Curse

MSecorsky · Aug 01, 2005, 08:59 PM // 20:59

Can't we just say that having either one is nice?

Orochim4ru · Aug 01, 2005, 09:07 PM // 21:07

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Infact, more and more, I'm having a hard time seeing any difference at all between +5 al and +30 hp. I just keep seeing +5al as being "+ X hp CONDITIONAL on AL related damage".

Its more than that. Its the amount of hp you don't need healed that counts here.

Say you have 450 hp (1 sup + 1 sup vigor rounded for easy math), adding a fort increases your max hp by 6.66% This means that you have an additional 6.66% buffer. Adding a +5 armor mod, however, lowers the damage you take by around 8.33%, meaning that you technically can absorb more damage.

Thus, under normal conditions, armor is better in terms of heal efficiency and in terms of total "tanking" ability sans heals. This means that your call between +5 armor and +30 hp is one of meta: will my enemies be using a lot of armor penetration and dots? or will they be using something like kd/as, which has no alterior damage types.

Red Locust · Aug 01, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

The way I see it, +30 health mods are doing absolutely nothing until you drop down to very low health. In some cases they're even interfering with stuff like protective spirit and sacrifice spells.

Let's say you take a 300damage spike, and your health drops down to 100. It would make very little difference if you had 70 health instead, your monk would still have to expend the same amount of energy to get rid of that 300 damage. Your health mod did practically nothing.

Now let's say you have +5 armor. You take a 300 damage spike, which actually hits you for 275 damage (on a natural 60AL target). You just saved your monk the trouble of healing through 25 damage, and that armor upgrade actually did something. Now let's assume you go through 3000 damage during a match (which is not uncommon), that's 250 damage averted, definitely nothing to sneeze at.

The only time +health would be useful is when someone beats you to within an inch of your life, and then starts wanding you for single digit damage. Then that 30 health you have left gives your monk the time needed to heal. But who does that? Whenever you see someone drop to 15% or less health, you take the opportunity and unleash the hardest hitting spell you have in order to terminate him and take him out before the monks get to work on him (which they are certainly trying to do).

Ensign · Aug 01, 2005, 09:37 PM // 21:37

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

Extra health is not the first or last to go: your analysis will be more accurate if you stop trying to conceptualize it as first or last, but rather simply as what it does. It adds to your total maximum heath. Pure and simple...A fortitude upgrade ADDS to your total cushion

What the modifier does really isn't in question, it's the most boring and straightforward upgrade in the game. What we're discussing is what sort of effect the upgrade actually has. This naturally turns to a quick discussion of the value of health, and particularly high health totals.

The whole 'first to go, last to go' debate stems from a gross misunderstanding of the whole deal. That because someone took 30 damage that dropped him from 485 to 455, that his Fortitude upgrade actually did something because he still has 'normal' hit points, when in reality the upgrade really didn't do much of anything.

You have exactly one valuable health point - the last one. Every other health point is just a buffer, a resource used to stall your own death or a margin of error for your Monks to work within. Hence the reference to your maximum health as a 'spike buffer' - high health is important for surviving large spikes of damage in a short period of time. It buys you a bit more time for your Monks to react with healing and protections. When damage does *not* come in large spikes, it's an efficiency battle, and the size of your health total is *irrelevant*, as long as it is suitibly large to absorb the entire healing of a single spell.

So to get back into the purely abstract, +health helps against damage spikes by giving you a bigger buffer, while +armor helps in the efficiency battle by doing damage mitigation and making healing more efficient by extension. Right? Right.

The problem with that debate, and the reason this decision is considered to be a no-brainer by those who understand the problem, is that +armor actually gives *better* protection against damage spikes than +health modifiers, pushing +health out of its niche and onto the bench.

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

it gives your monks more options, it gives them more time, it gives you more time

None of this is being argued. What is being presented as a statement of fact is that a +defense upgrade does all of this *better* than a Fortitude upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

it helps immensely if even a few points of healing might have otherwise gone to waste.

+health is valuable in as much as it allows you to absorb bigger heals and still get every point out of them - however, I will present that health totals are large enough that any heal delivered in an interesting situation is going to be fully absorbed, as health totals are still much larger than heal sizes, Fortitude upgrades or no. Healing only fails to give back the full amount when you're topping off a character, and neither upgrade, defense or fortitude, is going to matter much in those situations.

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

It is invaluable against any kind of damage, but ESPECIALLY damage that ignores armor, of which there are dozens of varieties.

This is really the crux of the argument, isn't it? There's ignore armor damage, and +health is more valuable against that than +armor for obvious reasons.

The fundamental problem with this sort of argument is that ignore armor damage is not the sort of damage that +health protects against - gross damage spikes. On its own armor ignoring damage tends to be painfully slow (DoTs). These are battles of energy attrition, and the size of the health pool is largely irrelevant as you *will* be seeing thousands of points of healing coming over the course of a battle. If you finally do die, it's because of attrition and your Monks being worn down - a few extra points of health are simply not going to matter.

More often though you see ignores armor damage *supplementing* a more conventional spike - be it some extra smiting from a Balth's Aura to wear people down or the +damage from a Warrior's attack skills. This extra damage enhances the spike, certainly, and +health does help here. But, as usual, you need to look at where the bulk of the damage is coming from in a scary spike, and if you do so the sources look familiar - Warriors and Rangers with weapons and Elementalists with nukes. The sources of damage that +armor works on and protects against better than +health.

If a good, ignores armor damage spike pops up then +health will instantly become the upgrade to have. Until then, though, +armor is going to be the upgrade to have, not just for the bonus to efficiency and the siege game, but because it gives you a bigger buffer than +health could hope to.

Peace,
-CxE

JoDiamonds · Aug 01, 2005, 09:53 PM // 21:53

Both are very useful. It just depends what you are fighting against.

If everything is hitting the armor, the armor is pretty much just better. But plenty of attacks bypass armor partially or completely.

Blue Steel · Aug 01, 2005, 10:14 PM // 22:14

Ensign, let me say that that was an excellent response in every way. I will only disagree on one point, but as you and I both know, it is the critical issue:

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Originally Posted by Ensign

More often though you see ignores armor damage *supplementing* a more conventional spike - be it some extra smiting from a Balth's Aura to wear people down or the +damage from a Warrior's attack skills. This extra damage enhances the spike, certainly, and +health does help here. But, as usual, you need to look at where the bulk of the damage is coming from in a scary spike, and if you do so the sources look familiar - Warriors and Rangers with weapons and Elementalists with nukes. The sources of damage that +armor works on and protects against better than +health.

I submit that there are scary spikes of all sorts, but the ones that kill me have always been and always are combined spikes with the bulk of the damage coming from armor penetrating or ignoring attacks. Every attack can be seen as damage over time, and when you look at how long it takes a sword to kill me, its a pretty tame "degeneration" of my health compared to the lightning blasts flying in, the poison, the phastasm and illusionary weapon, the afterburn armor ignoring "set on fire" damage from more mild flame attacks when i was "marked" with rodgort's, or the smiting damage of a good monk. Those, in my experience, are the more intense health "degenerations" and armor doesn't help. You get two or three of those stacked against you and you are in real trouble. You get two or three warriors attacking you simultaneously, and you are in moderate trouble.

I see the scary spikes as armor ignoring spikes supplemented by a little "conventional" damage, not the other way around. I have enough armor to not worry about most "conventional" attacks, but what do I do against the others? I look for more health and solid support characters to cancel the effects however we can.

Ensign · Aug 01, 2005, 10:19 PM // 22:19

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Originally Posted by Diomedes

If, as is claimed, that the +30 is the /last/ damage that you are taking, then shouldn't the damage /prevented/ from the +armor be considered the last health equivalent in the exact same fashion? In other words, if you saved 17 damage, then doesn't that not matter unless you only survived by 17 or fewer hp?

In the absence of healing, yes, that's exactly the case. Then all you're worried about is how big your spike buffer is and whichever one has a larger number then wins out.

It's when you throw in healing and other damage prevention that armor starts to look better. Just on raw damage, The target is only taking 91.7 damage on each hundred, which means you have to do 8.3% less healing to keep that guy healthy, which means 8.3% more energy for you. Over the course of a fight, +armor upgrades translate into free heals for your Monks.

From another perspective, the amount of damage needed to kill a person with a fortitude upgrade is equal to their base health, plus whatever healing they recieve, plus thirty. The amount needed to kill a person with a defense upgrade is equal to their base health, plus whatever healing they recieve, all multiplied by 1.09. From a straight buffer standpoint, +armor starts higher against standard damage (+41 vs. +30) and quickly gets better as healing is used.

To go back to the original argument, +armor is also better because it stacks nicely with protections. Slap a Shielding Hands on a target, and the +armor upgrade is going to perform significantly better than +health - the damage is reduced by armor before Shielding Hands reduces it further. The same goes for -damage from Knight's Boots and Absorption runes. Armor plays better with Bonds. It gives you a better threshold for Seed. And while it isn't super relevant, +armor has better synergy with Protective Spirit than +health (3 less damage per spike to heal).

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Originally Posted by Diomedes

If your HP is rarely dipping very low then it's probably because you're being over healed.

Sure, and when that's the case neither modifier is particularly relevant. I mean neither is going to come into play unless there's a serious threat that forces you either to react quickly (damage spikes) or ration your energy very carefully and make sure you maximize each heal (debilitation). If you're safely topping people off on healing then extra defensive measures really aren't needed.

It's the extremes you need to defend against. When you faced an Air Gank team a few months ago you were concerned with getting people the best spike protection possible, and that, really, was a tossup between +armor and +health. When you're seeing heavy energy debilitation every single heal does have to be maximally useful and +armor becomes invaluable.

But a lot of the time, yes, you're topping off and the efficiency arguments lose some weight. The most valuable thing you're looking for in your upgrade is the spike protection. Since that's comparable between the two in many real situations, you have to look at the the side benefits - I.E., efficiency arguments, how well they work with other defensive options, and once that's taken into account +armor comes out ahead.

The two really are comparable, and closer than I might imply by digging into the details.

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Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Seeing as the smiting groups that have been popping up love throwing out balth's auras, in the current pvp climate, i'd say that fort wins over armor.

Balth's Aura does swing things towards +health - Zealot's Fire swings things back towards +armor. +health gives you a straight 1.2% better survival time against an Elmo Smiter with Aura + ZF. Fortitude is better if you're not using protective buffs, but if you are take defense for the synergy.

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

and a more rare and expensive status symbol to boot, it is my preference . .

I think that the value of the different components weighs much more heavily in these arguments than they should - as the popularity of Sundering and Weapon Mastery upgrades suggest. It should be apparent by now that value and usefulness do not translate in any meaningful manner in this game.

Peace,
-CxE

Nash · Aug 01, 2005, 10:19 PM // 22:19

Lightning doesn't ignore armor, and if you get owned by IW and Phantasm, well then your team must be pretty awful.

Personally I'd rather use Mastery and take the minor damage boost than more armor on a character class that doesn't really need it.

Orochim4ru · Aug 01, 2005, 10:24 PM // 22:24

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poison, the phastasm and illusionary weapon

Poison, sure. Phantasm and IW? i haven't seen those used for months.

Also, being marked with rotgor also means you've got some happy fragility on, most likely, meaning you should be packing anti-hex.

More viable and dangerous armor pen is brought on by smiters or by spells similar to those in the shatter line, but those, unlike air or kd/as spikes don't kill in 2 seconds, they're more running off damage over time.

The thing is, with those types of attacks, even the ones you mentioned, +30 hp isn't going to do squat, because the attacks are easily kept up. If you dropped to 29 hp while being healed, you're still going to be taking the same dps in the next few moments, so what's to stop you from getting killed then?

Phades · Aug 01, 2005, 10:39 PM // 22:39

The real question is does the +5 armor or the +30 hp buy the extra fraction of a second of life when it matters, not if the hits accrued over the course of an hour adds up to a greater energy efficiency synergy with another character. When asking questions like that typically lead to pre-calculating damage potential versus expected healing ability in a set timeframe. If the extra hp give the nudge, then that is what is used, but if not then the latter. Considering the popularity of focuses and the option for +energy mods, the characters that would consider using said weapon upgrades probably wouldn't really benefit from either in a pvp situation.

That is a pve solution versus a pvp solution and both have merits.

Blue Steel · Aug 01, 2005, 10:55 PM // 22:55

All excellent points. This thread has become quite the intellectual discussion. My preference for the fortitude upgrade is that, on an intuitive level, it is more versatile. It helps with every kind of attack, so if a PvP team happens to be running all armor penetrating or armor ignoring attacks, you are in as good of shape as possible, and if they are using predominately (or exclusively) conventional attacks, you are in a comparable position to what you would be with +5 armor. If you are in PvE (which is where I find phantasm to be a popular attack) you are also in great shape. In PvE there is a lot more "topping off" of healing and a lot more but much shorter battles anyway. If you just want one upgrade that will, indisputably, serve you at least reasonably well in any situation, fortitude is the one to go for.

Asplode · Aug 01, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

I don't think this calculator's entirely functional.

I just entered 106 base damage, vs 60 armor, with 25% armor penetration, and turned up 137.46, when I clearly do 140 damage with a lightning orb against a 60AL target

Zrave · Aug 01, 2005, 11:21 PM // 23:21

Obviously, the right answer to the dilemma is to have two weapons, one with armor and the other with health, the latter to which you switch when your health gets real low. I recommend a Hale Staff of Fortitude.

However, I disagree with Ensign when he states that Mastery is utter shit, comparing it directly to Sundering. Well, those pieces go on different parts of the weapon, so its not fair to compare them at all. The hafts are infinitely more useful than the grips, but Mastery, being the only option that even slightly contributes to the offense, has its place in any build that is already sufficiently resilient that attacking it would be a mistake. I'd use armor in a frenzy build, sure, but otherwise Mastery is a worthy candidate.

Enchanting is the exception, the overpowered grip, which should be used if you have any enchantments at all.

MSecorsky · Aug 01, 2005, 11:33 PM // 23:33

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Originally Posted by Zrave

Obviously, the right answer to the dilemma is to have two weapons, one with armor and the other with health, the latter to which you switch when your health gets real low. I recommend a Hale Staff of Fortitude.

I found a gold Smiting staff of Fortitude (my ranger did, that is...) that has base stats of +10 energy, +5 armor and reduced poison duration. Slapped a Hale headpiece on it... I'm positively giddy. Neither +life thing is maxed, but still is +50ish life.

Ensign · Aug 02, 2005, 01:11 AM // 01:11

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Originally Posted by Blue Steel

Every attack can be seen as damage over time

This is true, but after a relatively short period of time it stops being a spike (which kills before the monks can respond), and starts being 'damage over time', which has to win through attrition.

I'd put the spike timeframe at roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds. If it takes longer than that to drop a target, it's no longer a spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue Steel

when you look at how long it takes a sword to kill me, its a pretty tame "degeneration" of my health compared to the lightning blasts flying in, the poison, the phastasm and illusionary weapon, the afterburn armor ignoring "set on fire" damage from more mild flame attacks when i was "marked" with rodgort's, or the smiting damage of a good monk.

I submit for your consideration that you've been spending too much time in arena without competent monking.

Peace,
-CxE

Mormegil · Aug 02, 2005, 01:17 AM // 01:17

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Originally Posted by Asplode

I don't think this calculator's entirely functional.

I just entered 106 base damage, vs 60 armor, with 25% armor penetration, and turned up 137.46, when I clearly do 140 damage with a lightning orb against a 60AL target

And such a slight approximation makes you think that the calculator is not "entirely functional"?

noblepaladin · Aug 02, 2005, 02:47 AM // 02:47

First of all: realistically, neither upgrade will save you except on that very rare situation where 1 out of 20 times you happen to survive by a thread. We are dealing with very small percentages here, but since we are still trying to figure out which one is "slightly" better...

Armor works better with healing. A simple example: suppose mending heals you 6hp/sec, and you are getting hit for 8 hp per second. You take a net of 2 damage. Now suppose the damage is reduced by 12.5%, and you take 7 damage per second, now you take a net of 1 damage, doubling the time you survive. (Note that I manipulated the numbers so the situation is easy to understand, it's very rare that real game situations are as optimal as this). So even a small amount of armor can make a noticible difference in the outcome of a battle.

The flaw with this argument is that in a real battle you are not always constantly healed. If you do not have a constant source of healing like mending or Healing Breeze, that extra hp may allow you to heal yourself before you die (ex. you get knocked down and you couldn't cast your healing spell in time, even though you can easily heal yourself to full health).

In general, armor tends to be better on characters with low armor. A Mesmer with 60 armor can gain between 8-9% damage reduced from the +5 upgrade, whereas the amount of extra health that the +30hp upgrade gives is slightly over 5%. Along with the healing situation I described above, the +5 will edge out the +30hp almost all the time. For characters with heavy armor, such as a Warrior with a Gladiators armor a shield, you have an Armor Level of 80 base + 20 vs physical + 16 shield + Bonettis defense (or some other stance) and any benefit you get from armor only get activated 25% of the time and is probably unnoticible due to rounding off. If you are heavily armored and defensive, you can squeeze quite a bit out of any hp you have.

Some other pieces of information that are relevant. Most spikes are affected by armor. Most types of elemental damage are reduced by armor (holy damage is not I believe, because I always seem to hit for the listed damage when I smite). The extra damage from Warrior attacks like Cleave and Executioners Strike are not reduced by armor, but the base attack is. Many mesmer spells such as Empathy or degeneration spells ignore armor, but most spell casters still fire off a few regular attacks in between and many of the direct damage spells are still reduced by armor (in general, Mesmer and Necro spells seem to ignore armor the most).

So the basic summary, both the +5 armor and the +30hp have their advantages and disadvantages. However, the advantages of both are very small, and probably wouldn't make a difference in most battles (yeah, you can think of a situations where you survived by 10 hp, due to armor or the +30hp, but think about all the times you did die). Your build and strategy is much more important, afterall GW rewards skill, not equipment. So if you cannot afford the +30hp, don't be too upset with a +5 armor.

hydrak · Aug 02, 2005, 02:59 AM // 02:59

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Originally Posted by noblepaladin

In general, armor tends to be better on characters with low armor. A Mesmer with 60 armor can gain between 8-9% damage reduced from the +5 upgrade, whereas the amount of extra health that the +30hp upgrade gives is slightly over 5%. Along with the healing situation I described above, the +5 will edge out the +30hp almost all the time. For characters with heavy armor, such as a Warrior with a Gladiators armor a shield, you have an Armor Level of 80 base + 20 vs physical + 16 shield + Bonettis defense (or some other stance) and any benefit you get from armor only get activated 25% of the time and is probably unnoticible due to rounding off. If you are heavily armored and defensive, you can squeeze quite a bit out of any hp you have.

Agreed. Against spike damage, +5AL upgrade is less effective on high AL characters such as rangers (100AL vs all while using bow) and warriors (80-85AL vs all w/o shield, and 96-101AL w/ shield).

Orochim4ru · Aug 02, 2005, 03:03 AM // 03:03

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Balth's Aura does swing things towards +health - Zealot's Fire swings things back towards +armor. +health gives you a straight 1.2% better survival time against an Elmo Smiter with Aura + ZF. Fortitude is better if you're not using protective buffs, but if you are take defense for the synergy.

I'm all for the armor>fort mostly, but smite groups also pack JI. With 10 str and a penetrating attack, that gives a warrior attack 50% armor pen, leaving your +5 mod to +2.5, which gives around 4% dmg reduction. add that to large aoe dps, and your monks are more likely to waste energy they might otherwise have saved.

On the whole, however, single target focus attacks generally tend to favor armor over fort, if only for the fact that protection magic and +armor work VERY well together as was noted by Ensign earlier.

Morganas · Aug 02, 2005, 06:49 AM // 06:49

Despite the fact that +armor is more effective on low armor chars, from a practical standpoint in pve, if given the choice, a non warrior should always have +hp. The monk shouldn't be healing you anyways, and if you mess up, the hp is more likely to give enough time to toss the foe off back on the warrior. Warriors should never go +hp, since the monks spamming heals on you the whole fight you should try and make their jobs run more efficiently.

In pvp, everyone should go +armor, unless you're trying to maximize grenth's or something weird like that.