those 20 points you put to const , would make huge difference if you would put em to dex. probably at least 10-20% more crits.
You should rely more on evasion and leather gear to avoid dmg.
Then the only remaining problem becomes magic damage.
I also can see SPR builds on archers happening… tho I’m not brave enough to test it yet.
If it’s possible to get to sustainable sp recharge while spamming say something cheap like [Oblique Shot] , that would be pretty strong.
your actually wrong stats add flat damage, but skills are also flat damage. “multiple” hits are actually one hit with that formula split between the “hits” in this case barrage actually only gets 36 more damage. [Guide] Damage formula
I mean there are some skills which are special edge cases like stabbing which is one skill that essentially you cast over and over without using more sp or having to wait for the cooldown. ill fully test all ranger abilities at some point but this is basically how it works. even magic damage which hits 10+ times like krivs’ thunder spell only did matk+skill damage when you add up all the hits together
the only multipliers in the game as far as i have seen are attributes, special skill combos (umbal blow after blocking does 4x the final damage) and special skill mods (catar strike does 1.1x and energy bolt does 1.5x) but i have not tested everything
It really depends on the items as well, I think. That and what passive attributes the archers in question leveled, what monster type they attacked, what gems they socketed and any extra damage stats on the jewelry they wore.
I can say that my first archer attempt was as you stated, with an eye on having comfortable hp/sp as well as damage and crits, but my second archer went almost full ham on strength and dex, as well as focusing on getting the best available bow, upgrading it to +5 or higher, and favouring damage equips and gems over defense.
In concert with upgrading my skills passive damage buffs and choosing skills that further increased my damage, killing bosses and tougher mobs became trivial when compared to my first attempt.
TL.DR.: It really DOES make a difference, maybe the archers you observed didn’t have an optimized build or had worse equipment than you at the time.
The fact is that strength and dex just synergize extremely. Factor that with the increased dodge chance from dex and the dodge bonus from wearing leather with high leather armor proficiency, and the only reason you should invest in Vitality is to make sure the boss can’t luckily one shot you with a strong skill.
Oh well if that was wrong then sorry. I was playing Pyro which seemed to multiply the damage (for Fire Ball since that was what I tested with and without weapon damage)
No need to apologise, this is what internet boards are for - talking with each other, discussing skills, finding out things you didn’t know or disproving things you thought might be true.
It’s almost as fun as playing the game, really. 
were you taking into account the fact that fire ball does fire damage and if something was weak to fire you’d do 50% more damage?
No, I don’t think they were ice monsters. I was in the caves testing stuff. Since I had all INT, I had 73 INT and around 200 MAtk overall without my weapon on. Fire Ball as I know it, does around 200 or 250 damage per hit at level 10 I believe. When I attacked the mobs with Fire Ball without my staff, it did around 400-450 (can’t remember correctly) each hit. With my staff, which had 100 or so MAtk, it increased the Fire Ball damage to 500-550 damage per hit.
edit: Take these numbers with a grain of salt because I just remember doing 400+ without staff and 500+ with staff.
Stats seem to contribute anywhere from 20-40% of the damage output, where base level accounts another 20% or so, equipment (including refine, gems) accounted for 50% of the damage.
For wizzies it was imperative to go full INT low level. Otherwise your autos do too little due to Magic Defense.
I made a stat calc with all the stat formulas and tested it to verify that it is correct with a bunch of high level players in iCBT and kCBT3. The M Atk formula is level + int. If you plug in the damage formula I linked before you’ll see that M Atk - M Def = auto attack damage and M Atk - Mdef + Skill power = skill damage. Even if you do 1 damage with Z you can still do nearly full skill damage. Level 45 creatures I tested magic on had roughly 60 mdef so if your skill atk = 400 youll do 340 even with 0 matk.
Three things to consider however:
As you get a stat higher you get bonus points in it, these seem to scale at 1 bonus per 5 base points at first and at 50 points you have 60 total points in that stat then it switches to a 4:1 ratio meaning at 74 points you will actually have 90. So the more of a stat you have the more bonus you’ll get. I assume the frequency increases even more beyond what I have data for.
[Guide] Bonus stat points distribution [Updated 8/28/15]
Secondly there are some skills which take more from your stats. Right now we know that Meteor says its attack power is equal to M ATK300% + 500 so if we take this at face value then the skill would actually be Matk times 400% +500 (cause matk goes once into the formula for all skills at 100% but that isn’t listed)
Other examples are energy bolt which does 1.5x the normal damage formula and highlander catar stroke does 1.1x.
Finally, Attributes increase your damage with skills by 1% per attribute level, BUT this damage increase is based on the actual damage you deal not the base damage you WOULD deal. So after all defenses if you did 100 damage without attributes you would do 125 with 25 levels in attributes 150 with 50 levels and 200 with 100 levels. Then you multiply THAT number by the type mod (slash/hit/pierce/element) which if you have the correct one for the monster you fighting is 50% so take that 125 and make it 187, take that 150 and make it 225, take that 200 and make it 300. For melee if you crit increase it by a further 50% to 281/337/450.
Meaning with 100% attribute your str could be giving you 3 damage per point with 4.5 on a crit. So taking into account stat scaling you will see larger differences as we level.
Do you know how magic amplification work?
To simplify:
Magic damage formula =
{[(Matk x Skill Modifier) - Mdef] + Skill base damage} x Attribute bonus x elemental bonus
add 0~m.amp no idea when it goes in with multipliers but I’m assuming before.
The stats made a huge difference. I pumped all my points into DEX and STR (2:1 ratio), and then used Crouch Shot for the extra little boost on damage. This made a giant difference in the number of hits required to kill a lot of enemies, such as the ones in the Veja Ravine. I completely forgot about attributes, but if I had been abusing them I’m sure I would’ve been killing things in one to two shots down there.
20 damage points might not seem like a lot, but it really makes a difference, 5 sets of that and you’ve got almost a free hit.
well the issue is most people arent looking at basic attack ratios. they look at the skill damage, when your skill adds 500 its easy to not notice the difference between 500 and 520 until you factor in attributes.
That’s the beauty I see in ToS mechanics so far.
The reason you didn’t feel this different was because your level 57, which is the super early game.
Pure/2 stat builds vs balance builds are way more noticeable around 125/150.
That is a good question.
If you ask me, yes it matters. That is because the game has class-specific base stat gains.
From what I could gather, you will at some point end up being around lvl600, maybe more. And your entire stats are evenly split up between 3 parts:
Which is why you should use the stat calculator on TOSBase for the only use it has, which is to look at how the classes base stat gains differ from each other. I will save you the time and effort:
At lvl600…
Wizards end up with 11k HP and 150 extra points in Mdef compared to other classes.
Archers have 14k HP and they have around 150 Accuracy, 70 Evasion and 120 crit chance more than everyone else.
Clerics end up with 15k HP and they have the biggest mana pool and mana regeneration of all classes.
All Swordsmen end up with 19k HP and 150 more Pdef than anyone else.
You will get a free 600 points in Matk and Patk in any case, without allocating any stat points. And your weapon will most likely dish out around 500-600 damage without upgrades, base stats or stat alloction considered. Just the weapon alone will do that much damage if you had 1 atk.
Yet allocating stats still matters a lot because 500 stat points equal 600 stats. So if you allocate your points optimally, you will have a total of 720 points to spend (till lvl600).
It’s just the question which stats matter for whom?
Swordsman builds who rely on CON are more beneficial than DEX builds because they make full use of their already big advantage in HP+Def.
An Archer would always be ahead of other DEX-based classes like Barbarians since they have much higher accuracy and Evasion.
A Wizard class could go for CON to make full use of his advantage in Mdef, but he has such low base HP that going DEX might be the better route since if anything will kill you as a Wizard, it will more likely be a physical-based class than a magic-user, because you already got some extra Mdef but no HP and not much Pdef.
The mana-pool of cleric classes just means for me that you are going to want to create any cleric class that tries to outsustain his opponents. Which you already do in any case since you already start out with skills like Safety Zone and Heal.
But no, you are not forced to invest into any damage stats in order to deal a decent amount of damage. You only need to do that if you have huge percentage-factors in any of your important skills. Like the Corsairs Pirate flag for example.
Con seems like the best choice to avoid getting critted as well, but the question is how much Con will be useful against a full-DEX opponent when I myself am maybe also something like an Archer who uses DEX? Could I get an edge over another Archer from investing into CON?
That’s why I wonder how much % crit chance the crit rate gives.
I get that the crit rate is a relative value, so your crit rate is measured against the targets Crit-Res. But what I don’t get is what ratio gives how much %. That’s the last piece of information about the stats that I still don’t get.
One of the most informative posts I’ve seen about stats so far. Now I’m undecided on what I want to put for my stats distribution instead of full INT seeing as the stats overall seem VERY balanced before stat allocation.
You said that a DEX build vs CON build for a Wiz would be better but the only upside I see to that is evasion (not saying it’s not good) but the accuracy and critical chance makes it seem a bit lackluster for a wiz seeing as they don’t really need those two things. Since CON increases weight limit as well as HP and apparently Critical Resistance which would seriously hamper the critical attack builds of archers and swordsman, isn’t that a better choice?
You are right and it also increases HP-Regen. CON seems like a good investment all around.
I dunno whether some Wizard classes might not actually profit from the critical chance. Magic in general does not seem to crit, but I have seen people say that some of their spells do crit for whatever strange reason.
pure dex? lol… no dex/con :]
Actually - this is only my guess but - I think that a mix between Con and Dex should be viable on some classes because of the wide array of stats that both of these give.
As a STR-based class you can make use of CON for synergy with your extra Pdef or just for some extra survivability and still use Dex to reach high critical rates and accuracy for your attacks. The evasion from DEX once in a while would just be a little extra to it.
A build like 1:1:1 (STR:CON:DEX) doesn’t seem all that bad. At least with the right gem+equip choices made.