Warhammer Online: Player Stats: Defenses: Wounds Vs. Toughness

Surprisingly, one of my most read articles (that actually has to deal with Warhammer) is one of my first blog entries; Toughness Vs. Wounds. When I go back and read the article, it’s really a horrible story telling rant of crap. I love it. Just the kind of blind mindless rage this game is lacking now. It’s a nice story, and a decent mathematical lecture (meh), but it really strikes me odd that it receives so much traffic even a practical year later. It occurs to me to go to google, and short of ton of forum links, Mr. Meh is the 4th highest resource for information on those stats. Well, crap. That wasn’t my intention. If I knew I was going to be a guide, I would have made it into one.

Better late then never. Presenting Mr. Meh’s updated guide to defensive statistics:

First is to understand the different defensive stats. There are active stats and passive stats.

Basic Passives (These are your most basic stats):

Wounds = 10 Hitpoints (this is your green bar)
This is the most basic stat and the most important. If this is taken to zero, you die.
500 Wounds = 5,000 HP (regardless of rank)

Toughness = 1/5th Reduction to each Damage Point you receive to your HP.
This stat cannot be bypassed or negated. It works on each strike you receive. Mostly PvP based.
500 Toughness will reduce any attack by 100 (regardless of rank)

Resistance Passives (These are more passive specialized defenses):

Armor = % of mitigating Physical Attacks. [Armor Value/(Level*110)] = % of mitigation with a cap of 75%. Toughness is applied before Armor. Mostly PvE concentrated.
3,000 Armor = 68.18% of each Physical Attack (Rank 40)

Magic Defenses (Corporeal, Spirit, Elemental) = % of mitigating the particular Magic attack. [Magic Resistance Value/(Level of Attacker*.42)] = % of mitigation. Toughness is applied before resistances
400 Corporeal Resistance = 23.8% of each Corporeal Attack (Rank 40 Attacker)

Active Defenses (These are stats that have another attack or speciality feature with a defensive bonus):

Weapon Skill = % chance to Parry (Negate a Melee Physical Attack)
[Weapon Skill Value/(Level*7.5+50) *13.5] = % of Negation Chance. WS also boost your Armor Penetration for your Melee Attacks.
500 Weapon Skill =  19.3% chance to Parry (Level 40)

Initiative = % chance to Dodge (Negate a Ranged Physical Attack)
[Initiative Value/(Level*7.5+50)*13.5] = % of Negation Chance. Initiative also boost your ability to see cloaked enemies.
500 Initiative = 19.3% chance to Dodge (Level 40)

Willpower = % chance to Disrupt (Negate a Magical Attack)
[Willpower Value/(Level*7.5+50)*13.5] = % of Negation Chance. Willpower also boost your HPS.
500 Willpower = 19.3% chance to Disrupt (Level 40)

Block= % chance to Block (Negates any type of Attack EI Shield)
[Block Value/(Level*7.5+50)*5] = % of Negation Chance. 
300 Block = 4.3% chance to Block (Level 40)

Besides Wounds and Toughness, any other defensive stat uses your level to decide the percentage for mitigation. With the exception to Magic resistances using the attackers level. This is why is seems that the level 32 Bright Wizard can hit for half the amount of his bigger older brother that is 40.

Notes:

You cannot really mitigate many of the Moral Attacks. If it’s an attack that says it will strike for X, it will infact strike for X.
Defenses have an order to which they are checked. Like any arithmetic. The system first sees whether you can Parry/Dodge/Disrupt/Block, then it mitigates by using your toughness, then checks resistances Armor/MR. The resulting damage then hits your HP.

Ultimately players become thoroughly confused on what to do for boosting stats. They probably can understand the benefit of each, but also know specialization is a better idea. In many cases you have players just trying to figure out how to be more durable. And this leads to the mistakes made with stacking the wrong type of defense.

Short answer: Unless you are a tank that already has naturally high Toughness, toughness is not going to really help your cause. The point of toughness is to mitigate a little bit off each attack. So naturally a tank dancing about in the front lines being hit by everyone’s DoT (damage over time) and normal attack, the ability to remove 200 DPS off a normal 400 DPS hit, is pretty useful to the healer trying to keep the tank alive. But it also helps, he has naturally high armor, magic resistances, weapon skill, initiative and also has the ability to carry a shield.

You however might be a Choppa, or a Bright Wizard, or a Witch Elf. You have specialized defenses. Choppa has WS, BW has Willpower, WE has Initiative. Mitigating 200 DPS off of 500 DPS hits really means nothing for you. Because the tank can take about 20 of those before he needs a heal, you can take about 3 before you die, shamefully.

You have base stats from your character and from your armor pieces. You have a lot of freedom with your talisman slots and your renown bonuses on what directions you can take. So after your done maxing out Strength/Intelligence/Ballistic Skill, you are probably looking for some defense. This is why you should be looking at Wounds, not Toughness if you aren’t a tank.

Example of Non-tank:

Let’s take a well-rounded toon, like a Warrior Priest/DoK. At 40/40 they probably have base Wounds at 500 and Toughness at 350 (Annihilator should be around there).

This means they have 5,000 HP and can mitigate 70 damage per strike.

Between Talismans (7 slots at about~22 stat per tali = 150) and Renown (40 points with 20 spent on Willpower = 60 points left ) you can find another 210 points to spend on Wounds or Toughness in some way or another.

Scenario 1: Toughness
Wounds = 500
Toughness = 560

This means they have 5,000 HP still, but can mitigate 112 damage per hit.

Scenario 2: Wounds
Wounds = 710
Toughness = 350

This means they have 7,100 HP, but can still only mitigate 70 damage per hit.

The basic difference here is 2,100 HP and then 42 mitigated damage.
So what’s the trade-off? How many strikes do you have to take to make toughness worth it?2,100 HP /42 Damage = 50 strikes)

You have to get hit 50 times (say 50 to yourself out loud) to make Toughness worth wild against Wounds. Then think to yourself, can you even survive getting hit 50 times? If you are a healer, maybe, with some help. But ultimately, you can take about 7 to 9 hits before you have an ‘oh shit, detaunt and self heal/run away moment.’ Your point of having better defenses, was to live just another 2 or 3 more seconds, to get off that moment saving heal, or that killing blow. How often have you been a 1/2 second from casting that moral 3? Wounds will get you there, not toughness.

Tank Example:

Now, however, the opposite is valued for you if you are a tank. Especially a shielded one.

Tank 1: Wounds
(W) 1,250 = 12,500 HP
500 = 100 DPS reduction  

Tank 2: Toughness
(W) 1,000 = 10,000 HP
750 = 150 DPS reduction  

Both encounter the same situation. And AoE blast that averages 600 DPS over 20 Seconds.

Tank 1 actually mitigates 100 off the 600 and takes 500 DPS. Over 20 seconds (500*20) that’s an HP loss of 10,000; leaving him with 2,500 HP, approximately 20% left. But still 10K to heal.

Tank 2 takes 150 off 600 for 450 DPS. Over 15 seconds (450*20) = 9,000 lost, leaving that guy with 1000 HP, and approximately 10%.

Now the obvious is that as solo fights go, clearly the (W) is a better choice. More HP left, which means he could fight longer. For soloing, (W) has a greater benefit for defense. If the fight went for another couple of seconds, Tank 2 would be dead. In the end, each tank looks at the Green bar and sees, how full it is.

The big BUT here is that these guys need healing. And from an outside view, the healer sees two green bars, one slightly more to the left then the other. The healer doesn’t see 2,500 HP vs 1,000 HP, he sees 20% and 10% bars in green, saying he’s a good judge of a laggy green bar. He also has no idea that one missing 10,000 HP vs. 9,000 HP. That healer can produce 1,000 HPS before running out of AP between HoTs and instant casts, for the sake of argument beyond 4 seconds. So if the object were to heal the two Tanks, then big deal, the first Tank takes a second or 2 longer to heal. But say the healer is like any healer and he/she has to take of their herd, of 5 others, maybe including themselves. In that case, the healer’s HPS is actually 200 HPS per each of their people. Of course saying they are a decent healer, and don’t just let BW/Sorc die. In any case, that means the first tank will take 5 seconds longer to heal up. Those are heals that maybe coming off of more squishy more vulnerable players.  Worse yet, if the fight keeps going, the first tank will actually drain the healers’ AP, costing everyone to die.

If you are a tank stacking Wounds, you are killing your group because your healer is spending too much time on you.

Bottom line: Tanks using Toughness create easier heals for them and more heals for others. Tanks that use Wounds are selfish asshats that have an apparent goal to simply be the last to die in the inevitable wipe to come.