Health most effective stat?

jazzinspace

I play a dragonknight currently.

Looking at the stats calculator you can see that if you assign a point in health you gain 15hp.

alternatively if I put a point in stamina/magicka I gain 10 respectively. Is it therefore more effective to spend all of my stats points in health and increase magicka and stamina by gear?

I've heard people talking about soft caps, what are these?

ottohi

Only pump HP if you want to be a tank (but really a wall), but otherwise you'll want to put some into stamina and magicka as well. Yes you might get more benefit out of pumping HP, but that doesn't mean it's best. Gear +stats should be like icing on a cake. It should be nice if it's there, completes the cake, but if it's a good cake it shouldn't need it. Don't rely on them.

Soft caps are caps in so much as they make you have to do more to raise it by a % or other.
Good old boss example:
A hard cap would be a boss gaining +100% damage after, say 5 minutes.
A soft cap would be a boss spraying hard hitting fireballs out after 5 minutes.
Gear:
A hard cap would be after 25% crit, every bit more you get is 100% discarded.
A soft cap would be after 25% crit, you need triple what you needed to go from 24% -> 25% for 25% -26% crit.

Hope this helped.

jazzinspace

ok so say we get 49 stat points to play with:

magicka - health - stamina.

Is the most effective stat distribution:

10- 29 - 10

leaving you with total:
1180 - 1565 - 1180

If you are using a fairly balanced spec of 3 magicka spells and 2 stamina skills -> they seem to use about 300-400 per use so that's say 1200 max.

which means you can get all of your skills off in a fight, so potentially thats the maximum amount of stamina/magicka you really need in a battle right?

Sure you could use your abilities more than once and that's subjective for a build... perhaps we should take this further with ideal stat compositions for specific builds but i want to make my build open ended enough to do all of the builds that require a balance of stamina and magicka.

Archaegeo

Unless they changed something from end of beta, current meta says 49 in health 0 in stam and magic because you can soft cap those with armor/abilities/passives.

Thanasimos

Stop focusing on end game builds. You are leveling, so put points into what you find yourself lacking. Pure health builds for leveling are stupid. Besides, they changed health to 15 per point and buffed health armor enchants by 50% to completely balance the system.

Tamisan

Dunno 'bout most effective, but I'd say it's usually the most important. Unless you run around with both an ubertank and uberhealer. Then being squishy isn't so bad.

jazzinspace

are you suggesting I should respec at end game? kind of annoying it costs more to respec the more skill points you assign so I kind of wanted to get it right first time.

15health to 10stamina/magicka per stat is still a difference.

Kyubi_3002b16_ESO

you do know raising magicka or stamina has a direct impact on the damage of magic or weapon attacks not just the number of uses?

elorei

Gear also gives 50% more health than magicka or stam, though, so it is a wash in the end, really.

If a piece of gear gives 10 stamina, the same gear with same level enchant (but health instead of stam) will give 15 health.

The main reason people like to stack health is the softcap is way higher. You can cap either stam or magicka without a single point spent. You will not cap both, though.

Is 7-8% more damage worth giving up 735 health (A close estimation of the difference between 49 into magicka versus 49 into health)? You have to make that decision on your own.

Hexos

Its still better to pump health. Leveling is super easy and when u get to 50 u wont need to respecc. At 50 u will want 49 health, this gives you more flexabilty IF you want to change builds from heavy mag to heavy sta and vise versa

elorei

Hexos wrote: »

Its still better to pump health. Leveling is super easy and when u get to 50 u wont need to respecc. At 50 u will want 49 health, this gives you more flexabilty IF you want to change builds from heavy mag to heavy sta and vise versa

Respeccing stat points is dirt cheap at lvl 50 considering your bankroll at that time.

Phaeze

Health is a useful stat, but I would like to point out a few things that might help with some of the perspective here.

First, health is only one aspect of surviving a fight. Stacking it is wonderful, but aside from giving you a buffer between life and death, it has no function.

Second, mitigation and avoidance are both viable tactics. For tank characters, health will be a high priority. However, armor helps to prevent damage from incoming hits, as does magic resistance. Blocking can further prevent damage from hits. You also have the dodge functions, which can swiftly move you out of the way from an incoming area burst. Lastly are the interrupt options for the melee characters, which can prevent major hits.

Third, it is likely that you won't have to deal as much with being the primary target for mobs if you are running around in a group. Health is not as necessary when you're not in any danger of dying (at least if your tank is doing his/her job).

When building a character in this sort of skill sandbox, it is often best to consider all the options. Before deciding to throw all your eggs in one basket, look at what sort of skills you can bring to bear as a player. I can assure you that all the health in the world can vanish in an instant if a skilled player can take it all away without letting you land a hit.

sflanagan21ub17_ESO

There are a lot of great comments above on what to do from a stat perspective. My advice is simple...Do what makes you feel most effective while soloing and grouping.

With the soft caps things kind of balance out anyway. If you make a mistake and you don't realize it for 5 levels, that is ok. Just continue on as you always have the option of respecing later on.

Who knows you may want to be a mage with a few stam points because you need em for skills like Silver Bolts or a tank with a few mag points so you can bust out more stone fist casts...Its all good, particularly while your leveling.