I'm hoping to run my first Shadow Lair soon, and I wanted to get well-suited gear with good UVs. That's when the hair pulling started. I've heard a lot of different opinions on what constitutes a "good" variant on one piece of gear or another. Even extensive research (Antistone et al.) has not given the results I wanted.
My main question is this: What gives greater defenses:
A Skolver Cap with Shadow High plus a Snarbolax coat with Piercing High, or...
A Skolver Cap with Piercing High plus a Snarbolax coat with Shadow High?
On the one hand, people have told me UVs function as a percentage of the natural defenses on a piece of gear. On the other, I have heard there is more evidence that it is completely equal either way. Can anyone help me out?
Thanks!
How do UVs work with natural defenses?
I agree with the sentiment, stacking mismatched UVs can be kind of pointless, but I'm just wondering if there's a difference in the damage taken with one or the other.
Defense UVs appear to add the same amount of bar length at a given star level regardless of what armor they appear on.
If bar lengths are truly indicative of defensive value, then your two examples should give the same total defense.
If bar lengths are not indicative of defensive value, then you'd need to specifically test both sets to be sure.
Note, however, that you can't craft Snarbolax armor except at the end of a shadow lair (even if you have all the materials). So you might want to consider something else to wear for your first run.
First off Antistone, I really appreciate the testing on damage values you've done on your wiki page. Thanks for that!
I know I can't craft a Snarbolax coat quite yet, I was just using it as an easy example.
Testing both might be a bit out of my price range at the moment, but maybe when I get more money.
Personally, I'm completely convinced that the defense bars are indicative of defense value, so the two are the same. Antistone refuses to make statements about anything without fully thorough testing, which is good because it prevents misconceptions, but can also be bad in that it makes things seem like we have no idea how they work. So to prevent him from arguing me to tears again, yes, I cannot say the following with 100% confidence, and yes, I have been wrong in the past, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Here's the deal:
* Skolver provides a certain amount of Piercing defense at heat level 10
* Each level of UV provides roughly 10% of the bar length of Skolver's Piercing defense (Low=10%, Med=20%, High=30%, Max=40%); it's not percentage-based off the UVed armor's defense
* Defense is increasingly useful against attacks as you get more defense of a type, relative to the percentage of damage that is knocked off compared to the full attack power; therefore UVs are only really useful if you're already packing defense against the type in question, and they are most useful when adding to already amazing defense against that specific type, i.e. two pieces of equipped gear with defense against it
I'd prefer:
A Skolver Cap with Piercing High plus a Snarbolax coat with Shadow High
Why? because outside of shadow lairs, why would you want a skolver with shadow defense? there are only pierce things on wolver dens...
Same for the snarby, only shadow damage on dark cty and other fiend levels.