From what I have seen in other threads, is that Endgame Characters should have around 400 SP, and be at CR300-plus. Is this correct? According to some posters & commenters, a CR210 boosted character has less than half the SP of a char that levelled there, as the boosted character has only 75 SP, and would need about 100 more in order to be effective at CR210 content. In Other Words, CR-boosted characters are only getting 3/8 the SP they need. Am I right so far? If this is the case, then a Boosted CR 100 performs at the level of a Natural CR 38, a Boosted CR 210 performs at the level of a Natural CR 79 and a Boosted CR 255 performs at the level of a Natural CR 96. If this is the case, then what can be done to correct this SP Deficit?
Play the game. Get the feats that give you SP. Most (if not all) of the SP given with the CR skip are from the core/base/FTP part of the game. Everything else comes from content you have to either buy or sub to gain access to, not to mention feats that can come from TCs. Giving away points from all that means a player doesn't have to either pay for or play that content. The financial hit is one thing, but the devs DO want us playing the content they made. I mean, it IS a part of why people make games, after all. This is why it's more ideal to use the skip on a lower level alt you might want to get to endgame (or close to it), especially if you've already got a character there. In that case you can use replay badges to play catch-up on SP (depending on how many you have saved, of course). A player who uses a CR skip is getting only that, a CR skip. Most everything else that comes with rounding out that character (SP in particular) then falls on the player.
The character advance is not intended for brand new players, it's a shortcut for veterans to bring up alts.
Rule of thumb: CR=SP. Like Will suggested, playing is the best thing that you can do. Jumping to an endgame CR is risky for newcomers because the community can be quite critical at times and can usually read the performance of a CR skipped character. Enjoy playing but never try to bite off more than you can chew. Good luck out there.
To be frank? As long as you have +/- 100 ish (60 for Role / DPS crits, 20 ish for Weapons 20 for Movement / Iconic Abilities - those numbers are intentionally high to account for performance-build specific additional purchases) your output will be functionally "good" or at least "acceptable" because you have crits and enough SP for Weapon Mastery, special Weapon combos, or "good" Iconic Abilities like Neo Venom and Heat Vision. That being said, "Full" SP can change your Precision or Might by 11,000 by the time you're in the 300 CR range (or more, since there is a percentage scaling that factors your standing Precision / Might into account, which you can change by adding equipment, and since every CR cap increase also increase purchasable Might and Precision stats it'll always grow in multiple ways). The other side of that coin being that a lot of the secondary benefits are Artifact based these days, so SP isn't "everything" or the "only thing" any more, though it does actually do something these days - once upon a time? It did not. That's why I *still* have the link to the percentile based SP proposal in my sig. Gotta remember how it was to appreciate how it is. For a "purchase in" CR Boost, I think 100 SP would be a better entry point than 75, and I think 100-150 might be reasonable. I think 175 is a big ask. Here's why. The second your character goes from being a CR 95 to being a CR 257 (or whatever this year's CR skip was) your character has the capacity to burn through all the old Feats without real effort, beyond LFG'ing for a group to run some of the instance-based Feats. A lot of Feats are Style-based, meaning that you can blast out content for a week in a given range, take 300 Source Marks, and instantly polish off 4-5 SP worth of Feats by Vendor purchase alone. Now, not to be a "fair to the older players" guy, because I know some of that is gatekeeping, I still think it's worth mentioning that Feats and SP do, largely, need to be gotten the old fashioned way because that's where you learn the minutiae of the game, base mechanics that become late-game staples, things like that. Though if you wanna talk about a CR boost that will boost your SP to that of your current top character, I'm all ears. If you already got it, then you already got it.
Many players have dramatically overestimated the significance of skill points. The order of progression seems to roughly be: Gear > Artifacts > Skill Points > Augments While some players try to claim that a player should have skill points roughly equal to their CR, the fact is that all things are not created equal. A CR300 character with 45 skill points will outperform a CR45 character with 300 skill points by a MASSIVE margin. The truth about Skill Points is that there are two very notable soft caps. The first occurs at around 160-170 skill points, depending on what you do in your weapon and movement trees. Speaking strictly in terms of the passive stats trees and ignoring the movement, weapons, and iconics trees where you invest to your personal preference, in terms of passive stats you are required to spend 1 point to determine your play style, then typically 60 points to max your crits. Then you will invest 100 points into your respective stat that you want to raise. As you raise this stat, you will notice that it carries two bonuses. The first is a static bonus. Each rank grants you X more Might or Vitalization or whatever you're investing in. Then, at certain specific milestones, it also grants you 1% additional Might or Vitalization or whatever. This is where math comes in. You see, 1% of a little number is a little number, but 1% of a big number is a bigger number. These 1% bonuses scale with you, so as you improve your character, they contribute more and more. Those 1% bonuses end when you reach 100 Skill Points invested in the passive stat, capping at a whopping +10% bonus to the respective stat. That's a heck of a lot of bonus. After 100 Skill Points into the passive, you will receive no more +1%s. From there on, it is only the static bonus. This makes that 160-170 range the first soft cap. Everything invested after this is going to have a lesser payout. The skill points invested are still giving you more Precision or more Restoration or whatever, but they are not giving you as much as what those first 100 did. Same cost, but reduced reward. Going further is still beneficial, but it is not as beneficial as getting to that first 100 points was, because getting that +10% was the important milestone. But you can still continue to invest skill points into your passive stat for those lesser static bonuses, and they do continue to improve your performance. They do not carry the same weight as the first 100 did, but they still help. Except, those cap out as well. I think it's something like 275 now. So when you reach somewhere around the 335 mark of Skill Points, you reach the second major soft cap. At this point, you will have maxed out your passive stat. That's as good as skill points are going to get it. You can still gain more skill points, but you cannot invest any more of them into Might or Precision or whatever it is you were putting them into. You've got to put them somewhere else instead. So, at this point, you can dump them into something else. After maxing your Might/Power node, maybe you start throwing the extras into Health. Extra Health will not significantly improve your DPS, but extra Health might keep you alive a bit longer, and living longer might improve your DPS slightly during certain specific fights. Again, these extra skill points aren't useless; they still serve a purpose. But they definitely are of diminishing return. They are giving you even less than what those 101-275 ones were. The exact soft caps and diminishing returns vary between the roles. For example, a Healer that finishes Restoration and then goes Might/Power will probably get more value out of that extra power than the DPS who finishes Might/Power and then goes Health. A Tank that finishes Dominance and then goes Health will definitely get more value than a Controller who finishes Vitalization and then goes Dominance. A Fire Tank can benefit greatly from Dominance, Health, AND Restoration, giving them a lot more benefit for those later skill points than what a Precision DPS might see from going with a little extra Health. The exact amount of impact varies between powerset and role, but in a nutshell, the major soft caps occur when you can hit 100 points in your passive stat, and then again when you max your passive stat. Basically, the truth about Skill Points is the more you have, the less they matter. So people who are trying to tell you that you need 400 skill points to do endgame content right now are either mistaken or lying. You don't. Nowhere near it. Thousands of players prove that incorrect every single day, successfully clearing endgame elite content without having maxed their skill points. Claiming that you need 400 skill points is like claiming you need full Grail T10 armor in order to complete the Wonderverse Raid. It's just not true. People were clearing it on day 1 using their dropped gear from Birds of Prey. Having better gear will make it easier, but that minor improvement across a few extra CR increases is not so massive that it really is a make-or-break for any player with even a rudimentary idea of how to play their powerset and what the fight mechanics are. The same holds true with Skill Points. If you have reached the 100 point soft-cap for the +10%, then you are fine to run any content in the game. It's the same idea behind Artifacts. A rank 200 Artifact is better than a rank 120 Artifact, but the difference between no Artifacts and 120 is waaaaaay more than the difference between 120 and 200. There is a diminishing return. The further you go, the less bang-for-your-buck you are getting; the earlier portions have far greater impact on gameplay than the later ones. If a CR-boosted character runs every Challenge, Duo, Alert, and Raid up to their CR level just one single time, getting whatever feats come from that first run and ignoring everything else, they will have significantly more than enough skill points to run any content in the game. Moreover, this will give them a bit of practice using their powerset. Because if the idea is that a player should be able to purchase a CR boost and then immediately jump into the hardest content they are eligible with and be successful, the hurdle to overcome is not going to be a lack of skill points, but rather a complete lack of experience with the powerset.
Because I was curious, I'm off today, and I figured out how to post videos on Youtube (I'm old, hush) I took a few minutes and ran a test. Essentially, this? Is the case, however - the degree to which Skill Points matter is still quite significant, even though it is actually less than Artifacts. Using a fairly straightforward (and heavily debated) output platform, Doom Spin, as my production combo, I started with the easiest test - Gear. This was accomplished by resetting SP - I purchased Weapon Combos, Iconic Abilities, and my standard Flight Abilities, plus one point for Weapon Specialization. Test parses are single target, 30 second parse, I took two passes for each set. Gear (310 CR) produced a parse average of 17,839. Then I added Critical Chance and Critical Damage : Gear (310 CR) plus Criticals produces a parse average of 22357 DPS - roughly 25% increase. Then I added Artifacts (200 Strategist, 200 Transformation, and 166 Venom) : Gear (310) plus Criticals and Artifacts produces a parse average of 29,685 - a 66% increase over Gear alone. I removed the Artifacts and tested 275 Skill Points next : Gear (310) plus Criticals and 275 SP produces a parse average of 24,990 - a 40% increase over Gear alone. Finally I tested all three - Criticals, Artifacts, and 275 Skill Points. Gear (310) plus Criticals and 275 SP produces a parse average of 38,973 - a 118% increase over Gear alone. So, Skill Points are contributing, significantly, but Gear and Artifacts are definitely contributing more.
Thank You, Kimone , Will & Brit! Thanks for the info! I really appreciate it! This helps a lot! I had suspected it would come down to running all the content I had thus far 'skipped'. At least now I can make smart, informed plans to proceed. Again, Thank You All! I might well be older than you, Kimone. I have fond memories of the Atari 2600 & Timex Sinclair 1000!!
Just a small correction in this point. The Devs suggested this during the stats matter revamp as a rough guide on when might dps start to become power efficient. Power cost goes up with cr, but following that guideline (and placing sp in might and power) means you are putting less strain on the troll so they can keep the tank and healer powered. Of course, it's still possible even with max sp in might and power to have a power hungry loadout, but most loadouts would be fine following that guideline. Now, that was before artifacts (and the switch to augments which all include health and power on all versions, if I remember correctly), so some things have changed since then, but that doesn't mean it's currently a bad suggestion/goal. It just means that there are now other ways to get the stats that you would have by just getting your sp to about the same as your cr. And with power in the augments (if I'm remember correctly) you need less sp to get to the same size power pool (which essentially makes you more power efficient) if you have well leveled augments.
