DehNutCase

Okay, apparently it's a theme with me that I get more of the rate up SSR on summer banners than the rate up SRs. -_- Still pretty happy with my haul, since everyone other than Nero would mostly be for the drop bonuses, but it's still weird that I only managed to pull a single SR (Frankenstein) vs. 2 copies of Nero. Quartz stockpile is completely bankrupt now, though. Edit: Oh actually I have 2 copies of Frankenstein. So it's 2 Nero vs. 2 Rate Up 4*s.

Oh, hey, Summer 2017 drops Monday, looks like they did end up pushing everything forward rather than making a dead week or two where the Bunyan event used to be.

It's a bit minor, but does it feel like the first card bonus applies to the first card to anyone else as well? (Beast lair's FGO formulas kind of imply this, but the in game hints or w/e imply the first card bonus is only for cards 2 & 3, IRRC.) i.e. Arts has 400% NP gain for the first card, Buster has 200% damage rather than 150%.

Ugh, this CQ looks like it's going to be a damn grind. Incoming damage is extremely low for a bunch of mid level Beserkers, but 600k+ hp is a lot of chew through, especially due to the sustain requirements. I think I'm going to bring in Jeanne rather than use a support Merlin if this run doesn't pan, since for some reason every single Merlin uses 2030s (ignoring the ones using event CEs). Not like 2030s are bad, but it's about on the level of Merlin's Bond CE, and that's not really what I'm looking for when Prisma Cosmos and Golden Carp are both on the table. (One for better sustain, one for better Burst.) Edit: Turns out incoming damage was really low, despite the fact that later boars had more levels. The correct play was to run Waver in the front lines rather than using Merlin, but that's not something I could've known going in. (My team was basically my whipless Kiara team with Merlin swapped for Waver, lul.)

Apparently in JP they're experimenting with letting past events be unlockable---Dante's Prison Tower is on sale in the Rare Prism shop if I've read things correctly---so maybe eventually they'll let even big events like a Summer Event be unlockable.

Parvati has good NP gain by default, a 3 turn 30% Golden Rule and 30% Quick Performance Up , a single turn 50% Atk Up, 50% Def Up, and a very minor battery that heals for 3k, which covers damage, sustain, and bulk. All of her skills are on 5 turn cds too, so they have really good up-time. Of course, this comes with the downside of having an almost completely selfish kit, but the numbers are good enough to make her a very good primary damage dealer. She's even great at making stars for herself assuming the meta remains AoE focused. (For single-target fights Parvati's NP gets significantly worse in terms of refund and star-gen, which hurts her quite a bit.) And don't let her barely 8k Atk fool you, lancer's 1.05x damage modifier means that fully invested her Atk isn't as crippling as it looks, and her hp is above average at level 100 even for 5*s. Archer Artoria*, for example, has 12,343 Atk at level 100 (without Fous, and effectively 11,726 Atk after the 95% Archer damage mod), and 15,943 Hp. *Mind Artoria has fairly low Atk and she's in a class with a bad damage mod. Parvati has 9,840 Atk at level 100 (without Fous, and effectively 10,332 Atk after the 105% Lancer damage mod), and 16,069 Hp. The difference comes out to be 1,394 Atk, and the more Fous and high leveled CEs you invest in the smaller the difference becomes (due to the damage mod), so you can napkin math the difference to 1k and not be too far off. If you're on a budget in terms of quartz the fact that she's 4* means she's easier to max out in terms of NP level, but if you're on a budget in terms of grails the fact that she's 4* means she'll take 2 extra grails compared to a 5*. My main issue with her is that she doesn't crit well despite being someone who slots into the primary damage dealer role, but it's better to have bad crits but lots of stars than good crits but no stars. There should also be team comps that can leverage the fact that the primary damage dealer doesn't care too much about criting to let supports use the crit stars for resource generation, for example with Reines or Osakabehime, but that's something I'd have to test when everyone actually gets to the US. All in all I'd probably rate Parvati around the level of OG Mash. Comparable to 5*s in her specific niche, so basically one of the best 4*s, but not something I'd consider broken relative to actual 5*s.

My main issue with Quick servants in general is that Quick cards tend to be awful if they aren't NPs. 80% damage by default means that card up doesn't increase the damage very well compared to Atk or Crit Up. Both Atk and Crit Up scales with the 50% damage from a Buster lead, but Performance Up doesn't---nor does Performance Up increase, for example, Arts lead NP gain. This means that unless your team is very biased in terms of its buffs (for example, 100% crit up to only Quick cards), non-NP Quick cards are only for resource generation. And for some reason most servants have awful NP gain and awful hit-counts on their Quick cards, so they give crap for stars and crap for NP gauge a lot of the time. Atalante very much suffers from this. She doesn't even have the mixed Quick and Buster deck like Scathach, MHXA, Atalante Alter, OG Lancelot etc. who all have at least 2 Buster cards each to actually do damage with their crits. By default, a Quick Crit only does 7% more damage than a non-crit Buster. So 'normal' quick Servants like Jack or Atalante pretty much always slots into the role of a secondary damage dealer unless they have triangle advantage---their NPs will do serious damage, but their face cards would be to generate NP for themselves and crit stars for the team, neither function needing them to get buff priority for single target stuff. Which isn't to say Atalante's bad, mind. The closest comparison to Atalante would probably be Drake, both of them have a team wide 'mana burst,' a Golden Rule, and tons of stars from their NPs. The main trade-off is that Drake has a 50% battery in exchange for a dodge---I'd take the battery most of the time, since I'm willing to lose servants to clear a map faster, but I'm not going to call anyone stupid for taking a survival skill over a battery. Drake's bases are miles better, though, with a better deck for face carding and a Quick card that's as good as both of Atalante's combined. But 5*s are gonna 5*. Personally I'm more looking forward to Osakabehime than Skadi for Quick Servants---my gut feeling is that Buster Up, Atk Up, and Crit Up are all more important than Quick Up in terms of damage, although I'll have to test it. Pity her Buster Up is tied to her NP, meaning she'll also be slotting into the secondary damage dealer role I'd slot most Quick servants in, since you'll want to click her cards for NP.

Ah, I tend to bring 2 Drakes + Ozy. (Lots of people have the MLB CE + Drake combo for some reason.) My back-line is just underleveled dorks. There's nothing that special about the run given my Servants, the 2 Drakes clear the Beserkers (and I sneak in a little extra NP gen by using the NP as the third card), and then Ozy goes to town on the eye. Since I don't take any damage from the golems unless I fuck up it means my team goes into the eye with full hp, and Ozy's NP having an NP Seal means that I have 4 turns to kill the eye before it does its AoE, and even if it does Ozy's Imperial Privilege means he can pretty consistently survive. Coming into the eye after a Drake NP means I should have 2 cards that crit + Ozy's NP, which, ideally, is backed by 2 Voyagers of the Storm + his Imperial Privilege & Charisma, and if the map goes long at least one of my Drakes tend to be able to fire off another NP for second round of crits.

Oh, actually, I suck at math. I only get like ~150 Iron for the cave. Don't know why I thought I had +14 drops for Iron. (If my MLB Knights were broken into 5 pieces I think I'd get 200 Iron on a good day, but it's not.)

Mind, I don't play JAP either, but here's how I break down loopers, conceptually. (For farming, at least, for Challenge Quests loopers draw an NP card every turn for the 3 turns your buffs are up, which gives your main damage dealer 8 cards over 3 turns (5 in the deck, 3 NP cards---on average), letting you almost fully leverage a maximally invested unit.) People with 50% batteries can probably NP twice in any map where a looper can NP three times, and it's easier to find high Atk stats on people with NP battery skills than people with the ability to loop. This means that a looper can't afford to lose so much damage in exchange for their ability to loop that they end up needing 2 NPs to clear a single wave (not necessarily over 2 turns, something like Looper + Arash or Looper + Helena also counts). The main draw of a looper, at least for farming, is the fact that they're an 'extra' NP you have available to clear all the waves. But if their damage is so low that it ends up costing you another NP then it'll end up being a wash. So you'll probably want a 4* looper to be NP2+ to keep up with your 5*s. (Rider Mordred doesn't have an interlude, either, so she'll probably have problems competing with 5*s that have interludes or are at NP2+ regardless of how many copies you roll, at least in terms of damage.) A 5* looper has less damage issues, but they're also harder to come by. And, mind, looping isn't the only way to cram more uses of AoE NPs into a team. Arash, Nitocrisis, Plugsuit etc. can all do that. Doesn't help that a looper's team comp requirements doesn't really jive with how I farm, although that's a personal thing. I'm a gigantic lazy ass when it comes to farming, as few clicks as possible and as little time taken as possible is best, meaning I tend to not use people like Waver or Arash unless the team doesn't work without them. For example, right now I'm using Gorgon, Helena, Artoria all with Kaleidoscopes for farming doors and hands because it means I only need 3 clicks to setup all the teamwide buffs (18% Charisma, 20% Battery, 20% All Card), and at most 1 button a turn after that to setup the mana burst equivalent. For event farming I don't get NP Gauge CEs consistently enough to care about being optimal in terms of turns spent, so I tend to maximize drops and bond gain, which usually means a looper wouldn't do anything special. Since loopers function best in situations where most of your damage is coming in a 3 turn burst, rather than just grinding things down like I do for most events.* They fact that loopers tend to have lower than average NP gain from face-cards also means they depend on starting NP CEs a bit more than most. *I think I'm averaging 7 or 8 turns clears for the Summer Rerun, for example. (Getting 200+ Wood/Iron/Stone per run is damn sweet, though.)

Oh man the hermit crab challenge quest caught me by surprise. I went in with Black Grail Artoria since it was all Sabers, but that 100% damage reduction crab at the end is going to mean that I have to kill it with Waver Atk Up (from the 500 dmg per card), Waver's NP Curse damage, and Nero's NP Burn damage. Not sure if I can actually chip off 50k with my team, tbh, but I'm too lazy to just quit and grab some of my per card damage CEs and give Waver Prisma Cosmos. Edit: Done. Good thing I grabbed 2 Wavers for the team since Artoria wasn't using an NP Gauge CE, LUL. Helped that the incoming damage was pretty low.

Ah, don't mind me when I'm posting giant walls of text, I'm pretty much just doing them for fun. FGO is nowhere near hard enough that you actually have to optimize. And, personally, that's how I think mobile games should be---some challenge quests once in a while is fine, but they should be optional. How they did it for Kiara was more or less ideal, people who wanted a challenge could do it whipless or whip only, but people who didn't care could just grind until she's trivial. Regarding investing, though, I'm definitely the type that would go for the 1% improvement on my best unit rather than the 100% improvement versus an average or even good unit, assuming the 101% best unit is still better than the 200% average/good unit. It helps that FGO doesn't punish you for focusing on 1 or 2 key units at the very start---the cost system even encourages it since you can barely manage to fit 2 5*s into your team, much less 2 5*s with 5* CEs.

Tamamo's NP doesn't buy you a turn, is the thing, so the CD reduction is one. Like, pretend we had an AoE version of Coaching: We press the AoE Coaching Skill, all skills cd are reduced by one. We pass the turn, all skills cd are reduced by one again, so the turn after using the AoE Coaching we have -2 CD to everything. This doesn't mean the AoE Coaching skill is somehow -2 CD to all skills, it's -1 CD, but the turn after using it everything -2 CD just like if you used a Tamamo NP in place of the AoE Coaching Skill. The main issue with your comparison with the Atlas Code is that you didn't pass the turn after using it. Like, give the -CD a time delay---so that it'll only trigger after you do your attacks---you wouldn't call it a -3 CD skill just because the skill you used it on went down 3 cd by the time the -CD takes effect. For example, let's see how often we can use a skill given that we can only survive, say, 6 turns worth of hits and that Tamamo's Healing can be ignored. (If Tamamo's healing buys a turn then yes, it's actually worth -2 CD, but in that case so would Medea Lily's NP, or 8 turns of Elizabeth's Bond CE healing. Jeanne's NP would also be worth 2 turns in such a case, since it heals for 2k over 2 turns and blanks 1 turn of damage.) I'll use one -1 CD AoE skill a turn (a self affecting 2 CD or a non-self affecting 1 CD---alternatively, three 6cd self affecting AoE Coaching skills), a stun every other turn (a 2 cd Stun---alternatively, three 6cd stuns), or one Tamamo NP a turn (1 CD self affecting or 2cd non self-affecting, although it's not a skill---we can pretend it charges Gauge by 50% and we had 2 Tamamo's, though, or it charges 100% and we have 1), and compare how they'd affect a 5 CD skill. 1 -1 CD AoE, number in brackets is the cooldown of the 5cd skill: Turn 1: [4], 1 use. (We use the 5 cd, then click our AoE CD skill) Turn 2: [2], 1 use. Turn 3: [5], 2 uses (We click our AoE to go to 0, then use the skill.) Turn 4: [3], 2 uses Turn 5: [1], 2 uses Turn 6: [4], 3 uses (We use the 5 cd, then click our CD skill.) So we get 3 uses with -1 CD skill a turn if we die in 6 turns of hits, since we take our 6th hit turn 7 and die. 1 turn Guaranteed AoE Stun, 2 CD: Turn 1: [5], 1 use, 0 hits taken. We use our Stun. Turn 2: [4], 1 use, 0 hits taken. Turn 3: [3], 1 use, 1 hit taken. We use our Stun. Turn 4: [2], 1 use, 1 hit taken. Turn 5: [1], 1 use, 2 hits taken. We use our Stun. Turn 6: [5], 2 uses, 2 hits taken. Turn 7: [4], 2 uses, 3 hits taken. We use our Stun. Turn 8: [3], 2 uses, 3 hits taken. Turn 9: [2], 2 uses, 4 hits taken. We use our Stun. Turn 10: [1], 2 uses, 4 hits taken. Turn 11: [5], 3 uses, 5 hits taken. We use our Stun. Turn 12: [4], 3 uses, 5 hits taken. As you can see, using a stun every other turn gives us just as many uses of a 5CD skill as using a -1 CD skill every single turn, at the cost of inflating turn-count like crazy. However, balanced by cooldowns it's identical to an AoE -CD skill in terms of amount of skills used. (Since a self affecting 2CD AoE Coaching is identical to a 2CD Stun.) 1 Tamamo NP every turn: Turn 1: [5], 1 use Turn 2: [3], 1 use Turn 3: [1], 1 use Turn 4: [5], 2 uses Turn 5: [3], 2 uses Turn 6: [1], 2 uses Let's round up and say this is 3 uses.* As you can see, Tamamo's CD reduction is comparable to a -1 CD skill or single turn stun with the same effective CD. (The fact that we only got 2 uses of the 5cd skill is because Tamamo's NP is time delayed, but if we use a lot of turns the inefficiency doesn't affect things as much.) *Tamamo's NP occasionally runs into situations like this, where you're forced to use it when the skill is at 1 cd already, but it doesn't pop up nearly as often as in this example---in retrospect, I should've used a 4 or 6cd skill. For clarity, here's the effect if we had a -2 CD skill every turn: Turn 1: [3], 1 use Turn 2: [5], 2 uses Turn 3: [2], 2 uses Turn 4: [5], 3 uses Turn 5: [2], 3 uses Turn 6: [5], 4 uses You'd get 4 uses rather than 2 or 3 if you had a -2 CD skill, albeit just barely. (To be fair though, it's running into the same situation as Tamamo's NP, in that for a 5cd skill you'll end up using it when the skill has 1 cd a lot.) 6 turns might be a bit too short and require numbers that aren't 'real,' so we can also see the effects of 20 turns of 1 6 CD AoE Coaching skill, 1 6 CD 1 turn Stun, and 1 Tamamo NP every 6 turns. (Again, we're discounting the healing.) The skill we're using is still 5cd. 6cd (self affecting) Coaching: Turn 1: [4], 1 use, coaching skill has 5 turns of CD. (We're assuming it affects itself so that the comparison with a stun skill is similar.) Turn 2: [3], 1 use, 4cd on Coaching. Turn 3: [2], 1 use, 3 cd on Coaching. Turn 4: [1], 1 use, 2 cd on Coaching. Turn 5: [5], 2 uses, 1 cd on Coaching. Turn 6: [3], 2 uses, 5 cd on Coaching. Turn 7: [2], 2 uses, 4 cd on Coaching. Turn 8: [1], 2 uses, 3 cd on Coaching. Turn 9: [5], 3 uses, 2 cd on Coaching. Turn 10: [4], 3 uses, 1 cd on Coaching. Turn 11: [2], 3 uses, 5 cd on Coaching. Turn 12: [1], 3 uses, 4 cd on Coaching. Turn 13: [5], 4 uses, 3 cd on Coaching. Turn 14: [4], 4 uses, 2 cd on Coaching. Turn 15: [3], 4 uses, 1 cd on Coaching. Turn 16: [1], 4 uses, 5 cd on Coaching. Turn 17: [5], 5 uses, 4 cd on Coaching. Turn 18: [4], 5 uses, 3 cd on Coaching. Turn 19: [3], 5 uses, 2 cd on Coaching. Turn 20: [2], 5 uses, 1 cd on Coaching. We die on the 20th hit, so we get 5 uses of our 5 cd skill in 20 turns, with 2 cd until its next use. 6 CD Stun: Turn 1: [5], 1 use, 6 cd on Stun, 0 hits. (We use our Stun.) Turn 2: [4], 1 use, 5 cd on Stun, 0 hits. Turn 3: [3], 1 use, 4 cd on Stun, 1 hit. Turn 4: [2], 1 use, 3 cd on Stun, 2 hits. Turn 5: [1], 1 use, 2 cd on Stun, 3 hits. Turn 6: [5], 2 uses, 1 cd on Stun, 4 hits. Turn 7: [4], 2 uses, 6 cd on Stun, 5 hits. (We use our Stun.) Turn 8: [3], 2 uses, 5 cd on Stun, 5 hits. Turn 9: [2], 2 uses, 4 cd on Stun, 6 hits. Turn 10: [1], 2 uses, 3 cd on Stun, 7 hits. Turn 11: [5], 3 uses, 2 cd on Stun, 8 hits. Turn 12: [4], 3 uses, 1 cd on Stun, 9 hits. Turn 13: [3], 3 uses, 6 cd on Stun, 10 hits. (We use our Stun.) Turn 14: [2], 3 uses, 5 cd on Stun, 10 hits. Turn 15: [1], 3 uses, 4cd on Stun, 11 hits. Turn 16: [5], 4 uses, 3 cd on Stun, 12 hits. Turn 17: [4], 4 uses, 2 cd on Stun, 13 hits. Turn 18: [3], 4 uses, 1 cd on Stun, 14 hits. Turn 19: [2], 4 uses, 6 cd on Stun, 15 hits. (We use our Stun.) Turn 20: [1], 4 uses, 5 cd on Stun, 15 hits. Turn 21: [5], 5 uses, 4 cd on Stun, 16 hits. Turn 22: [4], 5 uses, 3 cd on Stun, 17 hits. Turn 23: [3], 5 uses, 2 cd on Stun, 18 hits. Turn 24: [2], 5 uses, 1 cd on Stun, 19 hits. We die next turn, so we had 5 uses of our 5 cd skill with 2 cd left until its next use, and 1 cd left until our stun. The exact same situation as the -1 CD skill if all we care about is skill usage. Just like before, our turn count is a bit inflated. Tamamo NP every 5 turns (alternatively, 6 self-affecting CD): Turn 1: [5], 1 use, 5 cd on NP. We used our NP. Turn 2: [3], 1 use, 4 cd on NP. Turn 3: [2], 1 use, 3 cd on NP. Turn 4: [1], 1 use, 2 cd on NP. Turn 5: [5], 2 uses, 1 cd on NP. Turn 6: [4], 2 uses, 5 cd on NP. We used our NP. Turn 7: [2], 2 uses, 4cd on NP. Turn 8: [1], 2 uses, 3cd on NP. Turn 9: [5], 3 uses, 2cd on NP. Turn 10: [4], 3 uses, 1 cd on NP. Turn 11: [3], 3 uses, 5 cd on NP. We used our NP. Turn 12: [1], 3 uses, 4 cd on NP. Turn 13: [5], 4 uses, 3 cd on NP. Turn 14: [4], 4 uses, 2cd on NP. Turn 15: [3], 4 uses, 1 cd on NP. Turn 16: [2], 4 uses, 5 cd on NP. We used our NP. Turn 17: [5], 5 uses, 4cd on NP. Turn 18: [4], 5 uses, 3cd on NP. Turn 19: [3], 5 uses, 2cd on NP. Turn 20: [2], 5 uses, 1 cd on NP. 5 uses, 2 cd on skill, 1 cd on NP, exact same situation as our Stun and AoE Coaching skills if we die in 20 hits. (Fortunately we never ran into the situation where we had Tamamo's NP up at the same time our skill only had 1 cd left, so we didn't have to hold our NP for a turn so as to not waste it.) Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant---you need to be 5cd to be up in time for the 2nd buff cycle if all your stuff is 6cd. But it's a one off thing, once Revelation is in synch with everything else you don't need to fix it again, since every buff cycle after that it'll be up a turn before all the other 6cd stuff. It's still a downside, mind, but I'd much rather they gave it more stars than 1 less cd, since if you only have time to use Revelation once the cd doesn't matter, and if you have time to use it a lot then 'wasting' the skill once to fix synchronization isn't much of a loss.

Mind, I specifically said an AoE 100% stun would be a Tamamo NP, and Jeanne's is single target & not 100%. I'm referring to a stun that always succeeds here, not what the game calls 100%. An AoE stun does most of what Tamamo's NP would do at the cost of inflating turn count. Basically, turn 5 after using a Tamamo NP would be equivalent to turn 6 after using an AoE stun, and the effect on CDs would be identical in that case. To fully make that comparison you'd have to ignore Tamamo's healing and the extra NP tick (assuming the enemies didn't already have their NPs charged), but you'd also ignore the 4 cards worth of damage from using a skill that buys you another turn rather than an NP card, so I feel like it's a pretty fair comparison. Regarding Revelation: Personally I'm fine with 6cd star gen, mostly because quite a few damage buffs are on 6cd cycles rather than 5cd cycles. If the numbers are higher the 6cd stuff tend to be better than the 5cd stuff since the best damage output comes from stacking all your buffs during your turns with your highest damaging cards anyway, even at the cost of effectively turning 5cd stuff into 6cd stuff. If all your cards did the same damage then the difference is basically a rounding error, though---if you had a 5cd 50% Atk Up and a 6cd 50% Buster Up and all you ever clicked was non-NP Busters the synch your CD strategy does... 0.015% more damage, or something like that. If Revelation had better star gen numbers then its biggest downside would come from the second use of it. A 5cd would be up right in time for a 6 Turn cycle, but 6cd wouldn't be, since you get your stars the turn after you use the skill, so you either have to hold all your other stuff for an extra turn, use something like Rider Alter's Coaching, not use Revelation for a full buff cycle, or just live with the fact that your revelation is basically only up for 2 out of 6 turns.

Personally I value a 100% AoE stun at the level of Tamamo's NP*, so I'm fine with Jeanne's kit, even if every skill is a tad underpowered. Jeanne's is single target and vulnerable to debuff resistance (and debuff success up or debuff resist down are fairly hard to find), but it's still damn good as a skill. *A stun saves the hp Tamamo would've healed by preventing the enemy team from attacking, a team with good generation stats would easily get the equivalent of 25% NP gauge each from a turn of cards (although some of that would come in the form of crit stars rather than NP Gauge), and a stalled turn is another -1 CD to all your skills compared to not having stunned the enemy team. The fact that the enemy team still gets an NP tick is annoying, but the stun adds a turn of damage so it's a worthwhile trade-off compared to Tamamo's NP (which actually costs you a card's worth of damage rather than giving you 3 cards worth of damage) even if you aren't using the stun when the enemy has their NP ready. Her 1st isn't bad as a concept, but the numbers are disappointing. It should be either 5 CD to synch up with the typical offensive skill CDs---which would make it easily comparable to the effects of running a 2030 despite only being up 60% of the time, thanks to the fact that crit stars are more valuable when you have buffs up*---or else it needs to give a bit more stars. Hans level 15 stars/turn at 5 cd would be overkill, but 5cd or 15 stars would be more than enough. *Yeah, crit stars also improves your resource generation even during turns where buffs are down, but resource generation is what Prisma Cosmos is for, particularly in the case of early servants who don't actually get that much NP from hitting things. Her 2nd skill is a bit of an oddball skill, in that you need to stack NP damage down or have everyone on your team have Jeanne level bulk for it to be worth it. The typical case is already covered by Jeanne's NP, so it's mostly for use against people who can ignore Jeanne's Defense Up and Invulnerability, weakening them with debuffs rather than defending the team with buffs. That said, Jeanne is probably the best person to have an ultra-niche defensive skill like this, because she already has the ordinary cases covered, rather than being someone who can only cover the niche cases where invul or defense stacking doesn't work. (Melt also has a combo like this, except her dodge is self only in exchange for her NP Damage Down being AoE and 50%.) The issue with Jeanne's 2nd Skill's niche is that people who can afford to run Jeanne can probably afford to specifically build a team vs. people with buff removal or invul pierce, and you just drop Jeanne from the team entirely rather than leveraging the 2nd skill. It also shares the problem with her stun in that it's single target and not reliable vs. debuff resistance. It's actually even less reliable than her stun because her stun actually has 120% at level 10, which beats most passive sources of debuff resistance. The main problem with Jeanne, though, isn't that she's bad. (She's very good.) It's that she's slow. It's more important to be good than to be fast, but as long as the game is easy (which is most definitely is, at least in NA), being fast is a bigger concern than being good. Just about everyone is good, so the people who end fights quickly are more important than the people who can lower the failure rate even further. Clearly we need to get Jeanne Bunker Bolt to fix that issue, Kappa. Just staple it to her Revelation.

I like how the only other person with a formal dress CE on their support list is this random guy with NP5 on half his stuff. He's probably feeling pretty bad if his friend's list is anything like mine, lul, since he's specifically asking for anniversary CEs. (I'm assuming he means the formal dress CEs rather than the Holmes banner CEs, since I doubt he'd have problems getting those.) Kind of tempted to pull a bit more on the Holmes banner, but I already got the 5* CE and I feel like dropping more tickets on it would be pushing my luck considering Summer Nero is pretty close now.

I mean, a 20% battery is still a battery. That said, being reminiscent of Gaiwain probably isn't a good thing considering she's 5*. Kind of feels like she's suffering from the 'Golden Rule Effect,' where if you have skill(s) that increase your NP gain they deliberately shaft your base NP gain---and they probably would've made her third skill like 30%+ if she didn't have the Avenger 3.3% NP gauge a turn. The 7% death rate paired with a basically impossible to remove invul means she can really consistently survive one turn, but her kit feels like they tried to specialize her in 3 different directions at once, which more or less guarantees that a third of her kit will be useless in any given fight---It's just that which third is useless rotates depending on the fight & team comp. I still like her, though, but that's because I usually prefer to have a 2nd damage dealer over a 2nd hard support on most of my teams, and her kit basically shoe-horns her into the secondary damage dealer role. It helps that a triple Buster deck is basically ideal for using offensive Command Codes as far as I can tell. (Pretty easy to give her, say, Da Vinci-chan for one of her Busters since she has 2 other ones to spare for stuff like being a buff removing Buster lead that primes the turn for your main damage dealer.) Mind, all that's just theorycraft, maybe I'll change my opinion once I actually see what the content in JAP is like, 2 years down the line.

Feels kind of weird that we're getting the singularity memorial quests again after, what, 6 months or so? It's a bit late + I've played them before so I just built burst comps to rush them all down. (The hardest part of all of them was actually picking the CE to take, LUL. I had it narrowed down to Kiyohime, Nero, or Ishtar. Will probably be picking Nero's since she's actually in my box---if we ignore the fact that Kiyohime(Berserker) is also in my box.)

Not sure what Bunyan being out a month earlier relative to JP means for the rest of the US schedule, but at least it means I have something to do since I rushed through Agartha. If a 4* ticket comes out I'm probs going to be using it to give someone another level in NP---originally it was going to go on Goron, but I ended up picking up 2 extra copies so she doesn't need it. Nero would've been an obvious pick for me if it wasn't for the fact that I'm expecting to NP2 Bride eventually, and the 4* tends to be a package deal with Bride. The welfare Servants do pretty good jobs of filling out my 4* pool, so I'm not really interested in picking up random NP1 4*s. If my quartz count goes bankrupt going for Summer Nero I'll probably grab another copy of Medusa(Lancer), since that would mean I wouldn't have a lot of budget for Eresh + Medusa during Christmas. (Or, if I manage to remember about him, a copy of Caster Gil for his debuff success chance buff for Medusa specifically and being another good Arts support for my box in general---it's really Arts heavy.)

Personally I'm the kind of person that would consider a strictly better servant power creep even if that servant's niche isn't relevant for the meta at the moment. (That is, I tend to judge power creep in terms of increase to player abilities than change to meta.) But that's neither here nor there. The lack of a non-Spartacus AoE Berserker with NP charge is pretty much the main reason AoE casters and assassins see any farming use, so I'll probably try to pick Ajuna up once he hits US as the lazy go-to option. (I tend look for AoE berserkers when farming AoE stuff because I'm a lazy ass, although, oddly enough, I never bother looking for Kintoki when I'm farming single target stuff.)

My only issue with Agartha's fights is that you never get to take Megalos full to 0. I don't think he ever had more than 4 hp bars and that's kind of a disappointment. (Finished the whole thing earlier today, I like the start and middle storywise but the ending was really meh for me.)

That feeling when you got to almost 900 million damage points because the 3BP fight has the best drop rate for pages. : / The pacing of Onigashima made it feel a lot longer than normal events, even though it's just a regular 2 week event. Probably because I usually chill for the last few days of other events, but this event had me grinding more or less to the end.

Mind, the main reason I'd use Nero Bride would be if her face cards, her damaging NP, and her 2nd skill mattered*, because otherwise there's not enough reason to run her over Tamamo or Waver. Because of that I don't really think Paracelsus fills a similar role---he's more like Tamamo or Waver than Bride in an Arts team, someone with noodle arms but excellent support. *Which is as much about the crit stars as the Atk Up. Which is why I think Caster Gil is the budget Bride of non 5* Arts Supports. I'm looking more at the results of what bringing Paracelsus into the team does than how he does it. That is, I don't distinguish between NP loops that happen because you used Waver's skills to loop, you used a Golden Rule, or you stuffed a ton of Arts Ups. I mentioned Waver because I feel like he's the #1 support you need to compare Arts Supports to if you're NP looping shenanigans---Waver's amazing at starting the loop, decent at keeping the loop going, controls incoming damage pretty well, and also adds a decent amount of damage. (I couldn't see the last video, but the common theme of all the other teams is that Waver is on every single one of them.) Pretty much the break down---for me---of Paracelsus is: Excellent ability to keep the loop going, adds a decent amount of damage (he's not very good at this, but even a 3* Caster's AoE NP is still an NP, and 20% Arts Up isn't nothing), and good damage control assuming you're using Poster Girl. Bride is okayish at all of those, but the situations where you'd run her for those things are the situations where Waver and Tamamo is straight up better than her. I like Bride and all, but if you don't click her cards I don't see any reason to run her over, say, Kaleidoscope Tamamo who you swap out after using her stuff. Thinking about it more, though, I guess it wasn't that fair to compare Paracelsus to Waver, Tamamo might've been the better comparison for someone who's only brought in to use their skillset once. (Off-topic: Tamamo looks damn sweet now, tbh. She can fill the role of your 2nd Waver in terms of starting the loop by using a Kaleidoscope and NPing for the teamwide Gauge, and then you use her NP Up and Arts Up and plugsuit her out for a fresh Waver.)

It takes a lot of NP gain for a Golden Rule equivalent to beat Waver's raw NP Gen, though, hence why I feel like Paracelsus ends up being a worse Waver. Waver doesn't refund at all, but 50% of a full bar is equivalent to 100% Golden Rule for the first NP. It's a bit worse if you manage to loop into 2 or 3 NPs, but most people who can do that have such overkill NP gain that Waver's 1st is enough to make them loop. I tend to value Waver's 1st as a 50% Golden Rule skill because of a combination of the fact that it front loads better---you can use it turn 1---and because if you only get 1 NP during the duration it's only a tiny bit worse than a 50% Golden Rule if you got one full gauge from it. (50% Golden Rule adds about 33.3% NP if you go from 0 NP to 100% NP.) It's pretty much why I tend to take Waver over Bride or Tamamo to support Archuria, everything else being equal. Once the loop is going the other 2 perform similarly, but Waver's so much faster at getting things started that he ends up being my go-to loop enabler. (If you already have 2 Wavers you'd look into 2nd stringers like Paracelsus, but honestly he doesn't feel that much better than just letting Wavers' skills get off CD---or maybe even just running the -2 CD Mystic Code.)

Eh... Paracelsus feels more like a crappy Waver than a budget Bride. The situations where you'd run Paracelsus over Bride are probably the same situations where you'd run Waver over Bride. (And you had Waver as an option in those situations you'd run Waver over Paracelsus.)