Difference between revisions of "Strategy:Tough as Nails"
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| − | Tough as nails gives a character a flat +1 armor. Generally speaking, this tends to a weaker defensive trait than | + | Tough as nails gives a character a flat +1 armor. Generally speaking, this tends to a weaker defensive trait than jellrunner, but choosing between the two involves a lot more consideration than just the general case. |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | Situations in which a player could benefit from a little extra armor, but has the option of retreating to somewhere safer, are fairly common. In such circumstances hellrunner shines. A much less common situation is that which sees a player under fire, with nowhere to retreat to. Less common, though, doesn't necessarily mean less important to preclude. In fact, we're all *so* familiar with that unlucky caves level that we enter surrounded by arachnotrons, or the panic-inducing start in a room with a pod of mancubi, revenants, and archviles - all that's required is another pod on the other side of the nearest door, and the game could abruptly end! Sometimes our only recourse is just to kill the enemies as quickly as possible, and in those cases hellrunner will offer very little protection. | |
| + | So, while hellrunner is usually better, since the former case is more common, surviving the UNusual situation is often more critical to our success. | ||
| − | + | Another consideration is how tough as nails provides more benefit the more damage we're taking. While we always endeavour to take as little damage as possible, this can still be a factor in choosing defensive traits. For example, the technician, with an ability to use medikits almost instantly, will tend to carry a few more health packs and tank a little more damage (while a scout would be more likely to roll the dice of phase devices or rocket jumps). The very fact that we're playing a technician can encourage tough as nails per se. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | I suspect that by the time players are building cerberus armor regularly, they have already judged and excluded TaN from their list of go-to traits, but I feel that the two synergise well enough to ultimately put | + | Most importantly, though, I feel it needs to be mentioned that tough as nails is working at its best when our received damage after other defense is low, but greater than 1. 3 is the magic number here, where TaN will reduce it to 1, effectively *trippling* our hitpoints against such attacks. While in practice it may be incredibly unlikely to get this 'sweet spot', there is a case where it's a lot more common than might be expected - cerberus armor. Cerberus armor offers little protection from bullet attacks, which are typically in the range of 2-8 dmg, but if the cerberus armor is power-modded, that (2-8) 5 average damage is going to be reduced by the power mod down to, you guessed it, 3! Cerberus armor similarly fails to defend well against shotguns, which are significantly more powerful, but since they are shotgun attacks our TaN defensive trait is doubled in effectiveness here! Then we have the energy attacks, which hit hard (anything from 12(caco) to 20(archvile), perhaps about 16 damage on average?); Cerberus armor's resistance% hugely reduces these down to about 5 damage, and then the p-mod takes it down to that familiar sweet spot, 3! |
| + | Put that all together, and it turns out that if we're wearing P-modded cerberus, that ideal three times as tough 'perfect scenario' actually occurs with surprising consistency! This is more than a little convenient, given that cerberus armor is pretty much the go-to late-game defensive goal if no fancy uniques are found! | ||
| + | |||
| + | I suspect that by the time players are building cerberus armor regularly, they have already judged and excluded TaN from their list of go-to traits (that was certainly what happened with me, anyway!) but I feel that the two synergise well enough to ultimately put tough as nails amongst the very top of the defensive trait choices. | ||
Revision as of 01:53, 13 December 2020
| Game Data | Strategy |
Tough as nails gives a character a flat +1 armor. Generally speaking, this tends to a weaker defensive trait than jellrunner, but choosing between the two involves a lot more consideration than just the general case.
Situations in which a player could benefit from a little extra armor, but has the option of retreating to somewhere safer, are fairly common. In such circumstances hellrunner shines. A much less common situation is that which sees a player under fire, with nowhere to retreat to. Less common, though, doesn't necessarily mean less important to preclude. In fact, we're all *so* familiar with that unlucky caves level that we enter surrounded by arachnotrons, or the panic-inducing start in a room with a pod of mancubi, revenants, and archviles - all that's required is another pod on the other side of the nearest door, and the game could abruptly end! Sometimes our only recourse is just to kill the enemies as quickly as possible, and in those cases hellrunner will offer very little protection. So, while hellrunner is usually better, since the former case is more common, surviving the UNusual situation is often more critical to our success.
Another consideration is how tough as nails provides more benefit the more damage we're taking. While we always endeavour to take as little damage as possible, this can still be a factor in choosing defensive traits. For example, the technician, with an ability to use medikits almost instantly, will tend to carry a few more health packs and tank a little more damage (while a scout would be more likely to roll the dice of phase devices or rocket jumps). The very fact that we're playing a technician can encourage tough as nails per se.
Most importantly, though, I feel it needs to be mentioned that tough as nails is working at its best when our received damage after other defense is low, but greater than 1. 3 is the magic number here, where TaN will reduce it to 1, effectively *trippling* our hitpoints against such attacks. While in practice it may be incredibly unlikely to get this 'sweet spot', there is a case where it's a lot more common than might be expected - cerberus armor. Cerberus armor offers little protection from bullet attacks, which are typically in the range of 2-8 dmg, but if the cerberus armor is power-modded, that (2-8) 5 average damage is going to be reduced by the power mod down to, you guessed it, 3! Cerberus armor similarly fails to defend well against shotguns, which are significantly more powerful, but since they are shotgun attacks our TaN defensive trait is doubled in effectiveness here! Then we have the energy attacks, which hit hard (anything from 12(caco) to 20(archvile), perhaps about 16 damage on average?); Cerberus armor's resistance% hugely reduces these down to about 5 damage, and then the p-mod takes it down to that familiar sweet spot, 3! Put that all together, and it turns out that if we're wearing P-modded cerberus, that ideal three times as tough 'perfect scenario' actually occurs with surprising consistency! This is more than a little convenient, given that cerberus armor is pretty much the go-to late-game defensive goal if no fancy uniques are found!
I suspect that by the time players are building cerberus armor regularly, they have already judged and excluded TaN from their list of go-to traits (that was certainly what happened with me, anyway!) but I feel that the two synergise well enough to ultimately put tough as nails amongst the very top of the defensive trait choices.
