JB...... Strenth and EE have a special relationship when concerning damage. If your weapon had lets say 100ee, then when your Strength reaches 100, it will have a diminishing effect compared to when it was at say 50. A 1 str add in stats when at 50STR on a 100EE weapon will have more of an impact on overall damage than adding 1 Strength to yout stats using a 100ee weapon when your Strength is at say 150. Or, take the other side and say you had 100EE weapon and 200str. What is better adding 1 more STR or getting a weapon with 1 more EE....... ofc, its getting more EE to be more equal to your STR. That is the diminishing return part, Still with me??

OK, What I'm trying to state is that with a high EE weapon like in my build, getting the MOST BANG for my buck with my stats is to put my STR as close to my EE as possible, then the rest into DEX. In my trials, I have not seen DEX by itself be a big factor concerning your AVG damage when sacrificing Strength in the process. Like in my high EE weapon strength build. Perhaps CS,CF and PS would make a bigger difference but IMO...... I repeat IMO based on my trials...... having your STR close or equal to your EE and then DEX (so long as you have at least 70 DEX) is the most effective AVG damage build.

Again, all IMO based on my tests. I'm posting screeenshots to back up my words.... are you going to?? Or, you just going to continue to rant "coolbreeze is wrong and I'm right"???

and here is a few more screenshots to show continued progress this climb. From 60-66

Also, forgot to mention that the first post screenshot had 1 full level with a 45 weapon with 121ee and a 39dex armor instead of the 55 strength one which is why the minimum is low and the average is a bit low.

These 3 screenshots also included about 10 waves of Evil Presences (ranging from 1 to 5 total per battle). One run had 3 EPs battles in a row (first time I've seen that)

Anyhow, enjoy.

you know what
you're clearly not open to looking at things the way I'm explaining them
so now I'm going to write it out, in the simplest, clearest, most grade 5 way I know

your damage is some base number multiplied by the following:
(1+ee/100)(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1))
so to do the most damage, you obviously want that number to be as large as possible
you shouldn't care what it is that makes it large, as long as it is large
There is one small thing not taken into account into this, which is the defense being ignored on a crit
to compensate for that you could add some sort of scaling factor and you would then have (1+ee/100)(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1)(scale)) which would be pretty damn accurate
note: the scaling factor would in this case be dependant on your EE since it has to account for the difference between your damage and the monsters defense
but since nowhere am I pretending to know what (%crit)(crit mult - 1) is, we can actually pretend that the scaling factor doesn't exist, the results won't be affected in any meaningfull way

But if we were to take a step back and consider the scaling factor
we would have
(1+ee/100)(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1)(scale))
and scale would be directly proportional to monster defense, and inversely proprtional to your damage. Monster defense being pretty much a constant since you're doing the same climb no matter what
so you're left with a scaling factor that gets larger as you do less damage, smaller as you do more
something like (damage)/(damage - defense)
your damage, monster's defense
this is something with diminishing returns
plug it in if you must
but I'm telling you, it approaches 1 so fast, that with any decent rate of damage the scaling factor can even be considered constant
this happens even faster in catacombs where the defense of a monster is lower
making the scaling factor effectively ignorable
(if absolutely necessary I can even do some examples with actual numbers)

so if you're still following at this point, basically we have this and we want to make it as big as possible
(1+ee/100)(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1))
now your weapon is your weapon, you can't change it by putting stats somewhere, and obviously to do the most damage you want high ee
so your ee is locked in and you can't change it
now you have
(X)(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1))
and you want to make that as large as possible
X is a constant at this point so now we are making the following as large as possible
(.95+str/100)(1+(%crit)(crit mult - 1))
The way to do this, does not depend on your EE at all
so now tell me, how does your str affects your stat distribution?


So that's my reasoning why I claim str/dex isn't effected by your EE
now to refute your claims that you should pump your str to match your ee and put the rest into dex (in case you can't derive that from the wall of text above)
STR IS NOT SUBJECT TO DIMINISHING RETURNS
it is subject to linear growth
which by it's very definition
is not diminishing
so then why wouldn't you just pump pure str?
because just as with your str/ee you would like to get them as close as possible to each other in order to make their product large, you can also try to do the same thing with dex
the damage bonus from dex may not be as high as the bonus from str so here's an analogy
say you had 24 units of fence to make a square enclosure with and you want a large area.
knock that down by half to make up for two sides, and you're left with 12, you want two numbers that sum to twelve and multiply to make the largest number possible, in this case that's 6*6 =36
now with dex, it might be that it gives half as much damage boost as str (it's probably a function based on dex and varies depending on your level but this works fine for illustration)
so now the farmer tells you that the southern and northen fences have to be doubled up to stop the wind (pretend)
so now name the walls according to their direction
e+w+2n+2s = 24 and e*n = max area (e=w, n=s)
e + 2n = 12, e*n = max area
3*6 = 18 is the max in this case
so even in this case, though the doubled up walls give you less bang for your buck (they are dex in this example), it is still worth investing in them because multiplicatively you get more total
bringing this fence example back to ladder slasher, you could say your fence length is EE
so then you're reasoning, that as this length changes, the relative proortions of the fence sides will change too
that just isn't true

you may think that example was totally irelevant, but it's not
it's the most dumbed down version I could think of, and it may actually have made it harder to understand by detracting from the main problem, but in the end it is entirely accurate as a representation of what's happening and why you think your way works the way it does

if you need any clarifications on anything feel free to ask, I know this is tl:dr

edit:
my response to your screenshots
it might just be the case that an almost pure str build is better, and that would explain your results
but this has nothign to do with how much EE you have on your weapon and your coming to that conclusion is erroneous

This post was edited by jbpellerin on May 18 2009 07:18pm

Bump

wow, tl;dr...
@coolbreeze, this seems just like a showoff topic...

I have no idea if my conclusion is 100% correct in the way I'm saying it and I certainly would not bet my life on it (thats really semantics). All I know is that with my gear........ going all STR is the best way for me to do the most damage the fastest and I will show it during the next 4 days with screenshots.

All your formulas and such look nice but perhaps they are flawed because all I can tell you is the proven results I will display with Screenshots. You can have all the fun you want after putting a formula to work out the discrepancies.

My whole point of my post is for a discussion to come to a better understanding of the game mechanics but you want me to just accept your formulas. They may be right (I haven't spent the time plugging in all the variables). But, if they are right and you know what the outcome is by your comments; you state that the best build is Str+20/DEX in all melee circumstances and to use your formulas to prove it. If that is because of your formulas, then I think perhaps there is a flaw in the formula.

I'm saying I know from real world experience in game play trials, that STR+20/DEX is not the best build in all melee circumstances.

This post was edited by coolbreeze on May 18 2009 07:35pm

I wasn't saying the formulas said str+20 is the best
devilwithin17 said he tested it and came to that conclusion
the formulas would back something LIKE this up, because using them you can get at the fact that their is no magic number like 120 that you should get your dex to and then rest into str
the formulas DO NOT back up getting your str = ee then rest in dex
but it might turn out that in your particular instance you lucked out and had the optimal ratio anyways

I'm just saying the formulas say EE has nothing to do with stat point allocation
and with all the other people yelling "moar dex with swords plzzzz" I just got tired of people making false claims
I'm simply trying to say that the ONLY thing that should affect your stat point allocation is how many total points you can get from gear (obviously) and if you arena or cata
the one thing I'd like you to consider if you do end up doing more testing along these lines is to look at the number you're getting as optimal and considering them without any influence from other factors
so simply look at (for example): "oh, I got that 170 str and 70 dex was pretty damn good
and then when I was stuck on ninja and couldn't use my plates anymore, I found that 150 str 60 dex was the best I could get"

dex makes u hit more often. so your total damage is higher than with high str.

dex does not do that.

Benny and a few others have done a few tests on this and this is no longer the case....when version 2 first came out, that was correct, but it seems Paul changed this somewhere along the road