[AM] Toughness over Armor talis?

[Throlla]

So RP and WP can ghet decent high armor. But elves in taoilored silk cannot

Will it make more sende to run like 400+ toughness on an AM? Mostly doing scenarios.

[lemao]

Toughness will basically do nothing if you dont reach a certain amount (like 700 + tough).
I would still suggest to slot armor talis or a mix of wounds + armor, as you prefer.

Also Runepriests usually don´t take the armor tactic, there is more valuable tactics.
You don´t really have a slot for it.

[PROsiak]

Let's consider some BIS setups u could run.
If u were to run armor, you could try 5p sov, 3p triumph (belt, gloves and jew) and 2p vw(boots and jew).
With 7 +136 armor talis it nets you 2578 armor, 3403 with 825potion. U get 11% reduced armor pen (6% from sov bonus, 3% triumph gloves, 2% sov jew). If u have fortress staff you also sit comfortably at 8k+ wounds, ~300 ini, ~200 toughness and a nice 18% heal crit bonus. 4th jewelery slot if probably best filled with gunbad diamond, to get 6% reduction i being critically hit.
What are the downsides of this setup?
U dont have ap recovery from sov7p/triumph4p. Only 6.5 ap per second from gear. Since u have ap drain it is managable, tho u may wanna drop that 2p vw setup for another piece of triumph and get 2p genesis for more healpower.
It's hard to run both funnel essence and eov without 6p sov. U have to sacrafice either puddle or magical infusion and u dont get to have res debuff or silence from eov path.
When it comes to armor it gives u limited defensives capabilites. Against witch elves, they have many abilities that allow them to pretty much ignore your armor. Mara's have a good armor pierce tactic as well. Idk about choppas and sh's, maybe armor is your best defence against them. Also 3k armor after 1/1.5k debuff is 2/1.5k armor and since every dps have some sort of armor penetration final value will be even lower (we may be lookin at values like 800-1200 armor, which translates to ~20% reduction in recieved damage).

Now the toughness setup.
There is a possibility to go for inv/triumph mix, although invader pieces are just the weaker version of the sov ones. So even if u end up with more toughness thanks to invader 4p bonus, you have lower stat values comparing piece to piece. And ideally u would wanna use The Sight staff instead of the fortress one for additional toughness. On invader setup it may be possible to squeeze around 500 tougness with 7talis, 620 with renown points and 700 with the potion. Probably a bit lower with sov. Plus is toughness works against all kinds of dmg and its not possible to bypass it.

U get to decide, tho my personal recommendation would be full toughness talis with sov(5-7p)/triumph(2-4) setup depending on whether u wanna use funnel essence and have additional ap recovery. Getting around 500-600 toughness with renown and pots, stacking crit reduction with futile strikes IV and good use of ur detaunts makes you pretty tanky.

[Throlla]

PROsiak - Thank you interesting info. I really wanna try the toughness setup. Seems solid

[BluIzLucky]

In most situations (e.g. not organised 24v24 or ranked) you are better off focusing on positioning and battle awareness and stacking wounds and heal crit/power, being too tanky let's you survive some situations you shouldn't have been in to start with, which if you are new can be detrimental to gittin gud.

That being said, you can defo turn your AM into this girl doing as Prosiak describes..

Spoiler:

And it's great if your main role is insta rez, puddles and EoV spam, while trying to survive 2 single target groups focusing you.

[Nameless]

For me armor is too expensive so I kinda go with toughness.
But for me best approach is mixing talis. The burst comes mainly from crits so lower chance of being critted is best defence imo, so 1-3 initiative talis is very handy. Depends of the gear setup 1-2 wounds will be needed to reach 8,5 hp or so and rest toughness.

[nocturnalguest]

Forum search function is kinda wacky so i struggle to find a math, but last i recall there was some proper analysis in old topics that concluded toughness is better all-arounder.
And indeed the only real content you may require such tankiness is probably city with 2 ST groups on you. However, yet again, your (and all other healers too) only real defense for that is positioning and movement.
Do not overdo it tho, stats should be balanced first and foremost.