How to Boost player overall with chem/strategy?

Statix said:

Hey guys, this might be a stupid question but I've never messed around with chemistry and strategy cards before (only play offline NMS) and was wondering how to boost player overalls and also what the maximum overall boost one can achieve is. If possible I would like to boost my 96 overall qb Bo Jackson to a 99 or my 97 overall Walter Payton QB to a 99 but am pretty ignorant as to how this all works

Hey there, welcome welcome! This is Madden, after all, so there really are no "stupid questions" -- they basically make us do homework to even attempt to understand what sort of EA logic might have gone into the game design. The in-game menus and descriptions are horrendously inadequate, a huge part of the learning curve is figuring out what abilities work and what do not, or what are left-overs from last-generation (PS4, etc) of console.

This is a VERY common misconception, especially for newer players. The OVR rating on the players/cards do not matter one bit. It's merely a visual indicator and has no real impact on in-game performance of that player. The next order of business is trying to understand that stats barely matter, especially now that we're in the end-game. Almost everything works off of minimum thresholds, meaning that 99 Man Coverage will play about the same as 90 MCV (as 90 is the minimum we want to meet, with many stats). There are exceptions to this rule, obviously 99 SPD is way faster than 90 SPD, but broadly speaking, the goal is to hit those minimum 90s.

Rather than focusing on your player's OVR rating, i would encourage you to make sure your skill position players are all equipped with as many DISCOUNTED abilities as you can justify. Typically this means checking the last ability bucket, or the last couple/few. Many cards released in recent weeks are getting TONS of 0AP abilities, to the point where we've got so much, it's difficult to know what to run. Adding abilities to your players will have a significantly greater impact on your in-game performance than anything else.

For example, on quarterbacks we would want what is called the quad (god) stack:

Gift-Wrapped -- this will ensure your players reliably catch the ball and do not drop open passes, while also giving ALL of your receivers the ability to make diving catches
Set Feet Lead (or Pass Lead Elite) -- one of these will increase the velocity of your passes
Gunslinger -- this will improve (lessen) the time it takes to actually throw the pass, giving you more opportunity to avoid sacks
Hot Route Master* -- this one is certainly optional, but it will open up unique route combinations on all receivers that weren't available before, some great Corner and Post routes, etc. If your receivers have various WR Apprentices, this is not necessary as it is redundant. (The newer/upgraded version of HRM is Master Tactician, which has HRM, Conductor & QB Playmaker all wrapped into one)

Hope that gives you some general context. Sorry, wasn't trying to dodge your original question, but the other ways you could approach those thing would be to add various team chemistries and boosts, which will increase various stats on your players, IF you are running a specific theme team. Theme Team All Stars promo had a ton of really great options that can and will help boost specific players. The first goal is to hit 25/50 of your favorite team, which will give you +1 SPD to all relevant TT players, as well as some other basic stats. There are also Strategy items that can be applied to your roster to help, but these are very minor.

Focus on getting those abilities dialed in, please let us know any questions. I know i've thrown an awful lot of information your direction. Lemme know if any of this made sense.