Armour vs Toughness, which is best? ( Healers )

[Lileldys]

On live, the meta seemed to be to stack armour on your healers, but that was T4, and with us being in T3, is toughness better or is armour better?

I've personally always leaned on the side of stacking toughness. With magic classes being unaffected by armour, Witch Elves and Witch Hunters ignoring armour on their main spam, Slayers and Choppas stacking Weapon-Skill, and Mara/WhiteLion debuffing armour, is it worth throwing my hard earned gold at armour talismans or am I better off getting toughness talismans?

If I stack the +99 armour talismans ( blue lvl 20s, fairly priced ) I can get my WP to 2800ish armour rating, giving 80%~ Physical Resist ( I know its capped at 75% ), with 270ish toughness
If i stack the +16 toughness ( Same as other talis ) My WP has 2100ish armour, giving 60% Phys resist, but with 400 toughness
Both are using the armour prayer.

If anyone has done the maths, are there certain thresholds where armour becomes better than toughness, and vice versa? Which is better for current T3? Which is better for T4?
Am I a scrub for thinking toughness is better?

Many Thanks

[Toldavf]

Armours going to be best unless you can get 800 toughness. Just remember to keep your detaunt up or you will still die fast. The current biggest armour debuff is 1400+ a rather hefty lump of armour having 2800 armour give a really nice buffer to the debuffs with detaunt no single dps should threaten you as always though don't get cocky 1 dps turns into a train unpleasantly fast.

Witch elves shouldn't be to much of a problem after FP drops just keep facing them if you cant kite off

You already seem to know your stuff so I don't know why im lecturing you bad habit maybe

[SilverWF]

Tier 1-2 - armor
Tier 3-4 - TOU

[Gerv]

This is going to sound like a brutal post but Initiative - get your crit chance low as possible, no good stacking armor if your getting critically hit 30% of the time.

[Sulorie]

Armor talis and init jewels.

[Jaycub]

Wounds will give you the same thing no matter what in terms of survivability.

1 wounds = 10 hp

However armor and toughness (and resists) work together and scale off each other and will give you different results based on how much of each you have and certain thresholds set by debuffs and buffs etc...

You would need to setup some math where you find that threshold of toughness/armor/resists values where it is equal to or greater than wounds of the same value, in terms of how long you would survive with each.

The problem with this is it is going to be different for all kinds of situations that you will find yourself in.

I think in a lot of these threads and what I personally subscribe to is that wounds is better than toughness GENERALLY on all classes that are cloth and light armor, with the exception of choppa/slayer. Otherwise toughness is just as good if not better on heavy armor, medium robe, medium armor. But there are even more exception like drawfs with their armor racial, possibly zealots/RP banking on always having their armor procs up, or slayer/choppa playing around having "good" rage management etc...

Classes that I can pretty much say for certain will always get more out of wounds than toughness: BW/Sorc, WH/WE, and probably AM and Shaman.


Still waiting on someone to do the maths tho :^)

[Lileldys]

This is going to sound like a brutal post but Initiative - get your crit chance low as possible, no good stacking armor if your getting critically hit 30% of the time.

My WP is using the renown reduced crit, shows in getstats and on character sheet, so presuming it works. Currently at 1.8% chance to be crit (before mdps crit chance addition)

I decked my RunePriest in armour and can survive the tank, choppa and mara(f their wounds debuff), but struggle with the rr40 welfs using inc+out heal debuffs

Still awaiting maths on toughness vs. armour....one day

[Omegus]

IMO at the moment if you play a light armour class then stacking armour generally isn't worth it - between weapon skill and debuffs (both -armour and ignore armour) your mitigation will be almost zero and it doesn't provide any additional protection against magic.

Armour

Devastator: 795 armour (from Arsenel of War's DB)
Armour Talis: 7x 99 (example used in OP) = 693
Potion: 577 (blue R30)

Total: 795 + 693 + 577 = 2065 armour, or 58.7% mitigation.

vs Marauder (same figures should apply to WL)

Cutting Claw: Debuff 1360 (I asked a sav-specced R32 mara in IC)
Impale: Ignores 519 armour if behind (same sav-specced marauder, so little-no mastery bonus)

Total armour bypassed: 1879 before weapon skill.

[Foltestik]

neither one will help you if your positioning is bad and you cant detaunt, if you play good you can go full WP and prekite melee dps, cleance sorc and GG
if you go full deff you heal ****, and 2 proper dps with same CC will kill you anyway

[Toldavf]

Don't, stack willpower