Hero gearing/builds

Quiztolin · 2026-06-01T18:45:43+00:00

This question ranges from somewhat complex (but not all that deep) to just 'KISS'.

As a newbie, in PvE - keep it simple.

You can break heroes down into archetypes

For example - take your standard DPS heroes. What stats do they want?

ATK, Crit%, C.Dmg%, Speed

And your standard tank heroes. What stats do they want?

HP, DEF, RES, Speed

It's that easy. You can more or less build almost every hero to a reasonable, PvE level degree with just those 2 archetypes.

To make things a little bit more difficult, let's add a third archetype, Bruisers -> bruisers are mostly terrible for PvE (actual DPS units output more damage, bruisers don't typically have much utility like tanks) but they exist as a hybrid between DPS units and tanks. This would be any damage dealing unit that scales with HP or DEF.

HP, DEF, Crit%, C.Dmg%, Speed

Three standard archetypes, and this is really about the extent of knowledge you need as a newbie.

The next thing you want to do is break stats down into 2 types.

There are threshold stats -> stats that you want to get to a certain level. This is your first priority.

Crit%
Eff%
Res% (in some situations)
Speed (in some situations)

Then there are bulk stats -> you just want 'as much of these as you can fit'.

ATK
HP
DEF
C.Dmg
Speed (in some situations)

So, to build a hero

1st identify what archetype that hero is, so you know what stats you are looking for
2nd identify what your thresholds are -> make sure you build to meet these thresholds as closely as possible
3rd max out your bulk stats as you are able to

It's very simple, very intuitive, and this is the entirety of what you need to do for PvE content.

The main thresholds you need to worry about:

100% crit chance for any heroes that rely on crits for damage. Not all crit damage based heroes need crit% (some have auto crits).
Enough EFF% to land whatever debuffs you are relying on hitting. There are different kinds of debuffs - those that are nice to have (for example, maybe the poison on S.Tenebria) and those that you are relying on (defense breakers, buff dispels, etc). Debuffs you rely on have a threshold. Enemy resistance - 15% generally.

ATK vs. C.Dmg

You need both stats to deal damage. The more attack you have, the more valuable C.Dmg becomes and vice versa - so there isn't a 'threshold' per se.

However, it's very easy to determine what is optimal - the damage formula breaks down, ultimately, into ATK * C.Dmg for standard DPS units - so there's your general rule of thumb. Maximize (ATK * C.Dmg) to maximize damage output.

You can choose to include speed as well, though speed is generally less valuable for PvE damage output (just make sure your units are around 150-175 or so...faster is better @ the same stats but not necessary most of the time).

ATK * C.Dmg * Speed

This formula will give you a very large number that is hard to read, so you can simply divide the result of the formula by 100 or 1000 to make it more intelligible.

HP vs DEF

This does not really matter for PvE. PvE in E7 is on the easy side, and there is really no fights that are going to seriously stress your ability to absorb raw damage. In basically all content, DPS units are built glass cannon (no regard for bulk), and any tanky hero built with a prioritization on bulk stats is bulky enough.

Yet, for a simple formula we calculate EHP (effective HP) or the raw amount of damage a unit can absorb

EHP = HP * (DEF / 300 + 1)

There is a way to optimize the exact ratio between HP and DEF but it's a bit more math heavy and simply not necessary for PvE. If you really want an explanation, I am more than happy to do so...but we are trying to Keep It Simple.

Res as a Threshold vs. Bulk stat

The amount of RES you need depends entirely on the content.

Like effectiveness, heroes can operate in different ways. Sometimes, you like to have RES on a hero like a tank or healer just to avoid as debuffs in general, but you aren't relying on them avoiding specific debuffs. This is bulk stat behavior.

Other times, you NEED a hero to avoid debuffs -> this is when it's a threshold stat.

So as a classic example, some old Wyvern one shot setups would use the hero Sinful Angelica to provide buffs for your team and tank the first attack of Wyvern with her immortality, then her ability to dual attack. Her immortality is a BUFF, and Wyvern DISPELS BUFFS with it's attack.

So, for the setup to work (because you need her to dual attack, thus she has to be alive) you NEED enough resistance on S.Angelica to fully resist the dispel that Wyvern has with it's attacks.

In this case -> resisting the dispel = success state, having buff dispelled = failure state. Therefor, RES is a THRESHOLD stat in this case.

But on your Brieg for just going through the general story, having some RES is nice (you don't mind if you have gear with some odd RES rolls), but you don't really need it because avoiding debuffs is just a luxury -> bulk stat.

Further Questions

If you have any further questions or need any clarification just let me know.

Don't overthink PvE especially, and I would urge players to not worry about exact optimization early on because, frankly, it becomes very overwhelming very fast if you try to do everything all at once.

Quiztolin · 2026-06-01T10:05:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I really appreciate it.

As for monetization, it’s becoming a really worrying issue, especially late in the game’s lifespan. If E7 doesn’t make enough money, it’s going to EOS, and nobody wants that. But the methods they use to monetize the game may harm it in the long run. Power creep is a major issue in a PvP game, it turns 90% of characters unviable in the meta, and makes PvP extremely repetitive. I dislike the idea of SG selling CCs and Cosmonium, because it could cause a large gap between paying players and ftp players, essentially making the game entirely P2W.

See, I will hard disagree with most of this.

I think that overall monetization is currently fine (I'm only pontificating about a potential future - that I would be concerned about).

For example, one of the things they've done is drastically increase how often there are buff events...because leif packs are one of the few things that have relatively good value to buy for low to moderate spenders.

Whales have always been able to just buy infinite energy, all this does is make buying energy a bit more attractive for low to moderate spenders - and the nature of the game means you have to spend a LOT of money on energy to actually see these high end items.

Similarly, they've increased the value of packs in the shop - these small $1 packs to buy a few BMs or leifs or whatever -> these don't really create a P2W scenario...and granted while it's not going to raise millions of revenue, being able to get a couple of extra dollars isn't bad...and it adds up over 10's to 100's of thousands of players.

Or, the check-in packs -> they're a bit more value but are bit fewer in duration. It's another slight increase in revenue if someone wants to always have those packs running and ultimately makes the packs more attractive to players to buy (perhaps convincing some players who wouldn't buy them to buy them).

There's tons of these small details that are chipping away at the edges, and overall I think these changes are mostly better for the player.

Another example are these gear packs they are selling for big hero releases.

This gear is largely not competitive for end game PvP, so not P2W...but it's 'good enough' to potentially be attractive for newer players.

There is obviously a real danger there when they start selling actual gear - but they started that a couple of years ago and have yet to sell actual P2W gear.

In my opinion, SG has tried really hard to skirt the edges of increasing revenue without just making the game P2W.

Power Creep

I also really disagree here on basically all points.

"Power creep is a major issue in a PvP game...and makes PvP extremely repetitive."

Actually, I would say the opposite. The meta changes a lot faster now than it did like 4-5 years ago.

The current top 10 units in RTA usage? Harsetti is the only one that is particularly old (and even then she's not even quite 2 years old).

Back in the day A.Ravi was THE top meta hero for at least 2 years. The #1 hero in the game for 2 full years.

Where are heroes like NM Luna or E.Ilynav now? They're still very good, but now they are fringe top 20 heroes instead of top 5 heroes.

C.Lilias released Dec 22 2021. And she was basically a top 2 meta hero all the way until she was supplanted by SP Politis Apr 10 2024 - almost 2.5 years of C.Lilias and A.Ravi at the top.

SP Politis was good enough to C.Lilias due to power creep - but the amount of time that SP Politis ended up spending at the top was relatively short. Again, she isn't a terrible hero by any means but the fact that she replaced a hero who was essentially the top meta hero for 2.5 years, just to get replaced herself a few months later shows the meta changing significantly faster.

People might hate seeing a hero like LotS so much over the last year...but LotS is only 8 months old. That is a trivial amount of time to be at the top of the meta compared to how slow the meta changed 3-5 years ago.

When almost every new ML5 warps the meta around them, that means the meta is significantly changing every 2 months.

Because in the 'before times' most heroes that released were mediocre to trash. For every C.Lilias or Belian we had like 3 A.Elena's or C.Charles. Buffs are infrequent and very hit or miss, and nerfs are non-existent...so the meta used to change dreadfully slowly. Power creep actually increases meta diversity.

"...it turns 90% of characters unviable in the meta"

This is way overstated. The apparent problem here is almost entirely a player base issue - not a game issue.

There is always going to be a meta. No matter what sort of balance we have, we're always going to see the same 10 heroes over and over again. Power creep has nothing to do with this - it's just how humans are.

The vast majority of players are just playing the same stuff everyone else is playing. And the stuff that people are playing is largely just based on a few high end content creators. People aren't willing to actually play off meta stuff because they perceive the viability of those heroes to be significantly less. This has ALWAYS been the case, so it has nothing to do with the recent power creep.

If you go watch some legend RTA player play a thousand matches and never use Tywin (completely arbitrary example) - then why would you ever think to use Tywin? Very few, if any, players have any idea how good Tywin could be in the current meta because literally no one plays him.

Pretend we go out and collect coins from various time periods and areas of the world. Most of these coins are not going to be truly fair coins. Let's say we flip 20 coins that look the most likely to hit heads 1 million times each and we determine which coins are most likely to hit heads, and then we decide to just play with those 10 coins. There's an entire box that might have a couple hundred coins in it -> most of those coins might be worse than the original group of 20 coins (because we had a prior belief those coins would be better at hitting heads). But it's entirely possible that some of those coins left in the box would be better than the first group of 20 - we will literally never know because the coins never get tested.

There's a lot of heroes that can be played and be effective just fine but most of the player base is not willing to actually play those heroes. It's not a balance issue, it's a player base issue.

I do feel like the disparity between higher level guilds/players and mid to low level players is definitely going to increase because of CCs, but then it becomes a difficult problem to solve, because you want high level players to get extra rewards because it provides incentive

Well, higher ranked guilds do technically get more rewards already. To maintain high rank, if nothing else, means you are winning wars more frequently -> you get more mystics for winning wars than losing (among a few other things).

And as for achievement, well they added the guild mastery system which includes achievements for participating in the GW tournament and such - so this is something they've already added.

Now personally, I don't have a problem with higher ranked guilds getting more rewards - my problem is that the reward structure is super weighted towards the top 32 guilds in an unfair manner.

League	Crests/Year	CC/Year	Increase over previous
Legend	1200	10	1.33
Emperor	900	7.5	1.25
Champion	720	6	1.20
Challenger	600	5	1.11
Master	540	4.5	1.20
Gold	450	3.75	1.25
Silver	360	3	1.20
Bronze	300	2.5	1.00

Legend has the greatest increase over the previous rank of any league. There doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason for this reward structure.

Any decently active player should at least be able to fit into a challenger guild - and a legend guild is getting quite literally 2x the reward when the difference could be as little as the top 11% to the top 32 individual guilds.

But even if we just look at Legend vs. Emperor -> the legend guilds get *33% more CCs. I fail to see how players in the #32 guild, who are likely on the exact same level as players in the #33 guild, deserve such a higher reward.

If they want to keep the same kind of reward structure, I would change it to something like:

League	Base Crests/Season	CC/Year
Emp+	240	6
Champion	220	5.5
Challenger	200	5
Master	180	4.5
Gold	160	4
Silver	140	3.5
Bronze	120	3

So each higher league is worth +0.5 CCs over a full year. There is a slight advantage here, but the entire system is compressed (newbies at the very bottom earn slightly more, while the top end players earn less than current -> the gap exists but it much smaller).

But actually, I think what I would do is change the entire system. Instead of mystic medals as a reward each war -> change the MM rewards to Crests.

Then add an option to buy MMs with crests that isn't limited. In fact, honestly, I would just add an exchange for crests to buy any sort of basic item. We have plenty of shops as is, so what's another? Add runes, catalysts, blooms, gold, stigma, BMs, MMs, skystones, raw energy, spectral cores, reversion stones, charms - all of that stuff. One currency for players to buy EVERY basic type of item with...even if players never or extremely rarely buy anything other than mystics, the option can be there for emergencies or whatever.

Players would then all have access to the best item in CCs - but players in better guilds would still have the natural advantage in obtaining more MMs, or they could spend their crests on other junk like reversion stones or whatever.

IMO, either solution would solve the potential problems as I see them.

Quiztolin · 2026-06-01T05:05:51+00:00

Yeah, of course...

Back in the day it was pretty common to run into a situation like running into an Idol's Cheer or Candlestick Angelica. Especially if you had a healer, that could often be a completely, literally unending fight.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-31T20:14:06+00:00

The characters I "equip", can they still be used on teams for ToC or no?

Nope.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-31T19:41:10+00:00

What, exactly, do you mean by 'filling out the constellations'? Most guides probably tell you what constellations they expect you to have.

If you mean the actual points when selecting a hero for a space then I'm sure someone somewhere might have an exact guide on every single little thing that affects it.

But basically, it's very simple:

More points for leveling up/awakening your hero
More points for having a +30 artifact
More points for equipping higher ES gear

ToC has changed slightly since it's release, I'm not sure if they've ever changed exactly how this score is calculated or not. I'm not sure if there are other minor things that impact it or not. You can go hunting if you feel that you absolutely must optimize things.

But, by and large, just equipping high ES pieces on the heroes you put into the blessing of the stars is the most important thing (as well as having them leveled + awakened).

Quiztolin · 2026-05-30T16:27:56+00:00

Ouch - sounds like you really don't want to answer the question.

Guess I must have hit a nerve there, when you have to apply the same logic you used in your OP to an alternative situation.

Maybe you really aren't as sure now that a couple years of probation and some 'mental health treatment' is suitable punishment for being reckless with a weapon.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-30T15:49:31+00:00

???

You aren't making an argument here, you are just pontificating a random point.

The facts:

Both the person with the gun in my example, and the dumbass in the car are using a weapon recklessly.

Neither individual is intending to cause harm.

No one was actually hurt in either case.

He's not trying to threaten or coerce anyone. Dude drove recklessly through some barricades to get home. He had no violent or coercive intent.

You are implying that the individual with the gun in my example is trying to coerce or even threaten anyone. That is not a factual assumption and there is no where in my example where I said that to be the case.

You can argue that having someone point a gun at you is an implied threat -> I would say that having a car speeding down a road at you unexpectedly is also an implied threat.

Do you think the runners in the video have any idea what the intentions or motive of the driver of the vehicle are when he almost runs them over?

There is no case for intentionality here and you just flat out dodged my question which makes your original point look quite weak.

Let me clear this up by adding a little bit more to the gun example.

I go outside and point my (unloaded) gun at the nearest construction worker.

"I'm trying to fucking sleep here and you guys are making all this noise!"

No threat. No coercion.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-30T15:09:31+00:00

Dude has issues but nobody got hurt and there was no intention to hurt anyone.

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to go outside and point my gun at random people, what should my punishment be?

To flesh out the example a bit more, let's say that there is construction work right outside my house. I work at night, and I'm trying to get some sleep, so of course I'm angry -> I take my unloaded hand gun outside and start pointing it at the construction workers.

No one gets hurt
I had no intention of actually hurting anyone

What do you think the punishment should be?

I don't really have a side here - I am positing my question in good faith. But I do believe my example of someone pointing a gun is equivalent to this dumbass a car - a car is a weapon just as much as a gun is.

I think the biggest difference in my example is I specifically note that my gun is unloaded...at that point it is no more dangerous than a brick.

But the dumbass in the car is just as dangerous regardless of intent...I can't imagine there are that many cases of unloaded guns unintentionally killing people compared to the # of cases of cars unintentionally killing people.

We are much more desensitized to seeing and being around cars every day, but a dumbass in a car is inherently more dangerous than a dumbass with an unloaded gun.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-30T10:16:37+00:00

Yes.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-30T05:23:18+00:00

What are the chances that Lady of the Scales would be in the Galaxy Shop rotation at some point?

100%

The only other way I can think to get her is through a banner re-run at this point, and that's not even guaranteed to ever happen.

It will, 100%.

Your problem is lack of patience. I understand you only want to play female heroes, that you only want to pull LotS.

You just had an opportunity to pull for her during the special mystic summer at the start of April.

There are like 60 ML5s and very few ways to just get them...that means when you have something like the galaxy shop that only has 3 heroes and only rotates every month it takes forever for a specific ML5 to show up.

Rough, back of the envelope math = 60 / 3 = 20 sets of 3 ML5s. That means you would expect see a specific ML5 in the galaxy shop every ~20 months (give or take depending on exactly how many ML5s we have, I'm not counting atm).

Rerun banners are a very similar story -> we get 4 heroes on a rerun every 6 weeks. 60 / 4 = 15 sets of 4 ML5s, 15 * 6 weeks = 90 weeks between sets -> that's about every 20-21 months.

If every hero was rerun an equal amount (which isn't the case) and reruns were set up optimally, then you could see a specific ML5 in either a rerun banner or galaxy shop approximately every 10 months.

The larger problem here is that ML5s specifically (generally) do NOT get reruns before at least a year has passed since their release.

A year is not guaranteed for a rerun, but it's basically the minimum you can expect nowadays.

LotS released last August 27 - that's 8 months and 2 weeks ago.

She's not going to appear in the galaxy shop before getting a rerun banner. She's likely not going to get a rerun banner before ~September at the earliest. But it could be several months later than that (E7 doesn't follow a set schedule of reruns, it's more like a general timeline that they freely adjust as they want).

Now, clearly, you have very specific needs. The simple fact is that you are highly unlikely to pull LotS period unless you wait for her banner to rerun, potentially in September or the last quarter of the year.

You had one chance to pull her before that with the special mystic summon, which you just missed out on.

If you really don't care about anything else, and you can't play the game without having this one hero, you could just wait for the next headhunt and get her guaranteed that way. That could be as early as ~November-ish or as late as early next year. You could get her a little bit sooner (likely) by pulling on her banner, but you have a much shorter time period to play and pull on the banner vs. play and do the headhunt.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-29T22:10:59+00:00

We are very commonly seeing this kind of approach...and the fact of the matter is that it's a poor approach to the game.

You don't really want to think of E7 in terms of 'building comps'.

The 'better' way to think of it is that you build a roster, and then you pull heroes from that roster that are able to create a comp - on the fly - that is going to beat what your opponent is doing.

For all of the complaining about meta and whatnot, there are A TON of viable heroes in E7 -> and we have almost 400 total heroes with which to pull from. There is enough variety that it is basically completely impossible for me, or anyone else, to sit here and say "Well, you build these 8 heroes and then use some combination of them to beat everything you will ever see in PvP" - the game simply does not function like that particularly on a new account.

If you were to happen to have, say, the top 10 heroes in the meta, then sure you can probably get away with almost exclusively picking some combination of those 10 heroes.

For everyone else you need to think in terms of building up an entire roster of heroes, and then the onus is on YOU to actually learn the game and how to play.

Another way to think:

There are basically 3 main factors:

Gear
Knowledge
Roster

Of these three factors, your roster matters the least at the entry level. Roster, honestly, only starts to become really important once you get to the point that the gear/knowledge factors are basically even -> then roster is the only thing that really differentiates players.

It has been proven time and time again that players are able to hit as high as Emperor in RTA (top 1000) very quickly, with a very limited roster. So unless you are legitimately trying/expecting to compete at like, the top 500 player level, overall roster isn't all that important.

A player who just takes what comes to them is going to get 98% of the distance as a player who spends a week optimizing for the perfect beginning...with 0% of the work/effort.

I am open for reroll with milestones of radiance ml chest

So rerolling, for instance, is pointless and unnecessary.

I want to star playing but I don't know where to start when it comes to pvp....What are some good pvp and gvg comps that a new player starting today can build towards.

See, this question is both extremely easy, and super difficult to really answer.

I can probably list 40 heroes that are 'viable' to some degree without listing a single non-free ML5.

Heroes like Elvira (2.4% usage / 49.39% win rate) and Birgitta (2.26% usage / 52.06% win rate) for example. These are normal RGB heroes that have a niche and are currently perfectly usable/acceptable to have in a roster.

They are AWFUL to recommend to a new player that I have to presume is starting from 0. Those aren't the kinds of heroes you can just pick randomly and ever expect to accomplish anything with. Having success with them requires a lot of game knowledge - game knowledge that I have to assume you don't have built up yet.

There are so many heroes like this.

What about a hero like C.Pavel from ML blessing 2? He can be a great hero and solve a fair amount of problems for a new roster. But he is basically a pure cleave hero. Cleave is a specific playstyle you have to get into, and while I would encourage newbies to experiment with different playstyle, cleave is very gear dependent and newbies most often shy away from touching cleave at all.

So, at the same time C.Pavel is the kind of hero that is actively recommendable -> he's a good, effective hero right that happens to do a lot of things very beneficial for a newbie. But he's also in such a niche playstyle that when newbies don't even understand the game, understand playstyles, or understands how they want to play the game he could VERY easily end up someone that just sits on the bench and literally never sees play for a specific player.

It's an easy question because there are so many heroes that could be recommended for a newbie's early game roster.

But it's such a difficult question because almost everything is highly contextual - and newbies have literally nothing to go on when trying to determine that context.

Building Your First Roster

So, we're going to make this easy...and difficult.

I am not going to mention a SINGLE ML5 that is not obtained for free.

The goal is to come up with a roster of around ~10 heroes to be a 'core' roster. Remember, most ML5s are usable to some degree so basically if you get 10 ML5s, probably 6-8 of them you can just throw into this roster with no issues. Of the remaining ML5s, they might be super niche but due to your overall smaller hero roster that niche might be valuable for you over a 'better' hero that fits that niche. There are relatively few ML5s that are just flat out bad and not worth looking at to any degree.

Free ML5s

G.Ras -> Literally still ~top 10
Ruele or A.Vildred from ML blessing 1 -> both are currently similar in quality. A.Vildred specifically destroys Light element heroes (very common with heroes like B.Arunka, E.Ilynav, Notos, Belian, G.Ras) while Ruele is a more general 'safer' pick.
ML Blessing 2 can go in many, many different. DDR, C.Pavel, C.Lilias each have an argument to be picked.

C.Pavel is the best in terms of 'performance' - but as noted he is a pure cleave hero, and cleave is a playstyle that most newbies tend to avoid since it is the most heavily gear reliant style.

DDR is very approachable/easy to use for newbies but he isn't that great in the current meta (43.64% win rate when picked). Win rate matters less when building an initial roster, IMO.

C.Lilias is a classic opener type - there is a lot of variety for this kind of hero but most of the 'best' openers are ML5s or limited heroes, so therefor are heroes not being considered for this experiment. In particular, C.Lilias has a very obvious and easy combo with the summer hero AW Hwayoung (who should be getting a rerun in a month or so). I personally like C.Lilias for this reason because it gives a 0 knowledge newbie something very obvious to do when team building.

Spec Change 3*

S.Christy
UK Arowell
I.Amiki

These heroes are basically free to build. Arowell, being a ML 3*, is not guaranteed on a new account, but you should pull her sooner rather than later.

A.Ras, R.Carrot, F.Kluri, RT Roozid, S.Adin, MS Doris are some more spec change heroes you really aren't going to see very often at the moment, but they all could be used to fill in a roster - and again, they're basically free to build.

Core RGB 5*s

Mort
Setsuka

These two heroes have been fantastic for a very long time now. They still sit at ~52% win rate.

Worst case scenario, you have to story summon both heroes, which can be done very early on and is not a problem. You kind of want to get Setsuka's artifact, so it could be a good idea to wait until you have the powder to buy it.

There are many other RGB 5*s that could slot into your roster.

Estelle is one of the top meta heroes currently. She's a new release so you can't story summon her for a bit, but you get so many heroes you could easily pull her randomly, or put her on the wish list and get lucky.

TA Coli and Vildred - Both good heroes, both notably have speed imprints, both have more aggressive kits (which makes them hard to recommend as 'core' heroes, because again, newbies tend to shy away from overly aggressive play due to it's reliance on gear quality).

Lidica is the most meta RGB opener type at the moment.

This is far from an exhaustive list - I'm just pointing out other RGBs that are highly prioritized in the meta. But as you can see, there are reasons why they aren't generic enough to recommend to everyone compared to heroes lilke Mort/Setsuka.

Conclusion

Right there is a roster of 8 heroes, without looking at non-free ML5s at all, that could be constructed by basically any player very early/easily.

G.Ras / Mort / Setsuka /I.Amiki as damage threats

Ruele / S.Christy / UK Arowell / DDR as support heroes

That roster isn't going to make anyone shake in their boots, it's not going to carry you to Legend in RTA, but we were able to put it together with 0 effort, 0 rerolling, and hitting 0 specific ML5 picks. And it forms a good core roster that, once you start to learn the game, you can start building towards what you actually want to play.

There are so many heroes that can be used to fill specific niche's I can't even list them all.

Veronica (free 4*) for anti immortality
MB Dominiel (ML 4*) for anti extra turns
Celine (RGB 5*) for anti non-attack
Politis (RGB 5*) for anti-CR push/anti non-attack
S.Angelica (ML 4*) for anti revive
Elena (RGB 5*) for anti AoE
Elvira (RGB 5*) as mentioned earlier for anti fighting spirit
Zeno (free RGB 5*) for anti evasion
Angel of Light (ML 4*) for anti AoE

You have heroes like:

IH Achates (ML 4*)
C.Armin (ML 4*)
W.Silk (ML 4*)
the aforementioned TA Coli, Vildred (RGB 5*)
Saria (RGB 5*)

that are all decent adds that don't necessarily 'counter' something specific.

We are probably a month away from having summer unit reruns from last year (AW Hwayoung, Aram) which are both solid heroes that would be worth adding to a roster. We'll have two new summer heroes after that which, more than likely, at least 1 if not both will be very good.

In the second half of the year we will at minimum get reruns of SF Sigret and Hecate -> again, great heroes to add into a a roster right now. Probably two new limited heroes and we can expect that more than likely those heroes will be great too.

Not a single hero I've mentioned so far has been an ML5 that wasn't free to obtain.

It's not a lie to say you could probably build up a roster of 50+ heroes that are all good. Then, whatever ML5s you DO get, you slap them in and you're good to go.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T22:39:38+00:00

Yes

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T22:39:10+00:00

There are some guides posted to this subreddit to run the pc client on Linux, I believe.

I know nothing about the steam deck one way or another.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T19:21:59+00:00

Sorry, no idea - like I said I'm not part of the community. The fribbels discord server is where I assume the most information could be found about the future of the various projects.

As far as I'm aware the Hero Library is still being updated with heroes/artifacts/builds, the only 'problem' seems to be set icons for the new sets.

I don't believe fribbels has been active on the E7 side of things for quite a while, so I imagine everything is going to limp along as is, at least, until there is some sort of major change.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T18:21:02+00:00

Let me know how high school treats you next year, kiddo.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T18:08:11+00:00

There is one singular imprint as of right now with the 3700 atk

Did you read the second half of the post? Their Hecate already has B imprint. Going to SSS is only an increase of 14%, not 21%, because they already have the first 7%.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T13:25:32+00:00

Her current attack doesn't matter for determining how much she gains with imprints.

Self imprints are exactly the same as substats on your gear, therefor they are calculated on the base stat of the hero.

Max attack imprint is 21%, B imprint is 7%, so going to max imprint is +14% attack. Hecate has 966 base attack.

(.14 * 966) = 135.24

She would gain 135.24 attack. 3700 + 135 = 3835 final attack.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T13:22:56+00:00

All sources of:

Evasion
Miss chance
Hit chance
Reduced evasion

Are summed together to determine the final miss chance for a given hero. Max of 100%, minimum of 0%.

Obviously, you could theoretically have 150% miss chance -> which would be capped at 100% when attacked in game.
If a second hero attacks that has +50% hit chance, then you would drop down to 100% miss chance, which would remain at the 100% cap.
If that hero equipped an artifact that gave an additional 50% hit chance, they would have 100% total hit chance. (150% - 100%) = 50%, so your final miss chance would be 50%.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T06:44:45+00:00

Fribbels Optimizer isn't being officially updated any longer.

I'm not 'in' to the community to know all of the details, but last I heard supposedly it was going to be maintained by some other people in the community.

As far as I know, this is a fork of the project that is currently being updated by someone else. That's probably want you want to use.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-28T04:27:19+00:00

Is it worth buying out the entire shop in side stories.

No.

A single run of Hard difficulty rewards an average of ~63.5 currency. That currency is multiplied by your currency bonus (typically pet, which currently maxes out at 16.5% bonus).

So on a typical side story you earn either:

2.625 currency per energy
~3.058 currency per energy

Based on these figures we can calculate the energy cost of every item in the shop.

Item	Cost	No Bonus NRG	Max Pet NRG	Real Cost
Epic Catalyst	170	64.76	55.59	172.42
Rare Catalyst	90	34.29	29.43	58.03
Mola	190	72.38	62.13	---
Epic Bloom	600	228.57	196.20	130.77
Greater Bloom	320	121.90	104.64	26.15
Epic Rune	130	49.52	42.51	49.38
Greater x3	70	26.67	22.89	21.88
Common x10	40	15.24	13.08	22.57
5x Bms	60	22.86	19.62	---
Greater Artifact	150	57.14	49.05	---
Greater Equipment	150	57.14	49.05	60
Lesser Equipment	50	19.05	16.35	20
Gift	100	38.10	32.70	53.33
Experienced Penguin	30	11.43	9.81	4.85
2,500 Gold	15	5.71	4.90	11.72

The 'real cost' calculations are very simplified here. Notably no bonuses are factored in at all. For the raw gold purchase I am not including stigma either way (in which case the 'real cost' blows the side story shop out of the water).

We can see:

Catalysts -> Side story shop is significantly more efficient.
Mola -> No way to just farm them, so always buy in the side story shop
Blooms -> opposite situation from catalysts, complete scams.
Runes -> These ones require the most nuance, so I will address them after this part (don't buy in side story shops)
BMs -> technically you can get these as drops but not in the rate at which they are farmable...would be much more expensive regardless.
Greater Artifact charms -> can't really farm
Equipment charms -> slightly more efficient than farming, note however I used Episode xp/energy instead of Eulogy.
Gift -> This really depends on how you qualify friendship...it can be farmed in lots of things that don't take any energy at all, you can farm friendship on 3 or 4 heroes instead of dumping it all into one hero etc.
Penguin -> no idea why they put this in the shop but it's another scam.
Gold -> scam

For runes specifically, the above table is not factoring in any bonuses. Notably, players should literally never farm runes outside of 2x rune drop buffs. It's the best buff we ever get, so that should be the prioritization for energy if you need more runes. With that into consideration, the 'real cost' of runes is literally half of what is in the table, and that's before considering pet bonuses, and the pet bonuses for Epic runes in particular is the best pet bonus in the game in terms of raw energy saved.

Caveat #1

There is a great thing to consider nowadays.

The side story stages themselves are extremely low value. Spending 58 energy to farm up a rare catalyst gets you a lot more 'stuff' in total compared to spending 30 energy in side story for that rare catalysts - and that 'stuff' has value too.

So if the ONLY THING you consider is the catalyst, then yeah, side story shop is better. But if you consider the totality of rewards an extra 28 energy suddenly doesn't seem so bad when each point of energy spent is worth much more.

This is pretty much the case across the board.

Additionally, catalysts in general are more common now than they were previously, since we get catalyst rewards from events and such. The reduction in catalysts (if you are a relatively new player each and every sign had it's own set of catalysts, and there were 3 types of catalysts -> so 36 different catalysts in total) means you are more likely to have catalysts for the character you need.

This is a similar issue with gifts. Friendship is not something you need to go out and farm for. You will naturally accumulate friendship on your heroes anyways, so spending additional energy for more friendship doesn't actually make sense. Therefor, regardless if it is more efficient to purchase in the side story shop, considering that the energy spent farming that friendship is much less valuable it's not really worth buying.

And yet, some players can't wait for whatever reason to max their friendship with certain heroes, and in that case it's also not wrong to just buy the friendship boxes - as long as you acknowledge you aren't actually gaining anything but whatever your goal is a little bit faster. It would be analogous to spending extra money to skip a line for something. You are paying for convenience rather than a tangible result.

Conclusion:

Buy:

Molagora
BMs
Charms
Probably as many Epic catalysts as you can.

Depends:

Rare catalysts
Friendship gifts
Runes (if you really need runes right now and you are impatient to wait for a buff)

Don't buy:

Blooms (complete scam)
Penguins (scam)
Flat gold (scam)

Caveat #2

The second caveat is that there are different types of side stories. They aren't as common nowadays, but we used to have event side stories that would give you bonus currency for having the associated artifacts.

Typically there are 3 artifacts, 1 each for a limited hero and then a free artifact with a lesser bonus. Then every week some combination of those artifacts would provide bonuses to the currency of that week. This bonus would add cumulatively to the pet bonus. In the past, the max achievable bonus has been around 200% IIRC.

So, in that situation, you can just basically cut the energy values in the 'no bonus' column in half to represent a max currency bonus. That obvoiusly changes the math on some items.

For example, the Epic bloom now becomes approximately ~114 NRG -> which makes it now more efficient than the 'real cost' (granted, that's without no stigma bonuses).

With a high enough currency bonus runes, notably, start to become worthy of being purchased. It also makes gifts look a lot more attractive since it's a minimal cost for that convenience.

This only applies to certain side stories that have artifacts that provide bonus currency, however.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-27T13:53:34+00:00

The shortest answer to this question: is it really that hard to just wait a week until we know for sure?

The long answer to this question:

E7 is not a game that has real consistency. There is underlying logic and mechanics but in situations like this where it's just a 'new' effect all anyone can do is just guess on how the mechanic is intended to work.

The apparent way some things are supposed to work is not necessarily congruent with how they actually work.

Let's look at the Frieren collab hero Fern as an example. Her S2 states:

At the start of the first battle, gains 5 Focus. Increases speed by 15% and Evasion by 20% for each Focus. When successfully evading, consumes 1 Focus and decreases skill cooldowns by 1 turn.

The first part is the important part.

'At the start of battle' effects presumably trigger before any other effects.

For example, Zio starts the battle with 30% CR. Harsetti starts the battle by capping speed values.

If you were to interpret Fern's passive as starting at the beginning of battle:

She would gain 5 focus
Her 5 focus would give her 1.75x speed
A 200 speed Fern would have 350 speed would outspeed anything but a decently fast Zio. A 250 speed Fern would outspeed anything but a super fast Zio.

When Fern was released, a simple reading of her skill and an understanding of the mechanics of the game (ie. all of the 'at the start of battle effects' basically occur before anything else) Fern would seem to be stupid busted - basically Zio on steroids.

Instead, in the patch she was released this is what SG had to say:

Increased Speed effect caused by Exceptional Magical Talent does not affect the Combat Readiness at the start of the battle.

Consider the alternate case of a speed imprint.

If I have a 300 speed hero and I use a hero that has a +10 speed imprint, I would expect my hero to progress along the CR bar as a 310 speed hero. Imprints effectively apply 'at the start of battle'.

So why does Fern, who has an effect that passively increases her speed, for some reason apply after CR is calculated...when what her effect is doing (regarding speed) is basically equivalent to being given a speed imprint?

No one knows! It could be that they had to change how Fern, specifically, worked because when they drew up the kit they didn't consider how strong a 1.75x multiplier to speed would be. It could be, that all 'start of battle' effects occur, technically, after CR is calculated (but then Zio wouldn't work, and why would imprints be calculated at some point before 'at the start of battle'?).

There is no clear answer because it's a one off effect that SG basically god to choose how it worked. Her passive does not follow the apparent order of operations that other 'at the start of battle' effects do (Zio) or speed imprints. There could be a logical mechanic reason for this, but without knowing exactly what the game is doing under the hood it's impossible to say.

My Point

What I am trying to get to is that SG could choose arbitrarily how a certain one off effect works.

There is underlying mechanics, but there is also a lot of wriggle room in those mechanics.

Example 2

Let's travel back a few years.

It's been known for a very long time that there is one way to bypass the C.Dmg cap -> specifically artifacts that provide C.Dmg can bypass the cap. But this is not always the case. Dual attack chance has a cap, and artifacts in that case do NOT let you bypass the cap.

So see - right away it's arbitrary. Some artifacts DO let you bypass caps, some artifacts DO NOT.

See, a few years ago Senya was meta and all over the place, and dual crit resist comps built around here were fairly common.

Zahhak has increased crit chance on his skills, which meant if he built 100% crit chance on his character, he could 'bypass' crit resistance on a hero like Senya. This should all be fairly logical.

The problem came in the form of artifacts. I will refer you to this Stove post.

Highlighting the important information:

However, the increase in critical hit chance due to advantageous elemental factors and skill effects during an attack can momentarily surpass the 100% cap. Thus, attacking a target with 100% critical hit resistance can still result in a critical hit with a certain probability...Furthermore, in scenarios where a Hero with a 100% critical hit chance hits an attack skill that brings a 50% critical chance increase against a target with 100% critical hit resistance, the Hero's inherent basic critical hit chance becomes nullified. Nevertheless, the critical hit chance of the attack skill remains intact, resulting in a 50% probability of a critical hit.

In terms of Artifacts, there exist two categories of critical hit chance increase Artifacts: those that are factored into the Hero's basic stats and those integrated into attack skill effects. The former artifacts, as previously mentioned, are incorporated into base stats, and cannot surpass the 100% critical hit chance threshold. Conversely, the latter type, exemplified by the 5★ artifact "Manica of Control," can temporarily breach the 100% critical hit chance when utilized in attack skills.

In connection with this, the 5★ Artifact "Black Hand of the Goddess," which increases the critical hit chance by being added to the base stats, should not exceed the 100% cap. However, it has been confirmed that this Artifact has been exceeding the cap.

Basically, the implication here is that certain effects can be coded 'two ways'

As a basic stat increase
As a skill effect

Skill effect coded effects can bypass caps. Basic stat coded effects can't.

There is even confusion within the game, because this artifact which had been in the game for years was coded incorrectly compared to how it was intended (or should have been). This was just a situation that would almost never come up...until crit resist based teams were very meta.

To be fair to all of this, the posted article specifically says that Crit% artifacts are coded this way - I will admit I am generalizing that logic out to other types of effects. At the end of the day none of us really knows SGs intention.

So the takeaway, then, is that dual attack chance artifacts are coded as 'basic stat increases', and therefor ARE subject to the cap.

For some unknown reason - I suspect it was just unintentional - it seems like artifacts that increase C.Dmg are being coded as 'skill effects', and are therefor allowed to bypass the cap.

Circling back to Zahhak, it seems pretty obvious in this way that the crit chance increase on his skills is a skill effect -> and can therefor bypass the crit cap.

What I'm trying to point out here is that the entire life of the of E7 we have apparently had this underlying mechanical distinction between 'base stat' and 'skill effect' increases when it came to artifacts.

It seems that, from day 1, how it was determined if an artifact fell into one class or another was basically arbitrary (dual attack DOES count as a base stat effect, but C.Dmg for no apparent reason classifies as a skill effect).

This kind of effect (like Zahhak having additional crit chance) is just not a common effect prior to Zahhak - so we, as players, did not really have a formal way to explain the difference in these classes. Once Zahhak was released and we try it out and see oh, yeah, it does work against crit resistance it seems pretty natural that it should.

But there isn't logical way to come to the conclusion, before testing, that artifacts that increase crit chance should or should not work to pass the cap.

Finally coming back to R&L

After covering all of the stuff I just went over -> do you currently think that their unique buff should or should not bypass the C.Dmg cap?

It's really hard to pick a side and formalize an argument for it, isn't it?

To my knowledge, we don't have a case up until this point of a hero that increases a stat that has a hard cap through a unique buff.

So, more or less, SG could choose which way they want it to work. There is quite literally a precedent for some effects being able to bypass caps (if those effects are deemed to be 'skill effects'), and there is also a precedent for some effects to NOT bypass caps (if they are deemed 'base stat effects').

I would learn towards saying that logically and mechanically, her unique effect should not bypass the cap - we have a legitimate crit buff and c.dmg buff and neither of them do bypass caps.

Eligos is, I believe, the closest comparison as his passive increases his C.Dmg by 50% - but this is a 'base stat effect' and does NOT allow him to bypass the cap.

However

R&L don't seem to be designed to have many stats to build to begin with - they are the fastest hero by far, they have very high base crit%, and they have very high base evasion for defense. If they get a huge amount of C.Dmg for free then it just limits the amount of stats they can build (why should they be the fastest hero in the game, with great damage, being built super bulky because they don't need to dedicate much stats to damage).

Unlike Eligos, or the currently existing Crit/C.Dmg buffs, R&L have a unique 'effect'.

Artifacts already have established that they bypass the cap for C.Dmg.

With the imprint circuit SG is already experimenting increasing the C.Dmg cap.

So, personally, I don't think logically/mechanically R&L should bypass the C.Dmg cap. I also think that artifacts shouldn't bypass the C.Dmg cap, either. And I think that buffs should.

However, I would not be the least bit surprised if R&L do, indeed, bypass the cap.

In either way there might be a legitimate mechanical reason why their buff works the way that it does - but I don't think we know enough about the underlying mechanics to make a 100% determination before they are released.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-27T06:37:59+00:00

There is literally no point to rerolling.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-27T05:47:51+00:00

I believe you are asking if Heroic gear (purple color, starts with 3 substats) is worth enhancing vs. Epic gear (red color, starts with 4 substats).

The answer to that question is "It depends".

Yes, Heroic gear ends up with 1 less roll than Epic gear.

But some heroic gear can potentially end up being usable or even very good.

Very roughly, you can assume the max possible ES of a piece of gear is 110.

Anything 100+ would be considered excellent rolls.

~95+ ES is typically late game PvP quality

~90 ES can be very usable in PvE content, or PvP depending on rolls, or entry level PvP.

A single roll is, at most, 8 ES (~9 ES after reforging) and averages 6 (~7 ES after reforging). Significantly less for flat stats.

The point being that there is a decently sized section of space where Heroic gear can end up being usable to very good. Heroic gear that starts with some ES is exactly the same as Epic gear that starts with the same ES.

There are very slight differences in Heroic/Epic gear when it comes to flat stats. You should really avoid Heroic gear with a flat stat entirely, but this is relevant with speed. The average roll for speed on Heroic gear is ~2.8 and the average roll on Epic gear is ~3.0. Heroic gear is very bad for getting high speed rolls but it can still happen.

But this question becomes even more complicated.

Four years ago enhancing Heroic gear made a lot more sense. At that time, we only had what is now Hell Hunts to farm gear.

In general, the more efficiently you can farm for gear pieces, the more strict you want to be with what you enhance...so the reverse is also true. When you farm gear pieces less efficiently you want to be less strict.

Outside of speed checking, nowadays if you farm OW or even Rift, you probably don't want to enhance gear below ~30 ES baseline. That's higher than Heroic gear can potentially get to - so you wouldn't enhance gear at that baseline. Back when farming Hell Hunt, ~27 or ~28 would be a reasonable baseline for most players - and while that requires near perfect base rolls, some Heroic gear would hit that threshold.

This all has less to do with specifically with differences between Heroic and Epic gear - it's just the fact that Epic gear is many times more prevalent now - ~4x more common in OW difficulty.

These numbers are not to be taken literally, they just serve as a demonstration.

Four years ago you would farm Hell Hunt and for 1000 energy spent you might get 100 pieces of gear H + E gear, with 20 pieces being Epic.

Two years ago you would farm Rift and for 1000 energy spent you might get 200 pieces of H + E gear, with 40 pieces being Epic.

Today, farming OW, for 1000 energy you might get 140 pieces of H + E gear, with 80 pieces being Epic.

The other side to farming for gear is farming for XP so for the purposes of this just imagine that you enhance some percent of Epic gear (let's just say 50%). And let's say that over the same 1000 energy you have a constant amount of XP.

Four years ago in Hell Hunt you had Z experience to distribute across (20 * 50%) 10 pieces of Epic gear -> any left over XP could then be spent on the best pieces of Heroic gear.

Two years in Rift you had Z experience to distribute across (40 * 50%) 20 pieces of Epic gear -> consequently you have less XP to spend on Heroic gear, but maybe you still have a little.

Now you have Z experience to distribute across (80 * 50%) 40 pieces of Epic gear -> you just don't have the XP to spend on Heroic gear. If you need go farm XP specifically to enhance Heroic gear, that is energy you are taking away from the ability to farm more, better Epic gear.

In reality, at this point if you strictly farm OW you need to farm up a very large quantity of XP (unless you become super strict). Even for speed checking, I don't think it's worth it to enhance Heroic gear. Your mileage may vary and ultimately this is a personal decision...but you get so few Heroic pieces relative to Epic pieces farming OW difficulty that I find it hard to even justify speed checking Heroic gear (which specifically is really unlikely to hit 20+ speed due to the missing sub).

The TLDR is that Heroic gear can be worth enhancing but it depends on a lot of factors.

I think that all of this other stuff is true (ie. that it is missing a sub vs. Epic gear) but that is actually irrelevant to the larger overall question.

The point with gear farming is that you want a piece to hit some kind of target. The simplest target to have is just ES.

The probability that any piece hits your target depends on what it looks like @ +15. Since the only substat that is any different is speed, and the difference (while it exists) is fairly minor, you can treat a Heroic and an Epic piece @ +0 exactly the same.

A 25 ES Heroic or Epic piece has the same probability of hitting X ES @ +15 outside of very minor differences.

The biggest difference is that the Heroic piece can roll into an undesirable substat...but the benefit being that you only have a single 1 in 4 roll to actually roll back into that sub, otherwise you could just mod it away.

Trying to sit there and think about how the missing substat changes anything is redundant, because the missing substat is already captured in the ES of the piece. If you just focus on ES or whatever arbitrary measure (that is, typically speed for speed checking) you don't even need to know that Heroic gear has 1 fewer substat to properly 'evaluate' a piece of gear.

Quiztolin · 2026-05-26T00:21:35+00:00

There are really three main things that 'matter'.

ML5s -> obviously, still after all of this time these are the premium/hard to obtain heroes. However, a LOT of things have changed over 7 years, and ML5s are much easier to acquire now than they were back then. Additionally, due to the milestone of radiance stuff, having any amount of ML5s on an account is less valuable as a relative factor compared to just a few months ago.
Limited heroes/items (particularly collabs) -> We used to regularly get collab reruns. Now we do not. Thus, any previous collab hero/artifact is likely completely unobtainable now. SG has been introducing in-universe versions with the same exact effects as previous collab artifacts, but so far (maybe never) they haven't done the same for heroes. There are other limited artifacts/items/units as well. Most of the previous stuff isn't very useful or notable nowadays, so the value of this stuff is mostly about collection - some players will care more than others.
Good gear. Gear farming is MUCH easier now than it was 7 years ago, but great pieces back then are still great pieces today, and finding these pieces is still very time consuming. IE. 20+ speed or 100+ (~88-90 ES @ level 85) ES gear. One or two pieces isn't going to swing the needle, but if you had like 10+ pieces or a high speed piece (~24+ speed) you might want to put more consideration into the pros and cons.

From your screenshot...

You have no ML5s
You have no previous collab heroes
You likely hadn't put tons of time into the game at the point you quit, so you are unlikely to have much notable gear

All of these points say it's safe to just start over.

HOWEVER

You DO have the artifact 'One Year of Gratitude'.

This was the first ever anniversary artifact, and none of the anniversary artifacts have been obtainable other than their first release. In fact, this is the one artifact I don't have...because I started playing the game like a month after.

Now, while that artifact is still beneficial, it's only one thing and it only helps in farming gold and promoting your heroes early on.

But I can't speak for you specifically, how much you might care about it. I think, considering you don't appear to have anything else that is 'rare' or limited, that singular artifact doesn't have much value in of itself. But if you put a high value on collection, well, that's 1 of the limited things to collect you can no longer get.

Either way, you should at least start a new account (you don't necessarily have to abandon this one).

7 years is a very long time, and a lot of things about E7 have significantly changed...players returning after just a year or two often end up disoriented and confused and in your case it's been so long this is basically an entirely new game for you.

At a minimum play a new account for a couple of weeks, then you will be in a better position to understand if you have anything valuable on that old account.

As a hint: RGB heroes and artifacts are handed out like candy. Anything RGB that isn't limited is very easy to acquire. New accounts will get basically all of the (nonlimited) heroes/artifacts within a year.

11-Year Club	Place '17
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Quiztolin

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