[discussion] Where Do We Want Dex And Strength To Be?

I know there are threads on this already but damn, this is the biggest game changer since gavel. And I want a word in

Spoiler: Intro

Hello, people.

Recently there's been a 'small' update on the effectiveness of strength and dex. Instead of increasing the base dmg, much like %melee damage would, if I understand correctly, they now effect total damage dealt.

For many builds utilising strength and dex, this just about doubles their damage output. This has caused a... reaction by many people concerned with the balance this brings.

So, in the words of @Druser

This thread is ment for arguing and discussing about where we want dex and strength to be. Below I seperated the different things I think should be talked about

The problem Strength and Dex had.
Strength/Dex effecting only the base of a weapon and nothing else ment that, for endgame builds using many multipliers, raw spell, etc. something like 80 strength (56.3% damage) didn't even give a 10% boost in DPS. Same with dex, 80 defense or agility on the other hand more than double your survivability.

As a result, the only time people (who knew what they were doing and weren't memeing around) put skill points into str/dex was when they were necessary for the skill point requirements.

Spoiler: Topic 1 Str/Dex being multiplicative

Topic 1: Str/dex being multiplicative.
Before this change, the (relatively small) effects of strength and dex were additive, now they are multiplicative, which means that when you get a crit with dex, your strength boost doubles too.

Some people have stated that strength and dex should not be multiplicative and that this would make it alot more balanced. Strength should not multiply when dex procs because def doesn't trigger when agi procs.

To that I say, def does trigger when agi procs. reducing the 0 damage down to 0.
In all seriousness, take this example:
You get hit by an attack that deals 100 damage 20 times.
For simpletons sake you have exactly 50% defense:
That means you take 50 damage 20 times.
resulting in 1000 damage rather than 2000.

Now if you also have 50% dodge chance:
That means you (will on average) take 50 damage 10 times
resulting in 500 damage rather than 2000.

Do you see how this means def/agi are multiplicative?

Intuitively, it definitely makes sense to me that str/dex would be multiplicative. If they can't be multiplicative, they should at least be additive. Canceling out strength bonus when dex triggers really disincentivises building with both.

Spoiler: Topic 2 str/dex vs def/agi

Topic 2 str/dex vs def/agi

We'll take another look at the attack example from topic 2, this time you are the attacker.

You hit someone with an attack that deals 100 damage 20 times.
Let's say you have exactly +50% damage bonus
that means you would deal 150 damage 20 times resulting in 3000 damage rather than 2000 damage.

Now if you also have exactly +50% crit chance
You should get 150 damage 10 times
and should get 300 damage 10 times
resulting in 4500 damage rather than 2000 damage.

If we get the meatbag with the defense from Topic 2 (50% damage reduction + 50% dodge), that looks like this:

deal 150 damage 10 times
reduced to 75 damage 5 times
deal 300 damage 10 times
reducent to 150 damage 5 times
resulting in 1125 damage dealt to the def/agi meatbag

As you can see from this, the bonus you get from def/air is still better than the boosts you get from str/dex.
But how? you might ask, str/dex got up to 4500 damage. That's 125% extra damage, whilst def/agi gets down to 500, which is only 75% less damage taken. It's quite simple, def/agi halves the damage taken here twice. Halving the damage taken means the opponenet has to do 2x as much damage, halving it twice means the opponent would need to do 4x as much damage. Str/dex only gives 2.25x as much damage.

In PVP, def/agi still wins out, however. Wynncraft is mostly PVE and bosses have very different healthbars and attacks than we do. Some attacks one shot you, we have 'true damage' which goes through damage reduction and ele defs and stuff. This makes practice not quite as clear cut for PvE.

Spoiler: Topic 3 item balances

Topic 3 item balances
Up until now, I've only spoken about the skill points purely as skill points. Thing is, even before the patch people used str/dex. This was because of skill point requirements on items, there are alot of really good and cool items in str/dex which would be absolutely broken if they were def/agi instead. There's also the fact that ALL items which gives skill points are balanced around skill points in str/dex aside from requirements being kinda worthless. Even the ones which only give int/def/agi, because they now allow you to just put some points into damage.

With str/dex themselves being worthwhile, these items will have to be changed. My take is: don't change them too much, nerf the health for damage items in str/dex. As far as skill points go, those items were already really good. They suffered a bit from the fact that their effect was almost invisible, now they're just amazing. Nerfing health doesn't make thematic sense for most, I think skill point items need to get looked at in a one by one basis if this change is kept.


For now, enjoy the most broken builds wynncraft has seen since attack speed bonus effected spell damage.

Spoiler: Topic 4 visibility of effects

Topic 4 visibility of effects

Regardless of wether str/dex or agi/def is better or not, one thing is certain:
When you get hit by an attack and take 500 damage from an enemy, if you have max defense, you negated 80.8% of the damage.
If you were not using defense, that would have done about 2600 damage. But you don't notice this in play.

However, what you do notice is big fat damage numbers floating around your enemies. 2 x as much damage as you did before!





Unpopular opinion: This is also why people think ele defs don't matter but they do.

Spoiler: Final topic - How good do we want str/dex to be?

I want them to be just as viable as def/agi and think this change is precisely what str/dex need, I'm not against glassy melee builds getting 70K DPS and was getting tired of always feeling like I want at least 45K EHP in my builds if I don't get over 25K DPS.

 

agree, good job.

 

I don’t think that changing str/dex to how it is now and nerfing pretty much every single item to fit the new calculation is the best option. Tbh I don’t see why they need to be changed drastically, if at all.

 

If they keep current dex/str and rebalance base dmg on items WFA will be hammered too hard

 

Yes please thank you I wanted to say this but my brain is too small.

That's assuming that the items are not changed. Re-balancing the items will take away the pandemonium that this is causing. WFA deserved to be hammered, unkillable and able to do decent damage is ridiculous, especially when you compare it with pre-hotfix ETW, which was frail as a piece of paper and only a tiny bit more damage to show for it. Another thing: WFA wasn't nerfed at all, its just that the health/damage trade off was changed (the change will make more sense once the items are balanced).

Leaving Earth and Thunder as useless as they were was a fatal problem that would get harder to fix as the game got larger. Its better to remove the splinter before you need to get surgery to get it out. This is just the painful period, it'll get better soon.

 

what im saying is if they are nerfing most base dmgs to take new strdex changes into account, wfa will become useless dealing way less dmg than now

 

So you're saying that being unkillable is completely useless? And what about the fact that you still will be as thin as a paper if you go with ETW? Its a trade off that will continually be balanced. Of course if you choose the two defensive elements then you will not do much damage. This brings me to another benefit of this buff: it increases the viability of melee. If you go EFA or TFA then you will get decent melee damage with tons of hp, with the only consequence being only able to melee or maybe use 0 int spells. The same is true the other way, with ETA or ETF.