Burklight

Currently, Ignatz is the only unit that has Absorb Lck, and he doesn't learn Luna or Flare. This is also interesting. I'm now very curious as to what's actually going on with the damage formula when you lower defense below 0. I know from earlier testing that the multipliers get absurd, but my original theory doesn't hold. If this theory is correct, then you'd think hitting something with -5 defense would just give you +5% damage, but that's pretty clearly not what's happening.

I believe that Howl and Savior of the Meek aren't translated very well. I'm fairly sure that when the game says "knock back" they really mean "flinch." It's the same wording they use for Stalwart Stance, for example.

Oh, I understand what you're saying. I just think it's a distinction without a difference. Piercing Cry and Stalwart Stance are both excellent skills that are run for their utility reasons, meaning they don't directly help you deal more damage.

To clarify, I think defense and utility are essentially same thing.

Another thought I just had. I think it might make more sense to break down tier lists into "Offense" and "Utility" instead of throwing everything together. Because of the way abilities stack...using only offensive is probably wrong most of the time. Especially for ones that just give increased damage. For the following specifically, I think you shouldn't pick more than 3 or 4 in the same build. Wild Abandon, Weapon Prowess, Undaunted, Solitary Stand, Offensive Tactics, Lifeforce, Impossible Feat, Big Game Hunter. Especially if you're picking some of the hp cost ones. If you're using Lifeforce, Impossible Feat, Big Game Hunter, and Weapon Prowess, you're looking at 260% increased damage with skills. At that point, adding Offensive Tactics, for example, would just bump that to 280. That's not even a 10% increase. At that point, wouldn't a utility ability be better than a damage ability? Seems like you'd want 6-8 damage abilities and 2-4 utility depending on the unit. Putting them in the same tier list doesn't make sense if you look at it in context.

Looks pretty good at a first pass. Looks even better if we assume perfect play. If we assume near perfect play instead of actually perfect play... Wild Abandon should be moved to B on account of it will lose you S rank if you get hit by basically anything big on Maddening. There's enough damage skills that you don't need this "win more" ability that introduces unnecessary risk. Anything that prevents flinching I would put in upper B / low A. It's very easy to get nailed by a multi hit attack and react slightly too late on the dodge button. With flinch immunity you'll take significantly less damage, and potentially be able to just power through enemy hits in some scenarios. This is particularly good vs cavalry, archers and brawlers. The Creation - totally free requirement, I'd put in low A Goddess Vessel - totally free requirement if you're cooking, I'd put in low A Stalwart Stance/Serene Stance - I'd put in upper B I would also move Seeker of Greatness and Absorb Dex(Claude) to A, because when used together Claude gets pretty nutty very quickly. Absorb Dex on anyone other than Claude should top out at B at the highest, however.

I hadn't thought of that. I had thought about support builds. Annette pretty clearly wins on that front with Rally Spectrum, but there's 3 or 4 other really good support units. The only "defensive" abilities I actually like running are Stalwart Stance and Serene Stance because they prevent you from getting completely screwed over by poor play.

That's kind of what I mean by me being an impatient perfectionist. With the right weapons and setup, everyone can somewhat competently do their job. Some units, however, have the ability to mow down basically anything without any effort at all. I'm not going to turn this into a unit tier list discussion, tho. On the equipment front tho, I'm willing to assert that Reckless Power on A tier weapons is BiS. Got a few lucky drops and the damage difference was very noticeable compared to fully upgraded relic weapons. A fully upgraded Reckless Power Parthia for example has 640 attack.

I've only done one maddening run so far (Golden Wildfire) and it raises some interesting issues. I don't have enough experience on maddening in general to know if this is an actual problem, or just me being an impatient perfectionist, but the feeling I got was that because enemy level outscales the current level cap by quite a bit, the units you use need to have access to abilities that let you keep up. Iirc the last few maps enemies are around 160-170. Some of the harder paralogue maps are 180. In order to deal with that, units that have the easiest time are ones with Luna/Flare and to a lesser extent Impossible Feat. Shaz kind of sidesteps this issue by having access to magic and being able to break weak points almost instantly. My run heavily relied on Claude/Hilda. Balthus with Absorb str was somewhat able to keep up in a pinch vs mages, but really it was mostly just the Claude and Hilda show. No one else saw much use, and when they did it was painfully slow in comparison, regardless of whether or not you're fighting at a disadvantage. For example, full damage setup Hilda with War Strike instantly kills non boss sword users on maddening so long as they don't block, so advantage is kind of moot.

Something like that, yeah. And I haven't seen anyone do any research yet on "advantage" that weapon triangle or battalion gives you. I mean, we know it's 50%, but if it's 50% adding then Felix personal is probably still better than a battalion. If it's multiplying, then I could see arguments either way. 30% vs everything is probably better than 50% vs just one thing, if they're both adding. If it's a true multiplier tho, his personal would be crap. Considering he's likely still in the top 3 best units in the game, that's probably fair. Cant have everything, right?

Actually had a busy work day so I'm a little late to this one. I've been running IF on everyone who can use it. If you're playing well, you shouldn't be getting hit anyway and the damage only matters once your hp drops below 25% and then I use an elixir so it goes back to working. The damage doesn't count against your rank, so as long as you don't get one tapped from half hp you're good. If you're paranoid, you could always run Mercedes or Constance for Light Assist and heal that way. @Pie Burritos I listed numbers for everything I tested in the first post. They're in the spoiler. As far as knowing whether a skill adds or multiplies, you won't need to test every combination. Just need to test every skill with one other skill that's in a known category. It's going to be particularly important for weapon abilities, because weapon abilities that add are going to be deceptively not as impactful as they seem like they should. For example, lets say you have a weapon ability that in isolation gives +30% damage, but in the build you're using it on, you already have +300% damage though passive skills. That +30% is going to in practice only add 10%.

That accurately describes what I think it's doing most of the time. There might be some edge cases. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them were always multiplying and not adding, but I suspect most of them are adding.

I think we can skip figuring out what level 1 and 2 look like. The purpose would be to figure out what a BIS weapon would look like, and there's no way a level 2 attribute would end up being BiS. I'm also fairly confident that weapon attributes are significantly less important than attack given some of the early testing I did. If I had to speculate why, I would say that probably all damage modifiers are added before multiplying instead of each one actually multiplying. So the difference between say, 150% extra damage or 180% extra damage is less meaningful than 50 attack. If you've dealt with any PoE damage multipliers, think "increase" and not "more."

I don't have numbers to support this, was eyeballing it. Pretty sure DO adds half of the off stat. So for physical hits, it would be (str + (mag*0.5)). It's for sure less than 100%, looks like about half to me. Either way, it would make it one of the better abilities for scaling damage based on @Archeleon's findings because in a scenario where you have maxed str and magic, it's basically another fully stacked Absorb Str/Mag.

That's some really good work. That would also explain some of the findings in my previous post about Str being significantly more important than might. I also think the formula you have is likely spot on for normal attacks. My only immediate question from your findings are "It also means that the maximum damage bonus you can get from a weapon is 2212 (570Mt~254Str)" That's based off the assumption that you cant get higher weapon might than 570, yes? Because you absolutely can with reckless power. And the other question is how do you know it it's class based and not attack based? It makes sense that S1 would have a different modifier than S2, right? Unless you used it to predict multiple strong attacks in the same class and had consistent results.

I looked over that thread. It's for sure not Str or Mag + Weapon might. Str seems to be significantly more important than weapon might. Absorb Str/Mag are likely one of the BiS skills for those who get them. I'll figure out how DO works in a few hours.

What source says dex ups crit rate? I thought it only increased critical rush damage. Edit: found it. The tutorial is organized horribly. Leveling up > Leveling up and Stat Increases Also I have no idea how much str actually increases damage. Or attack, for that matter. There's too many unknown variables to easily isolate any of them. But if 20 str gives the same damage increase as 20 magic with DO on, we can assume it's just adding them and taking the total.

I mean, it seemed obvious it was doing something like this. The issue I'm having is figuring out how much DO actually helps based on str or magic without a baseline. You could get one by using stat boosters and reset the game. I might do it this weekend if I get bored, but what you would want to do is take the numbers you just posted, then give Edelgard +20 str with stat boosters, do it again, reset the game. Then give her +20 mag with stat boosters and see if the numbers with DO match. If they do, we'll know that it's just adding str with mag. If they're different, then we'll know it's using some kind of ratio that will be a pain in the ass to solve for.

The non spells that come to mind would be Byleth C6 and Edelgard C5 in their unique classes with EoF for duration. I might test those two specifically later if you don't.

That's an interesting find. Jokes on me for not looking at it harder at the time. Most of the absorb abilities are probably crap, but I can see Str/Mag and to a lesser extent Dex being a pretty big deal for the characters who get them.

Ok yeah, that makes much more sense. Also, do you remember what the cap was on Absorb abilities? I remember looking at it a few weeks ago and iirc it was 20 or 30.

Were you using both at the same time, or individually? I didn't look at Lifeforce, but Wild Abandon pretty clearly only bumps normal attacks by 50%. It would be very interesting if it's 100% for combat arts. That would imply to me that there's some kind of final damage multiplier on combat arts.

Not sure if the chapter tactics is a priority, but I can say for sure that the one that says "slightly increases the sell value of items" is +50%.

I tried it on my most recent run, and I believe the answer is nothing. I didn't recruit two semi secret characters, so it's possible that mattered. I skipped almost all cut scenes, so there may have been something in one of them, but it doesn't open up any new gameplay related things or anything like that. I'm not missing any events in my AG section either.

My favorite for grinding class exp is AG chapter 10 "Save the Citizens." Unit you're focusing on starts at the far left spot, go up, take the fort. Go right, take the next fort and get the awakening meter. Head down to kill the WLs, then save the last citizen and kill the boss. If you're quick you can do this in 2-3 minutes depending on the character/class. Gives about 40% of a bar for master classes with a knowledge gem.