Types of Health Bars
Health is how much survivability an entity has and how easily it can either be defeated or destroyed. Every mobile entity, living or otherwise, outside the safety of the walls has health bars to represent their health.
Health can be broadly classified into player javelin health, ally health, enemy health, boss health, and destructible object health. Each of these have sub types depending on whether they are heavily armored, shielded, boss level, or otherwise.
Health bars are depicted as hovering above an entity's top. They may be decorated with other markers such as ally/enemy indicators, enemy type indicators, and target indicators, if they are enabled in the UI settings.
Sub Types of Health[]
There are 3 sub types of health in Anthem:
- Health
- Shields
- Armor
All allies and enemies will always have either a health bar or an armor bar to show their survivability status, when not inside the Fort Tarsis. Some enemies and allies can also have a second health bar above either one of these bars to represent shields.
The priority of damage taken by an entity is always in the order of:
When an entity takes damage, their shield bar depletes first and then health/armor bar starts to deplete. Shields can regenerate after not taking damage for a short duration. So, even if an entity is at the verge of defeat, if they don’t take any damage, then it means their shield bar can completely refill.
Health or Armor bars can have separators to show an increased pool of health. Each segment between the separators is called a pip.
Player Javelin[]
Player Javelin Health
The Freelancer gets a different parallelogram shaped shield bar and armor bar. The javelin’s armor bar is green instead of yellow to show that it is an ally.
The total number of pips heavily vary from javelin type to javelin rarity to javelin bonuses. This means even if two javelins have a same rarity, their total number of pips will vary.
Ranger, Storm, and Interceptor all have a shield bar and armor bar. However, the colossus only has an armor bar. Since the Colossus uses a physical shield, it gets a special semi-circular shield bar with multiple pips, but only when unfurled. All other javelins have kinetic shields, so they do not have pips in their shield bar.
Ally Health[]
Ally Health
Ally Health is represented using green health bars. Depending on whether an ally is inside a javelin or un-suited, they can have additional health bars.
People not wearing any suits simply show up with a green health bar.
Ally javelins will also show up with a green armor bar. However, they can also have shields that are represented above the health bar in blue.
The number of armor bar pips depend on the power of the person or a javelin. Usually for people, it is only 1 health bar pip. For javelins, it is 3. Shield bars always have only 1 pip.
Enemy Health[]
Shielded Health with 3 Pips on Enemies
Enemy health is represented using red health bars. However, if they are heavily armored, they will have yellow health bars with a special decoration in silver underneath the bar. Shield bar, if present, is always shown above the health or armor bar.
The number of health bar pips and armor bar pips vary from enemy to enemy, and depending upon their types (standard/elite/legendary). Stronger enemies usually have more pips in their health/armor bar. But that does not necessarily mean they are more powerful than other enemies of lower type with fewer health bar. Enemies with shields will always have one shield bar pip, as usually shields can regenerate.
Boss Health[]
Enemy Armor with 4 Pips
Boss enemies have a special health bar that is much larger in pool size and even larger visually. It is fixed on the top of the screen as long as the Boss is in sight (i.e., not in an invulnerable or hiding state).
Boss enemies show up with various amounts of health bar pips, but they still show up with a red health bar. However, the bar is not to be confused with the red health bar of other enemies. This is because Bosses have different types of weaknesses and resistances. Each boss enemy is different and unique.
Check out the individual pages of The Monitor (Transcendent Form), Swarm Tyrant, Scelos, The Unfathomed, or Vara (Cataclysm Form).
Destructible Objects[]
There are several destructible objects found all over Northern Bastion and the strongholds. These items can be destroyed to obtain crafting resources or resupply units. These objects usually have one health bar pip in red. Some items such as pots and boxes do not show any health, but have hidden health bars. These can also be destroyed to obtain resupplies.
The following items can be destroyed to obtain items of interest:
- Organic Plants for Chimeric Compounds and Ember
- Mineral Nodes for Chimeric Alloys and Ember
- Crystal Nodes in Northern Bastion for crystals (defunct since Echoes of Reality was silenced)
- Large Shaper Crystals inside Conjunctions to stabilize the Storm Gate
- Pots and Boxes in camps for resupply units
- Scar supply and storage houses near the places where they try to establish footholds (and fail miserably)
- Scar Mines and Scar Seeker Mines
- Rusted old boxes in abandoned camps for Javelin Parts and Weapon Parts, and sometimes, Ember
- Red boxes for Crafting Resources and Cymatic Notes in Seasonal Strongholds
- Wooden Dolls to summon the Golden Grabbit in Seasonal Strongholds
- Rock Crystals to reveal Cymatic Notes, Echo Device or Pressure Plates in Seasonal Strongholds and Echoes of Reality (Game Mode)
- Explosives to destroy Rock Crystals to reveal the contents beneath or inside them
- The war-head used by Outlaw Rocket Trooper can be destroyed when it is being fired to one shot knock out the trooper.
- Shaper Nodes can be destroyed to not get zapped when moving in an environment
- The plates on a Luminary's legs' joints can be destroyed to reveal its weak points
- Skorpion eggs can be destroyed to prevent them from hatching
- Moonpods can be destroyed, but they only give out a blue dust
Damage Application[]
Different damage types do different amount of damage to different type of health on enemies. This multiplier works the same whether the damage is single-target (kinetic/impact) damage, or whether it is multi-target blast damage.
The guide below also serves as a damage multiplier applied to the player’s Javelin. However, additional properties, such as amplified shields and armor effects from javelin specific bonuses, masterwork perks, and other bonuses can and will have to be taken into account. When these special bonuses are considered, the multiplier will vary.
Shields[]
There are various types of shields. Some enemy shields have a resistance to certain elemental damage types. They are still represented by the same blue shield bar. However, an external barrier is shown on the entity to represent elemental resistance—the barrier has an orange flare for fire resistant, blue for ice resistant, and purple for lightning resistant shields. If they are not elemental resistant shields, then the barrier looks gray, or is not shown at all.
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 & Impact Blast  |
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 & Acid Blast  |
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 & Fire Blast  |
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 & Ice Blast  |
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 & Lightning Blast  |
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 & Armor Buster Blast  |
Armor and Health[]
Armor and Health do not have additional types, other than the color used to represent them to show whether they belong to an ally or an enemy. The damage done to them is as follows:
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& Impact Blast |
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& Acid Blast |
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& Fire Blast |
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& Ice Blast |
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& Lightning Blast |
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| & Armor Buster Blast |
Representation[]
Health bars and armor bars usually have vertical separators in between them to show the health pool of an entity. These separators divide the health/armor bar to show segments called pips. If there are n separators (including the bounds) in a health/armor bar, there will be (n-1) pips present in the bar.
The number of pips can loosely show how much more health/armor an entity can possess among each type. More health/armor bar pips don’t mean more health. They Do Not represent the total health of an enemy when compared between different enemy types.
Interpretation[]
Use the below guide to interpret the health among same enemy types and different enemies. They are explained using examples.
- An Elite Scar Scrapper can have 2 health bar pips, while a Legendary Scar Scrapper will have 3 health bar pips. This means, the legendary type will have a higher health pool.
- Both the Legendary and Elite Dominion Frost Brute have 3 armor bar pips. This does not mean they have equal health. This still means the legendary type will have more health.
- A Legendary Digester has 1 health bar pip. However, an Elite Digester has 2 health bar pips. This still doesn’t mean the legendary type here has less health. The legendary type will always have more health when compared to its elite counterpart or lower.
- A Legendary Dominion Elementalist has 3 health bar pips. Whereas, a Legendary Outlaw Elementalist has 4 health bar pips. This means the Outlaw Elementalist has more health than the Dominion Elementalist.
- A Legendary Outlaw Gunner has 1 shield bar pip and 2 health bar pips. A standard Dominion Storm Valkyrie has 1 shield bar pip and 2 health bar pips. However, the legendary Outlaw Gunner will have more shields and health than the standard Dominion Storm Valkyrie.
Trivia[]
- The total number of health bar pips not only depend on the type of the enemy (standard/elite/legendary)
- Colossus is the only entity in Anthem that has multiple shield bar pips and a unique shield bar design.
- Before Update 1.1.0, Dominion Storm Brute and Dominion Frost Brute enemies had additional shields in their health pool, but they were removed.
- Before Update 1.1.0, all enemies had depletable shields, and they were non-regenerative for enemies. This meant once the shield bar depleted, it would not regenerate. Since the update, all shields became regenerative, while the player javelins still kept their regenerative ability.
- The most number of health bar pips (red) are 5, which are only found in the case of Scar Hunter enemies (6 if Swarm Tyrant is counted, but Boss health is not the same as that of other enemies).
- The most number of armor bar pips (armor) are 6, which are found in the case of Ancient Ash Titan enemies.
- Named Enemies usually have more health than their unnamed counterparts, even among the same type.
Gallery[]
