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

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.