Most people seem to train their stats evenly these days. I vaguely remember it used to be pretty common to train health more than other stats, and that's how I've done with my pet.

I don't think I've fully kept track on battle-related changes after the revamps, so I started thinking my training strategy might be a bit outdated. Health DOES cost more exp than other stats, after all...

So, would it be wise for me to stop training health and bring other stats up to speed? What are the pros and cons? How did you decide which strategy to use?

Personally, I trained evenly at first but I later started focusing mainly on health. Health does give you more staying power, but training evenly covers more bases (ex: not getting crit as often, being able to outdamage your opponent's defenses/healing, activating additional effects more often, etc). The other stats do lose value at some point.

Nah, focusing on Health is still the most popular. People train evenly to quicker gain tiers, but only to a certain point (T11-12, namely).

Most of the base rules still apply - what has changed is that there's a cap and tiers. The cap is more interesting for this, because if you want to train evenly all the way you need to get very high in each stat before you can compete with people who focus on health. A tank build is what people prefer since they can take on bigger challengers quicker. With an even build you'd essentially need to wait for them to raise the cap before you can really compete since you're weaker in each stat except speed. It's possible to get by with an even build, but you won't be ahead.

That said, do whatever works for you.

Thank you both for your great replies, gives me some perspective. I'm not at the top tiers yet (at T9), so I guess I might still benefit from spending some exp outside health, just to gain stats a bit faster. Perhaps I should have done it all along. But it seems like focusing on health later on would be a good idea.

@ minerva While you'll still be able to beat most opponents trainng evenly, it'll take a lot more time and stats than if you go for health early on. It just doesn't compare.

Let's take this quick example, on a tier 12 pet, against the mightiest of all opponents, Prodigy. This is an example for anyone reading this that could be wondering the same. I could make an example with a weaker pet against Saggi for example, if anyone's interested.

This is @ mrcool's pet

Strength: 3,816 Defense: 3,816 Speed: 3,656 Health: 4,418

For a total of 15706 core stats. That's a pretty even build.

From what I see, he has some trouble with Prodigy, only having one win vs 40 losses. The following is a build you could get 10 wins with on Prodigy with probably less than ten losses, still with only 15706 core stats :

Strength: 3,000 Defense: 2,500 Speed: 2,000 Health: 8,206

At 3K strength instead of 3816, you get 1,7 less damage per icon on average. Since you're probably hitting for about 100 icons at this point, you're losing 170 damage every turn. Defense is irrelevant if you're using full blockers, because it's going to block the same amount of damage anyway. But we want that pet to be able to defeat every opponent, not just Prodigy, and defense can come in handy for later. We don't want an extreme build, that one could be pretty average and not that hard to achieve. Speed is a bit like defense, because you won't be able to outspeed Prodigy past the first win, so you won't be able to avoid critical hits, but for convenience, 2K is a good number as it triggers the god weapons' blessings and curses.

Health - the difference between 4418 HP and 8206 is, as my calculator tells me, 3788HP. At this point in your battle carrier, you are probably healing around 25 to 30% every turn. 1105-1325 vs 2051-2320 health healed every turn. You don't need to be using the best weapons, but with a relevant defense, you will out heal his damage more often than not. Yes I am aware he can hit for 12K damage, I have 35 wins on Prodigy and know how this shit works. That's avoidable though. Add scrolls to that and I'll be surprised if you even lose once.

Now - I'm not saying startegy is rubbish. He'll eventually be able to defeat Prodigy and everyone else ten times. Though, from my experience as a poor user, I couldn't afford to waste time and money on stats I didn't need. If you can afford it though, go even all the way, it'll take twice the stats and the money, but it'll work eventually.

I see you have a T9 so I do recommand training evenly at the beginning. Phase 2 is going for major health, I'd say someonewhere after 1200-1300 evens is good to start. You'll still be training the rest, just slowly. Phase 3 is when you have enough health to be in a good position against most opponents, and can start getting the other stats up for your own battle comfort. At this point I recommand getting to know what stats really do as it'll help you get the best build for your style of playing.

Interesting. That definitely makes a good case for going for a lot of health. I think I'll need to bookmark this post for reference :P I currently have 1500 health and ~1350 of everything else. So from your advice I should go back to focusing my efforts on health pretty soon...

Use your exp on health, hand train the rest. Or I don't know if you autotrain or something. If you get any health boosters from Shinwa, use them, and sell the rest. It won't make a big difference in the end, but you could use the sP. Also use everything that gives intel, that's a very important stat.

That sounds like a good plan. Especially regarding the sP :P I have like 12 AP free because I can't afford any good scrolls currently.

Very informative. Your explanation of even training vs. uneven training should be stickied or put somewhere in that Intro to Battling thread that Echo made. I might consider doing that 3 Phase idea of yours. Sometimes i get so close to murdering Wyrmgear, but El's health stat is so low compared to Wyrm's, I hardly stand any chance. -is a retarded battler still-

pretty much covered everything, but i'm just going to ring in another voice of support for singling out health vs even training. i started devoting all my EXP to health some time around tier 9 (i'm pretty sure it was before 10 anyway) and i've just seen my max HP grow explosively since then. sure you get less stats overall, but that extra health can be a huge boon when you're fighting rude dudes like GE. plus, higher max hp + percentage healers = MORE HEALING MORE HEALING MORE HEALING

who could say no to that

At this point, I think around tier 10 or 11 would be the best time to start training health more than the other stats.

I had less stats than that when I got my win on Prodigy actually (and about 15 losses from before I was actually ready just to gauge his weapons and to see progress). I still do feel that each stat has some relevance, but non-health stats (especially speed) do start declining in relevance later. I think sometimes, one's weapons and strategy can call to question what the best builds are.

, ty for this info, but since I'm still low in tiers, where do you go to see what you need to raise your tier?

Tiers are determined by the total of your health+attack+defense+speed. Once they hit a certain amount, you advance in tier.

The brackets would look like this:

Tier 1: 0-299 Tier 2: 300-599 Tier 3: 600-1199 Tier 4: 1200-1799 Tier 5: 1800-2599 Tier 6: 2600-3399 Tier 7: 3400-4399 Tier 8: 4400-5399 Tier 9: 5400-6399 Tier 10: 6400-7999 Tier 11: 8000-11999 Tier 12: 12000-cap (currently 22000)

going past the cap doesn't make you advance to tier 13

, ty :)

That was very informative. I'm auto-training on Health right now and letting the other stats increase through random events. I'm waiting until my stats are higher before I battle more.

What I do is, I have been using the training center for health and the battle stats for everything else. But that's just till I hit the max health for my pet's current level.

Just wanted to add another thank you for your post. I was wondering the same and that information was very informative and helped out. :) So thank you!

oh cool have been wondering myself thinks for the advice