-MaxHP incarnate ability - What does it do and how is it?

[Jordan Yen]

Has anyone taken it? How does it work in practice? In my imagination, this helps with bosses and AVs by reducing their HP and therefore their regen, but maybe I didn't think it through. I would love to hear actual experiences if you have tried it.

[Vanden]

Functionally it ends up being similar to -Regen and -Res at the same time. For example, if an enemy has 100 health and you deal 10 damage, you've removed 10% of their HP. However, if you remove 10 HP from their max, bringing them down to 90 HP, then deal 10 damage, now you've removed 11% of their HP. It's similar with regen; if they recover 10% of their HP per tick, with undebuffed HP they heal for 10 at a time, but with a 10% debuff they heal for 9 at a time.

 

The real strength, however, is the fact that it's simply not the -Res or -Regen Interfaces. Interface debuffs can only stack up to 4 times on one target, no matter how many sources are applying it. The -Regen and -Res debuffs are very popular and a lot of players have them, so enemies in incarnate trials hit that 4 stack max easily. -Max HP is less popular, so by taking it you're more likely to be contributing to debuffing the enemies.

[Jordan Yen]

8 hours ago, Vanden said:

Functionally it ends up being similar to -Regen and -Res at the same time. For example, if an enemy has 100 health and you deal 10 damage, you've removed 10% of their HP. However, if you remove 10 HP from their max, bringing them down to 90 HP, then deal 10 damage, now you've removed 11% of their HP. It's similar with regen; if they recover 10% of their HP per tick, with undebuffed HP they heal for 10 at a time, but with a 10% debuff they heal for 9 at a time.

 

The real strength, however, is the fact that it's simply not the -Res or -Regen Interfaces. Interface debuffs can only stack up to 4 times on one target, no matter how many sources are applying it. The -Regen and -Res debuffs are very popular and a lot of players have them, so enemies in incarnate trials hit that 4 stack max easily. -Max HP is less popular, so by taking it you're more likely to be contributing to debuffing the enemies.

Ok, that makes a lot of sense. Besides all that, I was thinking that doing essentially 10% damage to an enemy is kind of awesome... especially for tough ones.

[Hopeling]

17 hours ago, Vanden said:

Functionally it ends up being similar to -Regen and -Res at the same time.

For what it's worth, if you're comparing it to -res, it's equivalent to just -res and nothing else: making the enemy take twice as much damage has exactly the same end result as shrinking their health bar in half. Or for the actual numbers on Degenerative, reducing their max HP to 9/10 is equivalent to making them take 10/9 as much damage. This can be made rigorous; -hp is exactly functionally equivalent to -res(all), except that it stacks multiplicatively with other resist debuffs instead of additively.

 

Regeneration occurs in ticks of 5% of max hp. -regen debuffs leave those ticks the same size, but make them less frequent. -hp debuffs leave the frequency the same, but make each tick restore a smaller amount of HP. This does still make it easier to overcome the target's regeneration, sure... but so does -res. Either way, you need fewer hits to undo each tick.

 

I mean, it's not wrong to say that -hp reduces the target's regeneration, because it literally does make them regenerate fewer hit points per second. But if you want to compare it to another kind of debuff, it's functionally most analogous to -res alone, rather than -res and -regen together.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Hopeling

[Vanden]

4 hours ago, Hopeling said:

I mean, it's not wrong to say that -hp reduces the target's regeneration, because it literally does make them regenerate fewer hit points per second. But if you want to compare it to another kind of debuff, it's functionally most analogous to -res alone, rather than -res and -regen together.

It's true that it's not directly analogous to a -Regen debuff in the way it is to a -Res debuff, but it still reduces Regeneration's effectiveness as a form of damage mitigation, which is what players care about when talking about Regen debuffs.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Vanden

[Hopeling]

Sure. I'm just saying, if you want to compare it to -res, it's as good as -res alone, not -res and -regen bolted together.