Dec 10, 2011

Posted by in Fully Operational | 30 Comments

Fully Operational: All Of The Stats, All The Time!

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!” — There is no better example of damage in the Star Wars galaxy than the scene attached to that quote. Each week in Fully Operational, join Kray as he takes a look at the damage dealing role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. And yes, we’ll blow up a planet if we get the chance.

Folks, we’ve got a lot to talk about today, so I’m just going to leave this here and get right to it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic will begin early access next week (woo!), and as people begin to roll new characters in a new game they’ll be wondering exactly how they should be gearing up. This guide will explain the functions of all of the different stats in TOR (and there are a lot.) As far as what specs want what, that’s a bit murkier, but by reading through today’s post you should be able to get a basic handle on things. I’m not going to get too heavy into what the stats are, take this as a quick reference sheet.

The Primary Stats

There are six primary stats that you’ll find on gear and weaponry which  affect your characters the most. These stats provide multiple bonuses instead of a single increase, and (depending on spec) may have up to 5 different effects for a single point. To sum it up, each stat has multiple effects, and certain ACs and classes get additional bonus effects.

Strength – Increases Melee Damage + Melee Crit
Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior Bonus – Force Damage + Force Crit

Willpower – Increases Force Damage + Force Crit
Jedi Shadow/Sith Assassin Bonus – Melee Damage + Melee Crit
Jedi Sage/Sith Sorcerer Bonus  –  Healing Power

Aim – Increases Ranged Damage + Ranged Crit
Vanguard/Powertech Bonus – Tech Damage + Tech Crit
Commando/Mercenary Bonus – 
 Tech Damage + Tech Crit + Healing Power

Cunning – Increases Tech Damage + Tech Crit
Gunslinger/Sniper Bonus – Ranged Damage + Ranged Crit
Scoundrel/Operative Bonus – Ranged Damage + Ranged Crit + Healing Power

Endurance –  Increases health

Presence – Increases companion damage, companion health, and companion healing

One hat has better stats than the other!

The Power Stats

When you see those primary stats above increasing damage or healing, they’re only part of the equation. When you mouseover your character’s melee/force/ranged/tech damage, you’ll see it’s bumped up by both “damage”, yielded by the primaries, and one or two “power” stats, of which there are three. This is different from World of Warcraft in the sense that your primary stats do -not- modify your power stats, but rather are completely separate. Tech/force/power can be found on gear such as weapons and foci/shields.

Power – Generic stat that increases the damage (and healing!) of all of your abilities, regardless of type.

Tech Power – Increases only abilities considered “tech,” such as grenades or flamethrowers.

Force Power – Increases only abilities considered “force,” such as Telekinetic Throw or Shock.

Healing Power (Tech and Force) – This is actually split up into Healing Power: Tech and Healing Power: Force, but for all intents and purposes they’re the same. Increases the amount healed by all of your healing abilities.

The Secondary Stats

A staple of any MMO’s gearing process is having big powerful primary stats followed by the less powerful but more varied secondary stats, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is no exception.

Accuracy Rating – Increases your chance to hit with all attacks. Keep in mind there are separate caps for different types of attacks. If you go over 100% hit, the additional percentage is converted into defense penetration!

Critical Rating – Increases your chance to score a critical hit with all heals and attacks.

Surge Rating – Increases critical bonus damage with all heals and attacks. The default bonus is 50% extra damage/heals on a crit, which this rating improves.

Alacrity Rating – Decreases activation time for all abilities. This includes both casted abilities and channeled abilities.

Edit: Thanks to Saravi for pointing out in the comments that Alacrity Rating does indeed decrease the global cooldown, making the stat worth something for melee or instant-cast characters.

More stats are always better! Blurred for spoiler's sake.

The Gear-Defining Stats

Due to the extreme amount of gear customization in TOR, developers want you to be able to take any orange item (orange = fully moddable) and use it all the way to max level if you prefer. In order to achieve this, weapons and armor both have a dynamic stat on them which changes based on the level of the mods you have placed inside the item.

Rating – Increases the damage done on a weapon. You’ll see this listed at the very top of a lightsaber or blaster’s tooltip. The stat itself does absolutely nothing except increase the damage done — think of it as the ‘item level’ stat you’re used to seeing in games like World of Warcraft.

Armor – Armor, which you should be more familiar with, increases Energy and Kinetic resistances (more on that later), is the dynamic stat increased on pieces of equipped gear.

So, for an example, if you take an orange lightsaber with all level 1 mods in it, compared to the same lightsaber with all level 10 mods in it, the Rating stat will be much higher, and thus so will it’s damage. Same goes for Armor on those pieces with Armor on them.

The (Singular) PvP Stat

Conveniently enough, BioWare has condensed all the necessary PvP stats into one gigantic unit.

Expertise – Increases damage/healing done and decreases damage taken in PvP situations.

I’m not entirely sure what’s defined as a PvP situation, but I would imagine it’s damage done/taken to/from other characters, or healing someone who has recently taken damage from another player. Expertise is a jack-of-all-trades stat, it helps everything a little bit.

The Defensive Stats

I know, I know, this is a DPS column, but I have to include these stats in here just in case some of you care about survivability.

Resistance – There are 4 types of resistance in the game. Energy and Kinetic Resistance are affected by Armor as well as specific resistance stats, whereas Internal and Elemental resistance are only affected by their stats.

Defense Rating – Increases chance to parry melee attacks and deflect ranged attacks.

Shield Chance – For those who equip a shield in their offhand slot, increases the chance for an attack to be partially absorbed by your shield.

Absorption Rating – Increases the amount of damage reduced when an attack is shielded.

Phew – I think that just about covers everything. Most of these stats should be pretty familiar, specifically things like armor and crit, but it’s good to take a look over everything to help out your gearing needs. Keep an eye out soon for my mega-gigantor-uber post detailing the playstyles and general rotations of each of the DPS specs available to us at launch. Until next time, stay frosty!


  1. Thanks for the post! I learned a lot. :)

  2. Thank you for this, i’ve been curious as to what a BH/merc should do for stats, cunning or aim and now you have explained it better than anywhere i have found great job!

  3. On the picture with the blurred area, you may also wanna blur the same companion on the right hand side.

  4. Sorry to say but there are multiple things wrong here. BH/Commando has ranged damage AND tech for Aim. And also for the Sage/Sorcerer Willpower is force power AND healing

  5. Nice work, but IMO, you should mention that alacrity decreases not only the activation time on abilities with an activation time, but the channel time on channeled abilities… ’cause it does.

    As for the *ahem* GCD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIQRN4Kt89w

    • Whoa! Unfortunately my high level characters were all melee so I didn’t have a ton of alacrity… I didn’t notice the GCD change when I popped my alacrity relic! I’ll update this ASAP.

      • Alacrity only affects the GCD when the channeled ability time < GCD time. This is why in the video the Death from Above ability, while the channel time is reduced by ~10%, the GCD is not affected at all. Melee instant abilities will (unfortunately) not be affected by alacrity.

      • While I understand Saravi’s linking to a Youtube Video, I’ve seen (and performed) numerous other tests using Alacrity biochems, with long term testing – hitting the button as fast as possible, for multiple activations in a row, and timing how long it takes to get 10 shots off (to amplify the effects). Still no change in GCD, as I’ve seen it, or read. I’d be hesitant to spread what may be inaccurate information on a major site like AskaJedi, based only on one comment, and one video that doesn’t really show things that clearly, nor how testing was performed.

        • Last line in the video if you watched it to completion: Further testing is required to validate these observations (paraphrasing). There is *evidence*, not *proof* of a reduced GCD on abilities with an activation time. It should be tested further (and extensively) in the live game. Most of the tests I’ve seen have involved chaining instant casts that do not have a reduced GDC.

      • Kray, please be careful with the edits there. There is no evidence that alacrity reduces the GCD on instant cast abilities. Every instant cast (rapid shots, kolto missle, rail shot) shown in that video has a GCD of 1.5 seconds.

        There is at best *SOME* evidence that alacrity reduces the GCD on abilities that have an activation time, and because I couldn’t find even a single capture of that character using an ability with an activation time >1.5 seconds, it may only apply to abilities with an activation time <1.5 seconds, as both power shot and healing scan, as shown in that video, have a cast time of 1.3 seconds (with 1.3s GCDs, going by the quickslot refresh animation).

        These are BIG maybes that need to be tested further, on all classes with all abilities. I don't want to cause confusion. I want to promote testing. That's it, that's all.

        • Therein lies the issue with trying to analyze stats from limited playtime in a beta build. These are guidelines and observations, not cold hard facts. The Glance Rating I’m seeing referred to in comments and on TORhead is evidence that not everything can be caught around level 30.

          I updated the post based around the end of the video showing that with an ability with <1.5sec cast, it appears that the GCD is shortened as well. Without doing my own testing (again) I can't really confirm or deny this, but I'd like to include it in here for now for posterity's sake. Once the game is out (tomorrow night!) we'll have a lot more data to work with and I'll be able to give some more definitive answers.

          • Okay, but you say “Thanks to Saravi for pointing out in the comments that Alacrity Rating does indeed decrease the global cooldown, making the stat worth something for melee or instant-cast characters” when the GCD of channeled and instant cast abilities does not appear to be affected, thus making alacrity useless to melee and instant-cast characters.

            The only GCDs I saw that appeared to be sped up were those associated with abilities with an activation, when that activation time less than 1.5 seconds, but greater than 0 (non-instant, not channeled).

            Hope that clears things up.

  6. Force Power : Only dps? are you sure? will not be DPS and HEAL?

  7. On several item databases there is also Glance Rating on some gear and you do not have that listed… was that removed?

    • I went through every stat on the character sheet as well as all the gear I could find on vendors to make sure I nabbed them all. It’s perfectly possible Glance Rating might exist on a drop somewhere but I found no evidence of it on gear nor did I find a spot on the character sheet where it would be summarized. If someone can confirm the stat’s existence in the most recent build I’ll be happy to include it as well!

      Keep in mind that certain databases are using extremely old information, so don’t put all your faith in them til a bit after launch.

    • I don’t recall ever seeing “Glace Rating” on items or the character sheet. It could be something higher level that I never got to, but it wasn’t something I saw (and I looked at all the high-end gear on token vendors).

  8. Under the Cunning description, you have Scoundrel and Operative “Ranged Damage and Ranged Crit” listed.However,most Scoundrel/Operative abilities are psudo-melee abilities, but still fall under the “Tech” banner. I just wanted to clarify that ALL Scoundrel/Ops damage, both ranged and melee, use Cunning for damage and crit. Most people playing these classes for DPS use very few true “ranged” abilities per-say, but they are all Tech regardless. Great article here, hope I helped.

  9. Why did they take out Accuracy? A secondary PvP stat that countered the defense stat.

    And yes PvP is player versus player. Not player versus environment or npc. So any stat related towards PvP would be related towards PvP.

    Its usually not a good idea to wear PvP gear in a PvE raid, but people did it all the time to boost their ilevels.

    If you do not know what comprises a PvP situation, one has to ask how long have you been playing MMO’s and have you played anything other than on a PvE server?

    • I believe his comment was in reference to BioWare’s description of “PVP Situation.” Not in general terms, but in terms of exactly what BioWare defines as a PvP situation. Does it only count in Warzones? Or in dedicated PvP areas? Or is it useful against any player target anywhere in game? We can make assumptions on what that means, but it’s hard to say for sure.

      It’s not like BioWare defined it as “against player damage.” So perhaps it would reduce damage from environmental effects in a PvP area or Warzone. All of that is open for interpretation using the wording “PvP Situation.”

  10. This was a great overview of the way stats will work in this game. It is especially helpful for those of us to whom the universal language of mathematics is still foreign.

    I especially liked the inclusion of the defensive stats. Do you have a recommendation of where to go for articles on tanking in The Old Republic? It seems that The Bacta Tank is on hiatus and I’d like to get some pointers going into the game.

  11. Mavtsynchroid says:

    Hey, really liked the info you had here. I had people in game telling me that my orange armor did NOT scale with my leveling, regardless of whether i kept adding new mods to it. Think he was talking about the rating. Anyway thanks again, glad I finally know what surge and alacrity rating is (Someone also told me alacrity had to do with how well you heal)

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