[Slayer] STR / WS balance

[Chupachup]

I would like to hear peeps opinion on the balance between STR and WS.
How do you experience the effect of more or less STR and WS.

To avoid the Tougness/Wounds/Armour discussion in this topic lets assume you are in a decent warband , got guard and heal and you would feel really bad if any other dps class would be on the top of the kill list

Greez chupa

[Foxbeep]

I've heard it said that with current armor values (Not the absurd T4 ones) stacking STR is far more important than bothering with WS until you're strength capped, then feel free to slot some WS for the heck of it.

I don't play slayer though just figured I'd drop some anecdotal evidence.

[TenTonHammer]

Between brute force and wild gambit it's not hard to get high str and ws

I don't play slayer but on my choppa I run bf + DWLF along with duelist gear and I slot 13-14 str talks and run bandit weapons with 3 rr levels of str

I have 790 str and 32% armor pen un potted so something similar would be easily do able for slayer?

[tomato]

Depends, playing with a high armor debuff stack mainly str, if playing without one ws is more important.

[Scrilian]

WS

[Chupachup]

So WS what Scrilian ? If I just was looking for a reply like that I would have made it a poll....

Servers down so take a effort to reply with some sentences

[Scrilian]

So WS what Scrilian ? If I just was looking for a reply like that I would have made it a poll....

Servers down so take a effort to reply with some sentences

I accidentally closed my browser with a big reply so I got a bit mad and just posted WS instead.
Long story short its very easy to obtain ridiculous amounts of mitigation with armor in t3, so WS is much better than STR unless there is a WL/IB to constantly debuff the target.

[roadkillrobin]

For AoE WS is much better imo, you gonna hit against all kinds or armor types including alot of people in medium robe who stacks armor talises. Adding just pure dps on that isn't gonna domuch as moast of your attacks gonna be mitigrated by around 50-60% on avrege I think.
If you run melee assist premades with IB's or WL armor debuff then caping str is the better option.

[Gerv]

In my opinion and talking to the slayers I run with in guild, its not stacking one or the other, it is the relative importance of each stat to the situation. I would initially cap strength or get as close to the cap before adding in secondary stats like WS or wounds. This is due to a number of things.

Firstly, as Tentonhammer states, with the help of tactics and set bonuses you should be able to get as close to the strength cap as possible so there should not be too much need to "stack" strength.

Secondly, the classes you should be targeting primarily are the casters, healers and mdps. Since the majority of them do not stack high armor (better with wounds and crit reduction imho) there should not be a lot of armor values to punch through.

Once you have reached close to the strength cap, you need to think about what your priorities are. You can not dps when you are dead, so having approximately 5k wounds (imo) is a solid starting point. From there you can add in weapon skill. If you were running in a premade however, the presence of guard, co-ordinated healing and other skills should keep you alive longer and allow you to add in more damage orientated stats, this is when I would run Wild Gambit, otherwise I believe you would be too squishy for pugs to heal.

[notagain]

Cap strength before optimizing for weaponskill. Take WS wherever you can get it, just don't take it over STR until you are STR capped. Caveats would be, if you are choosing between weapons and one has 25 more weapon skill and the other has 10 more str, go ahead and take the higher WS item. But when choosing between no str and no WS, optimize for STR first. I don't remember what the STR caps are any more though. Wounds get third preference. The Slayer is a glass cannon and you will tend to melt no matter how much health you stake (because of class mechanic).