Battle Stats - Top #100 - Updated Quarterly

Why is Dexterity better than defense now?  Let me count the ways.

1. Education provides +19% passive dexterity vs 11% passive defense. So, without even discussing this topic further, dexterity is ALWAYS going to be 8% more effective.
2. Dexterity is one of the main factors in determining stealth. No other stats are even considered.
3. Needles: Tyrosine provides +500% versus +300% for serotonin. Serotonin provides extra life, but that doesn't make up for the lower stat boost. When a skilled player is attacking a defense whore, they are going to be using an epi and a skilled defense whore is going to be using a sero, thus there is a built-in 40% nerf to defense caused by needles. Also, the reality is that players adjust their attack settings to have the temp trigger early in a fight when defending. So, if you are already on full life, you don't even get the benefit of serotonin's extra life. On top of all of this, a serotonin needle is by far the most expensive needle, 117% more than dexterity's tyrosine.
4. The weapon mods greatly favor increased damage versus increased hit chance. The flashlight mod buffs dex. There is no similar def mod.
5. Temps: Much cheaper temps, double stacking boosters (tyro+flash) creates an 11x difference between equal speed and dex; anti dex temp easily blocked.
6. Dexterity is 100% damage mitigation
7. EOD armor special of a full block massively favors dex whores.  It is hard to hit a dex whore. Then when you finally have a hit break though and it gets blocked, it is devasting. Way more so than to have one of your chip shots on a defense whore. [Edit: The puncture special has been enhanced to be an EOD killer. This is yet another damage boosting issue as described below. This change is much worse for def whores than it is for dex whores.]
8. Revives can give less than full life - def whores need life; dex less so
9. Combinations: tyro + flash in private security when the opponent isn't wearing something that blocks flash gives you practically 25 free turns. There really isn't a Def equivalent where you can skew the ratio that high. Flash + smoke debuff stacking - Smoke alone reduces speed to 1/3rd, however smoke + flash reduces speed to like 5%.
10. Critical hits are a huge nerf to defense. Rationale below on damage's impact. It is much easier to get a critical hit than it was five years ago. Thus an attacker's hits on a defense whore on average are more damaging.
11. Wasted damage through overkill. Undoubtedly this was not considered when balancing the different stats. The false argument is that hitting a defense whore 10 times for 750 each is the same as hitting a dex whore twice for 3750 each. In reality, you are probably hitting the dex whore twice for 5000. The extra 2500 damage on the dex whore is "overkill" and plays no part as to whether the attacker wins. The extra damage on a def whore is always relevant but the extra damage on a dex whore is only sometimes relevant. See example below.
12. Longer fights: In a competitive war, it matters how fast you can damage your opponent. People are attacking you while you are attacking an opponent. When fighting a dex whore, you are attacking multiple rounds waiting for 1-3 of your hits to connect. A fight against a defense whore can also take multiple rounds, however you are inflicting damage each round on the defense whore (assuming we are not talking about extreme levels of dex or def).
13. Damage is somewhat capped.  Even if you have a million times more strength than a dex whore's defense, you will still need to hit them 2-3 times unless you get a critical hit. 

14. Base damage increases, but damage mitigation doesn’t scale with it.  Base damage goes up as strength goes up, but the amount of damage mitigation from defense goes up by less and less as it increases. 

    Let me illustrate:

    1b strength vs 1b defense using a yellow Armalite (75, 62) with no weapon bonuses does 5200 damage on a head shot.

    1t strength vs 1t defense using a yellow Armalite (75, 62) with no weapon bonuses does 8800 damage on a head shot.

    In contrast, 1b dexterity vs 1b speed results in a 50% hit chance AND when you increase the numbers, for example, 1t dexterity vs 1t speed, it also results in a 50% hit chance!  So, defense becomes less effective as the numbers go up but dexterity maintains its effectiveness as the numbers go up.  Four years ago, to get into the top 100 battle stats required 60b, now (9/2026) it is 128b. Higher numbers mean more damage, meanwhile Life stays the same. This is a systemic problem for defense. This is legitimately broken imo. The perpetually increasing damage also makes the next item particularly problematic.

15. Weapon Specials. This is a really big one and the main reason dexterity became better than defense. Almost half of the weapon specials nerf defense in some way, whereas only a small handful nerf dexterity. The weapon specials overwhelmingly add damage. Damage does not affect def and dex equally. The way you beat a dex whore is to have a few of your shots break through their dex.  The way you beat a def whore is to whittle them down over many rounds in an attack.  So, every weapon bonus that increases damage matters a lot in a battle against a def whore. 

     

    Let me illustrate this point further. Lets assume the target has 7500 life, attacker hits the defense whore every turn and the dex whore once every five turns.

     

    So here is the base damage case:

     

    [image: i.postimg.cc]
    

     

    Ten turns and both the def whore and the dex whore are dead. Totally even.

     

    Now lets add 20% damage to the same scenario above. Everything else stays the same, just +20% damage.

     

    [image: i.postimg.cc]
    

     

    As you can see, the def whore is now dead after turn eight, and note the overkill damage on the dex side that was useless. Hopefully, no one will try to make the point that is doesn't matter how many turns it takes to kill your opponent. Damage enhancing bonuses do matter though, there are a lot of them, and they do disproportionally affect def vs dex. 

     

    Someone is bound to reply mentioning sure shot. I'm not going to argue that is not a great weapon special against a dex whore, but I don't think it evens the playing field given the factors discussed above. Additionally, anti-sure shot people always conveniently forget about the Execute special which ignores defense and the Deadly special which does 5X damage and processes at the same rate as sure shot, as well as Blindside. I could argue that in terms of balance, sure shot should be stronger. Also, unbelievably, the bleed and poison specials process on zero damage (and even reloads) during a round in an attack. They don't process when you miss. Additionally, all of the weapon specials that cause stat debuffs (weaken, demoralize, etc.) are going to process (based on their processing chance) when you hit a defense whore for small damage, but they obviously don't process when you miss a dex whore.

The list above are developer biases that are structurally part of the game, i.e. not player decisions. However it is worth mentioning that no players specialize in speed (anti-dex) whereas many players specialize in strength (anti-def). So, if you are a player trying to decide whether to go dexterity vs defense, that should also weigh into your decision.

So ched needs to rebalance combat system regarding stats. In my completely unbiased, 1 trillion defense, opinion 😀