General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Hilda]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

However, if we look at the best tanks the game has to offer, infantry's Seliph and BH!Ike blows armors' best straight out the water. I will concede that Poison Dagger might not need a Refinement immediately since it might heavily impact offensive players who are still using other infantry as tanks, but if those two infantry tanks become more and more common on offense, I would argue that Poison Dagger Refinement would definitely be necessary in the future, preferably with a Firesweep effect against Infantry. Seliph is super easy to merge for veteran players and BH!Ike does not need a lot of merges to be effective.

Both of them are hard countered by allready 2 existing things.

Brave Ike gets eaten up by Hardy Bearing: I have had this week 3 attempts at my defense with a Brave Ike supertank, all of them got eaten up by Hardy Bearing Sothis. Urvan is nice, but you can work around that. I am sure other Dragons or Red mages can kill him too with a Hardy Bearing seal. Heck it doesnt even need that, an AoE mage can deal with him.

Seliph as a supertank is only viable on Defense Teams currently. On offense Teams he gets eaten up by Ophelia or any Mage with a precharged Aoe, Seliph sucks in multiple combat round tankings once his HP goes below 50%. Seliph is only viable as a Tank on Defense Teams as a classic Vantage Tank and that can be worked around with Bolt Tower, Color Advantage Splash damage or just plain Enemy phasing him.

In my experience Infantry units are more likely to die to AoE precharged Teams then Armor units. Armorers have a clear advantage here due to their higher BST and stat allocation (excluding Gen 1 Armor units). Even combat wise Armorers have a better performance due to Fighter skills, because they can be allocated with min/max stats neglecting SPD. The only issue arises when someone runs Null-Follow up in any form, thats when their performance drops because they suddenly have to win a SPD check.

And this is where Infantry SPD tanks come in handy.

Sounds fairly balanced to me.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Hilda said:

Both of them are hard countered by allready 2 existing things.

Brave Ike gets eaten up by Hardy Bearing: I have had this week 3 attempts at my defense with a Brave Ike supertank, all of them got eaten up by Hardy Bearing Sothis. Urvan is nice, but you can work around that. I am sure other Dragons or Red mages can kill him too with a Hardy Bearing seal. Heck it doesnt even need that, an AoE mage can deal with him.

 Seliph as a supertank is only viable on Defense Teams currently. On offense Teams he gets eaten up by Ophelia or any Mage with a precharged Aoe, Seliph sucks in multiple combat round tankings once his HP goes below 50%. Seliph is only viable as a Tank on Defense Teams as a classic Vantage Tank and that can be worked around with Bolt Tower, Color Advantage Splash damage or just plain Enemy phasing him.

 In my experience Infantry units are more likely to die to AoE precharged Teams then Armor units. Armorers have a clear advantage here due to their higher BST and stat allocation (excluding Gen 1 Armor units). Even combat wise Armorers have a better performance due to Fighter skills, because they can be allocated with min/max stats neglecting SPD. The only issue arises when someone runs Null-Follow up in any form, thats when their performance drops because they suddenly have to win a SPD check.

 And this is where Infantry SPD tanks come in handy.

 Sounds fairly balanced to me.

I am talking about them being used as just regular tanks in an Enemy Phase team, not supertanks. If players see Hardy Bearing, SK!Alm, Ophelia, or other high threat units, most of them are not going to send their tank to tank things that hard counters them. Most players will switch to a more appropriate tank or just use a different team entirely.

While you have a point in that Seliph sucks in multi round combat, his deficiency in that department is less of an issue for an Enemy Phase team when you are using multiple tanks to lure multiple threats at once, reducing the likelihood that he will face multiple nukes.

Against Blazing teams, armor tanks do have an edge against them due to having both high Def and high Res, but infantry tanks can still handle Blazing teams with Aversa as a support unit.

[Ice Dragon]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Luna, Moonbow and Dragonfang etc make those first 20 a little more useful. Not that this is a disagreement, I fully get what you're saying, that plus atk seal is obviously going to be more useful on Grima than Azama even though it applies the same stat total increase to both of them. I'm just pointing out something extra that is in itself rather worthless to add because that's just the kind of guy I am.

The interesting thing is that those skills also don't actually care about those first points in stats. Yes, they contribute damage to those skills by how the skills are worded, but because those points of stats are always there, that damage is also always there and is for free.

For example, the first 20 points of Atk contribute 10 damage to Dragon Fang, but because every built unit (at level 40) has at least 20 points of Atk, Dragon Fang could instead have the effect "adds 10 damage plus damage equal to 50% of unit's Atk over 20" and still be functionally the exact same (at level 40). That 10 damage is always guaranteed to be there by the fact that no relevant unit will ever have fewer than 20 points of Atk.

 

As a fun aside, simply subtracting out the baseline value of a stat while still including it in multiplier calculations is actually done in other games. The simplest and most intuitive case I know of is the Attack Speed stat in Vindictus, which has an invisible base 100 (so 5 Attack Speed means your attack animations are a nice, round 105% of their normal speed). However, Attack Speed buffs do exist in the game and apply to the base, so a 20% Attack Speed buff when you have 5 visible Attack Speed would add 21 Attack Speed, 20 from the base 100 and 1 from the 5 visible stat.

 

5 hours ago, XRay said:

For Spd tanks, the BST gap does not make much of a difference.

I'm not going to quote the whole post (but this is a response to the entire post), but I'm not quite sure what simply listing match-up counts does to make the argument that 10% fewer stats is about 10% less combat performance.

For one, the Hard List has not been updated in almost a full year (the last update was with Brave Redux). That's old enough that Surtr isn't even in the list, and it most certainly does not have any of the Infantry Pulse setups commonly seen in Aether Raids.

Additionally, match-up counts alone don't tell you who those losses are against. Wins and losses are not of equal worth to each other. For a tank, the ability to win against Ophelia, for example, is easily worth more than the ability to win against both Kliff entries on the Hard List or even all 8 Effie entries.

Finally, match-up counts don't tell you how good a unit's sustain is, which is now extremely relevant for tanking in Aether Raids. Win-loss ratios are more applicable in Arena Assault where you typically only fight one or two rounds of combat, but in Aether Raids, a tank may need to go three or four rounds of combat in a single enemy phase.

 

Oh yeah, and while I'm at it, the Hard List Ophelia doesn't even come with her Special fully charged because Missiletainn doesn't have the number of relevant teammates as an option, so the Hard List doesn't even give you an accurate Ophelia match-up.

 

5 hours ago, XRay said:

However, if we look at the best tanks the game has to offer, infantry's Seliph and BH!Ike blows armors' best straight out the water.

Seliph's sustain is complete garbage, and I would even argue that he is not actually even a "real" tank.

Seliph's entire shtick is the fact that he won't die on his first round of combat, and then you're forced to eat a 30-damage Vengeance to take out his last point of HP. His role is to one-hit kill a single enemy on his second round of combat (by virtue of the fact that he almost always survives his first) and then either die (if controlled by the computer) or be sidelined or healed up for another go (if controlled by the player). The fact that he's limited to exactly 2 rounds of combat and that his role is to set up to land a single one-hit kill sounds nothing like the role of a tank, but more that of a single-use nuke.

 

2 hours ago, XRay said:

While you have a point in that Seliph sucks in multi round combat, his deficiency in that department is less of an issue for an Enemy Phase team when you are using multiple tanks to lure multiple threats at once, reducing the likelihood that he will face multiple nukes.

This is only viable when enemy units do not have overlapping threat ranges, which is pretty much only the case for the cavalry line map archetype. That is a severe limitation to his usefulness.

 

2 hours ago, XRay said:

I am talking about them being used as just regular tanks in an Enemy Phase team, not supertanks. If players see Hardy Bearing, SK!Alm, Ophelia, or other high threat units, most of them are not going to send their tank to tank things that hard counters them. Most players will switch to a more appropriate tank or just use a different team entirely.

If the correct option to seeing some of the most commonly used enemies is to use a different unit for the same job, then there is a problem with the unit. If the correct option to seeing some of the most commonly used enemies is to use a different team, then maybe the team doesn't deserve a team slot.

Yes, it's inevitable that you'll need to use a different unit or team sometimes because no unit is perfect for every situation, but you also have to evaluate how often you'll end up needing to use something else.

[Jotari]

13 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The interesting thing is that those skills also don't actually care about those first points in stats. Yes, they contribute damage to those skills by how the skills are worded, but because those points of stats are always there, that damage is also always there and is for free.

For example, the first 20 points of Atk contribute 10 damage to Dragon Fang, but because every built unit (at level 40) has at least 20 points of Atk, Dragon Fang could instead have the effect "adds 10 damage plus damage equal to 50% of unit's Atk over 20" and still be functionally the exact same (at level 40). That 10 damage is always guaranteed to be there by the fact that no relevant unit will ever have fewer than 20 points of Atk.

 

As a fun aside, simply subtracting out the baseline value of a stat while still including it in multiplier calculations is actually done in other games. The simplest and most intuitive case I know of is the Attack Speed stat in Vindictus, which has an invisible base 100 (so 5 Attack Speed means your attack animations are a nice, round 105% of their normal speed). However, Attack Speed buffs do exist in the game and apply to the base, so a 20% Attack Speed buff when you have 5 visible Attack Speed would add 21 Attack Speed, 20 from the base 100 and 1 from the 5 visible stat.

 

I'm not going to quote the whole post (but this is a response to the entire post), but I'm not quite sure what simply listing match-up counts does to make the argument that 10% fewer stats is about 10% less combat performance.

For one, the Hard List has not been updated in almost a full year (the last update was with Brave Redux). That's old enough that Surtr isn't even in the list, and it most certainly does not have any of the Infantry Pulse setups commonly seen in Aether Raids.

Additionally, match-up counts alone don't tell you who those losses are against. Wins and losses are not of equal worth to each other. For a tank, the ability to win against Ophelia, for example, is easily worth more than the ability to win against both Kliff entries on the Hard List or even all 8 Effie entries.

Finally, match-up counts don't tell you how good a unit's sustain is, which is now extremely relevant for tanking in Aether Raids. Win-loss ratios are more applicable in Arena Assault where you typically only fight one or two rounds of combat, but in Aether Raids, a tank may need to go three or four rounds of combat in a single enemy phase.

 

Oh yeah, and while I'm at it, the Hard List Ophelia doesn't even come with her Special fully charged because Missiletainn doesn't have the number of relevant teammates as an option, so the Hard List doesn't even give you an accurate Ophelia match-up.

 

Seliph's sustain is complete garbage, and I would even argue that he is not actually even a "real" tank.

Seliph's entire shtick is the fact that he won't die on his first round of combat, and then you're forced to eat a 30-damage Vengeance to take out his last point of HP. His role is to one-hit kill a single enemy on his second round of combat (by virtue of the fact that he almost always survives his first) and then either die (if controlled by the computer) or be sidelined or healed up for another go (if controlled by the player). The fact that he's limited to exactly 2 rounds of combat and that his role is to set up to land a single one-hit kill sounds nothing like the role of a tank, but more that of a single-use nuke.

 

This is only viable when enemy units do not have overlapping threat ranges, which is pretty much only the case for the cavalry line map archetype. That is a severe limitation to his usefulness.

 

If the correct option to seeing some of the most commonly used enemies is to use a different unit for the same job, then there is a problem with the unit. If the correct option to seeing some of the most commonly used enemies is to use a different team, then maybe the team doesn't deserve a team slot.

Yes, it's inevitable that you'll need to use a different unit or team sometimes because no unit is perfect for every situation, but you also have to evaluate how often you'll end up needing to use something else.

Yeah, but Luna does that 10 damage because 20 is the "base". If the base was 0 and characters like Azama had like 1 attack, then suddenly Luna would be a lot less effective as its lowest damage increase would be 0. On the other hand, if the base line was 100, Luna would be dealing 50 damage to start with, which would make the points above the base almost negligible. I said the skills I'm question make the baseline a little more useful, as opposed to completely irrelevant (which it would be in a pure addition subtraction scenario), as how big or small the base is determines how good or bad those skills are.

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yeah, but Luna does that 10 damage because 20 is the "base". If the base was 0 and characters like Azama had like 1 attack, then suddenly Luna would be a lot less effective as its lowest damage increase would be 0. On the other hand, if the base line was 100, Luna would be dealing 50 damage to start with, which would make the points above the base almost negligible. I said the skills I'm question make the baseline a little more useful, as opposed to completely irrelevant (which it would be in a pure addition subtraction scenario), as how big or small the base is determines how good or bad those skills are.

(Luna targets enemy Def/Res, not Atk.)

That's not entirely true. You'll notice that Draconic Aura and Dragon Fang have 30% and 50% multipliers instead of the usual 50% and 80% that Bonfire, Ignis, Iceberg, and Glacies have. They very well could have made Dragon Fang be "boosts damage by 80% of unit's Atk−15" (the 15 base comes from Chaos Named), but opted for the simpler effect. I figure that they chose to the simplicity of using smaller multipliers as an alternative to setting a higher base to account for the existence of weapons. As such, it's clear that where the baseline stands dictated the skills' effects, and the skills were originally tuned to where that baseline is.

It's also worth noting that zero is an actual hard baseline for every (non-HP) stat in the game. Any points of stats lost beyond zero do not actually lower the stat past zero. Because of this, Bonfire won't reduce the damage you deal on activation if this happens, and damage you take will not continue to be increased. This hard baseline means that Bonfire's effect really does behave as "boosts damage by 0 plus 50% of unit's Def points above 0", which is analogous to my description of Dragon Fang as "boosts damage by 10 plus 50% of unit's Atk points above 20". The points in Def that you got that contribute to the hard baseline (e.g. if you have base 10 Def and -13 Def in debuffs, you're getting 3 points of Def for free) did not contribute to Bonfire damage because Bonfire doesn't care about points of Def below the hard baseline to begin with. As such, you can technically do the same with any other stat and raise the functional baseline to a point where the stat simply cannot go below (not because it's prevented from going below, but because you've run out of mechanics to subtract stats past that point), though Atk is the only stat where said functional baseline (at 5-star level 40) is not also zero.

But I digress.

[Javi Blizz]

Anything about the refines? I can only see Lute’s one

[Stroud]

So Frederick got DB 3 refine and effective against armors.

Hawkeye got Lull Atk/Def 3 and Special Cooldown -1

Virion got Sudden Panic 3 and an omni Statboost +4 if he has at least 1 more HP than the opponent.

And Lute has Res/Spd debuff -5 on enemies with Res <= Res -3. And combat buff +4 on all stats if enemy is in Penalty state. 

Well. I thought about Freddy getting Playerphase refine I can work good with it. But I hope more along the lines of Brave axe or something other need. Maybe even multiphase.. Where was the creativity here..they could have given him a Penalty Effect for Def <= Def -3. along with it... so simple.. but nope.

Or just copy Lute overall and put Def instead of Res. 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Stroud

[Vicious Sal]

- Lute is a decent refine, but her 5* lock makes her difficult as a +10, so I don't expect to see her much more often. 

- Virion has sudden panic now, rip to the poor soul who gave Sudden panic to Virion through SI. I don't expect him to be a big impact at all. though he and Lute almost make a complete Aversa now.

- Hawkeye has a great refine in my opinion, he can now compete with Donnel for a great Null C disrupt user. Winner of the day for me.

- Frederick has a basic refine, gets the job done, but nowadays I'm used to giant walls of text so this felt disappointing, even though it isn't bad. he can use GF reasonable well.

 

All in all, Hawkeye might just creep up on my Merge project list as an Astra unit. being green is great vs Ophelia's etc. rest is an improvement, but nothing noteworthy as far as I can see. 

Curious as to what Ana thinks of the Frederick refine.

[Xenomata]

>Changing Lute's Spd Ploy to Sabotage Spd/Res and gaining all stat +4 against Penaltied foes is definitely good, though... I dunno, it's not like she has amazing Res in the first place, even if her main targets have bad Res to begin with...

>Hawkeye coulda made it out better than Beruka, though this is fine to. Lull Atk/Def is not bad to have on a more defensive unit.

>Freddy could have gotten better, but for the sake of cementing an armor-killing build this works great for it, especially considering he can also use his primary WoM to be used as a sort of Finishing Blow unit. Though... could have been better.

>Wow... they're giving Virion something massive to work with, considering his free status. Sudden Panic as the base effect and a Max Hp measuring refine off of 46 base when most units can barely manage 40? His base stats means he might still not compare to other archers, but he's far from the most below average now, if only as an easy source of Sudden Panic.

[redlight]

Not a bad batch of refines. Clear winners are Virion and Lute, but perhaps moreso Lute. Though she is a 5 star locked character lol. Hawkeye is pretty alright and Freddy found himself another niche he can cover. Surprisingly enough the dude is rather versatile now.

[Diovani Bressan]

In my opinion: Hawkeye > Virion > Lute > Fred

Hawkeye has a pretty good weapon, and Lull Atk/Def is pretty useful, boosting his attack power and defenses. I may build a Hawkeye.

Sudden Panic is pretty good on Virion, since his HP is not bad. But what got me is that his refinement works with Max HP and not Current HP, which is pretty good. At neutral +10, he will have 50 HP. Against all foe with 49 HP, he will have Stats+4 during combat. It helps him to fix his stats, that for today's standards are pretty bad

Lute is pretty good as well. Sabotage Spd/Res is a new  thing for her, and in-combat when foe has penalties is pretty good as well. She lost some points because she is 5* exclusive.

Sigh... Fred is... something. He kept the armored effective, which is not a bad thing... But I am disappointed with Death Blow. His Atk is pretty good, so it will help him even more, but... it's a basic and lazy refinement. I would say that the Slaying Hammer+'s Dull Armored is a better effect than DB. Even a Bond type effect when near Sword or Staff units would be better. For me, he got the worst refinement of this group.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Frederick's Axe isn't remarkable, but it is beneficial, and it isn't like he has much competition in his weapon and movement type.

 

Really liking Hawkeye. Going to build one. Now I just need to decide if I want to go for Quick Riposte or Wrath.

 

Virion is unique, and I like him enough to maybe make him a merge project. But he is directly competing with Aversa and I question how he compares.

 

I have a Lute, and I may refine her in the future. Good refine.

[Diovani Bressan]

16 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Really liking Hawkeye. Going to build one. Now I just need to decide if I want to go for Quick Riposte or Wrath.

Wrath B Skill and QR Seal.

I also want to build him. I may go with the same type of build that I went with Lukas, which is Steady Stance + QR, for a 3 CD special in every counterattack. I am between Bonfire and Luna...

[Fabulously Olivier]

3 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Wrath B Skill and QR Seal.

I also want to build him. I may go with the same type of build that I went with Lukas, which is Steady Stance + QR, for a 3 CD special in every counterattack. I am between Bonfire and Luna...

I won't be doing that because QR and Wrath have anti-synergy.

[Diovani Bressan]

3 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I won't be doing that because QR and Wrath have anti-synergy.

That's true... I forgot about the HP requirement to trigger Wrath.

[Anacybele]

Disappointed. All Frederick gets is armor effectiveness and Death Blow? This isn't a brave weapon, IS. Extremely underwhelming. I'm sticking with my Slaying Axe build. Can't believe I waited all this time and got my hopes up for nothing...

I expected Sturdy Stance or something like that, not this. I'd have to change my build entirely anyway because I use an enemy phase one while Death Blow is player phase.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Anacybele

[Fabulously Olivier]

3 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Disappointed. All Frederick gets is armor effectiveness and Death Blow? This isn't a brave weapon, IS. Extremely underwhelming. I'm sticking with my Slaying Axe build. Can't believe I waited all this time and got my hopes up for nothing...

I'm also rather disappointed. But considering Frederick's common builds do revolve around OHKOs, this weapon does play into that.

[Anacybele]

1 minute ago, Etheus said:

I'm also rather disappointed. But considering Frederick's common builds do revolve around OHKOs, this weapon does play into that.

What are you talking about? He's best as an enemy phase unit since his Atk and Def are both high. And while his Atk is high, it's not Cherche or Lilina levels or anything, so he can't really OHKO that well.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Anacybele

[Fabulously Olivier]

Just now, Anacybele said:

What are you talking about? He's best as an enemy phase unit since his Atk and Def are both high.

I'm going off his Gamepress recommended build. Which makes use of that high attack to OHKO. 

 

He's pretty versatile. His stats work with enemy phase, while his movement and attack are good with player phase. 

[Anacybele]

2 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I'm going off his Gamepress recommended build. Which makes use of that high attack to OHKO. 

 

He's pretty versatile. His stats work with enemy phase, while his movement and attack are good with player phase. 

Well, I still think he is best as enemy phase because you're making use of both of his best stats, not just one good stat. IS seriously fucked up here. Why make use of only one good stat when you can do both? Gamepress is wrong.

I did say I was willing to change my build if the refine was good enough. But just a lame Death Blow is not worth it when I know I would get more results with what I already have.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Anacybele

[Diovani Bressan]

Well, Hawkeye got a good refinement and that's what I wanted, so... I am happy.
For Hawkeye and for me, IntSys did a good job! 🙂

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 minute ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Well, Hawkeye got a good refinement and that's what I wanted, so... I am happy.
For Hawkeye and for me, IntSys did a good job! 🙂

Agreed. And I'm also eyeing Virion for a potential new summoner support because I really like him. Though Aversa is my current one and she's so effective.

[Diovani Bressan]

6 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Agreed. And I'm also eyeing Virion for a potential new summoner support because I really like him. Though Aversa is my current one and she's so effective.

Right?

Aversa and Virion are great units, but I would say Aversa is better. Her requirement is higher but the effect is better since it also inflicts -3 to all stats. Also, she being a mage helps a lot in Arena, helping to deal damage to green armored units.

But Virion still can be useful as an extra unit for AA and his refinement is pretty unique.

In my opinion, Hawkeye and Virion are the winners of this refinement group. Lute is pretty good, but she loses some points for being 5* exclusive, and Fred is... Ew...

Edited October 8, 2019 by Diovani Bressan

[Anacybele]

9 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Fred is... Ew...

IS: Hawkeye gets this, Virion gets this, and we'll give Lute this. ...Oh, we forgot Frederick's in this group! ...Uh, just give him Death Blow. Yeah. Hardly anyone uses him anyway (though Virion was used even less).

I'm honestly pissed. I waited months for my favorite character not named Ike to get his own weapon only to be given trash and entirely let down.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Anacybele

[Diovani Bressan]

1 minute ago, Anacybele said:

IS: Hawkeye gets this, Virion gets this, and we'll give Lute this. ...Oh, we forgot Frederick's in this group! ...Uh, just give him Death Blow. Yeah. Hardly anyone uses him anyway (though Virion was used even less).

I can see Virion being used more now... 🙂