Warrior General Games

With so many "how does my player look threads", I decided to see if we can get a conversation going about build theory for safeties. Please excuse the changes it is a work in progress.

I think most people agree that right now the most important attributes to get to the soft cap (48 points without equipment) are vision, speed and agility. I would put these as tier one attributes.

What do you guys think are the tier two and three attributes for FS and SS? They are going to be different. No more than 4 per tier. This is to help people that want to start building safeties or have questions about how to assign points after a level up or a boost. The purpose is to help someone not make the mistakes I made. This might also help eliminate some of the questions about safety builds.

Tier 1:
Speed, Vision, Agility

One of these three should be your highest attribute, and you should focus on soft capping all three as soon as you can. Put all of you equipment points into one of these 3 categories.

FS spend more time in zone coverage, and man coverage on WR.
SS spend more time in coverage on TE, HB, FB and stopping the run. These tiers are setup with that in mind.

FS Tier 2:
catching, confidence, stamina, tackling

SS Tier 2:
stamina, strength, tackling, jumping

Tier 2: Put points into these categories as you boost and occasionally when you level. After you get your tier 1 attributes up to the soft max put more points into these categories. Train in these areas, until you start getting them to the 25-35 target range. The order is dependent upon how you want to build your player, but stamina is more important for SS than FS.

FS Tier 3:
jumping, strength, carrying

SS Tier 3:
catching, confidence

Tier 3 attributes need to be trained as you get farther along in your players development: Lvl 20+. Any points you put in these categories from boosting or leveling needs to be split with the SA you are focusing on.


Special Ability:
When you decide what type of safety you want to be, that will help you decide with Special Ability tree(SA) to focus on.

Alot of players when they first start out make the the mistake of putting points into the SAs early. This is not very effective. The SAs become effective as your safeties base attributes become higher. I recommend against putting any points into the SAs until you get your player to level 16. SAs work like multipliers for a particular attribute. For instance, if a player has 4 points in Super vision, but only 20 points in vision he will not be very effective, because his base attribute will not be in line to use the SA. That is why it is important for you to focus on getting your base attributes set before working on SA's. Here I will explain which base attributes are tied to which SA's based on my observations.

FS - Special Abilities
Coverage tree.
First Step - Tied to Agility. Very important when playing teams with very fast WR that line up in the slot.

Change Direction - Tied to Speed and Agility. Same as above.

Swat Ball - Tied to maybe agility, strength, jumping(there is debate here). Very important, because if you are swatting the ball then you are probably preventing a First down completion.

Super Vision - Tied to Vision, Duh! Helps you get a jump on the ball and read run plays vs pass plays. Also helps you know which WR the the QB is throwing to.

Shutdown Coverage - Tied to Speed and Agility. Helps you prevent completions.

Hard Hitter Tree
Wrap up Tackle - Tied to Tackling. Helps reduce the chances of a missed tackle, but is unlikely to cause Fumbles.

Diving Tackle - Tied to Tackling and jumping. Helps a safety that is trying to tackle a very agile WR or RB.

Growl - Tied to tackling and confidence. Most effective against players with low confidence makes missed tackles less likely.

Big Hit - Tied to strength and tackling. Increases the chances of causing a fumble, and reducing moral of your opponent.

Closing Speed - Tied to speed agility, and confidence. Help the safety run down players from behind.


SS - Special Abilities
Coverage tree.
Change Direction - Tied to Agility and speed. Helps a player make adjustments to fast agile players

Super Vision - Tied to Vision. Helps you get a jump on the ball and read run plays vs pass plays. Also helps you know which WR the the QB is throwing to.

Swat Ball - Tied to maybe agility, strength, jumping(there is debate here). Very important, because if you are swatting the ball then you are probably preventing a First down completion.

Sticky Hands - Tied to catching and confidence. Helps a player make plays at important times in the game and improves the chances of an INT.

Closing Speed - Tied to speed agility, and confidence. Help the safety run down players from behind.

Hard Hitter Tree
Wrap up Tackle - Tied to Tackling. Helps reduce the chances of a missed tackle, but is unlikely to cause Fumbles.

Diving Tackle - Tied to Tackling and jumping. Helps a safety that is trying to tackle a very agile WR or RB.

Growl - Tied to tackling and confidence. Most effective against players with low confidence makes missed tackles less likely.

Big Hit - Tied to strength and tackling. Increases the chances of causing a fumble, and reducing moral of your opponent.

Monster Hit - Tied to strength and tackling. Same as above, but on steroids.

Regardless of which type of build you have Hard hitter or coverage. You are going to need to put some points into the first two SAs of the other SA tree. For instance, if you are making a coverage FS you will need to put some points into the Wrap-up Tackle and Diving tackle SA on the hard hitter SA tree. This is because the first two SA's in each tree carry their effectiveness over to player builds focusing on the other SAs. This appears to be true of all players in the game regardless of position.

Scouting Bars:

Scouting bars are the flashy ways that you can compare players in GLB. They are very effective for comparing low leveled players (eg level 18 and lower), however as players get more advanced and players start putting more points into SAs they become better without it affecting their scouting bars. For instance, safety A has vision at 48.5. He has Super Vision of 5. Another Safety B, has no points in Super vision but has put all of the points into vision for 52. Safety B will have a higher scouting bar in pass defense, but Safety A will make more plays on the field because of the way SAs work.


Basic build information
Another reason putting points into your base attributes early is so important is that after level 21 or 22 ( I can't remember which.) You get fewer points to spread among your major and minor attributes. Read this thread for more indepth information.
http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=25826
So it makes sense for you to put points in your major and minor attributes until you reach level 22, because it is a more efficient use of the leveling points, and SAs are the same value regardless of your level.

I am not claiming to be an expert, but if we get some good conversation going, I will come back and edit this top post and maybe it will help some people out.

For a general SS, this is just my opinion:

Tier 1: Vision

Tier 2: Speed, Agility

Tier 3: Stamina, tackling, strength

Tier 4: Jumping, catching, confidence

I know this is 4 tiers, but I can't really emphasize the affect vision has, far more important than speed/agility in my opinion. You want to get those up high of course, but vision should be a primary focus. With change direction and closing speed on the SA tree, you've got some decent quickness boosts right there.

Spd/Agi are surely more easily noticed and are (especially speed) the craze for all positions. More vision helps you get into the right position so you don't need to be making extremely quick cuts. You're also not going to get juked out of your skin too many times or be caught by a pump fake with high vision. Extremely important. #1 for SS. My opinion.

I can't really vouch for a FS as I've never owned one.

As was probably already said, it all depends on what type of guy you want to be building. As I have an FS, I will do FS:

Coverage FS:

Tier 1: Speed

Tier 2: Vision, Agility

Tier 3: Jumping, Catching, Confidence

Teir 4: Stamina, Tackling, Strength

Balanced FS:

Tier 1: Vision

Tier 2: Speed, Agility,

Tier 3: Strength, Tackling, Jumping, Catching

Tier 4: Stamina, Confidence

HardHitter FS:

Tier 1: Vision, Strength

Tier 2: Speed, Agility, Tackling

Tier 3: Stamina

Tier 4: Confidence, Jumping, Catching

As far as SAs go, I think Super Vision is the most important, for pretty much any type or safety. Then it really is down to what type of safety you are building, though I think First Step and Change Direction are important for all types because it gives a boost to your mobility, allowing you to make the tackle/knock down the pass/get the INT/force the fumble easier.

Just my thoughts.

The Swat Ball SA is probably more jumping than anything else.

I agree with both of you that Vision is the most important attribute. However, I don't necessarily think it should be the highest. I think a safety with 70 speed and 55 vision is better than a safety with 70 vision and 55 speed. Because not matter how good your vision is you just aren't going to catch the WR. I have played against TEs with over 55 speed. Seeing the play isn't going to do me much good if I can't get there.

Originally posted by kjoyner96
I agree with both of you that Vision is the most important attribute. However, I don't necessarily think it should be the highest. I think a safety with 70 speed and 55 vision is better than a safety with 70 vision and 55 speed. Because not matter how good your vision is you just aren't going to catch the WR. I have played against TEs with over 55 speed. Seeing the play isn't going to do me much good if I can't get there.

Fair point, but I think by placing vision in Tier 1 we can help make people aware that vision is VERY important to a safety. The number of builds I have seen where people have neglected vision is astonishing, and then they are wondering what is wrong with their build?! You need the right balance between vision and speed, which is something that I think a lot of people don't have, but I agree with your example there. 70/55 speed/vision is better than 55/70

Originally posted by Spike25
Originally posted by kjoyner96

I agree with both of you that Vision is the most important attribute. However, I don't necessarily think it should be the highest. I think a safety with 70 speed and 55 vision is better than a safety with 70 vision and 55 speed. Because not matter how good your vision is you just aren't going to catch the WR. I have played against TEs with over 55 speed. Seeing the play isn't going to do me much good if I can't get there.

Fair point, but I think by placing vision in Tier 1 we can help make people aware that vision is VERY important to a safety. The number of builds I have seen where people have neglected vision is astonishing, and then they are wondering what is wrong with their build?! You need the right balance between vision and speed, which is something that I think a lot of people don't have, but I agree with your example there. 70/55 speed/vision is better than 55/70

I wholeheartedly disagree with a 70/55 speed/vision ratio being better than a 55/70. By the same token I could say high speed is useless if you can't read the play correctly. Speed is definitely important, but I think having a slightly lower speed but higher agility rating will make up for it, especially with the new changes coming up. With the large cushion safeties get, they can easily get away with 55 speed if they can pick out where the receiver is going to be accurately enough.

This is just the opinion of a SS owner -- I imagine high speed is slightly more important for a FS than a SS, as they cover WRs more, but I'd still favour a high vision build myself

I put a lot into my guy's speed once. He did improve a lot.

Then I put 1 into vision and 2 into super vision and he got to the ball so much better than before.

Chances are, he wouldn't have gotten to the ball if he didn't have the speed. So I'm gonna leave it at they work hand and hand with each other. You can't go wrong really. I say speed is better though just because when it comes down to it, if you need to chase someone down the field as a last resort safety valve, speed > vision.

Originally posted by Sigmaforce
Originally posted by Spike25

Originally posted by kjoyner96


I agree with both of you that Vision is the most important attribute. However, I don't necessarily think it should be the highest. I think a safety with 70 speed and 55 vision is better than a safety with 70 vision and 55 speed. Because not matter how good your vision is you just aren't going to catch the WR. I have played against TEs with over 55 speed. Seeing the play isn't going to do me much good if I can't get there.

Fair point, but I think by placing vision in Tier 1 we can help make people aware that vision is VERY important to a safety. The number of builds I have seen where people have neglected vision is astonishing, and then they are wondering what is wrong with their build?! You need the right balance between vision and speed, which is something that I think a lot of people don't have, but I agree with your example there. 70/55 speed/vision is better than 55/70

I wholeheartedly disagree with a 70/55 speed/vision ratio being better than a 55/70. By the same token I could say high speed is useless if you can't read the play correctly. Speed is definitely important, but I think having a slightly lower speed but higher agility rating will make up for it, especially with the new changes coming up. With the large cushion safeties get, they can easily get away with 55 speed if they can pick out where the receiver is going to be accurately enough.

This is just the opinion of a SS owner -- I imagine high speed is slightly more important for a FS than a SS, as they cover WRs more, but I'd still favour a high vision build myself



I do agree that FS do need more speed than SS. What I am trying to say is that either speed or agility needs to be your highest stat with vision second and the other third. For instance, my guy has 75 speed, 54 vision and 40 agility. I will be getting his agility higher when I boost next season, because with the changes coming down speed and agility are more tightly integrated now. That was a mistake I made early in his build too much is SAs early and not enought in agility, and I am little weaker now than I should be...

I also think that you can get away with a slightly lower vision by putting points into super vision. I have 7 in Super Vision now an I am the first guy on the defense to react to a pass or run.

Indeed. I don't think either way of looking building is a particularly wrong way, I guess it just comes down to personal preference. You can't really go wrong if you've got all 3 stats pretty high up there. My SS has 48/40/63 spd/agi/vision With all of the equipment going towards vision. I'll level up tomorrow and I'm thinking of getting vision to the soft cap rather than boosting agility or speed A couple points in change direction and closing speed, along with a healthy dose of super vision, and I've made a pretty solid player I feel. Regardless of super speed, he seems to have the foresight to be in the right positions. With the emphasis backs are putting on juke and spin SAs, I think strong vision will only be more apparent at higher levels.

Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with a speed focus, I'm just more inclined to believe vision should be a little higher. A safety really can't be messed up by a lot of speed unless they have no agility

I don't know why stamina is such a big deal. You only need around 28-30 stamina for an SS when playing on hard. For SS I'd say get speed then agility then vision then strength to soft cap. I am kind off split on whether to put all equipments on speed or split them with strength or something...

Stamina is about on par for me with tackling/strength at present. I've got around 30 in all three, but tackling will probably be need to be boosted come next season. Just gonna wait and see if I can get by with wrap up.

I actually don't think speed is that important like you guys are making it, especially for SSs who won't normally guard the WRs.

My SS has 51 in speed, and I'm leaving it that way, upping more important things (vision, agility) first.

I'll let you all know.

Originally posted by Zarkoviyx
I don't know why stamina is such a big deal. You only need around 28-30 stamina for an SS when playing on hard.



No way. You need at least 35.

It depends on the team. If you have less then 75 at the end of a game then your stamina is too low. If you have 83 or more left after the game then your stamina is probably too high, and you need to focus on other attributes.