u/DuggieHS

Does carnal pleasure (no listed heartthrob dmg) use your heartthrob damage from Aphro's Heartbreaker boon (80-140dmg by rarity + pommable) or does it use some other damage amount, since Heartbreaker is not a pre-req?
If you don't have Heartbreaker does it just do 80 dmg?

It seems that heartthrobs from Darkside (80 dmg?) and Love handles (120 dmg?) have a fixed base damage (no way to increase the base damage.. just scales with global/olympian damage/crit/etc), is that right?

I assume Sunny Disposition just gives 2 heartthrobs with the same base dmg as whatever the first heartthrob had.

Are these the only ways to create heartthrobs?

Scenario 1: Death Mel.

Suppose you're Mel with 100 Max HP and let's say you take 160 dmg across the biome. Don't worry though, you've got some healing and DDs, so you're not dead.

Each biome is about 10 rooms, so with wayward son (or perhaps other healing) you should heal about 50 HP (if not at max HP throughout the run).

100 Max HP + 50 healing - 160dmg = -10HP. That's okay, you've got DDs, so you heal back up to 40, then we subtract that 10HP. You're sitting at 40-10 =30HP. You hit the fountain at the end of the biome (heals 40% max HP) and you're at 70 HP with 2 DDs to spare.

Let's say you repeat your performance in the 2nd biome, 70 + 50 -160 = -40 HP, yikes! That would eat 2 DDs, but, we'll say some of that damage got eaten in the overkill of your first DD so you were able to survive with 5 HP. Hit the fountain you're at 45 HP with 1 DD left.. and you're only 2 biomes in. Repeat and you die in the 3rd biome.

Scenario 2: Strength Mel (just counting defense, not the 20% offense bonus)

Everything goes exactly the same, but instead all damage is reduced by 40%.

So after the first biome, we're at 100 max HP + 50 healing - (160*.6) dmg = 150 - 96 = 54 HP. Hit the fountain and we're at 94 HP. Almost max.

Okay, second biome, same thing happens, we only lose 6 HP again, so we're at 88 health. Repeat for 2 more biomes and you win with 88 -12 - 40 = 36 HP (there's no fountain after the last boss).

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Naysayers: "But wait, you get more max HP as you go." This only makes the case stronger for Strength users. Say it's last boss and you have no DDs, you buy 25maxhp... that's it.. it's 25HP. Strength user gets the dmg reduction bonus (67% more EHP). Even with 1DD, it's only only 40% more EHP.

Other Nayser: "But I can buy things to replenish my DDs". This costs 200g per DD replenish. 125g = 25 max hp (so 100g = 20hp); so strength mel can buy 40 more max HP with the gold you spend to replenish a DD (There are better things to spend gold on than maxhp and DDs; additionally if we both buy the same amount of healing strength user healing will go further).

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Healing makes Strength better than death, not to mention the 20% dmg (which i'd easily spend about 2 grasp on--see origination 50% for 5 with a condition or furies 30% for 2 with a condition, whereas strength is 20% with no condition).

Scars and Pain change the calculation. Full scars eliminates the healing benefit I've outlined above. Pain reduces the benefit.. if you have 100% pain + strength.... you take 100% +100% - 40% = 160% dmg... which is only 20% multiplicative damage reduction.

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tl;dr Strength is the superior defensive option to Death, because of increased effectiveness of healing, which can be found all across the game, in particular wayward son and fountains.