How much do you value the six core stats?

[Pixel Peeper]

tl;dr at bottom.

To help myself figure out how much each stat affected me, I compared how much a level 6 character who put all their level-up points into a stat got (17) compared to one who didn't put any (7).

Seems to me like Strength is just OK. Having 51 Attack Power instead of 21 sounds great, and for certain attacks (like Cleave), it is, you'll be doing 151% damage instead of 121% damage. But a lot of physical attacks have built-in Attack Power bonuses that makes the math look very different. Even weak (level 1, Recharge 2) Warrior and Thief attacks like Rend and Dirty Trick add 50 Attack Power, and doing 201% damage instead of 171% is significant (it's 17.5% more damage) but not as great as 51 VS 21 initially made it seem. For attacks like Steady Strike (+200 Attack Power) it's 351% instead of 321%, not that much of a difference (9% more damage). The 10 Armor bonus is pretty weak as you should have close to 100 from actual armor. The Penetration would be good but you can get a fair amount of Armor Penetration on equipment already (Galon's Griefmaker has 50 on its own, gloves from Winter City have 10). Oddly enough, since the Penetration is general and SpellPen/Temptation aren't that common, that bonus might be better on Spell/Revolve combat builds than physical combat ones (ah yes, Strength, that classic Wizard stat). Go figure.

Agility is good. Accuracy is one of the best stats for dealing damage, it not only lets you avoid a semi frequent -100% penalty to damage (missing), it also greatly improves your odds of getting crits and makes your damage more reliable in general, so the +20 Accuracy from having 17 Agi instead of 7 is real nice. +10 Evasion is also nice for the same but opposite reason (it'll make the enemy less likely to crit or hit). +10 Initiative is a nice bonus.

Toughness IMO is the weakest stat, only exception being Willpower for non-casters, maybe Strength for casters. That level 6 character would get +50 max HP which is nice but just not as good as what you'd be getting from another stat. The physical resistance is OK but doesn't manage to salvage the stat.

Cunning does a lot of things so I think it's more significant than it looks. That extra 10% crit alone is pretty nice, making crits even bigger is good too, and then there's 10 Ward and 10 magic resistance on top. Not bad at all.

Willpower is different because while most stats benefit all characters and few stats are truly necessary, all casters will definitely take Willpower and all non-casters will definitely not take it. Having 51 Spellpower instead of 21 makes more of a difference than having 51 instead of 21 Attack Power does because you can't get that much Spell Power from gear (let's say 40 for a moderately well-equipped level 6). Basically you'd have 91 Spellpower instead of 61, so you'd be doing 191% damage with spells instead of 161%. It's not massive but it's highly considerable (close to 19% more). +10 Focus and +10 mental resistance are minor but pleasant bonuses.

Presence is perhaps not as bad as one might think. The 10 extra points give +20 Leadership, meaning a modest +20 Attack Power and +20 Spellpower bonus, but one that is granted to all allies (2 companions and 1 summon). It'll make Cleaves and spells significantly stronger. Your summons will also be much stronger since their power is based on Leadership. As additional bonuses, you get +10 Sexiness and +20 max Resolve. None of these bonuses are particularly great individually, but because they come up so very often, they make Presence very respectable.

tl;dr
Strength is fine but could be easily overrated
Toughness is the weakest stat
Agility is great, virtually all characters will greatly benefit
Cunning is solid, no one needs it but everyone benefits nicely from it
Willpower is highly polarizing, virtually a necessity for casters but super weak for others
Presence is nice and could be easily underrated

That said, the overall balance is surprisingly good. I was making a Warrior and had a lot of trouble deciding what stats to put my points into. That's a good sign.

Did I miss anything? Miscalculations? Are other people's assessments very different from mine?

[UndyingRevenant]

Ok so, my opinion might not be correct, or at least optimal, and I never really number crunched hard, but for me, I used the class descriptions as a guideline for which stats to focus, with the logic of since you have limited stats you can level at once and a limited level cap, any point not put into a primary stat feels awful. For example, with the thief, the description reads "Adepts of shadow and subterfuge, thieves make their fortunes in the underbellies of distant cities and on the lonely trade roads with equal ease. As a thief, you're hard to pin down and hit, easily evading enemy attacks before slipping behind them fro the kill. *Agility* is your greatest weapon -- both for avoiding harm, and landing your own blows -- however, having the *cunning* to pick out your enemies' weaknesses and the *strength* to exploit them are valuable assets indeed. The life of a thief is one of profit through swiftness and guile." Therefore, during character creation, I choose race and occupation to begin with the most agility. I also ensure Agility, cunning, and strength can be leveled, but thats usually a given. ive seen people recommend leveling like a souls game or traditional rpg, but personally with how stuff scales it feels long term like youre gimping yourself to use a point of a stat for something that doesnt directly benefit your class, like deciding late game as a physical tank you want 10 points to use for better magic for some reason. Presence seems really good to me but personally I'd only use it on a bard or straight summoner, tanks would lose ability to generate aggro, thief will lose prep time, healers lose shielding. it is a good stat but imo best to be a side benefit of summoners. with warriors losing initiative penalties as well hybrid stats also arent as required, and also, drinks at the bar, maybe take salt with it but if i remember correctly they boost a stat based on your highest stat, so say again you have a thief with agility cunning and strength, and you picked racials for agility. You get one shot? get a toughness drink. you want a tougher party? get a presence drink etc, same with any class. now if you mix your stats, then the drink will also be a less effective stat bonus. they also made stats more long term instead of having really easy hard caps with max armor or lust resistance, personally for me the hardest thing is equipment selection over stats, but of course thats subjective too, like if you have prep time then nearly every fight you could theoretically tweak. might not be helpful, not very intricate, but i dunno min maxing the default 3 recommended stats seems like a safe bet. doesnt seem so far like it'd have something like a souls game where you get each stat to a hard cap then pump your damage or something, but i dunno just my experience.

[Xenos]

Crits are being nerfed soon so agility won't be quite as mandatory anymore

No more being instakilled by an Alissa crit at level 6, basically

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by UndyingRevenant:

Ok so, my opinion might not be correct, or at least optimal, and I never really number crunched hard, but for me, I used the class descriptions as a guideline for which stats to focus, with the logic of since you have limited stats you can level at once and a limited level cap, any point not put into a primary stat feels awful. For example, with the thief, the description reads "Adepts of shadow and subterfuge, thieves make their fortunes in the underbellies of distant cities and on the lonely trade roads with equal ease. As a thief, you're hard to pin down and hit, easily evading enemy attacks before slipping behind them fro the kill. *Agility* is your greatest weapon -- both for avoiding harm, and landing your own blows -- however, having the *cunning* to pick out your enemies' weaknesses and the *strength* to exploit them are valuable assets indeed. The life of a thief is one of profit through swiftness and guile." Therefore, during character creation, I choose race and occupation to begin with the most agility. I also ensure Agility, cunning, and strength can be leveled, but thats usually a given. ive seen people recommend leveling like a souls game or traditional rpg, but personally with how stuff scales it feels long term like youre gimping yourself to use a point of a stat for something that doesnt directly benefit your class, like deciding late game as a physical tank you want 10 points to use for better magic for some reason. Presence seems really good to me but personally I'd only use it on a bard or straight summoner, tanks would lose ability to generate aggro, thief will lose prep time, healers lose shielding. it is a good stat but imo best to be a side benefit of summoners. with warriors losing initiative penalties as well hybrid stats also arent as required, and also, drinks at the bar, maybe take salt with it but if i remember correctly they boost a stat based on your highest stat, so say again you have a thief with agility cunning and strength, and you picked racials for agility. You get one shot? get a toughness drink. you want a tougher party? get a presence drink etc, same with any class. now if you mix your stats, then the drink will also be a less effective stat bonus. they also made stats more long term instead of having really easy hard caps with max armor or lust resistance, personally for me the hardest thing is equipment selection over stats, but of course thats subjective too, like if you have prep time then nearly every fight you could theoretically tweak. might not be helpful, not very intricate, but i dunno min maxing the default 3 recommended stats seems like a safe bet. doesnt seem so far like it'd have something like a souls game where you get each stat to a hard cap then pump your damage or something, but i dunno just my experience. :resmile:

I also wouldn't recommend spreading your points around (at least not usually), especially since you cannot cap any stats in this game so you never have any "spare" points, but which stats best suit a class aren't necessarily the ones that the game recommends. Thieves for example have massive Attack Power bonuses built into their powers, so Strength doesn't do that much for them; Presence IMO is an equally viable choice, especially since it would, as you pointed out, shift a bit of aggro from your character to your allies (slightly; a tank would still do great with Presence instead of Strength).

The Boons are a good thing to point out, they essentially mean that you get 4 stats to max instead of just 3. They're cheap (10 EC) and last 24 hours. Makes it so you only need to "ignore" two stats instead of three.

Originally posted by Xenos:

Crits are being nerfed soon so agility won't be quite as mandatory anymore

No more being instakilled by an Alissa crit at level 6, basically

That's true, the change is already in the backer patch. It will nerf Agility somewhat (you'll still want some Accuracy to hit reliably, but excessive Accuracy won't yield as much anymore), bringing it to the level of most other stats, which is good.

Poor Cunning, however... let's face it, most of what made it valuable was the crit chance and crit improvement. If crits aren't that strong anymore, Cunning might fall to the level of Toughness: something you'd like to have but just aren't going to take because other available stats are more beneficial.

[ahnkra]

my build is always Max Will, Max Cunning and Max Presence. I play a charmer and critting on a group "tease" ability goes along way to ending fights. Making sure whoever is traveling with me is at their best, and borrowing that white Bless spell just wraps everything up in a nice package of electrum coins and other "spoils" of war.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by ahnkra:

my build is always Max Will, Max Cunning and Max Presence. I play a charmer and critting on a group "tease" ability goes along way to ending fights. Making sure whoever is traveling with me is at their best, and borrowing that white Bless spell just wraps everything up in a nice package of electrum coins and other "spoils" of war.

That build is very effective, but with the massive crit nerf, will you be keeping Cunning? I don't know if it's been buffed to compensate of it's just a bad stat now.

[ahnkra]

Dont know yet @Trip, will have to play through again to see if my preffered build still works. TBH my build relies pretty heavily on those crits, whether it was me critting tease attacks or Brint critting his. Otherwise Im going to have to go back to Tank Healer combo and as much as I like Cait, i preffer her entertaining folks at the inn or the temple, rather than running around with me all the time.

Cool idea for a spin off game, instead of playing the Hero, we get to play the Mallach priest/ess and entertain the hero and his/her groupies while trying to convince them to build the Temple and a bunch of upgrades for it. With each new upgrade adding new / different adult "options" on how we go about the entertaining part ; p

[Pixel Peeper]

I just did a near-complete playthrough myself so I'm not sure I want to do a whole lot of testing right now.

Really wish we had more info on what was done exactly, but we can't even trust the in-game Codex since it's not being updated to match game mechanics.

[gamer300]

The penetration example given above is in correct. Strength gives "Penetration" which is Armor Penetration, Spell Penetration, and Temptation all wrapped into one. Galon's Griefmaker only gives Armor Penetration, making it super useless on spell and resolve builds

[WuTaNiSt]

that's what he said, unless I'm missing something? That the penetration aspect of strength might actually be more useful to non-warriors because it's all 3, whereas warriors can get decent armour pen from weapons instead

[Pixel Peeper]

Yes, it was the general idea I was going for. A physical combatant can get a bunch of Armor Penetration just from gear and would not particularly care about an extra 10 Penetration from Strength.

But a spell or resolve combatant doesn't get a whole lot of Spell Penetration or Temptation from gear (and the chest armor pieces that add Temptation often has pretty bad stats). They would benefit more from the Penetration granted by the extra Strength.

This could lead to, uh... "nonstandard" wizards.

Mage: "I cast a spell on you!"
Opponent: "Foolish mage, I have high Ward!"
Mage: "Bro, have you seen my huge pecs? My muscular spells will ignore your Ward!"

It's not the most logical mechanics, but it helps make Strength useful for nonphysical combatants and, at the very least, it's funny.

[ahnkra]

you see you miss the obvious magely use of those pecs, against magical wards. First you wait for your opponent to realize your a finger waggler, and cast their "ward" spell. Then you casually walk up to them and X#!>~ slap them,... with those big ol muscles you gots now. Their concentration now ruined, you freeze em, burn em, or tease them at your leasure.

I mean how do you think all the Bara gods out there make it work. They just FLEX their might and everyone is so impressed / intimidated, they forget to use their wards, their shields, or their reflexes. Bro thats so hawt,..... Please dont hurt me!

All kidding aside, yeah that is a very strange mechanic to have in the game. I think every other game i have ever played probably purposely made sure something like that couldnt happen, cause it makes no sense.

[WuTaNiSt]

you had a somewhat similar thing with the weird stat system PoE ended up with. I remember from quite near the start of early access they made a big song & dance about not just replicating DnD but half of the game's systems just ended up reinventing the wheel & ending up with a square instead. The magnitude of all effects, both physical AND magical scaled with might, so casters wanted might, but then in dialogues might was treated almost exclusively as physical strength. And then for even more hilarity most DoT effects had set amounts over a variable timescale (50 damage over X seconds, rather than say 5 dam/sec) but duration for everything scaled upwards with int, so it was actually better to have low int for any DoTs. So you ended up with wizard builds that were thicker than mince but could floor an elephant with one punch because somehow that made their spells more powerful

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by WuTaNiSt:

So you ended up with wizard builds that were thicker than mince but could floor an elephant with one punch because somehow that made their spells more powerful

Ouch.

This... this is why mechanics need to adhere to reality at least at little. Gamers are going to pick what works best mechanically, so if your mechanics aren't representative it'll create, well... that.