3.5b8 effective health and tanks (Nortan)

So lets think about what the best tanks are in the game. I'm just going to look at the base effective health based on hitpoints and abilities of units. I'm calculated effective health simply by adding up an exact number or estimate of max hp and dividing by base cost. I suppose you could think of it as ehpg (effective health per gold).

Hades [ 6.17 ] No surprise here...everyone knows they are the best tank in the game. HOWEVER I would like to add that prenerf Hydra beat it out at [ 6.55 ] while when hades was cheaper it was still only [ 6.27 ].

gnoll warrior [ 6.00 ]

ogre basher [ 5.83 ] meh

guardian [ 5.78 ] those bulky nature units...

tree of travel [ 5.77 ]

Lord of death [ 5.65 ]

mudman [ 5.65 ] underrated early game unit. Great lead for lvl 1 - 3.

hydra [ 5.58 ] oh how you have fallen my love

cavalier [ 5.50 ] Could be as high as [6.16] or as low as [ 4.21 ] depending on how many hits it takes to die. I'll just put it here.

gateguard [ 5.50 ] hatchling too!

forsaken one [ 5.36 ] assuming 100% uptime on it's ability it should be a bit lower. Great for sponging some hits  

seer of darkness [ 5.28 ] reduced cost yay

harbringer [ 5.26 ]

novice [ 5.25 ]

outcast [ 5.2 ] bulky, decent lead.

egg sack [ 5.2 ] amazing early game blocker

halfbreed [ 5.15 ] bulky well rounded nature unit.

minotaur [ 5.15 ] All it's good for is tanking hits. Junk and annoying to lead with.

crusader [ 5.13 ]

goliath [ 5.12 ] This is largely an estimate and with it's ability I'm forced to guess a bit. It would be something closer to [ 5.68 ] if you pretend like it's armor buff only affects itself. Perhaps you are just making a lot of goliaths.

nightmare [ 5.09 ] Not exactly tanky though.

steamroller [ 5.08 ] 200 hp from that poor geomancer that dies isntantly boosts it up there.

necrolyte [ 5.00 ] This thing is awkward and I never use it after the increase in it's cost. I only used before the price increase if I was desperate for piercing dmg. It doesn't need all that hp if it's not meant to tank.

golem [ 4.97 ]

sea giant [ 4.93 ]

soul of hero [ 4.91 ]

guardian of death [ 4.84 ]

greymane [ 4.82 ] armor increase factored in.

slavemaster [ 4.81 ] it can kind of take a hit...even though it's medium armored...and awful.

footman [ 4.81 ] hate these. It's upgrade is [ 4.79 ].  Good for taking hits on the rare piercing lvls.

fenix [ 4.78 ] Depending on how long it lives this could be higher due to mana regen.

young frost dragon [ 4.77 ]

assault tank [ 4.69 ] Very good tank for range dps

krogoth [ 4.68 ]

warchief [ 4.67 ]

ogre pulverizer [ 4.67 ]

skeleton warrior [ 4.67 ]

dragon hawk [ 4.63 ]

blasters [ 4.63 ]

zombie [ 4.63 ]

wandigoo [ 4.61 ]

ancient wandigoo [ 4.61 ]

maverick [ 4.60 ]  

warden [ 4.52 ]

king claw [ 4.44 ]

thunderbird [ 4.44 ] What can't it do now

sword mage [ 4.40 ]

prisoner [ 4.40 ]

mutant [ 4.32 ]

wolverine [ 4.2 ]

bigfoot [ 4.11 ]

Might as well get to the ridiculous stuff

neotank [ 3.94 ]

royal griffin [ 3.93 ]

azure dragon [ 3.90 ] I believe the slowing affect is 25%? or is it 30? If 25% then [ 4.88 ] against melee waves assuming you aren't getting powerful ranged send.

wyvern [ 3.89 ]

doomsday [ 3.72 ] People often trick themselves into thinking this is an amazing tank. The armor type is the only thing good for tanking.

dragon of death [ 3.70 ]

thrall [3.68]

dragon aspect [ 3.51 ]

ascendant [ 3.33 ]

oceanus [ 3.19 ]

wind rider [3.16 ]

soul of villain [ 3.12 ]

meridian [ 3.11 ]

aqua spirit [ 3.00 ]

apparition [ 2.66 ]

fire archer [ 2.62 ]

gravekeeper [ 2.28 ]

hellraiser [ 2.27 ]

meliai [ 2.16 ]

dark priest [ 2.12 ]

zues [ 2.09 ]

mercurial [ 1.66 ]

Nice statistics and trivia, but it really doesn't say much (specially your DPS post) due to the 'What to build?' question being far more complex than this. But I really appreciate the effort, though, this is not something that's in my head when I play and numbers can be really fun. ^_^

Nortan wrote:hydra [ 5.66 ] oh how you have fallen my love 

That made me kinda sad. :c But 800 HP was a bit much, 700 would be just right imo.

About the egg sack, I know it's really hard to do, but have you calculated the buff time? It's not easy, but it can be approximated.

BlackJohnny wrote:Nice statistics and trivia, but it really doesn't say much (specially your DPS post) due to the 'What to build?' question being far more complex than this. But I really appreciate the effort, though, this is not something that's in my head when I play and numbers can be really fun. ^_^

Nortan wrote:hydra [ 5.66 ] oh how you have fallen my love 

That made me kinda sad. :c But 800 HP was a bit much, 700 would be just right imo.

About the egg sack, I know it's really hard to do, but have you calculated the buff time? It's not easy, but it can be approximated.

Edit: sigh. I looked at it again and hydra is actually lower than I previously stated at only [ 5.58 ]. Losing 600 hp is huge but it's still better than when hydra only split into 2 mini hydra. Then it was only [5.26 ].

Definitely. I got so distracted doing these that I didn't realize how many hours passed by. The thing about egg sack is that it's ability is impossible to calculate. How do you account for 1.5 seconds of complete invulnerability? You would have to know how much dmg it's actually avoiding in that time. There's also the fact that things that hit hard just kill it so later in the game it's ability never activates anyways.

At the highest estimate I could assume it is knocked to 1 hp in one hit and then immunes attacks from ~3 things doing that same amount of dmg. 260 + 259(3) = 1037/50 = [ 20.74 ]. That's unrealistic and doesn't really tell you anything though. What if it's ability activates and something with 800 attack hits it twice while it's immune? Does that artificially boost it's effective health a ton?

If it's ability gets the opportunity to activate it would probably be considered the best tanking unit in legion. Lets assume things are attacking it that do 30 dmg a hit after the 7th hit it would have taken 210 dmg, be at 55 hp, and in range of it's ability. Then in that 1.5 seconds it immunes lets say 8 hits cause it got surrounded. 260 + 8 (30) =  500/50 = [ 10.00 ]. However if multiple things are attacking it for that kind of dmg it will just die before it activates. Perhaps only one thing was attacking it and it managed to immune 2 hits from it that would only be [ 6.4 ]. Looking at something practical like lvl 3 where it takes 4 - 5 dmg a hit and only seems able to immune one round of attacks you could say it immuned four 4 dmg attacks and four 5 dmg attacks 260 + 4(4) + 4(5) / 50 = [ 5.92 ]. If it doesn't die too fast on lvl 7 I could see it immuning 8 - 10 hits. 260 + 8 (17) = 396 / 50 = [ 7.92 ]. Still really good but not as impressive and it will probably die too quickly. There's way too many possibilities to think about but the main thing is that it's not something you expect to activate outside of early game. lvl 10 bosses just barely kill it in 2 hits so it's ability doesn't even work there ;S. Ultimately I'd rate it [ 6.10 ] as my personal estimate since it is OP when it's ability activates but otherwise it's just average.

Thx, you done a lot of work here!   


I knew it, my lovely ogre basher... ppl dont like them if they get it in early but im always glad   

Did you ratet the Goliath with his 3+ armor or without?

You did calculate it with 100% attack against all armor types? Cause you shouldnt forget, every tank got a round he dont work that well cause of dmg type he got to take.

Whether your tank is better or worse, depends also on the other towers you have with him. Hydra with Overseer wouldnt work as well as tank as Greyman or Goliath with it and so on...

But the statistic you done is rly good anyway and give an intresting look to the units.


Best Regards,

Rockabilly

Rockabilly[UC] wrote:Thx, you done a lot of work here!   


I knew it, my lovely ogre basher... ppl dont like them if they get it in early but im always glad   

Did you ratet the Goliath with his 3+ armor or without?

You did calculate it with 100% attack against all armor types? Cause you shouldnt forget, every tank got a round he dont work that well cause of dmg type he got to take.

Whether your tank is better or worse, depends also on the other towers you have with him. Hydra with Overseer wouldnt work as well as tank as Greyman or Goliath with it and so on...

But the statistic you done is rly good anyway and give an intresting look to the units.


Best Regards,

Rockabilly

Without the +3 but it's an estimate anyways due to it's ability and it's ability doesn't affect itself without multiples of itself. Cavalier is an estimate too since the random number generator is random. If it gets hit hard enough that ability doesn't do hardly anything if it's going to die in 3 - 4 hits anyways. The armor would help a little though and should be included since you usually make at least a few. Also with armor increasing abilities I simply multiple by the the amount over the regular 15% dmg reduction that it is increase. Azure dragon might only be [ 3.90 ] but on melee waves it be better than that due to it's slowing armor. I'm reluctant to include goliath armor buff or azure dragon slowing affect because if you think about it all units benefit from goliath armor buff as well and mermaid/highborne replicate the same effect as azure dragon on top of providing an additional 2 armor. I updated it a little for you though. Azure dragon slow and mermaid slow are 25% right? I'm not really sure myself.

I assume chaos dmg against all armor types. Otherwise you would have to take every armor type into consideration. You could also think of it as all units with unarmored armor since it's the same thing. At the end of the game everything does choas dmg so it's not impractical except for the fact that things at the end hit so hard that the effective health of most these units is largely irrelevant. Everything has it's place though.

Calculating life steal with overseer or mana regen for fenix is practically impossible but those definitely do affect effective health of a unit is at certain point in the game just as if priests or yggdrasil found a unit worthy of their heal. When things start hitting so hard that your units all die in 2 - 4 hits however it usually doesn't matter that they have life steal capability. Maybe I'm just bitter about current 3.5 b8 lvl 33 though. I could make up my own multiplier for melee with life steal but it's just a guess and as I said it's very dependent on how much dmg they are taking in the first place. It practically requires a formula of it's own.

Gnolls warriors are so high, lol.  

Norton wrote:footman [ 4.81 ] hate these. It's upgrade is [ 4.79 ].  Good for taking hits on the rare piercing lvls.

How much is Guard ehpg calculated with the 85% pierce reduction? I really like this unit. I'm always happy when I roll it on hybrid. But they ain't that good for the very first levels, as you said on the other list. His Medium armour stinks.

Furthermore, it's funny (and crazy) to read both list you made, the EHPG list especially, it makes me thing that most upgrades (some of them which i liked very much) are not worth at all. Also, when you put both list together, it goes to show that some units ain't really what I thought they were. About life steal and mana regen, I think you could skip that in your calculations. The simpler, the better.

About the dps per value list you made, it is also a nice list, but I wouldn't bother doing the calc taking extras auras in consideration, because, if you think about it, it doesn't really reflect the single tower DPS per Value. Apart from that, the units you calc'd without these buffs, I found them to be very awesome and I think it is the best way (perhaps, the only way) to really compare unit for unit. And when you put all units under same conditions, we can compare them on equal grounds. Anyway, it's nice trivia. Good job! Have a star   

PS: I wonder if you could make a sheet on excel, I think then you might be able to even calc their EHPG for each round. I've seen excel doing wonders, but i'm no good with it. Besides, on an excel sheet you could change some values without trouble, if they ever get to change.

Excel sheets are indispensable!