How tanky are Yeeks, really?

[Sirrocco]

So, last night, I was talking via in-game chat with someone who apparently plays only on nightmare and insane. I myself play only on normal, and, indeed, have never won (I generally run out of interest before I run out of game to play.) He was insistent that yeeks, due to their exp mod, were one of the tankiest races in the game (behind only Thalore). This assertion seemed bizarre to me - I've always found Yeeks to be pretty fragile, even after they get out of their home zones (glass cannons, due to the overlevelling, but fragile). Can anyone explain a bit better? Is it that higher difficulty players invest more in defensive talents and/or get less use out of HP? What's going on with this one?

[HousePet]

That assertion is bizarre.
Levelling up faster makes enemies scale up faster.
Tankiness is usually a measure of how long a character can withstand attacks. eg. hp and damage resistance.
Yeeks do not have this.

[azrael]

Yeek Solipsists can be pretty tanky, thanks to their high Willpower. But that's mostly just a quality of Solipsists.

As for Yeeks on their own, their high EXP modifier doesn't really mean much, since enemies generally level with you, and thus increase their damage relative to your HP.

[Robsoie]

Actually, leveling faster does not only give the enemy more HP and damage, it's giving to your character more skills/stats points and is allowing to take some of the skills that increase survivability a lot much earlier than with other characters that would struggle for longer to level up to such point.

The major difficulty for the Yeek is early games, as the squishy nature can make you 2 hits killed by anything (as apparently instakill is not possible anymore in the game , at least if the instakill protection always work), but once you're building up out of that early game, you'll notice at some that you have access to more skills than you would had with other races when you're finished with every tier 1 dungeons, because you'll have a higher level.

You should even be able to have a Prodigy in Dreadfell by example, while it can happen for a Cornac on a very lucky and experience rich run, only Yeek should be able reach the required level 30 when it's time to clear that dungeon.

I have won only 1 Yeek but it was really fun once he got over the "too squishy to survive" time (though i admit it was more the class, Summoner, that helped me win than running a Yeek, but it helped him in early game)

[StarKeep]

Instakill protection isn't protection from getting nuked down, it's protection against certain 'finisher' talents. (such as the Wyrmic's ability to om nom)

[SageAcrin]

Yeeks are not tanky.

Their leveling speed does help make the values somewhat better than they look, though, particularly in the middle of the game-early, they have to overcome that big Con penalty, and late they cap off in levels. In practice, they're about on line with Shalore for how good they are at taking hits, since Shalore are 9 HP Mod but large EXP penalty.

Nightmare/Insane, your intrinsic durability matters far less, though, and abilities far more, due to the damage values skyrocketing to the point where the question is usually if you're getting oneshotted or not, and no race can intrinsically avoid oneshots at all.

Having said that, getting constantly oneshotted or nearly, by margins of a few HP, is extremely common in earlygame Nightmare, and I'd imagine it's even more extreme on Insane. I'm not sure how you get a Yeek off the ground there, enough to actually feel like they're good.

So, all told, they're not as bad as they look. But they are by no stretch a tank. If you want that effect and want to actually feel reasonably durable, play a Cornac instead.

Also, given how few people actually clear on Nightmare/Insane, maybe you should have asked if they'd actually gotten anywhere with a Yeek. There are three legitimate Nightmare clears of a Yeek at all, on a quick check (In fairness, this probably misses one or two due to various periods of glitches with Yeeks), and out of those, two were Adventure.

Vault lists no clears for them on Insane.

[Salo]

I'm not the person in question, but the only time I won nightmare was with a yeek. Enemies leveling with you isn't that big of a deal in nightmare difficulty and the 200~250 more health another race would have at the end of the game is not that big of a deal either if it means you have your key abilities up faster. Still, I don't think "tankiness" is the right word to descrive yeeks either.

Having said that, getting constantly oneshotted or nearly, by margins of a few HP, is extremely common in earlygame Nightmare, and I'd imagine it's even more extreme on Insane. I'm not sure how you get a Yeek off the ground there, enough to actually feel like they're good.

Well, usually yeeks are used for races with good earlygame. Like with yeek doomed (I think I've done the starting dungeons with them at least 5 times) it's perfectly doable as long as you put your first 12 stat points into constitution* and do the dungeons in the right order (first 2 levels of the pits, then the whole underwater dungeon and finally the ritch flamespitter boss).

*) something yeeks should probably do even in normal

[SageAcrin]

Sounds about like what I expected of them on Nightmare, really.

Insane's the difficulty I more question their earlygame durability on.