Gearing

hmmm i find it more of a play style thing more over than what gear you have. I can say, that I have a full invader set and a full berserker set. Each of which I've runed out and have proper food buffs. And i can say that i perform pretty equal with both.

I will just say this.

If you feel like running into a mob of people and spamming your abilities and not having to worry about your health.. then yes grab some Invader/Temple gear.

If you feel confident that you will survive most encounters then go berserker gear.

Me I personally prefer berserker gear over invader.. it's just my play style and I perform alot better with it.

Berserker gear is by far the most popular set. It's the metagame. That said, let's take a solid look at that metagame and figure out what we should and should not be doing. This article is about GEAR alone, nothing to do with trait lines or anything else.

I'll be looking at all equipment stats according to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature but not counting any runes or traits.

I'm going to do my best, but my numbers are most likely a little bit off (most notably weapon damage varies), and especially off from your observations taking into account traits, runes, sigils, etc. Thankfully, both power and toughness increases scale linearly, with no diminishing return problems to calculate. A somewhat more obscure argument can be made for boosting toughness along with Healing power, but that's a different story.

Full Berserker: Power +1001, Precision +696 (+33% crit chance), Critical Damage +57% (equivalent to doing 207% of your normal damage per crit)
So non-crit attacks are boosted up to 152% (from a normal base {power+weapon damage} of 1920). Crits happen 8.25x as often as naked, at the rate of 37% of the time for 207% damage (or 315% of non-crit, non-berserker's attack).
Normal crits would be calculated into DPS like this: Overall damage = Damage + (damage X amount of crit X chance to crit), resulting in something like: 100 + (100 x 0.50 x 0.04) = 102, or 102% overall damage.
So since we're looking at the bonus effect of the equipment, we have to calculate percentages. 152(new base damage) + (152 x 1.07 x 0.37) = 212.2 overall damage, or 208% of your original baseline 102 calculated above.

That is an overall increase in your DPS by 208%. That, however, you have to remember is full on DPS boosting with no increase in defense. Also this is not increasing any condition damage or anything else. You do, however, have the chance to proc on-crit-hit effects for other things, potentially way over 250% increase.


Knight's fully geared is the largest amount of Toughness boosting, so let's take a look. This will be simpler due to the calculation of armor, not having to take any criticals into account. For an explanation of how this works, think of it this way: fully calculate attacker's damage, then divide by Armor, while armor itself is the sum of Toughness and armor's Defense (according to your class). I'm a thief, so I'll take Medium armor numbers.
Knight's has a strange trinket set, so let's add it up: 179(weapon) +315(armors) +356(trinket base) +90(jewels minor) =940 toughness increase.
Base medium Armor is: 1064(armor) +916(toughness) =1980
1980+940= 2920
Therefore boosting only the toughness trait with full Knight's increases Armor rating by 47% (for effectively 147% survivability rating)

Knight's, however, increases your Power and Precision more akin to the berserker's set, so it's not really the best defensively, as you'll see below. This was merely a test to see how much damage could be mitigated by maxxing your Armor. In this example, being hit by a full berserker's invader would result in only taking 141% more DPS than before each of you equipped armor (their 208% dps mitigated by your 147% armor).

(Self-notes: pwr +696, pre +696. 136.25% base attack, A. A + (A x .5 x .37) = 161% damage boost)


Soldier's, however, is what Beezy is describing as the "only" set to consider, so let's boost both armor and health to see what we come up with (as well as consider the increase in DPS). Luckily the set is uniform, especially if you get the Invader's set of trinkets:
Major trait power: +1001.
Base Attack: 1000(weapon, taken from exotic shortbow, your results may vary) +916(base Power) =1916. 1916 +1001 = 2917 (new Attack)
New Attack power = 152%
Minor trait toughness: +696.
Base (taken from above): 1980. 1980 +696 = 2676 (new Armor)
New Armor = 135%
Minor trait vitality: +696. Each point adds 10 to your Health, so increase is flat 6960.
Base: depending on class, can be 18,372, 15,082, or 10,805
New Health = 138%, 146%, or 164%, respectively.
The relationship of Armor to Health leads us to the equation New Armor x New Health = New Ability to Withstand Direct Damage...
of 186%, 197%, or 221%, respectively.

Overall that's 152% increase in DPS plus 186%, 197%, or 221% increase in survivability, for the full Soldier's set, depending on class. Unquestioningly, the Guardian, Thief, and Elementalist stand to benefit the most from ANY increase in Vitality, but to the other professions it's still quite viable for sustaining oneself. For this set, let's just take a mid-line Ranger as our example and say that by doing 152% more damage living 197% longer, you're roughly 299% more effective in combat, even though you don't spike as hard.
*NOTE: unlike the other two, this set adds 0 to critical chance, and some builds actually rely on criticals for bonus effects that make them more effective in combat beyond the raw numbers!! This choice has to come from you, the player, to know whether critical hits are going to cause you to be more effective or not.


BOTTOM LINE:
I hope you enjoyed my little geek moment as much as I have. It's actually been quite eye-opening to me, and I hope this insight helps you to be more effective on the battlefield. Overall though, I believe that these numbers do add up, based on the results. What I DO know, is that Berserker's gear is VERY POPULAR, and you should take that into account as you think about what you need to be shielding against. Toughness increases help immensely against this type of direct damage, whereas it doesn't affect damage from conditions. Increasing your toughness by 696 is all well & good against 'zerkers, but won't do you any good against a Bleed-spammer necro or thief. If there is anything to be taken away from this post, let it be this, though: things are NOT always clear-cut & dry, and the reality is that the differences between these sets actually lead us to believe that any one can be effective, when played in different ways. Also, if anyone happens across a different set of calculations, I fully admit I am prone to making odd mistakes, and I would gladly fix my mistakes wherever possible.

p.s. 12.26.12 I just fixed calculation errors from when I was figuring criticals into damage output. Nobody corrected me, I just did it on my own. Thanks for taking me at my word, but people really ought to pay attention to game mechanics before they make assumptions.

» Edited on: 2012-12-26 12:25:03

I use multiple sets for WvW on Elthuzar depending on what activity I'm doing. I have a full berserker set for glass cannon Thief which can be used for assault squads, tower defense, I also have a mixed support/condition set that is used for support in large scale attacks, this is more of an all-rounder set with 1k condition damage, decent vitality and approx 500 healing. It allows me to put out sustained damage through caltrops (100+ per tick)and choking gas cloud and provide support through, group stealth, Shadow refuge healing and regeneration.

Every now and then I'll log onto an alt guardian but the gear gap between full exotics and level 35 rares on my alt are usually too much to handle for long.

Power/Toughness/Vitality gear is not optimal for a thief imho. Sure it might help with a niche build but berserker and condition builds are just as effective.

» Edited on: 2012-11-14 17:41:40

Survivability is the way to go in WvWvW. If you are dying in big fights on more than a rare occasion, then you need to adjust your play style and gear. Dead people do no damage and dead people cause the enemy to rally. You will do far more damage in the long run if you both stay alive and remain capable of sustaining it.

Which is perfectly relevant in a large scale combat or low skilled combat Covenn. Full berserker gear and full berserker trait builds are detrimental if the person in full berserker is reckless and part of a larger force but to say that Soldier gear is the only option is naive and incorrect, especially where a Thief is concerned.

If I am playing it safe on my Thief I will be running with 20k health and 1.6k condition damage but this build and it's gear is tailored toward harrier/support.

If I am roaming or in a Havoc squad I will run either full berserker or a mix of berserker, knights and soldier gear. Pure soldier gear just doesn't work with the thief, a skilled glass cannon thief will still take your meagre 18-20k health out in a split second and disappear.

If you're running solo, then by all means run full zerker. However, if you're running in a group then its way too much of a liability. As a thief or mesmer, you can get away with a 50/50 mix of PTV and zerker (or similar mix) because of stealth, but having a decent baseline for health and toughness is imperative because of the down state / rally mechanic.