Gear vs Stats: Any point to attributes?

[Stray952]

While agonizing over starting traits I noticed that the ones that give you 5% of any attribute are garbage. You have to get to 21 base stat before thats more than one point bonus.
This then made me realize how useless all the stats kind of are.

So, my thinking is...
The equipment gives you points in damage and armor (effectively CON) equivalent to putting several levels into either your primary damage stat or constitution.

Given that, you're much better off putting your levels into things like Crit%, movement and willpower, right?

I mean, those things will actually change how the character plays on the field.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

I cannot fathom why anyone thinks crit is better than str or dex.
Outside of weapons that trigger an ability on crit. The math does not work as far as I can see.

Movement is good but at outside of a few incidents I never find I need more than 14.
Willpower can be good to get galvanised faster, I still prefer more straight up damage.

[Atma]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

I cannot fathom why anyone thinks crit is better than str or dex.

Because you get a lot of stats from your equipment and only a little bit from spending your level up stat points on them.

However, you don't get 20% crit from your equipment as easily.

Even if you don't put any of your points in Str, your guy will still have a ton of Str by the end. Crit, not so much.

You do you, though. I'm just explaining what the thinking surrounding points in crit/movement is.

[Robin of Spiritwood]

You can do fine without investing any points in any stat, but it's useful to have plenty of Move. We don't need to Min-Max.

Nimble/Strong traits can matter a bit at higher levels when your mercs have over 90 in the relevant stat. But they never become a big deal.

[RainbowPig]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

I cannot fathom why anyone thinks crit is better than str or dex.
Outside of weapons that trigger an ability on crit. The math does not work as far as I can see.

Movement is good but at outside of a few incidents I never find I need more than 14.
Willpower can be good to get galvanised faster, I still prefer more straight up damage.

Like Atma said. Str and Dex weapons will provide in shedloads once you get into level 5+ equipment. At low level +2 str to a str 10 character would be a whole 20% increase.

But for example say at lvl 8 your character has 80str from weapons and layers plus base strength. 2 extra str points is a measly 2.5% increase. Now what has a higher dps. A character with 90str and 10% crit chance or a charac with 80str and a 20% crit chance.

Your crit chance has doubled so over the long term you're putting out twice as many crits (Now i'm not actually sure how a crit works, so that's the main sticking point; does it do max damage plus 25/50/75/100% or whatnot, or is that randomised so that's it not always supermax.) If a crit does say x2 of your damage then is it better to do say 90 damage with a 10% chance to crit, or 80 damage with a 20% chance to crit.

The bigger those number get damage wise the less that extra 10 str does, it doesn't scale. Crit chance however scales up your damage and keeps well into the late game.

Edit: Plus, 5% to str or dex when you have 80 is a whole extra... 4. Ok that doesn't sound like much but that's two level ups that instead could go to non-level scaling attributes like movement, willpower, crit chance.

[Asdf]

Originally posted by Stray952:

While agonizing over starting traits I noticed that the ones that give you 5% of any attribute are garbage. You have to get to 21 base stat before thats more than one point bonus.
This then made me realize how useless all the stats kind of are.

I can't understand your logic where you say that 5% to stat traits is trash and bring no single evidence.
In fact, lvl 2 chara can have ~40 str, so 5% of it will be 2 str.

[buchecker]

Originally posted by IBlackI:

Originally posted by Stray952:

While agonizing over starting traits I noticed that the ones that give you 5% of any attribute are garbage. You have to get to 21 base stat before thats more than one point bonus.
This then made me realize how useless all the stats kind of are.

I can't understand your logic where you say that 5% to stat traits is trash and bring no single evidence.
In fact, lvl 2 chara can have ~40 str, so 5% of it will be 2 str.

Which is not noticable in a fight.

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

I cannot fathom why anyone thinks crit is better than str or dex.
Outside of weapons that trigger an ability on crit. The math does not work as far as I can see.

Movement is good but at outside of a few incidents I never find I need more than 14.
Willpower can be good to get galvanised faster, I still prefer more straight up damage.

After a certain amount of dex it provides no extra crit chance either so only a flat dam increase, with diminishing returns, while 1% crit will roughly add 1% damage later on.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by buchecker:

Originally posted by IBlackI:

I can't understand your logic where you say that 5% to stat traits is trash and bring no single evidence.
In fact, lvl 2 chara can have ~40 str, so 5% of it will be 2 str.

Which is not noticable in a fight.

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

I cannot fathom why anyone thinks crit is better than str or dex.
Outside of weapons that trigger an ability on crit. The math does not work as far as I can see.

Movement is good but at outside of a few incidents I never find I need more than 14.
Willpower can be good to get galvanised faster, I still prefer more straight up damage.

After a certain amount of dex it provides no extra crit chance either so only a flat dam increase, with diminishing returns, while 1% crit will roughly add 1% damage later on.

But the crit to hit for dex and the crit dmg from str is not the reason to choose str.
Unless I am mistake, which is certainly possible, the straight up dmg from str/dex is not capped.

So plus 1 str, obviously on a str weapon, is superior to plus 1% to crit and 1% increased crit dmg.

I have never read anything about diminished returns from dex or str, beyond the side bonus of their effect on critical hit/dmg.

[Gaz O'D]

Some weapons require crit to proc a certain effect, so having bloodthirsty, even just at 3% extra crit, can help.

[buchecker]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

So plus 1 str, obviously on a str weapon, is superior to plus 1% to crit and 1% increased crit dmg.

I have never read anything about diminished returns from dex or str, beyond the side bonus of their effect on critical hit/dmg.

When you have 50 Str/Dex (which you can get by lev 5-8 with gear and feasts) one levelup is 2/50 extra damage (since damage scales directly with attribs), which is about 4% extra damage, at 75 its 3%, at 100 its 2%. Level 12 weapons will easily get you to 100 (if ou grind that far). 2% crit is 2% of the time around 100% extra damage (with meal buffs and Wrongdoer buff) plus stuff that triggers on crit.

So Attribute gains will diminish over time and by endgame on average contribute less than crit, however more reliable.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Again I am not 100% sure of my assumptions but let's take base of.
Ignoring str effect on crit dmg.

Brute weapon 80% dmg on average, str 70 including weapons, crt chance 25% and crt increase 50%.
His base dmg is 63 on avg.

We choose to A increase str by 20 or B increase crt by 20 pts.

Brute A: now does 81 dmg,
Str of 90, crt chance staying at 25% with 50% increase on crit.

Brute B: now does 74 dmg,
Str stays at 70, crt chance increased to 45% and on crt dmg to 70% increase.

And this completely ignores the increase str has to critical damage, which to the best of my knowledge is the only thing that is capped.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by buchecker:

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

So plus 1 str, obviously on a str weapon, is superior to plus 1% to crit and 1% increased crit dmg.

I have never read anything about diminished returns from dex or str, beyond the side bonus of their effect on critical hit/dmg.

When you have 50 Str/Dex (which you can get by lev 5-8 with gear and feasts) one levelup is 2/50 extra damage (since damage scales directly with attribs), which is about 4% extra damage, at 75 its 3%, at 100 its 2%. Level 12 weapons will easily get you to 100 (if ou grind that far). 2% crit is 2% of the time around 100% extra damage (with meal buffs and Wrongdoer buff) plus stuff that triggers on crit.

So Attribute gains will diminish over time and by endgame on average contribute less than crit, however more reliable.

Fair enough I have not gotten to lvl 12, even on EA I only got to 10 so have not seen 100 plus on weapons.

I can see at around str 120 ish that crit maybe more potent. But currently at level 10 I only have one character at that level.

[buchecker]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

Fair enough I have not gotten to lvl 12, even on EA I only got to 10 so have not seen 100 plus on weapons.

I can see at around str 120 ish that crit maybe more potent. But currently at level 10 I only have one character at that level.

I have just reached level 8 with my starter chars, so im not at that point either. I havnt raised crit at all tho, i spend most of my levelups on Move which is much more broken than most other stats. Where you put the rest makes not much of a difference. I just caught 4 polar bears with my level 8 party on expert and both their tankiness and damage dwarfs mine its not funny.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by buchecker:

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

Fair enough I have not gotten to lvl 12, even on EA I only got to 10 so have not seen 100 plus on weapons.

I can see at around str 120 ish that crit maybe more potent. But currently at level 10 I only have one character at that level.

I have just reached level 8 with my starter chars, so im not at that point either. I havnt raised crit at all tho, i spend most of my levelups on Move which is much more broken than most other stats. Where you put the rest makes not much of a difference. I just caught 4 polar bears with my level 8 party on expert and both their tankiness and damage dwarfs mine its not funny.

Even with this knowledge I still would not, having the consistent dmg for me is still superior.
Knowing that I will kill certain people for me is better than having a high probability that I will.

Plus I am not sure that I will be playing very much of the game with a lvl 12 character, give the grind.
As stated my max character is just lvl 10 now with around 113 str with plus 10 for profession.
At this point str and dex are still superior.

[Schalimah]

Did some experimenting here.

Critical hits are always calculated from the skills max roll.
The average damage formula would then look somewhat like this

(1-c/100)*((A*MIN/100+A*MAX/100)/2)+(c/100)*(A*MAX*(1+C/100))

c = crit chance
C = crit damage
A = attribute (strength/dexterity)
MIN = minimum damage multiplier (e.g. skill deals 80% - 100% dexterity)
MAX = maximum damage multiplier (e.g. skill deals 80% - 100% dexterity)

Which stat is better is very dynamic.
for most of my characters +1 crit chance and damage is slightly better than +1 dexterity/strength.
And while in the beginning, you get the secondary benefit from strength/dexterity every 2-3 points, later it is only every 10+ points (aka diminishing returns).

Adding a Wrongdoer (+30% crit damage to all party members) to your party heavily skewes the results towards crit.

Additional findings while testing this:
- perforating oils description is missleading.
I understood it as basically halving the targets guard.
It actually reduces the guard by a flat 50.
Any target with less than 50% guard is treated as having no guard.

- Bandit heater shield actually reduces arrow attacks by 80%, not 90% as advertised

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by Schalimah:

Did some experimenting here.

Critical hits are always calculated from the skills max roll.
The average damage formula would then look somewhat like this

(1-c/100)*((A*MIN/100+A*MAX/100)/2)+(c/100)*(A*MAX*(1+C/100))

c = crit chance
C = crit damage
A = attribute (strength/dexterity)
MIN = minimum damage multiplier (e.g. skill deals 80% - 100% dexterity)
MAX = maximum damage multiplier (e.g. skill deals 80% - 100% dexterity)

Which stat is better is very dynamic.
for most of my characters +1 crit chance and damage is slightly better than +1 dexterity/strength.
And while in the beginning, you get the secondary benefit from strength/dexterity every 2-3 points, later it is only every 10+ points (aka diminishing returns).

Adding a Wrongdoer (+30% crit damage to all party members) to your party heavily skewes the results towards crit.

Additional findings while testing this:
- perforating oils description is missleading.
I understood it as basically halving the targets guard.
It actually reduces the guard by a flat 50.
Any target with less than 50% guard is treated as having no guard.

- Bandit heater shield actually reduces arrow attacks by 80%, not 90% as advertised

Yes if you build your team around high crit, but is a Wrongdoer bonus better than another person doing dmg.

You also need to factor in if your Str is higher your base dmg that is being multiplied on crt is also higher.

As pointed out it is only when str/dex gets into 120 plus zones that THEN crt stat becomes superior. Before reaching that point anyone pushing str will have a advantage, then can pivot to crt with food etc.

Unless I am missing something this only really come into effect at lvl 11 to 12.

I think if you are not respecing in those final levels the Dex/Str is the better option and maybe the better option for all one handers.

Additionally to the 14% crt is not 14% additional dmg, it is 14% additional chance to increase the dmg to what the current multiplier is, so if the multiplier on crt is 50% it is only 7 additional dmg. It only becomes 14% when the multiplier is 100%.
Lol so it looks like the math was not so simple after all.