What does extra wounds do exactly?

[MadyMadMady]

I noticed it only adds an extra health chunk. but it doesn't increase the max health.
like if u have 300 health it still remains 300 but with a few extra health chunks.
so what's the use of having those??? why would someone go for extra health chunks instead of increasing his max health???
can anybody explain it to me?

[MOK]

Think of like Extra Lives, ala mario. By default you can go down twice. With +1 wounds you can go down 3 times. Zealots have further mechanics around it, but they don't need the trinket's +! to deal with it. Mostly, this is for the Veteran and Psycher, who are pretty fragile. Veterans in particular get wrecked when they're hit from behind, so until you get really good you ought to have at least 3 wounds to compensate for how prone to going down you might be as those two squish classes.

[Phantom Limb]

More wounds mean you can go down more times before the final blow and respawn.
Sometimes an extra wound can help you survive some situations but it isn't 100% mandatory thing.

[DLCI]

you can get knocked down once per wound and be revived without dying

with multiple wounds, you can run out of health more than once or twice, get knocked down, and get back up with some of the health back

in theory, extra wounds add quite a bit of extra health to your pool, because you can lose all your hp several times and still not die

the tradeoff tends to be that if you picked something besides wounds, you probably wouldn't get knocked down as easily

the real catch is that it depends entirely on whether someone on your team revives you in time. if you get in a bad spot and nobody can get there quick enough to help you, or if your teammates are fighting and not paying attention to how long they have before you bleed out, those extra wounds do absolutely nothing

[Haggis]

Generally speaking its better to invest in toughness. If you are going for Auric Storm Survivor then you probably want to go 2x toughness and 1x wound curio, as you can get insta-killed if there is a slight build up of corruption (eg. if you get hit by 2 bursters you will often just die with the base 2 wounds with no chance at being revived, which is very annoying). There is also a Zealot build that uses wounds and gains damage and damage resistance based on how many wounds of health it is missing.

[Artan]

Also - Med stims lose their value and effectiveness when you take + wound given that they:

Restore one health segment, or 25% of max health, whichever one is larger of health and corruption damage.

[DLCI]

Originally posted by Haggis:

Generally speaking its better to invest in toughness. If you are going for Auric Storm Survivor then you probably want to go 2x toughness and 1x wound curio, as you can get insta-killed if there is a slight build up of corruption (eg. if you get hit by 2 bursters you will often just die with the base 2 wounds with no chance at being revived, which is very annoying). There is also a Zealot build that uses wounds and gains damage and damage resistance based on how many wounds of health it is missing.

because of the order it calculates damage/perma-damage, there is (still) a rare but persistent and annoying bug where you will instantly die if you take purple damage that would bring you below your last extra wound at the same time as you take normal health damage that would knock you down

i don't know the exact math that puts you at risk for triggering the bug, but there are two situations that are sort of like this

the first (and less common) situation is when you have something like 150/200 health (with 50 corruption)

then you take 50 damage and 50 more corruption -> should leave you with 50 health

but for some reason it calculates your remaining health after the corruption, then you take the damage and it counts that you have no wounds left therefore you instantly die

the other (and more frequent) situation is the same thing except you WOULD get knocked down by damage

but it counts the purple as exceeding your current health, and since you would only have 1 wound left AFTER being revived, it decides the outcome in the wrong order,

basically it counts your health as though you lost the wound from being revived immediately, before adding the corruption, so you die instantly

typically only occurs with large bursts of damage that cause corruption, like poxbursters or plague-ogryns

this sounds like that is what you are describing

[MOK]

Originally posted by Haggis:

Generally speaking its better to invest in toughness. If you are going for Auric Storm Survivor then you probably want to go 2x toughness and 1x wound curio, as you can get insta-killed if there is a slight build up of corruption (eg. if you get hit by 2 bursters you will often just die with the base 2 wounds with no chance at being revived, which is very annoying). There is also a Zealot build that uses wounds and gains damage and damage resistance based on how many wounds of health it is missing.

Comments like this are missing the point.
The OP is a newbie. A newbie wants Wounds.

[Vandal Savant]

Extra wounds are good training wheels when you're trying new difficulty levels. They'll let you go down more, but more importantly, they'll make going down less punishing and help you not snowball into further downs.

You should aspire not to have extra wounds unless you're martyr zealot, but most players learn more by actually getting to play the game instead of waiting to be rescued, so take them for the buffer until you build up more confidence in your play style.

If you can reliably go through missions without using your extra wounds? You're ready to lose the training wheels. If you can't? The extra toughness/HP wasn't going to help anyway.

[Grail]

Corruption resistance is always superior. It reduces the corruption enemies deal, but also if you are knocked down and revived, the corruption you suffer is less than a full wound, giving you a sliver of breathing space. But generally speaking, yes, wounds curios are a trap. Don't get them unless you are playing martyrdom or you hit the dirt A LOT.

[Arani]

Originally posted by MOK:

Originally posted by Haggis:

Generally speaking its better to invest in toughness. If you are going for Auric Storm Survivor then you probably want to go 2x toughness and 1x wound curio, as you can get insta-killed if there is a slight build up of corruption (eg. if you get hit by 2 bursters you will often just die with the base 2 wounds with no chance at being revived, which is very annoying). There is also a Zealot build that uses wounds and gains damage and damage resistance based on how many wounds of health it is missing.

Comments like this are missing the point.
The OP is a newbie. A newbie wants Wounds.

This 100%.

The most dangerous killer in the game isn't being worn out little by little, but those singular mistakes where you take massive dmg all at once. Be that from oneshotters, disablers, or being caught out of position and gunned & beaten down. Toughness does nothing against those oneshotters or those mistakes. Toughness in essence is really just performance resource: the faster you kill stuff / proc weakspots & crits, the faster it generates and the more frequently you can afford to tank a regular hit in melee. Its usefulness depends on your output and skill.

Newbies make more mistakes so they go down more often. They also tank more hits in melee, and have a much lower output to generate that toughness back. Wounds or even hp are much better for newbies than toughness.