Doesn't it say something when Melee DPS classes decide to go for Hdex and Hagi augs instead of Hstr augs? If the stats on an aug are virtually the same accept Hstats is Hstr really that meaningless that one would go for defense?
I think anyone who's played EQ for a month realizes that stats are borked in this game. Some of them do nothing, some do almost nothing, and for the most part, you just get them all handed to you on every piece of gear. So, what that says to me is that they probably know something you don't.
If Hstr worked like Hdex used to/works for ranged (adds bonus damage before crit/disc multipliers), it would be a lot more worthwhile to stack Hstr as a dps class. As it is, the dps increase from Hstr is pitiful, so the bonus to critical chance and a useful amount of avoidance increase is far more worthwhile. It doesn't help that the number of wild rampage mobs that can 1-2 round a melee dps has shot up, making extra avoidance very valuable on raids.
Dead DPS is no DPS. Personally, I tend not to focus on a single heroic. I try to balance hStr, hAgil and hDex as much as I can. My DPS seems to be about on par as other monks who focus on single heroics, and I tend not to die a lot. Am I going to loot a tank piece of armor before a tank? No.
HStr + damage, HDex + Crit. If I understand it right, Do you want to add d10 base damage to every swing, or do you want to add 1% crit chance. 100 HStr = +10 base damage (Note: 99 HStr gives you nothing, you only gain every 100) 100 HDex = +1% crit chance
its every 10 hstr is +1 dmg, and it also adds atk. and i believe its different for each class on hdex, when I tested it recently for berserkers it was at 150 hdex intervals that I saw +1% crit chance. so until we can hit 450 hdex, 300hdex is a good stopping point to then focus on hstr to boost atk for the best hit distribution possible.
Attack from strength is basically worthless. It changes your displayed attack, but its not the same as pure attack from ranger buffs, skills, ect. Its just like how agi changes your ac number, but doesn't actually do anything for you defensively.
^This. Ive also seen some parses that say otherwise. Hstr most certainly does give a DPS boost. The only thing that has ever been questioned about Hstr, is shield AC.
It's every 10. HDex had the same (+damage) increments, when it was working for melee. (Likely still has them for ranged.) You can easily test this with Tribute or adding/removing augments, and parsing to see your max hit. I believe the crit chance is actually from the cap boost to base dex, not from the HDex directly. So, assuming it is in fact 150 increments, what amount is required to hit that increment would depend on your character. All Planar Power and following AAs? Shaman buffs? DoN stat boost AA? This may not be as cut-and-dry as it seems.
hdex also increases procrate which is another boost to offensive and for some classes thats bigger than the base dmg from str i guess, also depends what that player does on a regular basis. dex is huge for nearly all melee and tank classes because it has so many benefits, while it is nearly if not completely useless for caster/priests. as an sk ill take more riposte (~1% per 25) more parry (also ~1%- one is 1.2 one is .8 but they average out) every 25points, and get more procrates and crits on top of that. as a ranger that is pretty much all that matters because hdex still works exactly as it was intended to for them then jsut fill in holes if any with hstr for the melee side if you want. i honestly don't get however why a melee except perhaps those that use block isntead of parry, would take hagi over hdex. so many people, sadly including a lot of tanks, mistake that tiny bit of displayed ac to be worth something. parry is better than dodge because it's checked before it, and riposte is better than dodgebecause it also is checked before in addition to doing damage in return to the mob that could also trigger a proc and in sk cases, or anyone with an sk epic running in their group:a selfheal as well. leave the hagi to the tanks whom it should be their secondary heroic, and to caster/priests who get so little out of anything else and hope that it'll at least let them live 1 more hit. that all said, while i am all about getting more hdex i also make sure to balance heroics at least to a point. i have hdex hagi and hstr augs myself (str is moreso if maybe someday they fix the shield part, but i can feel ok about it bc of the dmg increase for hit to heal, as an SK at least) though the bulk of my augs are hdex, followed by a large chunk of hagi, and jsut a small handful of hstr until i find good enough reason to kill them off for better dex ones. ideally id get rid of all teh hstr ones and bankem, but i don't, at least not yet. up until the last year or so hdex augs werent so easy to come by WITH tank stats anyway so kinda had to get what you could, now it's possible to go all out on whatever stat you want, if you want to dedicate 100% to 1. i understand melees wanting hdex i truly do, it definitely has benefits, ncie benefits offensively and defensively. i don't see why they would choose it OVER hstr at least in most cases (a zerker or rogue that does nothing but decap/assassinate all day has no use for hstr, and rangers are best with hdex period of course) but it is the best secondary heroic for them like hagi is best secondary heroic for tanks. (i also still dont get the ones that take hagi and hsta augs over hdex, its disturbing to see warriors that do that repeatedly, and yo ucan't tell them otherwise lol, to me hsta is as useless as hwis and they too are stuck on the whole visible ac thing bc they can see it, not truly understanding what heroics actually do)
What melee dps class are you talking about? If you mean Berserkers, than most of their spam dps is from ranged attacks and stacking Hdex ups their dps in that way (Thanks Rorce for the explanation). Hagi also helps Berserkers who tend to be even more fragile than rogues. If you are a rogue, Hstr is still what you want to stack but there is some merit from Hagi and Hdex as well too as rogues do have throwing attacks and always could benefit from some marginal increases in defenses . Monks are light tanks so Hagi helps them. Not sure how this is surprising. /shrug. Build your character how you want. With augs and all gear being all/all now, there is no hard and fast rule that you have to stick to a certain stat.
Hdex provides more total avoidance than Hagi per a tier for classes with parry and riposte (+1% to each of parry and riposte vs +1% to dodge and non-shield block), so they should value it higher. But you can easily pick up an extra tier of Hagi by using +8 augs Hagi over the crappier Hdex augs. From some quick log searching, I found some melee hitting 7 times a sec over a fight (probably with an AE disc since most were around 4x a sec). With 470 Hstr giving a flat unmodifiable +47 damage to each hit, that is +329dps in total from Hstr. With something like 150 Hstr coming from focusing your augs, that's an amazing 105 dps from focusing on Hstr. Note that the current Cleave IX - 32 on raid cultural augs is worth the same as 320 Hstr for each additional aug past the first in terms of added dps. Of course, actual numbers are going to be lower. Since the top ranked Hstr rogues are all using Xorbb power sources with 100% power, and the 7 hits/sec was from a monk that used an ae melee disc on a fight with adds. But why not round up to the best case when you're dealing with something that adds an amount of dps that would be lost in the rng noise otherwise?
Yeah, I guess you could say that, under super-optimal conditions, adding 100 dps to 150,000+ dps burns is pretty easy to miss.
