End Game Shard Reconsideration?

Mmm, I think mystic is better off sharding defensively rather than +2 Attack. We're one of the shortest range casters (along with venos) so archers and other casters will pop us if we go +2 attack.

Garnets versus HP is going to depend on your individual gear, but I'd lean towards garnets overall.

In normal conditions (against an opponent not sharded JoSA), Vitality stones are second best sharding after JoSD(afterwards Garnet gems and then Citrine gems). As your opponent's atk lvls increase Vit becomes better that JoSD.

The most effective shards depend on what gear you have. If you have the usual r9r3+g16 helm/cape+cube neck+a pdef ring all +10 +o'malley's, the threshold when Vit becomes better then JoSD is when your opponent has ~140 atk lvls. The more atk lvls he has after that, the more Vit becomes more effective over JoSD. If you also have the gear from NWs the threshold rises to ~145 atk lvls.

Ofc you'll also have to consider how many ppl will have those JoSA shards and how many of them you face. Because resharding for a specal kind of opponents you fight every once in a while seems like a waste.

Zoldi - Lothranis wrote: »

Are you talking about +20 vit stones or +10 vit stones ?

Personnaly I don't understand why a mystic would shard with vitality stones since for a caster 1 vitality point only equals to 10 HP (and a ridiculous amount of regeration or defensive points). So basically +10 vit stones < citrine gems for any caster class, isn't it ? And even if talking about +20 vit stones I would say that this doesn't worth it to my eyes.

Full Vit shards add 240 vitality (2400 hp for all casters except venos). In addition they add:

60 + 19.2% of equipment defense.

If you have low defense to begin with, you wont see much of a difference. Full vit shards will allow them to take roughly 31% more damage when buffed and 37% more damage when purged, whereas 115 hp shards will add a flat 28% to their HP pool. For reference, full JoSDs would reduce the damage taken from an attacker with 170 attack levels (r9s3 sin with chill of the deep) by 23%.

In fully endgame gear, a mystic probably has something like 7581 physical defense unbuffed.* The vit stones will add 1397 (2515 with verdant shell only, 4191 if you include BM and cleric buffs) physical defense and 2144 (3430 buffed) magic defense unbuffed.

For casters, JoSDs don't make sense against r9s3 until your armor is all +12, even when you ignore attack level shards. If you only have +10 or +11 ornaments, the case is a little better for JoSD, but if you are going to spend that kind of money you are better off refining ornaments to +12 and sharding Vits.

Against those opponents where JoSD do provide better defense (in the neighborhood of 120 or fewer attack levels), they will already be dealing far less damage so the added damage reduction isn't as imperative unless you are being attacked by multiple opponents simultaneously.

*Note I didn't include heaven ravager because I don't really think it is worth it for the money but it will make the case for Vits (slightly) better.

Additionally, when you are +12 full JoSD, anyone with enough attack levels to overcome your defense levels has given up a tremendous amount of defense themselves. You might be able to take 1 less hit from them, but they probably won't be able to take more than 1 or 2 good hits from you.

O_o Well I just learned something today. I thought Vit just added that tiny bit of pdef and mdef, never knew about that percent bonus thing. I guess I should stop laughing at DarkSorcer's sharding. (although he should probably throw some drakeflames in there, still really easy to kill him with Absorb Soul).