Testing second wind

Stouty22 · June 8, 2016, 5:23am

Disclaimer: This is not my thread. All credit goes to @Scottes

The Borderlands Wiki page about Second Wind says a bunch of things. A few that aren’t well understood because of lack of detail, there are some points that I doubt, and there’s a couple that I have never heard before. So i wanted to dig in and test them.

The points that interest me are:

A Second Wind will restore 25% of the character’s health.
A Second Wind will fully restore the character’s shield.
Damage dealt by all guns is also increased for a few seconds.
After a Second Wind, the downed character’s bleed-out timer is lowered.
In particular, I am curious about the details of the bleed-out timer - how much shorter does it become each time? And how many times can you get crippled before the bleed-out timer is instantaneous?
Health gain from an insta-health vial resets the bleed-out timer.
Health gain from a healing kit resets the bleed-out timer.

I have read the following tidbit about resetting the bleed-out timer, so I want to test this:
7. Regaining full health resets the bleed-out timer.

I’m also curious about how to reset the bleed-out timer. If insta-healths and healing kits work, then what about other things? So I’ll add the following points to test:

Does health received from Transfusion Grenades reset the bleed-out timer?
How about health received from an Aries revolver?
Or Kyros’s sniper?
Does health received from Bloodwing using Out For Blood reset the bleed-out timer?

So I set out to test these points, and note any other interesting details along the way.

Setup and Test Methods

For this test I configured my test map to best suit the detail that I was investigating.

I usually set it to spawn Mixed Bandits around level 50ish. Using the Mixed Bandits means that the enemies would be the random generic bandits that one runs into - midgets, psychos, lunatics, executioners - whatever. When one dies, another will spawn after one second.

However, there were times that I needed more consistent results from consistent enemies, so I sometimes set it to spawn Crimson Lance Pyros, which always spawned that particular enemy. And there were times when I set them to re-spawn after 10 seconds, since I didn’t always want to fight another enemy immediately after getting a Second Wind. This gave me time to take a healing kit, or pick up an insta-health.

I’ll then proceed to test all of the points above, like the length of the bleed-out timer or all the different things that may reset the bleed-out timer.

Along the way, I’ll note any interesting things I find.

As usual, I record the action using Fraps, and play the videos back frame-by-frame using VirtualDub, and record what happens.

Restoring Health

Getting a Second Wind will indeed restore 25% of your health. I saw this numerous times, and most of you probably have, too. After getting a Second Wind, my level 61 would revive 250 of his 1,000 health points.

Now here’s the interesting part: You get 25% of your health for each enemy you kill to get that Second Wind.

My character was in New Haven when I started the game, so I headed over to that clown-car tent of midgets. Three of them surrounded me, and I let them whale on me with those cute little axes they carry. Eventually, they crippled me, and I started bleeding out. I shot one with my Firehawk to get a Second Wind.

And I noticed that I had revived with 500 health.

So to confirm, I did it again. I killed a couple and let two of them live. I then ran into a position where these two could gang up on me. I kept shuffling position so that they stayed very close together. When one of them dealt the crippling blow, I started bleeding out. I fired at the ground between them, and the resulting fireball from the Firehawk killed them both, and I had 500 health again.

So I headed over to Rust Commons West where all the little Spider Antlings are. I let 10 or 12 surrounded me and chew me up until I started to bleed out. I fired my Pestilent Defiler once at the ground, and the resulting ball of acid killed most of them. I was revived with my full 1,000 points of health.

Another note, not quite so interesting or surprising, is that I often got a Second Wind by killing an enemy just after he fired a bullet, which hit me right after I revived. The result was that I was revived with 250 health, but then his bullet hit me removing a few points. So it seemed like I didn’t revive with the 250 points I was supposed to get.

In a firefight with numerous enemies - or one with a high-RoF weapon - this is even more likely to happen. You revive, get hit by 2 or 3 bullets, and are left with minimal health.

Restoring Shield

Yes, this is true. Every time I got a Second Wind I came back with full shield. This probably isn’t surprising to many people, but I had never noticed before.

Increased Gun Damage

This is true. Against some level 50 Crimson Lance Pyros, my Equalizer was doing 616 points of damage for a body shot. I let one cripple me, then I killed him for a Second Wind. When the next Pyro spawned, body-shots did 824 points of damage, a 33% increase (approximately).

This increased damage lasts for 16 seconds.

Measuring the Bleed-Out Timer

I tested this by letting an enemy cripple me by dropping my health to 0, and then I’d measure the bleed-out timer until I died.

Then I’d re-spawn, get crippled, and kill an enemy to get a Second Wind. Without healing, I’d let another enemy cripple me, and measure this second bleed-out timer.

I’d continue in this fashion, increasing the number of times I’m crippled, until the bleed-out timer is instantaneous.

The initial bleed-out timer lasts for 12 seconds.

The second bleed-out timer, after one Seconds Wind, is 8 seconds.

The third timer, after two Seconds Winds, was also 8 seconds.

Same for the fourth bleed-out timer, after three Second Winds. 8 seconds.

The fifth bleed-out timer, after four Seconds Winds, finally shows a difference - it is 4 seconds.

The sixth bleed-out timer, after five Seconds Winds without resetting the bleed-out timer, lasts only 1 second.

After the last death with the 1-second bleed-out timer, I re-spawned and went back to fighting and testing. I let the enemy cripple me, and then killed him for a Second Wind.

But I just barely made it because the bleed-out timer was blazingly fast. Reviewing the movie, I had a 2-second bleed-out timer, and killed him 0.2 seconds before the timer ran out.

The next enemy spawned, so I let him cripple me, and I never got a chance to get a Second Wind because the bleed-out timer was down to 1 second.

So it would seem even a re-spawn won’t reset the bleed-out timer after a while.

Note: I have some doubts about the validity of these timers, but I tested a couple times and I’m fairly confident that they are correct. However, testing how the bleed-out timer resets show a lack of knowledge in why the timers shorten to 4 seconds or 1 second. Please see Post 14 for more details.

5-11. Resetting The Bleed-Out Timer

Originally, this section contained a bunch of useless information because I was chasing my tail.

Myths from the forum and the Wiki gave me tunnel vision, and I tested a bunch of health-related things, trying to figure out what reset the bleed-out timer. Finally Gothalion and Jaredhite made a couple suggestions, and I tested with those in mind.

The bleed-out timer resets once you survive ~27 seconds after a Second Wind without getting Crippled.

I don’t know why it changes to 4 seconds, or 1 second. Maybe I’ll test again and find out some other day.

As far as these methods - insta-health, health kit, gaining full health, etc. - NONE of them work. I have tested them all, and have found times when they don’t work. When they did appear to work, it’s almost certainly due to some time delay, like waiting for the healing kit to fully heal. If they don’t work every time, then they don’t work at all.

Summary

A Second Wind will restore 25% of the character’s health.
True. Actually, you get 25% of your health back for each enemy you kill getting that second Wind.
A Second Wind will fully restore the character’s shield.
True.
Damage dealt by all guns is also increased for a few seconds.
True, by approximately 33%
After a Second Wind, the downed character’s bleed-out timer is lowered.
True. Without a reset, the timer last 12 seconds for the first time, 8 seconds for the second, third, and fourth times, 4 seconds for the fifth time, and 1 second for the sixth time. After that 1-second timer, though, even a re-spawn won’t reset the timer. The next timer lasted only 2 seconds, and the one after that lasted 1 second.

As for the above, I have to say “maybe” to all of it. The tests on resetting the bleed-out timer sheds some doubts on them. I think that these bleed-out times are time related (time between Second Wind and getting Crippled), not by the number of instances something happened. I’ll leave this as-is until I get more data.

Health gain from an insta-health vial resets the bleed-out timer.
Health gain from a healing kit resets the bleed-out timer.
Regaining full health resets the bleed-out timer.
Does health received from Transfusion Grenades reset the bleed-out timer?
Does health received from an Aries revolver reset the bleed-out timer?
Does health received from an Kyros’s sniper reset the bleed-out timer?
False. None of these reset the bleed-out timer. The bleed-out timer resets once you survive ~27 seconds after a Second Wind without getting Crippled.
Does health received from Bloodwing using Out For Blood reset the bleed-out timer?
Not tested due to the results of the tests for restting the bleed-out timer.

Note:
Originally Posted by senselocke

Please note, though, from personal experience, if you get downed then go to your inventory to equip something, THE TIMER IS STILL RUNNING. This happened last night–I went to Inventory, after getting downed, to equip the quick-kill weapon, and the second I un-paused I died. So make sure you’re quick-kill gun is in a quickslot.
This is true for multi-player AND single-player.