Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

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.

it is the 60% of the time you dont crit.

I think why his math doesn’t match what people experience in game is he assumes a 33% increase in power is also a 33% increase in damage. it may be the case but I dont know. It is not the case with healing or condition damage stats.

If he is right then the devs have failed us again by making it so. A 2 offensive stat gear setup being equal to a 2 defensive stat gear set doing almost the same damage. actually now that I think about it, the devs are definitely capable of such an oversight.

A 33% increase in power is a 33% increase in damage. Check the damage formula, everything is multiplicative.

And precision has more benefits than just increased damage. Pretty much every class has on-crit traits, and many of the best ones are minors, so they’re somewhat universal. Then there’s on-crit runes and sigils. To make precision be about increased damage, you have to / can invest in prowess (crit damage).

I realize this is in the Necro forum, so commenting about other classes may seem off-topic, but precision, critical hits, and stat sets are game-wide, so understanding them may require more than just necro-specific information.

sorrow.2364:

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.

The 0.6 is the chance to not crit. In non-reduced form, the formula is this:

Damage x Crit Damage x Crit Chance + Damage x Regular Hit Chance

And reducing that, you get

Damage x (Crit Damage x Crit Chance + Regular Hit chance)

With crit damage at 1.5, and a crit chance of 40%, you end up with a 60% chance to hit regularly.

Damage x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6)

Increasing the crit damage does benefit knight gear more. As for how much more, I haven’t really checked. There’s no question that if you gave Knights just more crit damage, it wouldn’t beat out an equivalent investment into soldier’s power. However, I haven’t done a full on “try to maximize DPS” check with either of these, since I assume that if you are building defensively in the first place you wouldn’t do that. So, if you are going to forgo all of the defensive traits in a defensive build and go for maximum statistical offense,

Soldier’s gets 300 power and 300 precision
Knights gets 300 power and 300 crit damage

Then you get from Soldiers:

Damage from power: 2.42
Crit rate: 18%
Total damage: 2.42 x (1.5 × 0.18 + 0.82) = 2.63

And from Knights:

Damage from Power: 2.09
Crit Rate: 40%
Crit Damage: 30% (1.8)
Total damage: 2.09 x (1.8 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.76

Which is a bit surprising, actually, in that crit damage scales much better than I expected. This ought to teach me that I shouldn’t use the original base value (698) when doing a quick calc in my head. Though you would have to weigh build flexibility in the end, since if you go anywhere but full Spite and full Soul Reaping, Soldier’s will match or beat out knights, and even then if the 5% increase in overall damage will have to be weighed by the 26% decrease in overall survivability from using Knights, and the 35% increase in condition damage that the full curses line would give if you went for the full curses line in soldiers. I guess you would have to weigh that out in the end as far as the build goes: go straight up spite + reaping for raw power, or go for curses and more AoE damage via conditions.

Interestingly, if you go with 300 power + precision in both Knight/Soldier, you get a damage increase of 2.65 out of knights, making them effectively the same again.

Softspoken.2410:

A 33% increase in power is a 33% increase in damage. Check the damage formula, everything is multiplicative.

And precision has more benefits than just increased damage. Pretty much every class has on-crit traits, and many of the best ones are minors, so they’re somewhat universal. Then there’s on-crit runes and sigils. To make precision be about increased damage, you have to / can invest in prowess (crit damage).

I realize this is in the Necro forum, so commenting about other classes may seem off-topic, but precision, critical hits, and stat sets are game-wide, so understanding them may require more than just necro-specific information.

the link you gave me includes a weapon skill coefficient so no 33% more power does not equal 33% more damage unless every skill specific coefficient for direct damage in the game is the same

Dredlord.8076:

Softspoken.2410:

A 33% increase in power is a 33% increase in damage. Check the damage formula, everything is multiplicative.

And precision has more benefits than just increased damage. Pretty much every class has on-crit traits, and many of the best ones are minors, so they’re somewhat universal. Then there’s on-crit runes and sigils. To make precision be about increased damage, you have to / can invest in prowess (crit damage).

I realize this is in the Necro forum, so commenting about other classes may seem off-topic, but precision, critical hits, and stat sets are game-wide, so understanding them may require more than just necro-specific information.

the link you gave me includes a weapon skill coefficient so no 33% more power does not equal 33% more damage unless every skill specific coefficient for direct damage in the game is the same

Everything is multiplicative, including the skill-specific coefficient. So doubling your power? Doubles the damage, regardless of what the coefficient is.

Regarding the OP’s topic, I start with the skills and utilities I need for the situation, not the armor. If playing a condition management role, set traits appropriately and then choose equipment to assist.

Armor stats is last as a factor behind a player’s experience, utilities, trait-skills, consumables, weapons, and runes/sigils. Choose everything else with more care than your armor, then use the armor stats to fill in what minor gaps are left. I used to think it all started with armor but that was backwards; armor and weapon stats are the tiles on the roof, not the foundation or walls.

Anchoku.8142:

Regarding the OP’s topic, I start with the skills and utilities I need for the situation, not the armor. If playing a condition management role, set traits appropriately and then choose equipment to assist.

Armor stats is last as a factor behind a player’s experience, utilities, trait-skills, consumables, weapons, and runes/sigils. Choose everything else with more care than your armor, then use the armor stats to fill in what minor gaps are left. I used to think it all started with armor but that was backwards; armor and weapon stats are the tiles on the roof, not the foundation or walls.

I suppose that can be true depending on your outlook yet armor is a significant investment that you generally can’t switch on a whim. Sure, you have the occasional player who has a full set of each of the various armors but for most players exo armor requires a lot of time/money so caring about the stat distribution is really just caring about your playstyle since you are likely ‘stuck’ for a while.

I do see what you mean however.

Personally I find the armour itself is very cheap compared to the extra bank/inventory space to collect it all… but unfortunately I have skins on it I don’t want to be replacing all the time, because those blue transmute rocks build up in cost after a while too.

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.

A baseless and in necromancer case more then any other false statement. Necros have plenty of access to damage abilities that do not scale with anything(cough minions cough). Same goes towards healing that doesn’t scale with anything.
I highly suggest you actually try things before making assumptions on your own.

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.

And yet again way off and completely wrong. 50% crit chance is all great… if you have anything that benefits from crits. Procs/traits etc. If you don’t then high crit chance with 0 crit damage means absolutely nothing when on the other hand your base damage is higher. Sounds like you read a thief/warrior guide where classes have a truck load of crit dependencies.
Also ratio is put there for convenience sake instead of thinking in terms of hp+armor-damage reduction from armor etc you are given 1 single number to compare and in all 3 cases same formula to get it is used. If you can’t grasp that… god… I feel bad for you and suggest you should really go to school. Or find some common sense(not likely).

But would be the Knight gear more well suited for Necro since their base HP pool is that high?
I mean, if you have more toughness and less HP, it is more easy to outheal the damage you get.
Knight gear gives way more toughness compared to Soldier gear, without considering the fact that it scales pretty well with Critical Damage.
Also, the benefits that comes from increased HP to Death Shroud are overshadowed by 30% more life force from Soul Reaping (quite mandatory if you have Knight gear, useless if you have Soldier gear) and the increased toughness of the set (the armor values applies to DS too, right?).

So, overall, Knight gear is more suitable for Necros compared to Soldier..?

If we’re talking pve/fractals, the best set to go with IMO would be knight armor with berserker trinkets and jewels, wellbomb spec. Use an axe instead of dagger if you find it hard to survive in melee range, or use both if you don’t feel staff is must-have. The third util slot is ur wildcard, signet of undeath is nice for some fights, for others you’re better off with blood is power for more damage, for stuff like the grawl shaman top fight you may prefer spectral grasp to save teh villagers.

If we’re talking 1v1, there are several ways to go about it, the most effective one I’ve found so far is a condition/fear/well hybrid spec with Carrion amulet. Makes mesmers rage/cry. Thieves are 50/50, bunker eles and rangers…not so much. It’s not very easy to pull off though, takes some planning of skill use over time and dodge timing must be really good.

sorrow.2364:

But would be the Knight gear more well suited for Necro since their base HP pool is that high?
I mean, if you have more toughness and less HP, it is more easy to outheal the damage you get.
Knight gear gives way more toughness compared to Soldier gear, without considering the fact that it scales pretty well with Critical Damage.
Also, the benefits that comes from increased HP to Death Shroud are overshadowed by 30% more life force from Soul Reaping (quite mandatory if you have Knight gear, useless if you have Soldier gear) and the increased toughness of the set (the armor values applies to DS too, right?).

So, overall, Knight gear is more suitable for Necros compared to Soldier..?

Something interesting with necromancers is that they get an alternative form of healing that scales with vitality: Life Force regeneration. Another interesting thing with necromancers is that they are the only class where toughness and vitality are nearly perfectly balanced when comparing toughness and vitality.

For an example, lets say that you are comparing 1000 toughness vs. 1000 vitality. The toughness gets added to the base armor of the necro (1836), and ultimately decreases their damage taken by 54.5%. That in vitality gives 10k HP to 18376 base HP, and ends up giving 54.4% more damage that they can take.

As you can see, if you had any less HP, as it is with anything that isn’t a warrior, then vitality would give more survivability. If you had any more armor, then vitality would give more survivability. This is because the necromancer is the only class that starts with a 1:1 ratio between HP and armor. Now, you can argue back and forth between which one is better, since they both have their pros an cons.

Vitality:
Pro: Scales better on every class other than necro
Pro: Works on all forms of damage
Con: Ablative. Once that extra HP is gone the advantage is gone.

Toughness:
Pro: Increases healing efficiency.
Pro: Cumulative effect from healing power.
Con: Does nothing for conditions
Con: Scales worse on every class other than necro.

So I suppose it is better to consider on a build by build basis. Regardless, the vitality increase from soldiers gives a 38% increase in HP, and likewise a 38% increase in the Life Force pool as well as a 38% increase in the efficiency of Soul Reaping’s Life Force bonus. Soul reaping caps out at 30% increase. Now, the toughness from Soldier’s gives a 38% in durability as well, and this can be considered a further increase to the health since Soldier’s has more of it, as well as an increase to life force. You can come up with a scaled HP form this called Effective HP. EHP is basically max HP multiplied by how much toughness improves survivability, or

25,356 × 1.38 = 34,991

And the Life Force being 70% of that is 24,494 in Life Force

Knight Gear gives a 51% increase in durability. With no HP bonus, this comes to

18376 × 1.51 = 27,748

And with life force being 70% of that, you’ll get 19,422. But, if we were to assume that knight gear put 300 points into Soul Reaping and Soldier’s didn’t put any points into either Soul Reaping, Blood Magic, or Death Magic, then you can say that the Life Force pool is 27,748, which is 3.2k more “HP” in LF than soldiers, but sacrifices 7.2k real HP to get this.

HiSaZuL.2843:

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.

A baseless and in necromancer case more then any other false statement. Necros have plenty of access to damage abilities that do not scale with anything(cough minions cough). Same goes towards healing that doesn’t scale with anything.
I highly suggest you actually try things before making assumptions on your own.

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.

And yet again way off and completely wrong. 50% crit chance is all great… if you have anything that benefits from crits. Procs/traits etc. If you don’t then high crit chance with 0 crit damage means absolutely nothing when on the other hand your base damage is higher. Sounds like you read a thief/warrior guide where classes have a truck load of crit dependencies.
Also ratio is put there for convenience sake instead of thinking in terms of hp+armor-damage reduction from armor etc you are given 1 single number to compare and in all 3 cases same formula to get it is used. If you can’t grasp that… god… I feel bad for you and suggest you should really go to school. Or find some common sense(not likely).

Im sorry but barely any build will have 0 crit damage. And even with 0 crit damage crits do considerably more than non crits. My necro was my only option in dungeons for a while so i maximised my dps so i wasnt completely useless. Ive experimented alot with trait and stat combo’s. Any beserker or knights necro is going to have some points in soul reaping which gives a really big boost in crit damage.

Minions are useless and unreliable in pve (die to boss aoe’s and just dont attack). Healing is useless in dungeon running because your not going to kill a boss by healing it to death. You should just be managing your own survivability which requires very little in the way of traits and stats. Unless your playing the anchor role where you can help a bit. But this isnt a holy trinity mmo stop talking like it is.

ps. Find it funny how you directly insult me and dont get your post deleted. Whereas i just act a little egotistical and i get a warning and a deleted post..

I hate seeing people mention life force generation as healing. Its not. You cant use your lifeforce to heal your actual hp bar. Once you come out of DS your still on low hp and having a large hp pool means you cant heal it back up quickly. Its pointless to go for vitality until we can actually use our DS to heal our hp back up.

Lol… soul reaping tree is a niche which holds appeal mostly for pvp or terror builds. In both cases there are better ways to gear crit damage. You essential saying you are dumping 30 trait points to get some crit damage and with those 30 trait points you don’t get a single trait that benefits from doing crits. Grats.
Also… After i read the whole hp is terrible because you can’t heal as fast…. I wont even bother anymore. I think i can find more sane arguments from a kid who threw a dead squirrel at another kid and comes up with a logical reasoning behind the action.
And I’m still amused at people throwing this isn’t a holy trinity mmo. Weeee weee Whoo whoo.
And yet… we have tanks. And we have healbots and we have dps bombs. Confused much? Not actually sure what this holy trinity means? Like I said this conversation is seriously not going anywhere.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

CUT

There is something you have to consider:
- Heals do not scale with vitality. When having less but more efficient HP pool (read more armor), you’re going to outheal better the damage you take, thus we can say that heals scale with toughness as much as EHP scales with toughness. You should consider that also, but I don’t know exactly how you can put that in your formula.
- Death Shroud degen is a percentage. That means that the more Life Force you have, the more you are going to lose natually when in Death Shroud.
- Soldier gear has no access to the crit damage multiplier. If you consider the Soldier gear itself without any other trait or buff, it will give better damage output compared to Knight gear, but when you’re adding Critical Damage via traits or buffs, you’re multiplying your damage by a good amount and that’s where precision is worth something offensive-wise.

Here’s a logical reasoning behind why hp might be bad, since we’re talking about pve and fractals:
agony deals a percent damage of your hp per tick, reduced by agony resistance. Let’s assume you had the same AR on a vitality set and on a non-vitality set and that agony hits you for 30% of your hp. The bigger your hp pool is, the more damage you take from it and the less your healing (and the healing you get from the group) will help you survive all the ticks.

Now, theory aside I do agree that the Soul Reaping tree is best suited for terror builds and I wouldn’t go farther than 15 points in it for a pve build. IMO the crit damage stat should be moved to the Spite trait line instead of condition duration, then the attributes gained from both these trait lines will be more in line with the uses of the actual traits in them.
As it is now, you’re better off sticking to max 15 points in Soul Reaping and stacking crit damage from trinkets/jewels, power and precision from armor, running the obvious 2 wells and BiP for the extra might. Whether you want to go full glass or use knight stats on the armor is up to you really. Worrying too much about survivability in pve as a necro is a bit silly if you ask me, we’re not the most squishy cats out there so it’s mostly about maximizing your damage output. There’s very few things that could 1shot you, regardless of whether you choose to go full berserker, knight or soldier, but the difference in dps is noticeable.
Unfortunately our trait options that do benefit from crits are not extremely useful in pve, can’t really name any besides lifesteal (which is arguably useful as well, since the numbers are so low).

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lol… soul reaping tree is a niche which holds appeal mostly for pvp or terror builds. In both cases there are better ways to gear crit damage. You essential saying you are dumping 30 trait points to get some crit damage and with those 30 trait points you don’t get a single trait that benefits from doing crits. Grats.
Also… After i read the whole hp is terrible because you can’t heal as fast…. I wont even bother anymore. I think i can find more sane arguments from a kid who threw a dead squirrel at another kid and comes up with a logical reasoning behind the action.
And I’m still amused at people throwing this isn’t a holy trinity mmo. Weeee weee Whoo whoo.
And yet… we have tanks. And we have healbots and we have dps bombs. Confused much? Not actually sure what this holy trinity means? Like I said this conversation is seriously not going anywhere.

Erm ok. Soul reaping tree is the must have trait line for power builds in pve. The stability is useful in dungeons like arah, the boosted dmg when lifeforce is above 50% is very good. The 5 second DS cooldown is good if your flashing DS aswell (can get perma fury without help from teammates with this and 15 pts in curses). Theres plenty of traits for flashing DS and lots of them are good in power builds. The piercing lifeblast with vuln stacking is good. The spectral cooldown reduction is good. The locust swarm is also good, procs loads of crits on a crit build and generates really good lifeforce. Not to mention full beserker with 30 in soul reaping gives over 110% crit damage. The spite line is the power line with awful choice of traits (mainly the minors).

Please explain whats wrong with my logic about lifeforce healing? There is no benefit to not being able to heal yourself after you’ve failed to absorb a hit with DS. You dont need extra DS hp to absorb a massive hit. Sure it instant removes all your lifeforce but in a power build you gain it all back in a few hits. You dont need vitality, its a wasted stat, we can already absorb enough hits with our base hp. And as gabi said, agony is percentage based so your just gimping yourself further by not being able to out heal a single agony tick on high level fractals….

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….

It’s because the maths outlined deals with expectation, not individual trials.

Since fights can be short, a few crits here and there can shorten it. But if soldiers and knights were to have a dps marathon over a long long time, soldiers will rate higher very slightly going by the numbers from an earlier post.

I have three sets of armor.

1. Carrior Armor with Centaur runes + Rampager Trinkets

I built my first set back when everybody else was using Rabid all day long and told using anything except Scepter is dumb.
I’ve used Dagger for ages!

To this day it’s still my favorite set. It’s so versatile.
You have Condi+Power+Crit+Vitality and thus can pick pretty much which ever trait trees you want.
Suddenly Ground-targeted Wells in Curses make perfect sense!
You are hardy enough to not die easily and still can hit 50% crit chance if you want to.

You can utilize EVERYTHING from Death Shroud, the Power damage, the Bleeds, the Chill, the Teleport to melee-range.

It’s quite nice in WvW as well.

2. Soldier Armor with Soldier Crests + Soldier Trinkets.
I think I only ever used it a few times.
It was nice when in Arah with newbies, and quite handy for tagging targets for loot bags in WvW.
Having both Vitality and Toughness and having Plague added on top makes you ridiculously hard to kill.

On the down side your damage is nothing to write home about.
It’s not as bad as you might think; the set has a ton of Power.
It’s just… not amazing.

3. Minmaxed Zerker+Knights mix that sacrifices a bit of Crit Damage for lots of toughness.

This set hits really hard without being a complete glass cannon.
Still… too little survivability for my playstyle. I like to stab things!
Might be better if and when Axe gets buffed again.

…
As for sPvP I just run the same Carrion Scepter Fear build everyone does.
I run it with a Focus off-hand, though. I like the Life Force.
I should note that I’m not very good at sPvP, however.