Rusty, when you add holds and speed bonus it stacks with PS, so it should increase the spread between 6 & 8 because everything is magnified, not lower this spread...
Also even if that italian sword hit a "fluke" threshold, it still shows how tough a time a finesse low damage slash weapon has with guys at 55+ armor. Usually it's better vet players wearing 55+ armor too (Kuyak weight armor + gloves heirloomed tops 55+), and it gets tougher to lay 4-5+ (assuming hold + speed bonus) hits on them when they maybe need to hit you 2-3 times with a beefy 2h or polearm. If 8 PS can cut that that down to 3 hits, that's at the very least 33% better at killing hard targets, a significant difference in a tough fight on a chaotic battlefield.
Sort of, but not really. Again this is mostly a factor for 1-handed weapons because of the low initial damage. Another huge factor is the fact that everything in this mod is based on percentages.
1st off, higher agility will have a higher on average speed bonus, so they'll get an extra point or two of damage from that.
Now, let's talk about holds. A perfect hold will net you a 25% damage increase.
Say we have a weapon that does 30 cut damage.
With 6 PS, (48% damage increase) you'd do 44.4 damage per swing. A 25% hold bonus on top of that would add an additional 11.1 points of damage to bring you to 55.5 points.
With 8 PS, (64% damage increase) you'd do 49.2 damage per swing. A 25% hold bonus on top of that would add an additional 12.3 points of damage to bring you to 61.5 points of damage.
So, the held attack from 8 PS only nets you an extra 1.2 points of damage in this example. The actual attack only does 6 more points of damage. Now, here's where things get crazy.
Armor has 2 values, soak and resist. Soak totally nullifies damage and resust reduces it.
Not sure if these are the old or new values.
armor_soak_factor_against_cut = 0.8
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce = 0.65
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt = 0.5
armor_reduction_factor_against_cut = 1.0
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce = 0.5
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt = 0.75
Anyway, what this means is that both attacks are reduced by the exact same amount regardless of initial damage. This also determines whether you glance or not.
The second value is a percentage-based reduction. Since it is percentage-based the higher damage value is reduced MORE than the lower damage value. That knocks off even more of the higher PS advantage and brings the two values closer together.
Since the soak factor was reduced a while ago, it actually helped agi builds out and hurt str builds. The previous advantage of str builds was the reduced glance chance. Now, you'll really only glance due to bad footwork. So the biggest advantage of str builds was taken away.
Also, since PS is percentage-based, you don't gain much of a bonus off of the low-damage 1-handers. Poles and 2-handers have a much better bonus from PS.
Also that build in my first example; I would say I average about 3.5 hits to kill someone like that. That's with 6 PS and a MW Italian sword.
IMO you want 6 ps and 6 ath, anything more on either of those is just gravy. So if you dont plan on retiring, or dont think max IF/WM are worth it, go ahead and get an additional ps or ath, but I would suggest not going below 6 ps or 6 ath.
Really good advice, by the way.
