No chance yet in PvP... they can do more wounds like a BM BC and PB spec warrior can do (due to weapon stat increases) but no the 10 dex is leaving a Dwarf AL in the dirt when it comes to sticking PvP wounding affliction %'s

Don't you dare, I can't afford to change.

None of the current specs really suit bards. That might be the simplest solution. Not meaning to hassle the divine crew, but -3 dex is huge to people not transed in Acrobatics. Maybe even for trans acrobatics. Poor merians are as clumsy as dwarves.

As far as I could tell, Ild, Estarra already did say no to boosting dwarves. You just don't want to hear it.

how much difference does the native weapon make? If it improves wounding, how much of a difference does it make compared to dex? in other words, a dwarf AL would be equivalent to what dex in a non-dwarf with AL?

Why is it any harder to make a spec for bards (that's different from the one for casters) than it was to make one for warriors?

Casters are fat. Bards are buff.

Well...

I will make one final attempt to explain the problem with dwarves and then I give up.

If dwarves did 8 billion wounding per swing, they would still be unusable. People seem to be misunderstanding exactly what dex does for a warrior. In regards to Eoinn, the native weapon bonus to wounding has nothing to do with dexterity. Only monk wounding scales with dexterity. Warrior's chance to inflict a wound-based affliction (Slit throat, tendon, knockdown, jab, sliceear, artery, hemiplegy, etc) is based on dexterity.

The issue is that no matter how much you increase dwarf tankiness and wounding rate, it does not matter because of the low dexterity. Warriors are already so random (See my rants posts where I hack down and hit chest five times) that you absolutely must control things that are within your grasp, IE race dexterity. If you select a low dexterity race, the only thing you do is cripple yourself.

Now, dwarves are exceptionally tanky. We all get this. They have several fine bonuses. They are also a "favored weapon" race, which sucks for axelords because they are incompatible with the warrior archetype. As a Merian, I can typically power attack and with a 3/5 to 4/5 rate get a knockdown. With a dwarf I was at 1/5. When warriors count so much on precise wounds in a very random class, if you go with ten dex you might as well just not bother.

Two suggestions were offered to clear this up without just blanket adding dexterity to dwarves. One was that favored weapon status gives +% chance to inflict wounding based afflictions on par with having 12-14 dex. The other was shifting axelord to a more appropriate race like Taurian. You could also just add dexterity to dwarves.

TL;DR version:

1. Dexterity for warriors is not "wounding inflicted" it is "chance to give wounding-based afflictions", a common misconception.

2. Tankiness is worthless when you can't kill anyone because you can't get an affliction that you have the wounding for.

3. Easiest fixes are adding 2 dex, switching axelord to taurian, and/or making favored weapon give +% chance to give wounding afflictions.

thanks, Desitrus, obviously I don't know what I'm talking about but I get it now

I think switching the AL native weapon to Taurian is a great idea - fits nicely with the race

That's not completely correct, as I understand it (understanding provided by Roark).

If you have your body part wounded up to 10,301 wounds, the game does a roll between 0 and 10,301. The number that is rolled is then checked to see what "range" it's in (if that number is in the "heavy" wound range, it will do the highest affliction on that body part up to heavy).

Dexterity modifies that roll somewhat, but the more wounded a body part is, the better the likelihood of you getting it. This is pretty easily tested with Faeling-- I'm much more likely to get a behead if I've worked them further into critical than just barely on the edge. With really bad dex, though, that body part is going to have to be torn to shreds to get any kind of decent rolls.

I think you guys are making claims that I just don't think are valid. I believe that the role of dexterity to inflict a wound is extremely small--so small that the difference that 2 points of dexterity would make would be all but unnoticeable. Looking at the code bears me out. We'll investigate further as I could be wrong on that, but I'm beginning to think that the importance of dexterity for warriors has risen to urban myth proportions. It just doesn't make that much of a difference, certainly not when looking at 2 points.

The effect of a single point (or 2 points) is pretty small, but very crappy (by which I mean 8 or less) dexterity does cause problems (especially when compared to 18 dex). As dexterity isn't the only thing that actually mods whether or not you get an affliction, but the wounding does as well, it does seem to be blown a bit out of proportion (and perhaps Dwarves don't really need those extra 2 points that badly), but low dex does hurt (which I suppose it should, that's the point, eh?).

PS: Shadowlords vs. Elfen Lords, please.

At what point is it "out of proportion" though? Is every dex 10%? Is there a parabolic equation with this as well? Are the breakpoints 13 and 17? We don't know any of this and it's not being given freely at this point so what we do have is testing.

This is what I do have. Out of 58 leg hits as a dwarf with 10 dex, 16 were knockdowns, a light wounding affliction. Out of 60 leg hits as a merian with 13 dex, 38 were knockdowns.

As I said before, warriors have VERY FEW THINGS in their grasp to control how random the class is and racial dexterity is one of those. Often, you are looking for slit throat/pinleg on your big "power volley", and most people are barely going to be into heavy wounding. Do you want a higher or lower chance to have that happen? The boost to precision you would need to add the kind of wounding post-armor absorb is far more significant than adjusting dexterity, race, or +% on favored weapons.

Once again, I'm just saying, anyone with a brain will discard dwarves as unusable, which is a waste of favored weapon status if you are NOT A DEMIGOD.

Just a question, but what were the relative strengths/wounding on the body parts with those two tests? Assuming you were Merian Lord, there should have been a higher wound number, which would account for more knockdowns (being a light wound, even a few hundred more wounding points would help with the rolling tremendously). Then add dex in on top of that.

If the strengths/wounding were the same, though, then it is all due to dex.

It was on geb's plate, the difference in actual wounding was around 30. Even when he let me put it at heavy (two wounding levels above what was needed) the knockdown rate was still nearly 30% lower for dwarves.

Heh. Fullplate strikes again.

Still, at heavy wounds, getting a light wound affliction shouldn't have that much of a difference no matter what the dex.

I believe the difference that dexterity makes is less than .5% per dexterity point. (Again, we'll investigate further.) I don't believe dwarves are unusable and grandstanding statements like that really doesn't help your cause. In any event, maneuvers were meant to give warriors a lot more control in their combat. If that is not the case, maybe maneuvers should be looked at rather than posturing to raise dexterity on races.

Maneuvers are great, but they don't actually provide a higher chance to roll an affliction afaik (are you suggesting that they could?). They allow us to remove afflictions that we don't want to get in order to concentrate on the ones we do-- so, for example, I can use a lung maneuver that only punctures and collapses lungs without allowing for heartpierce or piercechest (both of which made getting a collapsed lung nearly impossible pre-maneuvers). It gives a ton more control, but doesn't make it any easier to get the high-end affliction.

Maneuvers definitely provide a higher chance! Maybe that should be increased if no one is noticing it.