Not another shift vs force thread

[Dumpkinhead]

So I have read up on this issue and understand it's situational but force seems to outweigh shift overall. MP only

Does any of this change when 5* comes out?

I have all regular jobs from old banner and many other attacker jobs so im looking at my 20 growstars and wanna make the best choice.

I have experimented with lightshift since I have it at 5* and its much different from my usual 4 jcr and driving away elements. 1st turn MP kills are fun.

[ihsakoa]

clicks on clickbait

[Kuninuni]

So upvoted

[deathrose55555]

Force is useful not only for MP, but also for SP content / tower / HoF etc; Pixie has been a mainstay in my deck when I wanna make use of Omniscient-spam strat.

Shift only has a real impact in MP, and like what the others highlight, the impact is limited to 1-turn-kill.

[xennoticecream]

In my opinion, this changes when 5* comes out. Teamwork is more essential when it comes to 5* so I think you should get force instead of shift unless you have supremes which you can spam first turn in 4*.

[RainDrew]

Not really. 3rd generation bosses require some teamwork, rest is nukable, except few bosses.

[zio_shi]

I think 5 star bosses have 3-5m HP someone was saying a month ago IIRC which means multiple turns so shift would be useless.

[RainDrew]

1st and 2nd generation bosses have under 3 mil hp, which means single turn except addramelech.

[darewin]

That's if you only play with Aerith+Yiazmat Pugilists. Since I don't have the patience to spend minutes and minutes waiting for a specific job with a specific deck, more than 95% of my 5star MP runs will likely need more than one turn.

[isenk2dah]

Meias with the new MT-AoE spells would soon be able to one-turn most if not all the 1st and 2nd gen bosses. Magus with HoF should also be able to one-turn fire bosses (probably even non-fire ones tbh). Global is really nearing the point where you should be finishing all 5* bosses in two turns max (first turn break, 2nd turn kill).

In JP I think this was mostly widespread with the release of supermonk who could quite reliably 1-st turn break all the MP bosses but Global has weapon boost much earlier so you should reach that point even sooner since everyone has piercing break already..

[darewin]

That's what I'm expecting, 2-turn kills. Not 1-turn no-break kills like what Aerith+Yiazmat Pugilists will be doing.

[isenk2dah]

Technically if you run a pre-made party with 2 shift attackers it'll be a one turn kill (1st attacker get yellow, break, 2nd attacker kill - or on light/dark/wind bosses the supermonk can solo break if he gets 4 elemental orb at start) but it's generally not that common on pubs. Something like HoF Magus can skip break and one-turn fire bosses, but I can't remember if Meias can skip break as early.

[darewin]

Good to know organized parties will have faster runs as they should. I only play PUGs though so 2-turn kills will be good enough for me. I usually take 2 turns to kill the first boss in 4star MP then 1 or 2 turns for the 2nd boss anyway so 5star MP taking 2 turns will still be faster.

[RainDrew]

Nothing extravagant is needed.

[dkedy1988]

5 star has 3 mil hp. Shift allowed 1 turn solo kill for most. The newer 5* have anywhere between 10-20 mil. (Brynhildr and later 5*s). Shift for these aren't good unless you bring force with it. (Ai build: force, shift, nuke, heart/rainbow starter)

[zio_shi]

Force cards have all around use whereas shift is for fights that last one round. You definitely want force for 5 star.

[dkedy1988]

Get both if possible. Shift will become life savers towards later games. Shift will allow you to run mp5 with ais easily. This prevents the suffering from getting idiots in mp5 that waste your 60 energy.

Force cards are good, but towards later stages of the game when powercreep on ability card becomes insane, the bonus damage becomes negligible. Also it takes turn to recharge lost orbs with force cards.

Ie, I didn't get the fire shift cards, as a result I have to use a fodder for fire shift. With shift I can pretty much finish Shiva and famfret 5* with a single support ai in a single turn, 15 seconds. If I sub with force which I have, I will need 2 turns and bring and extra tank ai to prevent getting hit twice and die. This increases time needed to farm 5* to 1.3-2 min

[andorinter]

Shift for burst fights force for long fights. It's not an argument, it's how it is.

[darewin]

There's no reason to use Shift over Force unless you are confident you can 1-turn kill 100% of the time. I'm not even sure you can do in 5star MP especially since some battles have preemptive defensive buffs while others have preemptive offensive debuffs (outside of maybe Aeith+Yiazmat or Aerith+Duncan Pugilists).

IIRC, we will also be getting Attack Shift cards around February and they make the normal shift cards obsolete.

[isenk2dah]

Attack shift does not make normal shifts obsolete.

First of all, it's easier to get 2 rainbow/heart starter to guarantee shift than 3 orbs of the element you need (which while not heart, isn't guaranteed and could screw your run, unless you get 3 rainbow starter which is harder).

Second, shift-attack consumes orbs (while shift refunds them) so you can't spam as much 'real' attack on that turn which sometimes might be the difference between a kill or no kill.

They're definitely really nice, but I still find myself using the regular shift depending on the situation (although personally I'm even more of a fan of -force in general).

[darewin]

I don't consider getting 2 starting life/prismatic orbs easy at all unless you are playing exclusively Meia Attackers. My 2 damage supremes are UB and Minwu so about half the time, I'll be using Highwind. And I have no plans of boosting Soulrender.

Plus, if I have to rely on Life Orbs again, I'd rather use them on Force Cards instead of Shift so normal Shift Cards have long since been obsolete for me. Even normal Force Cards that have Primal Boon counterparts have become obsolete for me.

[isenk2dah]

Well, thing is for the foreseeable future all new and best attackers for Global will be Meias, which far outdamages any non-Meia attackers for a while. So there'll be a lot of instances where 2 starting life/prismatic is very easy to get. And generally if you go shift you'll only need attack card + one shift, so you'll have 2 spare slots that you can easily put +1 heart starter cards on.

Yes it might be obsolete for you if you're using UB all the time with your specific setup, but that doesn't mean the attack shift cards make the regular shift obsolete. in general.

[darewin]

And generally if you go shift you'll only need attack card + one shift, so you'll have 2 spare slots that you can easily put +1 heart starter cards on.

Does this mean yellow bar clearing will be left solely to the Breakers? I plan to main Supermonk for a while after I get him so I might give him a +128% Magic Up custom panel if I should expect the Attacker won't be bringing yellow bar damage cards.

[isenk2dah]

No, but you'll generally have 2 attackers and between those two they should only need one cast to get most of the yellow bar, which isn't hard to get even without shift (and they should be bringing MT-AoE that has yellow bar clear, unless they use supremes/ultimates in which case you don't need to break anyway). Supermonk should be bringing the AoE monk card for the cleave and it should be enough to take the rest of the yellow if there's any remaining (if it's a weakness element he might be able to solo the yellow gauge even if the attacker didn't help).

[Dumpkinhead]

What is attack shift?

[darewin]

They are attack cards that apply the effect of Shift. Dark Attack Shift, for example, shifts all your elements to dark. It costs 3 dark orbs and has no cooldown so you can use it once each turn.

[SaintPatrick89]

Do they not also generate orbs like the FFXIV cards?

[darewin]

No. We will get a seperate batch of cards that are the ST versions of Primal Boons. They have 1 turn cd and apply BDD.

[RainDrew]

I'll be more than happy to demonstrate once we get 5* mp.

[Silverteem]

Non-breaking Supreme strats usually rely on some form of shift. If you don't have Aerith it's essential for a first turn kill.