Need Help Settling Sharding Debate

Reichle - Sanctuary · May 2010

Okay, I'm level 70, got that all important 3 star equipment, but I'm a bit cautious about sharding. I've seen threads debating this so I may be necroing here, but is it a total waste to go full garnet? I think higher physical defense is more important than like 300 more points in HP. I have 51 vit already. I have 900+ physical defense, which is pitiful (hence the leaning towards garnets).
But I may be giving garnets more credit than they are worth. I'm not entirely sure how they work (do they take a certain % out of each hit? and how much % for each shard?). I've read that a blend of garnets and citrines is good, but the person I've been debating with swears that citrines is the better way to go.
Or maybe it doesnt matter because they both achieve the same end? Citrines add 300 HP while garnets protect you from 300 hit points (these numbers are highly arbitrary, assuming that these are the same number and level of garnets/citrines).
Arrg someone educate me so I can go spend lots of money on shards and stop being a fail cleric because I dont have sharded equips.

Lylfo - Dreamweaver · May 2010

Go full citrine for now especially if you are full mag...

You'll need all the HP you can get for pve until lvl 90+
and decide to go mixed sharding or full garnet from there.

DeathBanana - Heavens Tear · May 2010

If you feel like you're getting hit too hard by phys attacks and don't mind the decreased HP, go with garnets. If you feel like you don't have enough HP, go with citrines. Why no one realizes this, I will never know.

Vivre - Harshlands · May 2010

Citrine sharded stuff tend to be easier to sell/buy. If you want garnets at lvl 7x chances are you'll have to shard them yourself and later resell for almost nothing. (But every server is different so you'll have to check up on this for yourself)

At 7x, I wouldn't bother sharding at all (or at least, just buy whatever cheap sharded stuff you can find) for PvP and physical mobs when you -have- to tank physical.. plume shell and pot mana.

I was light armor build until 90 (which is cheaper than arcane w/ pdef shards) then statted pdef sharded / vit build / arcane armor.. and it works really well.

Roxiann - Heavens Tear · May 2010

I would just go for phys. def. because you already have enough in vit. I personally try to go with a balance of the two. But with you having over 50 in vit you probably wont need any more hp.

Reichle - Sanctuary · May 2010

DeathBanana - Heavens Tear wrote: »

If you feel like you're getting hit too hard by phys attacks and don't mind the decreased HP, go with garnets.

What do you mean decreased HP?

DeathBanana - Heavens Tear · May 2010

Reichle - Sanctuary wrote: »

What do you mean decreased HP?

Less HP than sharding with citrines
Bad wording, I know

Tojop - Dreamweaver · May 2010

My two cents: unless you're on a PvP server or pk, shard citrines. You'll spend a hell of a lot more time taking magic damage than you will taking physical damage.

MystiMonk - Sanctuary · May 2010

I wouldn't worry about sharding at this time as I don't have any only on my cape.When you replace you armour every 10 lvls it is not worth it unless you can use it in the next 10 lvls.

Epidemy - Sanctuary · May 2010

I think citrine is a little more versatile than garnet, since you can deal with both magic and physical damage.

But, if you consider going garnets, then do full garnets; a few points in Physical Defense (PD) would not be great benefit, especially because your vanguard spirit would add a good amount of PD only if the base amount was significant. So unless you go full garnets, your garnets shards would be nearly waste.

PS : also, I generally agree with MystiMonk, but in my case, and in hers, I disagree : if you have many alts, including arcane ones (or LA if you are LA, and so on), your incoming alts will get benefits from you previous equipment. My current gear comes from my main, and will go to my younger psy alt

Paramedic - Dreamweaver · May 2010

if u dont refine much then hp goes first before p.def

i still fully shard with citrine cuz:

-i have p.def bonuses and+% pdef resist on every armor part and p.def jewlery

-there is lotta nasty, magic-hitting stuff here

oh and btw, http://pwcalc.ru/pwi ftw

Reichle - Sanctuary · May 2010

MystiMonk - Sanctuary wrote: »

I wouldn't worry about sharding at this time as I don't have any only on my cape.When you replace you armour every 10 lvls it is not worth it unless you can use it in the next 10 lvls.

Well, I level slow so sharding will go a long way.

Axemanek - Heavens Tear · May 2010

CITRINES FTW!!
just thought i'd make that point :P

DeathBanana - Heavens Tear · May 2010

AMBERS FTW, I have 3 shabbies in my warsoul helm

Noob - Raging Tide · May 2010

Go hp shards you have plume shell 80% prot against phy attacks when maxed

Hazumu - Dreamweaver · May 2010

The problem with plume shell is that even when maxed it drains your mana. And that's a valuable asset for a cleric. What I would do is wear protection belt and necklace and then full garnet sharding.

When you expect to get hit, IH yourself, that will compensate for the smaller HP base and you won't get hit as hard that way.

Another thing to concider:
You have 2k hp and 1,5k p def.
You add 1 citrine, your base HP rises by 40hp let's say. That's 2% increase
You add 1 garnet, your base pdef rises by 40 let's say. That's 2,7% increase PLUS you have pdef buff you can cast. Forgot how much it increases your pdef by, but lets say it's 50%. That way your physical resistance is increased by 4%.

Citrine, works against both magic and physical, you take harder hits.

Garnet, works against physical, but you have your own buff to increase it's effect. Plus you get quite decent magic defense from your arcane gear anyhow.

Paramedic - Dreamweaver · May 2010

Hazumu - Dreamweaver wrote: »

The problem with plume shell is that even when maxed it drains your mana. And that's a valuable asset for a cleric. What I would do is wear protection belt and necklace and then full garnet sharding.

When you expect to get hit, IH yourself, that will compensate for the smaller HP base and you won't get hit as hard that way.

Another thing to concider:
You have 2k hp and 1,5k p def.
You add 1 citrine, your base HP rises by 40hp let's say. That's 2% increase
You add 1 garnet, your base pdef rises by 40 let's say. That's 2,7% increase PLUS you have pdef buff you can cast. Forgot how much it increases your pdef by, but lets say it's 50%. That way your physical resistance is increased by 4%.

Citrine, works against both magic and physical, you take harder hits.

Garnet, works against physical, but you have your own buff to increase it's effect. Plus you get quite decent magic defense from your arcane gear anyhow.

way, way too many numbers taken from nowhere

http://pwcalc.ru/pwi ftw as usuall

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear · May 2010

Hazumu - Dreamweaver wrote: »

The problem with plume shell is that even when maxed it drains your mana. And that's a valuable asset for a cleric. What I would do is wear protection belt and necklace and then full garnet sharding.

When you expect to get hit, IH yourself, that will compensate for the smaller HP base and you won't get hit as hard that way.

Another thing to concider:
You have 2k hp and 1,5k p def.
You add 1 citrine, your base HP rises by 40hp let's say. That's 2% increase
You add 1 garnet, your base pdef rises by 40 let's say. That's 2,7% increase PLUS you have pdef buff you can cast. Forgot how much it increases your pdef by, but lets say it's 50%. That way your physical resistance is increased by 4%.

Citrine, works against both magic and physical, you take harder hits.

Garnet, works against physical, but you have your own buff to increase it's effect. Plus you get quite decent magic defense from your arcane gear anyhow.

0.o

I understand what your trying to say with your math but its flawed.

After a set amount in either magic res or phsy res you gain a 1% resistance.

As you gain more resistance in either you run into diminishing returns (takes more to get a 1% increase in defense)

Now I could go on awhile. I'll try and keep this short.

If you wanted to really calculate it out (get the most from each shard) you would have to see what your resistances would be if fully garnet sharded buffed and non buffed. A mix of shards, citrine;garnet, (this is what my cleric does) buffed and non buffed. And fully citrine sharded again buffed and non buffed......compare appropriately.

Reichle - Sanctuary · May 2010

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear wrote: »

0.o

If you wanted to really calculate it out (get the most from each shard) you would have to see what your resistances would be if fully garnet sharded buffed and non buffed. A mix of shards, citrine;garnet, (this is what my cleric does) buffed and non buffed. And fully citrine sharded again buffed and non buffed......compare appropriately.

....How the heck would I do that w/o spending lots of money?
And honestly, I was leaning more towards garnets because a cleric needs physical defense. You can heal to make up for your HP, and I already have 51 vit, so adding even more HP seems...unneeded vs. getting more physical defense.

yashino · May 2010

Evasion shards
with elemental ornaments.

why? cleric has plume shell which is their best physical defense.
Why evasion? cuz you gonna have elemental ornaments why need more mdef, get lucky and get missed.
why elemental ornaments? cuz you dont need phys res as you have plume shell.

Lylfo - Dreamweaver · May 2010

Its up to you. Full citrine works better at lower level because walking around with 2k hp at 70s or 80s is plain suicide no matter how well you can heal or how well you resist physical attacks
.
---you cannot do tt1-2 and 1-3 with that kind of HP.

It is better to shard more garnets later on when you can get in more refines and better shards.

Remember, we have plume shell, wings of protection and guardian light as our defensive skills so we have quite a bit of survivability but more HP is great to compensate for reaction time to activate those skills and what not.

About the mp argument, using Herb Yuanxiao can recover 5k mp over 10 sec while jiaozi only heals 3k hp over 10 sec. Technically, it would be better to spam yuanxiao for survivability.

MystiMonk - Sanctuary · May 2010

I would say use average citrine shards if this for pve don't spend to much on them .I think I made thread on this as well.I would use garnets if TWing.

Deceptistar - Sanctuary · May 2010

do you use charms? thats also a big deciding factor

Lemuria - Harshlands · May 2010

I've always preferred to add more HP, so I'd lean towards citrines. I can understand your dilemma though, with the extremely low defense damage will be much higher eating through that extra HP quickly. Having said that, bear in mind that while there are bosses who do physical AoE, there are many more who use magical AoE. For this, higher HP is more useful since you're already well protected by your arcane armor.

Later on you might choose to swap the citrines for garnets and get the extra HP needed by refining your gear instead. Just bear in mind that arcane gear gets the lowest HP bonuses of the three available armor types.

Kuyaa - Lost City · May 2010

hp shards always better if u have low refine/low vit still.. againts physical atk?just counter it with plume shell and 79 skills u should be fine.. and in BB pdef not that important since dmg reduced by 50% no matter what.. so hp is way to go for early game

Aubree - Dreamweaver · May 2010

Lylfo - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Its up to you. Full citrine works better at lower level because walking around with 2k hp at 70s or 80s is plain suicide no matter how well you can heal or how well you resist physical attacks
.
---you cannot do tt1-2 and 1-3 with that kind of HP.

It is better to shard more garnets later on when you can get in more refines and better shards.

Remember, we have plume shell, wings of protection and guardian light as our defensive skills so we have quite a bit of survivability but more HP is great to compensate for reaction time to activate those skills and what not.

About the mp argument, using Herb Yuanxiao can recover 5k mp over 10 sec while jiaozi only heals 3k hp over 10 sec. Technically, it would be better to spam yuanxiao for survivability.

Totally disagree here....

I remember being lvl 70 and doing drum boss in 1-2. Man he hit like a brick and I could not live through it. I was constantly told to "get more hp". I did get more hp, but still couldn't live through drummer. What made me live was, I sharded pdef. Pdef goes a lot further than hp in TT. That is because most of the aoe and attacks in TT are phys. You have 50 vit that is good enough, Go Pdef FTW

Im going to say go pdef in everything (except cape and hat, only if you decide you want more hp )

Paramedic - Dreamweaver · May 2010

ijs http://pwcalc.ru/pwi

to avoid that whole pointless debate

rule is -and everyone must agree with that- that u can start to shard garnets when you have certain (suitable for you) amount of hp

because it s really not cool to die from magic, really..

and beside that, if for example 1 hp shard gives u 2% hp more and 1 p.def shard wont give you like ~4% p.dmg resistance compared to what u had before, then -imo- it s not worth turning to garmet.

hope it s obvious enough and there is no need to explain why

in my case, now i got this 'perfect' balance when garmet shard with give me '2x more'..
and at this point when i actually know what bonuses i can get from gems i can decide what to do.

knowing that i still wont switch to garmet, but not because i fell in love with citrine gems but cuz with my low hp i wont wanna be first who die on snake in warsong, silly metal mobs in seat and i will feel bit more comfortable in fc or nirvana with 5k+ hp buffed

this is profit from not being life fan of stupid citrines or garmet gems and actually checking your stats b:quiet

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear · May 2010

The following at level 70 offer nice phys resistance adds. Especially the sword.

★Sakyamuni's Light
Magic Sword
Grade Rank 10
Attack Frequency(Times/second) 1.25
Physical Attack 330-494
Magic Attack 598-731
Requisite Lv. 70
Requisite Strength 39
Requisite Magic 210
Phys. Res. +216
Magic Attack +56
Evasion +214

★Dark Pants of Hades
Arcane Leggings
Grade Rank 10
Phys. Res. +120
Metal Resistance +1075
Wood Resistance +1075
Water Resistance +1075
Fire Resistance +1075
Earth Resistance +1075
Requisite Lv. 70
Requisite Strength 39
Requisite Magic 108
Phys. Res. +45
Vitality +6
Reduce Physical damage taken +1%

You can grab those and they will equal more phys resistance then a fully sharded garnet set. And then you can shard for what you want....hp or more phys resistance.

Hazumu - Dreamweaver · May 2010

I'm sorry Para, but your logic is flawed.

1% p. def increase =/= 1% hp increase

however
1% p.def increase > 1% hp increase

Here is why:
For one thing, when you increase your hp, it's only there ONCE.
While the physical defense is in there with each and every strike you take.

But more importantly:
Clam Scout for example hits you for 1623 physical damage.
If we take away 1% from that you get 16,23. But as we know, it takes several hits and it's not too uncommon for a cleric to get 3 hits before the mob dies. That means that that 1% increased pdef alone saved you for 49 hp. But that's not all, the higher you get, the more they hit you for and thus the better the result.

However, this example is biased for the HP shards to begin with since if you have no garnets now, your pdef is propably very low and thus the return for adding a few is propably going to be a lot better than 1%. And don't forget, you can get more HP from refining your armor.

Besides, if we take myself as an example. I have 50% physical resistance with only my own buffs and I'm arcane wearer. With BM buff it shoots up to 57% and I haven't even finished my set yet. I'm still missing 2 pieces of my planned set and I expect to get my physical resistance up to 60% fully buffed with those adds. When we include that to my 4k+ HP base, the result is quite convincing. Especially so when I'm pretty much always last one to fall in any peculiar moment.

Qlngfu - Archosaur · May 2010

this should have ended when paramedic posted this -.-
YOU know best what you can afford, try combining different shards, gear and refines and see what will benefit you the most

Reichle - Sanctuary · May 2010

Deceptistar - Sanctuary wrote: »

do you use charms? thats also a big deciding factor

I use MP charms from time to time...it's not constant

Need Help Settling Sharding Debate

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