To Oak or not to Oak?

On normal difficulty helping Oak gives u 40 life.

OR you can kill all 3 and take 1 extra passive.

This got me thinking assuming that u can spend that passive on a 5% life node which is better?

I assume the 5% life node would be better since at high lvl our base health+life from gear is so high that 5% would be better.

Has anyone else though about this or done math on the subject?

The 5% node might offer more life in the short term, but in later levels, with appropriate modifiers, the 40 life will be better.


An example:

A Life-based build with 180% multiplier (a very reasonable estimate) needs about 1786 base Life to reach its goal of 5000.

The same build with 1826 base Life (1786 + 40 from Oak Reward) and a 175% multiplier (180% - 5% from Eramir Reward) reaches 5022 Life.

The way I think it works out is that you take the life node anyway. You dont sit there with 5% life thats a 1 point spend and not take it at high level because you took oak, well, I certainly wouldnt. The end result is you take every life node you can or you take every life node you can AND have the oak 40 life.

Maths wise, just for theory, I feel like its going to be pretty similar, but will depend on your gear and build. 40 flat life, with a 200% life tree is going to give you 120 life, and thats sort of what you get from a regular life node but will depend on how much strength and flat life you are getting from gear/tree/levels. I dont think theres a 1 size fits all answer sadly.

40 life is better. To get pure life is harder than %life.

Pure life is multiplicative to all %increased life.
%increased life is additive and applied to the base life only.

What Snorkle wrote.

They are equal in theory for most builds, but it's useless to compare when you can just have both.

Unless you have some 123 point tree that desperatly needs every single stat point to get all his Notables. But being level 100, it should be no problem to get the 20 orbs of regret then.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

The way I think it works out is that you take the life node anyway. You dont sit there with 5% life thats a 1 point spend and not take it at high level because you took oak, well, I certainly wouldnt. The end result is you take every life node you can or you take every life node you can AND have the oak 40 life.

Maths wise, just for theory, I feel like its going to be pretty similar, but will depend on your gear and build. 40 flat life, with a 200% life tree is going to give you 120 life, and thats sort of what you get from a regular life node but will depend on how much strength and flat life you are getting from gear/tree/levels. I dont think theres a 1 size fits all answer sadly.

I think the point of the OP is coming from a different point of view.

To make a comparison, you have to assume a character level of 100, with the option of additional 5% life hitting the theoretical level of 101.
If your char is below 100, ofc you would choose the 40 life from oak, because you still have the option to get the +5% life.

But at level 100 and as long as you still have access to another +5% life node, you might do the maths again.

Most of us never level up to 100, so I guess Oak will be the better choice. Plus, even at 100, saladful's example shows the difference.

Cheers

Thank u all for the replies.

Idd it seems like if u need to make a choise then Oak is better.

Here is some math I did to back that up:

At lvl 100 all chars have 1238 base life acording to wiki.

Lets assume we have +150% to max life from tree(this is in favor of the 5% node choise since the more % u have the better Oaks choice is) and about 300 strength (150 extra life)

Oak would give us 100 extra life ib this case (40*(100+150)%=100)

In order for 5% to beat that we would need:

x*0.05=100 => x=2000 base life

Which means we need 2000-1238(assuming lvl 100) -150(from 300 str) = 612 from gear and passives

Most ppl will never reach lvl 100 so this number will actually be higher.

Also many build will have more the +150%life from tree.

SO it seems unless u are packing a rediculus amount of strength Oak is better.

"

Which means we need 2000-1238(assuming lvl 100) -150(from 300 str) = 612 from gear and passives

All those example calculations are flawed.

It heavily depends on class, gear, tree, build.

Getting way more than 300 str and 600 flat life from gear is not too hard for some builds.
(If I could, I'd stack >1000 total str and >1000 flat life on gear on my current build, I just cannot pay the price for such items... And all of a sudden, 5% life is more potent than 40 flat).

If playing Softcore, I would say the skill point is clearly better since it offers flexibility. At a later stage, you can always decide if you want a little more life or something else. For HC, it's less clear. In most situations, the +40 life will offer slightly more than +5% from the passive tree, but the difference is negligible while the additional flexibility is always a plus.

On HC you always take +40 HP from Oak for life build unless some very very niche build.
Since you always take any 5% HP node easy reachable on path (even with slight detour).

There is no freedom in that.