Suggestions for balancing Skater Classes/Superstar/X-Factor abilities

Seeing if this gets approved in the World of Chel section...

I have played a ton of EASHL over the past 15 years (yikes). I mostly focus on 3s now, so a lot of my advice will come from my experience in that mode, but I think a lot of it will be able to be applied to both modes as it's more of a question of overall build diversity/balance rather than the meta differences between modes. If anyone wants to question why EA should at least review/consider some of my advice, I can provide proof that I'm no slouch, but I don't want to pre-emptively "humblebrag" by posting stats or my club name etc.

Major changes

1. Remove Elite Edges
   • Skating is probably the most important part of this game, Wheels is not available in CHEL for a reason (aside from the pre-built Vector), so this isn't unprecedented.
   • Elite Edges makes it way easy to just turn and skate away from a hit/poke and because of this it almost fills the same niche as Unstoppable Force at times, effectively allowing you to replace balance with Speed/Agility.
   • At the bare minimum it shouldn't be an X-Factor ability, that's part of the reason so many wingers run Puck Moving Defenseman (we'll get to that later), but I think it would be better for variety if it's removed altogether.
   • What would replace it for the current builds that have it as an X-Factor?
     • Dangler could be given Shock and Awe or All Alone, maybe Third Eye or It's Tricky.
     • Playmaker could get Send It, or maybe to help it close the gap with Puck Moving Defenseman give it Stick Em Up
     • Puck Moving Defenseman could maybe get Heatseeker, Quick Pick, or No Contest. 
     • There's plenty of options, just got to try not to nullify the niche of other builds with the new X Factors we assign these builds.
2. Remove X-Factor Truculence from Power Forward and Defensive Defenceman, change the minimum Body Checking for Superstar Truculence from 84 to 85 and instead of requiring 82 Acceleration, make it 82 Balance
   • The amount of Hit assist and the acceleration boost that you currently get with Truculence is absurd.
   • It enables small fast builds to fill the niche of big strong builds, making big builds even less desirable when combined with the existence of Elite Edges and speed being so important
   • Increasing the minimum Body Checking makes it so that the fastest build that can access Truculence without a +4 Checking boost is now 93 speed
   • Changing it to 82 Balance makes the fastest build that can access Truculence 94 speed as you can't have 95 Speed, 85 Body Checking and 82 Balance with any combination of boosts.
   • With these minimum requirements, you can still have a build with 94 Speed and Truculence, however you must use a +2 on Speed and a +4 on Body Checking and you would max out at 85 Agility, it does not sound like a super desirable build ESPECIALLY if we remove Elite Edges, it might be useable, but the Agility would leave a lot to be desired.
   • The reason I think it's okay to keep it on the Enforcer classes is it lets those classes keep their niche. The other stats are so abysmal on those classes that it would be highly unlikely that they become the meta. You'd probably see them in drop-ins, and there might be the rare few who could make it work in club, but I think for most people it would be a non-starter.
   • What to replace X-Factor Truculence with for PWF/DFD?
     • DFD could get No Contest, Yoink or Thunderclap
     • I think for Power Forward we would probably also need to remove Gold Unstoppable Force as the only semi-counter to that now would be Enforcer. So PWF probably gets No Contest and Back At Ya instead of Unstoppable Force and Truculence, if we want to make it more offensive compared to the Grinder, we could give it Make it Snappy or Shnipe as one of the two new X factors. I was thinking Heatseeker, but the TWF has that and would probably be immediately more desirable.
     • I think you could also buff Big Rig to not require you to use Puck Protect but just be "skating near the net" with the puck (same range as Close Quarters probably) to help offset the loss of Unstoppable Force

I think those two above would go a long way. I do also think that the PWF and DFD should get a couple extra balance/strength added back to their classes to help give them a more unique identity if we make the above changes.

Another thing that I think needs a balance pass is the stat requirements for all the Superstar abilities in general, most of them are way too low to force you to make any real decisions with your build.

Superstar Ability Changes

1. Increase the requirements for all the Superstar shooting buffs. This will make Sniper and Offensive Defenseman more desirable as they will have to sacrifice less Athleticism to use these boosts and it should force smaller builds to have to spend boosts in the Athleticism and Power categories to keep the max speed they want.
   • Make Close Quarters, Shnipe and Make It Snappy all require 84 Wrist Shot Accuracy and 85 Puck Control instead of 80 and 82 (since these abilities can apply on so many shots I want to force you to have to sacrifice a decent amount of balance/agility to use this with a max speed build, increasing the puck control also makes it a tiny bit harder to equip)
   • Make Shock and Awe require 82 Wrist Shot Accuracy and 82 Deking instead of 80 and 75 (this will still allow Sniper/PWF centers to equip it with a +4 on deking)
   • Make Heatseeker require 82 Wrist Shot Power instead of 80 (Makes "weaker" builds like DNG/PLY/PMD have a harder time equipping this and keeping Accel/Puck Control/Endurance high)
   • Make One-tee require 82 Hand-eye and 84 Slap Shot Power instead of 80 and 82 (Increasing the Hand Eye requirement makes Sniper/PWF/DFD/Enforcers have to sacrifice a little Strength or use a boost in that category, Slap Shot Power, same as above for the DNG/PLY/PMD)
   • Make Beauty Backhand require 82 Wrist Shot Accuracy instead of 80
   • Make Thunderclap require 84 Slap Shot Power and 82 Strength instead of 82 and 78
   • Make Off the Rush require 84 Slap Shot Power and 78 Balance instead of 82 and 75
   • Make All Alone require 82 Deking and 85 Puck ControlMake Seeing Eye require 80 Slap Shot Accuracy instead of 78
   • Make Seeing Eye require 80 in both wrist shot and slap shot accuracy instead of 80 WSA and 78 SSA
   • And as one more generic thing, just slightly nerf the accuracy bonus of all the shooting traits.
2. Passing ability changes. The following changes should make defensive minded builds have to sacrifice some defense to equip these, and shot focused builds like the Sniper and Offensive D sacrifice even more defense to equip these
   • Make Third Eye, Send It and Tape to Tape all require 85 passing (every build can get this without a +4 boost)
   • Make Third Eye require 85 Offensive Awareness (Every build except Enforcer D can get this and 85 Passing)
   • Make Tape to Tape require 85 Puck Control instead of 80 Offensive Awareness
   • Make Send It require 82 Hand Eye instead of 80 Offensive Awareness
3. Remaining Offensive ability changes.
   • Make Puck on a String, Ankle Breaker, It's Tricky and Skilled Up all require 82 Deking and 85 Puck Control (This allows Sniper/PWF centers to still use them with a +4 deking boost, ideally I would like faceoffs to not even be a modifiable stat, but then that Tactics category becomes even more useless)
   • Make Spin-O-Rama require 85 Agility and 85 Puck Control instead of 75 Deking/82 Puck Control (no one uses this anyway, but this makes more sense to me, still easy to achieve)
   • Make Crease Crasher require 85 Puck Control and 82 Balance instead of 82 Puck Control and 75 Balance
   • Make Big Tipper require 85 Hand-Eye and 82 Balance instead of 80 and 75
   • Make Total Eclipse require 80 Strength and 80 Balance instead of 78/75
   • Make Magnetic require 84 Hand Eye and 85 Puck Control
4. Defensive ability changes
   • Make Shutdown require 80 Body Checking and 80 Stick Checking
   • Make Back At Ya require 80 Body Checking and 82 Balance (want to keep it lower than truculence to help counter truculence)
   • Already Mentioned, but Make Truculence require 85 Body Checking and 82 Balance
   • Make Stick Em' Up and Yoink! require 80 Stick Checking instead of 75 (makes it harder to equip on offensive forwards)
   • Make No Contest require 85 Puck Control instead of 82
   • Make Bouncer require 80 Strength and 80 Balance
   • Make Ice Pack require 75 Durability and 80 Stick Checking
   • Make Quick Pick require 75 Stick Checking and 80 Defensive awareness
5. Athleticism ability changes
   • Make Unstoppable force require 84 Balance instead of 85. This just makes it a tiny bit more viable, you still need to sacrifice shot or speed or agility, it would allow minimum size builds to equip it with a +2 boost, but they could at best do 94 speed/84 balance/85 Agility. Without Elite Edges, the agility would likely be a problem.
   • Elite Edges? Get rid of it.
   • Make Bounce Back require 85 Durability and 85 Endurance instead of 77 and 82 and also make it slightly reduce the energy drain while Full Pressure is active.
   • Make Shrug it Off require 80 Balance, right now it's just a crutch for bad players that want to use a speed build and don't know how not to get hit. I'd also make it so that you recover slightly faster from being winded, not a lot though.
   • Born Leader is fairly useless right now, make it so a big hit can reduce the time remaining on Full Pressure by 6 seconds and a blocked shot by 3 seconds.
   • Make In Reverse require 85 Agility and 80 Defensive Awareness instead of 82 Agility and Speed (this is clearly supposed to be a buff for defensemen, so let's associate it to a Defensive stat).

I know it's a lot, but I think it would make for a much more interesting game with a lot more build diversity in EASHL. The builds themselves also need slight changes in my opinion, just to make a bit more of a seperation in their niches.

Minor Build stat changes

1. Puck Moving Defenseman
   • Decrease base Puck Control by 1
   • Decrease base Wrist Shot Accuracy by 1
   • Decrease base Wrist Shot Power by 1
   • Decrease base Deking by 2
   • Decrease base Stick Checking by 2
2. Playmaker
   • Increase base Stick Checking by 2
   • Increase base Wrist Shot Power by 1
   • The above changes will make it easier to equip shot boosts on the Playmaker than the PMD and also gives it a slight deking/puck control advantage and helps close the gap defensively a little bit.
3. Power Forward
   • Increase base Balance by 2
   • Increase base Strength by 2
   • Just helps give it a niche as a bigger build again, I think it's stats otherwise are fine.
4. Grinder
   • Increase base Balance by 2
   • Increase base Puck Control by 2
   • Very minor, but makes it take a bite out of the Two way forward niche by giving it more strength on the puck.
5. Two Way Forward
   • Decrease base Wrist Shot Accuracy by 1
   • Otherwise I think this build is fine, better defensively than the PMD and PLY while not being able to reach the 95 speed that PMD and PLY can get
6. Two Way Defenseman
   • Decrease base Wrist Shot Accuracy by 1
   • Increase base Slap Shot Accuracy by 1
   • Increase base Slap Shot Power by 1
   • Increase base Puck Control by 2
   • Just helps it grab a bit of distinction from the TWF. They're still a little too interchangeable, but it is what it is.
7. Defensive Defenseman
   
   • Increase base Balance by 2
   • Increase base Strength by 2
8. Offensive Defenseman
   • They finally buffed the Slap Shot accuracy this year, so I think this build is fine. If you're a winger that only takes one timers/slappers it's definitely better than the Sniper in some ways, but it can't get the 95 speed and it's wrister isn't nearly as good.
   • I might increase it's Wrist Shot Power by 2, just because D guys are taking more wristers these days, it's accuracy will still lack compared to the Sniper
9. Enforcer
   • Since this will still have Gold Truculence in theory, I don't want to change it too much
   • Increase base Balance by 2
   • Increase base Strength by 2
   • Increase base Puck Control by 1
   • Increase base Stick Checking by 2
10. Enforcer D
    • Same thing with Gold Truculence
    • Increase base Balance by 2
    • Increase base Strength by 2
    • Decrease base deking by 2
    • Decrease base Defensive Awareness by 2
11. Sniper
    • Increase base Stick Checking by 2
12. Dangler
    • Increase base Deking by 2
    • Increase base Stick Checking by 2
    • Increase base Wrist Shot Power by 1
    • I think this is enough to help make it a bit more of a shooting and deking build than the Playmaker

I think my stat changes are a little too micro/specific to really care about, but they just help with the seperation of builds and help bring up some stats a tiny bit on certain builds to offset the large changes I made to the Superstar ability stat requirements.

The only other thing I have to say is that I hate Faceoffs being a stat that I have to invest in as a Center, but if we removed that, then that Tactics attributes section would be basically useless, so, whatever, I've lived with it for years.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my ChelXTalk...