Stamina based Mechanics

The Stamina Bar

Guarding and any other related form of Block mechanism is based on Stamina. The blue bar next to the encounter bar shows your stamina meter. 100 stamina fills the guard bar (typically). Its value is given with up to two decimal places. It gets consumed when one blocks a hit or uses it to fill Vengeance (dps path). It refills by dropping the shield or by using certain powers. Up to now this is probably nothing new and this part is not here to explain the basics, so let’s focus on more details here! The following mechanics and powers are linked to stamina:

  • The Block mechanic for blocking up to 40% of maximum Hit Points. Stamina does not regenerate while blocking.

  • The Vanguard path mechanic ‘Dig In’ to get a stronger block mechanic (60% of maximum Hit Points) than the normal Block mechanic on cost of being rooted in place. One plus, Stamina does regenerate at a diminished rate.

  • The Dreadnought mechanic “Seethe” to consume Stamina to increase “Vengeance” (increases damage).

  • The Class Feature “Heated Vengeance” increases the rate at which Stamina is converted.

  • The Stat “Stamina Regeneration”, that accelerates the stamina refill.

  • The At-Will Power Brazen Slash replenishing stamina.

  • The Class Feature “Shield Talent” increases Stamina Regeneration by merely 2%.

  • The Class Feature “Steel Recovery” gives 5 Stamina on encounter and daily use.

  • The Encounter Power Knight’s Challenge replenishing 50% stamina.

  • Other powers (Greater Endurance, Critical Deflection, Shake It Off, Gladiator’s Guile, etc) that base their effects on the amount of stamina available. However these are not covered.

The game explains very little about how fast Stamina is regained or consumed and the Combat Log does not contain any information about Stamina either, thus let’s go through each of those in detail! This section includes additionally the testing methodology to protocol its unique way to uncover information, which was one of the main reasons to write it!

Dig In

Let’s start with “Dig In”, because it depends on none other variables!

  • Dig In replenishes 0.2 Stamina every 0.1 seconds, thus it would require 50s to refill 100 Stamina!

  • The rate is not increased by the Stat “Stamina Regeneration”!

One may ask, how does one get those values without having Combat Logs or tooltips? Let’s shred some light in here. If one takes a hit, activates Dig In and opens any window (Inventory, Character sheet, etc.) one can hover over the Stamina Gauge and see its exact values updated. Now that is going too fast for a normal human eye. By making a video and extracting the regeneration rates and the timings over a longer period of time, - e.g. 10s - (to avoid including errors by lag or client processing delays) in a dedicated video editing tool it is possible to get those values! By largely modifying the Stamina Regeneration stat and redoing the test one can examine that the stat does not have any effect on Dig In.

Standard Stamina Regeneration (lowered Shield)

The Stamina regenerates when the Shield is lowered. Its base regeneration rate is something around 0.5 Stamina every 0.1 seconds. Thus one would need 20 seconds to regenerate 100 Stamina. It gets increased by the Stat “Stamina Regeneration“. The stat is estimated to be a coefficient to the Stamina Regeneration rate, however due to unexpected numerical values, I can not fully confirm that. Let’s go again into testing: Unfortunately we are unable to drop the Stamina Regeneration coefficient to zero due to having at least 10 WIS as an ability score. Due to a lack of many decimal places, it’s best bet is to raise it to a multiple of 20% because then one expects to increase the rate from 0.5 to 0.6 (0.5*1.2=0.6). Thus the best way to test is, to drop Stamina with Seethe (more to it later) and then analyze again a video in a similar manner as with analyzing Dig In. At 20% the Stamina Bar will increase by ~0.6 Stamina every 0.1s. However one can see that it is not fully 0.6: The value series may for example jump from 0.6 > 1.2 > 1.81 > 2.41 > 3.01 > 3.61 > 4.21 > 4.81 > 5.42 > … indicating an increase greater than 0.6 Stamina. Due to having no better way to analyze the Stamina Regeneration formula, the minimal numerical error is ignored here and is modeled to work as a coefficient. By dividing the 20% Stamina Regeneration stat from rate extracted from the captured value series, one then deduces a basic Stamina Regeneration rate of 0.5 Stamina every 0.1 seconds.

Seethe (Dreadnought mechanic)

Dreadnought update

In mod 27 the Dreadnought got an update and I have not updated this part anymore. So take it with a grain of salt.

Old Seethe

Seethe converts Stamina into Vengeance. Stamina is not regenerated while Seethe is active. Without the Class Feature “Heated Vengeance”, Seethe consumes 5 Stamina every 0.25 seconds and increases Vengeance by 4 (5→4). Thus 80 Vengeance is gained after ~5 seconds if one starts Seethe at 100 Stamina. Be aware that Vengeance drops 1 every 1 second! Thus one would see 75 Vengeance after finishing Seethe. Sounds easy in theory but way harder to test than one expects! The test is similar to the other tests: One activates Seethe and opens a window, hovering over the Stamina Gauge while recording a video. Then a second video is done with hovering over the Vengeance Gauge. Two value series are extracted that show clearly the conversion rate:

  • Stamina example: 100 > 95.4 > 90.4 > 85.4 > 80.4 > … (The error of ~0.4 to 0.7 seems to be a server side error, where Stamina Regeneration is not stopped in a timely manner …)

  • Vengeance example: 4 > 8 > 11 > 15 > 19 > 23 > 26 > 30 > … (The jumps on 3 happen at the same time as the permanent reduction of 1 Vengeance / s.)

With a video tool that is able to analyze the milliseconds, one can now examine the reoccurring timing of the conversation rate. 3 problems occur:

  1. After activating Seethe, one has to open a window fast and hover over the Gauges in time. Because Seethe lasts only 5 seconds, the captured value series are very short.

  2. Seethe isn’t triggered as regularly as one expects. It seems server side driven and thus prone to lag and delays. It is not unusual that one sees updates after 0.15 seconds or after 0.35+ seconds.

  3. Because of the short series of values and a high jitter on the conversion times, it is not 100% reliable to take the beginning stamp and ending stamp and then calculate the average of the values. A rerun has to be made.

However, this is only what we can do, thus even with not 100% safety, one can extract the average conversation period of 0.25s.

Small Note: Seethe has two decimal places too, but these are not appearing in these tests.

Seethe with the Class Feature “Heated Vengeance” (Dreadnought mechanic)

Dreadnought update

In mod 27 the Dreadnought got an update and I have not updated this part anymore. So take it with a grain of salt.

Old Seethe with "Heated Vengeance"

Seethe still converts Stamina into Vengeance and Stamina is still not regenerated while Seethe is active. With the Class Feature “Heated Vengeance” however, the rate changes: Seethe now consumes 6 Stamina every 0.25 seconds and increases Vengeance by 6 (6→6 up from 5→4). Thus 96 (not 100 because it does not have enough resources at 4!) Vengeance is gained after ~4 seconds if one starts Seethe at 100 Stamina. Be aware that Vengeance still drops 1 every 1 second! Thus one would see 92 Vengeance after finishing Seethe. The testing method is similar to Seethe without the Feat, thus I'll refrain from rewriting the testing details.

Brazen Slash

Brazen Slash is an At-Will power that states in its tooltip that it restores Stamina. This is true, however it does not state how much. After tests it appears that the restored Stamina is 3 Stamina/cast time, thus Brazen Slash restores 1.5 Stamina on the first and third hit (0.5 s cast time) and ~2 Stamina on the second hit (0.65 cast time). It is not increased by the Stat Stamina Regeneration. The testing is once again not as simple as one thinks. First off, one has to drain Stamina by using Seethe and then open a window after activating Brazen Slash (Do not stop pressing your mouse as it would stop casting Brazen Slash too!). Then again hover over the Stamina Gauge and analyze the recorded video afterwards. The video analysis is once again needed, because the Standard Stamina Regeneration can not be turned off! Of course a multiple of +20% Stamina Regeneration as a stat is recommended, to avoid extracting wrong numbers. A value series may then look like the following:

0.6 > 1.2 > 1.81 > 2.41 > 3.01 > 5.21 (first hit) > 5.81 > 6.41 > 7.02 > 7.62 > 8.23 > 8.83 > 11.43 (2nd hit) > 12.04 > 12.64 > 13.24. > 13.84 > 15.95 (third hit) > …

As we can see, the Stamina replenished from Brazen Slash overlaps with the Standard Stamina Regeneration. Subtract the Standard Stamina Regeneration from the series and one extracts the Stamina replenished from Brazen Slash. Redo the test with a different amount of the Stamina Regeneration stat to deduce the independence of the replenished Stamina to the stat.

Class Feature “Shield Talent”

The Class Feature “Shield Talent” increases the Stamina Regeneration stat by merely 2%. This value can be deduced from the change in the character sheet. Since I have not seen any bugs related to the shown stats in the character sheet, it is safe to assume that it works as expected. A difference of 2% Stamina Regeneration can not be tested anyway, so no further tests are done.

Class Feature Steel Recovery

The Class Feature “Steel Recovery” provides 5 Stamina when an encounter or daily power gets activated. Steel Recovery is not increased by the Stat Stamina Regeneration. The testing is easy with a few tricks: 1) Drain all Stamina with Seethe, then 2) switch to Vanguard (which had pre selected Steel Recovery and Knight’s Valor), 3) activate KV, 4) open any window and hover over the Stamina Gauge while making a video. Since Knight’s Valor activates each second it triggers Steel Recovery each second. One can find a value stream containing for example … > 48.7 > 49.3 > 54.9 > 55.5 > …

The value 54.9 contains the +5 (+0.6) Stamina from Steel Recovery.

Knight’s Challenge

The Vanguards Encounter Power Knight’s Challenge regenerates 50% and is unaffected by the Stamina Regeneration stat. This power can be tested only by the most inaccurate way of all other tests: By watching the Gauge before the cast of Knight’s Challenge and afterwards! Since Seethe is unavailable on the Vanguard path, one has to start real combat and drain its Stamina that way by way over 50%. Hovering is not possible too, because the value before its cast is needed. Hovering once before the activation and afterwards would create a large error, due to Stamina replenished from the Standard Stamina Regeneration in the time needed to open and close the window and perform the hovering actions. Thus the most accurate way is to take a close eye on the Stamina Gauge before and afterwards.

One can deduce that indeed 50% Stamina are replenished, however the bar is not full enough to indicate any increase by the Stamina Regeneration stat.

Final remarks

There are many more powers (Greater Endurance, Critical Deflection, Shake It Off, Gladiator’s Guile, etc) that base their effects on the amount of stamina available. However these are not further analyzed, because they are either too complex (Critical Deflection, Shake it Off), add a fixed amount on the Stamina Regeneration stat (Greater Endurance, Gladiator’s Guile) or only affect other stats by simple fixed amounts (Hel Bonuses, etc.). Worth noting is however, that the Stamina Regeneration stat is only used for increasing the Standard Stamina Regeneration rate. Thus the stat is less convincing than one may expect!

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