Talk:Health/@comment-5877442-20160218233934/@comment-26231232-20160412141054

Let's take your example: a jungler takes a camp and he's at 80% health. If he has 1000 max health, he finishes the camp at 800 health, meaning he took 200 damage from that camp. If he bought Thornmail, he'd finish that camp with 900 health (100 armour cuts the damage you receive in half). If the gold he spent on that Thornmail (2350 gold) was instead used to buy health (let's say, Bami's Cinder and a Giant's Belt), he'd have 1000+300+380=1680 max health. When he finishes that same camp, he'll have lost 200 health, which leaves him at 1480 health, which is considerably healthier than 900 health.

One other very important thing to consider is that health is a defensive stat against physical, magic, and true damage. Health helps you survive all kinds of damage, while resistances are specific to either physical or magic damage. So, if you need to itemize against different types of damage at the same time, health is the way to go.

Last thing: you can't disregard effective health. Armour, health, and MR go hand in hand, and together they represent your effective health, which is the only defensive combat stat that really matters. Building only armour and MR isn't as effective in combat as building a combination of armour, MR, and health, simply because effective health is what you have to take into account when in combat.

So, all in all, you can prioritise whichever feels better to you. I would say, though, that health would be a better first stat, simply because in game there are various sources of damage, and health protects you against all of them, while armour or MR only protect against one. I also think your logic is fundamentally flawed, as you mentioned: you're thinking one stat is better than the other, while in reality they do not compete with each other. They complement each other.