Strength Attribute - Improve 2H Weapons

PTR Feedback
1

Currently, the Strength Attribute determines the amount of damage you deal with your equipped weapon and each point increases your damage dealt by 1% of your weapon’s damage.

In an effort to make 2H weapons become more competitive, I would like to propose that each point increases your damage dealt by 3% of your weapon’s damage when 2H weapons are equipped. This would make Strength three times as effective for 2H weapons.

For example, if you have 100 points in Strength, you would do 300% more weapon damage with 2H weapons vs. 100% for 1H weapons. Thats a whopping 200% more weapon damage and is not trivial.

The benefit of this change is it would buff 2H weapons across the board and does not require a massive overhaul. I’m no programmer, but think it would be a straightforward change and could be implemented fairly quickly.

Last point, this change opens up more build diversity with players pursuing Strength based characters and makes the Strength Attribute more important beyond meeting stat requirements for gear. Thoughts?

Strength Attribute

  • 1H weapons: Each point of Strength increases damage dealt by 1%

  • 2H weapons: Each point of Strength increases damage dealt by 3%

Attribute Current Proposed
Dexterity (/point) +5 AR +10 AR
Strength (/point) +1% damage +2% damage
9 Likes
2

It would be nice if the damage benefit was higher in general so there’s more of a reason to skill it up instead of vitality.

3 Likes
3

I’m not sure if buffing the ST bonus for 2H weapons is better than say, buffing the base damage of 2H weapons. Overall, the goal of making them better than their 1H counterparts (at least in terms of damage) makes sense.

I’d prefer 2H weapons to be the king of damage, 2x 1-handed to have the most utility, and 1-handed + shield the most defense.

I think this is in part due to the MASSIVE power of grief compared to other runewords (hence this could also be addressed in runeword changes).

2 Likes
4

Agreed, but buffing the base damage for roughly a hundred 2H weapons is far less likely due to sheer amount of work that would be required from the developers as compared to buffing the strength attribute bonus, which would buff all 2H weapons across the board with one change. I think this would be a step in the right direction and maybe future improvements could be made at a later time.

3 Likes
5

Not necessarily just 2-handed weapons, but also 1-handed weapons that aren’t accompanied by a shield or a second 1-handed weapon. Conversely that will mean that 2-handed weapons that are dual wielded are treated as 1-handed weapons in this scenario.

1 Like
6

2 handers will never be used untill they give as much stats and affixes as dual wielding weapons or weapon and shield. But that would mean we should have a 2H sub requierment for RWs, and must rework every unique 2H weapon.
The new Obbsession rw is a step in to that deriction, an existing one is BotD for example, but that should be changed to require 2H weapons only. And i’m not seeing that happening ever, so 2H will never be used sadly, no matter what you do whit them. Maybe in some very niche cases but that’s all.

7

I agree that the perfect fix to 2H weapons would be a complete overhaul. However, I still think there is value in the proposed change with changing the strength attribute bonus as that would buff 2H weapons across the board.

Is it perfect no, but it does move us in the right direction with improving 2H weapons.

2 Likes
8

When all 2H will give 75% allres, +7 to all skills, 500% AR, 500% IAS, 80% chanse to Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, 70% FCR, +20 to all attributes, 20 life and mana leech is when you’ll see the them used more frequently, other than on mercenaries. Dose your proposal go in the right direction? Probably. Will it change anything? Deffinetly not. Ok maybe for xbows, but other than that, I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

9

I think buffing the strength attribute to grant 3% damage dealt per point for 2H weapons vs. 1% damage dealt for 1H weapons would be a good change.

For example, if you have 100 attribute points in strength, you would do 300% more weapon damage with 2H weapons vs. 100% for 1H weapons. Thats a whopping 200% more weapon damage and is not trivial.

I agree it’s not going to replace allres, + to skills, AR, IAS, CB, etc… but it is something that can be implemented now without requiring a massive overhaul. This change atleast moves 2H weapons in the right direction by 1 step and throws them a bone.

Last point, this change opens up more build diversity with players pursuing STR based, 2H weapon characters.

1 Like
10

This (or something similar) seems like a reasonable enough idea. Right now points in STR aren’t terribly useful beyond meeting stat requirements. Casters using Spirit routinely put more in STR than almost any Paladin or Barbarian, which is a little goofy.

That said, just bumping up the damage of weapon bases probably does more. VIT is too valuable of a stat dump with monster damage being so high. I’m guessing people would still choose that over pumping STR for damage, unless the STR bonus was broken levels of powerful.

Nonetheless, I’m not against this. It’d be a bit of consolation for builds that have to pump STR to meet specific weapon requirements. Wouldn’t mind getting a bit more help with my spearazon! They have to dump a lot into both STR and DEX to use their weapons, and less VIT is rough when they already have trouble stacking resists.

2 Likes
11

Totally agree on that 2H Weapon need to be tweaked (buffed) in some way.
(also Crossbow too)

1 Like
12

I’m not against your idea, I just don’t see it makeing a big difference. I think we still won’t see melee characters running whit 2H weapons and dumping points into Str. Because haveing a big health pool and being tanky is still more important. How ever, if we could split geting life from both stats. 2/3 from vit and 1/3 from str on top of geting 2-3% more dmg to 2H weapons, maybe it can happen. For Druids it’s definetly a good thing. But than there’s the thing about bows and xbows. For xbows it won’t be a problem, but bows have a pretty good dmg output, and they are 2H weapons also.

13

i like the idea but 3% is too much. 1.5% would be good enough for starters.

14

I think 1.5% is marginal and wouldn’t see much impact. As others pointed out, the damage output of 2H weapons has to compete vs. allres, + to skills, AR, IAS, CB, etc.

I think 3% would be a sweet spot that pushes 2H weapon damage far above 1H weapons, which is a good change. As 2H weapons have been subpar for a very long time, it’s time for them to have their limelight.

2 Likes
15

I agree 1,5% is not enough, if thats how it would be changed… In my opinion it has to be at least 2% to be noticeable. Maybe 2,5% would be a good value to try?

16

let’s say you have an Executioner’s Justice. 350 average damage. Add 7 +10 Max GCs, that’s 385 average damage.

at 300 strength 1.5% per point would provide an additional of 150% damage, which would be +577 damage. IMO it’s a very good amount to just add.

17

I think a 2%damage + 1% or .5% bonus AR per str while using 2H would be more useful for melee builds.

1 Like
18

Thats seems like a reasonable approach.

19

I still say its not enough!

Lets move to a different point of view for this example!

From my understanding the damage-bonus % adds to the weapondamage and works like every other percental damage improvement (like from skills or equipment), all different sources are added together and modificate the weapon damage…

Case number 1 (barbarian who is using berserk)

Lets say for a barbarianwe take Executioner’s Justice once more with the added GCs–>385 average damage…mabey you have 200 strength, you are using berserk with 900 % damage bonus and we have a mastery with 150 percent, all together 1250%
–>which leads us without the improved strength modification to 4812,5 average damage!
Now we add 100% (still 200 strength) for the 1,5% improvement for twohanded weapons → 1350% for 385 is 5197,5 thats an overall damage improvement from 8%!
For 300 strength it would be 5197,5 average damage without improvement and with improvement of 1,5% (150% more to the percental value) it would be 5775 which means the changed modification of 1,5% would be an overall improvement of 11%!

Case number 2 (barbarian who is using WW)

again same equipment (385 average damage) with 200 strength and about 300 % from WW and mastery together and a might mercenary with 200 extra percent → sums up to 700%, the damage modificated 385+700%=2695, if we take 1,5% we had another 100%–>385+800%=3080 is an improvement of about 14%!
now the same for 300 strength: without the 1,5% -->3080 and with 1,5% improvement 3657,5 which would be an overall improvement of 18,75 percent!

Summary of the modification improvement

Berserk:
for 200 strength -->8% more overall damage
for 300 strength -->11%

Whirlwind:
for 200 strength -->14% more overall damge
for 300 strength -->18,75%

I’d say thats not enough to make 2H weapons really competitive!

Please comment if there are any mistakes with the calculation!

20

not really enough when the issue is you are lacking an entire stat stick from your off-hand

1 Like