Author Topic: More Important, +HP or + Resist?  (Read 23293 times)

Ankhammon

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #20 on: October 31, 2015, 06:30:41 PM »
I'm risking necro posting here, but it's Halloween so I figure it's ok.

The one point that is not being addressed in this thread is that you will have damage mitigation factors that affect what might work best on your character. You will get a better idea of what is better for that character if you review them.


For instance if you have a Ice dom/troller you will have access to artic air and shiver (amongst other things). This allows your character to survive a lot more easily in a lengthy fight but that your Achilles Heal will be the alpha strike. Those two powers will negate over 100% recharge and add in lots of other soft control goodies like slow, afraid and confuses.
For me this means that I would build first to make sure of the alpha strike, probably defense. From there I would have to consider the secondary and even the Ancilary choices I wanted.
IF I'm taking Stone mastery epic (troller) and have access to Earths Embrace, then adding HP makes little sense (I can cap HP when I want), I'm adding res.
If I'm taking Nature Affinity secondary (troller), I have amply access to Hots and regens and even some decent resists. I would work +HP.
If I'm taking a Earth Assault secondary (dom), I have access to lots of knockdowns and some stuns. Adding HP sounds good because you can add kin combats to all your kdown powers. This lets you have huge amounts of rech and would let me get the self heal usable very often.
ETC, ETC.

This doesn't directly explain your question, but I always think about things like this when making a determination as to what will work best for my builds.
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Arcana

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #21 on: November 03, 2015, 03:03:10 AM »
I'm risking necro posting here, but it's Halloween so I figure it's ok.

The one point that is not being addressed in this thread is that you will have damage mitigation factors that affect what might work best on your character. You will get a better idea of what is better for that character if you review them.

Strategically, good advice in general.  However, when specifically comparing +HP and +Res, this is less important because except for the factors discussed in this thread both of those have qualitatively the same kind of benefit: higher effective health, higher effective alpha strike resilience.

Also:

Quote
If I'm taking Nature Affinity secondary (troller), I have amply access to Hots and regens and even some decent resists. I would work +HP.

Actually, I think this is not good advice.  Assuming we're talking about a level of +Res and +HP that are comparable in strength "on neutral ground" then anything that actually *has* resistances would benefit from stacking: I would tend to pick +Res over +HP on anything that actually has resistances.  The HoT and regeneration don't swing the recommendation the other way because as previously discussed, regeneration is "neutral" between +Res and +HP and heals are actually *stronger* with +Res over +HP.  Furthermore NA had absorb.  If memory serves, resistances affected incoming damage before it interacted with absorption: in other words resistance "protected" absorption, effectively amplifying it.  +HP did not synergize with absorption in the same way (or any way).

Ankhammon

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #22 on: November 03, 2015, 05:09:10 PM »
Strategically, good advice in general.  However, when specifically comparing +HP and +Res, this is less important because except for the factors discussed in this thread both of those have qualitatively the same kind of benefit: higher effective health, higher effective alpha strike resilience.

Also:

Actually, I think this is not good advice.  Assuming we're talking about a level of +Res and +HP that are comparable in strength "on neutral ground" then anything that actually *has* resistances would benefit from stacking: I would tend to pick +Res over +HP on anything that actually has resistances.  The HoT and regeneration don't swing the recommendation the other way because as previously discussed, regeneration is "neutral" between +Res and +HP and heals are actually *stronger* with +Res over +HP.  Furthermore NA had absorb.  If memory serves, resistances affected incoming damage before it interacted with absorption: in other words resistance "protected" absorption, effectively amplifying it.  +HP did not synergize with absorption in the same way (or any way).

As usual, you are bringing in information I was unaware of. That definitely calls into question my ordering of importance HP/Res for Nat affinity.

In this case, resistances affect incoming damage before absorption is something I didn't know. I always assumed it was absorption that was eaten before any other consideration outside of whether or not you were hit. This is the case in many other games and it just creates a much less valuable, apart from all your personal defenses, shell of fast eaten HP.
So since -tohit, Defense and resistances will all be counted before absorb, there does come one additional question. Since Wild Bastion is on such a long recharge (240 seconds), how long does the absorption bubble last? Does it go beyond the 10.25 duration listed in mids? The question comes since the healing portion of WB last for that duration.
If that's the case, then adding res becomes way more important than adding HP. If not, then res still probably wins, but not by nearly as much since you still want to make sure you are not hit by enough to kill you and +HP has a universal flair since it has no damage type consideration.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2015, 06:52:35 PM by Ankhammon »
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Arcana

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #23 on: November 03, 2015, 08:51:44 PM »
As usual, you are bringing in information I was unaware of. That definitely calls into question my ordering of importance HP/Res for Nat affinity.

In this case, resistances affect incoming damage before absorption is something I didn't know. I always assumed it was absorption that was eaten before any other consideration outside of whether or not you were hit. This is the case in many other games and it just creates a much less valuable, apart from all your personal defenses, shell of fast eaten HP.
So since -tohit, Defense and resistances will all be counted before absorb, there does come one additional question. Since Wild Bastion is on such a long recharge (240 seconds), how long does the absorption bubble last? Does it go beyond the 10.25 duration listed in mids? The question comes since the healing portion of WB last for that duration.
If that's the case, then adding res becomes way more important than adding HP. If not, then res still probably wins, but not by nearly as much since you still want to make sure you are not hit by enough to kill you and +HP has a universal flair since it has no damage type consideration.

Keep in mind we can't just jump onto test to confirm anything anymore, so I'm going from memory and my interpretation of the power definition.  If my memory of absorb mechanics is correct, the correct way to read Wild Bastion's City of Data definition is that every player had an absorb bar, analogous to their health bar, but the max of that bar was normally zero.  So when we say a player had "1000 health" what we really mean is that their max health was 1000, and of course during combat their actual health could be lower than that.  Important to remember that in a sense, damage and heals were "permanent" in that normally they did not expire.  If you were hit with 100 points of damage, that damage was permanent in that it could be healed, but that damage subtracted from your health and that was that.  Similarly heals were also "permanent" - they had no duration, they just added to your health bar and that was that.

Absorb was like that as well: you had an absorb bar, and damage to that bar was "permanent" and "heals" to that bar were also permanent.  So what Wild Bastion did was two things.  First, it buffed your absorb bar maximum to a level that was computed to be 25% of your health bar.  If you had 1000 points of max health, you'd now have a 250 point absorb bar *maximum*.  At this point, how much absorb do you have?  Zero.  All that effect did was give you a 250 point absorb bar.  Now, on top of that, Wild Bastion *also* gave you a "25% absorb heal" which in effect filled your absorb bar.  So now you have a 250 point max absorb bar, and that bar contained 250 points of absorb.  How long does it last?  Well, the points last forever, or until you take damage.  But the max absorb buff lasts only 60 seconds.  When *that* expires, your absorb bar drops back down to zero max, and of course any points inside the bar disappear.

Think of it like Dull Pain.  When you use Dull Pain, two things happen.  First, DP buffs your max health by 40%.  And then it also provides a 40% heal.  So if you have a 1000 point health bar, then first that gets increased to 1400 - but your health is still 1000 points, so it actually looks like your health bar is only 71% full.  Then you receive a 400 point heal, and that fills your health bar up to 1400, and your health bar looks full again.  Those were two separate effects, and when you used DP you could actually see both effects visually affect your health bar.  When DP expires, even if you have all 1400 points of health, when your health bar drops back down to 1000, you lose any points above that.  Most absorb effects acted like DP: they granted you both an increased Absorb bar (typically increasing from zero) and some actual Absorb points to fill it.  The points didn't expire, but the bar itself did.

Now, am I 100% certain that resistances affected incoming damage before hitting absorb?  After all this time, no.  I'm 95% certain.  I'm 100% certain that if they did not, they would soon enough because in City of Heroes that kind of discrepancy between defense and resistance (defense obviously always protects absorb points due to the way CoH tohit mechanics work) tended to get nullified sooner or later.  I'm pretty sure if I detected that difference in testing, I would have wrote it up and I don't recall doing that.

Ankhammon

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #24 on: November 04, 2015, 12:36:35 AM »
If you are right, then the absorb mechanic in CoH worked considerably different than I expected. It would have been one of the more powerful segments to the Nat Affinity build and provided quite a large advantage.

Too bad I never played around with it when I was spending lots of time with my Naff/DP defender.
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Arcana

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #25 on: November 04, 2015, 08:45:58 PM »
If you are right, then the absorb mechanic in CoH worked considerably different than I expected. It would have been one of the more powerful segments to the Nat Affinity build and provided quite a large advantage.

Too bad I never played around with it when I was spending lots of time with my Naff/DP defender.

The "forum consensus" on absorb was that its numbers were too weak to be interesting, particularly for blaster toggles (some blasters got absorb as part of their I24 damage mitigation revamp).  As usual, forum consensus when it came to novel game mechanics was its usual spectacularly wrong self.

Ankhammon

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Re: More Important, +HP or + Resist?
« Reply #26 on: November 05, 2015, 12:35:51 AM »
The "forum consensus" on absorb was that its numbers were too weak to be interesting, particularly for blaster toggles (some blasters got absorb as part of their I24 damage mitigation revamp).  As usual, forum consensus when it came to novel game mechanics was its usual spectacularly wrong self.

Completely agree. The forumites liked to do the shark feeding frenzy dance. One "leaders" opinion and a thousand posted regurgitations. But fotm would hit everything eventually and then the set/mechanic/usw would have it's day.

My personal misunderstanding of the mechanic was due to rarely using the power because I simply didn't need it while using my Naff/DP defender (which I fell in love with). Reasonably high resistance numbers combined with hots and tons of -dam left me with a pretty sturdy character. 

Wish I'd finished him. Still high on my list of projects if/when.

Cogito, Ergo... eh?