Is armor overrated?

I have tried the Marauder class since the beginning of the recent reset and since I had no experience in building one this is what I started with.

1st Build
Grace + BM + Reduced Mana
Determination + Hatred + Reduced Mana
Groundslam + Heavy strike + Added melee + faster attacks + IIQ
Enduring cry
Leap Slam

Build as follow but without the BM keystone.


This gave me something in excess of 14k Armor. I had overmaxed resists so i could handle a resist curse maps with -20 resists mod. However, I only had 2k hp. With 6 end charges, I was able to face roll pretty much all content, aside from some exceptionally painful +4 projectile lightning skellies/ chaos damage constructs , where i would not be able to leap slam blindly into mob.

However after running a day of maps with Jerk on the last day of the 1-week race, I realized that this build has a major weakness in that the mod that reduces or negates mana/hp regen would seriously gimp the damage as only Heavy Strike could be used even with ~2% mana leech.

This lead me to take the BM keystone as seen in the above build.

With this keystone, I dropped determination and hatred but with the links freed up from those auras i had this:

Grace + Reduced Mana
Groundslam + added fire + Added melee + faster attacks + IIQ
Heavy strike + added fire + Added melee + faster attacks
Enduring cry
Leap Slam

Now with determination gone, my armor dropped to about 9k. Despite this large drop in armor, I found that as long as I had 6 endurance charges, I was still able to face tank everything although at this point, my hp would fluctuate in more difficult maps.

This lead me to the conclusion that stacking armor to 10k+ is probably unneccesary as it seems to give diminishing returns and that it would be more profitable to stack hp nodes instead.

I would really like some comments and advice on what is the "max" armor you would need to have to run content with 6 endurance charges and whether or not it is more effective to stack armor like a moron aka me, or to get more hp nodes.

I do realize that there exists a balance between hp and armor, so perhaps the pros and cons of having varying amounts can also be commented on by the experienced people in the community.

TLDR;
What is the max armor you will ever need to reach with 6 end charges, and is hp a better defense stat to stack or armor.

P.S i would really appreciate if a modified passive skill tree could be shown on how to get 4K+ hp on a mara as I am unsure whether it is more effective to branch into the ranger or templar areas for the additional hp nodes.

Afaik, armor is the worst option right now. Just my experience. Armor hybrids or other options have always fared better.

Armour has always been the worst defense type, despite the evasion whining ;p

However, most armour users have strength as their basic stat, which is superior to dex or int and makes up for armour being bad.

Endurance charges are the best form of defense, and if you want the ultimate defensive character you should stack them with CI. Such a build is tricky to make, however.

Armour actually provides increasing returns to effective health under endurance, especially if you have more than 4 charges: link. The effects are profound.

The amount of armour you need changes depending on your situation: link

If you're using granite flasks, dropping determination makes your granite much less effective: link.

You won't notice a significant difference from 12k to 7k, as small hits just won't matter against high reduction. Your A/D to cap reduction at 6 endurance is 18 armour per point damage. At 12k armour you should be capping DR against up to 670 damage; at 7k, 390. Level 63 "estimated reduction" is based on 470 damage. "Average" hits are small, so going from over-cap to slightly under-cap (approx 85%) won't hurt much.

But now, when you meet a boss (or a +%critD mob pack!) and granite, if dropping determination pulls you below the reduction cap? It makes a huge difference. At 6 endurance, you need 36k armour to cap against a 2k hit - brutus slam, crit IPD rhoa charge? If you granite with determination to 36k armour, graniting without determination would only get you to 24k. You go from 90% DR to 80% DR, and take twice as much damage.

My model is correct according to the formulas provided in the mechanics thread. But there may be something a bit glitchy at the moment; my numbers don't work, and you actually need a bit more rating to cap reduction than I've suggested here.

Armour never has diminishing returns, even without endurance. It's always at least linear, and having endurance makes it scale up hyperbolically.

What it means is, stacking armour is a great option and works extremely well, as long as you can always cap your reduction with a granite flask against anything. You're right on one point: if you keep stacking armour, it'll stop benefitting you against small hits (which are 90% of what you face, right?) I already demonstrated that your old setup with determination is usually over-cap. But, the catch is: you need to always be near the cap. In an armour build you'll usually have a smaller life pool; coming off the cap even momentarily is dangerous. On the same note, you need to raise your resist cap. It's not optional.

Capping reduction against large hits is pretty comical. I made an armour-stacking templar that could granite to 60k armour under 6 endurance charges, and I could stand still in front of a map brutus. His slam took a sliver of my life, and his melee hits barely registered. I used to farm fusings by spamming merci vaal; face tank, granite when the mallet winds up, yawn and continue (before the determination change, even). No life build can do that.

Thanks for the replies. Now to help me to decide what armor/hp ratio to use, is there a link anywhere that gives mob damages?

nope, nothing official.

You just kinda have to experiment.

I tried a 2H Marauder build that stacked life/resist while mostly ignoring armor. It's kind of workable, since I managed to beat Hardcore Normal, though I can't be bothered to play through Cruel/Ruthless/Merciless yet again, only to be wiped yet again. But it turned out to be very vulnerable to swarms of fast attacking mobs (like Monkeys) of past level 25 or so.

Because of how armor works, it helps against those kinds of fast attackers. You might want to consider whether you are ever in danger against them without high armor.