After you went to blacksmith and leveled the gloves some levels in Rappelz, you will notice that they had a pdef of x/y and a MDef of x/y. The X's were highlighted orange.

Once you have hit level(Rappelz Rupees) 20, you had equipped some armor items from the trainee island quests. You will refernce the r2 wild leather gloves to keep it simple which has a pdef of X and a MDef of X.

Just from a noobie perspective, it seems that the X is how much PDef and MDef we are actually getting from the gloves and the Y is how much PDef and MDef we should be getting from the gloves if we did something to increase it. So we thought r2 Defense cubes would close the gap, but as we use the cubes, but the X and the Y values increased. Same thing goes for blacksmithing. And socketing has no effect on those numbers.

Fortunately each upgrade will add usable stats, even if your below the rec level(Rappelz powerleveling). So if you have the cash, upgrading from lv1 all the way up to lv10 in one shot will make you noticeably tougher for the first few levels of a new rank.