Steel Skin or Vampiric Aura or no DE? (in General)

Which would be better with my character? Which one will be better in the long run?

I've tried both SS and VA so far and they don't affect my fight list too much.

Personally, I am leaning towards VA because of the help it grants me against some GA characters. However, SS helps me survive the ranged rounds while my EBow does its work. Then again, I could simply invest more XP in Evasion instead of training a DE.

VA imo

The AC from SS will help you versus GA too. How many levels would you have to train of each to get full effect?

What if any tattoo will you use in the future?

If none, I would say save the xp and put it into HP.

Cube: I have to train just over 1/8 of my HP level wetter I use VA or SS. Why?

Ranger: I will probably use an RoBF if I switch to a tattoo. But that will not be for a LONG while. So maybe dropping the DE makes more sense.

I thought the amount of VA you have to train was based on your damage.

Cube: It is. And the level I need is about the same as the amount of SS I need. It's just a coincidence.

1 - 186/477 = .61
1 - 186/597 = .69

.8/.69 is a 11.5% reduction in damage versus Physical with SS.
VA will give you 20% of your damage in health.

I'd probably go with VA if anything just because it'll work versus Mages just as well as versus Tanks, and you don't have any big AC items so I think it gives a better survivability.

And what if he puts all that xp into HP.

Non dispellable HP.

As he said 1/8th so a 12% increase in HP, in other words definitely don't do SS especially with the TSA regen.

TSA regen would go up by about 3k per round.

Since VA is trained to your damage, that's 120k ish damage, so 24k HP gained per round. Depends how many of your enemies have DM, as well as how many rounds they/you last.

If you last 6 melee rounds or more typically then go with VA. 6 melee rounds seems to be about your minimum. However, considering half these people probably have DM, as Ranger said go with HP.

"Since VA is trained to your damage, that's 120k ish damage, so 24k HP gained per round."

Rectification: That 24HP *per hit* per round. So it can stack up pretty quickly. Against non-DM chars, it can and does make all the difference.

With this in mind, is pure HP still the best solution?

Rectification of the rectification: 24K HP per hit per round (not 24HP).

So It would mean that I regain all the untrained HP by round 3 of melee if I double hit. Round 2 if I hit more often.

Whoops, forgot about that. Nice catch. It's pretty hard to say then. VA sounds pretty tempting.

Against Walls, Evasion, and DM - VA of course won't be very good, but maybe it would let you fight up higher against people without those.