38 replies to this topic

[Threeleaf]

How are people picking which is their more important damage-mitigation stat?

When would you want high armour and when high health?

[Drekor]

high toughness vs direct damage
high vitality vs conditions

Vitality is safer bet since it helps no matter what but it comes with having your heal restore less of your total HP %.

[Shamadamun]

Drekor, on 12 June 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

high toughness vs direct damage
high vitality vs conditions

Vitality is safer bet since it helps no matter what but it comes with having your heal restore less of your total HP %.

Do conditions go straight through defense? If so that's pretty wicked!

I usually prefer toughness with a touch of vitality because I want my heal to mean more.

[Morghana]

This only applies to a SPVP point of view (i haven't tested pve at all)

I tested both combinations, high vitality with low toughness (1).. and higher toughness with a lower vitality investment (2).


1) This was the natural way for me, maybe because I usually tend to pick ranged proffesions. It feels ok, but bursty specs eat your hp pool pretty fast.

2) I tested this with my necro without ANY vitality in gear (916 base stat), but 1800+ toughness, she had around 18k hp pool. I found this combination way too more resiliant.

In conclusion, the better survability results I found were around 1500 toughness and 20k hp.

Why?

I think thoughness is so cool because it reduces all the incoming direct damage not only physical but magical too. Protection boon helps a lot.

In the other side, condition damage is not so high because the only one cond which can stack intensity and kill you pretty fast is bleeding (poison healing reduction is disgusting, but you can deal with it). And all the proff have several condition cleanse mechanisms.. so vitality helps you react to cond stacking or wait your cds to remove them.

Edited by Morghana, 12 June 2012 - 07:55 AM.

[Syntak]

I pick toughness as a necromancer because I have so many condition transfer skills

[Killyox]

a mix of both but toughness is imo better in most cases unless vs heavy dot team

[Ayestes]

Condition Removal, Toughness, Compassion, and Active Defenses such as Dodge, Immunities, and CC are your best option for survival.  Vitality is the worst stat in the long run, but you need enough to make it between Heal cooldowns.  In larger fights, Vitality could be more useful to save yourself from being blown up, however.

Edited by Ayestes, 13 June 2012 - 12:51 AM.

[Nicator]

Is damage reduction through toughness an inverse exponential function or does it reduce damage in an uniform way? It really depends on that. Toughness is great, but if your HP pool is too low to resist the time fighting between heals, some vitality might come in handy, depending on how it works.

Also, for guardians, elementalists, necromancers and mesmers, the trait that improves vitality also improves compassion, which means you'll also get better heals to compensate for a higher HP pool by mastering them.

[DeanAdamFry]

As long as you have two ways to remove conditions often then go all in for Toughness and Healing Power since it'll effectively bring you back to full health while being a tough son of a bitch.

Tried this sort of combo with D/D Elementalist and no burst damage could tickle me, it greatly reduced the impact players had on me in terms of damage definitely Warrior's.

[dandelions]

I like toughness way more than vitality. (and I suppose healign power which is effectively like toughness.. basically any toughness you haev increases your effective hp, it effectively increases your heal, because if you heal for 6000 points with 20% dmeg reduction, say, then that is effectively a 7500 heal. and healing power just directly increases your heal.) Ofc this depends on how much % dmge reduction toughness equates to, but I think it is a decent amount. I played my guardian with really low health but high tough/armor (maybe around 14k hp) but it felt much much more tanky than my ele, even if the ele had 20k hp.

This beign said though, you do need decent condition removal because otherwise you will get owned by conditions (tbh if you haev higher health you still need good condit removal also). So good candidates are: ranger (many ways to remove conditions), necro (popping into DS remove conditions), ele (water spec).

[misterdevious]

I didn't really have a choice because I wanted Precision for triggered (non-condition damage) effects, combined with some decent defense.  Previously there had been FOUR amulets with precision and two good defensive stats, but now there were... none.  So I looked at the defenses on the precision amulets...

Rampager and Berserker had 284 Vitality.
Rabid had 569 Toughness.
Knight had 798 Vitality.

So I chose Knight for Vitality, and then added a Shaman jewel to add 125 Toughness and 75 Healing to bolster my defense.

[Eagerguilder]

If you can reduce damage to almost nothing why even think about vitality?

[Morghana]

Eagerguilder, on 14 June 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

If you can reduce damage to almost nothing why even think about vitality?

Because outside paper theories, shit happens.. peak damage occurs, self heal has recharge time, dodge get locked for endurance regeneration, full cond removal skills are not always up...

Edited by Morghana, 14 June 2012 - 04:26 PM.

[SirMoogie]

Morghana, on 14 June 2012 - 04:20 PM, said:

Because outside paper theories, shit happens.. peak damage occurs, self heal has recharge time, dodge get locked for endurance regeneration, full cond removal skills are not always up...

And generally armor stats in these game are not a linear increase, but logarithmic, and you will never reach 100% reduction.

Edited by SirMoogie, 14 June 2012 - 04:38 PM.

[Vanillea]

Rune of Melandru is one of the ultimate tank runes. It potentially reduces condition dmg by half and provide a little toughness. With that rune, you can pretty much choose any other combination of traits/amulets and still be decently tanky. Rune of Divinity has one of the highest value for well rounded build. Pick Divinity if you don't have anything in mind

[UssjTrunks]

Definitely toughness. Conditions can be removed, direct damage can't. Conditions also aren't very dangerous unless stacked 10x. There is also really only one class that is a condition threat (necro) while 4 classes that are direct damage threats (warrior, thief, ranger, and ele). I'd rather defend against the damage I'm more likely to face.

Edited by UssjTrunks, 14 June 2012 - 05:02 PM.

[Scol]

Morghana, on 12 June 2012 - 07:03 AM, said:

I think thoughness is so cool because it reduces all the incoming direct damage not only physical but magical too. Protection boon helps a lot.

There is no such thing as physical/magical damage in GW2 - there is only direct/condition damage(and possibly lifesteal, dunno how it works)

Vit is better vs condition damage and Toughness is better vs direct damage.

[LethalConcept]

My 2c

Toughness and Vitality work on different scales
Toughness is intended to buffer against single higher damage hits while Vitality buffers against multiple smaller hits and condition damage
For any build of mine on any character, a minimum 15k Health is needed against burst builds. Ideally you want a mixture for both, but since vitality is the only stat between toughness and vitality that actually can buffer against both condition damage and direct damage, i would lean towards having a higher vit stat

[Politikon]

Interesting.

What do you guys think about this post where this guy concludes that more vitality is always better to have than toughness in sPvP?

http://teamlegacy.ne...t-good-in-spvp/

[Mammoth]

Politikon, on 16 June 2012 - 06:51 AM, said:

Interesting.

What do you guys think about this post where this guy concludes that more vitality is always better to have than toughness in sPvP?

http://teamlegacy.ne...t-good-in-spvp/

I think there's still some room in that post for debate. E.G if you have 29k health, 100 toughness = 100 vitality. If you have 23k and heal once for 6k, 100 toughness = 100 vitality. If you have 17k and heal twice for 6k each time, 100 toughness = 100 vitality. It follows then that if you have 18k+ and survive long enough to heal for 12k, or 24k+ and heal for 6k, 100 toughness > 100 vitality.

However, none of that accounts for condition damage, which is inevitable. On top of that, I'm inclined to agree with the general sentiment that vitality > toughness anyway, simply because it will help you survive coordinated spikes much better unless you already have 29k health, at which point they're nearly a nonissue. With the abundance of CC rendering the dodge mechanic less effective for avoiding spikes, I would expect them to be frequent. For pickup games, very high health characters, and/or heavy healing characters, toughness obviously gains value. For tournament play, vitality does seem stronger according to that info. Thanks for linking that btw

One thing I do disagree with are the conclusions about vulnerability. If you spread around 10-15 stacks of vuln spikes get a lot scarier, but that's another debate

Edited by Mammoth, 16 June 2012 - 07:39 AM.

[Ksielvin]

Politikon, on 16 June 2012 - 06:51 AM, said:

Interesting.

What do you guys think about this post where this guy concludes that more vitality is always better to have than toughness in sPvP?

http://teamlegacy.ne...t-good-in-spvp/

I think it's rubbish. Many people who stacked toughness on various professions reported being very happy with the results.

There are two ways of estimating your defense: what you got right now if someone is trying to kill you, and your sustain. The best way to look at the first is effective health. This means your health multiplied by the effects of applicable damage reduction. That can be hard to do for active defenses (dodging and skills) but easy for passive damage reduction.

A light armored profession like a Necromancer would have 916 base Toughness as lvl 80, and 937 armor. Total of 1853 Defense. A heavy armored warrior would have 2147 Defense. While both have the same amount of base health, the warrior would have 15.9% more effective health against direct damage because it takes 15.9% more incoming damage to lower his equally sized health pool to zero.

Spoiler

I believe actual damage reduction numbers aren't necessary here. But to my knowledge you could calculate it relative to the minimum case with (1-(1853/Defense). This would give 13.7% better reduction to the warrior. To find out the damage required to kill him we'd calculate Heath/(1-0.137) which gives 15.9% more (effective) health than previously.

Like the dps stats, defensive stats increase each other's effectiveness and work best by stacking both with some mix. Here's how much adding a pvp amulet (without jewel) would increase the base health and defense of different professions. Just assume it increases their effective health against direct damage by this percentage:

Istaro, on 12 June 2012 - 08:36 AM, said:

Ah, thanks!  So if only we knew the base defense of each armor class, we could calculate the percentage increase in effective health produced by a given increase in toughness, and with that, the relative worth of vitality and toughness for each profession.

What I have right now is that in sPvP, a 798-vitality amulet increases health by 74%, 53%, and 43%, for the low-health, medium-health, and high-health professions, respectively, while a 798-toughness amulet increases effective health against non-condition damage by (798/(916+D)) * 100%, where D is base defense.  I could have sworn I saw a post giving the base defense of each armor class somewhere, but I can't find it now.

Edit: just found some numbers (937 for light armor, 1084 for medium armor, and 1231 for heavy armor), albeit in a really old thread.  If they're still accurate, then 798 vitality and toughness produce the following percentage increases in effective health against non-condition damage for the different professions:

Elementalist: +74% from vitality, +43% from toughness
Mesmer: +53% from vitality, +43% from toughness
Necromancer: +43% from vitality, +43% from toughness
Thief: +74% from vitality, +40% from toughness
Ranger/Engineer: +53% from vitality, +40% from toughness
Guardian: +74% from vitality, +37% from toughness
Warrior: +43% from vitality, +37% from toughness

Dang, that's lame, I was hoping it'd be closer.  A given amount of vitality and toughness are of equal value to an otherwise unmodified necromancer, but for all other professions vitality is better.

(I don't agree with the conclusion of that quote.)

So! If the same amount of vitality increases effective health by more, why would we want to get toughness (before stacking a whole bunch of vitality first)? Because it also increases your sustain. Equally sized heals for the warrior in earlier example are effectively 15.9% bigger! Arguably even the effective health should be calculated including one self-heal for 25% or 33% of one's health because you nearly always get one off. Having more virtual health from heals increases the value of toughness more and more as fight drags on.

Edit for example:
A warrior with 19k health has 22k effective health with base Defense.
Adding 798 Vitality gives 31270 effective health.
Adding 798 Toughness gives 30140 effective health.
Adding 789 Vitality and healing once for 6k gives 38223 effective health.
Adding 789 Toughness and healing once for 6k gives 39696 effective health.
And so on as you heal more.

Of course, toughness does nothing against condition damage. This could be addressed via condition removal or reducing duration. Or stacking vitality or adding healing. Stacking Compassion is another way to increase your sustain. Like vitality and toughness for effective health, stacking a combination of compassion and toughness ought to be best for increasing sustain because we're all self-healers.

Edited by Ksielvin, 16 June 2012 - 09:16 AM.

[Maeverra]

Well, if the formula I used (Ayestes's formula) is correct, and I did my math correctly, then the answer is clear...

Example #1 - Toughness:

Spoiler

You're a Warrior. You put 1098 points into Toughness (an amulet + 300 in traits), and nothing in Vitality. This means your Health is 18,372 and your bonus Defense is 1098.

[ ( 1098 + 1853 ) / 1853 ) – 1 ] = 59% damage reduction

You get hit with an attack that'd do 10k damage on you without any Toughness.
10,000 x 59% = 5,900
10,000 - 5,900 = 4,100
18,372 - 4,100 = 14,272
You could take up to 4 of these hits and still have health left over.

You get hit with attacks that'd do 400 damage on you per attack without any Toughness.
400 x 59% = 236
400 - 236 = 164
18,374 / 164
You could take up to 112 of these hits and still have health left over.

Example #2 - Vitality:

Spoiler

You're a Warrior. You put 1098 points into Vitality (an amulet + 300 in traits), and nothing in Toughness. This means your Health is 29,352 and your bonus Defense is 0.

You get hit with an attack that'd do 10k damage on you without any Toughness.
27,062 - 10,000 = 19,352
You could take up to 2 of these hits and still have health left over.

You get hit with attacks that'd do 400 damage on you per attack without any Toughness.
27,062 / 400
You could take up to 67 of these hits and still have health left over.

Example #3 - Toughness/Vitality:

Spoiler

You're a Warrior. You put 569 points into Vitality, and 569 points in Toughness. This means your Health is 24,062 and your bonus Defense is 569. This is 1138 points total.

[ ( 569 + 1853 ) / 1853 ) – 1 ] = 30% damage reduction

You get hit with an attack that'd do 10k damage on you without any Toughness.
10,000 x 30% = 3,000
10,000 - 3,000 = 7,000
24,062 - 7,000 = 17,062
You could take up to 3 of these hits and still have health left over.

You get hit with attacks that'd do 400 damage on you per attack without any Toughness.
400 x 30% = 120
400 - 236 = 280
24,062 / 280
You could take up to 85 of these hits and still have health left over.

TL;DR/In Conclusion:
According to this, just taking raw damage into account, it's better to invest in Toughness. But Toughness doesn't protect against conditions.

So I guess it's up to you to decide what is more useful. Pure Toughness, pure Vitality, or a mixture of Toughness and Vitality? The usefulness depends on different factors, such as how much condition removal you have.

Edit- Corrections.

Edited by Scarlet, 16 June 2012 - 04:04 PM.

[Plume]

Toughness : 18,372 - 4,100 = 14,272 Health
So it does like 1/4 or 1/5 of the overall health (4.5 ratio)

Vitality : 27,062 - 10,000 = 19,352 Health
So it does like 1/3 of the overall health (2.7 ratio)

I don't know why you think vitality is better if you are down with 3 '10k attack' when 4 is needed with max toughness ?
Toughness also help with the heals so. I guess having a little vitality is good for conditions too.

[Maeverra]

Plume, on 16 June 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

Toughness : 18,372 - 4,100 = 14,272 Health
So it does like 1/4 or 1/5 of the overall health (4.5 ratio)

Vitality : 27,062 - 10,000 = 19,352 Health
So it does like 1/3 of the overall health (2.7 ratio)

I don't know why you think vitality is better if you are down with 3 '10k attack' when 4 is needed with max toughness ?
Toughness also help with the heals so. I guess having a little vitality is good for conditions too.

Haha, point taken. This is why I shouldn't do math. I'll fix my post. lol

[Plume]

That seems better now

[Nyth]

Scarlet, on 16 June 2012 - 02:48 PM, said:

<snip>

Theoretically you're correct. But in practice it isn't always that easy.
Just to name an example: The only 798 toughness amulet is one with condition damage and compassion. Those might not be stats you desire. In fact a lot of the vitality amulets have better combinations with offensive stats. Whereas most toughness amulets tie you to condition damage and/or compassion.
In short that added defense that toughness might provide will come at a cost of lost damage, unless you play a condition heavy build.

Same goes for the trait line. Including those 300 points for the calculation are nice; but it might not be the trait line that is good or one you want to play with.

Edited by Nyth, 16 June 2012 - 11:45 PM.

[Maeverra]

Nyth, on 16 June 2012 - 11:42 PM, said:

Theoretically you're correct. But in practice it isn't always that easy.
Just to name an example: The only 798 toughness amulet is one with condition damage and compassion. Those might not be stats you desire. In fact a lot of the vitality amulets have better combinations with offensive stats. Whereas most toughness amulets tie you to condition damage and/or compassion.
In short that added defense that toughness might provide will come at a cost of lost damage, unless you play a condition heavy build.

Same goes for the trait line. Including those 300 points for the calculation are nice; but it might not be the trait line that is good or one you want to play with.

Haha, I know, I was just using high numbers as an example to compare the two. The results are the same even at lower numbers.

[Warmaster Bacon]

I would go for vitality, helps with falling damage, conditions, and general damage.

[blakdoxa]

Depends on what other defensive abilities you have.
I'd never ever rely totally on either vitality or toughness for mitigating damage.
Not reliable at all.

[styken]

Rabid Amulet will be perfect for my necro condt build.
as a Necro i prefer much more toughness instead vitality, as someone say already 1500 toughness + 20-22k vitality is amazing, much better than 26k vit and 916 toughness, this for Necro since we cant cast protection boon often but we can easily avoid conditions damage

mark evasion trait still dont work but when it work, toughness will be even more great because the regen boon.

Edited by styken, 17 June 2012 - 05:07 AM.