I am sure you (at some point) have wondered why some 4 star characters seem to be stronger than a lot of 5 stars event girls.
(Most notable Di Yu, Snowflake and St Paulia) when you sort them from total power?
But does that actually mean they are actually stronger?

I think not, but before i continue, in case you don't know how total power is calculated by each squad.
It's quite simple, it's just the sum of each character's stats (ATK,DEF and HP) excluding SPD

Some characters have a lot of HP and that makes them go up in the list but i don't think that necessarily means they are stronger than other characters.
Some characters have high HP but have low def which under-compensates compared to other characters who have low HP but high enough DEF to survive longer than the high HP characters, thus dealing more total damage over all depending on how much damage they actualy do per turn

So how do you assure your squads are optimally sorted?
You might want to sort them by ATK, they might die sooner and actually deal less total damage than a balanced squad, but are those actually the characters that deal the most damage?

I have a theory but i am not sure about this so i would really appreciate if someone confirms this.
You can't know the true damage a character does by simply looking at their ATK stat or buffs.
Have you noticed that the characters which higher ATK are the ones who don't have multiple hit moves?
For example Amaryllis the 2 star flowerknight (compared to other 2 star ones) or Edelweiss the 5 star one.

I am not sure about this but i believe damage is calculated on each hit, so obviously characters who have multi hit moves need to have slightly or greatly less ATK to balance it out.
That's why characters with only one hit moves have higher ATK stats.
This would mean that the characters listed from higher ATK are not actually the ones who do the most damage, that's something to think about.

I think you can't know the true damage a character does unless you count each hit and apply the damage formula for each.

Maybe i am missing something i don't know? What do you guys think?

By the way if you want to know how your character's defense efficiency is like, here's this formula.

(HP/(1000-(DEF/4))
This basically calculates in how many hits your character would die if they get hit by a monster that deals 1000 damage (2000 atk)
disregarding any kind of buff or randomness.
The higher the number you get, the most turns your character will survive.
It's science