Warrior General Games

Is it even really possible? Do strength/big hit/monster hit actually work well enough to make them really worthwhile? Any SS out there who force a lot of fumbles because of them? Or kill guys coming over the middle a lot? I know most WRs ignore strength so it seems like it should work, but for those of you who have tried it, does it?

Once I got my str up to around 60 i started seeing fumbles. But he was real slow so I gave it up to make him a faster better player. But I think it's possible for a s.s. to force a lot of fumbles with the right build.

First of all you should know that Bort said (I think I read it in Bort Stalker some months ago) that every tackle basically gets a quality rating. This is pretty sensible - you shouldn't need SAs to be able to land good hits, and you shouldn't be able to be pathetic and still land jarring shots just because you have SAs. So what this means is that a whole lot of factors take part in generating a "big hit," and especially when you get to the strength side of things, it becomes remarkably difficult to see how often you're actually landing a big hit. For example, my FS has low strength and mediocre tackling, as I'm playing the 10% rule (try to miss only 10% of the tackles for teh season). I still got two forced fumbles, both on upper-tier RBs that don't cough up the ball very often. But looking at the two fumbles makes it pretty clear why and how it happened - I went backwards in Cover 1 and got enough an acceleration boost that when they ran straight up the middle, I'd gotten at least 10 yards of acceleration into the crash. Now this sort of tackle happened like 8 times over the course of the season, and I'm set to Wrap Up, of course.

Which means arguably both times they fumbled, my Big Hit SA kicked in.
EDIT: Actually it could also mean that the RB got hit so many times that when I landed those monstrously hard hits, they coughed it up. This is part of the reason why people are weary of that Big Hit SA

And that's more or less what Big Hit does. If you land a natural big hit, the SA simply increases the fumble chance. Nothing more, nothing less. So this skill is relatively weak in my opinion, at least without more concrete numbers in terms of the odds of landing a natural big hit.

Monster Hit implies it broadens the scope of what your natural big hit is - so you don't need 10 yards of running in a straight line to generate a big hit. This skill seems to actually cause you to hit harder.

Now you add those two skills and what I've implied about landing a big hit (some combination of angle, speed, and strength) and you can see why you can't really create a force-fumble machine. It's hard. No one has had the balls so far to make a player with high enough strength that they generate much of an impact via strength, at least in terms of SS and LBs, where this really starts to kick in. Everyone's a speedbacker.

Now if you're willing to look past the stats, things get a bit more complicated.

Some of us in this section of the forum seem to see a correlation between strength/hard hitting and receivers dropping the ball (usually listed as a pass deflection) if you hit them right as the ball gets there. Standard football stuff. It is, however, much harder to see if they're dropping balls over the course of a game because of the pounding they take. The effect of confidence is unquantifiable, and furthermore it's difficult to see how much of a hit in confidence they take. Plus, you probably won't see something concrete like a drop in catching - Bort implies numerous times that confidence affects EVERYthing, so the player might actually be running slower or whatnot after a big hit.

I think a lot of teams actually prefer a hard-hitting SS because they do land a lot of hits, and if they're going to land a lot of hits they might as well land them hard, but a lot of other teams shy away from it because it's "not proven" (as opposed to quick, speed SS whose effect is 100% visible).

In terms of WRs, though, the reality is probably going to be that you'll find it difficult to smash them. Most tackles come from the CBs, and you need a host of other stars lining up to get a good shot (vision, agility, etc.). That's not to say it's impossible or useless, just saying it's hard to get a good feel for how hard-hitting SS are doing against WRs.

Personally as a FS a hard-hitter would work wonders because of the sheer amount of speed we tend to build up pre-impact, but we don't get Monster Hit, so it's a lot more difficult to pull off - which is why you don't really see any.

that's a great explanation southlight, thanks.

Originally posted by southlight

Personally as a FS a hard-hitter would work wonders because of the sheer amount of speed we tend to build up pre-impact, but we don't get Monster Hit, so it's a lot more difficult to pull off - which is why you don't really see any.

You could build a SS the way you want him with monster hit and just play him at FS, the penalty for playing out of position is supposedly very small.

Considering how inferior the FS SAs are compared to SS SAs, that's indeed an option

You'd need to have a network of team owners (because team life expectancy isn't very high) who will use you that way, though ^^

Originally posted by southlight
No one has had the balls so far to make a player with high enough strength that they generate much of an impact via strength, at least in terms of SS and LBs, where this really starts to kick in. Everyone's a speedbacker.
.

Not true. My SS in pure hard hitting, and pure terrible. Both with 80 str, or 70 speed (equip swapped). 11/11 in big hit/monster hit.

Originally posted by Splat
Originally posted by southlight

No one has had the balls so far to make a player with high enough strength that they generate much of an impact via strength, at least in terms of SS and LBs, where this really starts to kick in. Everyone's a speedbacker.
.

Not true. My SS in pure hard hitting, and pure terrible. Both with 80 str, or 70 speed (equip swapped). 11/11 in big hit/monster hit.

You'd still need 60+ agility and vision to make best use of those fumble forcing skills. I bet on most attempts, you guy just isn't in the perfect position - so he gets the tackle, but not the fumble.

So you need to be level 50 to be an effective hard hitting SS? :-/
also, I've seen plenty of FF's from terrible speeds/angles

I don't know because my level 8 SS plays in Level 13-29 league. His last game he had 2 big hits. No fumbles but to be doing so well against guys twice his level http://goallineblitz.com/game/replay.pl?game_id=350215&pbp_id= http://goallineblitz.com/game/replay.pl?game_id=350215&pbp_id=1219038

My team last season had 2 SS's. One with high strength the other with high tackling. (Mine being the one with higher strength). We each caused the same number of FF's (like 4 including scrimmages). Thus strength and tackling affect causing FF's equally.

Originally posted by luckskywalker7
My team last season had 2 SS's. One with high strength the other with high tackling. (Mine being the one with higher strength). We each caused the same number of FF's (like 4 including scrimmages). Thus strength and tackling affect causing FF's equally.

Lolz. I'm not sure your sample size was large enough to really be able to come to that conclusion...

Originally posted by jbagwell4
Originally posted by luckskywalker7

My team last season had 2 SS's. One with high strength the other with high tackling. (Mine being the one with higher strength). We each caused the same number of FF's (like 4 including scrimmages). Thus strength and tackling affect causing FF's equally.

Lolz. I'm not sure your sample size was large enough to really be able to come to that conclusion...

wat? Come on - hasty conclusions = win.

Originally posted by hiimjake
Is it even really possible? Do strength/big hit/monster hit actually work well enough to make them really worthwhile? Any SS out there who force a lot of fumbles because of them? Or kill guys coming over the middle a lot? I know most WRs ignore strength so it seems like it should work, but for those of you who have tried it, does it?
The bottom line is dumping points into strength and tackling that are needed in Speed, agility and vision is counter productive on what an SS needs to be. SS's are not there to cause fumbles. I wouldnt dump much into those SA's other than wrap up. I have noticed on my SS, the big hit SA has only happened a few times.

Originally posted by mogs01gt
Originally posted by hiimjake

Is it even really possible? Do strength/big hit/monster hit actually work well enough to make them really worthwhile? Any SS out there who force a lot of fumbles because of them? Or kill guys coming over the middle a lot? I know most WRs ignore strength so it seems like it should work, but for those of you who have tried it, does it?
The bottom line is dumping points into strength and tackling that are needed in Speed, agility and vision is counter productive on what an SS needs to be. SS's are not there to cause fumbles. I wouldnt dump much into those SA's other than wrap up. I have noticed on my SS, the big hit SA has only happened a few times.

Now that I can see big hit and monster hit I have noticed my Safety getting big hit/monster hit on roughly 1/3 of his tackles- and that's with only 5 points invested in each. I get a lot of "deflections" after the receiver has seemingly gotten control of the ball, and I don't miss tackles while set to "somewhere in the middle" tackling

I think having a 80 speed SS is fairly over rated. Strong safeties are much different from free safeties. You get thrown in the box to stop the run, you need to effectively tackle power backs without getting trucked.