Mods 2.0 in SWGOH: A Primer

FIRST OFF: THERE IS A TL;DR AT THE END OF THIS POST. If you just want a really quick set of advice, feel free to look there. If you want to hear the reasoning behind the advice, read the actual article.

Hello all! The purpose of this post is to discuss mod strategy at a basic, functional level. I'm not going to give you in-depth strategy for each specific character, or help you fine-tune your mod loadouts. The purpose here is basic instruction and strategy, so you can turn around and apply it to your account. The more you do this stuff, the better you get.

Here's a link to my own mods, in case you're wondering if I actually adhere to this strategy myself.

Here are the topics I want to cover:

1. The Mods we're looking for
1. General stats
2. Arena vs. Roster Mods
2. How to get mods, and what to do once you have them
1. Mod Energy (slicing vs. mod challenges)
2. Mod Store
3. How to find speed secondaries efficiently
3. Which mods belong on which characters (with pictures!)

Things I'm going to assume:

1. You know the difference between a Primary and Secondary stat
2. You know what stats are found on which mod.
1. i.e. Critical Damage is only found on Triangles, while Offense can be found on Arrows, Triangles, and Crosses, etc.
3. You understand the basics of how stats upgrade on mods

Stated Goals:

1. Every usable character will have +60 to 70 speed - oftentimes more
2. Every usable character has one or two of their important "stat needs" addressed, such as Potency, DPS, etc.

You may be intimidated by these goals, simple as they are. I think it may end up easier than you think. I will explain below.

1) The mods we're looking for

First off: are mods really necessary to play the game at a high level?

Yes. Absolutely. Characters are significantly stronger with a random set of hodgepodge mods, because of the extreme stat increases. A character with bad mods is going to have significantly worse output than a character with decent/good mods.

Plus, this game has increasingly more PvP, where you need to beat other players' squads. If two squads have equal gear, the faster team is almost always going to win. There are obviously other factors, but having a faster team is a great way to guarantee a win. In fact, there are several teams that depend on having a specific character go first (looking at you, Imperial Troopers with Starck).

A note about the Speed stat: I believe that most characters benefit from having extra speed on them. Usually, they benefit more the more speed is put on them. This isn't true for all characters, but this article is going to assume that you understand and believe this (very basic) principle. Speed is, generally speaking, the most important stat in the game. (it's not the only important stat, of course)

What we're looking for

An argument can (and shouldn't) be made that all mods are useful to some degree or another. We'll cover in greater depth which kind of mods are important in Section 3. For now, let's make a couple generalizations:

1. Everyone want speed (there are exceptions, of course)
2. Every character has at least one "stat need" they are trying to fulfill. For instance:
1. Tanks want to absorb damage well
2. Attackers want to inflict damage well
3. Many characters want to be able to apply debuffs well
4. Some characters operate entirely from Crit Chance (Aayla is an example of this)

The mods we are looking for are generally trying to fill both speed AND the character's "stat need." Usually, we are trying to meet both within the same mod.

• Speed can be found:
• Secondary stats
• Speed Mod Set
• Arrow mods
• "Stat need" can be found: 
• Primary stats
• Secondary stats
• Mod Sets (i.e. Health, Protection, etc.) 

Embo's "Stat Needs" are Protection (see his Special above) and Crit Chance if possible (his payout gives him a free turn if he crits)

Arena vs. Roster Mods

Mod collection is often seen as trying to obtain really high speed secondaries so your arena team can be faster than opposing arena teams. Going first usually means you win, at least on offense. However, this approach is extremely short-sighted.

• Unless you want to continuously swap mods from character to character, only a few of your characters will have a functional mod set. 
• Believe me, it's a pretty big hassle, even with the new (awesome) mod loadouts function
• This approach flat out DOES NOT work in Territory Wars or Grand Arena. You can't duplicate mod sets for use in TW or GA. Only one or two of your teams will hold any real value.
• Of course, you can always reapply your mods before each event, but that's also a pretty irritating course of action.

My argument is that if you want a truly functional, powerful roster, you need each character to have their own fully-functional mod set. One great reason for this is that each character has their own distinct "stat needs." Swapping mods for every event is not a perfect solution by any stretch.

And, let's just be real here. With the arrival of Grand Arena and Territory Wars, the game has shifted away from the "you only need one team" approach. If you want to win a Grand Arena match, you need more than just one good team.

So, here is my artificial distinction between mod types:

• Arena Mods are the ones with gaudy speed or offense stats. They are extremely limited in number, and are very difficult to obtain.
• Roster Mods are mods that do not have gaudy statistics, but still fulfill basic "stat needs" for a character. They are much easier to obtain and will do your account more good overall than Arena Mods.
• Usually this means you have a speed secondary of +7 or greater, as well as an important Primary Stat or Mod Set bonus, which meets your "stat need".

• Please note that the term "Roster mods" is a term of my own devising. You won't find other players who reference it, because I am the only person who uses it, so far as I know.
• "Stat need" is also my own term. Ha!

Arena Mods (I had these on Jedi Knight Revan when I wrote this. This set has been very difficult for me to obtain - there's no way I could get this for every character. And no, it's not a perfect set for his needs, though it could be much worse.)

This is an example of "Roster Mods." None of them have gaudy speed (well, Spirit is starting to approach that), but all of them are extremely functional. See below for Asajj mods.

These are the "roster mods" I have for Asajj. They are definitely not top-end arena level mods (look how many are single digits!), but she has a very serviceable level of speed and offense, which are the two things she wants most (along with Crit Damage).

So... now what?

I'm going to discuss how to find the mods we're looking for, and a few things to avoid.

2) How to get mods, and what to do once you find them:

Mod Energy (Slicing vs. Mod Challenges)

We have a marvelous thing now called Mod Energy. Instead of having to choose between a Cantina farm and mods, we can have both! We can spend the energy on Slicing, or Mod Challenges.

• Slicing is what you do when you have a ton of already-solid mods, and want to turn them into arena mods. They may already BE arena mods, and you want to make them better.
• This is a new feature, and as such is really flashy as well. Who doesn't want a Triangle with +24 speed?
• Slicing is the "Arena Mods" approach
• Challenges are the primary method of obtaining new mods
• Challenges are the "Roster Mods" approach

So, which one do we choose? 

This is a pivotal question. Whereas arena mods are important for arena play, our goal is to accumulate enough mods so that our entire usable roster has its own solid mod set. 

• Slicing, while it is certainly fun and sometimes useful, is extremely inefficient.
• Getting enough mats to upgrade a single mod can take a full day or longer.
• Even after the upgrade mats are accumulated, you are not guaranteed to get the stat you want to upgrade.
• If it takes you one day per mod upgrade, it takes four full days to get a single stat increase in your desired stat.
• I actually doubt you can get a full upgrade per day unless you're only upgrading greens and blues.
• Challenges help us accumulate new mods daily.
• Without refreshes (which are cheap now!), we can get 17 new mods every day.
• Most of these mods will be useless, but they're each worth 10k credits.
• With 3 refreshes daily (150 crystals), you can accumulate 40 mods per day.
• I don't know the drop rates on the various mod colors, but this is a pretty solid number. It's going to be around 15 non-gray mods every day. Someone let me know if they find drop rate stats.

Let's take a moment and be very honest.

Farming mods sucks.

It doesn't matter how you do it, there isn't a non-frustrating way to accumulate a prolific collection of mods. Let's not spend time complaining about it. Please know that I do understand your misgivings about mods though.

• RNG in getting speed on mods seems tilted against us
• RNG in upgrading speed on mods seems tilted against us
• RNG in slicing speed on mods seems tilted against us (as of this writing, I've failed my last fifteen attempts to slice speed)
• It seems like we almost never get good mods. Ever.
• I genuinely believed this, until I started keeping track of every 8+ speed mod I received over one month's time. I was astounded at how many solid mods I'd gotten. It still never FELT like I had gotten much at all.

So, back to the question at hand. Slicing mods vs. Challenges

If your only concern in the world is Arena, slicing mods holds a slight advantage. I only say slight, because you need to have mods to slice in the first place. And often, your best mods will come from farming rare mods and getting them to upgrade the organic way.

I'm not going to crunch numbers for you here, because I don't know the drop rates. What I will say is that it will take the average person (no refreshes) one week to get a single speed increase from slicing. In that same week, you're likely to get at least one or two usable (7+ speed) mods, even with horrible RNG. And, you're much more likely to get 3+ usable mods.

So, in terms of efficiency, you're going to get a wider selection of usable mods if you do challenges instead of slicing.

• Constant influx of new characters require a steadily growing mod collection.
• Slicing is inefficient
• You will receive more total speed stat to distribute by farming from challenges

My own strategy

Now, my own mod collection isn't as amazing as others, but I do have a pretty solid collection. Whereas I do still need a steady supply of new mods to equip on new characters, my needs are slightly different. I have most of the mid-level mods I need. I want to focus a little more on getting my arena mods better. So, I do this:

• All refresh energy goes toward mods. (I typically pay crystals for 3 energy refreshes daily)
• All regenerating (free) energy goes towards slicing materials.
• I also buy a LOT of mods from the Mod Store. See the next section.

It's a good balance, if you can do the 3 refreshes. If not, I recommend sticking to almost exclusively mod challenges.

Mod Store

So, the mod store is going to be where we find a LOT of our really strong mods. I'll try to make this section as concise as possible, but there is a lot to consider.

• Mod Sets to prioritize:
• Speed
• Offense
• Critical Damage
• Critical Chance

• Mod Types to prioritize:
• Triangles
• Critical Chance (CC)
• Critical Damage (CD)
• Protection or Health (on speed/health/defense set)
• Offense (less awesome than CC and CD above, but still decent)
• Crosses
• Offense
• Health/Protection
• Potency (less common than the three above)

• Rarity priorities:
• For the Triangles and Crosses listed above, buy Purple and Gold.
• For anything else, buy ONLY GOLD mods unless you have 30M+ credits saved up.
• Don't buy blue or green mods. They used to be good deals. Those deals now suck for what we're looking for.
• ONLY EVER BUY 5-DOT MODS. 4-DOT MODS CAN'T BE UPGRADED AT ANY POINT, AND THEREFORE SUCK.

• Speed levels:
• I don't buy mods from the store with only 3 speed unless I have a LOT of extra credits laying around, OR if it's a perfect match, like a Crit Damage set Crit Damage Triangle. 
• If they are Triangles or Crosses, I buy them if they have 4 or more speed.
• If they are anything else, I don't buy unless they're 5 speed.

• Arrows:
• Less important to buy, since if you're farming mods from challenges, you'll get plenty of low-level speed and offense arrows.
• Gold SPEED PRIMARY arrows with either crit chance or offense secondaries are the only ones really worth buying. I generally pass them up though - they're just too common, and easy enough to slice to gold if you need to. 
• Speed primary is guaranteed, and secondary upgrades matter less for what we're working on. Still, a speed arrow with 4 Offense upgrades is really nice to have in arena.

Other mod sets are fine to purchase as well, and to be honest, ANY triangle with 5 speed and Crit Damage is one I'll buy in a heartbeat. Triangles are the rarest mods in the game (followed by crosses) and have a lot of variation. Finding one with good stats is very difficult. Sometimes we just have to spend on mods that aren't 100% ideal.

Slicing, if you must. 

You'll still end up with a few slicing mats from raids, events, etc. The most efficient mods to slice, by far, are green ones. It takes far fewer upgrade mats to do so.

However, there are often other good targets for slicing. As a general rule, I only target mods with speed secondaries for slicing. Arrow mods I target either Crit Chance or Offense.

Generally, you only want to target mods that can eventually become Arena mods (i.e. gaudy speed secondary). That means that if a Purple mod only has 5 speed, it's probably not worthwhile to slice.

You can do the math (remember that a mod can upgrade by +3, 4, 5, or 6). I consider an "arena mod" to be at about 17 speed. Crosses and Triangles are rare enough that I'd reduce that to around 15 or so.

6-dot mods

6-dot mods are cool and all, but keep in mind that they won't help any characters who aren't G12 (and therefore 7*).

Generally, there are only two reasons to upgrade a mod to 6-dot:

1. It's an arena mod, and therefore trying to maximize speed and other stats.
2. It's for a pilot.
1. 6-dot mods can increase a ship's speed by up to 3 total, which at high-end ship arena play, is a LOT of speed.

6-dot mods look cool, and can certainly be useful, but I would REALLY not recommend expending resources on them at this point in time (as of 12/16/2018).

Gray Mods

In almost all cases, other than speed arrrows, I'd recommend selling grey mods before spending credits to see if they have speed secondaries on them. There are a couple exceptions:

• Triangles that aren't defense
• Offense Crosses
• Potency Crosses
• Other crosses with primaries you need

In the above instances, level them to 12 (which gets expensive FAST). If they have a speed secondary, slice them. If they don't, sell them.

Finding speed secondaries:

• Every single mod you get has a 25% chance to have a speed secondary.
• Every speed secondary has a 25% chance to upgrade on each tier.

What this means is:

• For every 16 green mods you get, one will become a Roster mod.
• For every 8 blue mods you get, one will become a Roster mod.
• For every 6 purple mods you get, one will become a Roster mod.
• For every 4 gold mods you get, one will become a Roster mod.

GREEN MODS (TIER D)

• Upgrade to Level 9
• If one of the secondary stats is Speed, upgrade to Level 12
• If no speed secondary, stop at Level 9, and eventually sell.
• If at Level 12 a speed secondary is at +7 speed or greater, keep it - it's a Roster mod.

BLUE MODS (TIER C)

• Upgrade to Level 6
• If one of the secondary stats is Speed, upgrade to Level 12
• If no speed secondary, stop at Level 6, and eventually sell.
• If at Level 12 a speed secondary is at +7 speed or greater, keep it - it's a Roster mod.

PURPLE MODS (TIER B)

• Upgrade to Level 3
• If one of the secondary stats is Speed, upgrade to Level 12
• If no speed secondary, stop at Level 3, and eventually sell.
• If at Level 12 a speed secondary is at +7 speed or greater, keep it - it's a Roster mod.

GOLD MODS (TIER A)

• If one of the secondary stats is Speed, upgrade to Level 12
• If no speed secondary, stop at Level 9, and eventually sell.
• If at Level 12 a speed secondary is at +7 speed or greater, keep it - it's a Roster mod.

3) Which mods go on which Characters?

This isn't an easy topic, and I don't intend to spend a long time on it, because it's just too complex - every character is different. The key is to figure out what you want each character to be doing.

I generally go with "The Rule of Two."

This just means that you need to focus on the two most important "stat needs" a character has, and go for those. Every character would like more of every stat, but usually there are two that you should really focus on more than others.

However, focusing on more than two can cause too much frustration.

Example 1:

These are the mods I've given to Embo at the time of writing this.

We previously identified Embo as having a "stat need" for high max protection (his special bases its damage off of it), and for Crit Chance (CC). He also wants a lot of speed. Also, because he wants a high crit chance, he also benefits from a big crit damage bonus.

You'll note that I put Protection on both the Circle and Square, and used a Crit Damage (CD) set and CD Triangle. All mods have extra speed on them.

I've met his protection and Crit Damage need. He has a naturally high CC stat however, and when taken into consideration with the rest of the squad's abilities (and his own), I decided to focus instead on the two stats that are harder to come by ("remember, rule of two").

I also put a Health Set on him.

"But why?" you ask. "Wouldn't it be better to have a Crit Chance set on him instead of Health, which isn't even a Stat Need?"

The answer is that I didn't have a CC Triangle and Circle with the right stats. It's lucky that I even found a matching second set, to be honest. The second set was NOT a priority.

SOMETHING MANY PEOPLE STRESS ABOUT, BUT SHOULDN'T:

Don't focus overly much on getting the perfect Mod Sets. It's just too hard to get perfect mods to match up with Stat Need for every single character. You'll pull your hair out in frustration if you attempt it, and then you'll quit working on mods, because of how tedious it is.

Focus on ONE need that can be met with a Mod Set.

• Usually, that need takes four mods:
• Speed
• Crit Damage
• Offense
• Sometimes, that need takes two mods:
• Potency
• Defense
• Health
• Crit Chance

Essentially, focus on getting FOUR mods for their Mod Set bonus. For example:

• Get ONE Offense Mod Set bonus if your Stat Need is damage
• Get TWO Crit Chance Mod Set bonuses if your sole focus is on Crit Chance (which is rare)

It's wonderful if you can get all 6 mods to match the way you want, but it's REALLY NOT WORTH YOUR EFFORT. Mod set bonuses are really nice when you combine the bonus from four. It's not really that big of a deal if you miss the final 2-mod bonus.

To be clear, you absolutely should be focused on mod set bonuses. You just absolutely shouldn't stress out about getting them perfect. One bonus is enough.

Example 2:

Here's my Mother Talzin at the time this was written. You'll note my mod set bonuses are consistent with my point above.

Let's go over what Talzin wants to do when she's not the leader:

1. Inflict Plague (potency)
2. Take lots of turns (speed + unique zeta + Asajj lead zeta)
3. Do lots of damage
4. Survive

A lot of people assume that Talzin's only source of power is in Plague. While Plague is certainly extremely potent (ha), it's not the only focus of what Talzin can do. She also hits like a truck, even if she never inflicts plague.

In truth, her two essential functions in a Nightsister build are doing damage, and taking lots of turns so that she can keep doing lots of damage.

Focusing on too many stats is really detrimental for modding a "roster" squad. It gets too stressful. Instead, determine what you can live without, and do that. I'll walk you through my decision-making process:

1. Talzin wants all the speed she can handle, so I gave her a Speed set.
2. Talzin's survivability can be greatly enhanced by her gear, so I decided not to focus too hard on that need.
3. Talzin's special damage is such a high number that it really benefits from the % Offense stats, particularly on the cross and triangle.
1. Note that her base crit chance is incredibly low. Even if I somehow got a CC Mod Set in the extra slots, it would not be worthwhile to count on crits.
1. Instead of Crit Chance, like most damage-dealers want, I went offense on her Triangle.
4. The Potency cross vs. offense cross debate can be difficult. I can absolutely see the value of inflicting Plague more often. 
1. However, her Potency is naturally high, and maxing out her damage is going to be more important.
5. The "rule of two" applies here to Speed and Damage. 

Why is speed treated here as a "stat need" when with Embo it wasn't?

Generally, you can treat speed as separate from what we're calling a "stat need" because while speed is good for most characters, it's not the absolute focus.

Think of it like this:

• You can typically meet one Stat Need with a Mod Set bonus.
• You can typically meet another Stat Need with Primary stats on the mods.
• That leaves room for Speed to be met in the Seconday stats.

However, if you NEED more speed, you'll have to use the Mod Set bonus on it, making Speed into a Stat Need.

Let's go over one more example before I publish this monstrosity.

Example 3:

First Order Executioner (FOX) exists to do lots of damage. How can we best facilitate that?

FOX is a really fun character, despite his extremely simple kit. His Stat Needs include doing damage, and doing more damage.

Normally, we would just throw and Offense Mod Set and a Crit Chance Mod Set on him with a Crit Damage triangle, and call it good.

However, FOX is part of the First Order, which means he has access to a lot of Advantage buffs. He doesn't need to worry about getting critical hits as often as other characters outside of that faction would.

This allows us to focus on another part of his kit: he does damage based on his max health.

So, I was able to get him a Health Mod Set, along with a Health circle. I was also able to squeeze in some extra Crit Chance here and there as I could, to give him a decent percentage in that stat as well.

KEEP IN MIND that with the extra percent damage we get from the Offense Mod set, it's almost always more beneficial to use the Offense set instead of the Crit Damage set, especially for characters without 70% or so CC.

FOX has very little chance at hitting 70% CC without some really weird mods, so I went Offense with him. I suppose the argument could be made that because he often has Advantage (the buff that guarantees a critical hit) a CD set would have been better on him, but because Offense set mods were what I had available, I went with those instead.

In reality, quibbling about those types of things can be fun for some, but many others absolutely hate that sort of minutiae. So, just look at a character's stats, and if their CC is pretty low (40% or less) without mods, go Offense set instead. If you go CD instead, there probably won't be much of a difference in output.

Alright, this thing has turned into a much bigger article than I had planned. I hope you all found it helpful. Let me know if there is something you would like me to expound upon.

Here's the aforementioned TL;DR:

1. Focus on applying speed secondaries when modding characters.
2. Farm NEW mods with mod energy instead of mod upgrade materials, until you have a large collection.
3. You want to get as many +7 speed secondary mods (and higher) as possible.
4. Farming mods sucks - nobody enjoys it. But, it's necessary if you want a solid roster.
5. Upgrade all of your Green and Blue and Purple mods to the minimum to determine if Speed is a potential stat on them (i.e. upgrade Green mods to level 9, Blue to level 6, etc.)
6. Every character has at least one "Stat Need" (usually more).
1. Identify the top two needs for your character, and mod them accordingly.
1. Usually you can address two "Stat Needs" for a character using a Mod Set bonus for one, and Primary stats for the second, which leaves room for big Speed secondaries.
1. Sometimes a character needs MAX speed, which means speed becomes one of your Stat Needs.
7. DON'T try to fill all of the Mod Set bonuses. Choose one big one, or two small ones. Leave the last two spots for non-matching mods. Your modding experience will be MUCH less stressful if you do this.