Anyone doing the Strength AA for swash?

[purplepalad]

<div> I havent seen anyone posting about it and or what they think the benefits are?  Think its best to go all one line maxe or to spread between two?  Agility and strength?  Just wondering.  As a side note anyone know what the quickest way to get AA is?  I have done a lot of exploring so far.  Still too low for most of Maj 'Dul and or course KoS.</div>

[Davhanama]

<div></div><p>I am doing STR and AGI.  These lines fit my playstyle.  I have 4 points in each level 1 skill and will put my next point in Walk the Plank. then I will decide whether to put the next point in the level 2 STR depending on how things go.</p><p>As for quick ways for AA..I have been running around LS, TS, etc getting discoveries where I can.  I have also gone back and have killed the named mobs I can.  As well I have done as many collections as I can..those are good exp and AA exp.</p><p> </p>

[Belizarius]

<div></div><p>Strength line seems like a pretty 'safe' bet if you don't want to agonise over it.  There's hardly any silly equipment restrictions, most of the AAs are useful, you get a defense boost, a damage boost, a new debuff, it shouldn't affect your play style.</p><p>The backstab damage proc from Agi looks nice for a DPSer, but some of the other Agi lines kind of suck imho (Sailwind, and the movement boost one).  Walk the plank could be nice for soloing.</p>

[Elt]

<div></div>I choose to go with the strength line simply because I don't have a nice enough 1-hander to begin with the Wisdom line.  Although the one skill that requires a sword is a nice filler attack its hardly a necessity.  To me the gem in this line comes straight from the increased critical chance.  I have 6 points in this which currently puts the skill at 10.6% I believe (not looking at character).  I constantly see criticals come up while I'm fighting.  Since I'm not exactly sure how much difference these are making in DPS I can't say if its a great advantage but I do know at least that this lines is working like its supposed to. 

[Redel]

<div>Hi, 60 Swashy on pvp Nagafen server here, I've been able to work up to 22 aa points.</div><div> </div><div>So far I've put mine into str 4, 4, 4, 8.   I've decided to end the strenght line early.. PvP fights are over to quick to make a difference to take the final aa point.  +16 str is sweet.   +defense is ok.  The extra style will be good for when I change to sword spec.  What i really like is the 14% to crit, i crit all the time. non stop, 7-8 times a fight, its crazy.  Very nice dps boost.</div><div> </div><div>The rest of my points are going 4,8,8,8 wisdom line for more dps.  It will be awhile to see how nice the dps from lunge reversal and double attacks will work out with a crazy crit rate.</div><div> </div><div>I saw no reason to put 8 points into any of the final aa lines.</div>

[Wildfury77]

I'm going stamina/strength.......the post above is interesting: I plannedStrength 4/8/8/8 (for max static bonuses and debuff)Stamina 4/4/4/8 (for my sword + shield build +50% dps)Note no final step!! but the static +critical bonus seems nicer than the final stamina skill imho!!<div></div>

[Rokjin]

<div>As a note, a crit seems to give a 30% boost to whatever damage you were going to do, either with a CA or with auto-attack. So if at 8 points maxed it's 14%, that's..</div><div> </div><div>14% * 0.3 = 4.2</div><div> </div><div>So a 4.2% overall DPS boost.</div>

[dagoo7]

<div></div><div></div><div>From the post I referenced in the wisdom line thread below:</div><div> </div><div><p><font color="#cccc33">"Critical (Bonus damage): Critical hits are relatively new to the game. Currently they result in a 30% bonus to damage. Critical hits, unlike other DPS modifiers are capable of acting on Combat Arts, giving them an advantage. However, unlike the other abilities which add completely in "units" (a double-attack is 2 hits, not 1.3 hits) critical hits must be considered carefully, as they only add 30% of the critical chance to your overall DPS. How does that work?</font></p><p><font color="#cccc33">If you had one ability that did 100 damage had a 10 second cooldown, you would expect to do 600 damage in a minute. If you had a 50% critical chance, you would now crit 3 of those attacks (on average) which would increase the damage 30% (or 30 points, 3 times.) Now you've done 690 in the minute, meaning despite your 50% critical chance, you've only improved your DPS by 15%. (50% crit chance * 30% damage modifier = .5 * .3 = .15)"</font></p><p><font color="#cccc33">-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</font></p><p>While, the 30% number initially seemed a bit low, better minds than mine have figured this out and in testing it appears to be about right.  So the net boost to overall dps from 8 pts in the strength crit skill, as Rokjin stated, should result in a net overall dps increase of 4.2%.</p><p>While 4.2% is not huge that increase applies to both autottack and CA damage, unlike other dps boosts (haste, double attack, +dps) which only apply to autoattack.  Since a majority of our dps comes from CAs this means that the crit boost is much. much more significant than a similar boost in one of the other dps modifiers.  As such, the effect on overall dps is probably similar to what you get from other types of autoattack boosts in our and other classes AA lines. </p><p>Even though you will see a lot more big orange numbers.  If the base rate of melee crit is around 1% like many claim, then with maxed crit bonus, your going to see those big numbers 14x as much.   While thats noticeable its still (according to the numbers) only a 4.2% net increase to overall dps.  Nonetheless, even 4.2% increase to our generally excellent dps is significant.</p><p>Developers seem to have tailored AA +crit% for each class based on their overall dps and how much of their damage comes from CAs.  Thats why we only get 14% but others like berserker get 20%, and some others get significantly more for spell crits.</p><p>Because of the fact that crits also apply to CAs, you will get significantly more noticeable benefit comparted to an autoattack boost in short fights where stuff is dead or close to it, by the time you run through the heavy hitter combat arts.  However, in longer fights where autoattack damage becomes more important, autoattack boosts will likely close the gap.</p><p>I have chosen to go strength line at first, but will respec to wisdom as soon as I hit 50 and buy a good 1her.  With the proc and other synergy benefits from doubleattack, I think wisdom has the edge right now in terms of dps potential over strength.  However, as soon as I max unencumbrance, I plan on sinking points back into strength.   Combined wisdom and strength should make a nice increase to dps at the cost of giving up the other types of benefits in the other lines.</p></div><p>Message Edited by dagoo7 on <span class="date_text">03-24-2006</span><span class="time_text">06:13 AM</span></p><p>Message Edited by dagoo7 on <span class="date_text">03-24-2006</span><span class="time_text">06:14 AM</span></p>

[Rokjin]

<div></div><div></div><p>It comes down to what your ratios are. CA to Auto-attack damage..With a 4.2% DPS boost to both CA and Auto-Attack, compared to a 29% boost to Auto-attack, doing some quick crunching with an excel sheet..</p><p>75% CA to 25% Melee:</p><p>With 4.2% damage boost from the Crits, and assuming you do a total of 100 damage each fight (to simplify calculations and allow easy percentage boosts)</p><p>CA damage = 78</p><p>Melee damage = 26</p><p>Total damage with STR Crit = 104.2 (a 4.2% Boost, as we expect)</p><p>---------------------</p><p>With 29% boost to auto-attack, no boost to CAs.. same 75/25 ratio:</p><p>Ca damage = 75</p><p>Melee damage = 32.25</p><p>Total damage with WIS DA = 107.25 (a 7.25% Boost)</p><p>--------------</p><p>So it seems arguing based only on the STR Crit bonus vs the WIS Double-attack, if your ratio is 75/25, you get more benefit from Wisdom. Doing some more crunching, the 'break-even' point is the 85/15 ratio, at which point Wisdom does only a bit more damage. (0.15% more)</p><p>At 86/14, Wisdom starts to lose out, with STR doing 0.14% more DPS.</p><p>So in short, if your damage percentage from Combat Arts is 85% or LOWER, you will get more DPS from 8 points in Unencumberance. If your damage percentage from Combat Arts is 86% or HIGHER, you will get more DPS from the STR Crit line, of which at the moment I forgot the name.</p><p>As a note, this overlooks other factors such as proc rates, stat boosts/losses from the STR line/using a single item with nothing in offhand, etc.. but it's a good guideline comparison.</p><p>Message Edited by Rokjin on <span class="date_text">03-24-2006</span><span class="time_text">12:19 PM</span></p>

[tawek]

<div></div><div></div><div></div><div>It's not surprising the dps from Wisdom is higher than from the Strength branch.</div><div> </div><div>Strength has a little extra dps from its criticals buff, but that's just one skill out of four.  Of the other three, one is a defense buff, and two are debuffs with some damage.</div><div> </div><div>Wisdom gets a boost to its dps from all four skills.  Double attack (from Unencumberance and Freehand Reversal), Lunge Reversal effectively gives another attack, and Coule boost all melee skills.  The skills also give good boosts to riposte and other defense skills.</div><div> </div><div>Wisdom seems to be somewhat more offensive, and has the best boost to defensive abilities.  Strength has less defense and offense; its main benefit is nice debuffs.  Strength is a more useful stat to boost, and the branch doesn't lose the stat benefits of an off-hand item.</div><p>Message Edited by tawek21 on <span class="date_text">03-28-2006</span><span class="time_text">08:11 AM</span></p>