New Mafia Wars Combat Formula

As some of you may have noticed, when Mafia Wars put in the new combat screen which tallies item equipment scores and displays them on the fight screen, they changed the combat formula.


These were not just minor tweaks either. Under the previous system, testing had shown that for some reason on certain servers, attack and defense did not matter and all stat points were lumped together. Clearly this is no longer the case - attack is used for attack, and defense is used for defending.

Additionally, under the old system, attack and defense stat points were weighted much heavier then weapon and armor attack and defense points. In other words, under the old system, someone with weak equipment and a very high attack and defense stat score could beat someone with great equipment and poor stats. This is no longer the case. Under the new system, equipment scores are weighted very heavily - someone with great equipment is going to win most of their fights regardless of stat point allotment. The actual equation is unknown, but it definitely relies a lot more on equipment then it used to.

Honestly, I think that in theory this was a good change - stat points accounted for way too much and equipment accounted for way too little when it came to fighting. However, the problem is that currently players can easily boost their total equipment attack score to over 56,000 attack points by simply collecting 500 track loaders, TNT/Canonazos, and Guerrilla Squads. However, players can only boost their defense equipment score to around 49,000 points. As a result, even the best players can not win every fight on defense.

For example on my level 220 fighter account above, I have almost the best equipment, and a moderate amount of attack and defense (about 400 of each). I win literally every fight on offense even though I put a decent amount of points into energy and stamina and the account has no bonus godfather points. However, I sometimes notice that I lose fights on defense, other people are able to rob me, and so on and so forth. This is because I (and other players as well) can not boost my defense to match up against a well geared players offensive capabilities.

One strategy you could use it to put more stat points into defense then you do in offense. Because the equipment is better for offense, you do not need as many stat points in attack as it is. However, if Russia comes out and balances out the equipment, or worse, makes better equipment available for defense then there is for offense, this could backfire in a bad way. I think that stacking the odds slightly in favor of offense is a good thing - everyone wants to win fights on offense - but right now the difference is so significant that if someone has the best offensive items you are going to lose all your fights on defense even if you have a lot of +defense stat points and great defensive equipment.

For now, the only real fix is to wait until Russia and hope they add better defensive weapons.