[Nanovelich]

While trying to think of how to reply to the whole thread on the Basic Attack fix, I eventually gave up. I could make a rant about Vorpal existing, but that's a borderline case that should probably be knocked down a peg so it doesn't prevent the rest of basic attacks from being lifted back up.

That's beside the point.


A major problem I've found with basic attack builds that -aren't- relying on Vorpal to process and score them an upwards of 500 damage on someone regardless of how tanky they are: STR.

A very large majority of weapons scale off of it, but it provides very little otherwise. You get additional BW, which is only important to heavy builds since they want that extra weight, whereas anyone else reduces their gear's weight to fit what they already accommodate rather than opting for more STR, unless they're going for Two Hand... in which case they're still grabbing the talent to reduce the effective weight of their weapon in the end.

It provides Fire ATK, sure, but that's not very relevant to the basic attack builder either unless they include a reason for it.

And it provides Encumbrance, which is simply a dungeon-delving luxury and completely irrelevant in battle unless you've managed to Overencumber yourself before the fight.


So, what is STR good for? Weapon scaling, because so many melee weapons scale off of it.

This is in comparison to everyone else getting weapons that scale off of stats that also provide them other significant benefits. Ranged weapons? Scaling off SKI, which they needed to hit anyway. Daggers? Scaling off GUI and LUC if they're good ones Vorpal Fang, which they wanted for criticals COUGH FOR VORPAL COUGH anyway. Tomes? Whatever stats they need for their main magic and WIL, which again, they wanted anyway.



So a random thought. What if we looked back a bit on old formulas and made STR add additional numbers to the SWA for basic attacks only, rather than roll back to a bug?

This gives more incentive to build STR and use STR scaling weapons rather than everyone jumping to the same handful of weapons that don't rely on STR like they do now, and it gives people what they want in getting basic attacks back up a bit in the game.


Because let's be honest, a very large majority of the weapons in game are completely ignored because they scale off of STR, and unless you're a Reaper/Apertaurus looking to throw some Dragon Remains on them for a casting tool, you don't want to use them. And if it's not an Axe or a Spear, it's almost useless altogether. Why invest in STR to match one weapon's scaling when you could find a different weapon that doesn't make you? If you're MA? Better run HoTG for +12 STR, because STR is absolutely necessary for your classes, and not getting that +12 will kill your stat allocation otherwise.


So that was the random thought I had. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't really know; you tell me. Just thought I'd put it out here and see what other people thought. I don't even know what numbers I'd suggest this go off of if not simply "+STR damage to basic attacks." Because I feel like that would be too high, but I also feel like STR/2 would be too low. Difficult to say.