22 replies to this topic

[TheKnox]

I posted this on the GW2 Official Forums, but I thought I might get more feedback here.

Quote

With all of the noise about the Vigorous Precision change in the recent patch and how that impacts Altruistic healing builds in particular, I feel like sharing a theory about why balancing the guardian seems to be so tricky.

Generally speaking, condition damage stats are terrible for Guardians, so if you want to do damage, you have a choice between Power/Precision/Crit damage stats on your gear.

With the low HP pool that a guardian has, going full Berserker’s gear is almost suicide, so your best two choices become Knight’s and Valkyrie’s if you want to maintain a balance of survivability and damage output. Unfortunately, Valkyrie’s gear gives you additional crit damage, which doesn’t help much unless you are already using a fairly high crit build.

Here is where I believe the problem lies. In both PvE and PvP, the Knight’s set offers 2 offensive stats and 1 defensive stat to help achieve some balance between survivability and damage output. The difference is, in PvP, you gain a significant boost in your most critical area (HP), while in PvE, you gain a ton of toughness.

The baked in class mechanics already do a pretty decent job of reducing incoming damage (Aegis, Numerous sources of Protection etc.), but don’t do a lot to mitigate burst damage or heavy condition damage sources.

The reason the AH builds are (yes, they were nerfed, but they are still) so powerful is that the steady stream of incoming heals compensates for the low HP pool, and allows the toughness/protection/aegis to multiply the effect of that healing.

Contrast the PvP Knight’s set with the PvE set and you can easily see why frequent PvP players might feel that Guardian survivability is out of line with the level of damage they are able to do, while in PvE (or WvWvW especially) a guardian is forced to give up more damage (by moving towards Soldier’s gear) or feels more vulnerable to burst/conditions.

I believe that if people had access to the same stat splits that exist on Knight’s Gear in PvP in the PvE world, the guardian would be in a much better place without any other changes to the class.

Fake Edit: I realize that you can mix and match Pow/Prec/Crit and Pow/Tou/Vit gear and get in the same ballpark from a damage/survivability standpoint, but having a high crit rate is arguably more beneficial (Vigorous Precisions, Empowering Might, Sigils etc.) than having a ton of bonus crit damage.

An example of what PvE/WvWvW stats would look like using the PvP stat split is something like this:
http://gw2skills.net...QRljJHRO2cc5IzB

I realize there are two gems in there, that's pretty close to the total stat allocation in exotic PvE gear though.

I think most people would be pretty happy with something like that as a starting point for a balanced guardian, as compared to somebody with a meager 13k HP in the PvE Knight's Set.  You could certainly afford to roll in some more damage oriented gear or "Tankier" gear if you wanted to from that starting point.

Edited by TheKnox, 17 December 2012 - 06:24 AM.

[turbo234]

That font size is horrendous.

[Elysen]

~16k HP should be fine as a confident Guardian, allowing you to swap out a bit more vitality for Knight's/Berserker prefixs if desired.

While I believe Toughness to be a better stat for AH Guardians, even post "nerf", because, as you stated, we have a lot of heals and regular damage mitigation if we cycle Aegis/Retreat! shout. However, our base health certainly isn't enough to cover the mistakes we inevitably make.

You stated that Toughness is the primary Knights stat in PvE, so conditions are a problem. Guardians have a literal buttload of condition removals - be that through a few of our Utility skills directly, or traited shouts (pure of voice) and socketed Soldier runes (Vit/Tough & 6 bonus is basically pure of voice trait), we can also utilize our light combo fields to good efect.

With the "nerf" to vigorous precision, I will certainly be looking to get an extra 500-1k HP from somewhere, likely at the cost of some crit %.

We can treat precision as a hybrid stat, as EM only has a 1 second ICD. Critting every 1 second is HUGE. All AH guardians should certainly be looking for a group with at least 1 warrior for the fury buff, especially if they've neglected a bit of precision for a bit more survival.

"a guardian is forced to give up more damage (by moving to Soldier's gear)". In comparison to what? I'm going to assume you are comparing to the other Soldier profession - warrior. The catch is in our profession "Guardian" we are inately supposed to be a bit more supportive. Of course, AN have made it so you are not tied to doing one role as a certain profession, but this does not mean we should not offer lots of support. Those who really want to be an all out, damage dealing glass cannon really should have looked towards a different profession.

[TheKnox]

Xephenon, on 17 December 2012 - 07:07 AM, said:

While I believe Toughness to be a better stat for AH Guardians, even post "nerf", because, as you stated, we have a lot of heals and regular damage mitigation if we cycle Aegis/Retreat! shout. However, our base health certainly isn't enough to cover the mistakes we inevitably make.

You stated that Toughness is the primary Knights stat in PvE, so conditions are a problem. Guardians have a literal buttload of condition removals - be that through a few of our Utility skills directly, or traited shouts (pure of voice) and socketed Soldier runes (Vit/Tough & 6 bonus is basically pure of voice trait), we can also utilize our light combo fields to good efect.

"a guardian is forced to give up more damage (by moving to Soldier's gear)". In comparison to what? I'm going to assume you are comparing to the other Soldier profession - warrior. The catch is in our profession "Guardian" we are inately supposed to be a bit more supportive. Of course, AN have made it so you are not tied to doing one role as a certain profession, but this does not mean we should not offer lots of support. Those who really want to be an all out, damage dealing glass cannon really should have looked towards a different profession.

I currently run around with 15.8k HP or so in my guardian build, so I'm not really complaining about the current state of things per se.  The point I'm trying to make is that, to get to that much life, I have to pick up more Toughness or more Crit damage than I'd prefer at the expense of Precision.  The reality is, if you don't want condition damage as a stat (we don't), and you want precision (we do), you are basically forced into either Zerker or Knights gear for damage gear sets.  Neither of those sets have any Vitality, so you're basically end up giving up one of the two stats you really want as a guardian to get up over the minimum HP 'requirements' that most people feel comfortable playing with.  This problem doesn't exist in the PvP gear set, which is why I think people in PvP feel that the guardian is more powerful than it is in the PvE/WvWvW realm.

Also, light fields are nice for removing conditions from other people, but they require some other kind soul to remove conditions from yourself.

[FoxBat]

If you're planning to take any hits (as opposed to covering mistakes for dodging etc.), you aren't going to run around with zero toughness. PvP bunkers run soldier's even.

Also the damage difference between full soldiers and a knight/zerker mix is like, 5%, and much lower if you are mixing because you don't want that much vit. I think the second best dungeon profession in the game can live with that kind of tradeoff.

Edited by FoxBat, 17 December 2012 - 08:53 AM.

[process.execution]

Magi weapons/armour (e.g. AC, TA, HotW) are a great substitute for a couple of slots to shore up Vit/HP without foregoing Precision. I think you're focusing too much on the craftable items; there are a lot more stat combinations available in PvE than PvP.

[Elysen]

process.execution, on 17 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

Magi weapons/armour (e.g. AC, TA, HotW) are a great substitute for a couple of slots to shore up Vit/HP without foregoing Precision. I think you're focusing too much on the craftable items; there are a lot more stat combinations available in PvE than PvP.

Magi is pretty much junk. Guardians scale poorly with Healing Power. I'd really only recommend the Staff being Magi, as you use that FOR healing (Empower /w AH is about a 4k self heal, give or take).

[paradiselight]

I would have agreed with your viewpoint 3 months ago when I reached level 80 and started to gear up my guardian. I saw my low health pool, searched for ways to buff it up and was pretty frustrated that the PvE knight set provided toughness instead of vitality.

Fast forward to now and after many dungeon runs I can't say that I share that same sentiment anymore. In fact, I feel that toughness > vitality (depending on your skill level, some vitality is still needed though). At the end of the day, the question of toughness vs vitality is all about not getting downed. Now let's examine the argument in support of vitality over toughness

The first argument to get vitality over toughness is condition damage. Well, guardian has a lot of condition removals so that shouldn't be a problem.

The second argument to get vitality over toughness is that you want to avoid getting one-shot. You can achieve that by stacking less vitality than toughness since vitality gives more EHP than toughness does. The thing is, one-shot mechanic should be avoided completely via dodge, aegis or blocking. But sure, there are times when you mess up and get hit and vitality acts as a better buffer (roughly 2x better),  but only against the first mistake. It's harder to heal back to full if you're stacking vitality instead of toughness. So in a prolonged fight where multiple mistakes could occur, toughness is going to outshine vitality by a mile due to its synergy with healing received.

Now if you run with a dedicated team where every party member could throw around some healing, then toughness is even better.

Not to mention that agony ticks a percentage of health and so survivability wise there is no difference between vitality and toughness. But with toughness, it's much easier to heal back the health loss.

To sum it up, vitality is a nice one-time buffer while toughness is a long-term investment that gets better and better over time. In a dungeon setting where fights are prolonged, toughness > vitality. In PvP where fights are short and have lots of condition damage, vitality > toughness. That's why the knight set is different.

Edited by paradiselight, 17 December 2012 - 05:56 PM.

[BlasBlas]

paradiselight, on 17 December 2012 - 05:55 PM, said:

snip

I agree with you and not with the OP.  And with how our profession is designed our stacking of toughness plays a bigger part in EHP due to all of the constant healing we produce.

[TheKnox]

FoxBat, on 17 December 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

If you're planning to take any hits (as opposed to covering mistakes for dodging etc.), you aren't going to run around with zero toughness. PvP bunkers run soldier's even.

Also the damage difference between full soldiers and a knight/zerker mix is like, 5%, and much lower if you are mixing because you don't want that much vit. I think the second best dungeon profession in the game can live with that kind of tradeoff.

The difference between full soldier gear and full Knights gear is about 17% not counting the mechanics that scale with crits (sigils, EM etc.)

In full Berserker's gear,  you are more like 50% above the soldiers set.

I'm not claiming that the current state isn't workable, but having to sacrifice damage for additional survivability simply because the stats you want don't exist on gear is unfortunate.

[FoxBat]

Just going to use the exotic totals from here to ballpark.

Damage can be considered roughly equal to average "effective power" so we can just use that. (Power modified by crit damage)

Soldier Power = 1003 + 916 (base) = 1919
average crit multiplier = 1 + (.04 base chance * .50 extra damage) = 1.02
total damage = 1916 * 1.02 = 1957

Knight Power = 697 + 916 = 1613
chance to crit = (697 + 916 - 832) / (21 * 100) = 781 / 2100 = .37
average crit multiplier = 1 + (.37 chance * .50 extra damage) = 1.185
total damage = 1613 * 1.185 = 1911

1957 - 1911 / 1911 = 2.5% damage increase for wearing soldier's instead of knights.


Now let's try full Berserker for fun

Total Power = 1919
Chance to Crit = .37 (same as pure knights)
Total crit damage = 3x6 jewels + 5 ammy + 3x4 accessory, ring + 2x5 1h weapons + 2x4 head, s/g/b + 3 leg + 5 chest = 61 crit, so 1.11 multiplier damage increase
Crit multiplier = 1 + (.37 * 1.11) = 1.4107
Total Damage = 1919*1.4292 = 2707

2707 - 1919 / 1919 = 41% increase for berserker's over soldier's (close to 50)

Next let's swap knight armor into the berserker setup

Total Power = 224 armor + 358 trinkets + 150 jewels + 90x2 1h weapons + 916 base = 1828
Chance to Crit = .37, same as zerk
Total crit damage = 3x6 jewels + 5 ammy + 3x4 accessory, ring + 2x5 1h weapons = 45 crit, so .95 multiplier damage increase
Crit multiplier = 1 + (.37 * .95) = 1.3515
Damage = 1828*1.3515 = 2470

Let's try soldiers in place of knight's

Total power = 1919
Chance to crit = 781 - 224 (loss from no prec on knights) = 557, 557 / 2100 = .26
Crit Multiplier = 1 + (.26*.95) = 1.247
Total damage = 1919 * 1.247 = 2393

2470 - 2393 / 2393 = 3.2% damage increase from Knight + Berserk over Soldier + Berserk. (Throw in knight vs soldier weapons and maybe we get 5%?)

Now that both of our numbers are more straightened out, I hope it's clear that this would be a damned minor improvement. Trading power for precision is not as good as it looks in terms of raw damage. If someone wants more vit and less toughness, soldier's is a good place to look.

Meanwhile I know plenty of classes that would love to get major power or condi damage with minor precision, but they are stuck with that slightly less efficient rampagers. Really a lot of the most optimal stat combos are just plain not options, I think intentionally to keep choice between the remaining options somewhat more competitive.

Edited by FoxBat, 17 December 2012 - 10:19 PM.

[indure]

I don't see the OP's problem. Are you concern that you can't stack enough Vitality, while still keeping large amounts of crit?

[TheKnox]

Running those numbers again with a 30% crit damage added on, and any power you get from runes/consumables makes the Knights set better by a larger margin.  This still isn't accounting for on crit process.

As for what my point is: Guardians have a tough time picking up crit chance without sacrificing useful stats due to their low hp pools. This is not true in sPvP, and the difference between the two stat splits is making it harder to balance the class.

For comparison purposes, a warrior who wanted to spec as glassy as possible can put Knights gear on and be significantly more durable.  A guardian who did the same thing is going to be much less durable than the warrior because of the small hp pool. Allowing access to the pvp version of Knights gear, even if it is just on jewelry, would allow low hp classes like guardian elementalists and thieves to make better use of that set.

TLDR: PvE Knights gear is unfortunately biased to be much more useful to high hp classes.

Edited by TheKnox, 18 December 2012 - 01:23 AM.

[BlasBlas]

TheKnox, on 18 December 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

snip

I do not agree.  And you should probably back this up with EHP numbers.  I understand this is a hard thing to do because it is hard to account for all the healing we can do to include it in the formulas.

[indure]

TheKnox, on 18 December 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

As for what my point is: Guardians have a tough time picking up crit chance without sacrificing useful stats due to their low hp pools. This is not true in sPvP, and the difference between the two stat splits is making it harder to balance the class.

For comparison purposes, a warrior who wanted to spec as glassy as possible can put Knights gear on and be significantly more durable.  A guardian who did the same thing is going to be much less durable than the warrior because of the small hp pool. Allowing access to the pvp version of Knights gear, even if it is just on jewelry, would allow low hp classes like guardian elementalists and thieves to make better use of that set.

TLDR: PvE Knights gear is unfortunately biased to be much more useful to high hp classes.

I think your under-selling the guardian class. Warriors do have more innate and passive defenses then a guardian, but this is off-set with the guardians large toolset of cleanses, active defenses, boons, and huge amounts of self healing. Like BlasBlas mentioned above, it is really hard to calculate how all this adds up to EHP numbers, but in my own experience the Guardian is exceptionally tanky, even with relatively low health.

Furthermore there are many ways that a guardian can improve there crit chance besides just armor. For guardians that use one-handers, you can get a base 34% crit chance with just traits. For two-hand users a possible combination: 4% base + 5% (10 points in Radiance) + 5% (Sigil of Accuracy) + 12% (Runes of Lyssa) + 10% (Berserker weapon) = ~36 crit chance without touching armor or trinkets.

[TheKnox]

I'm not trying to complain about the class itself. I'm mainly complaining about the itemization options, which I feel especially impact the low HP classes. I feel that it is more noticeable on guardians because we have relatively weak ranged options and escape tools compared to thieves/elementalists.

To put it in another light, how many people would prefer 13k HP and 3500 armor over 18k HP and 3000 armor, all other things being equal?

Most warriors probably wouldn't want to be only given the pow/prec/vit version of the set either, because having 30k HP and no toughness isn't very appealing either.

I don't think they need to replace one set with the other, but I think that both should be available, at least for trinkets or something.

[indure]

TheKnox, on 18 December 2012 - 08:14 PM, said:

I'm not trying to complain about the class itself. I'm mainly complaining about the itemization options, which I feel especially impact the low HP classes. I feel that it is more noticeable on guardians because we have relatively weak ranged options and escape tools compared to thieves/elementalists.

To put it in another light, how many people would prefer 13k HP and 3500 armor over 18k HP and 3000 armor, all other things being equal?

Most warriors probably wouldn't want to be only given the pow/prec/vit version of the set either, because having 30k HP and no toughness isn't very appealing either.

I don't think they need to replace one set with the other, but I think that both should be available, at least for trinkets or something.

With a mixture of knight/soldier/valkyrie armor you can already achieve the results you are talking about. I'm not against adding a power/prec/vit armor set, but I'm not sure that there is actually a problem that needs fixing. For me personally, if the new armor was added I would only use a couple of pieces and it would mainly replace my Valkyrie armor, not my Knights since I need a little more crit chance.

[Strife025]

30 points in vit trait and soldier runes gives you ~15.5k unbuffed hp and 16k+ with WvW bonuses. I've found that's more then enough for PvE. You probably want a bit more for PvP and WvW, but for PvE you shouldn't need anything more then that, especially with agony being a flat % in fractals.

Most guardians I know that strictly run PvE run full knights or combination of knights + berserker now.

[jpg1]

I think that the HP Pool is merely an adjustment to one's skill level, and most of the people have the right of it. You can actually achieve decent levels of HP if you mix and match pieces of Armor, and trait your Guardian properly.  

The lack of HP demands you to be more skillful - it makes you play smarter. That innate challenge to the Guardian gives it additional flavor to tell you the truth.

[BlasBlas]

jpg1, on 19 December 2012 - 01:25 AM, said:

I think that the HP Pool is merely an adjustment to one's skill level, and most of the people have the right of it. You can actually achieve decent levels of HP if you mix and match pieces of Armor, and trait your Guardian properly.  

The lack of HP demands you to be more skillful - it makes you play smarter. That innate challenge to the Guardian gives it additional flavor to tell you the truth.

Very well said.  I've seen some very skillful guardians running just over 10k hp (not exaggerating) in WWW.  I'm timid to attempt it, but its pretty cool watching them.

[jpg1]

BlasBlas, on 19 December 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

Very well said.  I've seen some very skillful guardians running just over 10k hp (not exaggerating) in WWW.  I'm timid to attempt it, but its pretty cool watching them.

To be hones, I think 15,000+ is pretty decent for a casual player. There is just so much a Guardian offers in terms of survival that all players of different skill levels and styles will find their niche somehow.

[asmodess]

hmm  i`m running beryl jewelry of valky ,, bezerker  weapons, spineguard back with ruby jewel, all knight gear , with beryl orbs atm havn`t bought runes  of  divinty yet .

i`m around 2650 armor, 2900 ish attack, 37% crit, pre food/oil ,  80`sh crit damage , and over 17k hp  with food i`m over 40 % crit chance and  17800 ish hp .

not great i know but i`m happy ..

[Buran_Grey]

I'm currently wearing the Auora (Soldier) karma armor, except helm and boots (which have different attributes) in  which  I use Knight gear. The weapon is a not "top stats" soldier hammer and the accesories is a mix of pre-full stats exotics with emeralds and other orbs used as placeholders before I chose and get my final items. So far all of my attributes are about 1500 with 16.5k HP and 2500 attack; my weakest stat is the crit chance (around 26%) but doesn't bother me because half of the gear is still in transition towards full exotics and trinklets and orbs can be easilly maneaged to provide decent crit chance once you get the amount of power and endurance/armor you get confy with.

   Must said that I find a little weird that Guardians, which stands as one of the only two classes capable to wear heavy armor have a small pool of health, but so far didn't have big troubles playing with it in PvE or WvW -even being a mele player, with hammer+gs-. I think that soldier armor works well due the lack of precission only affects the crit chances, and Guardian procs based on crits aren't that great. Sure, crits also means more damage, but you will have hard time to outscore other classes in dps. With the great control tools available to Guardians reaching 17-19k health and focusing the resources in power and endurance -with a bit of precission- seems to be more that enought; my Warrior does more damage but feels a lot more weak and I'm starting to change his full berserker armor towards a knight one.