What do you think is better, if you’ll have to decide between those?
Health can’t be weakened by ailments, but def is stronger?
Just about having this decision and wanted to hear your opinion. I’m still undecided.
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I think I’ve heard Defense to health is a 1:2 ratio
100 defense is equivalent to 200 health.
Similarly while health can’t be weakened, it can’t be strengthened either like defense can.
All that to say I lean defense.
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Yes, but you’ll always gain half as much def as health for the same node.
Minions can increase health and buffs can increase def.
Hmm, still thinking.
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Depends on the heroes stats, my preference is to have around 750 defense and 1400ish health, if possible. At that point I feel heroes do well enough with survival, too much lower on either and they tend to feel a bit squishy to me vs these heavy hitting defenses … also, as I don’t have high level crit troops (but do have nice mana ones), I’m generally finding that defense and health have been a bit more noticeable for me then the added attack.
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Isn’t DoT a health weakening? 
Yes, as damage is. 
@amessofamind
If there’s def or health + att and def + health, I usually go the sturdy route, but there are also this paths:
Imo not much of a difference, but why not talk about it? 
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I mean with Shrubbear’s special skills that increase defense, I think I continue to lean defense.
I gotcha. In those cases I pick based on current and foreseeable stats… so, if I know I’ll get a nice health boost later, maybe I go defense there, but just depends… I know the original idea from a lot of folks was, make heroes excel in one area (the one they already excel in) but I’ve been finding I prefer more well rounded heroes… take tarlak for instance… he’s so squishy that I don’t often use him, if I could get his defense and health to the standard I see as usable in raids… I’d much rather do that personally then add even more tile damage, but I understand each player has their own way.
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I like going Health and Defense. I don’t stick to one path on my heroes. I wasn’t as well versed in the game when emblems became a thing, so I went with my gut on a lot of the embleming… and I still do. I try to make them slightly more sturdier than those unemblemed.
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This is quite a good question, actually. In my opinion the answer isn’t the same for every hero, or in some cases could even differ for the same hero used in different ways.
My personal approach is to model what the end result looks like of different emblem paths for a given hero, which I do using Kamikaze Assassin’s “E&P Heroes” spreadsheet. It has an “Upgrade Tool” tab, which allows you to select a hero, and then select nodes in their talent tree and see what the stat boosts and end result looks like. It’s best to make a private copy of the spreadsheet in your own account to prevent possible confusion from multiple people trying to use it at the same time, like it says in his notes.
So for me which path to take is a decision I take individually for each specific hero, also considering how I use them which may not make a difference in every case but sometimes it does, for example if you use a hero specifically for tank duty. Sometimes I think it makes sense to boost a hero’s strong point, but a lot of the time I actually like taking a hero with a weak point, and eliminating that as much as possible with the emblems.
For example, Little John has a fantastic special with no exact equivalent among 5*, but he is very squishy so for him I focused completely on boosting defense, which makes him decently usable when facing 5*. He could’ve had an absolutely amazing attack stat by going the other way, but what good is that if he’s killed before being able to fire his special most of the time, having low defense and slow speed?
Another example is Elena, whose biggest weakness is also low defense. But… for her Perfect Riposte special, higher defense causes less damage to be reflected back, so in her case I still want to make her more survivable, but I’m choosing health over defense wherever possible. She can get close to 1500 HP (1492 if my notes are correct) at +20. As a side note, with other good candidates for the fighter emblems, I’m actually not so sure I’ll take her that far, but that’s a different subject.
Also worth considering sometimes, there are talent tree nodes that give a percentage boost to either health or defense (or attack), and it could make sense to maximize that boost by focusing on the same thing up to that node in the tree - meaning, boost defense as much as possible, so that a defense percentage boost later in the tree gives the biggest possible absolute increase (or health, whatever is applicable). But that may not necessarily be a big enough factor to sway the decision, this is why the spreadsheet is so great to model this and see which looks best in the end.
Finally, costumes add another layer of complexity, as the costumed talent tree will follow the path of the non-costumed talent tree, but the costumed hero is of course a different class. Which path would be best is now going to depend on whether you intend to use the hero with or without costume, or possibly both in different situations. I haven’t had specific cases in my roster yet where I’ve had to think about this, but it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
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Excellent answer, thank you very much. 
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If I had to lean towards one or the other, then health imo because the more health you have the more riposte damage you can dish out should your hero be within radius of Cyp, Boril, or Elena.
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I think go for the best option for the hero, say jackal goo full attack as I got healers that can keep him alive had a lot of people say defence for him.
Using your rosta to the max putting them in the right situation. If I use areil and heals mana boost jackal back n ready to fire in 5 tiles!
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Yeah the health is the important thang on riposte! Got Elena first 5* red liking her! Big fan of riposte
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This question has kept me thinking about health vs defense specifically. I can see these 2 specific scenarios where health has the bigger benefit:
- Riposte - more damage can be reflected back.
- Any DoT (Damage over Time), as this is an absolute number which is not influenced by defense stats.
So what is the specific case for defense over health? Maybe we need someone with impressive math skills here, my gut says you need a minimum threshold of defense, else your high HP gets eaten up very quickly by damage from offensive specials. I think the imaginary case of a hero with 2000 HP and 0 defense would get one-shotted by a Marjana for example, if my thought experiment is correct.
So along that line of thinking, the lower the defense stat, the higher the benefit of a defense boost, with diminishing returns the higher you get, while I think HP increases would give a linear benefit (not diminishing the higher you get). And if this is correct in principle, is it possible to calculate the exact point where a health point is worth exactly twice 1 defense point? I know there is a damage formula floating around the forum, but I’m not sure if anyone has attempted this kind of calculation. Maybe I should dig up that formula and see if that is making sense, but I know there’s people with much bigger math skills than mine, would love one such person who knows about the damage calculations to weigh in, if I’m making sense or if I’m crazy (and maybe those 2 aren’t mutually exclusive 
).
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In my blue mono titan team on my main, Grimm is always next to Boril or Cyp depending on the titan.
Got maxed crypian! Love that dude! Boril is 1/1 but so is Sonya captain of diamonds Isrena Athena! Sadly his last on the list! But still need a cleric! Gonna do Sonya as lack dispel then Athena as well it’s Athena! Also pulling mad at guardians if vela comes into my rosta just be a total head Phuk 
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Here is another tool for modeling talent tree choices, has existed for a little while but I only just came across it… haven’t used it (yet), but it looks good. It includes costumes which is great. @Razor made that one, so thanks for that, kind sir… I think I need to go test it out. 
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I’ve seen this same ratio repeated in multiple places, but don’t think it’s accurate. I think A:D:H actually averages out closer to 1:1:1.75, so 100 Defense is roughly equivalent to 175 Health.
That’s interesting.
How do you calc it?