Combat effectiveness

[Theolaerynn]

So then, why would it seem like strength makes little difference in the attack damage? Is it just a fluke of the random numbers?

All I can say is my experience has been that strength makes a very noticeable difference. Your mileage may vary.

[Machariel]

so i did read the post of deathtiny's and well notice one thing you other may have failed to notice. theres no explination of tooth and claw and primal on which our attacks are BASED on.


Yes str raises our dmg out put. i have never denied that, im only stating its not as much as you may think it is. Does that make it a useless stat. NO it does not, however 150 str is NOT going to give you a huge boost. i do have my scale sets with str and str xtals when i want to do my optimal., however dropping some for survival yet still hit just about as hard is what i have been aiming my post at for those who claim dragons have no survivability.
Dex for me is useless but thats my view on it, because it raises our pathetic evasion, we cannot get enough to make a huge difference especailly noticable on the mobs that count. yes fighting t4 mobs it may be noticable youll dodge alot, but against t5 and t6 your gonna get hit as much as someone without it because our evasion is downright pathetic. If you have over 1600 t&c after buffing yourself your not going to notice a difference on your misses vs t6 mobs with max dex as in without it. Heck I even use Wiskey that drops my dex to 69% if its norm for the str boost it gives and still not notice a difference.
but then this isnt the reason why im replying.

This is to address Melanth.

Speak for yourself . if you have no survival rate and if you consider yourself a glass cannon. that is you. It quite angers me when its clear that someone does not use all the options given ingame for us.
Have you ever heard of resists. or carrying various resist sets and crystals.? Have you ever tried to use crush resists scales and xtals vs gigaroth or flame resist and crystals vs relkar?. High chance you may have not if you consider dragons to be glasscannons and have low survivability. because if you have used it . gigaroth can hit you with his specials for only 600 to 700 dmg while without em you getting hit for over 11k dmg. relkar can 1 hit kill you with his gold rage while with the resists he does a pathetic 1.7k dmg with it.
Why is it so hard to make different armor sets to use vs different situation and macro em for quick changing. really how hard is that. all of this is accesable to every dragon, these are not rare epic drops. I carry a set of scales for each resist (save etheral) with t&c, str and the said resist)if i want i can aggro all the giant fire beetles in drakul and crush them all at the same time. while our survivability is not that of a maxed out multiclassed biped we are not that far off. they use everything to their disposal, so why cant we. think outside the box for a moment. get some resist scales while hunting then come back and tell me if we are glass cannons.
adapt to the situations that come along, there is no One set does it for all the situations out there.
the new heal spell boosted our survivability alot. and for all the many dragons who are smart to carry different scale sets for different situations know perfectly well were not as weak as you claim us to be in terms of survival.

[Theolaerynn]

so i did read the post of deathtiny's and well notice one thing you other may have failed to notice. theres no explination of tooth and claw and primal on which our attacks are BASED on.

Damage: Weapon/Spell damage + Strength/Power * Attack Delay + Attack Skill * Attack Delay - Target's Armor * Attack Delay
All the modifications are divided by values that I'm not going to reveal at this time, but as stated originally, Strength/Power is 50% more valued than Skill, and Armor is slightly more valued than Strength/Power.
The above result is then put through a Gaussian randomizer to give greater variety.

I think you misread this. Attack Skill for Dragons is TnC.

[Melanth]

To Machariel:

Note that I am specifically addressing buffs and Withered Aegis mobs, not scales and Epics. I have said that dragons are the preferred choice (in my experience) for epic hunting, usually backed up by a healer or two. Often on Chaos dragons are specifically requested for epic hunts. Regular monster mobs pose little real threat unless you are incautious or downright foolhardy. A decent scale set is necessary to privide survivability in even simple combat situations and is a must have for any concerted adventurer, but i do not see that it should be necessary to carry a multitude of specifically crafted sets to attain a set 'ideal' combat effectiveness.

When engaging in specific combat situations, vis epic mobs, the combat situation can be reliably predicted and acted upon accordingly (pediction being a necessary asset of prevention) however in more generalised combat situations the flow of battle is unpredictable and it is not always possible to respond in the way you are suggesting. Take for example a hunting trip to ED, where you are unfortunate enough to be rooted by a caster mob who then draw aggro from an abomination. You have the option of magic resist or melee resist, either way you are looking at a sound pummeling. Such events, or similar, are not unheard of occurances. There is also the problem that by teching resists to scales you compromise on offensive aspects of combat effectiveness, and T5 crystals are a rare commodity. I have spent somewhere in the region of 6 months searching for radiant slash resist armour crystals and have only found one on the consgner and otherwise.

It would seem much simpler to me to improve buffs and make them stackable, rather than having to completely change your scales every time you encounter a different mob, but that is just my opinion.

[Kiamarra]

A bit of a late response, but in no way are we glass cannons. I have stats similar to Mach's (though I do have a lot of str, but we're very similar) and I also carry a few resistant xtals of each type. I find myself not dying as much as I did when I did not do this. I too can survive Fafnir's scorch, and I find that very handy. As long as you have the scales-or if you don't want to spend the time making scales-the crystals for it, and a bit of HP, there's a large survivability increase.