...PVP stat balance? What?

[Aether The Nob]

Many guides here on the forums tell players with any interest in PvP whatsoever to have a semblance of balance in their PvP stats if they don't want to end up like a wall or glass cannon. But I'm pretty sure that they are wrong. I was planning my character this morning, and looked at a spreadsheet with total attack and defense power incorporated into it. So I placed in my stats, and here they are:

Aether (the Nob):
Level: 213
Attack: 400
Defense: 50
Energy: 400
Stamina: 274
Health: 218
Total Attack Power: 435
Total Defense Power: 330

I know about the 70% addition thing, so this was no surprise. I am starting to build my defense, so I tried adding 200 defense:
Total Attack Power:575
Total Defense Power: 530

Then I tried adding 200 to my attack, just to check it out:
Total Attack Power: 635
Total Defense Power: 470

In the second instance, I still posses a quite respectable defense for a Monster Hunter/Hybrid, and have a 60 sp increase in my attack. I then made both stat values at 325, half of my total investment:
Total Attack Power:553
Total Defense Power: 553

As you can see, this is a more evenly built character, but is worse than the character that leveled attack at attacking, and worse than the defense character at defending. This said, those two other players can still defend and attack very well, even though they didn't even add any sp to the respective category. However you look at it, I still recommend going for whatever pleases you more; if you like defense, go all defense, if you like attack, go all attack. There is, as you can see, no such thing as a glass cannon, and a wall is far from incapable of winning attacks.

[Newershadow]

Many guides on the forum are tremendously out of date

[Aether The Nob]

I've noticed .

Someone will have to fix that someday, huh?

[web_fredo]

Level 200 low bsi...

Don't really understand what you want to show but please do you math with better stats...
Try level 400 bsi 10 for a 4k combined and maybe you will see what's the difference between wall balanced and canon...

[Cerbykins]

Also recall there are lots of caveats to that. Stat-switcher generals.....personal taste....the monster thresholds as well if you care about such things. You'd at least want to have 1k of each.

TOTALLY 1-sided builds have the issue that they may not be able to significantly damage that monster at all, issues healing, etc.

[Aether The Nob]

So the monsters are only dependent on the true attack and defense, not total?

Level 400, 4000 total sp invested:

Even Build:
Total Attack Power: 3400
Total Defense Power: 3400

Cannon Build:
Total Attack Power: 4000
Total Defense Power: 2800

Wall Build:
Total Attack Power:2800
Total Defense Power: 4000

I am trying to show that the builds really come down to personal preference, and will never be totally weak in one aspect of PvP. 2800 attack/defense is a lot, and although it cannot compare to a full 4000, or even 3400, your build cannot be messed up too bad no matter how you choose to PvP.

[Ineluki]

It really depends on what your goal is in PVP. Most of the players out there do not have wall builds. Most of them have either attack heavy builds or balanced builds. So if you build a cannon you'll beat anyone with comparable stats except a wall. If you go for a balanced build you'll beat the cannons and split your wins and lossses against other balanced builds.

That just covers offense though. Walls will bounce all but the most extreme cannons with comparable stats. Cannons won't bounce anyone except walls and there aren't many of those.

In most cases, you get more rewards for an offensive win than a defensive win which is why the player-base leans more towards cannons. Another reason is that if you assume the player base does lean more towards cannons, then building a cannon yourself means that you can beat a larger and larger group of players as you level up even with inferior stats. You only need to add 7 points to attack to break a cannon who adds 10 to attack.

For the most part, a wall doesn't make sense unless your BSI is higher than average. You need enough of an advantage to be able to beat people both offensively and defensively and that is tough to do for a wall unless they a BSI that is at least a full point or 2 higher than average.

[VersionsOfViolence]

I'm still sticking with a natural balance of Attack & Defense. Runes are srsly screwing with my OCD, which is why I'm now on a strict Damage Essence diet.

But remember that the stat-transfer generals from the chests (Xira, Halcyon, & Evalice so far) can alter your build tremendously, especially if you have either Xira or Evalice AND Halcyon.

[Mellisa The Hun]

Runes are srsly screwing with my OCD, which is why I'm now on a strict Damage Essence diet.

You won't be able to outrun the others, they WILL eventually find you.
So, why not just give in and collect all starting right now.....

(all except health, it's completely worthless Rune lol)

[Newershadow]

So the monsters are only dependent on the true attack and defense, not total?

No one covered this, but yes. Monsters only use the attack or defense stat, along with whatever modifiers from generals you may have.

[Aether The Nob]

Also recall there are lots of caveats to that. Stat-switcher generals.....personal taste....the monster thresholds as well if you care about such things. You'd at least want to have 1k of each.

TOTALLY 1-sided builds have the issue that they may not be able to significantly damage that monster at all, issues healing, etc.

I was looking for clarification on this. Thanks.