DehNutCase

I think any high level archer would completely destroy him? Would've been fine to just take the first single target 5* archer you saw, I think. Gawain has 30% damage resistance according the wiki, so my Artoria should take off at least half his HP with a single NP. (Assuming Gawain has 500k hp.)

I don't know why, but I keep forgetting I have Semiramis when I build teams for farming. I always go looking for one of my 4* Assassins when it's a Rider node. The bronze mat node is surprisingly pleasant to farm, with a damage CE and the 40% point CE it's fairly consistent to 3T with just face cards + a NP at the end (from someone with a battery). Bought most of the things I wanted from the event shop already, so I'm probably just going to buyout the bronze currency mats, the exp embers, and stop farming the event. (Going to finish the points ladder before I finish farming bronze currency, so no issues there.) Not sure how I feel about Divine Wine, Spirit Roots, and Lamp of Evil-Sealing being in shops so often. I have hundreds of the stuff, and it's not like they're used much either. On the plus side, it means I can skip farming for them without caring too much.

I didn't know the Okita banner was secretly an Apocrypha banner. Modred and Achilles showed up already and I still haven't seen a single 5* from the banner, whether it's Okita or the CE. -_- Mostly looking for a few copies of Poster Girl, but it doesn't look like it's happening. : / Edit: Well, I'll call it a day at this point. Finally got a copy of Poster Girl. Wanted multiple copies, but at this rate that would take thousands of saint quartz.

Well that CQ was... something. The CQ was so perfectly tailored towards Archer Artoria it's not even funny. Her biggest issue is that she wants Black Grail for damage but also a starting NP CE since she doesn't have a battery to start the NP loop train going, so in most CQs she has to pick one or the other and count on her team for the rest. But teamwide damage CEs being available means she doesn't need Black Grail, so I could just hand her a Kaleidoscope to get the pain train started. Ended up taking a hp bar every turn so Hijikata exploded without even doing a single NP. Pretty pleasant overall since even the ridiculous amounts of Crit and Buster buffs he stacked can't overcome Artoria, Nero Bride, and Waver's defense buffs. It's a pity MLB Kaleidoscope is so hard to get, since 50% extra NP gauge compared to most other options actually makes it one of the best CEs for Archer Artoria.

Obligatory theorycraft warning, since I don't play on JAP: Personally I prefer her being Avenger. Beserker would've been ideal, but if Nobu kept her kit and bases as a Beserker she'd be eating Arjuna Alter's lunch. Alter Ego's a fun class, but only doing 1.5x damage to cavalry while dealing .5x to Knights is deceptively limiting. Beserkers deal 1.65x to cavalry because of the Beserker 1.1x damage modifier, so the main advantage of Alter Egos would be a bigger hp pool in exchange for not doing well when knights are mixed in. Nodes where there's only Cavalry have heavy overlap with nodes where there's only one class, meaning you can often run a 2x advantage class rather than a 1.5x advantage class. And in mixed nodes Beserkers are just flat out better for raw damage without randomly getting gimped by knights. For Nobu in particular being weak against knights is a big issue because a big part of her farming kit is her triple buster deck, if she can't consistently lead the turn with one of her Buster Cards then the team's damage output suffers a lot, so you want her to be in a class that always does consistent damage. In my opinion, not doing .5x damage is a lot more important than doing 1.5x or even 2x damage for someone like Nobu, since she needs to click her face cards to properly support the team. A Buster lead is worth somewhere between 30-50% Atk Up in terms of damage*, but if your first card for the turn does 50% damage rather than 110% (Avenger modifier) the bonus is a lot less than it could be. *A buster lead adds the same amount of damage regardless of what type of card it is, but weaker cards like Quick would need a bigger % on the Atk Up to add the same amount of damage. As is Arjuna Alter is better than Avenger Nobu for most situations, but between Nobu's better Atk, slightly more supportive kit (10 stars/turn), and Avengers being ideal for Beserker* and Ruler maps there are definitely situations where Nobu's the better pick. On the other hand, Alter Ego Nobu would be basically strictly worse than Arjuna Alter, since her 1k Atk lead disappears once she loses the Avenger 1.1x modifier, and Arjuna doesn't really have survivability issues thanks to his guts. Alter Ego Nobu would be better at gathering her own stars, but as a secondary damage dealer star draw isn't as important, and to properly take advantage of consistent Buster leads you want another damage dealer in the starting lineup anyway. *Beserkers don't do 2x to themselves, only 1.65x, so Avengers are actually better at smashing Beserkers than Beserkers or Foreigners.

My main issue with Avenger Nobu is that her NP doesn't have an interlude, the anti-Sky buff is neat, but really not too important either way due to Sky being one of the rarer attriutes.* (Both her and Okita seem to have gotten 'safe' small upgrades that don't really change them too much.) *50% Damage Up is actually pretty amazing, since NP Damage Up is really difficult to get as a modifier outside of Black Grail (which gives way too much of it). I personally prefer Helena's 50% NP up more, since 80% proc chance is good enough for farming as long as you aren't automating it, but Damage Up does suit Nobu pretty well since it's also Crit Damage Up and non-Crit Damage Up, and her face cards are a big part of her kit. Giving Nobu an NP interlude is pretty dangerous since her raw damage is so high, though, so personally I'm fine with the way she's buffed. She gets a major boost in a small number of maps, rather than an NP interlude which would buff her significantly in just about every map. (Nobu being basically a Berserker means that she occasionally joins maps where everyone is just red carding things to death.)

DNC

Welcome to FGO : ) I'll probably send you a request once someone on my friend's list goes inactive for a week.

That sort of depends on what you're using him for. If you're farming with lazy ass jank teams and grinding things down with face cards he'll do a lot better than Dantes or Lancelot thanks to not being made of toilet paper + being better at controlling incoming damage, but for optimized farming comps he traded away good NP refill for that 30% battery. Golden Rule (both Lancelot and Dantes effectively have 50% Golden Rules, assuming everyone NPs 3 times each, and their base refill is about double Achilles') isn't that great in general, especially compared to NP batteries, but in min-maxed comps refill becomes a bigger factor since NP batteries would be mostly used for refill purposes anyway. Achilles has issues on that front thanks to low natural numbers and his kit boosting them via Quick Up rather than Golden Rule. In that sense he probably depends more on Skadi than Lancelot or Dantes, since if you need more NP gauge Skadi is the one who gives the most, thanks to 50% battery & 50% Quick Up, whereas Waver only has 50% Battery, and Nero Bride has 30% Battery and 45% Golden Rule (if Achilles had better numbers for refill Bride would be great for him, since Golden Rule and Atk Up meshes better with his Quick Up heavy kit, but he doesn't). If you have refill to spare you're allowed to look at supports other than Skadi, but Achilles probably doesn't. For CQs he doesn't really rely on Skadi, but the thing about Skadi is that she doesn't really help you survive CQs*, she just compresses the damage output of your team into a smaller number of turns. Because of how her teams work she can support servants that only add damage to a team, but Achilles isn't one of those servants thanks to his invul (meaning he can slow roll a CQ if he wanted/needed) and taunt (meaning he can handle single target NP turns). Rather than saying Achilles doesn't rely on Skadi for CQs it's better to say that Skadi lets you bring people who really have no business being in a CQ team into a CQ. In that sense she's exactly the Quick version of Merlin, though, since he also lets you bring people who only add damage into a team. *Technically her NP does buy you one enemy NP turn, and the crit chance down on her 2nd skill means that you can pretty reliably see that NP turn, but getting to do that meant you spent her CE slot on filling her NP rather than generating crit stars or providing a taunt or whatever.

My only issue with the raid quests is that the materials I want are mostly in the gold currency nodes, so I'll have a bunch of those left over, probably. On the plus side, gold currency trades to QP the best, so it's better than the materials being in silver or bronze. Can't reliably 1TKO yet (need to draw face cards), but that'll change once I MLB the damage CE. (I can probably find a consistent 1TKO if I'm willing to plugsuit, but that's massive overkill.) Farming raids is really relaxing, though, whether I'm trying to optimize or just grinding them down with jank.

I'm beginning to think that maybe I shouldn't run completely jank teams to maximize drops. Double Stheno + a 4* is kind of painful to run when your CEs basically don't do anything. (I've tried taking a support Mordred too, but Stheno is actually better, thanks to the Scathach node having so many dragons in it.) On the plus side, as long as that 4* is OG Nero there's basically no risk of losing the map, it just takes a damn long time to grind everything down. (I can't run +6 lotus since I don't actually have 5 servants that give additional lotus drops & the 5* ones can't fit into the team due to cost limits anyway.) Edit: The best part about running support Stheno is that you don't have to take it from your friend's list. Stheno doesn't have an NP anyway.

Yeah the gacha rates are really harsh. If you're on the wrong side of the bell curve then the 1% (really .7%) is going to ruin your life. And the 4* gacha rates (1.5%) aren't much better than 5*s if you're gunning for someone specific, it's brutal. Part of why I don't mind the gacha as much is because I can find pretty much anyone on my friend's list, so if I ever wanted to try a servant I can just grab them as a support. I guess it also helps that I don't actually have a lot of servants that I consider 'must haves,' even though I have a lot of servants that I'd like to have. In this coming year, for example, I think only Skadi would make the 'must have' list (I guess Archuria might also count, if a fifth copy of a 5* could count as a 'must have'). There's a ton more servants I'd like to have, and I'd be really happy to get them, but I wouldn't be that sad if I missed them.

C Reason already picks up most of Bernadetta's black magic spells, mind, and if you're going to spend time in Mage (to pick up Fiendish Blow), you'll have at least D+. I'll agree that ideally you'll want to dump a lot of Reason exp into her, since A Reason gives her both Warlock bases (17 Mag, plus 2 from Monk's Magic +2 skill puts you at 19, which is only 1 away from a 5 range Rescue) and her final spell, but Bernadetta doesn't actually need a lot of Reason exp to function as an offensive caster. A 4 range Rescue isn't too great, since the Rescue'd unit lands on the square closest to where they had been before (so it's more like a spell that moves something 3 squares, which isn't much better than a 2 square Reposition), but at 5 range it'll move people 4 squares, which is two Repositions worth, and 20 Magic is pretty achievable even without any Magic levels thanks to class stat boosts. Anna won't actually have a lot more range than Bernadetta, the marginal magic growth difference between them is only 15%, you'd need 4/.15 or about 26 levels after both of them hit level 20 (for Warlock bases) for Anna to get one more range on Rescue than Bernadetta---for practical purposes they're pretty much identical as casters. If both of them gets Warlock at the same time then the difference would actually show up sooner (since even if they end up with the same Range Anna would get to her maximum range earlier), but Anna has a Weakness in Reason in exchange for her Strength in Faith, so it's mostly a matter of whether getting Rescue a lot faster is worth having worse access to offensive spells and slower access to Warlock bases if you needed to spend skill exp in other things. Constance is significantly better in terms of raw magic than either of them, so for him it depends on how much you value Speed and having hidden talents in Riding vs. Magic and a strength in Reason. Regarding Encloser, well, that's kind of the problem with one unit having a lot of hard to get things.

Bear in mind Anastasia has a debuff resistance down effect on her Mana Burst & a stun stapled to her NP battery. Her kit is actually pretty amazing. It's a bit hard to use, but it's pretty well-rounded for everything you might want to use her for. For me, Sieg has the slight issue where he's competing against Nitocris as a farming caster, and it's pretty hard to beat High Speed Divine Words when it comes to spamming NPs. He's still good, though, especially if you happen to be farming dragons and Instant Kill the ability to proc instant kills isn't a factor.

Chapter 16: 1st Academy Session Academy:

Well, I actually value Rescue higher than Warp, so sacrificing Bernadetta to turn her into a caster feels like a reasonable choice to me. Thanks to the mage line being so strong in terms of combat she can actually get away with her awful 20% Mag growth by picking up 15 base mag from Bishop (17 from Warlock if you're willing to dump a fairly significant amount of Reason exp into her), +2 Magic from Monk, and 6 Atk from Fiendish Blow, so it's not like her combat is going to suffer that much for it. Plus she even has one of the easiest times getting into mage cavalry, which would get her Tomefaire. I'll admit you'd need to know about spell lists to have Rescue at all in Crimson Flower, though... Making Bernadetta into a caster isn't exactly an obvious move. Strictly speaking you can also get away with Canto, Reposition, and Stride, but that's just Rescue with extra steps. (And it's probably more of a hassle to get that many copies of Reposition than to make Bernadetta get Rescue.)

Yeah, I kind of assumed that the companies providing tests are making money, but I didn't know where to look up the info on who/what is getting the money from that, hence me asking. Mind, my impression of the No Child Left Behind thing was that schools were cooking the books in terms of test scores and graduation rates anyway, so I'm not sure how much ESSA would actually help. They might not have been directly cheating or whatever (although some were), but teachers definitely seemed encouraged to teach to the test & make their courses easier. Yeah, that'll increase test scores and graduation rates, but that doesn't mean they actually got better at teaching stuff.

Mostly just because I like her art. That is, I was thinking about NP5 because of reasons other than performance. Not that Atalanta Alter's bad, mind. Regarding 4* tickets, I tend to value them more than any given 4*, unless they're limited 4*s that you can't get via tickets. I also don't consider spooks when considering how many copies of a servant I go for. Plus it's not like I dislike Anastasia, who's on the banner with Atalanta.

Can you elaborate, though? Like who benefited in terms of profits and how?

Are you talking money profit or profit in terms of vote-count? I should mention that I have no opinion on the money profit angle---I have no idea what companies/schools/whatever benefited on that front. Anyway, as far as I know, voter turnout is still heavily biased towards older and more educated people, so crappy education didn't swing votes much either way at the start. So the votes angle is actually a plus for the GOP in my opinion---it's scummy way to lock down your voter base, but the fact that it only takes full effect 2+ decades down the line means the GOP at least knows how to plan for the future. It's kind of interesting that it's the GOP doing that, since people tend to be more likely to be Democratic the more education they got past high school, so you'd think the Democratic party would be better at future planning. *shrug* Admittedly it means the median US citizen is kind of a gullible dumbass relative other 1st world countries, but the US gets to import its best people from other countries, so it'll only be an issue if median intelligence/education mattered. Or if the US stopped being able to import their best people from other countries. A quick skim of immigration demographics supports my guess that the US is importing smart people rather than growing them on home ground, but mind that I didn't spend a lot of time to fact check. So I could be in the middle of a massive case of confirmation bias right now. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/ < Website I skimmed the data from. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/ft_19-06-17_keyfindingsimmigrants_update_educational-attainment-us-immigrants-2017/ < A graph of education vs. demographics in terms of immigrants. Yeah, some people are imported to do drudge work, but the US imports a lot of people from certain countries that get way better education than the average American. (Europe, like you'd expect, and maybe Asia as well, but the Middle East was actually a bit surprising to me. Guess the Middle East put that oil money to good use by planning for the future via educating their citizens. Pity the US is skimming from the top. ) So basically the No Child Left Behind thing benefited the GOP (but only a whiles down the line), was neutral to the US (since the US can just import its brains), and was negative for the Earth as a whole (since the US gave 3rd world educations to people born in a first world country). I'm honestly kind of surprised that making the average American less educated would help one party over the other, though. You'd think getting dumb people votes would be politics 101 or something. (Hell, maybe even politics 001.)

Chapter 15: Protecting Garreg Mach (Story Mission)

Chapter 15: Rare Monster Sighting & 2nd Academy Session Rare Monster Sighting, tl;dr version: Academy:

That feeling when Asterios casually one-shots Jeanne from full hp. -_- (Jeanne has 18k hp) Fights have been relatively easy despite that, though, since you get 6 slots and they're not making you chew through both break bars most of the time. But it still feels like it's about time to swap to a serious team rather than keep using my bond farming one. Edit: Oh wow the golem makes it feel like you're playing with triple Waver, that's some dope ass stuff. Double Edit: Anastasia hits like a paper towel... and the tree is about as dangerous as a RL tree (branches can fall on you, but you're probably fine).

Personally I like Mordred's new instinct a lot from a power perspective, but not at all from a design perspective. Mordred only has 2 Busters, so it basically guarantees that she'll use at least one of them very productively in a draw cycle, and in the uncommon case where she draws them both in a single turn (should be around 1 - (13/14 * 12/13), or about 14% of the time, if I'm doing my math right), 15 stars gives decent odds of both of them landing crits. It's basically as good as it gets for a crit skill, you get 50% crit, star draw (tied to the best damage face card), and even stars on top, which is strong and well balanced. From a design perspective, though, it's better to have servants that are very strong but also unbalanced rather than servants that are strong and balanced.* Waver belongs in the strong and balanced camp, which is pretty much why you can stuff him into pretty much anything. It makes for boring team building. *Balanced in the sense that they have everything they need, i.e., self-sufficient, not balanced in the sense that they're 'fair.' The rest of Mordred's kit is still a bit 'meh' by my standards, so she isn't crazy strong or anything, and the rest of her kit isn't very self-sufficient, either, so I can see why they gave her a skill that's pretty much an entire kit by itself (except toned down), but I don't like that kind of skill design. Edit: Oh wow, Anastasia already out. Ugh... not sure if I want to drop the money to NP5 Atalanta Alter right now, but she won't get a rate up after this one, as far as I know. : S

Well that's basically the trick of the two party system, isn't it? Give people two awful choices and it doesn't really matter who they vote for. Either they vote for one of the two, in which case it doesn't matter since they're both awful. Or they don't. In which case their vote doesn't matter since either: A, they don't vote at all, or B, they vote for a third party candidate---which means their votes don't matter. The fact that both parties did that implies both sides want a weak executive branch, though. Interesting choice since we're in a situation where a strong executive branch would be useful, but *shrug.*