Green Archon Shards: is health regen on Toxin status worthless?

[(XBOX)Varzin]

I was messing around with ideas for a Lavos build that makes use of green archon shards when I realized something unfortunate, the green archon shard perk "Recover +2 (+3) Health each time enemies are damaged by a Toxin Status Effect" is pretty much worthless compared to the blue shard perk "+5 (+7.5) Health/s Regenerated". Let's do some math.

So how do we calculate this? The perk says +2 health recovered each time an enemy is damaged by a Toxin status. I believe this means that the effect can be multiplied by having multiple enemies damaged by Toxin status at once. This sounds pretty good until you start actually doing the math. Toxin status damages the effected enemy every 6 seconds, so with a green shard you recover 2 health per afflicted enemy every 6 seconds after Toxin has been applied. Now you can also stack Toxin status, each stack having it's own timer, allowing for more frequent instances of health recovery. So let's say you use an ability that applies a toxin status and you get a good group of 10 enemies afflicted with 2 stacks of Toxin each, that's 40 health recovered every 6-ish seconds. Even under those circumstances (which seem pretty good to me) you're just barley achieving a better health regen then a blue shard with an effective +6.7 health per second. And the effect ends once the enemies die since they won't be being damaged by the effect anymore. More then likely you're not going to just stand there idly, you're probably going to be actively trying to kill those same enemies to move the mission along, so the actual duration of this effect will typically be pretty limited.

With a blue shard you don't have any condition that needs to be met to trigger it and the health regen is unlimited, you just always have it. In order to achieve a better effective health regen per second using a green shard you would need to be consistently applying lots of toxin across large groups of enemies, this feels like something only a few specific frames will be able to accomplish without dedicating a weapon to being a toxin spreader. Personally I'd rather just have the flat +5 per second. To me it seems like a lot of work to get something that simply equipping 1 blue shard will mostly equally achieve.

Am I wrong? Did I misunderstand something or just miss something?

EDIT: I misread the wiki, Toxin status deals damage every second for 6 seconds, not every 6 seconds. So that should actually be 40 health per second for a maximum of 240.

Edited March 7 by (XBOX)Varzin
Misread wiki

[drnlmza]

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)Varzin said:

So how do we calculate this? The perk says +2 health recovered each time an enemy is damaged by a Toxin status. I believe this means that the effect can be multiplied by having multiple enemies damaged by Toxin status at once. This sounds pretty good until you start actually doing the math. Toxin status damages the effected enemy every 6 seconds, so with a green shard you recover 2 health per afflicted enemy every 6 seconds after Toxin has been applied.

You've missed that toxin does damage each second, not every 6 seconds. Each proc lasts for 6 seconds (outside of status duration effects), but the damage ticks every second like other DoT effects.

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)Varzin said:

Now you can also stack Toxin status, each stack having it's own timer, allowing for more frequent instances of health recovery. So let's say you use an ability that applies atoxin status and you get a good group of 10 enemies afflicted with 2 stacks of Toxin each, that's 40 health recovered every 6-ish seconds.

At 40' health per second, this starts looking at lot better.

Is it actually good, given all the other options we have to heal with fewer conditions? That's definitely debatable, but it's better than your figures.

[(XBOX)Varzin]

4 minutes ago, drnlmza said:

You've missed that toxin does damage each second, not every 6 seconds. Each proc lasts for 6 seconds (outside of status duration effects), but the damage ticks every second like other DoT effects.

At 40' health per second, this starts looking at lot better.

Is it actually good, given all the other options we have to heal with fewer conditions? That's definitely debatable, but it's better than your figures.

Ah! You're absolutely right, I read the wiki wrong. Looking back now I see that it says "dealing a tick of damage every second for 6 seconds". That certainly changes the math, though I also agree that it's effectiveness is still debatable.

[Tiltskillet]

Explanation of the mechanics of these, expected and unexpected.  ~3:45. 

He get a single green to work with Banshee in base SP, which is something.  But I'm certain he could have done that with other sources of healing instead, considering everything else going into that build.

 

[(XBOX)Varzin]

8 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Explanation of the mechanics of these, expected and unexpected.  ~3:45. 

He get a single green to work with Banshee in base SP, which is something.  But I'm certain he could have done that with other sources of healing instead, considering everything else going into that build.

 

Oh yeah, I think I can guess where that weird quirk of the timing is coming from. I'd guess that the game's clock is registering multiple toxin status ticks occurring within the same 1 second timespan as 1 hit in that second. So even with the ability to stack Toxin procs this is pretty limited.

[Xzorn]

I put one on Saryn with Brief Respite.

With Tau Cast Speed, Tau +3 Corrosive. 200% Power, 250% Range 155% Duration if felt like an option to emulate Regenerative Molt.

I don't fully strip armor on purpose because it'll produce less damage against Ferrite thanks to armor double dips. Though this strategy worked better when standard Corrosive proc weighting for weapons was 90% + 60/60x2. Heat procs would probably start to compensate if enemies lived more than 1-2 seconds.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Health is irrelevant overall, except for Inaros, Kullervo and Nidus, who all have plenty of regen on their own.

Only Lavos can't shieldgate like other frames since he doesn't spend energy, so he's forced to use health to tank, but he's got Ophidian bite which will lifesteal any damage you deal with it, usually plenty good even on a 8s recast time.

I don't think where the green shards become applicable outside of extra corrosive stacks, all other options are kind of wack...

 

 

[Aevire]

Survivability has variable worth at different levels. At high levels everything oneshots you pretty much so DR and ways to ignore damage altogether (shield gating, playing revenant, going invisible, etc) become the only viable ways to stay alive. I would really like to see a very large scale survivability and damage rework that brings enemy damage scaling down to something more reasonable and makes survivability a more involved process. Until then toxin shard healing is pretty bad, yeah. Just use the toxin status damage instead.

[ominumi]

This is going to matter a lot by enemy density. Something like Melee Influence can spread Toxin fairly easy. There's just so many ways to regain health without much investment. Like Magus Repair.

[ChaoticOrderly]

Absolutely not since this is a shard effect and there is a number of way to offload healing that doesn't use a shard slot + a bad elemental damage-wise.