Is there a Power alternative for Trailblazer armor?

[Sifu.9745]

I mean as a condi player in open world or WvW you can replace your Viper gear with full Trailbalzer and your dmg will only drop for around 20% or 25%, depends of Profession/Build etc., while you get a huge amount of survivability in return.

 

As a Power player you don't have much options, if you prefer more defensive playstyle. You can equip Marauder gear, which is a boost to your Vitality (and only slightly dmg loss), but no Toughness is added, so in the terms of survivability it is inferior to Trailblazer.

 

Another bad option is Soldier gear, when you get both: Toughness and Vitality but you lose a huge amount of dmg, if you swap to this gear from Berserker or Marauder. For example: if you have 60% base crit (and at least 200% Ferocity) on your Berserker gear, that means that your dmg will drop for at least 60% on Soldier gear i guess. It's just way too much, compared to dmg loss on Trailblazer gear to Viper's gear.

 

I am just asking if we can get an alternative to more defensive Power playstyle without droping the dmg for more than 25%? Maybe you can add some new 4 stats gear with Power and Toughness being primary stats and Vitality and Precision as secondary stats?

Sorry for English ...

Edited August 17, 2021 by Sifu.9745

[ugrakarma.9416]

shouldd sacrifice critical chance: use cavaliers (toughness, power, ferocity), combined with very few knigths(power, toughness, precision), to maintain at least 35% critic. chance base,, the rest of critical chance u get from allies buffs on zergs/self boon(guardian have lots of self boon fury).

[Danikat.8537]

I can't directly answer the question, but this Wiki page may be helpful: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute_combinations

The table can be filtered using the buttons at the top to show, for example, all sets with Power and Toughness available in PvE and might help you find some good options.

 

The other thing to bear in mind is you can mix and match different sets. So you could swap out just a few pieces for something like Soldier's, giving you a slight boost to defence without losing all your damage.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

That would be Paladin. But according to Wiki, it is sPvP only.

 

Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

The short answer is no.

 

You can get power-vit-toughness, power-prec-toughness, power-ferocity-toughness, or power-vit-ferocity more or less.

 

The long answer is yes, but only if you use your traitlines for stats like in the following examples.

 

Now, some classes have access to lots of crit chance or lots of ferocity from their traitlines and can use those traits to shore up their stats and take one of the sets above.

 

A Str-Arms-Disc warrior for instance on power main stat set can get ~950 ferocity from traits, 500 of which come from 5 stacks of a 1m buff that goes away when they mount.

 

FWIW I've made a warrior using Sentinel stats that had while fully buffed 50% crit chance, 217% critical hit damage, 41% critical hit chance with chances at 91% and 100%, 3800 power, 3k toughness, and 34k HP.

 

Necros can get 33% critical hit chance from Shroud, an extra 180 precision, 2% critical hit chance per condition on the target, and if a reaper 2% critical hit chance per stack of vulnerability. They can also get 600 ferocity while in shroud as a reaper, 300 if non reaper.

 

Rangers via the Skirmishing traitline can use Viscious Quarry to make Fury grant an extra 10% crit chance and grant 250 ferocity.

 

Disclaimer I make not promises on the usefulness of any of these combinations.

 

 

[Fueki.4753]

Marauder Gear, which is Berserker with Vitality, might be the closest you get without completely sacrificing one attribute.

But it has no Toughness on it.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, Fueki.4753 said:

Marauder Gear, which is Berserker with Vitality, might be the closest you get without completely sacrificing one attribute.

But it has no Toughness on it.

Yeah, closest OP can get without sacrifice stats is Marauder gear with toughness runes and maybe a karka potion.

[The Boz.2038]

Go with Marauder stats. Massive durability increase for minimal damage loss (and even an improvement in Precision over Berserker). You can even use it in fractals and raids comfortably, because Toughness there is very much a complicating factor (it governs enemy aggro and can screw up mechanics).

Power damage multiplies through three stats, but more than condi damage does off two, so sacrificing two to get Vit *and* Tough is not as good an idea.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

There's various combinations that come close, like Valkyrie+Captain (Pow and Prec main, respectively). But you're not going to get exactly as high as Trailblazer, because condi builds ignore armor. This is what actually makes them so strong, not because you only have to take one stat to do damage--infact you could do good damage even without that stat, because you're doing millions of damage just by completely eliminating Toughness on enemies.

 

Also, what gear works for you is heavily dependant on class. For example, Reaper can run full Soldiers(!) and have insane survivability while still sporting 3.8k Power, 100% crit rate and 200% crit damage, due to traits. Other classes have similar access to, what the devs called "Superfury" on livestream, like Ranger and Revenant.

 

Its all contextual. There's even cases where Berserker or Marauder gear may be inefficient, as it'll over-allocate stats, like too much crit. This is why you should always use an armor calculator when making builds.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

wasn't there also demolisher stat? basically marauder but with vita swapped for toughtness (or is that also sPvP only stat selection?)

[The Boz.2038]

2 minutes ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

because condi builds ignore armor

In PvE, this is a detriment, and the OP mentioned both WvW and open world, so...

[Dante.1763]

4 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

In PvE, this is a detriment, and the OP mentioned both WvW and open world, so...

How is it a detriment?

[The Boz.2038]

Strike damage tooltips are made with 2597 Defense. Almost all PvE enemies are below this except for some rare tanks (Husk, for example, have about 3.5k), most of those well below (~2k), so you're actually doing increased damage.

[Fueki.4753]

11 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

wasn't there also demolisher stat? basically marauder but with vita swapped for toughtness (or is that also sPvP only stat selection?)

Demolisher is only PvP for now.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

42 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Strike damage tooltips are made with 2597 Defense. Almost all PvE enemies are below this except for some rare tanks (Husk, for example, have about 3.5k), most of those well below (~2k), so you're actually doing increased damage.

Tooltips have nothing to do with damage, so I don't understand what you're saying here.

 

Damage in this game is exponential in both increases and reductions and armor is a direct divider on all damage and thus reduces power-based damage no matter how much the enemy has, even just 10 armor will reduce your damage by 10x, which is why ambients take hundreds of thousands of damage instead of millions.

 

When you hit a mob you're actually doing tens of millions of damage and its being reduced by armor.

 

There is never a case where you're doing "increased damage" to an enemy with any amount of armor, and many condi DPS builds would be superior to power builds in PvE if the ramp-up time didn't make them nearly useless in encounters that are over before the optimal DPS output is reached, which is the primary reason they aren't taken that often for Fractals, etc. And in open-world, enemies are just too weak unless you're fighting an entire group of them.

[The Boz.2038]

OK, let me simplify.

Most enemies you'll encounter in PvE, and even some in WvW, will have below average armor. Against those with below average armor, not ignoring armor is better than ignoring armor. Strike damage does not ignore armor. Condition damage ignores armor. Strike damage is better against targets with low armor.

Better?

[Antycypator.9874]

You can mix Cavalier and Knight stats, or Marauder + Knight.

Or just play celestial.

[Gorem.8104]

1 hour ago, Antycypator.9874 said:

You can mix Cavalier and Knight stats, or Marauder + Knight.

Or just play celestial.

Yeah the best power alternative to Trailblazers has to be Celestial. Its the closest we get to getting the three main stats we need (power, Pres, Fer) and Toughness+Vitality with longer lasting boons and debuffs as an added bonus. Your dps will be lower then a berserker or marauder but you will be tankier. 

 

That Trailblazer set really is just broken in  how strong it is for Condi spec open world. Still, the best part about Marauder gear is you can use it in all pve grouped content, not having toughness is a good thing there. Mix in some  Knight for survivability and you are good for open world. 

[Sifu.9745]

2 hours ago, Antycypator.9874 said:

You can mix Cavalier and Knight stats, or Marauder + Knight.

Or just play celestial.

Celestial Power is even lower dmg than Soldier i guess? I play Celestial as hybrid Weaver and Tempest (and condi Daredevil sometimes) and it works perfectly for a mixture of all stats, though is still more condi oriented gear. If you focus only on Power and survivability i am sure there are better options than Celestial gear ...

A mix of Marauder, Knight and Cavalier might work, but i would prefer if Anet would add new gear with power, vitality, precision and toughness stats, so that we don't need to mix gear just to get an inferior alternative to Trailbalzer gear.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Sifu.9745 said:

Celestial Power is even lower dmg than Soldier i guess? I play Celestial as hybrid Weaver and Tempest (and condi Daredevil sometimes) and it works perfectly for a mixture of all stats, though is still more condi oriented gear. If you focus only on Power and survivability i am sure there are better options than Celestial gear ...

A mix of Marauder, Knight and Cavalier might work, but i would prefer if Anet would add new gear with power, vitality, precision and toughness stats, so that we don't need to mix gear just to get an inferior alternative to Trailbalzer gear.

You can build surprisingly strong warriors with cele gear.

 

Any class that offers large stat bonuses, and not all do, can leverage celestial gear pretty well.

[Beleron.9347]

Hopefully, we will get some decent new options with EoD. For my part, I'd like something like major condi and power with minor vitality and either expertise or precision. Celestial is excellent for builds which can use the healing and concentration, but often at least one of those is wasted.

[Infusion.7149]

If you really need to you can run Karka potion and scrapper or fighter (brawler in PVE) rune (power main stat with toughness)

[Cyninja.2954]

14 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

OK, let me simplify.

Most enemies you'll encounter in PvE, and even some in WvW, will have below average armor. Against those with below average armor, not ignoring armor is better than ignoring armor. Strike damage does not ignore armor. Condition damage ignores armor. Strike damage is better against targets with low armor.

Better?

 

Against enemies with below average armor, ignoring armor is LESS impactful versus not ignoring armor, aka ignoring armor is less important. That does not mean ignoring armor is worse than not ignoring armor.

 

That would only be true if ignoring armor came with a penalty. Which it does not, given the near similar damage output of condition versus strike damage.

 

The closest to a penalty in this case would be the ramp up of condition damage versus immediate impact of strike damage.

 

I get what you mean, but the way you worded it is technically incorrect because the penalty or difference does not come from ignoring or not ignoring the armor, but rather from the way the damage is applied time frame wise which is another balance aspect.

 

As to the thread at hand:

Power, precision, vitality, toughness stat combination combined with Power, ferocity, vitality, toughness would be the equivalent to trailblazer. Both of which are not yet available in-game and both which might not be as impactful as trailblazer.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[The Boz.2038]

The Kitty Golem has an armor value of 2597. The neck-and-neck strike-vs-condi damage is done on that exact golem.

Most enemies have much lower armor values, going as low as sub-2000, like light armor. Against most enemies, strike damage will outdo condition damage, precisely because of this. Health is irrelevant for this (and if taken into account, makes the difference even more stark).

It is, objectively, a downside of condition damage to not capitalize on this. Sub-standard armor is also much more common in the game than above-standard: very, very few enemies have more than 2600 armor.

I am, in the most literal sense possible, correct. Technically and factually..

 

Also, lol, power+ferocity with crap critical chance would be... fairly sad. Power and precision is a much better combination. Technically and factually.