Guild Wars 2

Still leveling my warrior, I’m ranged only so I don’t need to have much defense and vitality… I was wondering if adrenal health is any useful and if instead maybe I should go more into vit… my original plan was to go 10/25/15/10/10… but now I think putting 15 points into toughness just to get adrenal health might not be worth it and I could better put that into vitality for added survivability…

what are your thoughts guys? thanks!

I find adrenal health to be useful when combined with the healing signet. Even more so if you have a regen to stack with the two. Other than that it’s pretty useless. Adrenal Health heals you about 2-3 times slower than any other regen in the game.

Pros/Cons of the above:

Pros: You have nice combo of passive heals that help shrug off a lot of hits. Gives a nice damage mitigation, if looked at that way.

Cons: Harder to recover from being hit by a truck. The healing signet is not worth using if you need an emergency heal.

If you plan on dumping your adrenaline a lot(guessing so because ranged), then it probably won’t be useful for you. In my opinion you should be keeping up all 3 bars if you are willingly taking the trait for its effects.

in terms of adrenaline, I tend not to dump it too much in PvE, but I do dump it often in PvP clearly and with some tougher bosses… I still like keeping it up though for berserker’s power… sick trait…

I use adrenaline every 10s or so and it’s still a good trait and the main reason I have any points in defense really. If I’m taking sustained damage then I’ll hold adrenaline for the full effect. Coupled with everything else I got going it lets me tank quite a bit.

It’s not worth putting traits into defence if you wouldn’t otherwise have wanted the line, but it’s handy to have for the slight regen between larger heals. Fills the role of a minor trait pretty well I’d say.

as ranged specalist, probably not since your not looking to tank a bunch…

now for a mele wvw war, ya its useful, especially when your also wearin either knight/soldier or cleric/dwayna stuff.

Of course a mele wvw war should be putting at least 25 if not 30 into that trait line anyhow (30 point abilities are terrible but in a tank build the extra 50 heal power and 50 toughness are what your after)

on the other hand you got survivability backwards: survivability for a warrior is directly related to toughness and healing power, we already got enough HP, adding more HP just increases the duration (that your able to run into the enemy zerg and soak up hits)

Since you dont plan on needing a high duration of tanking (as ranged) any points your putting into tactics are for buff duration or for other trait purposes.

Honestly if your planning on going with a rifle build, try 10/30/0/0/30 full zerker gear with furious, crack shot, quick burst (or the one that burst takes less adren) signet mastery, crit passive, dmg passive, precision from signets, run 5 signets (yes for this build alone)

= 68% base crit (88% fury and 97% full adren i think) 109% crit damage 8 sec for each kill shot with a bonus 10% if u shot target to start em bleeding first…

if your gonna go ranged go ranged with the 15k kill shots in all their glory, just hide behind a mele warrior, guardian, or wall when the dead players friends come after you.

The extra toughness plus the health per second you get from a free heal far out-weights any hit points you would gain, especially when combined with healing signet. You pretty much do not need to worry about clicking on a heal. You can focus on other things, like line-of-sight, position, and watching the enemies animations for special attacks. When you do a condition rifle build, you don’t even need to worry about pressing any other keys but auto-attack and knock-back. Its great when you are sick of playing a button mashing D/D elementalist.

I find it somewhat useful, but it could be made better. Problem is the only bad Adrenal skill is Arcing Slice on Greatsword. There’s never really a reason to keep adrenaline full, especially when you’re a Tank like me with Hammer and Mace/Shield.

I’d like to see it’s power reduced by, say, 30% or something and have it ticking all the time

I went into defense after level 40 for pve reasons only. I liked the idea of being able to solo the majority of events and skill checks. I’m also a fan of S&B play style, so it fits. As one mentioned above, the benefit of having the extra regen is nice, but is not significant if it’s not stacked. In conjunction with healing signet and increased toughness is where the trait seems to shine.

Like LameFox stated, if you’re only going into the defense line for Adrenal Health, then you’d be better off spending the points elsewhere.

thanks guys! you reassured me… I don’t think dumping 15 points into def is worth it just to get a minor life uptick… can be better put into something else… you think I should go with something reasonable like 10/25/0/20/15 or just go straight up glass cannon with with 10/30/0/0/30?

I’d probably lean towards the 10/30/0/0/30. The damage output will be greater. You can negate the “glass” portion of the glass cannon with your ability to keep your targets at bay. Between rifle and bow, you shouldn’t have any issues keeping distance.

So for gear should I still go b@lls to the wall glass and get zerk stuff or try to mitigate non-existent defensive traits by getting some toughness/vitality gear?

Glass cannons are good for levelling IMO. Berserker rare gear and level appropriate ruby jewels all the way.

Just don’t get caught.

So focusing on Healing power is better than Vitality or Toughness , specially when having Healing Signet , Adrenal Health and inspiring Banners . Am I right ?
( Forget about other stats as I’m just talking about these )

Vitality by itself is bad for your healing because it just gives you more HP to lose (and restore) without improving mitigation. Toughness is mitigation. It increases your effective HP vs direct damage, basically making each point of health slightly more valuable, so healing the same amount becomes more effective. Healing power is basically the opposite of toughness: instead of making each HP worth more, it heals you for more HP.

So something like knight’s (not PvP – there it has vitality instead) or cleric’s is good for healing. Though if you were choosing between healing power and toughness, I’m not quite sure which would give an overall greater boost by itself.