Originally Posted by
Surrealistik
No you don't. I'm not even going to attempt to assign individual weightings to anything but say rings, which would be a simple binary as to whether or not they factor (really, most of the defensive rings aren't even worth accounting for). Yes, it's not a perfect system and I straight up said as much: your PvE slaughtering greatsword is at a disadvantage against the PvP focused Chaos Blade, Estoc or Gold Tracer, as is Lightning Spear vs Dark Bead, but at least with comparable quality gear you have a fighting chance as opposed to none at all; that's miles ahead of the current system. As for 'exploits' they're available to PvEers as well, besides their subjectivity; I don't recognize that as an issue.