Warrior General Games

http://goallineblitz.com/game/player.pl?player_id=999446

Not retiring quite yet, but probably done at the top levels, and moving to a friends' team.

Interested in seeing what people think--he was my first dot, and his build efficiency is relatively mediocre. Certainly there are plenty of faster safeties out there, and tons of better coverage guys. But for whatever reason Hope always seemed to outperform his build.

Figured I'd open him up and use the opportunity to collect feedback and also hopefully help new players in how to build a respectable coverage safety (again emphasizing that there are much better builds out there than this). Stuff like 'high speed is really good,' is almost so basic as to be cliche at this point, but there are some lessons learned:

1. You don't need high catching/Sticky Hands/INT% AEQ to pull in a bunch of INTs.

2. Coverage safeties don't need much strength, but they still need tackling. Since 'knocked loose' passes have become more infrequent strength has become less useful for coverage guys. It can occasionally be helpful in breaking blocks, but considering you should mainly be worried about missed tackles it's much more SP-economical to drop a couple points into Wrap Up Tackle, use DvG, and get Make Tackle% AEQ. Hope missed less tackles than many guys with 70+ strength who didn't have the necessary secondary stuff.

3. Agility is ridiculously overrated. Not that it's not good, but it's more effective to stack your EQ in speed and use Change Direction.

4. Have a high deflection coefficient--Deflect Ball% is crucial, and you'll also want relatively high Jumping/Vision and Swat Ball.

5. Confidence is terrible for safeties these days. It's possible that a high-confidence build would have interesting benefits that I haven't experimented with, but with the current morale system I would probably never spend a SP there and just rely on morale reserve.

agree with all five points, though I'd drop extra points in strength even if I had wrap up and dvg because it helps with deflections


also your build is closed

NVM i changed my sig.

So do you think Hope would have been just as effective with 50 strength with around the same amount of tackling? One of the problems with the zone archetype for safeties is that it gets no ALG making it very expensive to get it past 60.

I agree about Agility. I think only dots who are going to be blitzing a lot need to be past the 70s.

I also agree about confidence. My 1st safety had 60 confidence and I thought it made a difference, but after seeing the morale system this season I'm planning on keeping confidence to the 48 cap with future dots.

Agree about agility. 75 is plenty for safeties imo with 6natural change direction (7 with CE)

Agree about strength. Don't think 60 is necessarily needed for coverage safeties with DvG especially since having 50-55 means you have that DvG bonus against all HBs and most TEs/WRs. I also don't think you necessarily need 60str to be an effective tackler and i think it's overrated in terms of PDs

Agree about catching/stickyhands/int%. My WL SS had 8ints including playoffs and catching is the same as yours. Most has to do with the defense. Though i think double int% does help (though more for CBs)

Agree about deflect ball too. I think 2pieces is what all CBs/Safeties should have tbh. Then spend your other aeq or two on other stuff.

Agree about confidence though it's hard to recommend stuff considering morale changes every season.



So all in all i am in complete agreement I will say that stamina seems more important for everyone. 60 is the new 50 imo. I see around a 1.3 speed scouter drop with every 10 energy lost during games (not sure how it works with breath or whatever). Great build though. I wish i was smarter with aeq and BT down the strech with my WL guy. I switched stuff around late in the career and shopped some and couldn't make ideal eq for my 3 pieces plus i still have upgrades left on the table (though better than straight normal eq) but whatevs. Good dot

8isgreat: Not sure about strength, honestly. I know that with his current setup missed tackles are relatively minimal, but I've seen safeties with 50 strength struggle. I think the key thing is that if you want to run with that low strength you have to . . .

A. Recognize that you're probably going to be pretty useless in interior run support, because even if you're not a terrible tackler you'll often get knocked on your ass.

B. Make absolutely sure that you have Make Tackle % AEQ--without it you're probably screwed.

But for a SS playing a lot of C2, strength below 60 is a possibility.

chrono: Definitely agree with you about the importance of stamina. I wish Hope's stamina was higher--I dropped a few SP in it from converted BT at the end of his career, but I think if I had to do it again I would have taken the points I used to cap confidence from 35 and instead used them to get stamina to 58-60.

I've adjusted most my build plans for my 3 mid lvl guys to finish with stamina at 60


in terms of lower strength. i think it's best to have 48 or 60 or 68 and nothing between in terms of using DvG. If you have 48str, you'll be probably weaker than all WRs with break tkl skills, all HBs and all TE/FB. With 60 you'll have DvG working for most HBs, some break tkl based WRs and some te/fb. With 68, you'll probably only have it working against powerbacks.

In between it seems like the benefit from the 3-4 strength might not outweigh the fact you're moving past standard lvl caps for people. (hbs taking str to 60 and leaving it with ALGs making it like 63 so you don't want to be above 63 but lower than 68)

DvG is a superpowerful VA but a lot of people use it poorly imo like on 73str LBs (also not sure if the DvG takes into account equipment or not)

For advanced equipment would 2 deflect%,1 tackle%,and closing speed be a good combo for a SS? I'm referring to my SS Hitman which already has closing speed and make tackle% AEQ. His agility is only 61 at the moment but I was thinking bringing it to 68 would be good enough with ALG pushing it over 70 by his end build.What's are people's thoughts?

Yeah I definitely highjacked your thread. Just thought I'd get opinions since agility isn't viewed highly from some people in this thread.

I agree with all 5 points. His build looks a lot like Edward Earl Reed's...

Awesome post. Thanks SunshineMan.

Originally posted by ANumber1Roy
For advanced equipment would 2 deflect%,1 tackle%,and closing speed be a good combo for a SS? I'm referring to my SS Hitman which already has closing speed and make tackle% AEQ. His agility is only 61 at the moment but I was thinking bringing it to 68 would be good enough with ALG pushing it over 70 by his end build.What's are people's thoughts?

I think if you're going to use SA AEQ of any kind Closing Speed is a good bet because the SP value is so much higher. I used to like Super Vision AEQ, but it's pretty easy to get to 7-8 with SP, and frankly there's not a huge benefit to taking it much higher than that.

I think Make Tackle% and Deflect% are the two 'staple' AEQ that all safeties should have, but after that you can specialize. A hard hitter could grab a Force Fumble% piece or two, or maybe Monster Hit. A coverage guy might want to consider Avoid Fake% and Int%.

Don't know that safety is a position where you really need to stack % AEQ simply because safeties do so many different things that there's a lot of relevant AEQ to choose from, but if you want to specialize as a coverage guy stacking Deflect Ball% is definitely defensible.

I guess the question becomes whether you value the 10-12% Deflect Ball more than 22-25% Avoid Fake or Int%.