Better survival belts: Blunting or +3 Constitution?

[Lampros]

What's a better belt for surviving spike damage? Blunting Belt or +3 Constitution? Or something else? I have been putting the Blunting Belt on everyone, because an online guide said it's "OP," but I wonder if it's time to change when end-game rolls around. In particular, I seem to be getting a lot more spike damages from different sources now than Piercing or Slashing. So any suggestions? Level 14, and I have yet to do Act III, White March II, Concelhaut, or the Adra Dragon.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Lampros

[Boeroer]

That depends on your level and on your foes.

 

In the early game +5 DR is quite powerful and will be more useful than +3 CON.

 

+3 CON leads to +15% (* 1.15) endurace which means something like 50 enduracne to 58 in lvl 1. That's only 8 more. So he can eat 8 more damage. If the character gets hit more than once the Blunting Belt was better.

 

Later on +3 CON is better most of the time. Imagine 300 endurance * 1.15 = 345 endurance. 45 more. So he would have to be hit more than 9 times and no sooner the Blunting Belt would be better.

 

Now add the fact that CON also raises your fortitude and that the Blunting Belt only raises slash and pierce DR.

 

So my advice would be: Blunting Belt first, then later +3 CON belt.

 

However, there is another belt that can help you to survive spike damage if you have low defenses: Girle of Mortal Protection. It reduces critical hit damage by 27%. If normal damage would be 100 and critical damage would be 150, then with a Girdle of Mortal Protection you will only receive 150 * 0.73 = 110. So basically you spare yourself 40 damage. Pretty neat.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

That depends on your level and on your foes.

 

In the early game +5 DR is quite powerful and will be more useful than +3 CON.

 

+3 CON leads to +15% (* 1.15) endurace which means something like 50 enduracne to 58 in lvl 1. That's only 8 more. So he can eat 8 more damage. If the character gets hit more than once the Blunting Belt was better.

 

Later on +3 CON is better most of the time. Imagine 300 endurance * 1.15 = 345 endurance. 45 more. So he would have to be hit more than 9 times and no sooner the Blunting Belt would be better.

 

Now add the fact that CON also raises your fortitude and that the Blunting Belt only raises slash and pierce DR.

 

So my advice would be: Blunting Belt first, then later +3 CON belt.

 

However, there is another belt that can help you to survive spike damage if you have low defenses: Girle of Mortal Protection. It reduces critical hit damage by 27%. If normal damage would be 100 and critical damage would be 150, then with a Girdle of Mortal Protection you will only receive 150 * 0.73 = 110. So basically you spare yourself 40 damage. Pretty neat.

 

Holy fug! That's a lot of crit damage saved. And I guess there are mobs that hit that hard?

 

Too bad I sold the Mortal Protection belt! I am going to go look by various merchants to see where I sold it. (I should only sell magical items to my merchant in Caed Nua so I can find stuff easier.)

 

So far the spike damage that's messed me up are the exploding Constructs (especially if 2 go off at the same time and location) and traps (they knock me out even if they Graze me sometimes). I try to disable them earlier, but sometimes they are located in the middle of enemies, and I miss them until I walk into them in the middle of a battle...

Edited September 9, 2017 by Lampros

[JerekKruger]

I should only sell magical items to my merchant in Caed Nua so I can find stuff easier.

 

You should just not sell any unique gear at all , it's not like there's much to spend money on in Pillars, or any shortage of money.

 

So far the spike damage that's messed me up are the exploding Constructs (especially if 2 go off at the same time and location) and traps (they knock me out even if they Graze me sometimes). I try to disable them earlier, but sometimes they are located in the middle of enemies, and I miss them until I walk into them in the middle of a battle...

 

 

The constructs in Galvino's lab? You're supposed to run away from them when they go into suicide mode and/or use disposable summons to tank them (I used Sagani's pet Ituumak and Essential Phantoms for this purpose).

[Lampros]

 

I should only sell magical items to my merchant in Caed Nua so I can find stuff easier.

 

You should just not sell any unique gear at all , it's not like there's much to spend money on in Pillars, or any shortage of money.

 

So far the spike damage that's messed me up are the exploding Constructs (especially if 2 go off at the same time and location) and traps (they knock me out even if they Graze me sometimes). I try to disable them earlier, but sometimes they are located in the middle of enemies, and I miss them until I walk into them in the middle of a battle...

 

 

The constructs in Galvino's lab? You're supposed to run away from them when they go into suicide mode and/or use disposable summons to tank them (I used Sagani's pet Ituumak and Essential Phantoms for this purpose).

 

 

Duh, I didn't realize. So it's not my melees' fault if they die in 2 explosions? I thought I did not give them enough Endurance or Defense...

Edited September 9, 2017 by Lampros

[Kaylon]

The Blunting Belt is good for melee characters only, who already have high armor and get hit often by slash/pierce attacks. The +3CON belt is good for everyone and it helps against all types of damage... 

 

The Girdle of Mortal Protection reduction bonus isn't multiplicative, is cumulative like all bonuses/penalties in this game - instead of 150% damage you will take 123%. 27% of the base damage is insignificant most of the time and it works only on crits - in other words don't bother with this belt (sorry Boeroer  )

[Blades of Vanatar]

The Blunting Belt is good for melee characters only, who already have high armor and get hit often by slash/pierce attacks. The +3CON belt is good for everyone and it helps against all types of damage...

 

The Girdle of Mortal Protection reduction bonus isn't multiplicative, is cumulative like all bonuses/penalties in this game - instead of 150% damage you will take 123%. 27% of the base damage is insignificant most of the time and it works only on crits - in other words don't bother with this belt (sorry Boeroer )

I use the Blunting Belt on casters and ranged Rogues. They seem to draw fire immediately. It helps give my healer(s) time to heal them.

[JerekKruger]

Duh, I didn't realize. So it's not my melees' fault if they die in 2 explosions? I thought I did not give them enough Endurance or Defense...

 

To be honest I only realised that that's probably how you're meant to deal with them when I did the White March at a low level (went there around level 5, probably hit Galvino's lab at 6/7). Before that I just tanked through their explosions as best I could.

 

The Girdle of Mortal Protection reduction bonus isn't multiplicative, is cumulative like all bonuses/penalties in this game - instead of 150% damage you will take 123%. 27% of the base damage is insignificant most of the time and it works only on crits - in other words don't bother with this belt (sorry Boeroer  )

 

Yeah I was going to say something, but I assumed Boeroer knew the mechanics better than me and this was a peculiarity. It being 123% fits better with how most of these things work.

[Dr <3]

I like a lot girdle of mortal protection. Since my char usually have some kind of regen ( vet recovery at least) and high dr , once you cover the spikes of dmg from critical strykes you are good to go also in the worst rumble.

 

I have not tested exacly how it works, but the impression is that the effect is what Boeroer claimed ( ~ 1/3 dmg reduction of the total 150% of the critical stryke, so you actually receive more or less the same damage in case of crit or normal hit)

 

Is also worth nothing that the girdle is the only item with such effect in the game, while there are some other sources of + const ( in the worst case you can just enchant your armour for a plain +2)

[Lampros]

The Blunting Belt is good for melee characters only, who already have high armor and get hit often by slash/pierce attacks. The +3CON belt is good for everyone and it helps against all types of damage... 

 

The Girdle of Mortal Protection reduction bonus isn't multiplicative, is cumulative like all bonuses/penalties in this game - instead of 150% damage you will take 123%. 27% of the base damage is insignificant most of the time and it works only on crits - in other words don't bother with this belt (sorry Boeroer  )

 

Dammit; I went all over the maps to recover that damn girdle! Good thing I kept the alternative belts. Oh well. Anyways, I'd better hear Boerer's clarification, too.

[Boeroer]

It's a nice belt if you get crit a lot. Like when you have a character with low deflection and Sanguine Plate who looses another 10 deflection with Frenzy. Then the belt spares you more endurance and health than a Blunting Belt or a +3 CON item. For the usual tank it's useless.

 

By the way the numbers above I totally made up just for simpler examples. 300 "base" endurance is pretty high. And 100/150 damage, too.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

I did a quick test with a single leftover Ogre from that bounty in ELmshore and that's the conclusion after 10 received crits with and 10 without Girdle of Mortal Protection:

without Gridle oMP: average crit damage roll was 75.05 per crit

with Girdle oMP: average crit damage roll was 58.60 per crit (this was nor much more than the average hit roll - maybe around 10 percent but I didn't log that properly since I focused on crits)

 

This comes close to the numbers I used above (percentage wise) which is ok with only 10 crits each.

 

I think the girdle only works in combat because when you test it in a tavern on your own party members it does nothing.

 

Or/and it may also depend on whether your opponent's damage is mainly base damage (have no special weapons and/or dmg bonuses but mainly flat base damage). Basically everything that is not "kith who does weapon attacks". But I didn't test that theory.

Maybe the girdle is less effective against let's say kith rogues - but it is very good against everything that does crits with high base damage (wing slams, bites, claws, spells, you name it).

But as I said I didn't test that. I only experienced a decent increase of survivability on my "crit me please" builds every time I put on that belt. An now those short testings with the Ogre can at least explain a bit why.

 

So needless to say that around 16 less damage per crit is better than a Blunting Belt or a +3 CON belt - if you catch a lot of crits. THe higher the spike damage the more benefical is the girlde in comparison to the other two belts (sorry Kaylon  ).

Edited September 10, 2017 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

The belt works vs everything and yes, even in the tavern, vs your companions. The test is very simple - if the reduction is multiplicative then you can say exactly what is the max damage you can take. If you can take more damage than that then it's a straight reduction. Very simple to check and no need to do averages which are meaningless unless you have a very large sample. Once you know how the reduction works then it's very simple to make an estimation of the damage reduced because it's 27% of the base weapon damage. VS enemies using normal weapons (2h weapons) the average reduction is less than 5dmg and can go to 10-15 in the case of the dragons or the most damaging spells.

 

In the end there are a few things to keep in mind:

- how often I'm hit by a critical - does it make sense to equip a belt just for crits or there are better options (like reducing all dmg by 5 or having a bigger endurance/health pool) ?

- it's good to take so many crits to make the belt worthwhile? it's efficient to heal such build? how reliable it is (what happens if you take 2 crits in a row)?

 

Of course, the game is easy enough even on potd and you don't have to optimize everything to feel like a boss. 

[Lampros]

 

Of course, the game is easy enough even on potd and you don't have to optimize everything to feel like a boss. 

 

I doubt this is the case for all but you professionals!

[Boeroer]

Whatever your theory is, you can't deny the numbers (which are of course not meaningless once you have a decent amount of samples - I agree than 10/10 is not decent though, but I didn't have more time). Since I don't know how the belt was implemented the best way to determine its usefulness is to test it in combat.

 

While 10/10 is a very small sample and doesn't prove anything it already is in line with what I thought and experienced.
The average difference was near 17 points dmg per crit - against an ogre.

That doesn't fit into your presumption that dragons or the most damaging spells would do 10-15 less.

It totally fits with -27% though - and that's plausible if the ogre is programmed in a way that he's only doing base damage and doesn't have a lot of dmg mods - like most non-kith enemies have (I guess).

 

As I said, I think against kith enemies who attack with weapons and have different dmg mods this belt might be useless - but since those usually don't hit that awfully hard...

but against other enemies I presume the belt will work the same as against the ogre.

 

If you get disabled you are open for crits - then this belt is better than a Blunting Belt or a belt with +3 CON (also because you can get bonus CON from another item).

If you have a build that is out for getting crits (in order to trigger Frenzy or Shod-in-Faith or whatever spell holding) - then this belt is better.

 

In those cases the Blunting Belt would save you 5 dmg per crit (in this case zero because ogres do crush damage, but hey ).
The CON belt would give you 15% more of your base endurance which would be something like 30-40 points or so if you are >lvl 10 I guess. Also not very overwhelming. Especially because Girdle of Mortal Protection and bonus CON are not mutually exclusive. 

So I don't understand the numbers you were posting when talking about dragons or the most damaging spells when against a simple ogre the difference is already that obvious (but no offense!).

By the way: I tested it first in the tavern with a ranger's wolf attacking the character. So in my mind there should only be base damage + crit damage involved (wolf has 10 MIG). Here I did more samples (20/20) and the difference was nearly zero. So I assumed it only works in combat. Don't know what happened there.  

Edited September 10, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

I doubt this is the case for all but you professionals!

 

Assuming you play through Pillars a few times you'll feel the same. I am nowhere near as knowledgeable of the mechanics as the likes of Boeroer and Kaylon, but I've reached the stage where most of non-solo PotD feels easy (exceptions being the early game and particularly tough fights like bounties). When I first played Hard mode seemed pretty tough.

[Lampros]

 

I doubt this is the case for all but you professionals!

 

Assuming you play through Pillars a few times you'll feel the same. I am nowhere near as knowledgeable of the mechanics as the likes of Boeroer and Kaylon, but I've reached the stage where most of non-solo PotD feels easy (exceptions being the early game and particularly tough fights like bounties). When I first played Hard mode seemed pretty tough.

 

 

I don't think I would ever play PotD. In principle, I am against radically boosting enemy stats to increase game difficulty in an RPG. Enough of this scenario where I am supposedly a demi-god and yet the common ruffians I am fighting have x4 HPs and damage. Ridiculous, immersion-breaking, and cheap. (I am looking at you, Elder Scrolls.) I prefer to increase enemy numbers or quality. I am trying Hard after this initial playthrough, so I shall see how that goes.

[Boeroer]

You know the stats are not THAT more powerful on PoTD.

[Lampros]

You know the stats are not THAT more powerful on PoTD.

 

Yes, I am exaggerating!

[JerekKruger]

I don't think I would ever play PotD. In principle, I am against radically boosting enemy stats to increase game difficulty in an RPG. Enough of this scenario where I am supposedly a demi-god and yet the common ruffians I am fighting have x4 HPs and damage. Ridiculous, immersion-breaking, and cheap. (I am looking at you, Elder Scrolls.) I prefer to increase enemy numbers or quality. I am trying Hard after this initial playthrough, so I shall see how that goes.

 

I can relate to that feeling, but PotD doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as max difficulty in many CRPGs. 

[Kaylon]

Whatever your theory is, you can't deny the numbers (which are of course not meaningless once you have a decent amount of samples - I agree than 10/10 is not decent though, but I didn't have more time). Since I don't know how the belt was implemented the best way to determine its usefulness is to test it in combat.

 

While 10/10 is a very small sample and doesn't prove anything it already is in line with what I thought and experienced.

The average difference was near 17 points dmg per crit - against an ogre.

That doesn't fit into your presumption that dragons or the most damaging spells would do 10-15 less.

 

It totally fits with -27% though - and that's plausible if the ogre is programmed in a way that he's only doing base damage and doesn't have a lot of dmg mods - like most non-kith enemies have (I guess).

 

As I said, I think against kith enemies who attack with weapons and have different dmg mods this belt might be useless - but since those usually don't hit that awfully hard...

 

but against other enemies I presume the belt will work the same as against the ogre.

 

If you get disabled you are open for crits - then this belt is better than a Blunting Belt or a belt with +3 CON (also because you can get bonus CON from another item).

 

If you have a build that is out for getting crits (in order to trigger Frenzy or Shod-in-Faith or whatever spell holding) - then this belt is better.

 

In those cases the Blunting Belt would save you 5 dmg per crit (in this case zero because ogres do crush damage, but hey ).

The CON belt would give you 15% more of your base endurance which would be something like 30-40 points or so if you are >lvl 10 I guess. Also not very overwhelming. Especially because Girdle of Mortal Protection and bonus CON are not mutually exclusive. 

 

So I don't understand the numbers you were posting when talking about dragons or the most damaging spells when against a simple ogre the difference is already that obvious (but no offense!).

 

By the way: I tested it first in the tavern with a ranger's wolf attacking the character. So in my mind there should only be base damage + crit damage involved (wolf has 10 MIG). Here I did more samples (20/20) and the difference was nearly zero. So I assumed it only works in combat. Don't know what happened there.  

I don't deny the numbers, I deny the conclusions Also why pick the wolf pet for testing when you don't even know his base damage? The average base damage of the most damaging attacks/spells varies somewhere between 40-60 and 27% of that is roughly 10-15. Like I said, 10-20 samples are meaningless if you want to draw a conclusion (no offense!).

 

To show how misleading a small sample is let's take the ogre - he does 40-60 dmg with 21might - that means 30-40 base dmg. A crit should do 55-80dmg ie 67 average dmg. If the dmg reduction is multiplicative then the critical damage after reduction should be 40-58 dmg ie 49 on average. If the damage reduction is not multiplicative then the dmg range is 47-69 dmg ie 58 on average. 

[Boeroer]

Why not take the wolf? I know his base damage and thought I can compare the expected results with the numbers I receive when testing. But after 20/20 crits there was no difference. Even without knowing the base damage it's obvious that something didn't work properly - but maybe it was just a one time glitch, don't know.

 

As can be guessed from my previous comments about kith/non-kith enemies I don't think anymore that it's multiplicative (that was only my guessing after my experiences with the belt on some builds). But what I wanted to point out is that it can still be better (for certain characters) than a Blunting Belt and a Belt of +3 CON. And I don't think I stand corrected (yet). You said that one shouldn't bother with that belt (generally). I still can't see why.

 

Sure: for a character with good defenses it's definitely crap. But there are certain characters and also enough situations where it saves you more endurance than the other two variants.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Boeroer