When playing with my kids the other day, it occurred to me that not everyone understands how to evaluate the benefits of resistance vs. health offered when it comes to gear selection. I decided that I would write this quick tip. What you are trying to compare is the amount of damage it will take to kill you. I'm going to use ice because its a little simpler due to the fact that it resists everything. You can use the equation:
total damage to kill you = health / (1 - resistance)
You can then compare the answer directly to gear that only gives you health in order to get an idea of their relative value. The final decision is often more complicated than this, but its a good rule of thumb. Just a quick example:
one robe gives you +264 health, the other gives you +120 and 5% resist all. using the formula, tdtky = 120 / .95 makes the tdtky= 126. On its surface, it would seem that the robe giving +264 health is the better pick in terms of overall health.
You will still need to consider other factors, such as the amount of damage boost and accuracy it gives you. The importance of these factors depends on your play style, but in general, accuracy is more important for storm, fire, and myth, and damage is more important for ice, life, and death. Also keep in mind things such as 400 points of healing is effectively 421 points (using the same formula above) if you have 5% resistance to all but hopefully this will assist the newer players with gear selection.
lol my whole wizard experience i would only buy gear that gave the BEST health possible. so by lvl 46 i had more health that legendary storms(i am storm) about 200+ more to be close to it....then after a while i was thinking how much i would die in CL so i bought gear that still gives good health but also the best resist and other stuff so i pretty much have 2 sets of gear. first one: gives me roughly 2266 health and nothing else(possibly 5 resist to all) second one: gives 1867 health but also 37% damage, 27% resist, and 8% accuracy(all in the storm category) and i am now doing fine as a lvl 48 in CL, so good tips,and yes my playing style is always to try and upstage people by being better(kind of hard on a game like THIS)
