HV or SW?

sinisteel

Which set excels in PvP? Which excels in PvE? I'm sort of new to the realm of tier 2 and unfortunately there isn't much information available in online sources so I'm not really sure how I should proceed. Can anyone help me out?

hidahayabusa

HV sounds better. Simply because you can drop someone's Defense to negatives** and boost your damage...while increasing your defense. If you are into searching T2 gear, you can also take a look at the GG gear (Champion Mage) which is very good for PvP due to the CD reduction of mastery and the boost in Hit Points and Armor Penetration.

As far as Survivability goes, CW's main weapon is correct positioning, since no gear can provide a good survival plan. Most of the times, if you get focused you go down. So, keep a distance, dodge correctly and keep moving. Saying this just to point out that no matter how much Def is on a gear....the current meta-game is full of Armor Penetration, meaning that it's almost as good as useless.

** Suppose that you have a target with 25% Damage Reduction. And you hit him:
a) Armor Penetration will be calculated first (i.e. Damage Reduction Ignored)
b) HV will be calculated afterwards, so if you have enough Armor Penetration to get his reduction to 0 then, HV is dropping him to negatives which (due to the damage dealing formula) will give you a proportional damage increase. Quite some boost.

angrymanagement

HV is best for PVE & PVP as long as your using encounters that activate the 4 piece.
Sadly HV is the best armor set we have. The 4 piece bonuses of any other CW set doesn't hold a candle to it.
Even the new armor set in the next expansion looks like it will be inferior due to the 4 piece.

pers3phone

HV is better overall, both PvP and PvE. But SW is not bad at all either. In PvE, if you have a HV CW in the group already you can play with SW for another buff. Even with non-ideal stats and crit way above what's necessary, I still dished out almost the same damage. But one should still have HV for when no CW has it... so you should start with it.

There's a rumor SW is bugged and doesn't proc correctly. I never had the patience to test it.

fondlez

In endgame PvP, HV scales well across all types of PvP and since you are likely to be the only CW in a group, correct application of debuffs will have a significant impact. That said, GG Champions set in everything except the highest level of premade-vs-premade PvP is just as good.

In endgame PvE, you have a lot more options mainly because there is normally more than one CW in the harder dungeons, but also because you can contribute using a much larger variety of Powers and playstyles. T1 sets like Archmage and Focal Magi remain effective for a long time. Yes, players in T1 sets can and do outdps players in T2 sets... However, HV again has that party-wide debuff margin when CWs are not all targetting the same enemies or due to its survivability stats or if you are the only HV user.

Prior to Feywild, many CW's kept multiple sets, typically SW (or 2pc SW + 2pc Magelord) and HV or Archmage and HV. Then later, players realised the value of the GG set and had both the GG set and HV. These post-Feywild days, due to lower average income, Bound gear and the prior multiple HV stacking issue, players normally have either HV or GG.

So, you can get any other set while you are working on getting your HV for those min-maxing situations or where you are the solo CW in a group. Unless you intend to do high level endgame PvP any time soon, there is no rush for any specific set.

banaanc

angrymanagement wrote: »

HV is best for PVE & PVP as long as your using encounters that activate the 4 piece.
Sadly HV is the best armor set we have. The 4 piece bonuses of any other CW set doesn't hold a candle to it.
Even the new armor set in the next expansion looks like it will be inferior due to the 4 piece.

dont care about 4pc, ill be getting it asap LIFE STEAL !!!11!!one!