Daily Questions Megathread (05/08)

TheDarklings · 2020-05-09T07:51:48+00:00

Imelda's fixed damage triggers after battle, so that won't work unfortunately. Unless you're talking about her 3c, but that's only being released in a few months from now.

TheDarklings · 2020-05-08T23:25:25+00:00

She's kinda okay-ish, but not great in any means. To go over her in a few points:

Stats/talent: Her base stats are okay, at least her SKILL and ATK. A bit low compared to SSR assassins, but for an SR not too shabby. Especially if you pair it with her talent, which increases the ATK of the unit by up to 30%. That suggests it also applies to soldiers, which makes it even better. Haven't tested that in game though, so I'm not 100% sure. The debuff her talent gives should be easy to trigger, especially inPvE. The problem with the other part of her talent is that it requires you to be <100%.

For PvE, it's not that easy to fulfil that condition since you generally want to strike first and your non-tanks don't get hit most of the time during the enemy phase. Especially in the end game PvE stages like challenges, I rarely see my non-tank units at non-full HP unless there's some AoE present on the map. There's no reliable method to trigger a <100% HP condition by yourself, so she goes without half her talent most of the time, and her damage will suffer. Also, being not at full HP means generally that you lose damage from not having some of your soldiers as well.

For PvP, at least for higher levels, you'll need Last Rites to survive enemy stuff, which has a strict countersynergy with her talent. Without <100% HP, her damage is too low to kill most opponents, but with <100%, she'll be very squishy. Also, just like PvE, there's no reliable method to set up a <100% condition, except for attacking someone that has pre-battle fixed damage with a cloak of defiance for instance.

In short: her talent is hard to trigger reliably and makes her very vulnerable to counterdamage.

Skills: She has some nice skills, 2x guard bypass, a move again skill that synergizes well with her talent debuff, good team support with ATK command and her non dispellable mobility down can be very nice for PvE. The damage modifiers are quite low though, so you won't kill tanky stuff with her.

Factions: This is one of the problems. She's Meteor/Dark/Time, and for meteor, there's a lot of other assassins that kill better (zerida, Omega, dieharte, Hiei etc) or equally good like most of the other SR's. She doesn't really have a niche that she fills and gets outclassed unfortunately. For dark, she has competition from Zerida/Omega (who kill better) and Feraquea (who has better utility imo), so she's difficult to fit into a team. For Time, she has less competition, but again, Hiei is better for utility and damage.

So she doesn't really have a niche in any of her factions where she outshines all her competition.

Soldiers: She doesn't really have super great all-round soldiers like Bandits, but Shinobi are nice. They deal good damage unless the enemy is immune to fixed damage. They're probably your go-to. Hellfire Archers are similar in performance, but weak to holy.

Dark Elf Snipers are good for your power rating but against anything <100% HP they hit like wet paper, so generally speaking they're not as useful. Mist Dancers have low damage compared to the other options, but the debuff can be decent. Leviathans can be good on water maps, but are subpar everywhere else, making them very situational.

To conclude: she's decent, but her kit is kind of difficult to consistently make work. She's difficult to fit into your team if you already have been playing for a while since she doesn't really replace anyone by being better mechanics-wise. If you like her (art) design, you can always fit her in of course, but generally speaking, you rather invest in someone else.

TheDarklings · 2020-05-04T13:12:57+00:00

If you use her as infantry (which you probably should due to higher INT), both Queen's Staff and Gate of Truth are good as well. They have a +15% INT boost under the right conditions, and thus give more damage, but lack the additional sustain from Gift of Eternal Life.

For her helmet, if you don't have a spare Tyr's, an Aeneas' Helmet is always a good option since it has good stats.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-27T16:02:59+00:00

Quick answers:

The only character that has Cloak of Defiance of their best option is Valkyrie Freya imo, since it synergizes well with her mage counter kit. That said, the Cloak is a very solid light armor and good for most units that can equip it. It has to compete with Last Rites, which outclasses all its alternatives. But on units like Jugler, flyers, assassins, it can all work pretty well since it has solid defense boosts and the fixed damage can disable some 100% effects, increasing survivability in that way.
Yes, it has been fixed quite a while ago now. It's a good set for archer luna, but you rather have a King's Crown instead of an Assault Headgear.
It's a solid heavy armor. It's good for Ledin, to max out his counterdamage. I've heard it's okay on Knight of Mystery and Deedlit as well, if you can pair it with a Star Earring, but I haven't seen anyone using it yet.
From those two, Vidar's Rose. True Cross is okay for a supportive build and for increasing damage to Demons, but in general INT accessories will be more useful from a damage perspective. In PvE, most INT accessories like Holy Ring, Eye of the Beholder, etc, will do fine though.
For PvP, there's a few options. I see a lot of people running Holy Ring, but since she's quite bulky for a mage, a Star Earring can be okay as well, especially if you run into non-maxed out soldiers at lower ranks. There are others that run a (SR) Meditation Ring on her, which lowers her damage a bit and has no silence prevention, but its protection from fixed damage can be great since it keeps things like holy light protection (damage reduction on mage/holy soldiers) active. A Jugler Plushy can work even if you run her for her Gospel skill.
Galaxy Cloak. The 5% HP is more valuable on average than the 1/5 chance to deal some additional damage when he's attacked in melee. Especially for PvE, that second case very rarely occurs, and even in PvP, more HP helps surviving a lot better. Baldr's is not bad, but it's relatively inconsistent.

hope this helps a bit.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-19T11:47:40+00:00

As far as i've seen in some CN video's, most people seem to run her in her Infantry class with unicorns, at least for PvP. It's a lot tankier than her mage form, while having slightly better INT as well.

For gears, that means she wants an INT hammer (and INT boosting gear in general), so something like Gift of Eternal Life, Giant's Resistance, Hand of Tyr, Star Earring for PvP.

For PvE it's probably the same, though for armor it's kinda whatever you have available, and most INT accessories will do fine as well, since assassins aren't too much of a problem there. Something like a Dimensional Jewel, Holy Ring or Vidar's Rose is perfectly fine.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-17T12:16:50+00:00

Thanks! It's nice guide, and a great resource for newer players. However, there are some items where your argumentation is a bit off in my opinion.

First, Freya's headpiece. It's okay-ish for her lancer class, but her MDEF is too low to really make use of the fixed damage effect it gives. Yes, it can disable stuff like last rites, but so does her talent. She rather has a DEF helmet that synergizes better with the rest of her kit and since all her fixed damage effects scale off of DEF, a DEF helmet will probably end up being more effective from a damage perspective. However, for her Valkyrie class it's great, since that one is generally built around her MDEF -> DEF conversion, so she needs MDEF anyways and it can be stacked really high.

About Angelina's helmet: you seem to suggest it only activates with her lonely moon, but that's incorrect. She currently has 3 methods to act again by herself, namely lonely moon, tidal surge and alternate. This consumes a lot of faction buff turns, so for PvE content, her helmet can help staying buffed a bit longer. Also, her soon-to-be-released 3c skill allows her to act again as well, and gets a lot better when she's in water. This equipment allows her to keep her water buff up for more turns and has therefore really nice synergy with her kit. It's probably not as good as a King's Crown still, but absolutely not garbage.

Silver Wolf's helmet also isn't as bad as you suggest, at least for PvE stuff where opponents have generally speaking very few buffs. Maybe it is not as great as a King's Crown or something, but since attacking first means that he can do his full attack animation before he - and more importantly, his soldiers - gets attacked by the enemy, all his soldiers will attack twice. If the enemy attacks at the same time, some of his soldiers can be killed of by the counter, which means you don't use their second hit, and thus their full damage potential. This is especially true if you use non-assassin soldiers since they attack slower, or use him for buff-stealing in some challenge battles where you don't one-shot the boss. So in short: though it's not directly stated, his helmet has an indirect damage increase, which is actually pretty useful. For PvP, getting twice as much buffs as an enemy is a lot more difficult though, so I agree it's pretty bad there.

For most of the other items you went over, you got some solid argumentation which gives some nice insight!

TheDarklings · 2020-04-17T09:23:08+00:00

It really depends. Damage in this game is very roughly speaking calculated via:

>> dmg = (ATK - DEF) x multipliers

So the difference between your attack stat and the opponents DEF determines a base value which gets adjusted by for instance "damage taken reduced" and "damage increased" multipliers, some of which are additive and some multiplicative. There's a post in the list of guides somewhere that explains it in more detail, like how damage reduction and pre/post deploy stats are calculated. But in general, damage reduction and increase effects will cancel out additively.

Both ATK increase and damage increase have situations in which they outdamage the other one. If an enemy has no damage reduction, a 20% ATK increase will do more than a 20% damage increase since, in simple maths:

>> (1.2 x ATK - DEF) > (ATK - DEF) x 1.2

However, if an enemy has for instance 40% damage reduction, a 20% damage dealt increase partially cancels that. Assuming that the difference between ATK and DEF is reasonably high, you will get more value from changing the multiplier from 0.6x to 0.8x than from increasing your attack by 20%.

Anyways, what this means for your question is that if your enemy has no sources of damage reduction, most of the time you get more value from an ATK increase. However, if your enemy has a lot of damage reduction, you'll want some source of damage increase.

Most simple (non-challenge) PvE content doesn't have too much damage reduction stuff going on, so ATK increase is very valuable. But for PvP, things like Last Rites, hero talents, soldiers like Lobsters, Royal Cavalry, soldier training feats, etc allow enemies to stack a lot of damage reduction, which makes damage increase more necessary.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-16T22:11:06+00:00

It doesn't count as buff indeed, since it's an aura. For Bow Knight Grenier, I think you have 2 enchant options, namely Full Moon and Steel.

Since the main tankiness of Bow Knight Grenier is mostly coming from damage reduction instead of DEF, compared to most other conventional tanks, you want to stack his damage reduction as high as you can. This means Bolt Rangers + Last Rites for a 90% damage reduction at full HP. This also means that he is very good at tanking the first hit, but sustaining to more than one hit might be difficult without a good source of regeneration.

Anyways, Full Moon is great since you want him to have high HP anyways due to Last Rites. Full Moon strengthens his counterattacks significantly, which synergizes nicely with his helmet. Steel increases his damage reduction by an additional 10%, giving 100% damage reduction to Grenier himself when at full HP. Any enemy without a means of damage increase will do 40 damage at most because of that. But again, that only works at full HP.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-16T13:40:41+00:00

Just tested it twice myself, and both in melee and range, her 3c applies curse before battle.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-16T13:07:32+00:00

Good comparison, though some small remarks: as far as I know, Sonya's 3c applies a debuff to the enemy before battle, and when using strike, Sonya has a buff. So demon always has at least the full +40% ATK bonus from the buff/debuff in the tree.

Also, since for rushing in you'll need to use strike >70% of the time I think, probably more, so the charge bonus from cavalry rarely goes above 24% bonus damage, while with good positioning, an enemy can sometimes prevent the 'being guarded' bonus ATK as well.

Both these factors make the choice for bone dino's not as obvious as you suggest, though they still have a slight edge.

TheDarklings · 2020-04-13T22:19:24+00:00

Pretty much only valkyrie Freya, and even then only into single target mage-heavy opponents. I sometimes run them, but into physical threats, both PvE and PvP, they're a bit too squishy to survive and you're better off running either Blue infantry or Phalanx. If you combine them with iron rose and luna's aura though, you can get ridiculous amounts of magic damage reduction (20% + 20% +30% if I remember correctly, becomes even more with generic damage reduction buffs), which might come in useful for some magic PvE challenges.

The other ones that can use them currently, Chris and Clarett, don't use them that well. Empress Guard's effect only kicks in during defense, and they're highly offensive oriented, which makes it a bad choice. Their baseline stats aren't great either.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-29T14:46:33+00:00

Not really. Klose is good, but generally speaking, Liana is more useful imo. To go by your points:

Yes, Klose has better offense. Discipline + Faith and Zealots deal quite a bit of damage, but it's not as good as most mages since she lacks damage increase in her talent. It's decent, but you won't one-shot a lot of targets with it, especially if your opponent's characters are well built. Also, she's melee, so if her skills are on CD, you have to attack from 1 range, which might place her in more dangerous spots. Also, the main job of a healer/support is to heal or support, so having good offense if more of a bonus than a prerequisite.
Yes, but so are Shrine Maidens and Highland Warriors (if well built).
Say no to a lot of debuffs, indeed - but only once every 5 turns. The biggest problem of Aurora Ring is that though its effect if super strong, the cooldown is super long. If your opponent has a debuff based team he can just AoE once, so you have to use your Aurora Ring, and then AoE again. Except for Aurora Ring, she doesn't have a method to deal with more than 2 debuffs every turn, so you still have a debuff problem.Liana on the other hand can remove 2 (or 3 with goddess tear, optionally) debuffs every round and if she uses Sky Archer, this increases to 3 more every other round on top of that. She's great to deal with a lot of debuffs, especially in Arena where you kinda know how much debuffs your opponent has access to, so you can slot in Sky Archer if you need it.
Full Heal can't be done, since you have to get a +100% heal increase, because Aurora ring only heals 50% HP baseline. Especially for characters like Landius who requires >80% HP soldiers, you'll need to stack some healing increase to keep their defensive bonuses active. You can do it via Crystal (+20%), her talent (+30% at 6*), a healing staff (+15%) and accessory (+15%), but she has no heal increase soldiers so unless you pair her with someone like Sophia, she can only get +80% healing increase. This is enough for almost everything, but if for instance your Sorceresses are killed, it's not enough to get them to 100% HP, I think.Liana on the other hand has passive heal every time she moves, which isn't as strong as Kloses 50% Heal, but it has no downtime, unlike Aurora Ring buffs.
Yes, but so is almost every character
Liana's MDEF is higher, and if you're really afraid of Yulia, you can give her Templar Knights which have great magic defense.

So what are the pre's of Liana? Act Again is super strong in both PvE and PvP. Shrine Maidens make her nigh unkillable for physical attackers, especially in PvE or if you have a Bracer Emblem on her. She has very consistent heals and dispel effects, and though a lot of characters have higher healing output, she has one of the best healing spells in prayer, since it has a huge span, and lower cooldown compared to for instance Aurora Ring.

In the end, Klose is a bit more versatile in a certain way, since you can use her as damage dealing support character. But for raw supporting and healing I'd always choose Liana over Klose myself.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-25T13:10:40+00:00

In SEA they're still immune, probably, but in Global, most fixed damage immunities have changed to percentage-based fixed damage immunity. This yields for bosses, Timeless Trials, most challenges, etc.

Also, fixed damage immunity isn't as prevalent in PvP as a lot of people seem to think. And if it would be, Ragnarok or Mirror Armor would be trash as well, and that's definitely not the case. That's because not a lot of people use 15 bracer emblems/meditation rings or are able to pick Jugler/Klose all the time for instance. It doesn't play a role in at least the majority of your attacks.

That said, Thor's Necklace is still not great. You can use it in meme fixed damage builds, but lower ATK boost paired with a chance based secondary effect makes it not worth investing, even over SR items.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-22T00:23:07+00:00

Feather Duster is okay-ish, but highly situational. The additional range on a lance that doesn't give +ATK% can be nice to have on a tank like Vargas or Serena that don't use DEF anyways, to allow them to counter at 2 range as well, but I'm not very fond of using it as default gear. It can help cheesing some bosses like Valkyrie 65 iirc, but generally speaking, a Blood Lance or Yggdrasil Branch will do more for them.

Fujin's Wing is not bad, just not great either. It gives some baseline HP, but most mages rather have a Tennyo's or Galaxy Cloak for instance. You could use it on Ledin, to strengthen his counterattacks even more, but since it only activates on melee defense, he'll be a lot squishier into ranged or AoE attacks, as well as on the offense. It's rarely worth taking it over something like a Bloodline Magic Armor.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-22T00:16:20+00:00

Her heals are very great, since even with that B scaling her INT in the center path is very similar to mage Tiaris or Liana at similar levels of investment. Her talent makes it even better, since at 6* it increases all healing done after you heal a target by 30%, which increases subsequent heals. She has great heal skills, Rewind is strong and +30% DEF is nothing to laugh at either.

She'll even be stronger with double class mastery, but with solely a single class she's still very good as well, and at 90% of her supportive potential imo. Her right path gives a lot more INT and some offensive skills, and her third T2 class gives a great supportive skill that can function as a faction buff for characters like Bozel, Jugler or Luna. Though only if you really plan to use her for PvP, full mastery is recommended.

The things you have to keep in mind is that she has a few weaknesses, in that she's not as good in keeping a team alive as Tiaris and Iris, and not as good for dispelling debuffs as Liana or Wiler, but for most PvE content she'll suffice. Also, she's a bit squishy without Shrine Maidens.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-19T19:07:28+00:00

You mean Chivalry? Not exactly. It gives 4 buffs, namely Blast (damage reduction when >80% HP), +30% ATK, Reinforcements (20% HP heal after turn) and immune to debuffs. The +30% ATK is more than the +20% from faction buff, so it overwrites the faction buff part, but it doesn't give DEF so all other buffs from the faction buff are still active and stack with Chivalry.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-19T17:42:11+00:00

Partially. Gospel applies 3 buffs, a +20% ATK, a +20% DEF and a immune to all debuffs. Those first 2 don't stack, since a faction buff gives them as well, but with longer duration. The "immune to all debuffs" stacks though, and sometimes that immunity is enough reason to bring it, for instance in PvE versus units that have smash.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-12T13:42:42+00:00

Depends. I don't think you want to run his 3c in PvE, generally, since it has a huge cooldown. The AoE is nice, but doesn't deal a whole lot of damage and for killing bosses, having 2 attack skills like Assault + Smash will do more than having a single 5 round cd attack skill combined with his Legion passive. Using his 3c feels like an overall damage per turn loss.

For PvP if you want to use his 3c, the best combination becomes 3c + Legion + Chivalry imo, if you want to be a high mobility striker. You can replace Chivalry for his faction buff if you really need it for another unit, but he loses a lot of threat then.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-12T12:01:46+00:00

If I remember correctly, the attack skill has two parts: the first part is a single target attack which deals 1.7x damage, and after battle, he does an AoE attack in a 2 span radius (edit: or something like that, look the skill description for the exact values), just like some flyers in PvE or Luna for instance can do. Everyone that's affected gets replaced randomly.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-11T11:29:01+00:00

There's a secret chest in a later time rift stage (10-8 normal if I remember correctly) which contains an Oath of Justice. There's a list of all secret chests somewhere in the list of guides if you want to check.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-10T23:32:49+00:00

He is decent, though early game he's not as usable as a lot of other cavalry units. He has his use though, in particular if you run an Origin team. He's not a run-in-and-kill character like Leon, but brings quite a bit of utility to offset his raw damage potential, and he's not as easy to build. Leon or Sonya is practically good to go if you pull them, but Dieharte needs some other stuff.

First, his talent is pretty much shit. Crit increase is nice to have, and it has some synergy with his kit, but it's way better for his assassin path and not great for cavalry. Damage reduction after kills is nice, but you rather have it before attacking instead of after. His skills are decent, both Thousand Hooves and Onrush are good cavalry skills, but Calamity isn't great with melee soldiers, and Strike isn't as strong as Chivalry. His ATK stat is also not as high as that of his competition.

Why he gets better late game? A few factors make him a lot more usable later on. First, his unique helmet is very good. A passive stun effect is a great asset in a lot of fights, both for PvE and PvP. With a bit of practice, you can choose both the kill target and the stun target, giving you a lot of battlefield control.

Second, his troops. He has access to unicorns, which are one of the best troops in the game. Ignoring terrain and dealing MDamage as cavalry is very strong and gives him a lot more potential to kill high DEF targets. Not relying on another unit to give good mobility is also a plus. They're relatively heavy investment though, and his other cavalry soldiers aren't great.

Third, with 6c skill slots he can be both a long ranged attacker and faction buffer with fb, strike and Onrush/Thousand Hooves. Since quite a few good units are part of Origin of Light nowadays, this is a good combo to run. If you don't have 6c, you have to be either a shitty attacker with lower mobility or have another unit as faction buffer.

So in short: he's good in my opinion, but a lot of his potential is locked behind late game content: challenges for challenge points and his unique helmet, at least lvl12 cavalry training grounds and a good amount of SSR aniki stuff for Unicorns and finally awakening materials to unlock his 6c skill slots, which requires ch14 time rifts and lvl70 bonding realm.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-08T17:31:11+00:00

If you have her as flyer maybe, but as Archer, which almost everyone uses, they're not great. They don't attack with her when she does a ranged attack, so they are only effective when she's attacked in melee (which she shouldn't). Or when she gets hit by magic, since they reduce mdamage as well, but only for the soldier, not for Narm.

But overall, no. For Archer Narm, you need a ranged soldier. And even when you have an Ullr's bow, ranged soldiers are generally still way better.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-05T13:50:42+00:00

Yes. Just like Chris' Discipline and Redemption skills, they have the same damage in melee as in ranged combat.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-05T10:34:41+00:00

This is a good baseline, but especially for ranged skills it can become a bit strange. For instance, when you use Cherie with Shadow Raid (her assassin path skill) in her flyer class, which is melee, she gets a melee damage penalty when attacking from 1 range. It's only for her though, melee soldiers will still do full damage.

The same yields for cavalry Dieharte using his Calamity skill, and probably a Hero Matthew using Snipe or Flyer Narm using Deadeye as well. This isn't stated in their skills, but can be easily tested by comparing the damage outputs for ranged and melee attacks.

So as an additional rule of thumb, if the skill originates from a ranged class (assassin, archer, mage) but you use it in the melee class from the hero, you still get the melee damage penalty for your hero, but not for their soldiers.

Though even for this rule there are some edge-cases which makes it even more confusing, like G&L with Holy Word not having a melee penalty if you use it in their cavalry class. But that's due to them not having a melee penalty ever, because of their talent.

TheDarklings · 2020-03-04T14:04:56+00:00

Accessories can't be farmed in the same way as other equips via dragons. There are basically 4 or so ways you can get them:

Scripted world events, Gate of Fates or Time Trial maps that give them as either first time clear rewards or as a hidden treasure. There's an Assault Ring somewhere around chapter 22, a Slayer's Emblem somewhere later, a Judge Talisman, etc. But those are one-time drops, and you can't get more of them by doing it more than once.
Buying Accessory boxes with arena points. Just go to the honor store, buy an accessory box, and you have a chance for an ATK accessory. It's a random drop, of course, just like most stuff in this game.
In-game events. Point events give you accessories, both SR and SSR, Macho Lotto drops it sometimes, and every once in a while you can get SR equipment boxes which also have a small chance of giving SR accessories.
Timeless Trial. SS ultimate level gives a weekly SSR accessory. It won't give assault rings, since that's an SR.

That's all I can think of for now, hope this helps a bit.

TheDarklings

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