Intelligence and Luck

[Adoede]

We all know the general effects of these stats:
Strength - more base damage, more attack power for strength weapons, some hit points, some encumbrance reduction
Agility - more attacks, more initiative, better defense, more attack power for agility weapons
Stamina - more hit points, more endurance, more encumbrance capacity
Size - more hit points, more encumbrance capacity, low size gives defensive boost
Presence - reduce opponent initiative, increase kill rank, decreased chance to be killed
Chi - increased chance of criticals, increased critical damage multiplier,

I'm curious if anyone has a handle on what exactly intelligence and luck do.

I've noticed glads that seem to have lower str/agi but higher intellect do quite well against my glads. I know intellect effects how and when you utilize your skills, but I wonder if there are attack power/defense bonuses attached to Intellect as well. Intelligent glads do seem to be harder to hit and harder to defend against - at least according to my casual observations.

My guess:
Intellect - improved chance of using skills, seemingly improved defense, seemingly improved offense
Luck - better chance at finding arena tokens, better initiative rolls, better knockout chance

What are your observations?

[Kreegan]

Mine are that most of the Blood Gods top fighters are cretins but that hardly affects their performance.

Intellect does something to improve your gladiator's performance but is by no means a stackable stat. Get yourself the three universally accessible offensive skills from the Rage tree and get your Chi to 100-110+ and you won't need more than 80-90 Intellect because your fighter will just spam knockdowns and injuries with every second strike against most non-tank builds.

Still, I'm intending to get it to 170+ on Vaargus, just so he can occasionally mock his opponents with Surprise Ending spam.

[Adoede]

Hey Kreegan - are you suggesting that a 170+ intellect would allow Vaargus to use his surprise ending skill more than once a round? Cuz that would be a huge benefit to boosting intelligence.

Has anyone seen that happen? High intelligence leading to multiple uses of a skill in the same round?

[Kreegan]

No, not a chance, every active skill triggers no more than once per round. But even if it triggers once every round, that's quite enough. Surprise Ending is a fairly unique skill because it uses the opponent's power to beat him so you benefit from it even if your fighter doesn't have bombastic stats. Every other activated skill requires good stats on your own fighter, so Surprise Ending aside, I see no reason to deliberately raise Intellect above 100 on any fighter.

[Pit Lord]

Active skills have cd. Surprise ending has 2 round cd. If your gladiator use it in round 1 he/she will be able to use it again in round 3.

Still it can be extremely effective against 2/H rage if its always used at the opening.

[Kreegan]

I'm not sure if there are hard-coded cooldowns which don't drop below certain number of rounds but yes, the fact that one skill will not trigger more than once every X rounds no matter how high is your fighter's Intellect makes the stacking of this stat pointless. There is much greater (and much more visible) direct benefit in just investing in brute force or super-defense.