Hey all,

One of the most common questions heard in regards to Champions Online are in regard to choosing stats. The game is admittedly pretty lacking in describing the impact that stats have on your character and in making clear the reasons to pick one or another. So I've put together some of my thoughts on the subject.

The first thing to remember is that you will (at level 5 and level 13) be selecting two Super Stats. These two choices are the biggest decision you will be making in Champions Online, and as you level up it gets to a point where you can't back them out, even with the respec function. If you pick the wrong super stats to go with your character concept, eventually you'll suffer the "roleplayer's dilemma" - pick powers that fit your concept but are gimped, or pick powers that work but don't fit your concept.

Why are Super Stats so important? Two major reasons.

• First, they are the only stats which auto-level up with you. There are other methods of increasing stats, but they are a zero-sum game ... every point you use for stat A is a point you don't otherwise spend on stat B. Every piece of stat-enhancing gear you equip for Stat B means one less slot for gear that boosts Stat A. It is not uncommon at high levels for a character's highest stat to be 200+ ... and their lowest to be less than 20. With that amount of discrepancy, the 200s better be on the right stats!
• Second, Super Stats directly determine how much damage your attacks do - no matter what stat they are! If you pick Presence as one of your super stats - the attribute that controls support like healing and pets - then it also controls your damage potential, even for attacks that otherwise have nothing to do with presence. If you choose Constitution, then it controls your blaster damage just as much as if you picked Strength or Intelligence.
   

When picking super stats, there are two things you have to consider. First, there are inherent benefits of having a high number in a given stat.

Inherent stat benefits:

Strength - physical melee damage boost, knockback power, knockback resistance, physical hold breaking, throw weight (at low strength, you can throw barrels, at high strength, you can throw tanks and tractor trailers)

Dexterity - dodge chance, critical hit chance. Does not determine critical hit severity or affect accuracy in any way.

Ego - critical hit severity, intangible/mental hold breaking. Does not affect critical hit chance, and is therefore generally considered useless without at least moderate dexterity as post level 20 you will never critical with low dex

Intelligence - Reduces energy cost of powers, reduces cooldown times. Effect is small at low levels, but scale up very nicely, nearing 50% reductions as you get into high levels

Constitution - Bonus hit points beyond the standard level increases and hit point regen rate. Note that Champions tends to have a lot less healing available than other MMOs, unless you take your own self-healing powers.

Endurance - Bigger maximum energy pool and thus bigger energy regeneration rate below the equilibrium point

Recovery - Higher equilibrium energy point (more energy available at the start of combat) and directly boosts energy regeneration rate. The spreadsheet brigade has determined the regen boost is roughly half of that provided by Endurance

Presence - heal strength, strength of summoned critters/pets, agro control. Presence increases agro in defensive mode (the "tank") and decreases agro in all other modes

Common builds based on inherent abilities are DEX/EGO (for big and frequent criticals), STR/CON (for tough in-your-face melee), CON/END (bigger health and bigger energy bar - what's not to like?), INT/PRE (bigger and cheaper heals and pets). You can absolutely pick your own pair, you don't have to go with any of those.

The other major point to consider is synergy with the powers you want to take. The majority of synergies are with passive powers, so you should always determine what passive powers you want to use before choosing your first  super stat at level 5.

Common passives and their synergies:

Invulnerability (Defensive) - Provides damage immunity based on STR, provides damage reduction based on CON

Defiance (Defensive) - Provides stackable damage reduction based on CON

Enrage (Active Power) - Stackable damage increase based on STR and current Defiance level

Lightning Reflexes (Defensive) - Provides boost to dodge based on DEX

Personal Force Field (Defensive) - Ablative damage immunity based on END, regens based on EGO

Regeneration (Defensive) - No stat-based effects, included in list anyhow for comparison purposes to other defensive passives

Aura of Radiant Protection (Support) - Provides party (including self) damage reduction based on PRE

Other Auras (Support) - I believe they all scale with PRE

Fiery Form (Offensive) - DPS (fire/ice/toxic) scales with PRE, damage resistance (fire/ice/toxic) scales with REC

Electric Form (Offensive) - DPS (elec/sonic/particale) based on END, damage resistance (elec/sonic/particle) based on REC

Ice Form (Offensive) - DPS (fire/ice/toxic) scales with END, resistance (fire/ice/toxic) scales with DEX

Ego Form (Offensive) - Damage reduction scales with CON, Id Blade DPS scales with END

Killer Instinct (Innate) - Energy returned from using munitions powers based on EGO

Telekinesis (Innate) - Lifts with EGO instead of STR

this helped me out some. so should you go with the two super stats for your build that you choose that are set at 12 when you first create your character? like recovery and endurance. i was wondering how these things worked. im going with lightening for my char and was wondering about all of that and how it would affect your character.

The recommended stats for the framework are based on developer guesses as to how you're going to want to play that character. I'd never recommend sticking with those guesses unless you're severely uncertain what you're going to want to do, or they happen to have guessed right in your situation.

You'll see in my list that the reason the electricity set recommends END/REC is because Electric Form uses END and REC. However there are reasons you might not want that. For instance, there's no law saying you have to take Electric Form. It's certainly an ideal power for a glass cannon using sonic/particle/electricity attacks. There's also no law saying that you need the elemental damage resistance the form gives off that scales with REC, so maybe you just want END.

My own elec character uses CON/END and switches between Defiance for fights where he needs survivability (solo) and Electric Form when he needs raw damage output with little defense (mostly teams or AOE fights).

Great list. Thanks. Im saving it for the Early Start on the 28th.

 Dax