Which is more important to a warrior? The arguments have gone on forever and a day, and this post is just one more in a long line of opinions. Before we get into it though, there are a few points of interest to be noted:

* Assuming your healer is a cleric
* AC softcap is about 1250 (I think)
* Complete Heal heals for a maximum of 7500 HPs and costs 400 mana (without specialisation etc kicking in)
* STR adds directly (visibly) to ATK
* STA adds directly (visibly) to HPs
* DEX adds indirectly (invisibly) to weapon procs.
* CRITs are window dressing and have a set percentage chance of occurring.

OK, with that out of the way...which is most important?

My answer: all of them.... at different times in your career.

During the beginning levels of your career as a warrior, before you being grouping with clerics who have Complete Heal, your HPs take a back seat to your AC (and to your other stats)
Why is this? Mana efficiency for your cleric mostly. The following lists the heals a cleric gets up to Complete Heal (at level 39) with mana, HP healed and ration mana to HP


Minor Healing: 10m/10hp 1:1 (1.00)
Light Healing: 25m/35hp 5:7 (0.71)
Healing: 60m/100hp 3:5 (0.60)
Celestial Remedy: 190m/260hp over 24 seconds (4 tics) 19:26 (0.73)
Greater Healing: 150m/300hp 1:2 (0.50)
Superior Healing: 250m/583hp 250:583 (0.43)
Complete Healing: 400m/7500hp (max)

So up until a cleric gains the complete heal spell, the MOST they can heal for with any one cast is limited to a set amount. (For all intents and purposes, Complete Heal is still a complete heal for most warriors).

Well, so what? you may say. The more HPs I have the longer I can stand toe-to-toe and slog it out with a mob. That's true. For the short term. BUt those HPs will still need to be healed and that can only happen at a set rate. So it is more important to reduce the amount of damage you take and therefore the amount you have to be healed for. (Means it will be a longer period of time before your cleric goes OoM).

There are three ways to reduce the damage you take:
1) Reduce the amount of damage taken when a MoB hits you (AC)
2) Reduce the number of times a MoB hits you (AC)
3) Kill the MoB faster so it hits you fewer times. (ATK/DMG)

So, pre-Complete Heal clerics, we need to first maximise our AC and then our ATK. AC is easy (relatively) - get beat on to max your Defense and get new armour. ATK is the same deal - beat on mobs to max your weapon and Offense skills, get better weapons and UP your STR stat. (remember STR directly affects ATK).

Once we begin grouping with clerics with CH things start to change.
We see that Complete Heal costs 400m (ignore specialisation etc) and heals to a maximum of 7500 HPs (noone I know personally has this amount).

Superior Healing has a ratio of 0.43 mana spent per HP healed and costs 250 mana to cast. Complete Heal costs 400 mana to cast so in order for Complete Heal to be as efficient as Superior Healing, it must heal at least 933 HPs (rounded). Here is where we need to maximise our HPs - the more HPs we have, the more efficient Complete Heal becomes. For example, if I as a warrior have 2500 HPs unbuffed, a cleric casting Complete Heal can get (although unlikely) a maximum efficiency of 0.16 mana per HP. Substantially better than Superioir Heals 0.43. If we increase my maximum HPs to 5000 then that efficiency becomes 0.08 mana per HP. What does this mean? It means we can tank and tank and tank and tank ...

Still, what about maxing stats? Haven't I forgotten them? Not at all. They ARE important. STR increases ATK rating directly. This means you will hit more, do more damage and the mob willl die faster (plus you will get more agro). DEX will help you proc more therefore (depending on your proc) increase the damage you deal and/or generate more agro. One thing to remeber about DEX is that it effects how fast you learn weapon
skills - the higher your dex the faster your weapon skills increase. (Not going into archery here)

STA needs to be concentrated on for two reasons.

Prior to grouping with CH clerics, STA should be kept at or above 100 to minimise the effects of fatigue (your yellow bar that indicates how tired you are and tells you that you can't tumble roll again until you rest =p). Effects of fatigue with STA post 100 are arguable but the majority of people will agree that having STA over 100 negates fatigue.

Post CH clerics, STA adds HPs. For a level 60 warrior I believe each point of STA adds 6 HPs (though I could be wrong there).

How about AGI? It adds a minimal amount of AC and as long as it is above 90 then you needn't worry about it overly much. Why 90? Below 90 your movement rate starts to be affected (barely noticably) but as you take damage your AGI can drop significantly, then you start getting AC penalties and movement drops to a crawl.

Not good for tanking OR for running away =p.

CHA, INT, WIS .... you're a tank for crying out loud, noone ever wanted you to be smart or good-looking =p

Saves.
Fun fun fun.
When are saves more important than AC or HPs? Are they ever? Heck yes! When you are fighting MoBs that have an AE weapon (dragons are the most noticable examples of this) having high Saves can save your life - and your raid from wiping. (Levels > Saves but more on that some other time). Ideally, we all gather gear that has AC, HPs and Saves on them - but that sort of equipment isn't readily available until later in a character's life (generally speaking) and most of us will have to carry an extra set of gear around with us for swapping out.

So what do we sacrifice when we put our save gear on? HPs? AC? Stats? I'll always swap out AC gear for saves before I swap out HP gear. Why? Even saves of 200+ aren't going to stop all AEs hitting me all the time, and some AEs are rather nasty - the more HPs I have the longer I will last before needing a heal, the longer the healers can concentrate on the MT. But what if I am the MT? Again, at this stage of the game, your AC will be approaching the softcap anyway (with average gear I have almost 1100 AC unbuffed) and more HPs = more efficient healing, more latitude for lag on a CH Rotation, etc etc. So swap out pure AC before removing HP items.

Have I missed anything? probably.
Hope there's something helpful in there for the younger warriors amongst us.

Bikamar Neebiter

Edited, Sun Dec 8 23:43:33 2002