When should you forge weapons?

[triqui]

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

Protection is good against normal troops, but once squads of enemies start using armour piercing or negating attacks, its effectiveness is greatly reduced. You're unlikely to encounter massive squads with these sort of attacks, early game, unless you're up against an opponent using certain bless strategies.

I'm fond of regeneration and reinvogoration on thugs. Iterative probability proofing vs. critical hits in order to better protect a gem investment. Reduces affliction chance too.

Yep. Against heavy hitter SC, high defense is better. Against masses of trops, high protection is better. Against low Morale troops, Awe is better. Against non-magic weapons, Mistfom is better. And Luck is solid (but not the best), against anything.

It really depends what is your SC for. The best is a mix of everything. But i'll rather have a SC with Prot 30 and defense 10, than a SC with Defense 30 and prot 10. That's why awake E9 Cyclop with Prot 29 is a wonderful SC god to start expanding from the get go, and a W10 Fathers of serpents with Defense 29 and prot 5 can't. There are way much more mundane (and common) ways to ignore high Defense, than to ignore prot.