Suggestion: Stats (Agility, Grit, Survival)

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

Funcom, please give those stats a clear purpose. Agility, survival and grit seem a bit mixed up to me.
Reason:
While agility has direct impact on defense values (will it stay like that?), survival will get that 10% reduction thing? Even if one said that agility could be about being very agile with weapons… this could mean it collides with grit, which is the stamina stat.

It seems there is trouble to make it worth for players to pick those three stats? If so, why not try the straighforward way?
First: Think about why encumbrance is being invested into. Simple as that: it’s needed.

But how to archieve that for the other three stats?
Lets take survival for one example.
Assuming you decided to make survival a wilderness-survival-thing, it would affect enduring temperatures by a huge amount. So if one wants to build in a place, where people without at least 5 cold resistance-armor plus at least 20 survival wont survive for long, he will have to spend those points. Survival wouldnt be needed for fighting itself, but rather for being able to survive and thus being able to fight there at all.
Not every stat has to have direct impact on combat.

I think you got at least a few obvious options to have people want to choose the stat.
Movement, Stamina and its consumtion, Defense and in terms of survival, also wilderness-getting-by-survival. I would really love to see defense as one of the three, as it would give an option to not deal as much damage and instead soak LOTS of damage. Instead they could be the ones in charge of crowd control like stunning - or of summoning the avatar… :joy:
That being said, maybe not the weapon should deal most of the damage, but the player? (Not 1% per point, but 2% and lower the dmg of weapons?) This way, non archers would do bad with bow while archers would perform bad with melee weapons…

I guess you want players to have the utmost freedom they can have.
But without light, the shadow cant be seen. If you create a situation, where different stats and thus playstyles can counter each other, players are forced to choose a playstyle instead of having everyone stack the same just because its the strongest way… I can see this creating more of a diversity of playstyles and tactics.

Also could you please spread informations about what stats will be on what armor?
I think alltogether 7 stats on whole armor are a bit… weak. Flawless versions should maybe not give more armor, but instead more stats. (7/9/11?) Also maybe different armors of same kind shouldn’t give different defense values but different stats. Just a stupid thought. Could make balancing easier as well.
Having exceptional and flawless versions of each armor would be the next step - and placing the recipes on different kinds of armorers? Their lists are way too long!

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It seems like Survival is supposed to have some effect on health regeneration, but this isn’t really clear. It would be awesome if we could have some tooltips on the stats, to tell us more of what they do.

3

Last i heard agility only affected the ability your character has to move in heavier armour? and fall damage taken? (That was a long time ago though and i haven’t refreshed myself on current day hidden stat/attribute mechanics)

I do think things are abit mixed up, With the stats you mentioned though.
In my eyes it would go like this.

Agility: Would be directly tied to stamina and a slight adjustment to how the character reacts to weight differences. (Someone who is nimble, Would have a easier time wielding daggers, And therefore use them more effectively, then say… A twohanded hammer which weighs as much as they do.) But that means strength has to be reworked to the opposite of agility. (which is a pain in the ass)

Grit: Would be vitality’s complete opposite, While barely affecting your health directly.
It would increase your determination/morale/bravery. Thats pretty loosely translated into game logic. But it would essentially act as a persons actual endurance/defense/morale/bravery/spirit.
Affecting anything from how steady you hold a shield when a giant is approaching you/hitting you, To how well you deal with the Silent whispers from corruption(How fast you are corrupted)

Survival: Would be completely scrapped in favour of the term “Luck”
Survival is something we learn just by playing the game and observing the world/learning the ways, and progressing the tiers, It should be a immersive/invisable thing.
Luck: Would pretty much act like survival is currently, But would just give the options for more perk freedom. As luck can indirectly affect anything. Drops from mobs? How many of your random gather strikes actually hit a weakpoint, Giving more yield. Maybe one in a hundred falls you dont actually die?(slightly abuse-able with repetition), It just gives alot more possiblity to get creative with perks.
(Not saying “Survival” sub-type cant get creative either though)

One thing i will add thats more solid rather then suggestion/theorycraft, But fits the topic.
Is the forever sprint perk from grit needs to be removed. Endless Runner
They talked about perk changes last stream based on player feedback and what they observed…
HOW did only “Walking giant” build get nerfed? Why wasnt grit hit also? It NEEDS to be.

4

Wait… what? Grit is one of 3 bad stats? Seriously? Hold on…
reads the posts again
Are you for real?
One of my favorite builds is 30str, 30vit, 40 grit - it is pretty powerfull for both pvp and pve. If i get to have at least exceptional armor (more on that below) then I put extra points in 10 encumberance and 10 agility to get 10% off swings and running.
Grit is fine. There is absolutely no need to boost it (and some would argue to even nerf it really). It determines your ability to put pressure on an opponent - you run out of stamina in a fight = you are done.
Survival - You know the vitality perk that diminishes effects of temperature? Yeah that one - it belongs in survival (instead of moving bronzed physique there). It is pretty powerfull perk. It might make survival more viable. Put it instead of double gathering perk (that one can go into encumberance). Another park that can make its way from vitality is the 30 points health regeneration. This makes more sense than moving a perk into survival that increases your health pool effecively (bronzed physique) if you want to make it “survival of the elements”.
Agility - reductions on sprint, rolls and in the end ability to roll in any armor as if it was light. Honestly the jump stamina reduction is even more useless than perks that don’t work at all currently :wink: . We need more meaningfull perks in agility early on (like iron endurance).

“Walking giant” build is not as good as people claim it is. 50 Vit, 20 Str, 23 Grit comes as probably one of very few solutions here. So lets see how it fares against a 40str, 30vit, 30grit:

“In the left corner: The walkiiiiiiiing GIiiIIiAAAaAaaaAAAAaaNT!”
800hp / 0.8 (bronzed physique) = 1000 effective hp
160% damage on 20 Str.
“In the right corner: The puny CooOOOOoontendeEEEeeEEr!”
560hp / 0.94 (iron hard muscles) = 595.7 hp
220% dmg with 10/25% dmg boost (lets make an average 17.5%) = 258.5%
“And leeeEEts get ready to ruUUuuumbleeEE!”
1000 / 258.5 = 3.868
595.7 / 160 = 3.723
So if you go full tank you can barely (arguable with more grit on contender) win against an all rounder. How op is it?

EDIT:
I did not expect it to be that close and giant winning. Lets do a full out 23 str, 50 vit, 20 grit versus 40 str 37 vit 20 grit:
800 / 0.8 = 1000hp
169% dmg

644 hp
220 * 1.175 = 258.5% dmg

1000 / 258.5 = 3.868
644 / 169 = 3.811
Even closer. Extra spare points into agility should tip the balance here.

Now onto armor bonus stats. For reasons mentioned in another topic I would prefer the exceptional and flawless to only give an edge rather than a clear advantage.
+5 on normal
+6 on exceptional (and more armor)
+7 on flawless (and even more armor)

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5

I agree that temperature resistance should be in survival and bronze physique should stay in Vitality. A heavy Vitality build should be a tank build and bronze physique seems like an appropriate capstone. I also think that the consumables boost should be in Survival rather than in Vitality. A vitality build should be a straight up HP tank build. A survival build should be a regen tank.

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6

The boost should stay in Vitality to make them potions equivalent to the total pool (large pool is nothing after a few potions have been cycled thru in a fight).
The passive regen should go to survival so that you can survive without any healing items.

7

I think combining the highest health pool with the increased consumables and bronzed physique is what makes Vitality 50 over powered. Having a large pool that recovers quickly and deteriorated slowly is what makes a person invincible. Vitality build should be a large pool that deteriorates slowly and recovers slowly (which is why passive regen should stay in Vitality). The balance is in being able to take more hits.

Survival has resource collection related buffs. This synergizes well with resource consumption buffs. It makes sense to have a smaller pool that deteriorates quickly but recovers quickly. This is what can make survival not just an exploration / build stat but also an interesting combat related stat.

8

Yes, I’ve thought Vitality was the most overpowered for a long time. No other stat gives you such a direct advantage with so few points. The perk ‘Gluttonous Gains’ is down in Grit now, but it should really be moved to Survival IMO. Survival for health regeneration, Vitality for health capacity.

Survival’s description on TestLive talks about effecting ‘how quickly you metabolize food’. What does that mean? I’m hoping it affects how food is turned into health. Higher survival, higher health regen.

EDIT: Later on in the thread we discovered that Vitality was nerfed on TestLive, to only give 8hp per point rather than 12hp. It’s not overpowered any more!

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9

Removing the increased healing from healing items from Vitality will make it one of the worst stat lines. Here is why I believe so:
Lets say that “the walking giant” and “contender” are in a fight and both are using healing consumables that grant them 100 points between hits and we convert our % damage into these points too.

The walking giant takes hits:
1000-258+100=842
842-258+100=684
684-258+100=526
526-258+100=368
368-258+100=210
210-258 < 0 the walking giant dies on 6th hit.

EDIT:
Messed up the math here - tried doing it the easy way :wink: Its 800hp and damage is 258*0.8=206 becouse it is a reduction after all… sorry
800-206+100=694
694-206+100=588
588-206+100=482
482-206+100=376
376-206+100=270
270-206+100=164
164-206 < 0 - The walking giant dies on 7th hit instead

The contender takes hits:
595-160+100=535
535-160+100=475
475-160+100=415
415-160+100=355
355-160+100=295
295-160+100=235
235-160+100=175
175-160+100=115
115-160 < 0 The contender dies on 9th hit.

But lets get to more practical reasons. Middle of PvP clan battle:
-“This guy is a tank!”
-“OK! We will kill him last…”
Sounds familiar?

If one can’t dodge, kite, sustain and survive in PvP battle then by all means should be allowed to make a tank character to enjoy that content a bit longer. Even if isn’t as much help for dps pressure/spikes at least he is not a priority target most of the time and immediately dead.

40 -> 50 stat costs 95 points. Thats 20+10+10+10 lvl of other stats from 0 - so 20grit (more than double stamina recovery, higher stamina pool), 10agility (25% less stamina for sprint+10 armor(that 10 armor is quite a difference in light armored/unarmored fights), 10 encumberance (10% less stamina per attack, less stamina consumption if can get weight lower) and 10 accuracy (20%+25% more ranged damage (120%*125%=150% I admitt I actually need to test if perk bonuses are cumulative with stat bonuses (any volunteers or someone already tested?))). All that for 32% less HP pool (that includes bronzed physicue loss).
Why do I get the feeling the 50stat perks are supposed to be powerful?

“How quickly you metabolize food” - Wasn’t that how often you need to eat/drink?

EDIT: Another thought: If survival is about collecting resources it shouldn’t be about spending them but the ability not to instead.

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10

guys, i have o say that this is really nice work! lets hope FC weill read this and at least think about it

11

I don’t really understand your Giant vs. Contender example. In your original calculations on a prior post, you initially found that the Giant won. Then you adjusted your calculations to make the Contender more diverse, and ruined the equality of their builds. A player who distributes more points among lower attributes will always get further than a player who goes right for the most expensive attributes. Diverse builds will win.

Also, to play to the Giant’s side, he would probably rather put a few points into Agility to augment his armor and provide additional health. Let’s say 50 Vit / 20 Str / 20 Agil. 20 agility provides an additional 20% damage resistance. Forget Grit, it only gives 6% resistance.

Now, they’ve also moved Gluttonous Gains onto the 50 vitality perk. This was confirmed on last week’s DevStream. This means that the Giant will get a ‘healing burst’ at the end of each effect, rather than the 20% damage resistance he had before. This ‘healing burst’ might happen once every 5 turns. I’ll suppose it triples the effect of the healing for that single turn.

I also feel like your healing-per-turn values are too high, and just take up extra space. I’ll reduce the values of the heals for my version.

I based my damage off of the characters’ raw damage multipliers. Since the Contender gets 163% damage, then we’ll says he just does a straight 163 damage each turn.

Giant
50 Vit / 20 Str / 20 Agil
880 HP (800 base + 20% damage resistance from Agility)
120 DMG
(+ Unique healing burst from the new Vitality 50 perk)

Contender
40 Str / 30 Vit / 30 Grit
560 HP
163 DMG (140 base * 1.17 due to Strength perks affecting Light and Heavy damage)

Contender gets the first blow!
Contender (560) does 163 damage to Giant (717)!
Giant (717) does 120 damage to Contender (440)!
= Both sides heal 25 health =
Contender (465) does 163 damage to Giant (579)!
Giant (579) does 120 damage to Contender (345)!
= Both sides heal 25 health =
Contender (370) does 163 damage to Giant (443)!
Giant (443) does 120 damage to Contender (250)!
= Both sides heal 25 health =
Contender (275) does 163 damage to Giant (280)!
Giant (280) does 120 damage to Contender (155)!
= Both sides heal 25 health =
Contender (180) does 163 damage to Giant (142)!
Giant (142) does 120 damage to Contender (35)!!
= Both sides heal 25 health =
= Healing burst! Giant heals another 50 health!=
Contender (60) does 163 damage to Giant (54)!
Giant (54) does 120 damage to Contender (-60)!
Giant wins!

There are a few big shortcomings of this example. For instance, it imagines a straight-on slugfest, without dodging, stamina management, or positioning that might affect the fight. Those factors would push the advantage towards the Contender, as he has more Grit (thus more stamina). I’ve given the Contender the first strike, in an attempt to balance for this, but I feel the Contender would be able to maneuvre at least one more hit in. The Contender might juuuust sneak in a victory at the last hit. Same as the Giant won the victory at the last strike in this example.

It’s kind of a silly demonstration, as we’re squaring off two fighters who only chose to stat into three attributes. But I hope it demonstrates that Vitality is very powerful.

Personally I feel that more balanced builds, where you go up to around 30 points in each attribute, make more sense in actual gameplay. For the Giant, getting 50 in Vitality means that he forgoes some other important stats. I imagine the Giant would have more success if he went 40 Vitality, 30 Strength, 25 Agility (but then he wouldn’t be very much of a Giant anymore).

EDIT: Aye aye aye… I noticed that I forgot to take the Vitality 40 perk into account! This doubles the amount of health the Giant would heal every turn. End result after 5 turns: Giant wins with a whopping 179 HP remaining. Giant’s total health healed: 300 hp. And the longer the fight, the more health healed.

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These are raw calculations. Any additional variable makes difference. Also found out that I should have taken stats from in-game as some are different than the tool I’ve been using for my maths. Then I found myself a volunteer and simply did the test. Armors are standard Vagir and weapons are Telith’s Lament:

EDIT: Answering TwinCrows - I adjusted the stats afterwards becouse grit was taking no role in calculations so I made it identical for both builds.

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13

I think your maths point more to a need to tweak the effects of Vitality so that Vitality increases at an increasing rate rather than at a flat rate. The damage curve on strength, because of perks, is boosted. Sometimes flat (30, 40). Sometimes situational (20, 50). As you show, the contender only pulls ahead because of the healing. Vitality builds should have a bigger pay-off for the point investment. I just do not believe that the consumables boost is the way to do it. I believe getting a greater relative boost to health for going from 40 to 50 Vitality than you do going from 30 to 40 would be better.

The PVP example would be true of any tank regardless of how the tank tanks (healing boosts, hp, resistance). Extra healing does not solve this issue. Just prolongs it.

Also, I am not sure about the last statement about harvest boosts and consumption boosts. In my mind, a character that excels at gathering something should also excel at using that thing. It seems natural to me. Saying because I am good at collecting X therefore I do not need X as much seems odd. Maybe I am misunderstanding this?

The thing that is interesting here is that while we may have different opinions about stat distribution and perks, and FC has acknowledged that more tweaking needs to be done, the perk system does seem to be the right tool for promoting more well rounded builds rather than min-maxing. This is much better than when the game first came out on Early Access. Your Contender would never have stood a chance against the Walking Giant a year ago.

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14

I also tested some perks now:
Steady hands doesn’t work at all.
Slice and dice applies 10% cumulatively (200%dmg becomes 220% not 210%)
Brutal Strikes applies 20% cumulatively (instead of 25%)
Bronzed physique works as intended (20% reduction to dmg)
Blood-mad Berserker doesn’t work at all.

So basically perks used in comparing video work as supposed and is therefore valid. I think those example fights were pretty well balanced - victory was not super one sided in any encounter.

My whole point is someone makes a claim that a build is OP (redit post mentioned on stream) while as it turns out actual gameplay differs.

EDIT: Also as mentioned before some actual stats differ now - mainly - Vitality adds 8 points per level. Meaning you start with 200 and get 600 at lvl50. It actually is much nicer (and worse for the Walking Giant being OP sake - again) and closer together than I initially imagined.
So again - the 20% reduction in bronzed physique at 50 vitality is a well placed and balanced perk that gives a good “relative boost to health for going from 40 to 50 Vitality”.

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15

Wait… what? Grit is one of 3 bad stats? Seriously? Hold on…
reads the posts again
Are you for real?

I never said any of those stats is bad* - only pointed out it would be obvious (for every player, covering all playstyles) why strength, accuracy, vitality and encumbrance are wanted.
*Didnt test fighting, so I have no clue about how useful and viable they are.
Strenght and accuracy for damage, vitality for health and encumbrance to bring more stuff/harvest more without getting slow. (And thus disabled…)

Opposed to that grit, agility and survival are mixed up with their purposes.
There seems to be almost no clear position, which stat is about how sturdy you get, since three of those (agility, grit, survivals 40th+50th plus vitality on top) affect that. Thats bluntly put, every of those stats affecting your defense but none being that one defense stat…
How good to move and number of attacks in a row is affected by grit and agility - plus 50th encumbrance. (Staminacost for movement on agility (10, 30, 40), for basic attacks on grit 40th)

I would have preferred if:
Agility were that stat for stamina and movement.
Grit were that stat for defense.
Survival that stat for… well… survival? (HP regen, heal on consumable…) :wink:

Those only being examples though!
And just to try and explain what I actually meant.
That I didnt mean to call any stat bad/useless but instead feel that those mentioned stats are mixed up.

16

Some stats are off to the current testlive build:
Vitality grants 8 not 12 hit points per level.
Strength grants 3% not 1% damage per level.

If giant got 20 agility that affects your calculations then why contender got 30 grit instead that doesn’t (even tho it grants 6% reduction btw)?
20 agility grants more than 20% resistance with no armor and less than 2% with top tier heavy armor.

800hp base + 20% damage resistance = 800 / 0.8 = 1000
Let me explain why is it calculated that way on a different example (some people argued with me in the past it should be 800 + 20% of 800 which is 960 which is wrong (it also was a different example but the pattern was the same):
If you get 50% resistance then your damage taken is halved. Meaning you take exactly double the hits. Meaning you have exactly twice the effective hitpoints:
1000 / 0.5 = 2000
1000 * 1.5 = 1500 = it did not double your effective hp pool.

Similarly interesting thing happens when you compare high levels of damage resistance. When you look at 75% and 80% damage reduction it doesn’t seem like much at the first glance. But then you take time to process it:
1000 / 0.25 = 4000
1000 / 0.2 = 5000
5000 / 4000 = 1.25
You actually get a 25% effective hit points increase with it.

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17

This is why armor penetration and sunder are so important against heavy armor.

18

And rightfuly so!
Lets have an example of how powerful 50% penetration really is:

214 ar (74% reduction) gets hit with 50% armor penetration reducing it to 107 ar (58% reduction)

1000 / 0.26 = 3846.15
1000 / 0.42 = 2380.95
3846.15 / 2380.95 = 1.615
That is 61.5% increased damage. It is alot but leaving super heavy armor with some value.

106 ar (58% reduction) get hit with 50% penetration reducing ar to 53 ar (41% reduction).
1000 / 0.42 = 2380.95
1000 / 0.59 = 1694.91
2380.95 / 1694.91 = 1.404
That is 40.4% increase in damage. Much less effectiveness of additional damage (34.4% less) when lighter armor is hit.
In this example 50% penetration gave 15.04% more damage increase versus heavy armor than it did against medium.

Having said that I think most penetrating weapons should not go much over 50% armor penetration.

19

These are some very interesting changes to how the stats work. They definitely seriously nerfed vitality builds, and seriously strengthened strength builds.

Your conclusions on Armor and Armor Penetration are also really game-changing. I might even argue that Accuracy and Strength could make for the best builds, which goes along with your idea of the Contender.

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20

Yes strength and accuracy (accuracy gives 2% increase per lvl btw) do seem like very powerfull builds at a first glance. They are not overpowered as one might think however for there are 2 more combat stats that get in their way. One is Grit and another is mentioned Vitality.

Having a high grit (40+) character gives you a huge stamina advantage. This means you can swing your light attacks without a stamina cost. This means you can easily trigger enemy rolls and make them run out of stamina by pressure. It is not as easy to pull of as it sounds as you actually need to stay alive yourself while being super aggresive. But when that happens, when enemy makes the stamina management mistake, falls for it and runs out of stamina - you hold him on a platter for dinner. I’ve seen this happen alot in duels, I’ve also seen them die to first 2-3 counters after commiting to an offensive too much. 40 grit is not a golden solution to PvP, it gives you an opportunity to capitalise on enemy mistakes by ability to keep pushing.

Second option is to go high Vitality (40+). This is again becouse of the perk that resides there : you get double the effectiveness of healing potions. This goes well along pretty much the opposite to high grit strategy. Having such a build you want to trade some blows and then back out capitalising on your superior health regeneration. You get your hp back in double the rate, this is really fast with good healing items. Then when the fight has been happening for a while and you are confident that enough damage was done to the enemy that he is now low on health you proceed to attack and finish the fight.

So are high strength (40+) builds at a disadvantage here? Not really. Against a high grit opponent your hits carry a heavier weight to them. In a quick fight where grit character fails to dodge from 2-3 blows he dies. High regeneration builds are countered to some degree by the damage potential of high strength characters. You cannot allow them time off to regenerate both their hp and stamina.

I have played all 3 types and can’t decide if one or the other is the most powerfull. They all got their pros and cons. Vitality build seems to be the easiest to get a grasp on but then again it would prove least effective in group fight scenarios. Grit can be very deadly but you need to learn how to drain stamina and when to recognise when the enemies stamina is on low. Strength builds don’t have a clear advantage other than pure strength meaning you can make this build work really well if you are capable of going in and be the fighter who lands a couple blows on target early in a fight.

I think stats are not as unbalanced as people claim. They might need a little bit of tweaking. So I am really wondering how the incoming changes aregoing to affect that.

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