Korhadreth wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:56 pm
I'm going to have a look at toughness and willpower versus wounds next but I wanted to eliminate armour first because there are a lot of peeps still stacking it. I have 303 initiative with a single +22 talisman on the staff.
Lots of people are stacking it because it makes sense to stack it. In all the diatribes here, you forgo to actually imagine a real fighting situation.
The False reasoning
Credible threat to a healer are not range, so you can discount them. Most are dot based, which you can cleanse (magus, sham, SH), and sorc you can nullify rotation with detaunt or plain bubble when WoP reaches 1s to avoid the crit.
The first real threat is WE. Sneaking on you, opens, hit. With 1300 health more, but about 25% armor mit less, your 1300 health advantages over armor is gone in 4-5 AA (roughly 200-300 mit from armor on each). So basically, its gone before the open KD ends. Useless.
Second is offensive tank. They are the one that will catch you first in most circumstances. With armor stack, you probably mit 40-50% of their damage. Without, 20-30%. Again, your 1300 health bonus, last about 2 GCD. Nothing to write home about.
Finally, versus choppa, mara and MSH, your 1330 health might land you about 1s more life time over armor. Seriously, 1 guillotine+AA is 2000 health gone without armor/toughness stacking. So your 1330 doesn't give you as much as you seem to think.
The Sound reasoning
THEN, and someone touched on this on the first page, you are not factoring someone else or yourself healing you. Whenever you are healed, armor, resist and toughness becomes infinitely more valuable than any wounds you can stack, simply because the threshold of damage that will bring you down to 0 health is going up, so it takes less and less healing to keep you up.
Suppose you take 1000 damage per second, but the healing is only 900. You <lose< 100 health per second. Hence after 8300/100 seconds (with wounds talis), you will die all the same as in 7000/100 seconds. It'll give you 13s more life.
Now, with 15%-25% more mit (from armor talis), that damage becomes 750-850, but the healing stays at 900. You will never die, since the total health you lose every second is 0. Based on that, every thin bit of armor you can stack is more valuable than the bit before because it bring the amount of healing you need to stay alive lower and lower. And so on. Whereas wounds is a static investment. The wounds you stack now, is worth the same as the wounds you stacked before.
And as the numbers increase, armor gets better and better, whereas wounds gets worse and worse. Suppose you now take 10k damage per second. But are healed for 9k per second. Your 130 wounds now give you 1.3s more life instead of 13s. Your armor stacking, giving you 10-20% mit, still let's you live forever mitigating now 1000-2000 damage per second instead of the 100-200 in the example above bringing the damage you take below the threshold you are healed for, 9k.
The only time this is not true, and again, this was touched on in the first page, is versus morale bomb in WB play. If you are in the habit of getting caught in morale bomb range. THen yeah, wounds work because mitigation is dropped to 0. But honestly, this should not be a regular concern to any experienced player. Furthermore, a good double pot for 4-5k healing should keep you up if you ever accidentally get caught off-position vs morale.
tbh, stacking 7x armor talis - 5 in armor, 1 in wepon, 1 in BL cloak - (for 1000+ armor) on healers is a no brainer (except probably sham, that can reach tank toughness level).
My 2 cents.