Do Yourself A Favor

[Inaluogh]

No i'm not gonna say "Don't buy this game" because it's an amazing game. But if you play the game and find yourself struggling with most endgame enemies, you probably understood by now;

Any build that is not agility-centric is almost useless. Because Focusing solely on agility takes the whole "dice rolling" factor out of it. Kinda like making a powerplay DnD character. If you focus heavily on agi, you will never miss. The enemy will always miss. They will always get countered. You will come out on top unscratched even if the fights take a decade to end.

I tried stamina and strength builds. People say stamina is the most useless but from experience, i feel strength is probably the most frustrating to go with. You have ONE job. To hit people. If you focus on strength you also HAVE TO build up some stamina too so you don't run out of steam in two punches. Which means your stamina will be sitting at 1 or maybe slightly higher. Which also means, you can't hit ♥♥♥♥. Every single agility enemy will annihilate you, run circles around you and make you eat your own punches. Yeah sure, maybe you are lucky with coin flips and dice rolls so you can land 5 punches in a row which will instantly finish the fight in a KO. But if you are one those unlucky fellows, you will find yourself missing more than you ever want to.

So you have two choices;

1. Be Muhammad Ali, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee and their hands can't hit what their eyes can't see. You will only have a long, drawn out battle if you encounter another Muhammad Ali, which you will, but not very often.

2. Be the Joe Frazier in Thrilla in Manila, taking every shot that is thrown at you while not connecting enough to stop the opposition.

[Dagda]

I have 8Str (locked) and 11 Stam (locked at 8 as well) and I was building my character along the Cobra strike path (AGI 16). Plan worked perfectly .... until I met the prison Champion. The dude has massive STR and STAM w/ 9AGI.

I thought 8 STR would be enough....how wrong I was ;_; Oh and the whole dodge+ land all hits deal? Hah! This jail champ lands all his hard hits and tanks mine (if i hit) like a boss. Now, I'm grinding more AGI/STAM to try and get outta jail.

EDIT: Got'em http://imgur.com/a/bvr24
The jail champ had 13STR 9AGI 10STAM.

AGI builds are probably most reliable for people vs most targets but when you meet someone with massive STR/Stam AND agi, things can get sticky.

[Inaluogh]

I took the same path as you so i fought that guy. It's basically a coin flip. Keep trying until you win and there is a very high chance you will.

[76561198094982803]

Agreed. My bear style fighter (16-17 str, 6-7 ag end, hardcore mode disabled, most of basic skills and half, more usefull, in bear skill tree) cant hit enemy and lose over and over again, sometimes on last fighter, sometimes earlier - i cant progress anymore, because im stuck in first league championships. I cant gain more stats, cant develop more skills, cant do anything really (all quest are done). Game Over. Really bad game balance.
Skip attacks skill is necessary to bear style and some low cost attack (at least one, usually two) to reduce stamina usage. It will not help win tho - you will miss, enemy will hit, game over anyway with stamina or not.

[dieMaus]

Hm. Tbh for me the AGI-Style (first I tried) was the most boring of them. The fights drag WAY on. And, vs. the High-AGI enemys its a RNG-gamble.

Bear was more funny. Yes, in SOME fights especially till the end you maybe need abit RNG-luck (=trying the fight a second or third time) but overall it feels way more powerfull. Also, you dont NEED Agi for Bear (depending on your build) because most Bear-punches have high base accuracy. Just pump your Stamina so you survive vs. the AGI-chars as it takes some time to hit them ;)
I finished Bear with 16-5-12. If you really struggle vs AGI-chars (I cant imagine you struggle vs someone else??), try that: Keep your loadout the same but equip the "Tiger-Style". This does more for your accuracy then just blindly pushing agility on bear-chars will ever do (+the 4 AGI are locked so you never ever have to train it again)...

However, Turtle with energy-build trashes them all. You wipe the floor with AGI-Chars :) I never imagined I would finish my first HC run. And then I made it in 71 days.

So you see, if you know what you wanna do, equip the right perks and train no useless stats any build will work and win the game. And most of them need no (Bear) or just a bit (Turtle) Agility...

Last tip: Keep in mind that most of the time you dont need 100% from the endurance fights. For example I always stopped at 50% even with turtle-build. The 50% prize was enough anyway. Same for aliens, I never made the 100% with no builds, it was more easy to farm the 50% more often...

[Malthusians]

Agree about the stats, and especially agree about the hard fight series - the rewards don't really scale. So even if I could win 85% of the time the whole series, even that 15% of getting nothing made it not worth it vs 100% of the middle reward. The hard fights take a long time and a lot of management, yeah it's worth doing a few times to see what they're like and to prove you're boss. But there's not really a time limit, so multiple easy no-brainer 50% rewards with 100% probability was way more efficient for me than risking even a few losses trying to go the whole way.

[madcapbeatitude]

Originally posted by Inaluogh:

No i'm not gonna say "Don't buy this game" because it's an amazing game. But if you play the game and find yourself struggling with most endgame enemies, you probably understood by now;

Any build that is not agility-centric is almost useless. Because Focusing solely on agility takes the whole "dice rolling" factor out of it. Kinda like making a powerplay DnD character. If you focus heavily on agi, you will never miss. The enemy will always miss. They will always get countered. You will come out on top unscratched even if the fights take a decade to end.

I tried stamina and strength builds. People say stamina is the most useless but from experience, i feel strength is probably the most frustrating to go with. You have ONE job. To hit people. If you focus on strength you also HAVE TO build up some stamina too so you don't run out of steam in two punches. Which means your stamina will be sitting at 1 or maybe slightly higher. Which also means, you can't hit♥♥♥♥♥♥ Every single agility enemy will annihilate you, run circles around you and make you eat your own punches. Yeah sure, maybe you are lucky with coin flips and dice rolls so you can land 5 punches in a row which will instantly finish the fight in a KO. But if you are one those unlucky fellows, you will find yourself missing more than you ever want to.

So you have two choices;

1. Be Muhammad Ali, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee and their hands can't hit what their eyes can't see. You will only have a long, drawn out battle if you encounter another Muhammad Ali, which you will, but not very often.

2. Be the Joe Frazier in Thrilla in Manila, taking every shot that is thrown at you while not connecting enough to stop the opposition.

Nope! Here is option 3: Start the game with two attack slots, and fill them with your best attack and "block." Use the balanced map to lock your strength at 4, acquire a powerful strength-style attack, and leave "block" in that second slot. Add a third slot and fill it with "rest" to fuel your punches, also keeping your stamina at a BARE MINIMUM of half your strength; honestly, 75% is fine. The "boxer" passive skill, acquired in mid-to-late game, will increase the accuracy of several of your best attacks, and the "Triple Punch" attack modifier will cause them to combo frequently and cost less in order to offset the higher number of attacks.

The higher number of attacks will increase your chances of landing hits which will do incredibly destructive damage. In the VERY late game, when your strength is locked at 13, you have 4 attacks and a modifier, no blocks or dodges, but still train Agility to 8 or so (so this onslaught of attacks land even on dodgy opponents) and stamina to 10+ so you can keep up with your still-substantial energy consumption, and also have decent HP.

The bear build is more of a murderously aggressive "Young Tyson" kind of build that deals insane damage to both HP and energy. In early game with Bear, you throw Uppercuts and Paw Punches that deplete the energy of low-level enemies pre-emptively. In late game, you deal 3-hit combos with 100+ HP payoffs in the first round that empty your opponent's energy, then follow up with a second combo a couple turns later that empties their HP while they're still trying to catch their breath.