PLD Gear?

[Molly_Millions]

For those advocating DEF stacking for anything but trash mobs (ie, not any bosses) please have a read: http://kanican.livejournal.com/55915.html

Note particularly the amount of DEF required to make much of a dent in the amount of damage mitigated on a Lv58 mob such as Ifrit (afaik - and please correct me if I'm wrong - most bosses are around Lv58). I haven't seen anything to suggest that this has changed either, it's long but it's a good read. If you want to skim just read the bolded purple and red text and you'll get the gist of the information.

Essentially the issue is DEF increases its utility the closer it gets to the cap for that particular dLVL. This means that it's also less effective when it's further from its cap. Adding a 10DEF when it's far from the cap will do very little to mitigate damage, while adding 10DEF closer to cap will do a much larger degree of mitigation. The more dLVL there is, the further away the cap is and the less effect DEF has on mitigating damage.

I've read that post thoroughly and understand it's implications. The problem with damage mitigation in general is the effect of dlvl, NOT what stat you are stacking to achieve it. Physical damage mitigation from VIT comes from the amount of DEF that VIT adds. So, you have the same problem with VIT, but you get less DEF from your VIT than you get from stacking DEF directly. By stacking VIT you can make up for this with magical defense and enhancing magic potency. So tbh the effectiveness of DEF or VIT is kind of a wash and is more up to your own play style.

I have seen absolutely no testing on magical defense. For this discussion, we can assume that m.DEF suffers from the same dlvl curve as DEF. So the debate really comes down to what do you want to achieve with your chest piece. Do you want physical damage mitigation, HP, or a mix of m.DEF/DEF/enhancing magic potency? You then need to weigh the effectiveness of each against the stats of your other gear and decide what's best for your build.