That is correct, much appreciated.
That is correct, much appreciated.
Level and evolve units, level and equip equipment, max affection. Once you get to 15+ 5/6*s, you can worry about team synergy which helps a ton.
Don't have my ID on-hand, but you can check the Friends List topics for it. Have a fairly synergetic team of 6*s, one of which (Anemone) is totally maxed on ampies with 3 maxed-out equips and one (Bride Orchid) is about halfway to max on ampies. They tend to one-round the pests in this event (even bosses rarely last more than 2 rounds). Note that you'll want a girl at Evolved Max to get full statistical power out of them (and any other helper squad)
Various RNG elements like evasion, pests hitting units with defense buffs vs not, crits, girls hitting matching damage type tests vs not, and skill activation can give quite a bit of variation between runs even with the same squad; differences in skills and abilities are quite different as well.
My teams 1 and 2 are close in TP but team 1 with a lot of AOE skills does a lot better against most pest nodes on maps. Team 2 which has a lot of single pest attack skills tends to take more rounds and take more damage against the same nodes.
Ivan's squad works quite well, even scaled down to level 60. It got me through a lot of tough maps earlier on, and I still use it as a helper a lot (although not when I'm trying to three medal a map usually because its a fairly fast squad).
I'm actually keeping one of my girls pre-evolution right now just to keep my helpers at level 60 until I get one of my evolved girls up to that level.
As a side note, clearly I have a much narrower definition of synergy than some people, because I find relatively few combinations out there that are truly synergistic.
Problem with the truely synergetic squads: they tend to be rather slow, which is why people (myself included) generally don't put them as helpers
My counter squad (Hypericum, Anemone, Mirabilis and Rose for Counter, Dahlia for ATK debuff) is only 471 speed
My trigger squad (Cymbidium, Justica, Apple and Cyrtanthus for increased trigger rate, Fritillaria to leech on all the triggers) is only 474 speed.
On the other hand, my front tanking squad (in my signature) is mostly about being fast and small pest damage reduction/nest heal. Not really synergy, more about strategy.
My second squad which has Dipladenia, Dogwood and some girls increasing the sun gem drop is 742 speed. It is synergetic, but not the kind people want. (many prefer to tab out and skip the solar blast thing).
And speed is what people want for farming, not synergy. So you'll really find very few synergetic helpers around the place I'm afraid..
The squad was built with helping weaker people power through maps they can't normally clear (or would at least have difficulty with), thus it's meant to be fast and powerful, capable of bulldozing through most maps with ease while staying ahead of the [presumably] weaker squads. For those who have strong, leveled squads it's just an extra power + speed option.
My helper squad has 4 attack buffs (everyone except Anemone) for offensive boost, a defense boost (Anemone) + Enemy Attack Down (Bride Orchid) + Evasion (Ionocidium) + Life Drain Skill (Alpinia) + Heal on Pest node (Dianthus) for added survival, Counter for extra damage especially against AOE bosses (Anemone) and a Speed Boost to stay ahead of many squads (Alpinia). It's powerful and fast, with numerous ways to boost survivability. The attack order (for skills) is Hit All x3 -> Random3 -> Single Life Drain. Hardly anything besides Mission 13/14 bosses survives past Round 1 if more than one skill triggers.