Whichever has the most int and the cheapest

Ofc people prefer padded because of the defense but the difference is pretty minimal.

The defense difference is negotiable. Regular robes have higher magical defense anyways though and both have pretty shitty physical defense so honestly I'd probably take a regular robe over a padded for high level casting. It's just preference though - like the difference between plates and chains. All the armours are inverses of each other - robe = plate, pad robe = chain, leather = scale and scale = leather - just if you switch the magical and physical defense.

So basically what I'm getting at is that some people will tell you that one is better than the other because it has higher defense or whatever but honestly people can argue about this until the end of time and no one will be able to give you a clear answer that one is better than the other.


It sounds stupid, but the page which lists all the base defenses for the armours is actually pretty useful: http://ladderslasher.d2jsp.org/index.php?g=10

essentially what tyler said. i'd go with whichever is the cheapest and in most cases that's just a plain robe.

the defensive advantage is marginal

Just get one with ee, I bought this on hc for 100fg ... now it is my favourite robe for casting:

Mystical nightshade padded robe
Level Req: 35
Physical Defense: 0 to 56
Magical Defense: 74 to 185
+118% Enhanced Effect
+30 Intelligence
+3 Magic Luck

EE on armors also doesn't seem to fall off defensive wise. This has much more defense than a level 55 padded with no ee. I have to heal so much less with it. Defense is the name of the game!

i guess i should have put in that disclaimer. unless you go with ee, padded robes are superior to plain robes, but ee/int robes are relatively hard to come by