[X] My Assistant

Hi,

I'd like to ask more experienced players a few yes/no questions:
1) is damage bonus of radiant phase armor in percents like EDB?
2) can you mooglemail a soulfused equipment (for IW service)?

Thanks in advance!

1) is damage bonus of radiant phase armor in percents like EDB?

No, you just get additional MBD.

2) can you mooglemail a soulfused equipment (for IW service)?

No, so if you want to use a IW service you should do it before the fuse.

hey,

how exactly do I link equipment pieces that I own in a forum post?

thank you!

You just hover over it with your mouse cursor and press c. That opens another window and you can just use the link from that.

Awesome, thanks man!

Hi there Experts !

So im Lvl. 214 in Isekai ! Last Season all went well !

Have Imperill & Silence unlocked & slotted in abbilities !

None is available in Settings to Slot it ! What to do now ?

Waited for 4 days to figure out if it would adjust ... like well ..wait & see ^^ Im stuck ..especially because higher difficulties arent possible without them !

This post has been edited by mutsdhr: Aug 14 2021, 07:23

Hi there Experts !

So im Lvl. 214 in Isekai ! Last Season all went well !

Have Imperill & Silence unlocked & slotted in abbilities !

None is available in Settings to Slot it ! What to do now ?

Waited for 4 days to figure out if it would adjust ... like well ..wait & see ^^ Im stuck ..especially because higher difficulties arent possible without them !

probably because you have low deprecating proficiency, just cast some other depr spells and they should unlock soon

probably because you have low deprecating proficiency, just cast some other depr spells and they should unlock soon

Damn totally forgot about that ^^ Some time.. Mana pot´s & Stamina wasted & they popped up !

I don't see the freeshop or the Evil's wtb low level equipment anymore. What should I do with my low level magnificents?

Hey, I have a few questions. I'm trying to gain a rough understanding recently for what is considered good for equipment - though more about how important some things are in the weighing of items. I thought I had two items that were perfect as a comparison example, but I was mixing something up.

Anyway, as a simple example, from what I've understood Spell Proficiency Bonus is "the bomb" for Cloth type armors, so to get an idea of how important that is, I pose this example:

Two Cloth items of the same slot, say both are level 400 for roughly how much the difference is worth here. One of them has ~20 more proficiency bonus (let's say 90 vs 70), but the other hand has significantly better values in almost every other bonus. Is spell proficiency important enough to the point that the question of the other stats don't matter when the spell prof difference is this large? To begin with, could this theoretical difference in the example happen in the first place?

I guess I would have similar questions regarding other types of EQ, though which stats are the most important differ based on the gear and style. So far I know that for regular weapons and most styles (apart from casting/DW/Niten) assuming you're using one of the "best" weapon types then ADB% is the most important, which leads into anything except Slaughter being considered "useless" (at least if you're looking for optimal choices).
For suffixes from what I understood Ethereal is in theory the best, but for the purpose of high-end optimization of Potencies combined with them wanting Holy/Dark as their secondary strike, I heard that people generally prefer the suffixes for Holy/Dark. Otherwise it'd take a ludicrous amount of rerolling Potencies on average to get what you want. I don't know specifically why they want Dark/Holy so feel free to answer that one too, though I'd guess the top end enemies have less Holy/Dark Mit on average to be valued that highly? Or is it only SG, but SG are that important? I mention them because SG is by far the most mentioned whenever what little I have heard on the matter comes up.

For regular Heavy, I hear that the most important is their defensive values, probably weighed slightly based on other things. Shielding for block bonuses on 1H? Potentially "large" burden differences? At least I assume so since Kite Shield is so shunned despite the block bonus being - from what I have seen - somewhat small, but the Burden difference is huge relatively speaking. I feel like Kite wouldn't be as laughed at as I've seen it be if they only really cared about the Block, so while Burden might not be *the* factor, it has to be somewhat significant to them. More interference on the other hand just means you need to use more pots for them, so at most it is an inconvenience for people at high levels, and from my experience you don't really use many in the first place - at least not with a full set of auto-cast perks.
Preferred prefixes are probably Mithril or Shielding, unless people don't care about Shielding or Burden, in which case I guess any of the elemental ones is best. Not caring about Shielding or even Burden would be weird though given the comment I made towards shields just now, though in this case it would be competing with actual defensive stats instead of just Interference.
Suffixes I'm guessing is just all Prot/Ward.

For Power I assume it's preferred to have Savage+Slaughter, though Savage seems far less important than Slaughter. If talking about non-Savage, I assume the priority is whatever applied to regular Heavy? Just in a theoretical case, are there any builds that would prefer Balance over Prot/Ward?

For Light armor I assume you want all Shade with Shadowdancer if possible and no one (realistically) wanting Arcanist? I have no idea about the actual weighted value people place on most -fixes for any kind of Light. Though I have seen signs that some builds may prefer Leather with Prot/Ward (at least in a few slots). For prefixes one of the two specific to Shade? For Leather I think I saw Reinforced being "the bomb", no idea about the priorities for anything else tho. Leather suffixes I already mentioned briefly, but I assume it's Prot/Ward.

For Cloth I honestly have no clue beyond Cotton wanting their Prof for their suffix and Phase wanting their element for damage bonus, but beyond that I'm lost. I could guess that prefixes are Charged(>Frugal) for Cotton and Radiant>Mystic>Charged>Frugal for Phase, but that's just a guess with no idea of the value.

For Shields I know that 1H wants Force Shields with high block%, probably not caring much about which of the prefixes they get (other than any potential bias based on their current mits) and assumingly wanting Prot/Ward suffix. For Buckler all I know is that non-casters likely always want Barrier and 1H Casters wanting ONLY the Battlecaster (at least I'd assume so, unless Block% is important enough to them).

The only other thing I have any clue about that I haven't mentioned is that DW/Niten value Nimble and Swiftness more than others, but notably Nimble for the off-hand?

For anything else, I really don't have a clue either about preferences or how important some stats are compared to others. I also can't imagine people haven't asked these questions before (though likely with a thinner spread individually), feels like there'd be a sticky in the HV Chat forum by now at least highlighting the most sought after/least desired -fixes and stats. For me personally I only really care about anything used by 1H Power builds as far as weighing of stats goes, but for -fixes I'd like to know roughly how important (or unwanted) the ones that stand out are for all the prevalent builds.
What I mean by that is that while knowing roughly how I should weigh certain stats is important for anything I currently use, it has no value for builds I'm not currently running. On the other hand, knowing what EQ types and -fixes for other items is useful to me at any point, since it helps me quickly spot items that might fetch me a decent price as well as being worth keeping as a potential use if I decide to try other styles - though regardless of what happens I have no plans to ever play a caster focused character. The other physical styles have all caught my interest at some point.
Only once I actually care about either selling something in a shop of my own or playing the style would I care about weighing the stats on those items.


TL;DR
I list what I roughly know about what is or isn't important for specific categories of EQ, then finalize it by saying that what I want to know is first and foremost what EQ types are the most sought after for the (prevalent) builds and which -fixes are the most/least attractive for those - both for personal use and having an idea of what may be worth selling and thus holding on to.. which both serves to help me knowing what's worth having evaluated and wasting less time for the people actually evaluating stuff.
Secondary to that I also want to know roughly how strongly I should weigh the different stats on EQ for a 1H Power build once I look at something I'm considering using. I'm only interested and asking about 1H, if you'd be willing to answer that for all the other EQ types on top of the -fixes, you'd already be on your way to writing a sticky-worthy list for people like me.

If there is such a list somewhere, let me know how I missed it and if it isn't already, sticky it.. or increase the visibility somehow if it is stickied, I feel like I shouldn't have missed that. If there isn't one and there isn't gonna be one/multiple people compiling one as a reply to this, I'll do it myself if/when I ever feel confident in my knowledge.

*Edit* I also just realized that it doesn't actually say anywhere on the wiki - as far as I could tell - what all the possible sources for the rare materials (Repurposed Actuators etc) are, only mentions it does not (normally) drop from salvaging. Given how salvaging and the item shop is off, is the only possible place the Monster Lab, or do they also drop in combat?

*Edit 2* Oh yeah, in all my back and forths looking over things I forgot - I was supposed to ask since I never found it while running about on the wiki, but how does Block actually work? Specifically the EQ bonus, I imagine it's either a (soft) diminishing sum based on the absolute value or the highest single source (normally the shield)+multiplicative additions of the others to avoid reaching 100%.. unless proficiency serves to prevents it from ever getting there (wiki states prof acting as a multiplier?).
What I mean is say your shield is 50% and you have two sources of 10% you'd have 0.5*0.9*0.9 = a 40.5% chance of not blocking, or just flipping the result, a 59.5% chance of blocking.

If the wiki isn't even up-to-date on what contributes to blocking then my question is pretty much just "How does block work", I first thought about asking about it when I started mentioning Shielding, as I wasn't sure just how much that would be worth regardless of build.

This post has been edited by Xiandora: Aug 15 2021, 00:09

I don't see the freeshop or the Evil's wtb low level equipment anymore. What should I do with my low level magnificents?

I decided to reply in a post of it's own (sorry) since it felt like it might be easy to miss if I included it in my last post given how large it is.

If you're just looking to give them away to the ones in need and no one specifically offers you a place similar to the ones you mentioned, you could probably just start a thread and list all the items there, then send it to low level folks that ask.. doing a brief check just to avoid hoarding or the like - although I honestly don't know if it's possible to look up the EQ of one individual player without them providing it.

If you're looking to sell it then - depending on just how low level they are - I got the impression that most Mags of low level are (usually) auctionable barring the worst -fixes, so if they'd qualify just send them to Super's auction. If you're not sure about them being auctionable or not, have them Evaluated.

In my opinion side stats are undervalued, but for which stats are the most important, it is those that are the biggest on that particular kind of equipment. For example shields have small Physical Mitigation so you would not notice if it has a bad roll, with the majority of your PMit coming from your armors. But shields have high block so the roll on that is most important.

Aside from the size of the stat, the spread of the roll on that particular equipment can also matter. But people don't tend to study these as carefully and most stats are similar on this. In particular, I am not as picky about the roll on a force shield than others, because its block although high has a small spread. It's still the most important roll, but I might demand say 80%+ instead of 90%+. The block roll spread is more on other kinds of shields and especially bucklers of barrier.

(Although I would also begrudgingly accept 70%+ on bucklers of barrier for different reasons. They are much more rare than force shields to begin with, and I believe certain stats like barrier/nimble invisibly roll twice then add. This means that it is extra statistically unlikely to get either a very high or very low roll).

Check the wiki to see the stat ranges.

Dark/holy prefixes are overrated. The reason there is so little discussion is that old ideas on them became partially proven wrong, or challenged by newer and more detailed research, or truly altered due to the fact that the monster population changes with time (the species balance flexibly shifts the damages between the elements, while monster PL inflation causes holy/dark to continually worsen compared to the four elements). The introduction of the Day of the Week mechanic changed some issues, too.

Arctic is also overrated because many people were convinced by excellent research which also eventually became partially outdated and partially proven wrong. I think Tempestuous ought to be the current fad, ehehe.

I decided to reply in a post of it's own (sorry) since it felt like it might be easy to miss if I included it in my last post given how large it is.

If you're just looking to give them away to the ones in need and no one specifically offers you a place similar to the ones you mentioned, you could probably just start a thread and list all the items there, then send it to low level folks that ask.. doing a brief check just to avoid hoarding or the like - although I honestly don't know if it's possible to look up the EQ of one individual player without them providing it.

If you're looking to sell it then - depending on just how low level they are - I got the impression that most Mags of low level are (usually) auctionable barring the worst -fixes, so if they'd qualify just send them to Super's auction. If you're not sure about them being auctionable or not, have them Evaluated.

Thanks. I probably want to give them away since mostly they seem like crap to me, so I guess I will wait until I build up enough crap. I know at least one is a shortsword. I don't keep track of this stuff, really. I'm really a filthy casual.

In my opinion side stats are undervalued, but for which stats are the most important, it is those that are the biggest on that particular kind of equipment. For example shields have small Physical Mitigation so you would not notice if it has a bad roll, with the majority of your PMit coming from your armors. But shields have high block so the roll on that is most important.

Aside from the size of the stat, the spread of the roll on that particular equipment can also matter. But people don't tend to study these as carefully and most stats are similar on this. In particular, I am not as picky about the roll on a force shield than others, because its block although high has a small spread. It's still the most important roll, but I might demand say 80%+ instead of 90%+. The block roll spread is more on other kinds of shields and especially bucklers of barrier.

(Although I would also begrudgingly accept 70%+ on bucklers of barrier for different reasons. They are much more rare than force shields to begin with, and I believe certain stats like barrier/nimble invisibly roll twice then add. This means that it is extra statistically unlikely to get either a very high or very low roll).

Check the wiki to see the stat ranges.

Dark/holy prefixes are overrated. The reason there is so little discussion is that old ideas on them became partially proven wrong, or challenged by newer and more detailed research, or truly altered due to the fact that the monster population changes with time (the species balance flexibly shifts the damages between the elements, while monster PL inflation causes holy/dark to continually worsen compared to the four elements). The introduction of the Day of the Week mechanic changed some issues, too.

Arctic is also overrated because many people were convinced by excellent research which also eventually became partially outdated and partially proven wrong. I think Tempestuous ought to be the current fad, ehehe.

About holy/dark, that was more or less what I was thinking/expecting - in the past it would've been a different story, but it seems unlikely that there would be a *confirmed* bias of the monster population being weaker to specifically holy or dark ever since the introduction of the monster lab, at least once you're high enough level to (almost) always face them.

I also did take a peek at the EQ ranges before, and I tend to look over all stats on EQs I compare myself - even if I'm not always sure how valuable that extra 10 STR on EQ1 might be compared to 1 more Phys Mit on EQ2, or whatever. I could do the math myself to get a rough estimate, but eh. I don't care enough to go that far yet. Personally I'd roughly STR/DEX/END>AGI/WIS>INT (personally I shift AGI/WIS a bit depending on my burden - I used to have AGI quite a bit lower before when I had over 100 burden), but for personal preference and playstyle I actually do a slightly different than which is largely (except for AGI) based on some extremely simple rough estimates I did on stat numbers a few years back.. END>STR>DEX>WIS>AGI>INT, most of these being 10 points apart except AGI and INT, AGI currently 20 lower than WIS and INT being at a flat 300 atm. I just increase INT every so often once I feel the cost is so insignificant that raising it by 50 or so points won't matter. I don't remember exactly what the numbers were and how the formulas looked, but I imagine I might choose the stats a bit differently today if I do the math - I have far better gear and a full Power set (didn't have a single one back then), don't think I even had a full Leg set.

This post has been edited by Xiandora: Aug 15 2021, 01:11

I play light/2h on difficulties Hell or Nintendo. I've long used a mace due to stun proc reducing the amount of damage I take, but lately it has been getting ever so slightly harder on large random encounters. (By "hard" I mean that I actually have to use a health potion or cure) Should I switch to an Estoc? Aside from the challenges of obtaining an appropriate weapon of that type, I'm worried that the loss of the stun proc will make me even more vulnerable.

I don't know how to link equips, so I can't share my current gear unfortunately.

Switch to estoc? You know the sad truth about 2H is, that it is the stun from the mace what actually keeps you alive. When you switch to any other 2h weapon the monster will just wipe the floor with you. So change your weapon wont help you in any way.

And you can get the link for your equipment by hovering your mouse coursor above the item and press c that opens a window and you just copy paste the link of that window.

I play light/2h on difficulties Hell or Nintendo. I've long used a mace due to stun proc reducing the amount of damage I take, but lately it has been getting ever so slightly harder on large random encounters. (By "hard" I mean that I actually have to use a health potion or cure) Should I switch to an Estoc? Aside from the challenges of obtaining an appropriate weapon of that type, I'm worried that the loss of the stun proc will make me even more vulnerable.

I don't know how to link equips, so I can't share my current gear unfortunately.

I experienced exactly the same story and same idea like you when I was around 200-300 levels. I began with 2h mace as well, I thought mace could stun so keep me safe as well. And later as others suggested, if you are worried about the safety, switch to 1h style. First find a Legendary rapier of slaughter, if not a ethereal shortsword of slaughter is also ok. Second, find a Mag/Leg force shield with at least 36 base block. Third, start to switch from light to power heavy.

...

This is an absolutely enormous, dense & hard to read post; you would probably have more luck getting answers if you broke it down into simpler questions next time without worrying so much about overexplaining the context. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Anyway, as a simple example, from what I've understood Spell Proficiency Bonus is "the bomb" for Cloth type armors, so to get an idea of how important that is, I pose this example:

Two Cloth items of the same slot, say both are level 400 for roughly how much the difference is worth here. One of them has ~20 more proficiency bonus (let's say 90 vs 70), but the other hand has significantly better values in almost every other bonus. Is spell proficiency important enough to the point that the question of the other stats don't matter when the spell prof difference is this large? To begin with, could this theoretical difference in the example happen in the first place?

Spell proficiency is a kind of special case when it comes to value; it's the most important stat to mages until they reach the cap(s). There's a soft cap for elemental mages (roughly 1.79x their level) beyond which they no longer gain any counter-mitigation, only counter-resist - and all mages are hardcapped at 2x their level. But a pure cotton build would be weaker than a more properly proportioned mixed build - raw damage stats like magic damage and spell damage bonus are kept in balance in a good build, too.

That means that there's no hard numbers that can be given as to how important it is; it depends on level, current proficiency, how far they are from their goals, overall build, etc.

I guess I would have similar questions regarding other types of EQ, though which stats are the most important differ based on the gear and style. So far I know that for regular weapons and most styles (apart from casting/DW/Niten) assuming you're using one of the "best" weapon types then ADB% is the most important, which leads into anything except Slaughter being considered "useless" (at least if you're looking for optimal choices).

As a weapon suffix? Yeah, all melee styles want slaughter; DW and Niten are only exceptions in that they select between balance (for offensive purposes) or nimble (defensive) on their off-hand weapons.

For suffixes from what I understood Ethereal is in theory the best, but for the purpose of high-end optimization of Potencies combined with them wanting Holy/Dark as their secondary strike, I heard that people generally prefer the suffixes for Holy/Dark. Otherwise it'd take a ludicrous amount of rerolling Potencies on average to get what you want. I don't know specifically why they want Dark/Holy so feel free to answer that one too, though I'd guess the top end enemies have less Holy/Dark Mit on average to be valued that highly? Or is it only SG, but SG are that important? I mention them because SG is by far the most mentioned whenever what little I have heard on the matter comes up.

Prefixes don't really matter too much on melee weapons; 2H and Niten may care about ethereal because they want to avoid burden (as their survivability is somewhat low and must rely on speed and evade). For 1H and DW, it doesn't matter so much. Hallowed, Demonic or Ethereal may be preferred for schoolgirl arenas - and yes, it does make a little difference. Ethereal has a slight disadvantage in that if you level it to 10, you may not get holy or dark strike - but it can be left at level 9 and holy and dark strike can be applied by enchanting at the forge. I use this tactic for my DW record runs.

For regular Heavy, I hear that the most important is their defensive values...

There is only really one regular heavy build, and that's 1H - the other melee styles use light armour (except high-level specialists with resources and experience) - and 1H is very, very safe, so building it as a tank is just massive overkill and will only slow you down.

For Power I assume it's preferred to have Savage+Slaughter, though Savage seems far less important than Slaughter. If talking about non-Savage, I assume the priority is whatever applied to regular Heavy? Just in a theoretical case, are there any builds that would prefer Balance over Prot/Ward?

The reason why Savage is less important is that 1H counter-attacks can't crit, so it's mostly the bonus attack damage they care about. Balance is preferable to any other suffix if your accuracy is significantly lower than 194.8%, although you will generally only need one or two pieces to achieve this even at low level, if you forge your weapon accuracy (very cheap on persistent!).

For Light armor I assume you want all Shade with Shadowdancer if possible and no one (realistically) wanting Arcanist? I have no idea about the actual weighted value people place on most -fixes for any kind of Light. Though I have seen signs that some builds may prefer Leather with Prot/Ward (at least in a few slots). For prefixes one of the two specific to Shade? For Leather I think I saw Reinforced being "the bomb", no idea about the priorities for anything else tho. Leather suffixes I already mentioned briefly, but I assume it's Prot/Ward.

All light users prefer Savage Shadowdancer in every slot, it is far and away the optimum and Shadowdancer is the only suffix that really enhances damage. Low-level players will use the Fleet suffix if Shadowdancer is not available, or any-prefix Shadowdancers. Nobody really uses leather at all; Reinforced Leather of Protection (or Deflection) can be a decent survivability bonus but it's not really useful on persistent except in the absence of alternatives. I used a Reinforced Leather Breastplate of Protection on isekai last season to get to floor 90 as DW - I don't think it was really worth it, and I certainly didn't really feel any difference.

Arcanist has no use except for collection, item-world, or to people who want to be special and different and unique.

For Cloth I honestly have no clue beyond Cotton wanting their Prof for their suffix and Phase wanting their element for damage bonus, but beyond that I'm lost. I could guess that prefixes are Charged(>Frugal) for Cotton and Radiant>Mystic>Charged>Frugal for Phase, but that's just a guess with no idea of the value.

Refer to this long post about mage equipment. Mage is highly optimized and generally valued in binary; stuff is either very useful or not useful at all.

For Shields I know that 1H wants Force Shields with high block%, probably not caring much about which of the prefixes they get (other than any potential bias based on their current mits) and assumingly wanting Prot/Ward suffix. For Buckler all I know is that non-casters likely always want Barrier and 1H Casters wanting ONLY the Battlecaster (at least I'd assume so, unless Block% is important enough to them).

Force shield suffixes/prefixes don't really matter. There is some very minor gain in certain elemental prefixes if you subscribe to the logic of certain over-imaginative forum posters. Reinforced bucklers of the barrier or battlecaster are valuable to 1H mages (generally only if it has Dexterity, Endurance, Agility on it - although this is overkill except for very underprepared mages).

The only other thing I have any clue about that I haven't mentioned is that DW/Niten value Nimble and Swiftness more than others, but notably Nimble for the off-hand?

Swiftness is shit. As mentioned before, Nimble is the defensive off-hand of choice.

*Edit* I also just realized that it doesn't actually say anywhere on the wiki - as far as I could tell - what all the possible sources for the rare materials (Repurposed Actuators etc) are, only mentions it does not (normally) drop from salvaging. Given how salvaging and the item shop is off, is the only possible place the Monster Lab, or do they also drop in combat?

The monster lab is the only source of those rare-type materials on persistent, although they can drop naturally on isekai.

*Edit 2* Oh yeah, in all my back and forths looking over things I forgot - I was supposed to ask since I never found it while running about on the wiki, but how does Block actually work? Specifically the EQ bonus, I imagine it's either a (soft) diminishing sum based on the absolute value or the highest single source (normally the shield)+multiplicative additions of the others to avoid reaching 100%.. unless proficiency serves to prevents it from ever getting there (wiki states prof acting as a multiplier?).
What I mean is say your shield is 50% and you have two sources of 10% you'd have 0.5*0.9*0.9 = a 40.5% chance of not blocking, or just flipping the result, a 59.5% chance of blocking.

The EQ bonus referred to on the wiki is as you imagine, yeah, as far as I know.

Don't be fooled by the diminishing sum; if you have 90% block, and you equip a source of 50% block, you would have 95% on your sheet - but you are still blocking 50% of the attacks you were taking at 90%.

I experienced exactly the same story and same idea like you when I was around 200-300 levels. I began with 2h mace as well, I thought mace could stun so keep me safe as well. And later as others suggested, if you are worried about the safety, switch to 1h style. First find a Legendary rapier of slaughter, if not a ethereal shortsword of slaughter is also ok. Second, find a Mag/Leg force shield with at least 36 base block. Third, start to switch from light to power heavy.

Thanks. I did once attempt to transition to a 1h style, but it went... poorly. Maybe I'm impatient, but I'd assume that buying a bunch of normal heavy equip from the bazaar would at least allow me to easily handle normal difficulty. I'm too poor and low level to afford a full legendary/mag equipment transition unless I know for sure it is going to work out.

Ultimately, I am more interested in easily grinding lower difficulties than winning on higher ones at slightly greater effort, so for now I am inclined to stay with light 2h mace. I'll go down to nightmare if needed.

@Uncle Stu Thanks for the instructions. I knew Mace was somehow working for me.

Heavy? You mean as in plate? Well of course that didnt work. Well i admit, 1H does need a bit of work to get of the ground. But it is worth it, no other style can get so invincible. But for 1H to actually work optimal, you would need to stop using haste and shadow veil, it is just that when you stop using them without having the propper equipment you will get your ass handed to you. And with propper i would mean in your case a full power armor set of protection. Not slaughter, or balance, not even warding, at least not at the beginning. You also need a weapon of slaughter, sure as sure not a club, its stun debuff will be mostly negated by the stun you get from counter attacks, and because stun doesnt stack, means you will have nearly nothing from the stun from the block. A rapier would be best imo, but a shortsword would work for the beginning and last but sure as sure not least the shield. Force Shield. The higher the block the better, the only thing i actually think is worth bothering would be the PAB it has, optimal would be SDE, but for the first shield any would do. Get your weapon IW, Butcher/Fatality would be best but for starter most any IW will do. Now get some prof, get some forging. On your weapon damage and parry, dex if you can. On your Shield block all the way, dex and end if you have and can. On your armor, PM, Dex and End. Some MM wouldnt hurt but that is a lower priority as long as your parry, block and PM is still low. Later on a optimal defensive build would be made of three protection and two warding. Because later on five protection would be more as you need and when you did reached that point magical attacks would be your weakness. There you are done, you reached the most easy and lazy style in all of HV, does even allow you to go PFUDOR easy.

Because that is the reason you are poor. Because you play at such a low difficulty that your drops arent worth anything and you dont even get much credits.