+Health vs +Armor

[Hinagiku Ka Tsu Ra]

Basicaly this is a post with info about the diffrences between taking +armor insignia and Survivors insignia, and between using an Of Defense upgrade for your weapon or an Of Fortitude upgrade.
Information has been taken from Armor Rating on the Official Wiki.

First, the formula to determine damage taken from an equal level attacker depending on your armor level.

Where FinalDamage is the damage taken, and InitialDamage is the damage dealt according to the skill description and/or attack.

Lets take our basic lvl 20 elementalist. We'll assume that our elementalist has 530 health without insignia bonusses (480 base + 50 from a superior vigor rune)
Now lets look at 2 diffrent situations, situation A in which the elementalist uses survivor's insignia on his/her armor, and situation B, in which our elementalist uses Blessed insignia(+10 armor while enchanted).

So in situation A our elementalist has 570 health and 60 armor, and in situation B our ele has 530 health and 70 armor.
As can been seen in a table on the wiki page about armor rating, a character with 70 armor takes only 84.1% of the damage a 60 AL character takes from armor effected sources.

So in situation A our elementalist can take 570 damage before he/she dies, while in situation B our elementalist has to take 530/0.841 = 630 damage before death occurs. This means our elementalist with extra armor can take 10% more damage before he/she dies then our elementalist with extra health.

Now lets look at the weapon upgrades: Of Fortitude(+30 health) and Of Defense(+5 armor). Again we take our basic elementalist with 530 health. And again in situation A our elementalist has the +30 health weapon and in situation B he has a +5 armor weapon. According to the table at the wiki +5 armor reduces damage taken to 91.7% of the original damage.

So in situation A our elementalist can take 560 damage before he dies, and in situation B he can take 530/0.917 = 578 damage before death. This still means that our elementalist can take 3% more damage before death occurs.

Of course there are breaking points at which +health is more effective for survivability then +armor, to find this break point for survivors insignia vs blessed insignia we have to solve the equation x+40 = x/0.841 where x is the amount of health from which +armor will be better then +health. We can solve this equation in the following steps:
0.841*x + 0.841*40 = x
0.159*x = 33.64
x = 33.64/0.159 = 212
So once your health total from runes, weapon bonusses and other health adjustments is at 212 or higher, +armor is better then +health.

For Of Fortitude vs Of Defense we have to solve a slightly diffrent formula, namely:
x/0.917 = x+30
x = 0.917*x + 0.917*30
0.083*x = 27.51
x = 27.51/0.083 = 331
Thus if your health from runes, insignia and other health modifiers is at 331 or above it is better to take a Of Defense upgrade for your weapon.

Other advantages of +armor over +health include:

• +health is only effective while your health is under the amount of bonus health you recieved from it, while the damage reduction from +armor is always in effect.
  
• Less damage taken means that the healers have to heal you less, and can thus focus more on your other party members. Therefor one could say that having higher armor increases the effectiveness of heals.
  

tl;dr

+armor is better then +health

[safira]

Hmmmm, interesting Daniel

At first I was thinking Im going to swap all my survivors for armors but Im not sure on second thought ^^
Actually I think the choice of the insignia or rune depends on the strong points and weaknesses of the character, and don't forget health degeneration and armor ignoring damage

Take the ranger for example. He/she has 100AL already vs elemental and will NOT be the priority target for enemy warriors/rangers if their party has any casters in it (let alone if fighting with a (long)bow, they often won't be targeted at all). So the ranger's weaknesses are health degeneration and armor ignoring (AoE) damage. And in that case +HP is preferred over +AL

Furthermore, and not mentioning armor ignoring damage again, armor level reduces base dagame and elemental damage only. Not damage (skill) bonusses. If my dervish attacks a target that would have a theorethical 100% damage reduction from AL with her scythe skill that deals +30 damage, she doesnt deal the 9-41 damage from her scythe anymore. That damage will be prevented. But that +30 from the skill will still be dealt.

And at last, AI monsters prioritize the characters with the least amount of HP (think about DP'ed partymembers who will be target no.1 time after time). Having a high amount of health is a damage prevention in itself already because monsters will think twice before attacking you.

My conclusion would be:
+AL is better in some cases, +HP is better in other . Extra HP always helps you where extra AL on your armor helps more, but in fewer cases, not all. Examine your character and its role and choose the right upgrades!

^^ Happy choosing of upgrades

[Hinagiku Ka Tsu Ra]

Several things about your reply Merijn:

First of all you state that monsters decide their target by checking the HP of all enemies, this isn't correct, they decide their target depending on both HP and armor rating (info from Aggro on the official wiki), also the weapon you wield decides how much aggro you generate.

Second, lets not forget that, unless you play in a Mesmer/Necromancer/Monk heavy area, the majority of the damage you'll encounter will be armor affected, especialy in Hard Mode. Think of random dervish mobs hitting for 150 damage with a normal attack, rangers hitting for 100+ with normal attacks, not to mention elementalists dealing huge amounts of AoE damage. The bonus damage from skills is usualy minor when compared to the normal attack damage(the +30 damage from mystic sweep pretty much neglectible when compared to the 150 from the normal attack)

[safira]

True what you say it's health and armor, my bad ^^

And everything you said is correct
What Im trying to say, is that there is more. Its very complex and not only damage math that determines how useful an upgrade is.

There are forums filled with sophisticated pro-AL and pro-HP posts, and I ve read through them a long time ago already. From reading all those Im just not convinced that one of the two possible upgrades beats the other into oblivion

[Eki]

I think quite a few "high-end" PvPrs use +armor instead of +hp.
That's gotta say something about them Insignias.

That being said, I always went for the highest possible HP when playing on survivors

[moonchild]

Yes, pre GW i heard that high armour was superior to high health but the above makes it all less clear.

Is it possible to raise defense and get hit less often? I throw that out as I have never seen anything