Luck or Speed?

[Captain Kirk]

So I am min/maxing my (4) core characters, and I've decided to max Coordination (for APs), Awareness (for Range) and Strength (for Melee and CON). Now that these are all maxed, do you recommend I start buffing Luck or Speed?

[Radiac]

Attributes you want depend a lot on what combat skill you're using. If you're not doing Melee Weapons or Brawling with a guy, you can safely dump both Strength and Speed, and honestly, NOBODY can ever honestly say they "need" Luck, Luck is a "luxury" Attribute in this game. It's not totally without it's positive features, but you won't be punished for leaving it at a low number forever either.

For gun shooters, you absolutely need to plan on eventually maxxing out Coordination and Awareness. For your first two characters, I would put maximum points in Charisma up front and then start leveling up other stats.

[Meowella]

Originally posted by Radiac:

Attributes you want depend a lot on what combat skill you're using. If you're not doing Melee Weapons or Brawling with a guy, you can safely dump both Strength and Speed, and honestly, NOBODY can ever honestly say they "need" Luck, Luck is a "luxury" Attribute in this game. It's not totally without it's positive features, but you won't be punished for leaving it at a low number forever either.

For gun shooters, you absolutely need to plan on eventually maxxing out Coordination and Awareness. For your first two characters, I would put maximum points in Charisma up front and then start leveling up other stats.

I disagree with a lot of this information.

Let's start with which weapons want Strike Rate:
Care: Small Arms, Sniper
Neutral: Explosives (fire can prevent routes), Automatic (can benefit, but not that much to worry)
Don't Care: Big Guns (simply risks friendly fire), Brawling (stunning that much is pointless with 1 punch costing 1 ap)
Weapons you shouldn't use because they're just not good: Melee

So with only a couple of characters benefiting from high strike rate, this means most chars wont care about it - Leaders tend to use shotguns and as for Snipers... they actually don't care much because of the free SR on their weapons (15% on high end ones) putting them at 25% with charisma 1 and elite Steeltown helm, or Cha 2.

Luck, on the other hand, adds a chance for AP refunding, crit, mega crits (triple a crit damage), evade, crit resist and a few other things.

Luck is 100% NOT a luxury, it is a seriously strong skill for both offense and defense.

[Radiac]

The Charisma for the first two characters is so you can use them to power-level the rest of the team. Higher Charisma means more bonus XP. Strike rate is also a nice benefit, and I'll certainly take it in the deal, but it's not the reason for giving the first two guys Charisma.

Having said that, while Luck has it's benefits, they're all in the firm of things that happen at random. Granted, they happen in your favor and more often when you have high Luck, which is a benefit, but they're not predictable or dependable. You will probably get a lot of lucky crits in situations when they're a total waste because the target was going about to die anyway, etc. Looks flashy and feels lucky when it happens, but you can't use it to reliably plan on getting the crit when you need it. Having a high Luck will certainly get you some benefits, and if it's between that and Charisma, in your mind, you don't really need the Charisma for anyone outside of the two power-levelers, but it's not a terribly necessary stat for anyone, regardless of their build or skills, to me. Neither is Charisma, for that matter, but for the power-leveling, I do want it on those first two guys.

[snuggleform]

To answer the original question, I would pick Speed, this is based in hindsight on having beaten the game a few times: specifically because the boss fights in both of the DLCs require a lot of movement and Speed makes a huge difference in keeping the team moving along in a comfortable manner to adapt to the moving battlefields.

The Luck stat has always felt a bit too situational for my tastes. If you aren't scoring a lucky crit or getting lucky movement points back, it feels bad. The 10% is just sorta...meh in my book.

[valium]

Speed is important for melee builds, or if you want an evasive tank gunner. Anything long range can ignore speed entirely.

[endregacontrol]

If you are playing the DLCs, I would not ignore SPD on any character - not even on your sniper. Especially if you want to sail through Cheyenne's encounters smoothly...

That said, I'd not concentrate on updating SPD until after COOR is maxed out on all characters and STR on melee/AWA on ranged is also maxed. What other attributes may take priority over SPD is hard to say.

I do not like snipers, so I can't give you advice on how much SPD is OK for Cheyenne and I assume other missions/encounters should be fine without any SPD.

I also dislike ARs, because IMO, with the exception of a few late/endgame ARs, you might as well throw sticks at 'em for the first half of the game - again, just my opinion.

My party has two SMGs: a fire Ripper and a PDW - these characters both have 2.5 SPD. I find that this SPD on SMG characters works best with the Stormer perk - dunno if this SPD also works with ARs.

I have two brawlers: one with 3.5 and the other with 4 SPD. My brawlers are stunners, so they need to be able to run some distance; using brawlers for stunning will also make your Penetration fairly insignificant, since you are not going for outright damage. That said, I do use several features (cyborg tech, armor, background etc.) to push their melee damage so that they can still mop up any targets that my other rangers didn't quite finish off.

After Aspen, though, especially after Steeltown, your elemental characters should be able to take care of most encounters in one turn even on higher difficulties (at this point, I bet, your non-elemental characters won't get to shoot/hack/slash/whack, for the most part).

The only character of mine that has LUCK is the brawler with higher SPD - I mostly do that, because of lucky actions as opposed to Penetration (and because raising other stats on this brawler doesn't make sense after COOR/STR/INT are maxed, I get that 4 SPD and I added a few points in CHA).

Just how many attribute points you need to achieve a SPD that works best for a character really depends on what pets (if any), armor, weapons (referring to Striking Distance for melee and brawlers), cyborg tech (if any), mods, and perks you have - which is an additional reason I would stay away from updating SPD early, unless you already know exactly what SPD you are aiming for your build and you know what other features you'll be using, in addition to attribute points, to get that SPD.

Evasion is also very nice, but I wouldn't get SPD on my characters just for higher percentage evasion.

Hope this helps. :)

[Heau]

On the side conversation about the value of Charisma for strike rate.

Once you get the hang of combat in this game, and realize that strike rate is carried forward between fights, you realize that you only really care to have strike available on the first turn of an encounter. As such, you can easily "game" the system to grind different characters' strike back up ready for the next fight after you've killed most enemies and are left with only a few to deal with. Snipers and HMG are a little more difficult to "game" due to their very high AP cost but I dont value strike that much on them either.

This playstyle significantly devalues strike from charisma, at least dumping into charisma is significantly devalued. I only occasionally put a few points in it as 5th stat on brawler to have double stun openers, one with first action, another because you can get enough AP from foam finger and leadership to grind back to 100% strike, move to another stack of units and stun them too.

Similarly, I have played full melee comps with the quirk that makes you immune to a bunch of debuffs at the cost of -15% experience and 2 charisma and while the experience deficit is a bit more noticeable super early in the game, by the end game its completely negligible due to the cost scaling level to level. I don't think the power gain from 1-2 levels by the end game actually offsets the loss of power from picking charisma over a more combat oriented stat. It's mostly nice as a mean to meet most early/mid RP stat check and can be thought of min/maxing in that RP sense but less so in a combat power curve.

[valium]

A lot of people value strike rate way too much for a lot of builds. The only build I feel needs more than 2 charisma is brawling.

Now, older threads and builds having stacking strike rate for pistols/shotguns made sense at that time before shotguns were nerfed. You could spend a round building strike rate with pistols, then let off a tactical nuke with the jackhammer the next.

High charisma builds wont even reach higher levels given how extreme the exponential experience requirement gets. Your high charisma characters will just hit that ceiling faster, the rest will eventually catch up.

[Romara]

Lot of folks hating on speed, but my best character uses smgs with deathwish and maxed coordination and speed, moving for luck now. It's hard to hit what's always behind full cover, half a block away, after just shooting at point blank.

[valium]

After playing the DLCs, I saw the value of having 1 or 2 party members with high evasion, standing out in the open, drawing fire.

Latest run had both a brawler and blade damage dealer with high evasion. SMG is also a good choice, they are so OP late game you can sacrifice stacking damage for stacking evasion.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

Originally posted by Heau:

It obviously doesn't match some people's expectations of a gun fight game to just tank bullets.

That is the crux of the matter. I don't deny that it's possible to tank bullets. What I don't like to see in a game is to have to do it for all characters because every ranger in the team is built differently depending on their role.

You shouldn't be trying to make all your characters tanky. Instead, you should be focusing on Evasion to evade damage for most of your party.

The Speed stat becomes very important on SJ difficulty, not for its Speed bonus but for its Evasion bonus.

By optimizing stats, skills, and gear, you have the ability to make a party that is very strong offensively and defensively on SJ difficulty.

Each of my party members have the ability to dish out over 10K damage per turn by end game and most encounters end in or two turns. Yet, they are strong defensively as well and can survive indefinitely on SJ difficulty.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by Meowella:

Originally posted by Radiac:

Attributes you want depend a lot on what combat skill you're using. If you're not doing Melee Weapons or Brawling with a guy, you can safely dump both Strength and Speed, and honestly, NOBODY can ever honestly say they "need" Luck, Luck is a "luxury" Attribute in this game. It's not totally without it's positive features, but you won't be punished for leaving it at a low number forever either.

For gun shooters, you absolutely need to plan on eventually maxxing out Coordination and Awareness. For your first two characters, I would put maximum points in Charisma up front and then start leveling up other stats.

I disagree with a lot of this information.

Let's start with which weapons want Strike Rate:
Care: Small Arms, Sniper
Neutral: Explosives (fire can prevent routes), Automatic (can benefit, but not that much to worry)
Don't Care: Big Guns (simply risks friendly fire), Brawling (stunning that much is pointless with 1 punch costing 1 ap)
Weapons you shouldn't use because they're just not good: Melee

So with only a couple of characters benefiting from high strike rate, this means most chars wont care about it - Leaders tend to use shotguns and as for Snipers... they actually don't care much because of the free SR on their weapons (15% on high end ones) putting them at 25% with charisma 1 and elite Steeltown helm, or Cha 2.

Luck, on the other hand, adds a chance for AP refunding, crit, mega crits (triple a crit damage), evade, crit resist and a few other things.

Luck is 100% NOT a luxury, it is a seriously strong skill for both offense and defense.

I disagree with a lot of this information.

Charisma is the lowest on both Sniper and Lucia in my party with both set at 2 Charisma.

Most Sniper weapons have a Strike Meter bonus of 10% or 15% with a few outliers having zero or 20%. Having Charisma set at 2 allows you to have 20 or 25% Strike Meter with most weapons. If you build your Sniper to shoot two rounds per turn, you will have decent Strike Meter generation. This is a class I do not spam Torrent Strikes with as there are other classes better suited for that role.

Lucia has 2 Charisma which gives her 20% Strike Meter generation with handguns. I tested this at various levels and found that there was very little to no difference between having 20% or 25% Strike Meter. I was consistently getting 2 Torrent Strikes per turn on average with either percentages. Raising the stat to 9 for the next breakpoint in Strike Meter generation was totally not worth the huge loss in overall performance.

In regards to Big Guns, you should always be sending them off first or second to do AOE but thats your choice.

Melee can do roughly 15 to 20K damage a turn by endgame and he is often my defacto choice for taking down high health organic targets. Don't know why you think they are useless but thats your opinion.

If you are min/maxing then you generally want two characters with max Charisma just for purposes of powerleveling.

Luck is the most effective on frontline characters with high number of actions, low evasion, and low/medium Crit Chance. There are really only two archetypes that fit this description: Low evasion Brawlers and Small Arms. Generally, you don't have enough points with Brawlers as they have many important stats that take higher precedence. Small Arms can be built to take Luck depending on if you play her as glass cannon. I don't and as such don't have the available points to raise this stat. It is not needed, as she more than capable offensively without a single point in Luck. She also has 98% Evasion behind low cover which makes her very durable on SJ. I would give up neither of these aspects to raise Luck.

Luck is the worst stat because it works against other stats like Evasion and Crit Chance. The higher your Evasion and Crit Chance, the worse Luck becomes. You will always want to take Intelligence over Luck for damage since Luck does pitiful damage without high Intelligence. Intelligence does just fine without Luck and you get more skill points to boot.

You have a higher opinion of Luck because you play glass cannon and have surplus attribute points. Its fine to take Luck if you have the points for it but it makes the least impact on your character, and as such it is a luxury stat.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by saycheese:

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

That is the crux of the matter. I don't deny that it's possible to tank bullets. What I don't like to see in a game is to have to do it for all characters because every ranger in the team is built differently depending on their role.

You shouldn't be trying to make all your characters tanky. Instead, you should be focusing on Evasion to evade damage for most of your party.

The Speed stat becomes very important on SJ difficulty, not for its Speed bonus but for its Evasion bonus.

By optimizing stats, skills, and gear, you have the ability to make a party that is very strong offensively and defensively on SJ difficulty.

Each of my party members have the ability to dish out over 10K damage per turn by end game and most encounters end in or two turns. Yet, they are strong defensively as well and can survive indefinitely on SJ difficulty.

I was just trying to see it from a defensive player's pov. Tbh, I don't play defensively. Sure, evasion is always good. I'm not so sure that maxing it is necessary though from my SJ experience. Most of the time if not always, you'll be opening up an attack with a blast that destroys most enemy cover, then follow up by devastating attacks that don't allow them to hit back the next round, or at least only those that cannot one shot you will be allowed to live to the next round. The focus seems to be more on firepower aka attack being the best defense.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

Originally posted by saycheese:

You shouldn't be trying to make all your characters tanky. Instead, you should be focusing on Evasion to evade damage for most of your party.

The Speed stat becomes very important on SJ difficulty, not for its Speed bonus but for its Evasion bonus.

By optimizing stats, skills, and gear, you have the ability to make a party that is very strong offensively and defensively on SJ difficulty.

Each of my party members have the ability to dish out over 10K damage per turn by end game and most encounters end in or two turns. Yet, they are strong defensively as well and can survive indefinitely on SJ difficulty.

I was just trying to see it from a defensive player's pov. Tbh, I don't play defensively. Sure, evasion is always good. I'm not so sure that maxing it is necessary though from my SJ experience. Most of the time if not always, you'll be opening up an attack with a blast that destroys most enemy cover, then follow up by devastating attacks that don't allow them to hit back the next round, or at least only those that cannot one shot you will be allowed to live to the next round. The focus seems to be more on firepower aka attack being the best defense.

You're absolutely right. You do not need high defense/evasion on SJ since you can end most encounters in one or two turns with good offense.

However, a lot of people think that you must go glass cannon because you either can't survive on SJ or you can't have both good offense and defense. It is possible to have both.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by valium:

A lot of people value strike rate way too much for a lot of builds. The only build I feel needs more than 2 charisma is brawling.

Now, older threads and builds having stacking strike rate for pistols/shotguns made sense at that time before shotguns were nerfed. You could spend a round building strike rate with pistols, then let off a tactical nuke with the jackhammer the next.

High charisma builds wont even reach higher levels given how extreme the exponential experience requirement gets. Your high charisma characters will just hit that ceiling faster, the rest will eventually catch up.

The exponential exp requirements is a thing but if you want to max your party's level, it does pay to have two max Charisma characters with Explosives and Lockpicking. These two characters will outlevel the rest of your party, and you can use the level up mechanic to get everyone at the same level. Depending on how high you level and how hard you abuse the level up mechanic, it can mean the difference of a few levels for your entire party by endgame.

In my playthroughs, those extra levels make a big difference, especially early on since you can fill out your team with skills you normally wouldn't be able to take.