Guild Wars 2

I’ve generally been running all-zerk for roaming and havoc in wvw for a couple of years now, and I’ve done pretty well with it. I still do, frankly.

But I dueled a couple different warriors the last few weeks that were running tankier setups, and it left me wondering whether there’s more value to them than the common wisdom currently gives them credit. In fact, I wonder if they’re better than full zerk, even in duels.

Both times, I was running a full stance gs/s+sh build, and the first warrior had the same weapon and trait comp but with tankier gear. The other warrior was running gs/a+sh on a healing shout setup. I don’t remember the gear, but both were running Dolyak Runes (with an eye to switch), possibly Mango Pie, and some mix of (maybe?) Clerics, Settler, and I don’t know what else (or even if that was really the stat array).

The impression I got was that the additional damage output I got from my gear was less valuable than the extra sustain they were able to pull from theirs. I ran a few tests, like noting damage trade, etc. and I don’t think this was a difference in skill issue.

I’m also reminded of the cav/valk h/gs build I found and posted in another thread, which should have almost the same damage output as a zerk setup by efficiently utilizing the Intelligence Sigil, but way tankier.

Conventional wisdom holds that investing in defensive attributes beyond surviving a burst is generally less valuable than offensive attributes (I’ve said the same myself). But recently someone rightly pointed out that the correct thing to look at isn’t the percentage increase of extra damage or defense, but the actual values translated into time (the time it takes for you or your opponent to be dead).

Before I work up the motivation to do a bunch of math, has anyone else already done it since the June 23 patch and/or have you found tankier specs better than expected?

for now, in terms of only pvp, no. You will get rekt by dd cele ele if you run full zerk. idk about pve or wvw though -_-;

To give an example, have a look at this build I threw together:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJARTjMdQlH25BueAnIGqCKtHi9cI3guOFwFfrDAA-TVCHAB3pEEgHAgSK/WTXAuHCAJV/xgjAQL7PMwFAIAACwNvZ28mBOv5Nv5Nv55m38m38m3sUAfr1C-w

It maintains high power and a reasonable 45% crit chance through perma fury, plus it has guaranteed crits on its main damage rotation via the Intelligence Sigil. True it doesn’t have the raw damage output of a full zerk setup, but it has solid damage that can be applied continuously (in part thanks to the bow).

It also has almost 1k more armor than zerk and provides a whopping 1k+ heal/sec (approx) via Healing Signet, Adrenal Health, Renewal Sigil, Shouts, and Dogged March.

I’m not claiming this is better than zerk because I haven’t done the math. But out of the gates I can say a zerk setup probably isn’t putting out 600 damage/sec more than this build (the healing advantage on the other build less heal sig on a zerk build), and that’s not even factoring in the extra armor or the net benefit of providing that much healing to allies.

EDIT: Do note the food choice on that build is only giving about 21 health/s, but it applies party wide (i.e. about 135 extra health per shout). If rolling alone, cheap ol’ Mango Pie is clearly better at 85 health/s (self only), and there may even be better choices out there that have nothing to do with healing.

I’m not going to say whether you’re right or wrong, but I will say that the math only matters to a point. I have, like you, been running full zerk for a while now, but I used to use a set of soldier’s armor with the rest zerk, and I have also ran with knights armor. I found myself doing well with those sets. and they definitely did help in situations where I normally would have been screwed. I’m actually starting to funnel in some more defense on my current build, since I’m finding that full zerk just isn’t cutting it against skilled opponents (emphasis on skilled). I would personally stay away from any kind of healing power, as I just don’t find or see it being useful for roaming on a warrior. But overall I would say it comes down to preference. Being super bursty is fun, and definitely effective (I have won plenty of 1vXs on my zerk set-up), but I also like surviving. I have found recently that full zerk war has issues with good mesmers, and while the reasons may be up for debate, extra defense really helps and the drop off in damage isn’t too noticeable.

TL;DR

Preference!

Honest opinion / observation?

Outside of Min/Max builds (I mean, specifically have certain pieces of armor with certain stats) the reason why Berserker on Warrior does so well is not because of what we are running, but rather because of what other players run. Warriors in Berserker facing other berserker professions, outside of being ambushed have a slight advantage due to carrying the higher health pool to take the extra hit which can make or break a fight as well as skill (which especially given our current status in this game plays a heavy role).

That said, there is a certain luxury to having defensive stats which can mitigate an extra bursty strike to prolong the fight as a high health profession. Ultimately, not to offend or anything, two Warriors fighting with similar builds but one is glassier and one is tougher, does NOT come down nearly as much to stats as it does to skill.

Simply put, those instances you probably played into their hands, Berserker is still the way to go for contribution in more scenarios than what you experienced.

@Skyper
It’s possible, but I spent some time chatting with both of them, have played long enough to know when I’m getting outclassed, and I did have them sit there and eat my 100b outside of the fights, measured relative damage difference to health bars, etc.

Neither of these was a “I lost a fight and it must have been some trick or the gear!” scenario.

Again, I’ll refer to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtpz0nMdEn8

Through efficient use of the Intelligence Sigil on his main burst, and a reasonably good crit chance when factoring in the fury, his damage is about as good as a zerk warrior due to the ferocity and power, but he has very good armor and health too.

This may be a slightly different issue in that the weapon choices allow an efficient use of the Intelligence sigil, thereby forgoing a major stat investment in precision, but I’m not so sure. The shout heal warrior I described was also using an Intelligence sigil and, considering our 5s swap, this could be a key reason why zerk isn’t as optimal as frequently believed.

Right now i run cleric shield & mace and assassin’s greatsword. this gives me about 300 more armor when i switch to mace / shield and 15% more crit on greatsword (using accuracy sigil) along with 1 Cavalier and 2 Knights pieces, rest full zerker. Its all about what you are comfortable with, personally i like a bit of armor to not pay the full bill for getting bursted unaware.

What i can say is when you are learning the class / build – tanky gear makes the learning process so much faster because you can spend much more time in a fight.

So I’ve been out of WvW for a little bit but here my opinion for what it’s worth. Solo roaming has always been a bit iffy on warrior. No stealth or blink to jump people or get away unseen. As for gs s/wh , I only like that set up as zerker if ur main focus is yaks and u need maximum movement to get as many as possible. Otherwise have warrior sprint it enough to not need the s/wh. Zerker can be good in WvW but know that u can and will be spiked down quick at times. Personally I like condi for solo roaming , condi or stun lock for 2-3 man’s groups and zerker for havoc

Thanks for the comments so far, everyone. It’s helpful.

But, to be clear, I’m not asking “how much toughness/vitality/hp do we need to stay alive and be effective?”

I’m wondering, if we have two identical builds with equally skilled people behind them, and one uses full zerk and the other has more defensive gear, can the extra damage from the zerk gear be less than the extra damage reduction/healing from the more defensive gear?

Like I said in the original post, I’m very comfortable in all zerk gear (two of my four sets are zerk). But I’m wondering if it’s a less efficient gear setup than some of the other options.

If build A and build B have roughly the same damage output and build A has superior passive defense, then build A would naturally be better. However, there’s always a trade-off, and in that case it’s difficult to measure it: build A would exchange passive defense for less attack patterns, because rotations must accommodate for low precision (using Intelligence, Unsuspecting Foe, Burst Precision…).

I run full Berserker, because I don’t want to restrict my play style in a particular way, but against skilled (and tanky) opponents, I’d say I’ve had more success with builds embedding passive defense (e.g. a cavalier/berserker skullcraker with Unsuspecting Foe, or condition builds).

Also, I think we (as warriors) are still too stuck in the ancient building theory, which stipulates that a warrior should always have Discipline and Defense to be viable. While Discipline remains mandatory (for Fast Hands), I think the Defense line could really be substituted by the Arms line, without losing too much (Adrenal Health being the main loss in my view), while gaining more options relative to Precision.

These days, I’ve been trying Hammer+Sword/Sword, Strength/Arms/Discipline, using… full rabid gear with the Runes of Perplexity. I’ve sometimes killed faster than with Berserker gear…

I mean without going into any actual math, I would say that full zerk would probably provide more damage than a defensive set would provide defense simply because of the way the dps works out over time, but you have to remember that not only would this be an average, but it would also assume that everything works out in your favor. From my experience, it would be rather odd to land every skill perfectly, and I feel that because of this the added defense from a defensive set paired with intel sigils could have the potential to be more beneficial than full zerk. I don’t even think much math would be useful here, considering that the effectiveness of anything is going to depend on your play style. Some people will play better with a more defensive setup while others will play better with full zerk. I don’t think either one makes a player better by any means, I think it’s all in how they play. The whole mentality that the better players use full zerk is just wrong imo, and I think that the best players make builds that work the best for them.

What Quakeman said.

If you do no mistakes at all (land every hit, avoid all hits) then Zerker is best and you don’t need defensive gear (a shield of just some immunity would be enough for the few skills you practically can’t avoid.

Still, for various reasons, in practice receiving more than the absolutely minimum number hits is often a rule. In such cases players actually make builds that feels comfortable enough for them.

Interesting read, all of this…

I just recently made the jump to Warrior as being my main character since it better accommodates to my WvW needs.

I’ve always been a solo roamer and Warrior does great in this field, or at least in my experience. I also run full Stance/Berserker, Sword/Shield and Greatsword, Strength, Discipline and Defense. It deals heavy damage and has enough defense via Endure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance to get me out of sticky situations.

However, there are times where despite having very high damage, I simply cannot kill someone before they put me in a critical state. Much like a Thief might behave, you have to really put the pressure on from the get-go because the longer the fight draws on the greater chance of making a critical mistake that you cannot endure.

I might have to look in to some more defensive gear after reading this post.

I would re-phrase the " has enough defense via Endure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance to get me out of sticky situations ".

Endure Pain actually buys you enough time to score a kill, or at least inflict heavy damage, on your opponent. Defy Pain popping up would be a nice “bell ring” to remind you that you are almost dead.

As fully Zerker, each mistake you make (a hit you fail to avoid) results in 20%-30% more damage compared to a decently/heavily armored character.

Personally I prefer to sacrifice some damage in order to gain some defense/survivability.

There’s a thread in the pvp forum that was linked here in another thread about how toughness and strength stats scale differently. It says basically that strength has linear impact on damage while toughness has diminishing returns. Thus if you trade strength for toughness, you decrease your effectiveness. I know this is not debated here, just wanted to add the info for those who are not aware of that fact.

Precision is a stat that can be enhanced above average by sigil and traits. E.g., if you land 12 hits per 2 weapon swaps, you increase your average crit chance by 25% with sigil of accuracy. That equals 525 points in precision (for comparison, sigil of force adds damage equal to 150 power at 3000 power).

Therefore in a duel of equally skilled warriors, the full berserker should lose against one
giving up precision in favor of some toughness (not too much because of diminishing returns) and vitality, compensating precision by sigil of accuracy.

However, that does not imply this would always be the better choice against other classes.

@ulchanar

Yep, Strength scales in a linear manner. Toughness don’t and the more you put into Toughness the less it benefits you. I think that 1000 Toughness results in ~30% damage reduction while 2000 will be roughly more that 45%. On the other hand, any character starts with 1000 Power, doubling that amount means you are doubling the amount of damage.

In theory, if you could trade even the basic 1000 Toughness for an additional 1000 Power this would benefit you even more. In practice (where things rarely go as planned and 5h1+ happens), things can be different. Here is what I mean with a rather simplistic example:

Player A is fully Zerker, Player B is fully Knight (assume PvP ammys) :

If both players successfully critically hit each other with, lets say, a fully charged Eviscerate (3 tabs of adrenaline) player B will receive ~500 more damage compared to player A.

Now, if both players land a non-crit Eviscerate hit on each other, player A will receive ~500 more damage compared to player B. Same should go for all the skills.

Given that both players have the same crit chance which is ~50% (actually 46% I think), the outcome of the fight will be judged by skill (primarily) AND luck. There are some more “details” like might stacking, build/trait specific stuff etc etc that someone has to keep in mind as well. Still the Zerkers advantage isn’t that huge since Zerker forfeits almost all passive defense, while Knight retains significant attack capabilities.

To conclude… Yep, damage wise you are benefited more as a Zerker! On equal skill level the Zerker should win. Practically, its easier to say it rather than do it because each mistake you do as a Zerker hurts more but that is why its call “high risk/gain” build. Its just that personally I see it that risk is a bit more that the gain!

Toughness doesn’t have diminishing returns. It should be pretty obvious that 1%-unit of damage reduction is much more valuable when you already have a high damage reduction. For example from 0% reduction to 1% reduction makes barely any difference but from 99% reduction to 100% reduction makes you invulnerable. So it only makes sense that you need more and more toughness to get that 1%-unit.

However, all attributes have diminishing returns when compared to other attributes. More you stack one attribute, more valuable others become.

The only reason why toughness feels weak is that our base defense is about 2k while the base power is only 1k. If you want to mathematically optimize your power and toughess then aim for power = toughness + armor.

Wethospu.6437:

Toughness doesn’t have diminishing returns.

Hmmm… what do you mean? Maybe I didn’t expressed my self correctly then.

We start out ~2200 armor. Each point spent into toughness doesn’t equally reduce damage taken. So, increasing the armor from 2200 to 3200 will result in an ~30% damage reduction but increasing, theoretically, to 4200 armor won’t reduce incoming damage to 60% but it will result into a ~47% reduction.

So, each point you “invest” into toughness has lesser effect than the previous one. It scales down in a form of a curve rather than a line.

3200 is 45% more than 2200. 1/(1.45) = 0.69, so 31% damage reduction as you said.

4200 is 31% more than 3200. 1/(1.31) = 0.76, so 24% damage reduction.

If you want 31% damage reduction again you need 45% more armor, which means getting 4640 armor.

Similarly with power. From 1000 to 2000 gives 100% more damage. But going from 2000 to 3000 only gives 50%. If you want 100% more damage you need 100% more power.

We are saying the same thing, we just comment on it differently!

Regarding Toughness, I just compare each value (3200,4200, …) to the base 2200. You just compare each one with the previous (2200 vs 3200, 3200 vs 4200, …). The gradual diminishing of the value is apparent in each example.

Regarding Strength now… What you mention is absolutely correct. But if you compare it from the baseline, from 1000 to 2000 its 100% damage increase, from 1000 to 3000 its 200% damage increase.

Its just that Power scales in a linear manner (graph should be a line) while Toughness scales in a curved manner (graph should be a curve).

The right number you have to look for when wearing full zerk is 1300-1500 on your Toughness. What I do is I have a chest piece and an Ascended amulet of power , toughness, Ferocity. The rest is zerk gear all of it, and I run sigil of cruelty for ferocity buffing. So I have good defense while i dodge n roll and swing away with gs/hammer or sword/sh what ever you feel like running and you should even be safe running into a zerg and doing some hard damage. Good luck and go ham n your opponents!

Why don’t we have 2 warriors test it out by playing the same build, one full zerk, on with a mix of more defensive gear, then hb each other so that it evens out, see if that target stats is something to consider then have a duel to see if then the other stuff like the build , healing , whatever makes a difference ?

Ilias.8647:

We are saying the same thing, we just comment on it differently!

Regarding Toughness, I just compare each value (3200,4200, …) to the base 2200. You just compare each one with the previous (2200 vs 3200, 3200 vs 4200, …). The gradual diminishing of the value is apparent in each example.

Regarding Strength now… What you mention is absolutely correct. But if you compare it from the baseline, from 1000 to 2000 its 100% damage increase, from 1000 to 3000 its 200% damage increase.

Its just that Power scales in a linear manner (graph should be a line) while Toughness scales in a curved manner (graph should be a curve).

Technically, a line is a curve.

Ilias.8647:

We are saying the same thing, we just comment on it differently!

Regarding Toughness, I just compare each value (3200,4200, …) to the base 2200. You just compare each one with the previous (2200 vs 3200, 3200 vs 4200, …). The gradual diminishing of the value is apparent in each example.

Regarding Strength now… What you mention is absolutely correct. But if you compare it from the baseline, from 1000 to 2000 its 100% damage increase, from 1000 to 3000 its 200% damage increase.

Its just that Power scales in a linear manner (graph should be a line) while Toughness scales in a curved manner (graph should be a curve).

It’s important to understand what you measuring. Just looking at numbers in vacuum easily makes you jump in wrong conclusions.

The important thing to realize is that on the damage formula, Power is numerator and Armor is denominator. For example if you have 10 and multiply it with 2 you get 20 which is 100% more. But if you divide with it 2 you get 5 which is 50% less. Similarly you multiply with 3 and get 200% more but dividing “only” results 67% less.

Yes, if you drew a curve, damage increase would have a straight line while damge decrease wouldn’t. So based on this Power scales linearly while Armor doesn’t. However, if you multiply and divide with same value they cancel each other. So no matter how much you stack Power and Armor they will cancel each other as long as you add them equally. This is only possible if Armor has same returns as Power.

If you want to see how Armor scales linearly you should measure “hits to kill”.

Let’s say that with 2200 Armor you can tank 10 hits. 3200 Armor gives 31.25% damage reduction which means you can tank X hits where X * (1 – 31.25%) = 10. In this case X is 14.55 hits.

4200 Armor gives 47.62% damage reduction when compared to 2200 Armor which means you can tank 19.10 hits.

From 2200 to 3200 you can tank ~4.6 hits more. From 3200 to 4200 you can tank also ~4.6 hits more.

Edit: I had to round the final values since apparently you can’t say 4, 5 and 5 together.

Loading.4503:

Why don’t we have 2 warriors test it out by playing the same build, one full zerk, on with a mix of more defensive gear, then hb each other so that it evens out, see if that target stats is something to consider then have a duel to see if then the other stuff like the build , healing , whatever makes a difference ?

Some attributes can be easily calculated.

Raw Damage = Power * (1 + Critical Chance * (Critical Damage – 1))

Damage dealt = Raw Damage / Target Armor

Hits to kill = Target Health / Damage dealt = Target Health * Target Armor / Raw Damage

So a duel between player A and B. If A needs more hits to kill B then A obviously loses.

Hits to kill (A) > Hits to kill (B)

HealthB * ArmorB / DamageA > HealthA * ArmorA / DamageB

DamageB * HealthB * ArmorB) > DamageA * HealthA * ArmorA

So you can calculate numerical strength from Power, Precision, Ferocity, Toughness and Vitality. Higher the number, more optimized the attribute allocation is numerically.

Healing changes this a bit since it’s basically a health boost. The easiest way to include it is to estimate healing gained (based on duration of the fight) and just add it to the health value.

For something more sophisticated, you need to measure time to kill instead of hits to kill.

Time to kill = (Target Health + Target Healing) / DPS dealt = (Target Health + Target Healing) * Target Armor / Raw DPS

Time to kill = (Target Health + Time to kill * Target HPS) * Target Armor / Raw DPS

Time to kill = (Target Health * Target Armor / Raw DPS) / (1 – Target HPS * Target Armor / Raw DPS)

This can be put like this:

HealthB * ArmorB * (DPSB – HPSA * ArmorA) > HealthA * ArmorA * (DPSA – HPSB * ArmorB)

Some examples based gw2skills.net:

With berserker amulet: 2167 armor, 19212 health and 3334 raw damage. Total numerical value: 138 802 934 525.

With soldier amulet: 3067 armor, 28212 health and 2244 raw damage. Total numerical value: 194 164 801 776.

With barbarian amulet: 2167 armor, 31212 health and 2345 raw damage. Total numerical value: 158 607 367 380.

So a soldier warrior is about 40% stronger than a berserker warrior and a barbarian warrior is about 14% stronger than a berserker warrior.

With about 30 s fight you get about 10000 healing. So let’s add 10000 to all health values:

Berserker gets 52% stronger.

Soldier gets 35% stronger. Still 25% stronger than a berserker warrior.

Barbarian gets 32% stronger. Becomes 1% weaker than a berserker warrior.

With dps formula: 1000 weaponstrength, 1 skillcoefficient / s, HPS = 362 / s

DPS = raw damage * 1000 / s.

Berserker (A) vs. Soldier (B): 92 579 891 M vs 126 288 974 M

Berserker (A) vs. Barbarian(B): 106 143 729 M vs 105 549 719 M

Soldier is about 37% stronger than berserker. Barbarian is about 0.5% weaker than berserker.

What about 2 coefficient / s (everyone deals double damage)?

Berserker (A) vs. Soldier (B): 231 382 326 M vs 320 453 776 M

Berserker (A) vs. Barbarian(B): 244 946 164 M vs 264 157 087 M

Soldier is about 39% stronger than berserker. Barbarian is about 7.8% stronger than berserker.

Well here’s some math to compare full zerk with a mixed knight’s/captain’s/zerk’s setup. I dunno if the traits are right, since I’m not really into WvW but this is just to crunch numbers on the stats and look at how much offense we can squeeze out of a tankier build.

Zerk build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQFABGICK9Lm+pwCgIYAwW/FWBA-TxRBABUcBAuS5HN7PgnOAAeAAUq+jZKBDAcA87vBgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fDA-e

Power: 2834, crit dmg: 214%, crit chance: 53.05%
Effective power: 2834 * (1 + 0.5305 * 1.14) = 4,547.9
Effective power w/ Fury: 2834 * (1 + 0.7305 * 1.14) = 5,194
Armor: 2391, Health: 19212
EHP: 2391 * 19212 = 45,935,892

Knight/Captain w/ Zerk weapons: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQFABGICK9Lm+pwCgIYAwW/FWBA-TBSBABUcBA0Sp3VKDwTHAmq/EpSwY2fAgHAQAgDgf/NAs8yLv8yL3yLv8yLvcpA0TZE-e

Power: 2364, crit dmg: 169.13%, crit chance: 61.48%
Effective power: 2364* (1 + 0.6148 * 0.6913) = 3,368.7 (74% of zerk)
Effective power w/ Fury: 2364 * (1 + 0.8148 * 0.6913) = 3,695.6 (71% of zerk)
Armor: 3423, Health: 20212
EHP: 3423 * 20212 = 69,185,676 (150% of zerk)

Since most of the EHP difference is from armor, it’s fair to say that the sustain is also 50% higher, if not more because it has dolyak runes.

I would not be surprised if a guy with 50% more EHP and 50% more sustain/healing, but only 30% less damage does better in duels and roaming.

Let’s also look at how much of a total power coefficient they would need to kill each other.

(note: the 1100 below is the greatsword base damage)
Zerk (w/o fury) needs: 69,185,676/4547.9/1100 = 13.8
Zerk (w/ fury) needs: 69,185,676/5,194/1100 = 12.1

Tanky guy (w/o fury) needs: 45,935,892/3,368.7/1100 = 12.4
Tanky guy (w/ fury) needs: 45,935,892/3,695.6/1100 = 11.3

So mathematically, the tanky build has the advantage. He requires fewer attacks landed to win, in a scenario without healing involved.

His advantage grows further when healing is taken into account because his armor is much higher.

Khristophoros.7194:

—
His advantage grows further when healing is taken into account because his armor is much higher.

With 1 skillcoefficient / second:

Berserker DPS: 4547.9*1100 = 5002690

Berserker DPS against Healing Signet: 4547.9*1100 – 3423 * 362 = 3763564

3763564/5002690 = 75%.

Knight DPS: 3368.7*1100 = 3705570

Knight DPS against Healing Signet: 3368.7*1100 – 2391* 362 = 2840028

2840028/3705570 = 77%.

Both builds lose about same kind of damage output.

With 2 skillcoefficients / second:

Berserker DPS: 2*4547.9*1100 = 10005380

Berserker DPS against Healing Signet: 2*4547.9*1100 – 3423 * 362 = 8766254

8766254/10005380= 88%.

Knight DPS: 2*3368.7*1100 = 7411140

Knight DPS against Healing Signet: 2*3368.7*1100 – 2391* 362 = 6545598

6545598/7411140= 88%.

Both builds lose about same kind of damage output.

So the end result is that healing doesn’t really change the outcome. Knight gets a tiny boost if players manage to do low damage against each other.

Great posts guys!

So, as others already pointed out, Tanky guy has an advantage in a battle where hits are landed on both sides. The Zerker has the edge if he avoids some hits but land his own.

It seems we come to a conclusion that Zerker is the way to go in a zero mistake scenario (offensively and defensively)! Which means that you land every hit while avoiding incoming hits. Practically this is hard to achieve.

On the other hand, as long as the Tanky guy retains a portion of his offensive capabilities, he has more room to make mistakes and still win.

Going Tanky lets you retain a respectable portion of your offensive capabilities while going fully Zerk will maximize your offense forfeiting almost all but the very basic defenses.

Ilias.8647:

Great posts guys!

So, as others already pointed out, Tanky guy has an advantage in a battle where hits are landed on both sides. The Zerker has the edge if he avoids some hits but land his own.

It seems we come to a conclusion that Zerker is the way to go in a zero mistake scenario (offensively and defensively)! Which means that you land every hit while avoiding incoming hits. Practically this is hard to achieve.

On the other hand, as long as the Tanky guy retains a portion of his offensive capabilities, he has more room to make mistakes and still win.

Going Tanky lets you retain a respectable portion of your offensive capabilities while going fully Zerk will maximize your offense forfeiting almost all but the very basic defenses.

Realistically you won’t dodge everything though. If you did dodge everything it wouldn’t matter which build you were playing, you’d win either way.

I think it’s smart to go with whatever gives you the best odds.

I can’t think of a cheaper- sorry, more practical build than the “full damage, yet still godly survivability thanks to the cheapness of stances” one that’s been running for a while.

No, not in any gametype.

Mathematically, tankier specs have always had the best damage dealt per damage taken. From a sheer numbers perspective, even on optimized builds, it is always superior to run soldier’s gear to any kind of optimized berserker’s/assassin’s/valkyrie setup in regards to this ratio. Condition sets, especially dire, throw this way out of whack by getting the ability to minimize damage taken while retaining high offensive capabilities. This is and has been universal to all formats, and why the berserker amulet has never been used aside from on the thief in sPvP (as they get fewer gains from using defensive gear/physically cannot fight on the level of other professions on a point and are thus better used as bursty +1’ers/non-combat point flippers).

This is even further apparent in sPvP since the damage taken is also inherently lower due to the gains coming from berserker gear actually just being straight up bad while the defensive gains are quite large as compared to their PvP counterparts. Berserker gear and similar setups only truly shine when there are a lot of other modifiers at play and stats are able to scale much higher like they can in PvE and WvW.

You’re seeing more durable builds be more successful now in WvW because berserker is only truly good against other glass specs. With condi builds on the rise (dire gear and defensive traits due to a lack of need of three offensive stats, and how conditions ignore armor values altogether), paired with the incredible cheese that are currently the ranger/mesmer/ele builds in roaming, there is an increased focus on being durable enough to withstand substantial burst damage coming from multiple lower-hitting attacks and increased condition cleansing from the completely imbalanced and atrocious condi roaming builds. A lot of these specs are also extremely durable and directly counter pretty much anything playing glassier and offer next to no counterplay opportunities.

PvE-wise, DPS is everything considering the mobs are unintelligent and people just like to clear content faster. In no way is there a “best” gear set or “optimal” method of doing things, except for when time is considered a factor. For unskilled groups and new players, though, again, durability has mathematically always out-performed offense in regards to ease of content and the damage dealt vs damage taken ratio.

Roaming at the moment in WvW is the worst it’s ever been due to the blatant imbalances with a lot of the “meta” builds. I’ve given up on it mostly on my thief, and have had better luck frontlining zergs as a glass cannon recently.