The Value of Heroism

is 2 points.

Heroic is a fun card for theorycrafters. It's cheap, can have a big effect, but rarely triggers. Its benefit is pretty easy to quantify. Many have done the math on this upgrade, with Zombie Squadron's article as one of the more recent examples. Still, opinions seem to be mixed on whether this card is good. Some people say the benefit is strong enough, some say it triggers too rarely to matter, and some say it's only good because it provides insurance against bad outcomes.

I want to answer two questions to fill in some gaps and settle the debate. First, exactly how much does Heroic improve a ship? Second, how many points is Heroic worth? To answer these questions, I calculate how much more effective a ship with Heroic becomes. This is the best metric to see whether Heroic is strong or weak.

Most of the numbers were generated from the X-Wing Probability Calculator. I'll average the benefits using these assumptions:

Attacks received are always assumed to have a single mod, and I also assume 2 attacks received per round for focus on defense.

Technical note: the damage dealt scaling turns average damage dealt against a defense profile into "average attack equivalents". These are calculated using the meta assumptions on attack profiles. For example, 1 damage against a 0-agility target is only half of an "average attack equivalent" while 1 damage against a 3-agility target is worth one "average attack equivalent". Damage is scaled so a percent increase in damage dealt to a 3-agility target is worth the same as a percent increase in damage dealt to a 0-agility target (before adjusting for the frequency of these defense types). Without this adjustment, percent increases in damage dealt to a 3-agility would be worth less because it starts from a smaller value.

Heroic Offense

The graph below has the percent increase in damage dealt that Heroic adds. The average benefits at the bottom average across the meta assumptions including range bonuses, while the numbers above the line are just for those raw dice.

As expected, Heroic adds the most benefit for 2-dice attacks. 2-dice attacks improve by 6%, while 3-dice attacks are only improved by 1.5% and 4-dice attacks gain a negligible benefit. This means the average benefit including range bonuses is roughly 4% for a 2-attack ship like an A-Wing, while the offensive benefit for X-Wings is only 1%.

The percent benefit of Heroic on offense is about the same with or without focus. Of course, the raw damage increase is larger with focus because it starts from a higher base. Intuitively, this makes sense. Heroic gives you a retry, and the strength of that retry is just the strength of the base attack. The benefit of Heroic as a percentage of the base attack will just be the percent chance it triggers, and focus doesn't affect that at all.

This is not part of the analysis, but keep in mind Heroic doesn't help at all if you have already have a Lock on the target except by improving the chances to keep the Lock for the next turn. If you're frequently taking Locks, then Heroic's value on offense goes down.

Heroic Defense

The graph below has the percent increase in durability that Heroic adds. The average benefits to the right average across the meta assumptions including range bonuses, while the numbers left of the line are just for those raw dice.

Again, Heroic adds the most benefit for 2-die defense rolls and 2-agility ships. If we assume a 50% chance of having a focus in a round for defense (as opposed to saving it for offense or not having a focus token at the start of the round), a 2-agility ship like the X-Wing sees an 8% increase in durability while a 3-agility ship like the A-Wing sees a 5.5% increase in durability.

Unlike its benefit on offense, the benefit of Heroic on defense improves when the ship has a focus token. Intuitively, this also makes sense. For the easiest case to imagine, consider a 1-hit attack. When the defender doesn't have a focus token, this will only deal damage when the defender rolls only blanks or some combination of blanks and eyeballs. Heroic reduces the chances of rolling blanks, but not the chance of rolling some combination of blanks and eyeballs. When the defender has a focus token, this will only deal damage when the defender rolls only blanks, and Heroic reduces all of that chance.

Similarly, Heroic is also stronger against weak attacks than strong attacks for a similar reason. A weak attack relies on the defender blanking out to push through meaningful damage. A strong attack can still push damage through even if some evades are showing.

The Value of Heroism

We can use the simple method in my last article to calculate the total benefit of Heroic. We add the offense benefit to the defense benefit and divide by 2 to adjust for focus fire. It turns out the benefit for A-Wings and X-Wings are pretty close; Heroic makes A-Wings 4.8% more effective and X-Wings 4.5% more effective.

We can multiply these benefits by the ship's cost to find out how much Heroic should cost to keep the ship's efficiency the same. Here are some examples based on the January 2019 point costs:

• Blue Squadron Escort A-Wing: 1.5 points
• Tallissan Lintra: 1.7 points
• L'ulo L'ampar: 1.7-1.8 points (based on how often he's stressed)
• Blue Squadron Recruit X-Wing: 2.1 points
• Nien Nunb: 2.5 points
• Poe Dameron: 3.1 points

As we can see, Heroic should cost about 2 points on average to keep the ship's efficiency the same. If Heroic is added to a ship with other upgrades, the cost of the other upgrades should also be included and further increases the value of Heroic.

It only makes a small difference, but the true value of Heroic is based on the true value of the ship and not the official FFG point cost. Most of these ships are costed pretty accurately, but Tallissan and L'ulo are some of the most underpriced ships in the game. If they were priced more accurately (and with more precise modeling), Heroic adds about 1.9 points of value for Tallissan and 2.4 points of value for L'ulo. Poe might also be a bit overcosted, but the difference is small with R4 Astromech and he already benefits greatly from Heroic.

Overall, Heroic would be fair for most ships at 2 points and it's a steal at 1 point. The efficiency of Heroic is magnified because it's a cheap and unlimited upgrade that most of the popular Resistance ships can take. You can bring 4-6 copies of Heroic in a list and get 4-6 extra points of value.

That said, this might be a good thing. The point of faction identity talents is to make each faction feel different, and they can't do that if no one uses them. Heroic differentiates Resistance from the other factions and doesn't hard-counter specific archetypes (like Treacherous), greatly limit list-building (like Ruthless), or restrict the playstyle of lists that take it (like Selfless, or Dedicated to some degree). Fearless and Fanatical are other examples of what I think are well-designed faction identity talents in that I wouldn't mind if every Scum or First Order list included those (I wonder if Dedicated is interesting enough to qualify or if it would just get old fast). I'd be happy to see these talents undercosted so they see the table more frequently and do their job of making each faction play a bit differently.