Gear Assistance

[Grimwald]

Defense and Vit are ignored by almost all bosses. dLVL pretty much nerfs your defense and vit to where you're relying on your innate damage reduction abilities and passives. Luckily, VIT is an important component of your core stats anyways, so at least you're getting somewhat of a return. It's safe to assume most bosses are 4-6 levels higher than you.

"This is why the naked Ifrit run works from a tanking perspective. If you go in naked, you take about 1,100 damage. If you go in fully geared on a GLA with 1,000 Defense, you'll end up taking about 650. Because we are so far from the damage floor, there is very little efficiency, even in upping our defense from 50 to 1,000! It all as to do with where our current defense is relatively the defense required to reach the damage floor. This is why defense can seem so important on R50s, but mean so little on higher end mobs. Another way we can put this is the higher damage the mob deals to you, the less efficient defense stacking will be.

Beyond this explanation of tanking naked on Ifrit, I do not wish to get into a philosophical argument as to whether or not the defense stat is broken. I only intend to illustrate WHY things work the way they work. I will leave the philosophical "should be" arguments to the official forums."

Please see here for more info:

SCIENCE