Wrath vs. SS

[Junkhead]

vs.

 

I used to think, "what's the point of SS if I already have Wrath"? Right off the bat, people will tell you +10 Dmg is clearly better...but it's not that simple. While you can do a +10 Moonbow, Special Spiral can essentially turn 4-Turn Specials like Dragon Fang/Ignis/Glacies into 2-Turn specials...and guess who wins in that example.

SS also allows for AoEs every single rorund, as well as Aethers for characters with Breath-skills + Slaying. Stuff like that, of which we most likely know by now.

Not only that, but SS is also accessible to ranged units.

 

It's a pretty heavy debate, and I started off at Wrath's side...now, I'm kind of leaning towards the latter, which how flexible and the amount of possibilities it lends to many characters.

[Ginko]

I will give this to SS since I gave it to L!Ike and he don't have to be in Infantry Pulse team anymore to proc Radiant Aether early. After he proc Radiant Aether first time he will proc it after he take a hit and heal every now and then.

For me, Wraith works better on specific unit like Vector. On another units I have to set up Infantry Pulse to proc Wraith+any special on first turn which is quite busy set up.

[Ice Dragon]

The biggest difference between Wrath and Special Spiral is how long it takes for you to charge your first Special. Unless you are stacking first-turn Pulse skills or running Steady Breath or Warding Breath, Wrath on a faster Special is easier to set up.

Damage-wise, Special Spiral is only slightly better with Special Spiral + Dragon Fang out-damaging Wrath + Draconic Aura above 50 Atk and Special Spiral + Ignis/Glacies out-damaging Wrath + Bonfire/Iceberg above 33 Def/Res.

Wrath + Moonbow, however, beats Special Spiral + Luna until the opponent has 50 Def/Res.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Roflolxp54]

I guess it comes down to the melee armored/infantry unit that would use either of those B-slots. For my case, when I looked at sword Lyn, her using Special Spiral + (insert damage-boosting special here) at any % of HP seems to be a direct downgrade compared to her using Wrath + Moonbow at any % of HP (especially at 75% HP) based on the number of matchups won in the mass duel simulator.

[Junkhead]

9 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The biggest difference between Wrath and Special Spiral is how long it takes for you to charge your first Special. Unless you are stacking first-turn Pulse skills or running Steady Breath or Warding Breath, Wrath on a faster Special is easier to set up.

Damage-wise, Special Spiral is only slightly better with Special Spiral + Dragon Fang out-damaging Wrath + Draconic Aura above 50 Atk and Special Spiral + Ignis/Glacies out-damaging Wrath + Bonfire/Iceberg above 33 Def/Res.

Wrath + Moonbow, however, beats Special Spiral + Luna until the opponent has 50 Def/Res.

I use a lot of similiar examples with stuff like my Wrath Moonbow Libra, and asking if it would be worth switching over to that. SS would allow stuff like a 2-Turn Ignis, if the user is able to double and counter (you know, without Guard of Special Fighter getting in the way).

In fact, I kind of tested this very example:

 

Hell, I even encountered this dude whom switched to SS:

 

Though, if you think about it, it has it's reasoning. This Nephenee is +Atk, and takes advantage of her instant Bonfires to oneshot.

Armours are obviously a thing, so that helps. She also oneshots pretty much any ranged arena threat.

 

8 hours ago, Roflolxp54 said:

I guess it comes down to the melee armored/infantry unit that would use either of those B-slots. For my case, when I looked at sword Lyn, her using Special Spiral + (insert damage-boosting special here) at any % of HP seems to be a direct downgrade compared to her using Wrath + Moonbow at any % of HP (especially at 75% HP) based on the number of matchups won in the mass duel simulator.

Calculator wins in itself don't reflect the situation. SS takes place exactly after a battle, which is where it would allow access to lower cooldown specials. Even if you do fight a 40 Def dude and do 22 Dmg off a Wrath Moonbow, something like a 2-Turn reduced Dragon Fang would still do 25 Dmg if she has at least 50 Atk (it's obvious she has more).

She would be able to pull off a Dragon Fang literally every battle after that.

 

MODEDIT: lmao you know not to doublepost

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Though, if you think about it, it has it's reasoning. This Nephenee is +Atk, and takes advantage of her instant Bonfires to oneshot.

It's not instant if she's dead before she gets a chance to activate her first Bonfire.

 

3 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Calculator wins in itself don't reflect the situation. SS takes place exactly after a battle, which is where it would allow access to lower cooldown specials. Even if you do fight a 40 Def dude and do 22 Dmg off a Wrath Moonbow, something like a 2-Turn reduced Dragon Fang would still do 25 Dmg if she has at least 50 Atk (it's obvious she has more).

She would be able to pull off a Dragon Fang literally every battle after that.

The calculator certainly can. You just set the Special charge to 2 to pre-charge 2 points of the Special gauge.

However, you're still running into the issue that you're sacrificing your first-round performance for better performance afterwards if you aren't using Pulse skills to charge up your first Special activation.

[Junkhead]

5 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's not instant if she's dead before she gets a chance to activate her first Bonfire.

I take the guy who has a +10 Nephenee would've thought of that beforehand. :p

5 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The calculator certainly can. You just set the Special charge to 2 to pre-charge 2 points of the Special gauge.

However, you're still running into the issue that you're sacrificing your first-round performance for better performance afterwards if you aren't using Pulse skills to charge up your first Special activation.

I'm not saying you can't do that, but then you would have to be ignoring the subsequent battles. People don't normally take into account sequential battles in a mass calculator unless manually inputting and stating so.

The thing about Pulse skills isn't a huge factor, if you ask me. You still kind of have to do that with Wrath if you want a quick special. SS takes full advantage of that, and you see it with AoE builds.

[Roflolxp54]

44 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Calculator wins in itself don't reflect the situation. SS takes place exactly after a battle, which is where it would allow access to lower cooldown specials. Even if you do fight a 40 Def dude and do 22 Dmg off a Wrath Moonbow, something like a 2-Turn reduced Dragon Fang would still do 25 Dmg if she has at least 50 Atk (it's obvious she has more).

She would be able to pull off a Dragon Fang literally every battle after that.

I think the real issue is how easy it would be to set up for situations where Special Spiral would become better (especially the team comp the player intends to run the unit in).

For the case of Wrath, Wrath just requires taking damage, which can be cheesed via Ardent Sacrifice/Reciprocal Aid if somebody else is taking damage (and possibly landing kills) - it doesn't require much thinking/input before Lyn is able to start pulling off effectively 16-mt. Brave sword attacks with a guaranteed Moonbow proc provided that the enemy unit doesn't have Swordbreaker or Guard active. 

For the case of Special Spiral, assuming this isn't a multimap run (ie. TT or CC), Infantry Pulse isn't exactly cheap to come by (sure, there's Marisa but not everybody wants to sacrifice her or run another stock sword infantry unit that isn't Olivia just to power up another sword infantry unit's first special). And of course, Special Spiral isn't exactly practical if Lyn were to be on a mixed team (ie. Lyn Emblem) rather than an infantry-only team. And, unique to Lyn's case, her Sol Katti weapon has Desperation built in, which can potentially throw off special timing.

I'd have to say that Wrath is better on the basis that it's simpler to use for most applicable melee units. Special Spiral may be more effective than Wrath but the player has more hoops to jump through beyond giving the unit in question Special Spiral if they want to set up those 4/5-CDC specials.

Oh, and for the case of melee armored units, the debate becomes more of why use those Special Spiral or Wrath when they can use Bold/Vengeful Fighter?

Edited September 23, 2018 by Roflolxp54

[Ice Dragon]

11 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

The thing about Pulse skills isn't a huge factor, if you ask me. You still kind of have to do that with Wrath if you want a quick special. SS takes full advantage of that, and you see it with AoE builds.

The difference is that when you're using Wrath, you don't need to run Pulse skills at all because you want to take damage on the first round of combat to get Wrath up and running.

Slaying Edge + Moonbow + Wrath has a cooldown of 1, which means you'll activate Moonbow on your follow-up when initiating or your first counterattack when initiated on.

Slaying Edge + Blazing Wind + Special Spiral has a cooldown of 3, which means you need three sources of Pulse skills to have the skill activate on your first round of combat. If you're running Hardy Bearing to avoid being killed by Vantage, you can't even run Quickened Pulse, meaning you have to rely on Infantry Pulse or Ostia's Pulse to get all three charges.

 

Wo Dao + Moonbow + Wrath (or Slaying Edge + Bonfire + Wrath) has the same timing as Slaying Edge + Bonfire + Special Spiral for the first Special activation, which is your follow-up attack regardless of who initiates combat. The Wrath build has higher damage output at a cost of only being usable once every other turn on player phase or once every turn on enemy phase. The Special Spiral build has lower damage, but is usable every round of combat.

 

2 minutes ago, Roflolxp54 said:

Oh, and for the case of melee armored units, the debate becomes more of why use those Special Spiral or Wrath when they can use Bold/Vengeful Fighter?

Wrath is used on armors pretty much specifically with Black Luna or Berserk Armads (there are a few other douche builds involving things like Firesweep and Steady Breath). Special Spiral is pretty much always outclassed on armors, though.

[Junkhead]

10 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The difference is that when you're using Wrath, you don't need to run Pulse skills at all because you want to take damage on the first round of combat to get Wrath up and running.

Slaying Edge + Moonbow + Wrath has a cooldown of 1, which means you'll activate Moonbow on your follow-up when initiating or your first counterattack when initiated on.

Slaying Edge + Blazing Wind + Special Spiral has a cooldown of 3, which means you need three sources of Pulse skills to have the skill activate on your first round of combat. If you're running Hardy Bearing to avoid being killed by Vantage, you can't even run Quickened Pulse, meaning you have to rely on Infantry Pulse or Ostia's Pulse to get all three charges.

 

Wo Dao + Moonbow + Wrath (or Slaying Edge + Bonfire + Wrath) has the same timing as Slaying Edge + Bonfire + Special Spiral for the first Special activation, which is your follow-up attack regardless of who initiates combat. The Wrath build has higher damage output at a cost of only being usable once every other turn on player phase or once every turn on enemy phase. The Special Spiral build has lower damage, but is usable every round of combat.

 

Wrath is used on armors pretty much specifically with Black Luna or Berserk Armads (there are a few other douche builds involving things like Firesweep and Steady Breath). Special Spiral is pretty much always outclassed on armors, though.

I feel Wrath Moonbow has to basically garantee a oneshot for it to be outright superior. And the example you're using seem to be on the assumption that the character involved is doubling and getting counterattacked for them to proc their 2-Turn Specials (or in this case, effective 1 or 2 Turns through SS). So to me, the only real "hoop" to go through is getting through that first round of combat.

Maybe I'm seeing things differently, or don't compete in a high enough standard; my question is why is it such a big deal that you need to get that first special off so quickly? Unless you're being rushed by Cavalry into a corner, I don't see much of an issue next to getting very strong specials every single turn afterward.

 

To me, it's cool that you people think Wrath is the better and more flexible option. But I'm havin trouble entirely seeing that when I haven't yet struggled with those issues (not getting the first special fast enough).

 

I'm not sure if this is a very specific example, but it looks she might be better with SS than with Wrath.

With Wrath, she has the potential to do one very powerful Dragon Fang, but it's only once every other turn. SS would allow her to do Dragon Fang every single round past her first, and I don't see how it would be hard to make it work. Wrath Luna would be stronger past 34 Def, but is it better than having the option to do it even on the same turn (if you have a Dancer, for example)?

Edited September 23, 2018 by Junkhead

[Roflolxp54]

And of course, I may be biased because:

1. Wrath has been in the game for about a year now - many vets have plenty of chances to get Nephenee or maybe Karla via Focus banners, Legendary Heroes banners, 1-year anniversary Hero Fest, or pitybreakers. Special Spiral has only been recently added so not everybody has the chance to experiment with it, especially since it's a 5*-locked skill like Wrath is and is on a pitybreaker-prone color.

2. Even then, the 2 main units that already make great use out of Special Spiral (Ophelia and Lewyn) generally have little issue setting up (because of their prf weapons) and are ranged units (meaning Wrath is largely a non-factor in their performance since they can't even learn it in the first place).

3. The only Special Spiral user I have is Ares, which isn't a fair comparison since he can't even learn Wrath in the first place (he's a cavalier) and he has Special Spiral built into his prf weapon, which also has the CDR effect (Brazen Atk/Def + Vantage + Bonfire, anybody?).

Edited September 23, 2018 by Roflolxp54

[Junkhead]

1 minute ago, Roflolxp54 said:

And of course, I may be biased because:

1. Wrath has been in the game for about a year now - many vets have plenty of chances to get Nephenee or maybe Karla via Focus banners, Legendary Heroes banners, 1-year anniversary Hero Fest, or pitybreakers. Special Spiral has only been recently added so not everybody has the chance to experiment with it, especially since it's a 5*-locked skill like Wrath is and is on a pitybreaker-prone color.

I would kind of know this... killed of 3 Nephenees before finally keeping one of them- SS is partly responsible. No more Nepheneecide?

It's cool that it's not as outclassed as I thought it would be.

[Johann]

Having a spare Nephenee has made me think a bit harder about who would really gain the most from Wrath, and I'm inclined to say that I'd prefer it more on a bulky unit like Alfonse. Meanwhile, I'd probably save Special Spiral for a high offense ranged attacker who's too balanced/poor Spd to use something like Flashing Blade, like Sanaki or Jeorge.

[Ice Dragon]

33 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

I feel Wrath Moonbow has to basically garantee a oneshot for it to be outright superior.

Most characters that use the build use it because they can reliably kill with one hit.

 

35 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

And the example you're using seem to be on the assumption that the character involved is doubling and getting counterattacked for them to proc their 2-Turn Specials (or in this case, effective 1 or 2 Turns through SS).

Again, the characters that use this build at all are the ones that are doing so because they can double, either on player phase with enough Spd or on enemy phase with Quick Riposte in the Sacred Seal slot.

The thought process is "I want to use a Wrath build because I can reliably double", not "I need to make this unit reliably double so that I can use a Wrath build".

 

37 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

So to me, the only real "hoop" to go through is getting through that first round of combat.

And that's entirely the problem.

 

37 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Maybe I'm seeing things differently, or don't compete in a high enough standard; my question is why is it such a big deal that you need to get that first special off so quickly? Unless you're being rushed by Cavalry into a corner, I don't see much of an issue next to getting very strong specials every single turn afterward.

Because unless you are trying to feed every kill to a single unit, an Arena match is typically only four or five rounds of combat long, and a single unit only fights one or two rounds of combat. This means your first round of combat per unit counts more than subsequent rounds of combat.

When running skills that don't improve your first round of combat, like Brazen skills, Desperation, or Special Spiral, among others, I believe it to be better to make sure your first round of combat is already sufficiently good before bolstering subsequent rounds. In other words, if a 7/10 is "good enough", then I'd prefer a 7/10 first round of combat with 8/10 for all rounds afterwards than a 5/10 first round of combat with 10/10 afterwards if those were my only two options.

[Hilda]

For now Special Spiral in my eyes has only uses on a handfull of mages. I think Wrath is superior for most infantry units.

This could all change though if we get Sacred Seals of shield pulse, windsweep, watersweep etc. because in that case special spiral can allow for some nasty combos.

[MacLovin]

wrath is locked to melee armors/dragons/inf.. special spiral can also go on ranged infantry/armors.

[bottlegnomes]

The way I see it there are three types of units that really benefit from special spiral:

1. Mages because duh.
2. Units who really want to run 3 cooldown specials with a slaying weapon instead of 2 cooldown specials + 10 damage with a slaying weapon.
3. Units who really want to run 2 cooldown specials with a weapon other than a slaying weapon.

The thing is, for 2 there's basically one unit I can think of, and that's Zelgius because the jump from 30% to 80% is much more likely to be over 10 damage, AKA past 20 defense. But, Wo Dao + BF drastically outperforms Slaying Edge + SS in the first round. Subsequent rounds SS has a slight advantage in not making Zelgius take a counter, but how many rounds are you going in single-map modes?

For 3, about the only unit I can think of who wants that is Legendary Marth so he can run Exalted Falchion. And really that's not even a given either. Wrath + attack refined Slaying Edge deals somewhere between 10 and 4 more damage on the special. The major gain of Falchion + Special Spiral is it lets him have a better EP thanks to an additional 6 def and res, and being able to proc FE every round instead of once a turn.

But really, what Special Spiral needs to stand out, and what I hope IS is smart enough to never implement, or at least not until they've introduced a very significant number of ways to mitigate it, is a vantage seal.