So, I read somewhere you can only have a max of 35k between the four stats (Health, Strength, Defense, and Speed).

First question, I'm curious if that is true. Second question, assuming that is true, I was thinking of leveling my pet to

17.5k Health 10k Strength 2.5k Defense 5k Speed

and maintaining that general ratio between stats as I progress. Is this a good strategy? Looking at the higher opponents (looking at you Prodigy), I'm shorter on Health, but higher in Strength.

My thinking is I want high Health to take damage, high Strength to deal damage, Defense doesn't matter so much to me since it only applies when blocking and I don't plan on doing that unless it comes paired with a nice offensive weapon (I do have a Phoenix Quill for 100% healing when I get low on health), and finally Speed I want to be comparable to others' so critical hits are about even so they don't have quite an advantage, but I don't want to sink a ton into it and then rely on critical hits that might not happen when I need them.

Right now my pet's at

Health: 196 Strength: 177 Defense: 40 Speed: 175

I've been training the three higher stats evenly up until just a few days ago and am transitioning over to my new strategy. So far at the lower levels this strategy has been working fairly well and I'm taking out opponents with 1.5-2x more Health than me.

Anyways, long story short, I'd just like some feedback from people who have done this (or similar) and does it work? Or am I making a huge mistake? Thanks. :)

The main problem I am noticing is that most weapons having a healing cap at 9,999 HP and will only take a percentage of that amount. You aren't really gaining a heal benefit by raising your health that high and your lack of defense will eventually catch up with you.

Blocking is arguably a large part of the endgame where you have godlies blocking 100 of one icon type and demigodlies blocking 50 of two icon types. Those will become your main weapons, so I don't think their blocking should be taken for granted.

As you battle your opponents past win 1, all of their stats (except speed) will increase. Although I don't disagree with a build of 5k speed, just keep in mind that your opponents can still crit hit you if your speed is below theirs. They will do a lot of damage if they have a lot of strength, especially when you have a low defense build. You need to have a healthy balance between all your stats. As Jess pointed out, too much health eventually doesn't gain you anything other than becoming a punching bag for opponents like Paramnesia Buttwing Bomber and Paramnesia Recycle Beast that have over 8k speed and 9k strength to start.

Okay, so sounds like my strategy isn't the best. What would be some good end-game stats to be working towards? I guess 5k Speed was a good number?

I'm curious about optimum builds, too. My pet's rough stats are health: 8.5, strength: 7.5, defense: 3.7, speed: 3.5. Should I build up on speed and defense before I hit the new cap? What is the top end of speed that I should consider? TIA.

As far as I can tell, a lot of different builds work well. I'm not sure there is an optimum one.

Things to keep in mind:

• Strength and defense are calculated using an equation with a square root, so the higher you go, the less your actual gain will be. Ex: Going from 5,000 -> 6,000 strength gives you an increase of 9.54%, but 9,000 -> 10,000 strength will only increase your damage per icon by 5.41%.

• The equation for defense is only divided by 4 instead of 4.2 so you can get away with a slightly lower defense if you want. Ex: 8,820 strength and 8,000 defense will attack/defend the same amount per icon, 22.36.

• Most weapons having a healing cap at 9,999 HP and only take a percentage of that amount. Those that without a healing cap have the Healer label, but usually have a lower heal number on them anyway so they aren't very helpful.

• 6,001 seems like a good speed to stop at since only The Mage (7,000) Hydragellos (8,000), and Paramnesias (8,500 and 9,000) have a higher speed. The extra 1 point is to avoid a speed tie.

It depends on what you end goal is. In general, more health means you heal (up to 9,999 hp) for more and can absorb more damage, but that means less that you can invest in other stats.

If you want a pet that's meant to take on event challengers, then you want high speed and high strength. These types of pets will do more damage in a shorter amount of time, but will have lower defense so opponents can do more damage to you.

Pets with low speed and high defense can block against more damage so partial multi-icon block scrolls like cobalt eternal work better for these pets since the amount blocked is determined by [SQ RT (defense) / 4] x [ block icons]. However, these pets are more susceptible to crit hits.

A balanced pet with all even stats or stats within 1k of each other offers a little bit of everything, but it will take you longer to beat some challengers when compared to pets with uneven builds.

It also depends on what challengers you want to beat. For example, if you want to get 50 wins on someone like prodigy, then you want to make sure you have enough speed so he can't crit hit you and enough defense since his attack is very high at 50 wins.

Unless you have a really wonky build (something like health, strength or defense being extremely low) by T13 you will be able to beat 98% of challengers. Capped pets just struggle less in general as long as you have the right weapons and equipment. Having the right equipment becomes more important for the impossible challengers.

I guess what I'm asking is should I top out my HP at 10,000 and focus more on my st/def/speed? I think I'm hearing that I should get my def/speed up to at least 5000. They're both around 3800 at the moment.

Again, it depends on what your end goal is.

At 5k defense, you will have a BPI (block per icon) of 17.7 and at 6k defense, BPI of 19.4. It is up to you if you think you need an extra 1.7 block per icon.

At 5k speed, you will be as fast as prodigy so he can’t crit hit you. The castle and meat slab will still be faster, but only by 500 more so you could potentially boost in battle to overcome speed. The mage and some event challengers will still be 2k faster and a good chance they will crit. The faceless ones and Warlgthroth are at 6k speed and will have a less of a chance to crit hit than 7k speed, but it will still happen. The paramnesia challengers have much greater speed and will crit hit most often. These are only a few challengers so you may not care about them. Exp for battling the paramnesia ones is also not worth it for their difficulty.

I don't know that I have an end goal, other than the best use of my training. I'll keep researching, thanx.