Attack Gear Tactics

In Templar Battleforce, there are a wide number of factors to consider when selecting equipment to bring into battle. This page is dedicated to offensive tradeoffs. This page assumes the reader has basic familiarity with the mechanics of the game.

Penetration versus Damage
One tradeoff a player needs to evaluate is whether to select a weapon with higher penetration and lower damage, or vice versa. One example of this is the Captain's Blade which boasts better damage and defenses than the Force Blade, which has incredibly high penetration for its gear level cost.

In the current state of the game, there aren't any foes with particularly high deflection and low armor or high armor with low deflections, so won't have to consider those interesting, but odd, corner cases. We have four remaining categories of foes:

1) High armor, high deflection

To deal with these, such as Carapaces high penetration is usually recommended. A penetrating shot will ignore half of their armor, and the other half will, on average, only roll half of its value, meaning you've effectively reduced its armor by 50% (25% is, on average ignored either way.) The damage tradeoff you will make for the penetration is unlikely to be as dramatic with your base gear stats. An alternate way to deal with such foes is to use non-standard damage types such as Fire. This doesn't require penetration to deal significant damage, but does factor in (usually small) damage soaking from the resistance of the enemy.

2) Low/Medium armor, low/medium deflection

This category includes Spitters, Predators, and Rocket Cultists among others. Here penetrating hits can occur naturally on a regular basis. As every weapon has at least a little penetration, they can be treated as having almost no deflection, nearly guaranteeing penetrating hits. Thus, increasing damage is key to killing them in one or two hits—additional penetration might go to waste.

3) One-hit kill foes

This category has both weak armor, deflection, and very low HP. It includes most Cultists, and Scitterings. Here damage is a better choice but typically you'll have enough to kill them without focusing on it too much. Keeping these foes away (focusing on range) and hitting them reliably (focusing on accuracy) should be your goal.

4) Medium Deflection, Medium armor, Extremely High HP (Bosses & Siege Goliaths)

To deal with these foes, debuffs to decrease both deflection and armor will allow your entire group to deal damage. (A good talent for this is the Scout's Piercing Fire.) This is important because a single templar, even with perfect penetration, is unlikely to kill bosses alone. High damage attacks will fare slightly better than high penetration attacks if you've managed to debuff them. Otherwise, higher penetration attacks will be more reliable.

So what do you equip your team with? If you are facing Cultists in the next level, +range gear and +accuracy should be a priority over penetration and possibly even damage. If you are facing Xeno, a balance will serve you best, but all else equal, higher damage has a slight advantage. If you are facing Narvidians, high penetration gear will make life a lot easier due to their massive armor and deflection. Typically battleforces equip a mix of penetration-heavy weapons and damage-heavy weapons to deal will various threats.