Guild Wars 2

Hello, so: I’ve been playing for quite a long time and right now I decided to stick with d/d for pve (including fractals) and d/p for WvW, and I decided to make my own ascended armor, so I was wondering, is it worth to go full berserker?

Considering that I don’t die that often as things are now, is it really the best choice? Or is it better to put some Valkyrie stats in it too?

In the end most of the damage comes from the backstabs and the Hidden Killer trait (although in dungeons I do stick with shortbow for long times), which is the critical chance considerable “enough” before going Valkyrie?

Or to put it simple: which part of my armor/trinkets should I make zerker and which Valkyrie for max efficency?

No matter how I turn this, it all depends.

Build, runes, sigils, desired stats, if you want to be well setup while progressing for ascended, or if you want a perfect end result.

After they took out Critical Damage as a stat and changed it to Ferocity, they pretty much removed “soft” optimizing. What’s left is “hard” optimizing; obtaining the right number of precision and ferocity.

Q: whaat?
@: every 21 precision is 1% crit chance, if you have 20 precision and therefor lack 1 it gets rounded down to 0% and becomes a loss of 20 stats. And every 15 ferocity is 1% crit dmg, if you have 14 ferocity, same thing, a loss of a 14 stats.

Base precision: 926, 4%
Base ferocity: 0, 150%

if what I wrote above matters.
press Start+R, type “calc” without quotes.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Worst case scenario: you lose 34 stats in total.

If it doesn’t matter, well you can do just like all other thieves and go with full valkyrie armor set, 1x valkyrie+zerk ring, 1x cavalier accessory and rest berserkers.

Actually, you can have half-percentile stats. The number will be rounded down in the equipment menu, but it won’t mean you don’t have that critical chance…

Zeta.3198:

Hello, so: I’ve been playing for quite a long time and right now I decided to stick with d/d for pve (including fractals) and d/p for WvW, and I decided to make my own ascended armor, so I was wondering, is it worth to go full berserker?

Considering that I don’t die that often as things are now, is it really the best choice? Or is it better to put some Valkyrie stats in it too?

In the end most of the damage comes from the backstabs and the Hidden Killer trait (although in dungeons I do stick with shortbow for long times), which is the critical chance considerable “enough” before going Valkyrie?

Or to put it simple: which part of my armor/trinkets should I make zerker and which Valkyrie for max efficency?

Im not sure whats the most efficient, but Im going zerker accessory and jewelry, valkyrie armor, and valkyrie weapons. IMO its a waste of hidden killer to not build valk and/or cavalier.

Originally I was planning on going less valk and more cav, but you don’t lose any power with Valkyrie but your do with cavalier. Basically I’d go zerkers until @ about 30% crit chance, from there I’d stop building precision and add valk/cav peices. This will allow your backstabs to do same damage as a full berserker set, while letting you be a lot more tanky, and still having OK crit chance when not backstabbing.

I wish there was a Power toughness with fecority with power as the main stat (like valk). The curret cavalier toughness is the main stat. If the main stat was power I’d go atleast half (may be more) cavalier, but since it doesn’t zerk + valk all day

Since ascended armor is only useful for fractals, you should probably aim for full berserker.

Thank you all for your suggestions, at the moment I was thinking of going with something like this
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp7plPxzJ8PNRLRtdIEdvAXDh2PQAEiA-TVCEABLq+DBPAAmUmZwpAoJlG4s/AgKBbTfAAHBgAAHA/23++bgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fLDQ+WA-w

The crit chance seems high enough to still be useful for dungeons/fractals and the vitality seems ok to survive a couple of backstabs in WvW, what do you think?

Zeta.3198:

Thank you all for your suggestions, at the moment I was thinking of going with something like this
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp7plPxzJ8PNRLRtdIEdvAXDh2PQAEiA-TVCEABLq+DBPAAmUmZwpAoJlG4s/AgKBbTfAAHBgAAHA/23++bgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fLDQ+WA-w

The crit chance seems high enough to still be useful for dungeons/fractals and the vitality seems ok to survive a couple of backstabs in WvW, what do you think?

Looks good, just 1 recommendation:

I recommend you use the Master critical strikes trait that gives 2 seconds of quickness on critical hit, instead of either furious retail or practiced tolerance. (replace PT in pve, for WvW either). The 2s of quickness lets you get pretty much a free/extra auto chain in after backstab, essentially adding a few thousand damage to your burst. Sure sometimes it procs when you don’t need it to, but when it procs at an opportune time, you really notice the dps boost. It sounds kittenty (only 2s quickness on 30s cooldown) but quickness is freaking awesome

Esplen.3940:

Actually, you can have half-percentile stats. The number will be rounded down in the equipment menu, but it won’t mean you don’t have that critical chance…

Source? Never seen it tested so I was assuming the game engine is as limited as the UI.

Zeta.3198:

Thank you all for your suggestions, at the moment I was thinking of going with something like this
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp7plPxzJ8PNRLRtdIEdvAXDh2PQAEiA-TVCEABLq+DBPAAmUmZwpAoJlG4s/AgKBbTfAAHBgAAHA/23++bgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fLDQ+WA-w

The crit chance seems high enough to still be useful for dungeons/fractals and the vitality seems ok to survive a couple of backstabs in WvW, what do you think?

That’s actually a really good build.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Esplen.3940:

Actually, you can have half-percentile stats. The number will be rounded down in the equipment menu, but it won’t mean you don’t have that critical chance…

Source? Never seen it tested so I was assuming the game engine is as limited as the UI.

Not critting at 100% UI crit chance whilst always critting at 101+% UI crit chance.

Think about it for a moment, does it make sense that your crit chance is at 99.5-100.49_% crit chance, or that you’re simply at 100% crit chance if you have a very, very small chance of not critting?

If your UI shows you at 101% crit chance, you would have between 100.5 and 101.49.

For PvE it looks fine.

For WvW stabbing, an optimized damage build is 5/6/0/0/3 for ToTC and bonus initiative so that the 5 pt in crit strikes actually does something for you.

Valk is almost always a better armor choice.

DeceiverX.8361:

For PvE it looks fine.

For WvW stabbing, an optimized damage build is 5/6/0/0/3 for ToTC and bonus initiative so that the 5 pt in crit strikes actually does something for you.

Valk is almost always a better armor choice.

I was actually thinking about the standard 26006 for WvW, the Bountiful Theft trait is just too valuable to give up for dagger training, and the 20% reduce recharge rate of steal with Sleight of Hand is better (IMO) than the 200 extra power from revealed training. I mean, I can steal every 20 seconds, which is great in case you need to deal with multiple opponents or in case you need to reset

I use my thief in www and pvp in berserker/scholar, 6/6/0/0/2 or 5/6/0/03 in pve and 2/6/0/0/6 in www, it works. Having one or two teammates helps, since you’re really squishy, but you don’t have to craft two sets.

Esplen.3940:

Ghostwolf.9863:

Esplen.3940:

Actually, you can have half-percentile stats. The number will be rounded down in the equipment menu, but it won’t mean you don’t have that critical chance…

Source? Never seen it tested so I was assuming the game engine is as limited as the UI.

Not critting at 100% UI crit chance whilst always critting at 101+% UI crit chance.

Think about it for a moment, does it make sense that your crit chance is at 99.5-100.49_% crit chance, or that you’re simply at 100% crit chance if you have a very, very small chance of not critting?

If your UI shows you at 101% crit chance, you would have between 100.5 and 101.49.

You may have some odd numbers less than 1% since 1 Prec = 0.047%, but it only affects the calculation if you have the whole percent.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precision
Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Okay, you do realize both the sources you listed did not say anything near what you wrote. In fact, if you take an actual quote from your source, it’ll say:

In other words, Critical Chance is 0% when Precision is 832, and increases by 1% for every 21 Precision above that. Since the minimum value of Precision at level 80 is 926, this means the minimum Critical Chance at level 80 is ~4.476% and is displayed as 4%.

What is displayed is not always exactly what is being used in calculations.

Esplen.3940:

Okay, you do realize both the sources you listed did not say anything near what you wrote. In fact, if you take an actual quote from your source, it’ll say:

In other words, Critical Chance is 0% when Precision is 832, and increases by 1% for every 21 Precision above that. Since the minimum value of Precision at level 80 is 926, this means the minimum Critical Chance at level 80 is ~4.476% and is displayed as 4%.

What is displayed is not always exactly what is being used in calculations.

If you go to the second link, it shows this ;
Average damage = Base damage * ( 1 – Critical Chance ) + Base damage * ( Critical Chance * Critical Damage )

With the sample of this;
given a critical chance of 25% and critical damage of 180%, average damage output is 20% greater than normal.
Average damage = base * ( 1 + 0.25 * ( 1.8 – 1 ) )
= base * ( 1 + 0.25 * 0.8 )
= base * 1.2

That “Critical Chance” is the whole percentage. So if your Crit Chance shows 4%, then that formula will use 4%.

That’s always how it’s been understood.

Now you are introducing a theory that the calculation is using some odd numbers, but you don’t have any substantial evidence or data to support that.

If what you’re saying is true, then that damage example above would not have used 25%, since according to you, that should have been between 24.5 and 25.5.

What the odd numbers do is to track how many more precision points you need to get to the next 1% to improve your chance. It’s not being used for calculation — or at least that’s how it’s always been understood that what is displayed in the GUI is what is being used in the calculation.

If you think this is wrong, then you can gather the data to prove it is wrong and I’m sure someone in wiki will update that information.

Again, explain the 100% crit chance vs >100% crit chance discrepancy and let’s talk.

Have you actually gotten to 100% crit chance (on the dot)? Have you had a non-crit while at that percentile?

Have you gotten above 100% crit chance? Have you had a non crit while at that percentile?

Esplen.3940:

Again, explain the 100% crit chance vs >100% crit chance discrepancy and let’s talk.

Have you actually gotten to 100% crit chance (on the dot)? Have you had a non-crit while at that percentile?

Have you gotten above 100% crit chance? Have you had a non crit while at that percentile?

I’ve traited Hidden Killer and so far my backstab is always a crit hit.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Esplen.3940:

Again, explain the 100% crit chance vs >100% crit chance discrepancy and let’s talk.

Have you actually gotten to 100% crit chance (on the dot)? Have you had a non-crit while at that percentile?

Have you gotten above 100% crit chance? Have you had a non crit while at that percentile?

I’ve traited Hidden Killer and so far my backstab is always a crit hit.

Which proves my point because if you trait HK, you’ll always have more than 100% critical chance. (HK gives you +100% CC, it doesn’t set you to 100%.)