Most important traits

[houseofbacon]

Some traits seem obvious - passing accuracy, Man/Zone cov, run/pass blocking and pow/finesse moves. I thought we could start a thread to see what the most underrated trait/skill upgrades are?

For instance, I kept bumping up Man Coverage on Alterraun Verner. Over and over and over, went from 86 to 99 and he only increased by 2 overall, I thought that can't be frickin right. Bumped up Awareness by 5 after the last game, OVR goes up by 5, now he's a 94 OVR.

Wondering what else is out there for in between positions like linebackers, tight ends and safeties?

[ksteward84]

Awareness has always been a HUGE factor at all positions.

[houseofbacon]

All positions? Including offensive lineman and kicker/punter?

[ksteward84]

Of course including offensive linemen, they need to know what to do and how to react in a play. Go to edit roster>edit player and switch someone's awareness from whatever to a 65 and see how their stats drop.

[soulprophet]

Quote: Originally Posted by houseofbacon

All positions? Including offensive lineman and kicker/punter?

Everyone on the field (except maybe K/P) needs to have good awareness for one reason or another. It's obviously less important for anyone you user though, since you're basically taking over for the CPU.

I think a better question is which attributes are really important in terms of the actual in-game performance? Obviously physical attributes like speed have always been important, but how much impact does it have if, for example, you bump up PRS for a CB from 75 to 90? Or the same thing with BSH for a LB?

This will be my first Madden in a long time, so I'm curious to see how much these skill-specific attributes actually affect gameplay. If it really does have a big effect, that opens up all new layers of strategy especially for defense.

So if you're building a 4-3 maybe you don't care how good your Will is at shedding blocks as long as he's explosive athletically and good in pursuit (since he ideally won't be taking on many blockers), while your Sam needs to be really good at shedding blocks since he's more likely to take on blockers when playing the run. Your nickelback would have different required skills than your outside CBs. Your DL would need to be good at different skills depending on the technique they're playing, etc.