Guild Wars 2

Soldier’s vs Knight’s

• Power: +336 for Soldier’s
• Precision (crit chance): +33% for Knight’s
• Crit Damage: +5% for Knight’s (because of the Cavalier back)
• Toughness (dmg mitigation): +7.48% for Knight’s
• Vitality (hitpoints): +7,280 for Soldier’s

• Effective Power: +41.05 for Soldier’s
• Effective Health: +7,978 for Soldier’s

Since the Ranger really only benefits from crits for Sigils (our on-crit traits blow), I’m curious why so many of us (myself included) are using Knight’s instead of Soldier’s. I have a few thoughts, but still wondering.

What are you guys’ and gals’ thoughts on this?

Some of my thoughts:

In favor of Soldier’s:

• Ranger is not a burst class, at least not with the damage from the Ranger. Instead, we provide solid, continuous damage. This is reliable if you rely on just condition damage or just power. Crit damage is a bit more “spiky” and less reliable than just pure power.
• Condition damage ignores toughness 100%.
• A higher effective health allows one to ensure a fight lasts long initially and is beneficial if able to reset losing fights via mobility … greatsword ranger is quite mobile and able to do this against most classes

In favor of Knight’s:

• Ranger’s are not bursting most people down. As a fight continues, Vitality begins to matter less and less. Once it is gone, it is gone and can only be regained through healing (which neither set has).
• There are some nice on-crit sigils that drain life, chill, bleed, aoe, gain might, etc.
• If you take Runes of Melandru and eat Lemongrass food, you have -65% condition duration

Knights for me just because it is easy to get. Any one can get it, I doubt I will ever have a set of soldier or other pve armor.

Knight’s armor is just a good base to start working from. It mixes well with berserker’s gear. Also, precision gives greater benefits the more you invest in it. If you assign the trait points in those two builds, I think you’ll find that the knight’s gear pulls ahead in effective power.

I can tell you why I use Knights, for a near 50% crit without Fury.

Omnom Pies. Before the nerf, they were stupidly overpowered. After the nerf, they’re still useful enough that I won’t take the time to get a different set of exotics. That, and when you couple the high armor, with Sigil of Purity, and Sigil of Generosity, conditions just roll off of you.

When there were a crazy amount of Thieves in WvW, I ran.

Gear is;

Armor – “Vatlaaw’s” (Precision, Toughness, Condition Damage) all but Chest, which is actually the WvW/PvP piece giving (Power, Vitality, Toughness).
Jewelry – “Amulet of the Skies”, “Cirque of Arah”, “Big Mama’s Tooth” all slotted with the Mighty Infusion. You can use Exotics Knights Jewelry until you get your Ascended. (Power, Precision, Toughness)
Weapons – “Carrion” (Power, Vitality, ConDam)
Use Superior Rune of Undead to raise your Condition Damage, making good use of the high Toughness

Carry an extra set of melee/dual weapons, both slotted with Superior Sigil of Bloodlust, so that every kill gives you “two” stacks. This allows you to kill only 13 mobs, or if you’re lazy, only kill five creatures.

Then switch back to your fighting weapons. Shortbow + melee weapon(s) of choice.

You’ll have roughly 45% or better critical hit, so use Omnom Pie for the healing power. Even after the nerf, it is still decent. This crit chance also opens up a large variety of Sigils, your choice. If you are worried about conditions, slot Superior Sigil of Generosity, and Superior Sigil of Purity on dual melee weapons. High Toughness, with a greater condition removal makes for a solid bunker spec.

30 Wilderness Survival ( III, VII, XI )
10 Nature Magic ( VI )
30 Beastmastery ( I, VII, XII )

This is an anti-Thief spec because in WvW, they can hit very hard, so when you see a Thief up ahead, switch a trait on the fly. (You can drag your persona window to the far left so it exposes only the last set of traits.) XI in WS to XII in WS, which works great with VI in NM. If you don’t have time to switch, no worries, you still have VI in NM to help keep you from being spiked out.

Make sure to use the Sharpening Stone consumable as your second consumable. However, you can use others, like if you want a higher critical hit chance, use Maintenance Oil. If you want a higher condition damage, use the Tuning Crystal consumable.

Hm.

Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations for Knights vs Soldiers in terms of damage.

Assume full soldiers: 1003 power.
Assume full knights: 697 power, 697 precision.

Assume 916 base stat (no traits)

We then calculate the expected value of damage, crit and non-crit.

With full soldiers, you achieve 209% increase in damage
With full knights, you achieve 204% increase in damage.

This interesting! In the absolute absence of critical damage, Soldiers does more damage than Knights.

However, as soon as you reach 10% critical damage, Knights will edge out Soldiers in terms of damage.

I’ll argue that Crit damage shouldn’t be looked at as “burst” damage at all, especially when talking about timescales of ~30s-1 minutes which is really the minimum amount of time most non-trivial fights in this game take. Burst or no burst, under most conditions (How many Rangers have less than 10% crit damage?) Knights will end up doing more damage.

It’s for that Crit Chance because the more we crit, the more damage we do overall. As a ranger, HP shouldnt matter too much in short fights. The faster you kill things, the better. Since we also kill things from a distance, with all our dodges, we shouldnt be getting hit even in long battles and the toughness will help migrate damage in case we do get hit.

With my power/toughness/precision build it’s the only choice, heh.
And survivability is on decent level with omnomberry ghost and sigil of leeching/blood.

I like knight set on ranger and ele since it’s in-between armor. Neither heavy tank, neither for bursting people down.

You bring up a good point with the Sigil of Blood. Leeching doesn’t depend on crit chance though ;-)

I’m still looking into this. I’m going to have to finish out my Soldier’s set (need to run more Ascalon for gloves & pants … I’m a sucker for different skins for different gear sets).

I’m curious if there is some way to provide a decent comparison of the differences in offense and defense. Say, a x% offense vs y% defense.

Added to the Compilation Thread!

EDIT: Personally, I run a mix of Knight’s with Berserker’s (the minor pieces are berserker), with all Celestial accessories and a Soldier Back piece.

I used to run all Soldier’s to get a feel for WvW. I survived a lot, but I really felt my damage was lacking. That, and I found out that no matter how much survivability I stack, if I’m caught in a bad place with no way to escape, I’ll die regardless.

This was the time I decided to add a bit more damage and be more mindful of my positioning. I end up surviving a lot longer not because of the toughness, but because of strategic positioning. I have 1500 range after all, so I should be far away from that might want to kill me. If anything does get close, that toughness will be very handy to make me survive, assuming its not a 1v5.

To me, the main point of having 40%+ crit chance is to maximize on crit effects on food and sigils.