Radiant vs. Survivor

Racthoh

Racthoh

Did I hear 7 heroes?

Join Date: May 2005

Scars Meadows [SMS], Guild Leader (Not Recruiting)

Everything ultimately comes down to your build and the area you're tackling. +Armor is kinda useless when your character has "Save Yourselves!", +Health is kinda meh with a wall of minions soaking up everything and armor ignoring damage isn't present, and +energy varies greatly from skills present to whether or not energy denial is present.

Dzjudz

Dzjudz

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

gwpvx.com/user:dzjudz

How is +armor useless with save yourselves? It stacks.

spray04

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2010

Question: what about healers carrying Protective was Kaolai? They can't get energy from weapons so would only have 30 energy without radiant & attunement. In that case, is soul reaping, spirit siphon, etc. enough?

Sir Mad

Sir Mad

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

Moe's Pub

Pigs Can Fly [Pigs]

R/

It really depends on their builds. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Sorry, I can't help because I don't know what you're running on your heroes (and anyway I would be too lazy to try your build IG ). Basically, you gotta test that IG. Open the status window of one of your heroes with Kaolai, and keep an eye on his mana bar. If there is a problem, try to see if either more e-management (not necessarily on him: BR on another hero could do the trick for example) or more energy could fix it.

I have two heroes with Kaolai, one of them is fine with AL insignias, the other one needs radiant insignia. So go and do some testing. :P

EDIT -

Quote:
How is +armor useless with save yourselves? It stacks. At some point when you already have tons of AL, I think you should focus on protecting yourself from AL-ignoring damage (which means: more health)...

spray04

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2010

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Mad View Post
It really depends on their builds. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Sorry, I can't help because I don't know what you're running on your heroes (and anyway I would be too lazy to try your build IG ). Basically, you gotta test that IG. Open the status window of one of your heroes with Kaolai, and keep an eye on his mana bar. If there is a problem, try to see if either more e-management (not necessarily on him: BR on another hero could do the trick for example) or more energy could fix it.

I have two heroes with Kaolai, one of them is fine with AL insignias, the other one needs radiant insignia. So go and do some testing. :P

EDIT -



At some point when you already have tons of AL, I think you should focus on protecting yourself from AL-ignoring damage (which means: more health)... lol ya i've been testing ofc. Sometimes their energy run low, sometimes they don't. And at that point it's hard to tell whether the benefits of some more energy would outweigh health. That's why I wanted to hear what you guys do.

distilledwill

distilledwill

Forge Runner

Join Date: Sep 2006

Blighty

The Legion of the Blue Blade

R/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by spray04
View Post
lol ya i've been testing ofc. Sometimes their energy run low, sometimes they don't. And at that point it's hard to tell whether the benefits of some more energy would outweigh health. That's why I wanted to hear what you guys do. Well - if I'm running PwK on a hero its usually a Ritualist, Necromancer or at a push an Elementalist.

Ritualist: Usually has Spirit Siphon as energy management (as I'd be running a Channelling/Resto split) and so would have pretty decent energy management. I'd run Survivors.

Necromancer: With Soul Reaping and probably Signet of Lost Souls or Foul Feast. Again, very decent energy management potential: Survivors.

Elementalist: Energy Storage gives a large pool as it is, coupled with the Ele's other e-management skills (Aura of Restoration, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Attunements and energy gaining skills like Glowing Gaze or Mind Blast if you are running a Fire/Resto split) they've got enough energy as it is - Survivors.

Running theme here is... I don't like Radiant!

g2buy

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2008

Well for mine, I always go for survivor on my heroes because keeping all 7 heroes hp higher than mine is better since enemy ai will target me more. This is out of the discussion but I've always used +armor on my own characters. This is because I usually end up tanking myself and let my heroes spank the mobs The +armor really helps but it's not quite advisable to use +armor on heroes since it's hard at times to prevent heroes from dying, and when they die, the hp will be kinda low on them without +hp runes/insignias and this will make them get aggro more and die more.

And about radiant, I really never used them on any of my heroes ever. Never seemed to run out of energy except maybe in a prolong fight and if that's happening, you need more offense

Zesty

Academy Page

Join Date: Jul 2009

Mo/

It depends on the health of the person to begin with if youre making the decision between survivor and armor, same with +30 and +5/7 weapons. Every +5 armor is 8.5% damage reduction iirc. The point where it makes a difference is if the extra health will outweigh the damage reduction which is basically if you have really low health, not sure the exact amount i think its around 100~ hp for +10/15 insignias and 200~ hp for +5 weapons. So in general it's more worth it to use armor. Of course if you use something like spirit bond, shelter or prot bond the usefulness of armor tends to decrease as it is completely useless if youre taking large amounts of damage to trigger prot spirit and shelter and can inhibit spirit bond from triggering. If you're not using any of that however it is by far a lot more useful to use armor insignias.

That being said i use survivor anyways but I will probably go salvage them all for big money sometime.

And as far as aggro goes I'm not really sure it makes a gigantic difference in agro anyways because monsters also check for armor level as well for targeting but I know it might sway the monsters opinions a little. I can say though that if I'm frontlining I'd much rather have my heros take aggro so things will pull closer together and hopefully get stuck where I am blocking.