Premium Points - Best Value

[Nosh]

I'm shortly coming to the point where I'll have enough premium points to get HCW/HCP added to a 4x item. I'm hoping someone smart on this sort of stuff could give me some advice on the best way and order to spend premium points.

1: With the difficulty added to enchanting for a padded set of armor for example, does it make the most sense to get the HCP added at 4x for the cheaper cost and then find a good enchanter to raise the enchant? Or is it more sensible to enchant it as high as reasonably possible first, and then spend more points to add HCP?

2: As a light-armor wearing character, does it make sense to even use the points on HCP? My current main is a wizard, but I kind of feel like adding HCP to armor that only covers torso and arms is a waste. I assume the value of say doubles or full plate with HCP is much higher than full leathers with HCP, would it make more sense to just pad a set of doubles or fullplate, sell it for profit, and then buy a cheaper set of padded fulls?

2.5: Follow on from 2 -- anyone use padded fulls and think it's worth it? seems to me like it wont cover most areas you'd be concerned with (head, arms) and maybe it's more worthwhile to just get as huge of an enchant as possible to not get hit in the first place?

[Jymamon]

I'm shortly coming to the point where I'll have enough premium points to get HCW/HCP added to a 4x item. I'm hoping someone smart on this sort of stuff could give me some advice on the best way and order to spend premium points.

1: With the difficulty added to enchanting for a padded set of armor for example, does it make the most sense to get the HCP added at 4x for the cheaper cost and then find a good enchanter to raise the enchant? Or is it more sensible to enchant it as high as reasonably possible first, and then spend more points to add HCP?

Yes, adding the padding at 4x makes the most sense.
I take for granted that a PC wizard would do the 5x-7x enchants or the PP premium would change the answer.
If you use PP for the 8x-10x enchants, it is a wash since you pay 3000 points less for the initial padding then pay a 1000 PP premium for each of those enchant levels.

2: As a light-armor wearing character, does it make sense to even use the points on HCP? My current main is a wizard, but I kind of feel like adding HCP to armor that only covers torso and arms is a waste. I assume the value of say doubles or full plate with HCP is much higher than full leathers with HCP, would it make more sense to just pad a set of doubles or fullplate, sell it for profit, and then buy a cheaper set of padded fulls?

Padding applies to all areas, not just areas covered by the armor. [Oddly, I don't see this explicitly called out in the wiki.]

I'll defer to other on the silvers perspective, but I suspect the lower availability of HCP fulls more than offsets the lower demand for them making the value proposition about the same.

2.5: Follow on from 2 -- anyone use padded fulls and think it's worth it? seems to me like it wont cover most areas you'd be concerned with (head, arms) and maybe it's more worthwhile to just get as huge of an enchant as possible to not get hit in the first place?

Padding my wizards fulls was well worth it. While not getting hit is better than padding, it isn't an either or proposition. At some point, you're going to get hit and the more you can do to survive it, the better.

[Nosh]

Wasn't aware that padding impacted all areas, my mistake.

I had assumed that since there were calculations to average padding if you added, for example, a crit padded helmet to non-padded armor, that padding exclusively impacted areas covered by the armor.

[gilchristr]

Any way to take an armor down to 0x, to get it padded for cheaper in PP, then enchant it back up after padded?

[tyrant-201]

Any way to take an armor down to 0x, to get it padded for cheaper in PP, then enchant it back up after padded?

They made 0x the same cost as 4x because people were doing this.

[Methais]

Wasn't aware that padding impacted all areas, my mistake.

I had assumed that since there were calculations to average padding if you added, for example, a crit padded helmet to non-padded armor, that padding exclusively impacted areas covered by the armor.

The areas that the armor doesn't cover will get coverage of the next AsG down. So fulls would cover torso and arms, and the rest would get cloth equivalent coverage. But the padding would apply everywhere.

Items like greaves and helms only apply to their respective areas.

Before Rapid Fire got nerfed I was using fulls. After the nerf I switched to doubles. When you get hindrance while 515 is up you still only get 1 second of cast RT, so you can recast pretty much right away. With old Rapid Fire, you still had to wait out the 3 sec cast RT before you could cast again when you got hindrance. Hindrance is a lot less annoying to deal with now as a result other than lost mana, and I'm sure in a few days Estild will randomly discover a "bug" with Rapid Fire that was causing this and "fix" it and then yell at us for not being grateful.

[Wrathbringer]

The areas that the armor doesn't cover will get coverage of the next AsG down. So fulls would cover torso and arms, and the rest would get cloth equivalent coverage. But the padding would apply everywhere.

Items like greaves and helms only apply to their respective areas.

greave and helmist.

[Methais]

greave and helmist.

I am not, I have a helm in my locker!

[Wrathbringer]

I am not, I have a helm in my locker!

Me either. I know someone who has a helm.

[Methais]

Me either. I know someone who has a helm.

Yeah, me. And don’t think you can use me as your token “friend with a helm” either.