What is more tanky? Vitality/Toughness questions...

[Veprovina.4876]

Can someone "math me" with some facts? I know this is not all black and white and there are other factors involved, but purely damage vs damage apsorption and health wise - what's more tanky from the following?

 

2242 toughness - 3209 armor

1813 vitality - 24052 health

 

or...

 

1808 toughness - 2775 armor

2173 vitality - 30417 health

 

No boons, no modifiers, just straight up - which of theese two can take more hits from an attack?

Can someone do the math? Cause i don't understand exactly how it works so i'm interested how vitality and toughness affect survivability.

[Yasai.3549]

#It's about the sameish when it comes to "how long it takes to die"

 

Don't read on if yu are not interested :

 

In the end, it matters more if yur build has innate sustain, and how long yu intend to allow yur enemies to whale on yu.

 

Regardless, pushing yur HP to 30k has no benefits at all :

1. Yur never gonna be able to top yurself off fully

2. Yur dumping so much stats into something which can be easily deleted

 

Then comes to my other point : How long do yu intend to let yur enemies beat on yur body?

The longer something beats on yur body, the more damage yu take.

Sometimes it is better to just kill things off before that happens.

 

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Yasai.3549" said:

> #It's about the sameish when it comes to "how long it takes to die"

>

> Don't read on if yu are not interested :

>

> In the end, it matters more if yur build has innate sustain, and how long yu intend to allow yur enemies to whale on yu.

>

> Regardless, pushing yur HP to 30k has no benefits at all :

> 1. Yur never gonna be able to top yurself off fully

> 2. Yur dumping so much stats into something which can be easily deleted

>

> Then comes to my other point : How long do yu intend to let yur enemies beat on yur body?

> The longer something beats on yur body, the more damage yu take.

> Sometimes it is better to just kill things off before that happens.

>

 

Thank you and sorry, i should have given more context...

 

This is for a WvW build. It's not about how long i intend to let "mobs" wail on me, it's about surviving the big damage spikes form the AOE spam. Yes, other factors and team play will affect the outcome, but i'm wondering purely numerical, what is "better". You can't go in with berserker's in WvW and expect to do PvE rotations so that "things die quicker so i won't take as much damage". That's not what i meant by posting this, i know that in PvE damage is the best defense since you kill stuff faster and stuff doesn't have a chance to hit you back as much. But situations like that don't happen in WvW and you need some tankyness.

 

So, disregarding any other component like boons, heals from team, team composition and strategy - what is numerically "better". It will help me do some builds for myself.

 

So... After my explanation - it's still about the same, correct?

[Yasai.3549]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

 

> This is for a WvW build. It's not about how long i intend to let "mobs" wail on me, it's about surviving the big damage spikes form the AOE spam. Yes, other factors and team play will affect the outcome, but i'm wondering purely numerical, what is "better". You can't go in with berserker's in WvW and expect to do PvE rotations so that "things die quicker so i won't take as much damage". That's not what i meant by posting this, i know that in PvE damage is the best defense since you kill stuff faster and stuff doesn't have a chance to hit you back as much. But situations like that don't happen in WvW and you need some tankyness.

 

There's no "right way" to go about this, but in general, things dying vs things living long enough to hit yu are actually pretty much the same in any content.

The difference is how much is too much when it comes to survivability.

PvE mobs don't usually heal themselves, but Camp Guards actually do.

This is very important because it could lead to yu taking the camp, or taking too long and having to fight both the Camp Guards AND player reinforcements, which at that point I assure yu, will never turn out well in yur favour.

 

Plan ahead with this info ^

 

> So, disregarding any other component like boons, heals from team, team composition and strategy - what is numerically "better". It will help me do some builds for myself.

 

If yu are running solo, yu want to be tanky enough that yur self heals and self Heal over Times can sufficiently fill out yur healthbar in preparation of an incoming hit.

As such, having an enormous healthbar means nothing ; people can remove that amount of health faster than yu can heal it.

 

Rule of thumb is to have a comfortable amount of Vitality and Toughness so much so that yu don't get instantly deleted by players, then focus the rest of the stats on Combat stats so yu are able to kill yur opponent, and as a result, stop them from dealing more damage to yu.

 

 

> So... After my explanation - it's still about the same, correct?

 

Yes, still the same.

 

If yu stat yurself to be just a walking meatbag with lots of Health and Toughness, yu will be able to take alot more hits, but that doesn't necessarily ensure yu will survive that particular encounter without external factors.

 

 

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Yasai.3549" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

>

> > This is for a WvW build. It's not about how long i intend to let "mobs" wail on me, it's about surviving the big damage spikes form the AOE spam. Yes, other factors and team play will affect the outcome, but i'm wondering purely numerical, what is "better". You can't go in with berserker's in WvW and expect to do PvE rotations so that "things die quicker so i won't take as much damage". That's not what i meant by posting this, i know that in PvE damage is the best defense since you kill stuff faster and stuff doesn't have a chance to hit you back as much. But situations like that don't happen in WvW and you need some tankyness.

>

> There's no "right way" to go about this, but in general, things dying vs things living long enough to hit yu are actually pretty much the same in any content.

> The difference is how much is too much when it comes to survivability.

> PvE mobs don't usually heal themselves, but Camp Guards actually do.

> This is very important because it could lead to yu taking the camp, or taking too long and having to fight both the Camp Guards AND player reinforcements, which at that point I assure yu, will never turn out well in yur favour.

>

> Plan ahead with this info ^

>

> > So, disregarding any other component like boons, heals from team, team composition and strategy - what is numerically "better". It will help me do some builds for myself.

>

> If yu are running solo, yu want to be tanky enough that yur self heals and self Heal over Times can sufficiently fill out yur healthbar in preparation of an incoming hit.

> As such, having an enormous healthbar means nothing ; people can remove that amount of health faster than yu can heal it.

>

> Rule of thumb is to have a comfortable amount of Vitality and Toughness so much so that yu don't get instantly deleted by players, then focus the rest of the stats on Combat stats so yu are able to kill yur opponent, and as a result, stop them from dealing more damage to yu.

>

>

> > So... After my explanation - it's still about the same, correct?

>

> Yes, still the same.

>

> If yu stat yurself to be just a walking meatbag with lots of Health and Toughness, yu will be able to take alot more hits, but that doesn't necessarily ensure yu will survive that particular encounter without external factors.

>

>

 

Yeah, i wasn't talking about roaming and camp guardians. More like, big group fights. I only asked about the raw numbers because i wanted to know how toughenss and vitality relate to each other. If someone could do some actual math about that, kinda to visualise it, that would also be great. :)

 

Because, all that damage isn't going to do me any good if the opposing group casts 25 AOEs, i double dodge 10 of them, and i'm still left standing in 15 that can instakill me if i don't have any toughness whatsoever. Then i'm no use as damage to anyone if i'm dead.

But i agree, it's about how much is too much. That's why i was making the thread.

 

As for stacking toughness and vitality, it's not abou that, it's about choosing the gear attributes that are available. For me, since i need toughess and concentration - it boils down to Minstrel's VS Wanderer's. Both are super tanky, the only difference is - one has more vitality and healing power - the other toughness and power... So i guess the choice is made for me in this matter.

[maddoctor.2738]

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient)/(target's Armor)

Let's assume they take the same damage, 10 million, and see how long each of your builds will last against direct damage.

 

> 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> 1813 vitality - 24052 health

 

10000000/3209=3116 so build one will last 8 hits (24052/3116=7.718)

 

> 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> 2173 vitality - 30417 health

 

10000000/2775=3603 so build two will last 9 hits (30417/2775=8.442)

 

Your second build will survive longer against direct damage attacks. Conditions bypass armor completely so the second build will survive longer against conditions as well. To answer your question, the second build is better for pure survival, without taking into question heal efficiency, boons and so on.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient)/(target's Armor)

> Let's assume they take the same damage, 10 million, and see how long each of your builds will last against direct damage.

>

> > 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> > 1813 vitality - 24052 health

>

> 10000000/3209=3116 so build one will last 8 hits (24052/3116=7.718)

>

> > 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> > 2173 vitality - 30417 health

>

> 10000000/2775=3603 so build two will last 9 hits (30417/2775=8.442)

>

> Your second build will survive longer against direct damage attacks. Conditions bypass armor completely so the second build will survive longer against conditions as well. To answer your question, the second build is better for pure survival, without taking into question heal efficiency, boons and so on.

 

Thank you so much!!! That's exactly what i've been looking for.

 

It's incredible to see how minor the difference is! Especially since one of those has a lot more health than the other, but armor then i guess balances this out.

 

This helps me a lot actually, because both sets then, are about the same as far as the "general survivability" goes, the only difference is healing strenth, boon duration and power. Thank you!

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> Can someone "math me" with some facts? I know this is not all black and white and there are other factors involved, but purely damage vs damage apsorption and health wise - what's more tanky from the following?

>

> 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> 1813 vitality - 24052 health

>

> or...

>

> 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> 2173 vitality - 30417 health

>

> No boons, no modifiers, just straight up - which of theese two can take more hits from an attack?

> Can someone do the math? Cause i don't understand exactly how it works so i'm interested how vitality and toughness affect survivability.

 

There's no practical application for this. Vitality and toughness don't affect survivability independent of each other or any of the many other variables that determine outcomes. A general rule of thumb is that toughness will do more for you than vitality as long as there is no significant condition damage. The basic idea being that if you can sustain indefinitely either way, then more vitality isn't going to help. However, toughness reduces the damage you take, so it's possible it will turn an unsustainable fight into a sustainable one.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > Can someone "math me" with some facts? I know this is not all black and white and there are other factors involved, but purely damage vs damage apsorption and health wise - what's more tanky from the following?

> >

> > 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> > 1813 vitality - 24052 health

> >

> > or...

> >

> > 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> > 2173 vitality - 30417 health

> >

> > No boons, no modifiers, just straight up - which of theese two can take more hits from an attack?

> > Can someone do the math? Cause i don't understand exactly how it works so i'm interested how vitality and toughness affect survivability.

>

> There's no practical application for this. Vitality and toughness don't affect survivability independent of each other or any of the many other variables that determine outcomes. A general rule of thumb is that toughness will do more for you than vitality as long as there is no significant condition damage. The basic idea being that if you can sustain indefinitely either way, then more vitality isn't going to help. However, toughness reduces the damage you take, so it's possible it will turn an unsustainable fight into a sustainable one.

 

Yeah, i know. I just wanted some math done, so i can kinda visualize how they both affect damage. Which @"maddoctor.2738" provided. :smile:

I'm not doing a build based on just one thing, i know there's other factors, and i'm considering them.

I just needed some "math visualization" **for me** because that's how i better see things.

But thanks for the additional info! So you're saying toughness is more important than vitality? Or at least, can do potentially more?

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > Can someone "math me" with some facts? I know this is not all black and white and there are other factors involved, but purely damage vs damage apsorption and health wise - what's more tanky from the following?

> > >

> > > 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> > > 1813 vitality - 24052 health

> > >

> > > or...

> > >

> > > 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> > > 2173 vitality - 30417 health

> > >

> > > No boons, no modifiers, just straight up - which of theese two can take more hits from an attack?

> > > Can someone do the math? Cause i don't understand exactly how it works so i'm interested how vitality and toughness affect survivability.

> >

> > There's no practical application for this. Vitality and toughness don't affect survivability independent of each other or any of the many other variables that determine outcomes. A general rule of thumb is that toughness will do more for you than vitality as long as there is no significant condition damage. The basic idea being that if you can sustain indefinitely either way, then more vitality isn't going to help. However, toughness reduces the damage you take, so it's possible it will turn an unsustainable fight into a sustainable one.

>

> Yeah, i know. I just wanted some math done, so i can kinda visualize how they both affect damage. Which @"maddoctor.2738" provided. :smile:

> I'm not doing a build based on just one thing, i know there's other factors, and i'm considering them.

> I just needed some "math visualization" **for me** because that's how i better see things.

> But thanks for the additional info! So you're saying toughness is more important than vitality? Or at least, can do potentially more?

 

Yeah, I guess I would say that vitality may be useful to a point, but stacking a bunch of toughness can really make a big difference in how much damage you take and that's what really helps you stretch between evades/cooldowns and stay alive when the pressure is high. Vitality is maybe more useful in short-term scenarios such as jumping into a pile of enemies that maybe you wouldn't be able to sustain against for very long...but you only have to survive long enough to kill them. Maybe with baseline health you can't and with some vitality you can. That sort of thing.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > Can someone "math me" with some facts? I know this is not all black and white and there are other factors involved, but purely damage vs damage apsorption and health wise - what's more tanky from the following?

> > > >

> > > > 2242 toughness - 3209 armor

> > > > 1813 vitality - 24052 health

> > > >

> > > > or...

> > > >

> > > > 1808 toughness - 2775 armor

> > > > 2173 vitality - 30417 health

> > > >

> > > > No boons, no modifiers, just straight up - which of theese two can take more hits from an attack?

> > > > Can someone do the math? Cause i don't understand exactly how it works so i'm interested how vitality and toughness affect survivability.

> > >

> > > There's no practical application for this. Vitality and toughness don't affect survivability independent of each other or any of the many other variables that determine outcomes. A general rule of thumb is that toughness will do more for you than vitality as long as there is no significant condition damage. The basic idea being that if you can sustain indefinitely either way, then more vitality isn't going to help. However, toughness reduces the damage you take, so it's possible it will turn an unsustainable fight into a sustainable one.

> >

> > Yeah, i know. I just wanted some math done, so i can kinda visualize how they both affect damage. Which @"maddoctor.2738" provided. :smile:

> > I'm not doing a build based on just one thing, i know there's other factors, and i'm considering them.

> > I just needed some "math visualization" **for me** because that's how i better see things.

> > But thanks for the additional info! So you're saying toughness is more important than vitality? Or at least, can do potentially more?

>

> Yeah, I guess I would say that vitality may be useful to a point, but stacking a bunch of toughness can really make a big difference in how much damage you take and that's what really helps you stretch between evades/cooldowns and stay alive when the pressure is high. Vitality is maybe more useful in short-term scenarios such as jumping into a pile of enemies that maybe you wouldn't be able to sustain against for very long...but you only have to survive long enough to kill them. Maybe with baseline health you can't and with some vitality you can. That sort of thing.

 

Cool! Yeah i guess, having more toughness would help me survive those intial high damage AOE spikes in WvW because there's only so much you can dodge, and if your squad gets caught in one after the inital spike, it helps to have some survivability. There's only so much your healer can do, and they can do a LOT, but still. Since i play a utility mesmer, gravity wells, pulls, boonstrip and condi clense and such, it's helpful to be alive and not get killed immediately. Helps with sustain.

 

Thanks for your input! :smile:

[WorldofBay.8160]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> But thanks for the additional info! So you're saying toughness is more important than vitality? Or at least, can do potentially more?

 

vitality is nothing more than an offset to your death. unless you manage to disengage, get reinforcements (including heals) or kill your opponent during that offset vitality is entirely useless.

 

that means that in any possible scenario there is a vitality usefulness cap - in pve that cap is mostly at 0 because you don't need offsets (high damage bosses excluded obv). in wvw the cap will be higher but you won't ever know it just by numbers, only experience can tell you where the vitality cap is. in big group fights there will be lots of cleansing going on and you can rotate to the back and out of direct condi fire, so condis might not be the problem. on the other side if those cleanses are missing toughness will do only little to help you.

 

if you have any passive heals going on you need to factor them in. even if you get bursted for 20k in 2 seconds there could be 1k passive heals in that time that you need to add to your max health in both builds. that could already change something as toughness benefits more from additional health than vitality. so at the very least you have to consider the regen boon, even if you want to cut boons out, just a few ticks but it's still something.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"WorldofBay.8160" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > But thanks for the additional info! So you're saying toughness is more important than vitality? Or at least, can do potentially more?

>

> vitality is nothing more than an offset to your death. unless you manage to disengage, get reinforcements (including heals) or kill your opponent during that offset vitality is entirely useless.

>

> that means that in any possible scenario there is a vitality usefulness cap - in pve that cap is mostly at 0 because you don't need offsets (high damage bosses excluded obv). in wvw the cap will be higher but you won't ever know it just by numbers, only experience can tell you where the vitality cap is. in big group fights there will be lots of cleansing going on and you can rotate to the back and out of direct condi fire, so condis might not be the problem. on the other side if those cleanses are missing toughness will do only little to help you.

>

> if you have any passive heals going on you need to factor them in. even if you get bursted for 20k in 2 seconds there could be 1k passive heals in that time that you need to add to your max health in both builds. that could already change something as toughness benefits more from additional health than vitality. so at the very least you have to consider the regen boon, even if you want to cut boons out, just a few ticks but it's still something.

 

Yeah, once you factor other stuff like boons, condis and clenses, the story changes considerably.

This thread was more to just help me visualise how toughness and vitality interact with damage, and that it did. :smile:

I know condi bypasses armor, and i'm well aware i'm full of boons, condis, clenses and healing in the middle of a big fight.

But just kinda visualising the math that was provided, helps me understand how stuff works.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@"Veprovina.4876" quite easy solution. most tanky in Wvw is "minstrel" gear. firebrand and scrappers have to use that, with monk runes. more tanky u get by stacking durability sigil instead of renewal, not recommended normally, but helpful for new players who otherwise explode too fast.

 

vitality is good if u have the rest stats also very bulky obv.

 

about blob fights, so 45+, you always have to dodge the bombs and avoid the red circles. you have to heal, and it is best if u don't have to heal yourself. worst healers are those who have to waste all their cooldowns on themselves, just because they think jumping on the enemy zergs nose is funny.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> @"Veprovina.4876" quite easy solution. most tanky in Wvw is "minstrel" gear. firebrand and scrappers have to use that, with monk runes. more tanky u get by stacking durability sigil instead of renewal, not recommended normally, but helpful for new players who otherwise explode too fast.

>

> vitality is good if u have the rest stats also very bulky obv.

>

> about blob fights, so 45+, you always have to dodge the bombs and avoid the red circles. you have to heal, and it is best if u don't have to heal yourself. worst healers are those who have to waste all their cooldowns on themselves, just because they think jumping on the enemy zergs nose is funny.

 

Nice! Good to know!

I already use durability runes, it was part of the build my guild gave me.

And mesmers have weird heals yeah, on one hand, you can build your traits so that almost everything heals you (and others), mantras, wells, summoning illusions etc, but the cast times are so long that most of people will already be dead once you finish a heal...

Idk... I'm still theorycrafting, but from what i've seen, Anet made sure mesmers aren't good in anything, they're just "ok-ish" in most areas they cover. Except utility, that's where mesmers still shine.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

 

i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

 

alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

 

Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

 

1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

 

#1: 40,199 HP

#2: 43,962 HP

 

Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

 

Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

 

Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

 

For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

>

> i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

>

> alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

 

Nice!

 

So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

 

And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

 

I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

 

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

>

> Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

>

> 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

>

> #1: 40,199 HP

> #2: 43,962 HP

>

> Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

>

> Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

>

> Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

>

> For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

 

NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

 

Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

[AliamRationem.5172]

 

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

>

> Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

>

> ...There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific...

>

 

That last little bit I snipped is why. It's the part where you acknowledge that this comparison has no practical relevance. "Effective health" is a useless metric. It tells you nothing about which stat will improve your sustain in a scenario where those situation/build-specific factors are present (which is always!).

 

Another way of looking at this is to say that some portion of vitality comes up useless in any fight that you survive. For instance, if I have 15k base health and I'm comfortable playing at 50% health or above (meaning I do not feel the need to play defensively and give up DPS above that threshold), then ALL vitality is useless if I never take enough damage to reduce me below that threshold at any point during the fight. Compare to toughness, which always reduces power damage no matter what. Which is more useful? Effective health calculations don't account for any of this.

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> >

> > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> >

> > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

>

> Nice!

>

> So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

>

> And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

>

> I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

>

> > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> >

> > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> >

> > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> >

> > #1: 40,199 HP

> > #2: 43,962 HP

> >

> > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> >

> > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> >

> > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> >

> > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

>

> NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

>

> Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

 

You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> > >

> > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> > >

> > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

> >

> > Nice!

> >

> > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

> >

> > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

> >

> > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

> >

> > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> > >

> > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> > >

> > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> > >

> > > #1: 40,199 HP

> > > #2: 43,962 HP

> > >

> > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> > >

> > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> > >

> > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> > >

> > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

> >

> > NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

> >

> > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

>

> You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

 

Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios.

I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation.

Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients.

I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> > > >

> > > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> > > >

> > > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

> > >

> > > Nice!

> > >

> > > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

> > >

> > > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> > > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

> > >

> > > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

> > >

> > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> > > >

> > > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> > > >

> > > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> > > >

> > > > #1: 40,199 HP

> > > > #2: 43,962 HP

> > > >

> > > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> > > >

> > > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> > > >

> > > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> > > >

> > > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

> > >

> > > NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> > > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> > > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> > > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

> > >

> > > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

> >

> > You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

>

> Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios.

> I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation.

> Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients.

> I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work.

 

I hate to drag you in to this, but there's a history here. Aliam is still mad about the last time I used math to demonstrate that he was wrong on a few claims, so he's spent the last month or so going into threads that do math and baselessly declaring it irrelevant or useless. He's known about the effective health calculation for awhile, but he's indignant about not letting other people know how it works, even if it is exactly what is being asked as it is here. So, when he says that it doesn't tell you which stat to improve when I have spent two paragraphs showing how it does, that means that he is arguing in bad faith.

 

The reality of the game is this: you play off your stats. Before skill comes into play, before utilities and traits are considered, you start with your stats. They determine how effective everything is. In PvP/WvW you want to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible, and knowing how to distribute stats efficiently will do just that.

 

I've done this before. Pre-PoF I had a Revenant build for WvW where I did a bunch of this math on it. After factoring in all of the boons and stuff, I discovered that my statistical fortitude was so high that I didn't have to actually avoid attacks. I could just chase people around while spamming DPS skills and win, because if they tried to do the same then they would end up losing. That's how it worked in practice, too. I would relentlessly pursue in duels, able to constantly push an advantage while the flimsier professions had to constantly dodge and run away before eventually succumbing to my power.

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > > > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> > > > >

> > > > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> > > > >

> > > > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

> > > >

> > > > Nice!

> > > >

> > > > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

> > > >

> > > > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> > > > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

> > > >

> > > > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

> > > >

> > > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> > > > >

> > > > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> > > > >

> > > > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> > > > >

> > > > > #1: 40,199 HP

> > > > > #2: 43,962 HP

> > > > >

> > > > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> > > > >

> > > > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> > > > >

> > > > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> > > > >

> > > > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

> > > >

> > > > NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> > > > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> > > > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> > > > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

> > > >

> > > > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

> > >

> > > You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

> >

> > Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios.

> > I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation.

> > Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients.

> > I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work.

>

> I hate to drag you in to this, but there's a history here. Aliam is still mad about the last time I used math to demonstrate that he was wrong on a few claims, so he's spent the last month or so going into threads that do math and baselessly declaring it irrelevant or useless. He's known about the effective health calculation for awhile, but he's indignant about not letting other people know how it works, even if it is exactly what is being asked as it is here. So, when he says that it doesn't tell you which stat to improve when I have spent two paragraphs showing how it does, that means that he is arguing in bad faith.

>

> The reality of the game is this: you play off your stats. Before skill comes into play, before utilities and traits are considered, you start with your stats. They determine how effective everything is. In PvP/WvW you want to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible, and knowing how to distribute stats efficiently will do just that.

>

> I've done this before. Pre-PoF I had a Revenant build for WvW where I did a bunch of this math on it. After factoring in all of the boons and stuff, I discovered that my statistical fortitude was so high that I didn't have to actually avoid attacks. I could just chase people around while spamming DPS skills and win, because if they tried to do the same then they would end up losing. That's how it worked in practice, too. I would relentlessly pursue in duels, able to constantly push an advantage while the flimsier professions had to constantly dodge and run away before eventually succumbing to my power.

 

Sounds personal. I'm not going to touch that. But I would like to point out that you are literally saying that effective health predicts outcomes regardless of any other factor, even in competitive modes. It's a truly remarkable claim that I am not going to waste any further time refuting in light of the fact that the OP, who you were assisting, acknowledged both your contribution and its limitations.

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Here is another way to look at it. If you have enough toughness to negate 66% of a burst's damage while having health left over to keep fighting then your increased toughness will also reduce your opponent's weaker attacks. If you have enough health to survive a burst, but have paper armor you'll still die to the follow up auto attack. Since we have conditions to deal with, which cut through armor, you need vitality as well as toughness.

 

Things like Protection, damage reduction, condition duration reduction, condition damage reduction, regen, health gain effects all go into what your effective HP is.

 

This is one reason why things like Trailblazer stats are so effective. They give a high amount of effective health, and for condi builds you really only care about condition damage to maximize damage per tick since they will never tick very long.

 

So depending on your build, if it is power or condi, you should take that into account. If you are truly trying to get tanky AF, then roll either Wanderer's with traits and runes to make up for you lost miss chance and critical damage, or roll Trailblazer's and take traits, runes, and sigils to get cover condis, condi duration, or more defenses.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > > > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> > > > >

> > > > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> > > > >

> > > > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

> > > >

> > > > Nice!

> > > >

> > > > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

> > > >

> > > > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> > > > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

> > > >

> > > > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

> > > >

> > > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> > > > >

> > > > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> > > > >

> > > > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> > > > >

> > > > > #1: 40,199 HP

> > > > > #2: 43,962 HP

> > > > >

> > > > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> > > > >

> > > > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> > > > >

> > > > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> > > > >

> > > > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

> > > >

> > > > NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> > > > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> > > > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> > > > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

> > > >

> > > > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

> > >

> > > You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

> >

> > Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios.

> > I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation.

> > Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients.

> > I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work.

>

> I hate to drag you in to this, but there's a history here. Aliam is still mad about the last time I used math to demonstrate that he was wrong on a few claims, so he's spent the last month or so going into threads that do math and baselessly declaring it irrelevant or useless. He's known about the effective health calculation for awhile, but he's indignant about not letting other people know how it works, even if it is exactly what is being asked as it is here. So, when he says that it doesn't tell you which stat to improve when I have spent two paragraphs showing how it does, that means that he is arguing in bad faith.

>

> The reality of the game is this: you play off your stats. Before skill comes into play, before utilities and traits are considered, you start with your stats. They determine how effective everything is. In PvP/WvW you want to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible, and knowing how to distribute stats efficiently will do just that.

>

> I've done this before. Pre-PoF I had a Revenant build for WvW where I did a bunch of this math on it. After factoring in all of the boons and stuff, I discovered that my statistical fortitude was so high that I didn't have to actually avoid attacks. I could just chase people around while spamming DPS skills and win, because if they tried to do the same then they would end up losing. That's how it worked in practice, too. I would relentlessly pursue in duels, able to constantly push an advantage while the flimsier professions had to constantly dodge and run away before eventually succumbing to my power.

 

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > > > > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > > > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> > > > > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P

> > > > >

> > > > > Nice!

> > > > >

> > > > > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink:

> > > > >

> > > > > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile:

> > > > > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones.

> > > > >

> > > > > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol.

> > > > >

> > > > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > > > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this:

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920

> > > > > >

> > > > > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following:

> > > > > >

> > > > > > #1: 40,199 HP

> > > > > > #2: 43,962 HP

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.

> > > > >

> > > > > NIce! Thank you for that explanation!

> > > > > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy!

> > > > > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar.

> > > > > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty!

> > > > >

> > > > > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley:

> > > >

> > > > You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die!

> > >

> > > Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios.

> > > I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation.

> > > Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients.

> > > I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work.

> >

> > I hate to drag you in to this, but there's a history here. Aliam is still mad about the last time I used math to demonstrate that he was wrong on a few claims, so he's spent the last month or so going into threads that do math and baselessly declaring it irrelevant or useless. He's known about the effective health calculation for awhile, but he's indignant about not letting other people know how it works, even if it is exactly what is being asked as it is here. So, when he says that it doesn't tell you which stat to improve when I have spent two paragraphs showing how it does, that means that he is arguing in bad faith.

> >

> > The reality of the game is this: you play off your stats. Before skill comes into play, before utilities and traits are considered, you start with your stats. They determine how effective everything is. In PvP/WvW you want to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible, and knowing how to distribute stats efficiently will do just that.

> >

> > I've done this before. Pre-PoF I had a Revenant build for WvW where I did a bunch of this math on it. After factoring in all of the boons and stuff, I discovered that my statistical fortitude was so high that I didn't have to actually avoid attacks. I could just chase people around while spamming DPS skills and win, because if they tried to do the same then they would end up losing. That's how it worked in practice, too. I would relentlessly pursue in duels, able to constantly push an advantage while the flimsier professions had to constantly dodge and run away before eventually succumbing to my power.

>

> Sounds personal. I'm not going to touch that. But I would like to point out that you are literally saying that effective health predicts outcomes regardless of any other factor, even in competitive modes. It's a truly remarkable claim that I am not going to waste any further time refuting in light of the fact that the OP, who you were assisting, acknowledged both your contribution and its limitations.

>

 

I'm not going to go in any personal beef someone might have with someone else, i'm just going to say that the point of this thread was exactly what i got.

I asked for raw mathematical data, and all the calculations i got were exatly what i wanted to know, this includes @"Yasai.3549" 's comments, @"maddoctor.2738" 's game mechanics calculations and @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" 's effective health system. And all calculations seem to support each other, so to me that's proof enough that they're all equally valid at least when raw data is concerned. :smile:

 

> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:

> Here is another way to look at it. If you have enough toughness to negate 66% of a burst's damage while having health left over to keep fighting then your increased toughness will also reduce your opponent's weaker attacks. If you have enough health to survive a burst, but have paper armor you'll still die to the follow up auto attack. Since we have conditions to deal with, which cut through armor, you need vitality as well as toughness.

>

> Things like Protection, damage reduction, condition duration reduction, condition damage reduction, regen, health gain effects all go into what your effective HP is.

>

> This is one reason why things like Trailblazer stats are so effective. They give a high amount of effective health, and for condi builds you really only care about condition damage to maximize damage per tick since they will never tick very long.

>

> So depending on your build, if it is power or condi, you should take that into account. If you are truly trying to get tanky AF, then roll either Wanderer's with traits and runes to make up for you lost miss chance and critical damage, or roll Trailblazer's and take traits, runes, and sigils to get cover condis, condi duration, or more defenses.

 

That's good info too, thank you! Yes, in large scale WvW fights, burst is something to look out for, so toughness is definitely a thing to consider over health.

And yeah, trailblazer is pretty good for condi because condi doesn't lose that much if it doens't have power or ferocity.

I'm already running Wanderer's, but i'm thinking of Minstrel's because i wanna try being full support. Wanderer's has power, and someone said somewhere, power alone is not enough for damage. That's why power builds need precision and ferocity as well, while condi builds only really need condition damage and duration. So Wanderer's is kind of a jack of all trades on me lol. It's power, toughness, boon duration... So i'm tanky, but i can kind of deal damage and kind of be support, while minstrels would be more centered around just one thing. tanky support.