Hollow heart or armor?

[pi73r]

I was wondering:
Let's assume you have a crappy scenario where you have to choose between those 2 items.
Does anyone have any data what is actually stronger survivability wise (ignore the whip evolution)?

[Codester]

Hollow heart is better.

[bleak]

IMO armor is way better, and not just for when you have nothing better to pick. I even feel like my early runs (before buying strong upgrades for coins) were dependent on armor. Hollow heart on the other hand seems just worthless.

[Conga Lyne]

Hollow Heart, armor doesn't scale as well imo

Damage feels really inconsistent though so eh
Debatably armor since it doesn't reduce % health healed from pickups

[little Star]

Armor, by far, because it increases your effective health by so much it's not even a question.

Ex:
if you have 100+50 health, 0 armor and an enemy hits for 10 damage, you take 15 hits before you die
if you have 100 health, +5 armor and an enemy hits for 10 damage, you take 20 hits before you die

Most enemies that swarm you do chip damage and having even the +3 armor from upgrades makes such a massive difference it's crazy.

[Codester]

If you look at how armor scales in the files you will see that armor is basically useless and does next to nothing.
It's hollow heart. I'm not using my opinion.

[senitewolf]

I know you wrote "ignore the evolution", but the only time you could do that is if you have already all your weapon slots full, since being the support for an evolved weapon is a huge part of making a support item worthwhile, so you should always pick Hollow Heart usually.

Should you indeed have picked all weapons already and none is the whip, it depends. If you run a low base health pool char like Poe, armor is better. That is due to the Heart increasing HP by %, instead of adding a flat value.
If you run a regular health pool char it does not really matter, unless you have issues with the exploders in Library (in which case armor is better). That is simply due to the lack of invulnerability frames, which means a "hit" from enemies touching you occurs basically constantly. With damage coming in that fast it means the damage reduction armor is granting is basically as useless as the heart for keeping you alive for more than a couple of seconds past the 15-20m mark, should you find yourself getting overrun (which is the only really trouble in this game).

[Spawnling]

Spinach kill them before they come close ;)

Edit: Buy 1-2 points of armor for gold instead of using an item slot during a run. Armor only helps against chip damage, which is very low to begin with. Wasting an item slot for it isn't worth it, as nearly every other item is better.

[little Star]

Originally posted by Codester:

If you look at how armor scales in the files you will see that armor is basically useless and does next to nothing.
It's hollow heart. I'm not using my opinion.

What exactly are you talking about. it literally states what it does. It reduces damage taken by 1. And in the files it also is stated at 1 damage per armor, unless you saw something else?

it works the best early game because most things do chip damage, it's useless late game cause you aren't hit anyway.

[Donathan Cheadledge]

Originally posted by little Star:

Originally posted by Codester:

If you look at how armor scales in the files you will see that armor is basically useless and does next to nothing.
It's hollow heart. I'm not using my opinion.

What exactly are you talking about. it literally states what it does. It reduces damage taken by 1. And in the files it also is stated at 1 damage per armor, unless you saw something else?

it works the best early game because most things do chip damage, it's useless late game cause you aren't hit anyway.

Assume poster is talking about how it compares to how enemy damage scales.

[Keter]

Health, the Armor just sucks and I rather have more hp.

[KushBerryJake]

the hollow hart evolves a weapon, where as the armor doesn't. that is the biggest factor for me when choosing items.

[bleak]

Originally posted by little Star:

Armor, by far, because it increases your effective health by so much it's not even a question.

Ex:
if you have 100+50 health, 0 armor and an enemy hits for 10 damage, you take 15 hits before you die
if you have 100 health, +5 armor and an enemy hits for 10 damage, you take 20 hits before you die

Most enemies that swarm you do chip damage and having even the +3 armor from upgrades makes such a massive difference it's crazy.

Good example, but you are too generous towards hollow heart. Early (~first 15 minutes) it's rather like enemy hits for 6, so if you get surrounded and didn't get enough dmg, with maxed hollow heart you are dead in several seconds, while with maxed armor, you can walk through enemy crowds and still be losing health rather slowly.

[DereiO_]

Originally posted by pi73r:

I was wondering:
Let's assume you have a crappy scenario where you have to choose between those 2 items.
Does anyone have any data what is actually stronger survivability wise (ignore the whip evolution)?

i would skip xd no i would take the heart

[DILL-AN]

Originally posted by pi73r:

I was wondering:
Let's assume you have a crappy scenario where you have to choose between those 2 items.
Does anyone have any data what is actually stronger survivability wise (ignore the whip evolution)?

it depends what stage of the run you're in, but lets say youre getting hit by like 30 enemies, just having the first stage of the armor perk immediately starts gaining you 30 life per hit, which is way way better than just gaining a static 20 health. Idk if theres something im missing becasue im new to the game but like, in my mind that works \(-_-)/

[pi73r]

Lol, I love how 95% of people fail to answer my question xD
I know how to play the game, it's too easy at the moment with all chievs being easy.
I was just wonderinng how 2 compare defensively. While on paper armor sounds good, in reality that 1 point of damage per level made me think that's pretty bad compared to 20% health.
I've actually had a choice today where I had these 2 and a 3rd bad passive :D