Quote Originally Posted by Geo View Post
I believe that by the time he can kill Ultimates without support, the player will likely have a full grid anyways. So working towards unlocking Soul Weapons seems like the natural evolution of Disaster Farming.
Oh I see, I thought you're telling him to farm rags for fodder.

Didn't know Standard Raid was more efficient for weapon farming. Is it the case for Eidolon drops as well?
My data suggests that is the case for eidolons as well, but the difference wasn't big enough to be statistically significant. I'm not sure if the other player I mentioned collected stats on eidolons as well.

If you're curious, I went and dug up the stats I collected:

251 standard raids dropped 30 eidolons (~12% drop rate) and 53 weapons (~21% drop rate)
83 expert raids dropped 7 eidolons (~8% drop rate) and 8 weapons (~10% drop rate)

All raids done solo with no snatch, no Anzu/Sleipnir/Vlad and no drop rates up accessories. I'm actually a little skeptical that the standard-expert difference is that big, but I was just trying to answer for myself whether I should farm standard or expert, and that data was more than enough to convince me to just farm standard, so I stopped collecting additional data.

But it seems to me Ultimate drops only Assault weapons, whereas the lesser Raids can drop Defenders as well.
Correct, I used to tag every ult until I had full assault disaster grid. Once you have a full grid though, both assault and defender weapons are just fodder, so I actually just farm all 18 standard everyday and only farm the ults I need regalia for.

Btw, defender weapons aren't completely useless - they can be useful for those 'use X soul' GO missions where you do not have the correct weapon type for, and if your eidolon grid isn't packed with MLB event eidolons yet, your hp can sometimes use a boost from one or two defender weapons just so you can survive an OD - an extra few turns can more than offset the assault loss if you don't overdo it.

I try to have all the frames covered as well. I just was inspired to come up with more defensive approaches after seeing your take on Guild Orders. You used, for example, 2 Ignited Dragoons and a Nova Kaiser Dragoon against Icarus, in order to always have Wind Resistance Up. Inspired by that, I came up with the strategy of always having Defense Up, as it would mean less resources spent (2 hime slots against 3 Eidolons slots. The Eidolons could be better stat sticks, for example).
Yes, having those LB0 dragoons really tanked my stats. However, resistance, dmg cut and reflect stacks additively, such that you can theoretically hit 100% dmg immunity. Defense formula otoh is a quotient, so you can never achieve 100% dmg immunity - 100% def actually only mitigates 50% of dmg on its own. If you only need to mitigate around 20%-ish of dmg, def up works well enough. If you need higher levels though, resistance/dmg cut/reflect is usually the only viable way to do it.

Btw, you have pointed out a common problem with builds that can achieve very high dmg resistance - it sacrifices a lot of power, so things take forever to clear. If you don't need that level of defenses, it is indeed much better to devote less resources to it to improve your overall power level. Extreme turtling is really more for ppl really determined to clear content that is supposedly beyond their power level (or in my case, I just like the challenge...) Normal ppl do more normal things like just stacking def up as you mentioned without resorting to R and SR eidolons =)

A lot of my GO videos purposely use strategies that are uncommon just to spark ppl's imagination. I'm actually really glad that ppl like you are trying to take what you saw and adapt it in different ways, 'cos that's exactly what I hoped ppl would do. When you come up with something that I haven't thought of I hope you'll share it, too =)

Raising Defense right before an Overdrive is coming seemed risky, Icarus seems to nuke out of nowhere sometimes.
Actually, Icarus is pretty predictable. Go to the first post of the GO Megathread and click on the pastebin links Cobblemaniac provided us - it lists all the triggers of all waves. For Icarus, she'll AoE as long as she is not scorched (her AoE is supposed to scorch her, but sometimes it misses, so she'll AoE again right away - once she scorches herself though, she is completely predictable.)