Point at which stacking VIT outweighs diminishing returns from STR (for armor)?

[Hellspawn]

I have a read a few threads on this but it seems like most people are guessing, unless I haven't found the right thread. Unless I am wrong, it seems like at some point, STR reaches a point of steep diminishing returns with regards to armor, at which point items should be sought that increase VIT instead (taking damage out of the equation for the moment).

Is this correct? At what point does stacking VIT help you stay alive more than stacking STR for armor?

[Elyxthaxzus]

I think the issue is it's not out there. Game is a week old, and Blizz is not releasing any info on it. Many of the theorycrafters are hard at work, but it's not like WoW, where people have had years to test and check the game, pulling old data, refreshing it with the new patch info, etc. It's also not like D2 where the bulk of the game was on your own computer, and you could RE to you hearts delight. Most the critical mechanics are on server side, hence most peeps don't know.

I personally think that the "balance" point will change depending on the mobs, level, and your current gear. As an example, in normal a3, I noticed that my health was way behind...I was dying in one or two hits frmo heavy hitting mobs. So i stacked a bit more Vit, and issue was taken care of. Upgraded as i went along, health was looking good...but in NM a2 I was again dying. This time I noticed that my DPS was behind, so I brought my weapon up to date, added some more IAS, threw in a few straight up damage buffs (rubies ftw), and things became a breeze again. i possibly could have tired to stack more Vit, but my gear was high in Vit as it was...I was sacrificing too much DPS at that point.

Perhaps theres' someone who has put a ton of work into the math, but I honestly don't think its out there yet. You'll just have to make an educated guess like the rest of us when you start to run into roadblocks.

[Sooru]

As you said it comes down to which mobs you are fighting, and with which skills. Basically you should always have enough vitality to survive whatever burst damage you cannot reasonably avoid (like getting vortexed into arcane beam or such) and when you reach that goal, stack armor, resistances and self healing instead. At that point with the heals you could theoretically go on forever, but with extra vitality you would only endure one more hit before dying.

[Doppel]

I think there are way too many different factors to give a straight answer, it's also very difficult or maybe even impossible to correctly value for example the extra increase in DPS strength would give, and that in turn would then affect for example life leech, or mob health, and so on,...
If you want to have a very limited and simplistic answer that doesn't include all of these factors then just look at the percentile increase in protection from strength versus the percentile increase in life from vitality. But again making any conclusions based on that would just be omitting everything else that's relevant and probably more important.
Personally i don't bother with even trying to calculate all of this, i just go with my intuition.

[galzohar]

STR, defensively-speaking (assuming you're not a barbarian) is never worth stacking. It just gives too little armor. If it was worth stacking, it would be just like vit - A linear stat that loses value the more you have, simply because increasing your HP by 1 is much more effective when you have 10 HP than when you have 10k. You have to think in EHP terms if you want to understand anything. If you don't understand EHP, just do a search...