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Soldier's Gear


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Coming back to the game after a few years away, I found that several of my newer characters, made around the time Path of Fire had come out, had a full set of Soldier's Exotic Gear in their bags.

I can't imagine any good use for gear with these stats; Power, Toughness and Vitality.It seems like even if I was hoping to try out raiding and wanted my character to be a tank, this wouldn't be my choice of gear.

Has there ever been a build that made smart use of Soldier's gear? Am I missing something? What do people do with this free gear? I noticed I cannot break it down with salvaging. I'm hesitant to just destroy a whole complete set of gear - but that seems like the logical move just to get inventory space back.

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Sounds like the free gear you get with a level 80 boost.

Yes, it is trash. Soldier gear is really not very good at all. It has some niche use if you want to make a Champ soloing build (But there are better options and various classes can actually still just solo Champs while wearing full Berserker gear)

It is however, useful for its intended purpose, which is to stop newbies from getting rekt after using their shiny new level 80 boost and trying to participate in level 80 content (Especially if they hop right into HoT/PoF which has some very deadly enemies in it).

Beyond that, just delete the gear once you've got some actual stuff with good stats on as there's nothing else you can do with it (Though, I haven't checked if you can toss that stuff into the Mystic Toilet... I know other unsalvagable/unsellable stuff that you get from level up rewards/personal story can but haven't tested the free gear from level boosts)

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Until you get ascended gear or a particular build, Soldiers is pretty good for WvW. It is also good for casual PVE.

Contrary to popular belief, Soldiers is statistically one of the best sets in the game. The combination of stats it has means that you are very durable while having surprisingly high damage for how tough to kill you are. There's some math behind it, but its pretty complicated. The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on. But, if you're in an area with high sustained damage (such as WvW) and you aren't being pressured into maximizing DPS due to timers or peer pressure, then Soldiers gear is an excellent option.

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Thanks for the thoughts folks.

So basically it's of limited value once skill is up there - but could still have good utility in someting like a WvW zerg where there are more people hitting you than you can even see on the screen.

I've got these sets on a Mesmer I have built to be a Chrono, and a Ranger I have built to be a Druid... it looks like I set those up right before I'd left the game, to have as options against my normal mesmer and ranger... only to come back and see we now have multiple builds... but oh well... I can still find use for those two. Maybe I'll make them into WvW characters.

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@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:Until you get ascended gear or a particular build, Soldiers is pretty good for WvW. It is also good for casual PVE.

Contrary to popular belief, Soldiers is statistically one of the best sets in the game. The combination of stats it has means that you are very durable while having surprisingly high damage for how tough to kill you are. There's some math behind it, but its pretty complicated. The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on. But, if you're in an area with high sustained damage (such as WvW) and you aren't being pressured into maximizing DPS due to timers or peer pressure, then Soldiers gear is an excellent option.

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

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@"AliamRationem.5172" said:

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

Your comparison is terrible. For one, the guy you brought up isn't even using Soldiers gear. Second, you're comparing different professions, without demonstrating that the professions are equal otherwise. Third, you're comparing different tactics, without demonstrating that those tactics would otherwise be equal in the circumstances given. Fourth, these videos are made by two different people, with no stated goal between these people to maximize DPS between them. Fifth, this thread isn't about elementalists. You're trying to sell your build as if you get comissions every time somebody runs one. Sixth, you're neglecting to mention that your full Dire set would have equivalent healing and durability to a full Soldiers set, because they have the same defensive stats. You're comparing apples to Michelin Tires.

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice. Assuming the standard gear sets of full ascended, force, impacting, scholar runes, and running either soldiers or berserkers will get you the following stats:

Berserkers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 50.8%Crit Damage: 229.1%Health: 11,645Armor: 1967

Effective Health = 11,645 x (1967/1920) = 11,930Effective Power = 2556 x (.502 + 2.2914 x 0.498) = 2556 x 1.656 = 4,233Effective Health X Effective Power 50,499,690

Soldiers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 5%Crit Damage: 165%Health: 21,255Armor: 2928

Effective Health = 21,255 x (2928 / 1920) = 32,414Effective Power: 2556 x (.95 + 1.65 x 0.05) = 2639Effective Health X Effective Power: 85,540,546

I'll slow down a little.. Effective Power is the weighted average between critical hits, and non-critical hits. Effective health is how much health you have, relative to how high your armor is (light armor exotic as the base value). The product of those two numbers gives you how overall effective the build is in a vacuum, since it is basically the damage you do for every point of health that you get to survive with. You might have noticed that Soldiers gear is 69% higher than berserker gear. This means that, if these two builds were to fight in WvW and claw at each other with the exact same skills while not avoiding the other player, then the soldier set will beat the berserker set handily, leaving the fight a little under a third of their health remaining.

Hence, why I recommend it for WvW. A soldier build can just chase around a berserker build spamming DPS skills, and they win by default by a large margin. To also compare how much damage that each build does, you just divide one power by the other. Berserker build does 60% more DPS than a Soldier build. Or, the Soldiers build has 62% of the damage of a Berserker build. Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

Now, these numbers are build-less. I didn't factor in traits, and I didn't factor in team buffs or boons. For one, if you're on a team... they'll demand you wear berserker anyway, so how well soldiers does is a moot point. For two, if you're on a soldier's build, then you get more damage running different traits and sigils. It would require more time and effort than I'm willing to dedicate to the subject, but overall the soldier build benefits most from increasing crit chance, and the berserker build benefits from increasing general modifiers. The distance between the EH x EP product is different depending on professions, but without fail the result is always the same: Soldiers wins.

EDIT: Fixed base percentage of crit chance.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

Your comparison is terrible. For one, the guy you brought up isn't even using Soldiers gear. Second, you're comparing different professions, without demonstrating that the professions are equal otherwise. Third, you're comparing different tactics, without demonstrating that those tactics would otherwise be equal in the circumstances given. Fourth, these videos are made by two different people, with no stated goal between these people to maximize DPS between them. Fifth, this thread isn't about elementalists. You're trying to sell your build as if you get comissions every time somebody runs one. Sixth, you're neglecting to mention that your full Dire set would have equivalent healing and durability to a full Soldiers set, because they have the same defensive stats. You're comparing apples to Michelin Tires.

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice. Assuming the standard gear sets of full ascended, force, impacting, scholar runes, and running either soldiers or berserkers will get you the following stats:

Berserkers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 49.8%Crit Damage: 229.1%Health: 11,645Armor: 1967

Effective Health = 11,645 x (1967/1920) = 11,930Effective Power = 2556 x (.502 + 2.2914 x 0.498) = 2556 x 1.61 = 4,200Effective Health X Effective Power 50,106,000

Soldiers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 4%Crit Damage: 165%Health: 21,255Armor: 2928

Effective Health = 21,255 x (2928 / 1920) = 32,414Effective Power: 2556 x (.96 + 1.65 x 0.04) = 2622Effective Health X Effective Power: 84,989,508

I'll slow down a little.. Effective Power is the weighted average between critical hits, and non-critical hits. Effective health is how much health you have, relative to how high your armor is (light armor exotic as the base value). The product of those two numbers gives you how overall effective the build is in a vacuum, since it is basically the damage you do for every point of health that you get to survive with. You might have noticed that Soldiers gear is 70% higher than berserker gear. This means that, if these two builds were to fight in WvW and claw at each other with the exact same skills while not avoiding the other player, then the soldier set will beat the berserker set handily, leaving the fight a little under a third of their health remaining.

Hence, why I recommend it for WvW. A soldier build can just chase around a berserker build spamming DPS skills, and they win by default by a large margin. To also compare how much damage that each build does, you just divide one power by the other. Berserker build does 60% more DPS than a Soldier build. Or, the Soldiers build has 62% of the damage of a Berserker build. Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

Now, these numbers are build-less. I didn't factor in traits, and I didn't factor in team buffs or boons. For one, if you're on a team... they'll demand you wear berserker anyway, so how well soldiers does is a moot point. For two, if you're on a soldier's build, then you get more damage running different traits and sigils. It would require more time and effort than I'm willing to dedicate to the subject, but overall the soldier build benefits most from increasing crit chance, and the berserker build benefits from increasing general modifiers. The distance between the EH x EP product is different depending on professions, but without fail the result is always the same: Soldiers wins.

I'm afraid I don't understand the relevance of any of this.

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

Your comparison is terrible. For one, the guy you brought up isn't even using Soldiers gear. Second, you're comparing different professions, without demonstrating that the professions are equal otherwise. Third, you're comparing different tactics, without demonstrating that those tactics would otherwise be equal in the circumstances given. Fourth, these videos are made by two different people, with no stated goal between these people to maximize DPS between them. Fifth, this thread isn't about elementalists. You're trying to sell your build as if you get comissions every time somebody runs one. Sixth, you're neglecting to mention that your full Dire set would have equivalent healing and durability to a full Soldiers set, because they have the same defensive stats. You're comparing apples to Michelin Tires.

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice. Assuming the standard gear sets of full ascended, force, impacting, scholar runes, and running either soldiers or berserkers will get you the following stats:

Berserkers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 49.8%Crit Damage: 229.1%Health: 11,645Armor: 1967

Effective Health = 11,645 x (1967/1920) = 11,930Effective Power = 2556 x (.502 + 2.2914 x 0.498) = 2556 x 1.61 = 4,200Effective Health X Effective Power 50,106,000

Soldiers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 4%Crit Damage: 165%Health: 21,255Armor: 2928

Effective Health = 21,255 x (2928 / 1920) = 32,414Effective Power: 2556 x (.96 + 1.65 x 0.04) = 2622Effective Health X Effective Power: 84,989,508

I'll slow down a little.. Effective Power is the weighted average between critical hits, and non-critical hits. Effective health is how much health you have, relative to how high your armor is (light armor exotic as the base value). The product of those two numbers gives you how overall effective the build is in a vacuum, since it is basically the damage you do for every point of health that you get to survive with. You might have noticed that Soldiers gear is 70% higher than berserker gear. This means that, if these two builds were to fight in WvW and claw at each other with the exact same skills while not avoiding the other player, then the soldier set will beat the berserker set handily, leaving the fight a little under a third of their health remaining.

Hence, why I recommend it for WvW. A soldier build can just chase around a berserker build spamming DPS skills, and they win by default by a large margin. To also compare how much damage that each build does, you just divide one power by the other. Berserker build does 60% more DPS than a Soldier build. Or, the Soldiers build has 62% of the damage of a Berserker build. Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

Now, these numbers are build-less. I didn't factor in traits, and I didn't factor in team buffs or boons. For one, if you're on a team... they'll demand you wear berserker anyway, so how well soldiers does is a moot point. For two, if you're on a soldier's build, then you get more damage running different traits and sigils. It would require more time and effort than I'm willing to dedicate to the subject, but overall the soldier build benefits most from increasing crit chance, and the berserker build benefits from increasing general modifiers. The distance between the EH x EP product is different depending on professions, but without fail the result is always the same: Soldiers wins.

I'm afraid I don't understand the relevance of any of this.

tl;dr I am right about how the power stat works, you are wrong, and I have the math to prove it.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

Your comparison is terrible. For one, the guy you brought up isn't even using Soldiers gear. Second, you're comparing different professions, without demonstrating that the professions are equal otherwise. Third, you're comparing different tactics, without demonstrating that those tactics would otherwise be equal in the circumstances given. Fourth, these videos are made by two different people, with no stated goal between these people to maximize DPS between them. Fifth, this thread isn't about elementalists. You're trying to sell your build as if you get comissions every time somebody runs one. Sixth, you're neglecting to mention that your full Dire set would have equivalent healing and durability to a full Soldiers set, because they have the same defensive stats. You're comparing apples to Michelin Tires.

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice. Assuming the standard gear sets of full ascended, force, impacting, scholar runes, and running either soldiers or berserkers will get you the following stats:

Berserkers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 49.8%Crit Damage: 229.1%Health: 11,645Armor: 1967

Effective Health = 11,645 x (1967/1920) = 11,930Effective Power = 2556 x (.502 + 2.2914 x 0.498) = 2556 x 1.61 = 4,200Effective Health X Effective Power 50,106,000

Soldiers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 4%Crit Damage: 165%Health: 21,255Armor: 2928

Effective Health = 21,255 x (2928 / 1920) = 32,414Effective Power: 2556 x (.96 + 1.65 x 0.04) = 2622Effective Health X Effective Power: 84,989,508

I'll slow down a little.. Effective Power is the weighted average between critical hits, and non-critical hits. Effective health is how much health you have, relative to how high your armor is (light armor exotic as the base value). The product of those two numbers gives you how overall effective the build is in a vacuum, since it is basically the damage you do for every point of health that you get to survive with. You might have noticed that Soldiers gear is 70% higher than berserker gear. This means that, if these two builds were to fight in WvW and claw at each other with the exact same skills while not avoiding the other player, then the soldier set will beat the berserker set handily, leaving the fight a little under a third of their health remaining.

Hence, why I recommend it for WvW. A soldier build can just chase around a berserker build spamming DPS skills, and they win by default by a large margin. To also compare how much damage that each build does, you just divide one power by the other. Berserker build does 60% more DPS than a Soldier build. Or, the Soldiers build has 62% of the damage of a Berserker build. Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

Now, these numbers are build-less. I didn't factor in traits, and I didn't factor in team buffs or boons. For one, if you're on a team... they'll demand you wear berserker anyway, so how well soldiers does is a moot point. For two, if you're on a soldier's build, then you get more damage running different traits and sigils. It would require more time and effort than I'm willing to dedicate to the subject, but overall the soldier build benefits most from increasing crit chance, and the berserker build benefits from increasing general modifiers. The distance between the EH x EP product is different depending on professions, but without fail the result is always the same: Soldiers wins.

I'm afraid I don't understand the relevance of any of this.

tl;dr I am right about how the power stat works, you are wrong, and I have the math to prove it.

I'm not interested in arguing your subjective interpretations of the term "surprisingly high damage." Could you define a value or range of values you consider adequate? If that's too general, perhaps apply it to specific scenarios in actual gameplay? Bonus points if you provide video!

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Power simply doesn't do much by itself. You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity) to get anything out of it, and with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway. For example, a comparison.

Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!

But is it high damage? Do the math. A 7.5 minute kill against a boss with around 750k health. That's about 1.7k DPS. I had a celestial tempest healer build I ran back in HoT that could beat him in 6 minutes. Celestial is a very tanky set, but it does have some of the 3 stats you need to deal power damage. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and paired with a defensive build the same as the scrapper in this video, the result isn't much higher damage (about 2.1k DPS).

To put that in perspective, here's a video of my fire weaver solo against the same boss. I'm playing a condition-based build, which doesn't require additional stats to be effective the way power builds do. I'm also playing a fairly aggressive build on a class built for dealing damage. As a result, I defeat this boss in 50 seconds while dealing 15.7k DPS - more than 9 times as much as the defensive scrapper running only power stat for offense.

You may also notice my health never dips below 66% despite never using an active heal or rotating into water at any point. Because I am able to run vitality/toughness without sacrificing damage, I am passively pretty tanky. Combine that with traits and utilities designed to allow me to continue applying damage while evading and I am very hard to kill but the damage never slows!

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity.

Your comparison is terrible. For one, the guy you brought up isn't even using Soldiers gear. Second, you're comparing different professions, without demonstrating that the professions are equal otherwise. Third, you're comparing different tactics, without demonstrating that those tactics would otherwise be equal in the circumstances given. Fourth, these videos are made by two different people, with no stated goal between these people to maximize DPS between them. Fifth, this thread isn't about elementalists. You're trying to sell your build as if you get comissions every time somebody runs one. Sixth, you're neglecting to mention that your full Dire set would have equivalent healing and durability to a full Soldiers set, because they have the same defensive stats. You're comparing apples to Michelin Tires.

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice. Assuming the standard gear sets of full ascended, force, impacting, scholar runes, and running either soldiers or berserkers will get you the following stats:

Berserkers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 49.8%Crit Damage: 229.1%Health: 11,645Armor: 1967

Effective Health = 11,645 x (1967/1920) = 11,930Effective Power = 2556 x (.502 + 2.2914 x 0.498) = 2556 x 1.61 = 4,200Effective Health X Effective Power 50,106,000

Soldiers:Power: 2556Crit Chance: 4%Crit Damage: 165%Health: 21,255Armor: 2928

Effective Health = 21,255 x (2928 / 1920) = 32,414Effective Power: 2556 x (.96 + 1.65 x 0.04) = 2622Effective Health X Effective Power: 84,989,508

I'll slow down a little.. Effective Power is the weighted average between critical hits, and non-critical hits. Effective health is how much health you have, relative to how high your armor is (light armor exotic as the base value). The product of those two numbers gives you how overall effective the build is in a vacuum, since it is basically the damage you do for every point of health that you get to survive with. You might have noticed that Soldiers gear is 70% higher than berserker gear. This means that, if these two builds were to fight in WvW and claw at each other with the exact same skills while not avoiding the other player, then the soldier set will beat the berserker set handily, leaving the fight a little under a third of their health remaining.

Hence, why I recommend it for WvW. A soldier build can just chase around a berserker build spamming DPS skills, and they win by default by a large margin. To also compare how much damage that each build does, you just divide one power by the other. Berserker build does 60% more DPS than a Soldier build. Or, the Soldiers build has 62% of the damage of a Berserker build. Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

Now, these numbers are build-less. I didn't factor in traits, and I didn't factor in team buffs or boons. For one, if you're on a team... they'll demand you wear berserker anyway, so how well soldiers does is a moot point. For two, if you're on a soldier's build, then you get more damage running different traits and sigils. It would require more time and effort than I'm willing to dedicate to the subject, but overall the soldier build benefits most from increasing crit chance, and the berserker build benefits from increasing general modifiers. The distance between the EH x EP product is different depending on professions, but without fail the result is always the same: Soldiers wins.

I'm afraid I don't understand the relevance of any of this.

tl;dr I am right about how the power stat works, you are wrong, and I have the math to prove it.

No, you aren't. Reason: because you assume that both builds have no cooldowns, do consistent damage and pressure or spike damage is not a thing. Not to mention that you are using part of an equation, omitting the rest and then trying to draw a conclusion.

The multiplicative way how damage works in this game, the ability to stack damage modifiers and defensive skills to points in time where they are OF USE, makes the entire theory craft pretty much useless.

Yes, in a vacuum Soldier gear is amazing. In reality when paired with the active nature of this game and the way coefficients scale, it is pretty trash.

EDIT:To further expand on this:There are nearly no multiplicative defensive skills in this game (at least very few that affect EHP). Your vitality and toughness is what you get, with potentially protection for a 33% damage reduction. As such, survival and EHP will not climb at all or barely.Completely contrary to damage modifiers, which are thrown out left and right and as mentioned, scale multiplicative. So, as more and more traits, skills, boons etc. get added on top, they will scale far better off the higher base number of the effective power on the berserker stats, while the soldier set will see far less increase in offense, and barely a noticeable growth in EHP versus the berserker set.

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:No, you aren't. Reason: because you assume that both builds have no cooldowns, do consistent damage and pressure or spike damage is not a thing. Not to mention that you are using part of an equation, omitting the rest and then trying to draw a conclusion.

The multiplicative way how damage works in this game, the ability to stack damage modifiers and defensive skills to points in time where they are OF USE, makes the entire theory craft pretty much useless.

Yes, in a vacuum Soldier gear is amazing. In reality when paired with the active nature of this game and the way coefficients scale, it is pretty trash.

No. I assumed perfectly symmetrical violence. To go off of otherwise would invoke the particulars of a build or the player using it, in which case any comparison can't be readily made. I only bring up build differences in the end because it would be practical to do so.

The Effective Health x Effective Power product means that a soldier build is hitting a berserker build for a greater proportion of the berserker's health than the berserker build hits back. Doesn't matter if it is consistent damage or spike damage. Soldier's wins in either scenario. Toughness + Vitality gives more durability than precision + ferocity gives offensive power.

I am omitting nothing of value. The rest of the damage equation consists of things like weapon coefficients (constant, multiplier), skill coefficients (constant, multiplier), and damage modifiers from sigils and runes (multiplier). Because all of these are multipliers, it means in the grand comparison they cancel out. I.E. if you include the sigil of force when comparing effective power, you'll get (4233 x 1.05) / (2629 x 1.05), which changes nothing. Doesn't matter how many multiplicative modifiers you stack, the proportions remain the same. The only thing that would change these numbers is static bonuses, I.E. fixed amounts of stats that a trait gives.

EDIT: There are quite a few traits and abilities that would increase effective health, but it doesn't matter. Overall statistical strength is the product of effective power and effective health. The modifiers for one will still carry over to another.

You've brought up skill twice in the same post. See, I already covered that when I said the following above:

The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on.

For you see, skill is an unrelated to overall statistical effectiveness. Just like how the tensile strength of a baseball bat is unrelated to how accurately the guy swings it. However, overall statistical effectiveness does have an impact on the fight, especially when fighting against somebody else. Being overall superior in stats means that you win by default when you trade blows. That you'll have an easier time winning, your opponent has to do more to beat you, and that mistakes will be more forgiving. This kind of thinking isn't useless, either. I've been doing this in WvW for awhile now. Any time I consider switching out traits or equipment, the first thing I do is compare the EH x EP product.

Aliam repeated that myth that conditions only need one stat while power needs 3... to me specifically. That claim is wrong on multiple levels. Particularly, most of the damage a power build does comes from power itself, and you don't do "really poor damage" in soldier's gear. At least not in a WvW, PVP (so good they removed the amulet), or in PVE. Outside of raids, I cannot think of a place where soldier's gear is insufficient for completing content. If a gear set is trash in 1% of the game, then it isn't trash.

If you're saying that I am misrepresenting a formula, then you had better bring up the whole thing, and then show why it matters. I do not take kindly to accusations of being a liar. All you've done is drum up a bunch of generic criticisms of things that either have no impact whatsoever, misunderstand what I have written, distract from what I have written, or is a point that I have already discussed.

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I have 7000 hours of smallscale and duelling experience on different classes.

Soldier is trash in the current state of the game because it greatly misses the sweetspot of damage and sustain. For berserker gear it depends on the base health pool of the class but when we throw in marauder then things become obvious.

You can not kill most zerk or marauder encounters with a soldier build since they can burst and peel you while you can't. Soldier is so weak in damage now that everyone can just outheal it with either a little kiting, LOS or area denial. Then it's about landing damage and viable builds have very small windows of opportunity where you can apply noticeable damage at all. For these windows you need burst or you will fail hard.

This is the state of the game since the feb25 patch. Before that patch landed soldier was viable and often superior to berserker as with some traited damage multipliers it had basically the damage potential which marauder now has.

That's why I say since the patch landed that - for pvp - marauder is the new paladin and berserker is the new demolisher. And this transfers directly to wvw.

Damage formulas that ignore the combat mechanic (active defenses, hit and run etc.) can not represent the reality.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:No, you aren't. Reason: because you assume that both builds have no cooldowns, do consistent damage and pressure or spike damage is not a thing. Not to mention that you are using part of an equation, omitting the rest and then trying to draw a conclusion.

The multiplicative way how damage works in this game, the ability to stack damage modifiers and defensive skills to points in time where they are OF USE, makes the entire theory craft pretty much useless.

Yes, in a vacuum Soldier gear is amazing. In reality when paired with the active nature of this game and the way coefficients scale, it is pretty trash.

No. I assumed perfectly symmetrical violence. To go off of otherwise would invoke the particulars of a build or the player using it, in which case any comparison can't be readily made. I only bring up build differences in the end because it would be practical to do so.

The Effective Health x Effective Power product means that a soldier build is hitting a berserker build for a greater proportion of the berserker's health than the berserker build hits back. Doesn't matter if it is consistent damage or spike damage. Soldier's wins in either scenario. Toughness + Vitality gives more durability than precision + ferocity gives offensive power.

I am omitting nothing of value. The rest of the damage equation consists of things like weapon coefficients (constant, multiplier), skill coefficients (constant, multiplier), and damage modifiers from sigils and runes (multiplier). Because all of these are multipliers, it means in the grand comparison they cancel out. I.E. if you include the sigil of force when comparing effective power, you'll get (4233 x 1.05) / (2629 x 1.05), which changes nothing. Doesn't matter how many multiplicative modifiers you stack, the proportions remain the same. The only thing that would change these numbers is static bonuses, I.E. fixed amounts of stats that a trait gives.

EDIT: There are quite a few traits and abilities that would increase effective health, but it doesn't matter. Overall statistical strength is the product of effective power and effective health. The modifiers for one will still carry over to another.

You've brought up skill twice in the same post. See, I already covered that when I said the following above:

The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on.

For you see, skill is an unrelated to overall statistical effectiveness. Just like how the tensile strength of a baseball bat is unrelated to how accurately the guy swings it. However, overall statistical effectiveness does have an impact on the fight, especially when fighting against somebody else. Being overall superior in stats means that you win by default when you trade blows. That you'll have an easier time winning, your opponent has to do more to beat you, and that mistakes will be more forgiving. This kind of thinking isn't useless, either. I've been doing this in WvW for awhile now. Any time I consider switching out traits or equipment, the first thing I do is compare the EH x EP product.

Aliam repeated that myth that conditions only need one stat while power needs 3... to me specifically. That claim is wrong on multiple levels. Particularly, most of the damage a power build does comes from power itself, and you don't do "really poor damage" in soldier's gear. At least not in a WvW, PVP (so good they removed the amulet), or in PVE. Outside of raids, I cannot think of a place where soldier's gear is insufficient for completing content. If a gear set is trash in 1% of the game, then it isn't trash.

If you're saying that I am misrepresenting a formula, then you had better bring up the whole thing, and then show why it matters. I do not take kindly to accusations of being a liar. All you've done is drum up a bunch of generic criticisms of things that either have no impact whatsoever, misunderstand what I have written, distract from what I have written, or is a point that I have already discussed.

So much effort wasted on being "right" about a position that bears no practical relevance whatsoever. And yes, you are deliberately attempting to mislead with your specious arguments and you are well aware of it.

But enough wasting time on that. This is very easily resolved.

Just answer the question: How much damage is "high damage"? Do you even know? Of course you don't! Anyone who runs arcdps can see with their own eyes how wrong you are. This is just your opinion (i.e. "I deal surprisingly high damage in soldier gear!") backed by a whole lot of nonsense meant to confuse those who don't know any better by making it appear that you have an objective basis for these claims. You do not.

Prove me wrong. Find me even one video of any player (it doesn't have to be you!) dealing what you consider "high damage" using a gear set that features power-based damage with no precision or ferocity (so no condi builds!).

Alternatively, tell us your thoughts on the scrapper video I provided. Is that high damage?

If that's too much effort for you, please spare us another of your lengthy and meaningless expositions and just come out with a range of values you consider worthy of the term "high damage". If your argument holds water, you should be able to do that and stop dodging. How about it?

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:No, you aren't. Reason: because you assume that both builds have no cooldowns, do consistent damage and pressure or spike damage is not a thing. Not to mention that you are using part of an equation, omitting the rest and then trying to draw a conclusion.

The multiplicative way how damage works in this game, the ability to stack damage modifiers and defensive skills to points in time where they are OF USE, makes the entire theory craft pretty much useless.

Yes, in a vacuum Soldier gear is amazing. In reality when paired with the active nature of this game and the way coefficients scale, it is pretty trash.

No. I assumed perfectly symmetrical violence. To go off of otherwise would invoke the particulars of a build or the player using it, in which case any comparison can't be readily made. I only bring up build differences in the end because it would be practical to do so.

The Effective Health x Effective Power product means that a soldier build is hitting a berserker build for a greater proportion of the berserker's health than the berserker build hits back. Doesn't matter if it is consistent damage or spike damage. Soldier's wins in either scenario. Toughness + Vitality gives more durability than precision + ferocity gives offensive power.

I am omitting nothing of value. The rest of the damage equation consists of things like weapon coefficients (constant, multiplier), skill coefficients (constant, multiplier), and damage modifiers from sigils and runes (multiplier).
Because all of these are multipliers
, it means in the grand comparison they cancel out. I.E. if you include the sigil of force when comparing effective power, you'll get (4233 x 1.05) / (2629 x 1.05), which changes nothing. Doesn't matter how many multiplicative modifiers you stack, the proportions remain the same. The only thing that would change these numbers is static bonuses, I.E. fixed amounts of stats that a trait gives.

That is not true. You should know for this to not be true by simple reasoning that multiplying a higher number by the same multipliers results in a far bigger end result than multiplying a smaller number.

As comparison:10 times 50 = 50020 times 50 = 1,000

If we assume that this holds true, and as mentioned by me that EHP does not change in the same way, which it does not. The base value of off of which is multiplied is a factor.

The proportions staying the same, while comparing them to a more static value is ABSOLUTELY a factor.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:EDIT: There are quite a few traits and abilities that would increase effective health, but it doesn't matter. Overall statistical strength is the product of effective power and effective health. The modifiers for one will still carry over to another.

By far not in the same way, and not in the dimension that power or damage changes.

You've brought up skill twice in the same post. See, I already covered that when I said the following above:

The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on.

Which also remains true for WvW and Spvp. You just decided to not weigh any of those considerations when applying your statements.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:For you see, skill is an unrelated to overall statistical effectiveness. Just like how the tensile strength of a baseball bat is unrelated to how accurately the guy swings it. However, overall statistical effectiveness does have an impact on the fight, especially when fighting against somebody else. Being overall superior in stats means that you win by default when you trade blows. That you'll have an easier time winning, your opponent has to do more to beat you, and that mistakes will be more forgiving. This kind of thinking isn't useless, either. I've been doing this in WvW for awhile now. Any time I consider switching out traits or equipment, the first thing I do is compare the EH x EP product.

Except that as mentioned, trading blows is of no consequence in any scenario, since even when "only" trading blows, you calculation is not enough to calculate any possible result.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Aliam repeated that myth that conditions only need one stat while power needs 3... to me specifically. That claim is wrong on multiple levels. Particularly, most of the damage a power build does comes from power itself, and you don't do "really poor damage" in soldier's gear. At least not in a WvW, PVP (so good they removed the amulet), or in PVE. Outside of raids, I cannot think of a place where soldier's gear is insufficient for completing content. If a gear set is trash in 1% of the game, then it isn't trash.

You are mixing 3 different things here:A. gear being sufficient for clearing contentB. the amount of damage multipliers one must stack in order to maximize damageC. the amount by which each damage type is increased via each stat.

Stop mixing these issues and addressing them as 1, and the problem might get untangled.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:If you're saying that I am misrepresenting a formula, then you had better bring up the whole thing, and then show why it matters. I do not take kindly to accusations of being a liar. All you've done is drum up a bunch of generic criticisms of things that either have no impact whatsoever, misunderstand what I have written, distract from what I have written, or is a point that I have already discussed.

Worse: I am saying you are deliberately using half data and cutting corners to win an argument on a forum. The relationship between the values which you calculated in no way allows for ANY of the conclusions you are attempting to draw, and the worst of all: you know that, but decide that being right is more important than using data in a correct way.

Yes, you did misrepresent the formula by omitting for skill coefficients and for other effects, which is only mentioned as a side note in the damage wiki but brought up in more detail when looking at the Damage calculation help wiki: Damage = (Skill damage Positive multipliers) / (Armor Negative multipliers)

Since actual damage done is important versus EHP, and not power value, you are leaving out the entire subset of positive effects which affect damage (which as stated are far far more than damage reduction).

In short: you are willfully cutting corners and leaving out things trying to make an argument which one simply can not make.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Until you get ascended gear or a particular build, Soldiers is pretty good for WvW. It is also good for casual PVE.

Contrary to popular belief, Soldiers is statistically one of the best sets in the game. The combination of stats it has means that you are very durable while having surprisingly high damage for how tough to kill you are. There's some math behind it, but its pretty complicated. The reason why we all recommend berserkers for PVE is because active defenses take care of most threats, enrage timers or event timers exist, and because it is better for farming gold to kill things quickly and move on. But, if you're in an area with high sustained damage (such as WvW) and you aren't being pressured into maximizing DPS due to timers or peer pressure, then Soldiers gear is an excellent option.

I'm going to agree, but only in ONE case - If it's just the ARMOR that is Soldier. If the armor is Soldier, but weapons/trinkets are Marauder/Zerker you get a good boost for WvW survival while only losing a little DPS and it can help you learn.

Once you've learned though, swap that stuff out, unless you are being lazy (I keep my Solder armor in the bags for when I want to be a little less precise on my active defense in WvW, also, it's Karma temple armor and you can't salvage it anyway).

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@"AliamRationem.5172" said:

So much effort wasted on being "right" about a position that bears no practical relevance whatsoever. And yes, you are deliberately attempting to mislead with your specious arguments and you are well aware of it.

But enough wasting time on that. This is very easily resolved.

Just answer the question: How much damage is "high damage"? Do you even know? Of course you don't! Anyone who runs arcdps can see with their own eyes how wrong you are. This is just your opinion (i.e. "I deal surprisingly high damage in soldier gear!") backed by a whole lot of nonsense meant to confuse those who don't know any better by making it appear that you have an objective basis for these claims. You do not.

Prove me wrong. Find me even one video of any player (it doesn't have to be you!) dealing what you consider "high damage" using a gear set that features power-based damage with no precision or ferocity (so no condi builds!).

Alternatively, tell us your thoughts on the scrapper video I provided. Is that high damage?

If that's too much effort for you, please spare us another of your lengthy and meaningless expositions and just come out with a range of values you consider worthy of the term "high damage". If your argument holds water, you should be able to do that and stop dodging. How about it?

Claims I'm making a specious argument. Doesn't define his own terms. Demands I prove him wrong first. Misconstrues what I say. Dancing around everything else. I can recognize troll logic when I see it. You aren't here for a serious discussion on how gear affects damage and durability. You're just here to send me running into endless circles.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:

So much effort wasted on being "right" about a position that bears no practical relevance whatsoever. And yes, you are deliberately attempting to mislead with your specious arguments and you are well aware of it.

But enough wasting time on that. This is very easily resolved.

Just answer the question: How much damage is "high damage"? Do you even know? Of course you don't! Anyone who runs arcdps can see with their own eyes how wrong you are. This is just your opinion (i.e. "I deal surprisingly high damage in soldier gear!") backed by a whole lot of nonsense meant to confuse those who don't know any better by making it appear that you have an objective basis for these claims. You do not.

Prove me wrong. Find me even one video of any player (it doesn't have to be you!) dealing what you consider "high damage" using a gear set that features power-based damage with no precision or ferocity (so no condi builds!).

Alternatively, tell us your thoughts on the scrapper video I provided. Is that high damage?

If that's too much effort for you, please spare us another of your lengthy and meaningless expositions and just come out with a range of values you consider worthy of the term "high damage". If your argument holds water, you should be able to do that and stop dodging. How about it?

Claims I'm making a specious argument. Doesn't define his own terms. Demands I prove him wrong first. Misconstrues what I say. Dancing around everything else. I can recognize troll logic when I see it. You aren't here for a serious discussion on how gear affects damage and durability. You're just here to send me running into endless circles.

Obvious troll is obvious.

I defined my parameters with video and clear damage values. Do us the courtesy of doing the same. You don't need to provide video but simply define a dps value range that equates to what you are referring to as "surprisingly high damage".

We both know why you will never do that. Because the moment you do, it will become crystal clear that you are wrong and power without precision and ferocity deals jack for damage.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

That is not true. You should know for this to not be true by simple reasoning that multiplying a higher number by the same multipliers results in a far bigger end result than multiplying a smaller number.

As comparison:10 times 50 = 50020 times 50 = 1,000

If we assume that this holds true, and as mentioned by me that EHP does not change in the same way, which it does not. The base value of off of which is multiplied is a factor.

The proportions staying the same, while comparing them to a more static value is ABSOLUTELY a factor.

You haven't done the math, have you? Here, let me go through it step by step. The comparison between the effective health x effective power product just looks like this:

(Soldiers Effective Power X Soldiers Effective Health)/(Berserkers Effective Power x Berserkers Effective Health)

I'll throw in the real numbers

(2639 x 32,414)/(4233 x 11,930)

= 85,540,546 / 50,499,690= 1.6939

Now, lets throw in protection for the sake of argument. Protection reduces damage received by 33%, which can considered as multiplying effective health by 1.33. This makes the effective health of each build into 15,866.9 for Berserkers and 43,110.62. Throwing those numbers in, we get

(2639 x 43,110.62)/(4233 x 15,866.9)

= 113, 768,926.18 / 67,164,587.7= 1.6939

Well, look at that. Its the exact same result. This is the commutative property of multiplication. That's a fancy word for saying that A x B = B x A. What we really did is just this:

(2639 x 32,414 x 1.33)/(4233 x 11,930 x 1.33)

Which cancels out. The same thing happens with other modifiers. If we include the modifier from scholar runes (5%), sigil of force (5%), sigil of impacting (3%), and neglect protection, what we're getting is basically this:

(2639 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.03 x 32,414)/(4233 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.03 x 11,930)

=

(2,996.782425 x 32, 414)/(4,806.888975 x 11,930)

= (97,137,705.52395) / (57,346,185.47175)= 1.6939

We can cancel out the common terms. See, it doesn't matter if we multiply damage by 1.05, or if we multiply health by 1.05. The commutative property of multiplication means that it doesn't matter what order we multiply the terms in. But, lets take the extreme version of this. Lets say that one build has a product of 1, and the other build has a product of 1000. Lets also say that there are sigils and traits that increase damage by 100%. Apply it to both:

1 / 1000 = 0.0012 / 2000 = 0.0013 / 3000 = 0.0014 / 4000 = 0.001

The proportions stay the same.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Which also remains true for WvW and Spvp. You just decided to not weigh any of those considerations when applying your statements.

Me, again, earlier in this thread, the very next sentence:

But, if you're in an area with high sustained damage (such as WvW) and you aren't being pressured into maximizing DPS due to timers or peer pressure, then Soldiers gear is an excellent option.

You're implying that everyone should wear Berserker gear in WvW because everyone is so high skill that they can always dodge at the right time and burst at the right time. There's a problem with saying everyone can do this: everyone is fighting against everyone else. If everyone is super skilled, then their skill levels will cancel out when they fight each other.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Except that as mentioned, trading blows is of no consequence in any scenario, since even when "only" trading blows, you calculation is not enough to calculate any possible result.

It does. It means that the soldier is hitting the berserker for, proportional to each others health, 69% more than the berserker is hitting back. The soldier is winning, by default, and by a large margin. inb4 Aliam demands I prove what "large" means. The berserker has to have either greater skill, greater circumstantial factors, or a mechanical build advantage over the soldier to win. Likewise, for anyone who is low-skill it means that in PVE, that Soldiers is better, because even though you only hit for 62% of berserker's damage on average, you live 2.72 times longer.

@Cyninja.2954 said:You are mixing 3 different things here:A. gear being sufficient for clearing contentB. the amount of damage multipliers one must stack in order to maximize damageC. the amount by which each damage type is increased via each stat.

Stop mixing these issues and addressing them as 1, and the problem might get untangled.

I'm really not. Aliam did all three when he took issue with my claim that Soldiers is a good set. He cherry-picked a couple of videos to try to argue against me, and he purposefully neglected all of the little factors that go against his assertion. Condi duration, the direct damage component, on-crit effects, ramp up, etc.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Worse: I am saying you are deliberately using half data and cutting corners to win an argument on a forum. The relationship between the values which you calculated in no way allows for ANY of the conclusions you are attempting to draw, and the worst of all: you know that, but decide that being right is more important than using data in a correct way.

But they do. I came to these conclusions AFTER doing the math, not before. What I'm getting from this is that you don't understand how fractions work, but instead of asking what I'm doing or how any of the theory works you just start flinging accusations.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes, you did misrepresent the formula by omitting for skill coefficients and for other effects, which is only mentioned as a side note in the damage wiki but brought up in more detail when looking at the Damage calculation help wiki: Damage = (Skill damage Positive multipliers) / (Armor Negative multipliers)

Since actual damage done is important versus EHP, and not power value, you are leaving out the entire subset of positive effects which affect damage (which as stated are far far more than damage reduction).

In short: you are willfully cutting corners and leaving out things trying to make an argument which one simply can not make.

That's not how science works. You're supposed to control the variables. If you were comparing soldier to berserker gear, why would you use Tranquilizer Dart Vs. Fire Grab? The answer is that you don't. If I were to expand the formula for the entirety of damage, it would look like this

(Weapon Coefficient x Skill Damage x Power x Modifiers x (Chance to Crit X Crit damage + Chance to not Crit) x Health x Armor x (Modifiers))/(Weapon Coefficient x Skill Damage x Power x Modifiers x (Chance to Crit X Crit damage + Chance to not Crit) x Health x Armor x (Modifiers))

Lets eliminate all factors that are identical between the two builds. Considering that the only difference between the two is the Gear, this means the following are the same and can be canceled out:

Weapon CoefficientSkill DamageModifiers for PowerModifiers for Damage Reduction

What are we left with?

(Power x (Chance to Crit X Crit damage + Chance to not Crit) x Health x Armor)/(Power x (Chance to Crit X Crit damage + Chance to not Crit)) x Health x Armor)

The first part, which is Power x Crit Mod, is just effective power. The second part, which is Health x Armor, is just effective health. This formula looks awfully familiar, doesn't it? Well, there are two things that I did to it, which has no effect on the overall result, but nonetheless makes it easier to read. First, I kept Power in. For this trivial example, the amount of Power that is provided is the same between builds, so I could actually cancel that out. However, if I just did the Crit Mod x Effective health, it would look funny and people wouldn't be able to follow along. Second, Health X Armor gets you an absurdly large number of Hit Point-Armors, which is a unit that doesn't immediately make sense and isn't easily digestible. Instead, I opted to change this number into scaled health by dividing by 1920 armor, which is the base armor value for exotic light sets. This doesn't change the overall proportion, since I divided both sides by the same, constant number. It cancels out, again.

I also didn't omit this information. I covered it all in a single sentence:

Lets compare apples to apples: assume everything is the same, except for gear choice

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@"AliamRationem.5172" said:

Obvious troll is obvious.

I defined my parameters with video and clear damage values. Do us the courtesy of doing the same. You don't need to provide video but simply define a dps value range that equates to what you are referring to as "surprisingly high damage".

We both know why you will never do that. Because the moment you do, it will become crystal clear that you are wrong and power without precision and ferocity deals jack for damage.

No you didn't.

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:Power simply doesn't do much by itself

Define "do much".

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:You need crit rate (precision) and crit damage (ferocity)

Define "need".

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:to get anything out of it

Define "anything".

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:with most builds you can't skimp too much or you will deal really poor damage anyway.

Define "poor".

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:power without precision and ferocity deals jack for damage.

Define "jack."

You also didn't define "high damage" either. You just made a context-less and inappropriate comparison between random videos. See, I've already explained what I mean by "surprisingly high damage for how tough to kill you are." I defined it above as such:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Either way you look at it, the fact remains that most of your damage comes from Power. It is quite literally the exact opposite of what you said: precision and ferocity do very little, especially without power. Most of the damage comes from having high power.

I call it surprising, because most people assume that if you have three times the durability, that you would also have 1/3rd of the damage as compensation. Like there's a see-saw wherein everything is balanced around a fulcrum, and there is no method to obtain true gains outside of stuff like modifiers.

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@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:I'm really not. Aliam did all three when he took issue with my claim that Soldiers is a good set. He cherry-picked a couple of videos to try to argue against me, and he purposefully neglected all of the little factors that go against his assertion. Condi duration, the direct damage component, on-crit effects, ramp up, etc.

You're triggered. Take a deep breath.

I think I was pretty clear that I took issue with your claim that soldier gear produces "surprisingly high damage." That is not the same thing as saying that soldier gear isn't "good." This is what I had to say about the video of the scrapper:

"Here's a video from a player who runs tanky power gear with no precision or ferocity. His build also seems very survival-oriented on top of that. Obviously, the strategy is to outlast and he passes the test with flying colors! He doesn't seem remotely pressured even though he basically facetanks the entire fight with a flamethrower! Pretty impressive as this boss routinely wipes groups of players in open world!"

I then went on to point out that I played a tanky tempest build that performed in similar fashion before sharing my weaver build for comparison. Why exactly am I playing a low damage build if I thumb my nose at low damage builds? Some sort of clever ruse I suppose? At no point did I make any judgement at all about Soldier gear and, in fact, I had this to say in conclusion:

"I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with running soldier gear. But if you're going to run tanky you are objectively far better off running condition damage builds than power. For power builds that can take a bit more punishment, I highly recommend marauder for open world. It is a very good set because it gives you quite a lot of health, but doesn't skimp on those essential stats: power/precision/ferocity."

So let me be clear: You do you, broski! I run tanky builds that deal jack for damage, too! I said so and I have had videos of it up on my channel for years to prove it! As it happens, I also do builds for new players that are designed to be super easy to use (unlike my weaver build), but extremely survivable. I am not in any way out to belittle people for choosing non-meta builds (my builds are never meta because I'm a solo open world/wvw roamer kind of player) or using tanky stats. I use tanky stats on my roaming build, too!

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@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:snip

Going to keep this short because this is not an issue worth raging or discussing over since soldiers is NOT a good set in the totality of this games design.

Multiplicative common variables can ONLY be cancelled out if all factors are affected the same way. In your example this only holds true because you are going by a swing against swing scenario where if absolutely no other actions are taken, no boons are applied, etc. eventually a soldier set would outlive a berserker set. You then omit every other scenario by simply saying:"only in this case".

All fine. Based on that limited view though you can NOT make the claims you made for the totality of this game.

You can not claim the set is "good" based on what you have shown. You can not claim it will perform well in WvW. You can not claim this set is better for a weaker player because the situations in which a way higher alpha might kill an enemy faster might far outweigh a prolonged fight.

My only issue is the claims you make based of of a limited inspection. None of your math allows for any of them.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:snip

Going to keep this short because this is not an issue worth raging or discussing over since soldiers is NOT a good set in the totality of this games design.

Multiplicative common variables can ONLY be cancelled out if all factors are affected the same way. In your example this only holds true because you are going by a swing against swing scenario where if absolutely no other actions are taken, no boons are applied, etc. eventually a soldier set would outlive a berserker set. You then omit every other scenario by simply saying:"only in this case".

All fine. Based on that limited view though you can NOT make the claims you made for the totality of this game.

You can not claim the set is "good" based on what you have shown. You can not claim it will perform well in WvW. You can not claim this set is better for a weaker player because the situations in which a way higher alpha might kill an enemy faster might far outweigh a prolonged fight.

My only issue is the claims you make based of of a limited inspection. None of your math allows for any of them.

Do you know the reason why I assume perfectly symmetrical violence? Because, technically, you are fighting yourself. When deciding on what gear to use, there are a couple of very basic assumptions that go into making this decision:

(1): You are still yourself after changing gear.(2): Your profession is still the same after changing gear.(3): Your skills and traits are going to be the same after changing gear.(4): Enemies are going to be the same after changing gear.(5): The game formulae remains the same after changing gear.(6): You are deciding what gear that you yourself are using, and not somebody else.

The game does not change in mysterious and unpredictable ways depending on gear choice, and neither do you. There is "no other actions" taken because you can only take the actions you take, and you cannot take the actions you didn't take. Boons still work in Soldier gear. Soldiers will always outlive berserker, because enemies don't magically do more damage when you have more health and armor. There is no scenario where you are not yourself.

Not only can I make these claims, I am actively making them right now. The effective health x effective power product is the overall statistical strength of a set of gear. It is how much damage you do multiplied by how long you live while doing it. This product... it doesn't go away. In PVE if you're fighting a champion mob, or a veteran, or a swarm of normal mobs, or a world boss... the product is the same . If you're in WvW, the product is still the same. If you are a masterful player or a terrible player, the product is still the same. If your opponent is a masterful or a terrible player, the product remains the same.

Listen to yourself. Your basically saying "all that math is meaningless, because the berserker gear has 25 might and uses fire grab while the soldier gear doesn't, has 25 vulnerability, and uses vapor blade. That makes the sigil of force better on berserker gear."

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