Post by TRUE EB0LA on Apr 4, 2016 16:02:35 GMT -5
ALL CREDIT FOR THIS GUIDE GOES TO JokerUnique
This chapter looks at the character progression in general. To give it a better structure it is split up in the leveling progression - how you level up a character - and your equipment and stat progression.
Character Progression
The leveling progression in The Division is based on three pillars. The character level, the Dark Zone rank and the Base of Operation. The character level decides what gear you can equip, the Dark Zone Rank decides (among other things) what gear you can buy from the Dark Zone Vendor and the BoO progression controls what Skills, Talents and Perks you can use.
Character level
The character level it is the deciding factor what gear you can equip, because you can only equip weapons, gear and mods that have an equal or lower level than yours. This also applies to a certain extent to the world you explore, because the enemies in each District have a specific level-range and when you are 5 levels below this range, it will get very ugly very fast. But this is what RPGs are all about, if the enemies are too strong, you need to pull out, level up, gear up and try again. Then it usually works and with the right tactics, any confrontation is possible. At launch the character- max-level at will be 30.
Dark Zone Rank
The Dark Zone rank is detached from the regular level experience and is basically more as a rank system rather than a level. As you kill NPCs or Rogue Agents, you will gather Dark Zone XP that is added to the Dark Zone Rank. With a higher rank you will be able to buy superior weapons and equipment from specific Dark Zone vendors. The DZ Rank is also a requirement to access one type of the loot crates in the Dark Zone.
In contrary to the character level, the Dark Zone Rank can increase or decrease depending on your actions. When you die in the Dark Zone, you will lose Dark Zone Experience and when you are killed as a high level Rogue, you will lose a lot of DZ XP and therefore also lose Dark Zone Rank. This does not happen outside of the Dark Zone. Based on that, you really want a high Dark Zone Rank, because you can’t access high-level-loot-crates or buy high-level Dark Zone Equipment if you have a low rank.
On a side-note, while you can´t buy equipment above your Dark Zone Rank, after you bought it, you can always use it - even if you lose the DZ Rank.
Character Attributes
While the Character Level and the DZ Rank are important in the general progression, to really max out your agent, it is very important to understand the synergy behind the different attributes and how they work together.
Medical, Security, Technology (Skills, Talents and Perk)
Skills, Character Talents and Perks
As you upgrade the Base of Operations you will unlock Skills, Talents and Perks. The Skills are next to the regular weapons the most important offensive and defensive tools you have and enable you to perform your active role in the group. The Talents are passive abilities that are activated with specific actions (like shooting a person with full health in the head) and help you with situational buffs. The Perks are passive attributes, that expand your inventory, enhance the duration of buffs and give you more grenade slots. Wile you can have all 40 Perks active after you have maxed-out the Base of Operations, you can only select 2 Skills, 1 Signature Skill and in total 5 Talents. The trick is to find the right Skills and Talents that support your playstyle and your role.
Firearm, Stamina, Electronics
These three are your main Character Attributes. Firearm is the deciding factor how much base-damage you can do with your weapons. Stamina defines your health-pool and how much damage you can take while Electronics is the deciding factor how effective your Skill is. For example, a Ballistic Shield normally has 1000HP, but with a high Electronics value, you can give the Shield 4000 HP and a lot more.
You can change the Character Attributes with the equipment you carry, because each item adds points to one or more Character Attributes and this way you can buff your character to fit a specific role.
This is how 1 point for each Character Attribute impacts your performance:
In addition to the main Character Attributes, you can use the equipment, weapon-mods and gear-mods to add more buffs to your character that help you to be more effective in your role.
While the Character Attributes give you general performance buffs, these additional stats are more specific, have to be selected more carefully and are very situational. As tank for example, you want more defensive stats and protection against incoming damage, while a Damage Dealer needs more offensive buffs that enable you to do more damage. (more about this in the equipment chapter)
Weapon Talents
Each weapon that is blue (pistols green) and higher rarity has Weapon-Talents that give you an additional bonus. The Weapon Talents can give you – for example - 100% damage buff when the health of the target is below 30% or regenerate health after each kill. Weapon Talents need to be activated with a specific level of the Character Attributes (Firearm / Stamina / Electronics). These Weapon Talents are the polishing factor of each build, since they depend purely on the weapon and are – unless you have a legendary weapon – random. So the best tactic is to use what you get while you are leveling your agent, but once you hit level-cap, start synergising the Weapon-Talents with your Character Talents and your role.
Summary
As you equip your agent, there is a point where you have to decide what role (tank, healer, damage dealer) you want to play in the group and as you focus on a role, you will have to sacrifice your effectiveness in other regions to enhance your efficiency in your main role. For example, as tank you can endure a lot of damage and heal yourself, but you also have low DPS. As a DPS character, you can do a lot of damage, but you are also vulnerable to damage. This is all part of the min-max process as you find the build of your character and what equipment works best with your playstyle.
To put this in a formula, your performance on the battlefield are the sum of these layers:
Character Attributes + Character Talents + Equipment + Gear-Mods + Weapon-Mods + Weapon Talents
Stamina vs Armor
With a few points in Stamina you can get a lot of health that helps you in combat, because while other players are killed instantly, your big health-pool allows you to survive the damage spike. But a big health-pool does not give you protection against these damage-spikes and also put a lot of strain on the healer, because he basically has to heal the full amount of the incoming damage.
To get protection from incoming damage, you need armor, because armor gives you damage mitigation that subtracts a percentage from the incoming damage. For example, when you have 25% damage mitigation, the damage you get is 75% of the total damage-amount. So instead of 1000 damage, you only are only hit with 750 damage.
Based on that a char with 5000 HP and 50% damage mitigation is better to heal, because there are less damage spikes and that helps the healer a lot, especially in long fights. So depending on your role in the group – especially the tank – damage mitigation is very helpful.
Leveling priorities
Before we go into the various stats, lets look at the leveling process. While the mechanics explained above are in full effect in endgame, as you are leveling your character, all this is a bit watered down, because gear does not last long and therefore it is more optimization on the fly than in detail.
So how do you spec your agent as you are leveling? The different roles have to be respected - DPS focus on Firearm, tank on stamina / damage reduction and the healer on Electronics. But as you build your agent – especially when you play solo – focus first on stamina, to give the character a solid health-pool so you can eat some hits before you die. Once you have a solid base, 3 items with stamina, focus on your main Character Attribute and with a decent weapon you should be fine.
Character stats
As you are equipping your character, there is a huge stat-list in the background, that reflects your general performance and what you have currently equipped. This is the full list and in addition how you can affect the specific stat.
Firearm (increases weapon-damage)
Firearm is the Character Attribute you have to choose when you want to create a DPS character, because it pushes the weapon-damage and in combination with the bonus you can get with the equipment- and the weapon-mods you really can build a DPS-monster that matches your specific playstyle.
Primary Attributes
Weapons
Combat
Electronics (Increases Skill Power – support / DPS / tank)
Electronics give you more power on your skills, so the higher this value is, the more effective is your skill. With the right equipment, you can have very powerful skills, high cooldown and you can use your Signature Skill faster.
Primary Attributes
Skills
Stamina (Health-Bonus - tank)
If you play a tank oriented agent, you need to push the stamina-stat, because it is the deciding factor how high your health-pool is and how much damage you can take. The additional stats come from the Equipment and the gear-mods and are the deciding factor of your survival in combat. While the health-pool gives you a good bolster at the beginning, you need health regeneration, damage mitigation and protection against Elites to also survive the incoming damage and give healers time to do their job. This is especially important in long encounters and endgame.
Primary Attributes
Survivability
Exploration
Last words
Character progression is a huge and also a complex topic. This is a rough overview that explains the connection between the different layers of your agent and how they work together and that will get more important when you hit max-level. But it is also important to understand the different mechanics to know what to look for and how to judge the gear you pick up.
SOURCE
This chapter looks at the character progression in general. To give it a better structure it is split up in the leveling progression - how you level up a character - and your equipment and stat progression.
Character Progression
The leveling progression in The Division is based on three pillars. The character level, the Dark Zone rank and the Base of Operation. The character level decides what gear you can equip, the Dark Zone Rank decides (among other things) what gear you can buy from the Dark Zone Vendor and the BoO progression controls what Skills, Talents and Perks you can use.
Character level
The character level it is the deciding factor what gear you can equip, because you can only equip weapons, gear and mods that have an equal or lower level than yours. This also applies to a certain extent to the world you explore, because the enemies in each District have a specific level-range and when you are 5 levels below this range, it will get very ugly very fast. But this is what RPGs are all about, if the enemies are too strong, you need to pull out, level up, gear up and try again. Then it usually works and with the right tactics, any confrontation is possible. At launch the character- max-level at will be 30.
Dark Zone Rank
The Dark Zone rank is detached from the regular level experience and is basically more as a rank system rather than a level. As you kill NPCs or Rogue Agents, you will gather Dark Zone XP that is added to the Dark Zone Rank. With a higher rank you will be able to buy superior weapons and equipment from specific Dark Zone vendors. The DZ Rank is also a requirement to access one type of the loot crates in the Dark Zone.
In contrary to the character level, the Dark Zone Rank can increase or decrease depending on your actions. When you die in the Dark Zone, you will lose Dark Zone Experience and when you are killed as a high level Rogue, you will lose a lot of DZ XP and therefore also lose Dark Zone Rank. This does not happen outside of the Dark Zone. Based on that, you really want a high Dark Zone Rank, because you can’t access high-level-loot-crates or buy high-level Dark Zone Equipment if you have a low rank.
On a side-note, while you can´t buy equipment above your Dark Zone Rank, after you bought it, you can always use it - even if you lose the DZ Rank.
Character Attributes
While the Character Level and the DZ Rank are important in the general progression, to really max out your agent, it is very important to understand the synergy behind the different attributes and how they work together.
Medical, Security, Technology (Skills, Talents and Perk)
- These 3 categorize the Skills, Talents and Perks in the different roles (healer, tank, damage dealer) and help you decide what skill / talent could be most useful to your role in the group.
- They are directly connected with the Base of Operation progression and how many upgrades you have unlocked. As you max out the three wings, more skills / talents / perks will become available that can be equipped on your agent.
- Beyond that these categories have no impact on the stats of your agent.
Skills, Character Talents and Perks
As you upgrade the Base of Operations you will unlock Skills, Talents and Perks. The Skills are next to the regular weapons the most important offensive and defensive tools you have and enable you to perform your active role in the group. The Talents are passive abilities that are activated with specific actions (like shooting a person with full health in the head) and help you with situational buffs. The Perks are passive attributes, that expand your inventory, enhance the duration of buffs and give you more grenade slots. Wile you can have all 40 Perks active after you have maxed-out the Base of Operations, you can only select 2 Skills, 1 Signature Skill and in total 5 Talents. The trick is to find the right Skills and Talents that support your playstyle and your role.
Firearm, Stamina, Electronics
These three are your main Character Attributes. Firearm is the deciding factor how much base-damage you can do with your weapons. Stamina defines your health-pool and how much damage you can take while Electronics is the deciding factor how effective your Skill is. For example, a Ballistic Shield normally has 1000HP, but with a high Electronics value, you can give the Shield 4000 HP and a lot more.
You can change the Character Attributes with the equipment you carry, because each item adds points to one or more Character Attributes and this way you can buff your character to fit a specific role.
This is how 1 point for each Character Attribute impacts your performance:
- 1 Firearm point = 1% Extra damage
- 1 Survival point = 30 Extra Health
- 1 Electronics point = 10 Extra Skill power
In addition to the main Character Attributes, you can use the equipment, weapon-mods and gear-mods to add more buffs to your character that help you to be more effective in your role.
- Weapon-mods (Weapon and damage oriented buffs like magazine size and weapon damage)
- Equipment (Armor, damage resistance, Skill Power and more tactical buffs)
- Gear-Mods (buffs for Character Attributes and Skills)
While the Character Attributes give you general performance buffs, these additional stats are more specific, have to be selected more carefully and are very situational. As tank for example, you want more defensive stats and protection against incoming damage, while a Damage Dealer needs more offensive buffs that enable you to do more damage. (more about this in the equipment chapter)
Weapon Talents
Each weapon that is blue (pistols green) and higher rarity has Weapon-Talents that give you an additional bonus. The Weapon Talents can give you – for example - 100% damage buff when the health of the target is below 30% or regenerate health after each kill. Weapon Talents need to be activated with a specific level of the Character Attributes (Firearm / Stamina / Electronics). These Weapon Talents are the polishing factor of each build, since they depend purely on the weapon and are – unless you have a legendary weapon – random. So the best tactic is to use what you get while you are leveling your agent, but once you hit level-cap, start synergising the Weapon-Talents with your Character Talents and your role.
Summary
As you equip your agent, there is a point where you have to decide what role (tank, healer, damage dealer) you want to play in the group and as you focus on a role, you will have to sacrifice your effectiveness in other regions to enhance your efficiency in your main role. For example, as tank you can endure a lot of damage and heal yourself, but you also have low DPS. As a DPS character, you can do a lot of damage, but you are also vulnerable to damage. This is all part of the min-max process as you find the build of your character and what equipment works best with your playstyle.
To put this in a formula, your performance on the battlefield are the sum of these layers:
Character Attributes + Character Talents + Equipment + Gear-Mods + Weapon-Mods + Weapon Talents
Stamina vs Armor
With a few points in Stamina you can get a lot of health that helps you in combat, because while other players are killed instantly, your big health-pool allows you to survive the damage spike. But a big health-pool does not give you protection against these damage-spikes and also put a lot of strain on the healer, because he basically has to heal the full amount of the incoming damage.
To get protection from incoming damage, you need armor, because armor gives you damage mitigation that subtracts a percentage from the incoming damage. For example, when you have 25% damage mitigation, the damage you get is 75% of the total damage-amount. So instead of 1000 damage, you only are only hit with 750 damage.
Based on that a char with 5000 HP and 50% damage mitigation is better to heal, because there are less damage spikes and that helps the healer a lot, especially in long fights. So depending on your role in the group – especially the tank – damage mitigation is very helpful.
Leveling priorities
Before we go into the various stats, lets look at the leveling process. While the mechanics explained above are in full effect in endgame, as you are leveling your character, all this is a bit watered down, because gear does not last long and therefore it is more optimization on the fly than in detail.
So how do you spec your agent as you are leveling? The different roles have to be respected - DPS focus on Firearm, tank on stamina / damage reduction and the healer on Electronics. But as you build your agent – especially when you play solo – focus first on stamina, to give the character a solid health-pool so you can eat some hits before you die. Once you have a solid base, 3 items with stamina, focus on your main Character Attribute and with a decent weapon you should be fine.
Character stats
As you are equipping your character, there is a huge stat-list in the background, that reflects your general performance and what you have currently equipped. This is the full list and in addition how you can affect the specific stat.
Firearm (increases weapon-damage)
Firearm is the Character Attribute you have to choose when you want to create a DPS character, because it pushes the weapon-damage and in combination with the bonus you can get with the equipment- and the weapon-mods you really can build a DPS-monster that matches your specific playstyle.
Primary Attributes
- Firearms
Firearms increase weapons damage by 1 % per Attribute point
Weapons
- Weapon Damage (Firearm plus other bonuses)
Damage at optimal range with the current weapon and all bonuses included - Critical Hit Chance (weapon mods / gear)
Critical hit chance with the current weapon - Critical Hit Damage (weapon mods / gear)
Additional damage dealt with a critical hit - Headshot Damage (can be doubled with marksmen rifle bonus)
Additional damage dealt with a headshot (100%) - Accuracy (only reflects your current weapon)
Accuracy with the current weapon - Stability (only reflects your current weapon)
Stability with the current weapon - Range (only reflects your current weapon)
Optimal range with the current weapon - Reload Time (only reflects your current weapon)
Reload time your current weapon - Reload Speed Bonus (weapon mods)
Total Reload Speed Bonus - All Weapons Damage Bonus
Bonus damage with all weapons - Assault Rifle Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus with Assault Rifles - LMG Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus damage with Light Machine Guns - Marksman Rifle Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus damage with marksman Rifles - Pistol Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus damage with Pistols - Shotgun Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus damage with Shotguns - SMG Damage Bonus (gear)
Bonus damage with Submachine Guns
Combat
- Damage to Elites (gear)
Increases damage done to Elite and Named enemies - Health on Kill (gear)
Regain a percentage of your max Health whenever you kill an enemy - Enemy Armor damage (gear)
Increases damage done to enemy armor - Threat (weapon mods)
Modifies the threat generated by you in combat
Electronics (Increases Skill Power – support / DPS / tank)
Electronics give you more power on your skills, so the higher this value is, the more effective is your skill. With the right equipment, you can have very powerful skills, high cooldown and you can use your Signature Skill faster.
Primary Attributes
- Electronics
Electronics increase Skill Power by 10 per Attribute Point
Skills
- Skill Power (Electronics)
Improves your skills - Skill Haste (gear)
Improves the cool down of your skills - Signature Skill Resource Gain (gear)
Improves how often you can use the Signature Skill
Stamina (Health-Bonus - tank)
If you play a tank oriented agent, you need to push the stamina-stat, because it is the deciding factor how high your health-pool is and how much damage you can take. The additional stats come from the Equipment and the gear-mods and are the deciding factor of your survival in combat. While the health-pool gives you a good bolster at the beginning, you need health regeneration, damage mitigation and protection against Elites to also survive the incoming damage and give healers time to do their job. This is especially important in long encounters and endgame.
Primary Attributes
- Stamina
Stamina increases Health by 30 point per Attribute Point
Survivability
- Max Health (health pool plus stamina bonus)
The total maximum health of your character - Armor (Sum of all armor on the gear)
Mitigates % weapon damage
228 => 23.40% Mitigation
483 => 50%
974 => 100%
1 => 0.1 % - Health Regeneration (gear)
How much health you get back per second when your regeneration is active - Protection from Elites (gear)
Additional mitigation vs damage from Elite and Named enemies - All Damage Resilience (Armor)
Additional damage mitigation against all damage except environmental - Exotic damage Resilience (gear)
How much exotic damage is mitigated - Bleed Resistance (gear)
How high a resistance to Bleeding you have - Blind Deaf Resistance (gear)
How high a resistance to Blindness/Deafness you have - Burn Resistance (gear)
How high a resistance to Burning you have - Disorient Resistance (gear)
How high a resistance to Disorientation you have - Disrupt Resistance (EMP attacks) (gear)
How high a resistance to Disruption you have - Shock Resistance (gear)
How high a resistance you have
Exploration
- Virus Filter (unlocked with perks)
How high a contamination level you are protected from - Increased Kill XP (gear)
Increased XP gained from killing enemies - Increased XP for Headshot Kills (mods)
Increased all XP received for kills with a headshot - Increased Dark Zone XP (gear)
Increases all Dark Zone XP received - Scavenging (gear)
Increases the chance of finding more and better items - Rewarded Credit (gear)
Increases the amount of credits dropped - Rewarded Dark Zone Funds (gear)
increases the amount of Dark Zone funds dropped
Last words
Character progression is a huge and also a complex topic. This is a rough overview that explains the connection between the different layers of your agent and how they work together and that will get more important when you hit max-level. But it is also important to understand the different mechanics to know what to look for and how to judge the gear you pick up.
SOURCE