More health instead of more armor would not do anything good. It would make the fight longer without any kind of challenge, because as soon you have the armor down, the enemy is most likely perma-cc'd anyway.
No they won't be perma-cc'ed. Even if you give all characters ton of CC's, which would gimp you badly, you won't be able to unless you're down to the last 2-3 opponents. CC options are less then they used to be it seems and have longer cool down timers as well. By the time you can perma-CC the remaining opponents you earned the right to pull it off since you're going to the end of the fight anyway.
Less armor means you waste less time bursting damage an opponent. And more health means the overall length would still be the same as it is now. But you have more of that fight spend using your abilities besides bursting down armor types.
Further tweaks could be added by having the success rate of a CC be countered by opponent natural resistance to elements, or their class type and mental fortitude and such. That way success rate of CC is % based instead of auto-success. Which would come into play once the lower armor value has been taken down.
