Yeah, I agree 0 WM STR builds are the way to go right now. It's mainly because how WPF is working at the moment.
Simply, current WPF formula should be changed. I'm not sure why it was changed to current format in first place, but it looks ridiculous now.
Level 35 character can have:
- 121 WPF with 0 (!) Weapon Master skill - 121 WPF is completely fine for melee,
- 137 WPF with 3 WM skill - which isn't much of a difference,
- 152 WPF with 5 WM skill - difference between 137 and 152 WPF is unnoticable in game for me, between 121 and 152 there is slight difference, but nothing crutial.
Between 5 skill points put into WM, there is 31 WPF points difference. And you have to remember with armor, you will lose more WPF points when you have more WPF, since it's % WPF decrease penalty. So effective difference (depending from armor) will be 20-25 WPF for 5 skill points. Going higher than 5 WM makes it even less relative difference. So obviously, something is wrong here.
The question is, why person with 0 WM (so person who don't care about swing speed), can have 121 WPF?
It should be more like 70 WPF with 0 WM (with 70 WPF you see your swings are slower, but it's still playable - every pure crossbowman with 70 1h/2h WPF can confirm that). Then every WM skill should actually give you more than ~8 WPF points per skill.
chadz is very good in making some complicated formulas, so I don't think it should be big problem for him to make proper formula here. Builds with 6 WM should get about WPF what they have now. Above that, WPF number could be just slightly (!) buffed.
BTW: Long time ago, I've read they are going to change how WM is working. But that was like a year ago, and still nothing happened
. But the good thing is, devs see the problem exists here.