HP or Armor for Heroes

I know there is a general consensus that armor is better than hp for players (sentinel insignias instead of survivors), but I was wondering what you guys thought about heroes.

Since a lot of the meta 7H builds no longer have a dedicated healer, instead splitting the job up for 2-3 heroes, I feel like all of them having the most hp possible would allow them to stay alive long enough to get a heal.

So what do you guys think?

Full Survivor's
vs:
Herald's (for N/Rts with PwK)
Minion Master's (for Minion Masters, obviously)
Prodigy's or Artificer's (depending the type of Mesmer you run)
Blessed (for Smiters)
Centurion's (for Paragons)

The armor does let them stay alive long enough for a heal. They take less damage; hence more time for a heal. I don't believe it necessarily matters so much - but armor is generally a better choice.

I always run + armor on my heroes, since i never do NM anymore

in HM an Churning earth will hit your heroes for 300+/- dmg, and then, that extra Survivor Rune wount do shit, nor would Atunnement runes, since if your heroes are dying, that extra +2-5 energy will only make them cast one, max two skills before dying.

TL&dr : +armor > hp/energy.

I've been wondering about this for a while, and I agree that the damage limitation of armor may be more helpful than the additional 40hp of full survivor's insignias.

However, one other point to consider is that having your support heroes set up with high HP can help with aggro control. I play a warrior, and found that getting my heroes up to mid-600s hp and keeping mine to 550-600 helps to keep the mobs targeting me, at least until I get enough adrenaline to fire up 'Save Yourselves'. Note I am not saying that this replaces good aggro technique, just that every little helps :-)

I'm not sure if this effect is outweighed by the armor benefits to the heroes, or if the enemy AI puts a lot of weighting to +armor insignia, though - I'd be interested to hear from more experienced players about this.

None, go radiant Reasons being:

- Cheaper. once you are outfitting your third set of heroes, mass armor insigmias can be quite expensive and unneeded because...
- The best way to mitigate dmg is through a) preventing it altogether and through shelter

What i mean by prevent is use KDs, and player interrupts on the churming earth, lock down the ele boss, and so on. when you are being hit by that 300 churming earth, your heroes will die no matter what, so either interrupt it, or precast shelter

Some builds can eventually run out of energy in the long run, even with e management. illusion mesmer and some dom mesmer builds with more dmg packed in. even though they have spells in the inspiration line, they will run out of energy eventually. Larger energy pool makes em run longer. Remember that you are regening energy while moving from mob to mob,

In addition, other builds, require a larger energy pool as a buffer to also be more effective. The minion bomber, or some ST/prot ST/para builds come to mind, where just by precasting spirits, you are draining quite a lot of the heroes energy (30 energy for 3 spirits). In that case you are better off with 460 health and 50 energy than 550 health and 35 energy.

Shelter and prot spirit is more effective with a lower health pool. being hit for 40 dmg is better than 60. You get the idea.

Topping off a 450 health hero is better than a 600 health one. In HM some dmg will kill you regardless, you can't tank it, you mitigate it through those 2 spells.

Lastly, shelter and PS does not care a bout your armor rating. You might as well run around naked as long as you have adequate protection, you will be fine.

In the long run, an extra 10 energy is going to make a much bigger impact on your heroes than 60 extra health, or 10 more armor.

Note: there are always exceptions to the case, being warrior mains, where you end up body blocking quite a bit regardless. Thats when you take sentinel insigmias.
Another exception is when heroes have no energy problems and have a sufficient energy pool. Thats when you add in armor insigmias again. But rule of thumb is for heroes enough radiants/attunements for 45/50 epool > armor > health

Don't be afraid of a 450 health hero. If you geared him right, he will be much better than a healing sponge 600 health one

Isn't AI targetting priority current hp -> armour -> max hp?

Most of the time, Armour.
Any non-MM Nec hero = Tormentor's. Heroes are a little weird with PwK and may not always be holding it.
I tend towards Survivor on any Paragon hero I have simply because I don't like AR on heroes meaning they don't always have the benefit.
I also often use Survivor on Rit heroes, but only because Ghost Forge are still really expensive.

I pretty much treat heroes as though they were players in terms of equipment; only exception is that I often use Major runes over Superior att runes.

If you're going to use Radiants you might as well run full Survivor and then add another Major / Superior rune.

I use armour all the way, except when there aren't good armour insignia when I use Survivor insignia. The insignias don't really matter that much, though.

The threshold for not getting wtfinstapwned is slightly less than 400 health (for casters - high armour characters can obviously take more risks) in all but the most difficult of areas (aka. Foundry HM). I don't go with dual Superiors on casters though, just to give more room for error + the ability to take one wipe without dropping into the danger zone.

For casters either run superior + minor or dual major in case of threshold values and/or when you wanna save a few plat.

Most of the time a major instead of a superior makes little difference. For heroes its all about the skills tbh and the synergy you have. Insignias make very little difference, followed by runes.

Just go with whatever is cheaper IMO. Now that you have 7 heroes 99% of PVE can be done naked with basic weapons equipped.

I had completely forgotten about the way monster's decide aggro. It's been about 2 years since I last played. I think that is why I initially had Survivor's insignias on my heroes.

When I have a minion master with a sup death rune and running MM insignias instead of survivors, all monsters automatically aggro her.

I usually find that having more max energy on heroes is generally useless, with soul reaping and all the energy management skills the other characters have, it is rare that I run into trouble because my heroes bottomed out on energy.

Also, I guess since I am running SY! having more armor is not as useful as extra HP. Although, when I do get in trouble and have people die, it is almost always when SY! was down or I didn't position myself so that my heroes would get it. In that case, extra armor would be helpful.

It seems like the consensus so far has been armor > hp, but more opinions for either case would be great.

Armor makes a difference in aggro control, too. A significant difference - regardless of how much hp you have, see how well you tank a group with Armor of Earth up (as a note, this is why Shroud of Distress is so powerful - the same level of damage prevention, which actually being able to hold aggro).

Armor from insignia's will stack with SY, and it'll be there when it's down. Take armor when you can, HP if you can't, and energy runes for heroes that need it (don't run a mesmer with <30 energy, etc etc - make sure they can cast spells and then use e-management).

If you have any hero you want to 'tank' as a sort, set it up so that it will actually gain the aggro. I set up healers with more health/armor than other heroes so they don't receive as much of the pressure from groups. I'd rather lose one out of 5 damage dealers than one out of two healers/protection sources.

Quote: Originally Posted by OccamsRazor It seems like the consensus so far has been armor > hp, but more opinions for either case would be great. Just sit down and think about it. We can fairly easily establish that a heroes EHP (Efficient HP, the amount of actual damage they can take before going down) is HP x Mitigation. Increasing either will increase a heroes total EHP, so from that conceptual standpoint we can say they are even. However if you compare two rather extreme examples you will notice a pretty important difference: H1 has 50% damage reduction and 500 HP while H2 has 0% damage reduction and 1000 HP. Both has the same amount of EHP so they will take the same amount of punishment before they die, but it will take twice the healing to heal H2 compared to H1.

With that in mind one can fairly easily establish that armour is superior to HP from a mitigation standpoint, as long as the healers have time to react. You must have enough HP to a) being able to survive any true damage and b) not dying instantly when focused. HP, while not as efficient from a healing standpoint, acts as a filler since it gives your healers time to react. The thing is, if we throw Prot Spirit and/or Shelter into the picture both a) and b) gets solved. If we don't, they are going to die to any caster in the harder areas due to the insane amount of AoE damage they do. Due to that the survivability insignias loose some significance and you might want to look into other choices, such as Radiance. Don't get me wrong, extra armour and HP is never wrong but they aren't as irreplaceable on heroes as some people will try to make you believe. Look at your situation, think about it and make a choice you think will work best for you.

TL;DR:Armour > HP generally due to the fact that it ups both EHP and healing efficiency. Realistically neither choice are going to matter much since you need some kind of active defence to survive either way. Survivability insignias aren't mandatory.

In a typical potential wipe situation, I would say skill recharge time is a bigger constraint than energy pool.