Best Tuners for Difficulty (but fair)

A lot of it depends on how long your periods are. Here are what my understanding of what the sliders do and my settings. 

AI Learning at 0/6: No one has ever said if this was a good or bad thing. Ive asked about it, but never got a definitive answer to this question. I think people just assume that it’s a bad thing, but it could very well be just for your Teammates on how quickly it learns how you play. There is a slider that makes it harder to play against the AI so I dont see why EA would have two sliders that do the same thing. I just keep this at 0.

CPU strategy adjustment/Assisted Strategies: They are the same thing but for opposing teams. I have done a lot of testing with this and from what have seen, it effects the players offensive awareness more than strategy adjustments. Hear me out. When I have it set to 1/6 most of the shots go to the center of the net than they go to the corners. There are less one timers, less dekes, less creativity, less shots from between the legs. But when at 6/6, watch out, the shots will go more to the corners of the net and less to the center of the net. Here you will see the players awareness on full display. I saw my defenseman win a game in OT shooting the puck from between his legs. A defensman did that. If I turn it down to 0, everything is vanilla. I have mine set to 3/6. It’s a nice balance.

Game speed is at 3/6 but I dont have the skaters going 100mph either. Acceleration is 60/100, Skating speed is at 40/100, Agility is 75/100 and back skating is 70/100. When I increase acceleration, goals increased due to the fact players reached top speed faster. Puck Carrier Agility and Skating is 75/100. There has to be a penalty when you have the puck vs when you dont.

Fatigue Effect and Recovery: This is where you’ll see a balance in the game depending on how long your period length is: I have my Effect at 100/100 and Recovery at 3/100. Why??? Because I dont want to see the 1st line out there all the time. The faster the recovery, the quicker they will be on the ice. If you look at the time on ice after a game, you’ll notice that 4th liners will never see action. So I keep this way low so I see 3rd and 4th liners on the ice. And if a player’s fatigue level is in the red, then there is no way that they should be performing at the same level as someone who is in the green, so I keep my fatigue effect at 100/100. When you are tired and on the ice, there should be some sort of penalty. If you are defenseman, expect a rested fwd to skate right by you.

Shot power and accuracy vs Goalie Reaction speed: If you search YouTube, you will find that years ago, someone did a test. Shot power vs shot accuracy. The player with 100 shot power and 0 accuracy scored less than a guy with 0 power and 100 accuracy. So accuracy will determine goals vs shot power. Ive noticed on NHL24 that the shot speed is ridiculously fast. I noticed that a wrist shot is about 20% slower than a slap shot. I think slap shots can reach 100mph in a game and the fastest wrist shot in a game was 80mph. So no matter what I have my slap shot power, I make my wrist shot power 20% less. There is an easy formula to figure this ratio out when setting your sliders. For me SSPwr is 50/100 and WSPwr is 40/100. Accuracy is a guess but I still use a 20% rule. Wrist shots are more accurate than a slap shot. This is how I set up my goalie sliders. If the max power for a shot is 50, then I set the goalie reaction speed to 50 then adjust as needed. Play against the best goalies, if they have a save % of .95 on a consistent basis, then adjust. If they have a save % below .90, then increase the speed. But its accuracy that is going to score.

There are other settings like aggression and passing settings.. Each change will affect the game. So make your slider settings and play several games and adjust one thing at a time.

Hope this helps a little