radu this is what I have to say about your gear..
Str: 50
Dex: 152
it's pretty nice, and you got it right that dex is the most important stat. But you should try and raise your str a little if you can get it from one item.
If you see an ok weapon with decent ee (80-120) and good strength jump on it!
I'll give an example:
you now got 112 ee and 50 strength base.
I like to say that that is a 1 x 2,12 x 1,5 = 3,18 multiplier of your base damage.
you want to get a multiplier that is as high as possible, because this affects all attacks included crits (which is the most important).
even if you have 220 dex and 30 str, you would be much better off balancing str a little higher, but not at too great a cost of dex. and str is always cheaper ehh?
if you changed your axe for a 82ee / 30 strength one, most people would think it's the same as 82+30ee = 112ee (about the same as your weapon)
that's wrong.
i use this easy formula to calculate the "base dmg": basedmg of weapon * 1 + (ee/100) * 1 + (strength/100) = new dmg of weapon
so on a 82/30 weapon it becomes: 1 x 1,82 x 1,80 ~= 3,28 multiplier
now this is only a slight increase but it does help. changing from 112ee to 80ee/32str, increases your overall dmg by 3%.
The higher the ee weapon you have, the more you will benefit from having more strength. The clue is to try not to have to big a difference between your ee and strength. And keep dex as high as possibly for melee classes
I got a 35% increase in overall dmg including hits, from adding a 52 strength armor to my fighter, and combined with high dex on other items that would be deadly
This post was edited by Dragon_Reborn on Jan 21 2008 09:21pm