usefulness of armour

Armor has no effect on skills, whether it be Regulus' mines or TB's fireball.

Stacking health or armor really depends on who you are up against. TB depends mostly on his skills for damage, which would not be resisted by armor, so stacking health would be better. UB, however, often depends on his auto-attack, so stacking some armor couldn't hurt. Overall, however, I usually stack health rather than armor, since most of the damage you'll be taking will come from skills. But that's just me.

anything that is an activated ability counts as "spell damage" and ignores armor. so pounce, mines, ooze, bite, all of that ignores armor. 

everything else is mitigated by armor. so thats demigod weapon attacks. and all damage dealt by minions, creeps, and towers.

alot of players like to focus on health for two reasons. first is that demigod spells are the main source of burst damage, which is the primary threat to your immediate survival at least until the late game (when large minion armies or demigods with powerful artifacts that boost weapon damage come into play). second is that its just a quirk of the items in the game that are somewhat more high quality health focused items than armor focused items. 

but armor is still useful. in particular Scalemail is a pretty good starting item (though it will probably be replaced by midgame) and Nimoth Chestguard is a great item in general thats useful throughout the game. other armor granting pieces are a bit less good but for Generals with minions Plate of the Crusader is pretty strong. Groffling Warplate is pretty good for assassins but it costs too much so most players just get Nimoth as their one and only armor boosting item. 

thanks for the indepth answers

my suspicions were confirmed.

but i find armor is needed for defending againist crit noobs

Personally, I always buy Nimoth Chest Armor AND Hauberk of Life, since 750 armor, 1100 health, and +10 health per second for only 3250 gold is too good a deal to pass up. I usually end up:

Gauntlets of Brutality

Vlemish Facegaurd

Plenor Battlecrown

Nimoth Chest Armor

Hauberk of Life

and then buy a Heart of Life and citadel upgrades. Oh, and TP scrolls and locks, of course.

Armour starts to lose its effectiveness at a certain point, as it increases in a square root slope(if someone gave me the values, I could calculate the slope...). After that point, armour becomes less and less effective. HP on the other hand will always be useful.

this old nugget again. armor does not lose effectiveness. what you're seeing is the number "% mitigation" appears to grow at a decreasing rate as armor increases. this is because the armor formula is % mit = 100 x (1 - (2500 / (2500 + Armor)))

but that quantity is deceptive and not what you really care about. increases in armor are compounded on existing mitigation so the gain is linear if what you measure is Time To Live, which is a much more reasonable thing to care about. its not really about how much less damage you're taking its about how much longer you're living.

for example:

if your mitigation is at 80% and you're taking 100 DPS you're only going to lose 20 health per second. if you increase that mitigation from 80% to 90% you won't be losing 20 health per second, now you're only losing 10 health per second. you only increased your mitigation level by +10% but your time to live just doubled!

so yea, math and stuff, blah blah blah. 

conclusion: armor provides linear constant increases in Time To Live at all levels of armor. don't pay attention to the apparently diminishing rate of increase of the quantity %mitigation. its not telling you anything useful. 

Transitive, yeah, but if the enemy is using abilities most of the time, than armour doesn't matter so much. For example Regulus with Mines and Angelic Fury. Or Rook with tower spaming.

armor is good, here is my experience

i played a 1v1, started at lvl 20, had 20k gold each

i was reg, the other player was UB

ofc being a stupid noob i got ashkandor right off the bat.

the UB got all armor items.

i do no damage to him what-so-ever and got owned.

i learn my lesson and left.

Towers do not ignore armor, even rook towers.  In fact, if you see a tower rook, getting armor is one of the best things you can do. 

I'm usually erebus so I lean more towards armor [usually ones that buff minons] for 2 reasons:
1.) I often teleport deep behind enemy lines to finish people off, resulting in massive tower fire.  To get out alive, armor helps tremendously.
2.) My bite gives me something like 750 health back.  It's tough for me to explain exactly what I mean, but when I have a lot of armor that 750 health is a lot more significant than 750 health without armor.

Didn't know that, i thought the EVERYONE's ablities are considered as armour ignoring dmg (magic dmg). So Rook's towers do physical dmg. Any other demigods abilities that do physical dmg instead of magic dmg?

Imo, this a major fault of the game, not telling you what abilities are ignoring armour and what not...How can a new player (noob) know this? He gets his ass kicked, he doesn't know why and then he rage quits. Not good, imo...This should be corrected.

idd

more stats and info is better.

make it an option to enable detailed stats and ability descriptions.

games are complicated systems with rules. a good gamer knows this and knows that to master the game he must acquire a deep understanding of the rules. coming to the web (this here forum here) and asking questions is the best way to learn. a clutter of in game documentation would just make the game ugly and overwhelming. the community and the players are responsible for the education of noobs. they can learn this stuff the same way we did (examining LUA files, careful observation, controlled testing, etc.) or they can just ask people who know. 

 The ability is summoning the tower - the tower attacks themselves arn't abilities. They're just another form of minion.

The Rook towers code wise are exactly the same as the "normal" towers, just with some added timing code for "decaying".

towers can't move  so they arnt a minion  u can't control who they attack either

Yes you can.

Ok, so does anyone know for certain if Angelic Fury is ignoring armour? Because on regulus you can use it as an auto-attack replacement, with some mana gear...

How about rooks passive weapon upgrades (archers, catapult, etc)?

Imo, i don't think is normal to look in the lua files in order to know this stuff. For example, look at QoT, Compost vs Entourage: how do you know which one is best for health and dmg for the Shamblers? Compost doesn't say how much dmg and health gives to the Shamblers. It's not normal for this kind of game, to not know exactly what an ability does, without searching the web for people who know to read the lua files. Especially for a game that's supposed to accessible and all...

teseer u can't i tried a few secs ago

hmm wingd doesn't by pass armor  it is more like a passivebuff  with a slow drain on mana  it increases the dmg so if ur armor is the same as the ammount it increases it would seem it does

Your right, I just tried too.

Angelic Fury is a bonus to normal attack, it is mitigated by armor. 

Rook's Towers do not count as minions. they don't benefit from minion upgrading gear and they can't be controlled. they're like map towers (although they do not benefit from the Citadel upgrades that affect map towers). 

so s1foo was right on both of those counts, despite not actually using a single complete sentence or punctuation mark, he knows whats up.

Rook's Shoulder turrets are equivalent to the type of damage dealt by a map tower (arrow towers, tower of light, trebuchet towers) and they are mitigated by armor. 

@ DeadGhost,

looking the LUA files is only way to discover this stuff. you can always just test it in game. check the tooltips, check healthbars and stuff, use your gut, whatever. LUA files are just a bit more reliable is all, since its the raw data and isn't going to be affected by stuff going on in game that you might not be aware of. 

and for the record, Compost gives a much lower bonus to Shamblers than Entourage. 

i wish u could i would kill  enermy demis alot easier

and get killed a lot easier.

transitive you spelt my name wrong  there is a i  in my name s i 1foo