How much HP do you run in PvE?

Wow what's with all the bickering in here? The OP's question refers to PvE, so it doesn't matter when people pop up with "oh i have 350hp but i'm leet and pve is hard so low hp is gud". They can't have a valid argument as to why that's viable, because anything works in PvE.

All i can say is, those people need to go PvP with < 500 to learn the value of health. End of discussion really.

I have no idea, somewhere around 490-530 in PvE on my ele.

You know, I would love to have read a decent thread analysing the pros and cons of various HP figures. However, this thread is just an endless stream of "XXX hp 12 chars" posts. What conceivable purpose does this thread serve? Who actually reads this rubbish?

I'm gonna go with you did...

Only char I use prot spirit on is my monk. My other chars dont use it.
And I STILL have survivor and am STILL the last person to die in any given group. PvE is so easy you dont need alot of health.
If you suck that bad that you need to rely on alot of hp maybe you should uninstall GW.

How was it a dumb response? If you suck bad enough to where you need to rely on that much HP then read above.

Wrong on both accounts. PvE is SOOOOO damn easy.
You really dont need alot of hp you just need to know how to play.

I think he means running prot spirit on your hero monks.
He's not saying your W/Mos should be brining it.

I know what hes saying. And im saying I dont have Prot Spirit with me. Only in HM do I have myself or a hero bring it. NM is too easy to worry about it.
And I dont use warriors. Wammos ftl.

if you cast seed of life it can save the whole party from a wipe

My warrior has 575. Much more than that and you're just sacrificing far better stat bonuses.

405 on mine, 9/10 times. Sup rune for whatevers the most important to the build Im using. I also try to have a couple damage mitigation skills to make the monks job easier. And a rez. Always a rez. Kept a group I was in a couple days ago from wiping against Glint.
PS. Im not sure how you find PvE so easy Hailey. Maybe its because Ive yet to use one of the cookie cutter builds, but mine work ok in a good group.

It seems a little rich to complain about bickering when you seem unable to comment on anything without jumping on the "OMG PVE SO EASY, ME SO AWESOME" bandwagon. "Anything" does not work in PvE: try 8 armourless level 4 monks with empty skillbars in the ring of fire. Would that work? No.

If your only real response to a PvE-oriented question is to point out how god-damn manly you are with all your PvP awesomeness, then just don't post.


Low health (even 1HP) CAN work in PvE, and work very very well, thus low health suggestions are entirely valid. As are high health suggestions. As are the whole range of healths inbetween. In both NM and HM. You can't mock people for using low health when your only defense is "LOL WOULDN'T WORK IN PVP", that's like mocking someone for using a 55 monk because it wouldn't work in a heavy degen/lifesteal area. Well, DUH. People use low health in PvE because it's a valid, workable, and often wise decision in PvE. You're essentially mocking people for choosing builds appropriate to the situation, which is...the POINT of GW.


So please, try and comment without mocking people or trying to make yourself "luk gud" (this applies to everyone). Remember, the value of health in PvP is utterly utterly meaningless if you're not going to PvP.

620 on my monk, 550 on the rest.

i only realy use my monk in pve, i have 540 in my 40/40 set and 600 in my sheild set.

Most of my characters have 550+ HP. Energy boost is useful for certain classes, but overall I'd prefer my HP high and less nonsensical spamming (though spamming sometimes=crazy fun).

Within reason. Obviously you had to exaggerate a teeny bit to make your point noticed. Basically, low health is bad, but will work in PvE because it's so damn easy.

I was actually posting to point out that PvE being used as an excuse to use stupidly low health isn't valid, because anything (within reason, as you fail to grasp the point) will work in PvE.

Yeah, a 1 HP bip. It's meant to have lower HP to minimize sacrifice costs. Use your brain.

I rarely see people using 55hp monks when doing missions and shit. Stop confusing specific farming (ya know, the same builds that use skills such as mending) with general PvE.

Mocking this, mocking that. Please know what you're talking about. As bolded.. of course it's workable. Because as i've said 140757 times, and another 19057427589789 people have said before: PvE in GW is so easy.

Please try and comment without saying mocking in every sentence. I was mocking no-one. Simply stating that if joe bloggs thinks it's a good idea to run 3 sup runes, he should go try that in PvP. PvP in GW is where the skill is at. If you think your 300hp is good just because you're not going to PvP.. you're still baed at this game.

650 on ursan/530 on HB

QFT. Nothing is going to intentionally spike the crap out of you in PvE, so high health isn't that big a deal. It helps make your monks more efficient, but it's not that vital. As long as you're not down crazy low and stacking up DP, you'll be fine.

An old guildie of mine took a 380 health ele into the Deep a long time ago. Things were going fine until he died once, then everything that touched him instagibbed him. In the depletion room, he kept getting killed by the 100ish damage from the room effect. That sucked, hard.

In PvP, I can instantly tell who's running health in the 400s when I'm monking, because those people are dead.

As for Hailey Anne the squishy survivor, what benefits are you gaining from running triple superior runes? I can understand a single rune working well at times, but the cost of 3 is pretty huge for essentially no gains.

Ranger: 535
Assassin: 525
Necro: 505
Dervish: 535/560 (depending on runes)

Something like this iirc.

But the title says "How much HP do you run in PvE?" - how is what you said relevant at all?

Exactly...its not.
PvE and PvP are 2 seperate issues. In PvE for the most part you really dont need a whole lot of hp. its easy as hell.
So you people really need to stop bringing up PvP.

555 or 800, depending if I go Dragon Slash or Ursan Blessing =)
PS: I know I'm not a moderator, but if you wanna debate, please do it via PMs, instead of spamming the thread. It's really annoying...

Youre right...youre not a mod. this is a discussion thread therefore there will be debates. If you dont like it dont read it.

600+ on myself and all my heroes, except for olias. Cause he's MM.

450 - 480

I have thought about bringing it up but never found the time to + my gold usually goes elsewhere.

500 on my war and 480 on the rest.

Most all are mid 500's

Monk is 515
Warrior is 590
etc.

I hope you don't mean HM PvE, cause that would make it a silly comment or you're bragging or a PvPer. I'm talking about HM dungeons, HM DoA, etc. You won't survive long with just 400hp there. In a dungeon like 'cathedral of flames' you can get wiped out in a sec, especially with h/h if you're not careful even with a suiting synergy build.

On topic: I play with as much hp as possible, often having 660 hp on my main (monk) Even as a healer I will sacrifice on energy pool to get over 600. The experience in energy management, builds, timing and strategic insight have to make up for that. When I'm pugging or playing H/H, I must stay alive as long as possible to keep the team going. Those high hp often keep the mobs off of me which is a nice side effect for a monk. This way I'm less vulnerable to DP too and need to use less candy canes etc. if a party wipe did happen.

I don't know what to make of your post. Rangers are MUCH more capable than just a guy who fires pointy sticks, I have probably saved my party's ass multiple times by interrupting nukers, with the right timing you can pretty much disable a monk entirely. We also place lots of pressure with conditions and snares.

Also where is your proof the AI ignores rangers due to their minimal threat? Spiking Incendiary Arrows every half second with Needling Shot is NOT a minimal threat.

AI has hard-coded notion of individual's character threat level, based on class, armor, level, equipped weapon (ranged/melee) and health, and secondarily on their position and actions.

Rangers are probably the lowest on the list, especially if they stay outside of agro range, which is very easy.

AI is not smart, it works off pre-defined values. It does not compensate for different builds, or skill balances. Often, a particular caster, or a monk will become either instant agro magnet (all zerg that one), or spill-over target (if one target loses agro, they'll zerg that one).

This particular characteristic not only allows rangers to survive without getting much attention, but also makes them good mid-line characters (or front-line, if no melee) that keep mobs casually interested. In one way, AI wants to charge them since they're close, on the other it ranks them low due to their characteristics, keeping them just confused enough to have them running more than they would.

Rangers always die among the last. I've played them in PvE - probably the easiest class to play, next to warrior.

The only AI that I've ever seen even notice rangers are some specific necros (anti-physical/melee curses) - AI is smart enough to realize that rangers are highly resistant to damage, so they prefer to target them with degen, and attack debuffs, even more than melee (melee they can run away from).

Overall, AI makes wise decisions on how to prioritize targets. It just lacks in adaptability and execution, making it very abusable and exploitable.

It does not however consider how much damage a class effectively does, and I've never noticed any relation on actual build a character runs. So if you're going in with quad echo nuker or with empty skill bar, your ele will be classified as caster squishy with X health wielding a wand.

This would be heavily exploitable. If a build is found to attract all agro from mobs, you'd simply make that build, prot it into invinci tank, and send it up front. They wouldn't need to do anything, it would be just the new book trick.

One exception where rangers will draw agro incredibly effectively, and work perfectly with group dynamics is with H/H. Since player will not only agro mobs from almost outside agro range, it's first thing they'll notice. Secondly, ranger will be the very first thing that will hit them. As such, the initial zerg will go towards ranger. But during that time, H/H will deal enough damage to draw them away, giving you almost double the time before taking serious hits as when pulling with casters.

Also their skillbar. The more enchantments and hexes you have, the higher the threat level. It's why protection monks generally get targeted over healing monks (if you have one of each spec'd), and why SS necros get targeted over MM necros.

Rangers and Paragons are probably tied for last, correct.

However, threat level is probably most determined by position, and all these other factors are not nearly as important. That's why it's so hard to exploit other than just kiting and aggroing. Best to just leave Rangers and Gons to do their thing, making the best of what they got, and not being concerned about health as much. I personally run a major Expertise and Marks on my ranger to get the 14 breakpoint on Expertise and getting the most out of my bow damage (within reason). It's not terribly important, but I consider it just a little more important than health, and that's the deciding factor.

I run as much HP as possible. 'nuff said.

That is fairly shortsighted - there have been MANY FotM's that dominated PvP yet would fail horribly in PvE land, so does that mean that PvP is skilless? Nor would one say that if they found a three sup rune build that allowed a single class to clear pretty much all of PvE would they lack skill because it wouldn't work in PvP.

I can run a high HP build in PvE and never drop below half health on the whole party (and this is HM with H/H) so why would I not drop health in return for killing things faster? Why is that lacking skill?

I fail to see why it is smart to significantly increase the amount of time I take to clear an area for no return whatsoever - but again I guess I'm not some elite PvPer so I am stupid. I can fully understand that you, personally, are not good enough at PvE to do so (much of the skill in PvE is knowing what you are about to face and tailoring your current team build to attack it - effectively each area has it's own meta-game you are playing against) and would want a team build you are comfortable with (say a high HP PvP type balanced build). That is an effective and fairly easy way to play but it isn't the most efficient.

Lets face it - an echo Spiteful Spirit necro has been one of the more powerful damagers in PvE land since pretty much the release of the game, and yet it doesn't work well as an AoE armor ignoring damager in PvP because humans quit attacking. Those are two VERY different situations are you are a fool if you snurl your nose at said build simply because a human wouldn't fall for it - same thing with other builds like the older B/P ranger teams (before some of the more recent changes). In fact, it takes just as much skill and knowledge of the requisite part of the game to initially work that build up as any base build in PvP (and takes the same amount of skill to copy and play from someone else - which is what mostly happens in PvP also).

Agro is dynamic. When you first encounter a mob, it assigns some number to each party member. During combat, individual party member's agro changes based on their actions, and things that happen to mobs.

Squishies with low health are very desirable initial targets. This gives them very high agro rating, and often, it won't lower enough for mobs to switch targets before they die, making it seem like they are always stuck on single party member.

During combat (this was somewhat explained by Anet), mobs constantly evaluate the targets to see which they would kill the easiest. This is why, if a squishy gets spiked at start (due to high agro rating), they'll have less health than other party members, making them most desirable again, getting hit heavier, and so on - making it seem like all mobs are zerging one single character the entire time. It's a vicious loop.


Which.... all brings us back to original point. Due to the way AI works, it's beneficial for all casters to have high health. Or, if you wish, deliberately run single caster with low health, keep it protted, and they'll be a "tank". At very least, you'll know who to pre-prot. Warriors, rangers and paragons can likely run with lower health. Dervishes with AoE can cause a lot of scatter, making it less of a problem of getting mobbed and sins teleport, so mobs lose interest fast.

But high health has nothing to do with PvP strategy or some leet play - 500+ merely works better against AI, especially since the loss of attribute points doesn't hurt at all.

Rangers are usually attacked later because they are usually found standing among targets with 10 less armor.

PvE mobs pay very close attention to armor level; when I was learning the 600 build in Cathedral of Flames (as a 15 AL tank), I noticed that even when I screwed up and my heroes aggroed, most of the mobs stayed firmly on me. However, once I decided to commit to the build and put superior runes on my smite hero, I couldn't hold aggro during screwups because even though I had 15 AL, I had ~800 health and my hero had ~300. I was already in the habit of wearing +health armor on my monk, but this experience reaffirmed the wisdom of it. So long as I have more health than the other casters, mobs will go for them instead of me and I can do my job in peace.

The threat/aggro rating will lower fairly quickly. All it takes is that squishy all the mobs are gunning for to kite a few feet, or in more extreme cases, hit a run speed buff and run a few feet (not even away from the battle, just circular), and the aggro will switch to the next nearest threat. Like I said, position, or really proximity is a better word, is probably the highest determining factor. It may want that monk in the backline, but if it can't get to it easily enough, or if the monk moves, it will just hit the nearest target.

I honestly think this is probably the fault of poor pathing AI, rather than the aggro AI, but exploiting is exploiting. My point is that just giving the squishiest character massive protection isn't going to get much accomplished, considering people pull that tank'n'spank crap with a protted up warrior successfully, when technically that warrior should be one of the last to be targeted by your theory. If I had to place a percentage of what makes up threat rating, I'd say 90% proximity/positioning, 10% all that other stuff.

EDIT:
Besides, having high health for the reason of 'avoiding aggro' is just plain wrong. Just because your monk has 600+ health doesn't mean they won't be targeted. Also, if you yourself have high health (not directed at you, Antheus, just "you" in the general sense), you likely have high health on everyone else on your team - which means no one will be singled out because of health at all, and your 'avoiding aggro' reason goes right out the window. This is why big numbers alone shouldn't be the focus, but rather the roles your characters play in the team, your builds that may need certain breakpoints or lower health for specific reasons (saccing, for example), and of course the mobs you will encounter (super-high spikes, life steal, degen, etc) all should be considered - at least if you want to go in efficiently.

The OP asked how much life we had on our characters. He didn't say "If you run XX life, you're a 'noob'. Please debate."
To stay on topic: my monk has 570 or 600 health, depending on the staff I'm using.

575+ on all characters except ele and necro, which are 500+. My monk typically has 575-600, and he is my main. My warrior has 610.

I'd wager absolute values count as well, not just relative. This is why I said 500+, not "highest in group".

A 400 monk with 380 necro will put some mobs in a rage over monk. Having 500 health monk in a group of 550-600 doesn't seem to do that.

It could be due to relative difference. For example, target party member with 10% less health. Overall higher health reduces relative differences.

But no, it's not only for agro. I mentioned before, there's enough AoE damage for 400 or so points. That is enough to kill slightly wounded members with ~400 health. With 495-595 range, you have noticably higher survivability.

Eh, I don't know. Maybe. That same monk at 600 with the necro at 570 (same 5% difference as your example) would probably get the same amount of comparable threat rating. Of course the enemies will be hitting the 400 'harder' as their 50 damage hits for a higher percent of health, so it may appear that they get more pressure.

Of course. Just thought I'd throw that out there for those considering high health for aggro reasons alone.

In Everquest 2 it was more important for healing to be more efficient.

You take how much hp a heal gives and figure out how many times you can get hit before using up that heal. Better mitigation means you can get hit more times for each heal you receive, where higher hp makes no difference. The less often you need to be healed the less harazardous disruption is to your healers and the more freedom of energy use they have.

In EQ2 though energy was finite and people could be really picky, to the point of always running parsers to pinpoint the best way to handle their skill use and stats.