[Shujin]

I firmly believe one (of many) big part of why the tank meta is as prominent is because of strength doing a couple of things for them now.

Its not only their main damage stat, but its also gives them a good chunk of HP.

I suggest taking away the +3 HP per point and shift it around for something else that's benefitting the basic attackers.

0.25-0.5% crit damage 
or flat armor pierce  (or probably better to str/2 armor pierce, it shouldn't be overtuned)

or whatever. We tested HP. I consider the test failed. Strength should not be Both primary damage stat and secondary HP stat.

[Aqua]

If we're going to change the HP given from strength rather than remove it from the stat entirely change the +3 HP per 1 base to something else

A few ideas I had for this just of the top of my head would be as following:

+3 HP every 5 Points base

OR

+3 HP every 6 Points base

You get the idea really. Strength giving HP is fine as it is.

[Shujin]

I disagree that its "fine" in the current game, and here is why:

If you only lessen one weight on the overstacked side of the scale without adding something on another side of the scale, you will only very mildly shift the balance but more likely not at all, In this case its barely even worth touching if you do only that.

However if for example, strength wouldn't be an "tank" stat but a fully offensive one, that makes people that negate for example crit evade cause nothing hurts them anyway, get slightly more pressured by it-> In turn people will more often feel the need that they might want to avoid that-> Therefore shift their build around alittle and consider, if they want to be more tanky than offensive to spend points in defensive stats (faith or Luc in this example, or a boneheart enchant over giant gene)-> This automatically takes a bit away from one of the most oppressive playstyles right now. full SWA tanks.

So yes of course in theory it would be fine, but if it wants to keep doing that, there needs something else to be done. I think strength is a lot more reasonable and easier to shift around as.  And yes I am well aware that there are currently many more things not working right now. But you also can't further buff SWA autohit builds at the moment, so bringing a bit of fear to basic attacks is probably the way to go. (Vulcano enchant is getting its own thread, its way too strong, from what I gathered from testing so far.)

[Sawrock]

Since I’ve fought a lot as a basic attacker both with and without strength, crit damage and/or crit rate would be my preference. Autohits are overused right now and this would give basic attacks some merit.

[FatherCrixius]

Real tanks don't build strength.

Magic and tomes eclipses anything melee and strength based has to offer rn.

As for your suggestions, I disagree with both;

1% Crit damage per point would make it similar to gui, and people still refuse to build that because of it's terrible position in the basic hit damage calculation, hence the overwhelming reliance on volcanic, claret, or what have you.

Mitigating armour / 2 points of strength is also overtuned, partially due to the above reason, and already exists in the form of wear down weapons.

--
And lastly removing HP scaling will affect dodge builds MORE than tanks. Dodge builds run significantly lower vit than any tank. There are far more stat requirements for basic hitting than autohits, resulting in less Vit. I see too many 700 HP no dr kensei's wonder why they're getting their asses whooped, and removing strength defensive scaling does nothing to alleviate that. If you want to make crutchless basic hitting viable, either Kite or make the stats far more efficient to spec into defensive stats of your own.

[Perdition]

There are both positives and negatives to this idea but it would require extensive testing. I guess it would be as easy as giving a free fluidity fruit and changing the stat retroactively and seeing how it goes but I think it could be a change for the better.

I know that for some of my autohit builds, building str was actually more of a boon than expected because it does inflate your HP quite a bit while doubling up as damage. Actually, stats that act as both defensive and double dip into damage are always troublesome imo. It's why earth magic is so broken, and dark magic would probably be just as busted if it had better spells. I mean, we see that Enma's can wreak just as much havoc as Isenshi. The only reason wind isn't in a similar camp is because dodge strategies are vastly inferior. It makes no sense to reward someone offensively for a stat they're required to take for their respective strategy. If you want damage, you should be required to go out of your way to build it independent of what you're naturally taking for defenses.

This is why SAN isn't taken as often as it would be otherwise if there were widely available sound spells. You typically only see SAN taken if it also has a benefit for a racial. This is because it double dips in usefulness like the aforementioned defensive stats. To come back to the topic of the OP, this is currently part of the issue with STR here, although to a lesser scale. Getting rid of the HP scaling in favor of something else like crit damage or something else would also take away from the current tanking potential in the game. It's no secret that there are just tons of ways to make your character tanky. Even just removing the HP from str lowers the highest possible HP tanks can have which hurts them, and they could certainly use a hurting.

[Sarah54321]

Strength being changed like this would be detrimental to dodge builds far more than to tank builds. The only tank builds that really build strength are those that need to scale their weapon's SWA.

Basic Hitters are more likely to build Strength, and a basic hitter is more often than not dodge. They need as much HP as they can get.

[Fern]

Dev nerfed the STR-whoring tanks (to an extent) but not the spellcaster doomwalls. STR autohitters, while good, don't tend to be as good as someone ditching STR entirely in favor of magic and more DR stats with SAN sometimes thrown into the mix, albeit not necessarily.

I'm of the opinion that the reason we're in the spot we are is because Silence became a scarce enough status to the point Mages don't ever have to worry about it, specially if they have a Heron Feather or a Throatopener. Some people straight up do not grab Silent Prayer because of how rare Silence has become.

I think the only thing that should be addressed for now is magic tanks, and I'd say it would be best done by:
1. Making Silence more frequent of a status, not excessively but enough that it isn't considered inexistent.
2. Not making it completely shut down everything mages do. I think a reasonable compromise would be making it so Silence instead does:
A) Makes Spells work at half damage or effectiveness
B) Makes Spells work at half damage or effectiveness and does not let you cast Invocations.

Removing the HP gain from STR hurts the non-meta builds more than the meta itself right now. Magic tanks would be largely unaffected if STR hypothetically stopped giving HP, since they don't need it. They don't even need that much VIT, usually just leaving it softcapped and then pumping defensive stats up the wazoo.

[Shujin]

thats mostly a problem with damage numbers in general being overtuned.

But there is simple logical proof that the claim that it screw more with basic attackers than with tanks, is untrue.

While yes there are the magical tanks that do not rely on strength at all, I count them as in issue as their own and I tackle for now people like Falconstrike/Lance de lion death combo. Cause that's about 0% fun or fair.

40 base str results in 120 HP (132 with gene)

a defensive person easily has negations up in the lowball 50-60% area with armor to boot it (armor works before crit damage, heavily reducing its power)
Dodge people while in theory lose the same number of HP have far less options to lower the damage and there are plenty of ways around, if they are lucky they max out at 30% if they use ogatas and some other mainclass negation skill. Usually also barely any armor.
This means that the 120(132) hp for the tank are more than twice as effective, which in a damage race between those two is SUPER unfair. Cause again, none of them is losing damage one is just tankier has a more effective HP value.

Yes I left parry skills and evasion out, because they honestly barely even matter anymore with all the ways around it.


I absolutely agree that this is by far the cure of it. But Keeping HP here is not helping. Damage numbers need to be lowered overall. Otherplay styles, espicially the more risky ones, need more offensive power than their "Safe" counter side.

[Fern]

Falcon Strike into Lance de Lion is generally not doable due to the reason that:



You'd have to be standing right in Lance de Lion range for a Falcon Strike combo to be thrown into the mix, and at that point it's the same (in essence) as standing in the line of a Priest with Needle, in range of Wretched Oil > Menov's Fang, or in range of Sidecut > Two more basics. It's the sort of thing that usually, although not always, can be avoided.

Magic, on the other hand, cannot be avoided in the majority of circumstances. There's little counterplay to it beyond hyper-speccing into anti-magic damage, which is a huge part of why magic tank meta is considered so cancerous to deal with right now.

Dodgies already take a million damage from magic meta so the extra HP usually doesn't matter -too- much to them. But it's still a decent help. It's not only helpful for them, but for anyone that wants to build a particularly IC concept that needs some semblance of basic functionality even if not necessarily the strongest build out there. STR giving HP was a blessing and a curse due to the reason that it enabled more variety in a game where the cookie cutter build is so prominent, and that it enabled STR autohitter tank meta to exist in the first place. But Dev already nerfed the scaling on the biggest offenders of the STR autohitters, it's why I (personally) don't mind them as much as the one spellcaster with 60 scaled DEF/RES stacking a million DR and doing 400 damage per round to you with a Custom Spell > anything else. Worse, 700+ if they're running Impure Element for giggles.
 
Basically, removing HP gain from STR does not encourage more variety - it kills it.