Race Change

Tomo

Hi! I'm looking for opinions to weigh my planned reincarnation. Currently a storm trill trans Bonecrusher, looking to prioritize hunting capability above all else.

Base storm trill stats:

Strength    : 15     Dexterity   : 14     Constitution: 13

Intelligence: 11     Charisma    : 12

Current stats with some buffs (including true and standard favour, hence hefty):

Strength     : 18   Dexterity    : 15     Constitution : 16                   

Intelligence : 13   Charisma     : 14

Skill-wise, I have:

Athletics Weathering for +1 weighted con

Athletics Strength for +3 weighted strength

I consider my hunting speed decent, but the aslaran master race is tempting despite a pretty steep drop in stats. This is option one. Option two is tae'dae (which I was before using my free reincarnation due to barding):

Strength    : 18     Dexterity   :  8     Constitution: 17

Intelligence:  9     Charisma    : 15

The stats are pretty fantastic, even at base. However, my conflict lies in the racial buffs/maluses. Tae'dae has some pretty good inherent resists, plus the sip bonus. Aslaran, on the other hand, really only has the balance bonus in favour, along with the same level 2 fire malus. Would the tae'dae balance malus and hefty magic weakness outweigh the string of resists and stats?

Discuss, please!

Altrea

As a warrior, most of your damage at higher level comes from critical hits rather than weapon stats/strength (which is the reason why 1h warrior hunting is considered the best in the game by many, even with the release of whips), which is why a high speed weapon is suggested in the first place. The level 2 (14%) balance bonus on aslaran is, honestly, more useful than the 6 strength difference (especially with athletics, demi and titan, and any and all other bonuses to strength factored in). Not to note that tae'dae also have a l1 balance malus, essentially making the balance difference 21%.

As a warrior, the tae'dae resistances really aren't going to help you much in PvE anyway. As a level 93 warrior, I can already survive a decently large cave fisher clot of three as a human (without any of those resistances). The only place they might be of any practical use is a situation like ur'Bashing (if you're unaware of what that is, it's basically a very, very large hunting group on Astral designed to clear mobs summoned from a node as fast as possible). The 12 con from Aslaran may hurt a bit, but if you're willing to stack bonuses (stat bonuses such as athletics defs, herofetes, demi and titan eventually, truefavour if you can), it's not really going to be that noticable anyway.

The type maluses will really only hurt in PvP. You can proof away the fire malus on either one with little issue. The magic malus is about the same, but you'll likely have to pick one. Either way, won't affect you much within the scope of your question.

But honestly? Play the character you want to play - what you'll have fun with. PvE isn't really enough of a thing for you to really need to min-max from the start, and PvP is only if you give half a damn.

EDIT: Since I explained that critical hits are the key, but not why, I figured I'd edit in some quick data here. In Lusternia, unlike in a lot of other games, crits on attack are tiered and have the potential to do far more than 2x damage, going up to a world-shattering crit which is a 2^5 or 32x damage modifier (as a human with 15 strength, I do approximately 650 damage with my hunting weapon against something with no notable resistances to cutting, so this would be, in my best case, 20800 damage). As well, critical hits aren't as rare as in other, more popular games. At level 100 with no critical hit bonuses or artifacts, you will have a 42.1875% chance to crit. For an x4 crit (crushing critical), this is 17.8%. And this continues down the chain to 7.5%, 3.2%, and 1.3% respectively. Adding one more point of strength adds ~50 damage. This gives me a 2.8 (and easily lowerable with coal or artifact runes, or the lightning stance) second balance with a 2h weapon (which is comparable to a 1h with similar stats in speed. Damage would be cut by 50%, but that's not exactly a huge deal since you get two).

Let's take a mental leap and, based off my numbers from one point of strength (which is in practicality not useful, since it scales on a curve and not linearly, but bear with me), each point of strength will give 25 damage on a 1h weapon. Six points is 150 damage. Now, at demigod, a 42% crit rate with two swings per balance means you will have a, if I remember my high school math correctly (which I probably don't at all) a 66% chance of critting at least once. At 15str, that's a 66% chance to do 300 damage instead of 150, which is the equivalent of six points of strength, even ignoring the higher crit tiers. I will note you can do this with both weapons, and that chance is just for one to crit, so you do have the potential to crit twice (which would, in this fictional linear scale, be the equivalent of 12 points of strength about one in five times)

At the difference between tae'dae and aslaran, you would get one extra attack as an aslaran for every 4 of a tae'dae's attacks (2.4s for aslaran, 2.99 for tae'dae). At 66%, that is... ... a whole lot of math and I haven't had my morning coffee yet. However, when you take into account the upper crit tiers and such, your DPS should come out higher as an aslaran. As well, there are other mitigating factors that favour balance. Often with higher level hunting (UV, Muud) you will have to move around. Any delay between movements is an added delay to how long it takes you to get to the next creature, and as such, lowers your overall XP/<insert arbitrary timeframe here (default: microfortnight)>. That extra attack, the extra time to move and acquire a target, will make a difference in the long run - moreso than six points of strength which, in reality, scale both in effect and how bonuses affect them (it would not be hard for an aslaran to get 18 points of strength anyway, but it would be difficult for a tae'dae to pass 21/22, and the theoretical sweet spot is around 18/19, after which the effect drops off heavily anyway, so there's little point).

And this was a fun mental experiment which had no clear goal and I can't be arsed to do half the math on anyway. If somebody wants to continue it, feel free, but it should get the point across even somewhat. However, it's a game. Have fun. Don't worry about numbers just because you think you need to worry about numbers, especially for something so insubstantial as PvE.

EDIT2: Also, I feel the need to say your forum icon, resized as small as it is, looks less like a bear to me and more like a cream brown Grimace (of McDonalds marketing strategy fame) with low-hanging breasts. That is all.

EDIT3: Source on the crit data - http://www.lusternia.com/node/24675

Tomo

I cannot argue with numbers. I also cannot argue about low-hanging-breast cream brown Grimace.

Marcella

I continue to say that people who think 1h warrior bashing is the best neglect the fact that it was the best before damageshift - now, since you only get half the amount of damage when you do crit, and crits on 2h weapons carry over the damage to the next thing you smash, they're about equal.

Lothringen

KROKANI ALWAYS.

Lerad

Actually, there IS still a disparity between 1h and 2h warrior bashing with damage shift. The WSC of a 1h hit will carry over and probably overkill the target on the next hit, wasting some damage - but the damage wasted will be less than a 2h WSC. Afterall, the 36x damage of a WSC'd 2h swing is twice as much damage as a 1h swing, and probably less than half of that is needed to kill the next bashing target.

Less wastage has always been the core idea behind multiple attack classes being superior at bashing. It was the same with the other IRE monks as it is with 1h warriors here. When you kill a target halfway through your multi-hits, the remaining damage of your full bashing attack is not wasted and is carried over to the next target. Criticals have always exacerbated that advantage, making multi-hit classes heads and shoulders better than anyone else. With damage shift, every class now can carry over damage, so the arena has been evened quite a fair bit, but the wasted damage is still less on those with multi-hits. Unlike lusternian monks or the other IRE dsls where the full bashing attack is not carried over to the next target, lusternian 1h warriors are the only multi-hit bashers here, and they therefore remain the best native bashers. Just think about it, if you gave everyone 100% WSC rate, 1h warriors will literally be killing 1 more bashing target than anyone else per balance. That doesn't happen all the time, of course, but even with normal WSC rates, the difference is fairly obvious over time.

The thing that really evened the bashing scene here are the whips. Whips literally equalized damage output for bashing, and is most of the time better than the native bashing attacks of all the classes (with some exceptions). Damageshift didn't quite have the same impact.