Vitality Equivalents

[suffer]

I've been messing around with the EHP calc @ http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator

I want to make sure I understand the vitality equivalent section correctly. Under my character it says that 1 vit is equivalent to 1.89 res all.

So say I am searching for gear, and I come across two pieces with same stats except 1 has 100 vitality and the other has 50 resistance to all.

Essentially, the vitality piece is a better choice because the equivalent EHP from a res all piece would be:

100 / 1.89 = 52.9 res all.

Q1: Is the vitality piece the correct choice?
Q2: How do all my buffs (passives, impunity) factor into this decision?

(Edit: my actual res all vit equiv is 1.38 and to me it seems crazy that 1 resistance is barely worth much more than 1 vitality).

[Durikkan]

While yes, the piece with vit may give you more total ehp, depending on how much healing you get/use, res all might be a better choice, because increasing your total mitigation % effectively raises the power of heals you get. (if you had 50% mitigation, a heal for 100 would give you 200 ehp, etc. On my monk, a mythic healing potion that heals for 12,500 heals my monk for 396,500 EHP if you take dodge, armor and resistances into account.)

It looks like that should accurately reflect into that calculation if you've configured that calculator correctly.

[gakky]

I generally value
3 vita = 1 resist all
But it depends upon your build. Barbs do well with vita as they have so many % life heals. Potions and life on hit and life leech and healing skills are all fixed value meaning they work better with more resist/armour/dodge/block. Vita is not as good as it looks.

[Alkyen]

if 1 vit is worth 1.89 all res then 50 all res is equivelent to 94.5 Vit (50x1.89). this is without having in mind how much HP you heal during battle

if the stat is 1.38, then 50 all res is 69 vit. your resistances should be decent if that's the case.

[krischan]

These numbers with 2 digits after the decimal point make no sense. They provide an illusion of precision where there is none. There is no fixed factor, it depends on the situation.

Resists are obviously better versus versus enemies with many weak attacks or continuous damage than versus those with low speed, but massive damage. If Belial hits you, even good resists will probably be next to irrelevant, unlike vit, but they will help well if the Butcher fires his grill. If the fire eats up all life in 10 seconds, an increase in vit might make it 15 seconds, but an increase in fire resistance might make you immune.

[Karth]

These numbers with 2 digits after the decimal point make no sense. They provide an illusion of precision where there is none. There is no fixed factor, it depends on the situation.

Resists are obviously better versus versus enemies with many weak attacks or continuous damage than versus those with low speed, but massive damage. If Belial hits you, even good resists will probably be next to irrelevant, unlike vit, but they will help well if the Butcher fires his grill. If the fire eats up all life in 10 seconds, an increase in vit might make it 15 seconds, but an increase in fire resistance might make you immune.

What you're describing is more similar to how dodge and block work out than resistance. Resistance and armor can be directly equivalent to vitality as they are multiplicative with each other in determining how much damage you can absorb. At certain points, yes, vitality can be more effective at mitigating bursts of damage as it is often easier to get more effective hit points through that, but without resists to back it up it even 60k hp can be very ineffective - I've watched a wizard with that much getting one-shot by trash in A2 inferno because she had no resists to speak of and wasn't using Energy Armor to buff her armor either.

[krischan]

You mean, the more vit, the more damage will be absorbed by resists?

Do you have links with the formulae? I admit that I haven't cared that much about statistics so far.

Anyway, if Belial makes one attack every five seconds, resists will absorb less damage than being on the Butcher's grill for that long because resists will be applied more often than once every 5 seconds then.

But yes, the point isn't bonus life versus resists, but vit vs. resists, so if vit has other effects than bonus life, my comparison might not be all of it.

[Karth]

Well, the logic of that statement ("the more vit, the more damage absorbed by resists") seems a bit backwards to me though mathematically it works.

Effective HP = HP * (100/(100-Mitigation)), Mitigation is both your DR and Res (Mitigation = 1-(1-DR)*(1-AR))

Perhaps the problem is that you're looking at armor/res as if they're reducing damage by an integer? They reduce it by a percentage; the reduction in damage is proportional to the amount of damage in a hit. 50% is 50%, whether against five 100 damage attacks or one 500 damage attack.

[buralien]

They reduce it by a percentage; the reduction in damage is proportional to the amount of damage in a hit. 50% is 50%, whether against five 100 damage attacks or one 500 damage attack.

While this is true in general, it makes a huge difference to someone who has only 200HP but is able to heal between those 5 attacks.