Health vs armor: a breakdown

[Bainemo]

Wondering which stat is better? Then this post is for you!

Armor is a fairly complex algebraic formula that essentially breaks down thusly: At 50 armor, you take 20% less damage. At 200, you take 50% less. At 600, 75%. So as you can see, armor becomes less effective with each point.

Now, what does this mean in relation to health? Let's say you have 400 health. 200 armor would be exactly equivalent to another 400. 50 armor would be the same as another 80. To figure out how much the next point of armor will give you, plug this into wolfram alpha:

y = (1 - (200 / (200 + x))) * 100

Replace x with your armor value. Then do it again with one more. The difference between the two is the equivalent percent increase in health. For example, if you plug in 50, y should equal 20. If you do it again with 51, you'll get (the stupid version of) 20.3. That means your next point of armor would give you another .3% health. This is not very much unless you have a ton of health.

So essentially health is far more important than armor until VERY late in the game. In my example of 50 points of armor, in order for .3% to be equal to 10 you would require 3333 health. That is a lot. In fact, assuming equal gold cost, you shouldn't even bother getting a single point or armor until you have nearly 2000 health (ignoring the fact that you need that point to finish the manor), as 1 armor brings you from 0 to .5% reduction. Things get a little more nebulous when it comes to actual armor pieces, but it's generally pretty safe to go for straight health until the end of NG+ at the earliest.

There is one caveat however: vampirism. 100 health with 50% reduction is the same as 200 health in terms of how much damage you can take, but with one vampirism it would take twice as many kills to fully heal yourself with the flat health option. A heavily vampiric build should get armor much earlier than other builds or the health you leech will be less effective.

[Pixel Peeper]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Woudo:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Health regained from, say, Vampirism, is a lot more valuable if your character has Armor.

And health regained from drumsticks is a lot more valuable with Health.

Hah, but that's the thing. Getting 50% more HP from chicken because you've got 50% more max HP isn't any better than getting normal HP from chicken but having that HP go down 33% slower. The benefit from that drumstick ends up being the exact same. Armor makes *all* HP more valuable, including those received from drumsticks.

Don't get me wrong, HP upgrades really are better than Armor upgrades early in the game, but people come here with their math and forget really important factors.

My last two characters (a Dragon and a Paladin) both regenerated well over 10 times their initial HP pools via Vampirism, and my Armor affected *all* of that HP to make it 33% more valuable. That's pretty crazy.

[Haber Haber Haber]

This should be really helpful! Thanks

[TITOMOSQUITO187]

I figured armor worked something like this. Early on I have been just buying HP and getting armor by purchasing upgraded armor from the Blacksmith to get my actual Armor points since it doesn't impact the cost of items in the castle when you buy here. So essentially I consider all the runes and armors you can buy to be "Free" upgrades in that sense early on to give more benefits.

Of course you get stuck having to buy the weight limit skill more often this way, but as long as you aren't using all vampire armor our health will stay pretty high. I use a lot of Vampire runes if I happen to get them and move to higher defense armors if I can. Losing about 200 points of HP wearing vampire armors is kind of sucky early on. xD

[Taek]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Xanoptic0n:

Bit of a bump for new players and I was wondering if farming armor upgrades from chests was an option, is 100% damage reduction possible? The answer is no it's not, if this is thread true, to get 90% damage reduction you will need 1800 points. 95% = 3800. 99% = 19,800 and 99.9% you will need 199,800 armor points.

100% is impossible because maths :P

can't wait to farm that extra 199,500 points of armour from the chests

[ShinkuTear]

What is the highest Armor count you can get anyway? How much damage reduction does that give? What about with less Armor boosts from equipment?

The More You Know~ sorta thing :P

[Tealtyr]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Fabiohobo:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Xanoptic0n:

Bit of a bump for new players and I was wondering if farming armor upgrades from chests was an option, is 100% damage reduction possible? The answer is no it's not, if this is thread true, to get 90% damage reduction you will need 1800 points. 95% = 3800. 99% = 19,800 and 99.9% you will need 199,800 armor points.

100% is impossible because maths :P

can't wait to farm that extra 199,500 points of armour from the chests

It caps.

[Taek]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย spaghetti-sensei:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Fabiohobo:

can't wait to farm that extra 199,500 points of armour from the chests

It caps.

My dreams are ruined now

[f3y]

Thanks a lot for the information.

[Larva]

Awesome! Thanks for the info!

[Tealtyr]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Fabiohobo:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย spaghetti-sensei:

It caps.

My dreams are ruined now

You are welcome.