Let me preface this by saying I can't believe I have to take the time to break this down for you. Everyone I've talked to always speaks highly of you as a skilled player, and I would hope someone like you would be able to use my post to expand and improve their own working game knowledge.

Whether you like the way I present information or not, I promise my posts on gameplay stuff are always intended to be useful and to level the playing field by disseminating information to the players. This happens to be a point I consider my self well versed on.

First, I am making a lot of unquantified observations sure. The numbers I mentioned (21+ and 23+) were not selected at random, but I'm not going in to why I picked them as the exact values are probably the least important part of the post. I don't really crunch numbers so much as I observe trends in skill behavior and then try to deduce the structure of the underlying function.

For CF we must make a few basic assumptions. These are the ones I use, and I don't care if you agree or not. They have served me well over the years:

1) Most functions in CF ARE functions in that they pass the ever popular vertical line test when a single variable is altered (but not necessarily two).

2) Most functions in CF behave asymptotically at extremes, meaning that things are rarely ever 100% certain, or 0% certain. I further assume that good coding prevents anyone from altering one or more variables in the function such that the 0-and-100 barrier is never breached (what most people refer to as a "cap").

3) In light of the previous two assumptions, the theories of Calculus apply to CF.

Once you know how a function behaves according to some baseline (you know, from the experiments you did while PLAYING the combo right?) you can tweak the factors in the function individually to determine how they are weighted. Again, you really don't care about the numbers X and Y themselves, but how they altar the equation as a whole.

The goal here is rather to be able to say something like X has a greater effect than Y, which has about twice the effect of Z.

The basic tenants of mathematics determine this. Whether each factor is added in, multiplied by something, or has any coefficients, are all of particular interest. Also whether a particular factor is taken in to account early or toward the end of the calculation weighs in heavily.

Do this until you run out of things you think are likely to affect the skill and then you have a really good functional knowledge of your skill/legacy whatever.

In the case of STSF, it's two major factors are readily identifiable as Int and Wis. Minimal further experimentation suggests that the equation as a whole behaves in a very linear-seeming fashion during the early stages. One now only needs to know whether Int affects the slope of the line more sharply than Wis does. This is easy enough to vary and test.

Once this is done, you can actually take your observations and build a function you think is pretty close. From there you could do some nasty Calculus on it, solve for some things based on your data, calculate points of inflection, zones of concavity, and min/max values, but I've never found that to be necessary -- having a picture of general behavior and variable weight is plenty. After all, it's just a game.

In my observations, again without quantification of how much more because I think if you want to know that much you should do it yourself, Int seems to have more bearing on STSF than Wis. Hence why I would never play a low Int/high Wis race with the legacy. I would be much more likely, however, to play a high Int/low Wis race with STSF, but CF doesn't really have one of those.

Now, being that I think my criteria analysis for STSF is really good, 21+ is what I'd consider the bare minimum to even consider it. This is not to say there aren't other factors that would still make STSF a piss poor choice with those stats, but they aren't directly related to building the legacy up.

I've had two characters with Striking now. My opinion is not totally uninformed. If you think I'm out of left field, then by all means form your own (valid) opinion. Otherwise, blow it out your ass.

--Nightshade