Thread: Sacred Sword Princesses

Originally Posted by Semaphore

When trying to pick a balanced team to level, you look primarily at the element, not melee/ranged/magic. Elnora is not in competition with Chharodi, nor is Meryl in competition with Trisha or Emily in competition with Naladia. Chharodi is in direct competition with Trisha, however, as they're both earth. Similarly, you choose between Elnora and Emily.

No this isn't right either. It's best to look at both. You also have to consider the equipment and materials available for forging and exp books. How are you supposed to build someone if you have 2-3 Fire girls or 2-3 ranged in one team? The best way to build a team is 1melee-1ranged-1magic and pick 1 for each elements.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

Two star characters can be purchased with tokens in the shop. Three star can't. When they're up in the shop, for a two star girl, you can get about 3 shards/day for trial shop, 4/day for competition shop, or 12/day for league shop, and you can do that for a solid month. That's in addition to showing up in the farmable events with higher drop rates. And you can also accumulate tokens without spending them in months that you're not interested in the girls that a particular shard offers, so that you can get 12/day or so for a while after they rotate. It will still take a while to get a two star girl to seven stars, but it's at least doable. Three star girls will take, if not forever, then awfully close to it if you're not a whale.

I'm getting 7 shards/day in Isabelle's event right now. If you're really into it. Getting 7-10/day for 3* girls isn't hard only if you're going to use all your AP into it. Online twice a day will net you (120AP*2) 240 AP and if you do hell mode (30AP) then that's an almost guaranteed drop giving 8 shards. If you skip daily training then you can use the 50AP from friend gifting (+10AP regenerating while doing some random stuffs) for 2 more runs. Or add the feast for 30AP and you have 1 extra run. It's definitely faster and much more reliable than Trial Shop's 400pts (in which you need to beat the 10th floor for 430pts). And yes the more powerful 2* girls like Grace, Shalutta and Seleia comes with 400pts (cmiiw). If you fail then you need to wait for the next day. I'm pretty sure majority of the player base can't even reach that far. And for competition shop I think you mean 3 or 6 shards since I've never seen a 4shards/purchase.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

I'm not sure what level of PVP you're fighting at but in the top tier, that's wildly false.

My arena team consists of Elnora, Naladia, and Chharodi. Trisha and Claire are both easy, as either my Elnora or Chharodi will handily destroy them if the power rating is at all close.

650k battle power. My Trisha can easily destroy any mage (with 1-3 combo with same power) just as fast as your Elnora/Chharodi can kill her.

It's not all about element. You have to also consider Job Class bonus damage, their purple set (e.g. bane sets) and stats built. Sometimes two Elnora with same 200k power won't perform the same or deal the same output damage.

Also you forget that the OP of the question is just starting to play the game. So...

Originally Posted by Semaphore

An opposing Chharodi is the character I most fear,

That's because you don't have a wind character, preferably a mage with archer's bane set. I easily mowed a 260k Chharodi in Tower of Trials with my 190k Elnora by just microing. Her attacks are so easy to avoid just by running in circles and her ult can be dodged by simply rolling. There's even no elemental weakness here. I'd be more scared of a Naladia because her attacks are homing and avoiding is simply impossible.

And even in with the same power in Arena, Naladia can fight toe to toe with a Chharodi despite the disadvantage with element.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

If you're running around healing in Tower of Trials, you're doing it wrong unless that's a last resort to try to bail you out after you messed up and let one of your main characters die. Healing is completely useless there, as you heal from winning a match. You save your SP for heavy damage skills so that you basically one-shot your opponent with a damage skill.

9/10 of the player base are doing it wrong. Otherwise you would be seeing hundreds of announcements showing up. I'm also not using Claire (cause I don't have her) but some people suggested her (look at the previous pages forgot which ones). If you suck or just playing casual then why not try a complete turtle strategy. With the recent updates, even running around fills up the gauge so why not? 3 minutes is more than enough to kill all 3 characters with your hp completely in tact.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

What does melee have to do with Khalis?

Every 3rd attack she shoots 6-7 arrows. It's the same way how Elnora shoots around 4 bullets on her 5th attack but way more efficient. Same with Yjer shooting tons of bullets. At point blank range it really hurts. You probably don't know cause you don't have a melee in the team you've given.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

Of course Trisha is going to die to Khalis. Wind characters beat earth characters, on top of Trisha being terrible.

60k difference isn't enough to close the elemental weakness? Even 80k stings. So no, not entirely true. Other melees die a slightly slower death so yeah still it hurts. There's probably more into the damage calculation than a single elemental weakness. And as I've mentioned, my Trisha owns mages.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

Isabel is fairly tanky, and often the last opponent to die in arena. But while she can heal, she doesn't dish out much damage, so her being tanky just means that she's the last opponent alive before getting overwhelmed 3 on 1.

You're doing it wrong if your other two girls died and Isabelle was left battling a 3v1 match. This reasoning is flawed.

^Okay scratch the last part. Sorry I misread some parts. You're right but that's because the AI just sucks. Isabelle and Khalis main strength comes from their ult. You can't deny that as long as Isabelle casts her ult, you're guaranteed to die even if you have the elemental advantage.

Also this is just in Arena/ToT. In dungeon/raid I'd rather have Isabelle/Khalis as teammates because they're unmatched in dealing damage.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

No this isn't right either. It's best to look at both. You also have to consider the equipment and materials available for forging and exp books. How are you supposed to build someone if you have 2-3 Fire girls or 2-3 ranged in one team? The best way to build a team is 1melee-1ranged-1magic and pick 1 for each elements.

Why do you want one melee, one ranged, one magic? Elements have a rock/paper/scissors type effect where this element beats that one. Melee/ranged/magic does not have any such effect. Maybe there's a modest effect early on as your forging materials are divided early on among the three types. But once you've got three full sets of each type of gear forged up to +10, that effect is long gone.

Or just look empirically at what the top players use. Of the top 10 on my server right now, there are only two that have one melee, one ranged, one magic. Meanwhile, there are also two that have a team of three ranged. Eight of the ten have three different elements, and no one has all three of the same element.

For comparison, if everyone chose elements randomly and melee/ranged/magic randomly, the expected value is a little over 2 that have one each of melee/ranged/magic, and a little over 1 that has all three the same. So we're actually seeing players split among melee/ranged/magic less than if people were picking randomly. Meanwhile, the expected value is that more than 6 of the top 10 would have at least two of their team with the same element. People are very much choosing elements in a non-random manner to spread them out.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm getting 7 shards/day in Isabelle's event right now. If you're really into it. Getting 7-10/day for 3* girls isn't hard only if you're going to use all your AP into it. Online twice a day will net you (120AP*2) 240 AP and if you do hell mode (30AP) then that's an almost guaranteed drop giving 8 shards. If you skip daily training then you can use the 50AP from friend gifting (+10AP regenerating while doing some random stuffs) for 2 more runs. Or add the feast for 30AP and you have 1 extra run. It's definitely faster and much more reliable than Trial Shop's 400pts (in which you need to beat the 10th floor for 430pts). And yes the more powerful 2* girls like Grace, Shalutta and Seleia comes with 400pts (cmiiw). If you fail then you need to wait for the next day. I'm pretty sure majority of the player base can't even reach that far. And for competition shop I think you mean 3 or 6 shards since I've never seen a 4shards/purchase.

For a two-star girl, doing the training III costs 24 AP rather than 30. When you beat it, the question isn't whether or not you get a shard; it's whether or not you get only one rather than 2. That's more shards for less AP per run, getting you far more shards per AP. Furthermore, the event missions are available for two two star girls at a time, but only one three star, so the two star girls have their events available more often. So even if you're relying purely on event missions, you'd expect to star up a two star girl likely more than twice as fast as a three star. The shards you can get from shops are in addition to what you get from event missions.

Yes, I'm aware that the two star girls cost 400 points for three shards. That's included in my computations, and it comes to 133 1/3 points per shard. When you beat Tower of Trials, that's 430 points, which is good for a pro-rated 3.225 shards per day. If you think beating it is unreliable, then you just haven't figured out how to play it. I usually lost at some point the first few weeks I played. Then I figured out the strategy and have beaten it every single day since. I did have a close call once when I goofed and let my second strongest character die in the second battle. But it's tuned to be easy enough that some days, Elnora is my only character that even has to bother to use any skills. Yesterday, I didn't use any skills at all until the sixth floor.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

650k battle power. My Trisha can easily destroy any mage (with 1-3 combo with same power) just as fast as your Elnora/Chharodi can kill her.

It's not all about element. You have to also consider Job Class bonus damage, their purple set (e.g. bane sets) and stats built. Sometimes two Elnora with same 200k power won't perform the same or deal the same output damage.

While you're correct that there are other factors besides elemental advantage, elemental advantage is by far the largest effect. If you watch your damage numbers in raids, you both do bonus damage for elemental advantage and deal reduced damage when you have an elemental disadvantage. Those two effects stacking makes elemental advantage enormous.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That's because you don't have a wind character, preferably a mage with archer's bane set. I easily mowed a 260k Chharodi in Tower of Trials with my 190k Elnora by just microing. Her attacks are so easy to avoid just by running in circles and her ult can be dodged by simply rolling. There's even no elemental weakness here. I'd be more scared of a Naladia because her attacks are homing and avoiding is simply impossible.

And even in with the same power in Arena, Naladia can fight toe to toe with a Chharodi despite the disadvantage with element.

Not having a strong wind character explains why I fear Chharodi more than Elnora, Seleia, or Khalis. It doesn't explain why I fear Chharodi more than Trisha or Claire.

For what it's worth, my Naladia does have full archer's bane, forged up to +10, and with the head piece (but not the rest of the set) at seven stars. But it would still be suicide to throw her at an opposing Chharodi. For that matter, my Naladia also does far worse against Khalis than my Elnora, in spite of both Elnora and Naladia being equivalently powered up and having nearly identical power ratings. Elnora's elemental advantage is the difference.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Isabelle and Khalis main strength comes from their ult. You can't deny that as long as Isabelle casts her ult, you're guaranteed to die even if you have the elemental advantage.

I'm not sure what you mean by their "ult". If you mean their first skill, which is the big damage one for most characters, then I could believe that it basically consists of "kill enemy character". But that's also true of Elnora, Naladia, Chharodi, and probably most of the other characters in the game, though I haven't powered them up enough to know for certain. And it's nearly irrelevant in arena because characters die before they can fill up their SP to use a powerful skill.

Indeed, that's the entire basis of how to beat Tower of Trials. Let's suppose that I'm facing what you above called a cookie cutter build of Trisha, Elnora, and Naladia. And let's suppose that this is the top floor, so they've all got a power around 300k and higher than anyone on my team. The strategy is pretty simple: I send Elnora out first, wait for the enemy Trisha to approach, then use Elnora's Precision Bombardment skill. The enemy Trisha dies, the enemy Elnora spawns, and probably takes substantial damage from the tail end of my Elnora's skill.

Now the enemy Elnora is out, so I switch to Naladia. Naladia uses her White Hell skill, and the enemy Elnora dies. Or maybe the enemy Elnora took enough damage from my Elnora's skill that for Naladia to use her skill is unnecessary. But anyway, at worst, she has to use her skill to finish off the enemy Elnora, and then the enemy Naladia spawns.

So now I swap out my Naladia for my Chharodi, preferably quickly because a Naladia-Naladia duel will lead to them both doing a lot of damage to each other in a hurry. If my Naladia had to use her skill, the tail end of it is likely to finish off the enemy Naladia, or at least bring her low enough that just swapping out Chharodi almost instantly finishes her. But if not, then Chharodi could have to fight an enemy Naladia at nearly full HP. So she uses her Paw Paw Kill skill and the enemy Naladia dies.

Where did I get the SP for those skill uses? It carries over from one battle to the next, so I've got a lot saved up. What you get from winning one battle is generally a little less than 1 skill use per character, so it's plenty for some two characters to use a skill in each round, at least after the first couple of rounds. In lower tiers, I'd use the same character-swapping strategy except without needing to use the skill, as due to both a power advantage and an elemental advantage, my character might win a duel while losing only 1/5 of her HP--about what you get refilled for winning a match.

Originally Posted by Semaphore

Detailed explanation was here.

The back and forth you two have been having has actually been helpful in learning the ins and outs of meta and whatnot, so thank you both for that.
Putting character discussions aside, when you're farming for gear (which I assume purple is the best stuff) are there specific sets to avoid using on characters no matter what, or can you just use what you feel synergizes well with the character?

I played this game during release and want to return. I have Naladia, Elnora, Trisha(almost 4*, 27 lvl) /Celiim (2* 29 lvl). Leyna (3*, 28 lvl)/Khalis(3* 23 lvl). So i have 2 questions: 1) who should i choose in current patch in wind/earth because leveling them all is too long 2) what set should i focus first (i guess Naladia should be #1 priority). Now we have an event with raid pieces in rewards so i want to get as many as i can.