Your opinions about this gear setup.

Alright.
So we immediately throw away the Diamond of Defense and DoT build. You always should go one way or the other, not some half-damned in-between. b:laugh

So now it's a question between a DoT Full 3rd cast, or a JosD Full 3rd cast. (Note that there is actually a better combination for survivability - I believe it was 19 JosD/5 Savants, but I don't have the calculator handy).

At this point, it's not really a question about the gear, since they are equally endgame.
How do you play? Are you a very offensive or defensive player? Do you take risks, or wait for fortune's hand to favor your Zerk/Crit%? The thing is, you ought to choose gear that covers the area you're weakest in.

For example, I'm a highly offensive player. I defend myself mostly through sheer force, often by spiking my damage so I'll kill my opponent before he kills me, and I don't concern myself with my HP as much as I do as the HP of my opponent. Therefore, I'm sharding a combination of JosD and Savants, to cover my weak defense area.

Likewise, a highly defensive player is going to stunlock their opponent continuously, and the player in question will rarely die, but also rarely win, unless they either make a mistake and pay the price or get a really nice string of double damage hits. This person should shard DoTs, in order to cover for their strategy, which lacks the offensive initiative.

Most people these days will tell you to shard JosD, because it is currently the best shard in the game for survivability. However, I believe you ought to conform to your own identity, and choose what's best for you, not in general.
Take a man who has more skill with a dagger than a lightsaber, for example. A lightsaber is immediately seen as the most "powerful" or "best" weapon - however, when it comes down to it, the man is probably going to be better off with his own personalized dagger, than a glowy light blade that makes buzzing noises. He's familiar with the dagger, and is an expert at fighting with it - no matter how strong the lightsaber is, if he can't use it, poopoo for him.

Best of luck to answering your own question (and gz on a job! I'm still too young to get one!)

PS: Suggestions for your general gear build
1. Include CotD buff in your next build
2. Best tome for skillspamming is NOT the Luad - it's one of those blockier tomes, like the +55 dex. Personally, I'd go with either the +0.2 mps (kiting ftw) or the reduce physical dmg% - but as I said earlier, choose what fits you best.
3. Adversity Belt has +10 vit and dex, +3 attack and def levels, and +250 magical resistance (if I'm not wrong).
4. A G16 cape and helmet will give you better defenses and HP than the current choice of G15 hat and APS cape. Also, you can shard JosD in a G16 cape.
5. Always have both an O'malley's Blessing and a Jone's blessing. You gain more attack and defense levels if you are proficient at switching them in combat to suit your needs. (Omalleys while attacked, Jones while attacking)

(I was originally referring to your playstyle outside of stealth - Being in stealth basically means infinite defense).

Hmmm, offensive and defensive... in that case, I'd probably go JosD, especially since you mentioned your tendency to AoE a lot. If you're going to repeatedly do that, you'll need enough defense to get away - two spark should take care of any damage problems.

Your build looks excellent, but I'm a bit concerned with your Mdef. As a tanky physical sin, you're most likely going to get killed by magical range DD that you can't locate in time to save yourself. I'd recommend switching that cube neck into a magical one, while keeping the rings.
Everything else looks great.

You may want to start looking at various genie builds; Because you're into AoEing, you'd be well suited to TW and Group PvP. Therefore, you'd want a vit/mag genie. You have two options at 103: Faith+Elemental resists, ToP, fortify, that sort of stuff, or AD+Expel and the same after. If you put the same Elemental resist skills in both, you should have equal resist power to magic; however, Faith is going to give you more flexibility in your escape methods (blocking purge! Get out of stun to go into IG!) while AD and Expel are going to be both more reliable and better vs physical damage. Choose the build to counter the classes you have the most trouble with.

As for bragging: Dw, we all have egos here.

As for jobs: I have a few more years to enjoy, I guess. b:victory

I don't think any of those setups are ideal. All of them have the G15 Nirvana helmet for no apparent reason. Similarly, all of them have way too much PDef: it'll be even worse if we talk full buffs.

As for sharding, I'm personally of the opinion that you shouldn't shard DoTs. It's kinda dumb when you already have a ton of Attack Levels to go with. Also, never shard DoDs.

As for the tome: I don't think it's worth it to ditch Love: Up and Down just yet. It's a much more flexible tome than the Dex tomes you could get. Also, your comparison is unfair: Love: Up and Down is a tome made from 1 Scroll of Tome, whereas Divine Ignorance is made from three tomes of that grade, meaning it's triple the price. The Scoll of Tome equivalent of Love: Up and Down is Divine Brotherhood, which is just 25 dexterity with 2% crit, hardly worth a comparison considering that LUAD provides 25+ dex from restatting and 1% crit.

Zsw - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Could you provide me the calculation for that please? I calculated sharding for end game assassins multiple times and I always come up with 24 josd.

It does come down to what we're talking about.

For some, "endgame" is full +12's. For some, it's +10's.

Asterelle wrote an effective HP calculator around sharding. That is, it tells you the best overall sharding you could use with a setup.

For example, the OP's three setups produce the following results:
First setup: 13 JoSD with 11 Vit Stones
Second Setup: 10 JoSD, 14 Vit Stones

The third setup is the second one with a different sharding plan.

The reason why the effective HP is superior with some Vit Stones here is because his refines are at +10. Put them at +12 and we get the following results:
First Setup: 23 JoSD, 1 Vit Stone
Second Setup: 20 JoSD, 4 Vit Stones

Naturally, those stats are unbuffed. Put in some buffs and it'll be 24 JoSD.

Right. I only calculated for up to full r9 stage 1 using a set of full +12 gears.
Recalculations with this build seem to show that full josd is still superior in all cases except against other sins.

On another note, the OP's builds are broken. Stats on the armor got removed. I think that is the same problem with your build, Tsyn

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

Well, the point that I was rather trying to make is that the biggest influence with the optimal sharding is the refinement. The amount of HP that you gain when you go from +10 to +12 with gear like r9rr is so high that it kinda makes Vit Gems a bad choice.



Oh, that's just a PWCalc thing, he hasn't added the stats for the armors yet.

Yeah, that makes sense. I thought I was missing something so I wanted to confirm. Thanks. b:victory