Quote Originally Posted by Slashley View Post
Yup. If you have 5 (or more) weapons of the same type as the Phantom weapon, then they all gain a big bunch of base stats. Plus, you activate the skill of the weapon, which is pretty strong. Except for Guns, which is like, 45% HP. Because fuck Thunder.That's a good question. Since the Phantom weapons generally don't have Assault in them, you trade Assault for a big bunch of base stats. Secondly, those who aren't megawhales don't exactly get to choose what is in their Grids, so it doesn't seem all that impressive for most. Yet, people keep talking as if the Phantom Grids will be the second coming of God.

Meh, I guess I'll find out when I finally get my more advanced damage calc done which can calculate Phantom weapons as well.
From what I've heard, the stat increase is 30% (EDIT: to attack, to be more specific) including to the effects of +99, so having 4 additional weapons of the same type should already roughly make up for the base stats missing from a null weapon, even if we went out of our way to assume that null weapon's contributing 0 (which it obviously isn't). The question then is the to the bonus effect, which varies by null weapon. Most notable is the bonus effect of the Catastrophe Spear, which grants Strength (L) = 16% char. atk / 16% char. HP, which makes the spear an easy choice since even something small from 6 weapons getting bonuses like an additional 3000 attack (which is possible with 4 weapons of 2500 attack) is an overall improvement of 4.29% of something ridiculously high prior like 70,000 attack, whereas 5% assault contributes less than 2.5% after hitting an easy 100% character attack.

Harder to gauge are the weapons which do not come with assault. Assuming the opportunity cost is an FLB Assault (L) (which I feel like it probably won't, but let's just go ahead and assume so), this would correspond to 21% char. atk. If we assume a baseline of 160% char. atk without it (which may be unrealistic, but bare with me here), then this corresponds to an 8.08% increase in damage. If we assume 70,000 attack as a baseline with 6 weapons of the same type, then these six weapons would need 3141 ATK on average to match that increase.

The next question is if 70,000 ATK is a bullshit number. The answer is... kind of (?); it's pretty hard to hit for sure, but one video we found of a fire megawhale who runs 3 Ascalons (2 FLB, all with +99, total 7 +99's in the entire grid) and a null sword (which gives Avalanche (L), thus no assault) barely hits 70,000 ATK on Uriel AW and Acala AW (as of Oct 27, 2018). Okay, so this should tell us that 70,000 as a baseline is definitely too high, but that 65,000 ATK is still plausible, but that it's really, really hard. At the same time, he is running 158% character attack, which is matching our model. Therefore, if we do the calculation with 65,000 attack, the average needed goes down to 2917 ATK, which is a bit high (but possible for Ascalons of all things). Lowering the baseline further to 60,000 attack yields an average of 2692 ATK, which is finally reasonable since the null weapon itself will have something around this after +99.

In conclusion, it's clear that the null weapons which possess a dual skill containing assault are almost certainly going to be good if they can be properly utilized while it's a lot harder to gauge how much a dual skill without assault is going to fare, making it seem like a specific set up needs to be assumed to tell for sure.

Quote Originally Posted by Cobblemaniac View Post
Null weapons don't stack in their effects iirc, so it's only practical to run 1.

On another note, you only need 5 of the same weapon type to run a null grid, the null weapon considers itself as fulfilling the 6 same weapon type criteria.
From what I've heard, only the null weapon's stat bonus don't stack while the extra skills stack, but in any case, their drop rate is low enough that getting 4 copies of the same weapon you actually want already takes an asinine amount of time.

But just for fun, assuming the stacking of the second effect is true, we can talk about the meme 9 null spear grid which allegedly grants 144% Character Attack / 144% Character HP to all characters. Then we can run SSR Diabolos as the main and side Eidolon, who grants 20% Character HP natively and then 100-120% special attack when the Lilim condition is satisfied. Pairing this with SSR Fire Amon and only Kamihime that are either Fire/Water/Wind/Thunder, you can run a hilarious rainbow team which exploits the fact that SSR Fire Amon grants 50% Fire/Water/Wind/Thunder ATK to all allies and the fact that Diabolos Unleashed grants special attack to gain a literal 50% damage increase from elemental buffs. You can make this even funnier by running Azazel AW and Marduk AW to make everyone Hercules and gain powerful barriers/regen/pursuit buffs, which is just a hilarious idea. Or you can just do it for the memes and run Amon/Nike/Cybele/Baal in one team.

Of course, good luck collecting 9 * 4 = 36 null spears and SSR Diabolos. That's pretty much not going to happen in any realistic time-span, but it's a fun thought to consider.