Quote Originally Posted by Slashley View Post
Ah yes, having 13 out of 15 slots filled with TA and DA sounds extremely realistic.
I know we disagree on accessory priorities, but yes, some of us do in fact have 10 or so DATA effects on our accessories on multiple himes.

Why don't you run the maths and tell us exactly how much does this extra Double+ hurt that build?
Depends on number and size of avalanche weapons (or even worse, rush weapons) but here's one scenario (can't be sure DATA numbers are accurate since it's hard to test, but these are the best numbers I can find):

Tish TA 50%, fluffy DATA 15%/15%, SSR base DATA 8%/3%, accessory TA 10% (no tiara set 'cos you need earrings for that particular build to work) and you're already at GDATA - 23%/78%. Arty needs to TA not DA for that build, so she has 77.2% chance of succeeding. If you add a slotted DA accessory of 5% 'cos the other two effects are good, that drops to 73.6% (in the interest of keeping it realistic, I did not use an avalanche weapon since only Arty's gun has that, and nobody uses that gun unless they have no choice.) Yes, it's a small drop, but if you're going to ignore everything in this game that only has a few percent difference, then you would also ignore:

  • All accessory effects - except set effects, they're all small individually
  • LB-ing and lvl-ing eidolons - typically only a few hundred stats per LB, that makes 1% difference or less for most ppl
  • +99 weapons and eidos
  • FLB event weapons that are already dual skill - usually just adds a few hundred stats and 5% assault/defender which only makes a few % difference in dmg/hp unless your grid is really bad

There're probably other things I can't think of right now, but the point is, you can choose not to optimize around certain parameters if you think it's too much trouble, but if you don't optimize around ANY small things, they can add up quickly.

Well, your "highlight for an EXCEPTION" sure looks a lot like it is something that should always be considered, rather than just a footnote. Something that has no effect for 99.9999999999999999999% of the playerbase shouldn't so prominent in the post.
Please reread my post. This is what I wrote AFTER I've already talked about why it's not a good source of direct dmg:

Quote Originally Posted by dreamlitz View Post
In fact, avalanche can sometimes be worse than barrage - for GDATA builds, you want more TA not more DA as the DA will crowd out the TA from normalization.
Btw, this has wider applications than just avalanche weapons, namely how you should distribute grails/rings during UE.

Oh really. So what you're saying is that Tish-Iris-Vishnu-Michael is a viable team?
-.- I actually started writing a short paragraph summarizing how each of those himes when used individually gets you into GDATA situation that matters, but I don't think it's helpful. The key point is that you want to minimize the chance of your burst bottleneck from delaying your FB.

Even if so, Double+ will literally only hurt your team during extremely few turns, and extremely little during those turns even. Why on earth would you then claim that Avalanche can be worse than Barrage?
The point I wanted to make was that as a direct source of dmg, rush/barrage/avalanche all pales in comparison to other weapon skills. It can potentially be useful as a source of BG gain. However, rush and rush part of avalanche can hurt you when you stack on up to GDATA. You usually only bother stacking up to GDATA on the bottleneck hime, which is exactly where you need BG the most - yeah, it helps everyone else not at GDATA, but it only contributes tiny natk dmg there, but doesn't change your burst timing. Whereas delaying your FB can have big dmg implications.

The original question asked why avalanche isn't a great weapon skill, I think pointing out situations where it actually hurts instead of helps is relevant since you expect more of anything to always be helpful, even if the effect is tiny (e.g. elaborate never hurts your dmg output even though it sucks 99% of the time.)