Maximum Life vs Total Armor

Hello everyone. Lvl 100 barb. Armor 10133, Life 18244. I can kill Duriel though it’s slow and kinda difficult. And the highest NM dungeons I can reasonably handle, are lvl 75.

I’m considering, trying to reach armor 13200 as a “permanent” thing. Because it guarantess cap damage reduction even highest enemy lvls (150). Right now, I easily reach that with the Disobedience aspect while fighting. But I would like to stop using that aspect, add something for more damage as I’m rather weak in that front.

Helm gives me +1310 life (that’s the cap for the item power lvl), in Enchanted mod. I think maybe I could aim for cap +% total armor, on that mod. That should give me around 29%, which should translate to around +1850 armor.

So, given the circumstances… What’s better? Keeping +1310 life, or gaining +1850 armor?

Please, don’t make suggestions that ignore my question and go off on tangents, like suggesting I redo half my build. With all due respect, that’d be wasting your time.

Thanks.

Probably max life, as armor doesn’t help for non-physical damage.

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Damage Reduction would prove to be more useful honestly. Assuming you don’t already have it on all gear that can roll it. There comes a point where your armor can only do so much and unless you can get up to 30k life you’re not surviving everything without some DR.

2 Likes

I’m going to second what Iggi said, if you are low on damage reduction I’d start adding some of that on. It compounds on top of your base defenses like armor and is not reduced by enemy level.

Dont forget life scales your fortify skills now as well.

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you should be getting +66% from disobedience. so to hardcap prior to disobedience seems like a waste. i would go with the max life personally

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Easy choice for me with Life as much as possible.

New dungeons will probably be higher level than NM100 but you can still achieve the new highest armor requirement with disobedience.

I would say life for this specific instance. If this helps however, my sorcerer is like 12k hp, 12.5k~ armor and max dr and while it is slow, damage I do not take.

Ok. Thanks everyone. There are multiple points I wasn’t considering and are significant to me. And that’s helpful.

  1. Life is for ALL forms of damage, unlike armor.

  2. The “damage reduction” mods. I should’ve suspected those are linear, so monster lvl doesn’t reduce them. Ergo, they can complement armor nicely. ALSO, I’d assume they reduce damage armor doesn’t (non-physical). I have been neglecting those to some extent, I believe. Except for a couple aspects (I think Might and Iron Warrior).
    I don’t have any in the “+x% damage reduction” mod, specifically. I should check to see how high each mod can roll in each gear, and hunt for those. Also, see if something on the paragon board can boost the better damage reduction mods (I have some, but not much).

  3. New NM dungeons will likely mean I’ll end up needing even more than 13200 armor, thus meaning I shouldn’t discard Disobedience so easily. At least, keep a good gear option with that aspect around.

About Fortify… I just avoid that. It feels like it requires too much micromanagement for my taste and for the benefit it gives, specially considering I’d have to sacrifice other things to give it the focus it needs.

Wow… I have 13.5 life, but only 9k in armor even if I got max armor on every piece that can have it. I don’t have every gear at 925, most of them are around 8xx due to impossibility to Futher improve my gear (simply bad luck, every 9xx gear I found had 1/4 good stat at max).

How do you achieve 12.5k armor?
Which is cap for DR?

Thanks

At high level, you need to mitigate % damage, more than armor. There are great post with this point. GL!

Here’s my horrible incinerate build. Changed out helm aspect for armor on hit. Regardless 85% is cap.
http s://maxroll.gg/d4/planner/6i2cd0mi

Is this before or after Disobedience stacks? You want to have at least 15K going into Aoz.

Armor isn’t Life, but that amount of armor will significantly increase what’s called your “effective life.”