Grape's Ultimate Guide to STHS Attributes and BuildCrafting

[Grape 889]

With the VHLE having been demolished a few seasons ago now and the VHLM cap going from 200 to 400, adjustments have been made to player builds to fit within that cap and develop into viable concoctions for player success. With the incoming wave of new recruits, now seems like an appropriate time to put out an updated guide on TPE builds and what each attribute does overall. I have made it a focus to observe my own player’s development and performance for their entire career and heavily document changes in their individual performance with each increase. This article is the culmination of a full career worth of research which I hope some people can put to good use.

ATTRIBUTE BREAKDOWN

When building a player, it is important to understand which attributes do what. Not all attributes are created equal. While some are incredibly useful and will be a staple in a top performing build in the VHLM and beyond, others are completely useless and you should only build if you want to upset your GM. Below, I have broken down each attribute into tiers based on importance. The top attributes are ones you want to build and put a lot of TPE into, the lower ones have more niche applications that can be utilized further along in your build.

 

GOLD STANDARD

 

Defense

Attributes that build into this stat: Deking, Body Checking, Poke Checking, Defensive Coverage

THE most important attribute for STHS. Defense makes you better in quite possibly every way possible, due to it directly improving your positioning on the ice. That means you’re in the right place to get the puck, play the puck, shoot the puck, as well as stop other players when on defense, and be in the proper position to prevent taking penalties. Every single viable build will have a significant investment in defense boosting attributes.

 

PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES

 

Puck Handling

Attributes that build into this stat: Deking, Stick Handling

 

This attribute is vital in increasing your offensive output. The better your puck handling, the lesser your turnovers and the longer you are able to keep the puck on your stick and create plays.

Skating

Attributes that build into this stat: Stick Handling, Defensive Coverage, Speed

 

Skating is massive for creating separation and having more efficient puck play and positioning. Better skating means better scoring opportunities and works in conjunction with the positioning increase from the defense attribute, assisting in reducing penalties even more.

 

Scoring

Attributes that build into this stat: Offensive Vision, Slap Shot, Wrist Shot
 

Scoring directly affects how much you shoot the puck. The higher the scoring, the more shots you generate. More shots obviously means more goals, but it also means more assists as well, since you are generating rebounds on top of those shots

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES

 

Passing

Attributes that build into this stat: Passing, Offensive Vision

 

The other side of the coin for offensive production. This one has a lesser impact on offense generation, as it makes it so your player is more likely to pass the puck than shoot it. Rather rare to see builds utilize this effectively, however it can be useful to have a pure distributor on a team of snipers.

 

Checking

Attributes that build into this stat: Body Checking, Grit

 

Ties in well with a lot of the defensive focused attributes, checking allows for an increase in turnovers and improved defensive capabilities, at the cost of higher penalties due to your player now looking to play the body over the puck.

 

Strength

Attributes that build into this stat: Faceoffs, Poke Checking, Slap Shot

 

Ties in with shooting and puck handling. Your shots are likely harder, which will increase rebounds and therefore assists, and you are less likely to be hit off the puck, reducing your turnovers and improving puck possession. Strength suffers from the same negative as checking, as it also increases your penalties

 

SITUATIONAL ATTRIBUTES

 

Faceoffs

Attributes that build into this stat: Faceoffs

 

Pretty much only useful to boost if you’re a center, or a winger that plays center a lot. Otherwise you’ll probably never touch this attribute purposely.

 

Discipline

Attributes that build into this stat: Poise

 

Very niche applications. If your player is taking an egregious amount of penalties, you’ll put some TPE into this attribute to help out. There will come a point in which you have to increase body checking to boost defense, and therefore you’ll boost your checking and lead to more penalties. When you reach that stage, it will be important to put some TPE into increasing discipline to negate the negatives.

 

BASICALLY USELESS

 

Penalty Shot

Attributes that build into this stat: Wrist Shot

 

This attribute will naturally get boosted since you’re more than likely going to put points into wrist shot, but this should never be a focus.

 

Leadership

Attributes that build into this stat: Leadership, Poise

 

There have been numerous tests and evaluations regarding this attribute, and it has been determined that this attribute is literally useless with no noticeable impact on your player. My only assumption would be this relates to the morale of the team, in that your player will stay producing well even during low morale, or lessens morale impact on the team.

 

Fighting

Attributes that build into this stat: Grit, Fighting

 

Pretty much just handicaps your team.

 

ATTRIBUTE INTERACTIONS

 

Scoring and Passing

Since both these attributes theoretically improve your offensive production, it should be efficient to boost both up, right? Well, the way it works is kind of like a priority scale, in which your player has to decide whether to shoot or pass. Whichever the higher attribute is, is what your player is more likely to do. The issue is, when these attributes are too close together in value, your player ends up doing neither and your offensive production struggles. After some testing, it’s been determined that there needs to be a difference of 5 between the values (ex: Scoring 80, Passing 75) for your player to reliably generate their supposed offense.

 

HYBRID ATTRIBUTES AND DIMINISHING RETURNS

 

Before the hybrid system was introduced, players would apply TPE directly into attributes that they wanted to boost, which led to a meta build being discovered and abused. Scoring could reliably get up very high, while avoiding the conflict with passing, and other stats could be increased at a slower rate. With the introduction of the hybrid attributes to attempt to curb the meta, the stats are broken up into multiple attributes that feed into them by differing percentages. These percentages are represented in the 1st column in the chart below after each attribute. What you will notice, however, is on each TPE requirement increase for leveling, those percentages go down. Simply put, the value of TPE is reduced with each increase, which curbs players from boosting stats to an insane amount later on in their careers and allow for more parity in performance. This increase means that you can’t dump all your TPE into one single attribute without spreading your earning out across other attributes. Effective growth would look something like, using defense as an example, you would increase poke checking to level 70, then defensive coverage to 70, then deking to 70, then back to poke checking up to 75, and so on and so forth. Another tweak for the hybrid system is that attributes increase multiple stats, which allows for advanced buildcrafting and assists in building stronger builds in the M, since you now you’re able to put less TPE into attributes for a similar boost. The chart with all the values will be provided below for your buildcrafting pleasure.

		1 TPE per LVL	2 TPE per LVL	3 TPE per LVL	5 TPE per LVL	8 TPE per LVL	10 TPE per LVL
		0-70	71-75	76-80	81-90	91-95	96-99
Puck Handling	Deking	0.24	0.12	0.08	0.048	0.03	0.024
	Stick Handling	0.36	0.18	0.12	0.072	0.045	0.036
Defense	Deking	0.12	0.06	0.04	0.024	0.015	0.012
	Body Checking	0.06	0.03	0.02	0.012	0.0075	0.006
	Poke Checking	0.24	0.12	0.08	0.048	0.03	0.024
	Defensive Coverage	0.18	0.09	0.06	0.036	0.0225	0.018
Skating	Stick Handling	0.12	0.06	0.04	0.024	0.015	0.012
	Defensive Coverage	0.18	0.09	0.06	0.036	0.0225	0.018
	Speed	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
Passing	Passing	0.32	0.16	0.1066666667	0.064	0.04	0.032
	Offensive Vision	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
Checking	Body Checking	0.36	0.18	0.12	0.072	0.045	0.036
	Grit	0.24	0.12	0.08	0.048	0.03	0.024
Fighting	Grit	0.24	0.12	0.08	0.048	0.03	0.024
	Fighting	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
Faceoffs	Faceoffs	0.54	0.27	0.18	0.108	0.0675	0.054
Strength	Faceoffs	0.24	0.12	0.08	0.048	0.03	0.024
	Poke Checking	0.18	0.09	0.06	0.036	0.0225	0.018
	Slap Shot	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
Scoring	Offensive Vision	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
	Slap Shot	0.12	0.06	0.04	0.024	0.015	0.012
	Wrist Shot	0.12	0.06	0.04	0.024	0.015	0.012
Penalty Shot	Wrist Shot	0.48	0.24	0.16	0.096	0.06	0.048
Leadership	Leadership	0.72	0.36	0.24	0.144	0.09	0.072
	Poise	0.3	0.15	0.1	0.06	0.0375	0.03
Discipline	Poise	0.54	0.27	0.18	0.108	0.0675	0.054

 

BUILDCRAFTING

 

Through observing the top 10 scorers in the VHLM right now, I have come to the conclusive decision that it makes no sense. Builds are incredibly varied with really no consistency among the top performers. On really bad teams, the top players have strangely close passing and scoring attributes, which leads me to believe that offense is forced to generate at some point, and so the sim engine simply opts to go to the player with the best scoring/passing stat, and having both be really high means the engine picks you more often. From what I can gather, defense is still vitally important and should be in the 60s, probably could argue for hitting 70, some scoring stat needs to be in the high 60s, puck handling should be elevated somewhat high, and skating needs a slight boost. What I have cobbled together is a baseline build that is close to the 400 TPE cap for the M, but just under to allow for personalization and role development. This build will get you exactly to level 70 for Puck Handling, Defense, Skating, and Scoring, which should establish your player as a legit top producer in the VHLM, with 14 TPE leftover to go towards whatever it is that you desire. The build is as follows:

20 TPE into Deking
70 TPE into Stick Handling
70 TPE into Poke Checking
60 TPE into Defensive Coverage
80 TPE into Offensive Vision
36 TPE into Speed

50 TPE into Slap Shot

PH	DF	SK	PA	CK	FG	FO	ST	SC	PS	LD	DI	TPA
70	70	70	64	40	40	40	67.6	70	40	40	40	386

 

Different Positions?

 

Now, when it comes to goaltenders, I am not the guy to go to. Use @Gustav 's player guide as nothing really has changed except the cap is higher. Basically, just copy whoever is in front of you, as that’s been the strategy for multiple seasons now. Somebody figured it out a while ago, so no need to reinvent the wheel. 

 

For the skating positions, there really is no difference in builds. You can copy a forward build onto a defenseman and you will still perform extremely well. The only adjustments that could be made would be more defense if you’re a defenseman, and more scoring if you’re a forward.

(2050 words, claiming for 4 weeks)

[BOOM 9,126]

Thank you for producing a guide for me to follow. I shall report back in a couple of seasons to update you on all of my individual awards won.

[Nykonax 1,654]

1 hour ago, Grape said:

Strength suffers from the same negative as checking, as it also increases your penalties

fun fact it actually decreases penalties and increases hits.

skating also has no effect on penalties 

[Grape 889]

2 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

fun fact it actually decreases penalties and increases hits.

skating also has no effect on penalties 

Interesting. Hard really to gather concrete data for this since STHS is rather random, but this is what I gathered from what I observed. There's obviously other factors at play as well so definitely room for errors.

[BOOM 9,126]

I emailed SimonT but that mofo is one secretive dude.

[FlyingWV 49]

My review of Grape's Ultimate Guide.

I find this guide to be extremely helpful, and it follows closely the advise I received when joining the league, and how I have my build planned out. Furthermore, while compiling the Analytic's Edge articles that I have posted for VSN, i've noticed that focusing on a handful of attributes is the way to go to become a top performer. I think Grape ultimately leans this way as well, as the reccomended attributes to boost that he's stated follows along closely with boosting certain attribute groups. I fully agree that focusing defensively is also the way to go, my player John Cowgill is a center which is very heavily focused defensively, and i've noticed that he does pretty well with scoring points as well.

 

I give this article a 10/10 for sure, great knowledge to spread around to the playerbase, thank you for sharing.

[Ricer13 2,979]

There’s a pretty big misconception when it comes to passing and scoring. Many think passing equals assists and scoring equals goals. That’s not actually the case from my understanding. Scoring = points (goals AND assists) and passing = passing accuracy, which you think would mean assists but that is not the case. 
 

This makes it very difficult to have a true play making build. 

[Grape 889]

7 hours ago, Ricer13 said:

There’s a pretty big misconception when it comes to passing and scoring. Many think passing equals assists and scoring equals goals. That’s not actually the case from my understanding. Scoring = points (goals AND assists) and passing = passing accuracy, which you think would mean assists but that is not the case. 
 

This makes it very difficult to have a true play making build. 

High defense and high passing does develop into a legitimate pure play-making build, since higher defense improves positioning which in hand increases the amount of times you have the puck, but when going purely scoring and passing, scoring is gonna get you more points every time.

[Grape 889]

Claiming week 2