If you haven’t checked out our Stat Boost Guide (Part 1) – you should definitely do that first!

This second part will discuss what will likely be the most asked question of the 1.7 update:

What should I boost?

Now, while the answers to this question are about as straightforward as “What should I level?” or “Who should I put on my strike team?” — we do know some important things right out of the gate. And the things we know may provide a basis for making decisions like this one.

So let’s dive into what we know and go from there.

Building Balanced Teams

Ludia mentions in the patch notes that it is important to build balanced teams due to the new matchmaking rules (which now take into account the team you enter the arena with — including stat boosts — AS WELL AS your trophy count).

But they also mention the following:

Note: at 5500 trophies and above, creature strength starts to lose influence over the matchmaking algorithm. At 6000 trophies and above, creature strength no longer plays any role in adjusting the matchmaking: you’re in the end-game, buddy!

What I take away from this is two things. One, dinosaurs that act “above their pay grade” at lower levels will be really valuable as a way to possibly lower your matchmaking score. So maybe that Dracorex Gen 2 is still looking pretty nice with the niche swap in defense shattering rampage — which is pretty effective even at lower levels. And two, at 5500 trophies and above, all bets are off.

Still, if you’re rising up the ranks, it would be best (and natural based on what we discussed in Part 1) to evenly distribute the stat boost resources across your team.

The New 129 Speed

After the Raptor Meta died, the arena found an equilibrium of sorts around the dinosaurs with 129 speed. Spinotahsuchus. Erlidominus. Dilorachierus. Monomimus (pre-nerf). The new and scary looking Spynonyx.

It became a really crucial speed tier because of what fell directly below it too. Indoraptor. Magnapyritor. Utarinex. Touramoloch. Dinosaurs like these needed strong counters, and having the priority advantage was massive. So it stands to reason that this next update messes with this 129 speed tier a ton.

But equilibrium finds a way. Let’s take a look at how each tier increases the speed of a 129 speed creature.

As we learned in Part 1, the cost grows exponentially. And what we know now is that resources are actually pretty limited. So while at first it may seem obvious to boost the speed of your Spinotah, Erlidom, Diloraich, if you have all three of them on your team and someone else only has two? Well… their two 129 tier dinos will probably be faster than your three. Perpetually. Until you reach cap.

Because we’re all stuck using one resource (in this case Speed Stat Boosts) to boost our entire team, and because 129 speed dinosaurs lose a LOT of advantage when they are slower than others, we end up with some strange problems in a world of limited resources.

Maybe saying “I’m going to boost my Erlidom, Spinotah, Spynonyx, and Diloraich” isn’t really going to put us ahead of the next person.

The 50% Speed Problem

Another important speed tier to consider, when looking at these speed boosts, is how a slowing move works.

If I have a Stegodeus that I’ve left by the wayside (never boosted) and I am facing off with an Indoraptor that has fully boosted speed, I could end up shocked when my Thagomizer move seems to have ZERO effect on that Indoraptor.

But the math checks out. An Indoraptor with max speed (228) that gets slowed down by 50% will end up having 114 speed. That’s still faster than a Stegodeus with 107 speed.

What does this mean? It means any dinosaur with slowing moves will EVENTUALLY have to be boosted to at least 117 speed to ensure those slowing moves always work. Granted, that’ll be a while. But don’t overlook this detail. Because if you know this is the case, using 1 or 2 low cost speed boosts on Stegodeus or Gigaspikasaurus or some other tank with slowing moves early could give you an advantage when facing others who didn’t consider this.

Boosting beyond 117? That’s a different question. But you’ll at least need to hit 117 at some point.

So here’s a handy chart to show minimum speed, maximum speed, that all important 129 speed tier (as it gets boosted) and that all important 117 speed tier.

Damage and Health by Percent

But it still isn’t that simple, is it?

Where speed boosts are a flat amount, damage and health boosts are based on a percentage of a creature’s total damage or health at that level. So a 5% increase in health for Stegodeus (who has base health at 26 of 5400) is not equal to a 5% increase for Diloracheirus (who has a base health at 26 of 3450).

The same number of Health Stat Boost tokens gets you an extra 172.5 health for Diloracheirus, versus 270 more health for Stegodeus. That’s nearly 100 more health for the same price.

So when we first heard about Stat Boosts, we were thinking it would be great to boost a weakness (like how they mention making your T-Rex 100 speed faster). But when you look at how much you get for your money, it might be more beneficial to do the opposite and boost a STRENGTH rather than a WEAKNESS.

That’s not to say giving something like Dilorachierus more health is a bad call… that’s just saying in terms of cost – it might be just as beneficial to focus on building your team’s strengths versus fixing their weaknesses.

But even this doesn’t take into account the full picture. After all, we have dinosaurs that can boost damage. We have dinosaurs that can regenerate or heal. For these dinosaurs, one extra point of health means 1/2 extra health regenerated or healed. Or one extra point of damage means 1/2 extra point of damage after using a ferocious attack.

So… Boost Nothing?

Not really.

There’s a lot to consider when looking at boosts, but we do KNOW some things for sure.

  • It doesn’t make sense to boost damage on something with only Rend attacks (looking at you, Marsupial Lion) or dinosaurs who rely heavily on bleeding attacks (like our friend Stygidaryx).

Because Rend damage and bleed damage is based on the opponent creatures’ max HP, boosting a dinosaur who relies on either isn’t actually getting you much.

  • It doesn’t make sense to prioritize dinosaurs who use a lot of instant moves with Speed Stat Boosts, especially when they don’t have any slowing moves.

Dinosaurs like Ankyntrosaurus, Trykosaurus, even Thoralodosaur, may not benefit from speed boosts quite so much as a dinosaur who relies on slowing opponents or a dinosaur who relies on being faster constantly. The kit’s of these slow dinosaurs are built with the EXPECTATION that they’re slow. And a dinosaur who has priority moves doesn’t really get any faster (unless it’s priority vs priority) when using a priority move as a major part of the rotation. Leaving dinosaurs like this slower means you can use Speed on other creatures.

  • Boosting damage on something with one 2x move might be less useful than something that hits harder.

Proceratomimus looks epically amazing as a damage monster with the little damage buff it got in 1.7, but remember — it can only use a 2x move once every 2-3 turns. By comparison, something that can perpetually alternate 1.5x moves, or that has two 2x moves, will dish out more damage as time goes on. Sure, that one big hit can be amazing, but with moves like Swap-In-Dodge, Swap-In Invincibility, and Swap-In Evasive Stance, creatures that can’t repeatedly and relentlessly do damage in big chunks are not as cost-effective as creatures that can. So suddenly, a creatures’ moveset (or kit as we call it) in a boosted world becomes more important than ever before.

As we’ve been saying around MetaHub – Kit is King.

In Conclusion

We’re still figuring it all out, but we feel like we’re starting to get a handle on things. What we know for sure is we’ll need more guides on what types of things to boost early on in the game and later on in progression. And we also know building balanced teams (not just evenly leveled, but with a wide variety of tools – tanks, speedsters, damage over time, etc) is more important than ever if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

But that’s why we have a discord. That’s why we keep churning out content and sharing (for better or worse) what we’ve learned. So come join the discussion and let us know what YOU’VE learned. Because we have a feeling it won’t be one strategy that works in this new meta. It’ll be a few.
