A little advice

Trying to decide on gearing but not 100% sure on how to maximise burst whilst retaining durability.

Currently have three trains of thought.1) Full Valkyrie with damage reduction skills/mods/food. I'm aware that the stacking is multiplicative.2) Full Cavalier with damage enhancing mods/food etc3) 1:1 vitality/toughness ratio Valkyrie/Cavalier mix, again, want to keep max ferocity for reaper bursting.

As I do not raid, please no META full zerk blah blah.

Just wondering which of the 3 above would be best approach.

Thanks in advance

Well, first, what game content are you building for? In instanced PvE, toughness makes you the tank and will get you extra hate from bosses.

Second, ferocity is worthless without crit chance and, even zero ferocity give a 50% damage bonus when you crit.

Third, you can get good sustain by using minions to hold aggro, using shroud, using Death Magic, or using utilities like WoD, Rise, or shades, and so on.

Of the three stat combos, Valkyrie is the least onerous, if you do everything you can to get crit chance up.

Do not forget you can mix equipment, consumables, and upgrades; e.g., mix assassin with valkyrie.

I'm more fond of playing hybrid necromancer but I used to play soldier stat (PVT) and I must say that it's a pretty solid gearset for solo PvE content and zerg WvW. It also have the great advantage to be relatively cheap.

@Anchoku.8142 said:Well, first, what game content are you building for? In instanced PvE, toughness makes you the tank and will get you extra hate from bosses.

Second, ferocity is worthless without crit chance and, even zero ferocity give a 50% damage bonus when you crit.

Third, you can get good sustain by using minions to hold aggro, using shroud, using Death Magic, or using utilities like WoD, Rise, or shades, and so on.

Of the three stat combos, Valkyrie is the least onerous, if you do everything you can to get crit chance up.

Do not forget you can mix equipment, consumables, and upgrades; e.g., mix assassin with valkyrie.

My question is regarding stat selection, I'm well aware of the game mechanics surrounding agro being driven by toughness, again, this is about selection of Vitality and/or Toughness. I do not intend to raid/fractal with this gear.

When in reaper shroud I'm running 100% Crit rate, out of shroud with 25 stacks in vulnerability (not hard when running Reaper/Spite/Soul Reaping, I'm at 82% out of shroud, this is all self buffed so utilising the ferocity gained when running Valkyrie or cavalier with no Crit stats is no issue hence the focusing on Valkyrie and/or Cavalier gear, I don't not require Crit from gear at all.

The question is have is 3 fold as stated above and pertains to survivability v offence and the best way of attaining both in equal measure.

1) Should I go full Valkyrie to maximise my damage relative to cavalier (Primary power stat) and mitigate power damage received through damage reduction skills/food/utilities? (protection/rise/rune of scrapper/oyster food etc etc), again is understand that they are multiplicative and have diminishing returns.OR2) Should I mitigate primarily through toughness (Cavalier), ignore damage reduction food/runes/utilities and instead compensate for the loss in power primary stat using cavalier through damage modifiers/food etc?OR3) Mix/match 1:1 ratio of vitality/toughness by mixing both Valkyrie/Cavalier stats? having played around with my gear I end up at 2646 Armor and 26462 health which gives me a perfect 1:1 split

Gear selection and gold are no issue as I have multiple sets of light Armor.

Cheers

Please post your trait and weapon selections.

We understand you can get 100% crit chance without any precision stat gear but you also give up dps and burst potential for it.

As Dadnir has said, soldier gear has a nice balance for power-bunker builds. Vitality increases the LF pool but does not interact with Death Magic, if you are using that, and there is such a thing as excess LF.