Guild Wars 2

Been lurking around the forums a little & I’ve come across a couple of comments that left me confused. Which is: “Vit is a useless stat for Warriors.”

Why is vit a useless stat for Warriors? Yeah, sure we have a higher base health pool but won’t more HP = more survivability both PvE & PvP wise?

It is not a completely useless stat; as such, you wouldn’t want to abandon it.
First points in vitality are the ones that give you most benefit. Raising your health by 1 thousand when you have 10 is a 10% increase, while raising your health by 1 thousand while you have 20 is just 5%.

Against raw damage, extra toughness (dmg mitigation) will increase your lifespan more than extra vitality (HP). Against Condition damage, toughness is of no use, increased vitality will let you survive longer (as you have more HP to burn).

Vitality is nice, but if it’s a choice between Soldier’s (Pwr/Vit/Tough) and Knight’s (Pow/Prcs/Tough), to many Builds Precision is more important than Vitality.

It is only “useless” in the sense that there are other stats which would benefit you more. As such it should be considered a low-priority stat for Warriors. Not entirely “useless”, but not worth sacrificing more potent stats over, ya dig?

On the contrary! It depends on what you’re playing.

In PvE you can definitely get by running a glass cannon build with 18k-20k HP. In WvWvW forget about it! You better have at least 25k-30k HP.

epborden.7492:

On the contrary! It depends on what you’re playing.

In PvE you can definitely get by running a glass cannon build with 18k-20k HP. In WvWvW forget about it! You better have at least 25k-30k HP.

I have no Vitality on my equipment and I have…

23.400-something Health.

A Warrior without any Vitality from Traits has 20.000 Health at lvl 80. That’s a respectable amount of Health. Also, your Health does not mean anything when it comes to being a glass cannon; a Warrior with 20.000 and lots of Toughness is a lot tankier than someone who has 30.000 Health and minimal Toughness.

Yep, why pick Tactics over Strength, Arms, or Discipline right now? Because the minor traits are made by inexperienced devs.

Hell even the defense tree is lacking hard.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Yep, why pick Tactics over Strength, Arms, or Discipline right now? Because the minor traits are made by inexperienced devs.

30% Boon duration, brah.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Hell even the defense tree is lacking hard.

Dunno about that. Adrenal Health is one of my all-time favourite Minor Traits in the game.

Oglaf.1074:

Schwahrheit.4203:

Yep, why pick Tactics over Strength, Arms, or Discipline right now? Because the minor traits are made by inexperienced devs.

30% Boon duration, brah.

With Rune of the Forge and Warhorn mastery yeah its a good trait and all, just that it isn’t rewarding as being a good glass cannon.

Adrenal Health is good, but Armored Attack and Thick Skin though…

Much of this very well balanced class is a trade-off.

If you consider vitality, you have to consider the trade-off that it covers.

Toughness does nothing for damaging conditions while vitality seriously mitigates them.

So if you eschew vitality in favor of toughness, remember that your achilles heel is condition damage like bleeds, poison and fire.

My strategy, which is not the only one, is to stack toughness over vit, but make sure I can drop conditions readily. That is but one way to balance the trade-off.

You could also stack vit and toughness. But you then have less to spend on other things. The trade-off continues. Which is why i love this game and this class.

TL;DR
people who say vit is worthless for warriors are only telling half the story until they reveal what they traded that vit for, because vit is a powerful and linear stat (10 hp per vit point is substantial).

Schwahrheit.4203:

Yep, why pick Tactics over Strength, Arms, or Discipline right now? Because the minor traits are made by inexperienced devs.

Hell even the defense tree is lacking hard.

If you don’t care to use leg specialist in wvw when running greatsword, I don’t know what to say to you… =/

Yeah pick leg specialist over mobile strikes why don’t you.

glass cannon = big badda booms

big badda booms are the opposite of subtlety

tactucs =/= big badda boom.

tactics are often subtle and refined.

seems to me like you just want one big raer class that has everything.

might i recommend an ele?

my banner warhorn warrior loves the tactics and defense trees.

25/0/15/30/0

RollingBob.8502:

Much of this very well balanced class is a trade-off.

If you consider vitality, you have to consider the trade-off that it covers.

Toughness does nothing for damaging conditions while vitality seriously mitigates them.

So if you eschew vitality in favor of toughness, remember that your achilles heel is condition damage like bleeds, poison and fire.

My strategy, which is not the only one, is to stack toughness over vit, but make sure I can drop conditions readily. That is but one way to balance the trade-off.

You could also stack vit and toughness. But you then have less to spend on other things. The trade-off continues. Which is why i love this game and this class.

TL;DR
people who say vit is worthless for warriors are only telling half the story until they reveal what they traded that vit for, because vit is a powerful and linear stat (10 hp per vit point is substantial).

Thing is, my Warrior eats Conditions for breakfast.

Full Shout build, Soldier Runes.

Conditions are sort of a non-issue if you play your cards right.

and I believe you pointed out that you have little need to stack vitality, which is what I suggested. Your experience bears out my premise.

I think Vitality is only vital to survive that one Boss Swing which would otherwise Onehit kill you. However Vitality has some major downsides:

After that point of the one swing kill you now survived vit gives you nothing more. Healskills dont scale with it so with more vit it only takes longer to top you off.
It doesnt mitigate any damage and doesnt help you stay alive much longer unlike other games you cant act like a Manasponge to your healer because there are no constant healingspells.

For example guardians have a much better scaling: Their HP pool is lower however they have more toughness which smoothens out damage income and with their superior healing they top themselfs off rather quickly. For that onehit swings I talked about earlier they have aegis to survive being oneshot.

I run about 1700 toughness and 27k hp, I used to run 29k but switched some HP for toughness just to make sure It was higher than the non tanks in the party. Also running full shouts and soldier runes.

It’s nice after running around with 15k hp on my guardian

I’d probably bring up Agony if I was trying to think of a solid reason to run 0 vitality

I run 3 shouts on my bar with soldier runes, they are amazing on warriors but there are certainly times for me at least when I have condition damage and my 3 shouts are on CD (2 warriors with soldier runes is super awesome btw)

Also nice to have a large HP if you run with a guardian, tome of courage heals everyone to full regardless of hp pool, was down to 500hp in Arah on bad pull, my heal and 3 shouts on CD, besides me only the guardian alive, I’m one hit off death. bam guardian clutch heals me to 27k and we clean up without a wipe.

nakoda.4213:

my banner warhorn warrior loves the tactics and defense trees.
25/0/15/30/0

My I ask why the 5’s? Is 50 more power points worth a Tier 2 Major trait on another trait line?

adrenal health is worth every point. also, i used to be condition specced, and so had the 25 pt talent for crits in the arms tree. been playing back and forth between power and pre. i do miss the bleed stacks when solo.

Right, I see. So you would spend 25 on one and 15 on another to get the minor traits (Tier 3 and Tier 2) of those lines.

It is not a completely useless stat; as such, you wouldn’t want to abandon it.
First points in vitality are the ones that give you most benefit. Raising your health by 1 thousand when you have 10 is a 10% increase, while raising your health by 1 thousand while you have 20 is just 5%.

Wait — do all stats have diminishing returns like this?

Vitality is far from useless when i think of all those times i was low on HP during a battle and survived :P

Monki.5012:

I think Vitality is only vital to survive that one Boss Swing which would otherwise Onehit kill you. However Vitality has some major downsides:

After that point of the one swing kill you now survived vit gives you nothing more. Healskills dont scale with it so with more vit it only takes longer to top you off.

Of course the Vitality does something afterwards. Regen, a common buff, effectively gives you a longer health bar so long as you can prolong your life via kiting, dodging or just killing the target. This also has the effect of diluting condition damage you don’t have to cleanse just for that 1 burn that’s ticking away at your health.

If you didn’t have that vitality and you used a healing skill to fill you up, that regen is now doing nothing but being a boon on your window. Basically, Vitality is an enabling trait that feeds off of all mitigation provided by a team. Anything, regen, vigor, aegis, heals, magnify your vitality’s effectiveness since having ‘just enough to survive that one-shot’ can mean the world of difference.

Monki.5012:

For example guardians have a much better scaling: Their HP pool is lower however they have more toughness which smoothens out damage income and with their superior healing they top themselfs off rather quickly. For that onehit swings I talked about earlier they have aegis to survive being oneshot.

Also, in that example, guardians have low HP because they have lots of healing and boons. Their toughness isn’t really that much of a factor, it’s the fact they have aegis and protection boons.

Well didnt I say just that? At least I meant it that way.. Guardians have low HP BUT better healing and defensve boons..

I am sorry but I do not understand what you are saying. If you survive a hard Boss swing with 100 HP or with 1000 HP (because you invested in Vit more) where is the difference in reggens effectivness? I can see that you benefit from reggen more if you are not full so you get a few more ticks untill you are full of HP but is this worth the investment? To get a few more ticks of a boon you cant apply to yourself without help?

You say reggen holds against conditiondamage well yes but does more or less Vit change that? And if you dodge or kite as you suggest, a + in HP doesnt benefit you at all because you dont get hit.

Maybe I just dont understand what are you saying, could you clarify it for me please?

Monki.5012:

Well didnt I say just that? At least I meant it that way.. Guardians have low HP BUT better healing and defensve boons..

You said guardian had more toughness not boons. It’s the boons that is making the difference.

And surviving with 100 HP vs 1000HP from that big hit might make a big difference when the subsequent bleeding takes you out before you can even hit your heal or give you that extra second to revive someone who’s down.

And it’s simple logic that more health magnifies mitigation efforts (and a warrior can apply constant regen to himself, and since regen is a heal over time, it’s basically giving you a longer health bar depending on how long it remains healing you). The only circumstance where Vit would be pointless or just less useful is if the enemy is hitting for so little damage it barely moves your HP or you (and your party) are perfect and 100% (or even 75%) dodge everything.

And this is coming from a dungeon Warrior that wears Knight’s (toughness) gear. I’m not dumping on toughness, but it’d be foolish to say it’s pointless or doesn’t help. Just like a guardian is enabled by their boons, a warrior is enabled by their health (not equally, mind you). I would never suggest skipping out on it, but equip enough to get you to a comfortable health level…then add another 1.5k amount of HP and you’re perfect. I sit at around 24-25k HP for dungeons and fractals and I feel safe at that amount.

serivahn.9751:

It is not a completely useless stat; as such, you wouldn’t want to abandon it.
First points in vitality are the ones that give you most benefit. Raising your health by 1 thousand when you have 10 is a 10% increase, while raising your health by 1 thousand while you have 20 is just 5%.

Wait — do all stats have diminishing returns like this?

It isn’t a diminishing return. People represent it the wrong way. 1 vit is always 10 hp. That never changes. Because we have a large base healthpool, people say, “Oh, vit is less helpful for us.”

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Numerically, every stat in the game gives linear returns. 1 Vitality is 10 health no matter how many HP you have.

The effectiveness curve from stats are not linear, however, but logarithmic. The more of something you have, the less impact adding more of it has. 1 Vitality is always 10 health, but that matters a whole lot more when you have only 10,000 health than when you have 20,000 health.

This matters a lot because you have a choice about where you put your stats, and some places are going to be more effective than others, depending on where you’ve previously put stats. The more health and healing you have, the more valuable Toughness is – but as you add more Toughness, Vitality and Healing become more attractive. This game is less about going all-in on the best stat, and more about having the right balance of a variety of stats that maximizes your effectiveness.

As it turns out, the Warrior scales incredibly well with Precision and has a ton of base health. Since it is incredibly difficult to gear for Precision and Vitality simultaneously, there’s every reason to go all-in on the Precision side. Traits and Runes are more than sufficient to meet your needs for Vitality; anything more than that, and you’re cutting important stats for a low priority one.

Ensign.2189:

As it turns out, the Warrior scales incredibly well with Precision and has a ton of base health. Since it is incredibly difficult to gear for Precision and Vitality simultaneously, there’s every reason to go all-in on the Precision side. Traits and Runes are more than sufficient to meet your needs for Vitality; anything more than that, and you’re cutting important stats for a low priority one.

Bingo! Vitality isn’t a bad stat, but you’d have to sacrifice even better stats for it.