Guild Wars 2

I need to know which is superior in a WvW setting.

With the insane grind and time required to get ascended gear, I can’t afford to make a mistake on choosing gear. Not with my limited play time.

Vitality- Seems good for handling burst, and staying in the front lines longer before having to disengage. I’m not sure if vitality helps surviving against fall dmg, or if toughness plays a role. Been plenty of times allys have died form fall dmg while I walk away with a sliver of life. Just a minor perk.

Healing power- I can disengage form the front lines, heal up faster, and then head back in. There have been many times where I throw up healing signet, and sit on a flame ram while enemies rain death on me, and keep myself up without running away. Seems weak to poison though, and with all the combo fields plus exploding cows it can be applied easy. Even with condition removal.

Back in august 2012 I remember Vorsaken and a bunch of others did some big number crunching. They determined vitality gave you more per point invested vs healing power. Does this still hold up?

So which is it? Vitality, or healing power?
Or would a mixture of both be best?

Just to note. I play tanky and get into the thick of it. High toughness is a given. Currently using a 0/0/30/30/10 shout healing build.

P.S. Not interested in rolling a sparkling fairy guardian.

i have no idea really.. but if in 2012 vitality was better. then 2013 most likely still is..
My logic.

Vitality is still better solo (as healing power has low scaling per point), but in groups, especially if you’re running a shout heal build, healing power is far surperior as you’re utilizing heals on yourself + 5 others and they’re on a 20-24 sec CD as long as you’re using the right shouts and traited.

Ultimately, per shout heal rotation, it results in about +800 more direct healing per person (so approx 4000 more healing) and since you can do this approx every 21.5 seconds, the longer a fight goes, the better it is. Extrapolate a 64 second fight (assuming you use your heals right when they’re up), and it results in a difference of approx 64,000 healing to 40,500.

Interesting.

Issue is 2/3 of shouts are not used on cooldown. Shake it off is needed for condition removal, and Fear me is just great in a WvW scenario. Shout healing is not incredibly powerful but more like a nice bonus. As for ally support, its hard to factor that in considering most people hang back at range, so they may or may not be in range of the shout.

Anyone else have some input?

This is a hard subject, some people swear by full healing power warriors (+-2.2k heal/shout) others think vitality is better (1.5k heal/shout). If you go healing power, really go all the way. Healing power scales really bad and vitality scales enourmously good.

But as said before your shouts hit 5 people, so the minor increase has to be done x5. But you will lose: some power (=dmg), some thoughness and a lot of health (=survivability). I decided for myself that I didn’t want to lose that survivability, because my playstyle demanded it. I am an up into your face player. And if I go heal spec, I will die more often = less shouts to heal. For me the shouts are more for condition removal and buffs and the added heal is just an extra.

For personal survivability, vitality. For support, healing.

Shouts:
Formula: 40+((Level^2) x 0.18) + (Healing x 0.8)
At 0 healing at level 80: 40 + 1152 = 1192
At 1500 healing at level 80: 40 + 1152 + 1200 = 2392

So 1 point of healing = .8 hp/use vs. 1 point of vitality = 10 hp
Therefore, 12 shouts are needed to equal the same contribution to vitality.

However, healing also benefits your heal.

Healing signet:
passive regeneration is calculated by: 200 + (Healing Power * 0.033) per second.
active heals for 3320 + Healing Power.

Passive gives you 3.3% of healing power. So, for every 100 healing power, you regenerate an extra 3.3 hp/second.
Active scales 1:1 so 10 uses of heal = same contribution to vitality.

I don’t have the math on Mending and Healing surge, but they won’t be astronomically better, and therefore I wouldn’t expect them to come near overpowering vitality.

In conclusion, you’ll need to use ~10 shouts or heals in any combination for an investment in healing to = the same investment in vitality.