Is offense the best defense?

Humor of the title aside, I've been running a Critical Strikes thief since launch, and kept the Invigorating Precision trait since it was first released . I enjoy it well enough and have no real intention of changing my trait-lines, though recently I've swapped to Critical Strikes, Acrobatics, and Daredevil, in what is arguably the closest I've gotten to pre-Specializations (early 2014) thief in a long while.

So, the question at hand: which would serve me better, being a self-healing glass cannon, or taking a hit to damage (and healing) to trade on Toughness?

The Builds

Presently I'm using a mix of Assassin's trinkets, and Berserker's armor, with a Marauder's staff thrown in. Actual equipment is here.

• Attributes: 2697 Power, 2064 Armor, 14585 Health, ~92% crit rate, ~223% critial damage
• Good sustainability in smaller fights or against a large target (so long as I'm not being actively targeted).
• Very high rate of crits (and damage) turns the 10/20% conversion from Invigorating Precision into sizable chunks of health with the auto-attack alone (up to 1700/3000 HP on common PvE mobs).
• Vault (Staff 5) can deal an upward of 8k damage to common mobs, helping to dramatically shorten fights.

Feasibly, I could exchange most of it for something like this. Hypothetical equipment is here.

• Attributes: 2403 Power (-294), 3072 Armor (+1008), 14585 Health (--), ~72% crit rate (-20%), ~208% critical damage (-15%)
• About 49% more armor, which is a direct reduction of damage taken.
• Only nominal losses in crit rate and damage dealt, though a moderate loss of baseline Power.
• Most equipment can be cheaply obtained on TP or for laurels.

Reasons for Toughness

Being able to mitigate a chunk of the damage I normally take from my (admittedly) abysmal health and armor pool would definitely come in handy, since less health lost is less I need to recover. This also means that, despite healing less per strike (and less frequently), the geometric mean of healing obtained should be sufficient to recoup whatever health is lost.

Also, in a breakdown of damage, using the page on Toughness shows rather promising results. Here's the formula, for the curious:

Damage taken = (Opponent's weapon strength) Opponent's Power (Opponent's skill-specific coefficient) / (your Defense + your Toughness)

Hypothetical Foe

• Weapon strength: we'll use a nice round 1000
• Power: 2400 seems like a good basis, and befits a secondary attribute
• Coefficient: for this we'll use the Warrior's "Pulverize" skill, of 1.6

The Math

First, my original build:

Damage taken = (1000 2400 1.6) / 2064Damage taken = (3840000) / 2064Damage taken = 1861

By comparison, the proposed Teef-tank:

Damage taken = (1000 2400 1.6) / 3072Damage taken = (3840000) / 3072Damage taken = 1250

That's already 611 less damage taken (or about 33%)!

A Look into Healing

Since I plan on still running Invigorating Precision, let's see what the overall change would be. For this purpose, we'll use Punishing Strikes, which has a coefficient of 1.672, with an ascended staff -- a damage range of 1034 ~ 1166 (average: 1100) -- against a heavily armored target, or 2681 armor. For this, we'll presume that all strikes are critical hits.

My original build would deal 4119 damage, for a total recovery of 412 HP -- or 824 HP with Fury. It would take 2.25 to 4.52 hits like this to recover from that hypothetical blow.

Comparatively, the toughness build would deal only 3421 damage(-698), for a total recovery of 342 HP (-70) -- or 684 HP with Fury (-140). It would instead take 1.83 to 3.65 his like this to recover from the equivalent attack.

That doesn't seem so bad.

However, even if we account for an estimated 33% less damage taken, I'd also be 20% less likely to actually crit. Adjusting the numbers accordingly, it now takes 2.28 to 4.57 hits to recover. While this does show that the functional losses shouldn't be too bad, it also demonstrates that the only real bonus from Toughness might really just be surviving a few extra hits in the process.

(Don't worry if the math is a bit off, this is just for demonstrative purposes.)

Why Not Healing Power?

For the build I'm running, my main source of sustainability is through Invigorating Precision, which is only a flat conversion based on critical damage dealt -- there does not appear to be any coefficient from Healing Power, as there would be with, say, a Warrior using Adrenal Health or most other skill and trait effects that heal on a trigger. Thus, tossing Healing Power into the mix doesn't really give me a net benefit beyond making my dedicated healing skill a bit stronger.

Considering that thief has good access to evades, blinds and lifesteal, aside from marauder gear you shouldn't need any defense coming from gear. You can do math about damage taken all you want, but that's only calculating facetanking, which you should avoid as thief anyway. A single energy sigil on a second weapon is worth a lot more than some random toughness most of the time. Not to mention that the only place where you'll actually need some more serious defense are group events that you're trying to solo, which are completely avoidable by just playing with a group.

@"fluffdragon.1523" said:Presently I'm using a mix of Assassin's trinkets, and Berserker's armor, with a Marauder's staff thrown in. Actual equipment is here.[...]Feasibly, I could exchange most of it for something like this. Hypothetical equipment is here.

Looks like you're either really underutilizing Fury or overcapping crit chance very severely. With decent Fury uptime you can focus on a baseline of 80% crit chance (or even 70%, since you've also got Keen Observer) with zero loss of damage output. That means all your Assassin pieces can be Berserker pieces for about ~500 more Power, basically "for free."

If this is for WvW:

• I like the stats spread in your first build except I might put just a little from crit chance into health for like 15-15.5k as a baseline.
• I wouldn't bother with healing or healing stats unless it's a leech or also taking away their health otherwise I think it's just taking away from your damage and I think your opponent would feel that out and work with it.
• I'd like to have more toughness but I only really feel my toughness stat when I get jumped by other thieves maybe, it just doesn't fit into the budget well when I'm trying to bring a few other stats up. Toughness might get better play in spvp but in WvW where stats are really fine tuned I think that 2400 power won't pressure enough depending on the matchup.

Is this for competitive?

If it is, unless yu are using a build which hits and runs or pops in and out of Stealth, in yur face dodge tanking self healing builds aren't gonna work.Why?Weakness.

Weakness will throw a huge wrench into yur entire plan and alot of builds right now seems to drop Weakness like it's a side-effect or something.Weakness is so strong it can allow an Ele with no vitality built to fully tank an entire Ranger LB Rapid Fire, just because 40% of the hits became glancing blows which not only cannot crit but lose 50% damage.

@"ASP.8093" said:

Looks like you're either really underutilizing Fury or overcapping crit chance very severely. With decent Fury uptime you can focus on a baseline of 80% crit chance (or even 70%, since you've also got Keen Observer) with zero loss of damage output. That means all your Assassin pieces can be Berserker pieces for about ~500 more Power, basically "for free."

This is a really good point! I went back to check the actual stats in-game, and it looks like the tool I've been using has some bugs in its calculations. Here's a screenshot of the Hero tab in-game.

Looks like I'm sitting right above 81% precision, so that seems to be in line with your recommendation. Thanks! I'll do some testing tonight to see how fury holds up and whether swapping out a few accessories might be worthwhile.

@fluffdragon.1523 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:

Looks like you're either really underutilizing Fury or overcapping crit chance very severely. With decent Fury uptime you can focus on a baseline of 80% crit chance (or even 70%, since you've also got Keen Observer) with

zero

loss of damage output. That means all your Assassin pieces can be Berserker pieces for about ~500 more Power, basically "for free."

Ah, I can tell you exactly what's going on there: gw2skills.net includes the 10% crit chance from Keen Observer in your displayed stats already (my bad for forgetting that). (It does not, however, include the extra 7% situation from Twing Fangs.)