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Attributes and Gear

Published Jan 6, 2023 Updated Apr 13, 2024

This is an in-depth guide to approaching Attributes and Gear in PvE Endgame Instanced Content.

Guild Wars 2 is a large game, with complex mechanics and interactions throughout. This guide is intended to help with gearing custom builds on any Class or Character, and to help you understand the details of existing endgame builds made by the Guild Wars 2 community, and create your own variations and custom builds so you can better adapt to the needs of your Squad!

Attributes

Attribute Types

All gear in Guild Wars 2 is comprised of three, four or nine attribute combinations. A list of all attributes can be seen below;

  1. Power
  2. Precision
  3. Ferocity
  4. Condition Damage
  5. Expertise
  6. Healing Power
  7. Toughness
  8. Concentration
  9. Vitality

Prefix Types

All gear, apart from Celestial, will have one or two 'Major' stats and one or two "Minor" stats.

The total stats obtained from any piece of gear with three unique attributes will be the same as any other three attribute gear of the same rarity and type, and the same applies to gear with four unique attributes, and Celestial gear with nine.

Double handed weapons add the highest amounts of total stats per piece, followed by Trinkets and then One Handed Weapons and Armour which varies per piece.

Gear Rarity

Full exotic rarity gear is considered the minimun required to tackle endgame content with an effective build. Almost all gear at this rarity can be bought from the Trading Post for Gold.

Full ascended gear is used in the strongest builds, and highly recommended in the harder raids, strikes and especially challenge modes. It must be crafted, or purchased from vendors for currency.

Legendary gear is the highest rarity and hardest to obtain by far, and does not add more stats than ascended gear, but has it's own usability benefits such as free out of combat prefix changing, sigil and rune swapping and simultaneous equipping on multiple characters.

Attribute Scaling

Some attributes will have a base amount on a character before gear, scaled to the character level.

The Base amounts at level 80, and mathematical conversion of attributes are as follows:

  1. Base Power is 1000. Every 10 Power equals 1% more Strike Damage with no cap.
  2. Base Precision is 1000 and Critical Chance starts at 5%. 1% Critical Chance is gained per 21 Precision.
  3. Base Ferocity is 0 and Critical Damage starts at 150%. 1% Critical Damage is added per 15 Ferocity.
  4. Base Expertise and Condition Duration are 0. 1% Condition Duration is added per 15 Expertise.
  5. Base Concentration and Boon Duration are 0. 1% Boon Duration is added per 15 Concentration.
  6. Base Healing Power is 0. Healing scaling varies, so it is best to read relevant skills, traits or abilities.
  7. Your base health pool is class dependent. One Vitality equals 10 hitpoints added directly into your health pool.
  8. Toughness and your Defense rating total together to make Armor, as shown in the Hero Panel. Defense rating is visible in the stats popup for relevant gear, and is determined by the Armor weight class and gear rarity. Wielding a Shield also adds some defense rating.

Gearing Builds

Building for Damage per Second (DPS)

Building for damage is split into two categories; Condition Damage and Power Damage.

  1. Condition Damage builds to attack foes through applied damage over time effects (DOT) such as Burning or Torment.
  2. Power Damage builds deal direct Strike Damage.

Effective endgame builds are best focusing on one of these types of damage dealing and building for it, although some specs are capable of very effective Hybrid builds too.

Power Builds

Power Damage builds use the attributes Power, Precision and Ferocity. These builds are inherently bursty, due to dealing their damage spike near instantly with no ramp up, but may be outperformed by a condition based alternative on longer phases or fights.

The basic rules of gearing for a Power build include:

  1. Power builds first take as much Precision as is needed to ensure all strikes are Critical Strikes with Fury applied. Once capped at 100%, they maximise Power and Ferocity for Strike Damage or Critical Damage bonuses.
  2. Common runes include , and .
  3. Common sigils include , and

Pay attention to any traits that grant Precision as an attribute or Critical Chance.

Condition Builds

Condition builds use the stats Condition Damage and Expertise primarily, with some Power and Precision.

These builds typically take longer to reach their peak damage than full Power builds, but more than make up for it in longer phases or continuous fights where they have the necessary time to build up their damage.

  1. Hitting 100% Condition Duration for your primary applied condition. Take enough Expertise to ensure that your most heavily applied condition lasts for the maximum duration.
  2. Once capped on Condition Duration, look to build the maximum amount of Condition Damage.
  3. Common runes include , and .
  4. Common sigils include , , , and .

Check the duration of your specific applied condition by hovering over condition duration in the hero panel. Different condition durations are needed to cap on different classes.

Support builds

Support builds are commonly built as a full DPS, with some Concentration gear slotted to provide Boon Duration.

  1. Hitting enough boon duration to maintain Quickness or Alacrity permanently, without heavily compromising your DPS output. Consistently providing one of these boons at 100% uptime to five allies in any encounter.
  2. is an easy way to slot more Boon Duration. You should never slot it in the place of a primary DPS sigil such as .
  3. can be used for condition based Quickness builds.
  4. Power builds typically take Concentration gear for Boon Duration as there are no suitable power runes.
  5. Boon Duration scales additivley which means 100% will be doubling your base durations overall.

Heal & Tank builds

Healing and Tanking are approached with more specialised builds and gear, and you will be expected to provide either Quickness and Alacrity.

The main things to consider will be:

  1. When healing, slot appropriate ally healing skills. How do your heal skills work? They might be ranged, aimed, or affect a radius around you.
  2. High Regeneration uptime is critical to most effective healer builds, and scales off of Healing Power.
  3. Check what other boons you provide and and aim to upkeep every boon you can effectively. Healers typically run much higher Boon Duration than other builds. Might, Fury, Quickness, and Alacrity are critical to group damage.
  4. is by far the strongest rune when it comes to healing.
  5. Common sigils include and .
  6. When tanking, slotting appropriate blocks for the encounter is important. Know what you can and can’t block with Aegis, invulnerabilities, dodges and skill blocks.
  7. Take Givers, Minstrels or Trailblazers gear if you require more survivability when tanking.

Gear Prefixes

These gear types are regularly used in focused endgame builds. They provide attribute combos with good synergy with roles that fit ideal squad building.

Berserkers & Assassins gear

Berserkers & Assassins gear is the primary pick for building for maximum Power damage due to being the specific three attributes needed. Assassins is only slotted if more Precision is needed to hit 100% Critical Chance, and it is worth checking if it would be more efficient to run runes or an accuracy sigil.

Vipers gear

Vipers gear is the primary pick for building for Condition Damage and Condition Duration, with some Power and Precision also included.

Celestial gear

Celestial gear provides an equal amount of every attribute, at the cost of lower overall amounts of each than specialized gear types. Due to providing a huge amount of attributes numerically in comparison to other prefixes, it is popular in open world or self-sufficient builds, but typically only used by experienced healers and very specific builds in instanced content as on many classes some of the attributes will be wasted in focused builds.

Harriers, Magi, Givers & Minstrels

These gear types are typically used by heal supports due to the high amount of Healing Power and Concentration they provide. Harriers and Magi are used when not tanking, and with the latter only being used when Boon Duration capped. Minstrels or Givers are slotted when tanking because they are more defensive due to providing a high amount of Toughness and/or Vitality.

Diviners and Ritualists

Used partially mixed with DPS gear in power and condition supports, respectively; due to providing some Concentration alongside the base stats those dps types need. Ritualists gear also scales well with some Condition Damage builds in particular due to the Vitality being converted into other useful attributes by traits.

Infusions

Up to 18 Infusions can also be slotted that offer five stat points of an attribute on top of gear.

This is ideal if you are very narrowly short of capping Critical Chance, Boon Duration, or Condition Duration.

Infusions are an expensive investment for minimal gains, so only mix them for optimising if you are certain rerolling gear cannot solve your build problem.

You can always go for a clean set of infusions with a main attribute such as Power or Condition Damage to simply boost damage output slightly, and this is easier to manage and rotate within your character(s).

Jade Bot Core

New with GW2 End Of Dragons, Jade Bot Cores are tiered equipables that boost Vitality, and therefore total health and survivability on any class. Some classes may gain indirect benefits from the extra Vitality if they have conversion traits like Firebrand or life force mechanics like Necromancer. The maximun tier available is tier 10, which boosts Vitality by 235.

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