Guild Wars 2

I’m curious, what kind of build/stat spread do you find most effective in:
1) pve
2) pvp
2a) pvp 1v1 (where both players are about equally skilled…so no help from team)

To elaborate I’m wondering what spread of stats (crit chance, crit camage, power, healing power, boon) will be most effective? I know all kinds will work and this may be a very subjective question. Will a power focused necro be more effective than a condition damage focused necro? what would be your secondary stat? Will focusing on crit damage or chance instead of power yield more effective results?

Please tell me your answer, in your opinion and from your experience, this? I’m hoping to learn more insight on the necro.

With no real goal in mind it hard to answer your question but in general gameplay i prefer a high condition necro with high crit chance and get as many crit procs that i can that i deem to be useful but like i said with no real goal in mind its hard to answer

The stat distribution I default to first and foremost is Carrion. For three reasons:

#1: It has power, which gives higher damage overall than rabid and also works against environmental objects.

#2: It has plenty of condition damage. Just loads and loads of it.

#3: The vitality combines with Death Shroud well to give me a bulkier death shroud in fights, which makes vitality more useful on Necros than usual.

Though you lose the procs from crits, you gain more direct damage, so in the end carrion builds aren’t black and white as rabid builds are.

Of course, if you are going for tanky power necro, I’d recommend Soldiers. If going for pure direct damage, I’d recommend zerker. If going for pure damage hybrid, rampager’s mixed with carrion or celestial gear.

Beserker is the most efficent use of stats in pve. Power zerker necro’s dont hinder group speed clears that much in the way of dps. Any other stat combo is just making a weak class even weaker. Unless ofc you are talking about casual slow 1-2 hour dungeon clears with condition specs, where a bit of defense will obviously be needed.

1) PvE Zerker geared power well bomber
2) PvP…. Rabid for pure condition, Carrion for Hybrid /shrug
3) PvP 1 v 1 Rabid for pure condition, Carrion for Hybrid. Necro is not considered a strong 1 v 1 class if skill is equal.

Necro is best as min/max build imo go conditions all the way or power crit all the way. Im not a fan of Carrion at all, but many necros swear by it and hybrid builds.

am I the only one with love for knights?(pve version, pwr+tough+prec) of course I also don’t use all knights, just my armor.

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

Soldier’s actually does the same damage as knights when looking at just the sets. To compare the two sets, you would get the following attribute bonuses:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage. Comparing the durability, I’ll us the total effective HP, which is basically HP multiplied by armor value. Since this is highly class dependent, I’ll use the Necromancer as a base since we are, after all, talking about them.

Base HP: 18372
Base Armor: 1836

Effective HP 33,730,000

In Soldier gear we get:

New HP: 25353
New Armor: 2534

Effective HP (Soldiers): 64,240,000

In Knight Gear we get:

Base HP: 18376
New Armor: 2779

Effective HP (Knights) 51,070,000

So Soldier’s is superior to Knight in durability while having roughly equal damage outputs. There are only two times you’d ever want to go with knights: One if you are mixing it with something like Zerker gear or specific trait-dependent abilities so you can have more durability without sacrificing precision for the crits, and two in PVE if you plan on using attrition on champions mobs and want to be able to tank them indefinitely due to the increased healing efficiency gained from that toughness.

The latter will never be important for necromancers, since with Life Force scaling with vitality, they get a form of increased healing from LF gain in vitality. What soldiers will let you do, however, is plenty more face-tanking. This is really important for a necromancer, since they lack blocks, invulnerability, vigor, reflects, stealth, and some control effects. The only thing a necro can do is face tank, so maximizing this ability is important for the class. This creates a nice reinforcing loop for the necromancers, too:

First, they get the stats that let them face-tank better.
Then, they can use the dagger auto-attack at point blank longer, giving them more Life Force.
Finally, this extra LF lets them face tank for even longer.
Repeat.

This also lets the necromancer take point in encounters, drawing as much aggro as possible away from the zerkers so they can do more damage without leaping about like a circus monkey on red bull.

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage.

Yeah that makes sense if you completely ignore stat bonuses from trait lines and other sources…. But you cant do that. You lose a very small amount of power when running knights and crits add a lot of dps.

Anyway cant follow your math properly because you’ve added random numbers which i dont know what they correspond to. Whats the 0.6 and and 0.96 correspond to? It seems like you’ve made a typo and in both calculations you should be using 0.96 (Im making this assumption because i dont know where you’ve gotten 0.96 and 0.6 from and cant think what else would change calculation wise other than power and crit chance so that 0.6 should be a 0.96 whatever it is?), in which case knights would yield an end ratio of 2.75 which is massive compared to soldiers.

Also what the hell does that ratio even mean, seems like you’re just making up a ratio which has no place in the game. You should calculate effective dps or average damage on a specific skill like dagger auto attack, not some strange ratio which doesnt mean anything. Plus your knights stat distribution is wrong. Power and precision should have the same value.

You dont need maths to see that knights does considerably more damage than soldiers, you can do it just by watching the numbers come up on your screen lol.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Table

Useful table to see how big a difference crits make. The numbers dont seem that different but thats because they dont need to be to make a huge difference ingame. 1% damage increase is actually quite a lot.

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

If you want to increase your dps you need to aim for around 50% crit chance, you wont be able to do that with soldier gear. Plus necro’s have plenty of base hp. Dont need any more vitality. Go knights with beserker accessories and weapons if you’re set on a bit of survivability, but id still recommend going full beserker in pve.

SlitheSlivier.1908:

2a) pvp 1v1 (where both players are about equally skilled…so no help from team)

Imho, I would say that toughness, conditions, minions, and healing power would be the best combination for 1v1. You’re not going to be spiking anyone down but you should win just about every fight.

For example: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;044Z;2IkI0s3oI-K0;9;4J-JT-08;219-27A;1VZ-7;2jwmAjwmA9cl

spoj.9672:

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

If you want to increase your dps you need to aim for around 50% crit chance, you wont be able to do that with soldier gear. Plus necro’s have plenty of base hp. Dont need any more vitality. Go knights with beserker accessories and weapons if you’re set on a bit of survivability, but id still recommend going full beserker in pve.

One thing, you wont be able to carry a team that wipes because they dont know their class mechanics/skills influence the fight and you dont explot the fight so much that it goes up its own butt in full zerker in pretty much every fractal ever that is 20 or over.

But if you do wanna be a glass cannon (no matter the profession) based just on gear stats would be as follows:
Zerker – Ruby Jewlery in armor is a must!
One handed weapons, boots, gloves, shoulders amulet and rings (on ascended, if exotic then accessory) 2 handers and chest optional if you want more crit damage/over 50% precision.
If possible trait line with crit damage should be taken to max, also another great thing they hybridizes is taking divinity runes and celestial ascendeds (even if it isnt technically zerker nor knights gear they do give good overall stats and still enough crit damage to be on par with pure zerker)

Knight – Helm, pants, chest, backpack, accessory (on ascended, if exotic then rings) and 2 handers; 1 handers and amulets optional if you want more survival.

First, my knight distribution is correct. It is a little known fact that emerald orbs have a 20 precision, 15 power, 15 toughness stat distribution while the rest of the gear is tough/power/precision. Because of this, a true set of full knight gear has the non-standard distribution I listed above.

There really isn’t other sources for stats other than trait lines. You can get maybe a further 120 points from orbs and up to a maximum of 300 in two stats, but the majority of statistical bulk lies in the equipment used. You are also arguing from ignorance here: You say that you have to factor in trait lines because they will improve things, but then don’t actually show this improvement. I’ll argue that the differences only get worse if you factor in traits, largely because power still scales better than precision in the vast majority of circumstances.

And to provide those circumstances, I’ll link to a few other threads where some of us explored this issue:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/

Using the formula of

Power > 2100 / (0.5 + Critdmg) + Precision – 832

for when precision becomes more valuable then power, investing in precision only increases damage higher than power when power is at 4284. Remember: Knight gear gives no critical damage, so you are stuck at 1.5 crit damage. Even assuming you have 30% critical damage from traits, you’ll end up needing 2709 power beforehand before precision becomes more valuable than power. Likewise, for standard knight gear to gain more from precision than power (assuming you have 1614 power), you would need 221% additional crit damage. This is largely because precision suffers from a diminishing return, much like power.

So looking at traits and what is provided by the equipment, the best thing you could do in either situation is invest in more power, and pretty much everything else is worthless. A single point of precision isn’t warranted until, assuming 30% crit damage increase, you have 2709 power.

I’ll cut it down in simpler terms, since you don’t understand the math: in damage, power is a basic multiple. Twice the power does twice the damage, half the power does half the damage, and so on. Since base power is 916 at level 80, you’ll have to add 916 more points of power to do twice damage. So, when I wrote down

(916 + 1003) / 916

This is basically finding out how much bigger the new number is to the old once. Since it came up 2.09, this means that with soldier’s gear you are doing 2.09 times the damage than if you had nothing at all. Now, precision mulitplies power by the total critical damage. Because if this, you need power first, then precision second.

But by how much? Well, the critical hit rate is Precision – 832, then all of that divided by 21. It takes 21 points of precision to increase critical hit rate by 1%. This calculation is a little complicated, since you have to take how much it increases by, and multiply this by how often it occurs. So if I had a 25% crit chance with 0% additional crit damage, we would get

Power x (1 × 75% + 1.5 × 25%)

Where I’ll do normal damage (1) 75% of the time, and I’ll do one and a half times damage 25% of the time.. You can take how much power increases your damage, and multiply that by how much precision increases your damage to get a total damage increase ratio, which is what i used to compare damage.

The problem with precision and why it is so worthless is encountered here: at 100% crit chance ( 2932 precision), you’ll only increase your damage by 50%. Or if you have crit damage, 50% + whatever that crit damage is. For comparison, a 50% increase in damage only needs 458 points in power.

So, now that I have explained what those numbers mean, you can run the numbers yourself. But no matter how you look at it, Soldier’s ends up being better than Knights because the raw power it provides is ultimately more useful than the precision Knights gives, and it does this while still giving plenty of toughness + vitality.

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

It’s really hard to say what EHP to go for. At high level fractals, things do so much damage that it is really hard to say when enough is enough. I could try running numbers on efficiency all day, but in general I would find that berserker/cavalier is the superior stat spread. Another option is also berserker/knight, which sacrifices the crit damag for crit chance. It really depends on the build (particularly if you are going into soul reaping). Since precision is tied to condition damage, it might be more efficient to get the precision from equipment, and the crit damage from traits.

For PvE I’m in full explorer’s with minions lifestealing and distracting stuff so I can farm it. Otherwise I’d take soldier’s, unless I want conditions in which case… uh… what’s the name of the one with precision, toughness and condition damage? I haven’t used it but I saw it on an item and thought I might give it a shot sometime.

First thanks the reply to my questions.

I only play 26+ fractal and I’m not sure going full glass. My guildmates ain’t min/maxed and we don’t usually have the dps to kill trash mobs fast enough before the end of those “protection” period of knockdowns, blind, reflects, etc. And only me running glass build probably won’t help the situation. But at the same time I don’t want to be too tanky as I already have a full set of rabid condition build and I feel like I can shave some of the 2.6k armor to offense.

I think I need to play in buildcraft for a while and find the perfect balance of offense/defense.

Further expend to the original question. pve-wise, I think it’s really depends on the style. I KNOW it’s best to run full glass in most pve, but I don’t think that can apply to my situation.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

Soldier’s actually does the same damage as knights when looking at just the sets. To compare the two sets, you would get the following attribute bonuses:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage. Comparing the durability, I’ll us the total effective HP, which is basically HP multiplied by armor value. Since this is highly class dependent, I’ll use the Necromancer as a base since we are, after all, talking about them.

Base HP: 18372
Base Armor: 1836

Effective HP 33,730,000

In Soldier gear we get:

New HP: 25353
New Armor: 2534

Effective HP (Soldiers): 64,240,000

In Knight Gear we get:

Base HP: 18376
New Armor: 2779

Effective HP (Knights) 51,070,000

So Soldier’s is superior to Knight in durability while having roughly equal damage outputs. There are only two times you’d ever want to go with knights: One if you are mixing it with something like Zerker gear or specific trait-dependent abilities so you can have more durability without sacrificing precision for the crits, and two in PVE if you plan on using attrition on champions mobs and want to be able to tank them indefinitely due to the increased healing efficiency gained from that toughness.

The latter will never be important for necromancers, since with Life Force scaling with vitality, they get a form of increased healing from LF gain in vitality. What soldiers will let you do, however, is plenty more face-tanking. This is really important for a necromancer, since they lack blocks, invulnerability, vigor, reflects, stealth, and some control effects. The only thing a necro can do is face tank, so maximizing this ability is important for the class. This creates a nice reinforcing loop for the necromancers, too:

First, they get the stats that let them face-tank better.
Then, they can use the dagger auto-attack at point blank longer, giving them more Life Force.
Finally, this extra LF lets them face tank for even longer.
Repeat.

This also lets the necromancer take point in encounters, drawing as much aggro as possible away from the zerkers so they can do more damage without leaping about like a circus monkey on red bull.

your math is fail…

in game testing shows knights out damaging soldiers by quite a margin

Last time I did an in-game test. soldier’s outdamaged knights. Here’s a few hints to help you get past the biases:

Max hit =/= DPS
Big Numbers =/= DPS
Overall damage / time = DPS

EDIT: One trial =/= proof.

Feel I have to include this one. Due to the RNG nature of critical hits, it is possible to both outdamage and underdamage soldiers if the RNG decides that every one of your attacks should be a critical hit, or that none of your attacks should be a critical hit.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Last time I did an in-game test. soldier’s outdamaged knights. Here’s a few hints to help you get past the biases:

Max hit =/= DPS
Big Numbers =/= DPS
Overall damage / time = DPS

EDIT: One trial =/= proof.

Feel I have to include this one. Due to the RNG nature of critical hits, it is possible to both outdamage and underdamage soldiers if the RNG decides that every one of your attacks should be a critical hit, or that none of your attacks should be a critical hit.

here is a hint for you

don’t add back in 1 minus the crit chance…

No, Blood Red’s pretty spot on about this. Precision scales poorly for damage unless you somehow have a pile (>50%) of prowess. And if you’re running full Soldier or Knight, you won’t.

Basically the 750 precision won’t make up the 300 power you lost in terms of damage. Now if you have a couple good on-crit effects that you want to leverage, that’s a different story, but just strictly for damage? Precision isn’t that good of a stat.

Edit: I happen to have a pile of Soldier Gear that I run with in PvE. It feels really good to revive your allies multiple times in a fight because they keep dropping from chip damage, without ever going down yourself.

I’ve wanted to try a retaliation / group heal Cleric build for a while, but can’t be bothered to scrounge together another gear set.

I’m not good at math in this game. All I know is calculator.

6 Soldier armor
Effective Power 1255.62
Effective Health (EHP) 23127
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

6 Knight armor
Effective Power 1223.6
Effective Health (EHP) 21524
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.0.1n.0.1n.0.1n.0.1n.0.1n.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Soldier does 2% more damage than knight

BUT

After adding in Ruby Orb and Berserker trinkets
Soldier build
Effective Power 2448.49
Effective Health (EHP) 23127
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7|2s.0.2s.0.3s.0.3s.0.2s.0.3s.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Knight build
Effective Power 2539.41
Effective Health (EHP) 21524
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7|2s.0.2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.3s.0.2s.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Knight build has slightly the edge. 3.7%

But it seems almost identical.
Now what should one choose between the two?

Depends if you want to use a lot of healing and/or on-crit effects I guess. Normally I’d take knight’s because I do use loads of life siphon, which is individually really pathetic amounts, but because it’s a necro and a lot of extra ‘health’ comes from DS, I can let that go a bit and I tend to prefer vitality and toughness.

Also the fact that knight’s is easier to get full exotic of, since it only needs gold or materials. Soldier’s comes from karma/tokens/badges and can’t be crafted, so for the sake of convenience it might be easier to start with knight’s.

1) Rabid
2) Rabid
3) Rabid

I tried every single build on my necro, and rabid in almost every case was the best,

Regarding to 1v1 we can win many fights without a scratch, we are not horrible duelists… a experienced necromancer can give you a nasty surprise, the problem is when we face fast classes with lot of cc’s and short cast times,

As you progress you will face better and better oponents and our slow cast times, no access to vigor and our awful stun breakers will become more and more evident,

I’ve been trying Carrion for Condi after being Rabid for the longest time, damage isn’t noticeably different, though its more up front and less susceptible to cleanse. I feel more squishy without my max toughness though, heals aren’t as good.

I think either works though, perhaps even a mix, if you want to retain some crit for bleed procs. Also the perfect EHP point would be with a hybrid of the two.

Zerk armor + Scholar Runes
Zerk Weapons : Staff w/Fire sigil and axe-focus w/ fire sigil and chill on weapon swap.
Full Celestial Trinkets (back slot is still zerk)
I run 30/25/10/0/5
Utlites are roaming in wvw when im angry and want to burst a player down fast its : BiP, Signet of Locust, Signet of power. Lich form used if bunker is my target.
Relaxed Roaming its : Corrupt boon, Well of Blindness, Signet of Locus (if I have blind on my bar or via plague ill away use chill on blind.)
Food is 40% more condtion duration to put me at a set 70% on all condtion duration.
When and if I want to roll with the zerg its: BiP and Epidemic and Corrupt boon.

The nice thing about this spec is if I choose to do something pve related I can well bomb and with one slot open for BiP i can still see bleeds reach 100 dmg and have all the kick kitten damage from zerk gear and see some great numbers. I choose the celestial trinkets since I roam a lot and honestly its the only other trinket that gives me everything + crit dmg.

Hmm after reading about all the tests n stuff I might give my soldiers set a try. Although ill prob end up going back to knights just because I like using blood sigil+lifesteal food+lifesteal traits which all benefit from crit chance. Guess it all depends on playstyle/how much on crit effects you have in your specific build.

Well i had a massive post explaining why knights is better than soldiers but it got deleted by a mod because apparently i was being inflammatory. Cannot be arsed to repost the points. His maths is wrong as dredlord said. Even with RNG based crits you still out damage soldiers by a huge margin in game. Running knights is very similar to running beserker, except your crits dont get quite so big and ur base attacks are slightly lower (300 power is nothing). There is no way 300 power is better than 40% crit chance otherwise you’d see all the optimum speed run groups running soldier anchor guardian which would be hilarious and stupid.

I’ve got full Soldier set and I feel the damage is nowhere enough.

Sure, the survivability is pretty high, but the damage output I have is pretty much way lower than, let’s say, the one I have with Knight Amulet in PvP (which is quite similiar to Emerald/Knight jewel in PvE).

Has anyone here full Emerald set that can give us a video showing the damage output? Or some combat log?

sorrow.2364:

I’ve got full Soldier set and I feel the damage is nowhere enough.

Sure, the survivability is pretty high, but the damage output I have is pretty much way lower than, let’s say, the one I have with Knight Amulet in PvP (which is quite similiar to Emerald/Knight jewel in PvE).

Has anyone here full Emerald set that can give us a video showing the damage output? Or some combat log?

I do have a knights set and it doesnt feel much lower damage than my beserker set. Theres also the issue of soldiers not synergising with groups at all. Atleast with a knights build, fury and might from warriors will actually effect you in a big way. Even in full soldiers you can get 1 shot by certain boss aoe’s so its stupid to go for tankyness if you want to be serious about dungeons. Get good dps and get your friends to do it aswell. Will make your dungeon runs so much easier and quick once you get the hang of it.

I have a few different sets I run with but usually my armor is all knights sometimes dolyaks sometimes scholar and either I switch between valk/zerker/knights jewels and always zerker weapons. I run 20/20/0/30/0 maintenance oils and omnomberry ghosts, d/d always and either a/f or staff woc, wos, and for the last utility it depends on what the fight is and lich. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’m the last one alive soloing a boss and I usually win. Lifesteal and siphon scale so well with toughness that I actually understand why its not higher as they would make vamp necros borderline op.

I think I now know which is the next set I’ll make on my Necro and on my Thief.
Sad thing it costs an huge amount of gold :/

spoj.9672:

I do have a knights set and it doesnt feel much lower damage than my beserker set. Theres also the issue of soldiers not synergising with groups at all. Atleast with a knights build, fury and might from warriors will actually effect you in a big way. Even in full soldiers you can get 1 shot by certain boss aoe’s so its stupid to go for tankyness if you want to be serious about dungeons. Get good dps and get your friends to do it aswell. Will make your dungeon runs so much easier and quick once you get the hang of it.

No you cant, no boss hit in game does over 30k damage on direct hit with a ability and the few instadowns in game are designed so that even a colorblind person with fixed cam can avoid them.
Also as i linked before the difference in effective hp is 15k, while damage difference is petty 5k (8k if zerker/knight optimized).
Also Zerker has less synergy with groups, its selfish damage buffing, helping others via heals, rez and actually being able to control the boss is helping, dps whoring is for exploiters/strife fanboys.

Well depends. More DPS is less room for error. ofc, provided you dont die every 5 seconds.

Pendragon.8735:

I’ve been trying Carrion for Condi after being Rabid for the longest time, damage isn’t noticeably different, though its more up front and less susceptible to cleanse. I feel more squishy without my max toughness though, heals aren’t as good.

I think either works though, perhaps even a mix, if you want to retain some crit for bleed procs. Also the perfect EHP point would be with a hybrid of the two.

I mix Carrion and Rabid gear on a staff/well build, works fairly decent and not cramming on as much toughness as possible seems to help with being able to avoid/shed aggro easier in dungeons if I have to. It’s not optimized for speed runs or anything like that but it is functional.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

I do have a knights set and it doesnt feel much lower damage than my beserker set. Theres also the issue of soldiers not synergising with groups at all. Atleast with a knights build, fury and might from warriors will actually effect you in a big way. Even in full soldiers you can get 1 shot by certain boss aoe’s so its stupid to go for tankyness if you want to be serious about dungeons. Get good dps and get your friends to do it aswell. Will make your dungeon runs so much easier and quick once you get the hang of it.

No you cant, no boss hit in game does over 30k damage on direct hit with a ability and the few instadowns in game are designed so that even a colorblind person with fixed cam can avoid them.
Also as i linked before the difference in effective hp is 15k, while damage difference is petty 5k (8k if zerker/knight optimized).
Also Zerker has less synergy with groups, its selfish damage buffing, helping others via heals, rez and actually being able to control the boss is helping, dps whoring is for exploiters/strife fanboys.

You dont need hp if you learn to dodge. Ive had countless pugs with bad dps, making dungeons so much harder than full zerker groups. Even when they get downed a bit the overall dungeon is easier. Tanky people dont contribute anything to the group other than being the last alive and then claiming “well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive”. Funny how that person cant actually kill anything on their own cause there damage is so bad its like slapping an ogre with a fish. There is nothing more selfish than just tanking and not doing any damage. Tanking is for mmo’s like wow. Dps actually helps the group because you burn mobs down before they cause the entire group problems. Why cant people like you accept that it is the meta in dungeon running instead of being stubborn.

Your comment about exploiting/strife fanboys shows how little you know about the subject. Strife doesnt exploit, his videos leave out a lot of methods some groups use which are exploiting. LOSing is a legit strategy. DPS is the best way to clear dungeons

A key flaw with soldiers is that your heal is going to be nothing compared to your hp. You really dont want that.

For WvW, I’m currently running full PVT with knight’s gems and a 0/20/10/30/10 wells build. Prior to this I’ve run 30/30/10 wells with a mix of PVT and berserker’s, 30/30/10 wells with a mix of PVT and rampagers, and rabid/carrion in a conditions build.

If I remember right we maximize our effective health by equalizing vit and toughness, and we get about a 2:1 tradeoff (percentage-wise) when we swap between effective health and effective power (you can see this in the buildcraft numbers given above). So, I just plow into PVT, take as much life steal as possible to get a little more direct damage, and knight’s gems so I can get enough crit to make on-crit effects noticeable.

We’ll see how it ends up playing, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that beefier and tankier is the way to go, at least for me.

Btw im all for soldiers in wvw and pvp. Just not pve.

All math aside the difference in damage between knights and soldiers is huge in game.

Soldiers hits like a wet noodle and it takes a ridiculously long time to solo a camp compared to knights gear. You will be getting respawns before you finish the camp and that means enemy reinforcements have time to respond.

In knights gear you will shred a camp solo and have it capped in half the time.

In soldiers gear you will never kill a bunker ele. solo, in knights gear it wont be a problem.

ok now lets see more fancy math so you can try and convince me whats happening IN game is just my imagination.

spoj.9672:

You dont need hp if you learn to dodge. Ive had countless pugs with bad dps, making dungeons so much harder than full zerker groups. Even when they get downed a bit the overall dungeon is easier. Tanky people dont contribute anything to the group other than being the last alive and then claiming "well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive". Funny how that person cant actually kill anything on their own cause there damage is so bad its like slapping an ogre with a fish. There is nothing more selfish than just tanking and not doing any damage. Tanking is for mmo’s like wow. Dps actually helps the group because you burn mobs down before they cause the entire group problems. Why cant people like you accept that it is the meta in dungeon running instead of being stubborn.

No you still need hp unless you are a ranger or thief, because even perma vigored people wont be able to avoid all damage a boss can push out, especially with aoe mechanics.
Also the "well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive" wouldnt say that if you played well since no matter if soldier or all out rampager im pretty much on my feet for every fight (i do fail at traps thou since a-net cannot make a set timing for them). Also as a person that soloed MF, AC path 3 (old one when you could trick the idioti with 2 emberglows to be in the wall while the burrow spawn) and up to lyssa boss of Arah in soldier gear, no the damage difference is barely notable unless you have a 2.5~ scailing instant skill *cough fire grab, eviscerate, backstab from behind, cluster bomb shot, etc* because you got the same amount of power and necro skills in general scale pretty kittenty.
Ofc having 1-2 full glass cannons is really helpful, but unlike a full zerker group you can finish all fights in game with all soldier without any exploitation.
Strifes kitten kitten finish fast burn boss hp speedruns and people like you that follow his "meta" and explit encounter till it disappears up its own butt are the reason why wow dungeons ended up in the crapper and the reason why people used to get permabanned from mmos, remember Cthun wall trick, yeah 80+ people permabanned because they exploited fights and finished a encounter without bothering to learn any of the mechanics and having not finished the requirements for the boss, but still got their free loot.
Also that "meta" doesnt technically exist because PvE meta isnt dictated by elitest whores that love their free loot, but by the devs, so knowing how it went in GW, i can wait till they Underworld your kitten to hell.

Its not exploiting lmao. This is a completely different game to wow, you cant compare them. Please explain what is being exploited by killing things fast and efficiently.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

You dont need hp if you learn to dodge. Ive had countless pugs with bad dps, making dungeons so much harder than full zerker groups. Even when they get downed a bit the overall dungeon is easier. Tanky people dont contribute anything to the group other than being the last alive and then claiming “well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive”. Funny how that person cant actually kill anything on their own cause there damage is so bad its like slapping an ogre with a fish. There is nothing more selfish than just tanking and not doing any damage. Tanking is for mmo’s like wow. Dps actually helps the group because you burn mobs down before they cause the entire group problems. Why cant people like you accept that it is the meta in dungeon running instead of being stubborn.

No you still need hp unless you are a ranger or thief, because even perma vigored people wont be able to avoid all damage a boss can push out, especially with aoe mechanics.
Also the “well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive” wouldnt say that if you played well since no matter if soldier or all out rampager im pretty much on my feet for every fight (i do fail at traps thou since a-net cannot make a set timing for them). Also as a person that soloed MF, AC path 3 (old one when you could trick the idioti with 2 emberglows to be in the wall while the burrow spawn) and up to lyssa boss of Arah in soldier gear, no the damage difference is barely notable unless you have a 2.5~ scailing instant skill cough fire grab, eviscerate, backstab from behind, cluster bomb shot, etc because you got the same amount of power and necro skills in general scale pretty kittenty.
Ofc having 1-2 full glass cannons is really helpful, but unlike a full zerker group you can finish all fights in game with all soldier without any exploitation.
Strifes kitten kitten finish fast burn boss hp speedruns and people like you that follow his “meta” and explit encounter till it disappears up its own butt are the reason why wow dungeons ended up in the crapper and the reason why people used to get permabanned from mmos, remember Cthun wall trick, yeah 80+ people permabanned because they exploited fights and finished a encounter without bothering to learn any of the mechanics and having not finished the requirements for the boss, but still got their free loot.
Also that “meta” doesnt technically exist because PvE meta isnt dictated by elitest whores that love their free loot, but by the devs, so knowing how it went in GW, i can wait till they Underworld your kitten to hell.

thats a sad story andelle, I thought you were smarter than that.

My warrior has often been the last one alive and then solo’d the encounter in both knight’s and soldier’s gear (separately. I’ve gone through a lot of armour sets on warrior). So far in my various cheap temporary builds/sets on the necro as I accumulate decent looking exotics (yes I’m waiting for the full set of un-craftable exotics to equip any of it lol. My rare MF gear makes for an amusing handicap in cases like WvW) I’ve not seen much to suggest it will fare any worse, provided of course I build for it.

Granted, if you want to habitually farm or solo dungeons, you may as well skip straight to berserker’s, because with one person and/or enough repetition it’ll stretch on long enough to die of boredom no matter what, and any time saved correlates roughly to your remaining sanity and chance of avoiding an RSI. Unless you take an engineer with grenades, then you’re going to have an RSI no matter how fast you solo it. :|

But, I will note that when on the warrior I went from my first (recycled it to save bank space…) soldier’s set to knight’s, I totally thought I’d get better damage out of it… and… tbh, besides the runes, very little changed.

Dredlord.8076:

here is a hint for you

don’t add back in 1 minus the crit chance…

And for today’s lesson in mathematics, we will be dealing with weighted averages. Now, a weighted average is basically the sum of all the different things that can happen, with each one multiplied by how frequently they happen. It is a useful shorthand for calculating averages when you don’t want to individually add each value together.

In GW2, whenever you launch an unhindered attack either one of two things will happen. Either it will be a critical hit, or it will not be a critical hit. Thus, to find the average damage output, you need to factor in how many times something crits, and how many times it doesn’t crit.

So lets take an example of Soldier’s Gear. You have only a 4% chance to get a critical hit, and those critical hits do 50% more damage. So, to find out the average damage, you would need to multiply the damage by how frequently it crits (4/100) and how much more damage it does (50% or 1.5), and add that with damage times how frequently it doesn’t crit (96/100). Now, what you are suggesting is we ignore the entire “doesn’t crit” section, and just multiply the damage only by how often it crits. This leaves a gigantic void in the numbers, and also violates a mathematical rule of probability: The sum of all probabilities must be equal to 100%.

Afya.5842:

…snip…

But it seems almost identical.
Now what should one choose between the two?

Depends on if you want more survivability or more damage. If you want damage, the mix between zerker and knight is better. If you want survivability, it is probably best to go mostly soldier. I have two sets of equipment on my own necro, one of them is full carrion specced for condition damage, the other is Knight Gear with ruby orbs and zerker trinkets. It actually works quite well as far as a setup goes, and it is useful if you have a bunch of procs firing off in the build.

spoj.9672:

Well i had a massive post explaining why knights is better than soldiers but it got deleted by a mod because apparently i was being inflammatory. Cannot be arsed to repost the points. His maths is wrong as dredlord said. Even with RNG based crits you still out damage soldiers by a huge margin in game. Running knights is very similar to running beserker, except your crits dont get quite so big and ur base attacks are slightly lower (300 power is nothing). There is no way 300 power is better than 40% crit chance otherwise you’d see all the optimum speed run groups running soldier anchor guardian which would be hilarious and stupid.

Lets think about it simply:

300 power is a (1216/916) = 33% increase in damage. 40% crit chance is a (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) =20% increase in damage.

It’s pretty straightforward. These are mathematical principles. They aren’t something you can vote on or say must be wrong because “so and so does things such and such way” or hope that other people agree with you. You can sit there and type until you get carpal tunnel, but the math won’t change.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It’s pretty straightforward. These are mathematical principles. They aren’t something you can vote on or say must be wrong because “so and so does things such and such way” or hope that other people agree with you. You can sit there and type until you get carpal tunnel, but the math won’t change.

then can you explain why my time to kill is so much lower on my knights set? mathematically of course….

Dredlord.8076:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It’s pretty straightforward. These are mathematical principles. They aren’t something you can vote on or say must be wrong because “so and so does things such and such way” or hope that other people agree with you. You can sit there and type until you get carpal tunnel, but the math won’t change.

then can you explain why my time to kill is so much lower on my knights set? mathematically of course….

Screenshot / summary of your stat spread in each set of gear? (At 80, of course.) I’m interested in what totals you’re getting between these two sets.

Edit: Oh and if you could point out where you’ve got your trait points allocated as well, that would be excellent.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

300 power is a (1216/916) = 33% increase in damage. 40% crit chance is a (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) =20% increase in damage.

What exactly is the 0.6 part?
Anyway, there is something you forgot to mention (or I missed). With Knight gear, having just a little increase in crit damage boosts the damage quite a lot. For instance, spending 30 traitpoints into Soul Reaping gives a nice gap between Knight and Soldier in terms of damage.