Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I have been farming Twilight Arbor exp for the nightmare set. My build is around conditions, D/D + shortbow, so the nightmare set is a pretty good set to have for this. I have one concern, that the gear has toughness and no vitality on it. If I am in melee range deathblossoming around, and autoattacking, is it worth it to have more toughness than vit?

What is the real difference between toughness and vit? Toughness mitigates direct physical damage, while vit is just an increase to your hp(and ultimately the difference is that vitality would help against badfloor and “magic”), correct?

And no, I dont want to get the pieces with vitality and healing stats…

Toughness stacking is a counter to Direct Damage
Vitality stacking is a counter to conditions

Although the thief cannot stack large amount of either, it depends on what you’re doing either pve or wvwvw, or spvp.

Pretty sure there was a thread on this yesterday, so check around on the next page.

I do dungeons mostly, explorable. I’ll check for that thread.

I dont want to be a glass cannon, so Id like to survive an extra hit or two, but I know that the thief isnt meant to stack damage mitigation with a condition build.

There are two factors when I make this decision:
1. How much condition removal am I running? Toughness won’t help against conditions but if I’m running Shadow Step + Signet of Agility then conditions are much less of an issue anyways.

2. How good is your server at PvP? Good WvW score boosts everyone’s HP all the time, and having orbs is another massive boost when you’re within WvW. These are important considerations when choosing HP vs. toughness.

I am not factoring in PVP when making this decision. Soley on PvE. I dont run with signets…blinding powder, shadow refuge, caltrops.

I’m no PvE expert (or PvP lol) but I do know that Thief loses way too much damage when going for Toughness. IMO your best bet is to go for Vitality and have regeneration aspects instead of Toughness such as Signet of Malice, Assassins Reward and Sigil of Blood. Chances are you will end up with around +100 Toughness which is good enough with health regeneration.

Anyway, whatever you do I’d say regeneration is better than Toughness for Thief.

I’m personally going for a mostly crit (hello! This is a thief we’re talking about) and healing power + toughness thief (just with traits, armor will come as it does though thankfully I have some 70+ level power + crit exotics saved from chests and exploration) with some power. The toughness + healing power tree for survivability and to use that healing shroud that stealths people in it (and it’s a combo field too ^_^ )