HP vs. AL

This question seems to be asked frequently, and each answer is usually based on opinion. After much thought, AL is better than HP. That is to say that using insignias that increase armor are better than using survivor's insignias. That of course is not to say that extra HP is useless.

Example: Level 20 Assassin - Frontline

Full Nightstalker's Insignias
+1 rune of choice
Highest Vigor
3 Vitae

You still get the HP, but with added armor. Here is why AL is better than HP. AL reduces damage taken in the same way that having high HP takes an enemy a longer period of time to kill you. But, when having low HP, when you get healed, you still heal for the same amount. With the above listed runes and insignias, without factoring in weapons, you would have 85AL while attacking, and a maximum of 560HP (if using a superior vigor) as opposed to the extra 40 you would get for full survivor (which isn't much). If you get hit for say 100 damage with 70AL and 600HP, you would take 84 damage after damage calculation, bringing you down to 516. If you take the same amount of damage with 85AL and 560HP, you would take 64 damage after damage calculation, bringing you down to 496, lower than that of the other. But if each were to take that same amount of damage multiple times...

600 - 84 = 516 | 560 - 64 = 496
516 - 84 = 432 | 496 - 64 = 432 (After 2 attacks, they are both left with the same amount of health)
432 - 84 = 348 | 432 - 64 = 368
348 - 84 = 264 | 368 - 64 = 304
264 - 84 = 180 | 304 - 64 = 240
180 - 84 = 096 | 240 - 64 = 176
096 - 84 = 012 | 176 - 64 = 112
012 - 84 = 000 | 112 - 64 = 048

It may only be by 1 attack, but the one with survivor's insignias would die first without healing. But even in the event that they were both healed for say 150HP, the survivor's insignias sin would be healed for 25%, while the nightstalker's insignias sin would be healed for 27%. Not much difference, but it seems that the sin with a higher AL would both survive longer and heal for more. Now this is only one case, and the data given may be somewhat biased from other situations, but generally speaking the case is usually the same.

Now I've shown my thoughts, what are some of your thoughts?

PS: I still usually use Survivor's Insignias simply because they are available to all professions and can be used globally across all characters, heroes, etc.

Damage calculation data: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

You haven't proven that AL > HP.

You've proven that Nightstalker Insignia are better than Survivor Insignia at certain levels of base health and armor.

There's no need to discuss this, Armor is always > HP. Especially in PvE.
That 35 health you get from full survivor is lost in 1 hit.

http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14392

Better explained in this thread, prob somewhere on guru too, but CBA to find it.

AR > HP, except against armor-ignoring spikes.

QQ forums proved this years ago.

well you have to factor cracked armor (not really a problem in pve), degen, armor ignoring damage (most skill damage from wars, dervs, sins, paras, mez, necro, smites, ranger and pretty much anything that isn't an ele).

but yes, i think +armor is better for general pve. especially when those lvl 30 HM ele's hit for 300+ dmg with fireball.

Brief and straight to the point. I'm afraid I'd have to agree with this.

As I said, there are many other scenarios that I haven't touch on, but generally speaking, AL is better than HP. If someone would like to go through each scenario by all means, but I don't think it's necessary, nor do I have the time.

No need - the proof is in playing the game.

/nod

Good calculations.

I know that as far as modding a Weapon, the base increase for a perfect Fortitude vs. a perfect Defense mod (+30hp vs. +5AL) is +6.25%.

Base HP @ lvl 20 = 480
+30hp = +6.25% above max

each point of armor reduces damage by 1.25% (since +40AL = 50% armor-sensitive dmg reduction), so +5AL = +6.25% reduction above max

If you are facing loads of armor-ignoring damage, the HP boost is going to help more, if you are facing loads of armor-sensitive damage, the AL boost is going to help more. Since I don't get spammed with lots of armor-ignoring damage (Bloodspike, FGJ!+DSlash, never-ending Assassin chains) in PvE, the +AL works better.

There are 2 things to consider here. Most of this if not all of it is discussed in great detail in many threads

1. Spikes - Do you have enough HP to withstand a spike. With all the armor you can have if they can spike you down in one shot it doesn't matter.

2. Pressure - More armor = reduced pressure (with exception of degen amd armor ignoring damage)

So the thing is AL isn't always better then HP and vice versa. You have to balance the two, so you have the highest armor level you can have while maintaining enough HP to survive spikes

And this is why I compare the two only by simply separating the survivor insignias from an armor increasing one. Regardless of how you look at it, 40HP is not a lot of health to worry about about, armor ignoring damage or not. at -10 degen, that takes 2 seconds to lose, or 1 hit from an enemy. Of course you want to maximize the amount of health you can, but in most cases, armor is simply more important. Spiking is non-comparative because it still factors in AL vs. HP unless you are being hit by armor ignoring damage, which again 40HP is not a lot to lose.

No.
60 AL gives a damage multiplier of 1
+20 AL gives a damage multiplier of 1 / sqrt(2) - well, close enough.
+40 AL gives a damage multiplier of (1 / sqrt(2))^2 = 0.5

Effectively, if your armour rating is increased by 20, the damage you would have taken is multiplied 0.707 (1/sqrt2).

We can take this further and say that if your AL is increased by 10, then damage is multiplied by 1/sqrt(2)^0.5 - that is, 2^(-0.25).

If it's increased by 5, then it's 2^(-0.125) which is 0.917. This is actually an approximately 8% reduction in damage.
Hence, +5AL = 8% damage reduction from armour-sensitive sources.


Note: Using the above calculations, you can deduce that:

Damage Multiplier = 2^(-Extra AL/40) when you start from a base AL of 60.
Trivially, +1AL gives a damage reduction of 1.7%

It's generally known (at least in the gvg community) that armor > HP in the majority of situations, but it's still nice to see some numbers to back it up. Nice job. ^_^

Read this:

Armor rating table.

According to your math, you would get 0 dmg with +80 armor (and would you gain health with 81 or higher armor? How does Save Yourselves work?) .

Every +40 armor the dmg is halved. So +40 armor is 50% dmg, +80 armor is 25% dmg, +120 armor is 12.5% dmg. It's not linear. +5 armor is 91.7% dmg, or an 8.3% dmg reduction.

Come one guys, you can't seriously be discussing this for PvE?

Any benefit in any context is good. If everyone in your team can die less, engagements where the monks are pushed to the brink will turn in your favor.

If I'm H/Hing a hard dungeon in HM and I can't afford large stocks of consumables and am not a physical, then suddenly it becomes much more relevant.

Although to be fair, which insignia you use isn't too important.

Yeah well , you can "fake" survivor with a weap HP set but in many situations you cant "fake" a +10 or +15armor without lowering your own HP.
Like someone said before ( and me many times on Campfire ) , those 35hp are gone in the first hit , AL is still there on all hits of non armor ignoring damage ( wich if there are tons of it , +35 or 40hp isnt going to be helpful either ).

+HP can be nice if you have death penalty, but that's just one situation.

None is better than the other.

For a blood necromancer, health is usually better. Specially with Grenth's Balance builds.
Against degeneration and armor ignoring damage, health is better.

Against pure damage, armor is usually better.

It's all relative. It all depends on situation. That's why armors have insignia.

Remember, this is GW, there should never be anything that is 'The best', only 'better for this, but not for that'.

HP with runes and insignia, AR with spells like SY, Watch yourself, Ebon battle standard of courage etc. So you leave town with +600 HP and get the extra armor by spells. Works for me.

It's much easier to pump up the party's AR by using spells than it is to increase the HP on party members with spells.

For PvE it is possible to switch armor sets in order to deal with any situation that comes up. There is no reason at the highest level of PvE u shouldnt have at least one armor set one health set and minor and sup headgears to switch from. I've ran non-gimmicks in all areas since I first started playing on my new account. This ability has been extremely useful when people start to die or you see a situation where changing may be necessary.

If for one you are doing a balanced HM group for kathandrax and you equip a fire shield, +5 armor sword, and use an armor insignia you go from a 60al to a 83/88al for the majority of armor abiding damage. 23 or 28 extra armor is invaluable. Personal cons are much more effective than a +30 sword, +40 armor or even the 2 combined anyways.

It's good that this is mentioned with the impending nerf to SF. People may actually have to learn how to keep themselves alive without an invincible tank...

As long as the game has a pool of skills this powerful meaning you basically can't run much else than a handful of very similar style builds, the AL will keep being more important since there's no way you can run builds where running equipment all set to armor is a disadvantage.

If hexes, condition pressure and similar styles of play were still playable, AL wouldn't be such an obvious winner and you'd have to decide based on your specific situation and position, but I guess that's just not going to happen ever again.

I think HP may be better for builds with heavy mitigation (or at least competitive). As an ether renewal heal/prot elementalist who generally pbonds 2/3 the party, degen (hex/conditions) are the only significant way I see other players taking damage. I overheal plenty, so healing up the extra room from survivors isn't hard.

And this is why, for the longest time, my friends and I always ran a blood spike team in AB...

Armour? What armour?

I thought this was the PvP section what did I smoke earlier.

I'll probably get flamed here, but I respectfully disagree.

I think most people here underestimate health degeneration, and I face it alot when I play, and I don't PvP.

Let's look at it this way, from the 10 conditions present in this game, 4 of them deals health degen, only 1 reduces armor (and even then, it doesn't matter for cracked armor if you have 60 AL).

Now, let's not forget about health degen hexes, which also are everywhere.


I also have to disagree with comments such as "40hp goes out on the first hit you take" , to me they won't go on the first hit, instead, it's the last hit, the one that determines if you're alive or dead, success or failure. Countless times I was the last one standing, and looking ironically at my 1-15 HP left while the rest of the party kissing the ground.

So yeah, I don't mind if you take +AL gear, I won't complain either. But I'll keep my ~625HP, thanks.

Because it doesn't matter at all in PvE thanks to Monks having nothing getting in their way of keeping the entire party topped off at all times. ezmode protting and WoH can keep you up in the worst of times even if you have 350 max health.

Speaking as a Guy Who's Good At Mathematics, I'll tell you that since HP and AL are multiplicative rather than cumulative towards EHP, neither can be optimal. The optimum must be a proper balance between these two. Since the ratio of +AL vs +HP differs for armour pieces and weapons, it's probably optimal to get +AL insignias and +HP weapon mods.
Saying that +AL increases healing received is only partly correct, anyway. If your max HP isn't high enough, you won't receive full benefit from powerful heals.

If you're wanting to mix them, yes. So long as the AL insignias provide more than +5 armour.
A fortitude weapon mod adds 30 health, but a defense mod gives 5 armour.
Full Survivor's adds a mere 40 health whereas something like Tormentor's gives 10 armour. If you can easily meet the conditions for +AL insignias, it's usually worth it.

For PvE though, the difference between the two is near trivial. In the parts of PvE that actually matter, it doesn't matter what you're wearing, you're going to die unless someone prots you.

I've done my own calculations and i've seen that the base mechanics are really simple: +AL reduces the damage by some %, while +HP "reduces" the damage only by that
+HP, so the +AL effect becomes better than the +HP effect when you take enough damage. Since the AL vs. HP discussion has some sense only for difficult tasks, as HM, DoA, etc., (anyone worried about ascalon mergoyles?) where you are supposed to take a lot of damage, i'd go with +AL.

However, i usually put survivor on rangers for examples, because if they are midliners (so i'm supposing they aren't wielding a scythe or other melee weps.) with a bow, and they have high base armor (70 vs physical, 100 vs elemental), they probably aren't the first targets of mobs, so IMHO they are expected to take less damage then the casters or the frontliners, so in this case +HP bonus could be better.

But this is only theory, the real thing is that i don't know whatever else to put on a ranger (maybe that insignia that gives + armor while in stance, or the blessed one, as always), and, as others have said, the difference between AR and HP in PvE isn't important at all.

For the mixing up HP and AR thing, if you are referring to those people using for exaples more armor on chest and legs, and more health on the other pieces of armor (those with less chance of being hit), i've got some problems with this idea:

head +5 hp +10 AR 1/8 chance of being hit
chest +15hp +10 AR 3/8
hands +5 hp +10 AR 1/8
legs +10 hp +10 AR 2/8
feet +5 hp +10 AR 1/8

IMHO, if you put +5 hp on head, hands and feet, you are giving +15 hp on a piece of armor that counts exactly as 1/8+1/8+1/8=3/8. What i'm saying is that if you give up the armor bonus for those 3 pieces, it's the same thing of giving up that bonus for the chest piece, which counts for 3/8 too (i hope that my poor english is clear enough ).

So i don't understand those who put +10 AR on the chest because it has a bigger chance of being hit, and then don't put the same on head, hands and feet, that have all together the same chance of being hit.

Maybe i'm wrong though..

That's not what I was talking about. What I meant was that if your insignia AND your weapon mods AND your skills all boost AL and you're not boosting HP, you're doing it wrong - the +AL gets more valuable the more HP you have.

Doesn't follow, because the problem is strategic. Whether HP or Armor is superior depends on what your opponents do. This isn't a simple linear programming problem.

If you're facing an environment with nothing but armor-ignoring spikes (Obs Flame, Feast of Corruption) and hex degen, then Armor does no good at all. Under those conditions, you want all HP.

Under all other conditions you want Armor. With the present state of skills today, Armor is superior against both spike and pressure. The non-armor-ignoring spike that kills you at 560 HP and 95 Armor is going to be even more effective at 590 HP and 88 Armor. You should use + Armor mods on your weapons, and not just on your armor.

You're correct that at some point there is a tradeoff and increases in Armor cease to protect more effectively against spikes, but the breakpoint requires armor levels only attainable with "Save Yourselves". For all practical purposes, there's no reason to run Survivor or +HP weapon mods. Vitae and Vigor are the only justifiable options.

Uhm..i don't understand this. I agree with the fact that aving a higher maximum health allows you not to waste the big heals you receive, but honestly i don't think this is a major issue, expecially if you play with h/h or with monks who don't care much about energy management: they will waste heals (and so energy) anyway imho. But i don't see how the AL gets more valuable the more HP one has. The AL benefit depends on the damage you receive, not on the maximum HP you have.

Maybe you are saying that you are passing from +40hp/+10al = 4 to +30hp/+5al = 6, so you say: in the second case health works better, so i choose it. If this is the case, i think that this idea forgots the central issue: i want to choose what protects me better against damage, and this is more armor, even in the second case.

40/10<30/5 only means that, in the second case (30/5), to reach the breakpoint of AL > HP i need to receive some more damage than the first case (40/10), but i think that in HM the damage you receive is greater than both breakpoints, so in both cases i would choose +AL.

You wouldn't be wasting heals with a lower HP and higher AL. You would benefit more from it as you would be healed for a higher percentage than having high HP, low AL. In cases where HP is more important to have, you could still use high AL and benefit directly from the heals as opposed to healing the full amount, but not receiving the full benefit. High HP is important too, but in most cases, it isn't worth the trade off for high AL. As has been stated, Vitae and Vigor (and possibly weapon HP mods) are usually all you should need for extra health.

Would the AL>HP go for all classes or just the squishes? I see it would go great with 60 armor types, but with paragons and warriors have high armor is it really necessary for those classes to increase their armor as well, or is it better that those classes increase their health instead?

It depends , Paragons are midline so they dont really get much hits if there are melees. If they are helping to bblock then they are going to get a lot of little hits because of their position ( mainly ). The more armor they have , the little the damage they take.
In those cases , PS is going to help nothing because they are being hit by 10-40ish anyway but armor can reduce those armor sensitive hits just to give time enough for a heal. Shield of Absorption and Shielding Hands can turn that damage to 0 in 1-2sec if they are "under fire".
Since they ( can ) have shield ( P and W ) they can boost dmg reduction of somekind + HP + 16 armor if req is met , therefore , those particular classes gain more benefit of +HP .... but just because they already have a good armor ratio.

It's not necessary, but in general even for warriors and paras +armor is better than +health; if you have +armor insignias available which are nearly always up (like centurion for paras) use them, otherwise use survivors.

+35 hp or whatever it is only has use when you are down to your last 35 hp, ie you are only alive by the margin of your extra HP. +AL is useful every time you get hit by something that is affected by armor.