Shattered Kingdoms

You need fortitude and willpower on your armor slots, if you are going to have any shot of getting those two saves to a decent level. Otherwise, enjoy spending your time in PK being put to sleep, petrified, etc.

I tested this pretty extensively with a shaman friend. My first suit of armor was diamond with innate MP. I filled in all my jewelry slots with willpower and fortitude and then added a +greatly enhancement for both willpower and fortitude. It wasn't enough to reliably protect me against sleep and other maledictions.

So I switched out my diamond armor to a mix of mithril and adamantite that had innate willpower and fortitude. I continued using the jewelry pieces will willpower and fortitude, and voila - I was suddenly able to resist sleep and other maledictions reliably.

You have two options in the new system, IMHO:

1. Use armor with innate fortitude and willpower - then enchant the armor for either AP or MP, depending on whether you fear melee damage or spell damage more (both are augments and stack). Use willpower and fortitude jewelry, and throw a +greatly enhancement of willpower and fortitude on top of that. Fill in the rest of the enchants with whatever stats you didn't max, with a priority towards wisdom, constitution and dexterity.

2. Use any armor you want and enchant for MR. Enchant your jewelry for stats, HP, etc. While this is the easiest option, it also has a lot of drawbacks.

I think optimization is more nuanced than that. If all sorts of updated "uber" equipment options existed, and if I were trying to kit out a versatile frontline melee guy, I would be looking carefully at each individual piece of armor. I would want different innate enhancements on my helmet than my gauntlets, for instance. In some cases I might accept mithril or other materials, but not in all cases. But, you are right. I would certainly be on the lookout for armor with innate saves as a component of my kit. If you max out fortitude and willpower via jewelry and consecration, then making a little effort in the armor department can make all the difference against high art casters. Interestingly, the oddball weapons with +saves are also now much more useful for some builds, even some frontline ones.

Regardless, it's clear that a great deal of the existing "uber" armor should be updated. Something that used to be +great MP could be switched to a combination of AP, MP, and saves and would be vastly more useful for almost all builds. Just as a completely basic example, a character that got +1 each in AP, MP, Fort, Ref, and Will from his seven armor slots would be much better off than a character with +5 MP in each slot. Some of the "uber" kits could be pure Fort or pure Will, or a combination of Fort and Will, or AP and Fort... whatever. Even Ref would represent an improvement over pure MP. There are a lot of things that could and should be updated. I think the real key is that there is a big variety so that people can experiment with different things. I hope this is in the works. It would address this "problem" at a builder level instead of coder level, which may be all that's needed.

Honestly, all that gear can be enchanted with AP/MP, so I'd much rather take fairly obtainable "not uber" gear with saves on it and enchant my own AP/MP than take the time to get uber with AP/MP in any form on it. Melee damage is easier to deal with than maledictions.

The most paranoid of vets would aim much, much higher than 30. Also they'd ignore the reflex enchant at all costs.