Why do people on guides all recommend survivor insignia(hp)...?questions

hello i was curious to know why people all recommend all armor to have insignias for hp and runes for hp and not energy...? is this a new standard because of hard mode?

I normally always have superior vigor on body armor on helm i have superior of whatever i am using +3 skills and typically on gloves i put rune of whatever your class specialize in like minor soul reaping.

does this apply to everyone including the heroes? I am starting back again and i do get destroyed by some enemy but maybe i am not managing heroes right.

Well I wouldn't call it a standard. But what use is energy when your out of hp?

So having enough energy to kill is a good thing but not the number one priority.

Beside that most of energy management is done on weapons and in the balance of a build.

In the long run the differences are minor, so do whatever floats your boat. But, what you actually want to use, can depend upon your build, etc.
For example, Elementalists start with a large energy pool, so the +2 energy from an attunement Rune may not be as useful as +10 health. On the other hand a Warrior has a very small energy pool, and given it's high armor level, an Attunement or two could be more useful than added health (it depends upon how much of the build relies on adrenalin).

Generally speaking, my characters all had Survivor Insignias on the Head, Hands, and Feet and Radiants on the Chest and Legs - for +15 health and +5 energy.
I also used the same basic Rune setup as you - +3 to major attribute (for build) on head, Superior Vigor on Chest, minor class specialty Rune on hands, and attunement, or vitae, or secondary attribute on the legs and feet (depending upon build)

But, as I said at the start, in the overall scheme of things, the small variations made by changing Insignias (in particular), are not all that vital.

Well if your team set-up is efficient, you shouldn't ever run out of energy because your energy management should be strong enough; That's part of the reason. So it's plus 2 to 18 energy that you are never going to use. Especially in the case of an Elementalist, seems, if you wanted more energy on those you may aswell invest in a stronger Energy Storage Rune instead. The exception to this rule probably being Warrior, as Quaker stated, seems it's energy pool is so small to begin with, and it has next to nothing for regen or energy management, it's the only class that can genuinely benefit from Radiant and Attunement Runes in an effective team set-up (but that's not to say they are useful to every Warrior build because there is many they are not).

Of course, this point has limited viability, seems one could also argue if you need more health then something is wrong with your team's defense and healing set-up. That being said, I guess this is less of a point, seems when somebody is going to recieve some incoming spike damage or focus fire is a little harder to reliably predict than overall energy usage. But then that's pretty much all +Health Runes are useful for; Giving you a bigger health buffer vs. spike damage, and offsetting the loss of health from Major or Superior Runes.

Otherwise, people probably choose them because they are more generalist than the other Runes, but in the bigger picture +Armour Runes generally are more effective and help your team live longer, seems more health, once it's gone, is just more health to heal back, costing you more energy, whereas +Armour Runes will persistantly decrease incoming damage lightening the load on your healers without costing them more energy; indirectly adding more usuable energy to your healers the same way +Energy Runes would, while also adding more survivability to the character as a +Health Rune would.

Regarding radiant, attunement, and to a lesser extent, energy from weapons, the following thread is useful. Note that heroes and henchmen are particularly bad at managing energy, and they obviously can't weapon swap.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10279683

Survivor insignias are the cookie cutter when you aren't sure what rune you need or what, which is common with new or inexperienced players. All other runes boost armor, but the requirements for them are circumstantial and depend on the build. Radiant insignias are useless because heroes don't moderate their use of energy and battles usually don't last long.

The attitude towards insignias these days is to always bring armor runes. A recommended target for health is ~500 as many heroway builds use an ST Ritualist now and autoattacks will never hit over 50. Once you get down to "rune suicide in the low 400s, Shelter will just get triggered constantly where you're taking 40s instead of 43s. Of course, if areas have armor-ignoring skills, if you have ~600 health, you allow Shelter to trigger only on the stuff that is doing 120s. You can also use lower and higher health on different heroes to change the priorities of enemies, like running high health on healers so enemies don't target them. But more armor means less damage, and you always want in any balanced team.

thank you guys for the information i appreciate it a lot.

ill stick to using my energy set up i barely play hard mode and probably will only touch eye of north for books only.

I am still building a hero team so i don't have a lot of luxuries mentioned before.

I play HM exclusively and not a single hero or character I run has survivor runes. I think I may have only ever used it once on a very specific set of armor for a very specific purpose (don't even remember). And I've had absolutely no problem whatsoever with anything in any mode.

Extra pool, be it HP or energy, improves the (average) effectiveness of methods to reclaim the resources because a larger pool reduces the chance that some of the effect of that method is lost when more of the resource is reclaimed then fits in the pool.

Armor is pretty much always your best choice for general PvE.

Energy is situationally useful. For example, mesmer heroes sometimes spend themselves to 0 energy before actually trying to use energy management. MMs trying to spam Bone Fiends can sometimes use some extra buffer against random SR triggers. This is _very_ situational though, 99% of the time you see a hero run out of energy it is because your build is not made correctly.

Don't use health unless you are specifically gearing for the 1% of areas where armor ignoring damage means health is barely stronger than armor in the short term (Note: this is me saying "Never use health insignia", but in a way that avoids annoying twats from conjuring up exceedingly unlikely edge cases). For the most part if you need more health then you should simply be downgrading your Superior or Major rune.

Quote: Originally Posted by Amy Awien

Extra pool, be it HP or energy, improves the (average) effectiveness of methods to reclaim the resources because a larger pool reduces the chance that some of the effect of that method is lost when more of the resource is reclaimed then fits in the pool. No. You are looking at things the wrong way to begin with. If you take 100 damage and go from 400->300 health you don't have any greater healing efficiency than if you went from 600->500 health. Your situation only works if we assume that both subjects would start at x health and one would have a greater max health to be healed to, but that's not how normal PvE works.

Armor is what improves the efficiency with which you regain health. An armor insignia takes that 100 damage and reduces it by 15-30%. Armor is an indirect health management (less damage) AND energy management (healers spend less energy healing) AND damage booster (Since everyone runs hybrids nowadays, less time casting healing spells = more time casting damage spells). Health and Energy insignia are no management at all.