I started my Thane over 8 years ago now. Its always been a challenge to compete toe to toe with most classes, low HP, low WS, low Spell DMG. Spell DMG did get a boost finally and the procs (when first added) to the weapon lines where awesome. But they got nerfed eventually and we are back to being subpar. Its not to say you can't be effective on the battlefield. Thanes have great interruption capabilities and can keep healers occupied. Just don't expect to kill much without help. Oh and duel wield classes are one of the hardest for Thanes to take in a melee fight 1v1. They make your shield useless and generally will have thrusting weapons equipped which chew up your chain.

 

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what do your toa bonuses look like? Do you have +10 melee speed, melee damage and style damage? Do you have +10% magic damage and cast speed? Are you using haste and celerity? Templating is one of the reasons I'd not recommend a thane or any other hybrid to a new player.

 

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Can anyone confirm this? Does WS effect your to hit rate? I am not too concerned with my damage going up, but more concerned about the fact that over 50 WS wont help against dodge/parry/block/miss.
If this is true, then WTF is WS for? Measly skill damage increase?

Also does STR effect your to hit rate?


I was thinking I would aug my STR until I could tell I hit people more often then swap to more resist/survivability.
If WS is truly not effecting to hit or base damage past 50, then only STR effects this?

weapon skill plays into your defense penetration. IIRC, thanes are on the healer table rather then the hybrid table, and it sucks something fierce.

 

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This confuses me, what do you mean on the healer Table? Dont all melee get 50 in the skill?
And is this contradicting what the person above me said with gaining additional points? Does it or does it not improve to hit?

Weapon skill is generally pretty confusing. I'm not sure ANYONE truly understands how it works. I'll explain what I BELIEVE is true and if I am incorrect, I am certain someone will correct it.

Each general archetype is on a weaponskill table that determines their BASE weapon skill; ie the point where your base damage and defense penetration starts. This is modified by the amount of points you spec into your weapon.

Thanes are on the healer table IIRC, which is lower then rogues, and significantly lower then tanks. Say a tank starts with a value of 10 (completely random, made up number) and trains 50 into weapon, he gets +5 to his weaponskill, so his modified weapon skill might be 15. A Thane, being on a lower weapon skill table starts with a base of 5, and when he trains 50 points in, he still only gets +5 to his weapon skill...so at 50 weapon, his weaponskill is only going to be 10.

Now those are completely random and made up numbers...I highly doubt they are even proportional. The bottom line is, that a thane with 50 weapon will NOT have the same amount of weaponskill as a Warrior with 50 weapon. It won't even be close, and that's because the thane starts with a lower base (healer table) then the warrior (pure melee table).

The reason that thanes have lower weapon skill, is that they are by design supposed to be weaker then a pure tank in melee combat, because of your magic damage abilities. To equal the warrior, you need to use those magic abilities.

 

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Hopefully this will clear things up regarding weaponskill.


Just to clarify, +skills refers to your actual weapon spec. You can have 50 axe and up to +11 axe skill on your gear at level 50, for a total of 61 weapon skill/spec (note the space between weapon and skill). You then add in your realm rank +skills and that number can go up. "weaponskill" (no space) refers to that mysterious number on your character sheet.


Weaponskill is a printout on your character sheet in-game. It is a useful tool for comparison purposes basically, but does have some effects. It is a number that is made up of your weapon spec, strength (or whatever stat is used to "determine weaponskill" (dex for staff specs for example), +skills and some other mysterious things (damage tables mainly). people use it to say things like "you have a lower ws" which means you'll land hits less. Which is only partly true. Your weaponskill doesn't solely cause you to land less hits, per se. The main things that cause to-hit are things that also MAKE UP weaponskill: like str, weapon spec, and the str, dex, and specs (like parry/shield/weapon) of whoever you are trying to hit. It's *easier* to say that it's because you have low weaponskill but not entirely accurate, although I believe weaponskill is used in the to-hit formula, it is not a main ingredient (but things that make up weaponskill are).


If that just made you more confused, join the club. But in essence, don't worry about weaponskill. If you have +101 str and +11 weapon spec/skill in your template, you are maxing out your ability to land styles.


Aside from some items that have things called "accuracy" procs (like the Battler artifact), or enchanting a crafted weapon/armor at an enchanter (dropped weapons/armr come already-enchanted), there is nothing you can do to increase your to-hit chance with styles (enchanting crafted armor decreases the chance that you will be hit). You can wear "focal mythirians" to land spells "better" against mobs, but they don't work vs players. And fyi, Battler is generally considered subpar as a weapon choice, unless you are just using the pbaoe absorb buff/debuff on it (and not using it to hit things), but I think some champion weapons also get a similar accuracy proc.

 

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Weapon skill is a stat representing your ability to penetrate parry, to penetrate block, to penetrate evade, and to bypass armor/defense rating. Essentially, a 'to hit' stat, but more complicated.

A warrior starts out with a higher base weapon skill and receives more WS per point of STR than any other class. So a warrior with 50 weapon spec is going to have a higher weapon skill than a thane with 50 weapon spec. There are different growth rates for weapon skill for each base class, Seer,rouge,mystic, heavy tank, light tank. The thane it seems shares the same weapon skill growth rate of a seer. I'm not sure if thats 100% accurate, my thane always out performed seers. Ofcourse it's hard to make that comparison, seers can't spec in a weapon.

Now, the base damage of a 5.2 second 2h hammer is around 450. The warrior and the thane will both have a base damage of 450. Except the warrior will tend to no style for close to that maximum, about 400. Wherease a thane will have a no style damage of about 250. The thane has the potential to hit for 400, but with lower weapon skill, you get a lot more variation in your damage. As a thane it will range from 200 to 400, but 80% of the time will settle between 225 and 275. Rarely will you have spikes in damage up to the 90% mark of your maximum. Just like rarely will you see your warrior hit in the 50% range of his maximum.

Weapon skill increases with points in STR. And there is no cap to how much STR you can apply to your weapon skill. The only way to make a thane hit harder is to increase his str. Tho he gets less WS per point of STR so he can get markedly better, but will never close the gap between himself and a warrior.

Weapon spec also increases weapon skill, but only up to 50. Any combination of RR and + items to get to 50. Increases your weapon spec over 50 does not increase your weapon skill, tho it may show an increase on your character sheet. Spec over 50 also does not increase your base damage value.

Style damage is a multiplier for your base damage. Each style has a growth rate. That is to say ( and I'm on a little bit of shaky ground here in understanding exactly how this works ) a lvl 39 style has a growth rate of .92. At 50 hammers you will hit for x damage, at 51 hammers you will hit for x damage + .92 percent. Not huge, but a big difference if you have 65 hammers. Some styles have bigger growth rates than others.

Now there is something else about style damage I'm not 100% sure of. Some styles have the same growth rate, but don't do the same damage. For instance a lvl 9 reactive parry style with a growth rate of .9 does less damage than a lvl 39 reactive parry style with a growth rate of .88. So there is some kind of fixed damage bonus for performing the style perfectly, that increases proportional to it's growth rate x your weapon spec.

Now a warrior performs x style perfectly for (+200)600 pts of damage. This indicates the warrior managed to get 400 of his 450 maximum base damage, and applied 200 bonus style points to that damage. If that style had a growth rate of 1.0, and our warrior increased his weapon spec by 1. Then the same exact hit should look like this... x perfectly for (+202)602 pts of damage. The warrior still hit for 400 of his base damage, had the bonus damage added in, and then increased that style damage ( 200 is the style damage )by 1% for using a style with a 1% growth rate, and increasing his weapon spec by 1.

A thane performs the same attack perfectly for (+200) 450 pts of damage. Now our thane only managed to get 250 pts of his max base damage because he isn't as skilled. And has his style damage added to that. The thane can increase his weapon spec, and increase his style damage bonus, but he isn't going to improve his ability to hit for more of his base damage.

Now I may have not gotten the relationship between base damage, style damage and growth rates exactly right. But I did illustrate accurately how they differ in performance between a thane and a warrior.

Now for how WS helps penetrate defense. On my thane, I'd see damage like 300 ( -150 ). Wahoo, I hit for my maximum potential base damage, and he resisted 33% of it, 26% on items, 5% for armor resist, and 2% racial. Well, as good as that looks on paper, it isn't exactly true. My warrior hit the same target and this is what I saw 450 ( -225 ). Now I'm doing the big monkey scratch thinking wtf? How did my base damage become 675? It didn't. My troll's outrageous weapon skill pierced his defenses, and I was able to apply 100% of my base damage potential to my enemy. Something a thane will never do. And the reason why warriors will always out damage a thane in melee.
Weapon skill also negatively effects my enemies ability to block, parry or evade. My thane used to do well against assassins, the instant dd's help, but I usually lost if I missed my slam, and always lost when the assassin evaded and unloaded his CS evade chain on me. And they evade ALOT, but not so much when they attacked my warrior. He was able to actually hit the assassin more often. Same with parry and block, It is more noticable when you compare non styled strikes. The thane will get blocked and parried often without a style. The warrior not so much, he'll get evaded and block/parried more often than when he styles, but not as often as a thane.

Now that your confused. This is why I don't think it's necessary to spec 50 hammers. 39 or 44 is enough imo. But I always got + 11 weapon on items, I never skimped there. Plus, there are a huge amount of spec pts to be saved from 40 to 50 that can be applied elsewhere. But like I said, since the slam, nerf I'd prolly spec 50 50 20 20, even out my defense, but like always, I'd be back at 48 42 39 15. Maybe 50 sc and 6 parry. I just never seemed to gain as much as I lost when I strayed from that spec. Plus slam, is what helped me kill archers and assassins.
It takes time for a thane to kill, low damage, lots of misses. You need to spec for survivalbility to stay alive long enough to kill. Or until someone comes along and helps. ':-). It's the funnest, and most frustrating class to play.
My favorite thane story. The day I'm lead tank in my fg pug with good support. We mezz a FG. I have two skalds assisting me as I line up to take out the first caster and I miss my slam on a mezzed target. Un flaming believable. It's a wonder I didn't fumble.

The thane is good, don't get discouraged. Just don't try to turn him into a warrior or a runie and you will do fine. Overcap dex and qui, casting speed, and melee speed. Try and find a weapon with a celerity proc. Increase your crit chance. You can aug your str if you like but you get less return on that investment compared to other classes. Dex however should be applied to you the same as it is everyone for defense and casting speed. I don't know if dex helps your melee crit chance. Qui only affects on aspect of your abilities, melee speed, but it affects it the same as everyone else. ( pity thanes don't get evade 1, but really, they shouldn't )
Get determination because you need to make use of the time you are alive, you cannot afford to waste time being alive, mezzed doing nothing. IP was always a friend to me. Magic resists are nice. ST ofcourse. You prolly don't need raging power or mystic crystal lore. Serenity 1 should be enough.
I always wanted to get that pbao spirit damage RA. Especially now with 50 SC throw weapon for 200 damage. Your long range instant, your pbaoe instant, the RA spirit pbaoe instant, and throw your weapon is a good amount of burst damage. But that's a big RA investment. Determination will serve you better.

Wow ok, i see the stat you guys are talking about on the char sheet. Good to know what that means. Thanks for the input. I definatly understand how weaponskill works now, yay!~

Anyone have some numbers to help me out? Lets see how low or high the table of a Thane really is. If anyone has a lvl 50 melee class help and post your stats trying to get your STR to hover right around 325.

Level 50 I am sitting at these stats, I am going to buff my STR just to get it comparable to you guys. Try and get your STR to hover right around mine (prob you be unbuffed lol!) So we can compare WS stats.

327 STR
1447 WS
1620 WD

No played cleric will have the +24% energy resist buff, since that's at 48 pts into enhancement.. so only buffbots will have that one. Hence the difference between a hib group without a warden and an alb group, will be 6% energy resists (+10% CL vs +16% cleric resists)

As for the OP's question... make sure if your gear is spellcrafted, that it's also enchanted (should show +35% BONUS in the delve).. since that one directly influences your miss rate.

Also.. artifacts / crafted / champion weapons / ML10 weapons have a lower miss rate than dropped weapons.. but doubt many people play with mob dropped weapons anyway.

For your spell casted damage... ToA pierce is very important.. make sure you have that one capped (10%)


And don't forget.. you're a hybrid... Jack of all trades, master of none... pure melee will out DPS you in melee.. pure casters will out DPS you in casting.