How much Attack Power (Power) vs. Crit Damage (Ferocity) do you need to do sufficient damage?

In the title^

Very hard to tell, going below 200% crit dmg okay? or do I need to go above? And have much Power I need to do enough dmg 2.4k+? How low can I go until it becomes a detriment.

Should I go more Power less crit dmg or more crit dmg less power, which can I get away with?

I'm also playing Reaper, but this question applies to all classes, reaper is just one of the less viable power specs right now, tougher to play.

An example is - if i have 180% crit dmg but 2600 power, is that ok? or too dmg deficient

what is sufficient damage you want to deal? you can do 50 damage and get a lootbag if you support others doing the rest - so base values provide sufficient damage to get loot.class/build choice and your group is very important for your stat choice so i dont think there is a general answer to your question.

@MUDse.7623 said:what is sufficient damage you want to deal? you can do 50 damage and get a lootbag if you support others doing the rest - so base values provide sufficient damage to get loot.class/build choice and your group is very important for your stat choice so i dont think there is a general answer to your question.

I'm asking more for roaming, solo, or small group. I'm also asking for your personal experience and what you guys think.

Full berserker

There isn't really any general rule, unfortunately. Power is, of course, the main stat when it comes to dealing direct damage, but depending on what gear you're running, and whether or not you will have might/bloodlust/fury, things can get more complicated.

The best way to make decisions on your individual build/class is to make a spreadsheet using the damage equations from the wiki to compare the different gear options for your build and see which results in more damage overall.

@Tzozef.9841 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is sufficient damage you want to deal? you can do 50 damage and get a lootbag if you support others doing the rest - so base values provide sufficient damage to get loot.class/build choice and your group is very important for your stat choice so i dont think there is a general answer to your question.

most power builds while roaming are marauder or beserks depending on class/build they achieve different crit dmg/power values but you shouldnt go more defensive then full marauder + defensive rune/food or you will lack damage to kill anyone fast enough.my personal experience is mostly in full berserk tho.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Tzozef.9841 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is sufficient damage you want to deal? you can do 50 damage and get a lootbag if you support others doing the rest - so base values provide sufficient damage to get loot.class/build choice and your group is very important for your stat choice so i dont think there is a general answer to your question.

^ Pretty much that. In my experience most WvW roaming 1v1 fights are done in less than 10-15 sec. it goes up the more people are on each side. Then again I've had a 2v2 go on for more than 5 min, they were 2 bunkers and I was the only zerker, my buddy was trying out a full support scourge. The more people you're fighting with/against the more defensive things you need to start introducing to your gear/build. Which for me starts to plateau at around 15 people is where I basically end up in my zerg gear/build.

Power always gives greater results than Crit. Dmg. Just take a calculator and do basic math when you do your build. This may be the reason Sigil of Bloodlust is more popular than Cruelty, as even if you stack more ferocity from a sigil you still deal more damage with Bloodlust on most builds. As a result, Crit. Dmg. - the more the better - is great complimentary stat but usually doesn't work the way having more of it with less power gives better results.

@Inoki.6048 said:Power always gives greater results than Crit. Dmg. Just take a calculator and do basic math when you do your build. This may be the reason Sigil of Bloodlust is more popular than Cruelty, as even if you stack more ferocity from a sigil you still deal more damage with Bloodlust on most builds. As a result, Crit. Dmg. - the more the better - is great complimentary stat but usually doesn't work the way having more of it with less power gives better results.

no that sigil choise is because base crit damage is 150% , 250 ferocity is 16,666% crit damage so its only 11% of base value while power is base 1000 so 250 is 25% of that. for 250 ferocity more to be better then additional 250 power you need alot of extra power to compensate the imbalance at base values.

I guess it does depend on what class and weapons you use? I normally aim for 2500 power/200ferocity/50% precision with no added bonus (blood lust/might/fury ect) then you can work of defensive stats.

Maruader is good if you don't have too much defensive boons or defensive skills traits. Berserker is better when you have passive defense traits skills and defense boons.

I like maurder because I main engineer but if I was a different class I'd probably use berserker.

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@Inoki.6048 said:Power always gives greater results than Crit. Dmg. Just take a calculator and do basic math when you do your build. This may be the reason Sigil of Bloodlust is more popular than Cruelty, as even if you stack more ferocity from a sigil you still deal more damage with Bloodlust on most builds. As a result, Crit. Dmg. - the more the better - is great complimentary stat but usually doesn't work the way having more of it with less power gives better results.

Some traits and/or gear sets throw things off though. More power isn't ALWAYS the best, depending on what your other stats are from traits and other gear selected.

From an outdated post on another forum "Direct Damage Optimization Plots":

"Generally speaking, if you're looking to optimize damage output in a build, stack as much Power into the build as possible, next Precision, followed by Ferocity.

Stacking Precision over Power, or Ferocity over either can only pay off in a few extreme cases - Thief hidden killer trait being one case where stacking Ferocity over Precision can pay off in a Backstab build. That said, be sure to look at the numbers for your own builds - you'd be surprised at how difficult it is to come out on top when you ignore the rules of thumb given above.

I'm amazed all the time when I see builds from top players/guilds who are stacking Precision or Ferocity when it actually lowers their overall damage. Very very rarely is it advantageous to run Maintenance Oils over Sharpening Stones, or food with +Precision or +Ferocity over +Power or +Precision respectively - mostly only if you are after high crit chance for food/trait/sigil procs (high precision w/ Omnomberry Pie can sometimes pay off), or high Ferocity because of an artificially high crit chance as a result of a trait (Hidden Killer case above).

All of the above is why Celestial builds don't generally pay off unless you are going full hybrid power/condi damage - only a few class/weapon combos can actually achieve this."

You can see from these plots why you'd stack for power first then precision.

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-55437400-1430145482.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-74494000-1430145474.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-64777600-1430145178.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-64777600-1430145178.png

I like to min-max so I can weigh in.

I can't really tell you for sure on reaper since I don't know necro damage coefficients but I can give you some insight pertaining to the numbers I aim for on guard (historically since around HoT launch):

So as a "maximum standard" I equip full berserker armor, weps and trinkets and test damage on the same mob, on critical hits only.

• For me, full zerker comes out to something like 2.6k power and 216% crit damage
• Power food and utility but not ferocity food, no boosting traits and no power/ferocity runes.
• When I change the build, I test the same skills/damage/mob on crits only.

Obviously full zerker gives the best damage, but to achieve what I considered decent defensive stats (17k + hp, 2500 armor) without sacrificing more than 3-7% of the damage, I found I needed stats that looked something like the following (best to worst):

• 2500 power, 202% crit damage
• 2600 power, 190% crit damage (damage is actually bit better but I lose some sustain to gear like this)
• 2400 power, 210% crit damage (decent)
• 2300 power, 218% crit damage (about the same as above)
• 2200 power and lower: This is a no go, don't do it even if it means 230% crit damage.

Since you don't have to worry about investing in vitality nearly as much on reaper, I would honestly recommend going for something akin to my 2nd condition there.

One thing to ask yourself is how often do you crit? If you stack ferocity but never crit then you have wasted your stats. Would recommend trying out your builds in PvP lobby or if you have gear that you can swap in and out in the Raid lobby with the test golems that will state your dps every x percentage of their health till you find a build you like. The fractal golems are also good test subjects since they have a decent amount of CC to allow you to test damage and avoid CC at the same time. The other thing to question about your playstyle is how well you disengage or are willing to if you run into something that is tankier than you expect and weigh in your defensive stats from there. Good hunting!

@"Chaba.5410" said:From an outdated post on another forum "Direct Damage Optimization Plots":

"Generally speaking, if you're looking to optimize damage output in a build, stack as much Power into the build as possible, next Precision, followed by Ferocity.

Stacking Precision over Power, or Ferocity over either can only pay off in a few extreme cases - Thief hidden killer trait being one case where stacking Ferocity over Precision can pay off in a Backstab build. That said, be sure to look at the numbers for your own builds - you'd be surprised at how difficult it is to come out on top when you ignore the rules of thumb given above.

I'm amazed all the time when I see builds from top players/guilds who are stacking Precision or Ferocity when it actually lowers their overall damage. Very very rarely is it advantageous to run Maintenance Oils over Sharpening Stones, or food with +Precision or +Ferocity over +Power or +Precision respectively - mostly only if you are after high crit chance for food/trait/sigil procs (high precision w/ Omnomberry Pie can sometimes pay off), or high Ferocity because of an artificially high crit chance as a result of a trait (Hidden Killer case above).

All of the above is why Celestial builds don't generally pay off unless you are going full hybrid power/condi damage - only a few class/weapon combos can actually achieve this."

You can see from these plots why you'd stack for power first then precision.

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-55437400-1430145482.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-74494000-1430145474.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-64777600-1430145178.png

http://www.fort-aspenwood.com/uploads/monthly_04_2015/post-2831-0-64777600-1430145178.png

This is all still true, the only caveat is that there seem to be more traits now that modify damage stats which can throw things off for a particular build. Some classes/builds get a ton of ferocity from traits, for example, which makes precision more important, relatively speaking. Also, since gear like marauder has been introduced that gives vitality (which used to be kinda hard to get efficiently) relatively cheaply from an overall DPS perspective, many builds wind up with more precision than what the equivalent berserker build did, meaning that stacking more ferocity can sometimes pay off if you already have relatively high power. You really just have to plug the different gear options into a spreadsheet and see which one turns out best based on damage calcs.

Anyway, the stuff Chaba posted above is still true when speaking generally, but things aren't as straight forward as they used to be due to new traits and gear options.

Hello there (I recognize your account name, we were dueling last night, I was on rev and SB)!

When I'm creating builds, I don't like to necessarily min-max using calculations so much as try equipment out and find a sweet spot.

The first thing I try to do is work on survivability- finding a good spot for health and armor based on the way you play. After that, in general you should try to stack as much power as possible. Power will almost certainly be the maximum increase to your damage.

In terms of power, you also need to pay attention to any conversions your class may have- precision to ferocity? toughness to power? etc, in addition to any other traits that may affect your playstyle. For example, my rev has Roiling Mists and Assassin's Presence, which gives me loads of extra crit chance and ferocity as is, leaving even less reason for me to put more stats into those two.

If it becomes necessary, you can get down into the math details- i.e. calculating coefficients for your skills that you expect to land the most/expect to be bread and butter damage. You can calculate how adding precision vs. adding ferocity is going to affect your damage.

However, there are many more variables in play. What traits are your opponents running? Are they condi, making your toughness useless? Etc, etc. This game is really dynamic so it's impossible to truly build for every single situation- however, what you can do is build to make you as comfortable as you can.

tl;dr: work on survivability, then stack power first and foremost. pay attention to your traits. precision/ferocity tradeoff.

@"Arcaedus.7290" said:I like to min-max so I can weigh in.

I can't really tell you for sure on reaper since I don't know necro damage coefficients but I can give you some insight pertaining to the numbers I aim for on guard (historically since around HoT launch):

So as a "maximum standard" I equip full berserker armor, weps and trinkets and test damage on the same mob, on critical hits only.

• For me, full zerker comes out to something like 2.6k power and 216% crit damage
• Power food and utility but not ferocity food, no boosting traits and no power/ferocity runes.
• When I change the build, I test the same skills/damage/mob on crits only.

Obviously full zerker gives the best damage, but to achieve what I considered decent defensive stats (17k + hp, 2500 armor) without sacrificing more than 3-7% of the damage, I found I needed stats that looked something like the following (best to worst):

• 2500 power, 202% crit damage
• 2600 power, 190% crit damage (damage is actually bit better but I lose some sustain to gear like this)
• 2400 power, 210% crit damage (decent)
• 2300 power, 218% crit damage (about the same as above)
• 2200 power and lower: This is a no go, don't do it even if it means 230% crit damage.

Since you don't have to worry about investing in vitality nearly as much on reaper, I would honestly recommend going for something akin to my 2nd condition there.

This is really helpful, thanks! So quick question: What would do more damage?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhFwCugNBorWA4AEfF7ilRA-j1BXABFo8AYlIhoPoH1fed/hIUCCgSoAAIA3sNbzbG4m38m38m3sCdot5NrzdezkCY1xAA-w2600 power, at 190% crit dmg

OR

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhOD1odTs2GsAPUUCAQIW7D-jFCXABNo8pEdDHpSREKBfd/BAUC1jKKyqOQAAEgbezsZbGszduzduzdWje0G9o15NvZSBs6yI-w2400 power, at 200% crit

Assuming both have same amount of crit chance, with the 2.4k build having only decimal difference higher crit chance in actuality. (Or which link do you think is just a better build overall including defensive stats, as you will see, there is only marginal difference.)

Feel free to send me an edit too if you wish of what you think is potentially better.

Theres a lot of incomplete/outdated information in this thread. The answer to OPs question is: get as high an effective power as possible once you have enough survivability/effective health. Stat weights between power/precision/ferocity depend on traits, average might/fury uptime and the amount of each stat that you already have - each point of one stat increases the value of the other two. You'll often see builds with high innate crit get a better value from ferocity/dmg reduction food than power/dmg reduction food for example. It also needs to be kept in mind that 4stat sets like marauders as well as the 7stat celestial have more base stat points than 3stat sets like soldier's or berserker's, so they'll often overpower other sets just through raw amounts of stats rather than efficient weights. You should use an effective power calculator such as gw2power.com to figure out the optimal gear setup.

This is really helpful, thanks! So quick question: What would do more damage?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhFwCugNBorWA4AEfF7ilRA-j1BXABFo8AYlIhoPoH1fed/hIUCCgSoAAIA3sNbzbG4m38m38m3sCdot5NrzdezkCY1xAA-w2600 power, at 190% crit dmg

OR

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhOD1odTs2GsAPUUCAQIW7D-jFCXABNo8pEdDHpSREKBfd/BAUC1jKKyqOQAAEgbezsZbGszduzduzdWje0G9o15NvZSBs6yI-w2400 power, at 200% crit

I'm going to use the two builds linked in the post above mine as an example, here is an effective power/hp comparison between the two http://bit.ly/2pyIxSK. At no point in equal might/fury uptime will build2 outdps build1. Now that we're aware of effective power and keeping in mind overstatted sets we can make more efficient tradeoffs to maximize effective power and health.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhOD1odTs2GsAPUUCAQIW7D-jVh/gAN7PAobAS9nWlggK/CAgAYn7MgUAruMC-w (Breakdown: http://bit.ly/2pxW6lA)Here is a build that has more effective health and power than either of the other two linked. It simply stacks marauder's armor because it is among the most efficient ways to get effective power and health. This has some arguments against it, mainly that incoming healing benefits toughness but not vitality but this can be adjusted for by entering the average incoming healing per second in "healing taken" under the advanced tab. Also please keep in mind, full marauder's is also not an optimal build, I just wanted to use it as an example of how effective power/hp work.

Reaper/Necro in general can throw things through a loop because of build option it has.

Typically, power is always the most important stat to primary, though not always; marauder gear simply has more stats on the kit, increasing the build efficiency disproportionately to favor marauder over virtually any other mix from sheer stats alone.

For example, you can take Spite/SR/Reaper with Death Perception and Decimate defenses running traits to stack vuln and play a 0 precision build with 100% crit chance. For this, ferocity > precision. That said, you won't crit outside of shroud before stacking vuln, so it's not very effective in most PvP situations where the vuln can be cleansed quickly and shroud doesn't last any amount of time.

As for the aforementioned question about 2400 power and 2600 power, this depends on the context specific to the class/chosen build, but from the builds there, build 1 with higher power will always prove to deal higher damage. Ferocity is only effective if the value for power is high as to make the damage value at its baseline high. Unfortunately, the way ferocity works, it's just not a stat worth investing in as far as efficiency goes; it's only worthwhile as a stat to deal more damage with for the sake of increasing numbers.

Damage = (Power weapon damage value skill coefficient / target's armor) Critical damage Misc. modifiers (multiplicative)

It's worth noting that a 10% increase in the critical damage stat is NOT a 10% increase in damage. The comparison to be made here is it'll be multiplied by 1.9 vs 2.0.

Being multiplicative, the damage formula can be rearranged:*Power Critical damage* Skill Coefficient * Weapon damage / armor.

An arbitrary power value of 2000 for simplicity's sake 1.9 = 3800 while the same value multiplied by 2 = 4000The relative damage gains between the two are 4000/3800 = 1.05, or about a 5% gain in net damage going into the rest of the equation. A lot of people forget this relationship and thus over-value ferocity because they see* 10% and assume it's a 10% gain when it's just adding 10% to the existing modifier, which the more ferocity you stack, the less effective it becomes relative to other ferocity.

So comparing that 5% number from ferocity (also calculable from just comparing ferocity as 2.0/1.9), power can be compared similarly with a comparison of efficiency of gain in power:2600/2400 = 8.3%

The 8.3% number is bigger and this will always yield more damage going into the defenses of an opponent.

So then why do people invest in ferocity? Well, only when that gain in power is not efficient.

In the case where the player is playing a build with constant 25 might, the numbers for power would be +750 (or in reaper's case with Awaken the Pain, +1000)3600/3400 = 5.8%; even still, the +200 power is favorable. The number shrinks more as power is stacked. So what about a build with 2700 base and bloodlust?

3950/3750 = 5.3% which barely overshadows the ferocity still.

This is one of the biggest reasons why when ANet reduced the efficiency of ferocity years ago that the change was actually a net loss to build diversity: Ferocity is almost always a loss compared to just stacking more power, and this entire time, we've been operating on the premise of 100% crit chance. In any instance where the hit isn't a crit, the power is also just strictly better because the gains from ferocity are never even seen.

To be honest, though, I wouldn't recommend reaper for WvW anymore. It's really not in a good place at all and has virtually no matchups that are any better than "disadvantageous;" warrior is strictly better in smaller groups and there is quite literally zero upside to playing reaper in any group larger than 5. Right now, it really doesn't matter much what gear you use on a reaper, because strictly speaking, the class itself is inefficient.

Grievers is a choice

Hey guys thanks! This thread is actually really informative and super helpful.

I would even suggest to new players being linked to this thread as a updating consensus of hypothesizing optimal stat builds, or at least understanding the concept. Anet and the game in general doesn't explain this element of the game at all, and makes it very confusing and disheartening to newer players who don't understand this and just want to jump in and play, and not understanding why it's so frustrating to fight against others (pvp) yet still stumbling again upon the same roadblocks gameplay wise.

@ "ventusthunder.5067" - Hey man thanks for posting! :)and@"Arete.1862"

In response to both of you, you both gave similar and insightful answers I think is true and I discovered through playing more- quoting each of your answers "The first thing I try to do is work on survivability- finding a good spot for health and armor based on the way you play. After that, in general you should try to stack as much power as possible. Power will almost certainly be the maximum increase to your damage."and"The answer to OPs question is: get as high an effective power as possible once you have enough survivability/effective health. " respectively.

Yes, I've been finding this to be true more and more. Getting to this point in WvW is the tough part, I've been experimenting with this in sPvP due to the convenience. Even there I found Paladins (1050/1050 Power/Precision, and 500/500 Vit/Toughness) to fit this paradigm.

In following your model Arete you shared and example of optimizing both hp and power with your most recent example, I edited it to come up with this following your philosophy adding more toughness http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhOD1odTs2GsgLYxXxuYYE6qFAOAUph4wzC-j1xXABMoE8V1f+VJ3L6GAQZgAKFYd/hAAIA38mZz2MYn78m38m3s28mt5NbzbezkCY1lRA-w

I usually try to stick around 2100-2200 base power with no might or bloodlust stacks, I like about 210% ferocity about 60% crit chance base...

So for WvW roaming on Thief for example, I'm a combination of assassins, valk, zerker and maybe 1-2 soldier trinkets, not the best build but definitely works well for me due to my Australian lag and the amount of mistakes I make because of that.

Shocking how many people get this all wrong.Statistics and probability class day 1