Intelli-building Principles/Techniques

Well, I need to start somewhere and I might as well start with slowbuilding.  Let it be known that I'm changing slowbuilding in name to "intelli-building", or intelligent building in longform.  Slowbuilding just tends to get confused with the old school "super-slowbuilding".  So we'll just label it intelli-building.  It more accurately reflects the building techniques anyways, since "slow" tends to infer initial "dot-suck".  And that's not true.  By intelligently building your dot he'll succeed at any level of dotball.

To build a great dot, we really only need to do two things:

• Maximize the value of our ALGs (Automatic Level Gains, aka "natural growth")
• Focus our ALGs in the attributes that will allow us to be great at something (whether that something be movement or a physical roll like catch ball or force fumble).

Both become constant goals for our player development process.  The below tips and techniques allow us to achieve the right balance of the above two.  Remember, we are not building purely for effective level/value.  Our second goal is just as important towards our dots success.

INTELLI-BUILDING

Ground Rules

1. Be patient.  You never should feel rushed with any sort of decision making regarding the growth and development of your player.  There is always time to think things through or to ask others for their opinion. 
2. Do not take anyone's opinion as fact or as the absolute best thing to do.  Make sure you understand why certain advice is given regarding your player.  If someone is giving you a recommendation on what would be best for your dot, make sure that you agree with the reasoning behind it before you act on it.
3. Do not let performance affect your decision-making.  If your dot is struggling in one facet, do not abandon a previous build plan because of it.  Have faith in your established plan for your dot.  You can make adjustments to plans but never sacrifice your end-game potential for an immediate band-aid.

Tips and Techniques

1. Plan out your player.  Before even creating the dot, figure out what you want his end game build to look like.  Always remember to specialize your dot.  Balanced dots have never been favorable.  After figuring out what actions or role you want your dot to be dominant in, run the build through a player builder.  Make sure your general end game idea is plausible and challenging enough.  You do not want to have extra SPs to deal with at level 60+.  Put every SP and level up to use.
2. Only create players on D40 or D41.  Maximize your training time before XP starts accruing.  Everyone should aim to get their first attribute trained to 34 with the training bar at 90-99% (and then raised to 49 via SPs) before hitting level 2.
3. Upon initial player creation, intense train a major that you would like to have as your highest attribute.  Under no circumstances should you raise a minor as your first attribute.  This first attribute will be the one that receives the most value from ALGs.  Alternatively, you can think of this attribute as the one that will have either all or most of your equipment points.
4. Do not fear training at higher values.  Due to the increasing SP cost as attribute values rise, the value of training actually remains quite high at early points after crossing a new cap.  After raising our first attribute to the 2nd cap, it is a wise decision to train it over to the next point and then back up to 95-99%.
5. Never rush to apply SPs.  If you are training an attribute, you should generally not be investing SPs into that same attribute unless you have enough SPs to take it to the next higher cap.
6. Raise your first attribute (which we'll call the primary from here on out) to a high cap.  Your player needs to be a difference maker.  Regardless of attribute or position, your primary should always touch at minimum the 6th cap (80.53) before progressing to your secondary attribute.
7. Balance your training regimen.  While we want to sequentially train our primary and then secondary attribute (secondary attribute being the major we want the second most ALG value in), we also want to make sure we are not stuck waiting for training time.  Training and SP application should be a very smooth process.  Essentially you always want your training to be one step ahead of your SP application.  For example, when you are raising your primary you should be training your secondary, getting it ready to go for SP application once your primary is finished off.
8. Begin with intense training on low attributes.  You should always intense train ALG dependent attributes (typically majors) when they are at values below 30.  Do not worry about bonus tokens.
9. Do not rush to purchase Advanced Equipment (AEQ).  Many agents waste bonus tokens crafting full prefix/suffix AEQ pieces at low levels when they could save in some cases upwards of 40+ bonus tokens just by rolling at slightly higher levels.
10. When looking to purchase AEQ, only accept the best.  There is no reason you should be wearing pieces of AEQ with +3 stamina, confidence, etc.  Look to stack all your AEQ bonuses in the same attribute.  Likewise you should plan your AEQ out beforehand.  If you are building a tackle breaking RB, you absolutely must stack two or three +% break tackle pieces.
11. Consider rolling for AEQ at medium (approximately level 25-30) or high levels.  Even if you are able to locate a quality prefix (+attribute) or suffix (+SA or +%), you can always enhance the piece with the missing part later.
12. Once your primary, secondary, tertiary, and likely quaternary attributes are set, look to multi-train.  There are some exceptions where multi-training is not appropriate, mainly in situations where there is still a crucial attribute to address, but in general multi-training is a good option at this stage in your player's career. Only multi-train four attributes at a time.  These four attributes will generally be your minor attributes.
13. When boosting, do not just boost three times and then look to apply your new found SPs.  Many times you will end up boosting an attribute over a cap through ALGs, possibly costing yourself a lost SP.  For safety, boost once and then look to apply SPs.  If you can calculate the ALG value the attribute will gain in your head or safely know the attribute you are looking to raise will not cross a cap, then feel free to boost multiple times at once.  You will likely find yourself boosting once or twice at a time in most situations, however.
14. Do not let low attributes bug you or cause you to adjust your build plan.  If your level 50 dot has attributes in the 30-40 range, that is perfectly okay.  Even at high levels you may find yourself with an attribute like confidence at an end result of 35-40.  This is fine, your dot will not be terrible for it as long as it is a non-crucial attribute.  Also, remember that while level 50 may seem like your dot is getting up their in level, there are still likely 22 or 23 level ups remaining in your players career.  This equates to at least 110 more SPs!  Do not panic.
15. Do not touch SAs until all your ALG-receiving attributes are finished being raised.  Yes, this means that you will not raise your SAs until the back-end of your career.  For positions like RB where you may have high SP cost for all your SA demands, this moment will come around level 60.
16. Budget your SP use in SAs.  There are many SAs that you can completely avoid investing in (think Big Sack, Turn Shoulder, etc.).  Likewise, remember that SA cost raises just like attributes.  The higher the SA is the more you will pay (1-1-2-2-3-3-4-4-5-5, to be exact).  Consider only raising SAs to a natural 6 (just 12 SPs for the singular SA investment) or 8 (20 SP).  Avoid raising an SA to a natural 10.  The difference between 8 (9 w/ CEQ) and 10 (11 w/ CEQ) is going to be very minimal and not worth the additional 10 SPs.

 Think I missed something?  Post in the comments!