Alternative to total power for evaluating a stats stick eidolon

[dreamlitz]

Disclaimer: this is a long post with what may be a controversial opinion.

The tl;dr version is that I think total power is misleading and that Tiamat is not necessarily the best stats stick as a result.


I have been tinkering a lot with my eidolon setup to get the best stats for my teams. I consistently find total power to be unhelpful though as it implicitly assumes that 1 atk is worth the same as 1 hp. Different situations and different teams will value atk/hp differently, so trying to pin down what the 'correct' trade-off is not that meaningful. Instead, I asked the question of how much atk I can get by sacrificing 1 hp and vice versa using event eidolons. This gave me the following:



Interestingly, the top of the cloud of points traces out an almost perfectly straight line (red line in chart above) and spans a good range of hp/atk levels. This means that for almost any target hp level, there is a 'best' stats stick - one that maximizes atk. If you use only eidolons on/near the red line to hit the target hp level, this will also automatically give you the best atk possible.

A few highlights:

1. Tiamat, commonly considered the best stats stick is NOT on the red line - this means that if you actually need the hp, Tiamat may not be optimal for you.
2. Sakura x Mio, commonly considered the worst stats stick is actually as good as Tiamat based on distance from the red line - this means that if you need the hp, she's actually not terrible.
3. Eidolons on the red line spans the range of 600-800+, so as long as the average hp you are targeting for you sub eidolons fall in that range, there is really no reason to use Tiamat or Sakura as stats stick (assuming you own the eidolons on the red line of course.)

The red line above implicitly assumes that you are running a rainbow team. You can repeat the exercise accounting for the fact that you get a 10% bonus for himes matching the element of the eidolons. Since I main light, I did it for light and got the following:



Barong, Abou, Yule Goat and Nandi are the 'best' light eidolons depending on your target hp level for light. High power stats stick like St. Nick and Sphinx are actually sub-optimal unless you really don't need the hp.

So are you saying Tiamat is bad?

No. I am only saying that if you need hp, Tiamat is bad since you sacrifice more hp than 'necessary'. If you don't own the eidolons on the red line or you're a water main, the situation is obviously different.

Who even cares about hp, don't you just maximize atk?

My personal experience is that hp is very important for things you can't retry like tower, or if you are trying to carry a rag, where long battle means you usually get some consecutive DATA on the same hime eventually. If you have a ton of ascension, you also want your hp high to take full advantage of the heal, since most heals are capped around 20% of hp (ascension raises that cap, but not enough to keep pace with how much it raises your heal.) If that is not your experience, feel free to ignore what I am saying here.

So should I ignore total power rating?

No, it is still useful for comparing eidolons with similar hp. All I am pointing out here is that the implicit 1:1 atk-hp trade does not exists - if you actually tried to mix and match high and low hp eidolons, the best trade you can make is roughly 3.5:1-ish.

What about active abilities?

The analysis above only looks at stats. This is most relevant to AAB builds or short battles where you're not going to be using the eidolons' active abilities anyway. For other situations, it is obviously important to weigh the stats against what actives the eido brings.

Tiamat for example, has a very useful active, so if you're not using Python, Tiamat is still a good choice despite not being on the red line.

What about kaisers and gacha eidolons?

MLB kaisers are currently THE best stats stick no matter what metric you use. MLB gacha eidolons are also superior to event eidolons in terms of stats. Problem is, at LB0, both kaisers and gacha eidolons are actually worse than MLB event eidolons in terms of stats, and most ppl dun have a bunch of MLB kaisers and gacha eidolons, while most ppl DO have MLB event eidolons. You can easily repeat the analysis with gacha eidolons if you want though. I didn't do it 'cos it's not relevant to me.

EDIT:

Did the gacha eidolon analysis, too by request. See a few posts down.

What about defender weapons?

There is a reason why I am not considering weapons at all in this analysis. It is simply because most of the time, you don't have nearly the flexibility of what to use for weapons compared to what to use for sub eidolons. This is especially true if you are going for phantom grid, where simply gathering all the correct types of weapons is hard enough, and you usually have no room to decide whether you want an extra defender weapon in your grid or not - that is pretty much decided by which phantom grid you're going for.

Also, defender values are only as good as your base stats. If your base hp is low, defender isn't going to be that helpful. If you need to trade-off some atk for hp, changing your eidolon setup is your best bet. This is why I find myself consistently gravitating towards 'bad' stats sticks like Python and Barong, 'cos despite their low total power, they give me a decent boost to base hp while minimizing the sacrifice to atk.

What about upcoming events?

I looked ahead and performed the same analysis for Rashape, Yatokami, Nine Shots and Hes. They're actually all right on or very close to the red line (i.e. all excellent stats stick.) However, they're all in the 600-ish hp range, so if you are targeting higher or lower hp, the next several events will not really help you.