STR is much greater than DEX for every WS?Follow

For DE, Evis, mandalic stab and rudra's all have a dex mod of 30%. After you apply the alpha, (value that reduces stat modifiers on WS based on your level), it works out to the equivalent of a straight 25%. So every 4 dex on avg will raise your base damage by 1. Str increases your base damage (called Fstr) as well at a rate of roughly 4str=1base damage, so it also is the 'equivelent' of a 25% mod. In a vacuum, str and dex have about the same impact on overall damage. Then str adds a smidge of atk and dex adds a smidge of acc instead. Pretty close overall. Sharkbite has a 50% dex mod so dex beats str every time there.

The catch is that Str has a hard cap when it stops adding damage. The amount of str you need to reach this cap is based on 2 things. The base damage of your weapon (you need a LOT more str to cap on a D120 Gaxe than you do a D40 dagger), and the target monster's vitality.

You can add dex forever (see abyssea with 200+ dex upping your damage). You can only get full power from str for a little while. If you have a str atma (SA or VV) in abyssea, you probably dont need any more str unless its some hardcore Mnk NM with craploads of vitality.

Most WS have a str mod AND benefit from Fstr so it has a double whammy effect because it gets counted twice in the damage equation. So a 30% Str mod WS is still really about 4str=1base damage. 4str also will likely raise your Fstr by 1. So if you add 4str, you will get 2base damage instead of 1. For teh VAST majority of WS str ALWAYS wins because it has teh double whammy effect. Thf doesnt get this so it is usually pretty close.

So if both str and dex are pretty much identical with the only difference being adding additional acc via dex or atk via str, you should remember that Str can cap while dex cant. Also that we often stack with SA which adds more oomph to dex to pass up str by a good margin. SO if you are choosing between a 5str ring or a 5dex ring, the dex ring is the safer bet. On high level mobs, the acc is welcome. On lower level mobs, you are more likely to be capping str anyway. Dex is the safer bet across the board and doesnt mess up your set if you SA+WS.

This is false. Instead of going into the math too deeply however I'm just going to give the focal points on why.

Secondary Mods vs fSTR (base damage calculation) -- for every 4 strength you raise base damage by one up until the cap at which point strength won't give you any more damage aside from 2 str == 1 attack. DE and Evisc both have a 30% dex mod meaning for every 4 dex you get 1.2 wsc which is multiplied by alpha value, roughly resulting in 4 dex == 1 base damage.

Summary: 4 strength raises base damage by 1 but caps relatively fast on daggers. 4 dex will also raise base damage by 1 but has no cap, and also affects evisceration's criticals. Roughly speaking

1 dex == 1 strength, but dex does not cap whereas strength does.

Sneak Attack:

This is important. The dex mod of sneak attack has no cap and is 4 times more beneficial. Whereas you need 4 str to raise base damage by 1 when you use sneak attack it's a 1 to 1 ratio. This 1 dex == 1 base damage

Summary: 1 dex is worth 4 points of strength, making dexterity four times more important than strength when you stack sneak attack.

This rule is not 100% foolproof but rather 98% and the law to go by. 2 strength raises attack by 1 and 3 attack is ~~~ 1% average pDIF increase so that will affect the final result, but it will be so minuscule that it won't have any bearing on the final verdict.


Final Summary: If you are performing a weaponskill or using sneak attack a thief gets more benefit from dexterity than they do from strength. Thief is a unique class, and the only job this rule applies to. Every other melee job will get more benefit from strength than dex regardless of what they're doing, and I have a strong hunch your linkshell leader has never played thief. While it's true that str >>> dex for war, monk, drk, etc, this role is reversed on thief, and this is one of the little intricacies that makes the job so fascinating to me. I'm a little dex/crit whore, and I have enough dex/crit power that I can rival and outdo most other players on their various jobs.

One final thought. Don't ignore strength and attack. While I don't recommend gearing for strength before dex, I DO recommend using it where you can. There are a lot of pieces that incorporate both strength AND dex (hecatomb), and our raider's armlets has the whole kit and kaboodle (str, dex, accuracy, attack), while some armor slots don't have any awesome dex choices but great attack choices (the back has some great attack options). If you follow the basic rule that 1 point of dex is better than 1 point of str, but get as much of everything as you can you'll do just fine.

what if you don't have raider's armlets +1 because you upgraded them to raider's armlets +2... :D

Seriously though, Melphina and Banalaty summed it up pretty spot on. I just wanted to add that if you are in abyssea, chances are you have enough STR from atmas/cruror bonuses that you probably have capped fSTR already due to our low base damage. I only have 1 abyssite of furtherance, and with that and atma of the strong arm I am sitting at about 125 STR just in my TP set.

Except for Mercy Stroke



Edited, Jan 8th 2011 8:54pm by Lobivopis

They used to say that it was about 5 to 1 for attack versus Dex. It may not be quite like that anymore, but I'd imagine it's somewhere close to a 5 to 1 ratio.

WSC increases your base damage which affects every hit of the WS. You use an Attack back piece over a dex one for the simple reason that no dex back piece (nifty's being the best probably) comes close to Atheling, which everyone should have as it's a 100% drop with one KI needed to pop the NM, and easy to shout for help as people want the +2 mats.

do you have excel in your pc? The best advice i can give is using Kinematics damage spreadsheet here

You can play around with different equipment and check which one provides the best output.

The str cap depends on your target vitality. Check this link.

Edited, Jul 6th 2011 4:19pm by Laphine

For thief, it is pretty much really simple. point for point on Solo Evisceration and Dancing Edge, DEX = STR. So, go either way, HOWEVER. On SA + Evisceration and Dancing Edge, DEX is significantly better than STR, so my philosophy is given a piece with DEX and a piece with STR, I will go with the DEX unless there is a significant amount of str on the other piece.

AF3 +2 Legs vs. Tumbler Trunks is about 4% crit rate vs. 15 atk, meh, could go either way.
Lithe boots for the other. The 7 atk doesn't quite make up for the extra 3 DEX