When one looks at stats like Agility, Will, and Strength, it says about how the damage increases with every 5 of those stats. I know that specific damage is tied to what stat your weapon uses, and high strength would not boost a shooty gun that uses Agility.

However, it also says enemies with high will (or agility or strength) stat will do more damage and have more criticals against enemies with low will (or Agility or strength), for example. I use that defensively, boosting stats that are not my weapon's stat, so I'm not the one with as low a number in something that the enemy is high in. It works for me. I notice that when I do this, I seem to get criticals more often. Specifically, maybe I boost my buck crewman in agility or will, cause that is what was up. If he's facing another buck, he seems to get criticals more often than if his agility or will was not boosted. When I tell people this, and that boosting a non weapon stat seems to be helpful for both offense and defense, I get told that, no, it only matters what the main weapon stat is, and they see other boosts than main as useless. Am I wrong? Is there no benefit in using a boost that is not your weapon's stat? Or is it only a defensive benefit?

RRRRZZZZ419 on Jun 4, 2018 wrote:

So what you are saying is you think it may not matter what stat you boost for your team?

Does it also not matter what stat you boost your pirate with?

I'm NOT saying it does not matter. Boosting the stat for your pirate's class and weapon, or the main stat for whichever crew shows up in the fight is clearly useful, very useful.

What I am saying is that there are many people who only use boosts for their main stat, often people that only use crew who are that same class, who think casting other stats on them are useLESS. In many cases, the main stat has already been cast, but I am trying to add a secondary stat, often in what the enemy is strong in, or the enemy may be the same class as the person and their crew, and I don't have a card up to boost that same stat. In those times, giving a Privateer going after another Privateer or a Musketeer higher strength or agility could be a good thing to do. I'm saying that boosting a stat that isn't the main stat SEEMS to benefit, both by the enemy getting less criticals on you, and by you getting more criticals when ALL your stats can be higher than they start the fight with, against the enemies. It's not an automatic thing, but seems to me like it does help raise the odds.

What boosts are best to use and when, it's a very fight specific thing: who is the crew, what class are the other players, what class are the enemies, what powers are showing up? Just, some people seem to think boosting a non-main stat is never a useful thing to do. I figure Ratbeard knows which it is.

Interesting. Thanks for the feed back. It is possible what I seem to be seeing might be due to one of those possible exceptions with weapons, powers or power cards. Pet grants, too, maybe?
I notice he didn't rule out the possible defensive benefit of a secondary stat. That one seems fully in line with how the stats are supposed to work. If a higher stat in an enemy's main stat makes them more likely to critical on you, then raising your own stat in that area, might cut the odds they will critical on you, unless it doesn't matter if they are one point higher or forty-five.
Still, for someone who plays with mixed classes of crew, or pirates of other classes, it seems to work pretty well.