Quote (Moojilsuh @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 08:41pm)

Guard-
For Melee-
When your at lvl 55 with your gear on you want your dex to be around 110-120. Put the rest of the stats into strength
For items-

Weapon- Enhanced Effect( the higher the better)
Armor- For catacombs look for heavy armors with EE. For arena look for heavy armors with stats such as strength or dex
For charms- Look for stats such as strength or dex

Barb-
For stats I would suggest getting 110-120 dex at lvl 55 with your gear on. Put the rest into strength. If you decide to use axes for your weapon I like the pure strength build. Just pump everything into strength
For gear-
Weapon- Enhanced Effect( the higher the better)
Armor- For catacombs look for heavy armors with EE. For arena look for heavy armors with stats such as strength or dex
For charms- Look for stats such as strength or dex

LMK if you have any other questions

Quote (Welch @ Thu, 18 Jun 2009, 13:53)

More or less the same build for fighters as well. Thanks so much for your help sir. Much appreciated.

I will PM you if I have any other questions. Thanks again.

Quote (jbpellerin @ Sun, 19 Apr 2009, 07:15)

Before I begin, if you are looking for any x EE = y Str formulas, go away. A certain person has been posting horrible guides and it’s time that stops. Any ratios of the sort are misleading and only work for “instantaneous” values, once one parameter changes even slightly, everything else changes as well.
The formulas here do not require any math background to use, maybe to understand and manipulate but I’ve done all of that for you.

• 1. Damage and Defense Formulas
  
• 2. Tier comparison for damage
  
• 3. Str vs EE comparison for damage (very important)
  
• 4. HM vs int comparison for healing
  
• 5. Str vs Power Shot vs EE vs QuickDraw
  
• 6. Thoughts on Dex vs Str and critical strike
  
• 7. Comparing charms including mana use
  
• 8. Miscellaneous, proficiencies /mana

• 1. Damage and Defense

Damage = base*(.95 + str/100)(1 + (EE+prof)/100)
Spell Damage = base* (.95 + int/100)(1 + (EE+prof)/100)
Defense = base* (.95 + vita/100)(1 + EE/100)

• 2. Tier comparison for damage

EE at new tier = (100+EE)(old tier)/(new tier) – 100
Note: when considering between two items to use for yourself, you can add your proficiency level to the EE, this will be more accurate and will slightly favor higher level items.

• 3. Str vs EE comparison for damage

This holds for int and vita as well.
Giving a xx EE = yy str is always useless. Those values are not constant, for example with 105str and 0EE 1EE = 2str but with 5str and 100EE 1str = 2EE. So comparisons made along those lines are useless and I really don’t want to see any discussion about those things.
So what can we do? Well we can take two different setups and see which one does more damage in a quantitative way.  Take the following equation and run it for both setups, then whichever yields a bigger number is the more powerful one.
(.95 + str/100)(1 + (EE+prof)/100)
If the tier is different in the cases you want to compare, then you simply multiply the numbers you obtain by their respective tiers.

• 4. HM vs int comparison

Do the same as in 3. But using this formula
(.95 + int/100)(1 + (EE+prof)/100)(1 + HM/100)
In most cases, HM is going to be more effective. People have reported that this formula is inaccurate and the resulting heal is actually higher than what this predicts. I have no reason to believe them however and so this formula works just fine.
For computing the heal in accessory slot simply multiply by .75
As a rule if you are maze catacombing you will heal more for your mana if you put it in the accessory slot if your main charm has even just 1int or 1HM. The issue however becomes this: Do you need to heal a lot at a time or can your group afford you being a little bit slower but more efficient. In most cases efficiency will be better since healers are usually the limiting factor in a group.

• 5. Str vs Power Shot vs EE vs QuickDraw

For this it’s a little more complicated but still not that hard. Do the same as in parts 3 and 4 but use this formula instead:
X = (.95 + str/100)(1 + (prof+EE)/100)
Y  = (high end base damage)(X)(PowerShot %)/100 + ((high end base damage)+(low end base damage))/2)(X)(100 – PowerShot%)/100
Z = Y/ (1 – (Quick Draw)/100)
Then Z is your number to compare.
As you can probably tell, Power Shot is most effective on weapons with a wide range of damage. Quick Draw is by far the best mod when it comes to increasing your damage, it actually has increasing returns and more is better.

• 6. Thoughts on Dex vs Str and critical strike

So we’ve seen the formula for calculating damage based on Str and EE. Well let’s see what dex can do.
C = chance to critical hit (Affected by dex and +critical strike)
M = multiplier for increased damage when scoring a critical hit (Affected by dex)
Damage = (.95 + Str/100)(1 + (EE+prof)/100)( (1 – C) + (C*M) )
So now let’s think about using say an axe with 500-600 damage and a sword with 100-1000 base damage. With this formula, there is absolutely nothing that changes. The only thing that will make a difference in the average damage these two deal when considering crits and everything else is a monster’s defense. The difference here is negligible however and will not affect your slashing.
So in conclusion for this section, stop saying that you need more dex with swords. It is false and makes you look stupid. Also, I do not know what the optimal ratio is but I doubt it is pure strength. Furthermore, any of those formulas you have seen for critical strike that others have posted so far are wrong, so just ignore them.

• 7. Comparing charms including mana use

Ok so suppose you have a tier XIV (14) charm and it’s doing 350-420 damage and you have a tier XIII (13) charm that deals 338-405 damage. (Those are made up numbers but are realistic) The damage per mana ratio is slightly better on the first one but you want to know if the decrease in regen time will make up for the increase in killing time.  Just use this formula and see which number is bigger, the number you get is proportional to your damage per second when counting regen. (More accurate if you use the damage including prof as I showed in step 1, instead of just the displayed damage)
(Total mana)/ (Mana cost of charm) * (average charm damage) / ((Total mana)/ (Mana cost of charm) + (Mana Regen)/ (Total mana))
If you’re shrineing then just replace (Mana Regen)/ (Total mana) with something like 10, which would be the number of seconds it takes you to go buy shrineables and use them.

• 8. Miscellaneous, proficiencies /mana

# of points for proficiency level x = 500*x(x+1)
Comparison method for # of points: say you have level x and you want to know how many times more points you need for level y, you can approximate quickly with (y /x)^2 - 1
Mana at level x = base*(x+1) + (x-1) + x*(x-1)/2