Post-Battle Stat suggestion: Damage Taken (in General)

Right now, one can learn a great deal about a strat by looking at the Post-Battle Stats block. One thing that you cannot learn, though, is how much damage any given minion took before dying.

This can be approximated by looking at the minion's original HP, adding in the effect of AS, and comparing to the final post-battle HP. This is not sufficient, however, if VA or VA-simulating weapons are used.

A true Damage Taken (DT) column in the post-battle stats block would make it instantly clear how much "shielding" benefit is coming from each minion. It also seems like it would be easy to accumulate and display.

The next step beyond this, which I don't think will appeal to Jon, is the idea of "Damage Prevented", which would show the combined effectiveness of armor, Protection, and ST (if ST is still in the damage calculation). I suspect Jon won't do this on the grounds that it would give up too much information about how damage is calculated, but I could be wrong. It also seems to need a little bit more programming effort than DT would.

DT - Don't like it, that's only 1 spell that it's really needed for. A bit of a waste of space, at least in my opinion.

DP - I like :) Don't like the chances of Jon using it but it's still a pretty cool idea :)

I don't know... One can calculate DT by reading the blow-by-blow, using a little logic, and doing a little math. DP, in my opinion, would be giving too much information away for free. Just like DT, it is possible to work out DP with the blow-by-blow, although it would take a lot more time and effort. Still, for those who want to craft advanced strategies, it represents additional depths to plumb out and set those heavy thinkers apart from the pack.

To provide either of those values in the post battle stats really removes some of the depth to battle, and provides fewer areas to explore and experiment with. With such a loss, battles would come closer to just stat comparisons, instead of strategic arrangements.

Bubo, with the random nature of damage for every attack apart from Decay, how could you work out 'Damage Prevented' from reading the play by play?

Essentially one would have to track the range of damage dealt to the minion(s) being observed, and compare it to other tracked minion(s). It would take quite a bit of work, I'm willing to admit, but it is possible to chart the differences in ranges. Facing opponents with Cone of Cold and Fireball would make things a bit easier. From what I've observed, while round to round the damage varies, within the round damage taken by minions is within a narrow range.

Would this give the exact amount of damage prevented during a specified battle? No, but I don't agree that it should in the first place. While the method I described would not pinpoint the exact amount of damage prevented, proper tracking would give a good idea of the amount within a small range. This range should be enough to assist in creating advanced strategies.

Bubo, it's not worth doing that amount of work to get the DP.
For "advanced strategies" it's mostly just common sense and a little bit of looking at the spell descriptions page for 10 minutes, that's about all you need. That and a bit of experiance in playing the game.
DP however would help the greater part of the community if we could see it and just how much "extra HP" we're getting from our armor, ST and AMF. It's not like you aren't always capable of looking for new changes to your strat without knowing the DP, it'd just add a little to general gameplay.