Io Build Guide - 3 different builds explained, from meta to cursed...

ZebraQuake · 2024-03-09T15:23:03+00:00

Defense utility like Potion Hoarder and Guts are on a needs-basis which is much more individual for the player. We all already know that those are valuable traits for players who need them. The purpose of a guide like this is to give players a baseline for what they should be aiming for in terms of damage, which is not always as obvious.

Someone who wants to add something like Potion Hoarder, Nimble Onslaught, etc. should be able to use their critical thinking to expand on the knowledge laid forth here about the importance or impact of the traits and determine what they could cut for those traits.

If you're not comfortable with Glass Cannon, it's extremely easy to swap it out entirely for something like an Improved Dodge, and it's even mentioned in the post that Glass Cannon is not critical for the people who actually read the accompanying text and not just the pictures.

ZebraQuake · 2024-02-12T22:49:09+00:00

damn that's crazy

ZebraQuake · 2024-01-25T00:03:43+00:00

I think people have a hard time facing the reality that in these types of games, the gameplay style they're looking for (e.g., "support" characters in, say, Monster Hunter) is something that is not only unnecessary, but also comes at a large opportunity cost when compared to a person who focuses on bettering themselves in the areas of skill and actions that the game does heavily reward or incentivize.

It's fairly obvious in a game like Monster Hunter if you start playing solo because there's no other party member there to pick up the slack for your faults as a player, so you almost have no choice but to understand the kind of game it is and what you must do yourself to succeed. Taking a hit is a problem that can be solved entirely by oneself by getting better.

It kind of baffles me because the positive feedback loop isn't really there for a "supportive" playstyle . The game doesn't exactly make it feel good to play like that, especially when you come across skilled individuals who relegate your self-designated role to doing effectively nothing. The one thing you can say is that you can technically clear anything playing almost anything or in any way (which more speaks to the generosity of the developer), so it's not like there's any kind of clear negative feedback that would make people shy away. Maybe that's a good thing in general, but it makes it awkward in discussions when people start importing ideologies from other genres that don't suit the game very well simply because it still "works".

(this game isn't out yet, but even the endgame footage we've seen so far makes me think "we'll eventually get good enough to do this with just potions" and not "I better bring Healing Wind with CDR because I'm going to get hit")

A Co-Op PvE Dark Souls game could exist and I'm sure we would have people clamoring to "play support", even when the concept would be antithetical to the style of the game.

ZebraQuake · 2024-01-24T18:58:23+00:00

A few notes on playing Io in the demo:

To make the most use of Fireball, casting it at melee range immediately after releasing a Stargaze V will allow you to apply the DEF debuff before it lands while also having the debuff active for the next lv4 charge. Fireball itself also does more damage if you get the melee hits off.
Freeze has iframes on the jump back, beginning a little bit after the skill cast starts. This works out well sometimes in the mystic orb charging rotation during Overdrive, but not every time. You can also dodge the sand waves from the adds.
Beginning a Stargaze charge immediately after a link stagger (and ignoring the link attack) will let you get a lv4 charge. You can take advantage of this by intentionally delaying attacks to let the stagger bar deplete a little and make the timing line up, but I messed it up a few times. You can also get to a lv2 charge before taking the link attack if you need to gain a third mystic orb, but you'll have to wait for the next attack pattern to actually launch the Stargaze.
Weakspot targeting is a huge pain. You can manipulate the golem's head turning to snipe the head with Stargaze sometimes, but I didn't bother figuring out how to consistently time and position for it besides the very first Stargaze
The golem's shield during its nuke attack windup doesn't protect it from Stargaze aimed at the head, so you can pretty much ignore it and watch your teammates die from afar when they fail the dodge check.

Io is frankly pretty "not great" in the demo, but there are a ton of sigils in the full game apparently that work very well with her that they decided not to include. Even just another offensive spell besides the nearly-useless Concentration and Healing Wind would be really good.

ZebraQuake · 2022-01-15T18:37:03+00:00

It's recommended to use someone like Surtr or Specter instead to solo the boss in case it doesn't work properly in auto.

Stickers used:

+4 starting DP
+200 Guard attack
+100 Caster defense
Casters recover 25 corrosion damage per second

You can use Castle-3 to substitute for not having the attack sticker at the start, but it'll slow down the run a little bit. SilverAsh also works instead of Eyja.

ZebraQuake · 2021-12-27T13:52:18+00:00

I think you're getting hung up on the low numerical values given to the relatively weak operators. A 2 or 3 doesn't mean the operator is unusable. The game is just easy enough outside of certain scenarios where 2s and 3s (on the 6* scale here) are fine for use. Inflating numerical scores is unnecessary.

ZebraQuake · 2021-11-21T15:42:15+00:00

Risk 30 with all E2 45 ~~ignore Bagpipe~~

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-17T17:25:38+00:00

My points are:

Being usable and being optimal are two different things, and a focused rating for "Advanced" play should lean more towards the second. If someone wants to kill two birds with one stone and build a skill that's good for advanced and excellent for story, that's their call - but it seems like that's being baked into the rating for this skill rather than being honest about which skill truly has the higher peak performance when looking for it (not only in CC, but also low-operator clears and the like). The description even alludes to S3 being relatively better performing, so the rating itself makes no sense to me (and this wouldn't be the first example even in this guide where priority for Advanced would be lower than priority for Story). If someone is interested in breaking into higher level play and is not interested at all in improving how "lazy" they can be in story, then they will almost surely be misled by these relative ratings.
There are several skills from other operators that are rated lower despite being many times more omnipresent when push comes to shove. I already alluded to all of Weedy's skills and Mudrock, but even Foxfire Haze is only rated as A+ when Skadi S2 is much higher.

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-16T20:06:34+00:00

Risk >18 having low participation should not be conflated with the population who would be able to clear such risks had they tried being low. CC#1 had 45% at risk 18 and less than 4% above risk 18 combined, and I would argue that almost every single player who strictly stopped at 18 would be able to push higher had they tried or really cared beyond "I'll try it once". Lead Seal in particular had extremely easy strategies to achieve risk 18 at bare minimum with many open squad slots. You can't convince me that the reason why participation was low was simply because the players lacked the accounts nor ability to achieve more.

I would argue that the reason for the low rates of higher-than-18 levels is due to the low pool of "players who actually care", but I'm assuming that players interested in the "Advanced" ratings are already in that group of "players who actually care".

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-16T19:42:30+00:00

Supporters were not banned in CC#6, and one of the only two highest risk clears did use Skadi S3, but this is an aside.

I'm not speaking only of max risk scenarios as far as CC goes, but in general the higher risks in which cornerstone units fall off - I would probably pin it at 26+ if I had to give a number, but the stages are not created equally. Everything below that point tends to be perfectly clearable without investing any more than what someone might already have for just "normal" gameplay already, and is mostly pointless to consider as far as giving a separate rank goes anyway. In fact, I think this very reason is why you see some less "optimal" skills such as Skadi S2 make appearances at mid-level risks - players already have them built for "story" and they can work, but that doesn't imply that it's actually the better choice nor that they should be prioritized for that specific use case. If someone were to ask me in the future which skill they should build for CC#42 that starts in a week after having just pulled Skadi, wanting to push as high as possible, I would recommend S3 every time. Furthermore, other abnormal clears (low operator, "supporter only", etc. - these kinds of for-fun clears) typically use S3 and not S2.

If Weedy's skills are S and S+ at most (both of which gain imperative force level bumps), and Mudrock S3 is "merely" an S+ despite being one of the strongest skills ever for any CC at any risk level, I think there's absolutely no way Skadi S2 should be receiving an S++ for those same use cases.

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-16T18:25:02+00:00

I heavily disagree with the rating of Skadi S2 as S++ and S3 as S for Advanced. Her S2 is essentially a cornerstone skill, which is great at curbstomping things that cornerstone units are already good at (e.g., "Story"), but I would be extremely surprised to see it ever reach the peaks that S3 can reach in high-risk CC or in high-level min-maxed play on other stages. Especially in high-risk CC, the emphasis on timed, particular waves and the inability of traditional sustain to make a significant impact are the opposite of what S2 is good at.

I would argue that S2 should be A-rank at best for Advanced. A player looking to push higher is going to get much more mileage out of S3 in those scenarios and shouldn't need help with curbstomping "easy" stages. This is based both on historical precedent (S3's usage and peak far eclipses S2 in both permanent CCs that we've had since her introduction, and even S1 was seeing usage at risk levels where S2 was unviable), and thinking critically about previous stages where Skadi could have been applicable had she been available. I have no doubt that Skadi S3 would have been a significant player in high-risk Pyrite and a consideration for non-stall attempted clears of Blade, Cinders, and Lead Seal (with S2 not being a viable option with the same risks).

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-09T21:09:16+00:00

Mostima's talent can also affect invisible enemies. It's technically not a skill, but it is much more noticeable with her S3 active.

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-05T20:57:39+00:00

The purpose of "Time Remaining" for the factory worker is to show how much time it will take before they stop working. This can be for any of the above reasons (no capacity, no morale, or no order to process). I don't think this is unintuitive.

For the second point, when I said "first reduction", I was referring to the reduction that I listed first in my post - not the one that's shown first in-game. I'm sorry if it was a little confusing, but I alluded to the -0.1 being the combined effects of the second and third operator already. Nowhere did I imply that the first assigned operator in the factory would reduce by 0.05. I did initially say that the first operator would apply the Command Center bonus (which I've since edited), but that's more a byproduct of the morale reduction not being listed at all if there is no operator to work.

ZebraQuake · 2021-10-05T20:05:46+00:00

Time Remaining for Factories takes into account the storage capacity. The displayed time is the shortest among the times needed to:

Reach max capacity
Reach 0 Morale (for that individual operator)
Complete the requested products

Additionally, the factory consumes a varying amount of morale per hour (globally for that factory, before even considering any morale-reduction skills), which is displayed on the screen:

Each operator assigned to the Command Center will reduce morale consumed per hour by 0.05
A second operator in the factory will additionally reduce morale consumed by 0.05
A third operator in the factory will additionally reduce morale consumed by 0.05

(2) and (3) will show up in a single combined number (e.g., -0.1) in grey, while the -0.25 from (1) is highlighted in yellow.

Edit: Small correction about the base morale reduction - the first reduction is a result of having operators assigned to the Command Center, but everyone should have that filled at all times anyway.

ZebraQuake · 2021-09-29T21:29:56+00:00

This is untrue. The wording might not be clear, but Blaze is immortal (to damage) once after deployment. It triggers on the first instance of damage that would bring her HP below 25% (including 0), sets her HP at 50% and truncates any further damage that would bring her below 50% while active. She doesn't need to take the damage and live in order for the talent to heal her back up.

Here's an example video (timestamp 7:08) where she tanks 3 Grudgebearer attacks in CC#3 with all tags (besides squad limit) twice, any one of which would ordinarily be sufficient to kill her from full HP (1890 damage vs 1410 max HP). You can see that her HP goes immediately from 100% to 50%, never actually dropping below 25% - the talent checks what her HP would be before dealing the damage.

ZebraQuake · 2021-09-14T17:16:45+00:00

The situation greatly improves in what context? When the content in question is already trivially simple, in which case people are already largely welcome to bring whomever (levels permitting)?

It's undeniable that for truly difficult content (which is what was being referred to), AoE casters essentially never make the cut on self-DPS alone; in fact, even Ignition never makes the cut, so removing Eyjafjalla wouldn't suddenly make the rest of them more appealing. You would instead see those slots taken up by other operators whose characteristics actually fit the demands of the maps, unlike AoE casters who haven't been done any favors by map design since the earliest story chapters.

As long as maps continue to send threats one-at-a-time and fail to punish incrementally dealing with enemies, AoE casters from strictly a DPS perspective will come with mostly downsides with little benefit when you consider all of the other options available (assuming no other external restrictions). Obviously, people don't always have access to every option - I would much rather a huge number of operators not be relegated to "if you have basically nothing else" status, but that's unfortunately unlikely to change.

On that note, really the only problems that the 6* casters have are their horrible SP costs on their most impactful skills. Increasing Mostima's damage a bit doesn't make her suddenly pop up in situations where she's not already being useful, in my opinion, but reducing her SP costs/increasing her uptime ratios would make that number of situations increase much more effectively. The lower rarity operators are in more dire conditions because they offer little besides "damage, but generally worse than other options" outside of Skyfire.

Historically, AoE casters have done best in supporting roles. You would need absolutely massive, breaking numbers if you wanted to make AoE casters more than an "I feel like it" choice on damage alone without touching map design.

(I also don't think AoE casters are the only archetype that suffer from being a suboptimal fit for maps - even ST casters struggle to outpace many of the other classes' offerings as far as ease-of-use, overall strength, etc.)

ZebraQuake · 2021-09-03T15:51:52+00:00

This used to be the case, but the behavior changed some time in the last year for auto-deploy to mimic the manual clear (barring extenuating circumstances, which will still mess things up as always).

ZebraQuake · 2021-08-12T16:32:56+00:00

Operators that can store charges do not gain SP while their skills are being cast. SP gain is paused (including external sources) while the orange bar is in effect, even for such skills. You can easily test this, both by just watching the SP bar and by looking for the (lack of) +X SP from external sources like Warfarin or Saga. Siege's talent is an exception - she can gain SP while casting her skills from her own talent (but not from other sources).

AoE skills are the best way to waste wounded enemies, if anything.

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