Stat balance

[Riggs]

As has been raised many times - powercreep/inflation is rampant - when it comes to strength boosting.

Multiple stacking types of str boosts - on top of crazy high rage for barbs say (with pre, tod rings capstone etc) - it is very silly.

A super high str distorts ac, damage, monsters and classes. A non ftr/barb is at least 10 points behind or more for example.

Madstone boots, rage potions/spell, Titans grip, Profane bonuses, 3 types of stat potions (Yugo/store/collectables), and maybe 1 or 2 others I might be forgetting. It is pretty absurd.

Yet Dex has no boosts other than pots.

An 80 str barb is possible - why not an 80 dex acrobat or monk?

Or 80 con.

Mental stats would not be boostable without destroying the casting game - as saves and dcs are very different bell curves than to hit/ac bonuses.

But there seems to be no reason to not have dex and con boosting items that stack just like all the many, many str boosting items.

A better solution would be to make LESS of the str items stacking as well as adding in other stats - but trends dont indicate items like that will get 'nurfed' due to fear of complaining I guess.

So - how about Gloves of the Windstorm - +6 psionic dex bonus as 1 min clickie too?

Treason - untyped Dex bonus - making madstone boots not the only melee item in Reaver.

Tod rings - pre tier 3 adds +2 dex to rogues and monks and maybe rangers for example (pew pew)

Hezrou cookies - How about bearded devil cookies that add +4 profane dex bonus?

Again - there seems to be no reason not to have them in the game.

[Lorz]

Heya Riggs...from the wrong side of the planet.

I just wanted to post up that you continue to bring logic and reasonable arguments to the ddo forums and that it is very upsetting that you do. Why cant you be like the rest here and just whine or ask for easy buttons or complain about the easy buttons.

/anyways enjoy the free bumb and keep Thac0 in line....im going back to drinking away the jet lag

[Forzah]

An extra dex boost from some item wouldn't be bad. Con shouldn't be... think HP system is fine as is now.

[Kinerd]

I take issue with the claim that super high Strength distorts damage - melee professions other than fighters and barbarians are quite competitive when it comes to DPS, with the top rank being determined more by target.

I also think that allowing people to get Dex as high as they can get Strength would totally blow out the PC AC system, and the ensuing balance would make armor/shield users even more gimp than they are now when it comes to AC. There are already characters who are functionally impervious to melee attacks for wide swaths of the game.

The same applies to Con - a well built and geared character has essentially 0 chance of dying from one hit of raw HP loss. Dramatically increasing HP would unbalance the situation.

In short, I'm not sure what problem you could solve by implementing this suggestion, and it seems to me like it would create quite a few.

[Riggs]

An extra dex boost from some item wouldn't be bad. Con shouldn't be... think HP system is fine as is now.

Define 'fine'.

Show a game-breaking reason having another 100 hp for 60 seconds would destroy the game - and how having a +30 to str is not.

If one physical stat gets a boost - they all should.

[Riggs]

I take issue with the claim that super high Strength distorts damage - melee professions other than fighters and barbarians are quite competitive when it comes to DPS, with the top rank being determined more by target.

I also think that allowing people to get Dex as high as they can get Strength would totally blow out the PC AC system, and the ensuing balance would make armor/shield users even more gimp than they are now when it comes to AC. There are already characters who are functionally impervious to melee attacks for wide swaths of the game.

The same applies to Con - a well built and geared character has essentially 0 chance of dying from one hit of raw HP loss. Dramatically increasing HP would unbalance the situation.

In short, I'm not sure what problem you could solve by implementing this suggestion, and it seems to me like it would create quite a few.

Unless you made dex clickies that lasted 20 minutes - it will be something that is useful for 1-2 fights. Make them exclusive sure.

And matching items only will add maybe 2-4 types that all classes could get - as ftrs and barbs get class specific extra bonuses - and it is unlikely anyone is ever going to get a perma +20 to dex like barbs have to str.

So a +6 item, and a +4 item, and lets even say a Tod ring for a dex class adding in +2 is a +12 1 minute bonus to str 3/day - so you are saying +6 to ac for 1 minute is going to break the game? Or +120 hp for 1 minute?

I would need to see a much better argument than "I think it would cause problems" to be convinced of anything. Like say examples, or numbers. Or ...you know ...facts.

"The same applies to Con - a well built and geared character has essentially 0 chance of dying from one hit of raw HP loss."...so...by saying 0 chance - you are claiming NO ONE DIES at high levels? Ever? If they are well built. (Because players only ever get hit once? What quest pls - I am interested to know what monsters only ever hit once then stop until they die)

I am guessing you are thinking of normal easy Shroud runs with 2 healers spamming mass cures? Because otherwise the 0% thing is either monumentally ....lets say absurd...or you dont play the game.

Or else I would be interested in this guild that never, ever, dies that you play in. (You do understand what 0% means right?)

[sephiroth1084]

If one physical stat gets a boost - they all should.

No. The different stats have much different effects upon the game. The extra damage being obtained from Str inflation is something that applies semi-equally across all characters, and is made up for by other class features. The to-hit a little less so.

Increasing Dex does not have the same impact for all characters.

Improving Con doesn't either, though that is mostly just looking at rage duration for barbarians. Still, there simply isn't much reason to be boosting player HP much further.

[Riggs]

No. The different stats have much different effects upon the game. The extra damage being obtained from Str inflation is something that applies semi-equally across all characters, and is made up for by other class features. The to-hit a little less so.

Increasing Dex does not have the same impact for all characters.

Improving Con doesn't either, though that is mostly just looking at rage duration for barbarians. Still, there simply isn't much reason to be boosting player HP much further.

So - because stats do different things....only str gets a boost?

By that logic - take out +6 stat items too.

Take out enhancements for everything except strength.

Take out ship buffs for non-str shrines.

I mean - dex has different impacts on different characters... saying str affects casters(you said all characters) as much as melee makes a lot of sense I am sure....to someone.

Dex has less impact on the game than str does - yet somehow that is an argument to not boost it at all?

So logically ....wait....logic - thats what was missing from your post.

Feel free to add some.

[sephiroth1084]

If you want to be a **** about it...

I didn't say that there shouldn't be any boosts to Dex and Con (and there are some), but that the kind of inflation that Str gets would be more gamebreaking if it occurred on Dex. If you tranformed the barbarian's +14 Str into a +14 Dex bonus instead, that anyone could achieve, that would be, among other things, +7 AC over anything the heavy armored crowd could reach, and they're already behind on AC as it is. It makes the characters with Evasion even more likely to become immune to all Reflex saves (currently there are many traps for which the DCs are high enough that even Dex-based rogues still fail frequently enough to justify Improved Evasion and wanting a lot of HP). There are more, but I'm not listing everything, as I'm sure some people with a half a brain and capability for logical thought can extrapolate further.

The point is, there are so many sources for damage, many of which are exclusive to characters who cannot inflate their Str so much, that the game is fairly balanced across the different Str values. The fact that an extra 2-5 points of damage or so has a fairly small impact on the game when monster HP is measured in the thousands and tens of thousands further emphasizes this point, whereas increasing AC even a few points, when you have enough to matter already, has a much bigger impact on how that character interacts with the game as a whole. The same is true for Reflex saves.

And really, there isn't all that much more consistent Str-boosting stuff than Dex. Only one race can get +2 Str, whereas four races can get +2 Dex. Only one class gets +3 Str, whereas two get +3 Dex. Both have Yugo pots available. That leaves just Madstone and the Rage spell as widely accessible and reliable Str boosts. Well, if you're getting +5 Dex from enhancements on a Finesse build, you're basically tied with the Str version of the same character when they are Raged and Madstoned.

Why don't you apply some logic? I haven't seen anything from you so far except *****ing about not getting more Dex or Con.

Oh, and the Hezrou cookies do give +4 Dex. Apparently, you don't really care enough about Dex to notice.

[Raithe]

The fact that an extra 2-5 points of damage or so has a fairly small impact on the game when monster HP is measured in the thousands and tens of thousands further emphasizes this point, whereas increasing AC even a few points, when you have enough to matter already, has a much bigger impact on how that character interacts with the game as a whole. The same is true for Reflex saves.

No. When you are getting 2-5 (actually 4-7 from rage or Kensai power boost) damage every swing over someone else, it has a much bigger impact on game success than someone who happens to have a +7 boost to AC or reflex saves in a quest where mobs have +80 attack bonuses and you are already displaced (meaning the mob gets at least a grazing hit ~1/4 of the time and at most a full hit 1/2 the time).

The stat inflation that is making me scratch my head is caster DC inflation. I've been reading the forums a bit and caster DCs that come close to a bard's fascinate ability seem to be possible now. That destroys any semblance of game design criteria that DDO could possibly be retaining.

The object should be to make gameplay more challenging and more interesting. Inflating stats to keep people around will always come back to bite you. I have major doubts that revisions to Epic quests will draw additional paying customers in significant numbers. The stat inflation has left them with nowhere to maneuver.

[sephiroth1084]

No. When you are getting 2-5 (actually 4-7 from rage or Kensai power boost) damage every swing over someone else, it has a much bigger impact on game success than someone who happens to have a +7 boost to AC or reflex saves in a quest where mobs have +80 attack bonuses and you are already displaced (meaning the mob gets at least a grazing hit ~1/4 of the time and at most a full hit 1/2 the time).

False, even ignoring the fact that there are plenty of monsters with True Seeing.

+5 damage per swing, even +10 damage per swing, over someone else tends to cut your swings to kill count down by only a few swings, so you shave off a second or two in killing something (80 damage vs. 70, you need 7 swings to gain a 1-swing advantage, and at that point you've dealt 560 damage...so that kind of difference ends up being about 2 swings faster per 1,000 HP). This is kind of a simplistic way of looking at things, but it illustrates the point enough to be valid.

Going from enough AC to be hit on a 2+, to enough AC to be hit on an 11+ is the same as applying a second, stacking Displacement, which is a pretty big deal. Going from getting hit 50% of the time to 5% of the time is a tremendous shift in the way the character moves through quests.

The reasons AC is seen as being meaningless (erroneous as that view is) in the current endgame are because AC is so difficult to get up to meaningful level and because doing so usually means too much of a drop-off in DPS for it to be worth achieving. This isn't going to be as true once epic monster HP gets cut in half and their saves increase enough for our current expectation of everything being helpless all the time to continue to hold true. Now, if you're killing stuff 5-10 seconds slower than the guy with the inflated Str, but are taking almost 0 damage, you probably stand a better chance of soloing individual fights, or whole quests, and require much fewer resources from the rest of your party. The damage saved by having higher AC is greater than the damage saved by killing stuff faster (when monsters have too much HP to die in just a few swings).

Now, allowing for inflation of Dex in the same way that Str has been inflated will not have the same kind of effect as the Str bonuses do. For one, some characters can leverage that Dex into more attributes (Attack, Damage, Reflex, AC, skills), while others will gain very little benefit from it (again, characters who wear armor will fall even farther behind those in pajamas), while all melees tend to benefit from higher Str in similar ways.

The game handles increases in DPS very differently from increases in survivability.

The stat inflation that is making me scratch my head is caster DC inflation. I've been reading the forums a bit and caster DCs that come close to a bard's fascinate ability seem to be possible now. That destroys any semblance of game design criteria that DDO could possibly be retaining.

The important part of DC inflation is how far apart the minimum DC (with some effort) and maximum (reasonable) DC are. Most wizards, for example, can get to a 34 DC without too much difficulty, while the max reasonable DC is about 44. A 10 point spread means that the first group is going to have a very hard time landing spells in content where the latter is having any difficulty, while the latter will have something of a cakewalk in any content where the former isn't having too much trouble. That's fine, mostly because the spread still fits neatly on a d20, and because there are a multitude of options to improve performance of the lower group.



I will say, since I didn't mention it earlier, that I am in favor of reducing some of the stat inflation (though I doubt that we'll see much of that). In particular, we could probably stand to get rid of the class and race stat bonuses, but I am adamantly against inflating other stats just because Str has gotten the helium treatment.

[Emili]

False, even ignoring the fact that there are plenty of monsters with True Seeing.

+5 damage per swing, even +10 damage per swing, over someone else tends to cut your swings to kill count down by only a few swings, so you shave off a second or two in killing something (80 damage vs. 70, you need 7 swings to gain a 1-swing advantage, and at that point you've dealt 560 damage...so that kind of difference ends up being about 2 swings faster per 1,000 HP). This is kind of a simplistic way of looking at things, but it illustrates the point enough to be valid.

Going from enough AC to be hit on a 2+, to enough AC to be hit on an 11+ is the same as applying a second, stacking Displacement, which is a pretty big deal. Going from getting hit 50% of the time to 5% of the time is a tremendous shift in the way the character moves through quests.

The reasons AC is seen as being meaningless (erroneous as that view is) in the current endgame are because AC is so difficult to get up to meaningful level and because doing so usually means too much of a drop-off in DPS for it to be worth achieving. This isn't going to be as true once epic monster HP gets cut in half and their saves increase enough for our current expectation of everything being helpless all the time to continue to hold true. Now, if you're killing stuff 5-10 seconds slower than the guy with the inflated Str, but are taking almost 0 damage, you probably stand a better chance of soloing individual fights, or whole quests, and require much fewer resources from the rest of your party. The damage saved by having higher AC is greater than the damage saved by killing stuff faster (when monsters have too much HP to die in just a few swings).

Now, allowing for inflation of Dex in the same way that Str has been inflated will not have the same kind of effect as the Str bonuses do. For one, some characters can leverage that Dex into more attributes (Attack, Damage, Reflex, AC, skills), while others will gain very little benefit from it (again, characters who wear armor will fall even farther behind those in pajamas), while all melees tend to benefit from higher Str in similar ways.

The game handles increases in DPS very differently from increases in survivability.

The important part of DC inflation is how far apart the minimum DC (with some effort) and maximum (reasonable) DC are. Most wizards, for example, can get to a 34 DC without too much difficulty, while the max reasonable DC is about 44. A 10 point spread means that the first group is going to have a very hard time landing spells in content where the latter is having any difficulty, while the latter will have something of a cakewalk in any content where the former isn't having too much trouble. That's fine, mostly because the spread still fits neatly on a d20, and because there are a multitude of options to improve performance of the lower group.



I will say, since I didn't mention it earlier, that I am in favor of reducing some of the stat inflation (though I doubt that we'll see much of that). In particular, we could probably stand to get rid of the class and race stat bonuses, but I am adamantly against inflating other stats just because Str has gotten the helium treatment.

This...

[Raithe]

+5 damage per swing, even +10 damage per swing, over someone else tends to cut your swings to kill count down by only a few swings, so you shave off a second or two in killing something (80 damage vs. 70, you need 7 swings to gain a 1-swing advantage, and at that point you've dealt 560 damage...so that kind of difference ends up being about 2 swings faster per 1,000 HP). This is kind of a simplistic way of looking at things, but it illustrates the point enough to be valid.

No. Again, no. Taking a warchanter along on a quest provides right in the neighborhood of +10 damage to everyone's swing. It makes a huge difference in the time and expenditures required to complete. It's basically like having a whole other person along doing decent damage. In quests where DR is a major factor (portals, elementals) it makes an even larger difference. I remember the first time I ran Invaders elite with a bard. It was kinda fun having everything die three times as fast, especially after experiencing the difficulties involved with running the quest bardless (and without holy cold iron weapons).

Going from enough AC to be hit on a 2+, to enough AC to be hit on an 11+ is the same as applying a second, stacking Displacement, which is a pretty big deal. Going from getting hit 50% of the time to 5% of the time is a tremendous shift in the way the character moves through quests.

This might be true if healing didn't play such an overwhelming role in DDO. The reality, however, is that grazing hits happen, certain classes have healing auras they like to use, and a lot of easy healing would just go to waste if quests were run with high AC low DPS turtles consuming temporary DEX buffs and boosts. My fighter has every fighter boost available except the AC boost. The same would be true if I had all the gear to hit 90 AC.

Using the Shroud as an example, Meteor Swarm has no save and does a majority of the damage during the fight in Part 4. It is unaffected by Armor Class. How much difference does it make in success rates for Shroud runs if the group is capable of taking Arraetrikos out in Part 4 in one round? How about if they are able to take him out before the bladestorms even close into the center?

Now, allowing for inflation of Dex in the same way that Str has been inflated will not have the same kind of effect as the Str bonuses do. For one, some characters can leverage that Dex into more attributes (Attack, Damage, Reflex, AC, skills), while others will gain very little benefit from it (again, characters who wear armor will fall even farther behind those in pajamas), while all melees tend to benefit from higher Str in similar ways.

No. Extremely high strength scores have trivialized getting 50 DCs to melee crowd control maneuvers like stunning blow/stunning fist/improved trip. My fighter can trip just about anything with a 50 DC (I admit it makes me feel satisfied to do it to Vale wolves). Creatures with relatively normal balance skills simply never get up again in most quests (balance skill checks don't automatically succeed on a 20). The only difference with caster DCs is that it doesn't take any planning or coordination to push a button and watch everything around you die.

I think the point of this thread wasn't necessarily to push for providing more DEX and CON boosts. I think the point was to show that the entire system is basically garbage, and in a system that is garbage it doesn't really matter what **** is available. DEX and CON boosts are actually less broken than ridiculously high DPS.

[sephiroth1084]

No. Again, no. Taking a warchanter along on a quest provides right in the neighborhood of +10 damage to everyone's swing. It makes a huge difference in the time and expenditures required to complete. It's basically like having a whole other person along doing decent damage. In quests where DR is a major factor (portals, elementals) it makes an even larger difference. I remember the first time I ran Invaders elite with a bard. It was kinda fun having everything die three times as fast, especially after experiencing the difficulties involved with running the quest bardless (and without holy cold iron weapons).

Now you're not adding 10 damage, you're adding 10 damage to each party member's DPS. Not what we're discussing.

This might be true if healing didn't play such an overwhelming role in DDO. The reality, however, is that grazing hits happen, certain classes have healing auras they like to use, and a lot of easy healing would just go to waste if quests were run with high AC low DPS turtles consuming temporary DEX buffs and boosts. My fighter has every fighter boost available except the AC boost. The same would be true if I had all the gear to hit 90 AC.

Using the Shroud as an example, Meteor Swarm has no save false and does a majority of the damage during the fight in Part 4 false. It is unaffected by Armor Class. How much difference does it make in success rates for Shroud runs if the group is capable of taking Arraetrikos out in Part 4 in one round? How about if they are able to take him out before the bladestorms even close into the center?

There are some places where DPS eclipses survivability significantly, and places where AC can trump DPS. For your example, you chose one of the most extreme examples of DPS outweighing AC. Way to stack the deck.

No. Extremely high strength scores have trivialized getting 50 DCs to melee crowd control maneuvers like stunning blow/stunning fist/improved trip. My fighter can trip just about anything with a 50 DC (I admit it makes me feel satisfied to do it to Vale wolves). Creatures with relatively normal balance skills simply never get up again in most quests (balance skill checks don't automatically succeed on a 20).

And your 50 DC is coming with bonuses from a PrE, class, maybe race and equipment. A barbarian with a 66 Str has a 38 trip DC. Hardly gamebreaking. 48 with a Vertigo weapon, which is pretty strong. Hard to sustain any more Str than that, certainly not much more. I think the inflated Str impinges upon the fighter's tactics abilities, but not overly so.

The only difference with caster DCs is that it doesn't take any planning or coordination to push a button and watch everything around you die.

Eh, that's simply bias on your part.

I think the point of this thread wasn't necessarily to push for providing more DEX and CON boosts. I think the point was to show that the entire system is basically garbage, and in a system that is garbage it doesn't really matter what **** is available. DEX and CON boosts are actually less broken than ridiculously high DPS.

That's wrong. The system isn't so borked that any sort of change won't cause and meaningful further damage.

[sillyguyjim]

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I believe some of the argument lies with the to-hit values of a STR versus DEX build.

Pardon me again if I jump from thought to thought too much leaving for a weak argument.

Ranged attacks in their most optimal form (Longbow AA or repeater) use DEX for attack. In both of those situations, there is another stat (STR or INT) that contributes to damage making for a thin spread of ability points. Because the current game boosts allow you to boost your STR more than DEX, your attack can never be as high as a STR build. Also consider that classes using STR have similar boosts to to-hit that DEX classes have (kensai v. sneak attack accuracy v. flanking).

To-hit becomes most noticeable in a handful of current epics(ADQ, Big Top). Yes a well-geared character of any class can hit those mobs in epic, but how do you tell people who just hit level 20 that they need to farm for 6 months to get the gear they need for epics? Can you expect a bard to be in every group? In those situations, you end up with pure DPS classes that cannot land 50% or more of their attacks. This is not the same for a STR class that can easily begin epics upon reaching 20 and having an appropriate weapon.

There are three solutions to the problem:
1) Reduce mob AC, giving high STR chars and high DEX chars similar advantages in damage, but removing game difficulty
2) Reduce mob AC and remove stacking STR bonuses; creating an unfair advantage for alternative damage type classes (sneak attack, divine sacrifice, slayer arrows)
3) Provide similar resources to increase DEX temporarily; allowing DEX characters to damage mobs effectively

Unless you are specifically aiming for a high AC, adding +7 to your AC usually won't matter. In the cases where it will, the boosts would still be temporary and could help reduce the resource drain that plagues many raids. Now the healers in groups can melee instead of having to watch HP bars. Or in the case of Epic Zawabi's, perhaps a tank could finally hit that AC threshold for long enough to give the healer(s) a breather.

If you are building for DPS, there are often gear choices that conflict between AC and DPS. ToD rings take the place of Chattering, Seal of the Earth; Dragontouched replaces Icy Raiments; Gloves/Bracers of the Claw replace Spectral Gloves and Jidz Tet'ka. Because of the gear conflicts, a max DPS class will most likely not retain an AC that breaks endgame mechanics if they are allowed to increase their to-hit value through DEX.

The DEX chars that need to increase to-hit usually sacrifice DPS in some way. STR chars gain both to-hit AND DPS for every point of STR they gain. STR is also the most versatile damage boost as small as it may be. On any 0% fort mob STR is over 100% effective. On any 50% fort mob it is still over 100% effective. On any 100% fort mob, it is exactly 100% effective. Sneak attack damage, elemental damage types, and other random effects are situational. Currently DEX classes have to rely on these damage types to be effective and gear choices cause conflicts with to-hit values.

Some other situations:

Rogue mechanics suffer from being unable to increase their INT to high values for additional damage. Assuming they wanted to make full benefit of repeaters and class skills, they will not have a high STR value to use for melee damage. A remedy to this situation could be a set that applies a stacking INT bonus for mechanics only, preventing misuse by a crafty wizard.

Select weapons deal damage based on INT, CHA, or DEX; but are all generally suboptimal due to upper limits on those three ability scores. Anyone with a 10 STR and some of the current STR boosting gear can boost their way to higher values than a character with max DEX, CHA, or INT. These weapons will be suboptimal until there is a way to increase abilities to similar levels as STR as well as providing weapon bonuses on par with normal STR weapons.


In closing, I think that there's a very simple remedy to this situation and the arguments of everyone. Introduce a clicky or buff that increases DEX, but reduces AC by the same bonus gained from the DEX. This will allow the to-hit gains while removing any chance of abuse.

[Riggs]

If you want to be a **** about it...

I didn't say that there shouldn't be any boosts to Dex and Con (and there are some), but that the kind of inflation that Str gets would be more gamebreaking if it occurred on Dex. If you tranformed the barbarian's +14 Str into a +14 Dex bonus instead, that anyone could achieve, that would be, among other things, +7 AC over anything the heavy armored crowd could reach, and they're already behind on AC as it is. It makes the characters with Evasion even more likely to become immune to all Reflex saves (currently there are many traps for which the DCs are high enough that even Dex-based rogues still fail frequently enough to justify Improved Evasion and wanting a lot of HP). There are more, but I'm not listing everything, as I'm sure some people with a half a brain and capability for logical thought can extrapolate further.

The point is, there are so many sources for damage, many of which are exclusive to characters who cannot inflate their Str so much, that the game is fairly balanced across the different Str values. The fact that an extra 2-5 points of damage or so has a fairly small impact on the game when monster HP is measured in the thousands and tens of thousands further emphasizes this point, whereas increasing AC even a few points, when you have enough to matter already, has a much bigger impact on how that character interacts with the game as a whole. The same is true for Reflex saves.

And really, there isn't all that much more consistent Str-boosting stuff than Dex. Only one race can get +2 Str, whereas four races can get +2 Dex. Only one class gets +3 Str, whereas two get +3 Dex. Both have Yugo pots available. That leaves just Madstone and the Rage spell as widely accessible and reliable Str boosts. Well, if you're getting +5 Dex from enhancements on a Finesse build, you're basically tied with the Str version of the same character when they are Raged and Madstoned.

Why don't you apply some logic? I haven't seen anything from you so far except *****ing about not getting more Dex or Con.

Oh, and the Hezrou cookies do give +4 Dex. Apparently, you don't really care enough about Dex to notice.

Point on the Hezrou cookies. I dont think of them as dex boosting because dex boosting has less value than str boosting does. Esp since so many damage sources now completely ignore evasion AND ac. Someone being logical about the endgame would acknowledge that fact, not brush it aside.

Sure dex + robes is usually better ac than heavy armor - that is a game problem that many people have said should be fixed for years now - by having some form of stacking dr with armor - makeing +6 full plate, +15 armor say, more useful than +6 armor robes. That is a separate issue.

Trying to downplay str as 'a few more point of damage dont matter' is completely blowing smoke. No other stat gives a bonus to hit AND damage - and since in combat - the ability to hit, and hit harder - is about 95% of melee combat. Not getting hit ranges from useful to irrelevant in situations with a healer - like 99% of most raids. Making str 100% useful and dex moderately useful to a waste of time.

If you claim that 5 points of damage 'has a small impact on the game' means you dont read every melee forum post in the last 5 years that state, or assume every melee has power attack, the effectiveness of bard songs, the dozens of runs for Shintao or Barb Tod rings people will grind out for +2 to hit and damage etc - because every single to hit and damage bonus matters in this game - to hit more so - which makes str that much overpowered over dex because hey - you can boost str much higher getting double the benefit. (Oh hey we are back to the first premise)

Trying to say dex is in fact more important than str, and would break the game if it was boosted to the same levels - while at the same time downplaying the overwhelmingly accepted value of str as THE main and most useful stat in the game for a melee means either you do not play this game past level 10 - or you willfully ignore facts to simply try and score some kind of points in attacking me.

Maybe to you scoring points that have little to no basis in fact = logic to you. Maybe thats why I have neg rep for saying so.

It is a very sad state when 'winning' matters more than facts.

[sephiroth1084]

Yes, Str matters more than Dex for most of the game, but a large part of that is due to either AC being useless DUE TO NOT BEING ABLE TO GET IT HIGH ENOUGH TO MATTER or damage being much more important. If AC became easier to attain and maintain you would see more people using it. And adding DR 6/- to full plate is a rather paltry compensation when avoiding 10% more attacks (or much more than that if Dex were inflated like this) due to AC.

There is also the fact that there are now ways to get Dex to apply to both attack and damage. There are a few specific weapons and the Acrobat PrE, which can apply Dex to SA damage. An Acrobat using the Staff of Nat Gann, for example, is applying Dex to damage twice (only because the devs overlooked the fact that a 2-hander using Dex for damage should be getting Dex and a half, or 2.5 times Dex in this case).

Yes, every little point of damage matters, but it doesn't have the same effect on an encounter as more AC does. An effect? Sure, but not the same. If I go from 40 AC and +35 damage, while getting hit for 1/3 my HP every 4 attacks, to 45 AC and +30 damage (PA on vs. off), I end up completing that fight much more easily and using fewer resources, and also likely faster, unless someone else is healing me. If someone else is healing me, then they we are trading small increments of time for resource savings.

[dkyle]

STR simply doesn't break the game as much as other stats can when it gets high.

Extra STR generally just means extra damage. It also means extra tactics DCs, but the cooldowns on those keep them from being a huge issue. Auto-success on Stunning Blow isn't really a problem. Most Barbs already have this without trying, and still, not all even take the feat.

Extra DEX can easily make AC untouchable. If everyone gets easy DEX, everyone gets to be untouchable.

Extra CON makes a squishy into a tank, once they cross certain HP thresholds; if eveyone gets easy access to CON, everyone can tank. This one is the least game breaking of the rest, but it is also currently the second easiest to boost.

Extra WIS, CHA, and INT means higher DCs for spellcasters. Especially with epic ward being lifted, excessive spellcaster DCs would break the game.

In short, more STR means incrementally more damage. More CON means incrementally more HP, possibly crossing a tanking break point. Extra DEX, WIS, CHA, and INT can easily throw many of the delicately balanced systems in the game off the d20, for many more characters than can currently do it.

The Dev response to that would be to make the super-boosted stats the new standard for setting mob Saves and to-hit, which would mean anyone who can't muster those super-boosted states would be worthless at DC-based casting and AC. Think viable AC is hard now? Imagine how hard it would be for a non-Rogue if Rogues got significant DEX boosts analogous to Barbarian STR boosts.

Not being able to muster 80 STR on a Rogue, Ranger, Pali, or Monk doesn't make them useless. Those classes have other sources of damage, to at least partially make up for the lack of STR, and other features to make up for the rest of their DPS deficit.