+pdef vs +hp

_Rosaly_ - Lost City

As I'm starting to reach levels where sharding my gears will become an option (too expensive at lower lvls as I grew out of my gears too fast), I am debating whether to add hp or pdef to them. I have been asking around about this and opinions on the matter seem to vary. Maybe it is personal preference, but some clerics seem to prefer +pdef while others seem to prefer adding hp shards.

I would like to get more opinions here, preferably in a wider discussion between experienced players. I'd like to learn from the opinions posted. Which shards do you prefer and why?

Thanks a bunch in advance! b:thanks

steelmyth

my advice for pvp would be having unbuffed pdef equal to half of your hp. For pve hp is preferible so that you can aoe more mobs at once

Ahira - Lost City

You dont really need to be phys sharding atm I dont think. Probably shouldnt be pvp'ing at that sort of level and mobs from your level onward are going to predominantly be magic mobs as far as I can remember so HP sharding would serve you better.

Ussichu - Sanctuary

pdef only if you have some form of PvP you do regularly (TW or open PK)

otherwise use HP to survive instances better.

Fliiick - Heavens Tear

Save the gear and sharding til 90+, maybe even 99+

At those levels you can shard phys def as 90/99 gear give good HP bonuses when refined.

Aya__ - Heavens Tear

how i went:
70 TT set - hp sharded
80 TT set - hp sharded (was borrowed but id probably do the same if it was mine)
90 TT set - pdef sharded, hp refined (need to add more lvls of refinement tho... im still squishy but pdef effect is clearly visible and mag never hit me that hard to begin with)

Edit: imo it was worth to shard 70 and 80 cos they were intended to be kept for friends / alts. rather painful to decompose refined and sharded gear for souledges

Deceptistar - Sanctuary

70 TT set - pdef
80 TT set - pdef
90 TT set - pdef
99 TT/lunar - pdef

like aya says above, magic doesnt hit you as hard in the first place. You may balance out the stats you lack the most. Or you may lean on one type of stat and get one shoted by the opposing stat. Plume shell only works when you are;
1- not stunned
2- not being ganked
3- when your aware youll get hit soon

gear helps you 24/7

One interesting debate you will see if you search filter CLERIC forums with "pdef HP" is that early days (late 2008, early 2009) most of the clerics thought HP was the only way to go and that pdef was absurd b:chuckle its nice to see nowadays pple see the importance of balance and defense.

Mendolin - Sanctuary

in my opinion its HOW you play... there are always ways to have one or the other or learning a balance of both.
i shard with garnets and refine the armor for HP- both to me are equally important.

Paramedic - Dreamweaver

not sure if p.def p.def p.def is right idea if u have low HP (no vit build and low refine)
when i run 3-3 with bm, magic mobs hit me for 1/3 - 1/2 HP already (4k hp ftw)
wont be fun if they start to hit me for 2/3 b:shocked

i can tank every mag thing that dont hit me >1/2 easly


pwcalc of my nub gear'ed toon (just self-buffs)

(sharded mainly with citrines)
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=b5361d64e42c03d9 4055 HP 2866 p.def -> 43% p.dmg reduction

(sharded mainly with gamets)
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=23e0ece9bc7c7eff 3425 HP (-18%) 3900 p.def (+36%) -> 51% p.dmg reduction (+18%)


balance is important cause loosing 18% of hp to gain 18% of p.dmg reduction wont be best for me since HP 'works' on two

but if i had 6k HP then proportion would look bit more different..

Balthier - Dreamweaver

Paramedic - Dreamweaver wrote: »

(sharded mainly with citrines)
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=b5361d64e42c03d9 4055 HP 2866 p.def -> 43% p.dmg reduction

(sharded mainly with gamets)
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=23e0ece9bc7c7eff 3425 HP (-18%) 3900 p.def (+36%) -> 51% p.dmg reduction (+16%)

Isn't is just 8% more phy dmg reduction, or am I missing something?

didi

You could look at it this way. With 1 vit and 1,000,000 pdef, you will die if a certain mob or boss hit you. With 1,000,000 vit, and 1 pdef, you will likely live at the very least, half the time.

From that you could say that in this game, you will need a min amount of vit to stay alive most of the time. After you have reach a certain amount of vit of say 100, you will have to ask yourself, "is it now more efficient to add vit of add pdef". If i'm not wrong, after you have enough vit, you will be better off adding pdef to keep your hp as high as possible.

What i mean is, you will need a min amount of vit to stay alive, but once you have enough, you might prefer pdef which might keep your hp higher then adding vit instead.

MiliaFallyna - Dreamweaver

Mendolin - Sanctuary wrote: »

in my opinion its HOW you play...QUOTE]

I agree with this and along with it, personal preference. My cleric has ALL hp shards, even from the TT70 to the TT80 (still wearing) @my lvl, i have 5909 hp unbuffed (7.8hp barb buffed). I can take several hits before i actually die. Being well geared and prepared keeps me alive. b:victory

Paramedic - Dreamweaver

Balthier - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Isn't is just 8% more phy dmg reduction, or am I missing something?

8 / 43 = 0.18

18% it is how much more defence reduction (compared to what i had before) i gained

Ahira - Lost City

One thing to be aware of is that you cant necessarily say one type of sharding is "better" than the other. Which ever type improves your own "overall" survivabilty by a greater extent is probably the one you should use.

Balthier - Dreamweaver

Paramedic - Dreamweaver wrote: »

8 / 43 = 0.18

18% it is how much more defence reduction (compared to what i had before) i gained

I don't get it b:surrender

43% and 51% is already calculated in %, why do you want to find the percent of the percent (is that possible)? A mob hit you for 1000 with 0 % phy dmg red. That means you take 570 dmg with 43% dmg reduction and 490 dmg with 51% dmg reduction. If I am mistaken here you need to spell this out for me, as I'm not really good with maths.

Paramedic - Dreamweaver

Balthier - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I don't get it b:surrender

43% and 51% is already calculated in %, why do you want to find the percent of the percent (is that possible)? A mob hit you for 1000 with 0 % phy dmg red. That means you take 570 dmg with 43% dmg reduction and 490 dmg with 51% dmg reduction. If I am mistaken here you need to spell this out for me, as I'm not really good with maths.

yes lol, it s percent from percent just to compare it to HP i loss/gained

i lost 18% of hp compared to what i had before to gain 18% p.def compared to what i had before

u dont care if 'what i have before' is percent or number - it s just some value u had

imo it makes proportion more 'truthful' ;D

Aya__ - Heavens Tear

Deceptistar - Sanctuary wrote: »

One interesting debate you will see if you search filter CLERIC forums with "pdef HP" is that early days (late 2008, early 2009) most of the clerics thought HP was the only way to go and that pdef was absurd b:chuckle its nice to see nowadays pple see the importance of balance and defense.

most my higher level friends used citrines. i decided i need these garnets by myself, just added what i lacked most. i can add these +120 hp i lost on each piece by not sharding with citrines with one more lvl of refine, will just cost me some. on the other hand i cant spend all day in plume shell - and in bb i cant even use plume shell b:surrender

Strife_son - Sanctuary

Err I know it says I am a BM... but I have an end-game cleric also that is sharded for pdef. Combined with my high vitality (220+) and pdef shards, I have over 10k pdef (for 10 seconds w/ sage vanguard/ sage golden bell), which in PvP is very handy. A high refined tt99 weapon makes up for some of the damage I've lost statting vit. I seldom have trouble killing others, but am a pain to take down solo ;3

PinkSuccubuS - Lost City

1 thing about this build is that it all depend on ur stats as u going pure or wana tank more damage.
most cleric i see are pure maybe its cos its a pvp server and they wana we a dd cleric.
well taht is them i myself care most for 4 survival so here is my stats in hp and deff.
3019 hp unbuffed 3909 barb buffed/2900 deff nonbuffed 4500 selfbuffed 5500 bmbuffed
mag res 4600 non buffed 6k self buffed.

i can take good hits but do avarege damage

b:victory its awesome

Nasume - Lost City

b:faint less than 5k hp and lvl 9x.. sure squishy muchb:shutup

JanusZeal - Heavens Tear

Balthier - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I don't get it b:surrender

43% and 51% is already calculated in %, why do you want to find the percent of the percent (is that possible)? A mob hit you for 1000 with 0 % phy dmg red. That means you take 570 dmg with 43% dmg reduction and 490 dmg with 51% dmg reduction. If I am mistaken here you need to spell this out for me, as I'm not really good with maths.

It's a way of exaggerating things, a rather common issue. It's an 8% gain.

DeathBanana - Heavens Tear

My 78 cleric uses a 2:1 Citrine to Garnet ratio, and I LOVE it. 4k HP and 2.7k phys def ftw b:victory

Paramedic - Dreamweaver

oh noes. now janus gonna hunt my posts and troll them b:cry

Nieka - Harshlands

when you get to the point where your ready to shard and refine your gear you need to decide how you want to play the game. wheather you want to be pve or pvp is really the deciding factor on how you shard your gear. i dont think its really that important to start worrying about this until at least you hit the 80 to 85 lvl range and would not refine past +5 until you get a piece of armor that is end game just because of the cost of doing so. For myself im going to go with a mix but shard with more Phys def just because when you refine arcane gear it gives you hp anyway. doing this puts you more in the middle ground where you have enough phys def and hp where you dont have to worry about a barb bm or archer one hitting you without your plume shell on.

Hazumu - Dreamweaver

I noticed that a lot of people miss out a very basic thing.

Clerics are a support class with more buffs than any other class. However, none of those buffs add HP, we do however have a pdef buff, so that way we can and do squeeze out more use out of garnet gems than from citrines.

Sure, in instances you often do get barb buff as well, but there are still times where you have to go without.

Even more so, if you refine your armor, you get HP out of it and that will balance the stats out. Right now I get 4k HP with bit below 50% p.def. That's preeeettty sweet, if you ask me.

I have 2 citrines in my sleeves, but otherwise it's only armor refinement and garnet gems.

Xoria - Sanctuary

Pretty much said it all here in another thread:

Xoria - Sanctuary wrote: »

That statement is false, actually, in PvE terms. I wasn't sure if I would survive Warsong, Forgotten Frostcity, of Lunar Glade when I restat back to pure magic (30 vit tops), but I did just fine. When I had 120ish VIT, it just made it so I used less Elite Magic/Physical defense charms. For PvP, then yes, I would highly suggest the high VIT.



*Re- directs to my top statement.* Keep in mind that HP shards will only add so much. If an AoE does 3k and you only added 1k in HP, all those HP shards were just made useless. HP is good if you plan to accumulate a LOT of it (3k+ on top of a cleric's natural growth.. meaning around 5k/ 6k HP UNBUFFED). Physical defense gems will keep protecting you with every hit. It's what you know what to do against what that will keep you alive. Lol, that's why my signature at the bottoms says "Fail garnet gem cleric." The extra physical defense saved my butt I don't recall how many times, in TW. All those clerics with HP shards were just easy pickings for me against Plume Shot and Demon Wield Thunder/ Cyclone on Plume Shell. They'd target me and I just ate them.

NOTE: I do realize I am the very odd- ball cleric b:victory

It really is still personal preferences.

Aya__ - Heavens Tear

Nasume - Lost City wrote: »

b:faint less than 5k hp and lvl 9x.. sure squishy muchb:shutup

thats me b:surrender
im planning to have about 6k, but so far i refined without orbs, my armor is only +3...

Christianlej - Sanctuary

I`m with mendolin cos you can give Hp from refine Armor and Pdef from shards, that is important to me b:dirty

September - Lost City

Hp shards - Helmet & Cape.
P.Def shards - Everything else.
+ Refine equipment for more Hp.

That's what i prefer~

b:bye

Strife_son - Sanctuary

Get hp from vit. And more wonderful pdef of course b:dirty

Elf_crystal - Lost City

i put HP in my because i have very good phy def from my event stuff.
if u dont have event stuff i say half and half. :)b:pleased