Well Uhlans are my current bane at this point. Despite the upgrades I did all over, just can't kill them fast enough. Dropped down to core 6 and I'm just spanking it now, the second gundam in gundam waves doesn't even get to move that far once it's on screen before being shredded. Makes me somewhat confident that had I gotten a gundam wave on my core 8 attempt, I would've been able to do fairy well against it.
I might have to see if I can get some higher firepower rifles up to par before theater ends because my formation was Wa, SVD, calico, KSG and M37. Then deploying taunt fairy. Things are okay while taunt is up, but go south when it dies because stuff just stays alive too long. I'm wondering if I might have better luck with a RFHG team, dropped the SGs and bring in maybe python and grizzly. Don't know if that would get me enough dps to kill the everything before taunt goes down or soon after. I could get NTW modded today and get some levels on her 2nd skill, not sure how much that would help but she is an option. Might also be able to get M200 to 90, but again not sure if I could get enough skill levels on her. Pretty sure I might be able to clear core 8, if I could get a solid anti-Uhlan team because the current one can do one at best, maybe two before it's no good.
Also Uhlans are the main reason I'm frustrated that the server went for 6 echelons instead of the max fairy commands because I'm pretty sure a ton of people hoping to pad their score with CE padded stuff and advantaged dolls in echelons 5 and 6 got their shit kicked in by either those or gundam waves that have max shields and arrive in sets off 4 per wave. Though I'm also reading that the strikers are giving people trouble. Pretty much seeing lots of cases where another fairy skill use would be the clincher for people on the cuff. Also given that I'm at 9% in ranking, we'll see where I fall off to when they update things, I'll be surprised if I'm still in the top 10%. On the other hand, probably some really stubborn and reckless commanders that got wrecked into the first fight and used all three of their attempts for scores below 10K. I'd wager a ton of people are in my shoes, they don't likely don't have enough units to scamper by in core 8 on that 6th echelon, assuming they do 6 full combat echelons and not point padding ones. There is probably a set of those that could have squeaked by with access to taunt/airstrike/artillery skill for a sixth wave. IMO I think people probably underrate artillery fairy for theater. She gives an insane FP buff, which is going to help kill gundams, which you want gun ASAP and I'm comfortable saying her skill is going to hit the first gundam. Mine is at lvl 6 right now and does I believe 800 damage and that ignores armor. Also pretty sure at worst there is enough shielding up that that damage gets reduced by 20-30%, that's still a huge chunk of health in the worst case scenario. Though I think more often than not, that gundam eats the full damage, which means my rifles are spending less time on it and moving on to the next one. That's going to be huge with waves that have four of them. I suspect at lvl 10, it probably outright kills or comes damn close to wiping out any strelets in the blast radius. So that's less stuff you need to count on handguns to deal with and less stuff that will eat HoC rounds that you might want on gundams.
Edit: Occurs to me, I might actually have what I need to kill gundams and uhlans but I'd have to adjust my anti-gundam team and include M4 and then get use to properly deploying her cannon. Then figuring out which AR to throw into my flagship ARSMG echelon, since I use that to kill the day waves that are best dealt with using ARSMGs. That's assuming that either lee or m14 mod 3 would be enough for the M4 cannon squad's rifle needs. Would probably still need another high fp rifle for the anti-uhlan team and probably run that as RFHG because I don't think I could make SGs work, not without having ones that have shield skill to completely negate tank charges, so I can keep the tanks away from the rest of the echelon. Damn shame there isn't a good spot to test this stuff out on. ><
I made it through Core 8. My anti-Uhlan squad was thoroughly wrecked after 2 Uhlan fights. I doubt it would have survived a 3rd. Got lucky that I never got more than 2 Uhlan fights per raid. The strikers were really rough though. Kept getting those and could not kill 'em fast enough before they tore up my smgs.
I hope the equipment rate up when it eventually happens is good, because I still don’t have any gold exoskeletons and fairly few of everything else except peq, red dot, and ap ammo. equipment is def the biggest help I could get outside of some specific rifles I think.
idk, equipment ups never felt as impressive as the doll ups, but that might be because I don't craft as many since I don't like using my quick productions on 20 minute crafts.
So looking at what I have on hand for an anti-uhlan team that doesn't involve redoing other teams to make it happen.
SRS lvl 60, SL1. self buffs FP and accuracy
M200 lvl 59, almost 60. SL1 mod 2 is suppose to be a substitute for grape, just not as good.
NTW lvl 95, almost 96. SL5 I guess best described as a self buff FP and accuracy rifle, that can also debuff stuff.
Pretty sure I only have enough combat reports on hand right now to get one of those to the level I need it to be useful against Uhlans. I know if I dump all 435 combat reports I have now, I'd be 4 levels short of 90 on SRS. I have some of today and most of tomorrow to do more leveling and hope I can get more gifts of the snowfield to buy out more reports because there is still like 100 or so on the blackmarket for me and I think I have enough gifts of the snowfiled to grab another 100 reports. If I go with this, I'm looking at making the team a RFHG, since no way I'm getting my only shield SG up in time for that, if I level these guns and I'm pretty sure I need either an SG that can get shields on two targets or two SGS with there own shields, so M870 won't cut it. Skill level is a concern. Though if I go with RFHG, I'll probably run with calico to help with accuracy, python who It think might be getting enough stuff at 4 that she makes a difference and grizzle for more firepower. Granted with machine guns out, that does leave Mk23 and K5 as other possible choices. Anyone have any thoughts? I'm going to push levels on these units anyways because they'll help with the next story event. So advice would just help me decide whether it's worth using reports and data on these units now or save it for later. I'll probably have to burn off my surplus energy because I've been burning through data prepping for theater and most of it has been burned on HoCs.
I have a taunt fairy that I got to 3*, and another on the side at level for events that might need two. Both are at SL10, tried using it for my anti-uhlan team today.
I wasn't here for Valhalla, so don't have Sei. Is Pasta another from that event or is that a nick name for another gun? No luck getting a twin fairy, I've been getting fairy crafts up to the point that I'm seeing at least three fairies a week. Probably either have increase the fairy roster capacity or start feeding all my subpar warrior fairies to paradrops. To the point where it's not worth blowing calibration tickets on new fairies that can be acquired with the base fairy recipe, not unless they roll dmg 1 and might be out the point where it should be fervor, dmg II or bust.
Pasta is a nickname for SAT-8 (the gun's origin is Italy)
Twin fairy kind of trivializes the Uhlan teams since their attacks aren't very good against them. Allegedly taunt fairy is similarly effective to a lesser degree. I confirmed that Twin fairy trivialized tanking the Uhlans, but that does eat up fairy commands.
Another approach that shuts Uhlans down is shielded SG's. Uhlans utilize AOE attacks, so shields+armor=defanged attack. One common play that I've seen reported is to set Pasta's shield to manual, put shotguns into positions 9 and 3, and then trigger the shield every time that the Uhlans forecast a ram attack. Sei also projects a shield around your team and can be used in a similar fashion. I ran both Sei and Pasta on my team, and the two shields alternated with enough uptime that my tanks were barely scratched. In Isomer we'll get HS2000, who will do an arguably better job of shielding the team than Sei.
Here are my teams. I'm probably going to try to refine them a bit tomorrow.
1: Anti-gundam squad.
2: Anti-Uhlan squad
3: Backup anti-striker squad
4: Primary anti-striker squad
5: Anti-Rain team (M4's skill set to manual)
6: CE padding
Gameplan for specific enemies: Gundams:
I'd read that people were having problems with Grape wasting her nuke on the fully shielded gundams, so I decided to go for more sustained DPS over her nuke. The team works, but I activated the fairy skill, BGM, and AGS to do it. I wiggle Elphelt back and forth between 5 and 6 while the rifles do their thing.
I'm contemplating replacing IWS with Lee, Grape, M200, or maybe an manual activation NTW mod 3? I'm also contemplating replacing elphelt with another HG for further buffs, but I kinda wanted someone with shields to tank chip damage from the strelets.
Uhlans:
Activate AGS, move both shotguns into positions 9 and 3, then go AFK while the rifles do their thing. I can probably clear this with any HOC activation whatsoever, even 2B14 maybe. They just tanked the fight that well.
Strikers:
Activate 2B14, shuffle the tanks to do the thing where MDR memes her shield onto both tanks, kite RO forward to draw some initial fire before withdrawing, and then Suomi dodges the world once her skill kicks in.
Prowlers:
Let the team fight everything to maximize fire downrange at those dinergates before they can into melee range. Withdraw STAR before the mortar hits her. Game set and match. No fire supported needed from fairy commands or HOCs
Rodeleros:
Move M4 to position 2 and M16 to position 6. Dodge M16 to position 3 whenever a rodlelro leaps into laser position, and then return once it is safe. No fire support needed.
Strelet swarm:
Do a little kiting with M16 between 5 and 6. Retreat STAR and Vector once vector tosses her molotov. Manually activate M4 to bring the Railgun into play. No fire support needed.
All in all I'm pretty happy. I only need to use fairy commands against the Gundams. Which is a fortunate thing today since I had to burn one of my retreats because I bumbled a fight while experimenting with teams, and then on my final run I went up against five gundam squads.
Yeah, I don't have any shotguns ready that can use shields and I only have the one that dropped in the last event. RNGesus has kind of been a dick on that front with both not giving me S.A.T 8 or Grape. I haven't leveled MDR. So my only option for the Uhlans is probably a solid RFHG team with taunt fairy. Just trying to figure out if I can make that happen with SRS, M200 or NTW at least mod 2. Of course, skill levels are a consideration here.
I probably should lvl MDR at some point, since those shields would really help on some waves. Upside is I have managed to get Ro to 90 and have her at SL7, so I probably should use her in my anti-striker team. Probably pair her up with MP7 maybe. Also probably should put the anti-rain team together, with vector as the other SMG because that works really well against rodleros. Probably, shouldn't waste fairy or HoC commands on them, unless it's a late enough wave that I can afford to do so and still have everything I need for later waves, in the event that every wave afterwards needs them. My anti-gundam team is still M14 mod 3, Lee, Five-Seven, Storm and Contender, with artillery as the support fairy. I'm reasonable sure that will still work out in core 8, but who knows because I had to retreat around wave 3 because of two back to back uhlan waves.
M200 would IMO be by far the most valuable of those since it's night, Uhlans have evasion, and M200's skill can't miss.
MP7 basically fills the same role as Suomi. MP7 is arguably better at the job, but Suomi does have a bit more HP and she's advantaged for this particular fight.
The anti-rain team as I've built it has performed absolutely amazingly against the Prowlers, Rodleros, and Strelet swarms. M16 is amzing at tanking Strelets, however note that I have her equipped with a maxed out SPEQ and exo, which I think barely puts her at the threshold where Strelet attacks get reduced to 1. If I didn't have M16 available, I'd probably use a shotgun to stand up against all of that Strelet fire. The only downside with shotguns is that the timing to dodge away from Rodelero beams is much tighter.
edit:
incase it wasn't obvious, this is the formation I'm running. I'm using a 4* sniper fairy, but that's mostly for CE padding reasons. I'm sure the accuracy helps a bit, but other fairies would provide more potent boosts.
Just need to figure out what rifle to pair up M200 with because I don't think either SVD or Wa are going to provide enough punch and M200 probably can't partially carry them. Though if I only have the stuff to get one of the three rifles up to 90, it's going to be M200. I manage to get her almost to lvl 64 tonight. Currently getting her skill to lvl 2. I have some quick training tickets. So I should be able to get her skill to a respectable level. Also spend my batteries and overflow xp on regular combat reports. So I probably have enough to get her to 90 now. Probably want to consider more dragging, on 0-2 to reduce report needs, since I might be able to get to a point where I can bring in SRS. Though that probably somewhat depends on what I get from expeditions. I can definitely, get more combat reports, just don't know if it'll be enough. Probably will have to use her with a low skill.
Probably hold off on putting more stuff into skills for HoCs and artillery fairy. I only have 34 advance data and intermediate is running low. Plus, if I can wing those two rifles, I'll want data for them. Upside is from what I understand, both SRS and M200 will likely have uses in the next story event and we do get future theaters. So it's not wasted investment. Hell, might go for the RFHG team that just wastes Uhlans before taunt fairy dies and have the double shield SG with rifles and spare HG for waves where I don't or can't afford to blow points on taunt fairy. Actually, have to wonder how many people foolishly burned resources getting a six echelon to point padding, only to get wrecked because they got hit with 6 waves that they needed fairy commands for.
Edit: I also forgot that I have IWS at lvl 90, fully linked and with SL8. With K5 in the mix, she probably would hit stuff. So maybe that's my other rifle to pair with M200.
Thinking hgs will be Mk23, Python and K5. Can't get all the buffs on Python with standard layout, but can get every buff but M200's tiles on her and that should make her into a good force multiplier to kill stuff. Layout would probably be
M200 Mk23
Python K5
IWS
IWs would miss out on Mk23's tile buffs, but I think if I understand Python's mechanics, she would get some of the benefit for Mk23's active ability. Not to mention, she needs the accuracy boost from K5, 30% is nothing to sneeze out. Python will probably get enough of a boost that she does a decent job at murdering strelets hopefully, since she won't do more than scratch damage against Uhlans with their like 250 armor. Granted K5's active skill for her is kind of useless because ideally she is never at risk of being shot, on the other hand she does pass that along to K5 and Mk23 who may need it.
Other handguns that I have are Welrod, who probably isn't going to be of much help her with her skill. Spitfire, which doesn't work for boosting Python and her skill probably doesn't help much; especially, with 2B sitting on SL7 for her third skill (which essentially does the same thing). SAA which might be a good option instead of Python, she has SL6. I've got Jericho at 90 as well, but on top of being SL1, her stuff doesn't look like it would work. PPK at SL3. Grizzly at SL8. Calico also at SL8.
Well, was in top 9% but probably not anymore. Tried core 8, with the revamped stuff and uhlans still kick my ass. So dropped down to core 6. Then for the second run, didn't realized I had select core 8. In my defense, have the one year old in the house that is at full blown going to be a butt when they want something stage and so much of the stuff is samey in looks on theater menu. Hell, for some half-assed reason, they don't even list one map your own when you're in the formation setup menu and they should. Sure the bosses have different portraits but that isn't really going to be something that gets as much attention in theater because the boss doesn't fucking matter, it's the waves that matter. Also really wish they would throw the harder mobs at the top of the list instead of hiding them in the bottom because that's actually visual information that people are going to pick up better than the boss or having the stage listed out. It's very much a case of, having psychologist on hand could tell them that.
Maybe I'll still be in the top 15%. We'll see how things go, I get the impression that there are some people right where I'm at and others both ahead and behind me on ranking that won't stick this out on a daily basis. They probably hit 400K points are stop or go till they can get core 8. So things are probably going to be in high flux at this point for ranking where I'm at.
Not sure I'll make further attempts at core 8 though. I think my issue probably comes down to not having enough firepower from fairies for RFHG setups and no way I'm getting SGs raised in time for the other strategy and that would require S.A,T. 8 showing up in my next heavy craft. Upside is that M200 being raised to 90 on reports and getting quick trained to SL8 isn't going to be a waste either.
Edit: I'm an idiot, forgot to enhance M200. So maybe I do have a shot at killing uhlans. So guess I'll be trying Core 8 again tomorrow with my free retreat. Will need to put together another anti-striker term. First one will probably need to go back to having UMP45 as the lead tank. RO got trashed. Still now idea if my anti-Gundam team can hack it at Core 8 because I've yet to see one of those on any of my runs.
Is it just the Uhlans that are causing you grief? Can your teams deal with the Gundams and Strikers, or are they causing problems too? Those seem to be the three problem compositions while the Prowler, Strelet Swarm, and Rodelero squads are the easy ones. Reading around, it sounds like Strikers are causing people the biggest headache. I've heard reports of people who have the Gundams and Uhlans on farm being torn up by the strikers.
If it's just Uhlans, then you could try using your daily free retreat to try to clear core 8 in the hopes that you don't encounter any. Once M200 is online, you could try using her alongside some other strong rifle to try to deal with the Uhlans. Maybe the taunt fairy might be able to buy enough time for the rifles to do their thing. Maybe try using a team that goes all out throwing buffs on M4's railgun, or buffing M4 and M200? Remember that you need to set M4's raligun to manual activation to get the most out of it. Let the HG's pop their skills, then withdraw to dolls and manually trigger the railgun.
I am so sick of gundams. On my second assault today, I faced 6 of 'em in a row, leaving me to face the tanks without the TOW missiles, and only grenade launcher & mortar support, which is unpleasant.
Through both assaults today, I only saw strikers, tanks & gundams. There were 0 strelet swarms, prowlers & Rodeleros. I have clearly been slacking on my sacrifices to RNGesus.
My anti-Uhlan squads did better today because I removed the shotguns and just increased FP buffing. Went way better than with SAT8 & M870 on the frontline.
Also, seeing General_armchair mention that grape is shooting its load off too early made me realize I shouldn't pair the cano sisters together since strawberrycano speeds up RFs. Switching to M14 mod 2 has made my gundam killing go much more consistently now.
I have no idea how I'd do against core 8 gundams. Last two days, I hit a roadblock with Uhlans and don't even see the gundams. I did see the strikers and RO got reduced to two links, so not sure if I'm keeping her out too long or if I should just go with UMP45 who is mod 3, since RO is still level 90. Probably should also look into getting some sort of grenade in there. I think the backline was Ribeye, Groza and G36 mod 3. Maybe drop Groza for Fal, Zas would probably be a better option but I haven't gotten around to really raising mine.
I'll give it a try tomorrow again because when I did my run today, I forgot to enhance M200, so she probably had lvl 30 states. I also paired her up with IWS, Python, K5 and Mk23. So if that doesn't do the trick, I'll have to consider reworking the echelon. I know I'd probably want to scrounge up a second anti-striker team because I'll likely need it.
Uhlans are just fucking awful partly because they have 250 armor, which is well above what we can hope to achieve with armor penetration. Old servers had all their AP stuff buffed because I think the devs realized that armor was getting to a point where it was a problem, given that there were few options around it.
If I can't get it tomorrow because of not having enough damage, it'll probably be a sign that I just don't have high enough rarity fairies. I've noticed the stat boost from each star is pretty significant.
It looks like I was kinda lucky with my first day against the Uhlans. Using AGS alone against them is kinda dicey due to the slower shield stripping rate. I guess that I was getting lucky rolls on AGS's third skill. I didn't notice that the Uhlan ramming zone would slowly creep forward, and with just AGS stripping the shields eventually that creeps into the rifles on the back column.
I still feel like my anti-gundam squad is a bit of a weak link since I opt to consume charges of fairy commands, AGS, and BGM. I tried using Grape instead of IWS today, and grape continually let me down by nuking the fully shielded gundam. I think I'll give grape one more try tomorrow with her skill set to manual activation so that I can hold it in reserve while fully shielded gundams are within range. I'm also thinking that running Elphelt as a tank may be a mistake, since I'm hearing reports of people just running buffing handguns and clearing the wave pretty cleanly. All of that said, the formation does work, has proven itself capable of clearing at least five gundams, and scores higher than normal since Elphelt is a shotgun with slugs so she scores better than a handgun. The concern is running out of AGS/BGM charges if I run into huge sums of gundams and uhlans.
In other news, my anti-striker team cleared out seven strikers in one run today. I was anxious on the seventh since I had exhausted all of my 2B14 charges. However, since I hadn't been encountering many gundams, I had excess charges of AGS/BGM and fairy commands. RO635 and Suomi only lost two links each over the course of the seven fights. In light of this, I think that I'm going to retire my backup striker team tomorrow and fill it with an MG/SG team for more stat padding.
My top score for the final battle run today was 32801.
I'm only using a 2 star taunt and the tanks are pretty easy for me, as long as I have the TOW missile support.
Guess I'll find out if IWS & M200 (actually enhanced) will do the trick. I suppose the other issue, is if I lack dps, it could come down to not having HoCs high enough, but all of mine are at 80. Have had their stats enhance, have chips, some of which have been enhanced and have had skill trained up. Though I'll admit I'm a bit worried about pierce on BGM since it's not 500, might need to see if I can get there with a different chip setup. I'm not a fan of HoC tetris because you pretty much do have to do a ton of work or use a calculator to figure out what the optimal setup is between the chips you have. It really should be much more intuitive. Have to wonder if they'll revisit this part of HoCs in an update because I think the team has stated they've been unhappy with this aspect of HoCs.
I know once theater is done and I get the original HoCs to 100. I'll work on get the new one there as well and hopefully, in a spot where I could field her in theater instead of AGS. I like AGS and it'll be a bit before the new HoC can be on par, but here issue is that she is jack of all trades and there are solutions for killing masses of things that don't require HoCs. Sadly if you need shield breaking, HoCs are the only option and if you get 7+ waves of gundams and/or uhlans you need an alternative to BGM. Also theater makes AGS best strength irrelevant because she is great for saving AP on maps, while still hitting things you want destroyed and this is huge with structures.
I think that your two best bets for that Uhlan fight are either the IWS+M200 group, or some type of M4 railgun group that's M4 and a bunch of FP buffers to pump up her damage or a mix of M4 and M200 alongside those FP buffers.
That pierce might be the problem as well. My BGM has 669 pierce, and the tanks are a breeze as a result, but my 239 pierce AGS isn't enough for the fight.
Well, save for moving handguns down to avoid tank rams, technically only need to move Mk23, but seems like if I move both down one that's less time spend on travel and more on shooting, the uhlans are essentially AFKable. The echelon drops everything before the taunt fairy dies. Also probably helps that I decked out the handguns in PEQs to kill strelets and be slightly less garbage against uhlans once those are the only things left.
Anti gundam team did as well I expected it to. Need to be a bit more on the ball with retreating contender so five-seven eats a little less damage. Kind of butt clinch moment towards the end because I see the squares light, but gundms die before everything AoEd. Probably helps that I retreat the front handguns.
Anti-rain team performs solidly against rodeleros and strelets.
The anti-striker is only really good against two waves without airstrike. Longer if they get airstrike support and HoC support. Dumped Ro for UMP45, who seems to work better, but still.
All said, if I hadn't made rookie mistakes yesterday, I might have had everything I need to clear Core 8, which would have been the time to do it with what I had because I would have gotten a really good score and been solidly in the top 10%, maybe 7%, instead of 13%. I'll probably drop a bit more because my best score today was like 3-4k less than what I get in Core 6 because of the damage I take against strikers. So probably just worth my while to finish this out on Core 6 and hope that I don't drop down further, maybe I'll climb back up some because people either don't do things everyday once they hit 400K points and get Core 8. Or get people that really like to gamble and are barely pulling through, so they are one disastrous run away from falling way behind me. Plus, probably some people that are getting really bad scores on their Core 8 clears, that don't get they could be scoring better with Core 6 clears. On the other hand, also not getting the full 24% bonus for advantaged dolls because I only have three of them for core 8. Don't know if they'll rotate advantage dolls at any point, so maybe it'll be worth going back in if I an go from 16.5% to 24% bonus; especially, if I can get another anti-striker team. On the hand, I'd be completely fucked if I get 7+ waves of uhlans because I need that taunt fairy and I'd be hosed if it was 7 waves that needed BGM. So that might be reason enough to not go back and push my luck. Once the retreat is gun, I'm pretty much committed to the fight.
Edit: also threw FAL in place of Groza for anti-striker waves and I think her grenades helped there. Really wish I had raised Zas because she probably would have been a better option with her 3s windup time on grenade launch. Then have FAL in the back up squad.
Now's the time to roll for G11 if you really want her, but next month is the second anniversary so we'll almost certainly have a series of general rate ups for dolls, equipment, shotguns, and fairies. I really need to hunker down into "Logistics Frontline" mode since I bankrupted myself the other day recalibrating the talents on some of my 4* fairies.
Now's the time to roll for G11 if you really want her, but next month is the second anniversary so we'll almost certainly have a series of general rate ups for dolls, equipment, shotguns, and fairies. I really need to hunker down into "Logistics Frontline" mode since I bankrupted myself the other day recalibrating the talents on some of my 4* fairies.
I’m just doing my dailies now since I don’t think I desperately need more ARs except like AN-94. It’s hgs and rifles that’ll help me most so yea I’m saving for that general rate up. I’m at like 70k resources and 200 contracts rn.
Dawns on me that actually core 8 is my best source for points because I forgot that core 6 scores eat 40% reduction, like core 8 eats now. So my points in there yesterday were 13Kish. I think I got about 16k and 18K or core 8 today. So if I do that, assuming no bad RNG in a way that I run gets hosed, I could claw my way back to 10% maybe. Just depends on how many people ahead of me miss days, stop because they have 400K points and/or got core 8. Also depends on how many get bad RNG and maybe be in a worse spot for dealing with it than me.
I should hunger down and get the new HoC up to speed. I'm already training her first skill, but I think I'll want her for next theater instead of AGS, so I have a high pierce option if I get 7+ waves of stuff that needs it. IMO, they really should have a thing in there code that limits people to go only 6 waves that either have uhlans or gundams. It's really bad on this theater because there are so many in a position where getting the new HoC up really wasn't an option because their other HoCs still needed levels and they had tons of stuff that needed training. I'm not a huge fan of how 7+ waves of those things could really screw people over because getting to a point to kill gundam, uhlan and striker waves is already a huge time commitment.
I'll have to sit down and write up some feed back for theater. Probably need to create a new twitter account because I'm not going to us FB and there in game response has been very unsatisfactory. The UI for theater needs work. The biggest issue I have with it is that once you're in the formation creation you don't have anything that tells you what difficulty you're on. Not unless you go memorize which bosses we get and that only helps if there is a boss and IMO not much because you don't have to worry about bosses. If you get to a boss wave, that's free points. They really should list out the difficulty because yes, people can and have clicked on the wrong thing. The toughest units should also be displayed first, don't make people scroll down to see the units they need to care about, this also makes at a glance info more helpful. If uhlans still kick your ass, you'll know you missed clicked if you look over and see their icons. I also wouldn't mind the menu having a setup where it lists your best score for a map, but also lists the last score you got. This would help people like me that finally broke into Core 8 because again, I forgot that it lists best score and my best score is going to beat what I can get now on Core 8 because that isn't eating a 40% reduction. Also wish they gave units we deployed against waves some exp. I fine with no exp for the units that don't get used, but it's a bummer that none of the units used get anything.
All that said, need to fold up the SGMG echelon that I had on there for point padding. I can get through striker waves with the current group and the anti-rain team if I get a ton of them, but it isn't pretty. So I need to throw together a second anti-striker team.
Current one UMP45, MP7, FAL (think the three grenades help), G36 and Ribeyerolls. My choices for a second group aren't great because I don't have enough gold HV ammo, probably have to take the one off of M16, so that at least someone in the second group has one. Also only have one free gold PEQ left and don't plan on taking the ones on the HGs in the anti-uhlan team, they need those to burn strelets down to keep the taunt fairy alive. I do have the reports to get ZAS to 90, not sure how high I would need to get her skill to make it worth using her because it's level 1. Also if I can get another 160 reports, I could get RFB to lvl 90, but would need to raise her skill from lvl 1. On the other hand, she might do well enough at a low skill level. Not sure if she would help because I'm too focused on making sure I do the shuffle right with UMP45 and MP7 that they delay things before retreating and don't take too much damage. MP7 imo is taking to much. Though RFB could alleviate that some if most of the damage is strikers and not the brutes. The other AR I'd take might actually be AN-94, I think here skill would let her get more damage out than groza quicker and I don't believe those units are armored. For SMGs my choices are UMP9, RO and G36c (a shield going in after the first SMG might work here since that might give them enough time to pop the shield and delay before retreating. SMG also have the issue of probably getting stuck with green gear and maybe not having AP rounds, but then they are being remove so fast and moving so much that it likely doesn't matter.
Anyone have any thoughts on my striker setup? worth keeping in mind that I do have Groza, G41 and G11 all at level 100 with at least SL8 or higher. I'm open to the idea that maybe I should move something else into the first team or tweak the potential second team some. Don't think I could put out a third team, so echelon 6 will have to be a point padder.
Core 8 getting cleared has me a bit antsy. After abandoning my backup anti-striker team for more CE padding, I was able to boost my effectiveness against Destroyer by just shy of 2.9k CE (14387 to 17273). But since the zone is cleared, my score is reduced. That's putting a damper on me since my score was roughly 100 short of the bottom of the top 100 list for the "Final Battle" top scores. I heard someone claim that the final battle would take into account "pre-adjustment" scores so that people can keep competing for that leaderboard. I guess I'll see if that's true or not, since surely my new score outscores my old one even if it's not sufficient for the top 100.
All that said, need to fold up the SGMG echelon that I had on there for point padding. I can get through striker waves with the current group and the anti-rain team if I get a ton of them, but it isn't pretty. So I need to throw together a second anti-striker team.
Current one UMP45, MP7, FAL (think the three grenades help), G36 and Ribeyerolls. My choices for a second group aren't great because I don't have enough gold HV ammo, probably have to take the one off of M16, so that at least someone in the second group has one. Also only have one free gold PEQ left and don't plan on taking the ones on the HGs in the anti-uhlan team, they need those to burn strelets down to keep the taunt fairy alive. I do have the reports to get ZAS to 90, not sure how high I would need to get her skill to make it worth using her because it's level 1. Also if I can get another 160 reports, I could get RFB to lvl 90, but would need to raise her skill from lvl 1. On the other hand, she might do well enough at a low skill level. Not sure if she would help because I'm too focused on making sure I do the shuffle right with UMP45 and MP7 that they delay things before retreating and don't take too much damage. MP7 imo is taking to much. Though RFB could alleviate that some if most of the damage is strikers and not the brutes. The other AR I'd take might actually be AN-94, I think here skill would let her get more damage out than groza quicker and I don't believe those units are armored. For SMGs my choices are UMP9, RO and G36c (a shield going in after the first SMG might work here since that might give them enough time to pop the shield and delay before retreating. SMG also have the issue of probably getting stuck with green gear and maybe not having AP rounds, but then they are being remove so fast and moving so much that it likely doesn't matter.
Anyone have any thoughts on my striker setup? worth keeping in mind that I do have Groza, G41 and G11 all at level 100 with at least SL8 or higher. I'm open to the idea that maybe I should move something else into the first team or tweak the potential second team some. Don't think I could put out a third team, so echelon 6 will have to be a point padder.
First of all definitely take that gold ammo off of M16 and put it on another DPS doll. M16 doesn't have the scopes that the other dolls get, so she's low priority for getting the good stuff.
For the striker matchup, it's easier said than done but the goal is to do everything in your power to mitigate the hailstorm of damage from the strikers. The brutes aren't much of a threat compared to the strikers. The three main approaches are to stack evasion, debuff the enemy, and kill the strikers as soon as you can. I'm going to list some examples, but when crafting an anti-striker team you're going to want to combine as many
Stacking evasion:
Obviously you'll want some tile buffs or even fairy buffs to assist your main tank, but the main tank should be one that is also known for its evasion. I've heard reports of people using unconventional SMGs with extreme evasion stats like IDW and Spectre to good effect, but it's unlikely that anyone but those doll's biggest fans will have them leveled. RO635 is excellent for the fight because she sports a strong evasion buff with a short ICD that also debuffs enemy damage. CMS is a popular choice since her skill lets her boast a 100% uptime of boosted evasion. Suomi and MP7 are great since they have extremely potent evasion buffs, while the drawback of their long ICD is mostly tempered by the fact that the strikers don't quite get into range until the 5 second mark or so.
I haven't heard of anyone using the force shield SMGs, but if your maintank can manage to hold out for the first 8 seconds then they'll certainly be able to hold the fort for the next four, which should mark the conclusion of the battle.
One more thing that sorta but not really falls under evasion. When you retreat a doll, the strikers will keep shooting at it for a few moments. That will buy you a half a second or so before the next doll in line starts getting shot at. Retreating of your offtank can save your maintank some HP, and retreating the maintank can save her some more chip damage HP once your DPS have ensured that the fight will end before the remaining stragglers can target your backline.
Debuffs:
Apply some kind of negative effect to the enemy to debuff their damage output. Some popular examples:
RO635's skill directly reduces their firepower, causing each hit to hit for less.
UMP45 is being used to reduce enemy rate of fire with her smoke grenade, reducing their DPS (although I didn't have much luck with smoke placement when I used her. Maybe manual activation would help)
Welrod can debuff their accuracy, which IIRC has better returns than buffing our own evasion.
I haven't heard of anyone using a flashbang doll against them, but that would buy you several seconds of time. The fact that I haven't heard anyone suggest it has me worried that they're immune, I'm trying to check but can't find anything either way right now. Assuming that it works, then you'd need good flashbang placement for it to help but it would buy you a lot of time and might buy a force shield SMG time to proc her invincibility shield.
Firepower:
Either you want to stack maximum DPS to clear out the enemies quick, or you want to try to cheese your damage so that you can start depleting links from the strikers asap. Some popular choices:
Airstrike fairy skill to soften up the strikers and make them more vulnerable to losing links from other damage sources
You definitely want 2B14 providing fire support for this fight.
AUG's skill causes her to randomly start hitting enemy targets. The hope is that she sprays fire at strikers who were damaged by the airstrike and starts depleting their links and in turn reducing their damage output.
RFB's skill changes her targeting priority and gets her hitting the backline and removing links.
Grenadiers might be able to hit the backline and help remove links from softened enemies. You'll want one of the quicker grenadiers. Zas, K11, and FAL have some of the quickest ICD's on their grenades. I haven't heard of anyone using SMG grenadiers on their teams, but moltov and HE grenade SMGs have shorter cooldowns than
ARs with very high DPS can burn through the Brutes as quickly as possible so that they can start dealing with the strikers. The night specialist dolls have great DPS, but they don't get amazing until their skill kicks. AN-94's passive helps boost her DPS in the initial few seconds. Type 95 and Type 97 have very short ICD's and can start boosting their DPS in the early seconds where it counts most. K2 hits the ground running and might be able to pull her weight mopping up Brutes during the opening.
https://files.catbox.moe/idi8hv.webm
Above is my anti-striker team and a link to a webm of them in action. It's supported by a 4* shield fairy with the Fervor talent. The reasoning behind each doll is as follows:
Shield Fairy: At 4*'s she provides a potent 55.2% evasion boost to my SMGs. This is THE reason that I'm using it. The damage buff is fairyly weak at 14.4%. The accuracy buff is pretty potent at 41.6%, but I'm not sure how much it's needed. Normally I won't use the skill at all, which saves on fairy commands. However the shield is nice for mitigating early chip damage if I have sufficient surplus commands to use it.
AN-94: She boasts very high DPS during the initial six seconds thanks to her passive, and her active is very strong. She provides an evasion boost to both SMGs with her tile buffs
MDR: She's here to boost the evasion of my SMGs to extreme heights. Her skill will buff my SMGs with a whopping +80% evasion and a 40 HP shield. The shield is nice but it's the evasion buff that I care about. Note: If multiple dolls "occupy" the tile in front of MDR when her skill procs, then the skill will buff every doll on the tile.
K11: She's a fast grenadier. Her skill is kinda random, but I hope that I get lucky with the RNG and that her skill will provide a spike of damage that yeets a mob out of existence at the six second mark. Also she buffs the evasion of Suomi.
Suomi: She has an extremely potent evasion self buff of +150% and a HUGE HP pool. Her base evasion is low, so we need to stall for some time to get her online. Also she's an advantaged doll for core8, so her evasion is boosted a bit higher thanks to that.
RO635: She's my offtank. Her skill comes on very quick and both boosts her evasion and debuffs enemy DPS. It's her job to draw fire until Suomi comes online.
The gameplan in a fight is as follows:
Wait until RO's skill actvates
Immediately after it actives, have her swap places with Suomi
The timing on this move will result in MDR's shield applying to both SMGS, and place RO635 in the position where most of the strikers will prioritize her
Once suomi's skill activates, or RO's shield break (whichever comes later), I retreat RO and then move Suomi to 5.
Suomi holds her ground until there are only one or two strikers left, then I retreat her to save on chip damage.
I'm not sure if my choice of DPS is optimal, but it was good enough to clear 7 waves of strikers and I'm pretty sure they could clear 10 waves of strikers so I don't really intend to try to optimize this echelon further.
As for the stuff you mentioned, first of all you didn't mention any fairies and those are super important. But if we were upgrading your primary anti-striker team, I would replace UMP45 with RO635 since I think that RO is better suited to stall for time until MP7's skill comes online. I would also replace FAL with either Groza, G11, or AN-94. The problem with FAL as I see it is that while her grenade has a short ICD, the animation itself is very slow. I also don't think that she benefits much from Ribey's skill. The direct damage ARs will quickly mop up the remaining brutes the moment ribey's skill goes off, and then they'll quickly start depleting links from the Strikers. I'm unsure if G36 should remain. Her skill does come online fast at 4 seconds to help clear up the Brutes. If she's G36 mod 3, then I think that she should stay thanks to the evasion boost of her second skill. If she's vanilla G36, maybe AN-94 or G11/Groza.
If you built a second anti-striker team, you could try using UMP-9 and G36C. There will probably be about a second or so between the strikers opening fire and the flashbang impacting. But the stun should buy time for G36C's shield to go off. This assumes ofcourse that the strikers are vulnerable to stuns, which I am not 100% sure of.
From what I'm reading, Mica dropped the ball. Apparently, we weren't suppose to get hit with the penalty for core 8 being cleared. Don't know if they can fix that, I'd think they could if the servers are keeping the relevant data. it's a bit annoying because if I was given the full value of my Core 8 runs for today, I'd probably be assured of getting into the top 10% again, since the accidental core 8 run that got shut down on like wave three, would be easier to recover form against people that are staying in Core 6. I think I'm looking at about 4-6K more than Core 6 on my Core 8 runs with the penalty. So I'd need probably two days to make up for a bad core 8 run and get passed the people that pulled ahead of me and are still in core 6.
As for teams, one thing I do like about theater is that it does force you to see what you have and I'm embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot my lvl 96 C-MS at SL8. I probably should us her as the main tank in the primary anti-striker team, and then go with your suggestion of RO as the off tank because lvl 90 at SL7 should be enough. I'll try moving Groza back in to the echelon instead of FAL. G36 is fully modded. So C-MS and RO might be able to do the whole survive without getting beat up too badly long enough for Groza to do her thing. Also will abandon the whole move an echelon up and back real quick. I suspect my machine is booting up the fights in such a way that by the time I see the screen, I don't have enough time to make that trick work because by the time I get the main tank up, the strikers are close enough that they are able to lock on and keep firing. Fairy will be a 2* Airstrike with SL10 because it's totally worth using, when I hit a point where I know I'm not screwing myself out of need taunt fairy usage. It has the dmg 1 talent. Also I can give C-MS gold AP ammo because that's one of the few equips that I have more than of enough of for core 8. HV ammo and PEQs were at enough, but with needing another anti-striker team for insurance that ups in smoke and poor M16 will have to surrender her HP ammo to probably AN-94 in team two.
G36 Ro
Ribeyerolls C-MS
Groza
As for anti-striker team 2. I think I'll run UMP45 and MP7. Move MP7 down when I have to retreat UMP45. I'm thinking that might give her enough time to chuck her grenade and if I retreat her, might get some shenanigans where the strikers are wasting shots firing at her as she retreats or start moving up without firing. Then for ARs, have AN-94 (lvl 10 and SL10) at position 7 to burst down brutes, RFB at 4 and with SL2 maybe burst down some strikers before they get in range. Then have Zas at 1, I think I can get her to SL5 or SL6. Granted FAL is lvl 10 and has SL10. As for fairies, I have one fury at lvl 49 now, 2* and SL1, if I have commands left, might as well burn them. She does the fervor talent. Also have a lvl 74 paradrop, 1* and dmg 1 talent. Also a lvl 77, illumination fairy at 2* with the dmg 1 talent. At this point, after like 20 0-2 runs, and more reports from the black market, probably can easily get both RFB, who is 84 now and ZAS, who is still lvl 30, to 90.
I wish that we could do test runs against the mobs. I'd like to experiment some more with different compositions. Especially with the more common dolls that more players will have. But I also don't want to pull any punches since I know that my run will end if I get seven gundams since I need BGM charges against them and I'm 90% certain that AGS and 2B14 combined won't be sufficient to get those Gundams cleared in time. I already went up against seven strikers. Now I'm just waiting for lighting to strike twice with Uhlans or Gundams.
edit:
Also, IMO I think MP7 may server you better on your main team. Pair her up with a "fast" evasion tank like RO or CMS. Stack your evasion buffs on MP7. If that means that you put her at 5, then swap SMG positions in the start of the match. You want the fast SMG tanking for the first few seconds, and then MP7 to swap in once she comes online.
edit2:
Also, stuff like Theater is why I'm still investing in my Armor fairy. Some people have told me "we don't need armor anymore. They're not meta. We're facing new enemies with armor piercing attacks that render armor obsolete." While I'm thinking that it will only take one boss or high value target to be weak to extremely highly stacked armor for it to pay off in spades. We had one boss like that with Garm. CN hasn't had another like it since then, but who knows what we'll get in a future event or Theater season?
I probably also should level up MP7 since she's arguably better than Suomi. But at least Suomi is advantaged this time around.
Ah Garm, where you took the SGMG team because it pretty much could tank the unavoidable damage well enough. I pretty much think theater is Mica's experiment with trying to ensure that all the units they did create will see usage with the advantaged system. I'm curious if that'll pick 2 & 3 star units and boost them enough that they'd be worth using. Also think it might be a hint that they are contemplating making less relevant in other ranking stuff. I know for ranking it's not required on any server since people can get pretty high on the ranking without duping and EN I think has had people in all events for the top 100 that don't dupe. On the other hand, from a design point, I'd be worried that you get enough people aping the top spot that it renders all the work on the non-meta stuff a waste.
Also I'll dig it up, but someone has figured out how to stack enough armor on SGs to take a ton of bite out of the strikers and I guess they had a setup to mow brutes down really fast, since those are built to render armor moot. They were saying the highest damage they got from strikers was 10, it's still a lot, but that was the top end and most was like 2-3 IIRC. So it's probably always worth investing in side stuff if you can afford to because you never know when you get cheese interactions that let you deal with certain things in novel ways that are good enough, on par or better than the meta way.
I need to see which event we have next, I think it's isomer, which is still part of rifles frontline. I've been raising a ton of rifles because of theater and knowing that is coming up. Also raising TAC-50 because she can one shot the final boss in DJMAX if you do the right setup. I see that as both hilarious and I need to have one time where I completely face roll the fight with the final boss for great victory. Also lets you skip something that would be otherwise annoying and I don't think Mica will change things to prevent it, but they could.
So thinking back to HoCs and making them less complex because it's a problem when people need an outside program to figure out what to do.
First there are three things I'm trying to figure out and I'll admit one is mostly irrelevant, but I'm curious about. There seems to be an indication not all stats are equal in value. Though the shear RNG of chip drawing probably makes it hard for the player to confirm this. Next, is if they do have an itemization formula, does one get more bang for their buck having four stats on a chip instead of one. Thus, if most of your chips rolled with four stats, you actually will hit the cap for the best stat, while getting most, if not, all of the other stops to cap. Putting you in a better spot than someone that is running a setup entirely of single or double stat chips. Finally, do they want a power reward for people that fill in the whole grid or to lock having perfect stats behind filling the whole grid?
Then there is what we know. Chips that cover more squares provide more stats per square than ones that cover less. Rarity means more stats. Shapes that make it more difficult to fill in the grid give more stats. You also get a bonus for color matching. Finally, as mentioned the shear RNG with what shows up on chips. Honestly, I think most people could deal with everything without an outside calculator, except for that very last thing; especially, if the answer two my first two quests are yes.
So first thing I'd probably do if I was redesigning HoCs to be more user friendly. I'd kill a good chunk of the RNG with chip drawing. All chips would give you two stats. So that people that have already invested a ton in HoCs don't get fucked. I'd add a structure in the intelligence room that players feed old incompatible chips into, and yes you'll want to make chips unusable until they get converted; especially, if the answer to my second question is yes. If a chip has two stats, it'll equalize them to be of similar itemization value. If the chip has only one stat, it'll give the player three choices that all have the original stat and then one other stat. If the chip has three stats, the player will be presented with a number of choices equal to all possible two stat combinations of the stats on the chip and chips with four stats would have the same deal. Then tack on a hidden one time quest that spits out a ton of calibration tickets, maybe have two or three. You want the free calibration tickets because this move is going to probably result in people having to redo their setup and people will rightfully complain about how it made their calibration ticket investment a waste. Also by having it hidden, you ensure that it's there for returning players that invested in HoCs, that were present when you drop the change, while also ensuring that you aren't giving tons of unwarranted calibration tickets to new players or creating a scenario where a new players constantly ask "how do I complete this quest, when it's impossible for them to get obsolete HoC chips. So you also want to make sure that people can't pull up the menu for that structure if they don't have any obsolete chips.
Next, figure out how filling in the whole grid should work. IMO, people probably should get additional stats for filling the whole thing in, but it shouldn't be the only way to cap stats. So maybe have some additional cosmetic effect for filling in the grid on top of whatever bonus stats are rewarded. It'll help with maintaining sanity for the few OCD players that will not only insist on filling that grid in, but also doing everything they can to maximize stats, even if that means they have stat points that will get cut off for being over the cap. I'd also maybe consider a setup where some amount of stat points are unlocked by filling in the grid. That could have a formula base on the rarity of the chip filling the square, the color, the size and the shape. I admit this could be counter productive to simplifying things, granted maybe that formula could be simplified so that it only factors in color & rarity. So maybe thing would be simpler if the player was guaranteed 60% of the total stats if they filled in the entire grid with 5* chips of the correct color, while playing tetris to maximize everything could get you 70% of total stats off of just the chips. Having 30% wiggle room could be too generous, but what the chips can cover alone without factoring in color bonus or grid fill in, should be higher given what a pain some chips can be to slot in. Don't think people should get punished in a way that result in being unable to get perfect stats because they have a few empty areas.
In my anti-striker squads, I tried changing out incendiary grenade offtanks(vector, skorpion) for evasion buffing tanks (mp7, suomi) to switch up when their skill starts. Things went much worse.
I might try shield tanks (g36c, thompson) tomorrow to see if that goes better.
The challenge with shield tanks will be surviving until the 8 second mark for their skill to kick in. I asked around on some discord groups, and supposedly they can be stunned, but I don't know if one would have luck with flashbang SMGs targetting the right group of enemies.
-I think anti-gundam team is every so slightly better now. M14 has a fully enhanced and calibrated gold cloak. I also went back redid BGM's chip setup so that they now has 540 pierce instead of like 488.
-Anti-uhlan team is doing better with M200 sporting a fully buffed gold cloak instead of a green one. I also took her from SL8 to SL9. Wondering if it might be worth getting her to SL10. AGS+2B can allow the team to kill uhlans before taunt fairy dies. So I'm probably good if I get more than 6 waves that need pierce, but likely screwed if I get more than six uhlan waves because I don't think either the anti-gundam team or anti-uhlan team handguns can distract shit long enough for the snipers to do their thing. Granted if I'm doing everything right, it'll be BGM on those waves because I've decided that I'm throwing AGS+2B out at any uhlans I get in the first four waves. I know it's not ideal, but the anti striker team can manage without 2B support. If I do have to do AGS+2B, I do have to retreat the bottom HG because it the death of the tank down there is pretty close to the time it can ram in ram into that spot. Not a huge lose when considering at this point all strelets are dead, taunt is still up and it's K5, so the damage she is putting on 250 armor is kind of a joke. I don't think the lost like 1-20 damage retreating her will make the difference.
-Anti-striker teams, well all I can say is fuck these strikers. I think worst case the first team could manage four waves if it has too. The second one might also be able to do that. At that point, I think I could manage a 10 straight wave of the bastards with the anti-rain team and/or anti-uhlan team with it's taunt fairy towards the end. it probably won't be pretty. Never thought I would dread that wave more than uhlans and gundams.
First one is
G36 C-MS
Ribeyerolls Ro
Groza
Debating if I should switch Ro to off tank position. Granted I do shuffle them at the start because I wanted Ro's buffs on all the SMGs. Plus, have to wonder if it would be better to go back to either FAL, bring Zas or RFB instead of Groza. SMGs taking a beating so I might be doing something wrong in that regards.
Second teams is
AN-94 MP7
RFB UMP45
Zas
This one seems to do okay. Big issue is that neither tank has a gold exo. I probably should check the anti-gundam team because if there is one there, it would be better off here.
Also had enough reports after leveling ZAS and RFB, to take JS05, who was lvl 4 and QBU who was at lvl 6, to lvl 50. So that gave me an advantage doll bonus of 19.5% instead of the like 16.7% I was getting yesterday.
As for further tweaks. I'm leaning towards any additional data either going into 2B's 3rd or 2nd skill. Third skill is lvl 8 IIRC and I think the 2nd skill might be lvl 3. 2B is often deployed against strikers and uhlans, so boosting both her kill capability against unshielded stuff and likely nerfing the damage on what she fails to kill will help both with strikers and also uhlans. Finally, running Kar, JS05 and QBU through 0-2 because any extra levels I get on them is going to get me a higher score. Only downside is I realize they may change up what's advantaged, but I see this as the best avenue to claw my way back below 10% (currently at 12%). I figure there are people ahead of me who either don't have enough of the advantage units or willing to raise them up to a point that would allow them to stay ahead of me. I figure that's going to be more reliable than banking on people either stopping once they hit 400K points and clear core 8 (no doubt today is likely the day we start noticing that if it's a thing), miss a day or more, get bad RNG with waves or get bad RNG with betting, while I have good RNG with betting. Then also hope that I get really good RNG, like a core 8 run with 10 waves of purely strelets because they can't really damage M16, while not get hit with a setup that I can overcome twice in a day.
I'm also going to try rushing AT4 to the best of my ability, but my only source of quick access to special combat reports is burning surplus exp, which means I need to run stuff, have batteries and wait 4 hours for it. If I don't end up in a spot where I decide I'd prefer another stack of regular combat reports, which is what happened today because I only had 102 on hand and advantaged dolls for expeditions change tomorrow. So I did want to make sure I had enough to hopefully ensure that the lowest doll on the next expedition is lvl 50. Still going to try rushing AT4 since her skills don't matter for pierce damage out put and at level 60 it's feasible to get 300 piece on her, which makes her better for killing uhlans than AGS. There is the trade off, of doing less damage to everything else, but the only time where I've had AGS deployed against a swarm like wave is rodeleros because I wanted to make sure their shields get stripped so that none of them can get a second laser attack off because that's where time gets messy and things get damaged.
For people looking advice.
-Focus on clearing wave as much HP conserved as possible. Based on what I'm reading fore Ceia and others that have been CE padding the returns are pretty bad. It's not nothing, but it's looking like the difference between some that pulls off the maximum amount of CE padding and the person that manages to run with the bare minimum CE to clear Core 8 without too much pain is going be a few hundred points. So it only really matters if you're shooting for the top 100 and likely won't be the difference between being 1% lower and where you end up at. What matters for a good score is increasingly looking like:
Clearing 2 waves of Core 8 everyday that it is open with plenty of health left >> Barely clearing 2 waves of Core 8 everyday that it is open > getting the full advantage doll bonus > getting some of the advantage doll bonus = remembering turn in all your materials before the event ends > getting some sort of return on your scouting bets >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> CE padding.
I didn't include everything in that, but if your struggling with stuff, CE padding is the last thing to worry about. Treat it like a luxury. I'm not that heartbroken over folding up my SGMG team for a second anti-striker wave because getting blocked from completing one or two Core 8 runs is going to cost me thousands of points, to the point where I might as well have run Core 6 instead because it's probably less than 40 points that echelon adds to my score. I'll throw best score out for the day and we'll see how that compares to some CE padded scores and not that it does likely take a hit from lost links on the anti-striker teams. 31423 and I don't think this is being tainted by padding from the SGMG team I had yesterday because we had a 40% point deduction. I know I might likely pull ahead of a ton of people who have an anti-striker team that can't hack against more than 4 waves and they decided to roll the dice hoping the game doesn't give them a run where the fifth or sixth striker wave mows down all their echelons or ensures they no longer have the dps to get past gundams and uhlans.
Taking advantaged of advantaged doll bonus is a bit harder to make a call on. Depends on where you have issues, what you have raised and how your other shit fairs against things. I suspect I might be in an edge case because my gear and what I have guarantees that I'll get more points running a spectator echelon with two SGs & three advantaged rifles. If I did a third anti-striker echelon, it wouldn't be able to likely manage more than 1 wave, maybe two depending on support because it would be entirely in green gear and green gear that hasn't been enhanced. That's probably what my anti-rain team can manage and it might fair better, so it's too my advantage to have an echelon that can fight that just boosts my score by nearly 20%. So people are going o have to make judgement calls, if a 6th combat echelon would be the difference and you can't run advantaged dolls as spectator, then go that route. Advantaged dolls do work better if you've raised them to be combat ready because they do get a stat bonus.
Also if you're concerned about RNG screwing you because you get a mix of seven waves that are either uhlans or gundams. I would suggest testing the waters to see if you can manage with AGS+2B against gundams. If not, or you don't want to test it, get AT4 to 60 and hooked up with chips that get her pierce to 300. Unless you get a gundam, you really don't want to use BGM on the first four waves because if you don't need her for non-gundams for the first four waves, then you're set to kill them in the last 6. I don't know if AT4+2B would hack it.
Same deal with fairy use, if you're relying on taunt for uhlans waves. You'll probably want to suck it up for the first four waves, if they aren't uhlans and even if they re strikers. If the game already acutely made you aware of your lack of S.A.T 8 and to a less extend FP-6 (she has a similar deal to S.A.T 8, but not as good), you probably don't want to be reminded of that again because you pop airstrike on the first striker wave, which is wave 1, and then get six waves of uhlans and have to deal with the last without taunt fairy's skill.
On that not, if you have S.A.T 8 and FP-6 properly raised, that be the best SG combo for uhlans waves and likely makes the taunt fairy unneeded. If you're good enough, you rotate their shields so you have as much shield uptime as possible. FP-6 also has a knockback and uhlans can be knocked back. So you could not only reduce damage and stall for time thanks to the shields, but also by knocking shit back and forcing it to waste time on moving back into position. If you only have S.A.T 8 or FP-6 and no other SGs that shield themselves, you might want to grab your best SG with knock back that is lvl 90 or higher. This assumes that your backline can dish out enough damage. Though if you can do that, that does give you a ton of flexibility with fairy command usage. You can for instance only use them on airstrike till you hit a point where you know you can pop a fairy skill for each remaining wave. You also have the option in this scenario to pop fairy commands in the first six waves because you're not reliant on them and this approach means you can conserve links on you units for the final waves. IMO if fairy commands become optional, then it's better to go into wave 10 with full links and some scratch damage without fairy skill support, than to go into wave 10 with fairy skill support, but your dolls are missing links.
wow 2 days to get this taunt fairy to level 9. maybe i'll just pump the breaks at 8 and use it for a while like this. my rifle team desperately needs any sort of tank for those green shield guys in 6.
A nice thing with theater, is that it doesn't care if the unit is on expeditions, doing logistics, in for repair or training. If you think that taunt fairy needs more training, you can start that training and still have access to it for your core 6 runs.
A nice thing with theater, is that it doesn't care if the unit is on expeditions, doing logistics, in for repair or training. If you think that taunt fairy needs more training, you can start that training and still have access to it for your core 6 runs.
oh i didn't know that applied to faries too. i guess i should have assumed since it works for tdolls heh. i'll huck a couple hundred floppy discs at it and use it tomorrow, should help avoiding rng sadness
edit: hooray i finally got klin to drop. next step is to get a costume so i don't go to jail whenever i want a molotov smg....
Well almost got screwed out of two core 8 runs because of shitty weather and dominion energy being garbage. Managed to get on during the window between maintenance conclusion and the ceasefire. As of right now, now at 10% overall in ranking and 40% for final boss fight. This tells me a ton of people have either decided they'd rather try competing for the final score or more likely got too greedy and aren't getting two full clearings. Granted, I also suspect a good chunk of the discrepancy could be a result of scouting results, but iirc my batting average has been average for that. So I'll still get more points than I would have gotten from construction, but I not entirely. Guess I'll see if my continued efforts get me into 9% after the ceasefire.
My score for today was 31914. I'd like to get to 3200 tomorrow but I was only able to boost my score by a little less than 400 compared to yesterday. Not sure how much more I can eek out tomorrow because I'm pretty sure I'm not getting JS05, Kar and QBU to 80, which would boost my advantage bonus (I want to say it was something like 21.5% today with them all at 70 now, need to do the math on that) and let me give them cloaks for added CE padding. I do think running them throw 0-2 has been the way to go, since my plan was to get every unit to max level at some point. Kar and QBU have uses, it's just JS05 that probably isn't optimal at all to level right now. In addition to leveling them, I switched up some drones and have fury back on the bench since I haven't needed the backup team for the past two days and noticed that my lvl 78 1* paradrop gives more straight damage and evasion, than my 2* lvl 59 fury. Also with that echelon sitting out, paradrop is more CE as well and if they are just bench warming, might as well pad. Been trying to get xp on the airstrike, don't know if she is at a threshold where the next level translates into some added stats or not, but figure it can't hurt because anything gained would help on striker waves. Burning fodder chips on BGM to get more pierce and some reload, while burning them on 2B by trying to get mostly lethality, with some pierce. Level AGS because at this point, don't think AT4 would help me if I got 7 gundams and AGS+2B clears tanks. Also got some added skill levels on 2B, CM-S and RO. I figure I'll look into further enhancing of silencers on RO and CM-S, while considering further enhancement of the HP ammo on Python, Five-Seven and x4, but think keeping tanks alive on strikers is probably the best option.
Plan is to max CM-S's skill tomorrow after getting the daily bundle. Then probably drag the three advantaged dolls more. I mean leveling them seems to be paying off through the bonus and the gained CE on them. I just don't know if I'll take them past lvl 90. I think I would need all three at lvl 100 for the full bonus and I could probably do that in 6 days, but unless I get a ton of snowfields and decide to burn combat reports, just don't see how they hit lvl 100 in a way where I can get enough of a noticeable benefit for the remaining days. Lvl 90 is probably the last big boost and with how wonky CE weights are, it probably won't net me much more in the way of points than hitting lvl 80. I'm hoping RNG will just dump the last of the stuff I need to get both AGS and 2B to 5*, since that would probably get me a good chunk of CE.
Also kind of laughing at the scoreboard because I don't think focusing on CE padding is paying off for most and would argue the rewards from that are probably not as good as total score. The data bundle alone probably beats the 4x resource reward, then there is the AT4 data, which might do the same thing, as well as the special combat reports. Batteries are a YMMV and capsules might as well not exist. I'd like to be higher on the final battle board, but not going to risk the total point score. Hence why I'll probably stick with the 2nd anti-striker team, instead of redeploying another echelon of SGs & MGs padding my CE. I think my main anti-striker team can manage 5 striker waves, but I know if I get the 7 plus wave, not having that second team will screw me. All that said, I do hope they take another look at the whole CE thing because it's dumb that white slugs are better than a bunch of gold equips for CE padding and while the CE padding isn't much if people can afford to go for it, they will and it's just dump that rewards what should be pretty bad choices.
So I got M4A1 to 110 finally after what felt like a billion 0-2 runs and some reports. What sort of teams do you usually use her with? I assume you want two handguns you retreat right before her skill comes online, and then maybe either 2 smgs for buffs or an smg/ar for better damage?
It depends on what you're doing. Sometimes you put her in a fairly ordinary AR/SMG team alongside STAR15 and maybe SOPMOD. Sometimes you put her alongside two other dolls in a three man echelon for some kinda hands off AFK farming team. Sometimes you put her in a team of four handguns to buff her. Or sometimes you pair her with a rifle and three handguns.
When you go all in on buffing the railgun, you often set M4's skill to manual activation since it has a 4 second ICD. Then, once the handguns activate their buffs (usually 6 seconds), retreat two handguns and activate the skill. The railgun scales better with firepower and rate of fire buffs instead of crit because of how the damage is calculated (IIRC the main hit can't crit, but the AOE can?).
During Continuum Turbulence, the popular team for taking down the boss and the most powerful gundams was M4/M14 mod 3/Stetchkin/Calico/Mk23. Sometimes people talk about "Double Jupiter" teams, and they're talking about pretty much the same setup except IWS2000 instead of M14.
One AFK farming team for 10-4E is M4 in position 3, Grape in position 1, and virtually any doll that you want to drag along for XP in position 2.
Posts
I might have to see if I can get some higher firepower rifles up to par before theater ends because my formation was Wa, SVD, calico, KSG and M37. Then deploying taunt fairy. Things are okay while taunt is up, but go south when it dies because stuff just stays alive too long. I'm wondering if I might have better luck with a RFHG team, dropped the SGs and bring in maybe python and grizzly. Don't know if that would get me enough dps to kill the everything before taunt goes down or soon after. I could get NTW modded today and get some levels on her 2nd skill, not sure how much that would help but she is an option. Might also be able to get M200 to 90, but again not sure if I could get enough skill levels on her. Pretty sure I might be able to clear core 8, if I could get a solid anti-Uhlan team because the current one can do one at best, maybe two before it's no good.
Also Uhlans are the main reason I'm frustrated that the server went for 6 echelons instead of the max fairy commands because I'm pretty sure a ton of people hoping to pad their score with CE padded stuff and advantaged dolls in echelons 5 and 6 got their shit kicked in by either those or gundam waves that have max shields and arrive in sets off 4 per wave. Though I'm also reading that the strikers are giving people trouble. Pretty much seeing lots of cases where another fairy skill use would be the clincher for people on the cuff. Also given that I'm at 9% in ranking, we'll see where I fall off to when they update things, I'll be surprised if I'm still in the top 10%. On the other hand, probably some really stubborn and reckless commanders that got wrecked into the first fight and used all three of their attempts for scores below 10K. I'd wager a ton of people are in my shoes, they don't likely don't have enough units to scamper by in core 8 on that 6th echelon, assuming they do 6 full combat echelons and not point padding ones. There is probably a set of those that could have squeaked by with access to taunt/airstrike/artillery skill for a sixth wave. IMO I think people probably underrate artillery fairy for theater. She gives an insane FP buff, which is going to help kill gundams, which you want gun ASAP and I'm comfortable saying her skill is going to hit the first gundam. Mine is at lvl 6 right now and does I believe 800 damage and that ignores armor. Also pretty sure at worst there is enough shielding up that that damage gets reduced by 20-30%, that's still a huge chunk of health in the worst case scenario. Though I think more often than not, that gundam eats the full damage, which means my rifles are spending less time on it and moving on to the next one. That's going to be huge with waves that have four of them. I suspect at lvl 10, it probably outright kills or comes damn close to wiping out any strelets in the blast radius. So that's less stuff you need to count on handguns to deal with and less stuff that will eat HoC rounds that you might want on gundams.
Edit: Occurs to me, I might actually have what I need to kill gundams and uhlans but I'd have to adjust my anti-gundam team and include M4 and then get use to properly deploying her cannon. Then figuring out which AR to throw into my flagship ARSMG echelon, since I use that to kill the day waves that are best dealt with using ARSMGs. That's assuming that either lee or m14 mod 3 would be enough for the M4 cannon squad's rifle needs. Would probably still need another high fp rifle for the anti-uhlan team and probably run that as RFHG because I don't think I could make SGs work, not without having ones that have shield skill to completely negate tank charges, so I can keep the tanks away from the rest of the echelon. Damn shame there isn't a good spot to test this stuff out on. ><
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
SRS lvl 60, SL1. self buffs FP and accuracy
M200 lvl 59, almost 60. SL1 mod 2 is suppose to be a substitute for grape, just not as good.
NTW lvl 95, almost 96. SL5 I guess best described as a self buff FP and accuracy rifle, that can also debuff stuff.
Pretty sure I only have enough combat reports on hand right now to get one of those to the level I need it to be useful against Uhlans. I know if I dump all 435 combat reports I have now, I'd be 4 levels short of 90 on SRS. I have some of today and most of tomorrow to do more leveling and hope I can get more gifts of the snowfield to buy out more reports because there is still like 100 or so on the blackmarket for me and I think I have enough gifts of the snowfiled to grab another 100 reports. If I go with this, I'm looking at making the team a RFHG, since no way I'm getting my only shield SG up in time for that, if I level these guns and I'm pretty sure I need either an SG that can get shields on two targets or two SGS with there own shields, so M870 won't cut it. Skill level is a concern. Though if I go with RFHG, I'll probably run with calico to help with accuracy, python who It think might be getting enough stuff at 4 that she makes a difference and grizzle for more firepower. Granted with machine guns out, that does leave Mk23 and K5 as other possible choices. Anyone have any thoughts? I'm going to push levels on these units anyways because they'll help with the next story event. So advice would just help me decide whether it's worth using reports and data on these units now or save it for later. I'll probably have to burn off my surplus energy because I've been burning through data prepping for theater and most of it has been burned on HoCs.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Do you have any of the following?
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I wasn't here for Valhalla, so don't have Sei. Is Pasta another from that event or is that a nick name for another gun? No luck getting a twin fairy, I've been getting fairy crafts up to the point that I'm seeing at least three fairies a week. Probably either have increase the fairy roster capacity or start feeding all my subpar warrior fairies to paradrops. To the point where it's not worth blowing calibration tickets on new fairies that can be acquired with the base fairy recipe, not unless they roll dmg 1 and might be out the point where it should be fervor, dmg II or bust.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Twin fairy kind of trivializes the Uhlan teams since their attacks aren't very good against them. Allegedly taunt fairy is similarly effective to a lesser degree. I confirmed that Twin fairy trivialized tanking the Uhlans, but that does eat up fairy commands.
Another approach that shuts Uhlans down is shielded SG's. Uhlans utilize AOE attacks, so shields+armor=defanged attack. One common play that I've seen reported is to set Pasta's shield to manual, put shotguns into positions 9 and 3, and then trigger the shield every time that the Uhlans forecast a ram attack. Sei also projects a shield around your team and can be used in a similar fashion. I ran both Sei and Pasta on my team, and the two shields alternated with enough uptime that my tanks were barely scratched. In Isomer we'll get HS2000, who will do an arguably better job of shielding the team than Sei.
Here are my teams. I'm probably going to try to refine them a bit tomorrow.
1: Anti-gundam squad.
2: Anti-Uhlan squad
3: Backup anti-striker squad
4: Primary anti-striker squad
5: Anti-Rain team (M4's skill set to manual)
6: CE padding
Gameplan for specific enemies:
Gundams:
I'd read that people were having problems with Grape wasting her nuke on the fully shielded gundams, so I decided to go for more sustained DPS over her nuke. The team works, but I activated the fairy skill, BGM, and AGS to do it. I wiggle Elphelt back and forth between 5 and 6 while the rifles do their thing.
I'm contemplating replacing IWS with Lee, Grape, M200, or maybe an manual activation NTW mod 3? I'm also contemplating replacing elphelt with another HG for further buffs, but I kinda wanted someone with shields to tank chip damage from the strelets.
Uhlans:
Activate AGS, move both shotguns into positions 9 and 3, then go AFK while the rifles do their thing. I can probably clear this with any HOC activation whatsoever, even 2B14 maybe. They just tanked the fight that well.
Strikers:
Activate 2B14, shuffle the tanks to do the thing where MDR memes her shield onto both tanks, kite RO forward to draw some initial fire before withdrawing, and then Suomi dodges the world once her skill kicks in.
Prowlers:
Let the team fight everything to maximize fire downrange at those dinergates before they can into melee range. Withdraw STAR before the mortar hits her. Game set and match. No fire supported needed from fairy commands or HOCs
Rodeleros:
Move M4 to position 2 and M16 to position 6. Dodge M16 to position 3 whenever a rodlelro leaps into laser position, and then return once it is safe. No fire support needed.
Strelet swarm:
Do a little kiting with M16 between 5 and 6. Retreat STAR and Vector once vector tosses her molotov. Manually activate M4 to bring the Railgun into play. No fire support needed.
All in all I'm pretty happy. I only need to use fairy commands against the Gundams. Which is a fortunate thing today since I had to burn one of my retreats because I bumbled a fight while experimenting with teams, and then on my final run I went up against five gundam squads.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I probably should lvl MDR at some point, since those shields would really help on some waves. Upside is I have managed to get Ro to 90 and have her at SL7, so I probably should use her in my anti-striker team. Probably pair her up with MP7 maybe. Also probably should put the anti-rain team together, with vector as the other SMG because that works really well against rodleros. Probably, shouldn't waste fairy or HoC commands on them, unless it's a late enough wave that I can afford to do so and still have everything I need for later waves, in the event that every wave afterwards needs them. My anti-gundam team is still M14 mod 3, Lee, Five-Seven, Storm and Contender, with artillery as the support fairy. I'm reasonable sure that will still work out in core 8, but who knows because I had to retreat around wave 3 because of two back to back uhlan waves.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
MP7 basically fills the same role as Suomi. MP7 is arguably better at the job, but Suomi does have a bit more HP and she's advantaged for this particular fight.
The anti-rain team as I've built it has performed absolutely amazingly against the Prowlers, Rodleros, and Strelet swarms. M16 is amzing at tanking Strelets, however note that I have her equipped with a maxed out SPEQ and exo, which I think barely puts her at the threshold where Strelet attacks get reduced to 1. If I didn't have M16 available, I'd probably use a shotgun to stand up against all of that Strelet fire. The only downside with shotguns is that the timing to dodge away from Rodelero beams is much tighter.
edit:
incase it wasn't obvious, this is the formation I'm running. I'm using a 4* sniper fairy, but that's mostly for CE padding reasons. I'm sure the accuracy helps a bit, but other fairies would provide more potent boosts.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Probably hold off on putting more stuff into skills for HoCs and artillery fairy. I only have 34 advance data and intermediate is running low. Plus, if I can wing those two rifles, I'll want data for them. Upside is from what I understand, both SRS and M200 will likely have uses in the next story event and we do get future theaters. So it's not wasted investment. Hell, might go for the RFHG team that just wastes Uhlans before taunt fairy dies and have the double shield SG with rifles and spare HG for waves where I don't or can't afford to blow points on taunt fairy. Actually, have to wonder how many people foolishly burned resources getting a six echelon to point padding, only to get wrecked because they got hit with 6 waves that they needed fairy commands for.
Edit: I also forgot that I have IWS at lvl 90, fully linked and with SL8. With K5 in the mix, she probably would hit stuff. So maybe that's my other rifle to pair with M200.
Thinking hgs will be Mk23, Python and K5. Can't get all the buffs on Python with standard layout, but can get every buff but M200's tiles on her and that should make her into a good force multiplier to kill stuff. Layout would probably be
M200 Mk23
Python K5
IWS
IWs would miss out on Mk23's tile buffs, but I think if I understand Python's mechanics, she would get some of the benefit for Mk23's active ability. Not to mention, she needs the accuracy boost from K5, 30% is nothing to sneeze out. Python will probably get enough of a boost that she does a decent job at murdering strelets hopefully, since she won't do more than scratch damage against Uhlans with their like 250 armor. Granted K5's active skill for her is kind of useless because ideally she is never at risk of being shot, on the other hand she does pass that along to K5 and Mk23 who may need it.
Other handguns that I have are Welrod, who probably isn't going to be of much help her with her skill. Spitfire, which doesn't work for boosting Python and her skill probably doesn't help much; especially, with 2B sitting on SL7 for her third skill (which essentially does the same thing). SAA which might be a good option instead of Python, she has SL6. I've got Jericho at 90 as well, but on top of being SL1, her stuff doesn't look like it would work. PPK at SL3. Grizzly at SL8. Calico also at SL8.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Maybe I'll still be in the top 15%. We'll see how things go, I get the impression that there are some people right where I'm at and others both ahead and behind me on ranking that won't stick this out on a daily basis. They probably hit 400K points are stop or go till they can get core 8. So things are probably going to be in high flux at this point for ranking where I'm at.
Not sure I'll make further attempts at core 8 though. I think my issue probably comes down to not having enough firepower from fairies for RFHG setups and no way I'm getting SGs raised in time for the other strategy and that would require S.A,T. 8 showing up in my next heavy craft. Upside is that M200 being raised to 90 on reports and getting quick trained to SL8 isn't going to be a waste either.
Edit: I'm an idiot, forgot to enhance M200. So maybe I do have a shot at killing uhlans. So guess I'll be trying Core 8 again tomorrow with my free retreat. Will need to put together another anti-striker term. First one will probably need to go back to having UMP45 as the lead tank. RO got trashed. Still now idea if my anti-Gundam team can hack it at Core 8 because I've yet to see one of those on any of my runs.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
If it's just Uhlans, then you could try using your daily free retreat to try to clear core 8 in the hopes that you don't encounter any. Once M200 is online, you could try using her alongside some other strong rifle to try to deal with the Uhlans. Maybe the taunt fairy might be able to buy enough time for the rifles to do their thing. Maybe try using a team that goes all out throwing buffs on M4's railgun, or buffing M4 and M200? Remember that you need to set M4's raligun to manual activation to get the most out of it. Let the HG's pop their skills, then withdraw to dolls and manually trigger the railgun.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Through both assaults today, I only saw strikers, tanks & gundams. There were 0 strelet swarms, prowlers & Rodeleros. I have clearly been slacking on my sacrifices to RNGesus.
My anti-Uhlan squads did better today because I removed the shotguns and just increased FP buffing. Went way better than with SAT8 & M870 on the frontline.
Also, seeing General_armchair mention that grape is shooting its load off too early made me realize I shouldn't pair the cano sisters together since strawberrycano speeds up RFs. Switching to M14 mod 2 has made my gundam killing go much more consistently now.
I'll give it a try tomorrow again because when I did my run today, I forgot to enhance M200, so she probably had lvl 30 states. I also paired her up with IWS, Python, K5 and Mk23. So if that doesn't do the trick, I'll have to consider reworking the echelon. I know I'd probably want to scrounge up a second anti-striker team because I'll likely need it.
Uhlans are just fucking awful partly because they have 250 armor, which is well above what we can hope to achieve with armor penetration. Old servers had all their AP stuff buffed because I think the devs realized that armor was getting to a point where it was a problem, given that there were few options around it.
If I can't get it tomorrow because of not having enough damage, it'll probably be a sign that I just don't have high enough rarity fairies. I've noticed the stat boost from each star is pretty significant.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I still feel like my anti-gundam squad is a bit of a weak link since I opt to consume charges of fairy commands, AGS, and BGM. I tried using Grape instead of IWS today, and grape continually let me down by nuking the fully shielded gundam. I think I'll give grape one more try tomorrow with her skill set to manual activation so that I can hold it in reserve while fully shielded gundams are within range. I'm also thinking that running Elphelt as a tank may be a mistake, since I'm hearing reports of people just running buffing handguns and clearing the wave pretty cleanly. All of that said, the formation does work, has proven itself capable of clearing at least five gundams, and scores higher than normal since Elphelt is a shotgun with slugs so she scores better than a handgun. The concern is running out of AGS/BGM charges if I run into huge sums of gundams and uhlans.
In other news, my anti-striker team cleared out seven strikers in one run today. I was anxious on the seventh since I had exhausted all of my 2B14 charges. However, since I hadn't been encountering many gundams, I had excess charges of AGS/BGM and fairy commands. RO635 and Suomi only lost two links each over the course of the seven fights. In light of this, I think that I'm going to retire my backup striker team tomorrow and fill it with an MG/SG team for more stat padding.
My top score for the final battle run today was 32801.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Guess I'll find out if IWS & M200 (actually enhanced) will do the trick. I suppose the other issue, is if I lack dps, it could come down to not having HoCs high enough, but all of mine are at 80. Have had their stats enhance, have chips, some of which have been enhanced and have had skill trained up. Though I'll admit I'm a bit worried about pierce on BGM since it's not 500, might need to see if I can get there with a different chip setup. I'm not a fan of HoC tetris because you pretty much do have to do a ton of work or use a calculator to figure out what the optimal setup is between the chips you have. It really should be much more intuitive. Have to wonder if they'll revisit this part of HoCs in an update because I think the team has stated they've been unhappy with this aspect of HoCs.
I know once theater is done and I get the original HoCs to 100. I'll work on get the new one there as well and hopefully, in a spot where I could field her in theater instead of AGS. I like AGS and it'll be a bit before the new HoC can be on par, but here issue is that she is jack of all trades and there are solutions for killing masses of things that don't require HoCs. Sadly if you need shield breaking, HoCs are the only option and if you get 7+ waves of gundams and/or uhlans you need an alternative to BGM. Also theater makes AGS best strength irrelevant because she is great for saving AP on maps, while still hitting things you want destroyed and this is huge with structures.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Anti gundam team did as well I expected it to. Need to be a bit more on the ball with retreating contender so five-seven eats a little less damage. Kind of butt clinch moment towards the end because I see the squares light, but gundms die before everything AoEd. Probably helps that I retreat the front handguns.
Anti-rain team performs solidly against rodeleros and strelets.
The anti-striker is only really good against two waves without airstrike. Longer if they get airstrike support and HoC support. Dumped Ro for UMP45, who seems to work better, but still.
All said, if I hadn't made rookie mistakes yesterday, I might have had everything I need to clear Core 8, which would have been the time to do it with what I had because I would have gotten a really good score and been solidly in the top 10%, maybe 7%, instead of 13%. I'll probably drop a bit more because my best score today was like 3-4k less than what I get in Core 6 because of the damage I take against strikers. So probably just worth my while to finish this out on Core 6 and hope that I don't drop down further, maybe I'll climb back up some because people either don't do things everyday once they hit 400K points and get Core 8. Or get people that really like to gamble and are barely pulling through, so they are one disastrous run away from falling way behind me. Plus, probably some people that are getting really bad scores on their Core 8 clears, that don't get they could be scoring better with Core 6 clears. On the other hand, also not getting the full 24% bonus for advantaged dolls because I only have three of them for core 8. Don't know if they'll rotate advantage dolls at any point, so maybe it'll be worth going back in if I an go from 16.5% to 24% bonus; especially, if I can get another anti-striker team. On the hand, I'd be completely fucked if I get 7+ waves of uhlans because I need that taunt fairy and I'd be hosed if it was 7 waves that needed BGM. So that might be reason enough to not go back and push my luck. Once the retreat is gun, I'm pretty much committed to the fight.
Edit: also threw FAL in place of Groza for anti-striker waves and I think her grenades helped there. Really wish I had raised Zas because she probably would have been a better option with her 3s windup time on grenade launch. Then have FAL in the back up squad.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I’m just doing my dailies now since I don’t think I desperately need more ARs except like AN-94. It’s hgs and rifles that’ll help me most so yea I’m saving for that general rate up. I’m at like 70k resources and 200 contracts rn.
I should hunger down and get the new HoC up to speed. I'm already training her first skill, but I think I'll want her for next theater instead of AGS, so I have a high pierce option if I get 7+ waves of stuff that needs it. IMO, they really should have a thing in there code that limits people to go only 6 waves that either have uhlans or gundams. It's really bad on this theater because there are so many in a position where getting the new HoC up really wasn't an option because their other HoCs still needed levels and they had tons of stuff that needed training. I'm not a huge fan of how 7+ waves of those things could really screw people over because getting to a point to kill gundam, uhlan and striker waves is already a huge time commitment.
I'll have to sit down and write up some feed back for theater. Probably need to create a new twitter account because I'm not going to us FB and there in game response has been very unsatisfactory. The UI for theater needs work. The biggest issue I have with it is that once you're in the formation creation you don't have anything that tells you what difficulty you're on. Not unless you go memorize which bosses we get and that only helps if there is a boss and IMO not much because you don't have to worry about bosses. If you get to a boss wave, that's free points. They really should list out the difficulty because yes, people can and have clicked on the wrong thing. The toughest units should also be displayed first, don't make people scroll down to see the units they need to care about, this also makes at a glance info more helpful. If uhlans still kick your ass, you'll know you missed clicked if you look over and see their icons. I also wouldn't mind the menu having a setup where it lists your best score for a map, but also lists the last score you got. This would help people like me that finally broke into Core 8 because again, I forgot that it lists best score and my best score is going to beat what I can get now on Core 8 because that isn't eating a 40% reduction. Also wish they gave units we deployed against waves some exp. I fine with no exp for the units that don't get used, but it's a bummer that none of the units used get anything.
All that said, need to fold up the SGMG echelon that I had on there for point padding. I can get through striker waves with the current group and the anti-rain team if I get a ton of them, but it isn't pretty. So I need to throw together a second anti-striker team.
Current one UMP45, MP7, FAL (think the three grenades help), G36 and Ribeyerolls. My choices for a second group aren't great because I don't have enough gold HV ammo, probably have to take the one off of M16, so that at least someone in the second group has one. Also only have one free gold PEQ left and don't plan on taking the ones on the HGs in the anti-uhlan team, they need those to burn strelets down to keep the taunt fairy alive. I do have the reports to get ZAS to 90, not sure how high I would need to get her skill to make it worth using her because it's level 1. Also if I can get another 160 reports, I could get RFB to lvl 90, but would need to raise her skill from lvl 1. On the other hand, she might do well enough at a low skill level. Not sure if she would help because I'm too focused on making sure I do the shuffle right with UMP45 and MP7 that they delay things before retreating and don't take too much damage. MP7 imo is taking to much. Though RFB could alleviate that some if most of the damage is strikers and not the brutes. The other AR I'd take might actually be AN-94, I think here skill would let her get more damage out than groza quicker and I don't believe those units are armored. For SMGs my choices are UMP9, RO and G36c (a shield going in after the first SMG might work here since that might give them enough time to pop the shield and delay before retreating. SMG also have the issue of probably getting stuck with green gear and maybe not having AP rounds, but then they are being remove so fast and moving so much that it likely doesn't matter.
Anyone have any thoughts on my striker setup? worth keeping in mind that I do have Groza, G41 and G11 all at level 100 with at least SL8 or higher. I'm open to the idea that maybe I should move something else into the first team or tweak the potential second team some. Don't think I could put out a third team, so echelon 6 will have to be a point padder.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
First of all definitely take that gold ammo off of M16 and put it on another DPS doll. M16 doesn't have the scopes that the other dolls get, so she's low priority for getting the good stuff.
For the striker matchup, it's easier said than done but the goal is to do everything in your power to mitigate the hailstorm of damage from the strikers. The brutes aren't much of a threat compared to the strikers. The three main approaches are to stack evasion, debuff the enemy, and kill the strikers as soon as you can. I'm going to list some examples, but when crafting an anti-striker team you're going to want to combine as many
Stacking evasion:
Obviously you'll want some tile buffs or even fairy buffs to assist your main tank, but the main tank should be one that is also known for its evasion. I've heard reports of people using unconventional SMGs with extreme evasion stats like IDW and Spectre to good effect, but it's unlikely that anyone but those doll's biggest fans will have them leveled. RO635 is excellent for the fight because she sports a strong evasion buff with a short ICD that also debuffs enemy damage. CMS is a popular choice since her skill lets her boast a 100% uptime of boosted evasion. Suomi and MP7 are great since they have extremely potent evasion buffs, while the drawback of their long ICD is mostly tempered by the fact that the strikers don't quite get into range until the 5 second mark or so.
I haven't heard of anyone using the force shield SMGs, but if your maintank can manage to hold out for the first 8 seconds then they'll certainly be able to hold the fort for the next four, which should mark the conclusion of the battle.
One more thing that sorta but not really falls under evasion. When you retreat a doll, the strikers will keep shooting at it for a few moments. That will buy you a half a second or so before the next doll in line starts getting shot at. Retreating of your offtank can save your maintank some HP, and retreating the maintank can save her some more chip damage HP once your DPS have ensured that the fight will end before the remaining stragglers can target your backline.
Debuffs:
Apply some kind of negative effect to the enemy to debuff their damage output. Some popular examples:
Firepower:
Either you want to stack maximum DPS to clear out the enemies quick, or you want to try to cheese your damage so that you can start depleting links from the strikers asap. Some popular choices:
https://files.catbox.moe/idi8hv.webm
Above is my anti-striker team and a link to a webm of them in action. It's supported by a 4* shield fairy with the Fervor talent. The reasoning behind each doll is as follows:
Shield Fairy: At 4*'s she provides a potent 55.2% evasion boost to my SMGs. This is THE reason that I'm using it. The damage buff is fairyly weak at 14.4%. The accuracy buff is pretty potent at 41.6%, but I'm not sure how much it's needed. Normally I won't use the skill at all, which saves on fairy commands. However the shield is nice for mitigating early chip damage if I have sufficient surplus commands to use it.
AN-94: She boasts very high DPS during the initial six seconds thanks to her passive, and her active is very strong. She provides an evasion boost to both SMGs with her tile buffs
MDR: She's here to boost the evasion of my SMGs to extreme heights. Her skill will buff my SMGs with a whopping +80% evasion and a 40 HP shield. The shield is nice but it's the evasion buff that I care about. Note: If multiple dolls "occupy" the tile in front of MDR when her skill procs, then the skill will buff every doll on the tile.
K11: She's a fast grenadier. Her skill is kinda random, but I hope that I get lucky with the RNG and that her skill will provide a spike of damage that yeets a mob out of existence at the six second mark. Also she buffs the evasion of Suomi.
Suomi: She has an extremely potent evasion self buff of +150% and a HUGE HP pool. Her base evasion is low, so we need to stall for some time to get her online. Also she's an advantaged doll for core8, so her evasion is boosted a bit higher thanks to that.
RO635: She's my offtank. Her skill comes on very quick and both boosts her evasion and debuffs enemy DPS. It's her job to draw fire until Suomi comes online.
The gameplan in a fight is as follows:
I'm not sure if my choice of DPS is optimal, but it was good enough to clear 7 waves of strikers and I'm pretty sure they could clear 10 waves of strikers so I don't really intend to try to optimize this echelon further.
As for the stuff you mentioned, first of all you didn't mention any fairies and those are super important. But if we were upgrading your primary anti-striker team, I would replace UMP45 with RO635 since I think that RO is better suited to stall for time until MP7's skill comes online. I would also replace FAL with either Groza, G11, or AN-94. The problem with FAL as I see it is that while her grenade has a short ICD, the animation itself is very slow. I also don't think that she benefits much from Ribey's skill. The direct damage ARs will quickly mop up the remaining brutes the moment ribey's skill goes off, and then they'll quickly start depleting links from the Strikers. I'm unsure if G36 should remain. Her skill does come online fast at 4 seconds to help clear up the Brutes. If she's G36 mod 3, then I think that she should stay thanks to the evasion boost of her second skill. If she's vanilla G36, maybe AN-94 or G11/Groza.
If you built a second anti-striker team, you could try using UMP-9 and G36C. There will probably be about a second or so between the strikers opening fire and the flashbang impacting. But the stun should buy time for G36C's shield to go off. This assumes ofcourse that the strikers are vulnerable to stuns, which I am not 100% sure of.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
As for teams, one thing I do like about theater is that it does force you to see what you have and I'm embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot my lvl 96 C-MS at SL8. I probably should us her as the main tank in the primary anti-striker team, and then go with your suggestion of RO as the off tank because lvl 90 at SL7 should be enough. I'll try moving Groza back in to the echelon instead of FAL. G36 is fully modded. So C-MS and RO might be able to do the whole survive without getting beat up too badly long enough for Groza to do her thing. Also will abandon the whole move an echelon up and back real quick. I suspect my machine is booting up the fights in such a way that by the time I see the screen, I don't have enough time to make that trick work because by the time I get the main tank up, the strikers are close enough that they are able to lock on and keep firing. Fairy will be a 2* Airstrike with SL10 because it's totally worth using, when I hit a point where I know I'm not screwing myself out of need taunt fairy usage. It has the dmg 1 talent. Also I can give C-MS gold AP ammo because that's one of the few equips that I have more than of enough of for core 8. HV ammo and PEQs were at enough, but with needing another anti-striker team for insurance that ups in smoke and poor M16 will have to surrender her HP ammo to probably AN-94 in team two.
G36 Ro
Ribeyerolls C-MS
Groza
As for anti-striker team 2. I think I'll run UMP45 and MP7. Move MP7 down when I have to retreat UMP45. I'm thinking that might give her enough time to chuck her grenade and if I retreat her, might get some shenanigans where the strikers are wasting shots firing at her as she retreats or start moving up without firing. Then for ARs, have AN-94 (lvl 10 and SL10) at position 7 to burst down brutes, RFB at 4 and with SL2 maybe burst down some strikers before they get in range. Then have Zas at 1, I think I can get her to SL5 or SL6. Granted FAL is lvl 10 and has SL10. As for fairies, I have one fury at lvl 49 now, 2* and SL1, if I have commands left, might as well burn them. She does the fervor talent. Also have a lvl 74 paradrop, 1* and dmg 1 talent. Also a lvl 77, illumination fairy at 2* with the dmg 1 talent. At this point, after like 20 0-2 runs, and more reports from the black market, probably can easily get both RFB, who is 84 now and ZAS, who is still lvl 30, to 90.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
edit:
Also, IMO I think MP7 may server you better on your main team. Pair her up with a "fast" evasion tank like RO or CMS. Stack your evasion buffs on MP7. If that means that you put her at 5, then swap SMG positions in the start of the match. You want the fast SMG tanking for the first few seconds, and then MP7 to swap in once she comes online.
edit2:
Also, stuff like Theater is why I'm still investing in my Armor fairy. Some people have told me "we don't need armor anymore. They're not meta. We're facing new enemies with armor piercing attacks that render armor obsolete." While I'm thinking that it will only take one boss or high value target to be weak to extremely highly stacked armor for it to pay off in spades. We had one boss like that with Garm. CN hasn't had another like it since then, but who knows what we'll get in a future event or Theater season?
I probably also should level up MP7 since she's arguably better than Suomi. But at least Suomi is advantaged this time around.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Also I'll dig it up, but someone has figured out how to stack enough armor on SGs to take a ton of bite out of the strikers and I guess they had a setup to mow brutes down really fast, since those are built to render armor moot. They were saying the highest damage they got from strikers was 10, it's still a lot, but that was the top end and most was like 2-3 IIRC. So it's probably always worth investing in side stuff if you can afford to because you never know when you get cheese interactions that let you deal with certain things in novel ways that are good enough, on par or better than the meta way.
I need to see which event we have next, I think it's isomer, which is still part of rifles frontline. I've been raising a ton of rifles because of theater and knowing that is coming up. Also raising TAC-50 because she can one shot the final boss in DJMAX if you do the right setup. I see that as both hilarious and I need to have one time where I completely face roll the fight with the final boss for great victory. Also lets you skip something that would be otherwise annoying and I don't think Mica will change things to prevent it, but they could.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
First there are three things I'm trying to figure out and I'll admit one is mostly irrelevant, but I'm curious about. There seems to be an indication not all stats are equal in value. Though the shear RNG of chip drawing probably makes it hard for the player to confirm this. Next, is if they do have an itemization formula, does one get more bang for their buck having four stats on a chip instead of one. Thus, if most of your chips rolled with four stats, you actually will hit the cap for the best stat, while getting most, if not, all of the other stops to cap. Putting you in a better spot than someone that is running a setup entirely of single or double stat chips. Finally, do they want a power reward for people that fill in the whole grid or to lock having perfect stats behind filling the whole grid?
Then there is what we know. Chips that cover more squares provide more stats per square than ones that cover less. Rarity means more stats. Shapes that make it more difficult to fill in the grid give more stats. You also get a bonus for color matching. Finally, as mentioned the shear RNG with what shows up on chips. Honestly, I think most people could deal with everything without an outside calculator, except for that very last thing; especially, if the answer two my first two quests are yes.
So first thing I'd probably do if I was redesigning HoCs to be more user friendly. I'd kill a good chunk of the RNG with chip drawing. All chips would give you two stats. So that people that have already invested a ton in HoCs don't get fucked. I'd add a structure in the intelligence room that players feed old incompatible chips into, and yes you'll want to make chips unusable until they get converted; especially, if the answer to my second question is yes. If a chip has two stats, it'll equalize them to be of similar itemization value. If the chip has only one stat, it'll give the player three choices that all have the original stat and then one other stat. If the chip has three stats, the player will be presented with a number of choices equal to all possible two stat combinations of the stats on the chip and chips with four stats would have the same deal. Then tack on a hidden one time quest that spits out a ton of calibration tickets, maybe have two or three. You want the free calibration tickets because this move is going to probably result in people having to redo their setup and people will rightfully complain about how it made their calibration ticket investment a waste. Also by having it hidden, you ensure that it's there for returning players that invested in HoCs, that were present when you drop the change, while also ensuring that you aren't giving tons of unwarranted calibration tickets to new players or creating a scenario where a new players constantly ask "how do I complete this quest, when it's impossible for them to get obsolete HoC chips. So you also want to make sure that people can't pull up the menu for that structure if they don't have any obsolete chips.
Next, figure out how filling in the whole grid should work. IMO, people probably should get additional stats for filling the whole thing in, but it shouldn't be the only way to cap stats. So maybe have some additional cosmetic effect for filling in the grid on top of whatever bonus stats are rewarded. It'll help with maintaining sanity for the few OCD players that will not only insist on filling that grid in, but also doing everything they can to maximize stats, even if that means they have stat points that will get cut off for being over the cap. I'd also maybe consider a setup where some amount of stat points are unlocked by filling in the grid. That could have a formula base on the rarity of the chip filling the square, the color, the size and the shape. I admit this could be counter productive to simplifying things, granted maybe that formula could be simplified so that it only factors in color & rarity. So maybe thing would be simpler if the player was guaranteed 60% of the total stats if they filled in the entire grid with 5* chips of the correct color, while playing tetris to maximize everything could get you 70% of total stats off of just the chips. Having 30% wiggle room could be too generous, but what the chips can cover alone without factoring in color bonus or grid fill in, should be higher given what a pain some chips can be to slot in. Don't think people should get punished in a way that result in being unable to get perfect stats because they have a few empty areas.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I might try shield tanks (g36c, thompson) tomorrow to see if that goes better.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
-I think anti-gundam team is every so slightly better now. M14 has a fully enhanced and calibrated gold cloak. I also went back redid BGM's chip setup so that they now has 540 pierce instead of like 488.
-Anti-uhlan team is doing better with M200 sporting a fully buffed gold cloak instead of a green one. I also took her from SL8 to SL9. Wondering if it might be worth getting her to SL10. AGS+2B can allow the team to kill uhlans before taunt fairy dies. So I'm probably good if I get more than 6 waves that need pierce, but likely screwed if I get more than six uhlan waves because I don't think either the anti-gundam team or anti-uhlan team handguns can distract shit long enough for the snipers to do their thing. Granted if I'm doing everything right, it'll be BGM on those waves because I've decided that I'm throwing AGS+2B out at any uhlans I get in the first four waves. I know it's not ideal, but the anti striker team can manage without 2B support. If I do have to do AGS+2B, I do have to retreat the bottom HG because it the death of the tank down there is pretty close to the time it can ram in ram into that spot. Not a huge lose when considering at this point all strelets are dead, taunt is still up and it's K5, so the damage she is putting on 250 armor is kind of a joke. I don't think the lost like 1-20 damage retreating her will make the difference.
-Anti-striker teams, well all I can say is fuck these strikers. I think worst case the first team could manage four waves if it has too. The second one might also be able to do that. At that point, I think I could manage a 10 straight wave of the bastards with the anti-rain team and/or anti-uhlan team with it's taunt fairy towards the end. it probably won't be pretty. Never thought I would dread that wave more than uhlans and gundams.
First one is
G36 C-MS
Ribeyerolls Ro
Groza
Debating if I should switch Ro to off tank position. Granted I do shuffle them at the start because I wanted Ro's buffs on all the SMGs. Plus, have to wonder if it would be better to go back to either FAL, bring Zas or RFB instead of Groza. SMGs taking a beating so I might be doing something wrong in that regards.
Second teams is
AN-94 MP7
RFB UMP45
Zas
This one seems to do okay. Big issue is that neither tank has a gold exo. I probably should check the anti-gundam team because if there is one there, it would be better off here.
Also had enough reports after leveling ZAS and RFB, to take JS05, who was lvl 4 and QBU who was at lvl 6, to lvl 50. So that gave me an advantage doll bonus of 19.5% instead of the like 16.7% I was getting yesterday.
As for further tweaks. I'm leaning towards any additional data either going into 2B's 3rd or 2nd skill. Third skill is lvl 8 IIRC and I think the 2nd skill might be lvl 3. 2B is often deployed against strikers and uhlans, so boosting both her kill capability against unshielded stuff and likely nerfing the damage on what she fails to kill will help both with strikers and also uhlans. Finally, running Kar, JS05 and QBU through 0-2 because any extra levels I get on them is going to get me a higher score. Only downside is I realize they may change up what's advantaged, but I see this as the best avenue to claw my way back below 10% (currently at 12%). I figure there are people ahead of me who either don't have enough of the advantage units or willing to raise them up to a point that would allow them to stay ahead of me. I figure that's going to be more reliable than banking on people either stopping once they hit 400K points and clear core 8 (no doubt today is likely the day we start noticing that if it's a thing), miss a day or more, get bad RNG with waves or get bad RNG with betting, while I have good RNG with betting. Then also hope that I get really good RNG, like a core 8 run with 10 waves of purely strelets because they can't really damage M16, while not get hit with a setup that I can overcome twice in a day.
I'm also going to try rushing AT4 to the best of my ability, but my only source of quick access to special combat reports is burning surplus exp, which means I need to run stuff, have batteries and wait 4 hours for it. If I don't end up in a spot where I decide I'd prefer another stack of regular combat reports, which is what happened today because I only had 102 on hand and advantaged dolls for expeditions change tomorrow. So I did want to make sure I had enough to hopefully ensure that the lowest doll on the next expedition is lvl 50. Still going to try rushing AT4 since her skills don't matter for pierce damage out put and at level 60 it's feasible to get 300 piece on her, which makes her better for killing uhlans than AGS. There is the trade off, of doing less damage to everything else, but the only time where I've had AGS deployed against a swarm like wave is rodeleros because I wanted to make sure their shields get stripped so that none of them can get a second laser attack off because that's where time gets messy and things get damaged.
For people looking advice.
-Focus on clearing wave as much HP conserved as possible. Based on what I'm reading fore Ceia and others that have been CE padding the returns are pretty bad. It's not nothing, but it's looking like the difference between some that pulls off the maximum amount of CE padding and the person that manages to run with the bare minimum CE to clear Core 8 without too much pain is going be a few hundred points. So it only really matters if you're shooting for the top 100 and likely won't be the difference between being 1% lower and where you end up at. What matters for a good score is increasingly looking like:
Clearing 2 waves of Core 8 everyday that it is open with plenty of health left >> Barely clearing 2 waves of Core 8 everyday that it is open > getting the full advantage doll bonus > getting some of the advantage doll bonus = remembering turn in all your materials before the event ends > getting some sort of return on your scouting bets >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> CE padding.
I didn't include everything in that, but if your struggling with stuff, CE padding is the last thing to worry about. Treat it like a luxury. I'm not that heartbroken over folding up my SGMG team for a second anti-striker wave because getting blocked from completing one or two Core 8 runs is going to cost me thousands of points, to the point where I might as well have run Core 6 instead because it's probably less than 40 points that echelon adds to my score. I'll throw best score out for the day and we'll see how that compares to some CE padded scores and not that it does likely take a hit from lost links on the anti-striker teams. 31423 and I don't think this is being tainted by padding from the SGMG team I had yesterday because we had a 40% point deduction. I know I might likely pull ahead of a ton of people who have an anti-striker team that can't hack against more than 4 waves and they decided to roll the dice hoping the game doesn't give them a run where the fifth or sixth striker wave mows down all their echelons or ensures they no longer have the dps to get past gundams and uhlans.
Taking advantaged of advantaged doll bonus is a bit harder to make a call on. Depends on where you have issues, what you have raised and how your other shit fairs against things. I suspect I might be in an edge case because my gear and what I have guarantees that I'll get more points running a spectator echelon with two SGs & three advantaged rifles. If I did a third anti-striker echelon, it wouldn't be able to likely manage more than 1 wave, maybe two depending on support because it would be entirely in green gear and green gear that hasn't been enhanced. That's probably what my anti-rain team can manage and it might fair better, so it's too my advantage to have an echelon that can fight that just boosts my score by nearly 20%. So people are going o have to make judgement calls, if a 6th combat echelon would be the difference and you can't run advantaged dolls as spectator, then go that route. Advantaged dolls do work better if you've raised them to be combat ready because they do get a stat bonus.
Also if you're concerned about RNG screwing you because you get a mix of seven waves that are either uhlans or gundams. I would suggest testing the waters to see if you can manage with AGS+2B against gundams. If not, or you don't want to test it, get AT4 to 60 and hooked up with chips that get her pierce to 300. Unless you get a gundam, you really don't want to use BGM on the first four waves because if you don't need her for non-gundams for the first four waves, then you're set to kill them in the last 6. I don't know if AT4+2B would hack it.
Same deal with fairy use, if you're relying on taunt for uhlans waves. You'll probably want to suck it up for the first four waves, if they aren't uhlans and even if they re strikers. If the game already acutely made you aware of your lack of S.A.T 8 and to a less extend FP-6 (she has a similar deal to S.A.T 8, but not as good), you probably don't want to be reminded of that again because you pop airstrike on the first striker wave, which is wave 1, and then get six waves of uhlans and have to deal with the last without taunt fairy's skill.
On that not, if you have S.A.T 8 and FP-6 properly raised, that be the best SG combo for uhlans waves and likely makes the taunt fairy unneeded. If you're good enough, you rotate their shields so you have as much shield uptime as possible. FP-6 also has a knockback and uhlans can be knocked back. So you could not only reduce damage and stall for time thanks to the shields, but also by knocking shit back and forcing it to waste time on moving back into position. If you only have S.A.T 8 or FP-6 and no other SGs that shield themselves, you might want to grab your best SG with knock back that is lvl 90 or higher. This assumes that your backline can dish out enough damage. Though if you can do that, that does give you a ton of flexibility with fairy command usage. You can for instance only use them on airstrike till you hit a point where you know you can pop a fairy skill for each remaining wave. You also have the option in this scenario to pop fairy commands in the first six waves because you're not reliant on them and this approach means you can conserve links on you units for the final waves. IMO if fairy commands become optional, then it's better to go into wave 10 with full links and some scratch damage without fairy skill support, than to go into wave 10 with fairy skill support, but your dolls are missing links.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
oh i didn't know that applied to faries too. i guess i should have assumed since it works for tdolls heh. i'll huck a couple hundred floppy discs at it and use it tomorrow, should help avoiding rng sadness
edit: hooray i finally got klin to drop. next step is to get a costume so i don't go to jail whenever i want a molotov smg....
My score for today was 31914. I'd like to get to 3200 tomorrow but I was only able to boost my score by a little less than 400 compared to yesterday. Not sure how much more I can eek out tomorrow because I'm pretty sure I'm not getting JS05, Kar and QBU to 80, which would boost my advantage bonus (I want to say it was something like 21.5% today with them all at 70 now, need to do the math on that) and let me give them cloaks for added CE padding. I do think running them throw 0-2 has been the way to go, since my plan was to get every unit to max level at some point. Kar and QBU have uses, it's just JS05 that probably isn't optimal at all to level right now. In addition to leveling them, I switched up some drones and have fury back on the bench since I haven't needed the backup team for the past two days and noticed that my lvl 78 1* paradrop gives more straight damage and evasion, than my 2* lvl 59 fury. Also with that echelon sitting out, paradrop is more CE as well and if they are just bench warming, might as well pad. Been trying to get xp on the airstrike, don't know if she is at a threshold where the next level translates into some added stats or not, but figure it can't hurt because anything gained would help on striker waves. Burning fodder chips on BGM to get more pierce and some reload, while burning them on 2B by trying to get mostly lethality, with some pierce. Level AGS because at this point, don't think AT4 would help me if I got 7 gundams and AGS+2B clears tanks. Also got some added skill levels on 2B, CM-S and RO. I figure I'll look into further enhancing of silencers on RO and CM-S, while considering further enhancement of the HP ammo on Python, Five-Seven and x4, but think keeping tanks alive on strikers is probably the best option.
Plan is to max CM-S's skill tomorrow after getting the daily bundle. Then probably drag the three advantaged dolls more. I mean leveling them seems to be paying off through the bonus and the gained CE on them. I just don't know if I'll take them past lvl 90. I think I would need all three at lvl 100 for the full bonus and I could probably do that in 6 days, but unless I get a ton of snowfields and decide to burn combat reports, just don't see how they hit lvl 100 in a way where I can get enough of a noticeable benefit for the remaining days. Lvl 90 is probably the last big boost and with how wonky CE weights are, it probably won't net me much more in the way of points than hitting lvl 80. I'm hoping RNG will just dump the last of the stuff I need to get both AGS and 2B to 5*, since that would probably get me a good chunk of CE.
Also kind of laughing at the scoreboard because I don't think focusing on CE padding is paying off for most and would argue the rewards from that are probably not as good as total score. The data bundle alone probably beats the 4x resource reward, then there is the AT4 data, which might do the same thing, as well as the special combat reports. Batteries are a YMMV and capsules might as well not exist. I'd like to be higher on the final battle board, but not going to risk the total point score. Hence why I'll probably stick with the 2nd anti-striker team, instead of redeploying another echelon of SGs & MGs padding my CE. I think my main anti-striker team can manage 5 striker waves, but I know if I get the 7 plus wave, not having that second team will screw me. All that said, I do hope they take another look at the whole CE thing because it's dumb that white slugs are better than a bunch of gold equips for CE padding and while the CE padding isn't much if people can afford to go for it, they will and it's just dump that rewards what should be pretty bad choices.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
When you go all in on buffing the railgun, you often set M4's skill to manual activation since it has a 4 second ICD. Then, once the handguns activate their buffs (usually 6 seconds), retreat two handguns and activate the skill. The railgun scales better with firepower and rate of fire buffs instead of crit because of how the damage is calculated (IIRC the main hit can't crit, but the AOE can?).
During Continuum Turbulence, the popular team for taking down the boss and the most powerful gundams was M4/M14 mod 3/Stetchkin/Calico/Mk23. Sometimes people talk about "Double Jupiter" teams, and they're talking about pretty much the same setup except IWS2000 instead of M14.
One AFK farming team for 10-4E is M4 in position 3, Grape in position 1, and virtually any doll that you want to drag along for XP in position 2.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012