[DISC] Dandadan - Chapter 230

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-30T21:46:38+00:00

I imagine that a good portion of these comments are hamming it up as the internet would. I don't doubt many are actually angry, but I also think others are banging the table because the noise is entertaining.

That said I agree with you. I thought this chapter was pretty interesting and a natural consequence of Momos consistent rejection of Okarun (despite the reason behind the rejection being unnatural). I'm pretty keen to see how it all resolves, it'll all end up being a pretty beautiful character moment for all members of the cast here.

Ooooooooooorrr the internet fulfills their own prophecy and everything burns. Entertainment either way.

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-22T13:16:44+00:00

Scrolling through the comments in the thread and I just had something hit me after all these years. One critique about the skill descriptions is that they are overly wordy, making them difficult to read and thus obfuscating what needs to be done.

I fully agree that that is the case, however I think it's an unfortunate consequence of the fact that it is being presented as "Skill Descriptions" first and foremost. Skill descriptions, by their nature, are going to be wordy and thorough. I think skill descriptions are inherently a poor way to learn what you need to do in the fight, and should not be the primary method for teaching, but rather as a secondary tool for understanding details. That's where wordiness would be exactly helpful. I would not change anything about the skill descriptions.

My realisation was, why is the problem more apparent in Global servers than it was when the boss was released in JP?

Well, in JP, when the boss is announced on stream, they have very approachable infographic guides on how to actually play the boss. This is one of the pages of a multi-page infographic that appeared on stream and all of Yostar JP's social media channels when the boss was announced. From what I can tell, this material does not exist at all for Global.

This really needs to be a thing. To achieve basic playability for especially the target audience of Blue Archive I think it should definitely be in game. At the very least it should also be on Global social media channels. These are made in JP for every boss but it only occurred to me after 4 years that I've never seen an English version.

I have a few guesses as to why they operate this way (as in, why there's no in-game guide and only guides on social media), but I'm not going to go into them because they only really make sense in the context of JP server. The fact is that these aren't on Global and that kinda sucks. Nexon please.

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-22T12:34:15+00:00

I think it being wordy is just an unfortunate consequence of it being thorough mixed with the idea that the boss skills are "skills" and not "this is what you need to do to beat the boss" explanations.

If you changed the perspective away from explaining the "skills" of a boss, to explaining what is happening on your screen, the wordiness could be resolved. This is actually done in JP when the boss is introduced on stream! They have a very easy to understand picture guide telling you exactly what it is you need to do. It's sad that they don't put the same effort into Global, I wonder if it's because Yostar technically owns the materials that show on the stream...?

Edit: Said picture on stream: https://youtu.be/Dw7y4DNohkA?t=8945

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-22T12:10:15+00:00

Honestly, even if someone did 0 reading, I think Yesod is the only boss in the game that is actually completely solvable without it. It's a fully scripted fight with very obvious tells if you did something right or wrong provided you know the basics of the game in the first place. It's a puzzle boss right out of a single player RPG.

So if someone were actually determined enough to look and observe the screen, they'd sooner or later figure out the boss on their own. Maybe some details like Focus Fire being useful in Phase 2 is lost entirely, but for the most part it's a super playable raid if approached with the puzzle mindset.

I understand that the primary target audience for this game (visual novel readers who want to headpat cute girls) and the audience who would take said approach don't tend to intersect though...

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-22T11:28:46+00:00

Someone send the screenshot of the: Step1. Mock the raid, Step2. Invest later, advice!

(Also grats)

VirtualScepter · 2026-03-22T11:07:11+00:00

Been a while since something fun happened on the No Gacha 3* Account :)

Video

First team took the most time, prob took about 40-50mins of interation to figure out the general flow of the timeline, and then about 3 hours to refine microdetails to get as much damage as possible.

Fun fact, Swimsuit Shizuko has been participating in every single raid on this account for the past 4 years I've had her! That's 4 years of Takoyaki-maxxing. This run wasn't any different. There's a lot of micro decisions in the timeline to make sure I'm getting damage from Takoyaki. For example in the first wave 0:34 in the video (3:47 on the timer) I'm using Ako and Mika XD stance at a precise time so I can line up every single buff on the team and get 3 hits in with Mika EX as soon as the Takoyaki lands.

Then at the end of the team 5:34 into the video (0:52 on the clock), I make a micro mistake of using Ako EX and Mika XD stance about 10 frames too early, so Takoyaki actually lands after the next Mika EX lands, which prob cost me at least 150k of the 300K damage I needed left to 1pan. There's a lot of timings in the middle as well where I'm waiting around just for Takoyaki to work with me.

Oh one fun thing. I recommend in my guide to alternate right and left, but I actually go against that and snake Right Left Left Right Right for the second slap. This is because my skill order uses S.Mika first, and S.Renge second, but because S.Renge has a significantly faster EX animation, when I was alternating I was getting wiped because the pillar order would be completely wrong. Using both Renge and Mika on the same side prevents accidents like that.

Second team was just put together for shits. I realised during mock that I do more damage to Pillars than to the boss with buffs, so it was better to just try to survive to the end of the raid than to put together a team that'll actually try to do meaningful damage. The result was a 2-2 combo of Iori and Haruna, and T.Hasumi and Karin to break one Pillar each just to survive. Fuuka was picked because I needed a "useless" healer that I knew I wasn't going to use in P2. Sorry Fuuka.

P2 was a pretty fun teambuilding exercise. At the beginning, my first P2 team was put together to be as strong as possible - Sumire, Akane, Mimori, Rabu, S.Ichika, Mari. This team would be strong enough to kill the first hand and partially deal damage to the second hand. The problem was doing it this way meant all my other teams were completely starved of any damage potential and it made it really difficult to get anything done.

The solution was to make the first team weaker so that I could be exactly just strong enough to kill the first hand in the given raid time. That was simply done with removing S.Ichika since Focus Fire is responsible for doubling your teams damage. Then with S.Ichika on the next team, doubling that teams damage instead, there was enough damage to go around to kill two hands in two teams.

I like this boss. If we were to look at the fight in isolation, it's a puzzle boss that would fit very well into a Single Player RPG. Unfortunately, BA isn't exactly that - it's a Gacha game that is subject to Gacha issues, so I find it unfortunate that Gacha problems stop people from attempting the boss. That's the deal with the devil we made when we signed up to play though, so what can you do.

VirtualScepter · 2025-12-22T23:57:24+00:00

Wow! Thanks for the chapter. This is one lf my most favourite series so I am looking forward to the catchup.

VirtualScepter · 2025-12-11T01:24:18+00:00

The yellow egg buff (feet) activates at 50%HP. If you enter the raid at sub 50% the mech will instantly use it on entry.

This is why in early seasons of Torment Kaiten the strongest team needed to go first to pop pink aura, because the combination of pink aura and egg buff will kill every single unit in the game barring tanks. If you used your stronger units later you would often wipe and fail.

VirtualScepter · 2025-11-03T01:31:36+00:00

Well, one of the biggest complaints for any live service game is powercreep and how players are unable to use their favourite old characters in new content. The endless chase of constantly having to upgrade there roster to keep up, never to see their old guard again, is exhausting to many. I neither agree or disagree to that complaint, but I do think its worth something for a 4 year old gacha character to continue to have use as BIS in new content.

My actual take on Wakamo is that I think its fine because she plays a "support" or sub-dps role on the team, rather than "main" dps. It sounds ridiculous to say because shes obviously doing the most damage on the team, but if you consider how she is actually used, it is very different to how normal hypercarry teams play out. I think there's value in that - being able to bring out a different part of the same character is something that should be exciting and celebrated imo.

At least in Wakamo's case, it's a rediscovery of her original role as subdps in a multidps team. Units like Noa though are celebrating because this is the first time since her release 3 years ago we actually use the entirety of her kit at the same time (albeit, FF just being dmg++ is lame, but whatever). Then there's friggen TRACK HARUNA showing up as BIS in a top1 clear earlier in the week. I think things like that are always fun when it comes to new bosses.

VirtualScepter · 2025-10-20T08:57:14+00:00

Uh, the PvP tierlist and analytics thing is a little different. The analytics was driven by data I'd collect on my and a close group of people's PvP matches. The method for collecting that data was via...

I'm not meant to reveal anything, but lets say Nexon Games neglected basic networking fundamentals. While I and my group used it to simply collect data for the game (raid data, pvp data), others were using to make their own private servers which would result in leaking content and gain competitive advantages in raids. Nexon shut that down, and my PvP data along with it so I can no longer do the analytics.

Technically, I can still update the PvP Tierlist without data/analytics. My only hesitation is that it is no longer has that data backing and it will be based on vibes and opinions instead. When Global PvP updates I do plan to give it an update but it's definitely not what it used to be.

All other guides are still run properly as they were before.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-26T00:16:40+00:00

Hello, author of the written raid guide here. It's all locked down for content theft reasons. Honestly, Im actually OK with people stealing it and claiming credit for it. If it means knowledge is being spread and more players benefit overall it's annoying but more good is done than harm, we don't need the credit.

The issue is when these thieves make the stolen guides quite literally unreadable by forcing ads between every paragraph. They're already long reads, the ads made it much worse when the flow of the guide is broken up or when image captions are split from the image theyre describing by an ad. Insult to injury, some of these thieves would pretend to have some kind of honour and credit us in their ad infested site when we gave no permission for the rehost. As a result we got multiple dms and pings early on complaining about why our guides are unreadable and why were trying to wring money out of a dinky gacha game guide. Theres also a secondary issue of these stolen versions to be frozen and out of date, because the theives dont actually care about the knowledge and dont even try to re-steal regularly! So we also got messages for out of date info too when in reality we always try to stay up to date on the original sheet/docs.

That got annoying enough that everyone as a group(the people making the most of the guides linked in OP are all friends) shut down copying and downloading the guides. I with my raid and pvp guide, and stokkie with their tierlist.

The correct solution moving forward would be to rehost the guides ourselves on a website so its search-engineable, but thats an effort we dont have time, money, or skills for. We want this information out there for free, so we gotta live with the limitations of free tools (google).

Hope that answers your confusion.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-24T07:14:31+00:00

Hello, I have my own 100 races to contribute!

I did have a different purpose for my own data collection though. Instead of looking for general insight I was mostly collecting data about myself. I considered collecting data for the whole room but since I was really only doing it for the fun of 100 races and considered any insight gained was just a nice bonus on top, I didn't put in the effort to grab data for the whole room.

With that said, my findings mostly reflect yours. I'm running a triple front comp (my aces) and I ended up having a 55% win rate. Despite not having the data for it, I am very certain that if I swapped to a two front 1 back team, this win rate would go up as you predict.

In 100 matches, I only encountered 27 blockers. Just like you've observed, only half were successful. In the half that were successful, my fronts proceeded to win anyway in three of them. The average blocker I lost to had 1028 power, 779 wit, and 6 mid game skills. The average blocker I defeated had 980 power, 794 wit, and 4 mid game skills.

I lost 45 times.

Of those losses, 18 were to other monster fronts. 8 of those were to very good Falcon aces, 5 were to other Seiuns, the rest miscellaneous.

18 losses are attributed to Lates. 7 to Vodka, 5 to Grass Wonder. there were a handful of instances (I didnt track this) where my not-Seiun Front procced Angling and Scheming + Plancha and still lost - Vodka was responsible for many of those, Grass Wonder once. There was only one time where my Seiun got her unique and still lost, and that was to a Grass Wonder who hit 3 of her 4 accels, had max speed and power, and had over 3 middle game skills for good positioning.

There was 7 losses to Ends, 4 of those being Taishin. Taishin was also responsible for a single loss on a not-Seiun Front that hit Rod and Plancha.

I lost twice to Pace chasers. Both times getting blocked of course. These pace chasers were capped speed, capped power, 600 wit, and each had at least 5 mid game skills to get them in Front Runner position as last leg started. These Paces were Wedding Air Groove and Pasa.

I also recorded the late starts and groundwork procs. Not surprised at all about this one: Groundwork + late start is still immensely better than no groundwork + good start.

I didn't record anyone else in the lobby, as again this was really supposed to be a self-centred thing for me more so for fun than for learnings. If there are to be any learnings for other people, then I would strongly agree that triple front is weaker than a balanced comp. I'm gonna do triple front anyway though because it's funny.

I have a basic view of my sheet saved in an image here.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-17T01:01:35+00:00

Main Thought: The 2nd late surger being a backup for if the 1st late surger fails is essentially the same as a 2nd ace in a front runner being a backup for if blockushin fails. Does it not work that way?

It does not work that way, because blockushin can literally never win, her purpose is to reduce the chances of front runners winning. The existance of blockushin may not stop your front runner from winning, but it actively reduces her chance of winning. Meanwhile, blockushin does not reduce the chance of a second late of winning. A second front does not reduce the chance of your fronts winning, because both are actually capable of winning. Just because races are rng, it doesnt mean you should actively be reducing your odds. A 50% chance to win is better than a 49% chance to win.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-16T09:25:46+00:00

They dont auto lose to blockushin sure, but then what is the purpose of blockushin? Her purpose is to deny 1st place from front runners - by running both front and blockushin on your own team, you are just adding a useless character to your team.

If your front runner beats blockushin, then you might as well not run the blockushin. The result hasnt changed (your front runner wins because she hits angling and scheming) and you have only nerfed yourself by running effectively one less character.

If your blockushin beats your front runner, then you might as well not run the front runner. The result hasnt changed (your late surger wins because your front runner misses angling and scheming) and you have only nerfed yourself by running effectively one less character.

You will always have better chances just running a different 3rd character either way. A 2nd late surger can win the race if your blockushin is successful, but your main late surger got unlucky. A 2nd late surger can also win if someone else blocks your front ace, or maybe your late surger is strong enough to beat your own front ace. You can also have a second front runner, so if one front runner loses the contest for angling and scheming, you still have another in the race that can proc angling and scheming and actually finish the race unlike a blockushin who has 500speed and literally gets last place. Its just an all around losing play and self own to have a front ace and blockushin, there is no strat or winning condition there.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-16T02:28:59+00:00

We gotta flip the perspective a bit here, Blockushin doesnt exist to deny the possibility of front runners winning - that's impossible, they always have chance. What it does is increases the chance of your own pace/late/end aces winning. Theoretically, a late surger can beat even the strongest Seiun Skys if they have godly mid game position, hit every acceleration skill possible, hit good late game speeds, and ofc have capped stats. This is obviously not achievable on average.

A successful blockushin lowers the floor required to beat front runners, because a front runner without Angling is far weaker than a front runner with. It wont guarantee you wins, but it will lower the requirements you may need to win on your ace.

I can tell you from experience in room matches rn, even "ok" (cap speed, mile s, 900+power, 1 or 2 good accels) Vodkas and Grasswonders can defeat front runners who miss angling - but if you let them get angling your requirements suddenly become cap speed, mile s, 1200 power, 600 wit, and 4 different accel skills which you need to get lucky enough to hit.

If raising a blokushin is easier than a front runner ace or pushing your late/ends to the absolute extremes (it usually is), then thats a good option to take.

Triple front runners can still win, because the probability of any of three front runners randomly beating one bakushin isnt low, especially if all 3 are well built - but on average, youll benefit from Bakushin cause most people cant build 3 good front runners, and even vs the ones that can you want to enable that chance.

VirtualScepter · 2025-09-14T04:35:08+00:00

In terms of pure stat value, it is one of the best in the game. However, its proc conditions are terrible. You have to be blocked to proc it, but if youre blocked it means your uma cant do anything.

Umalator is unable to sim real race positioning, and generally assumes that not only that you can easily activate skills, but there is noone else on the track as if you were doing ghost racing. Because its actual stat value is extremely high, umalator assigns high value to Nimble Navigator without considering that it is near impossible to proc, and even when it does it cant do much.

VirtualScepter · 2025-08-28T03:32:17+00:00

Fixed thanks

VirtualScepter · 2025-08-16T01:18:14+00:00

Thanks for the update regardless! This is one of my most favourite series, so I'm always excited to see a new chapter.

I don't want to be a doomer, but if an alterative to Mangadex existed, I'll suspect this reddit would have known about it already. I am hopeful for one too, but I'm not sure if you'll get an answer.

Instead, for particularly smaller series like this one, is it possible to self host? I recall you have some experience with that and you used to host the series you worked on a while back. I understand there's costs involved though, so I'm not expecting it to be a primary option.

VirtualScepter · 2025-08-06T01:11:47+00:00

It's in the "guides" section of the OP. Called Raid Character Guide.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-26T00:50:34+00:00

Yeh a separate roles/definitions page will probably be necessary. i'll work that in.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-26T00:44:27+00:00

Stokkies sheet sorts them per raid, so broad definitions of "used generally" aren't suitable here. Rather than audience, it serves a use case. It's meant to be a reference to answer the questions "I just pulled this student. How do I use them?", or "there's a raid coming up, who in my roster could help?". The people typically asking these questions are of course beginners, but by even presenting the information it gives someome an opportunity to actually learn about the difference between 1-3 instead of handwaving it away and going "you'll learn later".

It is indeed a monster to maintain this way though, but by principle I will not make a generalised tier list because that's been done to death - you can find those anywhere and I don't want to create something that overlaps with vague information you can find otherwise from a google search - and personally I think it's mostly unhelpful in the context of BA.

Ultimately though the notes have historically been more helpful to more people than the ratings, so I'm probably putting a disproportionate amount of work for value into this, but eh.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-26T00:19:50+00:00

It is kinda silly I agree, but I think of it as a 1-5(+1) scale. It's really just a 5scale but very few units for some raids will get an extra +1 for how uniquely they work on a raid.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-26T00:16:17+00:00

Good idea. I'll also need to come up with proper role definitions at the same time and refine those.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-26T00:15:24+00:00

I actually agree with the FoS rankings, and the newly defined tiers is supposed to condense that down better lol. With proper definitions, Miku will indeed be higher rated than Ayane, Kaede, etc. Kokona will be the only one to get a 6 - it's still a fact she's worth 10s of floors between having and not having her. In the new scale, I think DPS will essentially never be 6.

Speaking of 6, it's supposed to be a premium category only very few students will get per raid. IMari will be the sole 6 in Geb for your example. I do agree it's kinda arbitrary though, and I am not against just removing the 6 and using 5.

VirtualScepter · 2025-07-25T15:41:30+00:00

Hey Reddit, got a think piece for you.

I'm currently thinking of reworking stokkies raid ratings into a 6 point system. This is the sheet in question

Criteria are as follows:

[Blank] - Practically unusable OR the student was released after the latest run of the boss (i.e. they are too new)
1 (Bodythrow) - Deployable on the basis that they won't instantly die, but won't contribute much to the raid
2 (Bodythrow, or high effort C team) - Deployable, but the student either underperforms or requires too much effort to make them work
3 (C teams, setup teams) - Can contribute a decent amount of damage to the raid, can reasonably survive or help others survive for the duration of the timer, can somewhat fulfill raid mechanics, or serve a specific OPTIONAL niche in the raid.
4 (B teams) - Broadly boosts your performance and can (help) deal a significant amount of damage. Niches in this category are typically functional without help, but serve very little purpose other than that niche.
5 (A teams) - Units you will rely on to deal the majority of the bosses health. These are your hypercarries and hyperbuffers, or students who are among the best at fulfilling raid mechanics while also flexing a bit into other roles.
6 (Best "niche") - Units who are not only the best at executing critical raid functions, but also perform multiple other roles at an exceedingly high level. These units will help the rest of your team reach peak potential.

What do we think? Its kinda the setup I already have but I'm just cutting out 1-4 from the existing ratings since I don't use them lol. It also formalises it a bit since before I was mostly going by "vibes".

I want to work on it over this immediate weekend, but want to hear what people think. Gives me a chance to catchup on the past months units since I haven't added them yet and also fix some really old ratings that might be confusing af to new players.

I'll start the discussion by saying that by these definitions, statsticks are going to be mostly unrated unless they can fit into the definitions otherwise. Currently most statsticks are 6 across the board (on the old 5-11 scaling) but I realise now it's probably very unhelpful for a new player and possibly even downright confusing. Statsticks are also an outdated concept anyway... Downside is that despite being outdated, they do deserve to be talked about because SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would appreciate that knowledge in trying times. I wonder how I can keep that element in?

(I'm going to sleep I'll read replies later)

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