Let me just go over my stat distribution for my next Pala, it’s not neccesarily right, but from playing to r6 and having got a feel for conviction + smite combo.
Right so, I never played a melee character before. I’ve just played around with archer c3, quarrel shooter c2, sapper c2 and rogue c1 so I have a rough idea how str:dex builds work but not for melee…
Multihit skills, true aoe skills like ranger barrage (with 3 overheat), elemental +% and armor +% modifier bonuses, like carve being pierce makes it good against leather armor AS WELL AS non-cd spammable skills like skyliner from highlander c2/3.
STR is really good for these multihit or spammable no-cd skills, yes i totally agree. 300 STR is better than 150 DEX. The problem with dex is your crit rate falls off at 140+ and again at 200+ somewhere. This is because your crit rate scales with your level, and the higher level you are, the higher dex you need to achieve a high crit rate.
[Removed Build]
In a previous build for paladin where I went for 185 base SPR, 190+ with armor and accessories, I could feel a fast scaling-issue occuring the higher level i got. This was felt through using Zalciai which is similar to dex in that it scales at 1 spr to 0.8 crit rate instead of 1 to 1, dex:crit rate.
The main benefit of zalciai is that it also gave an additional 400 or so crit atk due to having high spr and level 100 attribute giving +100, and +70 base atk at skill level 10 for Zalciai.
An additional problem with this build is, more points in spr less points in con… my heals were really bad too due to low int… And i felt it was more work having to setup zalciai than it was worth due to the level penalty to crit rate and having to be within melee range to do any real damage.
I prefer not to do an auto-attacking build because it requires staying within melee range for long duration so for me Chaplain is a no-no and i want to easily switch between dps and support. Otherwise STR would benefit me a lot more if i were to maintain an auto-attacking setup. But that’s not the case.
Because of going for 120 base con as a c2 cleric > priest1, the goal being that I outlast my party members to use ressurection in pvp. The issue with this though is my dps was lower than i’d like and felt a whole rank was useless due to picking priest when there is another priest in the party.
What i learnt from this is con is absolutely necessary for survive-ability at higher level when you can easily get one-shotted by bosses. But I don’t want to invest ALL my points in con to achieve that.
Another thing is physical attacks do knock back and when you have to kill paota 5 times a day in missions who deals all his knockback with physical attacks you start to realise con doesn’t help especially with low ping and safety zone animation gets stuck. Once his agro is on you you wont be able to do any dps because every hit will do knock back due to his large hitbox.
Paladin has the ability to achieve high single target damage due to having high skill base damage. With DEX and conviction, each hit has the potential to do an additional +50%. After testing STR:DEX builds with archer class, STR is superior when skill base damage is lower, but for skills like broom trap which has high skill damage, and musketeer snipe, you’ll get a much larger boost from that +50% damage than you would as a full STR build.
Remember I have no intention of relying on auto attacks later down the line due to depending on high single-target dps and cure having enough damage for ground-type mobs.
DEX will also drastically increase my survive-ability and reduce knock back as well by evading physical attacks. If i take a hit or 2, I can easily heal right back up to full and have lots of tiles on the ground for my party.
At rank 7, Pandamic enables me to spread conviction to more targets for that additional +480 damage per hit. Incineration scales off both conviction, magic def debuff from resist elements and INT and is also multihit. It’s also a debuff which is spread through pandemic to hit more targets.
I hope this all makes sense, but if you have any more questions I would be happy to answer them.
