Which is more important, damage or life?

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tonavin

Diabloii.Net Member
Which is more important, damage or life?

Obviously, obtaining as much as possible of both is preferred, but if you had the choice, which would you choose?

Strength? or Vitality?

10k damage? or 10k life?

Small charms of Vita? or Fine small charms?


Keeping in mind those above are all simply examples (I don't know if 10k damage is even 'good', let alone relative to 10k life) Basically, what is your philosophy as a player? Do you prefer killing as fast as possible, or simply out-surviving all your opposition?


The reason I posted this in this forum is because I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my new Barb I'm starting. I just wanted some general opinions on whether it would be more important to go for max damage, or max life. Mind you, I'm not really asking for help on my character per se, just wondering what everyone else's general character looks like so I can get a good idea of what I want to do with mine.
 
[exile]

[exile]

Diabloii.Net Member
life is a much more immediate priority -- but don't go crazy and sacrifice all your damage for it. it's all about balance. aim for about 3-4k life and you're set.

as for the charms -- fine small charms of vita rule :D but hey mastery gcs of vita are probably better in the longrun.

my death cleaver barb does ~4500-5000 (after the 100%+ chance to deal double damage) and has about 2.5k life; and that's already after i over-pumped str. he hasnt died in about a month, i think... :lol: and back then was in early hell baal runs.
 
Halciet

Halciet

Diabloii.Net Member
Life is definately the biggest concern, as there are plenty of ways to achieve a nice damage total. Since leech was heavily nerfed, damage has lost a lot of the importance it used to have. Similarly, changes to life stacking with BO and the large increase in enemy damage/lowered PDR cap and such, having a larger base life pool is much more important.

-Hal
 
rikstaker

rikstaker

Diabloii.Net Member
:evil:

Damage is definitely the biggest concern,as there are plenty ways to achieve enough life for survival<=Thats exactly how much life one should have, rest go into strength.Each level gives 2,vita gives 4,some charms,BO doubles it & if you get to ~3k+ & you have a solid build with high defense, resists & some dr & you play cleverly(everyone should the game is quite old) using warcries, thats all the life you need.With the boosting of monsters' life in 1.10,the importance of damage has increased manyfolds.You are not doing damage just to leech life, the prime concern is killing power,more leech is just the reward for dealing that damage.Heck if you have a bad boy weapon & decent support gear you can even go all out strength(titan) with just 2k life.Its worth mentioning that,you should only seek to increase your damage through strength if you wield 2handers since the dmg boost you get from it on lower dmg 1handers isnt a healthy return on investment.<=pvm.

Life is the biggest concern,its all about survivability,as many points as possible(factoring requirements & block) must be spent in vitality.<=pvp

Rik :strong:
 
[exile]

[exile]

Diabloii.Net Member
rikstaker said:
Damage is definitely the biggest concern

Life is the biggest concern
Click to expand...
a SCHWHAT?! lol.

i think the best thing to pull out of this thread -- find a balance, find what you like, make sure you dont die, make sure you're dealing relatively significant damage, and you're good to go. i think a solid goal is 3k+ life 'cause that's pretty important... and maybe 4k+ damage. but remember -- average damage is what really counts, NOT maximum damage.

EDIT: oh, i just saw your <=pvm and <=pvp parts. a little confusing 'cause i tend not to read to the ends of many posts. :D
 
Z

Zangeif

Diabloii.Net Member
If you're playing HC then life is by far more important.

If you're playing pvm sc, then it's totally up to you whether you want to kill faster or have more chance of surviving.

If you're playing pvp, then you need a balance between the two. Since you are attempting to kill them before they kill you, here is something to think about.

First try to calculate the amount of time you will survive. Variables here that you can control are your life, and your def/resists. Then try to calculate how much damage you can do per second on average. Variables here you can control are your damage and AR and how often you expect to get near them (for example against a teleporting char it can be hard to catch them, so you probably want to sacrafice dmg for enigma) Multiply the 2 together and u get the total dmg you can do over the time of the duel. If this is greater than the opponents life (you also have to consider blocking and DR) then you will kill them before they kill you. Now, this "formula" really can't be calculated (theres other things to consider like OW, DS, and your oponent's skill) but it's something that will help out your understanding of pvp if you consider it.

Basically, if you have very high life/def/resists, you want damage/AR. If you have very high damage/AR you want life/def/resists. When you are going to survive a long time, you want to do more dps. If you are doing very high dps, you want to survive longer.
 
M

mstrnicegui

Diabloii.Net Member
"dmg is king"... hah, I remember posting a thread about this a while ago.

My opinion:
- life is first concern. Once you can survive, that's the end of that.
- dmg is next. It's important to consider dmg as more than per hit numbers, consider it as dmg over time (speed vs dmg per hit). focus on this area and tweak over it until you've gotten a decent level of it, then tweak it to get some more.
- find the sources on items for each. dmg is first found on weapons, but can also be found in efficient levels from armor, boots, ammy, and charms. life can be found first in stats, but also charms, jewelery.
 
C

Cosmosis

Diabloii.Net Member
It is difficult to deal damage when you are dead. Unless you have quite a few of those spiffy new jewels.

Hard to keep life when the things around you stay alive, though. :)

-Chris
 
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