Is upgrading armor worth it?

[M.T. Fish]

I just got mangled by Legiana and barely managed to kill it. I usually did about half my health in damage so I was wondering if spending some time collecting armor spheres would be worth my time. I know it's supposed to be a harder fight at my current rank since it was the assigned quest but it still felt a little excessive and frustrating to be honest.

I've been mostly using the lance up until now so I had kind of been ignoring armor but I want to try other weapons. The only problem is that I when I eventually get hit it's for a lot of my health.

For further context I'm currently using the Hornetaur armor and messing around with a longsword (I wanted something more mobile than greatsword and lance that matched my armor). I've upgraded each piece of the armor three times.

[Bobucles]

Every 80 defense is worth a full health bar. If you can nab an easy +20 defense, do it. Resistances and the health booster are also very valuable for lance, since they have less opportunities to heal.

Default hunter health is 100. This can be boosted +50 from food/items, and +50 from health boost 3. Iceborne more or less expects you to be rolling 200HP at all times.

[Loxly]

No, you get a ton of armor spheres from bounties or simply killing monsters as you progress. Especially in low rank, i'd just craft and use anything with higher defense and keep progressing.

[M.T. Fish]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Every 80 defense is worth a full health bar. If you can nab an easy +20 defense, do it. Resistances and the health booster are also very valuable for lance, since they have less opportunities to heal.

Default hunter health is 100. This can be boosted +50 from food/items, and +50 from health boost 3. Iceborne more or less expects you to be rolling 200HP at all times.

Cool. I was worried this was a DS3 situation where armor didn't really do much. I'm glad you were able to give a pretty good frame of reference for it's effectiveness. I'm not the best at dodging but I want to mess around with a few weapons so damage reduction is pretty important for me.

I've a long ways to go before messing around with Iceborne but that sounds pretty brutal.

[M.T. Fish]

Originally posted by Loxly:

No, you get a ton of armor spheres from bounties or simply killing monsters as you progress. Especially in low rank, i'd just craft and use anything with higher defense and keep progressing.

I feel like I'm going to hit a pretty hard roadblock if I don't raise my defense somehow. Anjanath and Legiana kicked my ass pretty hard mainly because dodging isn't my forte in any game (probably why I've been maining lance).

I was also worried that this was like DS3 or Bloodborne where armor doesn't actually do much asides from status resistance.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Every 80 defense is worth a full health bar. If you can nab an easy +20 defense, do it. Resistances and the health booster are also very valuable for lance, since they have less opportunities to heal.

Default hunter health is 100. This can be boosted +50 from food/items, and +50 from health boost 3. Iceborne more or less expects you to be rolling 200HP at all times.

Health Boost 3 on lance is a ridiculous waste of resources, especially in Iceborne. You are always better off with something like quicksheath instead. ALWAYS.

[Bobucles]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Health Boost 3 on lance is a ridiculous waste of resources, especially in Iceborne. You are always better off with something like quicksheath instead. ALWAYS.

Sheathing, as lance? Do you... have you ever played lance? Every sheathe is a life or death scenario. Don't get into those situations.

Health recovery things like the health booster, natural recovery 3, and vaal hazak's super recovery go a LONG way on lance. On a good run, the lance can basically absorb all the chip damage from blocking without needing to fall back and heal. Immunizer/jerky will double natural recovery, so it's possible to stay down and recover most of the damage from a hit before standing back into a block.

One of the most important lance skills is galloping. Do a shield hop (R2, hold a direction, Y) to hop, and follow up with a lance hop (B) or a panic escape (hold back, A). It covers good distance and the shield hop gives full block so it's very safe.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Health Boost 3 on lance is a ridiculous waste of resources, especially in Iceborne. You are always better off with something like quicksheath instead. ALWAYS.

Sheathing, as lance? Do you... have you ever played lance?

Yes, I do have ever played lance.

https://youtu.be/tw6qn_UMO9w?si=-20Koq9LnWhO6ynp

[Zelph]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Sheathing, as lance? Do you... have you ever played lance?

Yes, I do have ever played lance.

https://youtu.be/tw6qn_UMO9w?si=-20Koq9LnWhO6ynp

Watched a couple minutes, and you never sheathed. Not sure why you would suggest quick sheath when you almost never sheath.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Zelph:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Yes, I do have ever played lance.

https://youtu.be/tw6qn_UMO9w?si=-20Koq9LnWhO6ynp

Watched a couple minutes, and you never sheathed. Not sure why you would suggest quick sheath when you almost never sheath.

Liar.

There is literally a sheath 42 seconds into the video, and a second one at 1:21.

[eclipse]

There is a Lance build i use now Finally that never has to heal and its not complete yet so i dont even have health 3, i dont think it even has health 1 atm. Still i have not died yet with it and i never really have to heal. Though the one i use atm requires most end game gear there was a one build i used starting into MR that also didnt worry much about health but was more in danger to elements.

Mostly focused around max health regen, immunizer potion, health augment, max defense boost. Also has partbreak and the weakness skill among few other things.

[Necroth]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Every 80 defense is worth a full health bar. If you can nab an easy +20 defense, do it. Resistances and the health booster are also very valuable for lance, since they have less opportunities to heal.

Default hunter health is 100. This can be boosted +50 from food/items, and +50 from health boost 3. Iceborne more or less expects you to be rolling 200HP at all times.

Health Boost 3 on lance is a ridiculous waste of resources, especially in Iceborne. You are always better off with something like quicksheath instead. ALWAYS.

just use the fatalis set, have it both ways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[kingjames488]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Every 80 defense is worth a full health bar. If you can nab an easy +20 defense, do it. Resistances and the health booster are also very valuable for lance, since they have less opportunities to heal.

don't think that's how it works?

assuming the formula I found for defence is accurate it reduces incoming damage by a multiplier determined by the formula 80/(80+def)

so 1000 damage with 1000 defence would be
1000x(80/(80+1000)) or 74.074 damage

and 1000 damage with 1080 defence would be
1000x(80/(80+1080)) or 68.965 damage

adding 80 defence didn't reduce the damage by anywhere near a full health bar... which I assume you're figuring is 200hp.

at some point someone made the assumption that a damage reduction multiplier is the same as an hp increase multiplier; but that only works if ratio of the values is consistent.

so what does this actually mean for defence? that after 800 defence you only take 10% of the damage you otherwise would have, and from 800 to infinity defence is the rest of that 10%.

1000 defence gets you to about 7.5% of damage taken
1200 would get you to 6.2%, 1400 to 5.4%, 2000 to 3.8%... and so on.

the elemental resistances are probably more important at a point really.

[FAT WANZER]

upgrading is worth it,now i don't get 1 shotted by velkhana tail stab

[Bobucles]

Originally posted by kingjames488:

a lot of numbers

Yes, that is a very difficult way of expressing a very simple topic. Games have been using the

Defense
number + def

formula for a LONG time now. You can essay for decades on all the finer decimal points, but the concept is very simple. 80 Defense = a brand new health bar. It's a very simple, very linear increase in the total damage a hunter can survive.
Now does a hunter need to worry about 1020 defense versus 1000 defense? Probably not. But going from 600 to 700 is a big payout and can easily be the difference between 1-shot and surviving.

[kingjames488]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Originally posted by kingjames488:

a lot of numbers

Yes, that is a very difficult way of expressing a very simple topic. Games have been using the

Defense
number + def

formula for a LONG time now. You can essay for decades on all the finer decimal points, but the concept is very simple. 80 Defense = a brand new health bar. It's a very simple, very linear increase in the total damage a hunter can survive.
Now does a hunter need to worry about 1020 defense versus 1000 defense? Probably not. But going from 600 to 700 is a big payout and can easily be the difference between 1-shot and surviving.

well if you're just going to ignore the math and carry on then you do you I guess.

but it clearly explains why going from 600 to 700 is a big difference compared to 1000 v.s. 1100 even; because it's less than the crossover point which is determined by the modifier... in this case 80 (or 800 def).