Thread: Alternative to total power for evaluating a stats stick eidolon

Very interesting. Would have been interesting to see the results for gacha eidos too. I'd always had the impression that event eidos with high hp got shafted on attack, but seems like that isn't necessarily the case.

Originally Posted by Slashley

I, at least, entirely ignore "total power." All I use is "Atk"

Honestly, I think this is more sensible than looking at total power.

Chances are if you need survival, you're better off using Joan instead of more base HP, no?

I do that for solo content, but for raids, it's hard to (V)MVP with Joan (actually it's just hard to (V)MVP in general, but even harder with Joan...) And helping out the raid with Joan/Andromeda is sort of a thankless job >.>

Originally Posted by Nik

But then you have things like dark ult/rag (probably others, idk) where she doesnt even attack until od, and just dots you to death.

Originally Posted by Slashley

That said, it's also possible to cap out DoTs, depending on the DoT. In which case having more HP starts being... okay... but still not great.

For dark ult, all DoT cap out at 750, so high hp actually really helps. If you're increasing your in-battle hp from 6k to 7k though, dun bother, it just makes it harder for you to heal up as Slashley stated. I went from 10k to 15k by messing around with eidolons and FLB-ing one of weapons, and it helped a lot for dark ult.

Originally Posted by Tanukimo

Very interesting. Would have been interesting to see the results for gacha eidos too.

Ok, maybe when I have time I'll take a look.

I'd always had the impression that event eidos with high hp got shafted on attack, but seems like that isn't necessarily the case.

Actually they kinda are - the slope of the line suggests that you have to give up about 3.5 atk to gain 1 hp, which is why high hp event eidolons always look so awful in total power. This is also why I caveat everything with if you need the hp. I actually often find that trade to be a bargain for AAB builds where the AI does a lot of stupid things so I need a bigger hp pool to offset its stupidity (I AAB AQ5 and most ults - not dark ult, actually I AAB that, too and rely on friends to clean up my mess ) If you don't find the hp useful, do what Slashley does and only look at atk (in which case Tiamat rules, by a pretty big margin.)

Originally Posted by dreamlitz

Actually they kinda are - the slope of the line suggests that you have to give up about 3.5 atk to gain 1 hp, which is why high hp event eidolons always look so awful in total power. This is also why I caveat everything with if you need the hp. I actually often find that trade to be a bargain for AAB builds where the AI does a lot of stupid things so I need a bigger hp pool to offset its stupidity (I AAB AQ5 and most ults - not dark ult, actually I AAB that, too and rely on friends to clean up my mess ) If you don't find the hp useful, do what Slashley does and only look at atk (in which case Tiamat rules, by a pretty big margin.)

A similar slope also holds for weapons within their quality type. I did something similar awhile ago and noticed that all weapons released have a similar curve depending on their accepted power level. Different weapon grades have different slopes (SRs are below what you're quoting, while SSRs are a bit above).

All else being equal, more hit points help period. This is actually the really big appeal of phantom weapons and their grid capabilities. Even with a couple of off-element weapons (provided their maxed) you can easily match the expected damage of an on-element non-phantom grid while upping your party's hitpoints by about 25-35% (depending on you amount of defender). You lose no damage output, but gain high resiliency. If you have the ability to go all on-element then you also benefit from the damage increase, but it's less because everyone has a decent base of assault to begin with. The real power advancement is left by base assault at that point.


Dejnov.

Originally Posted by Dejnov

-- This is actually the really big appeal of phantom weapons and their grid capabilities. Even with a couple of off-element weapons (provided their maxed) you can easily match the expected damage of an on-element non-phantom grid while upping your party's hitpoints by about 25-35% (depending on you amount of defender). --

Eerrrhhh? This sounds like massive bullshit, and _might_ only hold water with Lance Grids. Even then only for one off-element Lance. Maybe.

There is no way that adding off-element weapons will do you ANY good past extremely early game when you don't have on-element weapons yet. I'd like to link my damage calcs again, but sadly, neither of them have support for such details when it comes to survival like HP increase from Phantom weapons.

In any event, don't underestimate just how much 10% constant Assault or Defender is for your team. It easily surpasses Base Atk or HP gains. Also, here's some stats from my teams:
Fire: W: 1742 HP, 24727 Atk (Phantom), E: 3549 HP, 13703 Atk
Water: W: 1937 HP, 30084 Atk (Phantom), E: 3641 HP, 14496 Atk
Wind: W: 1393 HP, 24141 Atk, E: 3924 HP, 14457 Atk
Thunder: W: 2764 HP, 34490 Atk (Phantom), E: 3894 HP, 15255 Atk
The point here is, the majority of your HP is going to come from Eidolons. Even if you focus solely on Atk and thus get use the little HP ones, and even if you run a Phantom Grid with full +99 weapons (like my Thunder).

So, I'll say it again: As soon as you get a full MLB set of Eidolons, HP shouldn't be an issue. If it is, you're going to need to wait for Assault/HP double-skill weapon to really make a difference.

Originally Posted by Slashley

Eerrrhhh? This sounds like massive bullshit, and _might_ only hold water with Lance Grids. Even then only for one off-element Lance. Maybe.

There is no way that adding off-element weapons will do you ANY good past extremely early game when you don't have on-element weapons yet. I'd like to link my damage calcs again, but sadly, neither of them have support for such details when it comes to survival like HP increase from Phantom weapons.

In any event, don't underestimate just how much 10% constant Assault or Defender is for your team. It easily surpasses Base Atk or HP gains. The point here is, the majority of your HP is going to come from Eidolons. Even if you focus solely on Atk and thus get use the little HP ones, and even if you run a Phantom Grid with full +99 weapons (like my Thunder).

Warning: Wall of Text!!

So I understand what you're saying and what I'm saying really does sound like bullshit. I've been really hesitant to share what I've experienced for two reasons. One, it sounds wrong or at least counter to what we know about how the game works. Two, I initially couldn't explain what I'd seen. I think I might be able to now. I only know when I've been building these off-element lance grids (as that is my only maxed phantom weapon atm) in weaker element grids, my damage can go up. It doesn't always go up (it has gone down by 3-5% also in some situations) and it's usually not by much, usually 3-5%, but because of the hitpoint and the defense bonus in a phantom grid my hitpoints for my teams have gone up a lot (like I mentioned sometimes as high as 30%, but easily 20%). This has made my teams a lot more durable, while sacrificing very little in damage output ability (and, as mentioned, sometimes with a net gain). I've done a lot of experimenting with the grids (all on-element no phantom, defense SR placeholders to stay phantom, and 1 or more off-element in phantom layout, etc.) and I think my results should be easily replicated and I might be able to explain them now.

One caveat: I'm not a true long term player. I played when the game first came out, but due to work/life balance, I had to drop the game for almost a year. I've been back as a stable player for the last 9 months or so. I only have two really veteran level teams (with himes, weapons, and eidolons) - Light and Dark. My other teams have been a constant race to upgrade prior to their corresponding tower event and are still a work in progress. They are all assault and they are fairly well skill leveled and full assault, but even that tops out at 13-15 avg. skill level across all ten weapons in the grid (usually it's 1 or 2 FLBed full skill leveled weapon) and one or two zero star SSR at 9-12 skill level at the bottom end slowly being raised.

All comparisons are against a non-phantom full assault on-element grid versus a phantom grid which might use defense SRs or off-element SSRs in place of the missing 1 or 2 weapons to complete the grid. All grids are usually tested against a normal raid run (no element advantage, no skills used, exact same support Eidolons) to analyze raw damage and hitpoints seen in battle to quantify the change I expect. When I did the comparison, I found that the on-element defense SR was actually giving me less damage output than the off-element substitute and it was sometimes giving me less damage than the full on-element grid. Since the off-element weapon can only supply base attack (prior to any multiplicative effects), this has led me to presume what I'm seeing is an effect of base attack instead of any assault related multiplier effect.

My best example is my water grid. I have 3 water lances and, as mentioned earlier, the old configuration was a on-element all assault full SSR grid, avg. skill level on all weapons is 15, as the baseline comparison. The weapon I've been substituting in all grids is my FLBed +99 Michael Lance with a base atk of 3195 and phantom atk of 4153 (in grid). The standard Hime reported atk in the non-phantom grid is around 50000 atk. What I have in my grids is usually a couple of zero or one star assault/skill on-element SSR weapons that I've been substituting with the above mentioned Michael lance (to complete the phantom effect). The base zero or 1 star SSR usually provides around 10 to 13% additional character assault, while also having a base assault of around 1400 atk. For easy math purposes, I'll start generalizing now. This means that my chosen substitute usually brings about 2500 base atk to the grid for the loss of 12.5% character assault. I'll assume that I have around 100% character assault and 100% eidolon assault for the grid so that my on-element weapon is giving me an additional 6.25% damage output. When I substitute the Michael lance I lose that. I do gain 2500 base atk, which works out to about a 5% increase in base assault (based on the Hime reported atk of 50000). After the weapon is in the grid, all base attack gets multiplied by current character assault and eidolon assault which means that the additional 2500 base atk gets multiplied by 4 (x2 character attack, x2 eidolon attack) to give me a full gain in combat of around 10000 atk. This works out to a damage gain of 18.7% (5% x 1.87 character attack x 2 eidolon attack). Please note: I haven't seen this as the water lances I have used are not skill leveled or even weapon leveled to the base on-element grid, but I have been seeing a damage increase. I also may be assuming incorrectly how the effect is occurring (and if you have insight, I'd like to know). My current damage gain is currently around 3-6% (in both water and wind grids) and as I'm raising my Shingen and other on-element lances, it's been going up. The effect is dramatically less pronounced if you have to substitute two off-element weapons and is usually negative when I substitute three off-element lances. This leads me to believe once you hit the character attack bonus enough it starts to penalize the increase in base attack you get from an off-element weapon and the effect I'm seeing is lost fairly quickly.


Dejnov.

Originally Posted by Tanukimo

Would have been interesting to see the results for gacha eidos too.

Kinda slow at work today, so I decided to do this. Gacha eidos actually turned out to be pretty interesting, though I'm not sure if there's much practical applications to this:



I distinguished between eidolons released before 100% (green squares) and after (blue circles). The dotted purple line is my best shot of a best fit frontier through only the green squares excluding kaisers and red line is the best fit frontier for everything excluding kaisers and mythical beasts (won't be out until next year for us.) There are several interesting observations here:

1. The addition of 100%+ eidolons actually pushed out the frontier noticeably as seen by the difference between the purple and red line.
1a. Kirin and Belial are the only 100% eidolons that are not on or close to the new frontier (red line.)
1b. Huanglong and Hecatonchires are the only non-p2w eidolons that are actually closer to the new than old frontier (looks more like it is part of the red rather than purple line.)
2. The 120% (140% eventually) eidolons are all between the old and new frontier (i.e. stats are better than old gacha eidolons but worst than the 100%.)
3. With the exception of fluffy and Anubis, all blue dots have comparatively low hp (all below 700.)
4. Both frontiers have more favorable atk/hp trade ratio than the one I estimated for event eidolons (purple is about 2 atk per hp, red is about 3 atk per hp, event eidolon is about 3.5 atk per hp.)

On point 4, it is important to note that ALL non-p2w gacha eidolons are above the event eidolon frontier:



In above chart, green squares are non-p2w gacha eidos with purple dotted frontier, blue circles are event eidos with red frontier.

Corollary

1. If you're f2p or dolphin, none of this is relevant to you, since it's not like you'll have a bunch of MLB gacha ediolons sitting around to play with.
2. If you're a whale, none of this is relevant to you, since you should go for kaisers (or mythical beasts when they're out) if you want stats sticks (they are literally off-the-chart - I had to change the axes specifically to accommodate them.)
3. If you're a chubby dolphin/some other large-but-not-too-large marine animal, this MIGHT be relevant to you:
3a. Rule-of-thumb - use as many MLB gacha eidolons as you can, as they're all better value than even the best event eidolons.
3b. If you can't use all MLB gacha eidolons 'cos you need certain actives, certain elements or what not, your best bet is to get as much hp from gacha eidolons and get atk from event eidolons - it is 'cheaper' to get hp from gacha eidos (roughly 2:1 trade vs 3.5:1 for event eidolons.) For example, if you're using Behemoth and Azathoth and you really need to add barrier as an active, use Tiamat instead of Python and kick Azathoth instead of Behemoth.
3c. Huanglong and Hecatonchires are the best value for you if you want high hp stats sticks. If you want even higher hp, Behemoth is the best gacha non-p2w.

Originally Posted by Dejnov

A similar slope also holds for weapons within their quality type. I did something similar awhile ago and noticed that all weapons released have a similar curve depending on their accepted power level. Different weapon grades have different slopes (SRs are below what you're quoting, while SSRs are a bit above).

That is interesting. Aren't most weapons between like 100-200 hp-ish though?

Originally Posted by Slashley

So, I'll say it again: As soon as you get a full MLB set of Eidolons, HP shouldn't be an issue. If it is, you're going to need to wait for Assault/HP double-skill weapon to really make a difference.

Sometimes there's a drought of good weapons though. For light, the next assault/defender weapon is Sphinx reprint like 4 months from now... I don't want to wait that long, lol, so I try to tinker with what I have. I managed to boost my base hp from 8k to 9k-ish and base atk only dropped from around 51k to 49k-ish once I realized I was using sub-optimal eidos. It's not earth-shattering, but enough to make a lot of my battles (especially AAB ones) clear with some cushion as opposed to a nail-biter every time/outright wiped occasionally.

Originally Posted by Dejnov

I found that the on-element defense SR was actually giving me less damage output than the off-element substitute and it was sometimes giving me less damage than the full on-element grid.

Actually, you don't even need phantom weapons for this to happen. I used rainbow grids a lot for my f2p accounts during their infancy for this reason (put in whatever advent and UE weapons I had regardless of element instead of using SRs.) Defender weapons give zero assault value, so replacing it with higher stats weapon will automatically boosts its dmg. On the hp side, if your base hp is low, 13% defender doesn't do you much good, and having a +99 off-element weapon can often offset the defender value effect (e.g. at base 5k hp, dropping 1 M defender weapon loses you 650 hp, and a +99 FLB weapon can easily have 200-300 more hp than SR; if you still have other defender weapons left on the grid, that 200-300 translates to even more, so you may only end up losing a couple hundred hp or so.)

What I have in my grids is usually a couple of zero or one star assault/skill on-element SSR weapons that I've been substituting with the above mentioned Michael lance (to complete the phantom effect). The base zero or 1 star SSR usually provides around 10 to 13% additional character assault, while also having a base assault of around 1400 atk.

I think what's happening here is that you're kicking off an on-element low-stat assault weapon with a high-stat off-element, but also activating the phantom effect - the phantom assault from lance equals or exceeds the assault lost from replacing the on-element, and the stats from the off-element exceeds the on-element, so every component of the dmg calc is actually going up.

However, when you do this with a second replacement, the assault value goes down with no offsetting increases (since phantom lance skill has already been activated by the previous replacement.) The raw atk is still going up, so the question is whether the % increase in raw atk exceeds the % decrease in assault or not. The calculation is actually not hard to do, just pulling all the data together is a little tedious (need the exact assault value of the grid and base atk of all the himes accounting for weapon preferences as well - 20% boost from favored weapons.) Generally though, this is not a favorable trade at all unless your on-element weapons are just really bad (which they sound like they are in your case, lol, no offense meant to your water grid... My water grid sucks, too, so...)

Couple of quick questions/comments on your post Dreamlitz:

A) What is a mythical beast? I haven't heard of that Eidolon option.

B) I don't understand your corollary 3b example. Can you explain it in more depth/differently?

C) While weapons are in the 100/200 range for hitpoints they do follow the same rule you've outlined above. It's usually less noticeable since they're working from a lower basis.

D) I like the terms krill (f2p), dolphin (occasional spending) and whale (p2w) myself.

E) What I do like about the bump in phantom weapon effect (and this can be had by any assault phantom weapon) is that it eliminates the amount of unique weapons in my non-main grids. That allows for me to maintain their power, while reducing the amount of weapons I potentially have to raise. I can also afford to be more choosy on what I FLB; I'm looking for either Hime or the Assault UEs to break as I can only have 4 non-lance weapons in a phantom lance grid. This means that low return FLB or even skill leveling SSRs is not on the action list.

F) My water and wind grids absolutely suck, and I'm okay with that! I'm a Light/Dark main and those only exist just for tower/dummy events. (Though my water team can now solo Fire Ult Catastrophe so they are growing.)

G) Bricking Kaisers (any element) is an actual useful choice if you don't have a p2w Eidolon...



Dejnov.

Originally Posted by Dejnov

Couple of quick questions/comments on your post Dreamlitz:

A) What is a mythical beast? I haven't heard of that Eidolon option.

B) I don't understand your corollary 3b example. Can you explain it in more depth/differently?

C) While weapons are in the 100/200 range for hitpoints they do follow the same rule you've outlined above. It's usually less noticeable since they're working from a lower basis.

D) I like the terms krill (f2p), dolphin (occasional spending) and whale (p2w) myself.

E) What I do like about the bump in phantom weapon effect (and this can be had by any assault phantom weapon) is that it eliminates the amount of unique weapons in my non-main grids. That allows for me to maintain their power, while reducing the amount of weapons I potentially have to raise. I can also afford to be more choosy on what I FLB; I'm looking for either Hime or the Assault UEs to break as I can only have 4 non-lance weapons in a phantom lance grid. This means that low return FLB or even skill leveling SSRs is not on the action list.

F) My water and wind grids absolutely suck, and I'm okay with that! I'm a Light/Dark main and those only exist just for tower/dummy events. (Though my water team can now solo Fire Ult Catastrophe so they are growing.)

G) Bricking Kaisers (any element) is an actual useful choice if you don't have a p2w Eidolon...



Dejnov.

A) I'm not sure if 'mythical beast' is the universally accepted term for these, but what I'm referring to are these:



Highlights of these are:

i. Their passive is elemental resistance, up to 50% at MLB, so if you go into battle with these as your main and you have a friend with a MLB one, too, you get 100% elemental resistance O.O Obviously you lose a lot of dmg that way, but sounds like easy solo for stuff with no time limit. AAB AQ100 will be no problem for whales
EDIT: Ok, turns out this is only STATUS resistance, so nowhere near as great as I thought...
ii. They have incredibly strong active abilities, but can only be used ONCE per battle (e.g. White Tiger's active is 100% lightning atk up at MLB. EDIT: actually, if I'm not misreading things, the 100% atk up is in its own multiplier, so just outright double the dmg... Still subject to usual caps though.)
iii. They are off-the-chart stats sticks like kaisers, but trade off hp for more atk relative to kaisers

You can read more (translate google translate) about them at the JP wiki.

B) Let's say you need barrier (to counter doom for example.) I don't think any gacha eidolons has barrier as an active, so you're forced to use an event eidolon, which automatically means you're going to lose some stats. Now you can use Tiamat or Python for barrier. You also need to kick one of your gacha eidolon to accommodate the event eidolon. What I'm saying is that to minimize stats loss, you should pick the high atk event eidolon and kick the high atk gacha eidolon in these situations (so pick Tiamat, kick Azathoth.) If you do the reverse (pick Python, kick Behemoth) you will lose more stats than necessary to accommodate the active that you want with whatever hp level you are targeting.

Now, the astute reader will point out that I can just cleanse doom with Behemoth and dun even need to add a barrier eido, but let's pretend we need that cleanse for something else... I AM sort of reaching for practical applications btw, which is why I didn't even bother with the gacha analysis until ppl shown interest in it...

C) Got it.

D) Lol, what's between dolphin and whales though? You need to be a big spender but not big enough to whale for kaisers for this analysis to be useful. Maybe cursed whale? Whale with abysmal luck so all you have are non-kaisers non-p2w eidos to work with... I'm not good at naming things...

E) I understand the motivation. Outside of tower and those event missions with 'clear this battle with some random element team (for puny rewards)', is there any reason not to use your light/dark team? I still only have a phantom axe btw, so I haven't spent much time thinking about this (I think it's been almost 200 rags since i got the axe though, RNG should give me a break >.>)

F) Wait, can't you also off-element for dummy? I hit harder with my light team than some other team with elemental advantage... If they ever have multi-target dummies, then maybe the burst streak can make up for it, but single-target, my plan was just to use light all the way...

G) Agreed. With my luck though, gacha will probably drop me a p2w once I brick a kaiser... Although, if I can bait the gacha like that, it'll still be worth it...

Originally Posted by Dejnov

-- I only know when I've been building these off-element lance grids (as that is my only maxed phantom weapon atm) in weaker element grids, my damage can go up. -- When I did the comparison, I found that the on-element defense SR was actually giving me less damage output than the off-element substitute and it was sometimes giving me less damage than the full on-element grid.--

Well, yes? There's a reason why pure Defender weapons are frowned upon generally. As said by dreamlitz, they don't actually give you any attack outside of their base Atk. So when replaced by a higher base Atk weapon... ... of course it's more damage. But, it's also pretty certain that a slvl20 Disaster SR Assault weapon would do MORE damage than your off-element FLB Lance.

However, the part that messes things up here is the Phantom Lance. Which offers you:
1. 16% Assault
2. 16% HP
3. Lots of base Atk bonus
Which is no joke. If you replace one on-element Assault weapon with a off-element Lance to activate Phantom Lance, then you lost #1. But fair enough, you still have #2 and #3. Then you can replace one on-element HP weapon with a off-element Lance, and you've lost #2 too. But hey, you still have #3, so you're STILL in the positive.

However, these kinds of things kinda drop dead once your Grid starts to improve. Like, when you have a full Grid of dual-skills (SRs or SSRs), then you already lost both #1 and #2 from a single weapon. So, again: _might_ hold water with Lance Grids. But won't be ANY good past extremely early game.

Originally Posted by dreamlitz

--
i. Their passive is elemental resistance, up to 50% at MLB, so if you go into battle with these as your main and you have a friend with a MLB one, too, you get 100% elemental resistance O.O --

Hah, if only. It's 50% STATUS resistance. In other words, as useless as Kaiser passive.

Another thing of note on those things. The CD on the (one-time per battle) active gets reduced as the Eidolon gains more LBs. So unlike Kaisers, these guys are SIGNIFICANTLY worse for those who can't brick them to MLB.

Originally Posted by dreamlitz

F) Wait, can't you also off-element for dummy? I hit harder with my light team than some other team with elemental advantage... If they ever have multi-target dummies, then maybe the burst streak can make up for it, but single-target, my plan was just to use light all the way...

To my understanding, the Dummy is a different element every day. So it starts as Fire probably and cycles through all the elements per day. Expect Dark on day 6 I guess?

It's sad because I don't see any way to compete for any kind of ranks without Michael AW and Fluffy. The top50 is probably going to be taken by players who have both of those.

Originally Posted by Slashley

However, the part that messes things up here is the Phantom Lance. Which offers you:
1. 16% Assault
2. 16% HP
3. Lots of base Atk bonus
Which is no joke. If you replace one on-element Assault weapon with a off-element Lance to activate Phantom Lance, then you lost #1. But fair enough, you still have #2 and #3. Then you can replace one on-element HP weapon with a off-element Lance, and you've lost #2 too. But hey, you still have #3, so you're STILL in the positive.

However, these kinds of things kinda drop dead once your Grid starts to improve. Like, when you have a full Grid of dual-skills (SRs or SSRs), then you already lost both #1 and #2 from a single weapon. So, again: _might_ hold water with Lance Grids. But won't be ANY good past extremely early game.Hah, if only. It's 50% STATUS resistance. In other words, as useless as Kaiser passive.

Another thing of note on those things. The CD on the (one-time per battle) active gets reduced as the Eidolon gains more LBs. So unlike Kaisers, these guys are SIGNIFICANTLY worse for those who can't brick them to MLB.To my understanding, the Dummy is a different element every day. So it starts as Fire probably and cycles through all the elements per day. Expect Dark on day 6 I guess?

It's sad because I don't see any way to compete for any kind of ranks without Michael AW and Fluffy. The top50 is probably going to be taken by players who have both of those.

I agree that it's possibly phantom lance (and also by default phantom hammer) that really benefits from this situation. For wind and water, I'll take all the help that I can get!

I'm not so sure that immunity to status effect is to be frowned upon. By far the biggest thing that can destroy a fast burst team, is fucking with your ability to DATA or burst when you want to. These might not actually be totally useless passives. Don't know yet as you'll probably lose a decent amount of elemental (character) attack to field one (or two) that it means squat. Will see when they come out.

I'm wondering what you mean when you state that only those with Michael AW and Fluffy would be in the top50. That's only 1 element and you get into the ranking by all element's damage not just your light team, or am I missing something about the context in how these competitions are set up?


Dejnov.