Starting Items Case Study

By Sinzer on May 28, 2009 3:08:25 PM from

I was looking at the starting items and have made a case study looking at their effectiveness. I chose the Gauntlets of Brutality, Banded Armour and Scaled Armour as a comparison. To test simple DMG vs Armour or Health.

Taking a level 1 UB, I calculated what would happen if you pitted them against each other, here are the results :

Level 1	Base	Gauntlets	Scaled	Banded
HP	1550	1550	1550	1950
Armour	475	475	1075	475
Mit	16	16	30	16
RoF	0.72	0.72	0.72	0.72
DPS	121	139	121	121
HP/sec	2.37	2.37	2.37	5.37


Gauntlets vs Scaled		Gauntlets vs Banded		Scaled vs Banded
16.33		17.51		20.26
15.61		15.61		18.83

Scaled wins		Banded wins		Banded wins

The final numbers are the time in secs for the player to kill the other, obviously the lower the better.

Pretty much shows that for starting items you should go Armour and Health over Damage.

I hope to run some more complicated case studies, with some more time, looking at the higher level items (ashkandor in particular) and combinations as it scales. However, I am pretty sure that Health and +HP/sec is the most valuable stat, followed by armour, then followed by damage in most cases.

It is hard to compare against speed and the like, this case study obviously doesn't take into account skills causing damage. However, normally as DGs go up in level, the skill damage does not scale as well, and in some cases would detract from pure DPS.

I am beginning to find from game experience that stacking health and armour, is far more effective than trying to stack Damage. It keeps you in the game longer and makes you less vulnerable to attacks, giving you more time to escape (hopefully which you shouldn't be doing) or longer to get off skills or use items like pots.

+9 Karma | 6 Replies

how about Scale + Banded vs. Gauntlets + Banded?

banded is clearly the better of the two armors at level 1, so lets find out what the better second item is.

banded + scale

effective health = 2788

dps = 120.86

banded + gauntlets

effective health = 2320

dps = 138.84

banded+scale kills banded+gauntlets in 19.20 seconds.

banded+gauntlets kills banded+scale in 20.08 seconds.

its very close. you might argue that banded+scale has the slight edge but thats debatable since attacks don't come every tenth of a second, they come every 1.39 seconds so it will almost certainly take the same number of attacks for either setup to kill the other. its basically a draw.

the number crunch did not count the effect of health regen for this, which it should since the effect is not equal on both sides. the health regen of banded+scale side counts for more because of the armor. it might be enough to give a 1 attack edge to banded+scale in which case it would break the tie.

still its very close and i think the bigger difference will be decided by controlling a flag or taking a tower hit.

yep. everybody is realizing this.... hp ftw

the number crunch did not count the effect of health regen for this, which it should since the effect is not equal on both sides.

Its pretty easy to factor in the health regen, simply subtract it from the armour mitigated DPS value. Even 20secs at +5 is only 100 HP, not even one auto attack. In a fight HP regen is most probably not the biggest factor, simple HP pool size and armour mitigation.

I think the health regen is obviously more important in the downtime between creeps and DG encounters. Being able to regen your health quickly means that in a break you don't have to go back to the old crystal.

It is also worth bearing in mind for items like HoL. If you are stacking HP regen items, your need for expensive items like HoL is reduced (my UB build is not even needed as I don't use mana). You also get a lot of nice side effects from the HP regen gear, which tends to be a secondary stat.

Interesting. A few perhaps obvious things to point out:

1) Ranged attackers can get in their full effect from the gauntlets without suffering for a lack of defense (At least, in many cases).

2) When you aren't fighting to the Death, banded mail can be even MORE effective. Sitting around for 60 seconds will heal you another 300 health afterall.

3) Unclean beast has the highest starting armor in the game, so he gets the least advantage from Scale mail, and the most advantage rom banded mail. That rather skews these results.

Ok, I have done another quick case study, this one is quite surprising I find.

I compared level 10 UB stats. One wearing Slayers Wraps and one wearing Armour of Vengeance. Two similarily priced items at around the tier they would be purchased at. Who wins :

Level 10	Base	Slayers	Vengeance
HP	2765	2765	2765
Armour	763	763	1813
Mit	23.4	23.4	42
RoF	0.87	0.87	0.87
DPS	226.5	278.8	226.5
HP/sec	3.99	13.99	3.99


Slayers vs Vengeance
21.72
17.33

Vengeance wins

By a fair margin this time. I adjusted the 35 HP damage into DPS, which came out at around 30 and subtracted this from the Slayers DPS. Slayers Crit DPS was worked out to 22.3 on avg.

It is interesting that as the level scales, still the time to kill without use of skills is around the 20 sec mark, not really enough time for HP regen to make too much difference (HP regen is already factored into these calcs).

Zechnophobe .... Good points

Here is a chart for Torchbearer :

Level 1	Base	Gauntlets	Scaled	Banded
HP	1410	1410	1410	1810
Armour	240	240	840	240
Mit	8.8	8.8	25.1	8.8
RoF	0.68	0.68	0.68	0.68
DPS	95	120	95	95
HP/sec	2.19	2.19	2.19	7.19


Gauntlets vs Scaled		Gauntlets vs Banded		Scaled vs Banded
16.08		17.7		22.78
16.7		16.7		20.45

The Gauntlets are better than Scaled, however banded rules supreme (admittedly it is a little more expensive).

For ranged DGs, Regulus and TB, I think it can easily be argued that stacking damage is more efficient, as you expect to not get hit. However, for melee, whether it is a DMG melee or DEF melee, going HP seems to be the better option. Even more so against ranged, you need the HP and mitigation to get in range and soak up harrasment.

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Starting Items Case Study