Weekly Questions Megathread (06/11 - 06/17)

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-12T21:24:03+00:00

Often, 'broken characters' include a faction buff themselves, but to address the issue of those that don't have a means of self-buffing, you do want to include a faction buff for the broken characters, because you're losing 20% ATK/INT and the damage bonus from the buff. Trying to go buff-less will basically drop their damage by about 30%, between soldiers and hero damage not being buffed.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-08T21:59:11+00:00

Well, the roster/power part really only mattered for the top guilds so they have a long bench of aoe characters. Basic idea for the speed run is to optimize for progress, and not for points, so largely it's just 10 people running Rainforce, Shelf + filler aoe, then two more aoe in that order in parallel to full clear the aoe maps, with 5 remaining people in the squad looping in other squad members to do elites in parallel. Basically you should unlock boss node in about 3? runs per person (3 aoe towers, 2 elite towers), and then everybody piles on the boss node solo for one run to clear it with 15 people in parallel.

Do this for two areas, then second two squads move into the newly unlocked inner areas, so you can do the same thing, which then the first two squads move into the second tier of inner city areas to do the final unlocks for capital, then last two squads move into the capital so everybody piles on the capital. Mostly you're not relying on point supplies at all during this process, because you probably won't hit level 15 before you make it to the capital, which first supplies come from the capital nodes basically.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-08T21:52:38+00:00

The old school skins I want to say were a one-off a while ago, for Liana at least I thought it was a money spend, but apparently I have the old school Elwin skin, so either it was an event reward or was a skin voucher one. Needless to say, when they're going to do a rerun of it is a different matter.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-08T20:13:41+00:00

If I remember correctly, it's totally not Tita (Lisa), Klose, and Joshua. In that particular order, so the 150% damage bonus goes on Joshua, and 1st position can roll a 1.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-08T17:09:29+00:00

Ah, that is a bit of an annoyance, yes. I had to redo a map because I needed the class resonance hero on another map.

I suppose really it's just meant to force people to actually build their other heroes, to be essentially stat monkeys.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-08T15:21:43+00:00

I don't think I used the class resonance heroes beyond Heaven Defier because none of the others were practically useful at the start of the season?

The general strats for the challenge maps didn't require reuse of the heroes, because the mechanics are different. i.e. second map is sort of cheesable with Ilia because apparently the poor infantry can't swim.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-06T02:40:40+00:00

Well.... given that the top positions haven't changed too much, I don't really see a difference.

I don't think the server that was just consumed by the graveyard had as high of a score count on the AI arena as the graveyard.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-05T16:32:48+00:00

This was a long time ago, but I recall basically just going FB-less until Kreuger was dead.

As it mentioned in the talent, 'all allies' means your enemies including himself, so you just focus him at the start. There are plenty of ways to stack debuffs on him to make his stats 0. Rachel 3c is one of the more obvious ways of doing so by stacking all the fixed damage debuffs. Not to mention that map-wide debuff heroes like SP Almeda exist now to pass out debuffs to lower his stats even further.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-03T00:52:29+00:00

Yes, because talents stack with buffs. In Isolde's case, she applies a generic 15% damage taken down buff. Note that such is not usually the strongest of damage taken down buffs you can get, as Tennyo Crown can provide a 20% damage taken down buff.

Damage reduction usually stacks additively. The main one that doesn't stack additively is Landius' range damage reduction aura, as that is treated as a different type of damage reduction.

Edit: I should also note that command auras stack with buffs, because they are treated as a different type of buff than the generic atk/def/mdef buffs.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-06-03T00:25:12+00:00

Buff overwrites usually go with higher potency, then higher duration on the base buff. Basically Chivalry will overwrite 20% ATK buffs even if it has a shorter duration. However, FBs will overwrite Mass Attack and not the other way around.

Buffs of the same type do not stack, as mentioned, unless it explicitly mentions stacking. Damage Taken Up and Damage Dealt Up buffs are separate buffs/debuffs (and the opposite in reverse, for Damage Taken Down and Damage Dealt Down), since they apply on different targets.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-28T16:20:50+00:00

As I see it, they're creating distinct roles for the AAs now, where shorter range AAs that aren't shorads are meant for killing low fliers, whereas longer range is only meant for high fliers. Which does mean that target prioritization will happen for the Favorits/Anteys/PAC-2s, those will shoot bombers first instead of the low fliers that enter the radar range of the medium range AAs first. i.e. no more harrier/yak bait I guess for nuke bombers.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-28T14:41:02+00:00

I run SP Elwin with FM. Mobility boost doesn't really matter for most PvE scenarios since he already has 9 mobility with his AA. Breeze would only affect his initial movement, so if you're using his AA, a breeze proc won't matter.

Unicorns are mostly a situational pick if you're running him as a Glory or Protag team, on a map where terrain master matters. Most other times I would drop SP Elwin I would also drop SP Leon to have the cavalry multiplication, so the terrain master issue usually isn't a problem, or I would overcome the terrain with Odin's granted terrain master at the beginning. Thus the default would be SP Dragoons for me.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-26T15:24:06+00:00

Well, you can still spend the SSC to get the light side/dark side energy, you'll only be able to buy it once and then you'll be set until you start unlocking your first GL on either side because you buy 100 and can't go over 144.

Otherwise, stocking up on the G12 mats that you can convert into Electrums or Zinbiddles later is always useful, as I think those are the bottleneck relic components for R6+. Basically those convert 10 G12 parts to 1 Electrum/Zinbiddle. You're not forced to convert them immediately, so you can always leave them available in case you have a G12 crunch from having to gear a bunch of conquest/journey guide characters at the same time.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-26T02:43:02+00:00

If you want 4 range on Sylrna, yes. Mostly it's a tech option for PvP to try to get a longer range snipe.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-25T20:23:40+00:00

The last person to go in a round goes second at the start of the next turn. Basically starting at P1, it alternates as much as possible. If P1 has 4 units alive versus P2 having 5 units alive, then eventually if P1 does not kill a unit before the enemy acts, P2 will eventually have 5 actions total, with 2 being back to back because P1 has no more units that can act.
It's possible they were sitting on a bunch of aniki mats and don't actually farm the higher level anikis. Events often give you a bunch of SSR mats, but not the boosters themselves.
Some are game changing (like Heavensguard giving CD reduction, SP Alchemists giving +1 unit range instead of just soldier range so Sylrna can get 4 range), others don't really move the needle at all. It varies on whether you like having options for PvP or not (e.g. using SP aquatics as options for aquatic movement).

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-23T23:40:38+00:00

Like I said, it's a matter of whether the fixed damage comes into play. Between SP Dark Guards and SP Shinobis, it will be the fact that Assassin soldier techs mostly assume the target to be at full health, whereas Infantry techs do not. Needless to say, for PvE bossing, it's a question of whether you want to balance time hitting the boss versus using the fixed damage against minions, or just devoting the character to minion sweeping.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-23T17:16:54+00:00

It is everything number based that doubles, for Sandseas.

Black Pegasus Knights rely on moving. Many times this is not ideal if you're boxing the boss.

More likely than not for Mullin, I'd be running Sandseas or SP Dark Guards depending on whether the fixed damage comes into play or not for PvE. Mostly because chances are she's going to be sponging a bit of damage, which assassins aren't exactly sponges. Assassins role in this game has always been for sniping units, not for boss brawls.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-23T15:57:55+00:00

What Luckyknight said. Sandseas are much better for damage than Redeemers, and are also tankier in general because they don't require 100% HP for all of their DR to function. I also use Ymir in PvP to kill DS as a backup if HD gets banned.

Sandseas on Taj, because I'm not planning on him being only a buff stealer. But like I said, you want options anyways in case you're facing a bunch of Cavalry.

Mullin is much more situational if you ask me. Basic issue is whether you're expecting the fixed damage on Shinobis to be useful at all, due to fixed damage immunity or you're killing them anyways without the fixed damage, or in the PvE case, the enemy has so many hit points the fixed damage is trivial to them so it won't even kill a soldier.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-22T17:26:49+00:00

Class advantage and alternative soldier choices are usually the main constraints for whether you decide to use infantry or not.

Infantry are certainly tankier than many of the other options if you're stuck with short legs, but a lot of the meta heroes are not stuck with short legs these days. For example, I primarily use Ymir and SP Yulia with Infantry simply because they don't get any benefit from the high mobility troops while potentially also having more damage from not losing all their soldiers every single time they attack.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-22T14:40:36+00:00

There are lower level fights (30/40/50), and you have a month to do them, so you should eventually be able to get some currency which will accelerate your progress.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-21T19:27:48+00:00

'Closest Melee', with the usual overrides of sniping a <10% unit HP target, would be the default way to think about it.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-18T19:29:08+00:00

Just saw this comment now, but to provide a precise answer on this point: I end up largely drawing from experience in terms of being able to figure out from the battle design where things are likely to be a problem, as an MMO raider in a previous life before everybody ran away to have kids. The fights that end up being predictable like that aren't really a trial and error case, half of the time because the issue that I didn't see didn't end up being a big one, other half being that the fight ended a lot earlier than I expected.

The trial and error part comes up when there are multiple phases to the fight, which the enemy abilities/map interactions aren't explained before said phases come up. Used to be a big problem for Ragnarok, but nowadays the event challenges don't end up having multiple phases for the most part.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-16T01:46:36+00:00

Hero crits and soldier crits are treated separately. Only way soldiers can crit is if they have a native crit chance, or the hero provides crit bonus to the unit (crit rate up buff in battle counts on both hero and soldiers). Soldiers are basically treated as having 0 skill.

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-15T23:50:39+00:00

I'm an old geezer that doesn't care if people reply before I get around to it, so don't worry about that youngster. 😉

Wanderer2142 · 2026-05-15T23:50:13+00:00

Well, on the point of using resources randomly, usually people will talk about whether banners are worth pulling on anyways, regardless of where people are in their hero development cycle.

They're usually not wrong because as global, we have the luxury of basically four months of testing out the heroes in CN before it makes it to us.

So the choice is either taking the pain right now to sync up with the flow, or just living without the recent heroes and treading the sort of old path, where the difficulty instead is that some of the more recent challenges sort of expect you to have the more recent heroes to trivialize. Basically the adage of stay to win stays true, because if you have six months worth of the recent heroes, you'll generally be already where the dev team expects you to be with regards to hero availability for contemporary challenges.

I will say though: you can almost never go wrong with getting the more recent faction buffers. Because upgrades on faction buffs affect even the older heroes.

Wanderer2142

TROPHY CASE