In the betas, people were building full dex for classes like swordsman, archers etc. Is this still the case or has it been balanced out?
Thanks
i dont think its been rebalanced, but it was just good for content under level 200, its effectiveness tapers off alot after that
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So it’s best to go full Dex on Lv 200 then switch out for STR?
i always prefered the str builds, i’ll probably go str 1:1 dex untill 161, and putting any bonus points from quests and whatnot into str, then go str 4:1 con for the rest, or skip Dex altogether and just stick with 4:1
in the end it comes down to preference
ppl never built full dex, they used to get around 200-230 dex and go str.
ill be going full dex till 80 and than str 1:1 dex
bonus points into dex probably.
Yeah, for most cases 100-150 DEX is enough, or just full STR. Fencer might want 2 1 4 STR CON DEX.
Until there is a new class mechanism like: if u land a critical Y skill (single target) u can use X skill (strong skill, 0 sec CD) for 5 sec… Str is looking superior…
DEX just has very good synergy with EVA buffs and high damage skills (If your patk is insignificant comparing to skill damage then DEX is better), so Fencer benefits more out of DEX then other classes, because skill damage is relatively high and he has powerful EVA buff. Also for duelists DEX may be supeior because even though you will deal like 30-40% less damage, you will land every attack while enemy will land only 20-30% of attacks.
I agree DEX is better with raw skill dmg classes or skills with benefits (fencer, dragoon)
But u cant always ur eva buff up.
At 280: swordie (spent: 174dex 70str) acc 503, eva 503, crit rate 223
At 280: hunter (spent: 74dex 170str) acc 451, eva 415, crit rate 156
U cant evade this much without ur buff (btw archers has buffs to) and against magic enemy, ur acc and eva is meaningles while ur Str gives u more Dps.
Lets say %50 pve and %50 pvp:
in pvp enemy: %60 P.attacker (+%10 advantage to hunter and +%20 against swordie) but against %40 M.attacker (%25 dps lost)
Soo in pvp: Dex %90 effective, Str %100 effective… in pve Dex %75, Str %100
(Ofcourse this is a simple looking to stats Im not %100 sure)
PS: even there is raw skill dmg classes like u said (fencer, dragoon) there is not guarantee r8-9 classes without great Str scalling skills (but ofc u can stat reset in late game, not a big problem i think)
It’s far from being this simple. You take into account only autoattacks and %s are totally random.
Also there are lots of skills that boost your evasion but very few boosting accuracy. And some builds benefit DEX much more. Also DEX swordie will almost never miss while STR will miss a lot.
Also if built properly DEX may deal even more damage. And every damage buff will benefit dex, just as better weapons.
And yeah, you can’t stat reset anymore. Unless there will be special events I doubt we will see stat resets. And not in release version for sure.
if u are going 2H its probably better to go dex>str, cus u have bonus to crit atack and some of your skill have high base dmg or u will be using deeds of valor to increase dmg (so u need evade or u will die fast xD)
if u alredy have finestra rank 15 u can go str>dex and upgrade your gloves for accuracy.
The only problem is, that bonus to crit attack is % bonus. So if you go high DEX, it will be insignificant. And if you go STR with some dex, your rare crits will hit really hard. And don’t forget Moulinet granting you 50% crit chance.
But I agree that high DEX builds are still totally viable, almost every class has some synergy with both DEX and STR.
As for Hoplite, you need some DEX to overcome tough enemies crit resistance, because if you aren’t able to crit then your crit rate is wasted. That’s why I’d prefer at least 100-150 DEX in every swordsman build, because this way you will imitate Hoplite with Finestra. And if he will be able to crit with full STR build, then you will also be able to crit. Yet, if we assume that full STR Hoplite will be able to crit vs any enemy(at least with 1% chance), then going 100-150 dex will turn your finestra in a flat 22.5% crit chance buff, which is incredibly good. And it doesn’t require you investing too much.
I agree that STR>DEX builds are great (as well as DEX>STR for some classes), but I don’t like full STR builds (unless you have a premade party with Linker C3 and someone going full DEX).
In PvE, full STR doesn’t miss. Just get upgraded leather gloves, and your accuracy is enough to hit everything consistently.
I know that you won’t miss, but I’m talking mostly about crit rate. As I know, there are already bosses that have over 300 crit resistance, while having 500 crit rate as Hoplite with maxed Finestra is very good.
Sure there are classes that decrease crit res, but always relying on them is not the best option. That’s why I suggested some DEX in order to crit no matter what. Sure you will lose quite a lot of patk, but higher chance to crit will benefit your DPS more because of high skill damage. And extra acc/eva is never bad.
Crit rate continues to get harder to keep up with as you level. Essentially your DEX per point becomes worth less and less the higher level you are. You need to keep putting points in DEX to achieve the same offensive result.
As you rank up, your STR continues to get better the more points you put into it, and it linearly increases the bonus it gives to patk. Your non-crit damage will outshine someone’s crit damage, even with a DEX balanced build.
This only happens at higher levels, since at lower levels your weapon’s physical attack bonus is far higher than your bonus from STR, and crit damage counts for more. However, say you’re at lvl 230 / rank 7 with ~530 STR, your bonus physical attack from STR is actually far better than your weapon ( especially since it’s not variable min/max damage ).
Take 120 points out of your stat allocation to STR, and put those into DEX. You’ve gained ~150 critical rate, and lost ~260 STR / patk. That critical rate becomes worth less and less the more you level up, too.
I stat reset several times during CBT2 to test out STR/DEX ratios, and stat reset my character in kToS ( with the free stat reset they gave ) to full STR. For PvE, I would definitely say it’s a good option for high damage. Unfortunately PvP keeps me interested in the game ( and you need a lot of DEX to hit people ), as PvE eventually gets old, so I won’t be running a full STR build.
This is especially true if you’re a Doppelsoldner c1/c2, as you have a buff that gives 50%/100% to your physical attack, making more points in STR 1.5x/2x more effective.
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if u go full str + high level weapon u will have about 1400 pdmg, really low accuracy and no crit and no evasion.
if u go with a good str/dex rate u will have like 1000-1100pdgm, with high acc and high evasion and and a good crit rate.
and if u are going 2H u have +50% crit atack.
so i still think u can go dex>str, when the dmg numbers gets higher and higher, the +%dmg from crit also gets higher and higher.
It’s not 100% accurate. Sure your crit rate diminshes with level, but enemy crit res value diminshes as well.
Also it’s not diminshes. It’s just very high at early levels, and becomes average later on. Also if you keep investing DEX points(I mean going full DEX) your crit rate will actually grow, not remain the same, due to bonus points. For example full DEX fighter at level 100 will have 128 crit rate. It’s 53.8% crit chance.
At level 250 you invest 150 more. Now you have 54.6% crit chance. At level 500 you will have already 58.4% crit chance.
Lets assume we invest only half points into DEX. Now we have 27.3% at level 100.
At level 250 it will be 26.9%.
At level 500 it will be 27.3% again.
Finally, we go 4:2:1 STR:CON:DEX. lvl 100: 10% crit chance. lvl 250: 8% crit chance. lvl 500: 8 crit chance.
Looks like if we are going full DEX we gain nothing. But it’s not true. We keep the same multiplier by investing the same % of points into DEX. So DEX isn’t getting weaker with level, it’s maintaining stable damage multiplier. You might think that investing only 1/7 in DEX is not a good idea, but it’s also not true, because these 8% crit chance will grant you an ability to utilise your immense crit attack. Also your skills will deal substantially higher damage so landing a crit might on one of them might be dreadful.
And let’s see how much damage we lose comparing to STR:CON 5:2 (assuming rank 11, and assuming that gear crit rate equal to monsters crit res).
With STR:CON:DEX we have 1254 basic physical attack at level 500. Add here all your buffs/equipment and you will probably get around 3000 damage or even more (1750 bonus damage, ~1100 weapon and ~650 buffs).
With STR:CON we will have 1470 basic physical attack at level 500. 216 damage difference. So around 3216 patk. ~7% DPS loss with autos, much less dps loss for skills. AND you get 8% crit chance in exchange (+EVA and ACC as a free bonus).
It’s completely opposite to what actually happens. Sure at levels around 250 as we can see DEX drops in efficiency. And STR starts to shine (if not taking into account skill damage). But then DEX starts to get better again, especially because skill damage grows higher and higher. That’s why even DPS wise having % of skill points allocated to DEX is always good, no matter what build you use.
DEX has only 2 main downsides: Defense and Enemies with high critRes.
But both defense and crit Res can be reduced, so these are not true dowside. About the strength of DEX build, those are: higher survivalbility, higher accuracy, damage spikes(you can “accidentally” kill the enemy before he will be able to react).
STR has no real downsides. Only the absence of damage spikes due to ~0% crit chance, so no sudden death to the enemy. But also STR has no access to the powers of DEX, and it’s inferior in duels against DEX characters (however potentially superior against mages).
So I think, now it’s obvious that in late game full STR build is worse in every aspect then STR build with a % invested in DEX.
But I can make the same calculations for full DEX and it will be obvious that full DEX build is inferior to 2 1 4 STR CON DEX build as well.
My point is, some classes benefit from DEX more and some Benefit from STR more. But as I know, every class benefits from both STR and DEX. I can’t easily imagine a build that will benefit from avoiding spending points in DEX. As well, I doubt there are physical classes that will benefit from NOT spending points into STR, at least because they will have huge problems against highly protected enemies (1 damage crits is not a joke).
Talking about doppel, he benefits enormously from both STR and DEX.
Sure Deeds of Valor scale greatly with STR, but you will have hard time surviving if you have no DEX. Also your skills have very high base damage so crits will make a huge difference. Also as you get more damage from Deeds of Valor, your DPS from crits will also increase.
The idea of DEX is, that it will boost your overall damage by the %, that’s scales almost linearly with % of points you invest in DEX. And STR grants not % but flat scalings. Until certain point, when this flat bonus is superior to damage you get from skills/gear, it may be quite effective (though I think certain % of DEX points is always more effective then 0%, but varies with lvl). But when you STR starts to become inferior to gear bonuses/skill damage, then DEX begins to shine.
Overall my suggestion for every build would be: focus on DEX early game, then focus on STR mid game and again focus on DEX late game.
Though “focus” is a diffetent thing for different builds.
For STR heavy builds you should get at least 50%(up to 100%) of the amount of DEX you want to have in late game, and then just pump your points into STR, until you start having problems with crits (assuming you have high crit rate gear). Then pump remaining planned points into DEX. IF you will still have problems with crits, then I’d suggest you to continue pumping points into DEX(over your planned %) and get better gear. This way you will be able to crit against anyone but high CON builds with very good critRes gear.
For DEX heavy builds you want to pump points into DEX until ~150 DEX, then pump remaining points into STR and when you get your desired endgame STR, start pumping in DEX again.
I feel like the perfect distribution for most classes will be 2:1:4 or 4:1:2 STR:CON:DEX with simply investing 1 point in CON every 7th level no matter what. I didn’t make any specific calculations on this problem, but it just fells right for me. This way your CON will increase your base max HP by ~30% for swordie and by ~60% for other classes. If you feel yourself at risk, you can get more CON to reach 50% HP increase for swordies and 100% for other classes. I feel like for PvP CON is even more important, so maybe even 3-4x from standart amount may be required, in order to reach 220% base HP for swordsman and 340% for other classes. This numbers explain pretty well why full/high CON priests/mages are very strong in PvP.
For full tanks you’d rather go 100% CON or 2:4:1 / 1:2:4 or even 0:3:4/0:2:5 to simply evade most of the physical damage. I really doubt you will ever have problems with 40-60% inveted in CON, so these variants are preferred over full CON. Even as pure meatwall you will rarely get below 40%. And having the ability to dish out some damage is never bad. Dex has a priority over STR for obvious reasons. Also you will be able to hit much more often with your rare offensive skills(due to high ACC) and maintain at least 20-30% of offensive swordsman DPS, which is not bad at all. BTW I have no experience with tanks in this game (only with their numbers), so I might be somewhat wrong.
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There are several reasons why I think STR>DEX for 2H. First is 50% for crit attack, so STR is almost 50% more effective. Second is bleeding, that can’t crit and scales with STR. 3rd is Moulinet that grants you flat crit chance. 4th is Deeds of Valor, because it will double your STR value as well.
Yet if you go barbarian path, then DEX is better, because you get free patk from frenzy, and he doesn’t have bleeding/moulinet.
And barbarian has high damage skills that benefir from DEX more.
If you can condense these walls of text down a bit that’d be really great. I’m sure you can get a point across without so many paragraphs lol.
For one, you mention level 500 and rank 11. I’m not really willing to discuss levels that don’t exist yet, the game could completely change or there could be passive buffs to crit rate/chance that are introduced that change everything.
I’ll also note that I’m only really talking about DPS ( not tanking ) PvE swordsman here, as archer receives a friendlier crit calculation along with buffs that help greatly with keeping crit rate relevant. A swordsman that wants to tank and have good evasion should definitely build DEX.
I’m also ignoring the benefit of accuracy to DPS, since there is none. You don’t need any DEX to be able to hit everything in the game, you just need a good pair of gloves.
You provided a bunch of numbers but I’m not able to test against them because they’re just theory based on lvl 500 / rank 11. My opinion isn’t formed on paper, it’s from testing this in game and switching my stats around, and observing how I got the best DPS possible.
You say around lvl 250 DEX drops in efficiency, but then DEX starts to get better again as skill damage grows higher and higher. Can you give an example of what skill you’re referring to, so I can draw some kind of DPS evaluation based off of that? If it’s an extrapolation to ranks and classes that don’t exist yet, then I can’t really acknowledge it.
You say a doppel will have a hard time surviving if you have no DEX. I restat my doppel to pure STR, with 0 points in CON or DEX. I had no issues surviving. I realize you haven’t played the game yet so it might be a premature conclusion you’ve drawn.
I’d like you to put down a real-game situation that we can evaluate against, as it’s kind of hard to test against your words.
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Any skill that deals ~800 damage per hit benefits from DEX more then from STR, as I remember. I’ve made calculations once, but as I remember they were full DEX/full STR, not sure what about balanced builds.
I included level 500/rank 11 because it benefits STR more (due to more ranks => 100% bonus), and I also included calculations for additional crit chance at level 250.
Also rank 11 will most likely exist, and even with existant skills DEX already starts to be effective. In future it will most likely become even better.