Mechanics questions

[Timeetyo]

I'm new to the TL world and was hoping you vets could answer a few questions. I am planning on starting with a berseker and dont want to mess up my stat points.

1. Will the strength damage bonus affect all berserker skills, or only physical ones? Some are XX% weapon damage as physical... And some are as cold.
2. Will the focus damage bonus affect any zerker skills? If so, will it affect all, or only those that are cold (etc)
3. How does execute work? Is it only for auto attacks or can it proc on skill use?
4. When dual wielding, do the skills use the damage from bith weapons, the right, or the left hand?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[WhisperByte]

About #4:
In TL1 skills used the dps of weapon in main hand when dual wielding. Don't know how it is in TL2 but I assume it's the same.

btw: which hand is the main hand as I saw cannon equiped in right slot while shotgonne was equiped in left one

[Axios]

About #3: execute is when you have two similar weapon (like 2 pistols, 2 maces) and there is a chance that the 2 weapons shoot simultaneously.

[CrashFu]

1. Will the strength damage bonus affect all berserker skills, or only physical ones? Some are XX% weapon damage as physical... And some are as cold.
2. Will the focus damage bonus affect any zerker skills? If so, will it affect all, or only those that are cold (etc)

Strength increases weapon damage, so it will also increase the damage of any skills that are based on your weapon damage.

Focus will improve any skills that just list a certain number and not weapon damage. (If you use a weapon that does all elemental damage, like most staves or wands, high focus would benefit your weapon damage skills, too! An ice-staff berserker-shaman could be a pretty interesting build)

3. How does execute work? Is it only for auto attacks or can it proc on skill use?

Execute is only for standard attacks. It's a % chance on each attack, when using two weapons that can execute, that you will attack with both at once. Normally you'll alternate between them.

4. When dual wielding, do the skills use the damage from bith weapons, the right, or the left hand?

Unless I'm remembering this wrong, it went by the overall DPS. That actually means that in a lot of cases, dual-wielding would reduce the damage of your weapon-damage skills, compared to just equipping the single best weapon.

[Timeetyo]

Focus will improve any skills that just list a certain number and not weapon damage. (If you use a weapon that does all elemental damage, like most staves or wands, high focus would benefit your weapon damage skills, too! An ice-staff berserker-shaman could be a pretty interesting build)

To make sure I understand this correctly...
- with a physical weapon and a skill that is +XX% weapon damage, I would only get a damage bonus from strength.
- with an all elemental weapon and a skill that is +XX% weapon damage, I would bet a bonus from both strength and focus?

What happens for weapons that do 1/2 physical, 1/2 elemental? I saw a YouTube vid of beta that had a weapon that was something like 20-30 physical, 20-30 fire damage.

[CrashFu]

Focus will improve any skills that just list a certain number and not weapon damage. (If you use a weapon that does all elemental damage, like most staves or wands, high focus would benefit your weapon damage skills, too! An ice-staff berserker-shaman could be a pretty interesting build)

To make sure I understand this correctly...
- with a physical weapon and a skill that is +XX% weapon damage, I would only get a damage bonus from strength.
- with an all elemental weapon and a skill that is +XX% weapon damage, I would bet a bonus from both strength and focus?

What happens for weapons that do 1/2 physical, 1/2 elemental? I saw a YouTube vid of beta that had a weapon that was something like 20-30 physical, 20-30 fire damage.

Actually I'm not sure whether or not Focus gives any bonus to skills that are based entirely on weapon damage (except, again, if you use a weapon that does elemental damage) I don't think it does, but I'm not entirely sure of that.

But generally speaking, Strength increases all weapon damage (regardless of type). Focus will only increase the elemental damage of weapons, and skill damage.

If your character has really high strength but low focus, you can do a lot of damage with any weapon. You'll want to either focus on skills that are mostly based off of weapon damage, or ones that have really useful effects beside the damage (like stunning, or buffs/debuffs) Really the only skills you'd want to outright avoid are the ones that are just like "does X amount of fire damage". Keep in mind that you will also have less maximum mana if you don't invest in focus, so you won't be able to use your skills as frequently. On the other hand, Strength also gives a bonus to critical hit severity, so whenever you get a critical hit with your weapons OR skills it will do crazy damage.

If your character has really high focus but low strength, you'll either be using staves or wands (because they usually do all elemental damage and therefore receive just as much benefit from high focus as they would high strength), or just not rely on your skills as a primary source of damage (you could, say, get a ranged weapon that does Bleeding, health/mana steal, etc. and use it more for utility). Your skills on the other hand will do more damage and you can use them more often because you'll have higher max mana, so you'll need your weapons less anyways.