I’d like to hear opinions if Valkyrie armor set will still be viable after April 15th update.(going to craft ascended armor set now and can’t make a decision as to which stats should i choose). For a “cheese” dp/sb 0/30/30/10/0 build.
It’s hard to say and the question has been posed a number of times.
In theory the set will be quite a bit weaker as your main source of damage is getting a significant nerf.
But I don’t think it will be nonviable. In fact I’d wager, aside from slightly lower damage, you won’t notice the change much. And you should note that you too will be taking slightly less burst, so there’s that.
I would say that Berserker gear is slightly more attractive than Valkyrie at this point, but only by a margin.
I guess he’s talking about roaming. Yes it will still be viable.
@ Dagins : in WvW most thief don’t go full GC, they usually want to have something like 15k hp just to have a bit of resistance. Valkyrie gear is one of the way to gain that 15k hp. And since most of these Thief use Hidden Killer, a small lost of precision don’t affect that much your damage.
Overall you gonna lost about 10% of damage. So if you were doing backstab of about 6-8k dmg, you will now do 5.4-7.2k dmg. Not that big of a deal, this will make fight a bit longer, but the other player will also do less damage. The worst will be against condition damage build, that won’t be affected by this.
Forgive for not specifying yes, gear intended for WvW roaming mostly.
If someone who has used both stat sets for a similar build has experience with these, does zerker provide a considerable damage boost as opposed to valkyrie? with valk set you basically have what, 2k more HP with practiced tolerance trait?
Ascended Beserker Armor vs Ascended Valkyrie Armor
Valkyrie will give you 2 350 more hp, but you will lose 11% crit chance. What damage will you lose? For me I have about 2275 power and 117 crit damage (with food, etc) With Valkyrie gear about 56% crit dmg, with Zerker it will be 67%
On auto-attack will give about :
2275 * 952 * 0.56/2600 = 466 dmg.
If you take into account the critical you get the average dmg.
With Valkyrie = 466 * 2.67 * 0.56 + 466 * 0.44 = 902 dmg
With Zerker = 466 * 2.67 * 0.67 + 466 * 0.33 = 987 dmg
So this will make you lose about 8% of dmg, which is quite a lot, but since you get most of your damage from Backstab and you probably use hidden killer, then the lost of dps only apply only to a part of your dps, and not the main source of your dps.
I use executioner currently, along with runes of eagle, overall gives me +25% damage on targets below 50% health. I am thinking of experimenting with a different setup but it’ll be too expensive if I craft the wrong ascended armor pieces.
For roaming berserker’s is too GC as far as I can see.
Valkyrie gives 2.350 more HP in exchange for additional crit chance. The question here is, is it a good tradeoff or not.
I’ve run both varients on different occasions. And while on paper the ~2000 extra HP you have on Valkyrie armor (you have to account for the 7% Precision → Vitality conversion) sound superior to any fairly minor damage boost you would get from running Berserker, in practice the difference isn’t quite as obvious.
Burst and pressure can at times, be more valuable than a little extra HP. In fact the burst is what makes Backstab builds viable in the first place. And sacrificing that even for significantly more HP…ain’t necessarily worth it.
There’s no clear-cut answer though. Anyone can make anything work or make it look good. But I#d say Berserker gear, at least mixed with a few hybrid items, is a solid choice (and also great for PvE).
That said, I wouldn’t want to run around with less than 15.000 HP in any case.
Venomge, if you don’t use Hidden Killer, then the answer is different. You are far more dependent on your precision without that trait, so you may want more crit chance to make that first Bacsktab count.
The best for you is to experiment and reach that amount of surviability you need. For me its 14k hp, for Dee Jay it seem to be 15k hp. For other they are just find with 12k hp. It all depend on your level of skill and what you prefer to do. Someone that prefer to solo and kill target 1 or 2 at the time may need less hp. Someone doing that on a higher tier server, where there is a lot more ppl and more people in WvW are good, may need more hp. Same thing with a guy that like to go into the middle of a small party of 4-6 ppl and kill 1 or 2 before getting the hell out to recharge before finishing the survivors, he may need a bit more hp to survive.
Find your sweet defensive spot and then min max to fin what would be the best stats combination for you. The combinaison also change depending on what level of gear you will use. If you get exotic armor and weapons, with ascended trinket and no food, you probably won’t have the same gear as someone using full ascended with complete infusion. The additionnal stats, may push you to change a defensive piece for a more offensive since you can get nice small amount of additional defence in ascended+ infusion.
I guess he’s talking about roaming. Yes it will still be viable.
@ Dagins : in WvW most thief don’t go full GC, they usually want to have something like 15k hp just to have a bit of resistance. Valkyrie gear is one of the way to gain that 15k hp. And since most of these Thief use Hidden Killer, a small lost of precision don’t affect that much your damage.
Overall you gonna lost about 10% of damage. So if you were doing backstab of about 6-8k dmg, you will now do 5.4-7.2k dmg. Not that big of a deal, this will make fight a bit longer, but the other player will also do less damage. The worst will be against condition damage build, that won’t be affected by this.
The thing is nowadays u find more ppl using condi based build in wvw necro, engie, mesmer even warior and thieves. And in the next patch guards get more advantages in burn damage so maybe some guards change to a condi based plus knowing thieves will be more vulnerable to condi bc they nerf 10% power based and thieves new trait (50% less damage in stealth still vulnerable to condis)…so I think in the next patches we will see almost all ppl r condi based which is sad.
Ps: powet based thieves damage is great but also squishy and need more skill capped to be a good squishy thieves so I think anet should also consider the skill capped rather than just ‘dreaming all build could be as good as others’
I will check around for stat combinations and then check ingame and eventually find a sweet spot of defensive/offensive armor pieces to fit my play style.
My opinion: It will still be very good and Berzerker will still be suicide.
After the 15th you will have to revise mainly your rune and sigil choices, armor and weapon stats will be way less important.
You can easily make up for the crit chance loss on valkyrie armor by useing maintenance oil which will profit from the extra vit.
Also the changes to superior sigil of intelligence will make you able to ditch hidden killer for executioner in my opinion that sigil will be a must have.
Actually, Valkyrie will receive a really heavy nerf (cookie-cutter Hidden Killer backstab spec). Ferocity change decreases the damage of a single critical hit by 15-20% (did the maths in the topic of mine) that after incorporating into overall DPS (critical and non-critical hits together) gives 8-12% loss in damage.
Let’s consider 0/30/30/10/0 DD spec – typical rotation is CnD followed by backstab and AA chain where backstab will most likely deal 1/2 of the damage of that combo; CnD and AA might crit and shift it to like 3/8 of the damage but it doesn’t really matter. Point is, backstab is a key here.
Now, e.g. 10/30/0/0/30 S/P or 10/0/30/0/30 PD/SD; those specs dont rely on a one big hit but on the contrary their DPS is spread among critical and non-critical hits. Hence, even though each consecutive crit will be nerfed as hard as in DD spec the overall damage loss will not be that noticable.
At least, that’s just my opinion on the Ferocity-DD-Hidden Killer and Valkyrie’s viability.
If you’re using it for WvW with a build that has Hidden Killer, then yes, Valk is still a solid option. I don’t think the Tues changes will really change what gear is viable for you unless you’re using either Assassin’s or Celestial gear.
Speaking from a WvW pespective: would change the force sigil for superior sigil of fire. After the update it procs alot more frequent. And I don’t think you are using the best food really.
I would also change out one of your shortbow sigils, superior sigil of restoration. You are not that of a killing machine (if you are doing PvE, world events etc, then maybe) to take advantage of it.
And maybe change out the soldier trinkets for either zerker or valk.
Beryl Orbs is not the best option for damage either.
For D/D WvW roaming I currently run Valkyrie armor with runes of strength, Zerk weapons and zerk/valk trinkets. So far it’s working very well, providing a huge amount of upfront burst that I thought I would have lost after April 15th, and every subsequent round of damage after my opener deals even more as I build might. On my daggers I run a sigil of strength (sigil of air/fire or force can work here too) and a sigil of battle, so might stacking is never a problem, and I also take the signets of power trait in the critical strikes tree. I find that I’m dropping tankier targets faster than I was pre-patch when I used traveler runes. The only downside really so far, is that I find myself using that awful signet of shadows to move at a non-slug pace, although since I run Signets of Power in my traits, it has an added use once I am in a fight (5 stacks of might is pretty boss, especially when they last forever).
All that being said, I’m not sure what would be best for your D/P playstyle since I stopped playing D/P more than 7 months ago, so it’s been a while since I’ve played that weaponset enough to know what gear would strong with it. Considering it’s stick reliant on backstab though, I would assume valkyrie gear would be alright for it, although I’m tempted to say zerker would be better because you’re missing some damage that’s present in a D/D build (CnD).
