Below is sample text and links to a Melee FAQ from the VN Boards. This is an excellent, well thought out guide by Erudine. Topic: Melee FAQ Erudine 1,020 posts Posts: 1,020 Registered: May 01 Date Posted: 9/29 12:54pm Subject: Melee FAQ Melee Guide. Info for people new to the profession. ============ --contents-- ============ what's the best weapon swinging, S/P, damage and attack height armor and protections shields and damage prevention hollows and phantoms shields and stamina endurance and you heal kits and health elixirs know your imbues damage over time iron vs granite and tinkering weapons templates hunting grounds pk'ing =========================== --what's the best weapon?-- =========================== Firstly, there is no best weapon. If you mean which does the most damage, then the answer is sword. If you mean which does the most bludgeoning damage, then the answer is mace. If you mean which has equal access to all damage types equally, then the answer is UA. The point is, you want to know what makes the weapons different so you can choose which is right for you. That's what we'll talk about in this section. First of all, the skill credits required to train and specialize melee weapons differs. Use this handy chart: Sword 8 + 8 = 16 Mace 6 + 6 = 12 Axe 6 + 6 = 12 Spear 4 + 4 = 8 UA 0 + 6 = 6 (Sho) Staff 0 + 4 = 4 (Gharu) Dagger 0 + 4 = 4 (Aluv) Then lets consider the average damage done by each weapon to a Target Drudge during a one-minute period by a L120'ish character with pretty decent equipment: Sword: 3800(100%) Mace: 3683(96.9%) Bow: 3601(94.7%) Axe: 3554(93.5%) Atlatl: 3435(90.4%) Xbow: 3137(82.6%) Spear: 3064(80.6%) UA: 3058(80.5%) Staff: 2631(69.2%) Dagger: 2571(67.7%) This lists how much damage each weapon does a percentage of the damage a Sword does. So two very similar characters, similarly equiped, one specialized in mace and one in sword, the mace character will do only 97% of the damage the sword character does. Now, what makes each weapon special? Sword - strongest slashing and elemental attacks. Many entertaining quest weapons. High frequency of swords dropped in random loot. Weapons aren't too heavy, allowing many different ones to be carried. Double-striking quest weapons available. Chief drawback is no bludgeon attack. Mace - strongest bludgeon attack. No slashing attack except from one (maybe more in the future) quest weapon. Weapons are quite heavy. Some interesting quests. Axe - second best slashing and bludgeon attacks. No piercing attack (except for really terrible pickaxes and one quest weapon). Some interesting quests. Spear - strong piercing attack. No bludgeon attack. Heavy weapons. Few quests. UA - Damage is based on skill and on strength (other weapons have damage based solely on strength), making it harder to reach full damage potential. Has equal access to all seven damage types. Loot weapons have an extra +5% melee d bonus, and many quest weapons do also. Able to switch weapons mid-swing, without breaking stance. Swings slightly faster than other weapons on fastest swing setting. Weapons are very light. Few real quests. Staff - strong bludgeon attacks. No piercing attacks at all, and slashing only from mediocre quest weapons. Dagger - Dagger skill is based on Coord + Quick, rather than Coord + Str, for every other weapon. Dagger damage is based on Coord rather than Str. Weapons are very light. Tripple-striking quest weapons are available. No access to bludgeoning damage. Basically, all melee weapons work the same except UA and Dagger. No character would ever need more than one melee skill specialized. Choose the one that's right for you considering your template's skill credits needs, and lets get swinging! ========================================================= --swinging, S/P, damage and attack height, weapon speed-- ========================================================= Ok, now that we have chosen a weapon, let's attack something with it! There's two choices to make: 1) Where do I put the Power Slider? 2) Do I attack low, medium, or high? The power slider represents a change from -50% damage on the far left to +50% damage on the far right. This means you do 3 times the damage per swing with it set to full power than you do with it set to minimum power. Clearly, on minimum power, you also attack faster, but not quite fast enough to make up for the lost damage. Sol Chen's data says that you only do 8/9ths or 88% the damage per minute swinging on full speed than you do swinging on full power. So is that it? Swinging on full power uses more stamina per swing. If you run out of stamina, you will automatically do "least power" swings even if your power bar is set to full power. You're just too tired to swing at full power. You can, if you want, let yourself run out of stamina and then set the slider to full-speed and attack without other penalties. Swinging on full power can also result in "overkill" or wasted damage. If one full-power swing leaves what you're fighting with a tiny little bit of health left, you'd probably kill them quicker using four low-power swings than 2 full-power swings. Attacking low, medium, or high is a decision you have to make on a per-monster basis. Some monsters have different levels of armor on different parts of their body. If a monster, say a Zheralim, has a poorly armored head, and you swing high, then some of your attacks will hit the monsters poorly armored head and do additional damage. Here are the places you can hit using each attack height: high swing: head, upper arms, chest medium swing: hands, lower arms, upper legs, chest, abdomin low swing: feet, lower legs, upper legs Another thing to consider is where your opponent is swinging at you. If you and your opponent both swing at the same height, you each receive a +20% melee d bonus. This means it can make it harder for you to hit, but can also make it harder for you to be hit. A good demonstration of this is against Assailers, Devastators, Annihilators, and Obliterators, which always attack high. If you also swing high, you'll find you evade much more often. Now, what about those wacky slash/pierce weapons? some weapons, swords, daggers, katars, are rated as doing slash and pierce damage. That works out roughly like this. On fullpower they all do slashing. On lowest power and a low attack, they pierce. On low power and a high attack, they slash. Hilted weapons behave differently. Daggers hilted will pierce if a shield is equipped and slash if a shield is unequipped. Hilted Yaoji's will behave the same way, while hilted rapiers always pierce. For a multi-strike weapon to actually multi-strike, fullpower or very close to it must be used. Your buffed quickness effects the speed at which you swing your weapon. This interacts with the speed listed on your weapon. Larger speeds are worse (they swing slower). The general rule is that it takes 180 buffed quickness to acheive the fastest possible swing animation with a zero-speed weapon. Most weapons can reach zero speed with a high level swiftkiller spell placed on them, so this isn't as tough as it seems. ========================= --armor and protections-- ========================= Before we talk about shields we should quickly review how armor works. Physical attacks go through armor and resistances. War Magic attacks ignore armor entirely. Each piece of armor has different values vs. each of the seven attack types. These matter. If something attacks you with acid, then your armor's acid protection determines how much damage you sustain. Armor in general obeys this formula: Fraction of damage sustained = (1/(1 + armor level/60)) So if you have AL 60 armor, and you suffer an attack, you only receive half the damage you would have taken had you been unarmored. Similarly, if you have 120 AL, you only take 1/3rd the damage. Thus increasing AL has decreasing benefits: improving your AL from 0 to 60 has a (much, much) bigger impact than improving your armor from 1200 to 1260. Remember physical attacks are still effected by elemental vulnerabilities and resistances, particularly the Life Magic spells like "Acid Vulnerability" and "Acid Protection". Thus, if you want to protect yourself from physical attacks, you need to cast Armor Self (the life spell), all the seven Life protection spells, cast Impenetrability on your armor, and all the seven Bane spells (item magic) on all your armor. Similarly, if you want to maximize the damage you do to a target, you need to cast both Imperil and Vulnerability. ================================= --shields and damage prevention-- ================================= Shields are close to all-powerful. They act as an extra layer of armor in addition to the armor you usually wear. An attack coming at you from your front half (a 180 degree arc) will first have it's damage reduced (using the above formula) by the shield, and then have the remaining damage reduced AGAIN by the same formula for your normal Armor. Suppose I have an AL 600 shield and AL 600 armor. Then suppose I get hit with a 1000-point attack. This is what happens: 1000 damage - AL600 shield = 100 damage 100 damage - AL600 armor = 10 damage actually taken. Now compare that to just wearing AL1200 armor without a shield: 1000 damage - AL1200 armor = 50 damage actually taken. As this example should show, shields are very, very powerful. However, remember that because of this, some monsters are shield-hollow, meaning, their attacks ingore any shields. These include the Olthoi Queen, Devastator Tuskers, Annihilator Tuskers, and Obliterators. There may be others in the future, and this list may change - Assailer Tuskers used to be shield-hollow, but have presently lost that ability. There is an interesting quest shield, the Aegis, that has no AL, does nothing against physical attacks, but reduces the damage done by War Spells and Life Bolt spells. This shield functions very differently. When it is equipped any war spell (from the front or back) will have it's damage reduced by a % determined by your base magic defense. The equation is roughly (magic d - 100) / 9, which means at a possible maximum of 319 base magic d, the aegis shield would reduce all war magic damage by 25%. ======================== --hollows and phantoms-- ======================== There are certain quest weapons that are called Hollow, and others called Phantom. While these are mostly useful for PKs, the phantom can be very effective against monsters with super-high armor. Here's the rules: Hollow - ingores all magic of all kinds. Only things that matter is the base AL of your shield and armor. Phantom - ingores all armor of all kinds. Only things that matter is the Life Protection spells, including cantrip "wards." Thus, if you're using your Phantom Weapon to kill a Virindi Profatrix, to do the max damage, you'll have to cast Slashing or Piercing Vulnerability on your target. Both Phantom and Hollow weapons are available in all melee types and all missile types. Note that War Magic is already "phantom" because it totally ignores armor. ======================= --shields and stamina-- ======================= Your weapon and shield's combined burden (bu) determine how much stamina you use per swing. Basically heavier weapons and shields use up more stamina. I'm no expert on this, so I'm pasting an essay by Kougar from VNBoards. I usually have a hard time explaining myself in typed messages. To make sure I've explained myself well, I will end up being long winded. Sorry if this is more than you ever wanted to know on this subject. happy Combat Burden The burden of your weapon and shield will determine your combat burden. The combat burden will determine how much stamina you burn at any power bar setting. To determine which burden range you are in, add your shield burden to 1.5 times your weapon burden. CombatBurden = ShieldBurden + (1.5 * WeaponBurden) Burden Ranges I purchased a bunch of different weapons and shields to do my tests, but I still wasn't able to cover all possible burden combinations. I was able to narrow the range cutoffs down pretty good though. I will provide the low and high end of each burden range, the stamina used at 100% power for that range, and where my guess is for the cutoff to the next range. Tested Burden Range Stam used at 100% Power Cutoff Guess 0 to 202.5 2 300? 378 to 998.5 3 1000 1015.5 to 1665 4 1675 1695 to 2355 5 2375 2385.5 to 3023 6 3050 3052 to 3450 7 3750 3818 to 4110 8 ? All of the tests were done against oak drudges. The tester was not burdened at the time and had a strength of 175. These results were checked against another character with strength of 130 and were identical. A total of 78 different weapon/shield combinations were tested with the first character. I will refer to the burden ranges using the stam used at 100% power for the rest of this post. We have burden ranges from 2 to 8 based on the stam per swing at 100% power. Power Bar Settings For each burden range the power bar has fixed cutoff points for different stamina usages. The next table shows the upper power bar setting of each stam usage for each of the burden ranges. Range # Stam per swing: Highest setting on power bar 2 1: 99%, 2: 100% 3 1: 55%, 2: 99%, 3: 100% 4 1: 32%, 2: 65%, 3: 99%, 4: 100% 5 1: 20%, 2: 47%, 3: 73%, 4: 99%, 5: 100% 6 1: 12%, 2: 34%, 3: 55%, 4: 77%, 5: 99%, 6: 100% 7 1: 4%, 2: 24%, 3: 43%, 4: 61%, 5: 79%, 6: 99%, 7: 100% 8 1: N/A, 2: 15%, 3: 32%, 4: 49%, 5: 65%, 6: 82%, 7: 99%, 8: 100% On range 8 there is no setting that allows you to use only 1 stamina per swing. Knowing that 0% power = 0.5 * base damage, 50% power = 1.0 * base damage, and 100% power = 1.5 * base damage, you can see that the best stamina per damage ratio is at the highest setting for 1 stam per swing (2 stam per swing in the case of range 8). Kougar [end Kougar's text] ===================== --endurance and you-- ===================== Endurance and Strength, combined, have an effect on many aspects of melee combat. Here's a quick list of the effects: strength - burden, damage (except for dagger) strength + endurance - drain resistance, natural resistance, health regeneration endurance - stamina used per swing, stamina used per evade The strength effects on damage and burden work of buffed strength values but the other effects work of base strength and endurance. Firstly, each point of buffed strength allows you to carry another 150 bu worth of equipment before becoming overburdened, and thus suffering penalties to melee defense, missile defense, run, and jump. Each point of buffed strength also causes you to do slightly more damage on successful attacks, but this is covered in more detail under the section on Damage Over Time. Strength and endurance combined (their sum) effects your resistance to drain health, and harm spells, and the similar spells that effect stamina and mana. This resistance ranges (linearly) from 1% at 201 combined base str + end, to 50% at 500 combined base str + end. You also get the same benefit vs. magic and physical attacks, which acts as a weak Life "protection" spell vs. all elements. This protection is not cumulative with Life spells cast upon you, only the greater effect will occur. For example, if I have 200 base str, and 100 base endurance, I have 300 combined base str and end. I therefor have 16.6% resistance to drains and attacks. Thus, even totally unbuffed, I will take 16.6% less damage from all war and physical attacks, and drain + harm spells. Note that this is the only way to protect yourself from drains and harms. See http://ac.warcry.com/compendium/advance/natural_res_calc.php for more details. Strength and endurance also help your natural regeneration rate, or how quickly health returns to you, but endurance is twice as important as strength in this computation. The benefits go from a 1% increase in regeneration at 201 combined (str + 2 * endurance) to 110% increase at 750 combined (str + 2 * endurance). Base endurance by itself determines the likelihood of using a point of stamina when you successfully evade a melee or missile attack. This is rumored to max out at a 75% chance of using no stamina to evade at 250 base endurance. Similarly, endurance will help you use less stamina per swing, reducing your attacks to using a minimum of 1 stamina per full power attack. The exact math for this is unknown, but it is probable that the maximum benefit occurs at 250 base endurance. ================================ --heal kits and health elixirs-- ================================ Healing keeps a melee warrior alive. Healing kits have two different properties, one is a bonus applied to your healing skill, and another is a bonus that determines how much health you get back when you succeed in healing. There are several factors that determine whether you succeed or fail at healing these are: Total damage sustained, computed as max health - current health Buffed Healing Skill Whether you're in peace mode or combat mode A Random Number Healing is a skill check like any other (see math behind the skill check, http://ac.warcry.com/index.php3?library=essays/MathSkillCheck , for more information). Thus there is a 50% success skill level, where above it success becomes more likely than 50% and below that skill level, success is less likely. For healing, the 50% mark is: 2 * (max health - current health) Thus, if you have 200 maximum health and are currently at 50 health, the difficulty is 2 * 150 = 300, and you would need 300 buffed healing skill to have a 50% chance at success. If you succeed, the amount of health you get back depends on your skill, the healing kit you use, and your current stamina. The exact formula for this is unknown. It can be very difficult to heal when you are very close to death. In these cases health elixirs are a necessary tool in any melee's arsenal. Health elixirs can be bought in various sizes from healers in towns, and they can be made by alchemists, and powerful health elixirs can be looted off creatures or found as quest rewards. These currently restore between 50 and 120 health per elixir, depending on the exact type. It is advantageous in many circumstances to first drink an elixir to heal 65 health or so, then use your healing skill to heal the remaining 100 or 150 health. You will learn to know when this strategy is appropriate. ==================== --know your imbues-- ==================== Melees, more than any other class, need to pay attention to weapon imbues. This is for two reasons - firstly, a melee cannot have both maxed attack skill and maxed life skill, and some imbues compensate for a lack of life magic, and secondly, because a melee has to imbue 6 or 7 different weapons with Armor Rending or Critical strike to have access to Armor Rending weapons in each possible damage type. Presently, there are four imbues: Sunstone = Armor Rending Black Opal = Critical Strike Fire Opal = Crippling Blow (various) = Resistance Rending Armor Rending (AR) reduces the effective armor of your opponent by a % based on your base weapon skill. These weapons are most effective against higher-armored opponents. Note that using one of these weapons will effectively reduce the benefit gained from casting Imperil on your target. Also be aware that some monsters have NEGATIVE armor, and that using an AR weapon will acually result in the monster having higher effective armor, making this imbue counter productive. Critical Strike (CS) increases the rate at which your weapon acheives critical hits based on your base weapon skill. Crippling Blow (CB) is similar - it increases the size of your critical strikes, but not their frequency. Note that without imbues, you crit 10% of the time and your crits do 2 times the maximum damage a normal hit does. Resistance Rending (RR) imbues come in seven flavors, one for each type of damage. These are: White Sapphire - Bludgeon Rending Imperial Topaz - Slash Rending Black Garnet - Pierce Rending Red Garnet - Fire Rending Auqamarine - Frost Rending Emerald - Acid Rending Jet - Lightning Rending Each of these increases your target's vulnerability to attacks of the appropriate kind coming from the imbued weapon. This is exactly like casting the appropriate Life Vulnerability spell on your target. In fact, these two effects are not cumulative - if you cast Fire Vulnerability and attack with a Fire Rending Fire Weapon, only the greater of the two effects will occur. Note that you can put Fire Rending imbue on a Frost weapon - and this will do absolutely nothing! Don't waste your weapons and your imbues! Make sure you match the imbue to the weapon damage type. There is a formula for the maximum effect of these imbues: Armor Rending: % of armor ignored = (skill - 160) / 400 Critical Strike: % crits = (skill - 100) / 600 Crippling Blow: critical damage multiplier = (skill - 40) / 60 (exact RR formula unknown) Note that all of these have a maximum at 400 base skill. Even though you can have higher base skill, your imbues will not be any more effective after this level. The maximum benefits for 400 base are: AR - 60% armor ignored CS - 50% critical strikes CB - 6x damage multiplier on crits RR - 150% damage, same as a Level 6 Life Vulnerability spell. Which Imbue is best? Firstly, Resistance Rending is always much, much better than any other imbue against a target that is not debuffed in anyway. If you can cast Vulnerabilities and Imperils, then resistance rending is much, much worse than the other imbues, because your RR will not stack with your Vulnerability spell, while the other three imbues will. Secondly, it turns out that CS and CB, on average, and over long periods of time, do about the same average damage. However, a CB weapon is likely to "waste" damage by "overkill" since the crits are very large and very infrequent. On the other hand, it can be very satisfying to see huge Crits. grin Since CS and CB are about the same, we can just compare AR to CS, and the same logic applies for AR vs CB. Basically, AR is better on highly armored monsters. It can be hard to tell exactly which monsters these are, you'll have to test this in the field. However, there are some monsters that have very low armor, and after an imperil will have negative armor. On these it is critical to use CS weapons, because the AR weapon will actually REDUCE the damage you do. VoD is famous for having a large variety of these types of monsters. For more information on AR vs. CS, check here: http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=45287998&replies=21 Remember, you should always attempt to imbue your best weapon, because the effects of imbues are so powerful that your best-unimbued weapon will be pathetic compared to your worst imbued weapon. Quest Imbues - Biting Strike, Crushing Blow, and Slayers. Quest weapons come with different imbue properties that function much like CS and CB, but slightly differently. The important thing to remember is that each quest weapon has different effectivenesses: the Sword of Lost Light with Biting Strike on it has a different Biting Strike than a different quest weapon with Biting Strike. Biting Strike increases the rate at which the weapon makes critical hits. This rate is fixed and hidden, and different for each quest weapon. Thus, one quest weapon might crit at 15% (regarless of skill) and another at 20%. Crushing Blow increases the damage multiplier done by critical hits. This mulitiplier is fixed and hidden. One weapon might do crits that are 3 times bigger than the normal maximum hit, and another weapon might do crits 4 times bigger. The only way to tell is to experiment. Slayer properties increase the damage done to monsters of the stated type by a factor dependent on your base skill. Thus an Olthoi Slayer weapon does more damage to olthoi, and a Tumerok Slayer weapon does more damage to Tumeroks. The equation for the effectiveness is similar to the AR equation: 1+(base skill-160)*(slayer multiplier)/240. The slayer multiple is different for each weapon; Sol Chen guesses that Gearlan Quest olthoi slayers have a multiplier of .72, while Perfect Isparian Weapons have a multiplier of 1.71. ==================== --damage over time-- ==================== This section involves a lot of math. If you don't like math, and you're a gamer, that'd be a little bit surprising because games are all based on formulas, stats, and probability. Consider obtaining a working knowledge of algebra and probability. If you're a roleplayer and just like how COOL these games are, then don't worry, I'll sumarize what you need to know first, and let you know when you can skip the rest of the math. Damage over time is the idea that the damage output of two comparable players using different weapons, on average, obeys a very finely-tuned thing sometimes referred to as "balance" between weapons. By measuring the damage done by different weapons over time, we can compare how much more damage you do for the skill credit cost of the different melee skills. First: How do I increase my Damage? There are three ways. The most important is to cast blooddrinker on your weapon. The next is to raise your Strength (or coord for dagger players). The third is to tinker your weapon with granite and iron. For UA (and UA only), raising your buffed UA skill by 20 points will act like an additional point of damage is applied to your weapon. Don't get too excited about this, UA has a lower damage bonus from strength than all other weapons, which balances this out. Damage over Time Summary: Sword: 3800(100%) Mace: 3683(96.9%) Bow: 3601(94.7%) Axe: 3554(93.5%) Atlatl: 3435(90.4%) Xbow: 3137(82.6%) Spear: 3064(80.6%) UA: 3058(80.5%) Staff: 2631(69.2%) Dagger: 2571(67.7%) Remember that Strength is a multiplier applied to your damage after blooddrinker, any UA bonus, and iron tinkers are added into your weapon's damage. Also note that variance is the ratio of the lowest damage to the highest damage on your weapon, which doesn't change when it's buffed with something like blooddrinker. The only way to change variance is with Granite tinkers. Remember, a SMALL or TIGHT variance is better than a big variance, because it means your minimum hit is closer to your maximum hit. Math: [from Sol Chen's Damage Over Time study] DoT = (max dmg)*((1-crit chance)*(2-variance)/2 + (crit chance)*(crit multiplier))*(coord/str mod)*(power or bow mod)*(rate-of-fire) max dmg = weapon max+blooddrinker+UA mod Ua mod = skill/20, considering only true skill, not any Heartseeker or weapon mods (UA/10 for phantom katar) crit chance=0.10 for most weapons, (Base Skill - 100)/600 for CS melee, (Base Skill - 60)/600 for CS missile crit multiplier=2 for most weapons (some old-school quest weapons had higher), (Base Skill - 40)/60 for melee weapons, (Base Skill)/60 for missile weapons coord/str mod = 1+(Stat-55)*.008 UA, Bow, Xbow, TW and 1+(Stat-55)*.011 for other weapons. Bow, Xbow and Dagger use Coordination, Thrown Weapons and all other melee weapons use Strength. Bow mod = (100+bow/xbow/alatl mod)/100 Power mod = 1.5 for most weapons (.5 is used for hollow and phantom melee weapons) Rate of fire for MELEE weapons. assumes a zero speed weapon, and the owner has at least 180 quick. Some weapons can not be brought down to zero speed. I did my best to measure RoF for these weapons at different quicknesses and these reductions are included in the DoT. In general, it takes about 20 points extra quick over 180 to "zero" 10 points of weapon speed. Weapon speed differences are not hugely significant at high power (20 speed = 32 hits per minute instead of 33, 60 speed = 29 hits/minute) but at low power it is much more noticable (20 speed = 90% of the hits, 60 speed = 5/8 of the hits). It takes about 260 quick to "zero" a 40 speed weapon, about 300 to "zero" a 60 speed weapon....which is as bad as it gets, even for something like a fang mace. ROF (swings per minute) for weapon types are: UA: 35 (104 on max speed) All other melee singlestrike: 33 (88 on max speed) Doublestrike: 26 (52 hits/minute) Triplestrike Slash: 23 (69 hits/minute) Triplestrike Pierce: 20 (60 hits/minute) Bow: 28 Alatl: 24 Crossbow: 21 Thrown Weapons w/shield: 21 Any level 5-7 spell: 16 [ Read more of Sol Chen's work here: http://www.talkaboutsoftware.com/group/microsoft.public.games.zone.asherons_call/messages/196439.html ] With that much math you can do your own damage over time calculations, comparing all sorts of different scenarios. ========================================= --iron vs granite and tinkering weapons-- ========================================= Basically, use a mix of Iron and Granite. Granite reduces the variance of your weapon by 20% of its current variance (this is multiplicative). Iron adds one to the max damage of your weapon, without changing the variance (this means your minimum damage will go up, slightly). The rule of thumb is: If the imbue is AR or RR, tinker with granite until the variance is 25% or 20%. Then tinker with Iron. If the imbue is CS, tinker with granite until the variance is 50% or 40%. Then tinker the rest with iron. If the imbue is CB, don't use CB. Use CS. Or tinker with granite until the variance is 25%. Then iron. I summarized the above from Sol Chen's calcualtions: http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=38322419&start=38326666 Also try using a tinkering calculator such as: http://www.code-poets.org/weapondamage.html ============= --templates-- ============= There is a lot of variability in Melee templates because a melee gets good use out of five of the six attributes - Str for weapon skill and damage bonus End for resistances and stamina conversion Coord for weapon skill and melee d skill Quick for attack speed and melee d skill Focus for healing, arcane lore, life magic, and item magic. A melee can't start with 100 in all of those attributes, so tradeoffs must be made. I won't try to describe all the templates here, but I'll try to illustrate the dimensions along witch they tend to vary. 1. Almost all templates start with 100 in strength, because to do otherwise just sacrifices too much damage. 2. Some people play high-magic and others low-magic. Low magic templates tend to spec Weapon, Melee d, and Arcane Lore, and start something like 100/40/100/70/10/10. These usually train only Item magic, partially for baning and mostly for transportation. High magic templates will spec Life Magic and frequently start with 100 in focus. It might be something like: Spec weapon, melee d, life, and start 100/10/100/10/100/10. 3. Shields are so powerful that some people play without melee d. Most often combined with a very magic-heavy template. Something like 100/10/50/10/100/60, Spec weapon, life magic, creature magic. 4. An astute observer notices that most deaths are caused by magic, and not by melee attacks. Some people will spec Magic D instead of Melee D for this reason. 5. Some templates drop healing all together in favor of using Trade Health Elixirs, which can be made on a mule using Alchemy. These have the benefit of never failing. 6. Missile D is in general not needed because shields are so powerful, yet many low-magic templates will train it anyway, partially because they have too many extra skill credits. =================== --hunting grounds-- =================== [this space intentionally left blank. Look at Melee Leveling Guides, they change frequently. http://vnboards.ign.com/AC_Warriors_Stop/b5146/57992583/?124 ] ========== --pk'ing-- ========== Fashions in PK change fairly quickly. Let me just mention some basics: Melee vs. Mage Use the Aegis. Use wards. Use major Strength. Cast Imperil and Vuln. Learn to dodge. Use a hit-and-run tactic where you swing in between war spells. Press the attack when they are low on Stamina and Mana. If you don't get 2 crits in short succession, retreat and heal. Use health elixirs and the best healing kits available. Learn to slide-heal. If your magic d gives you one resist out of 30 spells, that can be enough to secure victory. Melee vs. Archer If the archer is a low-magic tank, you'll have to out-magic him. If the archer is a high-magic template also with high melee d, it's almost hopeless. Missile d helps here, the archer will have to fire more slowly. Wear very good armor, and fully buff and bane it and your undergarments. Try to nerf the Archer's Melee D and Coord. If the archer still evades, Magic Yeild him and try to win using quest wands. The weeping wand has a powerful L7 war spell that you can fire without war trained. Melee vs. Melee If one of you evades more, that one will win. If your oponent evades, nerf their melee d. If you can't evade your oponent, use a weapon with a higher melee d mod. Make use of the same-height-attack melee d bonus to either hit your oponent or evade your oponent, depending on whether or not you have the advantage.