Strength vs Weapon Skill for Warrior?

[Gilmore]

Is there any reason that you would take Weapon Skill instead of Strength? Strength seems like a no brainer because of the increased damage and buffs to agility and stuff.

[burner19]

Depending on difficulty and enemy defense WS is your hit chance and strenght damage. Go full str and you will hit never on bosses. Without ballance having all that damage means nothing if you cant hit nothing. On lower difficulties its less important but on highe you would be missing hits 24/7 with low weapon skill.

[Naustghoul]

WS for the win, then strength, then mix up agile and toughness, and then... I think perception.

[Metrod125]

The thing with STR/WS depends on your general build.

You NEED, not want, NEED Weapon Skill to hit things as a melee focused character. You cant do any sort of damage if you cant hit anything with low WS skill. As for Strength, your general melee weapon damage primary scales off of that. Granted some abilities have extra melee damage based off of Agility, but those are ability focused attacks, not the general damage your weapon inflicts.

You can, however, technically skip STR and pick up Peak Condition to make up whatever potential strength loss you have as you get more wounds (hp) with various other talents like It will not Die and Tough as Steel. Everything else depends on your base and advanged archtypes.

[Gilmore]

How much Weapon Skill is generally needed?

[burner19]

Originally posted by Gilmore:

How much Weapon Skill is generally needed?

Go full WS and toughness and maybe1 or 2 picks in str because there is a perk at 3rd tree that makes 20% of your life in to strenght. So you have WS over 100 and lot of toughness for survivability and from 200 wounds you will have 40 strenght. Also biomancy buffs on high psy rating can give you 40 to 50 str and toughness and that toughness gives you even more str.

[stax]

Weaponskill is needed to defeat enemy parry (not to hit! hiting is automatic with melee weapons). This means that to hit an enemy who can not parry (generally those wielding a gun) you do not need weaponskill. Except:

Weaponskill is also used to determine your melee crit chance: The higher your weaponskill is than enemy weaponskill, the higher the chance your strike will be a critical hit. This is also relevant for attacking gun-wielding opponents who can not parry - you will crit them more often if your WS is high.

Weaponskill however does nothing at all to defeat enemy dodge. Enemy dodge is defeated by the attacker's perception stat, and if the attack is melee, also half the attacker's agility stat. So don't sleep on those.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Is there any reason that you would take Weapon Skill instead of Strength? Strength seems like a no brainer because of the increased damage and buffs to agility and stuff.

Weapon Skill = Increases own Parry, Reduces enemy Parry Chance and Increases Critical Hit chance
Agility = Increases Initiative, Dodge Chance, Reduces Enemy Dodge (Only 50% of the attribute)
Strength = Does Increase Melee Damage by 5% per Point (double with 2 handed)
Perception = Reduces Dodge Chance for both Melee and Ranged.

A Character attacked in Melee will always Dodge and Parry.

Parry Chance in Melee is: (20+ Target WS + Parry Bonus - (Attacker WS + Parry Reduction))
Dodge Chance in Melee is: (30+ Agi of Target - Dodge Reduction of Attacker)

Parry Reduction in Melee is: Depends on your Weapon
Dodge Reduction in Melee is: (Perception + Agi /2)

Dodging can result in your character moving.

Personally i try to keep WS, AGI and PER about the same. If they are a Tank i go with Toughness over Strength as their 4th Attribute. (And if they are Ranged Fighter replace WS with BS)

In terms of Importance i would say WS and AGI are the most important, as those are your survival skills. AGI, because you need to get into the fight without being shot part, and because you'll always Dodge, meaning what you can't parry you might be able to Dodge.

Strength is the least important to me, because when the enemy can't harm me, then it doesn't matter if i need to hit them 2-3 more rounds to kill them. And there are a bunch of items in the game that enhance STR... as well as Talents like Peak Condition, and Damage Enhancing stuff for negating enemy dodge.

[Gilmore]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Is there any reason that you would take Weapon Skill instead of Strength? Strength seems like a no brainer because of the increased damage and buffs to agility and stuff.

Strength is the least important to me, because when the enemy can't harm me, then it doesn't matter if i need to hit them 2-3 more rounds to kill them. And there are a bunch of items in the game that enhance STR... as well as Talents like Peak Condition, and Damage Enhancing stuff for negating enemy dodge.

Doesn’t picking strength increase agility by the same amount? Why pick agility instead of strength?

[Sin]

Generaly:
It is easy to buff both, but strength has weaker applications.
I prefer agility, though alot of the warrior talents scale with strength so it always feels a little bad.
You could go WS > Toughness > STR if you are aiming for a pure melee combatant in heavy armor who won't be an assassin.
otherwise I would recommend:
AGI > WS > THG
if you don't aim for heavy armor and are contemplating a more dodge focused assassin / executioner approach. (Executioner is DLC content and could theoretically swap out toughness for strength for reasons explained below, but it makes you quite squishy during act 1. Highly recommending to pick the HP increases and defensive buffs including nimble if you go that route. Idiras defensive buffs also help a ton.)

The AGI one lends itself well for being a blade dancer (DLC) instead of a warrior too.

If you want to spice things up with a psyker in the mix:
AGI > WILL > WS

This one really needs to be an executioner though and frankly, bladedancer instead of warrior. You can skip the toughness because executioner has a talent which makes your hp scale off of medicae and you also got a talent somewhere between the two kits that allows your medicae to scale via your weapon skill instead of intelligence, so you get the full package of 4 attributes in a kit that can only take 3. Schools lending itself here are Pyro Bio and to a degree Sanctic, the executioner class really wants to stack dots and the first to provide them, sanctic is just generally nice to have in the party but can be taken by any psyker.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Doesn’t picking strength increase agility by the same amount? Why pick agility instead of strength?

Maybe there is a Talent i am not aware of (and Talents can be game changers), but i do not remember any mention of Strength influencing Agility and i checked the Tooltips of the game for my post. So if it does, then the Tooltips don't mention it either.

Even if it were, based on the way i understand how it works, i would always pick Agi instead of Strength, because Agility is the main attribute for Dodge and you always Dodge AND Parry when hit in Melee. Agility also influences your ability to reduce the Dodge of the enemy in Melee, even if it does so only by half of its value.

If my weapon does 10-15 damage and i can't hit the enemy... then it literally doesn't matter if i have a 200% bonus to damage. Same time.. if the enemy can't hit me in melee, because i am dodging what i can't parry... then it doesn't matter that i am only having +30% damage bonus instead of +60% damage.

[Gilmore]

Wait nevermind I just Googled it, it was Athletics that is boosted by strength. My bad.

[Ishan451]

To the best of my understanding, without taking gear and such into account the main Stats are WS/BS, AGI and PER, for any of the fighting characters. You need AGI to defend, you need PER and WS/BS to hit.

Of course, if you wear Medium and Heavy armor your Dodge Chance is going to be taking a hit, which can make AGI a lot less important. Also Depending on Archetypes other Attributes might be relevant. An Operative Ranged Fighter needs Int, for example.