Thoughts On HP Items: Why they are a problem

I like this idea.  Something has to be done about HP items, they are *always* the correct choice regardless of what other items you are going.

HP is always the correct choice because it is innately needed for survival.  By decreasing the amounts of HP on items, you do not solve any problem, you simply shuffle.  In general, there are only two modes of HP items: useful and useless.

They are useful when they enable you to live long enough to run away or to kill somebody.  They are useless when they do not.  This is a generalized statement, as there are always edge cases (ie, the "sacrifice" which sometimes does happen in order to get a sweet triple kill or something).

A basic equation is this, given HP items itemN, itemN+1, itemN+..., if the cost of those items is less than the cost of the same number of items that do the same amount of HP as damage, then the HP items are a better buy.  The reasoning is this:

if we have 6 items, 3 HP items and 3 Damage items such that

HP items cost 800, 900, and 1k gold and the amount of HP gained from the items is 400, 500, and 600 respectively for a total of 1500 hp.

Damage items cost 900, 1k, and 1.1k gold and add bonus damage of 25, 45, and 65.

The question of which set of items is the better buy, all other things equal becomes a question of either out killing or out living for the same amount of money.  That is to say, if you buy the damage items, can you kill somebody that bought the HP items before they kill you.  Or, likewise, if you bought the HP items, can you kill somebody that bought the damage items.

The problem of choice is that typically the case is that buying the HP items does mean you will be able to kill somebody first.  And the reason for that is because of poorly scaled weapon damage items not affecting the DPS in a great way.

Ie:

Players start with 100 dps and 2k health.  In this state, Player 1 would need 20 hits to kill Player 2 (assuming no HP regen).

Now say, Player 1 decides to get 20 more dps, player 2 decides to get 500 more health.  It takes Player 1 21 hits to kill Player 2, while it still takes Player 2 only 20 hits.  This means that the HP purchase was a better purchase.

This is the fundamental problem, expressed in a very simple example.  The damage gained from dps increase has to offset the HP gained from an HP increase of the same gold expenditure, otherwise the items are not balanced and they CAN be reduced to a pure math based choice.

So,

Items HPItems = HP_Items_You_Want;
Items DPSItems = DMG_Items_Used_Against_You;
Items AlternateItems = Some_Other_Set_Of_Items_You_Are_Considering;

if(cost_of(HPItems) <= cost_of(DPSItems))
{
 if(HP_Amount_of(HPItems) / DPS_Of(DPS_Items + Base__Opponent_DPS) > HP_Amount_of(AlternativeItems) / DPS_Of(DPS_Items + Base_Opponent_DPS))
 {
  // Then buying the HP items is the right choice!
 }
 else
 {
  // do something else, you are mathematically going to get ganked
 }
}

Making damage items have an effect on skills is probably the best solution, in all honesty.  Making skills be skill_damage + current_autoattack_damage would make the damage vs hp choice much more interesting and robust.

HP items are OP, because they make you too strong vs spells.

You have to be careful with this kind of analysis.  While it works for 1v1 situations with no running, the game is not all about 1v1.  In say a 2v1 situation, the 20 dps would probably be the better choice - your opponent isnt going to seriously threaten killing you and your goal is to kill them quickly before they can run into towers or a teammate can TP in.  Of course, in a 1v2 you probably want HP more than DPS since you arent going to kill anybody anyway.

Regardless, there is that wrinkle.  When I play a build that has a lot of speed, I typically want more DPS even if it isnt the best 1v1 decision because I use my speed to not take damage and will be chasing down a lot of people.  When I play a slow build (which is rare), then I want HP more and more since I might need it.

So I dont think that you can arrive at the correct balance just by using a simple analysis like this.  It really comes down to playtesting and seeing what works.  As it is, things are pretty good, but I agree with the OP that HP items should be tuned down a small amount because currently defense is too dominant over offense.

Of course not.  This doesn't arrive at anything OTHER than illustrating where the problem is, which is the point.  The example illustrated precisely where the problem of damage vs health balancing is.  It does not offer any solution, however.

My own personal solution idea is to make damage more effective, as opposed to hitting health with a nerf (for the fact that if you nerf HP too much at certain price points, it becomes useless and thus not used).  Instead, making skills take in to account current autoattack damage is probably a better, if not simple (requires balance testing in unto itself), solution.

This gets even worse when you factor in armor reducing the damage taken further increasing the value of HP over dmg.

OP I understand and for the most part agree with your sentiment about virtually mandatory items not adding to the game's overall appeal.

What is not true, however, is that HP stacking is mandatory. Of course some play styles (Ooze UB) demand it and some maps (i.e., Prison) encourage it. But it's not always necessary. There are many builds that do not require high HP to be viable.

It boils down to the map you play on, the game mode, the Demigod composition and the chosen play styles.

I understand the vast majority of people in the forums are still in the head hunting stage of their Demigod "careers" (?) but I would encourage anyone approaching this issue rationally to realize the majority may not have the big picture in mind.

A stronger argument might be that some of the +damage items are too weak.

As Krazikarl said, there are more factors at play.  In a single hero situation where both people fight until one person dies this weighing the options is valid.  However, that's almost never the case.  Ability burst damage is king in most 1v1 situations and especially in situations with 2 or more enemy heroes near you.  In this case HP is *always* better than damage, as it allows you to live longer ALL the time.  Living longer means you get to use more abilities as they cool down, stay alive longer for allies to heal or shield or buff you, and dealing more damage to enemies through autoattack and ability casting.  Damage items only increase damage dealt to enemies through autoattack, their only use being potentially killing an enemy faster so they cannot deal as much damage to your side over the course of the battle.  But mana items (allowing more ability use) probably does this just as well.

HP is just flat out more useful in team situations, and as such everyone stacks as much of it as they can.

yay double post

I agree HP is just too much more usefull in team situations. Plus the fact that most items increase armor and HP at the same time.

Lets say you can run out of range of someone in 10 seconds and you have 3k health and 25% in armor. The opponents have ganged up on you andhave 300 dps combined. Taken down to 225 dps combined. Now they each started with 100 dps to begin with and bought each 2k worth of dps items for an extra 50 dps each. You spend 4k and get an extra 1.5k health and 15% added to your armor (this is incredibly accurate scaling if you take into effect some of the hp items). So now you have 4.5k health can run out of their range in 10 seconds and have 40% armor. They do 400 dps now. Which now is taken down to 240 dps.

So this is a pretty realistic scenario for this game. All dps taken into account is auto attack. You end up with about the same dps with the opponent spending much more money than you did. In my opinion 2 things need to happen. Damage on items need to increase and cost of HP items needs a slight increase with an exception to the godplate and crusader's armor.

Now even if you get more complex and say 150 of that dps is all skills and can't be touched by armor. Still 250 dps is taken down to 150 dps. Now they are up to 300 dps. Which while higher than the 240 dps you had before still isn't enough to kill them. You would be hard pressed to kill the original and if an ally came in then the runner survives.

Now you may be wondering what is the point of this. Well analyzing this it means that you can spend less on HP items and get the same effect as spending more on DPS items. Now DPS items are already expensive and so are HP items it's just DPS items don't have the needed effect. So instead of nerfing the HP items and slowing down the game you might as well increase the strength of the DPS items and save us some time. Maybe that 2k you spend on dps can add more around 90 dps. Lets run it again with 90. (I'm not saying that if you spend 6k you'd get 270 dps because thats just too much. This is exaggerated a little for demonstrational purposes.)

Okay now you have 480 dps due to that extra 40 for each player. So we are up at 330 dps of auto attack. Taken down to roughly 200. Added to the 150 you get 350 dps. Now thats a LOT MORE. Now you still wouldn't kill them and if we buffed the dps items up any farther we would be bordering too powerful because stuff like the mageslayer would need buffed too and we don't need that much power. So lets increase the item cost of health items so you only get 750 hp and 15% extra armor.

I know that still wouldn't kill them. They would get away with 250 health. But who gets attacked and runs instantly especially if it's 2 on 2. Now that would be too complicated of a scenario to run in text but you got to think. Now what if 2 people had 4k health and 40% armor and only had their base 300 dps against 2 that now has 480dps and 3k health and 25% armor. In my mind this is much more fair then if you had 3k health 400 dps 25% armor against 300 dps 4.5k health and 40% armor.

I know didn't stay completely on topic and some of the variables were weird and not all of it made since with the HP item problem. I'm just trying to demonstrate a team scenario where it makes sense to get HP instead of DPS and why DPS isn't very usefull at the moment. I don't think that the problem is with HP items so much as it is the cost is too low compared to the low effectiveness of DPS items. Now speed items and everything could be thrown into the mix but for demonstrational purposes it wouldn't be worth it. Because people would say why didn't he just spend 4k on speed items and get out of there in 5 seconds or why couldn't he get a teleport scroll and teleport away thats 3 seconds.

I also know that not everything can be proved mathematically and this would need testing but in general a few of the lower end HP items cost is just too low vs the cost of some of the dps items. The DPS items either need a buff in strength or need the cost lowered in addition to the HP items getting a cost raise.

I say we can't just fix one or the other we need to tweak both and...

WALL OF TEXT

Well, Attack items are weaker mainly because of three things:

1. Fairly obvious imbalances. Gauntlets of Brutality give +25 damage (Armor modified) and Banded armor gives 400 hit points.  That means it takes 16 hits against a zero armor target to equal things out.
2. HP are effective for almost every task. They let you run when out matched as well as press for a kill when under matched. Good HP and HPS helps you take down towers, and ninja portals.
3. Lastly, especially early on, the flow of combat is very roughly: Two DG's meet in no mans land, they use abilities on each other, get in a hit or two, the one who is losing hides behind tower. With such short confrontations, auto attacks do not have much of a roll to play, not until 'hide behind tower' isn't that effective of a strategy... and what makes it not a good strategy?  Generally when the attacker has the HP and Armor to not worry about the tower...
   

Additionally, damage items don't serve the same purpose they do in say, Dota, where in addition to increased damage to enemy heroes damage items also help you kill *creeps* which gets you more money to buy more items later.  HP items only increase your survival, but don't help you get more money.  So there's delicate tradeoffs, you see.

In Demigod the base creeps couldn't matter less.  You either aoe them or if you can't you mostly ignore them as they don't get you much.  As such damage items are significantly less important than HP.

Priests healing for a percent of your total health just increases the issue.

How many damn threads do we need on this stupid topic ?

Enough so that they'll fix it.

There's nothing to "fix." It's simply mechanic of the game that you don't like, not a bug or exploit.

^^ This.

The World of Warcraft whiner babies are everywhere... don't like a game mechanic, whine about it until they change it, then find something new to whine about until they change that.

Shut up and play!

Being able to hold a lane, as opposed to running back to your crystal, gives you more exp and gold, as well as denies the opponent both of those. HP items allows you to do this, attack items (currently) does not. Like you said, killing creeps is not an issue in this game, so the only purpose damage items serve is to take down Demigods, but HP items outstage them even in that regard.

This is not a "game mechanic" btw, it's simply a case of item A being so sucky that B is always the right choice, against every DG. 3000 gold so I can get an extra 30 wpn damage? I can get that at level 2 with Oak simply by putting 1 point into Soul Power. A "game mechanic" would be the HP items themselves, but I don't think anyone wants them out of the game. It's simply so boring to see that GPG added tons of interesting items, only to have HP trump all forever and ever. Add that to the fact that you only get 5 slots to fill, along with limited gold, and suddenly Doomspite Grips looks like a pile of junk next to Godplate.

The HP items themselves are only a single part of the game. The game mechanic is the style, or "fact" rather, that stacking them is always better than stacking damage items. It is not something that needs to be fixed in order to make the game playable, only perhaps changed in order to add depth.

As for the topic itself, while stacking health is generally better that doesn't mean you should ignore damage items. I would rather take Mageslayer, for example, over that Godplate when I probably already have enough health.

In any case you could either lessen the cost or increase the effects of damage items, or do the opposite for HP items. Make one more effective or the other less.

It is nto the mechanic, it is a balancing problem. Have you ever played vs a 11k ub?? I bet you never did it with a tb.

Making the HP Items less effective would be the better way, because it would make spells also more important. OK atm spells are strong. But if you play Torchbearer after lvl 15 vs a beast or something like that, with stacked live, you ave no chance to kill him. And thats the point where balancing is fucked up. And i hate people saying "just shut up and play". It´s so frekin noobish to play ub and stack life items. I have a friend he played a few DGs, then he played ub with life items. And he just dominated. He won not because of skill, but for ub being op. If you mean I lie or this is wrong think what you want, but most players arwe pissed of by this, i hope so...

Not really true, you get exp by being 500 feet away from the creeps, there are no creep denies, and most of your gold is obtained by standing there.  But...

this is true.

What if it's a BAD game mechanic?

Yeah, this is my only gripe with it.

Honestly, i don't think it's that simple.

The easy way would, of course, only be to change the price/stats of the gloves etc. Then we could end up with the following scenario:

Suppose we have two DGs (for simplicitys sake I'll assume they're the same, since there's an endless amount of matchups that would affect the game otherwise).

DG 1 picks an armor, DG 2 picks the equivalent damage items (say, a glove), and the two of them meet at a flag and start pounding eachother. DG 1 will be able to sustain more damage than DG 2, but DG 2 will be able to deal more damage, thus depleting DG 1's HP pool faster. In the end, both DGs would be even in terms of staying power.

Now we have 3 "balancing" scenarios:

1. The armor gives more HP than the glove gives damage, so DG1 survives longer (this is what we have now). Thus, armor > glove every time.
2. Glove deals more damage then the armor can sustain, so we get the same as above, only reversed.
3. Both of them gives the players an equal amount of staying power on the field, neither HP nor damage is the best.

I assume that nr. 3 is what we all want. But that is dumb.

Why would we need gloves for something like that? If both players pick armor, we have the exact same scenario, but with less items. Making damage and HP balance out should be next to impossible given the amount of DG combos out there, but even if we do, we're pretty much back to where we are now, when everyone picks armor.

Instead, damage items should recieve a makeover to give more depth to the game. For example, make damage items super cheap and strong, but make them scale like shit and give no refunds. Investing in damage would then be a short term strategy, when you intend to pull a fast one on the opponent by going for a sudden advantage, and exploiting that to gain kills and farm creep, while keeping ahead. At the same time, you risk getting killed with such a low HP pool, and you'll be left behind if you fail to supress the opponent, since the they might go for a long term battle and invest into the more solid alternative, HP.

It could also be used as a means to temporarely even out the battlefield if you suspect that the opponents are about to reach maximum efficency (relative to your team), or to make a sudden push for the enemy towers.

All in all, simply making damage an alternative to HP seems like a waste.

Let us not turn this into a war of hyperbole. I have strong thoughts expressed in my Original Post, and hope I do not come off as 'whining'. The concept here is not that the HP items create an unplayable system (re: JagerJack) but rather that the system is noticebly not as good as I think it would be if the system were changed.  That is all.

So yes, 'fix' may not be the right word, as that implies it is a bug. 'Alter for the betterment of the game' is what we want.

11k health UB huh...

Lets see, in order to get 11k health a UB would probably need the following items at level 20:

GodPlate, Bulwark of the Ages, Girdle of Giants, Unbreakable Boots, Groffling Warplate, Orb of Defiance.... That gets you about 9,540 health, and costs 49,450 Gold. If you let an UB get this much gear, you suck.

We understand you get pwned against UB all the time, stop crying, and figure out how to be a better TB.