Question about end-game soulstones

Tankarei - Dreamweaver

I have a question for all you lvl 100+ Nirvy barbs to answer.

Supposing i'm wearing the full lionheart nirvana set, and thus gaining a +10 deflevel add.
Whats better: A set full of Diamonds of Dragon, having about 9k hp
or A set full of vitality stone like stone of savant or primeval, having about 30k~40k+ hp?

Does Defense level reduce the DoT attacks?
Is there any kind of attack or damage able to ignore defense level?

Dagnatic - Sanctuary

you dont have to be a genouse mate, or a 100+ Niv barb to tell you that 9k Hp is not enough for an endgame barb, not at all, 9k hp is barly enough for a lvl80 barb, so Id say, depending on sage or demon, SoS or Primeval shards, or maybe a Mix od DoT and SoS, a barb needs atleast 15k hp endgame, at least

Tankarei - Dreamweaver

Yeah, that makes sense.

And now I remember that Armageddon Damage is based on my max HP then, taking less damage from having a good deflvl is good, but I lose a very important advantage.

Thanks man.

Dagnatic - Sanctuary

Not to mention you actually get Mag def and phys def from Vit, i recommend Vit stones to all Meele classes (archers, BM, sin, barb, etc)

Baalbak - Dreamweaver

i recommend you build your toon with the gear you want on the pwcalc tool, and play with the different shard options.. then you should run the different resultant builds through the "effective health" formulas which can be found on the "damage" article in the pwi wiki.

as a general suggestion I would shoot for having about 30 defense levels at a minimum to "break even" with jones blessing - use Jade of Steady Defense for that (not DoT, those are for attack levels - you want defense.) DoD shards are kinda meh with only 1 defense level. if you have a piece of gear that is only g12 that you don't want to replace with a higher grade piece of gear (I'm likely to keep my g12 dominating waterforce which at +5 with with 3 immac citrines and the +7 vit mod i have on it, is damn close to a Warsoul Helm +4 with 3 immac citrines) ranting aside now.. use Vit stones in your g12 pieces i would say is the best option there.

anywho.. you can run those build options through the formulas to see which route will actually benefit you more / be better balanced.

fuzzywuzz

Refines for hp and JoSD for shards.

Fuzzy loves it and swears by it. b:dirty

Rawrgh - Raging Tide

First of all you'll have more than 9k with JoSD.



Second, according to the calculator thing asterelle made, it depends on who is attacking you.

If it's someone with a lower attack level, as in someone with just a jones blessing and maybe a few DoT, then the JoSD are better.

If it's someone with a higher attack level, as in someone with R9, then vit stones are better.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

Dagnatic - Sanctuary wrote: »

Not to mention you actually get Mag def and phys def from Vit, i recommend Vit stones to all Meele classes (archers, BM, sin, barb, etc)

Recommends defense levels to everyone but barbs. And I think the vit multiplier is 1:1500 or something super small, not really worth considering.

FuzzyWuzz wrote: »

Refines for hp and JoSD for shards.

Fuzzy loves it and swears by it. b:dirty

Agrees with Fuzzy, but barbs have skills that multiply their hp, not their defense level. So +10 vit for a barb is 150 hp (most classes its only 130hp or 100 hp), that then gets multiplied by BKI and tiger form. Not to mention our arma is based on hp, not defense levels.

JoSDs are Nirvana/Rank 9 gear, though. So to the OP, don't consider TT99 your endgame unless you are fist barb using it for -int and only plan on having 1 set of armor. Get Nirvana/Rank 9, refine it like crazy, then decide vit stones or defense levels.

fuzzywuzz

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

Not to mention our arma is based on hp, not defense levels.

In all honesty, Arma is the skill Fuzzy probably uses the least in pk. Even with 2 amber gems in the panda's weapon (2x accuracy +225) and 2 +7 Frost Chaos rings (2x accuracy +50%) the chance of missing the opponent outweighs the OMGWTF damage it is capable of.

Pretty much the only time Fuzzy uses arma to any extent is Rebirth and combined with the aura levels in there, having extra hp from vit stones is almost pointless anyway.

Anyway, back to the OP's question...

PWpedia gives the attack level vs. defense level formula as:

If attack level < defense level then:

damage taken = { damage delivered / ( 1 + (1.2 * ({ defense level } - { attack level }) / 100 ) ) }

This says to Fuzzy that you gain increasing returns the higher you can manage to grow your defense level. The amount of damage taken starts to greatly decrease when you get into the double digit difference between their attack level and your defense level.

Just for argument sake, Fuzzy supposes someone deals 1000 damage on the panda.

If they have 30 attack levels (ie: Jones Blessing) and Fuzzy has 31 defense levels, they actually manage to hit for 988.

Sharded with JoSD, right now Fuzzy has 52 defense levels. Heck, just for illustration purposes, suppose the panda throws on a +8 def lvl school teacher blessing as well to get it up to 60. The same person with the same jones blessing again manages a 1000 hit. This time, it would actually only manage to damage Fuzzy for 735.

The increasing returns from the level difference is what sold Fuzzy on the JoSD shards for end game.

b:cute

Baalbak - Dreamweaver

here's a sample build I'm working with:
fully buffed barb in tiger form, JoSD effective health on left, full primeval stone on right:

27188 / .13 / .97 / 1.38 = 156,236.7111448241 | 32359 / .12 / .97 / 1.74 = 159,769.1274637595

this is effective health against a physical attacker with 100 attack levels. Barb's gear is all +10 rank 9 (didnt include r9 weapon on build) and wearing a puzzle cube bage: vain, wings of cloud charger, and warsoul of earth.

unbuffed (say you get purged). again with JoSD on left and Primevals on right:

21718 / .19 / .97 / 1.38 = 85,391.65034954037 | 25849 / .18 / .97 / 1.74 = 85,084.46235072613

so now the "better" shard is opposite, with JoSD being more effective while unbuffed than the vit stones would be.

of course I only looked at the physical attack aspect for this comparison, you'd want to consider magical attacks as well when making your ultimate decision. is it likely that the mdef gains from vit stones will outweigh the defense level protection? All things to account for and consider IMO. But I'm not going to do all the math for everyoneb:pleased