Toughness VS Vitality

Does Toughness provide a second gain for necro?Like Vitality, which both increases health and life force pool?

If not, why not replace "Deadly strength" 's effect by making toughness also grant an increase to life force pool?

I mean… It would fit the trait-line, wouldn't it?Death Magic's meant to be the tank spec, no?

toughness doesn't provide any added benefit. DM as a whole is in need of a rework

Well Death Magic is in a much better spot than it used to be...

@Dadnir.5038 said:Well Death Magic is in a much better spot than it used to be...

Hardly

Death Magic trait lines are really dead.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Well Death Magic is in a much better spot than it used to be...

But still underwhelmingly bad compared to the other traitlines

No it doesn't.. but combining the two with the Necro's absurd amount of lifesteal can make you damn near unkillable in PvE.

Toughness and vitality are both good attributes, neither one is better than the other. I'll give you my opinion on both attributes as well as which professions benefit from toughness or vitality the most.

Toughness reduces direct damage or power damage. If you're fighting against bosses in PvE or professions in PvP that deal direct damage like power shiro revenant or radiant hammer/greatsword guardian, their damage will be reduced depending on your toughness. In PvE, the benefit of using toughness is to pull aggro and if you are playing builds like support scrapper, having more toughness allows you to pull aggro, reduce incoming damage and not having to worry about your allies running off in the distance and not being able to heal them.

Vitality can help you survive burst damage, but it's better for surviving degenerative damage, also known as condition damage. In PvP, professions with low health such as elementalist, guardian and thief need this attribute the most otherwise they'll die a lot. In PvE, none of the low health professions need vitality because a support player in groups can keep them alive. If you're playing support builds with low health professions, then vitality can help you tank damage. Toughness isn't really going to help you a lot as you will be forced to waste most of your healing skills on yourself. While necromancer has high health, they too need vitality especially if you play support scourge as having more vitality increases your life force. This allows you to be very tanky and give plenty of barrier to your allies.

@"killfil.3472" said:Does Toughness provide a second gain for necro?Like Vitality, which both increases health and life force pool?Following your logic, then yes toughness provides a second gain: it further reduces (additionally to the base 50%) the damage taken while in shroud.

So vitality increases pools and toughness reduces direct damage.

If not, why not replace "Deadly strength" 's effect by making toughness also grant an increase to life force pool?Deadly Strengh is misplaced in Death Magic. The trait makes no sence in the context of that line. One of the tons of problems this traitline has.

Death Magic's meant to be the tank spec, no?It's a sustain traitline (damage mitigation via toughness and cleanses and some gimmicks), but a badly designed one.

Toughness is always active and works in and out of shroud, reducing the damage you take for sure by a certain percentage. Vitality affects lifeforce so it too can always be a boon to you and increase your total health by a certain percentage. Neither is better than they would be on any other profession, so the answer to this thread is that it's your choice for what you want or what fits in your build.

Personally, I do not consider toughness to have a "secondary" benefit. Reducing shroud damage is still part of the primary benefit.

If toughness also reduced shroud skill cost, that would be different.

Primary: Vitality increases LF pool sizeSecondary: Vitality increases LF gain for all %LF gain mechanics.Tertiary: Some shroud skills have fixed LF cost rather than a percentage.Quaternary: Vitality increases the health buffer versus agony.

On the other hand, toughness is just awful outside of competitive modes and is not very rewarding for its investment there.Primary: Reduces damage taken out and in shroud.Negative: Does not reduce agony damage.Negative: Does not reduce LF cost for skills with fixed cost.Negative: Does not improve LF gain.Negative: Death Magic improves toughness but toughness does not improve Death Magic. Deadly Strength is the only trait to use toughness from equipment and it scales very, very poorly for giving up on crit damage.Negative: Toughness increases aggro on a profession without block, blink, or other immunity skills.

Invest in toughness only as a last resort because it is the single most unrewarding stat for Necromancer's. You can easily take Death Magic without having any toughness in your equipment.

Remember, though, that because of Necro's design, toughness may be required to survive in competitive modes because there are few ways to eat a burst from other professions.

Enjoy feeling painted into a corner by Necromancer's and Death Magic's design.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:Personally, I do not consider toughness to have a "secondary" benefit. Reducing shroud damage is still part of the primary benefit.

If toughness also reduced shroud skill cost, that would be different.

Primary: Vitality increases LF pool sizeSecondary: Vitality increases LF gain for all %LF gain mechanics.Tertiary: Some shroud skills have fixed LF cost rather than a percentage.Quaternary: Vitality increases the health buffer versus agony.

On the other hand, toughness is just awful outside of competitive modes and is not very rewarding for its investment there.Primary: Reduces damage taken out and in shroud.Negative: Does not reduce agony damage.Negative: Does not reduce LF cost for skills with fixed cost.Negative: Does not improve LF gain.Negative: Death Magic improves toughness but toughness does not improve Death Magic. Deadly Strength is the only trait to use toughness from equipment and it scales very, very poorly for giving up on crit damage.Negative: Toughness increases aggro on a profession without block, blink, or other immunity skills.

Invest in toughness only as a last resort because it is the single most unrewarding stat for Necromancer's. You can easily take Death Magic without having any toughness in your equipment.

Remember, though, that because of Necro's design, toughness may be required to survive in competitive modes because there are few ways to eat a burst from other professions.

Enjoy feeling painted into a corner by Necromancer's and Death Magic's design.

Just an FYI but agony is % health damage. Vit or toughness don't impact it.

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

10000 health - 10% = 9000 health.11000 health - 10% = 9900 health

Vitality helps vs agony while toughness does nothing because agony damage is not modified by toughness.

Think of it as another design issue like how boons are great in PvE because mobs do not corrupt or strip them while soft CC is nerfed by Defiance.

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

say that the toughness in your examplelets you take 10% less dmg.

The effective health left after one hit of 10%, so you have 9k health, is 9900. because you actually have 10% more health than what it looks like.the effective health remained the same as vitality. This 'example' is also terrible because it isn't based on real ingame figures so it doesn't even matter.

Vitality and toughness both have no impact on agony. Agony makes you heal for less and toughness gets u more effective health from heals compared to vit so technically toughness is better against it if you're incapable of keeping your fingers off the 6 skill or are receiving regen or some other kind of heal before the agony goes away.Agony is NOT a point here.

Also, i'd like to rewrite my earlier comment on the thread: toughness means your healing matters more (parasitic contagion, vampirism) since you have less health but take reduced damage. Your heals are effectively better and your effective health is increased by some percentage due to taking reduced damage at all times. Toughness is bypassed by condidmg so you need to clear condis faster than with vit.

Vitality adds health to shroud and your main base pool, increasing your total health by some percentage at all times.Vitality does NOT make your lf gain skills more effective, but with the scourge Espec your F skills have a set cost so the percentage gains are better with more vit. Toughness makes your barrier more worthwhile but unless you generate so much lf that you can spam all your skills or get more barrier than you would have juice in death/reaper shroud over a fight, vitality is better. Consider though that healing power, by increasing barrier AND health gain, lets toughness really shine, even on scourge (as long as you can generate the LF to get as much or more barrier than with a vit build).

Most importantly, remember that the notion of vitality increasing lf gain is not true. In reality, the benefit of toughness (healing is more impactful) doesn't apply due to the percentage based lifeforce gains, making it so vitality is as effective as toughness is for shroud but doesnt have the condi vulnerability of toughness.Furthermore i'd like to say that toughness is more effective on a necro or warrior than on other classes due to our base health. Vitality adds a set amount of HP based on the amount of points of it you got while toughness adds damage % reduction based on the amount of points of it you have. iirc it adds onto our (lowest possible) base armor. Therefore toughness is pretty massive on necros, but you should look at all the plusses and minuses for both stats in my post to find what you want to use.

There are far too many factors for all stats, situations and buffs. You just have to pick what's best for what super-specific situation or have to have some fun with your build and make it fit what you feel like you need.

It really depends, which necro spec you are playing.On core and reaper it doesn't matter much if you go for toughness or vitality.

On scourge, you might want both, as you are not having the dmg reduction from shroud.And shroud skills benefit from vitality.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Well Death Magic is in a much better spot than it used to be...

DM doesnt carry.. so its useless :}

@Rexts.8037 said:Death Magic trait lines are really dead.

I see what you did there.

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Well Death Magic is in a much better spot than it used to be...