Why is my health so low?

dueldragon

I have a level 144 CP Stamina DPS, He has only 16k health. On the other hand, I have an Altmer sorcerer, level 10, no points in health, only wearing light armor, He has 18k health. What the hell?

AcadianPaladin

Foes are generally CP160. Your level 10 is artificially 'battle leveled' by the game to allow the character to fight with the big boys. Your CP144, however, is very close to reflecting how you have built him.

16k health is not low for a CP character that is not sporting food/health enchantments/health bonuses from sets and has not dumped a lot of attribute points into health.

My CP550 is a magicka characater with no attribute points in health. She has one health enchantment on a small piece of her armor and one health boost from a set bonus. That brings her to about 13.5k health. She always adventures on blue magicka + health food and that brings her to about 18.5k. As a healer, that is fine for her.

You will gradually gain a bit more on all three of your primary stats as you gain more CP. Another way to boost all three primary stats is to unlock the top Undaunted skill line passive skill.

davey1107

Acadian is exactly right. This is because of the One Tamriel mechanics, which allow you to travel anywhere at any time. Before One Tam, your level 10 would have like 250 health, go to Craglorn, get spit on by a skeever and fall over dead, lol. Now he's setmtombe able to fight in any zone.

Think of it like this...the system handicaps a level 10 toon. It says "to fight a cp160 monster, this guy needs xx health and xx magic/stamina. Here's what we think he'll be when he's a vet." Then the system just hands you those stats. Your vet has had his handicaps removed, and now you need to fine tune him yourself through gear, food buffs, etc.

When your vet stam toon eats purple food, his health would be buffed by 4200, bringing his health up over 20k. Assuming your 16k is without food, then this is a reasonable amount of health to have on a character, although you can fine tune w gear.

Nestor

As explained above, your nearly at the end of the buff period. Good news is, your nearly at the CP160 level where it makes sense to start collecting and using sets gear that work the way you want to play. Try this, go find a nice grind spot, or easier a dolmen zerg and just get to 160. Once there, you should have enough gold to buy one/two of the zones sets. May not be able to afford the better ones, but most all sets will allow you to kill mobs/delve bosses and be effective in groups if you make your build work with gear. Then you can farm the BIS stuff and go from there.

It is only Vet Trials and some Vet dungeons that gear matters to a greater extent. Technique is still more important than gear.