3681

I haven’t done the math on hit points vs toughness but it would be interesting to know. I’ve been swapping out quite a bit of stuff trying to get a feel for what’s valuable and what isn’t, so far like most games, more hit points is always good.

3682

As a thief, I’ve lately started concentrating on precision due to the crit hit chance. Seeing that giant, batman-esque damage balloon with the red outline during a fight gives me immediate gratification and lets me know when it fires off.

But I should do a little more research on toughness now.

3683

A ran a glass cannon build from 1-80, which was fun, but noticed a point in the final couple of zones where the sheer density of mobs and crazy respawn rates made the glass cannon dps race a bit of a chore. I started adding Toughness/Vitality gems to my upgrade slots and jewelry, and it has made a difference. My crit rate, through Precision, is still around 50% and I can stay on my feet longer.

3684

What I’ve found is that toughness/vitality have a very symbiotic relationship in the game. You can find lots of good gear in drops and on the TP that buffs both, which is nice. Especially check out Runes Of The Soldier–the Superior set (which if you put in “buy” orders and get lucky can be had for between 55-62s on the TP atm) are awesome for combining damage mitigation with extra hitpoints.

3685

This was almost exactly my discovery as well.

From 1-80, my glass cannon, always-doing-crits for high damage rifle warrior build was just fine…but for both PVP and for dungeon content, it was getting me smoked like a salmon. I just couldn’t do the kind of damage necessary to make the build work.

Having sacrificed some precision and crit % for Toughness has made a huge difference. Yesterday I was out farming mining/logging materials, and it occasionally brought me into contact with Veteran-rated mobs. I can now simply stand toe-to-toe with these mobs and melee them with my axe and not sweat it.

3686

I dunno, I’d be inclined to say that judging by the amount of attention to detail Arenanet have put into GW2, the only reason they’re not opening an open world PvP server at the moment is because they’d consider it a different game.

IOW, I don’t think the people at Arenanet would be satisfied just opening an identical game server and letting people do open world PvP on it. They seem to be far too precise in the way they think about game design to do that.

So I think that’s why: to them, they would have to devote a lot of resources to making it the best open world PvP version of GW2 they could, and they’re not prepared to do it at the moment.

3687

The entire game is built with the philosophy of cooperation with everyone on your server. This goes from everything from dynamic events to sharing harvesting nodes and not even having to be in a group to share rewards for anything. Hearts are in known locations and events appear on the map to draw players together into a cooperative experience. An open PVP server completely flies in the face of the entire game’s design, I don’t see how it could work without some serious overhauling of mechanics and I’d rather ArenaNet not spend the resources to get that right for the 130 people who would still be playing on it after the first week.

I’ve had fun with open PVP servers in the past but this really is not a game fit for it.

3688

As a Warrior, I’m running Deep Strike which gives you +40 Precision for every unused signet. With all 5 slots in signets that gives me +200 precision at level 32. I’m a whirling greatsword demon of crit death.

I probably need to look at toughness because whatever survives my initial burst is usually very pissed off.

3689

Do warriors get a Signet of Scarper? You might want to try something like that.

I’m playing a mesmer, mostly, so I don’t often have the problem of too much burst. Out of curiosity, will actual players ever fall for Decoy, or is it just useful for the clone?

3690

These are great runes. By the way, I maxed Armorsmithing and would be more than happy to make any combines for runes/armor/boxes that folks need. Just mail me the mats (Ruskin) and the name of what you want, and I will hit the forge and return in the mail.

3691

I 100%'d Brisbane, but it was probably my least favorite zone to tackle that way so far. It was the second zone I completed though and I didn’t realize at the time how much better and more interesting places like Gendarran Fields and Kessex Hills are.

3692

In PvE later on that’s probably true. In PvP Toughness reduces normal damage but doesn’t protect from Condition Damage, and there’s almost always a few guys on the other team that will tear you apart with Conditions.

I’ve run a Toughness-oriented Engineer build in sPvP that could get almost 2.2k Toughness with the Juggernaut Trait and a Flamethrower equipped. I can hold points with that setup like crazy but can’t really take them. Not a bad setup to have on a team that’s working together, but sucks in PUGs if no one else on your team knows how to capture points.

3693

The WvW areas have the same kind of events. Apparently PvP can work there. In fact my faction was doing one and we got rolled by another faction. I hung around as a corpse and watched them then finish the event and I still got a gold medal award!

3694

I am finding toughness vitality the way to go on all of my toons. The survivability increase simply dwarfs the loss of killing power. To the degree I see a nerf coming in.

3695

Naw, toughness is not important; 30 into crit and 30 into power all the way!

I actually do enjoy using crits so I tried to spec 30 into the crit line and 20 into the Vitality line. I think I will change it to 30 into the vitality line though because of the “10% bonus damage without full endurance” on the thief tree.

How do you guys get your crit chance so high? I’ve got it up to around 35% with 30 into the precision trait line, but that isn’t too high. It works alright because of how fast the thief attacks, but more is better!

One more question on sigils for dual weapons: if I have 2 pistols each with the sigil that gives 60% chance for bleed on crit, does that mean I have a 100% chance to bleed, or each weapons skills have a 60% to crit? If that makes sense. I don’t Particularly want to buy the expensive runes without knowing beforehand :/

3696

Fairly sure it only applies to attacks with that weapon not sure though.

3697

Very true, which is why I’m finding going heavy on Toughness with a shout build makes me 10 times more survivable in PVP. “Shake It Off” shout removes all conditions for myself and those within radius…but EVERY shout removes a condition and does a heal to those in radius as well. Combine that with the trait for 20% reduction of shout cooldowns and you have a very survivy build that–with precision and power-based gear in the right spots–can also deal enough damage to where you don’t feel too much like a tank.

3698

Unless I’m missing something, “Shake It Off” only removes a single condition not all of them. It’s still an awesome skill though.

3699

At lvl 80, you can get over 800 stat points (for any single stat) with gear alone. This is how people get over 50% crit chance.

And yes, each weapon’s skills will have 60% chance of bleed. Skills from the main hand will have their 60% and skills from the off hand will have their 60%. BTW the same applies to the damage - skills performed by the off hand weapon will take that weapon’s base damage (and not the main hand weapon) to calculate the final numbers.

As for Toughness vs Vitality, I still haven’t seen the formula for damage reduction provided by Toughness/Armor. Without it, we can’t say if Toughness is really better than Vitality even for direct damage. Theoretically, it should be (due to more effective healing, btw it’d be interesting to buff Healing Power through gear together with Toughness) but it all depends on numbers.

3700

The official forums are now open for business:

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