Well met, fellow champion. Today, I’ll be taking you along on a magical journey to the world of hero stats. What are they? Why do they exist? How do they go up? What does all of this have to do with my hero’s class, subclass, and those funny green and blue indicators on the back of my hero cards? Why do people keep telling me that my Legendary Warrior is worse than their Uncommon Dragoon?
Let’s dive into it, grab hold of my hand, and for the love of Frisky, don’t let go.
You can click the overview here to jump ahead to a topic you like
· TL;DR
· General conclusions
· General background on stats in DFK
∘ Stats, what are they?
∘ How does a hero get their stats?
· Stat growth
∘ Stat growth: explaining the method
∘ Stat growth: class and subclass interaction
∘ Stat growth: subclass versus blue stat gene
∘ Stat growth: blue stat gene versus green stat gene
∘ Stat growth: rarity versus class
∘ Stat growth: impact of your choices
∘ Stat growth: go read the conclusions at the top again
· Acknowledgements
TL;DR
“Mettez, this article is over 6000 words, I’m not reading all of that!” Well, I have the solution for you. A TL;DR! While it does capture some of biggest takeaways, but it leaves out a lot of nuance, just keep that in mind:
- You can predict the influence different factors will have on a hero’s expected stat total at level 100:
- While it’s clear that main class has the biggest influence (orange), the player’s choices during level up (purple) are nearly always the second biggest contributor to any hero’s expected stat total at level 100.
- Rarity can have a large influence on the expected stat total, but you have to make out for yourself if you care more about the size of the stat total while disregarding which stats get boosted, or if you care more about where the stat points end up for your heroes.
- Stat genes matter slightly for the stat they affect, but have an arguably negligible influence on the full stat growth of any given hero.
- Also, if you aren’t going to read anything else, promise me you’ll at least read this, so you can see who else put their blood, sweat and tears into this work: Acknowledgements.
General conclusions
“Mettez, that TL;DR was not enough information!” Fine. But as I said at the start, this entire article consists of about 6000 words. So, to allow you to skip over the magical journey of how the specific analyses were done, we’ll start with the end. Specifically, let’s look at the general conclusions first, before I’ll tell you the entire story of how we got here.
The main takeaways:
- Main class is the biggest influence on the expected stat total for any given hero at level 100.
- For most heroes, the player’s choices are the second biggest influence. However, for Mythic heroes, their expected stat total is slightly stronger influenced by the rarity of the hero. The biggest thing to note here is that the player’s choices are always free to choose, whereas the rarity bonus is nearly fully random.
- Subclass has a unique interaction with rarity for impact on the expected stat total. If the hero is a Common, Uncommon or Rare hero, the subclass has a bigger impact on the expected stat total at level 100 than the rarity has, but for Legendary and Mythic heroes, this isn’t true anymore. Subclass matters less than the player’s choices regardless of the hero rarity.
- The influence of rarity on the expected stat total is strongly dependent on the rarity itself. The specific level of influence varies greatly between the different rarities.
- At level 100, the green stat bonus is almost negligible (less than 1% of the expected stat total), whereas the blue has about 1% of impact at level 100. Interesting is that in early levels, the green stat bonus is a lot more influential than the blue stat bonus, due to it being a flat +2 bonus at summoning.
- This article does NOT yet account for boosted summons and enhancement stones, as these influence a very small subpopulation of the existing heroes in a minor way, just keep that in mind.
For people who prefer numbers, let’s put these influences in a percentage. Don’t take these percentages as more than an estimation though! They will represent ballpark influences on the expected stat total for a hero leveling to level 100:
Now, what does this mean? Why should you care? Well, it may affect how you look at your heroes, and it especially might influence the way you look at how you value your heroes. Before I dive into this discussion, a few disclaimers however: 1) I’m not here to tell you how you should spend your money. DYOR and make responsible choices, 2) I have NO idea of what the actual impact of hero stats will be on the full DFK game, they will arguably influence combat in a major way, but how they will balance out with skills, classes and/or team structure, who knows, 3) ALL this article discusses is how stats grow, and how you can use that information to make informed estimations of what to expect from said hero. With that out of the way, I’ll discuss a few personal, not data-driven interpretations:
- I believe it is very interesting to see that the developers have strongly hinted at team-based combat, and have made it very obvious that main class is the strongest factor influencing any hero’s stats. To my mind, this means that they would want us to ‘build’ team(s) of heroes that complement each other. As I’ve said, this article does not touch upon skills or principles of team-based combat, however, specifically for stats, I’m already trying to create “balanced” teams of heroes instead of creating all tank-like heroes that deal physical damage and are slow (high VIT/END and STR, low AGI and no INT or WIS).
- Using the data shown in this article, you can look at heroes from a long-term perspective. Specifically, instead of looking at heroes priced in the tavern at 100 Jewel and see what you get now, you can see what you get later. Two examples:
1) If I don’t really care about summoning right now, should I spend 140–160 Jewel on an Uncommon Sage/Monk, with an expected stat total of 898 and stats that I can fairly well predict how they end up, or do I spend that same amount on a Legendary Monk/Archer, with an expected stat total of 888 but having a LOT less certainty on where those stats will end up? This is a continuation of the rarity VS class situation, but in my opinion, while more rare heroes have an equally high stat total as higher class heroes, higher class heroes should be valued more in terms of pure stat distribution chances. However, this is speculative, as we again don’t know about how combat will work specifically, and thus cannot predict the actual impact stats will have on combat effectiveness.
2) Which is the better hero, in your opinion: a Common Summoner/Sage, or a Rare Summoner/Archer? Ignoring player’s choices during level up for a second (so no +1 choices nor Gaia’s Blessings), the Common hero reaches a stat total of 631 at level 100, while the Rare hero reaches a stat total of 686 at level 100. If we believe that INT and WIS are the most important stats for a Summoner, the Common hero achieves a combined INT and WIS level of 238 with no chance of a rarity bonus, while the Rare hero achieves a combined INT and WIS of 209 but with a chance for a rarity bonus! However, it receives 80 stat points from its rarity, spread out randomly over 8 stats, so we’d expect both INT and WIS to receive 10 stat points each, leaving us with an expected INT and WIS total of 229. This is lower than the Common Summoner’s INT and WIS total. Which is the better hero? The Common Summoner with a great matching subclass? Or the Rare Summoner with a mismatched subclass? Will all stats matter for all heroes? Or will focused stat spreads be better? - Both of the previous points are mitigated by the level of influence you have as a player. When you level your heroes, your choices affect about 20–26% of ALL stat points the hero is expected to have at level 100. So, making the ‘right’ choices will matter. The only issue is, we don’t yet know what the ‘right’ choices are. It is just something to keep in mind. On a personal note, I strongly believe that the stats which grow the ‘best’ for each stat are important for its combat style, but it could easily be true that stats such as AGI or LCK will help every hero (movement speed or critical hit ratio for example).
- Given how I try to accumulate heroes with a long-term perspective in mind, I personally do NOT care about the stat genes. Less than 1% influence on my stat total at level 100? Not something I’m worried about when valuing heroes. A nice bonus if it lines up? Absolutely, but something I would pay a premium for? No. The team did discuss some potential smaller future utility for these genes (e.g., in a pure strength contest they might provide a boost), but in the recent AMA, to me, it felt like a “well, really we could do anything with these in the future…” sort of thing, and from a stat growth perspective, they are negligible.
- The speed of stat growth is interesting to me. IF stats have a very large impact on combat effectiveness, then higher leveled heroes absolutely outshine low level heroes. As an extreme example that pits a Common hero versus the best hero you could arguably have: a Mythic Dreadknight at level 5 has an expected stat total of 106, whereas a Common Knight at level 10 has an expected stat total of 100. If you want more examples, go check out my calculator for expected stat predictions (https://dfk-levelcalc.weebly.com/), but in general, if stats should be the primary driver for combat effectiveness, heroes that are leveled NOW will outshine new summons for a long time.
Now, you may have more questions on how I reached these conclusions, and you may be absolutely confused about what stats are and why they might be important. This is where the deep dives start, we’ll look at what data I used, how stat growth actually works, and all the nitty gritty details. This is where the magic starts 😉
General background on stats in DFK
Stats, what are they?
(skip this section if you are somewhat familiar with RPG style games)
In typical games using stats for individuals, like heroes, a stat is a number describing a characteristic of said individual. Stats are nothing more than descriptions that a computer (or in this case, the blockchain) can comprehend. For example, which hero is stronger? It can determine this by comparing strength values. A helpful tip for reading this article, and maybe some other as well, is that a lot of games abbreviate the full names of the stats. For example, “strength” could be displayed like STR, like DFK does. Other abbreviations are possible as well, but for this article I’ll be using the abbreviations also used by DFK. This is the same for dexterity (DEX), agility (AGI), vitality (VIT), endurance (END), intelligence (INT), wisdom (WIS), and luck (LCK).
Many games use such stats to determine complex situations, such as determining an individual’s effectiveness in combat. How DFK will approach this, still needs to be announced, but there have been a lot of people speculating on exactly how our heroes’ stats will be used in the game aspects of DFK. For example, stats like STR could determine the physical damage a hero can deal, whereas LCK could influence a hero’s chance of landing a critical hit. The official docs already do provide some general information on how the DFK stats will be used (https://docs.defikingdoms.com/learn/gameplay/heroes/stats). However, we are not sure of which mechanics in DFK will use the stats of their heroes and to what extent they will be used, but we have been told by the development team that stats are a primary driver in combat effectiveness, and might play additional roles in determining the success of upcoming quests (and we already know that stats determine about 1/3d of the current profession quest rewards).
So, why do people care about stats? Well, given how stats will be a primary factor in combat situations, higher stats should result in higher combat effectiveness right? Okay, that seems fair. So, how do I find heroes with better stats? Do I just look at any hero’s backside (get your mind out of the gutter) and see whose stats are higher?
Well, not really, at least in my opinion. This is where stat growth starts to matter.
How does a hero get their stats?
(skip this section if you are aware of the basic factors that influence a DFK hero’s stats)
A hero’s stats are determined by a few factors; their level, class, subclass, stat genes, and the choices made when that hero leveled up. For the people who are following the announcements closely, they know that boosted summons and enhancement stones also play a role, but at the current stage of the game, their effect is currently minor on a select population of heroes, and I want to keep the focus of this piece on the more ‘basic’ mechanics. If people are interested, I’ll post a follow-up piece later, when it becomes more relevant, but for now, lets focus on the first few I’ve mentioned, as they affect every hero.
So, how does a hero get their stats?
First, any hero that is summoned, starts out with their ‘base’ stats. These are unique to every class:
Second, then any applicable rarity bonuses get applied. They get applied every 5 levels, but start already when a hero is summoned. I won’t dive into the exact formulas in this piece, but I will show the implications. If you are interested in the math, this article explains the rarity bonuses in detail: https://defikingdoms.medium.com/breaking-down-advanced-hero-classes-stats-and-rarities-ce745dc5024
Third, the hero gets a stat bonus from their stat genes. Every hero has a ‘green’ stat, and a ‘blue’ stat. The green stat gene gives a flat +2 bonus to the selected stat when the hero is summoned, and the blue stat provides a 2% bonus stat growth for the main class, and a 4% bonus stat growth for the subclass. More on that below.
Fourth, every time a hero levels up, their stats go up. This increase in stats is determined by a few factors: class, subclass, stat genes, rarity, and the choices the player makes during level-up:
- A hero’s class gives each hero an increase parameter for each stat. This google document breaks it down nicely: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jfG6E6otW1V6ZLQycF5DumoBr_LrpQaz7cTmDPpwV2s/edit#gid=1663996050
You can interpret these numbers as % chances of successfully receiving a stat increase during level up. So, a hero with Warrior as their main class has a 75% chance to get a STR stat point when leveling up, and a 20% chance to get an INT stat point.
- After the hero’s main class has rolled, DFK rolls again for the subclass. Again, each subclass has their own increase parameters, and the document from above also shows these. Basically, the % chances of successfully receiving a stat point for the subclass are the same as those of the main class, but divided by four. You can see from the example below that a hero with the subclass Warrior has a 18.75% chance to receive a STR stat point during level-up for their subclass roll, and a 5% chance to get an INT stat point.
- The two rolls described above (main class stat roll, and subclass stat roll) are influenced by a hero’s blue gene. Specifically, the blue gene adds a 2% chance to the relevant stat of the main class (e.g., a hero with blue STR and Warrior as their main class would have a 77% chance of successfully receiving a STR stat point during level-up, instead of 75% chance), and adds a 4% chance to the relevant stat of the subclass (e.g., a hero with blue STR and Warrior as their subclass would have a 22.75% chance of successfully receiving a STR stat point during level-up, instead of 18.75% chance).
The green stat gene does NOT provide any more bonuses besides the initial +2 when the hero was summoned. - Next, every 5th level, the hero gets another bonus roll for their rarity. Common heroes do not receive this roll, Uncommon heroes receive a total of 2 bonus stat points, Rare heroes receive a total of 4 bonus stat points, Legendary heroes receive a total of 7 bonus stat points, and Mythic heroes receive a total of 10 bonus stat points. Again, for the specific rules (because yes, these bonuses are NOT nilly-willy), I refer you back to this link: https://defikingdoms.medium.com/breaking-down-advanced-hero-classes-stats-and-rarities-ce745dc5024
- Finally, the player has a few choices to make during every level up. Specifically, the player can pick 1 stat that gets a bonus stat point during level up (no chance, just straight +1 for that stat), and they get to pick two stats who could receive Gaia’s blessing. These last two stats have a 50% chance each of getting a bonus stat point that level-up. Important to note here is that the player has to choose three different stats during the level-up process, so the stat chosen for the +1 boost cannot be picked for a Gaia’s blessing, and both stats for the Gaia’s blessing have to be different.
As you can probably see right now, for those of you who are still following along, hero stats are a complex issue, and they involve a lot of math. So, in the next section I will break down how all of these variables interact, and how you can use that to your advantage.
Stat growth
“well Mettez, I knew all of that already. Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know yet?”
That’s what the main point of this piece is about. I see a lot of people being seriously confused about what influences their hero the most in terms of stats. A lot of people seem to care a great deal their hero’s blue and green stats, or don’t seem to care about ‘higher’ classes, whereas rarity is determined to be extremely worthwhile in terms of stats. In the upcoming deep dives, I will show you exactly how strong the influence of each variable is on a hero’s total stats. However, let me preface this topic with saying that I have NO inside information about the importance of stats. This is NOT a discussion on which heroes are better than others, I ONLY want to show how any hero’s stats are influenced by the variables described above.
There is one second point I want to clarify. When I mention “stat growth”, I am talking about the collective set of influences that determine any hero’s stat increase over time. In other words, all the variables described in the section above are factors that influence a hero’s stat growth.
Stat growth: explaining the method
Cool, so let’s dive into it. I’ll be using an extended version of a calculator I made that can show you expected stat values for any hero for a given future level. The original one is available for free at: https://dfk-levelcalc.weebly.com/, and you can in fact do the same kind of analyses with this one, I’ll just be using a version with a more detailed breakdown here.
Okay, so I’ll be taking you along how the stats of any hero will change, due to different factors influencing them. Let’s start with explaining how the visuals will work. For this example, we’ll be imagining a Common Warrior at level 1 (no subclass or stat genes just yet):
Given how this hero is at level 1, and Common, this hero only gets the “base stats” for the class Warrior. The current stats of a hero, so in this case, level 1, will be shown in the blue bars at the bottom.
Sweet, now let’s have this bad boy level up to level 10:
Given how our theoretical Warrior only has a main class, we only consider the expected stat growth for the main class. We will always indicate said stat growth (thus for main class), in orange. Notice how I mentioned expected stat growth? This is important, as RNG is always a factor.
“But Mettez”, I hear you ask “if RNG plays a role in leveling, why would you care about stat growth? Isn’t it all chance?”
Great question. And, for a few levels, yes you are right. But over a large amount of levels? You can fairly accurately predict a hero’s expected stats 😉 Lets take a simple example:
If you flip a coin, can you predict if it lands heads or tails? No? That’s right, randomness is not predictable on a small sample size.
However, now flip the coin 100 times. Can you predict the spread of the results? Pretty likely that it’s about 50/50 between heads and tails, right? So, now we apply the same logic to hero stats. In short, the further we look ahead, the more ‘rolls’ we have for potential stat increases, the more accurately we can predict any hero’s expected stats due to RNG averaging out over time.
Sweet, so let’s have our hero level up to level 25? Cool:
Okay. So, you can see how the expected stat totals (the total height of the bar) are comprised of both the current stats (blue) and the expected stats gained due to the main class rolls (orange). Now let’s add a subclass, let’s go with a Thief. So, a Common Warrior/Thief, going from level 1 to 25:
Now, the yellow bars indicate the expected stat growth from the subclass, Thief in this case, and you can already see the difference in impact from a main class, versus a subclass. Now, let’s add the stat genes. Let’s do green STR, and blue AGI:
The new bars maybe don’t need an introduction, the green bar are the stats gained from the green stat boost, and the blue bar are the stats gained from the blue stat boost. Now, let’s up the hero’s rarity, let’s make it a Mythic hero:
As you can see, white ‘error bars’ have appeared at the top of each stat bar. This is because you cannot predict where the rarity bonus will end up. A Mythic hero going from level 1 to level 25 can expect a maximum additional stat growth of 20 points per stat, for a total of 50 stat points. I hope this makes sense, but explained another way, that hero will receive a total of 50 stat points from rarity, and those points will land randomly, but only up to a maximum of 20 points per stat, due to the formulas used to apply said bonuses.
I’ll scale the rarity back down to Common, but keep in mind that white error bars at the top represent the maximum additional stat growth a hero could receive from rarity bonuses (if RNG is 100% in favor of that stat).
Now, we’ll start adding some level-up choices, let’s start with the +1’s. The owner of the hero chose VIT as their +1 until the hero hit level 10 (so 9 times), and then poured all +1 choices in STR (so 15 times):
The purple bars added to the stats indicate the stats gained from the +1 choices, 9 stat points for VIT, and 15 stat points for STR.
Finally, the player could choose Gaia’s blessings. The player chooses 2 stats every level up for a potential stat increase. In the example below, the player chose to GB (Gaia Bless) STR and END for the 9 level-ups that he chose VIT as the +1, the rest of the 15 level-ups the player GB’d DEX and END as he chose STR for the +1:
The lighter purple (violet? I’m bad with colors) bars indicate the expected stats gained from GB’s, for a total of 4 STR, 7 DEX, and 12 END stat points. Again, take care to note that this method gains accuracy the more levels forward you predict.
Besides the colorful charts I display above, I will occasionally also show some more basic numbers underlying the data in these charts. For example, the hero shown above can also be represented this way:
The information on this picture is exactly the same as I show on the calculator found on https://dfk-levelcalc.weebly.com/. The site goes into more detail, but it also shows stat totals and other information I’ll be using throughout this piece, so if you are unfamiliar with these, go have a look 😊(P.S., once I have some time, I’ll update the calculator to work with the fancy colors shown up above).
Cool, are we all on the same page on how my charts and tables work? Let’s start messing around with them!
Stat growth: class and subclass interaction
Let’s get this out of the way. Do you want aligned class and subclass heroes? Or shouldn’t you care? I’m not here to talk about combat skills, because yes, subclass DOES influence skills, but I’m only talking about stats in this piece (it’s long enough already). So, let’s take our example from before, a Warrior/Thief, I’ll make it Uncommon (note the white error bars), let’s ignore stat genes and level-up choices for now, and level that hero from level 1 to 100:
Now, let’s compare that hero to a Warrior/Knight, same story:
Cool, so what is the difference? Well, I’ll show you in terms of the % difference between the two. I’ll use a bit of sketchy math, but just follow along. In order to compare two heroes, I’ll always take the difference in their scores (e.g., for STR this is 4, 102–98) and then divide that number (4) by the average of both heroes’ stat value (98 and 102, average is 100), thus 4/100 = 4%. I’ll round that percentage to the closest whole number (no decimals), and this way you get an estimation of the % difference between both heroes. Yes, this is NOT a calculation of the exact % difference, as you compare the difference to the average between the two, but it gives us a number that is VERY easy to understand. (Just, just go with it you math nerds 😉):
So, in this case, comparing a Warrior/Thief to a Warrior/Knight, the differences are about 7 ish % overall, with the exceptions of DEX and LCK. This is due to Warriors and Thieves having the same DEX growth, and a very different LCK growth (Thieves shine here).
How much should you care about this? Idk, that’s up to you! But, here’s another example: a Summoner/Ninja versus a Summoner/Priest:
As you can see, these results are a bit to be expected. What is interesting, is that the impact of subclass is more noticeable (%-wise) for stats in which the main class is bad at. For example, a Summoner/Ninja has about 4% less INT than a Summoner/Priest, but gains about 17% more AGI. What should you do with this information? That’s up to you.
Stat growth: subclass versus blue stat gene
So, the big one, which is more important? The blue stat gene? Or subclass? Which hero has better stats aligned with mining (STR and END)? The Darkknight/Wizard with blue STR? Or the Darkknight/Knight with blue VIT? Let’s look at both heroes, going from level 1 to 100:
Comparing both heroes, you can immediately see how the Darkknight/Knight hero has a better mining stat total (197 STR+END) than the Darkknight/Wizard with blue STR (186 STR+END). Of course, the difference between these two stat totals is about 5+% specifically for mining, but other stats have changed as well. What you need to do for yourself, is figure out what kind of hero you want to have, and this piece is meant to show you how stats get influenced over time by different variables.
Overall, you can determine that subclass seems to have a stronger effect on any potential stat you might want than the blue gene, but, subclass influences any hero’s stats not as much as main class, and blue gene also has an impact. To show this, lets have a look at a Knight/Wizard with blue VIT, instead of blue STR:
Compared to the blue STR one:
In this case, the blue gene seems to have about 3% of impact on the specific stat total for the hero at level 100. Was this more, or less than you expected? Compared to the STR level of a Darkknight/Wizard versus a Darkknight/Knight, there was a 6% difference in STR.
In sum, blue stat genes do play a noticeable effect, but less so than extreme subclass differences.
Stat growth: blue stat gene versus green stat gene
Which is more important? The green stat gene, or the blue stat gene? We know that the green gene provides a +2 from the start, and the blue gene influences stat growth in a minor way (see above). Let’s have another look at our hero from the beginning, the Uncommon Warrior/Thief, green STR and blue AGI, going from level 1 to level 25:
RNG will matter here for the blue gene, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt, our expected gains from both genes is the same (2 stat bonuses from either).
And from level 1 to level 50:
The difference is small, we expect this hero to gain 3 stat points from the blue gene, and it has 2 stat points from the green gene.
Finally, level 1 to level 100:
This is interesting, we expect (and due to the large number of rolls, probably will see) 6 points of stat points from the blue gene, and only 2 points of stat points from the green gene.
So, you can do the math for yourself on how big that difference is, but the timing is interesting. It takes (on average) a LONG time before the blue gene seriously outshines the green gene. So, for “lower” level heroes, there actually is no benefit to having the blue gene, in fact, it could be worse at the current levels of heroes (sub lvl 10).
Stat growth: rarity versus class
Here we go, another big discussion. Which matters most? A rarer hero? Or a higher class? Is my Legendary Warrior actually worse than an Uncommon dragoon?
A lot of people have seen this image floating around, showing the stat totals for a given hero based on their class and rarity:
You can determine your expected stat total based on this sheet, but how does that work in practice? Well, lets look at the example up above and compare a Legendary Warrior with an Uncommon dragoon, both with a Knight subclass, both with purple STR (green and blue STR), and we’ll ignore level up choices, going from level 1 to level 100:
So, first of all, we can see that the expected stat total is very similar, 692 to 702. Both heroes have seriously impressive stat totals, and they are within 2% difference from each other. However, the charts and numbers tell us a different story.
For the Legendary Warrior, of its 692 expected stat total, we can ‘predict’ about 552 stat points, while 140 stat points are randomly allocated due to it’s high rarity. We can expect these stat bonuses to spread out rather evenly, and I refer you back to the rarity mechanics touched upon near the start and the analogy of the coin flip.
In contrast, of the 702 expected stats for the Uncommon dragoon, about 662 can be predicted, while 40 stat points are randomly allocated due to it’s rarity.
In other words, while high rarity low class heroes and low rarity high class heroes might have the same stat totals, the latter’s stats are more ‘focused’ in what could arguably be the stats most beneficial for its combat effectiveness (speculative, of course). To be more specific, about 20% of the Legendary Warrior’s expected stats are allocated at random, whereas for the Uncommon dragoon this is only 6%.
Let’s look at another fun example: Let’s compare a Common Dragoon/Paladin with a Mythic Monk/Thief, both green STR and blue VIT, going from level 1 to 100, ignoring level-up choices:
This is a fun example, in my opinion. Which hero would you prefer? The Mythic Monk has an expected stat total of 753, and the Common Dragoon one of 673. But, the Common Dragoon’s stats are all rather predictable, whereas about 27% (over 1/4th) of the Mythic Monk’s stats are allocated fully at random at this level. Which is better, in terms of stats? Less, but focused stats? Or more stat points, but randomly assigned?
Stat growth: impact of your choices
Finally, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, how strong is the influence of the player? How much do your choices matter? Let’s have a look. We’ll start with a simple example, we’ll pick a Common Wizard/Thief, with green VIT and blue LCK. This is what that hero looks like without any choices during level-up:
Now, how would we level this bad boy up? Let’s pick a simple example. Let’s say that the player is speculating that focused heroes are best for PVP, and chooses to +1 INT every single level up, and uses the GB’s (Gaia’s Blessings) on VIT and WIS:
HOLY MOLY! That expected stat total jumped from 553 to 750!! Did you see it coming? 😉 In more practical terms, by focusing your choices, you can almost double this hero’s INT and VIT, and add about 50% to the WIS of that hero. Does this matter? I’ll leave that up to you.
Let’s have a look at a fun example, that has been speculated on in the past (looking at you, SuperiorForm), and see how high we can push the LCK of a Thief/Thief, let’s pick a Common one, and give the hero purple LCK. The player chooses +1’s LCK every level up, and chooses AGI, and a bit of VIT and STR for the GB’s:
Of this hero’s expected stats, 51% of its LCK comes purely from the player’s choices, 35% comes from main class, 10% comes from subclass, 3% from the blue stat boost, and 1% from the green stat boost. Also, consider, this hero is a Common hero, receiving no rarity bonuses every 5th level. Should this hero be a Mythic one, it would receive a total of 200 stat points overall from rarity at level 100, resulting in 25 expected stat points for LCK (due to randomness) and up to an (RNG 100% on your side) 80 additional stat points for LCK.
Coming back to the point of this article, what matters most? The example above is a clean example to give you a ballpark. Keep in mind however that this is an example with someone always making nearly the same choices, and we are looking at a stat that is highly affected by the chosen class/subclass. But, it gives you a good idea of how hero ‘optimization’ works.
Let’s do one more random example, to see how ‘unaligned choices’ influence a hero’s stats. Let’s have a look at a Common Summoner/Priest, with green INT and blue WIS, and whose player insists on choosing VIT for +1 every level-up, and selecting END and AGI for GB’s:
Is this a bad hero? Only time will tell, but as you can see, this Summoner’s expected best stat all of a sudden became VIT, and its AGI and END are on an almost equal level as their INT and WIS. Is this ideal for PVP? Nobody knows, but it gives you an idea of the impact that player’s choices have.
Let’s put the impact of player’s choices into perspective: for any Common basic hero, the player’s choices determine about 26% of the expected stat total at level 100, and for any given Mythic elite hero, the player’s choices determine about 20% of the expected stat total at level 100. In other words, a very significant part of the entire stat total is fully determined by the player’s choices.
Stat growth: go read the conclusions at the top again
If you’ve reached this point, you hopefully are thoroughly confused about what you should care about for stat growth. The conclusions section at the top brings it all together, so I won’t repeat myself here.
After reading all of this, you are now actually informed about how stats and leveling interact! At least, of the basics, the next step is understanding how boosted summons and enhancement stones influence all of the above 😉
But, that’s for another time. Thank you for reading!
Signing off for now,
Mettez (Mettez#1145)
Acknowledgements
This article was my brainchild, but would have been absolutely impossible without the incredible amount of help, input, editing and proofreading that MrZipper has put into it. If you aren’t already, go read his articles: https://medium.com/@MrZipper7, I promise they are better formatted and more to the point than this one is ;)
Next, I also wanted to thank Drizz (Drizz#0320), Marleen (Marleen DFK all the way!#5631), Orbital (Orbital#4048), Jackson (jacksonmcd/morph#2398), and (bluidyPCish#6594) for their efforts in proofreading, providing relevant edits, and putting up with my insanity when discussing this topic (and really anything else) on Discord.
Finally, sorry for not naming you all specifically, but I hope all the peeps at PD understand that I appreciate all of the discussions we have , and I hope that this can continue moving forward!
