How the health bonus works.

Since I realized that not many L4D players truly understand how the Health Bonus (HB) in the VS Point System works, I decided to make this guide to explain the hidden secrets of the Health Bonus. First of all I’m going to assume you all the basics of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. If you don’t then you’re probably 6 years old and shouldn’t even be playing this game.

Let’s begin with common knowledge. A perfect HB is 200; there are 4 survivors (Zoey, Francis, Louis, and Bill); and you can have a maximum of 1 Pill and 1 Med on each Survivor.

Every 2 permanent HP counts as 1 HB, and every 4 temporary HP counts as 1 HB. In other words, permanent HP is worth twice as much as temporary HP.

First we divide the 200 HB by 4 Survivors giving us 50. This 50 is like a slice of pie allocated to each survivor. Each Survivor can carry a maximum of 50 HB and a minimum of 0 (If they die). This means one Survivor cannot have a HB more than 50.

We will first talk about individual HB then the HB as a team. The HB is calculated by your health after all healing items are used (after you heal and pop your pills). For example if you had 2 HP left with 1 Med, your HP after you heal would be 80. This translated to HB is 80 HP / 2 = 40 HB. If you had 1 HP with 1 Med and 1 Pill, then your HB would be the HP you have after you healed divided by 2 plus the temporary HP from your pills divided by 4 ((80 HP / 2) + (20 Temp HP / 4) = 45 HB), resulting with a HB of 45.

A commonly mistaken fact is that if you heal, you would have a higher HB. Clearly that is false because the HB is calculated by the HP you have after you heal. This raises the question, why not just heal? In a game situation, if you don’t heal, and walk into the safe room with 5 HP, you would be ensured of a 40+ HB because after you heal you will always have 80+ HP. But if you heal and get slapped by a common infected to 78 HP, then your HB would drop to a 39. This is why it is actually safer to not heal than heal. On the other hand, if you don’t heal in a tough situation, you run the risk of dying and losing all your HB. This must be in mind when you want to be stingy and get that extra 2 HB.

Now proceeding to how the team HB is calculated. The basic structure of calculating the HB remains the same, except you add all 4 players HB together to get the final HB. For example 45 (Zoey) + 12 (Francis) + 49 (Louis) + 2 (Bill) = 108 HB. But what if Zoey had 80 HP and a Med (assume that after Zoey heals she would have 90 HP) compared to Bill with 4 HP and no Med and no Pill. How would you raise your HB? Well from what we learned above, it would drastically raise the HB if Zoey healed Bill with her Med. So instead of (90 / 2) + (4 / 2) = 47 HB, it would be (80 / 2) + (80 / 2) = 80 HB. As you can see with this simple heal, your team HB just increased by almost one fold.

Let’s examine a real situation to better understand how HB works. Let’s say the Survivors are equipped as so:

Zoey (80 HP, 1 Med, 1 Pill)
Francis (75 HP)
Louis (30 Temporary HP, 1 Med)
Bill (4 Temporary HP)

So if they closed the safe room door right now they would have a HB of (90 / 2 + 10 / 4) + (75 / 2) + (80 / 2) + (4 / 4) = 126 HB. That’s a pretty low number, so how can we improve their HB? Well as you can see Bill is carrying 1 of the 50 total HB. So our first priority is to heal him. Since Zoey has the Survivor with the most HP and Med, we make Zoey heal Bill. Next we see that Francis is 75 HP compared to Zoey with 80 HP, so Zoey is going to pass up her birth control pills and give them to Francis because (20 / 4) < (25 / 4). So the end result is:

Zoey (80 HP)
Francis (75 HP, 1 Pill)
Louis (30 Temporary HP, 1 Med)
Bill (80 HP)

So now their HB would be (80 / 2) + (75 / 2 + 25 / 4) + (80 / 2) + (80 / 2) = 163.75 rounded to 164. That’s an increase of 38 HB from simply trading around some items.

To calculate the HP after a Med heal use the following formula:
Current health + (100 - Current Health)*(.
Thanks to everyone from the L4D Community for contributing to this formula. I chose this one because it is the easiest to comprehend.

FAQ:

Q: Do you get more HB for holding healing items (Med / Pill)?
A: No, your HB is based on your health after you heal, not if you're holding it or not.

Q: Is it better to heal or not to heal?
A: Generally it is better to not heal simply beacuse that Med is a 40 HB reserve that the SI can't touch. Once you heal, your 40 HB is up for grabs for SI.

If you have any questions, concerns, belief that the posted info is wrong, or just a urge to say something, feel free to post a comment.