Board 8 > Which do you prefer? DEf or HP

(+) Yeah! (+)

Which do you prefer to take when having to choose

Higher Def and lower HP
Lower Def and Higher HP

In most games, more def > more HP always.

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It's entirely dependent on the game, but most games don't scale both defense and HP in a balanced way, most games prefer one or the other.

I usually go with higher HP.

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Mos Def

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HP most of the time.

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Chrono1219

Having massive defence and then finding an enemy that ignores defence sucks.

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I take HPs.

In most games, more def > more HP always.

Um, what? Maybe I'm playing in bizarro world, but it's pretty much always the other way around in what I play. Basic instinct would make you think more def = less damage taken = less healing = less need for higher max HP, etc, but by the time you start seeing a real difference in damage, something else like a multiplier determined by relative levels of attacker/attackee is also in play.

Then there's the fact that HP pads you no matter what you're getting hit by, rather than just playing a role if it's a physical or special/magical attack.

Having a high HP makes me feel at ease. Even if the rest of a character's stats are low, if they have high HP I tend to think they're strong anyway.

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Def

Mainly cause of Fire Emblem.

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Mos HP

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hit points

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Higher Def and lower HP

Most definitely.

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hope you like gettin owned by seismic toss and also night shade

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Hope you like attacks that deal a percentage of HP damage while I laugh off 0 damage attacks at 1 HP.

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Hope you both like dying while I stock up on HP Plus and also Junction good thing to my Defense.

Yes, I do both of these in VII and VIII. Somehow.

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but then you get killed the next turn because that guy probably has other attacks

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TG: on earth class is sorted out by who can drop the most delirious flow
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For what it's worth, in Pokemon it's better to have HP and defense as close as possible rather than have more in one than the other, but having higher defenses is usually better because raising HP EVs is easier than splitting between defense and special defense.

Also usually better to specialize in one of defense and spdef too though.

There was one multiplayer game I played where the formula for attack and defense was rather basic so I pumped up my defense skyhigh in a week's time while ignoring attack and health for the most part (just enough that they would allow me to do damage and survive criticals) that I was a top-tier player on that server in just that week of playing. I was even accused of cheating and almost banned. Most other players shot up HP, attack, and special attack, but completely ignored defense, keeping it half or not even that great. Or perhaps it was equal all. But I think I was their first player to go defense heavy and take on players that had been around for weeks, maybe months, with little to no effort except pumping up defense to excess. And perhaps the only player at the time to have more than 1.5x defense than offense (it was closer to 5x).

I didn't stick around after that, mostly because I got bored of holding down a button on my keyboard with a battery for ten minutes, changing the difficulty level, healing, then running in place for ten more minutes. Did help me get through The Dark Tower series though. Excellent motivation to read.

Defense > HP

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From: Black_Hydras | #010
Def

Mainly cause of Fire Emblem.

This.

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Well, in Pokemon you try to make the HP so you can have substitutes with at least 101 HP.

And choose one, this is a preference question. Of course we're going to have max stats on everything if we had our way >_>

As for other attacks, it doesn't matter, nothing's going through my impenetrable defense! Apart from attacks that ignore defense, but hey, screwed either way.

Also, high HP screws over healing that have a set point (what the hell is that about?)

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what if you get poisoned

edit: well i guess poison sort of falls under "ignores defense"

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Well the guy with the higher HP is gonna lose more HP every turn then!

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From: Viktor Vaughn | #102
what if you get poisoned

edit: well i guess poison sort of falls under "ignores defense"

Steel Type

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Chrono1219

hope you have burn heal

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Ooh, burn

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I swap in my Heatran

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Chrono1219

You switched in to my Earthquake!

... wait, what were we talking about?

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Only RPG I really care about stats in is D&D, where I prefer HP. I'd rather not care if I get hit than rarely get hit but be ****ed whenever I do. Plus the way healing works in 4th Edition, higher HP means more effective healing.

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Definitely higher HP.

Right now I'm playing Disgaea 2, and I took a few moments to grind Adell on stage 4-3 (the first one with a level increasing Geo Symbol), and I don't think he could've solo'd all of those monsters (each being more than twice his level) if not for the huge HP boosts granted by the Muscle items.

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Dauntless Hunter posted...
Only RPG I really care about stats in is D&D, where I prefer HP. I'd rather not care if I get hit than rarely get hit but be ****ed whenever I do. Plus the way healing works in 4th Edition, higher HP means more effective healing.

in terms of D&D I prefer higher defense purely for reasons related to pissing off the DM.

"WHAT THE **** DO YOU MEAN A 29 DOESN'T HIT? I ROLLED AN 18 ON THE D20 FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!"

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Yeah but it's difficult to keep ALL your defenses high enough to laugh off every attack. There's always something like Will or Reflex dragging you down, and once the DM figures out which one it is, monsters with attacks that target that defense just happen to show up all the goddamn time.

Or you're playing 3.x and the same thing happens but with your worst save bonus.

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Black Turtle spilled my diet soda!

True enough.

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This question reminds me of Kiwi from Shining Force 2.

Best defense in the game (takes like 1 damage from almost everything) and very low hp... but he got 1 shot by almost any magic

So like Shining Force, I take high HP

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Ignore Def moves and the like kinda mess with this but I tend to prefer seeing my character take little damage than seeing them survive a lot of it.

Also I wasn't thinking about this in terms of physical vs magical defense.

Man let's not even get into how messy defense is in D&D 3. AC is like super awesome up until about level 6 at which point it becomes hilariously useless forever.

HP

from games like Disgaea and Final Fantasy

when you have millions of hp def hardly matters if you aren't OHKO'ing things if they are even OHKO'able

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HP forever

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depends on game

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Raw Damage mitigation and HP.

Most threats in games almost always come from magic, leaving a high defense as rather underwhelming.

Granted, it can change depending on the game, but this is generally how it works.

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Black_Hydras posted...
Def

Mainly cause of Fire Emblem.

This was the first thing I thought of as well.

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I have no real preference as it does heavily depend on the game, but more hp definitely feels good, even if your def isn't so hot. Though, tanking heavy damage also feels good...

Who needs hp and def anyway...*dumps everything into atk and becomes a glass cannon of doom*

as they say, the best hp or def is a good atk...

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Def.

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I prefer ways to mitigate damage over soaking it, so I guess that puts me in the DEF camp, even though I'm not making it quite that black and white.

Depends on the game, it really does.

There's at least three different kinds of common defence: subtraction defence, division defence, and multiplication defence. Subtraction (think Fire Emblem) can reduce damage to 0, but helps you less against a high-attack boss. Multiplication (think FF6) can reduce everything to 0 (it's broken). Division (think Pokemon) reduces everything by the same amount.

At least in Pokemon, HP ends up a lot more important than defences just because it works on both special and physical attacks. (Like...seriously, Deoxys-D actually isn't really a standout for tankiness: Similar to Uxie, less tanky than Umbreon).

In something like Paper Mario I'll take defence every time. All of your healing is fixed and doesn't scale with HP. It's subtraction defence but no enemy deals more than 10 damage per hit (though some have multiple hits). Defence works on everything: there's no "two types of damage".

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