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Is it better to pull five characters each time or only go for the colour you want?


Jotari
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Ive been dying to get a Ninian for ages now and I don't want to fail on this banner. I was wondering what people's pull strategies generally are. Given that every five times you pull a five star unit, the chances of getting one goes up, it seems logical to spend the full twenty orbs on each session. But then you risk pulling someone you don't want at five stars and resetting the counter (which is exactly what happened to me with Marth just now, already have like six of him at four stars that I'm not bothering to promote, not really joyas to get a five star one). I guess the best strategy is to brute force it to start and then play it coy.

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I just snipe the colors I want. Don't want to risk pitybreakers I don't want. Especially if there are units on the banner that I'd really like to avoid.

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In general I only pull from banners with new a / o exclusive units. For example I don't mind the banner with regular Marth, Sanaki... because they're pullable at any time. In focus banners I only pull from colours which represent focus unit(s). However I don't go for every focus unit. If I get two, I'm quite happy. It's incredibly hard to pull all. The past FE4 banner was the first banner I've pulled all focus units.

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If you're the type of person who just wants 5 star characters and don't really care who you get, then you probably benefit from pulling all the colors. That's what I did for the first few months of the game while I was building my barracks and whatnot. 

 

Now I kind of shift between strategies. Usually when I pull, I try to make sure I'm pulling at least two colors which means I'm usually shooting for 2 characters. That way it at least feels like I'm making the most out of my pulls since that means I can usually pull multiple stones in one circle. When I've tried to snipe for green, it's super painful since it feels like the orbs are so rare... But if I'm sniping for green and another color, I'm a little less disappointed. In some cases, I'll snipe a single color, especially if it's a character I really, REALLY want, but I don't like to restrict myself. I also keep track of my pulls and even if I'm sniping, I'll pull another orb if it will increase my pity rate...unless said pity rate is already through the roof.

It also helps that I make a list of characters I want for fodder and merges. Right now, most of the characters I want are red and blue. So I know that in the future, I want to pull red and blue for multiple reasons!

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Colour sniping can get you there as it is. Even if you get a total of 5 summons throughout multiple sessions, you still take hold the of the added percentage.

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It varies, if there is a unit I really desperately want I'll only snipe for the colour it's on. Otherwise the chances of pity breakers will increase and you end up "wasting" more orbs on colours that have no chance of being your desired unit.

If you just want a focus unit it's much better to spred out though. 

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If you only want Ninian, pulling on everything just to raise the pity rate is most definitely not worth the cost in orbs and chances that your pity rate will be broken.

Only summoning blues is the best strategy here by far, even if it means resetting the batch a lot. 

Also, I don't think it's ever mathematically preferable, even for people that would appreciate any 5* unit, to ever pull for a non-focus orb. The pity rate increase is not worth the extra orbs spent.

Edited by Vince777
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If you are going for one snipe. If you don't care pull all. Regardless you should assume it will be at least 100 orbs before you get a 5* on a standard banner. And even that isn't a particularly high number if Lady Luck doesn't care for you.

Assuming all sniping is one pull per session which is worst case scenario by far you get 20 chances for 100 orbs vs 25 chances for 100 orbs. The probability difference between them isn't huge. And the pulls you lose out on are easily offset by 'focusing' on what you want. Particularly since you are likely to get 2 or 3 pulls per session unless you are going for green and so the difference is more like 21 or 22 or even 23 if you are real lucky vs 25.

As for the rate ups? Pity is nice and all but pulling on what you don't want in an attempt to build it usually isn't a good idea. Rather it is a good way to end up with something you don't want.

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I do full summons for the first two sessions, sometimes even a third one, to build up the pity rate fast and also to gain some possible fodder. After that I start sniping. It is a huge gamble but it almost always works and gives me the unit I want but that’s just my luck. The reason I don’t snipe from the get go is because every time I have tried that I usually end up wasting a lot of orbs without getting a single 5* and no 5* is worse than one pity breaker.

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3 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

I do full summons for the first two sessions, sometimes even a third one, to build up the pity rate fast

Difference between 3%, 3.25%, and 3.5% is negligible. Wasting orbs to build up the rate is never worth it.

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I snipe unless I am pulling on a legendary banner, then I go all out.  I have bad luck if I do full pulls and only want someone from one color, the odds of being pity broken by some other unit is to high for me.  Using 5 Orbs on the on the only blue in a session makes much more sense then spending 20 orbs on the other colors you don't want unless you really need fodder from another color.  

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Personally, I don't care which 5* I get (minus those I already have). I'm just happy to have new units so I will pull for every colour as long as it contains a focus unit.

Never ever pull on an orb without a focus unit even if it brings you up to the next pity rate bracket. Even the three orbs spent on the 5th orb is not worth a .5% increase for the next 5 pulls. 

 

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I used to just snipe the desired colors. However, I find that this tends to not give me the desired units (perhaps the game determines which units you want by what color you roll). It also tends to result in a shortage of diverse units. Ie: I lack in green and colorless units because desirable green and colorless focus units tend to be so rare.

These days, I try to go for full sessions. I make an exception when I absolutely don't want the focus units of a particular color (ie: I really hate Nowi, Elise, and most seasonal units). 

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2 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

Difference between 3%, 3.25%, and 3.5% is negligible. Wasting orbs to build up the rate is never worth it.

Granted, it’s not a huge increase. Very minimal indeed. However, an increase is an increase and I find it worth it. It’s rng anyway so it’s not like there’s a right way to do it. Besides, it’s not like getting more units out of it that way is necessarily a bad thing either.

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If you specifically want one character, you should snipe that color only when that character is on a focus banner.

Picking any other color is a 0% chance of getting the character you want. Pulling for the character when they are not on the banner is a waste of resources because your chances are generally around 1 in 400 (compared to about 1 in 30 when they are on the banner).

 

The only time pulling all five characters from a session is advantageous (when there are colors you aren't looking for in it) is when you're first starting out, and filling out your box with more stuff is a far better value than trying to get a specific character.

 

42 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

However, an increase is an increase and I find it worth it.

Spending 3-4 orbs on a 0% chance to get the character you want in order to bump your 5-star rate up by 0.25% one pull session earlier than you would have anyways (that most likely won't even have very of the color you want) is objectively not worth the orbs when those orbs could have gone to a 3.5-5% chance (depending on color and your current 5-star rate) of actually getting the character you want.

 

23 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

Granted, it’s not a huge increase. Very minimal indeed. However, an increase is an increase and I find it worth it. It’s rng anyway so it’s not like there’s a right way to do it. Besides, it’s not like getting more units out of it that way is necessarily a bad thing either.

I find it dumb when people use "it's RNG" to imply that actual probability means nothing as if randomness somehow means numbers cannot be trusted.

Your odds of winning a six-sided die roll are 1 in 6 regardless of if you actually win or not. Winning the die roll doesn't somehow retroactively make your chances of winning 100%, and losing the die roll doesn't somehow retroactively make your chances of winning 0%. If you do enough die rolls, you'll find that you win pretty close to 16.7% of the time.

The reason boosting your 5-star rate is meaningless is because it barely changes your aggregate rate. You're going to spend so much time in the 3% and 3.25% range that another one pull in the 3.75% range will barely push your average up, and over a large number of pulls, your average rate is what matters.

 

One day, I should write a Monte Carlo that just simulates exactly how much of a difference changing your pull behavior actually means.

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Ive been dying to get a Ninian for ages now and I don't want to fail on this banner. I was wondering what people's pull strategies generally are. Given that every five times you pull a five star unit, the chances of getting one goes up, it seems logical to spend the full twenty orbs on each session. But then you risk pulling someone you don't want at five stars and resetting the counter (which is exactly what happened to me with Marth just now, already have like six of him at four stars that I'm not bothering to promote, not really joyas to get a five star one). I guess the best strategy is to brute force it to start and then play it coy.

If you want Ninian, the way to maximize your chances of pulling her is to only pull from blue orbs, right from the start. This is a question of probability, and you can mathematically calculate what pulling method is most likely to produce the desired outcome.

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that you have 3% chance of pulling Ninian for each blue orb, and that there's one blue orb each time you go into the session. If you pull all orbs in the first session, you will spend 20 orbs for a 3% chance of getting Ninian, since there was only one blue. Okay, but if you snipe and only pull blues 5 times, you will have spent 25 orbs, but you'll have a 14.1% chance of pulling Ninian.

(Probability of Pulling Ninian = 1 - (Probability of not pulling Ninian in a single pull ^ Number of pulls), or P = 1 - (0.97^5), although I can explain this more if needed.)

(Edit: I suppose I should point out that it's 1 - (probability of not pulling Ninian for that specific pull x probability for not pulling her for that specific pull ... continued for however many pulls you do). The exponent is just simplified notation for when the events have the same probability.)

Now let's suppose you spend another 20 orbs on a full pull to get your rate up. With those 40 orbs, you'll have had a 6.2% chance of pulling Ninian for all of those pulls. With the sniping method, you spend another 25 orbs to do 5 pulls, and you're up to a 27.2% chance of pulling Ninian somewhere in there.

Okay, so let's suppose you start sniping now after the first two sessions. For two more pulls, you end up at the 50 orb mark, but you'll have had a 12.6% of pulling Ninian. For the same amount of orbs with sniping, at this point, you are over twice as likely to have pulled Ninian, and you are at the same pity rate, with the full summon sessions being just two pulls ahead towards reaching the next pity bracket.

So, yeah, don't spend orbs trying to push the pity rate up.

Edited by Astellius
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21 minutes ago, Astellius said:

If you want Ninian, the way to maximize your chances of pulling her is to only pull from blue orbs, right from the start. This is a question of probability, and you can mathematically calculate what pulling method is most likely to produce the desired outcome.

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that you have 3% chance of pulling Ninian for each blue orb, and that there's one blue orb each time you go into the session. If you pull all orbs in the first session, you will spend 20 orbs for a 3% chance of getting Ninian, since there was only one blue. Okay, but if you snipe and only pull blues 5 times, you will have spent 25 orbs, but you'll have a 14.1% chance of pulling Ninian.

(Probability of Pulling Ninian = 1 - (Probability of not pulling Ninian in a single pull ^ Number of pulls), or P = 1 - (0.97^5), although I can explain this more if needed.)

(Edit: I suppose I should point out that it's 1 - (probability of not pulling Ninian for that specific pull x probability for not pulling her for that specific pull ... continued for however many pulls you do). The exponent is just simplified notation for when the events have the same probability.)

Now let's suppose you spend another 20 orbs on a full pull to get your rate up. With those 40 orbs, you'll have had a 6.2% chance of pulling Ninian for all of those pulls. With the sniping method, you spend another 25 orbs to do 5 pulls, and you're up to a 27.2% chance of pulling Ninian somewhere in there.

Okay, so let's suppose you start sniping now after the first two sessions. For two more pulls, you end up at the 50 orb mark, but you'll have had a 12.6% of pulling Ninian. For the same amount of orbs with sniping, at this point, you are over twice as likely to have pulled Ninian, and you are at the same pity rate, with the full summon sessions being just two pulls ahead towards reaching the next pity bracket.

So, yeah, don't spend orbs trying to push the pity rate up.

It wouldn't have taken that much thinking to come to that conclusion on my own, but I suppose feeling like you're building towards something is more reassuring than just failing repeatedly. That and I was trying only sniping last time she was up and utterly failed (to the extent that I shockingly spend money on six orbs! Which is very out of character for me).

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30 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I find it dumb when people use "it's RNG" to imply that actual probability means nothing as if randomness somehow means numbers cannot be trusted.

How about the anecdotal, "This method worked for me!" argument? Aren't those fun too?

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It wouldn't have taken that much thinking to come to that conclusion on my own, but I suppose feeling like you're building towards something is more reassuring than just failing repeatedly. That and I was trying only sniping last time she was up and utterly failed (to the extent that I shockingly spend money on six orbs! Which is very out of character for me).

I understand that feeling. There's also confirmation bias involved with other strategies, and disenchantment when sniping doesn't work. This is all based on probability, so sometimes you'll get lucky & sometimes you'll be unlucky. I wanted to add an objective mathematical demonstration here to prove why sniping is the most cost-effective strategy, since people often do wonder how they should pull, but might not be aware of how to figure out what's the best method. The discount on subsequent pulls and the increasing pity rate can create a sort of subjective psychological illusion, but statistics should be able to dispel that.

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Snipe for the one I like the most. At the beginning it's good to do full summons to build your roster and get nice SI fodder but when you reach a status where you have almost every niche covered and the ones that you don't have barely have any benefits or are straight up useless then summoning is just to collect your favorites so it's good to prioritize the ones you like better.

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Depends on the banner. If all the colors are represented strongly then go for the full wheel. That never happens, though, so I just snipe what I want.

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

It wouldn't have taken that much thinking to come to that conclusion on my own, but I suppose feeling like you're building towards something is more reassuring than just failing repeatedly. That and I was trying only sniping last time she was up and utterly failed (to the extent that I shockingly spend money on six orbs! Which is very out of character for me).

A small number of pulls results in high variance. Over many summon sessions, if you actually keep track, you'll notice your lucky and unlucky sessions balancing out.

It's no different than, say, weighting a coin to fall more often on heads (something like a 55-45 split). You're not going to see the payoffs of it on any single flip, but over the course of dozens of flips, you'll begin to notice the results.

 

The human brain is primed to remember events, not to do statistics calculations on demand.

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8 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Over many summon sessions, if you actually keep track, you'll notice your lucky and unlucky sessions balancing out.

Yeah, it pretty much feels like this, but for me it's across banners rather than individual summoning sessions. I got three LA! Hectors, 2 LA! Lilinas at one point not expecting anything out of the banner, and at my worst I tried summoning for the New Years banner sniping greens for Airzura, and got pretty much nothing with about the same number orbs given in. It feels like this back and forth, WoT banner - loss, Genealogy 2nd Gen banner - wins...etc.

To answer the OP though. I just snipe because I hate pity breakers.

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