Health Types and How They Work

White health: Normal. Can be healed by the likes of Mercy, Lucio, health packs, and more.

Blue Health: Shield. Passively regenerates after not being damaged. Found on Zarya, Zenyatta, and more.

Orange health: Armor. Offered by Torbjorn, found on Bastion.

Magic walls (blue or red, depending on team): Barriers. Blocks shots of enemies, allows allies to shoot through freely. Found on Reinhardt's arm toy, Winston's bubble, Bastion's turret, and more.

Now I have some questions. I'm told the types take different amounts of damge. Anyone got specifics on that?

Now I have some questions. I'm told the types take different amounts of damge. Anyone got specifics on that?

armor works by reducing your white health loss by a flat amount per shot until all of your armor is gone so it's really effective against high rate of fire weapons like tracer's smg.

from what I can tell every other health type behaves as you'd expect, although there are some interesting shield interactions that aren't immediately obvious. shields stop bullets and projectiles but not any melee attacks or winston's lightning flamethrower thing.

armor works by reducing your white health loss by a flat amount per shot until all of your armor is gone so it's really effective against high rate of fire weapons like tracer's smg.

Wouldn't that make armor really poor against high rate of fire weapons?

No no, armor works best against high rate of fire weapons. 1 armor = 5 damage reduction, but you only lose 1 armor each time you're hit. So if you have 50 armor, it would be best if you were hit 50 times for 250 damage reduction.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3doh28/difference_between_health_and_armor/

In plain terms, white health is better than armor (you'd rather have 250 health than 250 damage reduction spread over 50 hits). The armor mechanic just gives tanks better survivability against weapons with high rate of fire.

[Edit] More info:

Shield (blue): Consumed first. Regenerates after you stop taking damage. Cannot be healed.
Armor (yellow): Consumed second. Reduces damage from each hit by 5. Does not regenerate. Can be healed if it is "natural" armor. Natural armor is armor that characters have built into their health (i.e. they spawn with it). Bastion, Reinhardt, and Winston all have natural armor. Armor from Torbjorn's armor pack cannot be healed and is lost when consumed.
Health (white): Consumed last. Does not regenerate. Can be healed.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3r6834/questions_about_armor/

Thank you for explaining I never really understood it but it makes sense now

So do shields and barriers take more damage from specific sources? I've heard that things like concussive damage might do bonus to them but I can't tell.