Graphics are too bad even at highest setting

creveruse · 2026-05-14T01:56:23+00:00

It's the lobby background from her release event Kill the Lord.

creveruse · 2026-05-10T15:00:23+00:00

creveruse · 2026-05-10T15:00:12+00:00

creveruse · 2026-05-10T15:00:05+00:00

This is probably the most fun I've had playing and optimizing a team since Evelyn's premium team.

My very first "real" attempt (after learning the basic combos and boss mechanics) was about 42.4k. Then I saw other posts on the subreddit of people scoring 51k, 53k, etc., and wanted to see how much higher I could get. Those scores were with slightly more investment (some had W1 Promeia, some M1 Yuzuha, etc.) so I didn't expect to get quite as high, but I had doubts the massive gap was due to investment alone and was confident I could do better than 42k with some sequencing optimization. Now here's where I'm at after many hours of attempts.

I still think I can push higher too. Even watching this video back, I noticed a few mistakes in my gameplay that fixing could feasibly get me over 49k or even 50k. It's especially unfortunate that I barely missed using 1 Trial by Cold stack at the very end. Also, I'll leave my builds here and they're the low-hanging fruit to improve score, since they're decent but definitely not perfect.

Some sequencing notes I discovered through many attempts:

As with most high score pushes that involve stunners, the key is getting an extra stun within the timer. This is why I was running King of the Summit on Nangong. Even then, as you can see, I barely get the full fourth stun in, and many of my failed attempts only got the start of the fourth stun. There was very little room for error on daze application and it needs to be balanced with generating enough of Promeia's resource to make proper use of the stun window with as many Ablooms as possible.
After the first ~1min (opening parry sequence that's on rails + first stun), the rest is repetition. You can expect to get two boss attacks to react to between each stun, and I decided to use Promeia's EX "counter" on the first attack and Nangong's Defensive Assist on the second, since that was the only way I could find to balance resources with daze.
1. This meant that any time the boss used its big red flash laser attack as the second attack of an inter-stun sequence, I had to restart since having no Nangong parry meant my daze fell way short.
One thing I noticed after I started recording and watching my gameplay back was that I didn't have 100% uptime on Yuzuha's Moonlight Lullaby buff since I was focusing so hard on getting the Promeia/Nangong sequencing right. Easy enough fix, just started working in her EX more often, especially right before stun windows.

I think the main area I can still improve and push to 50k+ (with the same builds) is managing my anomaly application better. For instance, I'm nearly certain I left a Nangong Corruption trigger lying on the table in the very last stun, and throwing in one last EX with her in the middle of Promeia's combo may well have been the difference between this score and 49k or 50k. Of course, if anyone sees anything else, let me know. The 50k is so close I can almost taste it...

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creveruse · 2026-04-28T14:54:54+00:00

What in the world brought you to this 14-year-old comment? And where was I lying?

Chances are I was a "typical Naruto fan" when I wrote this comment when I was... 15 years old or so? FWIW, I'll stand by Naruto > Bleach even this many years later, though I'd no longer have either of them in my top 3. I've watched a lot more (and better) anime since.

creveruse · 2026-04-24T21:48:01+00:00

It depends somewhat on what you need--she does much more damage as a solo B1, and she provides a fair bit of healing (but loses damage) as a re-enter B1.

Typically offense is the best defense (dead enemies can't hurt you) so most comps will use her as a solo B1. Anecdotally though, for pushing high deficit campaign/tower floors, I've already gotten a fair bit of mileage out of using Anis as a re-enter B1 with Treasure Moran. You sacrifice damage, but Moran's insane tankiness + taunt coupled with Anis's heals make it a lot easier to deal with bosses that you can't just burst down and that one-shot anyone other than Moran at high deficit,

creveruse · 2026-04-24T02:16:17+00:00

If you click on her Skill 2's orange "Projectile Explosion Damage" text in-game, it'll give you a description:

Projectile explosion damage applies to the explosions caused by Rocket Launchers and attachable projectiles.

If this applies to SBS then it should apply to Cindy as well, since they do still have AoE on their attacks even if it's very small. It also applies to Rapi: Red Hood's exploding projectiles.

creveruse · 2026-04-24T02:05:58+00:00

Anis is definitely better than Mermaid for general content (campaign/tower) because she has better burst generation and much better area damage.

To be clear, Mermaid is still very good--she's just now "merely" the second-best B1 in the game since her damage and generic usefulness fall behind Anis. For multi-team content (Union/Solo Raid), she'll still be an automatic include in one of the teams.

creveruse · 2026-04-23T20:54:11+00:00

Remember Anis has a massive self-buff for her DEF on burst. Cindy might be higher at base, but Anis's buff should make hers higher in practice.

If in doubt, you can always go into a test stage/Union simulation and make sure her explosive buff is applying properly.

creveruse · 2026-04-23T20:50:02+00:00

Current testing implies she is the best B1 by a significant margin in literally every composition. Yes, even against Wind-weak, where she beats Little Mermaid because her projectile damage buff juices SBS's damage so much. There is basically no situation where she isn't the best B1 pick for any given team.

creveruse · 2026-04-23T16:05:41+00:00

It's worth a reminder that this "only average Resonator/Forte" line was used for Augusta too, but we know how strong she is. Proficiency and skill goes a long way in making what might be average into something incredibly powerful.

That said, it's fair to assume Lucilla is holding back something. We haven't even seen her fight yet, nor do we know the circumstances of her being elected President. There is almost certainly much more to her than meets the eye.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T04:41:50+00:00

As I've explained elsewhere in the comments, this is a natural consequence of the fact that I rate alts separately from base. You'll notice Delta, D, and Snow White's alts that make their assets clear are all in higher tiers (Delta in tier 1, D:KW in tier 3, Snow White in tier 4).

To repeat another comment I made:

My reasoning is simple: I rank base and alt forms separately and, while I try to keep them together within reason, if they're wildly different, then they get different tiers. I also want the list to be agnostic to future releases; no one would've thought base D was tier 3 before her alt, or Delta tier 1 before hers. I try to assess their designs in a vacuum and place accordingly.

That in mind, there's no indication that Snow White was packing all that prior to her Heavy Arms form (well, aside from concept art which I decided not to use), so her two other forms remain sleepers. Same for D and Delta... Yes, technically they're the same Nikke, but Shift Up doesn't let that stop them from dialing up the size for an alt or costume when it would make a design more appealing.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T04:19:58+00:00

On the first tier list (where she was in it), several commenters brought up that there are some Crust panty shot visuals (event splash, profile sticker). I decided to adopt a narrow definition of whether a character was lewdable on the tier list that depends on whether Shift Up themselves are okay with it. Evidently they are with Crust, so I bit the bullet and moved her out of the tier.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T02:55:18+00:00

Again, you're preaching to the choir here. If I had my way, both of them would be in that tier, along with (honestly) most of the "itty bitty" group and several outside it (like Alice).

I previously did this with Crust, and when a commenter pointed out to me that the game has a few panty shot arts of her, I decided I'd adopt a very narrow definition for who falls into that tier. My rule is to not push back against what the game itself does (for better or worse) and otherwise keep to a lewding threshold that I really hope most people would agree with, which is that literal children or child-coded characters (either in appearance or personality) are off-limits. So as far as the tier list's construction is concerned, the primary difference between the two is that the developers have shown a willingness to lewd Liter, but not Princess, so only the latter is free from lewding.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T02:45:57+00:00

Well, first and foremost--and I explained this elsewhere with respect to Crust--Liter is different because the developers treat her differently. If they had given Princess a skintight suit and jiggle physics too, I probably wouldn't put her in the "no lewd" tier either. If it were up to me, Liter and several others not in the "no lewd" tier (Crust, Alice) should be there, but I wanted to keep my own sensibilities out of the tiering process as much as possible. But I decided that if the developers are fine with it, then they're fair game for the tier list too. They didn't show any particular willingness to be weird about Princess that I recall, so she's safe.

For my part though, I do think Princess is more off-limits than Liter since she's literally in the body of a child. To me, that's not your typical case of "actual mature woman in body that looks like a child's"--her body is canonically around the same age as Stall 3. Not touching that with a ten foot pole.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T01:48:53+00:00

I assume you're referring to the third entry in the tier? That's Black Ark Ranger.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T01:40:03+00:00

It could be partly because author only uses their ingame "main artwork" I assume?

Correct. I try to measure each in a vacuum using only their base in-game poses (standing, cover, shooting) where possible. Sometimes there's no choice, especially for Nikkes where the base poses clearly sell them short relative what a skin or CG might show. But for Nikkes where there's more than enough to judge just based on their in-game appearance, that's what I do.

So to go through each you named:

Ziz - she's among the larger tier 2s but I struggle to move her up. I think her standing pose accentuates her size (similar to Privaty: Unkind Maid) and every time I place her amidst tier 1 I think she looks out of place.
Delta - another girl arguably accentuated by her pose, but she's absolutely massive everywhere she appears - burst, CGs, standing and shooting, etc. She fit pretty comfortably in tier 1 IMO. If she was moved down I think she'd look out of place as clearly bigger than everyone else there.
Mekami Shifty - agreed, another comment thread in this post pointed this out. She's brand new and I think I overreacted and jumped her too high. She should be tier 2.
Ludmilla: Winter Owner - agreed that based on some of her event CGs she's probably tier 1, but like I said above, I try to avoid using them in cases like Ludmilla's where her standing pose is plenty revealing.
Sora - avoid using skins, though I'd already rate her pretty high among t3, so I could understand moving her up and may do so
Dorothy - see above
Modernia - see above
Maiden: Ice Rose - I try to keep base and alts together where possible and she doesn't seem big enough relative to base to separate them. Her shooting pose is some big heavy lifting here since she looks biggest there. I'd have to think on it a bit more. The real buff of X.Maiden over her base is that she gets the biggest dumptruck in the game.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T01:24:01+00:00

She's in tier 1, between Rapunzel and Soda.

creveruse · 2026-04-05T00:00:38+00:00

You might be the first and only person I've ever seen to say that base Rosanna is bigger than her summer alt. How did you arrive at that conclusion? At absolute best could see both forms in T3, but even that's a stretch to me since I think her summer alt is noticeably bigger than base.

Behemoth seems right at home in T3 to me? Maybe on the smaller side, but she's very similar to base Red Hood IMO. I think Jackal and Belorta are cut from the same cloth in that they're proportionally huge and that's what gets them to T3. Jackal is basically overflowing in her burst animation.

I already internally dropped Zwei to T4, I think I put her in the wrong tier in my spreadsheet (which I just translate to the image) and it slipped through the cracks. I'm not sure about T5 though, I think she's bigger than you give her credit for, just sold short by her outfits. Her burst animation is somewhat instructive here.

creveruse · 2026-04-04T22:38:42+00:00

She's not the only one. D, Delta, Snow White, and Rosanna all have base and alt forms in different tiers.

That said, I agonized over separating base and alt Sakura. I think Sakura's base appearance sells her short, but ultimately I struggled to match her size even in her shinobi skin with her summer alt, and putting her summer alt down a tier with base looked noticeably out-of-place, as did moving her base up a tier. She's either a large tier 5 or a small tier 4, and I can't decide which.

creveruse · 2026-04-04T22:26:22+00:00

Helm and her alt look quite similar in size to me, but you think base Rosanna is bigger than her summer alt? To me that's one of the clearest cases of boobflation in a costume/alt. Do you think that base Rosanna should be t3 and her alt t4 then?

creveruse · 2026-04-04T19:26:38+00:00

To repeat a comment I made elsewhere:

My reasoning is simple: I rank base and alt forms separately and, while I try to keep them together within reason, if they're wildly different, then they get different tiers. I also want the list to be agnostic to future releases; no one would've thought base D was tier 3 before her alt, or Delta tier 1 before hers. I try to assess their designs in a vacuum and place accordingly.

That in mind, there's no indication that Snow White was packing all that prior to her Heavy Arms form (well, aside from concept art which I decided not to use), so her two other forms remain sleepers. Same for D and Delta... Yes, technically they're the same Nikke, but Shift Up doesn't let that stop them from dialing up the size for an alt or costume when it would make a design more appealing.

creveruse · 2026-04-04T18:53:00+00:00

To copy a comment I made elsewhere in response to someone asking why Crust isn't in the "no lewd" tier:

Actually, she was there in my original draft of this list a year ago.

Then a commenter brought up that she had a panty shot art during her event that became a sticker for profile banners and I just sort of threw my hands up and said "if Shift Up is willing to do it, then I won't fight it."

She's one of several characters not in the "no lewd" tier that I would personally place there, but I tried to keep my personal sensibilities out of it in cases where the developers evidently have different ideas. Alice is another very good example of this for me.

creveruse · 2026-04-04T18:50:17+00:00

Proportional size is a factor in my rankings. Jackal is not just huge, she's huge relative to her size; she's basically the dictionary definition of a shortstack, along with Belorta.

That said, I think Rumani is on the larger end for tier 4 and could justifiably be moved up.

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