Shard help

Brael - Dreamweaver

What would be the best setup for shards in my gear? So far I've been doing Sapphires but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking it might be best to go for the physical defense ones, as that would give me a little more versatility when it comes to survival, particularly around archers and physical AE's. Being on a PvE server, and not interested in TW I don't have to take PvP aspects into consideration. So my thoughts right now are:
Phys Resist - Great foxform returns, much more survival against physical stuff that hits me.
Mag Resist - Paired with being arcane, it leaves me with the highest defense possible against spells.
HP - Higher raw healing out of tree/metabolic boost. And since I usually group with a Barbarian I get more hp out of their buff as well.

Anyways, I've been thinking physical so far, but having not experienced the game yet at later levels I'm wondering if it would be a good move to go that route.

vagrant0

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What would be the best setup for shards in my gear? So far I've been doing Sapphires but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking it might be best to go for the physical defense ones, as that would give me a little more versatility when it comes to survival, particularly around archers and physical AE's. Being on a PvE server, and not interested in TW I don't have to take PvP aspects into consideration. So my thoughts right now are:
Phys Resist - Great foxform returns, much more survival against physical stuff that hits me.
Mag Resist - Paired with being arcane, it leaves me with the highest defense possible against spells.
HP - Higher raw healing out of tree/metabolic boost. And since I usually group with a Barbarian I get more hp out of their buff as well.

Anyways, I've been thinking physical so far, but having not experienced the game yet at later levels I'm wondering if it would be a good move to go that route.

Really depends on build and how you're killing stuff. Generally, HP shards are always a safe bet since they help deal with everything.

For a LA, hybrid build, it has probably the best return since a few hundred phys/mdef won't likely change anything much, while an extra couple hundred HP can mean life and death.

For a arcane build, more hp means living longer. As an arcane build, you usually don't take physical damage unless it's AoE or you've stolen agro from your pet. As even in fox form, you aren't getting hit much, the benefit that phys shards might give is negligible.

For a heavy build, although hp helps, magic attacks tend to really hurt. As fox form doesn't do anything for mdef, mdef shards are probably a better idea than HP.

In the long run, it's about effect. Unless you're pimping out your gear with the best shards available, you'll only be getting an extra 4-5% resisted at level, or about 25 health per hit from having all your shards in pdef or mdef. Verses an extra 25 health per average shard.

But really, if you aren't doing TW, or PvP, you can probably forgo using any shards until level 90 or so as long as you always have decent equipment. For the most part, the only time shards really make such a huge impact is when you're dealing with perfect shards in refined equipment. Before then, it's nice, but probably not worthwhile if you're just grinding. By the time you're level 70, you're pretty much lasting 4-5 hits from normal mobs, so have plenty of time to kill, use tree, drink a potion, or run like hell. Even with TT bosses, once you're over 2500 hp before buffs, you aren't likely to be killed by AoEs. WBs are another story, but again, you kinda need to be level 100+ to live against most of those anyway.