Which is more important health or defense?

[Yu Zhang]

when equip the weapon and germ, which one is more important?

health or defense?

like 70 health or 15 defense

[FluffNStuff]

Still trying to figure this out, but note that the 15 defense also includes 30 health.

[Ripper McGee]

I'm only level 13, so take that with a grain of salt, but I find my odds of surviving PvP (which I'm playing a lot) have increased significantly once I started emphasizing defense vs. health (I have at least 100 less health now than I did before, but do much better in PvP now).

[Late]

depends on your passive skill

[Wererhino]

I prefer defense. On a side note, skills cost health but it's a % of your total health so more hp doesn't mean more skills.

[Zel]

I'm 19 now and i use a full Redoubt set (all defence) and the extra 100 health passive. It's working great for me in pve and pvp. I thought about stacking health, but the cost of your skills scales with your maximum health so stacking it didn't seem as viable.

[FluffNStuff]

I prefer defense. On a side note, skills cost health but it's a % of your total health so more hp doesn't mean more skills.

Sort of, but it becomes a gray area when combined with combat. Consider if you fire off 3 skills. Even though it is an equal percent, you will have more health left on a higher health toon to keep you from getting wiped. Btw, is the % based on full health or current health? If it is the former, you could end up doing serious damage to yourself when you are low and need to fire off a skill.

[Zel]

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SENARIO:
Using a skill that costs 20 health on CD (lets say a 10 second one) and taking 15 damage a second from enemies.
You are not retreating, nor do you have any blood packs.

1000 health
10% damage reduction

After 20 seconds of combat you have taken 310 damage and have 690 health left.
You can take about another 46 seconds of combat before death.

500 health
20% damage reduction

After 20 seconds of combat you have taken 280 damage and have 220 health left.
You can take about another 14 seconds of combat before death.

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Of course this senario is completely contrived, and we assume that the stat weights on items means that stacking health will net a 200% gain in life just like stacking defence would net a 200% gain in damage reduction...probably not the case.

I just wanted to run some numbers myself, just for fun.

It does illuminate FluffnStuff's point quite nicely though. hah!

What i do recommend, now having done a few numbers, is that it would be wise to get your health up to a level where enemy damage is a small enough % of your health that spamming skills feels like the larger contributor of damage taken (or a level that feels comfortable) THEN start packing on some defence.

EDIT: Working on the assumption that skill tooltips update dynamically (as taking off an item immediately changes damage/health cost), using skills in town (which has been reported to reduce health) does not alter the cost of skills on the tooltip. This leads me to believe that skill cost is tied to maximum health, not current.