Berserker vs Assassin vs Marauder Gear in solo situation

[Aigleborgne.2981]

I often ask myself what gear is the best when playing solo.Most people advice for berserker or marauder gear.

For many professions, critical hits provide additionnal numerous bonuses or are simply necessary to success.As an example, Berserker specialization get might on critical, and furious can get you some adrenaline. Plus, you absolutely want to critical when using your burst skills.

Rounded numbers:Berserker: 60%, 80% with furyMarauder: 70%, 90% with furyAssassin: 80%, 100% with fury

Granted you can improve those numbers with sigils, runes, and food, but it will add strong constraints to the build.Assuming you can have perma fury, Assassin seems the best as you can have perma critical hits.Marauder is not far behind, but still, 10% counts and you would need Sigil of Accuracy at least. Leaving you at 3% less than Assassin, not bad but locking down one sigil for both weapons set.Berserker seems really low and I can't see how it can perform nicely, even with food, sigil, and rune help. And even if you could manage a good number, it would probably shut down any food/sigil/rune choice. And those are particularly important in solo situations.

Berserker/Marauder higher power is meaningless if you don't make critical hits when needed.

Conclusion: I think Assassin is the best if you want to freely choose sigil, rune, and food. Marauder comes second, it will definitly lock down some choices.Finally, Berserker seems to be only good for group situation when others will bring your critical to the max.

[FrostyFlake.1049]

If you play solo, balancing crit chance and power is key. If you exchange too many gear pieces for Assassin's you will hit critically more often, but with lower base damage, so the total result will be worse than if you had kept one more piece as Berserker's. Personally, i play a ranger with the spotter perk, full marauders gear and 1 or 2 assassins trinkets. this, combined with (usually) fractal potions or if not in fractals, some precision foods/utilities, this means 100% crit is very easy to achieve, and assassins gear would be wasted (since you cant go over 100% crit chance).

Marauders also has more stats than core zerker or assassin, the added survivability is great for playing solo, it means you can make mistakes or miss dodges and not be punished. With my full marauders set, i find that i can face tank all veterans and quite a few champion hero points without worrying about dodging, this would not be possible if i didn't have the added vitality. I often dive into the middle of camps in wvw with my soulbeast and don't have to worry about using my heal. with my full zerk characters, i find myself having to use line of sight to get the ranged characters to get grouped into melee range.

For group content, scholar runes are the obvious choice for max dps, but as a solo everything player, i would recommend rune of the pack. the added power and precision is great to guarantee perma crit and big damage, and the 6 piece bonus gives you might and fury while in combat, as well as some added boon duration. so as long as you are fighting something, you will pretty much always be critting. also, you're going to get hit, a lot, so rune of the scholar bonus will hardly ever apply when you dont have a dedicated healer.

Summary: I think full assassins gear is a waste, as you will most likely be above 100% critical chance, and anything above 100% is wasted. Berserker's gear will often yield higher DPS, and higher power is always welcome. Marauder will give you the best/most forgiving solo experience. almost all classes have a sigil for precision, perks for higher precision, and access to foods/ulilities/runes to boost crit chance, without having to run sigil of accuracy. running zerk/assassin instead of marauder is trading survivability for a bit more DPS.

crit is great, but doesnt matter if youre dead.

hope this was somewhat helpful, though you seem to have made up your mind.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

When it comes to efficient stat distribution, power wins out. This is because power scales linearly, whereas everything else is just a multiplier to power. I don't know if the math behind this has been posted on the new forum yet, but figuring out which one is best is a calculus problem. The direct damage formula is basically this:

Damage = K x Power x (Crit Chance x Crit Damage + Non-Crit chance)

I'll put in the real numbers and do some algebra:

Damage = K x Power x ( [Precision - 895]/2100 x (1.5 + Ferocity/1500) + 1 - [Precision - 895]/2100)

Let U = [Precision - 895]/2100Let V = Ferocity/1500

Damage = K x Power x ( 1.5U + UV + 1 - U)Damage = K x Power x (1 + 0.5U + UV)Damage = K x Power x (1 + U (0.5 + V)Damage = K x Power x (1 + [Precision - 895]/2100 x (0.5 + Ferocity/1500))

Where K is all of the static things like weapon strength, skill coefficient, enemy armor, geometric modifiers, etc. You don't have to worry too much about K, because it cancels out later. To see when the change in precision beats out the change in power, you take the derivatives of each and then set them equal to each other.

d(damage)/d(power) = K x (1 + [Precision - 895]/2100 x (0.5 + Ferocity/1500))d(damage)/d(precision) = K x Power x (0.5 + Ferocity/1500)/2100

So, investing in precision is equivalent to investing into power when

K x Power x (0.5 + Ferocity/1500)/2100 = K x (1 + [Precision - 895]/2100 x (0.5 + Ferocity/1500))

Doing some algebra again, we eventually get

Power x (0.5 + V) = 2100 + (Precision - 895) x (0.5 + V)Power = 2100 / (0.5 + V) + Precision - 895Power - Precision = 2100 / (0.5 + Ferocity/1500) - 895

From there, you can change ferocity to whatever you want. If we set it to zero, for example, we get

Power - Precision = 4200 - 895Power = 3305 + Precision

Since base precision is 1000, it means that you need 4305 power before putting a single point into either precision or ferocity is more efficient. Now, GW2 doesn't let us do freeform stat distribution. We have to go with the gear sets. Because 4305 power is unachievable, it is almost always better to choose the set with more power than it is to choose the set with less power. In the majority of cases, berserkers beats out assassin's because of this. There are some exceptions, such as power chronomancer, where it is better to hybrid assassin and berserker, but that is due to specific mechanics involving that profession.

When it comes to a combination of damage and survival, Marauder wins out. Mostly because it has more stat points overall. If you are ever wondering about a specific build, there is a shorthand that I use for power builds. I call it effective power, and it looks something like this.

Effective power = Power x (Crit chance x crit damage + non-crit chance)

For example, lets say I'm building a holosmith, and want to decide if I want to go with Assassin or Berserker. I just go to a build calculator, and plug in the stats to see what comes out:

Effective berserker power = 2557 x (0.7071 x 2.39 + 0.2929) = 5070Effective assassin power = 2135 x (0.9081 x 2.39 + 0.0919) = 4830

EDIT: Proofread

[Aigleborgne.2981]

Very interesting replies ? although lots of maths to digest.

Now, you sold me berserker stats (or marauder) but you miss one very important point: critical hit effects.Critical hits can trigger traits, sigil, and food. Some have ICD, but not all of them.Let's take my berserker example. Critical will give might and adrenaline. You can then take MMR to benefit from might. More adrenaline is very good by itself as you can burst more or faster.I could go on with CH sigils and food. On top of that, CH burst skills can also do more vulnerability, so more damage.

In this end, berserker might do more raw damage, but less secondary effects if you stay at 50-60% CH. When those effects are might and vulnerability, I'm not sure it still wins in damage. And even if it does, you will still loose other bonuses.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

Your numbers appear to be off by 10% (unless you’re accounting for some unknown food/sigil/rune/trait/signet), full asc zerker only just breaks 50% crit chance. Similarly, full sins only just breaks 70% and it cannot reach 100% w/ fury alone.

But math isn’t all that necessary (maybe aside from reaching crit cap w/o wasting stats). What’s more important to know is:

• power is #1 on things that allow you to hit it that long for it to even matter
• the less crit chance you have, the more you subject yourself to RNG

The topic of power vs crit chance can be explained using 2 examples:

• an infinite hp, static golem that you can freely bash up until the end of your days. Power wins. When does this actually happen though?
• a mob with only enough hp to eat maybe 2-3 of your crits before it already dies. Or a boss with a 5s vulnerability window. Each % of crit chance you don’t have is % chance that you might have to spend longer than the mathematical difference between raw power vs crit chance, because when you don’t crit in these critical moments, you lose a lot more than just some small theoretical dmg increase (unless you play some otherworldly multihit spec that negates RNG because the sample size of hits/crits is massively inflated).

So there’s a valid reason why capping crit chance first is emphasised in certain places, and how much you let slide is mostly dependent on how pedantic you are in achieving consistent results.

[Aigleborgne.2981]

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:Your numbers appear to be off by 10% (unless you’re accounting for some unknown food/sigil/rune/trait/signet), full asc zerker only just breaks 50% crit chance. Similarly, full sins only just breaks 70% and it cannot reach 100% w/ fury alone.

My bad, I had Signet of Fury when I took those numbers, it is exactly +9% Critical Hit.

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:

• a mob with only enough hp to eat maybe 2-3 of your crits before it already dies. Or a boss with a 5s vulnerability window. Each % of crit chance you don’t have is % chance that you might have to spend longer than the mathematical difference between raw power vs crit chance, because when you don’t crit in these critical moments, you lose a lot more than just some small theoretical dmg increase (unless you play some otherworldly multihit spec that negates RNG because the sample size of hits/crits is massively inflated).

It was my thinking but you explained it a lot better than me. I was playing my berserker with zerk gear the other day and I was hitting several normal hits with Arc Divider. Damage was low, and I got critical hits after my rage expires, obviously too late.Be absolutely sure that all your hits will be critical negates any random bad luck that might get you killed. Plus, it also assures you that everything based on critical hit will trigger everytime.

Achieving max precision with only attributes makes room for runes, sigil, and food. Those can bring important effects for solo situation that would be sorely missing with zerker gear. The moment you start to put out assassin pieces, you will be forced to pick replacements in rune/sigil/food.Maybe, it is best to find some balance here. I think all this really depends on your profession and build.