To make Battle Tactics useful doesn't really require that much money. As I'll show in a moment, even with 0 INT to start with, allocating your statpoints in INT can be more effective than anything else and that should be true for ML1 gear as well. Money defines only how much you can abuse this inbalance!
It's also a discussion about the 'don't forget to stack AGI' comment.
My pot example simplified things a bit: +1% crit. chance isn't always a +1% final DPS increase, it depends on the critical damage and the starting crit. chance.
Critical chance:
To keep it simple on this part, let's assume 0 INT (the pure 100% bonus on crit. damage):
10% crit chance = +10% damage
20% crit chance = +20% damage
...
90% crit chance = +90% damage
100% crit chance = +100% damage
Although the 'results' are true, they 'hide' a simple fact: The damage bonus is compared to a 0% crit. chance. But the higher your bonus already is, the less effective any further bonuses gets.
If you already have a 90% crit. chance, another 10% don't mean your total damage (the big yellow numbers) go up by +10%. They only change by ~5% ((200 / 190) -1).
Critical damage:
The same is true for the bonus to crit. damage. The higher your bonus already is, the less effective a further bonuses gets.
If you have a constant 10% crit. chance f.e., to raise your crit. damage from +900% to +1000% will only result a ~5% DPS increase.
AGI vs. INT:
That means that generally spoken, raising INT endlessly will become less and less useful and the same is true for AGI. However the question still is, which stat is 'usually' more effective.
Because you percentual DPS bonus depends on both crit. chance AND crit. damage, a more precise result of my pot example is (using my 33% crit. chance)
+75 INT (+30% more crit. damage)
0 INT before (100% crit. bonus) => final DPS increase = 7,45%
1000 INT before (500% crit. bonus) => final DPS increase = 3,75%
+75 AGI (+0,4% more crit. chance)
0 INT before (100% crit. bonus) => final DPS increase = 0,3%
1000 INT before (500% crit. bonus) = final DPS increase = 0,75%
Even with 1000 INT, any additional point in INT would increase the final DPS rate (= threat) much more than AGI ever would. (I guess it would take like 7k INT to balance it)
So choosing AGI over INT is for PvP reasons. You forgo a higher damage output, because 'finisher' skills do more than enough damage to kill a target and any additional damage would be lost. But if you want to choose a pure DPS build, you can't get enough INT.
Well, since this was about AGI vs. INT, I haven't discussed STR & Hit here.
A funny side note:
The developers punish the players twice: Not only do you get an decreasing benefit from the same x% crit chance the higher your starting value is, you also have to spend more and more points in AGI to achieve the same crit. chance bonus.
Edited by Greven79, 06 August 2014 - 12:01 PM.