Favorite Character to Stack Health On?

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#1

I’m just wondering who I should try to build as super tanky with the help of gear.

Recently I’ve been using Mellka to buff her up (especially after the nerf). I give her 2 purples: a +attack speed/+max health and a +skill damage/+max health, and then a Vigilance Link, which gives her +700 max health along with more damage output and a hint of healing received (and buffer teammates!). Along with her level 5 right helix choice, Mellka will be rolling around with 1000 extra health and can treat Thorn’s and Orendi’s ults like they’re just tickles. (Edit: I looked into it and Mellka’s health at level 10 goes from 1577 to 2577, which is a major difference)

So: do you like to beef up your squishy friends to help them take hits or do you like to add even more layers of beef to montana’s already massive pecs?

What characters, what gear, and what helix choices could help others look at these 27 battlers to change their game up and go in a different direction?

#2

I prefer to stack health and regen on the squishy mobile chars, makes them all that more annoying to deal with.

#3

For squishy range characters +hp is nice to have as a secondary stat. Normally a tiny bit of regen is all you need.

Outside of that, Boldur is fraking ridiculous if you can stack health gear. Come level 10 you’re pushing close to 4k health and his level 10 helix to add 2% melee damage per 100 health is silly. 80% right there not even including the other +18% melee damage helix option or other gear. I just started using him for the first time a few days ago and there’s no reason why I should have been able to out kill, out damage, and out survive every other player. (these weren’t newbies)
I had health gear and the gauntlets that gave up to almost +20% damage at full health. Was hitting at something like 400+ a swing and crits were well over 1000. Just silly.

#4

Kelvin gets massive damage boost from life via chomp. Out of any of them, I stack life on him.

#5

He stacks damage based on enemy life not yours or maybe i’ve missed an helix… but the problem is that even if you take all the helix that boost is chomp you will never deal more than 500dmg

#6

chomp skill adds damage based on your health. I think it’s the second mutation. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it do more than 500, but the point is that the cool down is super low. So 500 every 10 seconds or whatever is pretty amazing not to mention the additional benefits you get with Chomp. So yeah. Adding health to Kelvin makes him stronger and last longer. I haven’t played updated Kelving, but I used to be able to solo a whole section of guys no problem on advanced PVE.

#7

No, for the love of all that is sacred, no. Kelvin gets loads of hp from Chomp. If any character doesn’t want to get +hp on gear, it is Kelvin. 280 or 210 hp is laughable when you can get 10k naturally.

You missed a helix. At CR5, he unlocks a level 2 helix that adds 3% of his current hp to his Chomp damage. Also, the 500 max damage is the maximum base damage. Skill damage multipliers and the like will all increase that (when I was mastering Kelvin, I was routinely dealing 700+ damage with Chomp because I had over 10k hp and skill damage gear).

I’m getting tired of explaining the math on this to people, but no. Boldur has enough hp that stacking hp on him is redundant. People like to bring up his current hp into bonus damage thing as if the ~80% he can get by stacking hp to get 4k hp is impressive; they completely ignore the fact that, if you stack no hp at all, he’ll still have 3500 hp and be getting 75% +dam so stacking all of that hp only really gave him a ~2.8% increase in damage (180% / 175%; attack bonuses in BB are multiplicative so a 5% increase would actually be a 5% increase).

High hp characters get more out of DR than they do out of +hp. The only characters that should be really stacking +hp are those characters with low hp because, as a static value, the flat increase to hp amounts to a significantly larger increase to their total TTK than DR would. In addition, unlike +hp, DR also acts as effective +shield, +regen, and +heal received because it allows all of those values act upon lower incoming damage amounts.

Other things to consider: +regen gear is pretty much worthless because it provides so little. The only reason to get +regen is if you’re not playing an Eldrid and want to be able to top yourself off from what little damage gets through your shield while out of combat. 7 hp/sec is pretty much nothing. At 1k hp (e.g. level 1), it’s going to take 140 second to get you back to full health from nearly dead. Furthermore, stacking more +hp to make it go up faster isn’t going to make regen any more valuable. 7 hp/sec is as bad when you have 100 hp/sec as it was when you had 100 hp/sec (in a comparative sense, its actually less valuable the more +regen you have): 7 hp/sec is bad no matter what.

TL:DR If you want a tankier tank, stack DR. If you want a sturdier squishy, stack hp. Why? Because math.

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#8

I get tired of doing it also which is why I didn’t flat out say 118% total. More so broke it up into 80 + 20 + 18 to keep it simple. I’m not one to do the whole “big post math thing” and number crunch. Less explaining.
When I get the time I’ll have to see if the DR thing is really worth it. Even at 15% through gear (all things considered equal, ie not including skill DR or mult/add formulas; And 15% is a fairly large amount through gear) on 3500 hp brings your health pool to 4025 where stacking 700 (fairly easy to obtain) will bring it to 4200 plus the damage bonus. Though DR does technically make healing (and regen) more effective as you have less health to heal to full.

#9

kelvin is the best especially since he gains permanent health for killing a enemy with chomp i was running around level ten with 8 thousand health it was amazing

#10

Question when you get the helix for own health making chomp higher damage, does it replace the previous way or add on to it

#11

It adds on to it, such that you get 15% of target’s max hp (max 500) + 3% of Kelvin’s current hp.

#12

So that is why I can one shot some people

#13

After a certain point in base hp+shield combined it’s better to get Damage Reduction which also makes healing for your allies on you easier.

#14

This is unrelated but I like to use Voxis, Orendi’s legendary and an attack speed and shield to give me 850, essentially extra HP that allows me to run in, lay down AoE, run, rinse, and repeat.

#15

Dude, health regen is amazing – or at least used to be – for characters like thorn and Mellka. 22 health regen/second is significant if you can keep the enemy from being able to hit you the way that Mellka can, and her helix for more health regen later on makes it even better.

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#16

I tried heal staking on Kleese just to see where I could get him after his health boost. Between his HP and shield, I got him close to 4k total health in a PVP match. It was insane

#17

[quote=“Battleborn, post:15, topic:1543417, full:true”]22 health regen/second is significant if you can keep the enemy from being able to hit you the way that Mellka can, and her helix for more health regen later on makes it even better.
[/quote]

As I said before, the only value that regen has is in being a method of hp recovery that doesn’t require combat and that, through gear, anyone can get a hold of. The amount of investment it requires to get that much regen (on a character like Thorn, who is sporting a 7 hp/sec regen passively, you’re talking about 15 hp/sec, which is all 3 pieces of your loadout containing regen) could instead net you ~700 hp, 18% attack speed, or 20% attack damage (or a whole bunch of other more valuable options).

Regen isn’t just something you choose between having and not having. It has definite opportunity costs which pretty much always outweigh the benefits of stacking regen (to such an extent that I can’t even really think of any realistic occasion when they wouldn’t). The only value to regen is to characters that don’t already have a source of self-healing or regeneration.

As to stacking it on Mellka or Thorn, consider that, if you can avoid getting hit long enough to have your regen make a difference (assuming you mean this while also being able to do stuff other than avoid dying), why can’t you just avoid the damage in the first place? If you have to run away and stop fighting to get the benefit of a stat, what’s the point of the stat when you can get other stats that will actually allow you to actually be better at the fight itself?

#18

LOL you don’t get that much HP unless you solo missions. In group setting you top out at about 6-7k Secondly Kelvin starts off with very low health so adding some definitely helps and when you add heatlh you get bonus DPS. You don’t get bonus DPS from adding damage reduction.

#19

The only damage contribution Kelvin gets from hp is the 3% of current hp (important to remember this). 280 hp is going to add a whopping 8.4 damage to each Chomp, which is, at best, on a 4 sec CD, a truly massive increase of 2.1 DPS.

Just because it is factually true that +hp gear adds to Kelvin’s DPS doesn’t mean that it’s going to be anything approaching a value that would matter or that you even have a chance of noticing.

And, if you want to get totally pedantic, because Kelvin gets damage from his current hp, DR does add to his DPS because it means that he’s going to maintain higher current hp because he’s taking less damage. It’s not going to be anywhere approaching a noticeable amount, but that doesn’t seem to be an important criterion to you given your opinion about +hp gear being a DPS increase.

#20

Honestly, I don’t really buff anyone’s health. I much prefer health regen and damage resistance. Which I run on most all my characters.

That being said, running Melka last night made me seriously consider buffing her health.