Weapons Question...

Which stat goes with which weapon? Is strength all you need to do better melee damage or do you also need dexterity? I am currently using a halberd and am not sure whether putting points in dexterity would be a help or a waste. HELP!!!

 

I did some fairly rudimentary testing on this yesterday, and came away rather unimpressed with the current state of the stat system.

I stripped all skills off my character, investing solely in various combinations of STR and DEX... I found that, as it currently stands, these stats only increase your attack skill. If I dumped all my points in STR, my Attack Skill remained relatively low because of how the cost to increase scales with the stat's value. Same with all my points in DEX. In neither situation did my STR increase my damage nor my DEX increase my Attack Speed. My best results were achieved by balancing STR and DEX equally to maximize my Attack Skill.

In summary:
Stat modifications to Strength Damage and Attack Rate do not exist in the current incarnation of the game. Your stats govern Attack Skill, nothing more, which in turn governs your damage output, hit rate, and crit rate.

If anybody's results conflict with mine, please let me know - as I said, my testing was about as rudimentary as you can get. I'll test further today and actually record results to analyze this time.

 

Which weapon have you and what enemy did you test?

 

It seems in some opinions atm, int gives better results than dex.

 

I've heard it stated by the devs that different weapon types are affected by the base stats differently. But in practice, it seems all 3 stats affect Attack Skill the same. Chris said he hoped to do a Hangout on the base attributes and combat system soon.

 

Halberd. For my more in-depth testing, I'll be trying a few different ones, Hally, Dagger, Staff, and one or 2 more.

EDIT: I mean, I will if the forums settles down enough to ALLOW me to get to testing... lol

 

Entrappedmind, thank you so much, I have to try this. As a sword-and-board melee fighter, I put most of my points in STR, and based on what you said, I will try to mix it a bit more with Dex, and see what happens. Didn't think of that yet, but then again, I am still rather new to the game, so I went mainly for STR, melee skills and a bit of healing

 

Initial results (Not as thorough as I'd like, the Skele I've been targeting refused to spawn at times. *grumble*)

For all results:
Target: Owl's Head Sewer Skeleton Footman
Armor: Full Augmented Plate
Character Level: 42

Each set of Damage/Swing and Crit Rate is the average of 5 separate combats with a Skeleton

Test #1: Equalized Stats

Code:

STR	DEX	INT	Attack Skill	Move Speed	Dam Avoid	Dam Resist	Other Skills?
41	41	41	123		5.81		8		20		None

Code:

Weapon	 Min Dam	Max Dam	Avg Dam	Crit	Str Bonus
Halberd	 8		25	16.5	3	High
 
Dam/Swing	Crit Rate
13.75		2%

Code:

Weapon			Min Dam	Max Dam	Avg Dam	Crit	Str Bonus
Apprentice Dagger	3	10	6.5	30	Low
 
Dam/Swing	Crit Rate
8.29		32%

Test #2: Maximized Attack Skill

Code:

STR	DEX	INT	Attack Skill	Move Speed	Dam Avoid	Dam Resist	Other Skills?
60	38	37	135		5.81		8		25		3 Body Slam, 3 Deflection, 6 Endurance (for +12 STR)
											3 Stone Fist, 5 Attunement With Earth (for +10 STR)

Code:

Weapon	Min Dam	Max Dam	Avg Dam	Crit	Str Bonus
Halberd	8	25	16.5	3	High
 
Dam/Swing	 Crit Rate
14.19				 0%

Test #3: Maxed-Out STR

Code:

STR	DEX	INT	Attack Skill	Move Speed	Dam Avoid	Dam Resist	Other Skills?
82	12	10	104		5.81		8		25		3 Body Slam, 3 Deflection, 6 Endurance (for +12 STR)
^Maxed out										3 Stone Fist, 5 Attunement With Earth (for +10 STR)

Code:

Weapon	Min Dam	Max Dam	Avg Dam	Crit	Str Bonus
Halberd	8	25	16.5	3	High
 
Dam/Swing	 Crit Rate
14.38				 0%

Test #4: Zero Distributed Stats

Code:

STR	DEX	INT	Attack Skill	Move Speed	Dam Avoid	Dam Resist	Other Skills?
10	10	10	30		5.81		8		20		None

Code:

Weapon	Min Dam	Max Dam	Avg Dam	Crit	Str Bonus
Halberd	8	25	16.5	3	High
 
Dam/Swing	Crit Rate
9.96		0%

My apologies for one weapon per test, but I was running short on time. I'll work on this further, later tonight, and edit my additions in. So check back.

Initial impressions: I'm beginning to doubt even Attack Skill has anything to do with damage. STR certainly does not. Perhaps the only things that govern your damage output are Player Level and Weapon. I'll add a Test #4 tonight, with ZERO points in attributes. We'll see how that goes. Attack Skill obviously governs everything. Your individual stats are meaningless, at this point of development.

EDIT: Crap. I thought the tables that auto-imported when I pasted from Excel would remain after posting. They didn't. I apologize for the mess, will clean it up later. Trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up the formatting. Bah.
Formatting finally cleaned up. Won't get to add more weapon tests tonight, but I'll focus on that some more tomorrow.

SIDE NOTE: I also used weapons in varying states or disrepair - with no appreciable difference in result/damage between a new weapon versus a nearly broken one.

 

Those are some very very interesting results. Thank you for doing all this and sharing the results with us! Much appreciated!

 

I have also found that attributes and weapons have hidden bonuses that do not display in the characters stats menu. STR definitely is the key attribute for melee but DEX affects DPS to a lesser degree and to an even lesser degree..so does INT. The additional DPS seems to come in increments of 10 (having 69 STR same as having 60 for DPS). INT is key for magery and DEX for archery, though i have done very little testing with a bow.
since the more points you buy the more expensive it is, there is a point where you are better off getting say 10 points of DEX, than 2 more points of STR.

 

Holy stats Batman!

You're doing god's work here!

One methodological detail I'd love to know: how you recorded your data? Just looking at your chatbox with only damage dealt messages active, or there's a log somewhere you can parse for this datawarehousing effort? TIA

 

Chat. Trust me, I looked for a log and came away disappointed. It either doesn't exist or is hidden or encrypted. Or something.

Just recorded damage for each swing, zero for a miss obviously, recorded whether it was a crit or not, then did an average of the results across 5 combatants.

I just noticed that, on mobile, the tables don't align correctly. So I apologize if anything looks funky, it all looked lined-up on my PC.

 

Oh, one thing I noticed - quite often, a critical hit will do less damage than a non-crit... This should never occur.