User blog comment:JosephTomega/1 to 200 Level up status/@comment-5736752-20121219150135/@comment-5847779-20121219165705

Yes it does. Your strength stats affect all melee and all ranged weapons. Magic stat affects all magical weapons and elemental weapons. So it is lucerative to increase strength for all vocations except for Mage and Sorcerer. All other vocations have some sort of dependency on strength. Mystic Knight is kind of a mixed bag, because it is a melee vocation that uses magick to augment its attacks. Same goes for the Magick Archer although the latter has a bow that relies completely on magic so it has a lesser dependency. At any rate it will suck in melee.

So a Strider/Ranger type vocation can focus on strength or choose the middle way between magic and strength and use elemental weapons. Going with magic and strength with the correct augments might give you the best bang for your buck in terms of damage output since the strider is kind of in the middle. The Ranger is similar, but has higher strength values.