Hello world!
Let me introduce myself! I’m Petrify and I’m a full time Game Designer who previously worked on one of the first and largest “play to earn” games, Gods Unchained. I spent two years at Gods Unchained before moving into the mobile gaming space.
If you wish to learn more about me or connect with me, please reach out to me on Twitter.
My job as a game designer gives me a fairly unique perspective into speculating on DefiKingdoms. Most game designers try to think like a player when creating mechanics, which is funny, because I’m a game designer who is now a player trying to think like a game designer in order to get a slight advantage over everyone else.
The main purpose of this article will be looking at the currently known statistics on heroes and then creating some speculatory formulas to determine what heroes may be better in combat.
Why am I doing this? Well, I firmly believe the current market is almost exclusively focused on professions when it comes to valuing heroes and that pains me given we know that professions will only be a small part of the game.
Reading this sentence made me think to myself, how can I look at a hero and understand whether it is a strong hero from a traditional RPG combat sense? If we can do that we can potentially find some great heroes and assemble a crazy good squad of three quite early. So I came up with the following idea:
- Categorize each stat into things it will be good at in combat.
- Group similar stats together to create a few simple classic RPG roles.
- Create formulas to reflect each role.
- Apply that formula to each class and determine what class is best at what.
Part One — Categorizing Heroes Stats
First I want to be clear that I’m not a mathematician but that I have a pretty good grasp of how maths is applied to game design.
Strength
This description seems very obviously physical offensive/DPS related. Pretty straight forward one to start with and will carry a high weight in any DPS formula.
Dexterity
Okay this one is a little bit harder to get a read on. Seems to be mostly offense related but has some element of defense. I would use dex as a larger weight toward physical offense and a small weight toward defense.
Agility
Seems useful for most things, given it helps time between actions, this could be both offensive and defensive actions. It also adds some evasion which is traditionally quite an insane thing in RPG’s, but I also doubt it adds a significant amount to defense overall. Jack of all trade stats like this tend to be okay at everything.
Vitality
Very clear cut. Great for defense.
Endurance
Again, this is clearly just great for defense.
Intelligence
Very obviously great at magic damage, but importantly somewhat useful to magic defense.
Wisdom
Hard to differentiate between this and INT. Until we receive further information it would be fair to assume they’re equally as important.
Luck
Luck is a tricky one. Its clearly important for combat given we all know how a crazy crit can turn things in RPGs and evasions is nice but it does say it has a small role in it. Given its influence over loot it seems quite unique and will likely not be a large factor in actual combat but rather the post combat looting screen. Personally, I value Luck extremely highly when building a team of 3 to get better loot but I wouldn’t want to stack Luck on all 3 of my heroes.
Part Two — Grouping similar stats together
So after examining the descriptions for stats we can get a pretty good idea of what stat is good at what part of combat. INT and WIS may be a little disingenuous to say they’re all rounders when they’ll obviously have a massive impact on magic damage and likely a smaller impact on magic defense.
For now I believe it would be fair to say the following archetypes exist:
Physical Damage. Strength, Dex, Luck, Agi.
Strength + Dex (to a lesser extent than strength) determine your ability to deal damage. Luck determines crits. Agi lets you take turns faster.
Magical Damage. Int, Wisdom, Luck, Agi.
Int + Wisdom determine your ability to deal damage. Luck determines crits. Agi lets you take turns faster.
Physical Tank. Endurance, Vitality, Dex, Luck, Agi
Endurance + Vit determine your ability to take damage. Dex adds something small to defense. Luck and Agi determine your physical evasion chance.
Magical Tank. Endurance, Vitality, Int, Wisdom
Endurance + Vit determine your ability to take damage. Int gives you magic evasion, wisdom gives you magic defense.
Part Three — Creating formulas to reflect each role.
I won’t go too much into exactly why I chose the numbers I did for each formula because it quite simply isn’t worth the time. It is pure speculation based off the above descriptions so arguing over .5 vs .3 is fairly redundant.
All we know is that X stat is better than Y stat at doing something.
Physical Damage = Strength +(0.5 * Dex) + (0.2 * Luck) + (0.2 * Agi)
Magical Damage = Int + Wisdom + (0.2 * Luck) + (0.2 * Agi)
Physical Tank = Endurance + Vitality + (0.2 * Dex) + (0.2 * Agi) + (0.1 * Luck)
Magical Tank = Endurance + Vitality + (0.5 * Int) + (0.5 * Wis)
Part Three — Determining What Class Is Best at What
Here’s where things get really interesting. We have the data on each class stat growth rate is for both primary class and secondary class. Therefore we know which classes will end up being higher at each stat in the late-game.
Okay lets use this information of growth rates on purely a stat-by-stat basis to see what class will likely be the highest of each stat by level 100. Given that each primary stat growth rate corresponds to its secondary stat growth rate we will assume that each class is pure, for example a Monk is primary class Monk & secondary class Monk.
Here is some already quite interesting data. Personally I’ve seen Dark Knights valued very low compared to basic classes because they’re good at foraging but start with low foraging stats compared to Archers. This seems to point to the fact that Dark Knights may have crazy good DPS late-game given their high strength growth.
We can also instantly see that Sages are the best at Int/Wis which makes sense logically and shouldn’t be a surprise. However one surprising stat is that Paladins are the best at both VIT and END which seem to be the most important defensive stat. This is something I wouldn’t have guessed when you have powerhouses like Dragoons and Dreadknights around.
Okay so lets plug in our above formulas with growth rates to see if we can find anything else surprising.
An example of our formula for Physical Damage using a Monk is 60 + (0.5*60) + (0.2 * 30) + (0.2 * 60) giving us a physical damage rating of 108.
Physical Damage Ratings
Looks great! This makes sense logically that a Dreadknight and Dragoon would be crazy good at physical damage whereas the magical casters would be pretty bad.
Some interesting observations are:
- Warrior scores very highly, beating both Dark Knight & Paladin. This is due to their very high dexterity (70) compared to Dark Knights (55 and Paladins (45). In practice I doubt they will beat Dark Knights given their overall scores are very close and we have no idea what “moves” each hero will have.
- Pirates perform very well due to scoring high in all of the correct statistics.
- Ninjas, Thiefs and Archers have lower strength but higher Dex and Agi which isn’t weighted as highly so they score pretty bad.
Magical Damage
There really is nothing surprising here.
Physical Tank
Okay this is pretty cool.
- Our earlier look at best statted class at level 100 which suggested Paladins were crazy good at Vit +Endurance carried over here. Paladins are very likely the best Physical Tanks in the game.
- Knights overperform MASSIVELY. Their VIT + END growth rate is 150 which even beats out Dreadknights (140) and Dragoons (130). I would bet big that Knights will be the best budget tanks.
- Thiefs and Wizards look very squishy. This fits their typical RPG archetype of being glass cannons.
Magical Tank
- Paladins are insane tanks huh? So even when we take into account a large amount of Int + Wis, Pallys still beat out Dreadknights at tanking.
- Sages rocket up the rating due to their very high Int + Wis.
- Knights plummet down the rating due to their very low Int + Wis
- Thiefs still suck at tanking. Its logically because if you’re bringing a Thief to your party you’re doing it because they’re the highest Luck hero in the game and you want to maximize your loot.
What can you take from this article?
First — please don’t assume I’m saying Paladins > Dreadknights. Dreadknights are good at literally everything and will be the best hero of the classes that are released (obviously). However if you’re looking for a hero to be just a pure tank, Knights and Paladins should be quite good based off their stats.
I personally learned quite a lot from making these speculatory formulas. Given that we know that combat will take place in groups of 3 it would be pretty prudent to try and assemble a team that is well balanced across each rating.
I also believe the stat growth rates highlight how important it is to pay attention to subclass, given that a Paladin/Thief subclass will actually be a significantly worse tank than something like Paladin/Pirate. I feel that almost everybody would look at those two combinations and just see Paladin + Basic and value them the same, when you really shouldn’t do that.
Finally, I think it also highlights how important blue stat can be. If I’m looking at a Dark Knight/Dark Knight and I see blue strength I will be licking my lips knowing that the hero is already the highest possible strength growth therefore with blue strength it could end up being the highest strength hero in the game (ignoring rarity).
Thank you for reading. Please let me know any feedback you have on this article via my twitter.
