Guild Wars 2

Alex.6940:

Yes, you’re quite right that i tend to use armor and toughness interchangeably, but my overall points are all still correct and my examples are sound. I’m still not sure you understand what i mean though lol. If you assume defence = 0 then toughness and armour are effectively the same thing and what i’ve written will be accurate if that helps.

When i say 500 additional toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%, i’m speaking about it relative to having 2000 armor. So if you get hit for 10k damage with 2000 armor you only take 8k damage with 2500 armor i.e. 20% less damage.

I’ll explain my example again (and make an effort to use armour and toughness correctly lol) Lets assume you have 10k hp and 2000 armour. A thief attacks you and hits you for 13k damage, instantly killing you as you only have 10k hp. Lets look at this situation again, but this time we can choose between an extra 500 vitality or 500 toughness.

If you have 500 extra toughness, you now have 2500 armour. Therefore you get hit for (13000*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage instead. As you only have 10k hp you still die however.

If you have 500 extra vitality you now have 15k hp. You get hit again for 13k damage but you have 15k hp, so you survive with 2k hp left. In this situation, vitality is the more effective defence.

In general i think vitality is more useful in dealing with short duration fights or burst damage. Toughness will eventually beat vitality as fights go on and you heal through damage, but as most thieves generally try to burst people down, and the fights don’t last very long, I would generally advise taking more vitality over toughness.

Of course your build, play style and the situation at hand can mean that more toughness is more effective.

As I said, I understand the calculation, but I have a problem with your base numbers.

In your example, you assume that 500 Vit is 20% increase, when it is actually a 50% increase based on a 10k HP. So it is an unfair comparison that you increased Vit by 50% and only increased Toughness by 20% — of course, Vitality is obviously going to look better.

If we properly use 20% increase in Vitality, that’s only 50 Vitality which equates to 500 more HP, not 5k. In this scenario, 20% increase in Toughness (500) will reduce the damage by 2600 dealing 10400 instead of 13k. With 500 Toughness, our effective health is 12600. Adding 20% Vitality will only give us an effective health of 10500.

If the damage is 11K instead of 13K, having +20% Toughness gives us an effective health of 12200 and 20% Vitality is still 10500. In this scenario, the vitality dies and the toughness survives.

This is using your 20% premise and it’s obviously not a fair comparison since 50 Vitality is not equal to 500 Toughness.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Yes, you’re quite right that i tend to use armor and toughness interchangeably, but my overall points are all still correct and my examples are sound. I’m still not sure you understand what i mean though lol. If you assume defence = 0 then toughness and armour are effectively the same thing and what i’ve written will be accurate if that helps.

When i say 500 additional toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%, i’m speaking about it relative to having 2000 armor. So if you get hit for 10k damage with 2000 armor you only take 8k damage with 2500 armor i.e. 20% less damage.

I’ll explain my example again (and make an effort to use armour and toughness correctly lol) Lets assume you have 10k hp and 2000 armour. A thief attacks you and hits you for 13k damage, instantly killing you as you only have 10k hp. Lets look at this situation again, but this time we can choose between an extra 500 vitality or 500 toughness.

If you have 500 extra toughness, you now have 2500 armour. Therefore you get hit for (13000*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage instead. As you only have 10k hp you still die however.

If you have 500 extra vitality you now have 15k hp. You get hit again for 13k damage but you have 15k hp, so you survive with 2k hp left. In this situation, vitality is the more effective defence.

In general i think vitality is more useful in dealing with short duration fights or burst damage. Toughness will eventually beat vitality as fights go on and you heal through damage, but as most thieves generally try to burst people down, and the fights don’t last very long, I would generally advise taking more vitality over toughness.

Of course your build, play style and the situation at hand can mean that more toughness is more effective.

As I said, I understand the calculation, but I have a problem with your base numbers.

In your example, you assume that 500 Vit is 20% increase, when it is actually a 50% increase based on a 10k HP. So it is an unfair comparison that you increased Vit by 50% and only increased Toughness by 20% — of course, Vitality is obviously going to look better.

If we properly use 20% increase in Vitality, that’s only 50 Vitality which equates to 500 more HP, not 5k. In this scenario, 20% increase in Toughness (500) will reduce the damage by 2600 dealing 10400 instead of 13k. With 500 Toughness, our effective health is 12600. Adding 20% Vitality will only give us an effective health of 10500.

If the damage is 11K instead of 13K, having +20% Toughness gives us an effective health of 12200 and 20% Vitality is still 10500. In this scenario, the vitality dies and the toughness survives.

This is using your 20% premise and it’s obviously not a fair comparison since 50 Vitality is not equal to 500 Toughness.

It is a 50% increase in my example because that’s how it works in the game. You can’t choose to have 20% more vitality or 20% more toughness; you can only choose to have say 500 more vitality or 500 more toughness. The percentage increase is just dependent on your stats before the increase.

Whilst i’ve rounded the armour and hp values to simplify the example, having 10k hp and 2k armour is roughly what a thief has for base stats. The choice between a given amount of vitality or an equal amount of toughness is a real decision the player can make and its effects are more accurately modelled by my example. It is fair and valid whilst your example doesn’t reflect what occurs in game as I understand it.

Alex.6940:

TheGuy.3568:

Its not my kittening problem if you have issues with the English language.

“o·ver·all (vr-ôl)
adj.
1. From one end to the other: the overall length of the house.
2. Including everything; comprehensive: the overall costs of medical care.
3. Regarded as a whole; general: My overall impression was favorable.
adv.
(vr-ôl) On the whole; generally: enjoyed the performance overall.”

I used it as an adverb. Learn English.

Next time take your time reading what I write carefully before you respond.

Are you being obtuse on purpose or are you simply missing the point? I’m not sure why you’re getting so upset over this but the patronizing tone isn’t helping nor does it make you correct.

There are situations where vitality is superior to toughness and situations where toughness is superior to vitality. I’m not saying that vitality or toughness is better; i’m simply trying to say that the most effective attribute is determined by the circumstances.

But if you remain intent on proving that toughness is better ‘overall’, please give a comprehensive explanation with specific examples to prove this point and I will gladly admit i’m wrong if you’re correct.

Considering I wrote a detailed explanation before why toughness is better why should i have to again? It is not my fault you didn’t read it and understand it. Its math not opinion and it been explained over and over and over. You simply aren’t getting it.

Do we really have to do this again? Toughness is better in most situations ie in general (same meaning as the word “overall” since you seem to be having issues with this one word’s definition). Neither toughness of vitality is necessary. You are arguing antics with semantics and it kind of stupid and repetitive now don’t you think?

My condescending tone is intended. Why should I respect you as an equal when if you clearly didn’t read what I said, or worse understand it.

To sum this very long correspondence up. Your point is vitality is sometimes better.
My point toughness is better most of the time. Now do you understand my condescending tone?

BTW left the adverbial definition of overall up there since you seemed to miss it the first time.

Viking Jorun.5413:

TheGuy.3568:

stuff

I think you’re used to playing some other class than a thief. Toughness won’t do you any good as a thief because you need an inherently high vitality to be able to get the best of both worlds. You argue that the O kitten tating opinion where you have “fact”, but I see no evidence or research behind your claims. I’ve done the math. I know what’s best for each class.

Ok mister “math guy”. First off no one said no vitality. Most of you guys have issues with your reading comprehension skills and I cant help you with that. Condition damage is one thing and fact is thief (the class we play see photo below check the stats also) has decent condition management. Which means that vitality for dealing with conditions is not always necessary. That being said vs Burst where you have to take a hit usually one big hit vitality will do the job. However, once you start taking any sort of sustained dps toughness will win. So your question has to be which is better in most cases. And fact is its toughness. Also any skills that take a percentage of hp lean toward toughness via healing power.

The reason your examples are kittened up and bad math is you like the rest of you who don’t read and give examples of full vitality or full toughness eating nothing but burst dps. Think about it for a second. And its stupid since it has been repeated over and kittening over that you need both, but toughness is primary. Is it that kittening hard to understand? I literally say you run with 2700 armor give or take and 15-16k hp (you cant achieve this with base vitality) to optimize defense and you don’t really need either (dodge stealth other evade frames), but no one reads.

The original question “Toughness vs Vitality” its toughness. In reality you need BOTH or NEITHER. How many times does it need to be said?

TL;DR If you are not going to read why respond?

So keep trying to prove your right for some unknown reason when I never said toughness is to only stat used. Keep trying to prove something when I said the whole conversation is moot because of evades.

Be a little subjective and use those big brains to understand what I said before. If you can not please don’t respond. If you do understand then there is no need for you to respond. Get it?

BTW the minute I read this “. Toughness won’t do you any good as a thief.” I realized you really aren’t a math guy.

Here’s a question for you guys who are good at math. Is most of the damage in this game burst or sustained? Is mot of the burst cumulative hit or single hit?

TheGuy.3568:

Considering I wrote a detailed explanation before why toughness is better why should i have to again? It is not my fault you didn’t read it and understand it. Its math not opinion and it been explained over and over and over. You simply aren’t getting it.

Do we really have to do this again? Toughness is better in most situations ie in general (same meaning as the word “overall” since you seem to be having issues with this one word’s definition). Neither toughness of vitality is necessary. You are arguing antics with semantics and it kind of stupid and repetitive now don’t you think?

My condescending tone is intended. Why should I respect you as an equal when if you clearly didn’t read what I said, or worse understand it.

To sum this very long correspondence up. Your point is vitality is sometimes better.
My point toughness is better most of the time. Now do you understand my condescending tone?

BTW left the adverbial definition of overall up there since you seemed to miss it the first time.

I don’t need you to ‘respect me as an equal’, I just expected some common decency. I understand your points, i just don’t agree with you. You explain why toughness can be superior to vitality, which are the same points i’ve brought up, but you don’t explain why it is better in most situations. While you say it is math not opinion, you have offered nothing but opinion.

Toughness does save you more hp than vitality will give you eventually but, if you’re playing a d/d glass cannon build and plan on bursting people down for example, you’re probably not going to be fighting long enough for it to pay off. You play a condition build that will often engage in longer fights as you lack burst damage and have high self healing to deal with the damage that comes with it. That makes toughness ideal for your build and play style but i think people playing these builds make up a minority of the thief community.

TheGuy.3568:

To sum this very long correspondence up. Your point is vitality is sometimes better.
My point toughness is better most of the time. Now do you understand my condescending tone?

Dunning-Kruger

Alex.6940:

I don’t need you to ‘respect me as an equal’, I just expected some common decency. I understand your points, i just don’t agree with you. You explain why toughness can be superior to vitality, which are the same points i’ve brought up, but you don’t explain why it is better in most situations. While you say it is math not opinion, you have offered nothing but opinion.

I will literally quote myself and explain in detail….again

“Please remember no matter how much you get hit and what the value of the hit is toughness reduces the damage as a coefficient. HP is a raw number that tells you how much damage you can take. Every time you take a hit vitality’s effectiveness as a defensive stat drops. Unless you can continually fill the pool vitality is the lesser of the 2 but is not to be ignored.”

Toughness no matter how much you get hit for mitigates the damage by a percentage ie it is always protecting you for a percentage 4% 5% etc. Vitality simply allows you to take a number of hits toughness reduces the impact of every hit of physical damage. As you lose hp vitality becomes less effective as a defensive state but toughness on the other hand is always reducing physical damage by the same amount.

This does 2 things. First it allows you to keep more hp that you would have lost if you had less toughness (meaning it improves the effectiveness of vitality). The other thing it does is improve healing by allowing healing to be more effective at mitigation of damage. That is healing heals your hp pool. If hp is your primary defense then healing is the coefficient by which damage is reduced (if you heal consistently). For example if you have passive healing like Shadow’s Rejuvenation and you maximize your time in stealth so with base stats every 10 seconds SR would heal you for 2902.2. This can all be interpreted as SR mitigates 2902.2 damage every 10 seconds.

The main issue is as HP goes up past a certain point the effectiveness of healing power diminishes as it forces healing to mitigate more and more damage without being able to keep up with the increase in damage. What toughness does is act as a support stat for both your Primary Defensive stat (vitality) and your secondary (healing power).

The other thing is because most of the DPS in the game is not burst but sustained physical and almost all damaging skills have a physical component whether they apply conditions or not toughness is always doing its job. Every ht that has any sort of power element is being reduced by toughness. That means even fighting someone with condition damage the power component of their skills is still being reduced by toughness.

The problem with the condition damage argument is that vitality only allows you to survive conditions longer. It doesn’t not reduce the incoming damage in anyway. Healing power does do this but has the same relationship with poison that vulnerability has with toughness and considering poison is not only a healing reducer (33%) but also a damaging skill. The idea that having lots of HP mitigates condition damage is false. You have 3 ways to mitigate it. Dodge the condition, Reduce the duration of the condition or remove the condition. that is is. If you happen to run a build that con remove conditions often (cantrips ele Shadow arts thief condition necro traited of course) than having a high hp pool isn’t as relevant.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Just facts above this line

" but, if you’re playing a d/d glass cannon build and plan on bursting people down for example, you’re probably not going to be fighting long enough for it to pay off. "

“you don’t really need either (referencing toughness and vitality) (dodge stealth other evade frames), but no one reads.”

glass cannons are exactly that. BTW what works best in my build is evasion. Just like every other.

Sigh reason you get no “common decency” is because I take the time to read what you write but you don’t show the same courteousness to me. If you had read a thing then you would have dropped this the last post. You keep looking for things to argue over but your point is lost.

How many times do I have to explain this and how many times will you ask me without reading?

Edit:

And honestly that has been the pattern. I won’t respond to your post again. This has been rather pointless now that I think about it. You can have the last word or not I don’t care and I probably won’t read it anyway. Have fun in game our conversation is over.

Alex.6940:

The choice between a given amount of vitality or an equal amount of toughness is a real decision the player can make.

Right, so let’s walk through that decision.

Assume that your starting point is a total glass, 10805 HP, 1980 armor. You’re adding your first defensive stat points from whatever source – do you prefer toughness, or vitality?

Every single time the answer in this case is vitality. Why? At base health, your biggest problem with survivability is blowing up before you even have a chance to react. While toughness does help in this regard, it does so as a force multiplier on your health – of which you have little. Similarly, while toughness gains in strength every time you heal, at base health you have little opportunity to take advantage of this, as you don’t have the room in your health pool to take a hit and keep fighting while your healing works – many hits you take will force you to withdraw.

So the first points always go into vitality. So do the next points, and the next, until you approach 15,000 health. Once you’re at 15,000 health, you’re getting to the point where toughness, working on your larger health pool and the strength of your heal, starts to pull its weight and provide as much survivability as raw health. You also now have enough of a health pool to not explode in one hit, to take minor hits in stride and to withdraw only after taking serious damage. Toughness might be pulling its weight, but you still benefit from vitality and all the benefits of a larger health pool. At this point you’re going to want to start balancing vitality and toughness.

Once you get up higher, above 18,000 health and approaching 20,000 health, the benefits of a larger health pool become muted. You don’t need more room for your heals to work, and you’re not at any risk of dying to a burst. At this point, toughness dominates.

So you can see that which stat is better to invest in depends entirely on how much you have invested in defense to begin with.

As a very rough guideline, for a given number of points being invested in defense:

0-400: put everything you can into vitality. Getting a bigger health pool is the best thing you can do to stay alive.
400-1000: Put the first 400 points into vitality, and split the rest between vitality and toughness evenly – up to 700 points in vitality and 300 in toughness when you have 1000 points invested in defense.
1000+: take 700 to 800 points in vitality, and put the rest into toughness. At this point you are very tanky for a thief, and investing in toughness reinforces your strength as a tank better than a bigger health pool can.

That’s it, really. If you have enormous amounts of toughness you can start thinking about lowering the vitality somewhat simply because you have so much mitigation, but that’s not a situation you’ll find yourself in often with thief builds.

Super short version: vitality is stronger for squishy characters, toughness stronger for tanks. Look at your investment in defense and balance accordingly.

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision. There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Ensign.2189:

snip

Yes, i agree. There are some situations where you might want to deviate from those guidelines though, but in general i think they act as a good rule of thumb.

Alex.6940:

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

This was already explained in several posts and I can symphatize with TheGuy losing patience when you don’t even bother reading what was posted, not just by him, but by others.

Let me try to sum is up for you. If you have 15k health, but can only heal for 500-600 per sec, you would want to reduce the incoming damage as much as possible so that your healing does not lose effectiveness. Since Thieves cannot heal as well as other profession, toughness is necessary to accomplish this. Because having a large pool of health due to high vitality only means that you have a larger bucket to fill up.

The idea that vitality allows us to handle condition damage better or that so we can handle a burst is false. We can handle condition damage without toughness and vitality since we have a lot of utility skills for that. As for burst, you would want to reduce that damage by having toughness instead of vitality because, again, the reason I have already stated, toughness allows your healing be more effective.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision.

Overall means that whether the damage comes in a large burst or sustained, toughness reduces them each time they are applied.

Keep in mind that the damage displayed in the tool tip is based on a target with 2600 armor, in other words 1980 Defense and 620 toughness for medium armor wearer. So if you have toughness lower than 620, those skills will hit you for a lot more.

There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Neither vitality nor toughness benefits a glass cannon build, that’s why it’s a glass cannon.

IMO, having less health pool but with high toughness makes it easier to keep myself alive than the other way around.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

This was already explained in several posts and I can symphatize with TheGuy losing patience when you don’t even bother reading what was posted, not just by him, but by others.

Let me try to sum is up for you. If you have 15k health, but can only heal for 500-600 per sec, you would want to reduce the incoming damage as much as possible so that your healing does not lose effectiveness. Since Thieves cannot heal as well as other profession, toughness is necessary to accomplish this. Because having a large pool of health due to high vitality only means that you have a larger bucket to fill up.

The idea that vitality allows us to handle condition damage better or that so we can handle a burst is false. We can handle condition damage without toughness and vitality since we have a lot of utility skills for that. As for burst, you would want to reduce that damage by having toughness instead of vitality because, again, the reason I have already stated, toughness allows your healing be more effective.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision.

Overall means that whether the damage comes in a large burst or sustained, toughness reduces them each time they are applied.

Keep in mind that the damage displayed in the tool tip is based on a target with 2600 armor, in other words 1980 Defense and 620 toughness for medium armor wearer. So if you have toughness lower than 620, those skills will hit you for a lot more.

There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Neither vitality nor toughness benefits a glass cannon build, that’s why it’s a glass cannon.

IMO, having less health pool but with high toughness makes it easier to keep myself alive than the other way around.

You have only reiterated the benefits of toughness, which have agreed with and stated myself several times. There is more to staying alive than just reducing the damage by as much as possible. This is an oversimplification of the issue and neglects other factors. At no point have i commented on condition damage either.

The most effective defence in a given situation is the one that keeps you alive the longest, so let me provide some more examples. I’ll use the same conditions as before; if we take vitality we have 15k hp with 2000 armour and if we take toughness we have 10k hp with 2500 armour. Now lets see how these builds respond to 500, 450 and 400 dps (or 400, 360 and 320 dps if you have 2500 armour). They will both heal for 6000 hp when their drops by 6000 hp and then heal every 30 seconds afterwards, so roughly what you’d see with hide in shadows. When the hp drops to 0 or below, the player is obviously dead.

As you can see, it’s only when the dps drops to 400 that toughness lasts longer than vitality. Of course you don’t receive constant and consistent damage in game, these examples only serve to illustrate a general trend and how vitality can be more effective in surviving damage beyond initial burst damage.

Edit: I apologize for dragging this thread on but i felt that there was misinformation being given. I did read and understand the points posted, but evidently i didn’t explain myself very well ( the confusion over toughness and armour didn’t help either :P ).

I kept saying that you highlighted the advantages of toughness over vitality, but not how it was more beneficial for thieves. By this i mean that you have to take a significant amount of damage before an additional amount of toughness saves you more hp than an equal amount of vitality would afford you, as i think the graphs show. If a thief is trying to burst someone down, along with their limited defence abilities, they’re not likely to be fighting long enough for the extra toughness to pay off and overcome the benefits of vitality. This is why i feel you haven’t explained why toughness is the superior option for most thieves.

I hope my examples given will suffice in showing why at least vitality can be a better option than toughness for some builds looking to increase their defence.

Lets just call it a day guys. The math has spoken and you want both.

You want 14k hp, you want 2.5k armor. You want power as the primary stat because it is always best. You want crit damage over crit chance once you can break 50% via fury.

The question now is how do you do this? Full Valk, full cavalier accessories with precision jewels or full knights accessories with ruby. You want berserker weapons.

Sound about right? I’m an art major, I can’t follow the math, only the discussion. And the discussion has turned to [censored].

why not have a bit of both
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.3|c.1g.h2.8.1g.h14|5.1g.h4|1g.a7.1c.a1.1p.a1.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|2s.0.1c.61.1c.61.1p.61.1p.61.8g.67|a3.u6ab.u45b.0.0|40.1|57.5g.5a.5b.5v|e

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Let me try to sum is up for you. If you have 15k health, but can only heal for 500-600 per sec, you would want to reduce the incoming damage as much as possible so that your healing does not lose effectiveness.

You have this backwards. Toughness is relatively ineffective on a thief because they cannot heal particularly well; you are not gaining a lot of health for toughness to continue working on as a fight progresses.

To maximize your effectiveness you build around your strengths, not your weaknesses. You would never say ‘my class is not good at applying conditions, therefore I need to take a lot of condition damage to balance it out’. Speccing toughness isn’t suddenly going to make you good at healing. You take it once you’ve built up to already be tanky and it starts to pull its weight, not before.