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  1. #1

    Armour or Health?

    I was sure this would have been covered already, but I can't seem to find a straight answer on the forums - just the odd thread with one or two non-committal responses. As such, please forgive a silly question, but:

    If I want just borderline survivability and damage resistance, which helps me more - Armour or Health? Currently, I have mine split about 60/40 in favour of armour, but I could potentially drop a considerable amount of health in favour of armour with a few simple Recalibrations. The question, though, is "should I?" Near as I can tell, armour offers no specific damage resistance and merely serves as an extra non-regenerating health bar (not on its own, anyway) so it seems like the sum total of Health + Armour matters more than the specific breakdown. Other than Perks which offer bonuses based on total armour (which I don't have and might not for quite a while), is there a point to over-focusing on one at the expense of the other, or should I try and keep them somewhat balanced?

    Additionally, what about Armour-on-Kill vs. Health-on-Kill. My character in original Division was built entirely for Stamina and as much Health-on-Kill as I could manage (I think I had ~30% + Sustained). Given that health regenerates fully but armour doesn't and Armour-on-Kill still works with health missing, I suspect I should be focusing on this exclusively, but does that actually make sense? I'm still learning the game, so I'm not sure which way to go about it.

    And yes, I know that I'll never be "tanky" in this game, at least not with the more common builds I'm likely to have, but I'm mostly trying to get the most out of my health and armour. Well, and understand the system.
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  2. #2
    Goo-Goo-Man's Avatar Senior Member
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    Depends on your gear talents.

    If you run Beserk then you want very little armour and a whole lot of health. Conversely, with Unstoppable Force you want a whole lot of armour and a lot less health.

    All depends.
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  3. #3
    It depends on what you are going for on your build and what content you want to play.

    If you just want to play the pve content, without any specific build, armor is always better. Its the first thing that get damaged and its also the only thing you can heal with your skills and med pack.

    If you want to play the raid, its good to have at least a minimum amount of health, to survive the poison effect on the second boss.

    If you want to play a build with Unstoppable Force, you want as much armor as you can get.

    If you want to play a Berserk + Strained build, you want as much Health as you can get.

    Armor on Kill and Health on Kill are usually two attributes that can be ignored, since you actually need to kill first to get the effect. But there are still some talents which are nicely supported by those attributes, so again, it depends on your build.
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  4. #4
    Goo-Goo-Man's answer is right. But for most people, armor, armor, and more armor. Unless you are running gear with perks that give you more oomph if your armor is low.
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  5. #5
    Thanks for the responses, folks. Because I saw it brought up a few times - no, I have no intention of running perks which require low armour. While that might make for a better build, it's antithetical to how I like to build my own characters, so I'm going to want a lot of armour either way. That means - as I see it - focusing on armour at the expense of health. But not completely, because I still want to have some fallback. I'm still running on WT1 so exact health/armour values aren't going to be terribly useful, but I'll shoot for maybe 70/30 Armour/Health. Maybe drop a few low-value health mods for some high-value armour mods. Well, stats, rather.

    As to Armour-on-Kill, why is that bad? Yes, it requires a kill and that's not always a given, but I don't exactly have a lot of sources of perpetual healing besides that. I have a healing drone which works quite well for me so far, and I could use a Chem Launcher, but both of those are on a cooldown. Besides, I had a very robust build in The Division 1 which relied quite heavily on Health-on-Kill, since that game didn't have armour. I'm aware that I could also grab passive armour regeneration, but I've yet to find a regen buff that's worth considering. Generally speaking, I want to be able to "trade" with enemies at least a little bit, and that does require some amount of non Armour Pack healing. Especially since I'm likely not going to be using a very high-damage build.

    I get the gist of it, though. Armour > Health, unless I have Perks which either require low armour or high health. And even then, Health is still important even with high armour, just not to a great extent.
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  6. #6
    Armor can withstand bullets better, that's why health tends to melt quickly once your armor is gone. The exception are attacks that bypass armor such as poison gas. This is a gun game so expect bullets as the primary damage. Armor must be stripped first before AR health damage bonus can kick in.

    Typically, health-on-kill doesn't come into effect until your armor is gone whereas you normally lose armor first so armor-on-kill almost always is active. Obviously armor without condition is even better.
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  7. #7
    zigMAGNA's Avatar Senior Member
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    I usually want both.. and more of it dang it~!

    But for me Armor is priority.
    As many have said here it depends on your setup..

    For myself.. i built 3 Agents to WT5... 4th agent is just a simple mule for now.

    I have played with gears and different setups... I have gotten armor up to 340K range... and as low as 180K...
    I have also tried health at 30K.. all the way up to 130K...

    My main agent uses LMG and my 3rd Agent runs seekers explosive type build.. the seekers build is squishy compared to my main.

    I think the lowest I am comfortable with is 60K health..

    With my playstyle I like to flank the NPCs who try to flank me.
    I like to play aggressive whenever and wherever possible...
    So armor is my first line of defense and so I try to stack as much of that.. without sacrificing a minimum health amount that I am comfortable with.

    I also like hazard protection and try to have at least 25% in there.
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  8. #8
    Originally Posted by Malidictus Go to original post
    Thanks for the responses, folks. Because I saw it brought up a few times - no, I have no intention of running perks which require low armour. While that might make for a better build, it's antithetical to how I like to build my own characters, so I'm going to want a lot of armour either way. That means - as I see it - focusing on armour at the expense of health. But not completely, because I still want to have some fallback. I'm still running on WT1 so exact health/armour values aren't going to be terribly useful, but I'll shoot for maybe 70/30 Armour/Health. Maybe drop a few low-value health mods for some high-value armour mods. Well, stats, rather.

    As to Armour-on-Kill, why is that bad? Yes, it requires a kill and that's not always a given, but I don't exactly have a lot of sources of perpetual healing besides that. I have a healing drone which works quite well for me so far, and I could use a Chem Launcher, but both of those are on a cooldown. Besides, I had a very robust build in The Division 1 which relied quite heavily on Health-on-Kill, since that game didn't have armour. I'm aware that I could also grab passive armour regeneration, but I've yet to find a regen buff that's worth considering. Generally speaking, I want to be able to "trade" with enemies at least a little bit, and that does require some amount of non Armour Pack healing. Especially since I'm likely not going to be using a very high-damage build.

    I get the gist of it, though. Armour > Health, unless I have Perks which either require low armour or high health. And even then, Health is still important even with high armour, just not to a great extent.
    If you want proper healing besides skills and armor kits, you got either Patience, Blacksmith, Clutch or arguably Unbreakable to work with.

    Patience needs you to stay in cover, which shouldnt be that hard in a game that revolves around cover. Patience works only on armor though, but it benefits from Armor regeneration, which is also a way to heal yourself passivley, just not that effectively alone.

    Blacksmith is quite specific and needs you play with Pistol most of the times, but it is one of the talents i mentioned that benefits from armor on kill. Another talent would be Entrench.

    Clutch is usually used with the Berserk + Strained build and lets you facetank the enemys to some degree.

    Unbreakable is more of a safe mechanism, you can somewhat facetank but need enough damage to kill the last enemies of the encounter after Unbreakable triggered.
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  9. #9
    elkyri's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Malidictus Go to original post
    ..... but I'll shoot for maybe 70/30 Armour/Health.
    That's about where I am and it's working well for me.
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  10. #10
    i got 230k vs 40k.
    Health normally isnt something i rely on. because if you lost your armor then you are nearly dead. if you look on the buffs of weapons, you only see increased health damage on AR's or a plain bonus out of cover on lmgs.
    So not only is health mostly lower than armor but also goes away quicker.

    True, berserker and unstopable force ar thibgs to consider.

    My question is, how do you have easy recalibrations for armor on your items?
    Do you already have good attack values?
    I have to swap weapon damage or HS damage on my equip before even being able to think about something else.
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