How do damage dealer characters get their health/hit points buffs?

Zombocalypse

So for example, I'm going for a dual wield melee damage dealer build and I put all my level up attribute points on stamina and never on health... Will that make me gimped because despite my high melee damage, I get one shotted? Or is there some kind of tactic that will give me high health/hit points even if I avoid putting attribute points on health on all 49 level ups I get?

Is it a perk from a skill line? Or maybe certain armors and jewelries boost it? A food health buff? What?

Also... Why do people call it "64 on health" or "64 on magicka/stamina" when you only level up 49 times and are able to add points once every level up and no more?

Erickson9610

Zombocalypse wrote: »

So for example, I'm going for a dual wield melee damage dealer build and I put all my level up attribute points on stamina and never on health... Will that make me gimped because despite my high melee damage, I get one shotted? Or is there some kind of tactic that will give me high health/hit points even if I avoid putting attribute points on health on all 49 level ups I get?

Is it a perk from a skill line? Or maybe certain armors and jewelries boost it? A food health buff? What?

Also... Why do people call it "64 on health" or "64 on magicka/stamina" when you only level up 49 times and are able to add points once every level up and no more?

Some levels give you multiple attribute points. By Level 50, you'll have 64 attribute points, but you can always reassign those points (and your skill point allocations for ability morphs) at the rededication shrines in each alliance's capital city. Champion Points (when you reach Level 50) can also be reallocated, but that's done in the Champion Point menu.

You don't need to worry about being one-shotted unless you play more difficult content. Common ways to increase your Health include Racial passives, Item Set bonuses, Champion Point passives/slottables, Class passives, Undaunted passives, Heavy Armor passives, armor enchantments, The Lord mundus stone, the Healthy jewelry trait, and, of course, food/drink buffs. You could also consider just putting some Attributes into Health and changing it later if you no longer need the extra Health.

fred4

Once you're fully levelled, you'll have 64 attribute points to spend on health / magicka / stamina. I don't know, historically, why that is, e.g. whether it has anything to do with the original veteran ranks.

Since your title mentions being a DD, I'll assume you're talking about group play. I'll talk about the epitome of that first, e.g. veteran trials. The same roughly holds for veteran dungeons. See further below for solo play and other stuff.

If you are a DD in a veteran trial, you should have ~20K health. The main way to have more is via your choice of food. Race, armor enchants and (red) champion points also play a role, albeit as far as enchants I'm mainly talking about (expensive) tri-stat ones. As a rule of thumb, don't use pure health enchants on a DD and, for sure, use the Thief mundus (crit chance). Furthermore a warden healer in the group will provide Minor Toughness, increasing everyone's health by another ~2K, or so (10%).

Having more than ~25K health (unbuffed by warden healer) is not productive. Your maximum stamina or magicka contributes to your damage output and basically anyone other than the tanks in vet trials can and will be one shot, regardless of their health or armor, if they don't know mechanics or stand in the wrong place. Surviving is a question of learning mechanics, not of being tanky. Ideally stand at the back of the boss, the other side of the boss from the tank, with a healer behind you. Don't stand in red. Dodge roll or block, if you have to.

Dodge rolls will avoid everything but area-of-effect (AOE) damage altogether. Blocking is the next most powerful technique. Tanks are specced for high block mitigation and block sustain. They will mitigate 70%-80% of damage via blocking alone. This stacks, multiplicatively, with their armor, but armor can mitigate 50% of damage at most. That's the armor cap.

Bosses can hit for in excess of 100K in terms of raw damage. If you're accidentally hit by one of their big hits, instead of the tank, you will pretty much die instantly as a DD or healer, regardless of your stats and what you're wearing. Only outright tanks can mitigate that. On the other hand, the trials are designed, basically, such that everything not aimed at the tank, is survivable by squishy DDs and healers, just so long as you position yourself correctly.

That said, I've been talking about veteran trials. In normal trials you have more flexibility. You don't need the same damage and being a little bit tanky may help you survive, e.g. in case the tank(s) aren't doing their jobs. You can compensate for that, but by the time you get to vet DLC content, if the tank(s) make many mistakes, the group wipes. You can't really compensate by being a tanky DD.

In solo play you can do what you want. Being tanky can help, although the two solo arenas are most efficiently done with high damage, squishy builds that have self-healing, but a minimum of tankiness, if at all. Tankiness, be it higher health or resistances, can help to solo the harder world bosses, though.

In PvP everything is different. Self-sufficiency rules. Blocking, dodge rolling, speed, line-of-sight and sustain are all needed for defense. 30K+ health is the order of the day for most players.

Infinite Archive is completely different from everything else. If you want to go really far, especially solo, you may have to shift everything into health. However we're talking beyond arc 5 here.

freespirit

Two quick and easy ways, use a food with good health buffs and put health enchants on the three "big" armour pieces..... head, chest and legs.

They are known as the "big" pieces because those are the only three armour pieces that take full value from an enchantment.

DenverRalphy

Beyond buffing your health with Food and Champion Points, you basically rely upon your Tanks and Healers to buff you up and heal you. Stand between your Tank and Healer, then avoid taking damage while always being in front of your Healer so they can heal you.

If you're running solo, slot a tank skill to buff yourself and a self heal to heal yourself. Then dodge/dance around incoming damage as best you can.

The more damage you can do, the squishier you get.

Zombocalypse

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The more damage you can do, the squishier you get.

As in, you become more and more glass cannon? Does squishy mean you are brittle and die easily?

fred4

Zombocalypse wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The more damage you can do, the squishier you get.

As in, you become more and more glass cannon? Does squishy mean you are brittle and die easily?

Yep.

There are cases where you need to self-heal in trials, such as when you are a "portal DD". The way to do that, though, is with a skill, for example Resolving Vigor, which also makes you a little tankier. You don't really (need to) compromise your build to become passively tanky via extra health or a tanky armor set, as long as you sit in that 20K to 25K health range.

Of course I'm painting in very broad strokes and I'm talking about endgame group play, where you should mostly be together with capable healer(s) and tank(s), and it's all about the group effort. You have to rely on them. Since you asked about being a DD specifically, that's what that means.

The term DD really has no meaning when you're playing solo or, to some degree, in PvP. Also, when you're only starting out and you do normal content, or base-game veteran content, the game doesn't push you very hard. You can do what it says on the tin, e.g. "play as you want". A veteran player who knows all the game mechanics often doesn't need it, but you can make a tanky DD and this may enable you to complete some content you could not otherwise do. It may also allow you to carry a dungeon group.

Sluggy

In PvE, Damage Dealers aren't going to put points into health. You'll get all you need from food and potentially from group buffs in dungeons and trials. If you are dying that means you're not following a mechanic, standing in a place you shouldn't at a time you shouldn't or someone isn't healing. And you always have the option to block and dodge which can mitgate a surprising amount of damage.

Tanks of course want to invest more in health because of their job. Not sure about healers. I've never played one for PvE.

PvP is a totally different game however and these days there's really no such thing as too much health.

notyuu

Ok so to break things down.

you gain up to 64 points to invest into magicka/stamina/health as you level up as some levelups give more than 1 attribute point.

For PvE damage you'll want to invest all 64 into magicka or stamina (depending on your playstyle) to crank your damage as high as it'll go.

You can have some HP boosts without gimping your damage, namely the Boundless Vitality Champion Point slottable, Hero's Vigor Champion point passive, Your buff food (make sure you pick one that works with your stats first and foremost), Undaunted Mettle Passive and if you are lucky buffs/sets your group members will be wearing will also increase your avaiable HP.

As for avoiding getting 1-shot, this is the neat part, you eaither crank your damage so high that you kill the enemy before they get a chance to try and 1-tap you, or you learn how to dodge/block/shield/mechanics to circumvent the 1-shot, on top of that there's also common sense for positioning, such as stay behind the boss and don't stand in the AoE's.

The final note is for the love of all that is holy don't wear heavy armour if you're trying to be a damage dealer, the passives from light/medium armour make a considerble impact on your damage output.

darvaria

I have some PVE DD's and hp around 20-22k. In PVE you just need to learn the mechanics and roll dodge, block, mitigate, shield.

HP is really more important in PVP. In PVP, most players run one defensive set. Some groups don't let you in a pvp group if you have under 30K hp because you will VD the group. Unless you are a successful bomber. If you run with a consistent group, you can get away with lower hp but consider a lot of players run 40K hp plus at Cyrodiil. Stam toons will run some reinforced to increase blocking by using sturdy on a few pieces. And as mentioned, use heavy armor on legs/chest.

Food like Sugar Skulls, Bear Haunch give multi stats including HP. And a lot of players run tri glyphs on all pieces for more health .