Greetings, TORWarriors! One of the most frequently asked questions I’ve been seeing in SWTOR General chat has been “What does this stat do?” or “What stat do I need to focus on for my class?”
Today, we’ll take a look at character stats in Star Wars: The Old Republic and give you the basic rundown on what the various statistics mean and how they relate to each character class. **Please keep in mind that all information presented is from the Beta and Early Game Access play and is subject to change. For this reason I will not be providing any math, just an overview of what each stat does.**
Gretting citizen! I am programmed in six million languages which allows me to be helpfully annoying in almost any situation!
SWTOR sticks to fairly standard MMO conventions, meaning that your characters effectiveness is based on their stats and the items you equip. This is true whether you’re playing PvE or PvP.
There are two basic classes of stats, Primary and Secondary. The class you choose will determine which of these primary stats is most important to your effectiveness. You’ll need to be aware of which stat is your Primary stat as this will determine what types of gear you will want to keep an eye out for when you’re looking at stat bonuses. The Advanced Class will also factor in to what kind of Secondary stats you are looking for on gear. The following information is based on Beta and Early Access play and are probably the “standard” choices for basic character types.
Primary Stats
Strength: This is your basic Melee class stat. This stat modifies your Melee damage bonus and your Melee critical chance. This is the primary stat for Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors.
Aim: This is your basic ranged combat stat. This stat modifies your ranged damage bonus and your ranged critical chance. This is the primary stat for Bounty Hunters and Republic Troopers.
Cunning: This stat affects your abilities when using tech. This stat modifies your ranged damaged, ranged critical chance, your tech damage and your tech critical chance. This is the primary stat for Smugglers and Imperial Agents.
Endurance: This stat increases the amount of damage you can take (maximum health) and how fast you regenerate your health bar.
Willpower: This stat determines your ability to use Force powers. It affects the Force damage bonus and the Force critical chance. This is the primary stat for Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitors.
Expertise: This stat determines your skill in Player vs Player combat.
Secondary Stats
Accuracy: Affects your ability to hit opponents, if your accuracy is over 100 percent it reduces your opponents ability to parry, block, or dodge incoming attacks.
Absorption Rating: This increases the amount of damage that a shield will blunt above its basic absorption rating.
Alacrity: This stat lowers your activation time for channeled abilities and skills with cast timers.
Crit Rating: This increases the likelihood of an attack causing critical damage. Critical damage is an additional 50 percent of your base damage amount.
Defense Rating: This stat increases your chance to parry, block or dodge incoming attacks.
Power: This stat affects the amount of damage or healing those types of abilities do.
Shield Rating: This stat affects the ability of shields to absorb incoming damage.
Surge: This stat increases the amount of bonus damage from a critical hit – in addition to the baseline bonus of plus 50 percent. (For example a base attack does 100 damage plus an additional 50 damage if you get a crit, PLUS another bonus added for Surge.)
Additionally, there are some non-combat oriented stats that will also affect your character in other key areas.
Affection: This stat shows how your choices in mission interactions affect your relationship with your companion. Conversations that you have with your companions when they ask to speak with you privately will have a larger impact on their Affection rating. This stat is also affected by Companion Gifts. Gifts will either result in an Affection gain or your companion will have no reaction to receiving the gift. Companions can gain as many as 10,000 Affection points. Affection points impact your companions’ success rate and timing on Crew Skills tasks. Keep in mind that the Affection rating is unique for each companion. The rating shown is for the companion you are currently with.
Light Side/Dark Side points: This stat is directly affected by your conversation choices during missions. It’s shown as a meter on your character sheet. The more choices you make for one side or the other the more the “needle” will move in that direction. This is shown as the total of the choices that you make, so for example, if you make 2000 points worth of Light Side choices and 750 points worth of Dark Side choices then the value shown will be 1250 Light Side points. You can also grind these points via Crew Skills. As you gain points new titles will become available to you at each tier (1000 points, 2000 points, etc.)
Social Points: You gain Social Points by grouping for missions and Flashpoints. When you win a conversation roll in a cutscene dialog choice you receive two Social Points for each member of your party. You also gain a few Social Points just for participating, even if you don’t win the roll. Social Points also have tiers and unlock titles. You also unlock access to special equipment. Social items are typically iconic gear or costumes with customizable modification slots.
Valor: These points are gained from PvP. Again there are tiers which grant titles and access to special equipment as you gain Valor points.
That pretty much sums up the main points for character stats in SWTOR. We’re still pretty early into our game and it’ll be interesting to see some of the items and titles that unlock as players gain access to them. Tell us about your experiences and what kind of gear you get access to as you level up!
TORWars Podcast #151: Aren't You the Pretty Kitty?
Expertise could use a better summation than ‘skill in pvp’
. Damage reduction versus players?
Excellent guide – much needed, as the stats are confusing, especially at first.
Doesn’t strength=Might? I’ve been playing in early access for a while and I have yet to see strength as a stat?
As I understand Expertise increases damage/healing done on other players, and decreases damage done to you by other players. Its pretty much every pvp stat rolled into one.
Aye, you should change the description of expertise. We don’t want people to think they are better at pvp then other players, simply because they have a higher expertise stat.
Otherwise the guide is great. Thank you for that.
What about armor?
Dose it add to defense rating, or dose it serve another function?
I don’t really understand, if Strength is the melee stat, then why isn’t it being recommended for Assassins and Shadows? Especially those speccing for DPS?
If it’s like the old KOTOR system (or any old-style RPG system) then DPS Assassins and Shadows should be going for Strength & Endurance as soon as they pick their Advance Class.
Because Shadows will be using a lot of Force abilities, and Shadow Training means even your lightsaber attacks benefit from Will.
Str benefits 4-5 of your attacks; Will boosts them ALL.
well stats do different things for a few classes… in the case of the shadow/assassin, willpower not only increases your force potency, but also the players melee power and crit. Its the one stat to rule them all for both consular ACs.
whoops,
totally got the might=strength thing wrong.
got confused since items that have strength on them are normally have might in the items name.
my bad lol!
“When you win a conversation roll in a cutscene dialog choice you receive two Social Points for each member of your party. You also gain a few Social Points just for participating, even if you don’t win the roll.”
If I’m not mistaken, you get 4 social points when you win a conversation poll and only 2 for participation (if you don’t win the roll).
You are correct for a party of two people, and the guide is correct for all scenarios.
As the guide says, you get 2 Social Points for each member in the party when you win a conversation roll. So for two people you get 2 points for yourself, 2 for the other person = 4 points. Three people is 6 points, four people earns you 8 points.
When you do not win a roll, you get 1 Social point for every person in the party. 2 points for a 2 person party, 3 points for a 3 person party, etc.
agreed! you could have soo much expertise in your gear but that still aint gonna mean you got lots of skill in pvp! you got lots of damage reduction not skill :p
[...] Character Stats [...]
Do you get valor for killing players outside of PvP warzones? like planetside, etc? and if so, where do I see my character’s valor?
[...] [...]
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Well, I have to disagree about this being an “excellent guide” when you mention “non-combat oriented stats” like Affection, but forget to mention combat-oriented main stats like Armor and Presence. Also, companion health is affected by Affection and Presence.
All this brings doubt in my mind how thorough all of your guides are.
Couple of points here Batmap. Right at the start of the article it states that the information presented is BASIC and gathered from the beta and EGA and is subject to change. This article was written before any updates or changes to the live game and in fact before the official launch. Having said that there have been some minor changes/additions to a couple of things so here are some clarifications:
1) Companion Affection has zero impact on their health.
2) The Companion Affection bonus only affects your Crafting crit bonus and crafting efficiency (the time it takes to complete a Crew Skills task). However with Patch 1.2 if you max a companions affection you get a small bonus to your character stats once for each “class” of companion you max.
The stat bonuses are permanent and apply whether or not your companion is out. The bonuses are for the first companion of each type. They are as follows:
Melee Tank
1% Accuracy
Ranged Tank
1% Max HP
Ranged DPS
1% Crit
Melee DPS
1% Surge
Heals
2% Healing
3) The Presence stat is really only useful while you’re leveling with a companion out and it does increase their stats as follows:
Bonus Companion Health = Presence * 5
Bonus Companion Damage = Presence * 0.2
Bonus Companion Healing = Presence * 0.14
(Note that the above figures are old and it’s possible there have been some small adjustments but I have not seen any more recent information that I can verify)
As you cannot have companions out while PvPing (Warzones) and will not have them out while running level 50 FP’s or Ops their usefulness is limited and the presence stat while considered useful by some folks for the leveling part of the game is usually discarded on gear in favor of more relevant stats for end game.
Thanks for sharing your info. I really appreciate your efforts and I am waiting for your further
post thanks once again.