Better: +30 health mod or +5 armor always?

I remember a thread a LONG time ago about this (which I can't find now), before Factions even came out I think. There was a debate about which mod was better in functionality, the +30 health mods or the +5 armor always mods. Now with both Factions and Nightfall I was wondering what people make of this today. Does anyone know which actually helps your character out more? I assume there might be a slight difference in opinion on this for spell casters vs. melee characters, but just going by straight damage I was curious about which might be a better choice.

I always have one of each, sit on the 30hp normally, switch to a +5 and shield when under attack. For general use +30 is better though, as it helps against all forms of damage, not just some.

Well i used to run +AL mods over +hp in PvE. But recently have been using +hp as most often I'm protected well by a Prot monk so armour doesn't matter as much and its mainly degen that does the damage.

So yeah, its still the same as before - use +armor overall, but use +hp when you face heavy degen. And since you see a lot more degen these days, especially in hard mode, +hp is becoming preferred on more occasions.

I too carry both.

I guess HP mods are used more often, since people almost always want an HP mod in the item they buy.

I've seen the arguments time after time...

Basically, +5 armour for PvE, +30hp for PvP.

I run +hp anyways, 'cuz I PvP with my PvE chars... And storage is already full of the various weapon swaps, shields etc. that I need.

Which is better - a sports car or a truck?

Same deal with this - it depends on what you're doing at the time. And the posters above did a good job of explaining when armor makes sense and when added health is the way to go.

same here.

To the op. i use +5 or +7 (vs ph , vs ele etc) over a +30hp but have both ready to swap when needed.

Ah this...good times "discussing" this lol

I favor +5. I'm too good to carry l33t mods aka 20/20 +30

+30 hp on a healing build with infuse is still better ^^. It really depends on the opponents, your health situation, your build etc..

Don't forget as well as degen, +5 Armour mods wont help you against all forms of armour ignoring damage (Which sounds obvious I know, but some of you may have forgotten lol)

But like a lot of posters here, I carry both.

A +5 armour and -2 recieved damage (while in stance) bow is very usefull sometimes, but +30hp is always the one I'm carrying first

OK this post turned into overkill but here it goes anyway. Please be gentle.

Well the point of my question was to find out which is better with everything else being equal, the +30 health or the +5 armor defensive mod (NOT vs. only physical damage or only elemental damage). Without throwing in a lot of other variables such as healing and skills I was curious about which one was better straight up or if there was no significant difference. So I decided that since I wasn't doing anything productive today I would run a small test to find out. It’s a small test mind you, but I think it shed a little light on the subject. I also know that this is just ONE small test so I’m not suggesting this data is universally applicable. I’m just presenting it for the sake of discussion. If anyone is good at running statistics please feel free to correct any of my calculations.

To keep things simple I decided to test it on a warrior monster and went out to the Crystal Desert to let a griffon do the damage. I realize this isn’t the toughest of opponents but I wanted to use something that isn’t going to kill you in two or three or even 6 hits or nail you with 200 point spikes. Using a monster that would take longer to kill me also allows for repetition in its attacks so each run would include the full array of attacks and not be lopsided. I also realize that testing against only physical damage doesn’t prove this applies to every situation, but it should be obvious that armor ignoring attacks would automatically favor using a health mod so that’s a given. The defensive mod does give +5 armor always so it is effective against any type of attack that does not ignore armor.

This is the setup I used:

80 AL armor +20 vs. physical on all pieces
Major Vigor rune and Superior Absorption rune for -3 damage (because that is pretty standard for warriors and I didn't want to waste money crafting new pieces) and 2 (-35) health major runes
16 armor shield with no bonuses of any kind
Insignias were all radiant so they had no effect
481 max health with the +30 weapon
451 max health with the +5 armor weapon

I used a +30 health sword and a +5 defensive sword for each run, alternating between the two. Obviously with the defensive weapon I would take less damage each hit, but would the +30 health mod make me live longer on its run to make up for that? If they are about equal in terms of protection then it should take approximately the same number of hits to die for each mod. I ran 5 times with each weapon just letting one griffon kill me. I killed off the rest of the mob first, ran away for a minute then came back to the lone griffon. I used no skills, did not attack, and did no healing. Here are the results:

+30 HEALTH MOD
540 total damage in 28 hits
569 total damage in 25 hits
540 total damage in 27 hits
504 total damage in 26 hits
525 total damage in 26 hits AVG: 535.6 damage/26.4 hits = 20.3 damage per hit

+5 DEFENSIVE MOD
457 total damage in 29 hits
514 total damage in 30 hits
468 total damage in 26 hits
456 total damage in 28 hits
457 total damage in 32 hits AVG: 470.4 damage/29.0 hits = 16.2 damage per hit


The number of hits I could sustain was a little surprising. I fully expected them to be less than or maybe near one hit apart. BUT, using a defensive mod in place of a health mod I could actually take 2.6 more hits while also having 30 less in health. If you figure 2.6 hits multiplied by the amount of damage per hit (2.6 x 16.2) = 42.1 more damage you can take by using the defensive mod while still having 30 less health. If you add that 30 more health you get a total difference of 72.1 in favor of the defensive mod. Conversely, if you figure that you can take 2.6 FEWER hits when using the health mod you get 2.6 x 20.3 damage = 52.78 less damage sustainable while having 30 more health or 82.78 in favor of the defensive mod.

Looking at the data in another way, at 4.1 less damage per hit with the defensive mod gives you 118.9 less damage on average over the course of one death (29 hits to die x 4.1 = 118.9). Compared to the +30 health mod that’s a difference of 88.9 damage in favor of the defensive mod for each run. You could also say using the health mod results in 4.1 more damage per hit giving you 4.1 x 26.4 hits to die = 108.2 more damage sustained. Subtracting the extra 30 health that still leaves you with 78.2 more damage sustained. The numbers do come out a bit different each way but however you look at this data, the defensive mod seems to have an advantage in this experiment.

So far this has been using the observed total damage taken and you have to keep accounting for the difference in base health. I’m no statistician so I think I crunched enough there. Feel free to correct any errors I made. BUT first, lets look at it all a different way…

If you look solely at the number of hits compared to max health (not total damage since that goes beyond your max health due to overkill on the final hits) the defensive mod still looks better. For the +30 health mod I had 481 max health and 26.4 hits per death for an average of 18.22 health lost per hit. The defensive mod gave 451 max health and 29 hits per death which resulted in 15.55 health lost per hit. Taking this information and figuring out the percentage of health lost per hit you get 3.79% of the max for the health mod runs and 3.45% of the max for the defensive mod runs. That doesn’t seem like a big difference really but it ends up being an edge in favor of the defensive mod.
Even if you simplify the entire matter (which I am now wishing I had done) by taking the 2.6 extra hits you can take with the defensive mod multiplied by 15.55 health lost per hit with the defensive mod you get: 2.6 x 15.55 = 40.43 health. That is more than a +30 health mod gives you.

Going one (final) step further in analyzing the number of hits compared to max health I found one more interesting bit. In assuming the two mods would come out to be equal you can get 2 equations:

A) 481 health/26.4 hits = 451 health/X hits to give you the number of hits it SHOULD take to die with 451 health if the two mods were equal while using the defensive mod. In this case you get X=24.75 hits. The actual test data resulted in 29.0 hits so I gained 4.25 hits over using the health mod.

B) 451 health/29 hits = 481 health/ X hits to give you the number of hits it SHOULD take to die with 481 health if the two mods were equal while using the health mod. In this case you get X=30.92 hits. The actual test data resulted in 26.4 hits so I lost 4.52 hits compared to using the defensive mod. Average = 4.385 hits difference in favor of DEF in this scenario

Conclusion: I spent way too much time on this but I thought it would go much quicker and didn’t think I would get so long winded here. My apologies. But, at least for damage that does NOT ignore armor it would appear that the +5 defensive mod has pretty decent advantage over the +30 health mod. At least a lot more than I had thought it would. This probably doesn’t even help in deciding what mod to use in-game since you’ll encounter degens and armor ignoring spells throughout the game. At the very least this is some data that someone might find interesting… I hope. **puts on my flame retardant body armor and hits the POST button**

Personally if I had only one choice I would go with +5 armor. As posted before me when faced with non armor-ignoring damage it is ahead of +health. There other factors though. Most of the high level areas I am doing at the moment is vanquishing hard mode. In this the biggest threat are usually the eles with big bad AoE spells, all of which are reduced by armor. Also to consider is that lowering damage is more effective then increasing health by virtue of the fact that your healers need to do less work to undo the damage. For example: if you had 40 armor more and were against strictly armor affected attacks, your monks healing is effectively 100% more effective. Also comparing just damage vs life isn't a good comparison, in heavy battle some characters can take 1000s of damage to be healed by monks. The protection from armor can easily add up into 100s, while fortitude is still giving only 30.

Now the parts where health is more effective: armor ignoring damage and degen. For the most part armor ignoring damage is either A: not that prevalent (in the case of spells) or B: much me effective to reduce in other ways (attack skills -> blind kthx). Now for degen: even if you have the max degen of 20 health per second, you have plenty of time to switch to a +30 health weapon before you die. Further more, if degen is whats killing you, that only gives you another 1.5 seconds to get healed. This can help in certain situations, but in my opinion if you got degened to death which would take around 20-25 seconds with no healing at all, you probably weren't going to get healed in 1.5 seconds more.

My opinion can be summed up best like this: armor is reducing damage all the time and increasing your monks efficiency, health is only useful if you were going to take 29 damage over your max health, and by then in most cases armor would have saved over that much health. Of course, if you really want to survive hold +5 armor until you are nearly dead then pop the +30 health on, you win both ways.

After all of this, now compare +10 armor insignias with the +40 health insignias. Almost a joke.

fort and def seem about the same on a warrior, but on a lower armor character (sin or derv) defense mods are much more effective.

I also have perma pre characters, this would suggest (because there is no high level degen) that the +5 armour mod will be the most effective (in place of health mods - which i believe to be +28 max in pre) when on char boss runs in the northlands. My question or assumption is that the +5 armour mod is effective on all locations (unlike armour which is only effective protection on the specific location), would that be a correct assumption?

This is how I look at it for PvE. Sure +30hp will let you live longer under armor ignoring damage, but it is only useful if your health with the +30hp is less than 30. When I'm in PvE I'm always with at least one healer who will try to keep your health up high. So you can't ignore the effect of the healer. Therefore:

- When you take healing into account, I've probably had my +armor weapon and armor mods prevent hundreds maybe even thousands of points of damage for every time a +30hp would of had an effect.

- In PvE, there are very few monsters that don't use their basic attack on you. The basic attack is always effected by your armor.

- When the +30 is taking effect, your still sitting at less than 30hp. So unless you get a heal really quickly, your still dead.

- If you prevent damage, thats less the healer has to heal you. Meaning a very slight reduction in energy use if they don't overheal. +hp still needs to be healed and reduces the effectiveness of prot spirit (at +30hp, you take 3 more damage per hit that prot spirit reduces).

- I'm not aware of any areas in PvE where there is an enemy with a spike that sits within the range where +hp would be useful. They either spike to small or too large.

So I'd take +al over +hp in all PvE situations on both my weapon mods and insignia (assuming the +al is a condition I can meet).

Which is why, on some of my casters, I use a Defensive Staff of Fortitude

I would tend to think so after my little test yesterday. If the weapon armor mod was NOT effective on all locations, then the majority of hits by the monster would have done roughly the same damage as when using the health mod. This was not the case. Overall, each hit resulted in less damage when using the Defensive mod as you can see by the total damage taken until death. Even looking at the raw data (which I won't bore people with here) basically every hit (other than the lowest of the lows in the 8-11 range) resulted in less damage when compared to using a health mod.