Low Saves on a Wizard

[jiriku]

Personally, I'd lean against the armor, but that deathward benefit is tasty. Depending on a variety of factors, you could go either way. For example, if you have a low initiative, and if you don't have access to spells like ruin delver's fortune, celerity, contingency, wings of cover, and swift etherealness, your need for death ward goes up because your ability to layer defenses on top of one another is limited.

Edit: Resist energy 30 (all) is obtained by casting resist energy on yourself five times, selecting a different energy type each time. It is spell-slot intensive. If you have insufficient spell slots, you can grant yourself resistance to only those energy types you expect your opponents to use, or you can use pearls of power to gain additional 2nd-level slots. If you expect a cleric in your party, you can encourage the cleric to cast mass resist energy (which is only a 3rd-level spell for clerics) a couple of times, which reduce the number of energy types that you need to personally protect yourself from.

Edit: my general philosophy is to spend 50-60% of my spell slots on defense and self-protection. Most high-level casters could never hope to cast all of their spells per day during their daily encounters, so it makes sense to turn those unused spell slots to good use by using them to cast long-duration buffs.

Moreover, as a battlefield controller, you have the luxury of often being able to solve an encounter with one or two spells, so there's little need for a large offensive spell load. Plus, as you mentioned, you seem to have some nice bonus spell perks.