Disclaimer
The following thread is only theorycrafting . At moment i haven’t that build and i’ve not tested and all that i’m going to say is only based on the math behind gw2. Don’t post off topic comments; this thread is about “bunker” and “condition” gameplay. If you are interested comment if you are not leave this thread or i’ll report any aggressive post.
Hello fellow rangers,
today i want to talk with you about a question i had, few weeks ago, in the guardian forum: is possible to get 0 damage?
Obviously that’s impossible but my is still the same: get 0 damage per second
If you think that this is impossible then give a good look to the following math and you will find that optimizing defense is easier than you may think.
Before to start i want to say that this isn’t, still, a build or a guide since these are only few calculation i did in these days… but as soon as possible (after testing) i’ll trasform this thread in a guide/build if the conclusion is positive.
1. Defense, health, condition.
First of all is important to point out that to get maximum defense we can’t point all on toughness (due to the bad scale) and we need to get damage reduction from skill/combo/boon/trait combined with high health regen. To play as a bunker will never save you unless you are able to deal a low but sustained damage and the only “kind of damage” we get while going bunker is condition damage.
2. Zero damage, how?
Ok, “zero damage” is only a symbolic name because you will always get damage but at the end of the second your health will be full; that’s what zero damage means.
The common damage formula in gw2 is the following one:
damage = ((power * skill coefficient * weapon damage)/armor) * (1 -x -y -z)
where x, y and z are damage reduction.
As you can understand the damage is a product between 2 fractions and the only way to get 0 as result is to get x+y+z=1 but this is impossible. So the only way to get “zero damage” is to make our heal per second to cover that “damage” per second we get;
it is not so hard.
3. Regen, Prot, Reduction.
As the most of you can imagine the build is based on regeneration, protection and damage reduction effects . Regen because it well scales with healing power (0.125 * healing power) and we get a 33% boost on duration (with a common +95% boon build it’s 128% regen duration!). Protection is a great damage reduction (a good 6 sec every 10 sec of protection is almost perma prot). And the damage reduction comes from our bark skin trait… yes bark skin! It may seems that to get it at 25% hp is an hard choice but it means that when you reach 25% you may not be killed… really.
4. The starting of a build…
Ok, here you go if you want to have a direct view of what the build will look like:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQBMSU1V5XBaHIaPyU/PPrghcPGVpOFA-j0ABlhRr6KslXBJEATA-w
regeneration:
129 sec of regen every 60 sec -> 215% regen uptime
protection:
5.75 sec every 10 sec -> 0.58% uptime (without use skills and works like a passive prot gain)
damage reduction:
bark skin -> -30% damage at 25% hp
frost armor -> -10% damage for 5 sec
5. Does healing power scales better than toughness?
Of course, it does. So the most important thing (for now… i’ll explain better late) is better to get a cap of 2900-3000 armor and then aim on healing power… anyway apothecary seems to be the best choice for now… but i’ll work more on this.
Healing spring: 4920 + (1.0 * healing power)
Water Field + Leap Finisher: 1320 + (0.2 * healing power)
Regeneration: 130 + (0.125 * healing power) per sec
Spirit of Nature: 480 per sec
6. First conclusions
This will be a really hard to use build because you have to manage defense and offense while good timing both… learn when to raise your defense up to 0 damage and when to attack. While common builds have the “offensive burst” this build is based on "defensive burst which lead us up on a (skill damage/armor) * (0. 27%)=damage which is really… really low; now we only need to get damage… i’m working on. In the meanwhile i’ll be really happy to listen your suggestions and thoughts about the concept itself of “zero damage” … do you think you will never this kind of build? Damage is better than defense? maybe… or maybe not… what do you think?