I don't think it's a bad idea. People would simply have to choose between higher hp or attack/defence levels. Of course most people would go for the attack or defence stones depending on their class. I'm failing to see how they will cause an imbalance though. Imbalances occur when one or more class gains where another cannot. If every class gains the ability to add +4 defence levels for example then the rise is proportional. The only imbalance I can see is if a class is reliant on hp and would suffer by dropping their hp stones. But then that would be gained back with defence levels.I wouldn't say no to this to idea and I would be interested in seeing what the gm's say. Just ignore the forum trolls who say "just no" they have no concept on how this will affect this game.
To add to what Tali said, if there were JOSDs in game, NO ONE will go for HP shards cuz vit+ stones have diminishing returns while JOSD doesn't. In the long run, everyone will be too OP with too OP HP with +12 anyways with too OP resistances that it would take around 10 ppl to kill a single seeker/psychic/barb. And we dont want JOSD cuz we've already tried it on other private servers and thats the reason why pvp there is unbalanced.
The only reason I'm against adding more attack/def levels is that r8 is sufficient enough.Case in point:With this pataka, I have 71 attack levels. A lot of phys classes that aren't in r8 take 8-10k+ hits on a good day.Given that a venomancer is one of the weakest magic classes in the game, adding attack level shards, well, I'd be sitting with about 100+. Wouldn't feel very balanced at that point.
The only class that would be still using vit stones would be barbs. (the ones who wouldn't have got to be retarded enough to add def stones on a barb) And then it would outbalance the game way too much.Especially on seekers, psys with def stones, or sins and archers with atk level ones.Therefore, if they ever get added, I'm quitting for sure.
Let's say stones were added to weapons only