Effective skill maximums as they pertain to melee

[Gorath]

So after playing many many builds (I currently have 3 "mains"@ level 30 and 13 "alts" 20+) throughout c-RPG I figured I'd get everyone's views on optimized skill point maximums.

Skill name:  Max points (followed by reasoning)

Shield:  4     
     Having played shielders for quite a while (pre-patch I was very heavy into sword and board combat for style) the effect of the shield skill seems to boil down to extra shield HP only.  Sure, supposedly it seems to have an effect on the "speed" of your shield, but I have never noticed any.  Currently my shielder has 8 shield skill, pre-patch I had 9.  In both cases I never noticed any real increase in speed from the guys who stopped at 4 to use a Huscarl.  Sure my shield rarely broke but with a huscarl or heavy board shield that doesn't happen much anyways.  Hell, in most battles if you put it away vs axemen and only use it for people without axes even heater shields last quite a while.  Guys like Cyranule only have 4 shield skill (and 12 agi) and are no more slow than my 8 points (almost double).  Conclusion:  Just get the 4 points if you're going to be a shield and then stop wasting your skill points.

Athletics:  3-4
     Currently I have 7 and 8 athletics on my mains (depending on which one) and wear light-medium armor.  I have noticed consistantly in battle AND duel servers that strength builders such as Goretooth, Cyranule, Wallace, etc are able to keep movement speed pace with my characters even though they have far less agility, less than half my athletics skill and wear twice as much weight as I do.  Sure you notice a difference if you're naked, but if you plan to wear armor at all it seems that the tangible benefit of the skill stops after 3 or 4.  I have made it a point to ask people in the duel server their athletics value and get their thoughts and the general consensus has been that other than getting from point a to point b faster if uninterrupted (yeah right, with all the ranged spam?) that athletics for the most part is worthless.  Save yourself some skill-points and stop at 3-4.

Pure build WM:  3
     This is pretty subjective however I find that if my main melee wpf is at 130 I never feel like it's too low vs anyone of any build (str or agi) in order to be able to block and counterattack properly.  With this in mind you can achieve 132 wpp in a single weapon by level 30 with only 3 WM points.  If you're a pure build, this would be the number I would shoot for and stop.  After this point you are basically spending a skill point for 10 (or less) WPF points each time, which the effective benefit from doesn't seem that great to me.



The other skills all seem to retain a use for higher point values, but these three are the ones that after playing c-RPG all this time have really shown themselves to not be worth higher skill point investments than what I've laid out above.  Coincidentally this has also been consistant with the greater value of a str-build vs an agi-build currently.

Share your thoughts and findings.   

[jspook]

This is my current build

Strength: 18
Agility: 21

Converted: 8
Power Strike: 6
Shield: 4
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 7

One Handed: 3
Two Handed: 140
Polearm: 110

But if some of these things are unncecessary, like athletics......
I might have to re-think my point conversions and try to squeeze out another 6 from the build somewhere.
Just have to decide if I would put it in agi or bring str up to 21 as well...
or perhaps keep those points and put them into IF.  It seems IF at least has a direct value the more armor you equip.

[Teeth]

I have 9 athl and im faster than anyone else. I can outbackpedal most shielders. Im sure I wouldnt be able to do that with 4 athl. It seems that with your maximums youll have a lot of points to convert.

[jspook]

but is it your high agi that does that for you??  or your actual athletics.  you are a ninja, so I am assuming your agi is high 27 range...

[Gorath]

I have 9 athl and im faster than anyone else. I can outbackpedal most shielders. Im sure I wouldnt be able to do that with 4 athl. It seems that with your maximums youll have a lot of points to convert.

Well two things:
1)  I assume you're a ninja, and thus wearing pretty much no armor.  If so I made mention of this that if you're not wearing any armor that athletics does seem to increase your speed noticably, but that if you wear any armor at all (mail or higher, medium-heavy tiers) that the effect seems to drop off drastically.

2)  You can outbackpedal most shielders.  Shielders are slower than snail crap anyways, one of the curses of using a shield, I can outbackpedal most shielders on most of my alts who are around level 20 with only 3-4 athletics tops.  Of course my alts are semi-nude because they're still saving up money, but still.   

Thanks for the input thought.  I'm curious why with only 1 point more athletics you get a completely different opinion of your speed in relation to others than I do with 8 athletics.  Perhaps there's some kind of value-effect correlation here where instead of linear progression we have something akin to 1-3 athletics doesn't seem like much, but 3-4 is more noticable.  4-6 doesn't seem like much change, but 6-7 is, etc.  Just a thought.  Or it could be because you're not wearing armor as I said.  I plan to do a more in-depth test of the mechanic and value on an alt I have levelling where I record the differences at each point with runs done naked, in lamellar, in mail and if possible in 45+ armor as well.

[The_Bloody_Nine]

I think a good aspect of the game is that you cant bring down everything to numbers and effective maximums. Sure, its good to know what is reasonable to spent skills in, but only to a certain degree. After that its a pure matter of taste and a matter if you feel well with your build. You have to play good with it after all.

add to your list:

Power Strike: 5-7

I have never played below 15 strength and will probably never do. 5 PS gives you enough power to kill anything, if you know the reach of your weapon. With PS 7 and decent damage of weapon you 1 hit most players except plate. Going higher is not wasted at all, you will gain more chance of crusthrough if you use this kind of (2h) weapon and will hurt plated guys much more. So the maximum effectivness is -even more than with other skills - a matter of taste. Nonetheless i picked 5-7 as most effecitve for the reasons mentioned.

Iron Flesh: 0/8+

Unless you plan on going on high strength and wearing heavy armour at least occasionally IF is a waste of skill points. And if you do put in all you have. The difference with 8 IF and heavy armour is quite huge and can grant surviving many more rounds than without. In between 0 and 7-8 there is no point in planning on investing into it. Of course its ok to spent your last 3 spare skill points if you dont know what to do with them.

[EponiCo]

You are right about athletics. On my 7 athletics char there was a huge difference between mail setup and shirt+only one weapon setup. But in mail I was only a wee bit faster than 6 athletics char with 15kg more weight.
I disagree about ironflesh though. It's not something you immediately notice, but every time you survive with 2-10 hp left it was the 5 ironflesh that saved you. All kills you make after that, or rounds you win, were paid by it. But I guess you really need 50+ armor to really get use out of it.

[Dravic]

Also, what i can say, is that athletics 10+ with agi 30+ is great build for... crossbowman. Light crossbow and you are doing it very good, even vs archers due to possiblity to move yourself after "ass" animation stage. With 10 athletics, you can simply dodge most of arrows or hide yourself under nearest cover faster than your enemy.

My build:

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)

Strength: 9
Agility: 30
Hit points: 44
Converted: 8
Ironflesh: 0
Power Strike: 3
Shield: 0
Athletics: 10
Riding: 0
Horse Archery: 0
Power Draw: 0
Power Throw: 0
Weapon Master: 10
One Handed: 1
Two Handed: 1
Polearm: 1
Archery: 1
Crossbow: 190
Throwing: 1

Try it, ninjas, and you will see that it is more viable than "agile [light] archer with nomad bow" about what i did start a discussion. Due to 45 pierce dmg (even more, if heirloomed!) and about 1,5-2 secs of reloading at the very end of grind (30 lvl) and such running speed you can even backpedal someone, reload, shoot, and backpedal again ...

So no, 4 athletics isnt maximum, it is the LEAST.

[Gorath]

Sorry Dravic, I'll change the title to specify melee discussion.  Ranged doesn't apply as it really doesn't require much thought
(yeah I have xbowmen and archers/throwers too.  They're not even close to the same animal as melee)   

[ShinySpoons]

My 7 ath character can easily control the pace of a duel with any lower ath character. (I wear a gambeson usually) With a longsword I can just move in and out of my opponents range, often, I can stab someones head as they're recovering from an attack. In battle, I can pick and choose where I fight. If outnumbered I can book it, loop around a building and take some other group from the rear. If fighting heavies, I can stand and fight or throw in a few hits and leave, to return again later.

[John]

I think you're missing the point of athletics.  The way I see it, faster sprinting is a minor bonus on top of the main advantage - maneuverability.  Athletics significantly reduces the time it takes to switch movement directions.  This makes a critical difference against all but the faciest of huggers (and even then, should they have sub-par camera control). 

[Gorath]

I think you're missing the point of athletics.  The way I see it, faster sprinting is a minor bonus on top of the main advantage - maneuverability.  Athletics significantly reduces the time it takes to switch movement directions.  This makes a critical difference against all but the faciest of huggers (and even then, should they have sub-par camera control).

See this is actually why I've always tried to pump athletics.  Faster sprinting is a meh thing in my mind.  But it's precisely this effect that I notice no benefit from with my 7 or 8 athletics over players such as Goretooth in his umpteen billion heirloomed black armor (easily 2-3x the weight I'm wearing) with a str build, or Cyranule for instance with his 12 agi (so 4 athletics possible) and heraldic mail + huscarl weight.  They can keep up with my maneuverability and be just as fast with the footwork of diving in and out, strafing, etc as I am with less than half the weight and double the athletics.

Someone mentioned that perhaps I'm encumbered, but really?  I need the formula for that cause it's hard to believe with 18 str that wearing tribal warrior, leather boots, wisby gloves, klappvisor and a swiss halbard (or fister) is too much weight.  It's only:
weapon 2.8-3
Armor 5
Head 3
Gloves .75
boots .75
Total 12.5 at the most.

[Heroin]

I think a good aspect of the game is that you cant bring down everything to numbers and effective maximums.

I disagree. This is a game/computer program. Ultimately, it all comes down to numbers, like everything else in the game. And I'm certain there is a formula that can be applied here. Said formula simply isn't publicly available at this point.

[CtrlAltDe1337]

Higher shield skill is definitely worth it.  Its just sometimes there are other things more worth it   The extra speed and HP is very nice.

[Butan]

Someone mentioned that perhaps I'm encumbered, but really?  I need the formula for that cause it's hard to believe with 18 str that wearing tribal warrior, leather boots, wisby gloves, klappvisor and a swiss halbard (or fister) is too much weight.  It's only:
weapon 2.8-3
Armor 5
Head 3
Gloves .75
boots .75
Total 12.5 at the most.

I have 20 total weight on my agi build and Im fast with 148 wpf, so thats not your problem. More agi and more ath will make you more maneuvrable.

I think the formula is : WPF - total weight = real WPF

So -12.5 is nothing really.