STATISTICS (ABILITIES/SKILLS) IN SWTOR: understand them

[Chrisax]

This is a work in progress; please feel free to add comments and remarks so we can improve it!

"Statistics" is the word used in SWTOR to describe the attributes that determine the performance of a character. In Anarchy Online, it would be "abilities" or sometimes "skills".
This article will help you to understand what they do and which ones are important for you.


In SWTOR, there are 7 primary statistic (including one only for PvP) and 11 secondary statistics.

Those statistics work for players and for companions ("pets"). The important statistics for companions are often different from the important ones for the player, as companions often belong to other classes ("profession" in Anarchy Online) than the player. You have to equip your companions according to their specifics needs.

A] The 7 Primary statistics

Everyone has 2 main primary statistics: in your character window, they are the two highest values. One of them is always Endurance, as Endurance determines how many life points you have; the other primary statistic depends on your class ("profession" in Anarchy Online). These 2 stats must usually be boosted in priority.

It's the same thing for your pet, as explained above, except for "Presence" as Presence is the statistic buffing your companions, so companions themselves don't have it.

On the other hand, Presence (that boosts companions), is never a main primary statistic. It's of the same importance for everyone.

• I. Endurance (all classes, players and companions)
  • Main Primary statistic for all classes
    Increases your total health and the rate at which you regenerate your health.
    1 point of Endurance = 10 lifepoints, it seems
  • and then
  II. Aim
  • Main Primary statistic for the Trooper and the Bounty Hunter.
    Increases your range weapons damage and your critical hit chance with range weapons.
  III. Cunning
  • Main Primary statistic for the Smuggler and the Imperial Agent
    Increases the overall power of "technological" abilities (not sure what the list of technological abilities is), BOTH offensive and defensive.
  IV. Presence (all players but only players, not companions)
  • Primary statistic for all classes NOT main
    Increases companion's health, damage, and healing. This statistic only affects companions, so the companions don't have this statistic themselves. Hard to know how good Presence is.
  V. Strength
  • Main Primary statistic for the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior
    Increases your melee combat damage and your critical hit chance with melee attacks.
  VI. Willpower
  • Primary statistic for the Jedi Consular and the Sith Inquisitor
    Increases the damage and healing of Force abilities and the critical hit rate of force attacks.
  • and also
  VII. Expertise (PvP only)
  • Primary statistic for all classes if you PvP NOT main
    Increases your damage and healing in PvP combat and reduces the values of the damage you take in PvP combat. This statistic is on PvP equipment only. It is useless in PvM (PvE).

B] The 11 Secondary statistics

• 1. Absorption
  2. Accuracy or Accuracy Rating (same thing)
  3. Alacrity
  4. Armor
  5. Critical Rating or Critical Rating (same thing)
  6. Defense or Defense Rating (same thing)
  7. Force Power
  8. Power
  9. Shield
  10. Surge
  11. Tech Power
  
  
  
  1. Absorption
  • Allows your shield to absorb more damage. So it seems useless if you don't have a shield in the Offhand slot, except if it works (?) with a shield that you can cast, and in this case, Absorption would be only valuable when the shield is up / cast. (?)
  2. Accuracy or Accuracy Rating
  • Increases your chance to hit with any (?) attacks.
    But once you reach the hit cap of 100% (?) accuracy, then accuracy starts reducing
    - enemy armor (for range or melee attacks)
    - enemy resistance (for force attacks, in other vocabularies "spells" or "nanos" in Anarchy Online).
    It seems that it's good to take accuracy to a minimum of 100% + some points, like 105% or so, for full accuracy and some bit of armor/resistance reduction at least.
  3. Alacrity
  • Alacrity is really something to i,nvestigate as it's nor clear. It seems more or less comparable to "haste" effect in WoW (World of Worcraft) or to a global "Inits" modification/buff in AO (Anarchy Online) although "inits" in AO affect only the attack time and not the recharge time.
    Alacrity seems (?) to possibly reduce the global cooldown ("recharge" in AO) on some skills / attacks / Force attacks (spells), even fast cooldown ones like 1.5 seconds.
    But what about the attack time, and, also, Alacrity it does NOT seem (?) to help with "instant" attacks that are nevertheless not perfectly "instant" or maybe it requires a lot of alacrity to see a noticeable difference in the casting of those ones. Many things to investigate here before we can really understand this statistic. (?)
  4. Armor
  • Armor reduces the amount of damage taken from kinetic attacks (melee hits, and many Jedi force attacks) and energy attacks (blaster fire, Sith force lightning attacks).
    Armor does not reduce hits from Internal or Elemental damage attacks.
  5. Critical or Critical Rating (same thing)
  • Increases your chance to perform critical "hits" with all kind of attacks (melee, range, Force,...) OR heals.
    A critical hit = normal hit + a critical bonus determined by your class, level, equipment, and possibly buffs.
    The BIG difference with Anarchy Online is that HEALS can benefit from Critical Chance: a critical heal will heal for much more than a normal heal.
  6. Defense or Defense Rating (same thing)
  • Increases parry (avoid melee attacks) and deflect (avoid range attacks) chances. In Anarchy Online, it would be more or less like a global Evades buff.
  7. Force Power (don't be confused between Force Power, Power, and Tech Power)
  • Increases the strength (value) of all Force abilities, attack or defense.
  8. Power (don't be confused between Force Power, Power, and Tech Power)
  • Increases the strength (value) of all your attacks, of all kinds: Force attacks, all (?) non-Force attacks, melee, range. (?) So it seems to be a very powerful statistic.
  9. Shield
  • It should increases the chance for your shield to activate during an attack. Hard to guess what it does really, especially if you don't have a hardware shield. (?)
  10. Surge
  • Increases the "critical hit bonus", the percentage of additional damage a crit does over a regular hit.
    If you don't have good values for critical hits already, Surge is quite useless. If you have good crit value and rate, then Surge becomes interesting.
    It seems it's an addition appreciated in PvP where crits are important.
  11. Tech Power (don't be confused between Force Power, Power, and Tech Power)
  • Increases the strength (value) of all Tech abilities, attack or defense. (Not totally sure, at the time of writing, of what "tech abilities" are exactly).

[Chrisax]

reserved just in case

[noobas]

I need to learn more about:

channeled abilities vs. non-channeled abilities vs. instant abilities.

And, energy/force/focus/rage cost abilities, vs. no cost abilities.

And, to complicate things even more: energy/force/focus/rage building abilities...

[Hyde]

What I'd read elsewhere says Alacrity is haste, but (like WoW), actually does not affect the GCD (global cooldown). GCD -should- be locked to 1.5 seconds.

In WoW 2.x haste could lower the GCD but it became a HUGE problem because once people were able to cap haste it was simply overpowered. In WoW 3.x (and 4.x, which is where it is now) haste did not affect the GCD but -did- affect the ticking of HoTs and DoTs.

I'll be very interested to hear the final outcome.

My guess is it will lower the cooldown of an ability to under 1.5 seconds but will not actually affect the GCD, meaning that the ability still can't be re-used before the GCD ends. A very few abilities should be off the GCD (mostly tanking defensive cooldowns and abilities like the Jedi Knight's Riposte). However, unless you have multiple abilities off the GCD you're not going to see Alacrity have much affect on these slower abilities.

However if it DOES affect the GCD, that is amazingly huge once you can stack Alacrity enough to notice it.

I'm also curious to see proof on whether it affects weapon swing speed. It did in some major patches of WoW to the point where hast eventually became the #1 stat for some classes to stack.

I'm surprised it doesn't affect HoT/DoT ticks. It actually really impacts the usefulness of the stat -unless- it affects GCD.

Chances are also good the effects will be adjusted over time as they balance things.


...

Interesting note about stat caps ... for now at L50 you need around 10 pieces of moddable armor to be able to cap Surge or Alacrity (and likely all other stats). Capping Surge would give you a 99% bonus to damage. However you can't get 10 moddable armor pieces. What this boils down to is you likely CAN'T cap one of these secondary stats yet. Which also means (like Chris's note) that Crit Rating is probably going to be much more interesting than Surge for now. Later on as gear gets upgraded you will begin to see stat capping possible, and stacking a single stat may be less effective than balancing stats.

...

Unless you have a Shield % chance, the Shield and Absorbtion stats are worthless to you. These are tank stats. Defense should be universally useful (though much more so to tanks) BUT is likely going to be worth less to you than the offensive stats unless you are AOE grinding alot or trying to solo. Usually the DPS and heal classes can't get enough to make it worth bothering.

...

When you have a chance, always cap your primary stats, usually giving Endurance lower priority than your class stat unless you're a tank (and likely even then.

...

Overall, based on the hit/miss ratio that I'm seeing, I think that Power and/or Accuracy will be the secondary stats for DPS to focus on. Healers, unless going solo, should have no need for Accuracy gear. As a quest grinding DPS, I'd say go for Power ... but once you transition to a raiding DPS you're going to -need- Accuracy to hit bosses more reliably.

...

PS. Almost everything above would apply to WoW, Rift and the others. Once you have the basic mechanics down they will translate directly. Only once you get into theorycrafting stat caps will there be alot of difference. Alacrity is the big unknown here.