Warrior Guide

[Kodax]

Warrior Guide to Allocating Stats v_1.1
Last update 04.21.2010



This is purely a numbers thing. My conclusions are based on how dexterity and strength affect the various stats (see footnote for how calculations were made)

The Numbers

For strength

• Strength versus health: for 2 points in str. get 1 health
• Strength versus armor: for each ~20 points in str. get 1 armor
• Strength versus hit: for each ~19 points in str. get 1 hit
• Strength versus crit: does not affect
• Strength versus dodge: does not affect
• Strenght versus dps: not enough information to tell but effect is very minimal

For Dexterity:

• Dexterity versus health: does not affect
• Dexterity versus armor: for each 41 in dex. get 1 armor
• Dexterity versus hit: for each 2 in dex, get 1 hit
• Dexterity versus crit: for each 6.7 dex, get 1 crit
• Dexterity versus dodge: for each 20 in dex, get 1 dodge
• Dexterity versus damage: for each 6.9 in dex, get 1 dmg
• Dexterity versus dps: for each 5.7 in dex, get 1 dps

Conclusions
Stat allocations:
Strength should be allocated based solely on the gear requirements.

Dexterity: After gear requirements have been met via their strength requirement then all other points should be placed in Dexterity.

Intellect: 0. While putting points into intellect does increase mana pool and mana regeneration getting mana regeneration from gear, and carrying around lots of mana pots is probably better then allocating points here.

Why not strength:
From experience, the most important stat for survival of a tank is armor. And while Strength is almost twice as good for armor as dexterity both are fairly poor in increasing armor. Thus armor should be obtained through items not allocation of stats.

Strength is obviously a good source to increase health pool but based on experience the extra health that strength affords does not justify putting extra points into it.

Why Dexterity: While dexterity does not increase health it does increase dodge (by a small amount) but more importantly, it increase hit, dps and crit which all increase threat.

Equipment choice. Your first priority as a tank is armor which is good since all gear made for tanks has armor. The second priority is to reach at least 3 mana regen per second (mps) - you can get by with 2 mps but you will be potting to some degree. After getting the correct mps there is a lot more leeway in stat choices. Warning personal bias here -The one stat I'm not particularly thrilled with is hps (health per second). A tanks biggest issue is spike damage (damage that comes in very quickly). As a tank your first priority is to minimize spike damage which is why armor from gear and dodge from skills is so important. Hps does not lessen the damage coming in it just offsets health loss. While hps is nice to offset the small amount of dmg we do take, it's effect does not do much to counter the spike damage that kills us.

Note the below section is outdated.
Skills:
In looking at are skill tree most of our skills either reduced dmg, or generate threat. Thus, the following build is based on the class roll of tanking which our class seems designed to do.

Quick note in regards to skill points. It appears that the first time you place a point into a skill you get twice the benefit. So for example, for evade you get +5 percent dodge per skill point but for the first point, it is +10 (this was test for both evade, iron blood, and rage). This is important to know because, if you were only planning on taking evade and not taunt, you would be better off taking 4 points in evade and 1 point in taunt (which would give you the +5 dodge and an extra taunt).


Iron Blood: +5 point: Armor, currently is our number one survival stat and this increases armor +4 per rank. While the description says +4 armor per rank at level 28 with a base armor of 57 I am getting +8 armor per rank. Not sure why the discrepity (sp?) but there it is.

Evade: 5 points Excellent source of dodge (+5% per point), gives twice as much dodge as does taunt.

Rage: increase crit per point. Very nice for generating extra threat and increasing dps

Beckon: +5 points An excellent taunt

Taunt:1-5 points. While the the threat generated does not increase per rank (which btw it should) dodge is increased which is significant in regards to survivability. Taunts dodge increase is considerably less than evades (evade gives almost twice as much dodge as taunt) so if you are pressed for skill points placing one point in taunt and the rest in evade is a wise choice. Though do note, the two effects stack so getting both can be advantageous. Also nice if as a second taunt when beckon is on cooldown. I originally had this skill listed on my essential skill list but because its threat generation is a bit week I have downgraded it. If you find you are having issues keeping threat this is nice secondary aoe threat skill.

Stomp: 1 point: Has two purposes, one generate threat and two, allows to help mitigate some dmg coming (melee are out of range thus not hitting you) Stomp is also a combo move with a enchantresses ice storm.

Hell Scream: Reduces damage coming in. This skill is pretty nice but assuming you have taken Iron Blood and Taunt it is not essential.

Restore: Increases health regeneration. This skill is actually pretty nice but if you have a healer behind you, or plenty of health pots, can be skipped. I found myself using it after Iron blood wore off and I was waiting for it (iron blood) to come off cool down.

Crippling Slash: This is currently where I have put all my points after maxing out the essential skills. Its a decent damage boost (threat) and also keeps the enemy from fleeing.

Vengeful slash: has some decent dmg and knock-back. I would prefer this skill to skip the knock-back and just be a dmg modifier. If you are using this skill it is probably single target and the need for knock-back is not as pertinent.

Super Mega Slash: Same as Vengeful slash but with more knock-back.

Crushing Blow: Word for word the same as Hell Scream except its not an aoe affect and it cost -5 more mana (which is not great considering its only single target). While I can see if having uses on bosses (couple it with Hell Scream and you are taking very little dmg) but at this point in the game not necessary, perhaps later on.
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Footnote: Calculations for how str and dex affected the various indicated stats were performed as follows. After a reroll on stats I charted how each point in str and dexterity affected the various stats. At the time I was pretty sure it was linear (as I had assumed when I first wrote this guide), but figured I would check. After charting and creating a trend line for the data (all data btw was linear so I am very confident in my conclusions) I found the rate of change for each stat versus str and dex.