Stats

[Concillian]

One thing to note is that in Nightmare your resistances are halved. If you look on the Character Screen, under Details, if you have 20% resistances when you hover your mouse over them it will state 10%. I imagine it is further halved in Hell, and perhaps again in Inferno? Not 100% sure at this point (I'm only in NNM Act III). So, in that sense +STR and +Armor seem to be the best options by far for non-caster classes. Armor reduces damage flat out from all sources, and does not suffer penalties in at least Nightmare.

Well that is interesting.

I checked out 5k armor and 100 INT vs. inferno level monsters (level 65) and this is what I came up with. This was not taking into account what you just mentioned here about difficulty level reducing resistances:

38.2% reduction
Add 100 armor = 37.8% reduction (1.2% better)
Add 100 INT = 37.1% reduction (2.9% better)

The gap will widen with high armor. At that point INT is over double the defensive value of STR for a barbarian, however, if resistance is quartered. then they are going to be more in line with each other in terms of point for point value for a barbarian, but for any other class STR will be the best defensive stat outside of VIT.

So most classes will want STR + VIT items for best defense.

I guess I need to look into monk mechanics, because he would appear to have significantly lower EH than a barbarian unless there is some kind of class mechanic that adds some flat mitigation that barbarians do not have. Based on this, it looks like barbarians are by far the easiest to gear for high EH. Monk dodge will certainly help, but if he can't take 2-3 hits in a row, he's going to splat no matter dodge% (except 100%), leech or healing involved.