Quote Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
So, don't take the following as me disagreeing, I think we agree on all the technical points, just that we may have different play styles, and I thought it may be helpful to flesh out my thinking more. I am curious to see what your thoughts are, as discussions like these often help me see hidden potential in builds.
Disagree to your heart's content. I don't take it personally and love having the discourse.


Three things:
1. Fast and bursty can actually make hp-based (both pride-like and vigoras-like) weapons more attractive 'cos you can more easily shift when the damage occurs. If you are going pride route like my suggested use of Abou, you heal after FB; if going vigoras like your suggestion, you heal before. Note that if you have a red abilities heavy build (e.g. SSR Artemis), vigoras probably will in fact work better 'cos you usually unload most of them at start of combat when you are at full health. I usually use a buff and debuff heavy build (e.g. Tish), where more of my damage comes from burst, and it is not easy to burst at full health consistently outside of burst hour.
2. I actually have Sol (awakened actually) and ascension weapons, but I don't always use them. Light has a lot of very strong attackers, and while Sol is an extremely good utility hime, she usually gets benched or goes to sub when I don't need the cleanse or dispel and just go full DPS. Remember, for GO, potions drop reliably; emote for potion in raids or just free-ride on someone else's Andromeda heal if you don't need reliable heal.
3. Even with Sol, before awakening, it is still tough to consistently keep everyone topped off. Remember, her heal has a 6T CD, which often means you need to wait for two boss ODs before you heal again. And pre-awakening, her heal does not have the regen attached to it. That being said, I actually do use a build where I pair Sol AW with Joan and Tish, and if you time their abilities well, you can in fact keep everyone near full health most of the time and yes, it would make no sense to use Abou in that build.
My current hime team is SSR Artemis, Tishtrya, Sol AW and Michael AW with Metatron and Light Satan in sub. My grid is fairly poor and still uses some assault SRs. It takes longer to get that up and running due to large gaps in Light specific events.

I have tried running without Sol, but I've got a strong assault grid with very little defender and so my group is tender. As such I have to run Sol in almost every section of high level content. I have been pushing my team for burst and also double attack and triple attack optimization. While that is weaker in the short run against content that is debuffable, it is also one of the few ways to consistently put out damage into debuff resistant content and also when I'm using them off element (which is a lot of the time as this team is way better than most of my other teams). I agree that it is difficult to keep people consistently topped of, but that's why I'm so interested in the pride and vigoras synergy. I had a friend on the wiki discord channel run my weapon grid (which has LSatan's pride glaive in it) with both 1 vigoras and 1 pride weapon and also 1 vigoras and 2 pride weapons. On both grids, the damage output at the start is about 10% for the first 10% of hit points. It then goes to zero at around 80% life and then for the single pride grid it stays below by about 4-6% all the way to zero hitpoints. For the 2 pride weapon combo it still crosses at around 80% life and then sees about a 3-4% loss till about 25% life. At that point it picks up again and that vigoras is starting to help yet again. It seems fairly close to a wash (30 to 40% of your hitpoint range you've got around a 5% boost with 10% at start) and near the middle you're consistently around 3-4% less in hitpoints. I'll try and find the charts from last night's discussion and post them to this forum later tonight. (Currently at work)


A couple things here:
1. Remember you are sacrificing 13% assault to have a vigoras weapon, so at 100% assault, you are only gaining equivalent of 11% assault at full health. That is a lot, yes, but vigoras drops off non-linearly unlike pride and special attack, and you are gaining basically nothing around 80% health and losing out the entire 13% assault equivalent below half health. If you are using a non-Sol AW build, you will likely be spending a lot of time under 80% health.
2. Just curious, under what circumstances would your elemental be 50%? That sounds awfully low. The benchmark I usually use is either 110% elemental (30% soul weapon + double 40% event eidolons) or 170% elemental (soul weapon + 100% eidolon + 40% event eidolon). That would actually make your 18% elemental equivalent look even more attractive, but just barely attractive enough to want to replace the soul weapon with a vigoras weapon unless you have double 100%+ eidolons.
My elemental is not at 50%. It's currently at 80% (2star Echidna plus full skilled Shingen lance). I was just using that as a general estimation level (math is easier to run there than at other numbers).

That is actually the same logic as my suggestion of combining Abou with a vigoras weapon. I would argue that works better with Abou than with pride weapons, because for Abou, you are sacrificing eidolon elemental for special attack, which is its own frame, separate from vigoras as well. For pride, you are sacrificing base assault for hp-dependent assault (I am assuming a base case of 9x assault weapons), which is not a good offset to vigoras. Consider the following data points (double-check my math, but I believe I have it right):

a. 9x SR assault (I will ignore elemental frame since I am keeping that constant in all scenarios here): 117% assault = 2.17 dmg
b. 1 pride and 1 vigoras, 7x assault all SR: 101% assault, 12 pride multiplier and 16 vigoras base = 2.25 dmg at 100% hp (~4% higher than base case) but from ~85% hp all the way down to zero, you are losing up to 5% dmg
c. 2 pride, 1 vigoras, 6x assault all SR: 98% assault, 24 pride multiplier and 16 vigoras base = 2.22 dmg at 100% hp AND at ~0% hp (~2% higher than base case) but between 25%-90% hp, you are losing up to 4% dmg. You need to have a very specialized build to dish out most of your dmg OUTSIDE of the 25%-90% hp range

For reference, my Abou + vigoras calculations from before used 170% elemental and 117% assault as base, and 130% elemental and 104% assault for Abou + vigoras. There, the dmg loss never exceeds 2% but the upside can go to 20% at near death. It relies on high elemental and the fact that assault, elemental, special attack and vigoras are all separate frames. If your elemental is lower and/or you are sacrificing a 100% eidolon instead of 40%, the numbers look awful, too.

Just curious, are you MLB-ing two pride or two vigoras weapons? If two vigoras, what does your light build look like? If I did my math right, you have to be pretty confident that you can consistently keep everyone above 90% hp for it to be worthwhile. Not even my Joan + Tish + Sol AW build can manage that unless I bring LT as well AND her blind lands. Do you have a lot of ascension weapons such that even Joan's regen can keep everyone healthy from regular attacks and Sol cover OD or something? I guess if you have a lot of defense accessories, that will probably help a lot, too.
I'm actually trying to find a way to limit the potential downside to using Pride weapons in my grid. The biggest issue with a pride weapon in a grid is the loss of attack in the first 30% of hit points. One thing the calculation my friend showed is that my overall assault, in all situations, goes up as I lose hitpoints. I currently only have 1 pride weapon in the grid and I'm at full strength at 70% life (against an SSR) and then for all life lower I'm actually hitting harder with that single pride weapon (about 10% more as I go to zero life) in my grid. With Sol and ascension weapons I can heal 3666 hit points each heal. I have Tish also for that 'oh shit' that hime took 8k damage in one round also. So keeping himes alive and moving isn't a huge issue. Also I can guarantee getting another assault/ascension weapon at the next event that can be FLBed. I WILL have Pride weapons in my weapon grid whether I want to or not as it's a long long road to bricking Hime weapons that are better. If this is a know format for my game, what should I do to mitigate the first 15% to 20% life where I'm at a disadvantage? That Vigoras weapon seems to be the one missing link. Due to my friends analysis, I may never run more than 1 of it, but I think it's got to go into the grid to help with smoothening the damage profile, since in the medium term I have no choice and I'm using ascension staffs.

I actually plan on MLBing 2 of each (the pride sword and the vigoras weapon). I recently got a phantom sword drop and I'm tempted to try and build a sword grid with Arthur's sword, the Orchicalcum Swordx1, Frey's sword, and two of these SR pride swords (or maybe three and no Ori sword). MLBing an SR is unbelievably cheap (300 Eidolon Orbs per break) so it costs very little to try and do.


Dejnov.


Let's talk about Abou in another post; I've got to run to work meeting and the Abou discussion is deeper.