Multiple Toughnesses and Fun Math

[Samadhi]

This discussion is focusing on melees.

The general rule of thumb: Taking multiple toughnesses on a toon follows a law of diminishing returns. The idea being, that since 1 toughness opens up the enhancements, the first toughness = Total (HP from toughness + HP from Enhancements), and therefore taking the rest is a very quickly downward bump to your HP pool, or is considered no longer worth it.

Thoughts on this:
1. One Issue. Looking at the extra HP from an in-the-box only standpoint like this precludes the relative values of toughnesses to different classes. So for example, a 14 con rogue is going to gain a bigger percentage boost to total HP than a 14 con ranger, since the ranger is getting two extra HP/level already anyhow, and therefore has a larger total pool to begin with.

Caveat:
Any melee that is going to sacrifice a significant amount of offensive feats for HP is going to gimp themselves. It doesn't matter if you have the survivability of a mountain, if you can't break through the wet paper cloth separating you from your enemy. I am taking this as a given that an 8 Str intimitank is worthless in most content regardless of its defenses.

Fun Math:
First, why not take the toughness enhancements as a build given? I certainly think melee builds that don't take toughness at least once are rare enough that this could be considered "assumed" HP just as most people assume the build will wear a Con 6 item endgame. There might be exceptions; but most builds take advantage of them.

Second. Two points on constitution = 20 HP endgame. This means that every toughness feat could be considered equal to sacrificing a feat for 2.2 points of Con. Now, bumping up Con with ability points is a direct diminishing return (since it costs 2 then 3 build points per ability point raise). Let's take a common example of a build starting with 14 Con.
1 toughness = 2.2 Con = ~4 additional build points
2 toughness = 4.4 Con = ~11 additional build points
3 toughness = 6.6 Con = <technically infinite build points since this is impossible to do at creation and therefore akin to dividing by zero; however we can extrapolate as we like>

This is the fun part of the math. This is entirely right; completely the opposite of conventional wisdom; but just as true as conventional wisdom. The math is coherent within the framework. Therefore, if I wanted to say that taking toughnesses multiple times is actually more beneficial than taking it just once, especially on low hit die bards, rogues, etc to include the top issue - there would be math to support this.

Yes I was bored ; but at the same time, I felt it beneficial to verbalize why, in the absence of a direct impact DPS feat, it could often be a good idea to "pile on" toughnesses on a toon and not regret it in the slightest. Don't believe it is a horrible idea just because of misleading math; when we can come up with misleading math for just the opposite point of view.


PS If you are a true believer in the general rule of thumb, and firmly convinced that your math *is* right, you have my permission to dismiss me as a heretic and move on, or go read some general semantics.

[DragavonBeta]

Your math isnt wrong. You just use it in a very strange way to support your arguments.

Feats are more valuable for most builds than that.

[Thanimal]

I have to respond to any thread whose title includes the redundancy "fun math"!

More seriously, I've been thinking a lot about this, too. I'm not sure I've made a build *without* Toughness in a long, long time. The way Turbine has set up the game, every single build needs as many hit points as it can reasonably get. In a world of 18 (or 20!) CON Sorcerers, it's pretty obvious hit points are paramount.

That said, I don't really accept either your argument or the conventional one. Rather than considering the Toughness enhancements as a "given," I'd say the "correct" way to understand it is that the existence of the Toughness enhancements causes taking Toughness at least once to be mandatory. +43 hit points is pretty much the minimum you'll get out of it.

But that really has nothing to do with whether taking it again is a good investment.

Similarly, the idea that a second Toughness is automatically not a good investment is clearly silly. +23 hit points is, at you correctly point out, roughly equivalent to +2.3 points of CON, something many builds are willing to agressively spend attribute points to get.

So what it comes down to in my mind is plain old marginal value. There are quite a few very good feats in this game, so you always have to ask yourself "Is +23 HP better than this?" The key is: Don't assume the answer! Figure out what the answer is for a given build.

Of course, that's not that easy. I'm still torn on my Hate Monster about how many Toughness feats to take, and may end up doing some respecs after I get some higher level experience.

[Impaqt]

Its nearly impossible to talk about logic when someone is using creative math to "Prove" a point. FOr example, Like leaving out a Major Part of the Equation... IE: Completely not factoring in the toughness Enhancements into your equations.

[Twerpp]

With 20 levels now fighters can usually get everything they want to be the best at one style, and a some for versatility, and multiple toughnesses. In some cases all 7 character feats.

That really about the only class that support this. Maybe monks too I guess since you can use martial arts feats. Splashes too of course!

[Paragon]

Caveat:
Any melee that is going to sacrifice a significant amount of offensive feats for HP is going to gimp themselves. It doesn't matter if you have the survivability of a mountain, if you can't break through the wet paper cloth separating you from your enemy. I am taking this as a given that an 8 Str intimitank is worthless in most content regardless of its defenses.

This is precisely the issue as to why toughness is not usually worth taking more than once. You get from 62-102 hp from the first toughness, given you are also taking some enhancements from either race, class, or both. You get 22 hp for the second toughness and each other toughness thereafter. Now, I can see that 60-100 hp is probably worth a feat, it is quite a significant amount. But as soon as you start sacrificing any dps for 22 hp, you gimp yourself. It will take about 1 swing from a mob for you to lose your 22 extra hp. That's probably about 1 second. So you get 1 extra second to swing at something for a feat. (In high end stuff, when 1 hit is more like 30-40 damage, its a feat for 1/2 a second). This may not be a bad deal if you are in a 1v1 with a single mob that you can kill in a few seconds of swinging, but it rapidly decreases in usefulness against multiple foes as the total time you have to swing for increases and the amount of damage per second against you goes up.

The point is, the real balancing factor as to whether toughness is worth it or not should never be "how many HP can I get?" or "How much con is this feat worth?" but "How much does this help me DPS wise?" If your DPS goes down too much, it becomes very hard to justify toughness.

[Samadhi]

lol I got my first negative rep ever from this post - wowza!! someone was very offended by my joke