Thread: Kamihime General Discussion + Q&A

Originally Posted by Slashley

Now then... "Dark is not a shitty element. It can do fine and has plenty of valuable tools in its skillset" objectively speaking... Dark is shitty. Dark really, really suffers in Hime quality overall. Most elements have some true heroes among them, such that you can just MT and you're instantly fine. For Dark... ... there... really isn't any. They have lots of strong individual Hime (with +150% Assault being a recurring theme), but all of them kind of just... do their own thing. Which is not ideal. But hey, it works. If Dark existed in a bubble, it would be perfectly fine, but when you compare Dark to other elements, you go "... well, I guess it doesn't work well enough."

Dammit. This statement is something I still totally disagree with... Dark does not suck. You do have to play it differently though. And Dark is getting great Himes this year also... Nefertem, DTake, DSvarog... I think you're totally wrong on the ability for dark to be able to be a strong viable team.

The main point is, Assault and Defender will work always and for everything. Vigor and Ascension... do not. Is it possible to make them work? Yes. Should you recommend them to a new player? Absolutely not, let them get their basics straight first. This is further problematic since unlike Assault/Defender which are plentiful, Assault/(Vigor or Ascension) weapons are not. You didn't give me a specific answer to #3 either, just handwaved it away again. How exactly would a new player get their hands on such weapons again?
(Guardians make it possible for a few elements - specifically Thunder (Gun) and Water (Lance). Dark also has access to Ascension (Arcane), but even you said to go with the Guns, because goddamn the amount of Assault and HP on those Guns is amazing! Personally not getting them though since Envy Axes are about same grade, just far more defensive.)

I disagree with defender being needed in a grid anymore. You're better off getting Vigor and/or Ascension (especially Ascension). Your bang for buck is just better with Ascension than Defender.

Although, even that is pretty confusing to me. I mean, you keep touting Cern and Pluto. Cern has 30% per 5t (20% uptime) and Pluto has 30% per 2/8t (25% uptime). That gets you on average to 13,5% damage cut... and then when we add brand spanking new Nefertem with her 25% 2/5t (40% uptime) we reach 23,5% damage cut on average. Which I guess just barely reaches this 20% treshold. Though, when manualing, you don't exactly need to use these averages as damage cuts can be used only for OD turns. Still, that's not what "constant damage cut" means...

I agree that I'm not a fan of turtling (i.e. damage cut teams of 70-80%) and instead focus on just teams with overall damage cut of 20-40%.
You're not paying attention to the whole ensemble. You keep only focusing on the portions you like as opposed to the tools you can utilize. Let's just use Cernunnos, Andro on the team, and One On-Element 0LB Kaiser. Andro's Cursed Canting Chains gives 20% Defense 3/6T and Cerunnos can build to 40% Defense constant. that is 60%/40% 3/6T. This works out to damage cuts of 37.5%/28.5% constant damage cut for this team or 33% avg. damage cut. Cernunnos then gives 30% 1/5T or 6% average damage cut. An On Element Kaiser gives 20% 2/8T or 5% damage cut. Right now with all tools you have you're sporting 44% average damage cut. You now need to estimate the amount of damage cut that is coming from Andro's Heal. I like to assume 4k damage per round per Hime (fair and reasonable approximation for near endgame content) which means that you're taking 2.24k per round. Andro can heal 1.6k/5T or 320HP per round. That is base 8% damage cut or (after other sources of damage cut) equivalent to an additional 14.3% damage cut. This team currently runs 58.7% damage cut. You still have 3 Hime slots open. Now there are a ton of ifs and assumptions here. You might not like the 4k per round per hime approximation, if it's higher you do get less damage cut from Andro, but I don't think content goes much higher. If you get Nefertem, you can drop Andro and run Shingen. Joan and Andro are just there to fill slots for Himes you don't have. You could also run more Kaisers (5% avg.) and/or Dragoons (7.5% avg. MLB) as needed to up your defenses.

Another confusing part is, you claim to go to toe to toe with the strongest players with a build that has three units with zero offensive abilities. I mean, don't get me wrong, Nefertem is amazing and deserves her spot in any team that is looking to debuff and/or survive. Pluto can boost your full bursts a fair deal, but that's pretty much it. Cern... ... does absolutely nothing but reduce damage taken. That... still doesn't seem realistic in the slightest.

But, the real problem is here is that you're absolutely relying on Nefertem. This is a Hime who hasn't even been in a Miracle Ticket yet!! And you're still recommending this build to new players? How exactly are they going to go about it when they don't have the very cornerstone of such a build?!? I mean, I suppose you can kiiiinda make do without Nefertem, but then you need multiple Hime to offset that loss, and then you're damage output is even more in the pits.

Relying on Nefertem as a core meta Hime is something ALL elements do once you're aiming for META. This is not a counterpoint against utilizing an effective damage cut team as your core build. All of the other choices required - Andro, Joan, Idun and Cernunnos are available and/or SRs. They are all available to new Dark players fairly easily. Once you have the ability to get better choices, upgrade as needed.

And your claim that damage reduction doesn't add offense is invalidated by Vigor. Teams with 50+% damage cut can keep Vigor up for a really long time (usually the full battle). That's additional assault/damage that non-damage cuts can't do. Having Cernunnos means she doesn't do as much damage as an SSR, but she does allow all other SSRs in your team to utilize Vigor for far longer than without.

I'm not a Dark player anymore. I never got Anubis (instead got Nidhoggr) and now run Thunder. In Thunder I still run a strong damage cut Hime (Raiko) and as much Vigor/Ascension as I can. I don't pay attention to defender at all. In the above example, without any defender in the grid, we've got 50+% damage cut which is equivalent to 100% defender. Why bother with defender at all at that point. I mean you'll have to have some from sub-par weapons, but I'd gladly trade that in for Vigor/Ascension and the minimum needed Exceed.

"With utilizing Idun (free Hime also), there is nothing stopping a Dark player from making a viable team that can clear all content (might need help, but won't be completely useless)." I mean... you're not wrong... but... you can also make viable teams for any content without making a turtling/damage cut team? As soon as a player gets their hands on a full slvl20 SR Grid, they should be strong enough to clear almost all GOs (Jack excluded, but oh boy, a Dark turtling/damage cut team isn't going to do anything to her either). So, shouldn't these players rather go for the typical "kill it before it kills you" builds, which are significantly faster? Or do you have an example of a newer player clearing something like AQ7 especially early due to a build like this?

Being able to clear difficult content is an important aspect of Kamihime. Utilizing a damage cut team allows you to do that with sub-par grids and eidolons. Once you're able to clear higher content I don't think you actually have to switch the gameplay format to only assault/defense. Adding additional Ascension and Vigor helps that team clear faster. You can technically (with enough Ascension) turn the team into an AAB team. And with Vigor you can turn the team into a faster team. But I don't see any reason to trade Ascension or Vigor for Defense. That doesn't help you 'kill it before it kills you' either. The loss for a decent damage cut team you keep pointing out is at most a Hime and/or Soul choice and 1 maybe 2 Eidolons slots. The durability you gain and the ability to clear very high content at an early stage in a player's career is very valuable. The ability to grow this team past an assault/defender grid based team is also available.

There is a reason that ascension/vigor is harder to get than defender; they are better weapon grid skills. You do need to create a team to utilize it and so they take more effort and work, but there is a strong payoff from that also. The reason I think most Dark players should run a damage cut team is that it's so readily available to them. They have the easiest chance to get a damage cut team working. You can make that team with two SRs (Idun and Cernunnos) and either Andro or Joan. That is much easier than trying to get a specific SSR, but once you get them you can definitely transition to the better SSRs. Also, I don't believe they are hard/impossible to create for most elements. You do have to run Andro/Joan (and the Kaisers/Dragoons) until you get a damage cut SSR/SR, but that is not unrealistic. They are SR Himes in all elements that start the team. Cernunnos is a different beast in that her skillset is something you'd expect on an SSR.


Dejnov.


Edit: I would trade higher levels of damage cut for faster burst speed, but I would never trade Vigor/Ascension weapons for Defender weapons. As you get better Eidolons and Weapons, it is natural to see if you can move from Andro/Joan to Shingen/Yori. That team isn't an AAB team anymore, but if you needed an AAB team you wouldn't switch from Andro in the first place.