Health or Armor

[M.T. Fish]

Is using the Edgerunner perk for the Chitin armor worth having 100 less HP? I'm running a tank build with 20 in body and tech and 16 in reflexes and I'll probably raise cool to 20.

Without it I have around 650 health. It's unclear to me how armor works in this game to begin with as it says "up to 44%" when I hover over it but it doesn't tell me how effective my current armor actually is. 100 health seems like a pretty big tradeoff to me and i get the feeling Edgerunner is more for min-maxing damage than tanking.

Without the Chitin I can still equip stuff to trigger Cyborg with only 10 less health.

[Lorem Ipsum]

I put it in armor. Before I got the iconic armors in dogtown I was around the same as you, and I was getting damaged far too easily (playing on very hard). Now after getting nearly all the iconics I'm around 1169 and I can tank most everything and barely care if someone is shooting at me or not.

[M.T. Fish]

Originally posted by Lorem Ipsum:

I put it in armor. Before I got the iconic armors in dogtown I was around the same as you, and I was getting damaged far too easily (playing on very hard). Now after getting nearly all the iconics I'm around 1169 and I can tank most everything and barely care if someone is shooting at me or not.

I kinda settled on the Chitin for the health regen more than anything. I tested against a 6th Streeter with a knife on normal and honestly the armor doesn't seem to be doing much but any reduction is better than nothing i suppose.

[ImHelping]

One answer that seems to have helped me out is "You want 40% damage reduction from anything within 3 meters"

In the integumetary section. The proxishield (non DLC) is up to 20% damage reduction. The DLC dogtown Peripheral inverse (one of the lower cyber cost using iconics at like, 40?) gives even MORE.

Chitin is also solid because it doubles up on both health and big armor. But when some enemy with a sandy you are not allowed to disable is rushing you? Yeah, "Basically half damage, from one item" is huuuuge. ♥♥♥♥ armor value on it though, which is probably why I hardly ever hear anyone brag about how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good the Peripheral inverse is.

Again, basically HALF DAMAGE (point blank), with one part. Only way that part is a letdown is if the game is lying about how good it is or enemies get to cheat around it. The main reason it does not makes pain editor look like a joke, is because pain editor works on bullets from long range and has good armor.

As for armor multipliers, the single side rib cage looking Para Bellum in skeleton gives you a TON of armor due to having high native armor on top of the multiplier.

The iconic one from dogtown, Rara Avis, lists a much higher multiplier and gives some health on top, but because the armor gains you get from parts below Tier5 are kinda ♥♥♥♥, you can end up with less armor than just ysing the Para Bellum, and it won't loop around to more armor value until you are at endgame grade cybermetics. (So now I just... don't bother with that iconic, and stick with the normal one to save on cyber cost)