Armor vs Health Vs Energy

So I recently saw a thread about armor vs health on heroes.

So I had a thought,

On your CHARACTER, what is your health/armor/energy balance and how effective do you find this to be?

What is your opinion on the better option? What health do you find as an ideal minimum? What is the lowest you'll have your energy cap on your main character for energy (e.g. 35 for a dervish, 70 for a monk, 30000 for an ele, etc. etc.) Same with your health.

What are the runes you put on your armor?

Discuss Armor vs. Health vs. Energy

On my (pve) monk in standard defensive set:
- 580 hp
- 60 + 8 + 10 vs x (shield) + 10 (insignia) +7 vs ele/phys (spear) = 95AL vs X when insignia condition is met.
- 25e

yeah..i like armor..

Max energy is not good, unless you're actually dependent on your max energy pool for something (enough energy to use a certain chain of skills, exhaustion effects). You're usually far better off with survivability mods.

Armor is better than HP for survivability.

Since I usually have an ST shelter rit or ER ele with me armor isn't that important. That takes care of the armor ignoring damage too which extra armor doesn't. Therefore I often use more major/superior runes on heroes and then get their hp back to ~550 with ins and runes.

Well, if you got ST anyways, there's no point in bringing up their health again... Shelter and Union actually get more effective the lesser health you have. So going by your logic, you'dd be better of with all +energy...

I'm not saying it's the way to go, but if your reasoning is: "I rely on ST and Union", increasing the health on your character is something that goes directly against that...

Just go with +armor, always. (And if you have multiple armor options, obviously take the one which nets most) The ONLY time you should run hp insignias is when you're going to spend a long time in an area with alot of degen/armor ignoring damage. The only time you should run energy, as Lemming pointed out, is when you run a "run, cast skills and get out" build, such as the W/N raptor farm. (Altough for that specific farm, you could also use armor and the asuran title)

And Ether Renewal.

I run +armour on all pieces most of the time, with +health when there're no good +armour insignia to use.

Assassin

All Health on armor with 5e on wep, do the math ;p

I have this on my gear 90% of the time.

Energy is easy as hell to manage, having the health as opposed to conditional armor is always best for me.

I run my warriors most of the time, and I've found a mix to be helpful. I always aim for a rune of major vigor + a couple runes of vitae for a health boost, and for insignias I like knight's insignia (reduces incoming damage) and at least one radiant insignia for just a couple extra points of energy. For a warrior, +2 energy is a 10% bump, which can be really helpful at times.

I find health boosts to be useful when aggroing balls of monsters because there's oftentimes a spike of incoming damage in the opening second of combat and surviving that is my first objective. I've been down in the region where I was only alive due to runes more times than I care to count at this point.

I'm starting to trend away from runes of vitae now that I have asura scan, however.

Having additional armor would be good anyway because it means that less damage packets will exceed the 10% maximum health limit thus the shelter spirit will last longer.

When using an ER Prot with infuse may be better investing in additional health because will result in a larger amount of healing.

For the most part, armour is better than health for staying alive. Most professions have decent armour insignia choices. Radiant runes are almost never worth it outside of a few select cases and even then, I don't think they're truly necessary. If you find yourself wanting more energy as a caster, even with what should be decent energy management, then buy a high energy set and learn how to weapon swap effectively.

There are times when there aren't any good insignias to use though:
A Barrage Ranger can't use Scout's and the rest are all vs single types - he could use Brawler's but then he has less armour when kiting.
An Elementalist not using enchantments can't really used Blessed (pretty rare though) - that said Blessed is still sort of viable because you should have prots flying around.
Similarly, a Monk not using Healer's Boon or Unyielding Aura may have difficulty choosing - as a Monk it's ill-advised to spam skills on recharge, negating the boost from Anchorite's - again Blessed is ok, especially if you have Prots.

All melee characters should be able to run Blessed since you should at least be running Strength of Honor (maybe not if you're in a PUG), Derv's obviously get Windwalker's and should always have enchantments and Warrior's can run Sentinel's because they already have lots of armour vs physical.

This. Always get your armor as high as you can with insignias then run health runes. Running armor insignias is like always having a prot on yourself, it preemptively saves health + energy

You can straight away ignore the energy insignias/runes, because Maximum energy=/= Energy Management.

Toss-up between AL and HP, and well, since most people use ST rits or PS... I'd definitely go health. Unless you suck at luring and placing your prots.

Ideal HP to have: more than zero.

My main is an Ele
min HP: ~600 (survivor insig)
min AR: 60 normal + 8 shield = 68 natural
min Energy: between 70 and 85
I enjoy sitting in the back and blowing stuff up.

I am a warrior.

I run Sentinel's and a +5 armor pommel on my swords. I have +10armor vs most damage types out there. HP is only good for heavy degen areas and armor ignoring damages.

I generally run +armor insignia (when there's actually decent ones to use) with HP runes. I play Dervish and Rit the most, and they're both fully kitted out with Windwalker's and Shaman's, respectively.

Most of my characters (main general purpose build) and nearly all of my heroes, have the same basic Insignia/Rune setup. (There are exceptions, of course, for particular builds)
In PvE, for most occasions, the particular setup doesn't matter that much. So, rather than jerk around and since I, personally, favour Health over armor (because of degen) so the setup is:

Head - Survivor - Major of main build attribute (e.g. Marksmanship)
Chest - Radiant - Minor of primary attribute (e.g. Expertise)
Hands - Survivor - Minor of 3rd attribute if req, or Vitae, or Attunement
Legs - Radiant - Vitae or Attunement
Feet - Survivor (Bloodstained on MM) - Superior Vigor (character) or Major Vigor (Heroes)

This results, if I recall, in each character getting +25 health and +5 energy. I know it's not very "special" of a setup, but it works for me.

Do you often dip to 30 HP? If no, armour all the way. If yes, you are doing something wrong and should still go armour all the way.

The only place where i could see health being favourable to armor would be an AT match where you know the opposing team is going to be playing an armor-ignoring (or mostly armor ignoring) spike build.

situational

but armor is the best

health if your against unconditional damage / unconditional spike damage

energy, unlikely you will ever need it unless your build is a energy vampire