By The TheCloser⁵ᵗʰ
This is my own perspective on some gear stats, and I do admit to there being a few assumptions in here. I do like consider a problem from more than a single direction, maybe something here will help somone look at a piece of gear in a different way. We'll always be learning more and expanding on this particular topic, but lets start with the basics.
Stat points:
So far in this game, you can't simply out last a dodge build. If they have a higher budget than you, stacking points into the life stat is not a solution. +Life gear is over powered, it beats %life which multiplies your life stat points, and it will for the foreseeable future. That means, a lot of the points I stuck into life, aren't of much use right now. When you're leveling, most points should go into movement, though I'll expand on this some more.
If you're leveling quickly, and investing heavily in a stat, you will notice a phenomenon that will pop up often in this game, the concept of "diminishing returns".
As you put those points into Movement you will notice that the % per point invested, isn't a constant, it diminishes over time. That means eventually you will most likely want to put some points into attack and defense where the return is still “high”, but didn't come close to matching the value of movement at first. This would be late game though in my opinion, unless you're heavily invested in morphon cards.
Points in attack and defense affect "base" damage output, and base damage is what you can multiply using gear with Xdamage stats. (We'll discuss Xdamage and +damage later, but +damage doesn't seem to have any association with the other 2 types) You will not see the effect of putting points into attack and defense on damage, until the gap between you and your opponent’s stats are very wide. We haven't done enough research on this to give hard numbers yet, but we've seen unhappy players with a lot of points in attack.
(This would be advanced theory anyway as it takes time and investment in those stat points, and gear that magnifies that stat%. I think you don't see immediate returns because you have to beat the variable first, perhaps even a number added to the stats before the variable kicks in. We hope to figure that out later. Feel free to ask questions, and we'll all discuss our observations, this is an important topic.)
You can't finish the stat section without talking about Energy.
Energy may well be a terrible resource sink for a bunch of players. If you're leveling a power mini very slowly, you don't need energy stealing your stat points. In fact energy's only use is getting xp and fighting in fight club.
Now if you're a leveling machine you might think, "Well I need Energy for my leveling", but since energy accumulates at a set rate, having more points into energy may have a minimal effect for you as well. Someone will say " I can't log in fast enough to use it when it fills, so I need more points." The question is, can they log in fast enough to use the new amount that you've invested in, when it fills? Or, will you just lose 1% of some other stat for 2 more energy, 2 or 3 times a day? Diminishing returns may come into play here again later though, as will new game content.
I have 20 energy on my alt, so I can use a full large morphon bar. I felt good about not wasting that resource. My main has 30energy so I can use both gifts at once, and theoretically manage enough fights to win a fight club, but I rarely fight in them. So what did I really get?
Cards/Powers:
Cards seem simple, they add up to your stats and are carried by your teammates. Each teammate carries 5 cards of each type into battle, upto the max, which will equal your levelX5. Adding a level without having a friend to cover it, doesn't make much sense.
Cards are sorted by the amount of their main stat not the secondary stats. So a 80/10/10 attack card, could bury a 79/59/69 that might be more valuable to you. Adding a level without adding 5 cards of each type, doesn't make much sense either.
Morphon cards and gear, are what separate you from the competition, some will be better, some will not. A Morphon card is free to own, and has high stats. Some other options will work in a pinch, but you should always have your eye on ways to get better cards. A tiered Morphon card is better obviously, however, the same mp you used to tier it, could have purchased almost twice the number of stats in the store, minus the stats of whatever card it pushes out of your deck. Just look before you leap, maybe pull out a calculator.
Gear:
Gear will suffer the most from the "diminishing returns". Eventually, stacking more points into some of these categories, no longer gets you noticeable gains.
I explain the best gear building strategy as "balance" and "Wasted slots". By balance, I mean making use of every gear mechanic whenever possible. Don't ignore anything. 100 points in 3X looks good but if dropping 25 of those points still has you within a few percent of the same result, drop a piece of 3X gear and add some stun/stun resist/2X/+Life, whatever, anything may be a better option than a nearly wasted gear slot.
Another wasted gear slot is anything adding +dmg, that your opponent will resist, it just doesn't make sense. (Learn about resistence, read the files, ask questions, it matters, a lot.)
Keeping these concepts in mind, will help you build suits that get wins.
A Breakdown Of Gear Functions:
STUN :
The stun effect activating means that you will not receive any damage on their next turn, kind of like a dodge. It doesn’t guarantee you a “hit” as well. It will not activate if you miss, so there is another dodge connection. This means limited effectiveness against an opponent with a movement advantage, like everything else, but it’s another chance to avoid that person’s damage when they likely would have hit you again otherwise. We need to talk a bit more about this ability in reference to stun resist, because it’s kind of a tough one to counter. Your stun% (whatever it may be) should represent 100% of your opponents ability to resist. So anything under 100% will always see some stuns getting through.
STUN RESIST
Pretty self explanatory but as a % value of stun. Resist Stun 50% - should activate on average half of the times your opponent's stun procs. So if they have 50% Stun, and you have 50% stun resist, you’ll likely still get stunned 1 out of 4 times that you get hit. If these stats are released at uneven power levels, items carrying stun could easily become part of the new epic build.
LIFE + #
This one is pretty simple, and does not suffer from diminishing returns. +life looks great in a fight, but it is only part of your survivability. It doesn’t matter if you take a lot of hits, if you can’t do enough damage to win, flash and no substance. Dodge/Life/Damage you need them all. When building a fighting suit it doesn’t hurt to change your perspective. In a way Life is wrapped up with resistance (+Life = Avoided Damage) a different road to the same place.
REDUCE FOE (STRIKE/DODGE/BLOCK)
AND
STRIKE+/+% BLOCK + /+% MOVE +/+ %
Movement is king. If you’re not there when damage is done, and can still do damage yourself, you will win eventually. So +Move% gear can easily make you better than the guy that doesn’t have it.
Strike and Block will affect damage output, we know that. I admit to not having done enough research in this area. You can see its affect most clearly in your opponents base damage outputs. We will delve into this in a future article.
Here’s the fun part, these are stat modifiers. Stats are largely from cards. Cards are what people buy. So, these stats can counteract spending. They were the sleeping giant everyone met in the boots of clarity. They can be deceptively powerful. Also +/- % gear will get more powerful as stats increase, while straight +/- stat gear will become irrelevant with leveling, unless the amounts grow by a lot in later gear.
The road to a limited event champion especially, will be found in good use of stat modifiers, and stat points.
XDAMAGE
3X DAMAGE
2X DAMAGE
1.8X DAMAGE
1.5X DAMAGE
Times damage was nerfed early on in development. These all used to proc together, and you could see hits in the thousands. Now they check their activation % in the above order, starting with 3X, and only moving on, if 3X fails. If it fails it will check against 2X, and if that fails move on, etc. So 50% 3X and 50% 2X will together, manage to multiply your base damage roughly 75% of the times that you do damage. Adding 50% of X1.8% increases (with diminishing returns in damage) those odds to 87.5% and finally another 50% in X1.5 topping you off at approximately a 93.75% chance of some extra damage. That last one an increase of only 50% of you base damage though, and if you watch your fights that may not be a lot. Also there’s an 87.5% chance that you never see that X1.5% on any given successful hit, and a 75% chance that you don’t see X1.8 either. We’re talking about a strong chance of nearly wasted slots again. 1.5, and 1.8 are obviously less valuable because they lack the higher damage numbers, and proc less, but if you didn’t have any 3x/2X/1.8 suddenly 1.5 would again affect a solid % of your damage output.
+ DAMAGE
This one is flashy, it gets a lot of attention, and always will. It is now (recent change) easier to resist than base damage. Base damage resist suffers from diminishing returns, while plus damage resist does not. Though both of the resistance mechanics are still controlled by resistance% gear. +Damage is however, another one of the few mechanics that doesn’t suffer from diminishing returns itself. You can stack it to your hearts content. Multiple smaller amounts of damage, of different types, are much easier to resist, than one or two very large pools of one type of damage. If you ever don’t know what to put in a slot, put in something that increases your damage.
The Closer and the 5th Precinct leagues, hopes this was helpful to someone. Also, feel free to message me in game or on facebook if you ever have a question about gear, a game mechanic, leagues, or events.
Future Topics:
Limited Team Events
Why leveling isn't a bad thing
Individual stat examinations
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