Warrior General Games

Thought it'd be an interesting and potentially useful project to try to tap into the knowledge and experience of all the OL builders on this board and poll the community as to the most worthwhile OL SA's.

Which OL specific SA's do you all feel are the best and worst in each blocking tree?

Let's go with the following assumptions:


1. You are ranking these SA's with a Lvl 50+ OL player in mind who has 20 SP at his disposal that his owner has told him to dump all into the SA tree. Those crazy owners.

2. Line General is automatic 5 for centers and Protector is an automatic 5 for Left Tackles, so no need to include those. This is meant to help with the gray area SA's...the foundations and the absorb pains.

3. The order in which these are listed below bears no semblance to my actual feelings on an initial ranking or anything like that.



Feel free to share why you feel something is good or not, but please lets not turn this into a flame fest. I would like to keep this just as uncluttered as possible.

Rank the SA's in each tree with 5 being the best, 1 the worst and if you feel it is absolutely worthless, give it a 0.

Pass Tree

Absorb Pain
Foundation
Pass Block
Shock Block
Strong Arm

Run Tree

Run Block
Cut Block
Hands
Get Low
Pancake

I will keep track of everyone's replies and will share the results, updating this post once a day or so. Also noted will be # of times an SA is given a 5, as well as given a 0.

Gentlemen and ladies, start your ranking!

Run Block- 3
Pass Block- 3
Cut Block- 5
Hands- 2
Pancake- 2.5
Get Low- 3
Absorb Pain- 2
Shock Block- 5
Foundation- 2
Strong Arm- 2

Pass Tree

Absorb Pain 1
Foundation 4
Pass Block 5
Shock Block 2
Strong Arm 2

Run Tree

Run Block 4
Cut Block 5
Hands 2
Get Low 4
Pancake 0

i'm wondering why you have pass block higher than foundation, and run block the same as get low, when the descriptions for foundation and get low say they are "very important" as opposed to the just "important" blocking ones. Since Pancake is the only oline stat, there's really no way to tell which one is working when. but it seems like bort must have put those verys in the description for a reason. unless you've heard him say otherwise and i don't know what i'm talking about lol. or have you actually seen guys who have it very high in one and not the other get different results?

It totally depends on the position on the O-line... At this point though, I probably wouldn't put any SP into SAs for Guards or RT until at least level 40. At LT and Center it's different because of how good Line Gen and Protect are, but those are special circumstances imo.

Assuming I were at the point in my career to start spending on SAs, here is what I would do:

LOT: 1-1-2-4-8, 0-0-0-0-0 (protect)
LG: 1-2-4-8-0, 0-0-0-0-0 (foundation)
C: 1-1-2-4-8, 3-6-6-0-0 (line gen, get low, hands)
RG: 0-0-0-0-0, 3-6-0-0-0 (get low)
ROT: 0-0-0-0-0, 3-6-6-0-0 (get low, hands)


Absorb Pain - 0
Foundation - 4
Pass Block - 2
Shock Block - 3
Strong Arm - 0
Run Block - 2
Cut Block - 1
Hands - 4
Get Low - 4
Pancake - 1

Right - I didn't include Line General or Protector because those are no brainers.

And this is totally irrespective of the "When you should start spending pts on SA's" question. I'll edit the original post to make some of that more clear / head off the pass.

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

It really depends on your build IMO. For my heavy strength guys I REALLY like Shock Block, and my second favorite would be Get Low. For more agility based I like Cut Block, and Absorbe Pain. For a heavy blocking build I would obviously go with the run and pass blocking ones. Hands since it's update also looks good for everyone, but especially agility and blocking guys.

I really like high-blocking, medium strength guys (like 85 strength, 110 blocking); in this case...

Pass Tree

Absorb Pain: 3
Foundation: 5
Pass Block: 2
Shock Block: 1
Strong Arm: 4

Run Tree

Run Block: 4
Cut Block: 2
Hands: 3
Get Low: 5
Pancake: 1

I know this is over 20 points spent which doesn't conform to the hypothetical situation in the OP but I feel that to give what you are taking your player towards is more worthwhile.

For a G:

Pass Tree

Pass Block: 6 - A % modifier. If you are willing to spend 3:1 in attributes then you can spend 3:1 here.

Strong Arm: 2 - This would go up significantly if anyone demonstrated that this was useful against shed block. If you are held at arms length, can you shed a block?

Shock Block: 2/4 - Last season I would put this higher to combat the high agility DTs, but it looks less worthwhile now. Possibly still worth a 4 though.

Foundation: 4/6 - Now strength and reverse pancaking are coming back into play I can see a lot of DTs putting points into Strong Base which Foundation seems to directly counter. Considering taking this up to 6 depending on how the sim pans out.

Absorb Pain: 0 - With the current energy situation in the game, where everyone can play on Hard at all times no problem, this is worthless. Until the sim is changed so that playing 40 snaps on hard with 50 Stamina really drains your energy down to the 50 range, this does not appeal to me.

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Run Tree

Run Block: 6 - A % modifier. If you are willing to spend 3:1 in attributes then you can spend 3:1 here.

Get Low: 4 - Undecided. I know others rave about this but I was going the cut block route. The replays I have seen where people claim Get Low is activating look exactly like what a well-built G I know with a Get Low of 0 does, so I am not convinced by them.

Hands: Only enough to be able to raise Cut Block. With the current energy situation in the game, where everyone can play on Hard at all times no problem, this is worthless.

Cut Block: 6 - If DTs continue to be agility-based, I will continue to boost this.

Pancake: 0 - The changes this season make this more viable but even if you pancake someone you are generally too slow to pick up another block (especially at high levels where running backs have 100+ speed), although RGs might do this sometimes. For this reason I prefer Cut Block, or even just raising the blocking attribute to hold your block longer. However, it might be possible to use pancake together with Showboat Blocker effectively; I am waiting for people to test that before raising my opinion of the two.

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Final Point - If you have AE with a +SA to it, raise the SA naturally to 6 no matter what it is. In that way, with 48 bonus tokens, you can have this SA at 10 and will get more returns for your investment in terms of SP. That way you should have at least one of these at 10 without having to invest too many SP.

Also note that this would change depending on LG/RG. For example, I'm not convinced the RG needs so much Foundation, and the RG could benefit from Pancake more. Also, if your team runs to the right and you are LG, concentrate on the Pass Block tree first.

very nice mandy!

Originally posted by tetura
i'm wondering why you have pass block higher than foundation, and run block the same as get low, when the descriptions for foundation and get low say they are "very important" as opposed to the just "important" blocking ones. Since Pancake is the only oline stat, there's really no way to tell which one is working when. but it seems like bort must have put those verys in the description for a reason. unless you've heard him say otherwise and i don't know what i'm talking about lol. or have you actually seen guys who have it very high in one and not the other get different results?

The main reason I'd rate those higher is their safe. They're pure % bonuses, meaning we know they work, and they'll work next season and so on. Less nerfing possibilities.

I haven't really pumped any high enough for a good idea of how well they work. I'd look at shock block as a way to counter the high spd/agi low str D lineman. But I don't know how well it works.

My numbers were based on all players on the O line. Foundation is awsome for Gs but not as important to OTs that deal with weaker DEs. Pass blocking is usefull to all 5 positions IMO. Same goes for Run blocking it is generic enough and closer on the SA tree to be more valuable sooner.

Cut Block is just a personal fav of mine. LOL

Originally posted by corporeal
Originally posted by tetura

i'm wondering why you have pass block higher than foundation, and run block the same as get low, when the descriptions for foundation and get low say they are "very important" as opposed to the just "important" blocking ones. Since Pancake is the only oline stat, there's really no way to tell which one is working when. but it seems like bort must have put those verys in the description for a reason. unless you've heard him say otherwise and i don't know what i'm talking about lol. or have you actually seen guys who have it very high in one and not the other get different results?

The main reason I'd rate those higher is their safe. They're pure % bonuses, meaning we know they work, and they'll work next season and so on. Less nerfing possibilities.

I haven't really pumped any high enough for a good idea of how well they work. I'd look at shock block as a way to counter the high spd/agi low str D lineman. But I don't know how well it works.

make sense, thanks.

Pass Tree

Absorb Pain - 1
Foundation - 5
Pass Block - 3
Shock Block - 4
Strong Arm - 2

Run Tree

Run Block - 3
Cut Block - 1
Hands - 4
Get Low - 5
Pancake - 2