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.

[btutterrow]

I understand that the higher your armor rating the more aggro you cause, so this is another reason to increase your strength possibly?

[Deathshock]

Crushing blow could become useful coupled with ursan scream later on

[Sayishere]

i wanna bump this up i found it useful

thanks

[Kodax]

I understand that the higher your armor rating the more aggro you cause, so this is another reason to increase your strength possibly?

While it is true that your aggro rating goes up with armor, the problem with str is that it is inefficient in increasing armor. The best way to increase armor is by gear.

[Deathshock]

Out of curiosity, why isn't beckon on your essential skills list.

[Kodax]

Out of curiosity, why isn't beckon on your essential skills list.

Because when I originally created this thread Beckon did not exist. I have now fixed the original post to include it. Thanks for catching that.

[Hatchet]

Are the numbers still correct since the last updates?

[Noname]

Very good guide bro.

[Kodax]

Are the numbers still correct since the last updates?

The numbers are correct as of the revised date of the post

[Azrael]

This is a good write up kodax.
I don't want to completely pick it apart, but there are a couple things that need revising.

-Stats should directly effect damage. DPS is a calculation between your damage and your speed, and should not be directly effected by stats. Stats increase damage, and that combined with your weapons damage and your weapons speed determines Damage per second. I would be very surprised if stats directly effected dps without effecting damage first, as this would represent a flaw in the code.

-Some of your skill descriptions are outdated. Most notably, Super Mega Slash is no longer an extreme knock-back slash. Instead it was changed to a Stun move, and the damage was increased (after using all three slashes it seemed to do the most damage of all three). The stun immobilizes your target as well as stops them from attacking. The stun also last around 3-4 seconds, which is only 2-3 seconds less than the cooldown for the slash. Super Mega slash also stuns around 99% of the time, i cant say for certain if its 100% or not, but it rarely if ever fails to stun a target. While what skills a warrior invests in are up to the player, it is (in my humble opinion) the best slash for a warrior and hardly a "meh" skill. Whether you are tanking or dpsing, it is the best way to hold down a mob, (in fact hurs and I have become quite good at stun locking bosses, two warriors are capable of permanently stun locking a boss).

-Stomp and beckon also have stun capability. The more points invested into them, the higher the stun chance becomes. They do not stun every time like super mega slash though. Also from my experience, stomp is not as much of a combo with an enchantress ice storm, rather it merely shows some flavor text saying "shattered." It doesn't actually show the COMBO! text, though admittedly i could be mistaken on that. Either way though there is no better way to annoy an enchantress than to break their ice before they have a chance to cast their AoE flame blast, which their highest damage combo.

[Kodax]

This is a good write up kodax.
I don't want to completely pick it apart, but there are a couple things that need revising.

-Stats should directly effect damage. DPS is a calculation between your damage and your speed, and should not be directly effected by stats. Stats increase damage, and that combined with your weapons damage and your weapons speed determines Damage per second. I would be very surprised if stats directly effected dps without effecting damage first, as this would represent a flaw in the code.

-Some of your skill descriptions are outdated. Most notably, Super Mega Slash is no longer an extreme knock-back slash. Instead it was changed to a Stun move, and the damage was increased (after using all three slashes it seemed to do the most damage of all three). The stun immobilizes your target as well as stops them from attacking. The stun also last around 3-4 seconds, which is only 2-3 seconds less than the cooldown for the slash. Super Mega slash also stuns around 99% of the time, i cant say for certain if its 100% or not, but it rarely if ever fails to stun a target. While what skills a warrior invests in are up to the player, it is (in my humble opinion) the best slash for a warrior and hardly a "meh" skill. Whether you are tanking or dpsing, it is the best way to hold down a mob, (in fact hurs and I have become quite good at stun locking bosses, two warriors are capable of permanently stun locking a boss).

-Stomp and beckon also have stun capability. The more points invested into them, the higher the stun chance becomes. They do not stun every time like super mega slash though. Also from my experience, stomp is not as much of a combo with an enchantress ice storm, rather it merely shows some flavor text saying "shattered." It doesn't actually show the COMBO! text, though admittedly i could be mistaken on that. Either way though there is no better way to annoy an enchantress than to break their ice before they have a chance to cast their AoE flame blast, which their highest damage combo.

Good analysis: You are definitely correct, my skill section needs to be revisited. I have barely looked at it since I originally wrote this guide and there have been some major changes to the skills. In regards to dps the reason I used that number instead of just plain dmg it two-fold. If this were WOW, I would find a target dummy and get a dmg meter running and use that to calculate damage output. Here without that tool calculating average dmg is very tough. Thus either I look at the dmg indicated on the avatar screen (the dmg range - which I could do since I have those numbers) or I sit there and hit something my level for a while, and record the results manually.

I agree, approaching damage output from the perspective of how increased agility affects base dmg is a better measure but am not not satisfied with my measuring tools. In calculating how agility affects the dmg indicated on the avatar screen I came with 6.9 dex per increase in point of base dmg. Is that a better measurement of dex versus damage out? Maybe but I'm not entirely convinced.

What I will do for now, is include my dex/ dmg numbers along with the original dex/dmg numbers. Perhaps someone will come along with a better suggestion on how to measure dmg that I can then include in this guilde.

Revisiting skill section: I would not mind some input here. The problem I am having, is that some skills are easy to deal with - evade increase dodge by x for y amount of time. Other skills are a bit more nebulous and subject to user preference. When I first wrote this guide I did not include a skill section but later included it because some skills, like iron blood were just too good not to indicate.

I will rework the skill section updating it to match the current game release. If others would like to help with this I would be appreciative. What I am looking for, is a straight forward description of the skill. That accurately describes what the skill does beyond what the skill description does and how each point in the skill effects its description.

[Rusalio]

Bump bump.... Found this to be very informative.....something new people can and should look at....never saw the update...is there one?

[jjjjaaaakkkke]

nice guide very informative

[suomaf]

Complete new player here, but started with bears. I was following and pumping everything into dex and str only for eq, is this still valid for new patches. I saw some posts that there were some changes?

[Zeus]

suomaf, this statement is still valid, although dex won't increase your hit percent as much(its not nearly as overpowered as it used to be)

[Ninjakitty789]

Thanks for the guide.

[smoae]

spells are a little screwed up (as for how many points you should put into each one) but everything else is great.

[alexkww]

those information are useful TY

[xasha]

Great summary. I had independently arrived at the same conclusion regarding STR: Only boost it to wear gear, dump the rest into DEX. Good to know I'm not crazy.

I also had similar thoughts on Taunt and Super Mega Slash.

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xasha - enchantress
zooicidez - warrior