If you sacrifice some str or some Dex, your weapons base damage will be higher.
300str + 200dex is how you get the absolute highest damage possible with your hatchet, but you won’t have any health.
If you decide that you want some survivability, then you would give up some str/Dex for con. Most people would opt to give up some Dex because hatchet scales less from it.
I don’t use DEX, that’s my point.
Do I need Dex? My weapons are Stren/Con.
The attributes are now changed to 333 Stren and 134 con. that will give me the Con bonus at 200 and Stren will then be 357.
But where does Dex enter this equation which was the original question?
You don’t need Dex unless you want more damage or more utility.
What
What do you mean what?
I have the gold, I have swapped Con for Stren as was suggested.
The question was, why does a hatchet need DEX when it can be used with STREN.
Dex is not mandatory for hatchet, most the time I run 60 con rest in str that allows me to push 100 con if I need, but more often then not I just boost str.
What is the effect of having Stren/CON and DEX together?
Thats the whole point I am asking?
Utility mostly but even that is debatable. The devs thought people would play split stats, but most the time it doesn’t pay off take bow for instance you may think going into int would help but nope max damage is just pushing more dex at a cost of less con.
@Nich but what does the Bow have to do with a Stren/Con hatchet build?
I am seeking an easy reply as to why a hatchet can be Stren/Dex and what does it mean for a player like me using Stren/Con as perhaps I am scaling my weapon innapropriately.
it’s an example of splits stats not being worth it in the long run. In practicality it means you could run a dex build with hatchet, but it doesn’t really work well in practice.
Are you saying that a hatchet can be used in a DEX/Con build as well as Stren/Con?
“Scales with strength and dexterity”, but we won’t tell you exactly how it scales.
Still can’t believe the lack of some basic things in this game
Why have more than 300 str?
That depends on your definition of can. It’s not optimal by any means, but hatchet does have some utility that is nice which means there are options there. You’re worrying needlessly your build is fine just remove con as you get more comfortable.
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For double stat scaling weapons primary stat, str for hatchet is better dps till 150 str. Then you can invest 50 into dex for more dps than going to 200, the at 50 dex str is better to 250, then dex to 100 dex, and the DRs leap frog.
This doesn’t apply to GS as dex/str scale the same
Because I lean into GA and WH mostly when playing str and don’t want to respec all the time. The gains for hatchet by branching into dex are negligible at best.
Makes sense
Nope. 150 str 50 dex is 910 base hatchet dmg vs 200 str which is 920. The diminishing returns are not what you or the devs think. the extra crit chance isn’t a huge deal since hatchet crits all the time anyway. Now if you will excuse me I am going to go get a life since nobody should know this off the top of their head. 
I like running gs/hatchet with 150 dex 150 strength 200 con as it gives me a 4th dodge in medium armor and still has good damage output for both weapons. Won’t be as high damage if I put all into either strength or dex but the added mobility is a bigger pro than the marginally increase In damage imo
Ahh now this is sounding more like it. Easily explained as well.
So ultimately, I can use! Stren/Con and DEX.
Mobility is something my old, sore and arthritic fingers need. I must give this a try. 
Is this something you would personally would use in PVE? perhaps dedicated to only PVP?