Guild Wars 2

Currently i’m using a full zerk gear but i’m wondering if it’s worth it to switch to marauder’s gear instead. Which one are using ppl today?

Berserker’s gear will do more damage than Marauders, so it should likely remain your focus. Swapping in some Marauder’s might give you more survivability, but you’ll also do less damage and thus have to survive for longer in fights.

I’m not a PvE-er at all, but I can see how the increased Precision received from using Marauder’s instead of Berserker’s may allow you to more comfortably run the ‘Flawless Strike’ trait instead of ‘Side Strike’ in Critical Strikes without needing a Ranger/Druid with you that runs Spotter (which I think is meta).
that 7% increase in damage might warrant the switch to Marauder gear… Not sure though.

The vast majority of players should be running a good chunk of Marauder.

The DPS to survivability trade-off you get is fantastic – you can increase your health by over 50% for roughly a 3% DPS loss. There is no content in the game where you will notice a 3% DPS difference, but tons of content where you will notice 50% more health – it will keep you from being downed as often, which costs you DPS, and also ends up wiping groups, giving you more reliable raid kills, make you more effective against world boss encounters, and generally improve your performance across the board.

If you are so good at the game that you are consistently one-shotting everything in raids and never get downed, even when learning encounters, then follow the conventional advice and run full Berserker. Anything short of that and you should have some Marauder equipped. My raid group frequently one shots everything in SV, but when we don’t it’s not an inperceptable difference in DPS, but because people got downed during a Mallyx ground pound, or get downed from cannons → flamethrower on Sabetha. Both of those can be avoided with extra health from Marauder.

Craft a set. It’s leagues better than full Berserker for all but the most masterful of PvE players.

Ensign.2189:

The vast majority of players should be running a good chunk of Marauder.

The DPS to survivability trade-off you get is fantastic – you can increase your health by over 50% for roughly a 3% DPS loss. There is no content in the game where you will notice a 3% DPS difference, but tons of content where you will notice 50% more health – it will keep you from being downed as often, which costs you DPS, and also ends up wiping groups, giving you more reliable raid kills, make you more effective against world boss encounters, and generally improve your performance across the board.

If you are so good at the game that you are consistently one-shotting everything in raids and never get downed, even when learning encounters, then follow the conventional advice and run full Berserker. Anything short of that and you should have some Marauder equipped. My raid group frequently one shots everything in SV, but when we don’t it’s not an inperceptable difference in DPS, but because people got downed during a Mallyx ground pound, or get downed from cannons -> flamethrower on Sabetha. Both of those can be avoided with extra health from Marauder.

Craft a set. It’s leagues better than full Berserker for all but the most masterful of PvE players.

Thank you very much for the useful advice

im no math expert for thief dps but I’ve been messing with stamina sigils and zerker/marauder mix and I just evade for days and don’t go down easy.

Ensign.2189:

The DPS to survivability trade-off you get is fantastic – you can increase your health by over 50% for roughly a 3% DPS loss.

This sounds fantastic so I tried to qualify it and I was unable to do so. I’m no theorycrafting expert, but I took the the build from dulfy and modified it to use some Marauder and compared the stats. According to this comparison the effective power went from 4891 to 4587 for a 6% decrease while the effective health went from 13,361 to 19,270 for a 44% increase. While that’s still not a terrible tradeoff IMO, it’s not quite the 3% decrease for 50% increase you mentioned. Is there something I’m doing wrong in these calculations? Thanks!

James Brantly.7532:

Ensign.2189:

The DPS to survivability trade-off you get is fantastic – you can increase your health by over 50% for roughly a 3% DPS loss.

This sounds fantastic so I tried to qualify it and I was unable to do so. I’m no theorycrafting expert, but I took the the build from dulfy and modified it to use some Marauder and compared the stats. According to this comparison the effective power went from 4891 to 4587 for a 6% decrease while the effective health went from 13,361 to 19,270 for a 44% increase. While that’s still not a terrible tradeoff IMO, it’s not quite the 3% decrease for 50% increase you mentioned. Is there something I’m doing wrong in these calculations? Thanks!

We’re talking about DPS, not just Power. I did the math a while back and in terms of DPS, the difference was about 4% between full zerk equipment, and marauder armor + weapon and zerk trinkets (I guess Ensign was only talking about the armor when he was saying 3%).

DPS = ( crit % * base damage * crit damage % ) + ( ( 1- crit % ) * base damage )

Marauder equipment has indeed less Power (and Ferocity), but it has more Precision, which partially makes it up for the loss. In terms of burst damage (which doesn’t matter in PvE), zerk equipment is much better though.

James Brantly.7532:

This sounds fantastic so I tried to qualify it and I was unable to do so.

Just went and re-checked it myself, it’s 3% damage for 45% more effective health.

Important points:

- Running Critical Strikes matters. The free ferocity makes swapping out berserker for marauder less costly, and Practiced Tolerance actually gets better as a precision to ferocity conversion. If you’re not running Critical Strikes the difference is larger.

- The difference in DPS is larger without food (around 4% instead of 3%). Again, you get a lot of free ferocity here, which benefits marauder builds more than berserker builds. In particular, in a build with substantial amounts of marauder gear, furious maintenance oils become really, really fantastic, giving both additional health and a lot more damage than sharpening stones.

- The above number is with boons and banners, which flattens the damage somewhat – you lose a bit less than 1% damage, relatively, going from full buffs to no buffs.

Basically, if you’re running around with no boons, no food, and no Critical Strikes, you’ll have around a 6% DPS loss for the ~45% EHP gain. When you buff up for hard encounters and optimize your damage, that DPS loss drops to ~3% due to the factors above.

Hope that helps.

Sir Mad.1092:

We’re talking about DPS, not just Power

Right, which is why I used “effective power” which takes into account crit (try changing the crit values in the effective power calculator I linked). Since damage is based linearly on effective power, a percentage increase/decrease in effective power equates to the same percentage change in DPS.

Don’t misunderstand me though, I’d love to be proved wrong

James Brantly.7532:

Sir Mad.1092:

We’re talking about DPS, not just Power

Right, which is why I used “effective power” which takes into account crit (try changing the crit values in the effective power calculator I linked). Since damage is based linearly on effective power, a percentage increase/decrease in effective power equates to the same percentage change in DPS.

Don’t misunderstand me though, I’d love to be proved wrong

OK, my bad.

I guess the difference in therms of DPS then comes from your build, and from how many Marauder pieces you were talking about (I wasn’t counting the trinkets).

I’ve done the same with another build similar to what I run, and here are the results:

http://bit.ly/25TAXDd

Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQFAGl0MhGnYhTg/JWALqtQct6NvAICag5ef4XeA-TlBBQBKU9Hss/o8DAPAgAcBA0nOgzoEMAwBA/+7v/GA-w

4921 vs 4737 = + 3.8% in therms of DPS.

Unless you’re super lowmanning gorseval you won’t see much difference dps wise but you’ll surely live longer

I run full marauder armor and weapons with zerk trinkets. Stuff dies fast but I don’t if I miss a dodge ^^

As soon as your group gets halfway decent, you run into the problem of overcapping crit.

Full zerk without Sigil of Accuracy, but with Fury, Discipline and Spotter reaches 100% crit chance easily. And thats when Mauradeur probably starts dropping in dps more than just 4%.

Even without a ranger you reach 95%+