From adom wiki:
Purposes of strength:
Strength affects several of your character's values. The most prominent of these are:
Melee damage and to-hit: This makes Strength the most important stat for any melee fighter, and by extension anyone else who wants to use a melee weapon on a casual basis (as you may not want to waste all your spells and ammunition on mooks).
As for the exact amount, i dont know but for the purposes of the abv debate, 4 St should give you a mere 2.5 damage for my argument to hold! (which i think it does)
I nominate Skincrusher...
Heavy weapon talent line is useless, all talents put there are wasted but that's just my opinion.
I'd much rather invest into porter line, speed talents, TH and missiles for quick and lightning shots.
I virtually never take any weapon talents because the bonuses are just so ridiculously unnoticeable, even when all the related talents have been obtained.
You're looking at a maximum of +10 chance to hit at the point in the game when you already have to-hit around 100 or more.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
well, the basher line is a bit better, since it gives bonuses to damage too and don't forget that all these little bonuses add up to percentages when suing Aggressive+ Tactics, so, fighting at Very Aggressive or Berserker, makes those few extra points of damage noticeable.
well, i absolutely agree with you on the 1st 3/4 things you said...my 1st talents are almost always...alert, miser, TH, long stride (sometimes i take it b4 miser), porter, master packager, beast of burden, quick, very quick, greased lightning. but then i go for the melle weapon talents including aggressive and natural berserker (unless i have found a ranged artifact). And i think we can all agree that defensive talents are a complete and utter waste in the late game!!
died to an ice vortex in PC5 on the way back from the altar to the stairs .
Actually I usually take defensive talents in the late game.
Since so many monsters at that time ignore armor, DV is a better solution.
I'll try to get DV talents and dodger, then shield talents including shield master.
This results in around 10 extra DV that is independent of tactics. Quite useful.
I will take those DV talents over basher and any weapon talents any time.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."