CTA - Diff 1 to 6

Hi! I'd like to know how much life a 1 cta gives you, compared to a 6 cta, for the same character with the same items. Thx!

+1 vs +6 to

Battle Orders on the Call To Arms is a difference of +15% life/mana, since each

Battle Orders level increases the life/mana bonus by 3%. Note that you won't have 15% more life/mana with 6 vs 1 BO on the CtA, it's just that the life/mana bonus will be 15% higher. The effective increase in life/mana from using a +6 BO CtA over a +1 BO CtA will be less than 15%, probably around 5-10%. It depends on how much +skills and +vitality/attributes you have on your gear.

If you have +5 to all skills (of which CtA provides +1), that means it's a comparison between level 6 BO and level 11 BO.
Level 6 BO gives you +50% life/mana
Level 11 BO gives you +65% life/mana
The effective life/mana increase by going from a 1 BO CtA to a 6 BO CtA is thus ~10% (1.65/1.5)
So, if you have 1000 HP with a 1 BO CtA, you'd have 1100 HP with a 6 BO CtA.

If you have +10 to all skills (of which CtA itself provides +1), that means it's a comparison between level 11 BO and level 16 BO.
Level 11 BO gives you +65% life/mana
Level 16 BO gives you +80% life/mana
The effective life/mana increase by going from a 1 BO CtA to a 6 BO CtA is thus about ~9.09% (1.8/1.65)
So, if you have 1000 HP with a 1 BO CtA, you'd have ~1091 HP with a 6 BO CtA.

EDIT: I should add that BO does not apply to life added by +vitality/attributes on gear. I.e., the +attributes stat on

Hellfire Torch and

Annihilus increase your life (1 vitality = 2 life for Sorceress, but it is more for some classes), but this portion of your life is not boosted by BO. BO only applies to your base HP including hard points invested in vitality and +life from gear/charms. The above example calculations are therefore oversimplifications. The effective life/mana increase is actually lower than suggested above, because nearly every character has some item/charm with +vitality/attributes.

What's your class, how much total +vitality do you have, and how much +skills do you have in total?
That's the only way to give you a 100% correct answer.

Another thing is that the duration increases (10 seconds per level)
It can make difference for "Quality of life" purposes
(+6 x + 1 gives you + 50 seconds, almost 1 minute )

Oh yes, sure, the BO level matters a lot for the duration. The OP just asked about the life difference so I focused on that

And about the life/mana bonus, a higher BO level on the CtA is going to have a bigger impact the less +skills you have and the less of your life consists of a bonus derived from +attributes/vitality/energy.

Here's a real world example:

I have a

Nova Sorceress with 522 life before BO. She has 0 points invested in vitality (only the base 10 points), but she gets a whopping +100 vitality in total from her gear, that makes up 200 of those 522 hit points. Her base life is therefore 322.

Say she has a +1 BO CtA. That would give her a BO level of 10 (since she has +9 skills including

Battle Command). A level 10 BO boosts life by +62%, so she would have (322*1.62)+200 = 721 life.

If she instead had a +6 BO CtA, that would give her a BO level of 15, and a level 15 BO boosts life by +77%, so she would have (322*1.77)+200 = 769 life.

The effective increase in life would be 769/721 = 6.6%.

Similarly, her Mana is 1518 before BO. She has total of +43 to energy from items, which translates to +86 mana, and she also has +30% mana already from

Arachnid Mesh and a

The Stone of Jordan (this bonus works additively with the bonus from BO). The difference between a +1 BO and a +6 BO CtA under these circumstances would be 2201 vs 2367, a 7.5% difference.

Would it be worth it to upgrade? Maaaybe, if you have a lot of Wealth and care about min/maxing. To each their own

ShadowHeart wrote: 5 months ago

but this portion of your life is not boosted by BO

Huh, i did not know that...

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Another thing is that the duration increases (10 seconds per level)

Yeah, i was going to comment on how this is probably MUCH more important.

Mostly to make sure you do not run out of it while you're in the middle of a difficult fight.

Yes, what ShadowHeart said... If you have +Life as a nominal value from the gear that gets boosted same as "base" life (class base + increment from lvl ups + hard points into Vitality) does. +% Life and +Vitality bonuses do not get affected by the BO (which is why something like Aldur's or Waterwalks are usually the most optimal choice for the

Boots slot [on top of FRW], for example).

The responses are very well written and interesting. But isn't ES sorc kind of an extreme example?

If you look at

Zeal pally which doesn't run as much +skills, the standard maxroll build goes from ~2500 to ~2760 with 1-6 bo. It's about 10%, but more importantly the absolute increase of ~250 life is also pretty significant

I agree it's not necessary to have 6 bo, but it might be worth seeking out a higher roll if you have a character with higher life/level and lower +all skills

Finally, there is a huge difference in pricing : there are quite often 1 BO for Free or a very little fee, while 6 BO go for over a

Jah.

Make your choice !

My personal advice as I did it myself : get a cheap one first, make up your Wealth, all your other runewords etc., and if you're rich enough, then optimize those (by rolling many CtAs or by buying expensive ones).

marl71 wrote: 5 months ago

The responses are very well written and interesting. But isn't ES sorc kind of an extreme example?

Sure - I just wanted to provide that one as a counter to my own examples in my first post (which assumed no +vitality/attributes on gear), which ended up with around +10% just like the paladin build you mentioned. I mean, I did say that the effective increase was going to be 5-10% and that having a lot of +vitality/attributes makes BO less effective, so an example of an extreme opposite case would be a good way to illustrate how much gear matters and that there’s no a exact answer to OP’s question. That it depends