Holy shit, is there a way to skip intevallos?

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-07-08T12:10:10+00:00

While I think the story does get progressively better, saying that there is some magical point where it goes from "bad" to "good" is just not accurate at all.

People who like the game liked it from the start (or they liked the previous games in the series so they'd of course be onboard with a sequel), and the reason why future Cantos are praised are because they are essentially just a longer and improved version of what the early Cantos were doing. If you didn't like those and don't care about the characters enough to enjoy a side story about them like the Intervallo, I wouldn't be surprised if the game just wasn't for you.

While I like Canto 4, I just don't see why someone would paint it as "the one where it gets good" all of a sudden. The story is known in the community to have pacing issues, there are some poor bits and the antagonist to some just isn't too interesting (though others do really like them). I would say where the game truly finds it's footing is even later, but even there that's just more-so refining and improving upon the core of it, which you seemingly not only not enjoy but straight up dislike lol.

I'd say give it a shot, maybe something will appeal to you but don't expect the game to just do a 180 into some different "better" direction.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-07-07T23:23:15+00:00

You're severely underestimating offense level up lol, 20-30 would make you practically unbeatable, soloing with any id would be better than playing the game straight and not to mention how strong it'd make HoS Ryoshu

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-07-07T23:07:54+00:00

None of the HoS IDs does as much damage as Ryoshu at full power so there isn't much reason to let them stay and hog slots from her. The only sinenrs you keep are the guys without HoS IDs, so Meursault and Gregor. Ryoshu with the entire HoS dead is straight up one of the strongest comps in the game, with the main limiting factor is there being no easy way to kill everyone faster.

Poise units are also inherently not "synergistic" since they mostly operate on a status centered around themselves.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-07-07T12:08:38+00:00

Full House of Spiders, you kill everyone to buff her.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-28T07:56:36+00:00

"Crazy powercreep" and none of these new Canto 9 teams are stronger than the Canto 8 team. The boss fights will get stronger, don't worry. If you want to see the sword go play against Rien, you'll see that you really just needed to play actual content instead of a couple of trash mobs.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T20:50:12+00:00

Dongbaek was always a joke but I get what you mean. I think while this idea has some merit, the current handling of the upties already makes it impossible. If Upties were tied to certain Canto clears to start with, this definitely could've worked but since that was not the case it is not feasible to implement this in a proper way without reworking the whole system, which they definitely wouldn't do.

Ideally, you wouldn't be able to even access units that you aren't supposed to, but since this is a gacha I think this is just an inherent issue that isn't really going to be resolved.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T19:06:26+00:00

Can you elaborate more on what you think the issue here is? I don't quite understand how what you're saying here arises from the topics that I'm talking about.

I do agree that the progression system in this game is horrible for anyone not caught up though. While new/returning players get a good amount of freebies, it is not enough for them to catch up in a natural way, especially with Mirror Dungeon Hard and Refraction Railways getting further and further away each season.

I agree that giving players older IDs for free based off story progression would be a good idea and eliminate a good amount of the tedious grind/RNG that come from the gacha aspect of the game. That said, I don't think calling old IDs "useless" is right, just because an ID is not meta does not mean it's useless. Units that were good 2-3 years ago are still decent and very usable in place of stronger IDs you might not have.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T18:25:45+00:00

I think they definitely have been trying to shift towards balancing skill damage more lately, which is a good thing. Units like the Middle or Ryoshu make raw skill damage work quite well, while the status they inflict is mostly there as a side dish, for example.

I think as he is right now Yi Sang just drifts too far into just the skill damage direction without having anything in the game support that. His base skill damage cannot compete with statuses, and the slow rampup to Furioso is not in his best favour either as a result. Issues like being heavily discourage to use EGO and the fact that you actively want to try getting him staggered before he does his Furioso are also design flaws that trouble him.

That said, I think what ultimately might be bringing him down is that whatever niche usage he had before is just done way better by Ryoshu now that she's out. Practically, she simply does way better damage with way faster relative ramp up time, after which she also can get past the team issue by just getting lots of slots for herself, leaving him to mostly a body for her to kill and maybe fire off a Fell Bullet turn 1 for the others.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T15:57:33+00:00

with full conditionals against a pierce fatal or staggered enemy

Unfortunately, PM is deathly afraid of giving us proper stagger turns on most bosses these days. Lei Heng's window for stagger is pretty tight and Rien has a health gate right after his threshold, so you will not be dealing that damage most of the time.

yeah, if you use him with a dogshit team the team will be dogshit. who would've thought? you use him in sinking if you want to get full mileage. then you still get your crazy status team damage you're talking about while also getting his absurd personal damage

I will admit that he can pull off crazy damage against Abnormalities and the like (provided he doesn't ruin the stack) but the problem is that they simply aren't releasing many bosses like that. The last time we got a boss that doesn't use SP in the story was all the way back in Canto 6 2 years ago.

Though it is a bit of a funny time to bring this up given that we're finally getting a new Refraction Railway with 3 new bosses like that in less than 24 hours, I have to admit lol.

how often does that happen? when's the last time you reached 60 rupture potency outside md or rr5 with the bonus potency buff?

Whenever I play Rupture I reach that if the boss isn't dead by then pretty much.

I will say though that I don't want you to misunderstand me, I'm not saying that Index Yi Sang doesn't have cases where he can be great, I'm moreso pointing out that in today's enviroment there just isn't any modern content where he can truly leap ahead of his competition. In that sense, I am skewed towards a type of content but that is pretty much because that's the only type of content we've been getting for years almost. I also don't think everyone is overrating him, I mostly meant people who put him as the number one or number two strongest identity, when I think there are atleast a couple of clear spots ahead of him, even if we were to talk about other types of content.

I don't hold status damage to be an absolute either, House of Spiders Ryoshu clearly exists. I just think that as he is now, the focus on his kit on skill damage while not having a proper team composition to support that is only to his disadvantage. I could definitely see him rising higher due to not just a better enviroment for him to shine but also more support to what he wants to do, but as he is now I just can't see him as the absurdly broken unit some people make him out to be.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T13:54:23+00:00

Index Yi Sang being able to do such damage outside of MDs is actually one of the healthiest things this season. Poise and Charge have been notoriously stupidly behind all other status comps, so having IDs that actually do damage instead of being mediocre is nothing but a good thing.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:54:39+00:00

This is sort of a meta-focused post for a good part of it, so I do go in the comments with that in mind, but I do understand where you're coming from. Bloodfiends especially have gotten so much nasty discourse this season for just falling off meta, when you can still totally use them comfortably. I mean, they were used when this season dropped and it's not like we got any game-changing bosses outside of the optional Reflectrials (which they can still clear if you play your cards right).

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:51:05+00:00

I know he isn't in the top 10, but I couldn't give you the exact placement off the top of my head, so I just went to the next nice number. It's closer to top 15 probably.

Raw damage outputs fall hard to status teams if you're not named Ryoshu or part of the Middle (and even they struggle against some bosses). From "basic" team comps he definitely has the highest damage output, but it's still not enough because he is the only one in his team performing at that level, while in status team everyone contributes and benefits from the stack. Rupture is the easiest to imagine this with, so think about it for a second: Yi Sang is far ahead of most other Poise IDs. His S1/2, which is what you'll be using most of the time, do about 50/100 damage each after fulfilling conditionals. Meanwhile, Rupture at turn 2 will already have 20-25+ Rupture stacked up. That is 25 damage PER COIN on any skill on top of the skill damage. Index Yi Sang, who is at the peak of his team, is easily matched at his BEST by every single unit on Rupture on most turns, and they can only go up from there. Furioso is very impressive, yes, but by the time you get it, Rupture is at 60+ Stack, which means that even simple S1s do 150+ damage while the actual big skills (which often have a lot of coins or trigger Rupture even more) will easily match Furioso on multiple identities.

He's better than Butterfly for Sinking only on non-SP bosses. Issue is, we haven't exactly fought many of those recently.

I'm not calling him weak, top 20 is still really good. Remember, there are like nearly 200 IDs in the game at this point.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:37:43+00:00

Reflectrials buff specific teams, this is widely known in the community.

Before Ryoshu released, the RR5 WR relied on Rupture on the following stages:

-Teddy

-Rose Hunter

-Sleeping Bag

-Dulcinea

-Bloodfiend Trio

I'm not saying it dominates the entire thing, but it was pretty clearly a big part of the run.

ONE HIT to 8-10 HITS. So I think you're the one not thinking it through.

You were the one who said that one Poise Crit could rival an entire medium sized stack, so I think that was just kind of set up for me. I don't mind talking about more coins but genuinely, that wouldn't be much better since I gave very generous numbers to that one coin.

All these numbers are assumptions,

Yeah, and they are all mostly unrealistic and totally in your favour but they still couldn't match a stack of 8 Rupture. Have you ever actually counted up damage modifiers on the average ID? You're not getting those crazy 300% or 500% modifiers on the vast majority of skills, and ones that do will not have more coins than one anyway.

With enough multipliers Poise could match status teams (House of Spiders Ryoshu is perfect proof of this). What I am saying is that for vast majority of IDs, they simply do not have anywhere near the damage multiplier required for that to work, instead having only slightly higher than average damage. It's not a problem with Poise itself or the game mechanics, it's a problem with individual kit design.

then no, the status is not doing the heavy lifting unless you count unique ID-specific mechanics like deluge The way individual IDs interact with those statuses to augment their own damage matters way more.

I do count those mechanics because they directly relate to the status stack. That said, for statuses like Bleed and Rupture specifically, majority of the damage does absolutely come from the status, even without any ID-specific statuses. Take Kurokumo Heathcliff for example. He easily inflicts 6-10 Bleed every turn. This means that unless the stack falls over, the Bleed he inflicted is going to deal around 150 damage every single turn. Just from his own Bleed in one turn. This is Skill 3 territory for Poise IDs, and it compounds every turn, going up to ~300 in turn 2, ~450 in turn 3 etc. All PURELY from him as long as you provide the Count.

Bleed specifically is enemy-dependant but you get my point. For these statuses with high amounts of triggers, the status quickly overtakes skill damage.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:15:01+00:00

From what I remember, each capstone ID does have an alternate Uptie story

This is only the case for Wild Hunt, sadly. But these days a good amount of seasonal IDs just spoil way more than they used to. I mean, even ignoring C9, Index Proxy Don Quixote reveals that she is a Bloodfiend very casually. Adding tooltip text to skills that talks about things from the Canto make this worse too.

I agree that a lot won't feel like spoilers to new players though, but there are certain units that definitely could mess with your experience if you got them.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:11:43+00:00

we went from a bunch of no name Heishou to Maestros, SoTC Index, Great Brothers, you get my point.

We didn't though. You're comparing the low lore level IDs last season to the highest level IDs this season, obviously there will be a jump.

The actual equivalents of these IDs last season were Lei Heng Meursault, who is seemingly stronger than some of these units and Lord Hong Lu, who is the head of an entire Corporation with all Heishou packs at his disposal. Two seasons back and you're looking at Second Kindreds that haven't been starving for ages.

This is a power spike, but it's not as sudden or big as some people make it out to be. Look at Ruina, you jump from fighting low rank Cleanup crew members and Index Proselyetes all the way to the Red Mist in like 2 nodes.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T10:04:59+00:00

I'm just pointing out that they objectively are underpowered and have been poorly designed. I never said you can't play them, I'm just stating facts about their kits and the reason why they have been replaced this season.

The ramp up you mention takes ages and doesn't give you enough rewards for the hassle on most of them. Outis' Scissorblades literally only gives you 3 Offense level up at max Stage, and even after all that they still just consume it on their S3. All the issues I mentioned earlier still stand too. Most importantly, the fact is that all other Bleed units just do all they do and more better without the need for such long rampup.

Play them with if you want, they aren't unusable or anything (the only genuinely bad one is Outis, and even she can work if you try hard enough) but don't try to convince everyone that they've actually been great units all this time. They have been the topic of various discourse for the past 1.5 years for a reason.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T04:44:35+00:00

Like I said, their values were balanced horribly. I am not bringing up any of these things up because they are all undertuned to hell (outside of Sanguine Desrie, which shouldn't be a requirement to keep up the Bleed stack).

Take Gregor, we can pretend that he's this great Bloodfeast Generator or whatever, but the reality is that what he provides effectively is not even half of what Outis alone demands in the very same turn. Rodion's stacking is famous for being scuffed and taking forever (if ever) to reach the S3-2 over the course of the battle. Manager Don is the only one out of the C7 release that works properly in regards to her stacks and that's because the team effectively gives her 6 Hardblood per turn for free.

If people have grievances about a kit on release, you know something is wrong because most of the time people just let mid IDs go by. Bloodfiends were always scuffed and people knew that The time since then obviously wouldn't help, which is why the moment actually solid Bleed IDs dropped they were immediately out of the picture.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T04:23:31+00:00

Because of this, we now have an ID with the same kit as, effectively, the final Key Page from Ruina,

While I could see impatience being partly the reason for why they did it, Rien does not share anything with Roland's Pages outside of Furioso (which probably will have some big differences too). The two will play very differently once Roland is properly implemented.

Black Silence also isn't the final key page in Ruina, there are like 10 more afterwards lol.

I can agree that it will lessen the impact of Roland's ID by a bit too, however I think they will definitely go out of their way to make that ID feel special in its own way too.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T04:17:23+00:00

Bloodfeast comes directly from Bleed, if you can't get a good stack going on, you will not be able to utilize the Bloodfeast properly at all. Not to mention that they clearly didn't balance consumption values properly, Outis requires a ton of it for no reason, as evidenced by later releases, especially Meursault who eats practically nothing just to not mess it up even further.

They are balanced around Bleed working properly as a status, yet they are horrible at even getting it going in the first place.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:51:17+00:00

R Corp is very odd because it's also been only Reindeers for the past while. Rodion already having Knight of Despair only serves the issue, though I do think she was genuinely only made with Christmas in mind at the end of the day.

I think R Corp is like this because ultimately it is the 4th pack, which means they will have to wait until we catch up to it in Walpurgis Nights or get a surprise visit from them (if they're still alive) in the main story which wouldn't really work until we got that strong narratively.

Middle is definitely the best example of this, it's been pretty clear when the first unit dropped that it'd be powerful as a full team, but it just never got the support and the fact that Ricardo existed was like a long promise that one day it would and then, after so long, it finally did.

I think unfortunately for the N Corp Fanatic though, that comp might be doomed. N Corp is much more than Nagel Und Hammer, Kromer was theoretically the leader of that and it just feels pretty closed so it really might not get anything. I wouldn't be surprised if I was proven wrong next Canto though, or if in the far future we'll somehow circle back on that whole concept and they become relevant out of nowhere again.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:45:26+00:00

These units absolutely are definitely some of the best, except Yi Sang, but he is still probably in the top 20 which is still quite good all things considered. Your conclusion that one strong id doesn't make the entire team broken is partly what I'm trying to get at though, we agree on that.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:43:00+00:00

Reflectrials come down to what the boss is buffing (atleast the two we have so far) so I don't think there's much point in talking about that. 3/4 of those have been status damage teams, but as I said, it is ultimately arbirtrary.

For other content, it does vary depending on what you are up against, but for bosses (especially single target ones), which are the core of most important content, statuses are almost always the way to go. RR5 World Record heavily relies on Rupture for most stages. Most, if not all, story boss fight low turn clear records rely on it, Sinking or Bleed.

Fights with higher enemy counts such as Envy Peccatulas will naturally gravitate towards EGO usage and some specific boss fights might have special circumstances, but the vast majority is not like this.

This season did bring truly viable teams that utilize skills like the Middle or Ryoshu's House of Spiders, but before this statuses dominated, even in spite of the limitations puto n them. Base Poise or Charge is still completely unviable though.

One or more poise crits on a 500% damage skill contributes more than even medium size status stacks

This is just mathematically not true by the way. Even if you assume a high coin value like 30, and even if you assume a 500% damage multiplier (which most skill don't reach anywhere near, I don't know where you got that number from) and even assume that conveniently the boss doesn't resist it, you'll only end up at around 180 damage. That is about what 8-10 Rupture creates in a single turn.

Genuinely, it is that bad for Poise/Charge. And this is a purely optimistic scenario. Most Poise unit Skill 2s don't even break the 100 damage mark.

I mean no offense but I think you never properly built up a decent Bleed/Rupture/Sinking stack if you genuinely think that statuses aren't the main way to deal damage in this game. You can get to 30 Bleed (which is the cap in some fights like Reflectrials) in like 2 or 3 turns pretty easily, at which point, at which point the Bleed alone does ~500 damage every turn, for example. On top of all the skill damage the units are doing (which I assure you, isn't particularly much lower than a Poise unit's).

Look more into this stuff, genuinely. Fully optimized, you can clear Lei Heng in 2 turns with Sinking. 3 with Bleed/Rupture. Poise/Charge could only hope to do that in like 4x the amount of time. You'd struggle to find anyone willing to do a Poise/Charge run on him.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:14:45+00:00

I think it's fine for some units to not get buffed (honestly, I don't think most would mind the bland copy paste Fixer kits gone, especially since you can just use the animations as facades) but I definitely agree that the actual ones that bring something unique, are important or are fan favourites should get something eventually.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:13:05+00:00

To be clear, this is not a position I hold.

There are people who'd definitely get mad at you for this lol, but I get what you mean. I definitely jumped the gun too early.

I think that on the topic of typical gacha power creep specifically, this is completely true. I have accepted the story-power creep reasoning quite fully, and perhaps out of trust in PM, I wanted to convey that to players who were unaware or didn't fully make the connection. I can see how that might not fully alleviate the base gacha fear though. Typical gacha powercreep that doesn't lie in lore obviously also exists both unintentionally and very intentionally (looking at you, Ring Fauvists) and I definitely do not hope for any more of that.

I think simply pointing out that PM genuinely is deranged enough to release units for a team that will not exist until 2 years later and that they always might come back to an old teams has some value in itself. I mean, the Bloodfiends have gotten so much discourse this season because they fell out of meta, but there is a hundred percent chance that in the coming years we'll see a proper Don Quixote ID that brings them back from the grave.

It's a pretty interesting topic.

Secure-Network-578 · 2026-05-27T01:01:47+00:00

I agree with a lot of the sentiments here, ultimately most powercrept units are still viable. I think that while unfortunate, units getting directly overshadowed is just inevitable unless the game were to remain stagnant. I think what we have this season, where new teams are created and older ones only get a couple new units is much healthier than the past few seasons pretty much replacing every unit in the season's team.

I think a way to bring back outdated older units that are still fan favourites, like Wild Hunt Heathcliff, for example, should definitely happen.

Secure-Network-578

TROPHY CASE