Fire Ken: Chuck Norris’s Protege

This week let’s have a chat about my old friend Ken. Now as most of you know Fire in the current Meta can be difficult to add into a team. So many power characters are of the Ice nation that when your in a PvP Scenario it’s more advantageous to choose a different element. With that being said, there is still a place for fire hero’s and one of the OG behemoths is Ken.

Let’s talk stats then we will do some theory crafting and observation. Shout out to my friend Natsuma Z who is the host of the critically acclaimed podcast Free to Play BTW who loaned me his Ken’s stats when fully awakened and 6 stared.

Attack: 966 (Not bad lad as my Dad would say.This is an important stat but the good news here is that Ken have a mechanic called HP scaling. HP scaling means this: Ken will do additional damage that scales with the amount of health he has.

The actual math on this I believe (I know the community will correct me if I am wrong) is something like an additional 10% damage based of HP on skill 1 and 2 and 30% additional damage based on health with his skill 3. This is significant because you can focus on health as a sub stat or main stat on every piece of equipment and your not losing any damage.

In fact, your adding to the damage significantly. This mechanic is what we like to call “busted” meaning that it makes a character very powerful having the best of both worlds damage and longevity. All that being said, you do not have to focus on attack but at the same time if your gear has great attack and health stats then well… the more the merrier!)

Health: 7323 (Oh yeah baby! This is where Ken shines bright like a diamond. He has the highest base health in the game which means adding to it makes him a akin to the M1 Abrams Tank; dangerous and hard to kill.

Add into the mix the health damage scaling mentioned above and you have a real monster on your hands. Making Ken 20,000 HP + is not difficult because of HP scaling and the fact that he hits like a truck. Focus on this stat first and all else will follow.)

Speed: 102 (Not the slowest, not the fastest Ken lacks in this area and thus needs some love in this area. 160 is a good number to aim for as this places him in a good position on your combat readiness bar and allows him to cycle his skills faster. Don’t be afraid to add more, like any stat you want to go as high as your gear allows.)

Defense 657 (We are going to chat about this later but most people use Ken as a “Bruiser.” Defining the Bruiser archetype can be tricky so in simplistic terms a bruiser is someone who doesn’t do as much damage as a DPS unit but still hits hard, while maintaining enough defense statistics to make him hard to kill.

The more technical explanation would be a hero that maintains their survive ability via defensive tactics, statistics, and or sustain effects making them more effective in the mid to long term range during battle. So what does that mean for defense? If your going the bruiser route then 1200 would be a good number to aim for.

If you make a hero that has a ton of health but no defense then they can lose that health very fast making them ineffective. Defense allows for negation of damage much like a bullet proof vest could prevent some of the damage from a round fired by a small arm.)

Critical Hit Rate 15%/Critical Hit Damage 150% (Critical hit rate and Critical Damage are two stats that most people go for when building Ken. Even though Ken does extra damage based on his HP, the critical hit function will allow him to do extra damage on top of that. Like we talked about earlier the 10/10/30 will be multiplied even further by a critical hit.

It could be discussed in detail elsewhere but the origin of the critical hit mechanic goes all the way back to the original RPG Dungeons and Dragons. The point of the critical hit was to double the damage done to a specific opponent by an imagined hit to vital areas.

The mechanic has since then been used in nearly every version and iteration of Role Playing Games and it is usually something you want in great amount. That being said Ken wants to crit… he told me so. Go for as much as you can get here shoot for 200% (the classic “double damage effect”) go higher if you can.

To get the damage you need to hit the crit so you want 100% chance to crit but Ken will do well with a lower rate around say 85% if you find you can’t get the stats right away.)

Dual Attack 5% (unless you have gear that happens to all be dual attack set with ungodly substats don’t worry about this area, it’s far more advantageous to use other gear.

Resistance 0% (So this is a controversial stat in Epic 7 these days. The general consensus is unless your able to hit a minimum of 100% on this stat then it’s worthless. The game has a certain mechanic that makes resistance very RNG (random number generated).

Basically regardless of how much resistance you have there will ALWAYS be a 15% chance that you will or will not get the debuff to land. Sadly this really messes up the entire idea behind the resist function but most of the time a higher effect resistance does equate to less debuff’s. So with all that being said I would advise that unless your focusing on a build that uses resist gear, resistance artifacts, etc. then the points are best used elsewhere.

Looking at all this information it’s brought home that the build for Ken is variable and depends very much on what content your going to use him in. Currently the Meta focuses very much on Ice units so it can be risky to bring fire to the ice fight, however, Ken has some skills that make him deadly even to a blue powerhouse character like Sir Krau.

Ken brings the following effects in his kit: defense break, burn, stun, and decreased attack for debuff’s and increased speed, attack, and defense for buffs. He does a lot for himself and that makes him very versatile. Many PC’s choose to use Ken as a bruiser. The Bruiser archetype is much like the classic RPG idea of multi-classing.

Basically a bruiser has some of the qualities of both a tank and DPS type unit making them both dangerous and hard to kill. I ran into a situation where during a guild wars battle Angelic Momo, Ken, and Fallen Cici were impossible to beat within the 30 minute time limit because Momo can spam her heals (which are based on the total hp of the hero being healed) and the healed targets were basically immortal because I was unable to cause enough damage.

This is just one example of the how Ken is till effective in a Meta that revolves around ice element hero’s in almost every team.

As far as equipment is concerned there is an old running joke out there (I am certain it’s a meme somewhere) that any gear is Ken gear. In some ways this statement is very true. The abyss levels give a set of pretty decent lifestyle gear that gets more powerful the further down in the abyss you go. If the stats roll into the right places or are even a little off this is a great free to play option to give Ken a great setup.

That is the easy way to go but Ken works well almost anything because he is such a versatile character. Over time I have had a chance to play with Ken’s kit as he is one of my oldest hero’s. In fact he was the second five star I pulled and that has given me plenty of opportunity to play with different builds. The current configuration seen in the images below is what I am running with at the current moment so let me take the time to explain my choices and why I choose what I choose.

It is pretty well known in the community that speed is overall the best set of four that you can put on a character, any character. I have heard this explained several ways but usually it’s confusing and has to do with the math totals and percentages that are what make up your characters stats.

To simplify this and boil it down to it’s most basic element the amount of speed that you get from a speed set is the highest amount that any set provides. So, even if you have a character that doesn’t need speed as a primary attribute it is mathematically the most advantageous set and you can use your necklace, ring, and boot main stats to round the character out and the substats to get you to where you want to be.

Ken needs speed, this is something I have figured out over the past year of gaining rank in both arena and guild wars. I started playing this game almost immediately after it released but I wasn’t serious about it until about six months in; mistakes were made and time was wasted. Often I wish someone had explained this whole speed set concept to me at the start as it would have saved a lot of time and resources.

The concept of crit damage versus regular damage is very simple, a critical hit will deal more damage than a regular hit but at the cost of having to fit the “crit chance” stat into your build. Ken does not need to be run on a crit set but I choose this as a primary set because I wanted to take advantage of his bruiser capabilities versus building him full damage or full defense.

The crit rate for my Ken is to low and I am working to add to it but does land enough to get the job done. What I really focused on here was the health total. My previous build was life-steal with attack being the main stat for boots, necklace, and ring but I found I was losing both health and speed. Ken right now is at 21000+hp the highest life total of any character I have.

When I use Ken I back him up with a strong healer, this makes him a time consuming target for any enemy team. Even though he isn’t doing as much damage in this build as he had in previous builds, he still hits like a truck thanks to HP scaling. I spoke a little about HP scaling before but I want to discuss it more in depth to give you an idea of exactly what makes this mechanic so good.

HP scaling at it’s most basic works with this equation: more health= more damage. The mechanic is actually a bit more complicated and would look more like this in equation form: damage=health total+percentage modifier+attack percentage. The modifier in this instance is 10% for skill 1 and skill 2 and 30% for skill three.

An example would be if Ken had 100 hit points he would deal 10 extra damage on S1 and S2 and 30 extra damage for his S3. If you want to play with the  math you can use the skill modifier data mine that is available as an excel spreadsheet. Here is the URL for your convenience: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aqL0Uj26PRW_jAUj8pYaSls_DOuFq30fvwQh8ol74-E/edit?usp=sharing