What's athletics useful for?

[Hissssa]

Athletics will increase dexterity strength and vitality. The porter perk is nice and so is eating less food (although not necessary).

To be honest you get more out of putting points into weapon skills but it depends on what you want your front line to do. My back line mages were the real dps so the front guys were little more than people to take hits and hold everything. By the way I did play on hard.

[Empyrean]

There is plenty of food to go around and a couple places where you can get more any time you want

This depends on play style many of us have ran out of food around level 4, some people had to restart the game because of it. I myself ran out as I had 2 Minotaurs in the party and took my time generally. While there are places to get unlimited food they aren't till half way through the game or later.

Basically Athletics is a useful skill, especially for new players, playing on normal or easy.

Daniel.

You don't get reduced food consumption for a couple of levels anyway, and even when you do get it for a fighter, your party's total food consumption is reduced by a whopping 1/16th per party member with the skill. I would argue that if you want to save food, you should put more points into weapon or defense skills so you can kill enemies without taking as much damage. Even a small reduction in the amount of time you need to spend resting will probably help your food last longer than Athletics would. Not to mention that in the early stages of the game (before you have access to an inexhaustible food source) ten points into a lackluster skill constitutes a huge investment, and it's rendered completely moot only a couple of floors later. There's really no stage of the game where it's really beneficial.

I think you're posting in defense of what the skill is intended to do, rather than how useful it actually is: not very. Depending on the character, you might need to gain as many as three levels before you can even get the food reduction. By that point, if you're taking so long that you're running out of food, would the 1/16th reduction be enough to save you? I find it fairly unlikely that a playstyle that spends enough time to risk starvation would suddenly become viable due to such a minor reduction in food consumption.

[Hissssa]

Athletics is just as viable as weapon skill if you build your party accordingly. My fighters ended up with 24 points in athletics, 16 in armor and 16/18 in weapon skill (swords/axes).

While athletics isn't as useful per point it is still nice to have. If the stats worked closer to D&D 3.5 rules where 2 points grants an additional +1 then athletics would be FAR superior to weapon skill. Right now I think it takes 8 points of strength to increase attack power. Four points probably would have put athletics on a more even keel.

I can count on one hand the number of times where I couldn't circle strafe enemies through the entire game so it really doesn't matter (even on hard) how you build your characters. I didn't need to rest at all until I got to the first slime area and only needed to use the heal stones once to keep someone from dying to poison.

I used athletics to make my fighters more tank like and less dps oriented. My mages did most of the damage. Remembering that everyone needs to get a hit to do damage I think it's better NOT to have super high weapon skills.

[Empyrean]

Sure, it would be nice to have if you could get it for free, but the opportunity cost is greater than the benefits you get from it, which means it's not a good skill to take.

[Hissssa]

Depends on how you want to play really.

Athletics is viable if you build your party accordingly; it may be less optimal but it works just fine for making your fighters into tanks instead of dps machines.

You did mostly melee combat, I had my front line guys as the finishers. By the time monsters got close to me they had been pummeled by ice and fire bolts.

My guys rarely ever got hit because things were almost always 1-2 shots by the time the closed to melee range.

[Empyrean]

Athletics gives you less useful bonuses than Armor if you want to make your front row guys harder to kill. If you want more offensive power for a character, put points in weapon skills. If you want more defensive power, but points in Armor or Dodge. If you want a mix of the two, split your points between weapon skills and Armor or Dodge. Athletics is just bad. No matter what role you have in mind for your Fighter(s), Athletics will make them worse at it than if you had allocated your points into offensive or defensive skills.

My guys rarely ever got hit because things were almost always 1-2 shots by the time the closed to melee range.

So Athletics isn't bad because your other guys did most of the work? That's not very convincing. If you've got the enemy within a hit or two of death by the time you close to melee, Athletics isn't really doing anything.

[Darklord]

Sometimes I chose to do things because they are fun and I like the flavour. Most games don't actually require full optimisation, they allow you to have fun with your build and still succeed.

Daniel.

[Empyrean]

You can play with a bad build if you want. You can win with a bad build if you want. But when someone asks what a bad skill is good for, at least be honest enough to say "Not much" instead of coming up with weak justifications for putting points in a second-rate skill. The question was "What's athletics useful for" not "Can you win if you put points in athletics" or "Do you enjoy playing with inefficient builds" or anything like that. Athletics doesn't enable tactics that wouldn't otherwise work, or make any part of the game noticeably easier. It would take a very contrived situation for anyone to ever say, "I would have lost if not for putting points in Athletics instead of other skills."

[Darklord]

Wow harsh response their Empyrean!

Taking your opinion to it's extremes takes all the fun out of the game.

By your point we should figure out the optimum build and force everyone to use it, why choose at level up, because you may make a less then optimum choice!

Should we get your choices hard coded into the game so no one can make the mistake of choosing a skill you do not like?

Daniel.

[Empyrean]

Like I said, you can play with whatever you want. But when someone asks what a skill is good for, if it's not good for something then it's better to just say so.

It's pretty clear that it was intended as a general boost to offense, defense, and some utility in reducing food consumption and increasing carry weight. But when you start crunching the numbers, it's apparent that it just is not a good place to put your skill points compared to boosting your offense and defense by putting points into the more focused skills. I'm giving advice based on what the skill actually does, not what it was probably intended to do. It probably wasn't intended to be a bad skill, but it is. If you care about avoiding bad skills (and not everybody does, but a lot of people do), don't take it.