Pure STR = most gameplay?

[Zawarudo]

Ello!

I have trouble picking a class... seriously so... sickeningly so! Sooo I spent a long time reading and watching yutube videos and I noticed something interesting.

Ideal or not, for many classes theres always a pure strength build. People say stuff like:

Strider: 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin.
Ranger: 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin.
Warrior: 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin
Mystic Knight: 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin.
Fighter: 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin.

So... it seems if you choose to 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin when you get to level 200 you can play several classes!

[Pendergast891]

but you lose out on being able to play efficiently the magic classes (magick archer for example)

those builds will hit 900 strength but with barely any base magick stats.

Balanced builds will still perform just as well with the same end game gear, but have around 400 more magic.

From what ive seen the 'best' balanced build statwise is:

1-10 mage

11-97 assassin

98-100 sorcerer

101-200 sorcerer.

this gives you 605/604 attack/magick split base stats.

with this set up you can play every class and be only around 3% less efficient in some fights compared to a pure str or pure mgk build.

[Zawarudo]

Yes pure str is far from good for magic archers, mages or sorcerers. I think its more like this:

With pure str you can have fun with 5 classes (and relatively optimal builds for each).

With a balanced build you might play all classes and they will do great but they will still be lacking... unable to reach their full potential, to unleash the full devastation they can be capable of.

Its about choosing 5 glass cannons vs 8 jack of all trades.

Some say the difference is negligible. Sadly I have no idea.

[Pendergast891]

Originally posted by Badargo:

Yes pure str is far from good for magic archers, mages or sorcerers. I think its more like this:

With pure str you can have fun with 5 classes (and relatively optimal builds for each).

With a balanced build you might play all classes and they will do great but they will still be lacking... unable to reach their full potential, to unleash the full devastation they can be capable of.

Its about choosing 5 glass cannons vs 8 jack of all trades.

Some say the difference is negligible. Sadly I have no idea.

i would lean towards 8 jack of all trades due to the lack of integrated save files preventing easy swapping between saves, and being 'locked' into playing 5 classes makes it tedious to start over to try the other classes.

[zadymek]

Originally posted by Badargo:

So... it seems if you choose to 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin when you get to level 200 you can play several classes!

1. What kind of idiot advised STR build for Mystic Knight?

2. Playing as Ranger or Strider with such poor Stamina pool as that of Fighter's is far from fun. And you gain what exactly? Especially Strider.
Only Warrior actually gains something here and that's a bit of DEF and Stamina, at th cost of a bit of STR and HP.

3. As for the rest: those "miraculous recipes on the internet" have one major flaw. As much as leveling Vocation past 100 is of lesser importance you may be done with the game before you will even reach 60 ;) Plus you actually have to play as Fighter not your choosen Vocation, which may or may not get tedious pretty fast.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

So... it seems if you choose to 1-10 as a fighter, 10-200 as assasin when you get to level 200 you can play several classes!

Odd way to say Mystic Knight.

[Zawarudo]

I sort of dont know how to quote here but heres what I found about pure str mystic knights:

"- MK's best weapon, the Virge of Madness, is completely STR-based (+2000), so your STR-based damage will be #1 to surpass the damage threshold of enemies.
- Abyssal Anguish + Ferocity augment is a powerful combination which requires good STR.
- Great Cannon (+ Blessed Trance/Hallowed Invocation) w/ a Virge of Madness (or Devil's Bane) will benefit tremendously from a Conqueror's Periapt boosted STR stat, as much as from boosted MAG via Demon's Periapts.

Depending on how you use your MK (using Flame Riposte and Ruinous Sigils a lot? wanna bother w/ Stone Forest/Jungle setups? etc.), you COULD neglect MAG in favor of STR. Less versatile, but that's not a problem for everyone."

And pure str ranger... might not be the most popular but it is definitely a well known build.

[zadymek]

Originally posted by Badargo:

"- MK's best weapon, the Virge of Madness, is completely STR-based (+2000), so your STR-based damage will be #1 to surpass the damage threshold of enemies.

So the whole build is about one weapon? What about, y know, the 90% of the game when you don't have that weapon yet? ;)

Originally posted by Badargo:

- Abyssal Anguish + Ferocity augment is a powerful combination which requires good STR.

There's only so much you can do with 50% scaling, and you are sacrificing MAG that has much better scaling with this skill.
And why would you limit yourself to using core skills for just piss poor 10% bonus?

Originally posted by Badargo:

- Great Cannon (+ Blessed Trance/Hallowed Invocation) w/ a Virge of Madness (or Devil's Bane) will benefit tremendously from a Conqueror's Periapt boosted STR stat, as much as from boosted MAG via Demon's Periapts.

It will tremedously fail to benefit from Conqueror's Periapt. It uses half of weapon STR and that's it. It's a MAG based skill, like most MK exclusive skills, and will tremedously benefit from character MAG and half of weapon MAG.
If you even remotely consider basing your build on STR GC is your last choice.

I mean, MK as a elemental Fighter is playable but you rather want to use Fighter skills...which begs the question: why pick MK in the first place?

[Zawarudo]

Also this:

"I'd go pure STR if I was going pure. Grand Cannon gets decent scaling from STR anyways and weapons boost STR way more than Magic. Abyssal anguish will also still let you damage physically resistant things with pure STR so that isn't a worry.

The real reason though is that I find GC spam incredibly dull and only use it against Daimon 2 and the Ur Dragon (though I go with a balanced build and get lower DPS for greater versatility.)
"

You might not like the build but pure str mk exists and seems to be quite viable. Just to answer your question :P

Also... yes, since its about leveling as an assassin... aiming to get that weapon at lv 200 is not far fetched.

While you cant have it u can play as pure str fighter, assassin, war, ranger, strider or whatever you want ^^

[zadymek]

Originally posted by Badargo:

You might not like the build but pure str mk exists and seems to be quite viable. Just to answer your question :P

Hah, I already have encountered one proponent of GC build, who in turn, claimed that this is the only build. And also that MK generally sucks...based on this build ;)

The question is: have you seen this "build" in action? The quote already mentions it's far from versatile and dull as eF.

[Hex]

What does it matter what build you have at lvl200?

[Old Goat]

Simply reaching level 200 will not, by itself, enable you to play several different vocations. I don't recommend going the min/max build route if you wish to effectively play in a variety of vocations. You will most probably find yourself playing in a number of different vocations if you want to get the best augments. For example the Bastion augment (reduces the amount of physical damage you take) is only available in the Warrior vocation and the Awareness augment (reduces the amount of damage you take from magic attacks) is only available in one of the spell casting vocations. IMO the game is easier to play with a character that has a more balanced build than one that is designed solely on physical or magic STR.

[Sauro]

Originally posted by Hex:

What does it matter what build you have at lvl200?

More or less this.

The true Dragon's Dogma leveling meta is having fun while getting to 200. I can't imagine how dreadful it must be to be locked to Assassin for one bloody hundred levels, even with the sword/dagger/shield/bow availability.

Your weaponry dictates ~80%+ of your Strength and Magick components late game. At the best of bests, you'll be shaving, what, 2 or 3 minutes worth of fighting from the longest of encounters? Even still, this is a single-player game where you can pretty much take as much time on a fight as you want, and if you find yourself being toppled by a given enemy with, say, 400 base Strength, 600 probably won't make much difference at all, at which point you should probably revise your tactics instead.

Seriously, there's zero need to do this to yourself unless you REALLY want to min-max simply for the sake of doing so. How about you play several different classes from the get-go of level 10? Mix it up as you explore and discover new stuff. One of my favorite experiences with this game was going through the first roughly 20 levels as a Fighter, until I decided to change to Strider on a whim and discovered that I really liked the archery gameplay (and allowed me to actually kill those pesky seagulls for the board quests). Variety is the spice of life, goodfisher, don't get tied down to build formulas.

I've never played a "completely unoptimal" build (which would probably be something like 1-200 Mage), but given the game's mechanics, even that would be able to tackle the game's challenges because, again, equipment carries most of your stats, and a good strategy can change a lot,

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

You can go pure strenght but be prepared to run away everytime you'll come across something immune to physical damages...*

Being balanced means nobody will give you a hardtime, but you wont roll over anybody either.

Having a min-maxed build means you will roll over most ennemies, but you will hardly be able to damage your arch nemesis.... and then there's pawns and throwblasts.

That said, no boss ennemy is immune to physical damages (excpetion of the living armor in BBi pre-daimon, but there's a couple cheese method to circumvent this), so you can run pass all of them....

*exception of a strider with a pair of heaven's key and brain splitter. Making strider a better vocation to play with autonomy than assassin....

[Zawarudo]

Bear in mind Im a total noob that cant pick a class no matter what... Im talking of what I learned from the web not from my experience so please forgive my ignorance in advance :P

What ive learned have shown me that, in some ways, da pure str is the "only" way to go.

Take ranger for example, if played right doesnt need defense or m defense, all he needs is str and tons of stamina. While a pure ranger wouldnt fit an assassin, the assassin has the biggest stamina pool, second only to ranger so a pure str would be great for ranger.

Striders dont need def nor mdef neither, their skills require stamina and str and the assassin stats growth yelds more sta and str than da strider and anyone else... so sort of a must to go pure str with strider 0.o

The fighter... it might be a squishy fighter if one is pure str but theres sword and board assassin. If there are sword and board assassin skills, a pure str fighter can be just as viable perhaps?

Pure str war and mk... now this is polemic stuff... this is quite the niche stuff. I dont think Id like a pure str war... but a pure str build gives u that option... both str war and mk are favored by some ppl...

Mage, sorcerer and magic archer arent viable sadly :S

Right now I cant progress ingame cuz I cant make up my mind between going full assasssin or full war... they both rly fun damn! Id dump all this str stuff to go pure war... tho that wont be as optimal for so many classes by late game... should I want to switch.

[Bloodwest]

You might get bored off game by the time you max your character like that though. You can get powerful strength spikes by getting fighter's Vehemence and warrior's Clout augments, becoming stronger for overwhelming majority of the game compared to guy stuck with 10-200 assassin-only gameplay for that marginal strength difference. Number-wise you in fact get the highest strength or physical damage possible from stats but would that be any fun? You'll become op and trivialize the game for yourself way before you get 200.