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@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:There are several important things to know when talking about defense in Guild Wars 2.

The game tries to keep a fast pace in combat while making sure that active defense is rewarded more than passive defense (allegedly). This type of design choice is particularly noted with the Nerfs to Defy Pain on the Warrior some time ago, notably on the competitive modes, yet there are better options in PVE as well. However, the game does not like to provide much access to extremely powerful defensive skills. I'll pick on Warrior again just a little bit, but Shield Stance on the shield "5" is normally on a 25 second cool down for a 3-second guard. You're quite vulnerable for a whole 22 seconds before you can block for 3 seconds another time.

That said, there's a pretty good balance between choosing to dodge something or choosing to use a skill to evade it in some fashion to otherwise mitigate damage. However this particular concept differs greatly in methodology between PvE and the competitive modes at large. There are few
individual attacks
that you would consider dodging in PvE. Instead you would typically Dodge to avoid an AoE on the ground that you cannot run out of quickly enough. At least for me.

PvP & WvW are a whole other issue - there, a player needs to be recognizing the opposing players most dangerous moves. Typically you need to dodge someone's CC in order to avoid death by CC locking or just by the damage you'll take after being cc'd the first time at all. Unless you're fighting a champion in PVE, most of the mobs hits aren't going to be life or death. However in those competitive modes, literally every strike an opponent makes against you puts you precipitously close to defeat much faster.

Another thing to keep in mind in this conversation is the idea of sustain as well, although not specifically relating to the primary heal skill's activation. Many, but not all, builds have some method of keeping you in the fight without having to spend the time to cast your healing skill. It could even be bolstered by food that allows you to lifesteal or regenerate over time Etc. Time spent waiting to be healed is not necessarily a waste by any stretch, but it prolongs the combat, not shortens it.

As far as stats go, I feel like it depends greatly on the game of that you're playing. I'd write more, but its late. Maybe I'll check in tomorrow...

Most of this is true, however, it's a fallacy to distill all PvE into "you're fighting a single mob and dodge all of its slow, heavy hitting attacks" which is what I feel people are running with when acting like defensive stats are useless in PvE. This is clearly a caricature of PvE and not how most PvE combat actually occurs - certainly not when just doing stuff solo.

In reality, you are often chain-killing and fighting hordes at a time while taking a lot of damage, most of which it isn't possible to dodge, so you absorb it, boon up, heal through it, and kill as fast as possible (which dodging slows you down in doing). But if increasing your defensive stats improves your Time to die more than Precision/ferocity improves your time to kill (which is what this data reveals), there's a compelling case to be made that giving up a portion of the latter for some of the former is very effective even in PvE.

Sure, and I'd like to address that now since it's part and parcel of where I left off.

I'd like to go back to sustain for just a moment here because it is so much a part of this system. Traits like the Warrior's Might Makes Right (Strength): Gain health and endurance whenever you apply might to yourself. No internal cooldown.Healing: 133 (0.02)?Endurance Gained: 2

Allows players to cleave and sustain quite handily in a throng of mobs, it's got a good amount of use in WvW for me, especially coupled with Magebane Tether which pulses Might packets for its duration. It's not even part of a Specialization line identified as a "support" or "healing" line compared to how overt that theme is on Tactics. However, other professions do this as well.

Necromancer: Parasitic Contagion

A percentage of your condition damage heals you. (Healing will not occur while lifeforce replaces health.) That's for all damage done to all mobs/players you're currently harming with your damage. It is entirely possible to sustain by piling on to these offense oriented traits and abilities that allow you to heal as you fight, the ideal method, since you do not need to stop to heal. It is here that "no two professions are equal" is more of a factor and where you can benefit more from adding a bit of Vitality/Toughness to the mix. For example, Revenant heal skills are often contingent on interacting with damage or impairing conditions in some way, and they do not scale very well, Ventari being the outlier here. It's better to use Assassin's Annihilation: 1 second Internal Cooldown --- Siphon life from foes when hitting a foe from behind or the side, particularly if you want to try to sustain during a fight, though I hate the 1 second ICD and it really doesn't make sense when you compare it to something like Might Makes Right, but that's a whole other conversation about balance.

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@"Einlanzer.1627" said:Is it your opinion that bunker builds that use stats like Nomad or Minstrel work really well solo in PvE? Because that would be a surprise to me.Depends on what you want to achieve. They can do wonders for your survivability, but the downside is that their killing power is really low, so even small fights get extended till infinity. Considering that the fights in open world are generally not that difficult, offensive stats would obviously be worth more. Remember though that does not mean they are more effective - just more useful in a certain specific set of situations.

Notice also, that "being useful" was not what your post was about. It was purely about effectiveness and scaling of traits - and in this, defensive traits are as effective as offensive ones. They become ridiculously OP when pushed to extreme - it's just that both are OP in different categories.

You're trying to ask, who "works better": Usain Bolt, Shaquille O'Neal or Muhammad Ali.

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@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I've posted about this numerous times, but after doing a lot of research I've had some eye-openers.

"Damage scales more than Defense, so defensive stats are mostly useless."

This appears to be true on the surface, but actually isn't. Defense is only two stats that are weighted more or less equally, while (power) offense is three stats with distribution significantly weighted toward one of them (Power.)

So the real contest here is to look at Berserker's vs Soldier's and see what the tradeoff is in terms of damage and defense. This spreadsheet does exactly that:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xXxJl1yTzgVeeLtOdPpBk9nWyXmyhvJ1hGcEtnQ1H34/edit#gid=0

Berserker deals around 50% more damage than Soldiers, but has less than half the effective HP. Combining that with healing skills and dodging, this means that defensive stats are actually a lot more effective than people believe them to be. The key thing to remember is that you never want to sacrifice Power for defense unless you're full condi or playing a full support build in a group. But taking some Toughness/Vitality instead of Precison/Ferocity actually isn't a bad tradeoff even in PvE and especially for solo/open world builds. People love to say "get gud and dodge moar", but this is kind of a brainless meme. If you're playing solo in the open world and regularly engaging multiple mobs - you'll eat plenty of hits. Bolstering your defense even a little bit can help you maintain battlefield control and makes it much less likely you'll get downed. The other thing that people seem to forget is that, while mastering dodging is very important, it also interrupts your outgoing damage. This means there are a lot of circumstances where absorbing damage is more efficient than dodging. Vitality + Toughness allow you to get away with doing that a bit more.

This is why so many sets have Power primary. I think making a Berserker primary with some Soldier or Valkyrie pieces mixed in is probably the best way to play Power in both PvE and PvP in many cases (yes, better than Maruader's) - you sacrifice no Power while having a healthy mix of Precison, Ferocity, Vitality, and Toughness.You put something interesting points forward but for me this is all taking it out of a larger context. What plays into this is the choice of class your build as well. Some classes can boost certain stats for example and even though it's a meme it is true that this game has devaluated defensive stats in its core build up because it had to in order to accomplish their original goal of not having the trinity of heal, dps, tank. Of course later they brought their own version of a trinity back to facilitate raiding but overall the game is heavily reliant on dodging and having limitless combat resses.

So where I agree that choices do make a difference with stat choices, mostly this will be seen as irrelevant because you can dodge damage. And in fact you really have to because a lot of aoe damage is very lethal, even insta-kill damage. So what is the point of having more health if you can get one-shotted or the damage just overwhelms your defenses per definition? Same with Toughness. The big irony of Toughness is that it increases your aggro. So as much as Toughness doesn't allow you to tank generally it does make you the prime target for enemies. That's just bad in my view. You get the down side of being targeted without the proper defenses to deal with that...so dodge it is.

Now I will say that I have found a way to build a class more the way I like it. It's a guardian in celestial armor that I've been successfully using in open world content. The reason why it works is because I do have to possibility within my build to boost power and health so that my DPS is acceptable and, still combining it with some well placed dodges, I do notice that my character has more survivability. Particularly in fights with open world bosses and champions. The added reason for this class is how the skill sets are. Guardians do use a mix of direct and condition damage. So by using Celestial stats which boost almost all stats, none of those stat points are a loss and you do get a higher total of stats.

However, I use this specifically for Open world PvP and sometimes WvW and it works for me. I wouldn't suggest this for all classes for sure and I also have a second guardian in marauder stats and I use that one to compare. Different weapons also. So what I notice between the two is that the marauder set gives me a DPS boost that is noticeable but I also feel the difference in survivability. Essentially in short fights the marauder set is nicer but in longer fights I prefer having my celestial guardian. I did try berserker stats in the past but I didn't like that at all. I'm sure that in the meta that's what people prefer doing but I just don't like to have to rely on dodge so much cause that's boring to me since that's the case for all classes. At least with my mesmer I have some additional options to creat distance instantly so together with dodge I can call that a playstyle and that's how I keep things a bit more interesting for myself...because without that, all classes feel very much the same.

I remember vanilla and how berserker was already supreme pretty much from that start and that people would just go into dungeons doing the dodge, combat ress, auto-attack combo until the boss was dead. One boss I could actually stand at a place where the boss couldn't damage me and I just set my character on auto-attack and sat back drinking a cup of coffee while the boss was being killed. That specific situation aside, it's been a problem in this game from the start where we already saw that the classes had not been designed in a way that really created enough diversity because the stat sets were designed with specific classes in mind but that all failed because berserker made all of that irrelevant. And the problem lies therein that it was possible that that one set overruled them all.

Now currently there are a few sets that are quite viable depending on where you are or what you're doing but the core problem still exists and most stats sets are completely useless or superfluous in the game. I suspect there's a number that nobody or hardly anyone uses. For that reason they could easily take out at least half the stat sets that are there and just clean things up a bit. I don't see the point in offering stats sets that actually have no point. I suppose it's possible that all sets are used at least by somebody somewhere but in the overall scope of things I think they either need to make more of them useful or take a lot of them out that are just cluttering up things. I like having choice but the choices should at least make sense to some degree.

It goes without saying that people will have different views on a topic because we don't all like the same content or playstyles but I just have this feeling that there's a lot out there when it comes to stat sets that just has little to no value. And regardless of the method, I just think it would be a good thing to address that topic and make it better. At the same time I do realise that it's not a simple thing because all gearing is tied to content and classes and weapon choices all at the same time but I do feel it would be good for the game, at least from my point of view, to make some changes and because of all the connections, taking out some useless stat sets would be a start.

Coming back to your deliberations. I do think that it depends on the class, build and weapon choices to make a proper comparison and it also depends on what content is for. I do agree that defensive stats can make a difference but it all depends on what I just mentioned and that's missing in your post. What I will say is that you do need a significant boost in defensive stats to notice a difference and unlike my guardian examples I feel that the return on those is normally not as impactful as the gain in power would be. So I do understand that for most people it's silly to give up offensive stats for defensive ones.

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@Xervite.5493 said:Its a braindead meta where nobody looks at defensive stats. I remember looking for a normal open world build on youtube and guess what I find almost everywhere, full berserker with scholar rune. Cant blame players though the mobs in general are very easy they attack and then stand still for a second or two as is the case with most mmos. But if you look at a game like path of exiles defenses and resist are a must and a part of almost every meta build build. Why is that? Because the mobs are aggressive and relentless unlike simply hitting hard they gang up on you and keep at it.

Seeing how bad Defensive stats are makes me fearful of making heavy Defense Stat focused Ascended gear

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Xervite.5493 said:Its a braindead meta where nobody looks at defensive stats. I remember looking for a normal open world build on youtube and guess what I find almost everywhere, full berserker with scholar rune. Cant blame players though the mobs in general are very easy they attack and then stand still for a second or two as is the case with most mmos. But if you look at a game like path of exiles defenses and resist are a must and a part of almost every meta build build. Why is that? Because the mobs are aggressive and relentless unlike simply hitting hard they gang up on you and keep at it.

Seeing how bad Defensive stats are makes me fearful of making heavy Defense Stat focused Ascended gear

That's the thing though. Heavy defense stats (like soldiers and minstrels) are useful in wvw zerging and can have niche uses in raiding - so it really depends on the type of fight you want to pick.

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Plenty of stat types are used for all modes of the game. If you stack damage for some builds in the wrong content you will have hard time and be able to make nearly zero mistakes.

I have a mixture of stats I change all the time. I think that's also why legendary armor is worth the 1 year grind. I'd constantly be tweaking my armor combos, that shows a game has a healthy amount of strong combinations.

For example I'll usually run beserker weapon+trinkets and power/fer/stam on armor. If it's a build where I need to hit more crit then I'll replace some zerker with assassins etc. There are HEAPS of different defensive combos too for wvw/spvp, and remember lots of defense comes from talents and dodging.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Berserker deals around 50% more damage than Soldiers, but has less than half the effective HP. Combining that with healing skills and dodging, this means that defensive stats are actually a lot more effective than people believe them to be.People were telling you this each time you started a new thread, remember?

In every thread I was asking for theorycrafting on Soldiers vs Berserkers to try to gain clarity and everyone was willing to argue with me
without providing any evidence. I finally found it
, and yes, the people arguing that defensive stats are better than most players think were right. So, I suppose you could say I've switched sides. Congratulations.

The spreadsheet at the beginning of the thread doesn’t provide evidence though.

It's called data. Data = evidence.

Not necessarily. I can provide data that the world is flat, that doesn’t mean that it is. It’s also possible to take pieces of data and string together an assertion that isn’t true/accurate. Someone could take the damage difference between the stat sets, as well as the difference between HP, and then make an incorrect assertion about the two.

Stop being such a contrarian. It's really unbecoming. As usual, I don't even know what argument you're trying to make, and I suspect you don't either.

No. You're just refusing to make a counter argument.

In case things weren't clear, I was arguing against your assumption that all data is evidence and against your assertion in the following:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:So the real contest here is to look at Berserker's vs Soldier's and see what the tradeoff is in terms of damage and defense. This spreadsheet does exactly that:

Berserker deals around 50% more damage than Soldiers, but has less than half the effective HP. Combining that with healing skills and dodging, this means that defensive stats are actually a lot more effective than people believe them to be.

It's not an argument - let alone one worth countering. You literally drag me (and others) into this nonsense in every thread. Not indulging it this time.

I disagree, therefore your argument (what little there tries to be) is invalid.

Here you go: data is always evidence, it just isn't always enough to draw a conclusion. In this case, though, it is, because we're looking at simple data points and drawing a simple conclusion. Berserker's increases your offense by 50% over Soldiers, but Soldiers lets you take twice the amount of damage that Berserker's will. That means that Toughness + Vitality scales better for Defense than Precision + Ferocity does for offense.

But, how's this for something better - let's let Ayrilana turn this thread into a preposterous & abstract argument about what does or does not constitute evidence - a very typical Ayrilana contrarian tactic, and then act like I'm the one who did something wrong.

A player's HP and the damage that they do are unrelated; they're not even on the same scale. You're also completely ignoring the stats of what they're fighting.

Nice ad hominem. When you can't attack the argument, just attack the person.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Berserker deals around 50% more damage than Soldiers, but has less than half the effective HP. Combining that with healing skills and dodging, this means that defensive stats are actually a lot more effective than people believe them to be.People were telling you this each time you started a new thread, remember?

In every thread I was asking for theorycrafting on Soldiers vs Berserkers to try to gain clarity and everyone was willing to argue with me
without providing any evidence. I finally found it
, and yes, the people arguing that defensive stats are better than most players think were right. So, I suppose you could say I've switched sides. Congratulations.

The spreadsheet at the beginning of the thread doesn’t provide evidence though.

It's called data. Data = evidence.

Not necessarily. I can provide data that the world is flat, that doesn’t mean that it is. It’s also possible to take pieces of data and string together an assertion that isn’t true/accurate. Someone could take the damage difference between the stat sets, as well as the difference between HP, and then make an incorrect assertion about the two.

Stop being such a contrarian. It's really unbecoming. As usual, I don't even know what argument you're trying to make, and I suspect you don't either.

No. You're just refusing to make a counter argument.

In case things weren't clear, I was arguing against your assumption that all data is evidence and against your assertion in the following:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:So the real contest here is to look at Berserker's vs Soldier's and see what the tradeoff is in terms of damage and defense. This spreadsheet does exactly that:

Berserker deals around 50% more damage than Soldiers, but has less than half the effective HP. Combining that with healing skills and dodging, this means that defensive stats are actually a lot more effective than people believe them to be.

It's not an argument - let alone one worth countering. You literally drag me (and others) into this nonsense in every thread. Not indulging it this time.

I disagree, therefore your argument (what little there tries to be) is invalid.

Here you go: data is always evidence, it just isn't always enough to draw a conclusion. In this case, though, it is, because we're looking at simple data points and drawing a simple conclusion. Berserker's increases your offense by 50% over Soldiers, but Soldiers lets you take twice the amount of damage that Berserker's will. That means that Toughness + Vitality scales better for Defense than Precision + Ferocity does for offense.

But, how's this for something better - let's let Ayrilana turn this thread into a preposterous & abstract argument about what does or does not constitute evidence - a very typical Ayrilana contrarian tactic, and then act like I'm the one who did something wrong.

A player's HP and the damage that they do are unrelated; they're not even on the same scale. You're also completely ignoring the stats of what they're fighting.

Nice ad hominem. When you can't attack the argument, just attack the person.

HP and Damage are inherently related as the first exists solely to allow for the other.

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To be real I run more tanky type builds on the classes I play the most. (Ranger, Warrior, Rev, necromancer) And I almost always can dominate three or more of the glassy burst meta-cheese fiends. The only way they can actually out-manuver and outright just explode me is if they are some gimicky mess like mirage or the one shot thief who even though I have plenty of tools to stay in the fight just blows me up no issue (Typically before I can even react, which is because its just nothing but a gimicky mess.)

They need to make a round of Tank base E-specs more about mitigation, cc and outlasting your opponent and make it punishing for someone to come at you glassy but also make it so your strength scales off your defenses. (This way those of us who like playing tanks, can without having to rely on some bullshit shenanigans or the fact that we sometimes just don't have the tools to deal with specific bs I.E one shot messmers/thieves.)

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I quit reading after awhile, so sorry if this has been covered, but the OP is saying something that I discovered roughly 5-6 years ago. The fact is that, for any problem with a finite perimeter, the most efficient shape is a square where each side is equal length. A balance of offense and defense is going to, in a vacuum, be the most efficient way to build your character. Although I would argue that running full Marauder is the best option, because it has more total stats overall and sacrifices very little damage for a comparatively large amount of health.

In a vacuum... that's where the problem is. See, the game isn't "in a vacuum." Among the other things I discovered are the reasons why you should always run glass:

(1): You don't need the extra defenses. All classes were designed to have sufficient health and armor to survive in the game. I don't just mean with tactics and active mitigation. I mean straight up face tanking enemies. Even on my thief, who sits at 11k health, I will straight up face tank vet mobs that I'm fighting, because I will kill them much sooner than they will ever kill me. For the entirety of core Tyria, the vast majority of HoT, and most of PoF, you don't even need to dodge. You can just run in swinging, and win. In the cases where you can't do that, by and large you can't just run in while wearing PVT gear, either. There are champions that will utterly blow you away, no matter what gear set you're wearing.

(2): You make more money. The fact is that berserker gear kills things the fastest, which gives you loot faster, which lets you do more things that give you even more loot. There isn't a single dungeon speed-run that used soldier gear. No, face-tanking hits in soldiers is not faster than avoiding them/killing things faster with berserkers. Whether you're in the overworld, or in fractals, you'll want things dead as fast as possible.

(3): Things in this game are on a timer. Sometimes it is a hard timer, like a clock on the event. Sometimes it is a soft timer, like trying to prevent enemies from killing protected NPCs. Sometimes it is an overworld timer, like trying to complete an event before another event starts on a different map. Either way, you're on a clock, so it is beneficial to be able to do as much damage as possible. Even in events themselves, spawns are frequently set on a timer, so it is more beneficial to kill things faster than it is to be durable. We have the rally mechanic in this game, and their degenerating health bar is itself another timer. It is better to kill things faster for your teammates as well. If an enemy mob is attacking your teammate and not you, that is yet another timer in the teammate's health. Again, it is better to kill that mob faster.

(4): Active defenses are made up of far more than just dodging. In reality, the active defenses are more about using the right skills and having proper tactics. If you have the right tactics, you don't need to dodge. Shields, aegis, invulnerability skills, blind fields, long duration CC, ranged burst, massive healing skills, etc. Every class has access to these, and can use them for great effect while sacrificing little to no DPS. For example, on my thief again I use Pistol Whip when fighting multiple enemies in close range. Pistol whip is a stun + evasion skill which also does a lot of damage. By spamming this skill under quickness (deadeye, btw), I am able to avoid most damage while obliterating the enemies, no dodging required. Likewise, if things get too hot I can just pop a single Black Powder, to blind all of the enemies and render them helpless. Against a really strong enemy, I go into full evasion tank mode and time my pistol whips / flanking strikes to avoid their attacks directly, letting me survive endlessly against the most lethal of blows.

Now, the thief is a strong example, because they can blind and dodge forever. But this applies to all classes. Knowing how to fight is the important part, so if you're aware of what the enemy does and how they do it, then it is easy to win.

(5): Glass cannons are more flexible when it comes to scaling defense and offense. You probably noticed that there is A LOT of defensive traits, and A LOT of defensive utilities, and A LOT of defensive weapons and tactics. We tend to call berserker based builds "glass cannons", but they're really not. If you end up in a situation where more defenses are necessary, you can swap out utilities or traits for more defense. For example, on my Weaver build I tend to run Arcane Shield, which while not being part of the super-leet meta DPS build is nonetheless really useful as a shield and a stun break. If I'm in a really dicey area, I'll swap Superior Elements for Master's Fortitude for a quick health boost. Though it hasn't happened yet, I can also swap to bolstered elements and equip stone resonance for pulsing barrier. All of this is a lot of extra defense, but I'm still wearing Berserker Gear.

The opposite is not true for Soldiers. See, Berserker gear allows for peak performance in damage, but can easily change tactics to become incredibly durable through active defenses. But Soldiers doesn't allow for peak performance. You can't change tactics to do more damage. Once you're face-tanking an enemy while using all DPS traits/utilities... that's it. If you need more damage for some reason, you aren't going to get it. This puts a hard limit on the performance of Soldiers. Those passive defenses are only useful under the presumption that you will be taking lethal damage without them, and that all attempts to avoid damage are inferior to just being more durable at 66% damage output, and only in situations where it is necessary to take the damage instead of avoiding or mitigating it through other means. That just doesn't happen.


If we're talking about PVP and WvW, I would almost never recommend full berserker, precisely because it isn't an efficient distribution. But PVE is a whole different matter. You don't get quickly ambushed, you aren't under constant high damage from enemies, enemies generally don't run away or cleanse disabling conditions. If you're in PVE, you're going to want to build for the most damage possible, whether that is Berserker, Viper, or Griever. It will make you more money in the long run, everyone around you will love you for your damage, and also it is quite fun to blow everything up like a walking agent of death.

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In Open World, actually it does make sense to not go full damage since mobs die so fast anyways and you're looking to just get through the area. But anything works in pve, especially since mounts. There is no point in going meta raid builds because everything is dead before you can even do a rotation.

It is also reasonable to bring a bunker (say condi bunker) to solo instances, but I doubt that's the topic here.

In content like fractals, it makes no sense because stuff will instantly kill you anyways. For example, if you fail to destroy your echo vs Siax in CM, then you're wiping your group.(well, maybe you can take "rebound", but that's not a stat), and your extra tankiness is just being selfish while contributing nothing to the group.

Let's skip the dodging meme and assume nobody knows has to dodge. There are still many, many ways to bolster your survivability and essentially facetank bosses while people stay in damage gear. For example, a necro could sacrifice some damage to take blood magic to quickly res his allies. But the sacrifice can still use zerker gear and still contribute to the group as a whole. Guardians and mesmers can take blocks for the group. Guardians and Renegades also offer protection, which is the #1 way of surviving most enemies anyways.

I mean, we do have something called Arcdps. If anyone can produce something where facetanking a boss results in more overall damage, then it should be pretty easy to display.

In WvW; this is true that you can be better off mixing stats. That's always been the case.

One point that really is missing is that burst damage is key to most fights in the game, both against enemies and players. The ability to defend vs burst via abilities and also deliver quick burst to enemies is usually what really matters. In general, outside of mismatches, nobody ever dies in a sustained fight where you hit 1 vs the other player. In these cases, the effect of defensive gear is greatly reduced though certainly it makes sense to be able to survive some burst with it.

But then again I run minstrels as healer in fractals kek.

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@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:I quit reading after awhile, so sorry if this has been covered, but the OP is saying something that I discovered roughly 5-6 years ago. The fact is that, for any problem with a finite perimeter, the most efficient shape is a square where each side is equal length. A balance of offense and defense is going to, in a vacuum, be the most efficient way to build your character. Although I would argue that running full Marauder is the best option, because it has more total stats overall and sacrifices very little damage for a comparatively large amount of health.

In a vacuum... that's where the problem is. See, the game isn't "in a vacuum." Among the other things I discovered are the reasons why you should always run glass:

(1): You don't need the extra defenses. All classes were designed to have sufficient health and armor to survive in the game. I don't just mean with tactics and active mitigation. I mean straight up face tanking enemies. Even on my thief, who sits at 11k health, I will straight up face tank vet mobs that I'm fighting, because I will kill them much sooner than they will ever kill me. For the entirety of core Tyria, the vast majority of HoT, and most of PoF, you don't even need to dodge. You can just run in swinging, and win. In the cases where you can't do that, by and large you can't just run in while wearing PVT gear, either. There are champions that will utterly blow you away, no matter what gear set you're wearing.

(2): You make more money. The fact is that berserker gear kills things the fastest, which gives you loot faster, which lets you do more things that give you even more loot. There isn't a single dungeon speed-run that used soldier gear. No, face-tanking hits in soldiers is not faster than avoiding them/killing things faster with berserkers. Whether you're in the overworld, or in fractals, you'll want things dead as fast as possible.

(3): Things in this game are on a timer. Sometimes it is a hard timer, like a clock on the event. Sometimes it is a soft timer, like trying to prevent enemies from killing protected NPCs. Sometimes it is an overworld timer, like trying to complete an event before another event starts on a different map. Either way, you're on a clock, so it is beneficial to be able to do as much damage as possible. Even in events themselves, spawns are frequently set on a timer, so it is more beneficial to kill things faster than it is to be durable. We have the rally mechanic in this game, and their degenerating health bar is itself another timer. It is better to kill things faster for your teammates as well. If an enemy mob is attacking your teammate and not you, that is yet another timer in the teammate's health. Again, it is better to kill that mob faster.

(4): Active defenses are made up of far more than just dodging. In reality, the active defenses are more about using the right skills and having proper tactics. If you have the right tactics, you don't need to dodge. Shields, aegis, invulnerability skills, blind fields, long duration CC, ranged burst, massive healing skills, etc. Every class has access to these, and can use them for great effect while sacrificing little to no DPS. For example, on my thief again I use Pistol Whip when fighting multiple enemies in close range. Pistol whip is a stun + evasion skill which also does a lot of damage. By spamming this skill under quickness (deadeye, btw), I am able to avoid most damage while obliterating the enemies, no dodging required. Likewise, if things get too hot I can just pop a single Black Powder, to blind all of the enemies and render them helpless. Against a really strong enemy, I go into full evasion tank mode and time my pistol whips / flanking strikes to avoid their attacks directly, letting me survive endlessly against the most lethal of blows.

Now, the thief is a strong example, because they can blind and dodge forever. But this applies to all classes. Knowing how to fight is the important part, so if you're aware of what the enemy does and how they do it, then it is easy to win.

(5): Glass cannons are more flexible when it comes to scaling defense and offense. You probably noticed that there is A LOT of defensive traits, and A LOT of defensive utilities, and A LOT of defensive weapons and tactics. We tend to call berserker based builds "glass cannons", but they're really not. If you end up in a situation where more defenses are necessary, you can swap out utilities or traits for more defense. For example, on my Weaver build I tend to run Arcane Shield, which while not being part of the super-leet meta DPS build is nonetheless really useful as a shield and a stun break. If I'm in a really dicey area, I'll swap Superior Elements for Master's Fortitude for a quick health boost. Though it hasn't happened yet, I can also swap to bolstered elements and equip stone resonance for pulsing barrier. All of this is a lot of extra defense, but I'm still wearing Berserker Gear.

The opposite is not true for Soldiers. See, Berserker gear allows for peak performance in damage, but can easily change tactics to become incredibly durable through active defenses. But Soldiers doesn't allow for peak performance. You can't change tactics to do more damage. Once you're face-tanking an enemy while using all DPS traits/utilities... that's it. If you need more damage for some reason, you aren't going to get it. This puts a hard limit on the performance of Soldiers. Those passive defenses are only useful under the presumption that you will be taking lethal damage without them, and that all attempts to avoid damage are inferior to just being more durable at 66% damage output, and only in situations where it is necessary to take the damage instead of avoiding or mitigating it through other means. That just doesn't happen.


If we're talking about PVP and WvW, I would almost never recommend full berserker, precisely because it isn't an efficient distribution. But PVE is a whole different matter. You don't get quickly ambushed, you aren't under constant high damage from enemies, enemies generally don't run away or cleanse disabling conditions. If you're in PVE, you're going to want to build for the most damage possible, whether that is Berserker, Viper, or Griever. It will make you more money in the long run, everyone around you will love you for your damage, and also it is quite fun to blow everything up like a walking agent of death.

So, you never die or get downed in PvE running full glass? You must be amazing, or farming Queensdale and fighting one enemy at a time. Also, what you said about utility options being all defense is completely untrue. I recently swtiched my Revenant build to one that uses Rolling Mists with high Fury uptime, which means that I hit the crit cap with relatively little Precision, which means that those extra points are much better spent on Vitality or Toughness.

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:I quit reading after awhile, so sorry if this has been covered, but the OP is saying something that I discovered roughly 5-6 years ago. The fact is that, for any problem with a finite perimeter, the most efficient shape is a square where each side is equal length. A balance of offense and defense is going to, in a vacuum, be the most efficient way to build your character. Although I would argue that running full Marauder is the best option, because it has more total stats overall and sacrifices very little damage for a comparatively large amount of health.

In a vacuum... that's where the problem is. See, the game isn't "in a vacuum." Among the other things I discovered are the reasons why you should always run glass:

(1): You don't need the extra defenses. All classes were designed to have sufficient health and armor to survive in the game. I don't just mean with tactics and active mitigation. I mean straight up face tanking enemies. Even on my thief, who sits at 11k health, I will straight up face tank vet mobs that I'm fighting, because I will kill them much sooner than they will ever kill me. For the entirety of core Tyria, the vast majority of HoT, and most of PoF, you don't even need to dodge. You can just run in swinging, and win. In the cases where you can't do that, by and large you can't just run in while wearing PVT gear, either. There are champions that will utterly blow you away, no matter what gear set you're wearing.

(2): You make more money. The fact is that berserker gear kills things the fastest, which gives you loot faster, which lets you do more things that give you even more loot. There isn't a single dungeon speed-run that used soldier gear. No, face-tanking hits in soldiers is not faster than avoiding them/killing things faster with berserkers. Whether you're in the overworld, or in fractals, you'll want things dead as fast as possible.

(3): Things in this game are on a timer. Sometimes it is a hard timer, like a clock on the event. Sometimes it is a soft timer, like trying to prevent enemies from killing protected NPCs. Sometimes it is an overworld timer, like trying to complete an event before another event starts on a different map. Either way, you're on a clock, so it is beneficial to be able to do as much damage as possible. Even in events themselves, spawns are frequently set on a timer, so it is more beneficial to kill things faster than it is to be durable. We have the rally mechanic in this game, and their degenerating health bar is itself another timer. It is better to kill things faster for your teammates as well. If an enemy mob is attacking your teammate and not you, that is yet another timer in the teammate's health. Again, it is better to kill that mob faster.

(4): Active defenses are made up of far more than just dodging. In reality, the active defenses are more about using the right skills and having proper tactics. If you have the right tactics, you don't need to dodge. Shields, aegis, invulnerability skills, blind fields, long duration CC, ranged burst, massive healing skills, etc. Every class has access to these, and can use them for great effect while sacrificing little to no DPS. For example, on my thief again I use Pistol Whip when fighting multiple enemies in close range. Pistol whip is a stun + evasion skill which also does a lot of damage. By spamming this skill under quickness (deadeye, btw), I am able to avoid most damage while obliterating the enemies, no dodging required. Likewise, if things get too hot I can just pop a single Black Powder, to blind all of the enemies and render them helpless. Against a really strong enemy, I go into full evasion tank mode and time my pistol whips / flanking strikes to avoid their attacks directly, letting me survive endlessly against the most lethal of blows.

Now, the thief is a strong example, because they can blind and dodge forever. But this applies to all classes. Knowing how to fight is the important part, so if you're aware of what the enemy does and how they do it, then it is easy to win.

(5): Glass cannons are more flexible when it comes to scaling defense and offense. You probably noticed that there is A LOT of defensive traits, and A LOT of defensive utilities, and A LOT of defensive weapons and tactics. We tend to call berserker based builds "glass cannons", but they're really not. If you end up in a situation where more defenses are necessary, you can swap out utilities or traits for more defense. For example, on my Weaver build I tend to run Arcane Shield, which while not being part of the super-leet meta DPS build is nonetheless really useful as a shield and a stun break. If I'm in a really dicey area, I'll swap Superior Elements for Master's Fortitude for a quick health boost. Though it hasn't happened yet, I can also swap to bolstered elements and equip stone resonance for pulsing barrier. All of this is a lot of extra defense, but I'm still wearing Berserker Gear.

The opposite is not true for Soldiers. See, Berserker gear allows for peak performance in damage, but can easily change tactics to become incredibly durable through active defenses. But Soldiers doesn't allow for peak performance. You can't change tactics to do more damage. Once you're face-tanking an enemy while using all DPS traits/utilities... that's it. If you need more damage for some reason, you aren't going to get it. This puts a hard limit on the performance of Soldiers. Those passive defenses are only useful under the presumption that you will be taking lethal damage without them, and that all attempts to avoid damage are inferior to just being more durable at 66% damage output, and only in situations where it is necessary to take the damage instead of avoiding or mitigating it through other means. That just doesn't happen.

If we're talking about PVP and WvW, I would almost never recommend full berserker, precisely because it isn't an efficient distribution. But PVE is a whole different matter. You don't get quickly ambushed, you aren't under constant high damage from enemies, enemies generally don't run away or cleanse disabling conditions. If you're in PVE, you're going to want to build for the most damage possible, whether that is Berserker, Viper, or Griever. It will make you more money in the long run, everyone around you will love you for your damage, and also it is quite fun to blow everything up like a walking agent of death.

So, you never die or get downed in PvE running full glass? You must be amazing.

On rare occasion I do. But, then again, I've also been downed and died while wearing full PVT gear in vanilla GW2. So really, it is a bad metric to measure how good the gear is.

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Also there's this little gem:

"The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore."-Mike Z - https://pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring

This says a lot about the range of player capabilities and I continue to point this out wherever I can. Player performance means a lot, and until there's a reason to perform well, people likely won't push to any sort of "bar". For lack of a better phrase, "sloppy" or "unrefined" playstyles, builds, and players will have no reason to buckle up and hit something with 100% of their attention span.

This isn't everyone, and I hope it's not as flippant as it looks, but I know a lot of people aren't here because the combat system is neat and offers a lot, but instead because the combat with PvE mobs doesn't demand much from them. It's cool for them to have their cake and eat it too, but I consider myself to be pretty capable at the game. I'll die in PvP or WvW many times more often than I will ever die in hardest fights in open world PvE that aren't mechanical gotcha traps.

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@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:Also there's this little gem:

"The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore."-Mike Z - https://pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring

This says a lot about the range of player capabilities and I continue to point this out wherever I can. Player performance means a lot, and until there's a reason to perform well, people likely won't push to any sort of "bar". For lack of a better phrase, "sloppy" or "unrefined" playstyles, builds, and players will have no reason to buckle up and hit something with 100% of their attention span.

This isn't everyone, and I hope it's not as flippant as it looks, but I know a lot of people aren't here because the combat system is neat and offers a lot, but instead because the combat with PvE mobs doesn't demand much from them. It's cool for them to have their cake and eat it too, but I consider myself to be pretty capable at the game. I'll die in PvP or WvW many times more often than I will ever die in hardest fights in open world PvE that aren't mechanical gotcha traps.

This seems like a massive embellishment to me, but, regardless a lot of this is tied as much if not more to build selections and party comps than it is to player skill. Also, PvE combat isn't all easy. Some of it is and some of it isn't. Story instances in particular tend to be punishing in their difficulty.

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:Also there's this little gem:

"The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore."
-Mike Z -

This says a lot about the range of player capabilities and I continue to point this out wherever I can. Player performance means a lot, and until there's a reason to perform well, people likely won't push to any sort of "bar". For lack of a better phrase, "sloppy" or "unrefined" playstyles, builds, and players will have no reason to buckle up and hit something with 100% of their attention span.

This isn't everyone, and I hope it's not as flippant as it looks, but I know a lot of people aren't here because the combat system is neat and offers a lot, but instead because the combat with PvE mobs doesn't demand much from them. It's cool for them to have their cake and eat it too, but I consider myself to be pretty capable at the game. I'll die in PvP or WvW many times more often than I will ever die in hardest fights in open world PvE that aren't mechanical gotcha traps.

This seems like a massive embellishment to me, but, regardless a lot of this is tied as much if not more to build selections and party comps than it is to player skill. Also, PvE combat isn't all easy. Some of it is and some of it isn't. Story instances in particular tend to be punishing in their difficulty.

What precisely appears to be the embellishment here? If anyone has the ability to measure player metrics it's Anet. They are rarely that open about anything concerning player data, and that is very much true. You can choose to ignore it, but at the very least this is an admission of their awareness that the discrepancy between player skill exists.

I have a lot of off-meta builds that I run because they're at the very least more interesting or fun than other builds and it doesnt hamper my ability to do things in the game.

As far as PvE goes, as far as I'm concerned, it's incredibly easy. Story instances to me are the most egregious in their lack of difficulty. The last time I was surprised about a story instance was the notorious Eater of Souls in PoF that everyone complained about. I'll admit that I was surprised, but after I saw what was happening I just changed my skills and my weapon to accommodate for is break bar and it was all over.

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:But taking some Toughness/Vitality instead of Precison/Ferocity actually isn't a bad tradeoff even in PvE and especially for solo/open world builds. People love to say "get gud and dodge moar", but this is kind of a brainless meme. If you're playing solo in the open world and regularly engaging multiple mobs - you'll eat plenty of hits. Bolstering your defense even a little bit can help you maintain battlefield control and makes it much less likely you'll get downed. The other thing that people seem to forget is that, while mastering dodging is very important, it also interrupts your outgoing damage. This means there are a lot of circumstances where absorbing damage is more efficient than dodging. Vitality + Toughness allow you to get away with doing that a bit more.

Have to say I disagree greatly with that conclusion, and I see taking defensive stats as one of the biggest mistakes less proficient players make, which ends up making the game a lot more difficult for them.

The best defense in open world/pve is Dodges, active defenses like Aegis/block in general and maybe most importantly, CC (especially pulling mobs together), which is gravely overlooked be newer/less proficient players.

Literally 95% of mobs in the open world you can burst down without taking a single hit by combining high damage with chaining CC's.The more you reduce your damage by investing into defensive stats, the longer fights take, the more damage you take.

Even most story bosses die in literally 10 seconds with the right build and enough damage, barely able to hit you a single time. For the few fights that do take longer regardless, on merit of HP, dodging and and some well timed blocks/aegis are more than enough. But even there, the most important part is breaking breakbars or chain CC'ing should there be no breakbars.In addition, even if there is significant pressure, boons like Protection generally come at much less investment than building up tons of Toughness, and scale really well with full damage builds, considering the percentile reduction it provides. Same goes for mechanical interaction like reflects or projectile destruction against conditional pressure in form of projectiles.

Especially precision you don't want to trade in for defensive stats, as maxing out 100% crit chance is one of the most crucial steps for any open world/solo build (together with maintaining 25 Might and Vulnerability).

TL:DR;Toughness is the worst stat to invest in. Vitality can have some uses, especially with stat sets like Marauder, mainly as it comes in tandem with high precision, helping in maxing out crit chance.Otherwise, relying on CC and active defenses, as well as mechanical support like Boons or Reflects, which you can generally access with much less investment (as in, damage loss), are much better tools than investing in Defense stats, which provide very low value and in fact cause you to actually take more damage rather than mitigate any, simply due to slowing you down and so giving mobs more opportunities to hit you.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:So, you never die or get downed in PvE running full glass?

If nothing ever hits you, it's hard to ever go down. For the few cases where you do get hit, it's better to just pack some resustain, rather than investing in the ability to take slightly more damage, which you will then take more often due to dealing less damage, which then means you need to invest into more sustain, cutting into your damage even further, which leads to taking even more damage..

Defensive stats are a downward spiral into being less effective across the board.

Hydras are a good example of this, as with enough damage they actually perma CC themselves upon losing a head, and you can kill them in 5 seconds without them getting a single hit in on you.If you have build for defensive stats instead, you won't hit those damage threshholds, and suddenly take hits that make up 50-80% of your HP, as well as potentially CC'ing you with knockdowns.Suddenly a 5 second fight you exit with 100% HP, turns into a tough mob and an extended fight in which you constantly need to resustain or maybe even get downed in.

Damage + CC + Sustain or active mitigation will pretty much always outperform any combination that includes passive Mitigation.

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SO!

I've been reading this thread for a while. Haven't said anything until now mainly because I didn't have time (and that I'm often responding on a phone unless it's time to get serious) but also because I felt there wasn't much to say, but as more and more comments came in, it feels like the original guidance of the post is being swallowed more and more. But I think it's 'cause there's not much to talk about regarding it.

For what it's worth, I think the spreadsheet's pretty neat! And oddly enough, for as long as I've been playing, I never looked at the defensive stats working together as a whole as much as the direct damage stats do, and for me, it's made me expand my build experimenting even further. The purpose of this comparison is to learn something. That's... really it. You pretty much nod and move on, and since there isn't much to say in that regard (unfortunately), a lot of posts have come around to "explain" why such and such isn't necessary due to majority situations xyz. And, well, the posts are right, but so what? @Einlanzer.1627 wasn't asking about those and I'm pretty sure he knows that in fact, what with how things are written in a generalized manner in the opening post, but to perpetuate discussion, counter points to situations xyz in the form of abc have been brought forth, and the conflicts begin. Nonetheless, every situation is different so exceptions are unavoidable. Off the top of my head:

• Pretty much any encounter versus a normal or veteran mob due to their low health favors burst damage. This should be a given—not even sure why it must be brought up—and leans heavily in favor of a player's overwhelming skill usage and speed / mobility compared to a mob attacking every two seconds.• For PvE, when soloing, the vast majority of encounters you can get by with full glass. But in those rare events you can't, it shows. And it shows HARD. Thing is, all it takes to overcome such things in PvE is to ... not solo it, which goes right back to the glass preference again.• Anything that's not completely immune to soft or hard CC, as you'll want to do as much punishment as you can during its vulnerability periods, such situations favor damage.• All classes will have their differences which will shift the balance of encounters one way or another; i.e. Thief can go full glass with plenty of evades (and taken up to eleven with Daredevil) AND has Invigorating Precision, where it'll fill its health back up with the more crits you dish out. Because of the low health pool of thief, this is very useful. Guardian and Warrior can be active defense monsters; Revenant passive mitigation monster, etc.• Competitive play is by its nature an equalizer of offense and defense. Nothing to really argue about there.• In group play, you'll have others to contribute to the overall effectiveness of a team. All you have to do defensively, however you go about it, is make sure you don't get one shot, and your supports will do the rest.

And ... so on and so forth.

So, what's the answer to how much defense you should bring to complement how much offense you bring to encounters? Who knows? Too many variables. And sure, going damage is better in the majority of situations, but that's not the topic (obligatory covering of that territory complete!). This here, the spreadsheet, is just a deduction on stat effectiveness in order to help out with attribute investment options for one's own decisions. Nothing more.

EDIT: Autocorrect typos and some swap-arounds.

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@Asum.4960 said:Literally 95% of mobs in the open world you can burst down without taking a single hit by combining high damage with chaining CC's.The more you reduce your damage by investing into defensive stats, the longer fights take, the more damage you take.

While I agree with your last sentence, I disagree with the first.It is easy to quickly burst down one or two melee mobs. With some aoe cc, you can even go up to 5. Beyond this number, you reach your skill target cap and it becomes more difficult to kite without beeing hit.On top of that, you will face range attack, range aoe spells, not to mention cc, cripple, immo, chill.Let's take a simple example, shall we? Barradin's crypt, 2nd veteran calls 5 archers to help him. Last one is a mage with many ranged allies.Guess what? Many die there or are downed even with elite spe.

It's a lot more difficult to handle ranged mobs especially when they have aoe and conditions that target movement ability.Now, if you play a squishy berserker profession like elementalist, you can go down in no time.

I have played these examples in tanky gear and it was easy. Sure longer to kill, but I could outheal their damage.I have also experienced your last sentence : my tanky character was not enough durable and die in situations where a berserker gear could have done relatively easily.

Lastly, when you solo champion in open world, one mistake in berserker can downed you and then it's over. It is especially difficult if it can ranged you to death.

I would still prefer offensive gear but I don't underestimate defensive one.

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@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Asum.4960 said:Literally 95% of mobs in the open world you can burst down without taking a single hit by combining high damage with chaining CC's.The more you reduce your damage by investing into defensive stats, the longer fights take, the more damage you take.

While I agree with your last sentence, I disagree with the first.It is easy to quickly burst down one or two melee mobs. With some aoe cc, you can even go up to 5. Beyond this number, you reach your skill target cap and it becomes more difficult to kite without beeing hit.On top of that, you will face range attack, range aoe spells, not to mention cc, cripple, immo, chill.Let's take a simple example, shall we? Barradin's crypt, 2nd veteran calls 5 archers to help him. Last one is a mage with many ranged allies.Guess what? Many die there or are downed even with elite spe.

It's a lot more difficult to handle ranged mobs especially when they have aoe and conditions that target movement ability.Now, if you play a squishy berserker profession like elementalist, you can go down in no time.

I have played these examples in tanky gear and it was easy. Sure longer to kill, but I could outheal their damage.I have also experienced your last sentence : my tanky character was not enough durable and die in situations where a berserker gear could have done relatively easily.

Lastly, when you solo champion in open world, one mistake in berserker can downed you and then it's over. It is especially difficult if it can ranged you to death.

I would still prefer offensive gear but I don't underestimate defensive one.

I really don't understand how it is so many people come into these threads and act like you can go through PvE without ever getting hit. I get hit all the time and I'm sure I'm not terrible at the game. In fact, when I'm with a group in a zerg I see other people getting hit and going down all the time, usually more than I do. So I know it's not the norm to just coast through PvE avoiding all damage through active defense. The idea is quite preposterous.

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@Konrad Curze.5130 said:the problem is that mobs in this game do absolutly rdiculous amounts of damage. 5k autos with zero windup nor animation, oneshots with fast animations that get easily covered with other player's effects so you cant see the visual clues

stacking defense is useless because even if you reduce their damage by 30%, 70% of TOO MUCH is still TOO MUCH. thats why you will always, always be better off killing the mobs as fast as possible so they dont even get to attack you

Try any class(like berserk) that can focus on deal condition damage and use full trailblazer build, then go to bloodline fend to face Jade Boss. You'll see the difference.

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PVT has always been a solid option in PvE whenever time constraints are not a factor. (Either intrinsic like raids, or self-imposed like "speed runs".) In group play, having one character able to pick the overconfident glass back up, is very useful. The game does seem to be increasingly focused on DPS though.

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There are still a lot of people here missing the point, unfortunately. The point is simple:

Perception - Offense scales way higher than defense, so offensive stacking is necessary and defensive stats are useless (in PvE)Reality - Power scales the most of any attribute, but Toughness and Vitality scale defense a lot more than Precision and Ferocity scale offense

Going from 1000 to 2000 power increases your damage output by 2.0 x
Going from 1000 to 2000 precision + 1000 ferocity combined increases your damage output by about 1.5x.Going from 1000 to 2000 Toughness and Vitality combined increases your defense by 2.2 to 2.9 x depending on class

Observation - Precision + Ferocity are not necessary to be effective with a power-based build. They are utility options, just as Vitality, Toughness, Expertise, Concentration, and Condition damage are. Vitality and Toughness are potentially useful even in PvE because they increase your TTL by more than the loss of TTK from not using Precision and Ferocity.

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:There are still a lot of people here missing the point, unfortunately. The point is simple:

Perception - Offense scales way higher than defense, so offensive stacking is necessary and defensive stats are useless (in PvE)

That's not the reason defence is useless in pve. It does not become the reason for defence being useless in pve no matter how often you keep repeating this nosense.

Defensive stats are useless in pve because they are simply not needed. You can splash them in if you need a crutch to support your bad gameplay. That does not change the fact that they are simply not needed.

Most classes gain way better defence via traits and skills rather than gear. Changing the build would often make a far bigger difference than splashing in defensive stats. Not to mention that once you grow accustomed and more skilled at your class, you can change traits and skills free of charge. Where as you are stuck with shitty defensive stats on all gear sub ascended, and ascended you need to reforge at a cost too.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Reality - Power scales the most of any attribute, but Toughness and Vitality scale defense a lot more than Precision and Ferocity scale offense

Going from 1000 to 2000 power increases your damage output by 2.0 x

Going from 1000 to 2000 precision + 1000 ferocity combined increases your damage output by about 1.5x.Going from 1000 to 2000 Toughness and Vitality combined increases your defense by 2.2 to 2.9 x depending on class

Observation - Precision + Ferocity are not necessary to be effective with a power-based build. They are utility options, just as Vitality, Toughness, Expertise, Concentration, and Condition damage are. Vitality and Toughness are potentially useful even in PvE because they increase your TTL by more than the loss of TTK from not using Precision and Ferocity.

Perception and ferocity provide less of a benefit than power, but given that the benefit of defensive stats is 0, they provide a bigger benefit no matter how useful they are.

Arenanet could literally buff defensive stats to be twice as potent as they are now. That would change absolutely NOTHING in class performance or necessity for defensive stats.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Asum.4960 said:Literally 95% of mobs in the open world you can burst down without taking a single hit by combining high damage with chaining CC's.The more you reduce your damage by investing into defensive stats, the longer fights take, the more damage you take.

While I agree with your last sentence, I disagree with the first.It is easy to quickly burst down one or two melee mobs. With some aoe cc, you can even go up to 5. Beyond this number, you reach your skill target cap and it becomes more difficult to kite without beeing hit.On top of that, you will face range attack, range aoe spells, not to mention cc, cripple, immo, chill.Let's take a simple example, shall we? Barradin's crypt, 2nd veteran calls 5 archers to help him. Last one is a mage with many ranged allies.Guess what? Many die there or are downed even with elite spe.

It's a lot more difficult to handle ranged mobs especially when they have aoe and conditions that target movement ability.Now, if you play a squishy berserker profession like elementalist, you can go down in no time.

I have played these examples in tanky gear and it was easy. Sure longer to kill, but I could outheal their damage.I have also experienced your last sentence : my tanky character was not enough durable and die in situations where a berserker gear could have done relatively easily.

Lastly, when you solo champion in open world, one mistake in berserker can downed you and then it's over. It is especially difficult if it can ranged you to death.

I would still prefer offensive gear but I don't underestimate defensive one.

I really don't understand how it is so many people come into these threads and act like you can go through PvE without ever getting hit. I get hit all the time and I'm sure I'm not terrible at the game. In fact, when I'm with a group in a zerg I see other people getting hit and going down all the time, usually more than I do.
So I know it's not the norm to just coast through PvE avoiding all damage through active defense.
The idea is quite preposterous.

Depending on the situation, and for most open world, it kind of is for skilled players. The only really dangerous fights are some meta events or maybe some stray champion enemy which you want to solo. How many ultra dangerous enemies do you encounter in your regular pve maps?

Maybe you are not as skilled as you think you are. There is a comprehensive open world section on metabattle which provides quite a few builds for open world and story content. Most of them are running offensive stats, yet are very durable. Maybe take a look and adapt your builds.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:There are still a lot of people here missing the point, unfortunately. The point is simple:

Perception - Offense scales way higher than defense, so offensive stacking is necessary and defensive stats are useless (in PvE)

That's not the reason defence is useless in pve. It does not become the reason for defence being useless in pve no matter how often you keep repeating this nosense.

Defensive stats are useless in pve because they are simply not needed. You can splash them in if you need a crutch to support your bad gameplay. That does not change the fact that they are simply not needed.

Most classes gain way better defence via traits and skills rather than gear.
Changing the build would often make a far bigger difference than splashing in defensive stats. Not to mention that once you grow accustomed and more skilled at your class, you can change traits and skills free of charge. Where as you are stuck with kitten defensive stats on all gear sub ascended, and ascended you need to reforge at a cost too.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Reality - Power scales the most of any attribute, but Toughness and Vitality scale defense a lot more than Precision and Ferocity scale offense

Going from 1000 to 2000 power increases your damage output by 2.0 x

Going from 1000 to 2000 precision + 1000 ferocity combined increases your damage output by about 1.5x.Going from 1000 to 2000 Toughness and Vitality combined increases your defense by 2.2 to 2.9 x depending on class

Observation - Precision + Ferocity are not necessary to be effective with a power-based build. They are utility options, just as Vitality, Toughness, Expertise, Concentration, and Condition damage are. Vitality and Toughness are potentially useful even in PvE because they increase your TTL by more than the loss of TTK from not using Precision and Ferocity.

Perception and ferocity provide less of a benefit than power, but given that the benefit of defensive stats is 0, they provide a bigger benefit no matter how useful they are.

Arenanet could literally buff defensive stats to be twice as potent as they are now. That would change absolutely NOTHING in class performance or necessity for defensive stats.

@Asum.4960 said:Literally 95% of mobs in the open world you can burst down without taking a single hit by combining high damage with chaining CC's.The more you reduce your damage by investing into defensive stats, the longer fights take, the more damage you take.

While I agree with your last sentence, I disagree with the first.It is easy to quickly burst down one or two melee mobs. With some aoe cc, you can even go up to 5. Beyond this number, you reach your skill target cap and it becomes more difficult to kite without beeing hit.On top of that, you will face range attack, range aoe spells, not to mention cc, cripple, immo, chill.Let's take a simple example, shall we? Barradin's crypt, 2nd veteran calls 5 archers to help him. Last one is a mage with many ranged allies.Guess what? Many die there or are downed even with elite spe.

It's a lot more difficult to handle ranged mobs especially when they have aoe and conditions that target movement ability.Now, if you play a squishy berserker profession like elementalist, you can go down in no time.

I have played these examples in tanky gear and it was easy. Sure longer to kill, but I could outheal their damage.I have also experienced your last sentence : my tanky character was not enough durable and die in situations where a berserker gear could have done relatively easily.

Lastly, when you solo champion in open world, one mistake in berserker can downed you and then it's over. It is especially difficult if it can ranged you to death.

I would still prefer offensive gear but I don't underestimate defensive one.

I really don't understand how it is so many people come into these threads and act like you can go through PvE without ever getting hit. I get hit all the time and I'm sure I'm not terrible at the game. In fact, when I'm with a group in a zerg I see other people getting hit and going down all the time, usually more than I do.
So I know it's not the norm to just coast through PvE avoiding all damage through active defense.
The idea is quite preposterous.

Depending on the situation, and for most open world, it kind of is for skilled players. The only really dangerous fights are some meta events or maybe some stray champion enemy which you want to solo. How many ultra dangerous enemies do you encounter in your regular pve maps?

Maybe you are not as skilled as you think you are. There is a comprehensive open world section on metabattle which provides quite a few builds for open world and story content. Most of them are running offensive stats, yet are very durable. Maybe take a look and adapt your builds.

uh-huh, yeah.

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