Starting Strength on Green

[Caledore]

Given that Green won't have the over-abundance of +Str items that Blue has - what do you think is a good starting strength score to aim for to not be miserable and over-encumbered all the time?

I am leaning Half-Elf Pally, so not terrible starting Str, but not all that good either. Not sure if I should just go all-in with all 20 points, or spend some on Sta or Wis (given how miserably low it is).

[Baler]

STR will give you more melee damage. During classic you won't have a ton of great +stat items.
str is a solid choice.

edit: However a Half-Elf paladin has the lowest starting Wis 65 of all the race choices.
idk that's a tough one. 100 str vs 85wis

offtopic- half-elf has the highest starting Agi for pally which will cause you to be hit marginally less often.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Paladin...ing_Statistics

[AegnorP99]

I dumped a lot into strength on my pally back in early P99 blue. Never really regretted it. The quality of life improvement for 13 months is probably worth it.

[greatdane]

Anything under 100 feels a bit crap, and anything under 80 is seriously debilitating.

A full set of banded weighs:
Small - 35.3
Medium - 47
Large - not sure

A full set of bronze weighs:
Small - 64.7
Medium - 86
Large - 107.9

Weapon weight examples:
Ghoulbane - 9.5
Mithril 2h - 8.5
SSoY - 4.5 each

Add backpacks and a few knick-knacks and you could be at your weight limit before you've even looted any mobs. A human in full bronze, typical weapons, bags, food etc. probably has over 100lbs just from the essentials. People may have to stick to banded even when they could have bronze. While you can pour all your starting points into strength, that's a huge short-term band-aid that will end up significantly gimping your character in the long run when you can barely break 100 stamina in planar gear. Once you're tanking endgame stuff and no longer need the extra strength, having put all your points into it is pretty much like playing without rings on.

The advantage of the big races is severely underrated. An ogre shadowknight who invests in stamina has 80 more stamina than a dark elf who had to sink their points into strength in order to function. That's several hundred HP at level 50. Pairing a plate class with a weak race saddles you with a huge and long-lasting disadvantage that really doesn't go away until you're raiding Velious content, and doubly so if you're forced to essentially give up 20 stat points just to carry your gear. Eventually those 20 points in strength stop helping because you've got enough, and then you need like 120 stamina from gear in order to be on equal footing with the big races even with shm buffs, or 180 without.

[Danth]

Different players will have different minimums they consider tolerable. As a rule, the quicker a person expects to level, the more easily he can tolerate the "encumbered period" where armor is heavy and weight reduction bags unavailable.

My own personal rules of thumb for plate classes in a no-twink setting are as follows: If the character can wear small armor, I like to have at least 85 and preferably 90 strength at minimum. If it has to wear Medium, I want at least 100, again a little more doesn't hurt. A Human Paladin with 105 strength chews through it quick enough. There are only two races (Ogre and Troll) that are restricted solely to large armor, and both of their plate classes will start with sufficient strength by default.

Basically I don't particularly like Erudites on a fresh server, with 85 practical maximum strength (figure 5 into agility) and a medium armor restriction. I'm also hesitant with High Elf Paladins since they also have an 85 maximum strength, but their ability to wear small armor compensates enough to make it borderline tolerable.

Danth

[Kendir]

This has made me change my mind back to troll over DE for my sk

[Danth]

Originally Posted by greatdane [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

and then you need like 120 stamina from gear in order to be on equal footing with the big races even with shm buffs, or 180 without.

The lowest stamina you can get on any plate tank type is 70. The most is an Ogre Warrior that will cap at 150 as stats cannot be raised beyond that at creation, even with points available. 80 is a fair chunk, but where do you get 120-180 from? For a Shadowknight the practical difference is somewhat less since an Ogre SK cannot pass 147 starting stamina, and will likely have no more than 142 due to most of them smartly wanting to put 5 into agility. In practice a lot of Ogre Shadowknights will have 127 and put points into INT instead. For Paladins the difference is of course vastly less since Paladins do not have access to the large races.

In Kunark era at level 60, 72 stamina will work out to something on the order of a 375 HP difference for a 70 stamina Dark Elf versus the 142 stamina Ogre Shadowknight. This is a fair difference players should be aware of, but not a crippling one when the Dark Elf can expect to buff into the 4200 to 4400 range with average-quality equipment. As a rule I regard up to a 5% difference as totally irrelevant in this game, and up to a 10% difference generally not that big a deal. EQ just isn't that tightly tuned. The minimum-stamina Dark Elf will still be able to act as a tank for anything and everything a hybrid might be asked to be a tank for. Opinions differ, so it's up to the individual to read the values and decide for himself what's important and what isn't.

In the pre-expansion era ratios are similar, just with smaller numbers. With Velious of course, the Ogres start running into stat caps and the difference shrinks, reaching no difference at all for the minority of players who obtain high-end velious raid gear.

Danth

[greatdane]

where do you get 120-180 from?

As in that's how much it takes to get from 70 to 250 with/without shm buffs, at which point the races are equal (innates notwithstanding). Ultimately the goal is to max out your stamina which, for the flimsy races, is borderline impossible if you put all your points in strength.

Personally, I'd never put points in int/wis. Mana pool size is so utterly irrelevant in EQ except maybe for raiding clerics and wizards. It's literally never gonna matter whether you have 1500 or 1700 mana, or whatever the difference might be between an ogre and a brainy race. The only time the size of your mana pool ever matters in any way whatsoever is if you've gone from 100% to 0% in one fight and still needed more, which should never really happen to a knight. In reality, your life is spent in two states: either you sit at full mana because you're not spending more than you regen, or you hover perpetually somewhere below 100%. In both cases, having a higher maximum mana does absolutely nothing for you at all. Hybrids don't have a meaningful mana dump or really any spammable spells except ultra-cheap aggro ones, so you're never pouring a full mana bar into a mob.

[Gustoo]

Don't go strength on any character. Go stamina on weak goodly races especially terrible half elfs.

Roll a human so you can have like 100000 extra wisdom.

Add all to stamina.

Profit.