When to Slice Mods?
While slicing is available for all 5* mods, the necessary Mod Salvage can take time to acquire and not every mod is an optimal slicing candidate.
Slicing from 5A to 6E requires:
- 50 Amplifiers
- 50 Capacitors
- 20 Pulse Modulators
On average, most players will take 5 – 7 days to slice a single mod to 6E between the time to farm Amplifiers and Capacitors and acquiring Modulators from only the Guild Store. Slicing mods with mediocre stats can be costly and unnecessarily time consuming, so it is important to understand all the considerations involved with determining whether a mod should be sliced.
Shape/Slot considerations:
- Squares and Diamonds – All Squares have the Offense primary and all Diamonds have the Defense primary. With the large increases from 5A to 6E and with the definite bonuses received from these stats in general, almost all Squares and Diamonds are good candidates for slicing.
- Circles – Circles have either Health or Protection primares and, with the tiny increase from 23.5% to 24% in Protection %, Health primary Circles are ideal candidates to slice over Protection primary Circles.
- Arrows – Speed is still the only relevant primary on Arrows, but Tier D-B Arrows with Speed secondaries and non-Speed primaries could be sliced in the hope of gaining higher Speed secondaries. Keep in mind, however, any secondary appearing on an Arrow is easily dwarfed by the Speed primary Arrow.
- Triangles and Crosses – With the variety of primaries on Triangles and Crosses, it is much more important to consider the mod down to its primary and secondary stats to determine whether Triangles or Crosses will be worth slicing.
Primary stat considerations:
- Offense, Defense, Health, Crit Dam, Crit Chance are all great primaries to slice because they get the largest increases AND also have the best effects.
- Note: These are good primaries to slice on all but ARROWS.
- Tenacity has the largest increase, but as discussed in Understanding Mod Stats, it takes A LOT of Tenacity to effectively ward off the highest Potency and there are better stats to consider when slicing
- Potency is an excellent stat, though, comparatively it is not quite as high as others and the impact of the increase is not as high as other stats
- Speed, is THE most important stat in the game, but the increase gained from slicing the Speed primary is only +2. While any point of Speed can be valuable, slicing the Speed primary doesn’t provide the greatest return in value given the expense of Mod Slicing Salvage
- Accuracy and Crit Avoidance have sizeable increases once they have been sliced, but given that they only appear on Arrows, the increases do not outweigh the Speed primary
Secondary stat considerations:
When mods are sliced from 5E up to 5A, any of the secondary stats can increase towards the max for 5A mods. When slicing from 5A to 6E, the impact of the Multiplier should be considered:
It helps to utilize the above math to determine what the 6E secondary stats will be before slicing a mod from 5A to 6E and compare those secondaries to the max. A “good” stat is around 50% or higher of the available max stats.
General rules:
- Good
- Offense %
- Defense %
- Potency %
- Health %
- Okay
- Defense (flat)
- Offense (flat)
- Protection %
- Tenacity %
- Health (flat)
- Meh
- Crit Chance
- Protection (flat)
- Speed
Speed and Slicing:
Before the Mods 2.0 Update, Speed was singularly the only stat that mattered, and while some of the other primaries and secondaries had general value, Speed was overwhelmingly the most useful. The Mods 2.0 Update, however, attempted to level the comparative use of Speed through 6E mods. That said, SWGoH is a turn-based game, meaning the character speed will always be the most powerful element.
Speed remains as important as ever, but when considering which means mods to slice, Speed as a primary will only go up +2 and Speed as a secondary will only go up +1 (possibly up +2 in extremely rare cases). When all the possibilities are compared, the increases given for Speed are not enough to slice a mod only for Speed. Instead, mods should only be sliced if they already have Speed as a high secondary AND if the other secondary stats are worthwhile as well.
Slice or No Slice?
- Protection will increase to 24%
- Speed will increase to 18
- Tenacity will increase to 1.74%
- Defense % will increase to 3.23%
- Offense will increase to 75
Using our general rule of “50%+ of the max”:
- Speed is ~60% of the max
- Tenacity is ~13% of the max
- Defense is ~19% of the max
- Offense is ~34% of the max
There would be an increase 0.5% Protection and three of the four secondaries are all very mediocre. Spending 50 Amplifiers, 50 Capacitors, and 20 Pulse Modulators to achieve some bland secondaries and +1 Speed is not, generally, a good use of resources.
- Potency to 30%
- Speed to 24
- Tenacity to 1.96
- CC to 2.05
- Defense to 15
Again, all the secondaries are mediocre. That said, the primary will see an increase to 30%. Since +24 Speed is spectacular and very close to the max available, the primary stat and speed increases will justify spending the resources to slice the mod.
- Defense to 20%
- Speed to 17
- Health to 795
- CC to 1.93%
- Offense to 1.51%
The Health secondary is moderate, but Crit Chance and Offense are nothing special. That said, the Defense increase from 11.75% to 20% is close to double the Defense given with this mod. In #Understanding Mod Stats it is explained that virtually every character can benefit from Defense. Overall, this would be a decent mod to slice to 6E.
TL;DR Slicing Quick Tips
- 5A to 6E slicing gives a huge bonus to most stats
- Only slice mods with high Speed secondaries
- Offense, Defense, and Crit Damage primaries give the best returns on slicing
- Offense %, Defense %, Potency %, and Health % secondaries give the best returns on slicing
- Budget 50 crystals a day for a Mod Energy refresh
- Save 450 Guild Store tokens daily for 5A to 6E specific Mod Salvage
Next: Mod Loadouts
Other Pages:
- Mod Basics
- Mod Views and In-Game Recommendations
- Dots/Rarities and Mod Levels
- Colors/Qualities
- Mod Shapes
- Mod Sets
- Primary and Secondary Stats
- Understanding Mod Stats
- Speed, aka The Holy Grail
- Mod Farming
- Guide to Mod Slicing
- Mod Loadouts
- How to Choose Good Mods
- Farming Quick Tips
Last Updated: 9/26/18