Showing Posts Upvoted By Veydar.5017:

Stats to hit for WvW (D/D)

in Elementalist

Posted by: Pibriamal.8719

Pibriamal.8719

Just your standard roaming/small havoc group D/D ele, what stats should I aim for? I’ve seen numbers that say 2k power, 2.6k armor, 16k hp, 30% crit, and dump the rest into crit damage/healing power. Is that right?

Right now, with my mix of knights/soldiers/zerk, I have around 2.2k power (with food), 2.5k armor, just under 16k hp, 30% crit chance, and around 180% crit damage, and nothing invested into healing power except from traits in Water.

[Guide] DPS Elementalist for PvE

in Elementalist

Posted by: Esmee.1067

Esmee.1067

Put the stacking sigil on your underwater weapon— this works. Make sure it’s of the same type as your main stacking sigil, and note you can’t double stack anymore with d/f or s/f or whatever. So just stack with one of those, get to full stacks, and replace it— the underwater weapon should hold it.

Ok, I tried it on a low-level alt, something must have been out of place. Thank you.

Too much focus on Mini-games

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Harbard.5738

Harbard.5738

Clarifying:

I don’t have a problem with actual MINI games like the drinking one, I kinda liked it, I liked when I played it in the whispers mission. I’m sure actual MINI games don’t take significant time to make and add a little welcome extra. As i said in the opening post. I find them actually fun.

My problem is that it doesn’t make sense that significant chunks of content actually boils down to gameplay that is completely unrelated to skills, combat and builds as I also said in the first post.

In an attempt to focus this discussion, i’ve taken down my opinion about the fun/polish factor and left only the thing that matters most to me when it comes to minigames.

__
On a side note:

It really bothers me that people read half of it and then assume a lot. I’m not a “content locust”, I never liked those types. I just want to play an MMO not an arcade game collection. I suppose that’s fairly reasonable people expect to play with their combat skills in a game that’s about combat skills? Or is that also being “entitled” too?

And It’s just sad how people read a “comeback” in some flame thread and start blurting it out on every post thinking they’re the kitten. At least be original. Apparently the “current standard answer meta” is hovering around the “I don’t agree, so you’re entitled” or “this is not a fact it’s opinion”. Well, congratulations, you finally found out this is an opinion thread, even if the fact it starts with “My problem with minigames are:” isn’t enough of a clue.

C’mon guys.

Give me game. Not grind, not gating, not RNG, not +stat junk, not checklists.

Tough issues

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Keeping in mind #3, pure damage will eventually have a diminishing return. If you can kill an enemy 3 times as quickly, it isn’t nearly as much of a jump in survivability than killing them twice as quickly. What also must be considered is that stats always work in groups of 3, and never alone. You can achieve an overall greater survivability, in theory, though the correct combination of stats. This does have one issue, though: any survivability above necessity is inefficient, since killing an enemy quicker does far more than contribute to survivability. It also contributes to income and free time. But, only if you are a skilled enough player, since failure at a task is time consuming and income consuming.

It is also here that this analysis falls apart in PvP and WvW. In PVP, pretty much everyone you encounter has high sustained damage that is nearly unavoidable, and so the point of maximizing survivability through damage and other traits becomes a necessity, and not something that less skilled players do to survive.

As for a way to make toughness and vitality more efficient… I have not come up with a solution yet. This is mostly because I don’t think this analysis is fully complete yet, and I’m afraid that I would break the system further with anything I suggest. But, unless I am missing my guess, toughness and vitality are overall fools errands to invest in anything but the minimum required to survive certain encounters.

I suppose that ends the bulk of this analysis on toughness. For reference, I will list a few extra formula for anyone who wants to pursue this further.

Factoring in critical hits:

1 x (chance of not hitting crit) + (1 + 0.5 + crit damage) x (chance of hitting crit) = total crititcal multiplier of damage.

So, for example, berserker armor, weapon, and jewels (not factoring backpack) give 58% crit damage and 667 precision (36% crit chance), so…

1 × .64 + 2.08 × .36 = 1.39

Or a 139% damage multiplier to power. So if power does double damage, that’ll be 2 × 1.39 = 2.78 total increase in damage. Things become more complicated when factoring in the presence of fury or other things that increase crit rate.

Condition Damage:
Bleeds do double damage 850 condition damage.
Poison does double damage at 840 condition damage.
Burns do double damage at 1312 condition damage.
Confusion does double damage at 867 condition damage.

Factoring damage increases by percentage: Things such as 5% bonus to damage when endurance isn’t full, 10% increase to rifle damage, 5% damage while under the effect of might, etc. For now, I assume a geometic relationship, multiplying the damage ratio from power by 1.05 then 1.05 then 1.10 and so on. An arithmatic relationship would be to just add them together (1.05 + 1.05 + 1.1) and multiply them afterwards. I’ll need clarification on this.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Tough issues

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

But what of vitality? Well, that works on a similar principle. If we were to say that the 920 toughness were 920 vitality instead, then this would add 9200 HP to the character. Going off of the different base HP of each class:

Warrior, Necromancer: 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer: 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist: 10,805

And using this forumla:

1 – Base HP / New HP

We would get the following:

Highest base: 1 – 0.666 = 33.3%
Medium Base: 1 – 0.621 = 37.9%
Lowest base: 1 – .540 = 46.0%

So on a short term basis, vitality investment is either more effective than toughness or a lot more effective than toughness. For the lowest base HP, vitality is almost as good as investing in power. Vitality comes with the advantage that it can mitigate condition damage better, but heals remain steady in their effectiveness, although they heal less as a percentage of health. It is for this reason that vitality is often called ablative, for once the extra HP is worn away the effectiveness is gone. This, again, isn’t a problem for damage, though, since an enemy that is alive for half as long will inflict half as many conditions.

A final advantage to high damage builds is that they also reduce the damage for teammates as well. Killing an enemy twice as fast means that teammates also take half as much damage. Because of this, high damage is ultimately a cooperative form of defense, which is something neither toughness nor vitality can claim (unless you count standing around and taking hits while rezzing someone as cooperative).

This is all well and good, but you’re probably thinking that in practice it isn’t as simple as “if the enemy lives half as long, it’ll only do half the damage”. And this is correct to a certain degree: stats do not exist in a vacuum by themselves, and enemies have bursts of damage and may live for very long amounts of time despite being dealt more damage. However, it is by the game’s very design that the tools for mitigating the various problematic portions of a pure damage build are built into nearly each and every class. Taking a look at the various problems:

1) Burst damage from enemies. A lot of vets and champions may have an attack or two that is capable of bowling over a pure damage build in one hit, and toughness/vitality letting you survive that hit would be crucial. However, this is what dodging was made for: when that OHKO attack starts coming your way, you get out of the way. With copious blocking skills and reflecting skills and dodging skills with control effects, immobilizes, blinds, and vigor, the only barrier to a pure damage build surviving an encounter is how well they can read enemy patterns. Because of this, toughness and vitality become like a safety net until players get good enough that they no longer need them.

2) Conditions. Enemies can apply conditions in one of two ways: either steadily or in bursts. Steadily applied conditions benefit greatly from an enemy dying sooner, since they act like regular damage output. Burst conditions follow the same dodging mechanics as in #1, but with the added bonus that condition curing abilities can get rid of the problem before it escalates into something severe.

It is because of #1 and #2 that, eventually, players will upgrade to pure damage builds as they learn enough about the game. In the long run they survive better while accomplishing tasks faster. There is one unavoidable caveat, though:

3) High sustained damage and thresholds. There exists many enemies in the game that are incredibly durable while having high non-burst damage. They are rare, but nonetheless they are encountered on occasion. Often they are champions that seem to only have a ranged auto attack. It is here that a pure damage build suffers, since there needs to be a certain survivability threshold that they need to achieve. This threshold, of course, is how much damage the enemy does (considering all mitigation techniques like dodging and control) compared to how much the player can heal in the timeframe between healing. It is here that toughness shines, since vitality lasts but for a moment. High damage builds often have to contemplate where this threshold is when building traits, since it will allow them to beat those elusive but very difficult bosses, or they have to develop specific tactics to get around those bosses.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Tough issues

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Out of sheer curiosity and petty arguments I started doing some math regarding the way damage is handled in the game, and I have come to several conclusions that toughness and vitality are ultimately inferior to straight up damage. For this, I will be operating on a few assumptions:

*The formula listed on the wiki for damage is an accurate representation of how stats interract with one another:
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)
*The changes in tooltip damage for skills is an accurate representation of damage change ratios.
*This is in regards to PvE. In PVP and WvW these are far from the case.

If any of these are incorrect then my conclusions will be incorrect.

Now, while looking at the damage tooltips I noticed though much experimentation in the mists that if you increase your power by 916 points, you’ll have double the direct damage. Since the base amount of power at level 80 is 916, I put 2 and 2 together and saw that power is directly reponsible for how much damage you are doing. This is simple enough. Factoring in other things such as precentage increases and precision are far more complicated, so I’ll be getting into that later.

I noticed that the armor attribute is used instead of the toughness attribute for determining how much damage is reduced when struck. To anyone half decent at math, this means that toughness has a proportional decrease in effectiveness per point. But, how much of a decrease in effectiveness? Well, lets get to some maths for that. First, the basic toughness at level 80 is 916. Second, the basic defense supplied by exotic equipment at level 80 is the following:

Light armor: 960
Medium armor: 1064
Heavy armor: 1211

Adding in base toughness of 916, you get a base armor rating of…

Light: 1876
Medium: 1980
Heavy: 2127

These numbers are important, since it represents the base for how much damage is being divided by. The effectiveness of toughness is a proportion of that base armor rating.

Now, for an example I will use my level 80 engineer. My engineer is equipped in full knight equipment (which, in PvE, gives Toughness, precision, power). Ignoring the backpack, with exotic orichalcum emerald jewelry and armor and rifle, my toon has 920 bonus toughness from equipment. Add that to the base armor attribute, and I get a new armor attribute of 2900 armor. With armor being inversly related to the damage received, we can find out how much of a change this is with the following equation:

1 – 1/(new armor / base armor)
= 1 – base armor / new armor

Putting in the numbers…

1 – 1980 / 2900
= 1 – 0.683
= 0.317

So I am taking only 68.3% of the damage I would’ve taken without the toughness, or ultimately a 31.7% reduction in damage. You may be wondering: “That seems alright. What is the problem here?” Well, the problem here is that 920 power would’ve roughly doubled my damage output. A doubled damage output means an enemy would’ve been alive for half as long. An enemy alive for half as long does only half the damage it would’ve done, ultimately resuling in an indirect 50% damage reduction from the enemy. And therein lies the rub: by speccing more heavily in damage you end up taking less damage.

If you repeat this example and equation with light and heavy armor stats, you get the following ratios of reduction:

Light: 1 – 0.671 = 32.9%
Heavy: 1 – 0.698 = 30.2%

Know that these are ratios representing the change within that class, and are not viable for comparing to different classes. Each class has the same damage increase from power, though, so there is no additional math to be done there. It is also worth noting that toughness increases the efficiency of heals by those percentages, but whether it is an advantage is up to debate, because with double damage you’ll also only have to heal away half as much damage.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)

Drop rate of.. just about everything

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Avigrus.2871

Avigrus.2871

My collection of porous bones is the envy of all the land.

Bow down and worship my porous excellence…. i have a throne made of porous bones and also my plates and forks are made from them.

  • A-net, please remove DR… PLEASE
    • A-net, please fix drops from Champs/Vets/Dungeons… PLEASE

I can confirm that Vets/Champs are the worst looting mobs in the game…. this should absolutely not be the case.

I can only assume that they don’t know how to fix the drops issue…?

80 Necro (5), 80 Guard (4), 80 Mesmer (3)
80 Ranger (3), 80 Warrior (3), 80 Thief (3)
80 Ele (2), 80 Engi (3), 80 Rev (2)