In Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, the Power stat is meant to provide an easy way to compare the strength of different characters. Before the recent update, which is only live for some players, this was done using the character’s other stats.

The Old

The old system, while not perfect, at least gave a reasonable idea of how powerful a character was. By using a weighted value for each stat, the system should have been accurate.

Maxed Lando before the change.

However, because every character used the same stat weightings, regardless of role, it was flawed. Health and protection had high value, leading to tanks and other characters modded for survivability having the highest power.

This, in turn, meant that characters modded for speed or damage lagged behind, creating a power gap.

However, despite this inequality, power was still somewhat useful, it just didn’t live up to it’s potential.

The New

Unfortunately, the developers decided to address this issue, and in doing so, took a flawed system and made it useless. Under the new system, only five things matter – character level, character rarity (stars), amount of gear equipped, number and quality of equipped mods, and ability level.

Maxed Lando after the change.

Two of these criteria will be constant at high levels – character level and rarity.

Mods will also be fairly constant. As long as you’re using a 5*, level 15 mod, the power gained from it won’t change, regardless of set bonuses, primary stats, or secondary stats.

That’s three stats out of five that will generally be the same for every unit. The last two are ability levels, and gear. Each individual piece of gear provides a power increase, with the amount going up each gear level. This is the point where power levels will start to deviate. A character that can equip three pieces of gear at G11 will end with less power than one who can equip four or five.

Finally, ability levels. This is where the big gap comes in. Characters with five abilities will have higher power than characters with four. Characters with a zeta ability will have much higher than character without one, and characters with two zeta abilities will top the list.

And The Ugly

So, we have five stats, three which are basically a constant, and two that are arbitrary, that are meant to represent the strength of a character. To really illustrate how inaccurate this is, the four highest power toons are:

• Grand Admiral Thrawn
• Grand Moff Tarkin
• R2-D2
• Asajj Ventress

Thrawn and R2-D2 are both new characters, released in legendary events. Tarkin got a rework last month. It makes sense for them to be on the upper end of the scales. Asajj Ventress on the other hand, has never been an especially good character. None of her stats are fantastic; she doesn’t bring anything to the table that you can’t get from a better character. No, Asajj has high power because she happens to have two zeta abilities (which aren’t enough to bring her, or Nightsister teams, to a viable level), and five pieces of gear at g11.

This isn’t “accounting for utility, ability levels, and synergies.” This is just a number to tell us what we already know – how much has been invested in a unit.