Thread: Mono vs. Rainbow Grid

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Huh, all this time of mono vs rainbow grid, I was thinking in terms of kamihime compositions. I only just now noticed that you were talking about weapon grids the entire time.

I'm glad someone brought this up. Rainbow is a term players throw around a lot but there seem to be several meanings to it. And many will claim monogrids are "superior" to rainbow because they don't understand the design or the goals of a rainbow grid.

The first point of this article is to illustrate what a "good" rainbow grid looks like. Note the kamihime are all expected to be of the same element.

This article assumes your endgame goal is to have all 6 grids filled with maxed out SSR weapons. If you plan to only build one grid and ignore all other elements, stop reading this thread. 6 grids have several advantages over 1. You get advantage in every battle. Many event missions also require a specific element so building all 6 allows you to complete those missions.

SSR take a while to acquire so the 2 choices are to fill the remaining slots with SR weapons or SSR from another element. The former grants extra weapon skill buffs but less raw stats and requires you to spend resources. The latter gives higher stats and is completely free since the placeholder weapons are just weapons you use in another grid.

The second point is it shows what a "typical" rainbow looks like for players currently. It demonstrates that a maxed rainbow grid is fairly close to a maxed monogrid in terms of relative strength. And it requires no extra investment in SR which will just get replaced later.

Third, it compares the rainbow to a SL10 monogrid which is roughly what you'd expect to make using the same resources as a rainbow. This demonstrates that it's better to focus on your SSR and only use extra resources for SR. It also shows that it's a bad idea to split your focus and try to build all your weapons simultaneously.

Wrong from the start, should have run the numbers on this:

Originally Posted by nonsensei

I'm going to calculate with SL10 monogrids compared to SL20 rainbow grids, as making a monogrid for each element is much more costly than keeping one rainbow grid that might alternate only a little bit for each element.

In your calculation, rainbow grid gets 5 SL20 boost as well as element advantage. (Isn't it more like half-half, rather than rainbow?) So you need 5x6=30 SL20 SSRs.
Each SL20 SSR requires 380 Rs to level up, that's 11,400 Rs in total.
Each SL10 monogrid requires 675 Rs, 4,050 Rs in total.

I don't get why the 5 dark SSR weapons used in both the monogrid and rainbow examples have different skill levels.

After talking to the Discord troll a few months ago and running simulations using his team, I was convinced that the rainbow grid strategy was viable. I think nonsensei hangs out in that channel, so he should've seen the discussion too. But viable doesn't necessarily equal optimal, as Wanderer's criticism illustrates. If you want to fully understand this comparison, you need to run more simulations, consider different angles, and think carefully about the inputs and outputs. Napkin math isn't going to cut it. I know because I tried and ended up at a wrong conclusion several times.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm glad someone brought this up. Rainbow is a term players throw around a lot but there seem to be several meanings to it. And many will claim monogrids are "superior" to rainbow because they don't understand the design or the goals of a rainbow grid.

The first point of this article is to illustrate what a "good" rainbow grid looks like. Note the kamihime are all expected to be of the same element.

This article assumes your endgame goal is to have all 6 grids filled with maxed out SSR weapons. If you plan to only build one grid and ignore all other elements, stop reading this thread. 6 grids have several advantages over 1. You get advantage in every battle. Many event missions also require a specific element so building all 6 allows you to complete those missions.

SSR take a while to acquire so the 2 choices are to fill the remaining slots with SR weapons or SSR from another element. The former grants extra weapon skill buffs but less raw stats and requires you to spend resources. The latter gives higher stats and is completely free since the placeholder weapons are just weapons you use in another grid.

The way you describe the philosophy/approach strikes me as boiling down to:
Work on all the SSRs you can. Regardless of monogrid or rainbow, the grid for X element team will have corresponding X element SSR weapons. That is the base level of investment present in either approach.
The difference between rainbow and a monogrid for a given element is replacing the off-element SSR with an on element SR with assault.

So, in more generic form, it basically looks like this:
For an investment cost of 34,953 experience points and the equivalent of 190 R's (to max out a new SR),
you lose the difference in atk between the incoming new SR and the outgoing off-element SSR (usually in the 300-400 range?), while gaining 13% to assault.
The question is whether or not you the player finds that additional investment to be worth it, as (eventually) an SR gets replaced with an on-element SSR.

Of course, there's always different levels of investments for these temp weapons. Exp-wise, for an SR, it's 4,123 exp to get to lv 40, 10,168 exp to get to lv 55, and 20,778 exp to get to lv 70.
6 R's will get an SR to skill lv 4 (+5% assault), or 31 R's for skill lv 8 (+7% assault), or 91 R's for skill lv 14 (+10%) assault.

So the question evolves into figuring how much additional investment is needed before you start making gains, and then the followup to that would be to evaluate the investment:gain ratio and decide on what you're happy with.

Oops, that's 28 R's to get to skill lv 8, not 31 R's

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The way you describe the philosophy/approach strikes me as boiling down to:
Work on all the SSRs you can. Regardless of monogrid or rainbow, the grid for X element team will have corresponding X element SSR weapons. That is the base level of investment present in either approach.
The difference between rainbow and a monogrid for a given element is replacing the off-element SSR with an on element SR with assault.

So, in more generic form, it basically looks like this:
For an investment cost of 34,953 experience points and the equivalent of 190 R's (to max out a new SR),
you lose the difference in atk between the incoming new SR and the outgoing off-element SSR (usually in the 300-400 range?), while gaining 13% to assault.
The question is whether or not you the player finds that additional investment to be worth it, as (eventually) an SR gets replaced with an on-element SSR.

Of course, there's always different levels of investments for these temp weapons. Exp-wise, for an SR, it's 4,123 exp to get to lv 40, 10,168 exp to get to lv 55, and 20,778 exp to get to lv 70.
6 R's will get an SR to skill lv 4 (+5% assault), or 31 R's for skill lv 8 (+7% assault), or 91 R's for skill lv 14 (+10%) assault.

So the question evolves into figuring how much additional investment is needed before you start making gains, and then the followup to that would be to evaluate the investment:gain ratio and decide on what you're happy with.

Pretty much. Corresponding element SSR are your most valuable asset no matter your build and the long term goal is to have a full grid of them. There might be an approach that requires less investment in the short term for beginner players, but I tend to prioritize the long term and end game.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The difference between rainbow and a monogrid for a given element is replacing the off-element SSR with an on element SR with assault.

Yes. Last I checked, switching out a Disaster SR Assault SLV20 for an SSR is about a 2-3% damage loss for a maxed monogrid player (me). That loss increases the more assault skill you remove, but is mitigated by running a team with elemental advantage. However, the rainbow SSR grid strategy still relies on skill leveling the SSRs. It's more efficient in the long-term, but a monogrid player is unlikely to build 6 teams with skill-leveled SRs. They'll build 1-2 teams, and then shift to skill leveling SSRs only. So the opportunity cost is actually pretty minimal in the long-term.

Building a maxed monogrid takes about 3 months, and a player can farm Disaster Assault weapons at a rate of about 2 drops per week. A monogrid team isn't particularly effective on neutral-element content until about +60% assault, or ~SLVL6 average among all 10 slots.

Originally Posted by sanahtlig

After talking to the Discord troll a few months ago and running simulations using his team, I was convinced that the rainbow grid strategy was viable.--

... how? Or should I say, "define viable?"

Because seriously, I don't see any room for discussion whatsoever. A monogrid will just shit upon a rainbow grid so badly it isn't even funny.

We have theoretical tools to see this, but fuck it, I made a video to demonstrate just how damn badly rainbow gets shat upon. In the video, the stats are (higher number in bold):


Water rainbow vs Thunder mono
30800 vs 26935 base Hime attack (6740+6300+9600+8160 vs 6500+5370+8300+6765)
22910 vs 18176 weapon attack (note: weapon type bonuses not included since I don't know the specific bonuses per Hime, but even at worst it'd be 22910 vs. 19993)
12312 vs 12060 Eidolon attack (11972 vs 11446 as seen on video, but Eidolon bonus is easy to calculate)
145% vs 100% Elemental advantage
40% vs 40% Character attack from Eidolon
40% vs 40% Elemental attack from Eidolon
9% vs 105% weapon Assault skill
Everything is clearly far in favor of Water except for the Assault skill, so who do you think will win? Spoilers: the monogrid will just absolutely dominate. Even when fighting Water's strong opponent, Thunder STILL deals more damage. I honestly wanted to use Fire team against Wind, but 145% over 75% Elemental advantage should be a little bit too much to overcome.

With no double attacks, Water dealt 60k (timestamp: 1:37) damage in a turn. Thunder dealt 70k (5:04). Hell, at the end Thunder had four characters debuffed with Atk Down, and they STILL dealt 60k (6:41)!

Now, you can argue that "oh but it's just one Water Assault and it's low skill level!!!1" but... so what? That's the problem with rainbowgrids, that's all you have! The maximum I could have as Water is 16%. Yes, eventually, EVENTUALLY you'll have more SSR Assaults that apply to your Element but... you'd also have those in your monogrid(s). So a rainbowgrid would certainly grow more powerful as events roll by, but so does the monogrid (slightly). As their ultimate form is the same, a rainbow will slowly creep up upon the mono advantage and catch up, but never surpass it.

New players start with a rainbowgrid since that's all you can do. But as time passes on, you'll have more and more resources available to you. You will either just waste those resources, or start building monogrid(s). Many players can't be bothered since "eventually you'll just use SSRs!!11", and it really shows since they get absolutely shat on by players who bothered to build a proper monogrid.

So is it "viable"? That really, really depends on your definition of "viable." But it certainly isn't in my definition of "viable" - rainbowgrids are simply really crappy and only for the lazy.

I think it's funny how you proved the case for what makes rainbow so viable and still go off and say it's crappy and not viable whatsoever.

First, I need to point out something all players seem to go braindead about when it comes to this topic. Rainbow is not an endgame build. A player who knows what they are doing with rainbow has no plans whatsoever to stay rainbow for long. The argument for--or against it--has nothing to do with that. The goal for both SR mono and rainbow builds is to aim for an endgame grid of Mono SSRs.

Let's break down why rainbow is so viable and why your video proves a case for that.

First of all, Mono SR grid users are almost always fighting off-element since they normally only use 1 or 2 teams. The point of rainbow is to closely match a Mono users damage, with the help of element advantage. Which you clearly display in that video. 2nd, a rainbow user has the same strength across all of their teams due to a versatile grid. Not only that, but they also have -25% damage reduction from element advantage, which helps them outlast Mono SR users in Ragnaroks and Union Raids. They essentially do more damage because they live longer by taking less damage. Rainbow users can also get to a point where they can farm Ragnaroks faster, due to always having element advantage.

Obviously, Mono SR grids do more damage, but that doesn't mean they are better for clearing content. I'm not saying Mono SR grids are bad, but in terms of efficiency, rainbow is the way to go. Without question. However, if you prefer some extra damage you don't really need, then by all means go Mono SR.

Rainbow is a tool to work on all of your teams at the same time, and quickly get to a point where you can farm all event Ragnaroks, without burying yourself in countless SR weapons.