Jade of Steady Defense Vs +10 Vit Gems

+2 defense is better for taking simultaneous hits, like int TW or group PvP... and won't give you more hp for your charm to tick off. Each +2 def level will reduce more damage than a +vit stone will give you, especially when concerning damage from archers and mages.

Yes, a BM has to be a complete dumb **** to use vit stones when sharding their gear. And I could smack an archer for posting it early, only had 3 pack sales to buy em up so far dangit.

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Troll^^

Vit stones are fine. I would love to be able to stack +2 def. And if not that +10 vit stones. But I'm not rich enough yet.....

Nah, main account banned for a few more hours. When my BM hit 99, I did a comparison, and even if they cost the same, def stones were better due to three main reasons. Add in DEF lvl 2 ones, and yes, I mocked the heck out of the people paying more money for much less return. In essence, they are ignorant, and will likely change when someone does their thinking for them once again. Hence the lack of respect in last post.

<- Telarith, and yes, vit stones are a very bad idea.

Joshcja - Sanctuary wrote: »

damit tel/devoted >.<

was hopeing the fourums would math fail till i hit 99 and got my set T.T

glad not many sanc bm's use this fourum thingie ^.^

Hey, I gave you the heads up a month or two ago. Main thing is the archers of Sanc messed it up. Devoted was going to keep quiet about it as well. I really hope the discussion about it I had with Legerity didn't get to the others and cause the posts to happen, as I loved getting my diamonds for 3-5 mil each. Dang spotlighters b:angry
Ah well, when they finish looking at DEF lvl sharding, they may realize why archers have a reason to quit

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Only time def stones are worth it is if you have a high enough hp pool to begin with. Personally I would never use the def+1 stones over vit stones. But the Def+2 stones are way better. I had dreams of sharding my end game gear with Def+2....would be so sweet...

edit: was I suppose to keep the hp thing a secret....<_<

No, you're only thinking of one thing. There are three that makes even DEF lvl 1 better than vit +10. If you're going off the old archer one of 1% of your health per shard for DEF lvl, that is a bad way to compare. It blatantly favors vit stones at its best (first shard), and DEF at its worst (first shard).

That is again just one portion of it. Eh, here's the 3 things:

1. Health Adjustment

2. Damage reduction/Healing Amp

3. Debuff/Purge effect reduction

1. Basically health will be adjusted on a forward basis off of your total DEF lvl. Early on, this isn't too much. But the higher you build, the more effect each additional level adds.

For a proof, the first one would be 99. Divide 100 by 99 for an effect of 1.0101. A second stone would see 99 divided by 98 for an effect of 1.0102. Very small amount, but they pick up pace as it increases. By lvl 50, it's X 2, 67 X3, 75 X4, etc. And picking a small lvl isn't very good, especially as you're equalling the value of them. Remember, the vit stones sold at 25 mil when DoD went for 3 mil and under. Good times

All of this acts as your spike buffer, or maximum health. Divide health by remaining damage left after DEF to see how much this is. In instances add 10 DEF lvl to either count, or 8 DEF lvl using attendance charm.

2. Damage gets reduced by DEF lvl at an increased effect per stone, and getting a minimum of 12 should not be too difficult. Unless they spike you dead, your health gains will essentially be amped due to the lower damage received.

So for a realistic example (11K in one hit means you 2 or 3 shot basically either way), say 5K damage received to each. 7K health on DoD sharder, 8.8K health on Viter. DoD takes 4.4 down to 2.6K, Vit takes 5K down to 3.8K. However, using some health meat, you gain 250 health per second, and most high damage skills take 2 secs, so add 500 health to each. 3.1K and 4.3K. If you adjust the numbers to reflect DEF lvl to health, 2.6K would be 2.954K health, 846 down; while 3.1K would be 3.522, or 778 down. As you can see, health gain was amped by 1/.88, or 13.6%. Now this is just a small number. Looking at step 1, you can see just how high the health gain amp can go towards boosting health maintenance in between charm ticks, as this isn't even counting the health in there. And my hat alone has 6 DEF with just 3 sockets.

3. Debuff/Purge will also not harm a DEF sharder as much either. Because there is a third aspect to take into account: your normal defense damage reduction. With buffs we could easily have 70% reduction in both phys and mag, before the DEF reduction kicks in. So it would end up total reduction would be 73.6% vs. 70% on Viter. However, when purge from bow or veno kicks in, or amps, or debuffs, DoD ends up improving.

Against purge, the normal defense of both drop, but the DEF reduction increases in comparison. So say someone kills mag marrow and cleric buff, and Vit drops to only 30% mag def. Well, DEF shard would have 38.4% total defense.

Debuffs work the same, many archers rely on crits and their metal debuff to take down BMs. Well, as already shown, debuff does less to dragon sharder than Viter, and amped damage basically gets hit that much more reduction from dragon; Vit just gets normal defense applied to it.

All in all, the higher the damage taken, the better Dragon is. The higher the healing, the better Dragon is (cleric, self, or bloodpaint). The higher number of shards, the better dragon is.

As for highest efficiency, Vit stones have that with the first shard, and decreases from there. Dragon shards have it when you place one in the last slot, and decreases the less of them there are. 150 health has more effect the less health you have, so each additional one has less over-all effect. Whereas getting even 24 DEF lvl is pretty dang nice (31.6% amp to healing/health)

Just remember, spike survival is always counted, and either damage reduction OR healing amp is counted as well when computing it out. The damage reduction or healing is just a simple of matter of how you look at it pretty much.

EDIT: The funny part is when archers realise just how feasible getting 6X DEF lvl is. Now thinking of how hard it is for them to kill at end game, and their reliance on crits , debuff, and proc, how likely is it they will be able to 1 v 1 a properly sharded BM? Unless they shard DoT, they are pretty screwed against that. And even full DoT just reduces their over-all penalty. Without warsoul weapon to reduce DEF lvl of target to manageable level, they are in for a rude awakening when they crit for less than normal arrow damage. That's the schaudenfreud I enjoy for them breaking the DEF sharding news early

Extra Editing power: Add step 1 and step 2 to determine true comparison between DEF and Vit. As stated, the example you quoted just focused on 1 of the 3 things that determine which is better. Which is useful, if you stand there doing nothing as someone kills you. But add step 2 onto your adjusted health based off of reasonable healing ability and add the affected health to each respective side. It adjusts based off of roles; pk or duels count your food and skills, if you're tanking in PvE count your clerics IB stacks.

Also, he did the math wrong. It should be obvious with the first shard having a 1.0101 effect that you wouldn't get just 1% from that 15K health. He needed to mean when both end up at 15K health, that amount of health is equal. Which would be 14.85K health. Minor adjustment, but does show how much time he spent on his ideas. And again, it is biased towards Vit as 150 has a larger effect at 15K (1%), then it does on the 10th one (.9%). And who really plans on using just 1 shard in their armor anyways?

Properly you should look at it from each's specialty. Which means full Dragon sharding, at what point would changing one Dragon shard over to Vit be effective? That is the right question to ask, and how I came to the **** Vit stones philosophy. And why any BM running around with Vit stones in their armor, is special. Real special. They even have their invisible helmet on, to test walls with.

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

When packs were first out you couldnt make +2 DEF stones and there was no attendance blessing so you couldnt get all that far away from 0 for the big gains to kick in. +24 Defense level would give you 31% more survivability while 24 vit stones give 3600 more HP and more defense / resistance / hp regeneration. The vit stones would be better than +1 in most cases.

However +2 even at just 1 shard is better than vit in most cases.

I don't quite get the argument for purge/debuff not effecting a +DEF sharded player as much but if that were true that would necessarily mean that buffs wouldn't have as much benefit.

veno purges vit stoner...vit stoner now takes full damage and 10k hp goes down rather fast

same veno purges def sharder buffs are gone but you still get def lvl reduction so assuming 8k hp and 30 def levels....theres a far higher chance of survival

basicly vit stones give hp and + def level makes that hp far better than it would be otherwise

this would be really noticable tanking high lvl bosses with say a permenant +40 def levels (actually my endgame goal

say boss hits for 4k a swing

at 10k hp your a 3 shot

at 40+10 from bless boss hits 8k def sharded bm for only 2k

this would mean that

A) lower HP but bosses dont spike as high alowing for solo or no cleric tanking of high lvl areas and WB's

B)since you actually take less damage over time than the vit stoners you have less NEED for hp

C) bosses big spells are far less scary since your nearly impossibal to one shot

The most def level you can hope for at the moment is 16 from 4 socket pants/helm. Then assuming that "reduces physical/magical damage by 4% adds work the same way, an extra 8% from nirvana pants/helm. An extra 10 from bless box or 8 from attendance blessing. That brings you to -32% damage in TW, -34% in an instance.

I can't see where you could get any more than that without sacrificing -interval.

My thoughts on the +1 def stones is that they aren't really worth it. But the +2 stones...makes my mouth water...saying I want I want......

Joshcja - Sanctuary wrote: »

there are 24 sockets in a full 4 socket set

thats 48 possibal def levels + cube neck + warsong belt + blessing+ attendance rings for a possibal 60+ def levels

going for 40 myself to leave a bit of room for vit stones since i have 10 base vit aka need moar hp lol

but with g 12 tt 90 you would need to def lvl 1 shard quite a bit i guess

so assuming nirvana pants g 13 hat and cape

24def levels then you still have 12sockets in the rest of your armor + the def levels from ornaments and the 30 min blessing

Once close to 50 DEF, you get the X2 spike survival, which would directly equal the health from vit. Even 20 vit ones, 24 of them, would give 7200 health. And if you have 7200 health, they equal out at 50 DEF for just that, but DEF all the way also gives double healing effect as well. So if aiming for 40 DEF, just get 50 DEF and call it good. At that point, 7.2K health from refines is childsplay. Likely wouldn't even need to +5 the gear.

1st, 2 pieces of HH nirvana gives 5 attack level from the set bonus

2nd, the +4% defence is not a defence level boost it is the equivalent of a buff it adds 4% to your combined equipment defence numbers its highly useful if you get debuffed alot (like undine or hell marrow as its partly negated by the nirvana pieces)

Motoko - Raging Tide wrote: »

How does one acquire g13 lunar interval cape b:shocked? Also didn't think 1st upgrade from tt99 -> 100 crystal nirvana kept the set bonus, you sure it does?

Also as stated I would rather go with tt nirvana armor for the % dmg reduction, which I am pretty sure works the same as defense level.

Sadly it is very expensive gear, requiring 18 tinders and I think it was 30 Nature thingies. You lose two attribute boosts, gain some in Vit, for a higher grade cape with -int.

Hmmmm, really tough choice, the +2 def is actually worth considering, since diamonds of dragon with a single +1 are plain overran by +10 vit, here's my 2 cents
24 sockets is either 48 def level or 240 extra vit, which in a BM results in 3,600 extra hp and increases to hp regen, physical and mag defenses, small but they do increase
So let's say the BM has about 10k hp unbuffed with all the refines from gear, now we have to consider a couple things:
-Sky demon pearl or TT necklaces, even if they're low level gear for endgame, they can prove useful with +5% hp, which depends on your hp pool, so +5% from 10k hp is 500 adittional hp, little more than 3 adittional stones
-Diamond sutra, the more hp you have, the more it heals you for, 20% of 10k is 2k hp from a single cast, and sage one has chance to get you 5k instead
-Tree of protection, life-saving skill that also works based on how much hp you have, the more you have the more useful it is, 30% increase would give you 13k hp for a few seconds, and regens 20% of that every 3 seconds, so 2,6k gain on 3 seconds
Samsara wheel/calmness dew: useful life-saving apo powders that restore 60/90 mana and hp respectively, 90% of 10k is 9k hp instantly, can jump your hp back to near-full, and 6k instantly is not bad, instead of waiting the 30 seconds dark green orb needs to take full effect
So indeed, the jade has the upper hand if you're taking large amounts of damage, or attacked by multiple enemies, however that kind of situations can be considered as semi-rare, at least in PvE worlds, probably in territory wars or when in pk mode and you get ambushed, so i would say +vit stones have the upper hand in PvE and +def are best for PvP, where ambushes and ganks are more common