Survivor - Poor choice for melee character?

[SrsBznz]

I've started playing the game as a Survivor, thinking of primarily using daggers.
But after looking up the different classes I found out that they all have different gains from attributes.

Survivor
Vitality per CON point: 5
Mana per INT point: 4
Damage per STR point: 0.14
Offense per AGI point: 0.70
Defense per AGI point: 0.80

Warrior
Vitality per CON point: 6
Mana per INT point: 3
Damage per STR point: 0.40
Offense per AGI point: 0.80
Defense per AGI point: 0.70

Mage
Vitality per CON point: 4
Mana per INT point: 6
Damage per STR point: 0.10
Offense per AGI point: 0.70
Defense per AGI point: 0.70

As you can see, Warrior gains far more from attributes than Survivor. Between the two, Vitality and mana are both balanced just as offense and defense where they have the same total value, just differently specialized.
But the Survivor doesn't get anything to make up for Warriors getting nearly 3x the value from strength.

I can excuse this for the Mage since they'll only really rely on high mana pools but Survivor seems like objectively the worst class unless you want to use bows (which don't scale from strength).

[Amadel]

Read about that too. But found out that Survivor has its own benefits. Its the most silent class (enemies hear you from half the warrior's distance, so its easier to fight larger groups) + sneak ability, which is quite underestimated. Despite all the faqs i use it a lot, and it rocks. You are able to kill every boss in the first dungeon easily. Hide, crouch behind, cut to pieces (you can attack an enemy from sneak without alerting with some practice). And defense bonus is also good.

[Raze_Larian]

Survivors do tend to be the most challenging class to play.
If you just want a melee fighter, a warrior with a sword will have a higher base damage than a survivor with a dagger (even with the Assassin's Kiss skill maxed). If you play as a survivor/thief, though, that build can still be very effective. After the Aleroth dungeon, Poison Weapon can help, depending on the opponent (it is good against orcs, for example, but not so much with spiders or undead).

The survivor's Curse skill is very effective, even at level 1, since it can be repeatedly cast on an opponent to greatly lower its resistances to elemental and poison damage. Warrior's can also use the skill, though it doesn't fit the usual design philosophy, and warrior's tend to focus on physical damage.

The Larian forum topic sorta new, got a quick question[www.larian.com] contains some information on playing survivors.

FYI, there is only one unique dagger consistently in the game, with a limited opportunity to get.

The Stun skill is also helpful for melee builds. With my warrior I didn't bother with the elemental damage skills because at low levels they don't get triggered very often, and by the time I was a high enough character level to boost the skills more, I didn't need the extra damage. Of course, using a weapon with a lower base damage would make those skills more useful.

[Efraim X]

The different between a warrior and a survivor is not as much as look like.If you have good weapon most of the damage come from the weapon and not from the strenght (at least at lower levels).One example.You have a weapon that do 30 damage and have a strenght of 25 then a warrior do 40 damage and a survivor do 33 damage so it is not so big difference.The only time this have big effect is in the barfight because only a warrior can win that.

[Raze_Larian]

Originally posted by Efraim X:

The only time this have big effect is in the barfight because only a warrior can win that.

A warrior has an easier time winning that fight, but there are ways to get an advantage (besides levelling and boosting stats)...
If you don't mind 'cheating', drop a weapon and equipment before speaking to the fight promoter, and pick it up on the way into the ring.

[Gorith]

Originally posted by Efraim X:

The different between a warrior and a survivor is not as much as look like.If you have good weapon most of the damage come from the weapon and not from the strenght (at least at lower levels).One example.You have a weapon that do 30 damage and have a strenght of 25 then a warrior do 40 damage and a survivor do 33 damage so it is not so big difference.The only time this have big effect is in the barfight because only a warrior can win that.

Not a big difference??? The math you just used says otherwise...
The overall damage difference is almost 20% in favor of the warrior and the difference in bonus damage in comparison to the base weapon is 10% for the survivor and 33% for the warrior... Either way you look at it the difference is substantial.

[Surgiy]

Nah. Survivor is great. Idk about lower difs, but on high dif melee warrior sucks. One dude played it and said he managed to kill everybody on 1st dung only on 18th level and whole gameplay was like: "go there, understand, that you can do nothing, go somewhere else". Melee survivor can kill everybody, because he has sneak. Great ability. In 1st dungeon you can sneak every guardian with damage 40-160, so i don't really understand how to kill them without sneak. Later enemies get better sight, but you get blind, which isn't really useful even on 5th level for everyone but survivor, which has sneak. More mana per int helps too. When there are too many enemies, sneak helps to fight 1v1. It isn't easy and you have to maneuver a lot, but warrior's ability won't help you against a lot of strong enemies at all. And sneak helps to steal, but money usually are not the problem, so I wouldn't say it's very strong thing. I really like sneak. Ofc i'd like to have at least 0,2 or even 0,25 dmg per str, but this ability makes life as a melee possible. For some reason the game is done to make you suffer. Range characters suffer less. Melee ones suffer a lot. So ability which lets you kill anybody 1v1 without taking damage at all and slightly helps with big quantity of enemies is really good and decreased damage worth it. Again maybe it works different on lower difs. Maybe you don't suffer there and can live without so strong survival ability. Then ofc take increased dmg.