ClosedPoly said:

@Dearing.....Sorry to be slow.  The champion is Susan Militant. 

Susan is a 'sister' I suppose. Funny. She is a Common and has a great basic A1 but her base stats mean she will remain squishy even when scales by equipment. Are you a new player? If you really want to keep and use her then level her up and go for equipment that gives you a solid flat bonus such as HP 20 or DEF 20 rather than percentage as the percentage is scaling off a low base stat. 

Hello OP

when it comes to survivability a strategy is to built a team around the weaker characters, supports that have share damage, defence buff, or the next step to even mitigate the damage by using crowd control or block damage or unkillable

now in this case we want to look at individual champion tankiness.

generally you want a champion to have  anice mix of both hp and defensive stats. 

the main factor related to pumping these stats up is the base stats, this is where ranking up a champion and also their final base stats become very crutial. 

when it comes to HP 20 k to 40 k  is a safe place to be at. 

when it comes to defence it is the same principle, 2 k to 4 k is somewhere you want to be at

now this changes drastically by the location and the type of champion.

the key info you need to keep in mind is that:

defence is purely ''% mitigation of incoming damage''

HP is purely ''the damage needed to kill said champion''

therefore stacking defence without hp is like plating a sheet of paper with aluminium, rather than adding massive stacks of paper and making it a thicker pile. 

all the best

ClosedPoly said:

@Dearing.....Sorry to be slow.  The champion is Susan Militant. 

Susan is a 'sister' I suppose. Funny. She is a Common and has a great basic A1 but her base stats mean she will remain squishy even when scales by equipment. Are you a new player? If you really want to keep and use her then level her up and go for equipment that gives you a solid flat bonus such as HP 20 or DEF 20 rather than percentage as the percentage is scaling off a low base stat. 

Have you played much? 

ClosedPoly said:

I have been playing for 2 weeks.  I want to try her for a special project I have in mind that takes advantage of her A1.  I read that she can decimate small spiders if I can keep her alive.  Thanks for the suggestion about flat vs %.  Is there an advantage of going for more HP or more DEF?  Which one?

Man, i really hope that this special project of yours isn't about building her to 6/60 and using her as weak affinity tank in Spider. That will be... how to put that gently... plain stupid?

That summarize the problem i have with all those sites when they offer help and suggestion to fresh new players.

Seriously, what do you plan to do with her?

ClosedPoly said:

Its OK.  Its a strategy game and I am thinking outside the box while I have very little to work with.  Kael was 6-1 and WarPriest was 5-1.  I had to grind them both to get to 60 and 50.  While I did that I drug 2 chickens along.  If she can help me get a few levels deeper into spiders that is better than I am now.  Her A1 at the beginning of each round is devastating followed by Kael.  I might put her on my arena defense.  I have not won an arena defense yet.  Maybe she surprises somebody. 

Try to get as many points in the currently ongoing Champion Training event, because one of the rewards is the Soulbond Bowyer rare champion. I found her awesome against the spider, and also in the Arena. I still need to work on her Accuracy, but her turn meter rest skill is fantastic. Her A1 is an AOE, which means she can easily replace your Sister Militant.

While doing campaign you may focus on farming Warmaiden (if you don't have her already). She is solid rare and can greatly help your early/mid game. Definitely worth having her, even invest in her to 6/60. 60% [Decrease DEF] debuff for 2 turns as AoE is serious advantage and something, that is no near common for rare champion. And given the fact that we already have "only rare" requirement in some tournaments this may actually be way more profitable idea of just having her help early/mid game.

About HP vs Def. There can't be strait answer which one is better without taking the right content and other variables in mind. Def is considered better choice overall, but you better follow this as general rule and not as something, set in stone. On CB Def is considered by most players as better choice over HP if we take this "in vacuum" and in straight comparison, but you still want to keep other important things in mind.

On more practical aproach - the good starting point about balancing HP and Def on most champions is to try to keep them in something like 1:10 ratio. If your champion has around 20k HP, the Def sweet spot seems to be something like 2k Def. At least this is something that is recommended by one of the better players out there (and content creator also) who has proven himself as a player, who has a good understanding of the game .

And again, this is just general rule, based on his tests and something that i follow to some extend. Obviously, if your champion greatly benefit from Def or HP (damage wise or utility wise like HP based Shield or Heal) this can't be the case. Or if you plan to build one-hit-min-maxed glass cannon. :) You you will want to take full advantage of his abilities or the role he is supposed to take.

Another practical knowledge about how to distribute your HP and Def is how enemy act, based on your team specifics. If you take most of the dungeons for example, it seems like enemy follow some rule most of the time, at least to my knowledge and observations. Most of the time they tend to focus their single target skills on that guy on your team, which has lower current HP, especially if they can kill him with that skill. Then they seems to prioritize those that are weak affinity according to them. And then they seems to go after those, that has lower overall HP. This is not something that i can vote with my life as true :)), but seems to me that more or less this is how they act if there wasn't other complications and variables.

So, that may help you if you face situations when the enemy tend to focus on specific champion and prefer him as primary target. You may arrange your defense strategy, or you may push his HP to some degree, or you can just calm down and accept the fact that things won't be the same when you finally beat that stage and get to the next affinity 

WatchdogCZ said:

ClosedPoly said:

Its OK.  Its a strategy game and I am thinking outside the box while I have very little to work with.  Kael was 6-1 and WarPriest was 5-1.  I had to grind them both to get to 60 and 50.  While I did that I drug 2 chickens along.  If she can help me get a few levels deeper into spiders that is better than I am now.  Her A1 at the beginning of each round is devastating followed by Kael.  I might put her on my arena defense.  I have not won an arena defense yet.  Maybe she surprises somebody. 

Try to get as many points in the currently ongoing Champion Training event, because one of the rewards is the Soulbond Bowyer rare champion. I found her awesome against the spider, and also in the Arena. I still need to work on her Accuracy, but her turn meter rest skill is fantastic. Her A1 is an AOE, which means she can easily replace your Sister Militant.

One thing to keep in mind about Sister Militant - she is a common champion, meaning you cannot ascend her. She will never be able to use an amulet, even if at *5. The Soulbond Bowyer is in my opinion definitely worth getting to *6 and fully booking, with full Masteries.

I won Soulbound Bowyer yesterday.  Thanks for your recommendations.  Do you see Southbound as a specialty player for spiders and arena or as a long term team player in general?

ClosedPoly said:

I won Soulbound Bowyer yesterday.  Thanks for your recommendations.  Do you see Southbound as a specialty player for spiders and arena or as a long term team player in general?

I got totally absolutely extremely lucky and pulled Siphi the Lost Bride during the current Void Shard portal boost, which basically solved a lot of problems for me as far as team compositiuon is concerned, however my current mid-Silver tier Arena team is as follows in the order of activation:

1) High Khatun (*5/50, unbooked, unascended due to lack of potions, full Masteries) - Team Leader, simply to give me extra speed with her Aura and her team-wide speed buff, hopefully allowing my team to go first, and to act as a bait to maybe soak up some nasty single target attack that would one-shot one of the other champions

2) Siphi the Lost Bride (*6/60, 7/10 books used, ascended at *5 only due to lack of potions, full Masteries) - buffing up the whole team to survive the first retaliation strike, passively healing everyone upon their activation, putting targets to sleep/healing all team members some more, resurrecting the fallen (except High Khatun, she is not worth it)

3) Soulbond Bowyer (*6/60, fully booked, fully ascended, full Masteries) - switching off a ready-to-activate heavy hitter with the turn meter reseting attack, or at least damaging them enough for Athel to finish up the job, one shotting someone after the AoE from Athel with the Defense ignoring shot, or act as a bait much like High Khatun, except I would resurrect her, unless Athel is down too

4) Athel (*6/60, fully booked, fully ascended, full Masteries) - main hitter, trick is not to use the buff immediately, as it would remove the two-turn buffs from Siphi and open her to retaliation strike

Soulbond Bowyer and Athel use the Lifesteal and Accuracy sets. This is especially important for me, since they hit hard, or hit everyone with AoE, healing themselves a lot. If lucky, they also counterattack, healing themselves, namely Athel with her three very hard hits on her A1.

For now, High Khatun uses 2x Speed and 1x Critical Rate sets (I only had Boots with Speed as main stat in this set at the time I equipped her).

Siphi has Lifesteal and Speed sets, but I am going to give her something else than Lifesteal soon, as she mostly does not do any damage worth mentioning.

Soulbond Bowyer is very good at Spider, but I am not too far there, only stage 10 for reliable farming, and it is not too fast. I am slowly training Bellower, Psylar and Infernal Baroness to replace her. I really like her, but she mostly shines in the Arena for me. Her abilities work best on manual, not on Auto. I find her kit pretty awesome. I do use her in some Dungeons too, though, mostly the potion ones.