ‘enough’ and should you maybe look at stacking Vit? Is a balance the best between the two, or is Tough just hands down better?

toughness is a flat benefit(I don’t have anything to back this up, it’s just my assumption). It really depends on how you’re traited.

for example, as a minion master necro toughness is really beneficial for me as I have the trait that converts 5% of my toughness to power. Unless you’re going for a death shroud build or a straight up damage build I think getting as much of both as you can is a good idea.

They’re best in combination.

To think of it more simple: Toughness is the counter to Direct Damage, and Vitality the counter to Condition Damage.

We don’t know how the Armor statistic works. If it isn’t flat then we can calculate the effective HP increase for each point of Toughness and find the optimal combo (as we have condition removal everywhere so I don’t find the fact that bleeds/poisons/burns bypass Armor to be of much issue)

I personally stack Toughness over Vitality. We have a truly large pool of health for a caster already, and an entire extra health bar to play with. Also, Toughness lets me stay in Death Shroud a lot longer.

Now make toughness make my minions tougher and I’ll be on board.

darkoracle.6483:

Now make toughness make my minions tougher and I’ll be on board.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it does affect your minions.

Skliros.1058:

darkoracle.6483:

Now make toughness make my minions tougher and I’ll be on board.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it does affect your minions.

minions only scale with level and traits that directly influence them. I tested this with power. equipping a weapon that increases my power by like 10% doesn’t affect my minion damage by one point, so I assume the same goes for toughness/vitality.

the only stat that “affects” your minions is the healing power stat. that makes your mark of blood heal your minions more.

Interesting. I’ll have to retest it, because I could have sworn I saw a difference. Perhaps you’re right.

Necros are the only profession that scales 1:1 durability wise with vitality and toughness. being that we are a high base health class you will see instant rewards from going high toughness, but going half and half should have a greater benefit on your overall survivability. In the level 80 armor spectrum warrior/guardians start at 13%ish damage reduction with their 300 extra armor while necros at the lowest end start around 8. you have to gain around double your base armor ( so around 3600 for necros) to gain a 50% damage reduction. Necros only while channeling( dark armor in death magic + 6 minions out) and guardians because of their 10% flat damage reduction signet seem to be the only 2 classes to even scrape near these percentage, while sacrificing all means of damage. you literally hit for about as much as a critter with that kind of stat lean.

Long story short you want to balance vit : toughness 1:1 while other classes have to priortize one over the other.

Is it a good idea to go to far into either stat weight though? No, put simply damage is far to high in Pvp and Pve. Burst classes hit to hard and have far to much damage amp and explorable dungeon bosses have 1 shot like damage no matter how high you try get your defensive stats.

You can look up more info on the guildwars 2 guru forums. they have threads showing you the actual numbers and theory crafting going behind everything I’m talking about. I’m not a numbers guy so I just read what they wrote tested to see if it was consistent in game and it seems believable to me.

Also minions don’t scale with any of the necros stats besides traits. Percision is the only stat I would lean to since the frequency of criticals seems to increase when I tested them day on and day off, but I had no real way to test it with cold hard numbers

Toughness >>>>>> VIT

Mainly because of talents/runes/cosumables that synergize with Toughness

Runes : 5% Tough → Cond Dmg
Tuning Crystal 6% Rough → COnd dmg

But most importantly vitality is worthless when in deathshroud, while toughness still is calculated and prolongs time in deathshroud.

Other big question here; is there a moniker for items that does +Condition Damage, Toughness, and then either Precision or Vit?

McWaffle.1927:

Toughness >>>>>> VIT

Mainly because of talents/runes/cosumables that synergize with Toughness

Runes : 5% Tough -> Cond Dmg
Tuning Crystal 6% Rough -> COnd dmg

But most importantly vitality is worthless when in deathshroud, while toughness still is calculated and prolongs time in deathshroud.

this is simply not true the condition damage you would get back from the 5% toughness rune set is around 100 condition damage if you stacked toughness. Even if you did stack toughness to condition damage buffs your getting what 200ish condition damage back? only 5% of that goes into the actual condition damage so that like 10 extra damage a second.

Put simply a necromancer with a shaman set with stack toughness will have 3200 ish armor, but they will have like 20k hp

The same stacking necro with a soldier necklace will have around 2900 armor but 26k+ hp

better yet a soldier necro that stack toughness vit evenly will be around 27k hp and 2800 armor.

now the extreme toughness stacked necro will be reducing maybe 8-10% more but will have a dramatically lower pool to defend themselves with, while the even stacked necro survives longer and at almost no extra damage taken.

also toughness is completely passed over by condition damage while vitality is condition damage’s main counter stat

condition damage , precision , vit would be Carrion
toughness version would be Rabid

It seems Dictan really did his homework with this one. Well done, sir.

Dictan.4186:

McWaffle.1927:

Toughness >>>>>> VIT

Mainly because of talents/runes/cosumables that synergize with Toughness

Runes : 5% Tough -> Cond Dmg
Tuning Crystal 6% Rough -> COnd dmg

But most importantly vitality is worthless when in deathshroud, while toughness still is calculated and prolongs time in deathshroud.

this is simply not true the condition damage you would get back from the 5% toughness rune set is around 100 condition damage if you stacked toughness. Even if you did stack toughness to condition damage buffs your getting what 200ish condition damage back? only 5% of that goes into the actual condition damage so that like 10 extra damage a second.

Put simply a necromancer with a shaman set with stack toughness will have 3200 ish armor, but they will have like 20k hp

The same stacking necro with a soldier necklace will have around 2900 armor but 26k+ hp

better yet a soldier necro that stack toughness vit evenly will be around 27k hp and 2800 armor.

now the extreme toughness stacked necro will be reducing maybe 8-10% more but will have a dramatically lower pool to defend themselves with, while the even stacked necro survives longer and at almost no extra damage taken.

also toughness is completely passed over by condition damage while vitality is condition damage’s main counter stat

---

condition damage , precision , vit would be Carrion
toughness version would be Rabid

this is simply full of assumptions and logic that only proves you dont understand the class at all.

I eat conditions, thats our specialty. Send them my way, that’s how I heal, buff, and kill you.

No need to argue, Ill just demonstrate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7xtZSUqu_o

Honestly I’m gonna say toughness.

it’d not assumptions it’s flat out math

here since you can’t be bothered to find it

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/page__hl__+toughness#entry1911847

here’s another thread going into EHP as well explaining how discounting vitality’s worth is completely false and becomes way better than toughness during certain stat weighting.

if cold hard numbers are to much of a bother you can simply test it on npcs in the heart of the mist and you’ll find what I’m saying to be true.

also because necros can manipulate conditions doesn’t mean they are up all the time or that every build can afford the weapon choice/ utility sacrifice. Full condition teams will burn through most of these counters relatively early and then you will be begging for vitality.

I have researched this class plenty and I know this for a fact necros scale best survivability wise 1:1.

I vote for toughness and I am extremely disappointed that the Shaman spread in PvE is Healing, Cond and Vitality and not like the sPvP amulet, Healing, Cond Toughness.

No matter how you build your Necromancer, you will have 18k HP MINIMUM. That is already more than what most classes get when they shoot and go for some vitality as well. Vitality is great against condition damage and gives overall breathing room. Seeing as we’re in first class with warriors already AND we are extremely resilient against conditions, it only leaves direct damage. Well, Necromancers happen to be scholars in light armor, toughness patches up that pretty nice.

I never understood the QQ about heartseeker thieves and hundred blade warriors. It’s only because my Necromancer has always packed high toughness.

Yes! Actual math!

Okay, as we do eat conditions and should generally be running at least 3 different ways of removing them (OH Dagger, Staff, Consume Conditions), I want to discount them for the time being. That means that unless you’re somehow going a heavy Siphon build (which doesn’t work at this point and time), you pretty much want to stick to that formula to maximize your eHP, or HP/Armor > 10, add Toughness, possibly erring on the side of Toughness for boosting up Death Shroud. That gives us pretty close to a 1:1 ratio.

Sigma.9746:

Yes! Actual math!

Okay, as we do eat conditions and should generally be running at least 3 different ways of removing them (OH Dagger, Staff, Consume Conditions), I want to discount them for the time being. That means that unless you’re somehow going a heavy Siphon build (which doesn’t work at this point and time), you pretty much want to stick to that formula to maximize your eHP, or HP/Armor > 10, add Toughness, possibly erring on the side of Toughness for boosting up Death Shroud. That gives us pretty close to a 1:1 ratio.

guess you missed the siphon build in my video.

This doesn’t account for our lifeforce/deathshroad where VIT is meaningless, and toughness acts like vitality keeping us up for those most crucial seconds.

Not to mention HP boost we get if we take a shape shift elite further negating vitality. Ohh and 100s of cond dmg i get from toughness which in turn = more HPS

The ideal necro stat pairing9, will be running +Tough +Per + Cond Dmg, that is trifecta.

McWaffle.1927:

This doesn’t account for our lifeforce/deathshroad where VIT is meaningless, and toughness acts like vitality keeping us up for those most crucial seconds.

Except vitality acts as vitality since your death shroud is based off your HP.

More vit = more DS

Dibrom.6408:

McWaffle.1927:

This doesn’t account for our lifeforce/deathshroad where VIT is meaningless, and toughness acts like vitality keeping us up for those most crucial seconds.

Except vitality acts as vitality since your death shroud is based off your HP.

More vit = more DS

No more hunger = More DS

Please dont comment on things if you are guessing thats how it works.

your source is someone on a forums support of your 1:1 and is baseless.

If you really wanna look at numbers

Vitality facts
Warrior and Necro get +39% health by adding 798 vitality
Mesmer, Engineer and Ranger get +47% health by adding 798 vitality
Ele, Guardian and Thief get +64% health by adding 798 vitality

Toughness facts
Heavy armor classes get +36% armor by adding 798 toughness
Medium armor classes +39% armor by adding 798 toughness
Cloth classes +42% armor by adding 798 toughness

Also toughness potentiates our healing while vitality does squat, so make sure you add that in next time you come up with sudo theories.

So first you discount that the more vitality you have the more death shroud you have, which is does.

then you say the forum posters information is baseless yet you pull the exact numbers they use to try and prove toughness is flat out better than and that vitality has no place in survivability.

the only thing you are proving with the chunk you pulled out of the post if that going from 1800 armor to 2600 armor is a 42% increase. that’s doesn’t mean a 42% increase per point in effectieness

The formula isn’t just guess work it actually conveys how long you will survive vs damage with your stat weights. You are also grasping pretty hard if you think necros scale well at all with healing. Healing through siphon builds are pretty much a non factor when it comes to looking at a necros survivability. It’s actually the key factor separating us from being as tanky as guardians and warriors.Toughness only increases from healing if you have meaningful healing to begin with. If you say necro heals can compare you are flat out lying.

put simply an extra 26k health will be harder to chew through at 30% reduction than 20k hp at 40% reduction. especially when you have to contend with direct and condition damage.

honestly you seem set in your ways though so anyone reading can take what they will from this.

if you want to believe that necros have good enough healing to increase our toughness stat weight over vitality, that toughness is what makes death shroud more potent defensively than actually increasing it’s pool, and that necros make conditions completely irrelevant by all means just stack toughness.

It’s wrong but I’m tired of hitting my head on a wall.

Right now the math I’ve seen from people who did the testing says that 1 point of Vit = 10hp. As damage taken is basically Damage/Armor, you want to get more armor when Health/Armor > 10. Necro at level 80 pretty much has a 10:1 ratio of Health to Armor, so with Healing held equal to Condition Damage (as you don’t heal much and you have an incredible amount of condition removal/transfer), you basically want to raise Vit and Toughness at the same rate. Assuming your Toughness stays the same but your Health effectively decreases in Death Shroud (as in you get less than 10 points of Life Force for every point of Vit) then you’ll want to err towards Toughness, same if you think you’ll be healing quite a bit. If you don’t want to run condition removal or feel that you don’t have enough, then you can err towards Vit. Until we have the DS mechanics mathematically laid out in front of us we can’t really rule on that, so we’re stuck with just saying 1:1 is pretty good.

Dictan you’ve sold me on your first post. Today’s comment just reinforced it.

Dictan.4186:

So first you discount that the more vitality you have the more death shroud you have, which is does.

then you say the forum posters information is baseless yet you pull the exact numbers they use to try and prove toughness is flat out better than and that vitality has no place in survivability.

the only thing you are proving with the chunk you pulled out of the post if that going from 1800 armor to 2600 armor is a 42% increase. that’s doesn’t mean a 42% increase per point in effectieness

The formula isn’t just guess work it actually conveys how long you will survive vs damage with your stat weights. You are also grasping pretty hard if you think necros scale well at all with healing. Healing through siphon builds are pretty much a non factor when it comes to looking at a necros survivability. It’s actually the key factor separating us from being as tanky as guardians and warriors.Toughness only increases from healing if you have meaningful healing to begin with. If you say necro heals can compare you are flat out lying.

put simply an extra 26k health will be harder to chew through at 30% reduction than 20k hp at 40% reduction. especially when you have to contend with direct and condition damage.

honestly you seem set in your ways though so anyone reading can take what they will from this.

if you want to believe that necros have good enough healing to increase our toughness stat weight over vitality, that toughness is what makes death shroud more potent defensively than actually increasing it’s pool, and that necros make conditions completely irrelevant by all means just stack toughness.

It’s wrong but I’m tired of hitting my head on a wall.

If you dont recognize necros self healing then you have no grasp on our class. You spew disinformation, and it only hurts the community. Sorry you suck at necro, stop raging and spreading lies.

Please source me on vitality raising your pool for death shroud

Balance is key. Both attributes are important. In my experinece, you want enough toughness to get you to at least 2k armor. I have found that has been the sweet spot while still keeping by attack at 3k and health around 25-28k.

McWaffle.1927:

Please source me on vitality raising your pool for death shroud

This is actually really easy to test. Go into the Mists with 100% LF and switch between an amulet with +Vit and one without. You’ll notice that with less HP your LF should be at 100% but with more HP your Life Force will be lower (in my tests it was at 74%). The difference in HP was 26% which matched up with the difference in LF which suggests that your Life Force pool is directly linked to your HP.

Note that since Life Force is always gained by percentages that the more HP you have the more valuable Life Force is. I’m still trying to test whether the LF drain is the same or not depending on the total Life Force pool.

McWaffle.1927:

Dictan.4186:

So first you discount that the more vitality you have the more death shroud you have, which is does.

then you say the forum posters information is baseless yet you pull the exact numbers they use to try and prove toughness is flat out better than and that vitality has no place in survivability.

the only thing you are proving with the chunk you pulled out of the post if that going from 1800 armor to 2600 armor is a 42% increase. that’s doesn’t mean a 42% increase per point in effectieness

The formula isn’t just guess work it actually conveys how long you will survive vs damage with your stat weights. You are also grasping pretty hard if you think necros scale well at all with healing. Healing through siphon builds are pretty much a non factor when it comes to looking at a necros survivability. It’s actually the key factor separating us from being as tanky as guardians and warriors.Toughness only increases from healing if you have meaningful healing to begin with. If you say necro heals can compare you are flat out lying.

put simply an extra 26k health will be harder to chew through at 30% reduction than 20k hp at 40% reduction. especially when you have to contend with direct and condition damage.

honestly you seem set in your ways though so anyone reading can take what they will from this.

if you want to believe that necros have good enough healing to increase our toughness stat weight over vitality, that toughness is what makes death shroud more potent defensively than actually increasing it’s pool, and that necros make conditions completely irrelevant by all means just stack toughness.

It’s wrong but I’m tired of hitting my head on a wall.

If you dont recognize necros self healing then you have no grasp on our class. You spew disinformation, and it only hurts the community. Sorry you suck at necro, stop raging and spreading lies.

Please source me on vitality raising your pool for death shroud

We don’t really have much self-healing. Siphon Life just doesn’t work right now, nor do the traits that affect it/siphon health. The healing minion is complete garbage, so I’m trying to figure out where the idea of us having great heals comes from. You’ve got a regen off staff 2 and focus 4 (if you’re close enough for the former or get a bounce on the latter)? It’s not that good. I’d love to be able to run a healing heavy Siphon build where you lifesteal back all the damage you’re doing, but it’s just not feasible right now.

Toughness — sustained damage (which doesn’t really happen in pvp currently, good for pve though).
Vitality – Everything else (especially burst and conditions).

Terok.7315:

Toughness — sustained damage (which doesn’t really happen in pvp currently, good for pve though).
Vitality – Everything else (especially burst and conditions).

…I’m trying to figure out if people are being willfully ignorant or simply don’t understand basic math and how damage in this game works.

You have your HP. Vitality adds to it at a rate of 1 Vit : 10 HP. Adding more vitality adds HP which is then effected by your Armor value (Defense + Toughness) for direct damage. As Condition Damage ignores Armor, more Vitality gives more Effective HP against Condition Damage. On the other hand, your Effective Healing is reduced as your Vitality increases. When you boost up your Toughness you get a higher Effective HP against direct damage and it increases your Effective Healing. As the formula for maximum Effective HP is 10 HP for every point of Armor (and the base level at 80 pretty much sticks it to said 10:1) you want to increase your Toughness and Vitality at the same rate. You then adjust this rate based on if you think over the course of a single life you will take more Condition Damage or Heal more; more Vitality for the former, Toughness for the latter. We are fairly certain that Vitality effects Death Shroud, but it seems to be at a reduced rate (in that you could maybe get 5 Life Force for every point of Vitality). Once we have that figured out we can also compare the numbers there. Leaving Death Shroud out of the equation along with any % of X stat into Y, you want to go 1:1 of Vitality and Toughness, adjusting for Condition Damage vs. Healing. Sustained and Burst damage have absolutely no ****ing relevance here, it’s Condition Damage, Healing, and Death Shroud