Should I level Agility as a melee fighter?

[steedless]

Or just Strength and Endurance?

[psychotron666]

Yes. Agility also adds to your % chance to hit (though not nearly as important as your weapon skill and fatigue levels). But also agility keeps you from getting knocked down in melee.

Strength and endurance are more important, but agility is still very useful for melee fighters. If you don't have skills that use agility, just pay some trainers to train up your level 5 skills that are governed by agility every few levels for a boost here and there.

[なかの31]

Doesn't Agility also increase your dodge rate too? Like, the chance physical attacks directed to you will miss?

[JackTheRipper]

Agility adds to Both + your hit chance and - enemy hit chance.

The formula boils down to something like 5 agility = ~ +1% hit / - 1% enemy hit...may not be exact but its close.

And as stated above It Also lowers chance to be staggered / knocked down from physical hits.
Which is why the orcs berserk ability is kinda trash as it drains your agility making it so you get stagger spammed and knocked down constantly.

[なかの31]

I guess it's too much for them, haha.

[Lord Rumpkin]

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes, you should raise your agility.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by JackTheRipper:

Agility adds to Both + your hit chance and - enemy hit chance.

The formula boils down to something like 5 agility = ~ +1% hit / - 1% enemy hit...may not be exact but its close.

And as stated above It Also lowers chance to be staggered / knocked down from physical hits.
Which is why the orcs berserk ability is kinda trash as it drains your agility making it so you get stagger spammed and knocked down constantly.

Berserk forces you to either play a ‘hit and run’ melee style dipping in and out of melee range, or to use a Bow. It’s absolutely terrific for these two things, but for actually ‘tanking’ melee hits it’s pretty bad, yeah.

Drain Agility can be resisted with Resist Magicka though, so it’s possible to utilise it with Resist Magicka active & have almost none of the downsides.

—

To answer the OP’s original question : yes, Agility is worth levelling, if only for the resistance to stagger. All other benefits from agility are obtainable through skills/spell effects, but stagger resistance is exclusively an Agility thing.

[theo]

Orcs have constant magic resist mind you.
Orc barbarian was my very first character and I used berserk all the time, never had a problem with it except for dropping down after it expired (because of fatigue buff). It only looks bad on paper. Although I sometimes had to rely on luck factor, usually enemies didn't even have a chance to hit me, because it's them who got stunlocked and barbarian is very fast.
Agility is still very useful though.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by theo:

Orcs have constant magic resist mind you.
Orc barbarian was my very first character and I used berserk all the time, never had a problem with it except for dropping down after it expired (because of fatigue buff). It only looks bad on paper. Although I sometimes had to rely on luck factor, usually enemies didn't even have a chance to hit me, because it's them who got stunlocked and barbarian is very fast.
Agility is still very useful though.

They do, but only 25%, which reduces the 100 Drain Agility on Berserk to 75 Drain Agility initially. That said, with an appropriate spell or even just the Saviour's Hide Cuirass, you can get this down to near 0% fairly easily & mitigate the Agility issue completely.

And yes, if you're using in o a fast running character that can dip in and out of combat and stunlock the enemy first, there's usually no issue with it. Where it becomes a detriment is if you get cornered by multiple enemies and locked in place.