Assuming neither armor nor res is subject to diminishing returns, you don't have to head for any ratio at all. You can simply look at each individual affix and by how much it increases your EHP. Since 80@ is better than 400armor, this would mean that allres affixes are vastly superior to armor affixes. Everthing under the assumption that the claim from the OP is true

This post was edited by Kasiir on Jul 30 2012 06:14am

Well, this chart explains it much better than I ever could with words.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ag4BdvmMzezudEFJTUpBYU54aFZCX3JlcHhqSVhwOEE&output=html

Found that in some thread from US forums way back, will try to find that thread again.

And yes, AR is a far superior affix in nearly any case. However, sometimes you have to choose between losing 10-20 AR and gaining some armor instead

This post was edited by Blodulf on Jul 30 2012 06:55am

Well obviously there is a difference, and in my eyes having 900 all res with as low as 4.5k - 5k armor (as a dual wielding monk) will be utter trash and have close to no effect and it'll be like cutting butter in the sun on a hot day. Meanwhile just lowering the res by a 100 and upping your armor to 5.5k - 6k and all of suddenly you are the largest tank in the game (Yes even vs Ghom I notice a SIGNIFICANT difference between 6k armor and 7.2k armor with his psn cloud, so armor directly affects the resistance DR?).At some point there has to be a breakpoint as when to select one of the two stats, the lines must cross and it shouldn't be too complex to illustrate this through a simple graph (no I ain't familiar with the mathematics more then the simple formulas).

edit: Isn't armor supposed to reduce the incoming dmg that you take from any Melee/ranged attack and have nothing to do with say desecrator/poison? As this really contradicts the given example above vs Ghom). Else any char with 1200-1300 all res with 0 armor would tank Ghoms psn cloud, which isn't the case.

This post was edited by CorZor^ on Jul 30 2012 07:19am

So this sheet contradicts your thesis, doesn't it?
If the ratio changes, both stats cannot scale in a linear fashion regardless of anything else.

Posted a chart just above your post, that should clarify how armor and res work together.



Not at all. The point I was making was that armor and resistances don't suffer from diminishing returns. Diminishing returns = the idea that point 100 would be worth less than point 99. The fact that stats have different weights in different situations when compared to eachother doesnt change this.

For example, say you have 3000 armor and 300 res. 50% reduction from both, meaning a hit for 1000 will be reduced to 250. 75% effective reduction.
With 10k hp your effective hp is thus 40k.

Adding 300 res you'll have 66.66% from res, effective reduction is now 83,33%. EHP will now be 60k, 300 res added 20k to your EHP.
Add another 300 res and you have 75% reduction from res, effective reduction is now 87,5% and EHP is 80k. Adding another 300 res from that point still increased your EHP linearily.

See what I mean? If anything they increase in value when combined.

This post was edited by Blodulf on Jul 30 2012 07:27am

so
300res + 3000armor = 50%dr+50%dr = 75%dr

what adds more,
100@res+1000armor or 200@res
400res=57.14%dr
4000armor = 57.14%dr
total = 81.63%dr

500res=62.5%
+3000armor
total = 81.25%dr

but ofc the topic is good
its logic that you need 100% more defend if you wana bring armor dr from 80 to 90
and example above shows that its verry small diferance to try to get res+armor same amounth
better foccus on things that get boosted bye your skills ( a barb that leap-iron impact alot, will benefit more from defend then a barb that does not, the ones that does not, could better foccus also on @res)

Yes ofcourse, how to utilise this depends entirely on your class mechanics. The purpose of this post was to kill the misconception that resistance and armor diminishes in value if you pass a certain softcap. A frightening amount of people still seem to believe going beyond ~800 res is pointless since it "diminishes".

I see what you mean, but I think it is better to say that:
In fact they DO suffer from diminishing returns but EHP mechanics makes up for that.

What this means is that:
1. Keeping armor and res in relation has some importance. It is not true that a fixed amount of armor (or res) always adds that same amount of EHP, because the gain of EHP depends on your res (armor).
2. Dodge from dex with its diminishing returns benefits from the exact same thing and, while I didn't do the math, I assume blizzard will have made it scale in a similar fashion
3. Block chance/amount scales super-linear. There is a linear increase in reduction and by the same logic there is a rising gain in EHP.
4. If stuff like damge reduction vs meele/range/elites works additively, it scales super linear

This post was edited by Kasiir on Jul 30 2012 07:39am

I don't quite understand what you mean. How exactly DO they suffer from diminishing returns? The effect of 1 res is always the effect of 1 res no matter how much res you have, IE, there's no diminishing returns. Same goes for armor, and yes, same thing goes for dodge since that to has a linear formula. Reduction from block actually increases exponentially with each point, its not linear at all. Same thing with damage reduction vs melee/range/elite, each point is worth more than the last, its not linear at all.

Bumping this to purge misconceptions.