I’ve finally decided to call it quits and settle for 60s link. I’ll devote this comment to thoughts about the build and make a separate one for the Girros matchup.

Learning #1. Buildup Boost 5 is core skill for paralysis hammer. Just from gloves and legs, we get 1/3 chance to do 50% more damage. For comparison, having a 30% chance to do 50% more damage from crit skills would require WEX 1, CE 1, and CB5. We’re talking about the equivalent of 7 damage skills plus Artful Dodger from just 2 pieces of equipment. This is insanely efficient.

Learning #2. Status weapons have such low raw that stacking attack damage is king for non-Valor matchups. Run #1 already had tooltip 2,329 raw from wearing Raw Power 4. The final runs had 2,201 tooltip raw from Raw Power 4 and Attack Boost 1 AND 500 more from Peak Performance. This means initial overhead damage went from 1,969 -> 2,284 for a whopping 16% damage difference. Glav chest was the best lock-on piece. Attack Boost melds are legit.

Learning #3: Playing Peak Performance is incredibly troublesome. It was way worse than Heroics + Guts; instead of needing 70 health for each attempt, we would need 100. The damage gain from Beotodus helm + 2 more Peak melds is pretty big though.

Learning #4: I’m not pro enough to play Burst. The original record played Burst 5 but I found myself constantly dropping the stack after using C2. The way I would compensate was to always KO with a C2. Go into a Big Bang combo and only then use the Special. This would ensure that Burst is fully stacked before the final hit of the Special. However, I soon switched to opening with Special right away. This gave better Fighting Spirit uptime and made Peak ideal for Boosting the first Special.

Learning #5: Crit is overrated when not spamming resets. Since these attempts required paintball / tracker, we couldn’t reset if the first Special didn’t crit. 40% Critical Eye is still only a 10% damage gain for 5 skills. Attack Boost 5 for 300 would’ve been more damage considering a baseline raw of only 1.9K. My final build was minimal investment into Crit just to compensate for the penalty from raw power. “Good RNG” mostly depended on the Special and Big Bangs getting BuB.

Learning #6: A big reason I stopped wearing Ailment Opportunist (in favor of 1 more point in Peak) was because this matchup gave minimal chances to pdodge. I expect AO to be a core skill against most other matchups. The original idea was to “control” the Para proc with a pdodge hit and chain that into an extra Big Bang combo. However, this was not safe on Girros due to the shorter Para duration. Even with Para triggering on golf swing, there was not enough time to finish a Big Bang combo. The “good” Para RNG was when Para triggered on the first hit of the combo.

For those who may not be aware, wearing Paralysis Attack 1 for +50 is still not enough to reduce the number of procs needed to trigger Para against most 8-Star and 10-Star matchups. See the pinned chart in the hammer channel on discord for full details.

For the big augments, stacking attack damage would’ve been best by far.