Recovery is an estimate of how quickly a character regains "effective hit points" (EHP) during combat in Diablo III, and was formerly called Healing. It is one of the three "effectiveness statistics" estimated on the main Character Screen, alongside Damage output, and Toughness which is also measured in EHP. It predicts the number of EHP recovered per second while fighting, which can be compared to the maximum EHP (Toughness) to understand how quickly the character may return to full health after taking a large hit. Overall, these effectiveness statistics are designed to give players a quick way to judge the effects of changing items and skills; the percentage change to each of them that would occur is shown whenever a potential new item is hovered on in the Inventory.
Contributing stats[]
As with Toughness, "effective" hit points means Recovery is measured against the damage output of enemy attacks, not the raw amount of Life a character has. If attacks do less damage, then each Life point gained by healing is harder to lose again, and therefore more effective toward overall Recovery. So, Recovery is a combination of:
- stats that provide direct healing
- stats or effects that reduce damage taken (which contribute equally to Toughness)
Recovery is an approximate characteristic, arguably the most unreliable compared to Damage and Toughness. Direct healing from Active Skills are not included at all since they are unpredictable in their use. Increased effect from Health Globes is included, but the spawn rate of Globes themselves varies. Life on Hit and Life per Kill are included, but depend on the player's attack pattern - the Recovery stat assumes attacking constantly. (For this reason, Attack Speed also contributes to Recovery.) Life Regeneration per second is the only truly constant healing effect, but often Life on Hit is a larger contributor.
On the other hand, stats that reduce damage are much more predictable, and they affect Toughness and Recovery by the same amount: Armor, all resistances, Damage Reduction from skills and Legendary or Set item powers, Dodge chance, and a few others. The resistances are averaged, and not all attacks may be dodged, so actual regained Life may have different effectiveness depending on the attack being faced. As with Toughness, reduced damage from elites or the guaranteed 30% damage reduction for Barbarians, Monks, and Crusaders is not included.
Impact[]
Recovery is measured in Toughness units/Effective HP per second. Theoretically, dividing Toughness by Recovery gives the number of seconds a character would take to return to full health from near death - if they continued hitting enemies while taking no further damage. Due to these strict assumptions, it's often easier to focus on relative differences in Recovery than exact numbers. Furthermore, since Life per Hit is a large factor in Recovery, its value is not accurate outside of combat.
Very low Recovery relative to Toughness may require frequent use of Healing Potions or even trips back to town to recuperate from fights. Very low Toughness relative to Recovery leads to dangerous rapid swings between low and high health during combat, while very low Damage output compared to the defensive stats leads to long fights and slow progress. Generally, Recovery should be kept high enough that healing from a large hit doesn't require pulling away from combat. The more hits can be avoided while maintaining high damage, the less Recovery is required.
In the endgame, using multiple percentage-based Damage Reduction powers is an especially effective way to increase both Toughness and Recovery. They apply multiplicatively with each other and do not suffer from the diminishing returns that would be encountered by stacking even more Armor or Resistance.