I recognize that the question seems to be pretty complex, but I’m not looking for precision. Instead, I’ve been talking about rough notions like what DonnieDarko and Bebaxt just supplied, with some notes on what you’ve experienced. I’m not looking for exact numbers, but the vague impression you’ve gained over time.
But for the most part I’ll stop beating on that, as it’s been a few pages of frustration, so I’ll give up on that.
Instead, I’d like to revisit two of the more specific questions from the original post. I don’t suppose these should be such a problem.
A) Per the original post, there seems to be 5 categories for sources of survivability: devotions, skills, gear, materia, and augments. In terms of relative efficiency, do any of these categories tend to excel in something to the point that they ought to be favored for a particular kind of survivability or a particular stat?
Or perhaps it’s more useful to frame it from the other direction: Are there some forms of investment that are very ‘inefficient,’ and generally ought to be avoided?
B) Do some stats diminish over time in defensive potency? I have heard Armor argued as one such. I’m particularly interested in how effective armor investment is by the time you’re clearing, say, Plains of Strife in Ultimate. Are there diminishing returns? Or with armor, are we so desperate for damage mitigation that we just take whatever we can get, damn the cost?
A)In my experience, the most important and efficient stat will be armour rating because it protects you against both physical and magical damage. I have a soldier with 2,3k armour rating and I just laugh at crowd of monsters. The next important stat will be a shield. That also protects against both. I know many player thinks that having a shield decreases the damage output. To those players, I would recomend to compare their damage with and without a shield. As you know both shields and weapons have a flat damage value on them. Shields adds this flat damage to the damage output just like other weapons do. My shield has more flat damage than my sword. Moreover it protects me against coming attacks decreasing or negating the incoming damage completely. I would put DA after these two. Since gear is what gives the most armour, we can safely answer your first question as gear. Gear excels both in defensive and offensive terms. Next comes skills. Then devotions, materia and augments.
B) I would say " You may never have enough aromur. The bigger it is, the better.". However focusing on armour may cause you to sacrifice damage. If you dont mind a slow progress that wont be an issue. I think my comando has a good balance between offense and defense slightly favouring defense. I always favor chars able to hold up against big threats and deal a reasonable damage. That is what my comando does. Here is my build:
I am not completely sure about exact numbers on candence, markovian advantage(MA) and menhirs bulvark because I am over-caping them so I move some points to other parts. I have full Markovian Set and +5 to all soldier. It has 2,2 k DA, 11k health, 2,3k armour, 1,85k OA, a huge health regen and full resistances. It can see 55k damage/s during combat with a proced fighting spirit(FS). Although he lacks OA, he gains advantage when both MA and FS procs.
[QUOTE=bebaxt;443390]A)In my experience, the most important and efficient stat will be armour rating because it protects you against both physical and magical damage.
This is wrong, armor only protects against physical damage.