I will start with S:4 P:4 E:2 C:6 I:6 A:4 L:2 so endurance and luck will be my dump stats to benign with.

Probably luck, although the highly acclaimed "grim reaper sprint" perk is quite useful...

I'll probably skip Charisma for the most part. Maybe go for Lone Wanderer, but the rest of the perks don't really interest me so far. Just never been a fan of pacifying enemies and trying to get them to fight for me. I'd rather just shoot 'em.

S - 1

P - 8

E - 8

C - 1

I - 1

A - 8

L - 1

Sorry but strong back >>>>> every other perk

I always dump luck

For all of us (me, included) who plan to use Luck as a 'dump stat' of sorts..... wonder how we'll feel after they release the Luck video? Granted, the Strength, Endurance and Intelligence videos haven't done anything to alter my opinions of them, but they could reveal something in the Luck video that might make me think, okay, that IS a useful stat, now!

Unless there's a strength requirement to use certain guns effectively, strength is going to be fairly low for me. 3's as high as it'll go most likely.

But my true dump stat? Luck. Luck and charisma have always been my dump stats in the past, but since charisma has that "local leader" perk, I kind of need charisma now. Luck however, I don't expect to have any interest in. Could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Grim Reaper's Sprint was pretty good (and has saved me a few times before) in the past, but for me at least, it isn't worth the investment. Given the game purportedly has better FPS mechanics than FO3 or New Vegas, I very much doubt I'll be using VATS much at all anyway.

Yeah I'm on the fence on luck until I see how crits really work.

Luck would need to impact something other than VATS for me to not use it as a dump stat.

Most likely strength, endurance, and possibly luck. STR because nothing I've seen so far indicates weapon requirements, and the perks don't really wow me beyond three. Endurance because I don't really care about HP all the much/like a challenge, and luck because until they confirm otherwise I'm assuming non-VATS crits are a thing of the past.

Of course this is just for my initial character, other ones will dump cha or some such stat.

Well it affects loot drops.

Luck 2 will get all the loot drop effects that we know about...

Keep in mind that the Lone Wanderer perk (under Charisma at rank 3) will give you extra Carry Weight. So in my mind Strong Back isn't as important now.

Luck will be my dump stat again. Strength is a possibility...


Also: Anyone who uses Agility as a dump stat in FO4 --YOU HAVE LOST YOUR FREAKING MINDS!!!!

Depends, strong back will obviously give you more carry capacity per rank then what lone wanderer will ever give, plus we know from the article that as you rank up strong back you get nifty bonuses such as being able to move at regular walking speed by sprinting or being able to fast travel while over encumbered.

I get what you're saying. Although I still suspect people won't find Strength to overall be as important like it was in previous Fallouts. Less focus on strength means a less focus on Strong Back--for at least the early and middle levels, I suspect. We shall see..

Luck might be quite good if there are still criticals outside of VATs, which i assume there still are.

A random crit can save your life. And super-powered sneak criticals can be a pretty big deal if you play a sneaky character or focus on long-range sniping. Take out tough targets with a single shot.

Ah, forgot about that. Yeah, that might matter, but we have no idea to what effect it impacts loot drops.

I wouldn't count on Strong Back impacting carry weight more than Lone Wanderer - remember that Lone Wanderer has conditions associated with that carry weight increase while Strong Back does not.

I plan on trying a melee character first so my starting build will be 6-4-7-3-2-4-2. This should give me about 15 levels before I have to spend a point on raising a SPECIAL stat to get access to new perks, depending on how rank level requirements work. For my second character I'm leaning towards 3-8-1-6-4-3-3. I might move 4 points from Perception to Luck depending on how the Sniper perk works. Better Criticals and Mysterious Stranger might be more useful at early levels.

I'm actually hoping that they really did a lot of work when balancing stats and that it turns out that using any stat as a dump stat has significant drawbacks. Like instead of a 1 strength equaling 50 pounds of carry weight.. it now equals 10. That would definitely send me back to the drawing board.

I don't know if they've changed the carry weight ratio but if you're going with 1 Strength your giving up the ability to custom build your armor and melee weapons until later in the game since they require 3str for armor and 4str for melee weapons. Making perks tied directly to SPECIAL and taking out the rank 1 level requirements has certainly made me rethink how I'll be building my characters.

Will only be taking 3 Charisma so I can get the Lone Wanderer perk. Don't see any reason to have more then 3 based on that perk tree. Never been a fan of having companions with me. And I like the bonus that LW perk gives. Will be crucial for my characters.

With a pure DR armor system the armor isn't going to mean much of anything at low levels; or really at high levels. All hits will do something. Unless you can creep above 50% in the early game armor will have very little effect on survivability compared to DPS and that means taking a high-damage path like laser+crits will win the race. If you can build armor with a Damage Threshold, this all changes, but they're on record with DR-only (which is crap).

Say you step out of the vault with 1 Endurance but you have the armor modding perk; you can make yourself some armor that gives you 12-15% damage resistance; what would've been Vault Security or raider armor in Fallout 3. You have around 80 HP. The 10mm pistol does 18 damage. You can take 4 hits before you die from the fifth with a DR of 0%. With 12% you can take 5 hits. With 15% DR you can still only take 5 hits before you die on the sixth. With 50% DR you can take 8 hits. With 85% DR you can take 29 hits.

So again, armor doesn't mean a whole lot in the early game. The best method of staying alive second to being a high damage-per-second crit machine with high Luck will be Medic, which is the 2 Intelligence perk. Until your HP climbs into the triple digits or you can immediately heal damage effectively armor isn't going to do anything for you.

Why is medic good? Because I believe it increases Stimpak effectiveness by 20% per rank. Stimpaks heal 40% of your HP, thus each rank of medic adds another 8%. Effectively increasing your HP by 8% is even more effective than taking a point of endurance training.

Yeah, but simply not being able to craft isn't really that much of a motivator to not use it as a dump stat since it would only take 3 levels to build strength up to those perks. I totally want to build a non-crafting character and rely on only found objects at some point.. however, I doubt I'll be able to really resist crafting my first time through.

Out of the gate I really hate using any stat as a dump stat.. I want to at least start the game feeling like Mr. Normal. But man, this lower stat thing has really thrown me off. For one, I don't know what normal is anymore. In the previous fallout games, 5 was the average and you had enough points to then be a bit better than average. In this game.. if 5 is still the average then what the heck happened to my guy to make him a below average guy?