Something I would like to discuss: At what point should I stop investing defense and start investing into health or other things?
Recently I have fallen in love with a setting that few use but is still awesome for using it. Defensive!
Now, I've been running into the problem that I want to be so bulky that I put Bulky's name to shame. But recently I've run into the biggest problem is the decrease in my defensive capabilities. For example, for Elemental-themed monsters I run full Grey Feather Set with Elemental High + Elemental High + Elemental Trinket + Elemental Trinket + Elemental Perk. Now if it wasn't obvious, this is a lot of elemental defense... I mean a lot. (One piece grants 9< Units of Elemental Defense)
Now I understand that there's a decrease in how effective something is when playing defensively. But at what point should I be investing into other things? Testing it, without the trinkets and perk I only take an additional unit from my understanding. Am I basically hitting the threshold with just the elemental high UVs?
The last question is mixing and matching with other defensive sets. How good of an idea is this exactly? (kinda a mix of the first question too) I'm specifically talking about two pieces of specialized pieces of armor and going with what is pretty much 7.3< Units of Normal/Piercing/Elemental. In which case, I'm using a Grey Feather Cowl Elemental High + Mercurial Mail Elemental High + Piercing Trinket + Elemental Trinket + Elemental Perk which gives me this outcome: http://i.imgur.com/AAfcjsX.png
So in the end, is this a good idea? Has this been attempted before? Will this work just as well as a defensive set?
When a knight's defense is less than half the size of an incoming attack, defense just subtracts from the attack. So adding more defense is good.
The problem is that you may be adding so much defense that you come up to half of the incoming attack. Then the damage calculation seems to switch to a different regime, that we don't understand. But there are seriously diminishing returns?
So I don't know the answer, but I would do this: Measure the attacks that you're typically facing. Play with armor just below half of those attacks and just above half of those attacks, to see how the defense effects change.