UPDATED FOR SEASON 4 (8/24/2008)
At the request on many, I've decided to make a short guide to building a speed based pass rushing DE similar to Deebo's. I'm by no means an expert, but my approach to building my guy is different enough from Deebo's to make it interesting.
Part 1: Rolling your player. I didn't have the luxury of instant rerolling when I created my guy, but nowadays for this particular build you want to watch the speed and agility and just keep hitting reroll. Ideally they should both be 15+ with a few points in strength and tackling so they aren't completely wasted in punting or throwing or whatever. After about 2-3 minutes of rerolling, this is the best starting build that I came up with:
Strength: 13 Blocking: 10
Speed: 17 Tackling: 14
Agility: 15 Throwing: 8
Jumping: 10 Catching: 8
Stamina: 10 Carrying: 8
Vision: 10 Kicking: 8
Confidence: 10 Punting: 8
Not perfect, but very good.
Part 2: Building. I'm a fan of "slow building" as I've done with all my players. The basic concept is to train your attributes before spending SP on them. If you wish to do this, here's an idea of what you should do:
1.) Save the 15 SP you get when you create your player.
2.) Start training stamina.
3.) Make all your equipment (except custom) stamina.
4.) Once your stamina is up to 15ish base (plus equipment) change training to your choice of speed or agility. I prefer speed.
5.) As soon as your speed/agility + amount of SP available = 48, use the SP to boost up to 48.
6.) Start in on the same thing with the other one.
7.) At this point, you have choices to make. If your guy is getting tired too easily, you can train on stamina for a while. (never put SP into it) Or you can repeat the process with vision. (which is what I did) Or you can train on either vision or stamina while using your SP to get speed/agility to the second cap. (60)
8.) Only after you've gotten vision to the first cap and speed and agility to the second should you start working on SAs. The most important one is tunnel vision, by far. Train on your choice of stamina, tackling, confidence, or strength while getting tunnel vision up to at least 6 or 7 and shed block up to 5 or 6. Don't put any points into big sack.
Once you get to this point, you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. You should start to see significant production at this point.
Part 3: Strength explanation. For most of you, this is probably a new concept, but in my build I don't recommend putting a single SP into strength or even training on it. What about pancakes? My player is built like that and gets pancaked very little. I have a theory that this is because agility is actually equally or more important than strength on the defensive side to prevent pancakes. Having high speed helps as well, because in many cases the OT doesn't even get a hand on my player.
There are many successful strength based/balanced DEs. If you're interested in that type of build, you should go to Deebo's thread because I have no experience with them.
Part 4: Equipment. As I stated above, I recommend you use stamina equipment while leveling up. Once you get enough base stamina, put all your equipment points into either speed or agility. I recommend speed, but agility could work well too. Do not split the points between the 2. This is because points become more and more valuable the higher they are. Having 80 speed and 60 agility would cost you more SP than having 70 of both.
Part 5: Tactics. I currently play on the following tactics:
Hard intensity
Wrap up tackling
Balanced focus
Evasive pass rush
I probably will never be changing the intensity, tackling and pass rushing ones. I'm not convinced that the focus setting does a whole lot for DEs. I've spent significant amounts of time on all 3 and notice little to no difference.
UPDATES FOR SEASON 4:
-Added a tactics section.
-Speed is officially still better than agility in my opinion. This season's updates actually probably made it more so. The agility update did very little to this build, and the pass rush settings improved speed significantly. Agility is still easily the second most important attribute to this build. Going agility first is still a very viable option, and probably would make a DE slightly better against the run, while slightly worse against the pass.
-Tunnel vision is still easily the best SA, no longer contested at all by shed block. Again, this is a result of the pass rush settings. The evasive setting actually does a pretty good job of avoiding any blocks that would need to be shed, especially if your speed, agility, and tunnel vision are high enough.
-There is no clear second best SA for this build anymore. First step, change direction, and shed block all have their merits. If I had to put them in order, I would go change direction > first step > shed block but my mind could easily be changed.
-As everyone know, tackling has become more important. However, I think this has been overrated, at least for RDEs of this build. I still have yet to invest significant training and no SPs in tackling. I'm missing more tackles than last season, but not so much that it's become a big problem.
Any questions, feel free to respond here and I'll get to you as soon as I can. PMs are fine too, but I can't promise a response as I already get a lot.
At the request on many, I've decided to make a short guide to building a speed based pass rushing DE similar to Deebo's. I'm by no means an expert, but my approach to building my guy is different enough from Deebo's to make it interesting.
Part 1: Rolling your player. I didn't have the luxury of instant rerolling when I created my guy, but nowadays for this particular build you want to watch the speed and agility and just keep hitting reroll. Ideally they should both be 15+ with a few points in strength and tackling so they aren't completely wasted in punting or throwing or whatever. After about 2-3 minutes of rerolling, this is the best starting build that I came up with:
Strength: 13 Blocking: 10
Speed: 17 Tackling: 14
Agility: 15 Throwing: 8
Jumping: 10 Catching: 8
Stamina: 10 Carrying: 8
Vision: 10 Kicking: 8
Confidence: 10 Punting: 8
Not perfect, but very good.
Part 2: Building. I'm a fan of "slow building" as I've done with all my players. The basic concept is to train your attributes before spending SP on them. If you wish to do this, here's an idea of what you should do:
1.) Save the 15 SP you get when you create your player.
2.) Start training stamina.
3.) Make all your equipment (except custom) stamina.
4.) Once your stamina is up to 15ish base (plus equipment) change training to your choice of speed or agility. I prefer speed.
5.) As soon as your speed/agility + amount of SP available = 48, use the SP to boost up to 48.
6.) Start in on the same thing with the other one.
7.) At this point, you have choices to make. If your guy is getting tired too easily, you can train on stamina for a while. (never put SP into it) Or you can repeat the process with vision. (which is what I did) Or you can train on either vision or stamina while using your SP to get speed/agility to the second cap. (60)
8.) Only after you've gotten vision to the first cap and speed and agility to the second should you start working on SAs. The most important one is tunnel vision, by far. Train on your choice of stamina, tackling, confidence, or strength while getting tunnel vision up to at least 6 or 7 and shed block up to 5 or 6. Don't put any points into big sack.
Once you get to this point, you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. You should start to see significant production at this point.
Part 3: Strength explanation. For most of you, this is probably a new concept, but in my build I don't recommend putting a single SP into strength or even training on it. What about pancakes? My player is built like that and gets pancaked very little. I have a theory that this is because agility is actually equally or more important than strength on the defensive side to prevent pancakes. Having high speed helps as well, because in many cases the OT doesn't even get a hand on my player.
There are many successful strength based/balanced DEs. If you're interested in that type of build, you should go to Deebo's thread because I have no experience with them.
Part 4: Equipment. As I stated above, I recommend you use stamina equipment while leveling up. Once you get enough base stamina, put all your equipment points into either speed or agility. I recommend speed, but agility could work well too. Do not split the points between the 2. This is because points become more and more valuable the higher they are. Having 80 speed and 60 agility would cost you more SP than having 70 of both.
Part 5: Tactics. I currently play on the following tactics:
Hard intensity
Wrap up tackling
Balanced focus
Evasive pass rush
I probably will never be changing the intensity, tackling and pass rushing ones. I'm not convinced that the focus setting does a whole lot for DEs. I've spent significant amounts of time on all 3 and notice little to no difference.
UPDATES FOR SEASON 4:
-Added a tactics section.
-Speed is officially still better than agility in my opinion. This season's updates actually probably made it more so. The agility update did very little to this build, and the pass rush settings improved speed significantly. Agility is still easily the second most important attribute to this build. Going agility first is still a very viable option, and probably would make a DE slightly better against the run, while slightly worse against the pass.
-Tunnel vision is still easily the best SA, no longer contested at all by shed block. Again, this is a result of the pass rush settings. The evasive setting actually does a pretty good job of avoiding any blocks that would need to be shed, especially if your speed, agility, and tunnel vision are high enough.
-There is no clear second best SA for this build anymore. First step, change direction, and shed block all have their merits. If I had to put them in order, I would go change direction > first step > shed block but my mind could easily be changed.
-As everyone know, tackling has become more important. However, I think this has been overrated, at least for RDEs of this build. I still have yet to invest significant training and no SPs in tackling. I'm missing more tackles than last season, but not so much that it's become a big problem.
Any questions, feel free to respond here and I'll get to you as soon as I can. PMs are fine too, but I can't promise a response as I already get a lot.
Last edited Aug 24, 2008 08:13:43
