Yeah which is why she's just simply not as good as TT. Buuut I guess that's a thing I need to get used to. I'm sure I'll get TT as soon as next good mage comes out rendering her obsolete lol.
Kryla - Pretty good as well. She reminds me a lot of CG Lid. She's another one that will be ok or great depending on her enhancements. CG Lid 7* gets dual casted 60% breaks, so Kryla's enhancements should boost her breaks to 60% as well. It would also be nice to see her dual imperils go to 75%. Otherwise as a pure breaker, she's really good. Turn 1 she can break all 70% and fill her LB by half. Turn 2 she can self buff and unlock her skills. Turn 3 she should be able to full break again for her full LB gauge at 74%. However most bosses are resistant to certain breaks, so she may not even need her full LB.
In the enhancement preview they put up all of her Break Pots are being enhanced to 65% breaks, their duration is increasing, and each of them will give her LB crysts when used. She's already in a really really good place without the enhancements, her current rotation options should easily keep at least 70% fullbreak up at all times.
Absolutely. Like CG Lid, she's not super helpful to the party but if you need big breaks she can provide. Her DoT damage is interesting as well, wish they'd explore that more (maybe not fixed damage).
Yeah which is why she's just simply not as good as TT. Buuut I guess that's a thing I need to get used to. I'm sure I'll get TT as soon as next good mage comes out rendering her obsolete lol.
Trance Terra is an odd unit. She's got insane burst damage, but for longer trials she's not really all that good since it takes so long to get her quad cast back. I guess you could throw re-raise on and KO her on turn 4. Not sure if that would get her Turn 1 quad cast back.
Becoming important in future trials are things like extra mitigation from pod / cowered courage, or buffs like calamity border, etc. Units with free turns are good for those.
Also, something Kryla can do - with her Witchcraft+ she can clear enemy buffs/party debuffs AND reapply ATK/MAG breaks all in the same turn. I feel like that will be insanely useful in the future.
Playing around with Kryla, her rotation is pretty easy.
1. Calamity brew
2. Free turn (green magic/mitigation/Imperil)
3. Dark Anathema
4. DC Offensive/Defensive sap pots
5. Free turn
6. Free turn (or her all Imperil cooldown)
7. Calamity brew
That keeps up at least 70% breaks at all times, if you're using mitigation on free turns that should be up at all times, and you have tons of time to make sure she has the 26 LB crysts needed for her Offensive/Defensive sap pots DC turn.
Free turn 6 could be used for her LB finisher if you're sure you can get the LB crysts back before the Calamity Brew cast on turn 7 wears out.
Is Christine THAT bad? I have a couple of them, after all.
Wondering how to go about grabbing a second WKN, though.
GLEX UoC ticket unless you really want the Chinese New Year units.
I mean, I would love to have a 7* Chow far more than Dude In Mech. I just don't actually have a Chow yet and grabbing one Chow and then hoping New Year's banner behaves seems... risky.
Hmmm. Of the two magic tanks I could 7* with the GLEX UoC, Beryl is cooler and looks like she might have more general use cases, but WKN seems significantly tankier and magic tank is the thing I probably need most before tackling a lot of the trials.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
Messing around with WKN and A.Rain on the builder. Basically they come out around the same when using roughly the same equipment (24 million M.eHP). Here's some pro's/con's:
Espers: Winner - A.Rain. WKN basically has to stick with Phoenix to cover his innate fire weakness if there are any fire attacks. Rain can use any esper.
Elemental Coverage: Winner - A.Rain. Slight advantage to A.Rain, because he can use any esper and he doesn't have an innate elemental weakness. The one positive for WKN is that he can wear robes which allows him access to Rainbow Robe. Unfortunately GUMI made it prohibitively worse for WKN to wear a robe as you lose out on 20% HP to switch over. And if you got Kings Armor, Rainbow Robe isn't much better. Elemental coverage is tough to judge as it depends a lot on what materia and equipment you have.
Tanky-ness: Winner - WKN. A.Rain gets 200% buff that costs his LB, WKN get 150% buff to DEF/MAG/SPR. While A.Rain can't use it right off the bat, it also includes a self heal and mp restore along with 30% general DM. WKN can use his from turn 1 for only 27MP and he gets 50% Phy/Mag DM. While the buff is 50% less, his DM makes up for it. Additionally it can stack with general DM giving him some crazy magic protection. Since they are magic tanks, that 50% Mag DM is going to be huge as you'll see.
A.Rain with self buff: M.eHP: 51,608,885
WKN with self buff: M.eHP: 63,363,168
Even with A.Rain's 50% better buff, he's still down 12 million eHP. Now add in 30% general DM from any support unit:
WKN with self buff and 30% general DM: M.eHP: 90,518,811
WKN with sb and Zarg's 40% general DM: M.eHP: 105,605,280
WKN with sb and Zarg's/Wilhelm's LB 50% DM: M.eHP: 126,726,336 (A.Rain with 50% is 74,992,240)
WKN has about 40% more magical HP defense than A.Rain lol. Now Yuraisha comes with separate physical/magic 20% party DM, so if you have her in the party with A.Rain:
A.Rain with self buff and Yuraisha's 20% buff: M.eHP: 64,511,107
Just barely more than WKN without any support general DM. Now WKN has one major issue, it's that his Buff and DM are tied to Provoke. So if you are using someone with say Physical Evade to provoke, you'll need to set your units in the correct slots. On the plus side, WKN gets 50% physical DM and lots of defense. So he can take physical hits better than just about anyone as well. For example,
Sieghard geared for Def with his 40% Phy DM from provoke: P.eHP: 70,716,260
WKN geared for SPR and his self buff from provoke: P.eHP: 60,803,040
While this depends on gear and materia, it's an example that WKN is decent enough with Defense while maxing HP and SPR. Most 7* tanks get a 90% DM move; WKN does not. I don't really think it's much of a knock as most of the thresholds require re-raise more often than not anyways and WKN gets a 80% 1 time auto-revive.
One last thing, WKN has a 30% innate provoke. While this means technically he could get 95% passive provoke, it lowered my build by 3K HP and 200 DEF/SPR.
Status Ailment Resistance: Winner - Tie. Neither is great here. A.Rain has poison, blind, and petrify protection. WKN has silence and petrify. Both will need help if ailments are an issue.
Party Support: Winner - Tie. WKN has 2 ways to support the party. His Blizzard Ward helps with Ice/Wind resistance and his upgraded LB grants a great 150% DEF/MAG/SPR with 40% MP restore. This is a top tier buff and the change from flat MP to a % helps a ton in the 7* meta. However it doesn't include ATK which hampers it's usefulness to physical dps teams. A.Rain gets a party status ailments and stop resistance move. This can help remove the need to put status ailment blocking equipment on your entire party. Unfortunately support units like Zarg can't block all ailments, so this is pretty helpful. He also has a HP/MP restore, while fixed, is still enough for some off healing as needed. He also gets a 60% buff that is ok if you have nothing else.
Damage: Winner - A.Rain. His moves are based off SPR scaling, so he can be a top magic tank while still dishing out good damage. Setup for defense WKN has around 500MAG, so he's not doing anything but increasing chain count. Outfitting WKN for Mag, I was able to get him right around 2k but both Def/Spr were cut in half to around 500. The main issue with going this route is that he's stuck using older spells. Tornado, Freeze, Aeroja, etc all have bad modifiers on them compared to even an early 7* unit like Dark Fina (2.5x vs 7.6x). Funny that Barb's STMR would work great on him since it's got a boost to HP as well as modifier improvements. Overall though, WKN is not meant to deal damage, he's more someone who can chain with existing chainers like Rem to build a chain modifier for someone to finish.
Overall: Both units have uses. GUMI screwed WKN over some by focusing on MAG in his 7* form. With his enhancements already here, there's not much to help with his magical abilities to put them on par with the meta. While A.Rain's enhancements are pretty mild, they boost what he does a bit. As usual it depends a lot of what you are facing. WKN excels with magic based parties and fighting enemies that are not heavy on fire attacks. Zarg is a great support unit for him as he can provide high general DM, block all the status ailments WKN is missing, help with stat breaks and shore up elemental coverage.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Elly's wind skill is a 5 hit , and can triple cast it with her tmr and quintuple cast it on cooldown.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Oh, I guess I can see how you can read it like that. Does anyone have a 7* Christine that's been leveled up yet that can say for sure?
For Absolute Zero, there is precedent for changing # of hits. Yun's Blazing Combo went from 5->8 hits to make it chain with Kingsglaive.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Oh, I guess I can see how you can read it like that. Does anyone have a 7* Christine that's been leveled up yet that can say for sure?
For Absolute Zero, there is precedent for changing # of hits. Yun's Blazing Combo went from 5->8 hits to make it chain with Kingsglaive.
LB doesn't enable Snow Burial and neither does her CD move that gives quad cast.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Oh, I guess I can see how you can read it like that. Does anyone have a 7* Christine that's been leveled up yet that can say for sure?
For Absolute Zero, there is precedent for changing # of hits. Yun's Blazing Combo went from 5->8 hits to make it chain with Kingsglaive.
LB doesn't enable Snow Burial and neither does her CD move that gives quad cast.
That seems like a crazy oversight. Nice unit design there Gimu.
Christine - I don't think Christine is that bad, just like Trance Terra, niche. Weirdly she's better than Trance Terra from a quad casting standpoint as she gets it on turn 2 and then her LB can bring it back faster. So for longer fights, TT gets it turn 1 and 3, but then has to wait till turn 9. Christine can pop a CD to fill her LB which gets that 2nd quad cast faster. Her main issue is she need enhancements. Not sure when they are coming but her Absolute Zero needs a small boost to it's max modifier to match TT.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Oh, I guess I can see how you can read it like that. Does anyone have a 7* Christine that's been leveled up yet that can say for sure?
For Absolute Zero, there is precedent for changing # of hits. Yun's Blazing Combo went from 5->8 hits to make it chain with Kingsglaive.
LB doesn't enable Snow Burial and neither does her CD move that gives quad cast.
That seems like a crazy oversight. Nice unit design there Gimu.
I'm really hoping there's something Gumi is planning on sneaking into the enhancements. They usually don't list every enhancement when they preview them out, so there's still a chance.
Maybe a passive gets enhanced to auto-casting something to unlock Snow Burial all the time or something.
At the same time, I don't know why they'd be hush about it if that was the case. Her 7* unit design is so clunky because of it, it can only dampen the desire to pull for her. Give me a reason to spend my lapis, Gumi.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Elly's wind skill is a 5 hit , and can triple cast it with her tmr and quintuple cast it on cooldown.
True, but then Elly is pretty much the Akstar of mages. Even being close is pretty good Christine will be able to quad cast AZ on turns 2/3, hit her LB on turn 4, with turns 5/6 of quad casting AZ, turn 7 her CD is up again. TT can go on turn 1/3, then 9, 15, etc. She slows down way more than Christine.
Christine is limited by element which is a major downside, but if the enemy isn't resistant to Ice, and her enhancements boost AZ to Trance Terra element level (4x, 2x growth, 14x max), she'll be quite good. Hopefully they fix snow burial as well so she can use non-elemental as needed.
EDIT: Also Christine can imperil Ice. TT has to rely on external imperils.
Trajan45 on
Origin ID\ Steam ID: Warder45
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Now... I will say that I just took Fry, Kurasame, Christine, and Hyoh to the training dummy. With going all out on turn 3 I was able to get 199 million in one turn. My previous record was 7 million. So that's a thing.
+1
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Since I'm sitting Christmas out, and probably most of the events in January, I gave the Limited Unit step up a run. I'd say it was mostly good? I ended up with Beryl in step 2. Which works out pretty good as it's TMR is good for WKN. In step 3, I got a 2nd Aloha Lasswell, which is another good TMR get and allows for 7*. Step 4 I ended up with 2 rainbows, both the same unit: Ellesperis. Not sure I really was looking for that unit. I don't like her TMR and while easy to gear, I have plenty of DPS and she's pretty plain. She does have a Graviton Cannon move so I guess I can chain with 2B. Step 5: 2 rainbow, a 3rd Ellesperis and 1st Lucius.
On one hand, I got a couple units I didn't mind and over all got 5 rainbows, so not a bad deal. On the other hand, I got the opposite pairing of units I wanted. I wanted Lilith and got Lucius, wanted Malphasie but got Ellesperis. And I didn't really get any of the units I really wanted, 2nd Olive, 4th Zarg, 2nd Circe, or Seaside Nichol.
I still might throw some tickets at the old unit banner. Christine and Kryla's TMR's are really tempting. Christine's in particular looks like a version of mechanical heart that should proc quite a bit for an AoE magic tank while also giving WKN more Spr and Mag.
Finally looked over the new units. Man, Tiana, poor girl. 15MP and 1500 HP? I mean Yan a 4* unit could recover 30MP. Formula - Quaking Earth looks exactly like what I expect Christine's AZ to look like. Other that that 1 skill, she looks more like a 6* unit than 7*. On top of it all, her TMR is really bad as well.
Felix looks really good, he's sort of a Fire/Earth Kurasame. He's got pretty good slot efficiency; imperils, imbue's, self buffs, W and T cast. His LB gets you the 100% imperils with a good Atk/Mag break. Add in some common chaining moves and some minor killers, he's a pretty good all around unit. His passives are also really good. He gets 20% more innate ATK/MAG than Kura and an extra 50% TDH. His weapon selection is a bit larger as well, and even the names of his abilities are kind of clever. His main disadvantages are that his bread and butter attack, Salute - Blade Rush, is only 4 hits. Good luck trying to cap that. Also as a hybrid unit, like all others, he'll be harder to gear up.
Man, what a polar opposite kind of banner. Thankfully I'm all set with DPS, so this is a skip. I'd hate to try pulling for Felix and end up with Tiana.
May have done a dumb thing. Ran another lap on the step up. Turns out it put me right at 0 lapis, which is interesting lol. Did not have the luck of lap 1, got my first GLS, 3rd D.Rain, and 2nd Beryl. All of which may just warm the bench.
Thankfully there’s nothing i really need to pull for till February or so. With Vault of Lapis coming that should help.
Not sure why I want Zargs STMR so bad, should just UoC it instead of spending all my lapis.
Figured I might as well spend my 10+1 tickets and 5*EX ticket, since there's limited units in the pool now.
Got 4 golds rest blues for the 22 summons, then the EX ticket was Delita#2. Bleh. Well, I tried. If you're going to give me blues you could at least give me some Ingus or something, game, I do need more Letters and Arms.
Thought I'd toss a few tickets hoping for a Christmas miracle WKN, ended up with Christine #2 instead. Oh well, but more bonus I guess and easier to farm the event with her I'd bet. Will load her up a bit later.
Threw some tickets at the old banner looking for WKN. A 4* ticket drops rainbow! And...Kryla#3. This puts me in a predicament. If by the end of the event I have not gotten WKN, do I go ahead and 7* D.Rain? Do I get a fourth Kryla for the STMR?
I have no shortage of physical tanks so part of me is leaning towards Kryla STMR (plus four Magic Sanctuaries...) to make the coming elemental Tetris trials easier to deal with.
+1
JakarrdIn the belly ofOklahomaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2018
10 +1 was blah, got a 5th wadow and 6th ashe for fodder. 5 star ex turned into a fucking dark knight cecil. Guess I can get his STMR if I feel like it.
Snow edit: Oh, is fountain of lapis back? Sweet.
Jakarrd on
Greetings Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.
I'm still leaning STMR with the glex uoc, since I don't really have a unit need and a good one will out live most of the unit options. If I had gotten a third Kryla her's would definitely be in the running. I think other than Yuraisha's STMR, her hat is the highest SPR at 84, then hairpin at 51, plus it has decent resists. Not super flashy but would have a pretty long shelf life.
Tiana with a dupe is actually pretty strong, strongest mag chainer by a decent margin I think and up there with Kurasame's damage. Earth isn't isn't a super great element for magic damage going forward though, and needs a dupe on a banner a lot of people aren't pulling on.
Posts
Absolutely. Like CG Lid, she's not super helpful to the party but if you need big breaks she can provide. Her DoT damage is interesting as well, wish they'd explore that more (maybe not fixed damage).
Trance Terra is an odd unit. She's got insane burst damage, but for longer trials she's not really all that good since it takes so long to get her quad cast back. I guess you could throw re-raise on and KO her on turn 4. Not sure if that would get her Turn 1 quad cast back.
1. Calamity brew
2. Free turn (green magic/mitigation/Imperil)
3. Dark Anathema
4. DC Offensive/Defensive sap pots
5. Free turn
6. Free turn (or her all Imperil cooldown)
7. Calamity brew
That keeps up at least 70% breaks at all times, if you're using mitigation on free turns that should be up at all times, and you have tons of time to make sure she has the 26 LB crysts needed for her Offensive/Defensive sap pots DC turn.
Free turn 6 could be used for her LB finisher if you're sure you can get the LB crysts back before the Calamity Brew cast on turn 7 wears out.
I mean, I would love to have a 7* Chow far more than Dude In Mech. I just don't actually have a Chow yet and grabbing one Chow and then hoping New Year's banner behaves seems... risky.
Hmmm. Of the two magic tanks I could 7* with the GLEX UoC, Beryl is cooler and looks like she might have more general use cases, but WKN seems significantly tankier and magic tank is the thing I probably need most before tackling a lot of the trials.
Christine can't quad-cast Snow Burial (Chaos Wave move) until turn 3. She still needs a turn to actually use Winter's Fallen to enable it for 2 turns (4 turns after enhancements next week).
Unless you just want to use her as a finisher with Absolute Zero.
Unless they add frames/chaining family to Absolute Zero with her enhancements. We know the damage is going up, so maybe they'll change frames here too (fingers crossed).
Espers: Winner - A.Rain. WKN basically has to stick with Phoenix to cover his innate fire weakness if there are any fire attacks. Rain can use any esper.
Elemental Coverage: Winner - A.Rain. Slight advantage to A.Rain, because he can use any esper and he doesn't have an innate elemental weakness. The one positive for WKN is that he can wear robes which allows him access to Rainbow Robe. Unfortunately GUMI made it prohibitively worse for WKN to wear a robe as you lose out on 20% HP to switch over. And if you got Kings Armor, Rainbow Robe isn't much better. Elemental coverage is tough to judge as it depends a lot on what materia and equipment you have.
Tanky-ness: Winner - WKN. A.Rain gets 200% buff that costs his LB, WKN get 150% buff to DEF/MAG/SPR. While A.Rain can't use it right off the bat, it also includes a self heal and mp restore along with 30% general DM. WKN can use his from turn 1 for only 27MP and he gets 50% Phy/Mag DM. While the buff is 50% less, his DM makes up for it. Additionally it can stack with general DM giving him some crazy magic protection. Since they are magic tanks, that 50% Mag DM is going to be huge as you'll see.
A.Rain with self buff: M.eHP: 51,608,885
WKN with self buff: M.eHP: 63,363,168
Even with A.Rain's 50% better buff, he's still down 12 million eHP. Now add in 30% general DM from any support unit:
WKN with self buff and 30% general DM: M.eHP: 90,518,811
WKN with sb and Zarg's 40% general DM: M.eHP: 105,605,280
WKN with sb and Zarg's/Wilhelm's LB 50% DM: M.eHP: 126,726,336 (A.Rain with 50% is 74,992,240)
WKN has about 40% more magical HP defense than A.Rain lol. Now Yuraisha comes with separate physical/magic 20% party DM, so if you have her in the party with A.Rain:
A.Rain with self buff and Yuraisha's 20% buff: M.eHP: 64,511,107
Just barely more than WKN without any support general DM. Now WKN has one major issue, it's that his Buff and DM are tied to Provoke. So if you are using someone with say Physical Evade to provoke, you'll need to set your units in the correct slots. On the plus side, WKN gets 50% physical DM and lots of defense. So he can take physical hits better than just about anyone as well. For example,
Sieghard geared for Def with his 40% Phy DM from provoke: P.eHP: 70,716,260
WKN geared for SPR and his self buff from provoke: P.eHP: 60,803,040
While this depends on gear and materia, it's an example that WKN is decent enough with Defense while maxing HP and SPR. Most 7* tanks get a 90% DM move; WKN does not. I don't really think it's much of a knock as most of the thresholds require re-raise more often than not anyways and WKN gets a 80% 1 time auto-revive.
One last thing, WKN has a 30% innate provoke. While this means technically he could get 95% passive provoke, it lowered my build by 3K HP and 200 DEF/SPR.
Status Ailment Resistance: Winner - Tie. Neither is great here. A.Rain has poison, blind, and petrify protection. WKN has silence and petrify. Both will need help if ailments are an issue.
Party Support: Winner - Tie. WKN has 2 ways to support the party. His Blizzard Ward helps with Ice/Wind resistance and his upgraded LB grants a great 150% DEF/MAG/SPR with 40% MP restore. This is a top tier buff and the change from flat MP to a % helps a ton in the 7* meta. However it doesn't include ATK which hampers it's usefulness to physical dps teams. A.Rain gets a party status ailments and stop resistance move. This can help remove the need to put status ailment blocking equipment on your entire party. Unfortunately support units like Zarg can't block all ailments, so this is pretty helpful. He also has a HP/MP restore, while fixed, is still enough for some off healing as needed. He also gets a 60% buff that is ok if you have nothing else.
Damage: Winner - A.Rain. His moves are based off SPR scaling, so he can be a top magic tank while still dishing out good damage. Setup for defense WKN has around 500MAG, so he's not doing anything but increasing chain count. Outfitting WKN for Mag, I was able to get him right around 2k but both Def/Spr were cut in half to around 500. The main issue with going this route is that he's stuck using older spells. Tornado, Freeze, Aeroja, etc all have bad modifiers on them compared to even an early 7* unit like Dark Fina (2.5x vs 7.6x). Funny that Barb's STMR would work great on him since it's got a boost to HP as well as modifier improvements. Overall though, WKN is not meant to deal damage, he's more someone who can chain with existing chainers like Rem to build a chain modifier for someone to finish.
Overall: Both units have uses. GUMI screwed WKN over some by focusing on MAG in his 7* form. With his enhancements already here, there's not much to help with his magical abilities to put them on par with the meta. While A.Rain's enhancements are pretty mild, they boost what he does a bit. As usual it depends a lot of what you are facing. WKN excels with magic based parties and fighting enemies that are not heavy on fire attacks. Zarg is a great support unit for him as he can provide high general DM, block all the status ailments WKN is missing, help with stat breaks and shore up elemental coverage.
That sucks if true. I read Multi-frost as activating Snow Burial as well based on the wiki. I doubt Absolute Zero will get frame changes since it's 11 hits. They changed up Fryevia's but it was already 7 hits, CW is 5 with ACW having 10. They'd have to really rework the skill.
Absolute Zero could be a powerful skill though. It's already 4x with 9x cap that you can almost hit with 1 quad cast. Most mages have finishing moves in that range, upcoming Elly has 4.5x with 2x growth till 14.5x damage. But those are 1 hit finishers. This is a chaining skill that could grow to to a 12x cap.
Elly's wind skill is a 5 hit , and can triple cast it with her tmr and quintuple cast it on cooldown.
Oh, I guess I can see how you can read it like that. Does anyone have a 7* Christine that's been leveled up yet that can say for sure?
For Absolute Zero, there is precedent for changing # of hits. Yun's Blazing Combo went from 5->8 hits to make it chain with Kingsglaive.
LB doesn't enable Snow Burial and neither does her CD move that gives quad cast.
That seems like a crazy oversight. Nice unit design there Gimu.
Winter Fall -> LB/CD (for quad cast) -> Quad Cast Snow Burial
I'm really hoping there's something Gumi is planning on sneaking into the enhancements. They usually don't list every enhancement when they preview them out, so there's still a chance.
Maybe a passive gets enhanced to auto-casting something to unlock Snow Burial all the time or something.
At the same time, I don't know why they'd be hush about it if that was the case. Her 7* unit design is so clunky because of it, it can only dampen the desire to pull for her. Give me a reason to spend my lapis, Gumi.
True, but then Elly is pretty much the Akstar of mages. Even being close is pretty good
Christine is limited by element which is a major downside, but if the enemy isn't resistant to Ice, and her enhancements boost AZ to Trance Terra element level (4x, 2x growth, 14x max), she'll be quite good. Hopefully they fix snow burial as well so she can use non-elemental as needed.
EDIT: Also Christine can imperil Ice. TT has to rely on external imperils.
That's Christine's win animation. Huh?
On one hand, I got a couple units I didn't mind and over all got 5 rainbows, so not a bad deal. On the other hand, I got the opposite pairing of units I wanted. I wanted Lilith and got Lucius, wanted Malphasie but got Ellesperis. And I didn't really get any of the units I really wanted, 2nd Olive, 4th Zarg, 2nd Circe, or Seaside Nichol.
I still might throw some tickets at the old unit banner. Christine and Kryla's TMR's are really tempting. Christine's in particular looks like a version of mechanical heart that should proc quite a bit for an AoE magic tank while also giving WKN more Spr and Mag.
Felix looks really good, he's sort of a Fire/Earth Kurasame. He's got pretty good slot efficiency; imperils, imbue's, self buffs, W and T cast. His LB gets you the 100% imperils with a good Atk/Mag break. Add in some common chaining moves and some minor killers, he's a pretty good all around unit. His passives are also really good. He gets 20% more innate ATK/MAG than Kura and an extra 50% TDH. His weapon selection is a bit larger as well, and even the names of his abilities are kind of clever. His main disadvantages are that his bread and butter attack, Salute - Blade Rush, is only 4 hits. Good luck trying to cap that. Also as a hybrid unit, like all others, he'll be harder to gear up.
Man, what a polar opposite kind of banner. Thankfully I'm all set with DPS, so this is a skip. I'd hate to try pulling for Felix and end up with Tiana.
Thankfully there’s nothing i really need to pull for till February or so. With Vault of Lapis coming that should help.
Not sure why I want Zargs STMR so bad, should just UoC it instead of spending all my lapis.
Got 4 golds rest blues for the 22 summons, then the EX ticket was Delita#2. Bleh. Well, I tried. If you're going to give me blues you could at least give me some Ingus or something, game, I do need more Letters and Arms.
Thought I'd toss a few tickets hoping for a Christmas miracle WKN, ended up with Christine #2 instead. Oh well, but more bonus I guess and easier to farm the event with her I'd bet. Will load her up a bit later.
Threw some tickets at the old banner looking for WKN. A 4* ticket drops rainbow! And...Kryla#3. This puts me in a predicament. If by the end of the event I have not gotten WKN, do I go ahead and 7* D.Rain? Do I get a fourth Kryla for the STMR?
I have no shortage of physical tanks so part of me is leaning towards Kryla STMR (plus four Magic Sanctuaries...) to make the coming elemental Tetris trials easier to deal with.
Snow edit: Oh, is fountain of lapis back? Sweet.
Tiana with a dupe is actually pretty strong, strongest mag chainer by a decent margin I think and up there with Kurasame's damage. Earth isn't isn't a super great element for magic damage going forward though, and needs a dupe on a banner a lot of people aren't pulling on.
[edit] Oh, it's not a UoC ticket. Never mind then.