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View Full Version : Value of defender skill for heal/sustain comp?



Saeleyna
07-25-2017, 11:29 AM
Everyone talks about assault weapons and I understand why generally speaking they're better, but a lot of my better kamihime either have a heal, damage reduction, or both, so I can draw fights out quite a bit if I manage skills properly. Was wondering for a comp designed around damage reduction and healing, is there some merit to defender weapon skills or just sack them (assuming similar quality and all that) for assault weapons?

Unregistered
07-25-2017, 12:02 PM
Sack them.

Cooldowns prevent you from drawing a high level fight out forever. So the purpose of buying X more turns is to multiply by Y damage per turn to get (X*Y) more damage.
Also, my gut feeling is that the effective proportional gains aren't the same. That is, X% increase to HP doesn't necessarily mean you actually last X% longer, whereas X% increase to damage output is closer to killing an enemy in 1/(1+X) time.

Unregistered
07-25-2017, 02:49 PM
The reason people go blindly for Assault Weapons is because it allows you to clean the vast majority of the game even without requiring any extra survivability. Right highest difficulty content is:

- Expert Raid Event
- Ragnarok Raid Event (not renewable)
- Ultimate Advent Battle
- Ragnarok Advent Battle (not renewable)
- Union Raid Expert Lilim
- Union Raid Expert Demon
- Union Raid Ultimate Demon

Non-event content is irrelevant since it's really easy to beat compared to all of those.

Out of those, Expert Raid Event, Ultimate Advent Battle and Expert Lilim are easy to clear even with a build that's extremely far from optimized, as Ragnarok might demand a bit more effort but would still be beatable with any random build as long as you're getting closed to having it finished (full high level SR+ weapon grid with skill levels not being at bottom).


Therefore, Assault and Defender can both clear this content, but Assault would do this waaaay faster, which is more comfortable. The main point is: Defender is just unnecessary.


The thing is, Union Raid Demons get stronger every time you kill them and their potential difficulty is technically infinite.
The ONLY reason you would want to go for a grid with a lot of Defender skills would be if it allows you to beat those Demon better.


Then, is it actually better? I don't know since I never tried, but my guess (remember it's just a guess and a personal opinion) is that you could make a pretty effective Defender team that could beat really high level Demons solo.

Now there is one important thing to take into consideration: doubling your HP doesn't mean you'll double the number of turns you can survive. If your team has 20k HP, you fight 30 turns and heal 3000 HP every 5 turns, you'll have healed 18k HP during the whole fight. you could say that means you're able to tank 20k+18k = 38k damage during the whole fight (not exactly because of overheals but you get the idea). If you only had 10k Hp instead of 20k, you'd be able to tank 28k instead of 38k. You halved your HP, but the damage you can tank only got reduced by ~a quarter.

The real value here of having 20k HP instead of 10k would be the safety of a Kamihime not dying. Let's say you get unlucky and the same Kamihime gets Triple-attacked two times in a row and takes 6k damage every triple attack. she would survive with 20k HP, as she would slowly recover health over time as the damage you take end up spreading out over time.

The thing is if you have a team that:
- Outsustains the received damage
- Has enough HP to ensure a Kamihime won't randomly die when focused a few turns in a row
Then no matter how little your damage is, you will be able to win the fight.

And here is the real value of sacrificing every Assault Weapon and go for Defender Weapons instead: going for a ton of healing as the extra HP would be the security than you don't lose a Kamihime randomly, so your sustain is guaranteed to carry you through the end of the fight. In that kind of team, Defensive Kamis have really high value, and you would probably need 3 or 4 healers to make it work well.
This is actually quite hard to accomplish, because one important thing is that Defender grid makes Rainbow team members TERRIBLY AWFUL. The whole point of a Defender Grid is that all of your Kamihime survive, but there's no point if you randomly have Sol in a Dark team that doesn't have an HP boost and that would surely die at some point in the really long fight (or if she doesn't, that means you could have gone full Assault anyways and the HP was worthless). This problem doesn't exist with Assault Grid since Sol or whatever the rainbow member would be isn't supposed to deal damage anyways.

That means you need a full team of extremely defensive Kamis of the same Element to make it work, which is once more a really big restriction.

So my answer (entirely based on theory and no actual testings) to the question "How good a Defender team would be?" is: It might be the better than an Assault team for Union raid high level Demons specifically, but you would have to go through a lot of trouble to make it work, and an Assault team would be more convenient against everything else in the game.
Oh, you would also need a Union that goes for the HP and HP Recovery boosts during these events, and I'm pretty sure those 2 boost are 100% worth it regardless, but HP recovery tends to be underestimated so some Unions won't go for those.




I'll end up saying that, in a more general way, if you don't have rainbow party members, sacrificing just a few Assault Weapons for Defender just for a bit more survivability , even though it wouldn't be required for most of the game content, would probably be helpful for Union Demons. For example, going for 8 Assault / 2 Defender instead of 10 / 0 would mean sacrificing 12.3% damage for 32% extra HP, which is a nice deal

sanahtlig
07-25-2017, 04:50 PM
I'm planning to build an endurance readout into my damage calculator, but in short: for endurance builds, you want to maximize damage mitigation and healing. Max HP only helps with damage smoothing, which is less valuable when standard heals only heal a small fraction of your max HP. In general, a little more HP isn't going to save you from a wipe, however a little extra damage often DOES save you from a wipe because it allows you to control the Rage meter (either depleting it to avoid a Rage Overdrive, or maxing it to avoid a Normal Overdrive). So for an endurance build, you should aim for -50% ATK DWN and 2 strong healers (~500 HP/turn), perhaps in combination with damage reduction abilities (e.g., DEF UP and/or damage cut).

Saeleyna
07-25-2017, 11:55 PM
The reason people go blindly for Assault Weapons is because it allows you to clean the vast majority of the game even without requiring any extra survivability. Right highest difficulty content is:

- Expert Raid Event
- Ragnarok Raid Event (not renewable)
- Ultimate Advent Battle
- Ragnarok Advent Battle (not renewable)
- Union Raid Expert Lilim
- Union Raid Expert Demon
- Union Raid Ultimate Demon

Non-event content is irrelevant since it's really easy to beat compared to all of those.

Out of those, Expert Raid Event, Ultimate Advent Battle and Expert Lilim are easy to clear even with a build that's extremely far from optimized, as Ragnarok might demand a bit more effort but would still be beatable with any random build as long as you're getting closed to having it finished (full high level SR+ weapon grid with skill levels not being at bottom).


Therefore, Assault and Defender can both clear this content, but Assault would do this waaaay faster, which is more comfortable. The main point is: Defender is just unnecessary.


The thing is, Union Raid Demons get stronger every time you kill them and their potential difficulty is technically infinite.
The ONLY reason you would want to go for a grid with a lot of Defender skills would be if it allows you to beat those Demon better.


Then, is it actually better? I don't know since I never tried, but my guess (remember it's just a guess and a personal opinion) is that you could make a pretty effective Defender team that could beat really high level Demons solo.

Now there is one important thing to take into consideration: doubling your HP doesn't mean you'll double the number of turns you can survive. If your team has 20k HP, you fight 30 turns and heal 3000 HP every 5 turns, you'll have healed 18k HP during the whole fight. you could say that means you're able to tank 20k+18k = 38k damage during the whole fight (not exactly because of overheals but you get the idea). If you only had 10k Hp instead of 20k, you'd be able to tank 28k instead of 38k. You halved your HP, but the damage you can tank only got reduced by ~a quarter.

The real value here of having 20k HP instead of 10k would be the safety of a Kamihime not dying. Let's say you get unlucky and the same Kamihime gets Triple-attacked two times in a row and takes 6k damage every triple attack. she would survive with 20k HP, as she would slowly recover health over time as the damage you take end up spreading out over time.

The thing is if you have a team that:
- Outsustains the received damage
- Has enough HP to ensure a Kamihime won't randomly die when focused a few turns in a row
Then no matter how little your damage is, you will be able to win the fight.

And here is the real value of sacrificing every Assault Weapon and go for Defender Weapons instead: going for a ton of healing as the extra HP would be the security than you don't lose a Kamihime randomly, so your sustain is guaranteed to carry you through the end of the fight. In that kind of team, Defensive Kamis have really high value, and you would probably need 3 or 4 healers to make it work well.
This is actually quite hard to accomplish, because one important thing is that Defender grid makes Rainbow team members TERRIBLY AWFUL. The whole point of a Defender Grid is that all of your Kamihime survive, but there's no point if you randomly have Sol in a Dark team that doesn't have an HP boost and that would surely die at some point in the really long fight (or if she doesn't, that means you could have gone full Assault anyways and the HP was worthless). This problem doesn't exist with Assault Grid since Sol or whatever the rainbow member would be isn't supposed to deal damage anyways.

That means you need a full team of extremely defensive Kamis of the same Element to make it work, which is once more a really big restriction.

So my answer (entirely based on theory and no actual testings) to the question "How good a Defender team would be?" is: It might be the better than an Assault team for Union raid high level Demons specifically, but you would have to go through a lot of trouble to make it work, and an Assault team would be more convenient against everything else in the game.
Oh, you would also need a Union that goes for the HP and HP Recovery boosts during these events, and I'm pretty sure those 2 boost are 100% worth it regardless, but HP recovery tends to be underestimated so some Unions won't go for those.




I'll end up saying that, in a more general way, if you don't have rainbow party members, sacrificing just a few Assault Weapons for Defender just for a bit more survivability , even though it wouldn't be required for most of the game content, would probably be helpful for Union Demons. For example, going for 8 Assault / 2 Defender instead of 10 / 0 would mean sacrificing 12.3% damage for 32% extra HP, which is a nice deal

Yea that's kinda what I was thinking - don't know enough of the available kamihime to know how I could round out a full team that could make this work so didn't know if it would even be viable, but was only thinking of something like this for the union-based battles similar to one that just passed. Obviously for even rag. advent fights I could see full assault (or 1 defender) being optimal just for efficiency and all that but this was all just for looking at the infinitely-scaling based enemies. Thanks for the feedback - I'll at least keep a couple on hand to maybe try this out when I get a good team (still doing piecemeal atm >_<).

Shieun
07-26-2017, 12:32 AM
I used to wonder as well, but after experiencing Ragnarok difficulty on union raid, I do think that it is more beneficial to get attack power than max HP.

Part of the reasoning is that with higher attack power, its easier for you to deplete the boss' overdrive meter and giving you control on how you sustain your unit with cooldowns. I dont think it's viable to rely on your healing skill against most boss' overdrives.

If you can send the boss from rage to stun in 1/2 turns, then it is less likely for you to take overdrive from the boss... Also for some bosses who buff themselves with their overdrive, you can control their buff and instead of relying on 8 turn dispel, you can send them to stun when they are about to use their overdrive instead. With limited source of dispel (so far I only found one in Cassiopeia), its easier to control their rage/stun meter than to take and sustain your team from overdrive after overdrive.

Obviously balance will be important, no point having high attack if your hime is dead, and obviously there's no point in having lots of HP and your hime deal little damage to the boss allowing the boss to overdrive you over and over.

Unregistered
07-26-2017, 10:40 PM
Incidentally, what element and how many SSRs to target did you have in mind?
(Don't say Thunder; Thunder doesn't have any conventional healers that I'm aware of)

noxybell
07-26-2017, 11:27 PM
In general, a little more HP isn't going to save you from a wipe, however a little extra damage often DOES save you from a wipe because it allows you to control the Rage meter (either depleting it to avoid a Rage Overdrive, or maxing it to avoid a Normal Overdrive).

I do recall seeing some boss in DMM wiki that has no rage bar and hence can't be forced into stuns though. Unless Google Translate messed up again.


Incidentally, what element and how many SSRs to target did you have in mind?
(Don't say Thunder; Thunder doesn't have any conventional healers that I'm aware of)

My goal in the super duper long term (i.e. when-Thunder-has-a-Healer-SSR-released that scale of long), 6 SSR (4 main + 2 for reserve) x 6 elements =36. Also 6 new eidolons for each element that + 100% elemental damage. But I don't think the question was for me xD.

Unregistered
07-26-2017, 11:31 PM
Ok, technically what I said about Thunder is false. Cyclops has a rather strong party-wide regen skill. The catch is, that same skill also applies that particular buff that raises burst gauge in return for eating 5% of one's max hp. So if you're shooting for over 15k HP, the regen loses to the buff's DoT component.

And I'm not gonna bother accounting for the +recovery buff in Union events. That requires convincing your union to dedicate up to 100 out of 400 available grails for one specific person's build. That'll be a hard sell for larger unions.

noxybell
07-26-2017, 11:37 PM
Ok, technically what I said about Thunder is false. Cyclops has a rather strong party-wide regen skill. .

SR. Not in my radar. Then again Thunder is unique. Core Thunder SSRs all have some kind of self-regen or self-heal anyway, like Marduk, Jupiter, Thor etc. Getting them is a separate issue though.