The concept of Effective Health Points

[Jarkko]

EHP, Effective Health Points, is something familiar to those who have played a tank class in a MMO. In WAR I think it is something everybody should be aware of, because in a PvP enviroment everybody is a tank

Lots of the theorycrafting and examples are taken from http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100152 , please do take a look there for a more vivid discussion on this


In WAR we have two things affecting health: Wounds (each wound add 10 health) and Toughness (each toughness reduces incoming damage by 0.2 DPS). In items Wounds and Toughness (and everything else too) have same value: Same item in its different variations can give +20 Toughness or +20 Wounds (or Iniative, or Weaponskill, etc etc).

50 wounds is 500 health. 50 Toughness reduces incoming damage by 10 DPS.

Lets say you recieve 250 damage from a single source over 5 seconds. If you had 50 toughness more you would instead have taken 200 damage, but if you had 50 extra wounds you would now have 200 health more left. Isn't wounds simply way better always?

Let's say you are a paper-doll with 6000 health. Let's say you are taking 2500 damage over 5 seconds from 10 different sources (for example 3 players whacking you and a couple dots on you).

If you had 50 wounds extra, you would have taken effectively 2000 damage (6000+500 - 2500), but if you had 50 toughness extra instead, you would have taken effectively 2000 health. With the extra wounds you would thus be at 4000 health, while if you had the 50 toughness extra you would be at 4000 health too!

Now calculate in healing. Lets say you have warrior priest that is able to heal you for 1000 points every five seconds. Lets see what the health is after each 5 seconds if you are the "paperdoll" (1), have +50 wounds (2), have +50 Tougness (3)

1) 6000, 4500, 3000, 1500, 0
2) 6500, 5000, 3500, 2000, 500, -1000
3) 6000, 5000, 4000, 3000, 2000, 1000, 0




Now, I don't claim Toughness is better than wounds. It is not! But in situations where there is lots of healing available and lots of sources of damage, it is better to stack up on Toughness really good. Especially the tanks, but others too, might be adviced to hold on to "Tougness gear" if it is equally good as "Wounds gear" otherwise. As a general rule of thumb, Wounds let you survive the initial spike damage, but Toughness keeps you going for longer (if you just made it through the first seconds )


In essence, both Wounds and Toughness increase you Effective Health Poins. It is important to keep these two balanced, and if necessary, swap in different gear for different situations

[vacuum]

Good post and analysis. Thanks.
Given the spiky nature of damage - would you say that wounds work best in RVR - since if you're focus fired, you tend to be dead regardless?

[Jarkko]

Given the spiky nature of damage - would you say that wounds work best in RVR - since if you're focus fired, you tend to be dead regardless?

Yes and no.

Yes, Wounds is better in my opinion when there is one single source pounding you (supposing you can dispose the single source doing the damage decently fast), as it gives you a bigger starting pool.

No, Toughness is better because you seldom take damage from one source only in PvP. There are AoE attacks, dots and whatnots.

However, always remember that if you have a ton of Toughness and very few Wounds, you will go down fast. Toughness is good vs many sources of damage and in long fights, *especially* when you have healing incoming. You still need a decent healthpool to survive the spikes. Who cares you would have survived a minute, if you just had survived the first three seconds when you were nuked down and your healer was knocked down?


I would advice for a rather balanced amount of wounds-toughness for PvP gear. In PvE encounters, like PQ phases with several mobs, or in dungeons, (not so much spike damage, but lots and lots of sources of damage from the multiple mobs) if I was a tank I would go for more toughness in favoiur of wounds and blame the healer if I croaked 



Also as IB always try to keep up [spell]1357[/spell]. You will love it, your Oathfriend will love it, and your healer will love it   It is just silly how good the buff is for both you and your Oathfriend, and it will make the healers job much easier

[Torgal]

Difficult issue, I would agree that balance is the best route as stacking stats in extremis tends to lead to excessive neglect of others, for instance faced with the choice between +60 wounds on a helmet, or +40 wound and +40 toughness on another. My feeling is obtaining wounds until you have enough and then stacking toughness is a worthwhile way to go about it, but that's rather wooly since whether you have 'enough' is entirely objective. Often the choices are made for you by the range of gear available to you at higher levels of play, and all you have is customisation based on small choices (gemming in WoW, talismans in WAR?).

An interesting discussion which I have no handle on is the effectiveness of stacking initiative for the purposes of PvP survivability. Given the scarcity of ways to increase your own crit rate, if you can effectively reduce your opponent's crit rate by a significant amount, I would say that's very compelling. Also boosting evade rates is great.

The argument against intiative I think is that toughness is an across the board reduction in dps, whereas intiative will provide less average mitigation versus casters than melee and even against melee may let you down if the RNG is against you in any given situation.

I'd still like to see some analysis though.

[Jarkko]

An interesting discussion which I have no handle on is the effectiveness of stacking initiative for the purposes of PvP survivability. Given the scarcity of ways to increase your own crit rate, if you can effectively reduce your opponent's crit rate by a significant amount, I would say that's very compelling. Also boosting evade rates is great.

This is something the matrix-man (known as Peter ) would be good at But I'll give my own gut-feeling NB: This is *not* based on any calculations, just how I feel about the thing

For tanks, ranged and especially healing classes I think Wounds and Toughness are the most important defensive stats. They all will get all sorts of nasty stuff thrown at them: Spells, bullets, axes, you name it. Toughness and wounds are always nice. Sure, if yo get Iniative you don't have to spit on it, but Wounds and Toughness are way more important. Toughness = Wounds >> Iniative


Medium armoured melee DPS need IMO all three. They need to crit, they need to avoid critting, but they also need to fend off eager tanks and opponent melee DPS while they are wading towards the squishies. Toughness = Wounds = Iniative.

For light armoured melee DPS (WH and WE) a fast kill is everything. Get in, get the kill, get out. They can lock out casters for a short while, and they need to take the caster down before they themselves are only smoking boots. Crits are important, and it is also important that a ranged crit doesn't kill them when they are running out again; if they made it out alive they can run to friendly healers and get back to form (or make the GY run as is so very usual for these classes :p), and they need to evade the big mean tanks who eat wich classes for breakfast. Iniative > Wounds > Tougness

[Envicta]

I would say the choice is very much career independant,  because Careers have an array of different survival abilities.

For example,   on my Warrior-Priest i'm trying to increase my Toughness,   because in addition to my passive abilities that already increase my Armour rating and Parry chance,   I want to achieve the highest amount of migration as possible,    seeing as i'm going to be focused quite often.    Burst DPS is less of a concern for me due to that high migration.

However on my ArchMage,  running around in armour no thicker than paper,    I really do feel burst DPS, so I instead I 100% rely on my Detaunt and AE Detaunt abilities for my survival.     Therefore I want to increase my life-expectancy over the short time between the first Ouch and the last ouch..       So I would side with Wounds and probably only wounds.

I do agree with Torgal though,      you should try and get as much of the stat that is most important to you,  once you've peaked you should do as much to improve the other.

Interesting debate,    I welcome anyone who wants to go at it with some funky maths

Invicta.

[Jarkko]

There is no cap on Toughness. No matter how much you stack Toughness, the DPS reduction stays the same 0.2 per 1 point of Toughness.

However each attack will always do at least 1 point of damage, no matter how much toughness you have. This is true for DoTs too. In addition, fractional damage is always rounded upwards. It means Toughness is *slightly* more effective vs direct damage than vs dot.



Let's say the target has 300 Toughness and no resistances, thus reducing incoming damage by 60 DPS.

Let's say he gets hit by four direct damage type spells with 3 second cast time, each doing 500 damage minus toughness reduction. Thus he gets hit for 4x(500-(60x3)) = 1280 damage

Let's say the target gets hit by a dot doing 2000 damage over 12 seconds. The damage ticks every second. Each second the target recieves (2000/12)-60 = 106.67 aka 107 damage. Thus over 12 seconds he recieves in all 12x107 = 1284 damage.

[Torgal]

Interesting distinction there.

I'd also point out that not only does it not cap, if my thinking is right toughness gets more effective per point, the more of it you stack.

Consider a target dpsing you, maintaining a constant 10 dps. Adding 1 toughness point would reduce the dps by 0.2, leaving you on the receiving end of 9.8 dps. The first point of toughness reduced your incoming dps by ((0.2 / 10)*100) = 2%.

Now add a second point of toughness, again dps is reduced by 0.2 leaving you bearing the brunt of 9.6 dps. This second point however was relatively more beneficial that the first, it's gained you a reduction of incoming dps by ((0.2 / 9.*100) = 2.04%.

It's the same curious effect that means that armour penetration (weapon skill) has more beneficial relative effect on your dps versus lighter armoured targets than it does on heavier armoured targets.

[Warcold]

totally off topic, but Torgal, why on earth does your avatar have a banana in his 'pants'? ? ?