Here leveling qustion - how to level melee lord

[Lotor13]

Should I improve "charge bonus" or "melee attack" stats with skills?

what is more usefull?

[Andrewbh2003]

depends

general rule though is melee attack

[Kapika96]

Melee attack.

Melee attack is your chance to hit. Charge bonus increases melee attack and weapon strength when charging. That's it. So unless you're cycle charging your lord it's not going to make that much of an impact. Melee attack will help at all times, including charges.

[A.Pot]

Go with melee attack, weapon strength or defensive stats first. Charge bonus should be saved for later if the melee lord / hero has access to some powerful mounts like a Gryphon / Hippogryph, Dragons, Bears, etcs.

[Zeek]

It depends on the lord or hero and whether they have a mount but in general:

Melee attack > Weapon Strength/Melee Defense/Ward > Speed > all others

[lethminite]

I tend to do everything defence until 20, to minimise the chance of having the lord die on me if i leave him alone somewhere. But I often wonder if it's better to have melee attack to increase how well he kills instead.
Charge bonus would be the last thing i level up, because i'm not going to cycle charge things, too much effort.

[Lunos]

Melee attack is far better than charge stats unless you have the Lord on a Chariot and constantly cycle charge him. 35+MA-MD is the melee formula so essentially you have +1% chance to hit for every point of melee attack you get up to a maximum of 90% with a minimum of 8% chance to hit. Charge bonus is only active for several seconds after a charge.

[Triple G]

Charge bonus can be useful, when You have a lord who has a high damage output and two hits anybody. I personally would always level defense, armor, health - then attack, speed, charge, leadership. But eventually i would just get the last skill in the line (usually the 25% damage buff - deadly onslaught) and then switch to the red line. Attack means like 12% more chance to hit - defense means like 12% less chance to get hit, which translates into more health, those 15 more armor means around 7% less base damage received per hit, which translates into more health. With more staying power You can use the lord more tactical and not just as duelist. If You have a high damage lord attack can be more useful, but most lords are perhaps about trading several hits. The extra charge damage is perhaps not that important on a lord - the 30 more attack can be nice, but usually the last perk in that line also gives 60% more charge.

And if we take someone who is like "Say my name! SAY MY NAME!" as the baseline melee lord - then he has like 70 charge by default, with deadly onslaught he has 112. He has like 500 damage, with deadly onslaught and his abilities like 1k, and also like 180 attack for those like 15 seconds in which he can melt any opponent. So speccing into charge would be not really helpful - for 48 extra damage (with +60%), as his attack value is perhaps maxed vs the defense of the opponent. This would be without extra items.

[Lotor13]

Thank You, guys for answers, now it is clear ,

Melee attack is chance to hit. Charge bonus increases melee attack and weapon strength when charging. That's it. So unless you're cycle charging your lord it's not going to make that much of an impact. Melee attack will help at all times, including charges.

[Lotor13]

One more question

for defense

Armour or Melee defense stats?

What is different in practice?

[Enelith]

Armour reduces damage taken by a certain % (in short), while Melee defense is the Dark Soul's dodge (% to not take dmg)

Edit :
Note : Armour negates a part of physical and magical dmg, but is non existant vs armour-piercing damages.

Edit 2 :
When I'm talking about %, the actual % is not the flat value directly written on the corresponding stat, it's a bit more complicated calculation which includes the opponents, fatigue level, ground condition, etc... The higher the better anyway.

[Father Ribs]

Is this just a question of those two skills compared, or are you asking about leveling a lord in general?

The difference between armor and MD; someone else will show up with the math, but armor works to reduce damage, MD is for preventing being hit /in melee/. So if you're charging an enemy line, your MD isn't going to do anything against those missiles. Armor will, but it's effectiveness will depend on armor penetration.

Fighting something that swings hard, MD may be more effective than amour; blocking the hit, rather than reducing the damage.

What you "are" also has an effect. The nurgle factions armor is nowhere near as important as MD, because your armor is so low already it's not going to be very effective about preventing damage. Ditto demonic in general , and ethreal (like Belegar's dead drinking buddies, or Banshees), or goth berseker wittches.

You open a whole can of worms if you take into account race, faction, what you need it for, etc. Even a crazy threshing machine lord you may want to start with buffing the capabilities of the army, or buffing the stats of it's units...basically all the trees before you get to melee.

Some stats have been nerfed from the previous game, but the move distance buff used to be an automatic no-brainer. If you're an ambushing faction, you may want to focus on getting that skill before making your lord into a melee monster. Ditto raiding faction.

Or you may want to buff your troops; if you're a missile-heavy army, throwing points into buffing missile troops may give you more bang for the buck until your general is geared and leveled.

If you're a legendary lord, this isn't as important (they come back from the dead after all), but sending a mortal general into melee can be a very bad idea a low levels; you want to keep it alive untli level 20 and it becomes immortal.

[Triple G]

There´s base and armor piercing damage. I guess all units have some base damage, which is the one which gets negated with every hit. (You see that in game when You hover over weapon strength). When they have more armor piercing than base damage, they get some icon for it, which indicates "armor piercing", (while most attacks have some armor piercing damage), but every hit does at least 1 damage which isn´t negated by anything.

So armor works with every hit as it negates some base damage. RNG number, between 50 and 100 percent of the armor value, capped at 180, for 90% max damage reduction with the 50% roll. Anything more is overkill - but even 90 armor can get You the max value with a lucky roll, too.

Defense works either You get hit or not. Lunos wrote above how that is calculated. If someone on some mount charges at You, You would need to have some charge defense, else the attack value may be overwhelming for Your defense stat. That´s why i like melee people on foot, even if they get thrown around sometimes. But on a mount most don´t have charge defense, which negates the charge bonus. Usually against large targets - another reason why i like foot melee chars. Only few units have charge defense vs everyone.

What is better is hard to say. Defense blocks perhaps more damage in average, because if blocks all damage in some duel if You block. That´s perhaps more than armor could negate with every hit. And better than armor are the certain resistances. Best is ward-safe vs. everything and physical vs. non-magical attacks. Both stack. So instead of high armor You can also have a high ward safe, which is better, but usually hard to cap. I would always take the missile resistance skill, even more so on a bigger mount. Fire resistance is just needed if You have any kind of weakness to fire (like some regeneration, and fire reduces the healing rate), so give You items for it on those characters.

Originally posted by Father Ribs:

The nurgle factions armor is nowhere near as important as MD, because your armor is so low already it's not going to be very effective about preventing damage.

It´s still the same percentage than for anyone else. 15 more armor is 15 more armor. They have more health to compensate for lacking armor.

[trooperrob]

since in Wh3, lords and heros gain xp from kills rather than just a level in battle in wh2, does it make sense to put 3 points (in appropriate lords) into melee attack (or offensive spells) much earlier than in wh2?

[Ashley]

Originally posted by Zeek:

It depends on the lord or hero and whether they have a mount but in general:

Melee attack > Weapon Strength/Melee Defense/Ward > Speed > all others

Yes but this is done after leveling what spearmen buffing abilities exist first if the faction has them. If not choose a different race.

[Verchial]

Charge bonus is the last thing I spec up on lords and heroes.