DNC's Off-topic Argument Thread

[DehNutCase]

45 minutes ago, XRay said:

But the problem is that Counter-Vantage units can still be killed with Ophelia and Firesweep units if you send them in to solo enemies. Counter-Vantage units can murder lots of units, but that does not mean they are invincible, and Cleaner-Counter-Vantage is not anymore invulnerable to that than Blade-Counter-Vantage.

You have no idea how -blade CC plays.

Reinhardt is a 3 move horse. Reinhardt kills Ophelia on player phase. If you're running into multiple Hardy Bearing Ophelia you need to contact support.

 

A defense team needs 3 copies of firesweepers for CC -blade to be un-viable as a strategy, and at that point I just run my Nailah team. A 5 cleaner team would need the enemy team to have 7 copies of firesweep to be threatened. You might note that 7 is a larger number than 6. This is because the 5 Cleaner team kills 5 units without taking damage, and the last unit is debuffed to oblivion.

45 minutes ago, XRay said:

But the thing is that Dulls are not on defense teams, or at least I do not remember seeing any. It is like worrying about non-Ophelia units running Hardy Bearing, they probably exist, but the chances of encountering them are so low that it is not really worth worrying about them. The only reason I worry about Hardy Bearing at all is because Ophelia exist and she often uses it.

That's not how you fucking balance units or build teams. Not at the top level. Dominant teams spread very quickly at the top level, if CC -blade ever became common Dull effects would become lots more common. I run into Dull effects and Cleaner a few times a season, for the record.

 

A mode that measures the player being consistently good kind of cares about the player being consistent. I built Laevatein with TA-3 Axe-breaker when I was using her for a reason, because it folds every single Surtr set (including crap like CA-3 or Dull Melee). Something like Dancer Micaiah folds most of them, but there's actually no way to build a green axe armor to beat Laevatein with TA-3 Axe-breaker, and that was all I needed from her.

45 minutes ago, XRay said:

It is not just the A stat. It is the whole skill kit that goes into Counter-Vantage units. Counter-Vantage units do not stand a chance against nukes when a tank needs their A and Sacred Seal slot, and sometimes B slot, to even stand a chance of surviving a hit against nukes. A Surtr that is missing either Wary Fighter or Steady Stance will be killed very quickly, and even if it has its default skill kit, it still dies in one hit against Laevatein who can be buffed to crazy levels.

Cleaner sets are not tanks, they're player phase units that happen to kill you just as easily on EP.

 

You can kill them on your phase? They can kill you on their phase. I hope you're really good at running, because Cleaner teams have very good reach between dancer access, horse access, and the ability to force you to step on bolt traps just to engage them.

45 minutes ago, XRay said:

My BH!Lyn is not my only nuke. I usually run Laevatein or NS!F!Corrin as my secondary nuke depending on the enemy team. A Super Cleaner cannot counter both Firesweep and Blade nukes at the same time.

They don't need to. If you're forced into the situation where you can only use the firesweeper (because the shock trap got them into Vantage range), then you've already lost.

 

Because, right after you kill one or two of them with the firesweeper, they start killing your team from mobility skills triggering and Prf Cleaner being kind of obscene as a weapon.

45 minutes ago, XRay said:

And they are hardly a threat when there are plenty of options to tank them or simply hit them first before they hit you.

There very much are not plenty of options to tank them. The whole reason Nailah is a good pick for AR is because she specifically folds firesweepers, any other unit has problems getting chipped down.

And yes, hitting them first is a good idea if you're fine with losing units to the rest of their lineup, considering how far back they can stand.

 

What you're missing throughout all of this is that, not only is Cleaner broken (the best way to fight Cleaner teams is to: A, hope the defense team builder built it like an idiot, B, Run Cleaner yourself so you can snipe the Hardy Bearing user and CC Vantage them all), it's also incredibly unfun to play against. Mobility is what punishes misplays, not raw stats. Raw stats punish bad team-building (which you fix forever once you've noticed the problem), but mobility punishes misplays. And Cleaner has access to all the mobility it wants, being a generic weapon.

 

And this is what you consider a good addition to the game:

The most dominant, centralizing single weapon ever. That happens to be better in the AI hands (because the AI doesn't mind losing units) than the player's hands.

[Baldrick]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

This is because the 5 Cleaner team kills 5 units without taking damage, and the last unit is debuffed to oblivion.

How do you position your team so that 5 of your units are able to attack 5 of the enemy units, without stepping into their danger zone? And why are only units with the refined Cleaner capable of that? It doesn’t give you any mobility feats, afaict.

 

[Ice Dragon]

13 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

How do you position your team so that 5 of your units are able to attack 5 of the enemy units, without stepping into their danger zone? And why are only units with the refined Cleaner capable of that? It doesn’t give you any mobility feats, afaict.

Summer Linde and Eir have mobility. The "without taking damage" is the part that's unique to Super Windex, not the mobility part.

 

For background, Extreme Clorox is defined as having the additional effect of "boosts Atk by the total of foe's bonuses" in addition to its normal effect.

[DehNutCase]

59 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

How do you position your team so that 5 of your units are able to attack 5 of the enemy units, without stepping into their danger zone? And why are only units with the refined Cleaner capable of that? It doesn’t give you any mobility feats, afaict.

Mind, part of it also because the specific team archetype in question, Firesweepers, kind of have to use a lot of melee units. For drag back, Galeforce, and threat range stacking. You can run a few ranged horses, but if your team is dominantly ranged horses then it's pretty easy to find a spot where the threat range doesn't properly overlap and the team would just fold to a bunch of random offense teams. (Edit: And you would be able to fold them with a Null C-Disrupt Cleaner if you wanted to, although personally I'd just use Nailah in one of your other teams.)

 

And usually the back line has at least a few dancers, which basically don't exist as far as any CC cleaner is concerned. (The team should have some non-CC cleaners, but it's should be pretty easy to position so that the only ones that can be hit multiple times are the CC Vantage Cleaners, who would just Vantage OHKO after the first time they take damage.)

41 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

For background, Extreme Clorox is defined as having the additional effect of "boosts Atk by the total of foe's bonuses" in addition to its normal effect.

Penalties, derp. Boosts Atk by total bonuses is its regular effect.

@Baldrick That is, the Blizzard effect in addition to its regular Cleaner effect.

Edited February 16, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Baldrick]

36 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Summer Linde and Eir have mobility. The "without taking damage" is the part that's unique to Super Windex, not the mobility part.

As I understand it, the mobility is what makes it broken to the point of centralising the meta.

@DehNutCase It’s impossible to attack a ranged horse from outside its range unless you use 2 unit-turns, without Galeforce or some other mobility feat you’d be able to kill 2 Firesweepers at most.

 

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Baldrick said:

As I understand it, the mobility is what makes it broken to the point of centralising the meta.

@DehNutCase It’s impossible to attack a ranged horse from outside its range unless you use 2 unit-turns, without Galeforce or some other mobility feat you’d be able to kill 2 Firesweepers at most.

Cleaner units have dancer access.

 

That is, part of my cleaner team is dancers. I just dance my ranged horses to hit the ones in the back. Edit: Even then I don't actually think I'd need dancers, Firesweep teams shouldn't have a ton of ranged horses---leaves them vulnerable to random positioning shenanigans.

 

Edit: What centralizes is isn't really the mobility---that's just what makes it cancer. It's that daggers have a ton of stat spreads and movement types to chose from, to the point where if the Cleaner would be broken on a certain type of unit then you probably have access to that unit in a Cleaner team. Mind, we are missing quite a few move type + stat spread combinations that would be nice (a Reinhardt spread on a horse would be nice, doubly so if it's a dancer, even if it had 130 BST or something).

The fact that such a Cleaner Prf exists would also prevent strong dagger units from being released from the quite reasonable fear that you'd just add even more broken units into the fire.

Edited February 16, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Baldrick]

 

17 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

That is, part of my cleaner team is dancers. I just dance my ranged horses to hit the ones in the back.

Again, why can only refined Cleaner units do this?

[DehNutCase]

11 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

Again, why can only refined Cleaner units do this?

Because the hypothetical refined Cleaner is hilariously strong.

It adds damage from enemy buffs and debuffs.

A dagger does -7/-7 def/res by default in an AoE, so that's 21 damage (+14 from debuffs, +7 from -def). And you can easily debuff through other skill slots as well. (Like Smokes in the C or S slot, Chills in the B-slot, or other random jank.)

 

Its worst case is a 33 MT weapon, from just its own effects. Add more skill slots to that and it ends up so strong that if you're not using the Cleaner yourself your combat isn't actually relevant. It basically combines Hone Atk 4, -blade, and Prayer Wheel into a single weapon slot. Edit: And also the original Cleaner effect, of course. Which neuters enemy CC Vantage sets (since you OHKO them if they try to stack buffs), and ignores enemy defense buffs (since you add as much damage as their buffed defense prevents).

 

Edit: It's not that you can't use, say, a CC -blade Rein over Cleaner Linde, but the CC -blade Rein doesn't get to run with 4 copies of other units on the same level. (Your buffs have to come from somewhere, and Legendary Azura's combat is nowhere near CC Rein's level. Dancing Xander, though? His combat would be very easily comparable if he's running Cleaner.)

Edited February 16, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Baldrick]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

. It's that daggers have a ton of stat spreads and movement types to chose from,

Much less than mages. Especially for horse daggers, you’re given more horse mages for free than there are horse daggers in the game.

And a variety of sub-optimal stat spreads is not much use anyway. Nobody used Olwen, nobody used Blade Henry, Robin, Merric etc., and nobody would use Cleaner Matthew, Felicia etc.

 

54 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Because the hypothetical refined Cleaner is hilariously strong.

It adds damage from enemy buffs and debuffs.

My question was what stops other hyper-offense units from also using dance, so why does the Cleaner have better mobility than them.

54 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

A dagger does -7/-7 def/res by default in an AoE, so that's 21 damage (+14 from debuffs, +7 from -def). And you can easily debuff through other skill slots as well. (Like Smokes in the C or S slot, Chills in the B-slot, or other random jank.)

Smokes (including the default) don’t apply until after combat, and chills aren’t very reliable and use up the B slot.

It does have more potential damage output than bladetomes, but it’s not as easy to get going.

54 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Its worst case is a 33 MT weapon, from just its own effects. Add more skill slots to that and it ends up so strong that if you're not using the Cleaner yourself your combat isn't actually relevant.

Show me this build that would make every non-dagger obsolete.

54 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Edit: It's not that you can't use, say, a CC -blade Rein, but the CC -blade Rein doesn't get to run with 4 copies of other units on the same level. (Your buffs have to come from somewhere, and Legendary Azura's combat is nowhere near CC Rein's level. Dancing Xander, though? His combat would be very easily comparable if he's running Cleaner.)

You could always use Dancing Micaiah for that, but I don’t see why the dancer has to have as good combat when it won’t be initiating and will likely end up at the back of the formation.

 

 

 

[XRay]

5 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

You have no idea how -blade CC plays.

Reinhardt is a 3 move horse. Reinhardt kills Ophelia on player phase. If you're running into multiple Hardy Bearing Ophelia you need to contact support.

A defense team needs 3 copies of firesweepers for CC -blade to be un-viable as a strategy, and at that point I just run my Nailah team. A 5 cleaner team would need the enemy team to have 7 copies of firesweep to be threatened. You might note that 7 is a larger number than 6. This is because the 5 Cleaner team kills 5 units without taking damage, and the last unit is debuffed to oblivion.

Ophelia often has Firesweep teammates.

Once I send my Laevatein in to snipe Ophelia, even with Bolt Traps activating on Laevatein, her HP is not low enough to activate Wings of Mercy on my Olivia to take out the Firesweep nuke. If I let Laevatein remain at full HP to tank the Firesweep nuke, then she would die to regular nukes like Reinhardt and Lilina.

Super Cleaner with Counter-Vantage would have the same issue.

6 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Cleaner sets are not tanks, they're player phase units that happen to kill you just as easily on EP.

You can kill them on your phase? They can kill you on their phase. I hope you're really good at running, because Cleaner teams have very good reach between dancer access, horse access, and the ability to force you to step on bolt traps just to engage them.

6 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

They don't need to. If you're forced into the situation where you can only use the firesweeper (because the shock trap got them into Vantage range), then you've already lost.

 

Because, right after you kill one or two of them with the firesweeper, they start killing your team from mobility skills triggering and Prf Cleaner being kind of obscene as a weapon.

If push comes to shove, then I just leave a unit behind as a sacrifice, usually Laevatein in that scenario since she is already deep into enemy territory, and then rely on BH!Lyn, bonus unit, and my two Dancers to try to take out the rest.

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Baldrick said:

Much less than mages. Especially for horse daggers, you’re given more horse mages for free than there are horse daggers in the game.

And a variety of sub-optimal stat spreads is not much use anyway. Nobody used Olwen, nobody used Blade Henry, Robin, Merric etc., and nobody would use Cleaner Matthew, Felicia etc.

Just because something isn't as broken as it could be doesn't mean it's not broken. And just because bad options exist doesn't mean good options aren't good.

Olwen existing didn't make Reinhardt any less broken. For the Cleaner Prf the focus would be on maximizing attack and either mixed bulk (which is difficult if you don't use the armors, since the only other low speed daggers are Xander and Flora, who are very biased in one direction), or bulk in one direction (which is a lot easier), and, for one or two units on the team, good first round combat (which is either Atk and Speed, some kind of Pulse build, or an armor with Bold Fighter and boots).

 

And, because Cleaner is a generic, any future daggers would also be able to pick it up, if they had a more useful type-line.

1 hour ago, Baldrick said:

My question was what stops other hyper-offense units from also using dance, so why does the Cleaner have better mobility than them.

Other offensive units need far more support, and have far more limited team building limitations.  -blade also has a direct counter in Dull effects, whereas debuffs... don't.

 

Things like -blade has very real trade-offs in the kind of support v. mobility you can get. Take my current double dancer, Reinhardt, Savage Blow Staffer + Bonus unit team, for example. If I want maximum reach on my staffer it means my bonus unit can't be a horse or I don't get to use Tactics, since the staffer is already a horse.

If I use Hone Atk 4 to maximize performance it means Flying Azura is glued to Reinhardt and I'll usually have to pay a unit turn just to get him fully buffed. Alternatively I can drop Savage Blow on the staffer and run Hone or Fort Cav and glue the staffer to Rein instead, but I'm using a Savage Blow staffer for a reason (to maximize AoE damage in order to Vantage sweep).

 

On the other hand, if I do run Tactics for Rein it means my two dancers and my third unit can't all be the same unit type if they want buffs (I do happen to run 3 flying units, but that's because I'm a lazy ass rather than because it's the best choice). Which is a consistent problem during light season (because both Legendary Azura and Eir are flying---double Eir gives Rein enough bulk that he can usually Vantage sweep with just one dancer, thanks to easier setup, but the Eirs themselves end up with terrible combat because of the triple flying thing, which makes the job a lot harder than it has to be), and could cause issues with mobility. (If you're forced into an infantry dancer rather than flying dancers.)

 

And other offensive units tend to pay hp to kill things, meaning they need to fully clear the map. The Cleaner sets don't mind leaving people alive and unblocked because only a very limited selection of units can actually threaten them.

 

Also, other hyper-offense units are... hyper-offense, Cleaner sets can easily be mixed-phase thanks to how much combat they get from their weapon slot. Same reason as -blade, except they carry a ton of support themselves.

1 hour ago, Baldrick said:

Show me this build that would make every non-dagger obsolete.

It's not one build, it's the fact that the Cleaner works with a ton of builds. The Cleaner isn't broken the way, say, Eir is broken. (Eir is very very good at one specific thing, which is buffing the hell out of your team.) It's broken the way Reinhardt is broken. (Rein is good at pretty much everything, but not necessarily the best at any of them, which means that every other unit needs to beat him to be worth running. And for things like -blade, -raven, -owl, or even brave usually other units just worse than he is at running the set. Which is ridiculously centralizing.)

 

The easiest set is CC, Vantage, Atk Smoke, Spd Smoke. This does what Azura + CC Vantage -blade does combined. This is +7 all stats for the team and +28 damage for themselves, and this is the 'lazy' set. Because it uses debuffs you can also run it with Azura Hone Atk 4 to get an effective +14 to all stats for the laziest sweeper that ever lived. But this isn't a performance set, this is the 'I don't want to bother thinking' set. (I'd probably run 1 or 2 of it on any given Cleaner team, to function as 'glue' for everything else, though, because it is pretty good at everything, even if it's not quite optimized in any particular direction.)

 

For setup you'd probably want a unit with a Smoke C-slot and a combat S-slot and player phase A-slot, in order to maximize first round ORKO ability for the rest of your team to follow up. (Having less than 32 hp and Fury 4 would also trigger WoM after 2 combats, which usually means you can't get a lot of merges. No merges would normally dumpster your combat vs. +10s if it wasn't for the fact the Prf Cleaner is so broken.)

32 hp units can also run Fury 4 Vantage and just kill every single melee unit on the map. You no longer need CC because melee units don't exist, and you're always in Vantage range because you have Fury 4.

 

You can also pick up utility things like Hardy Bearing, Dance, (Xander has a really good spread for Cleaner, 35 Atk and a ton of physical bulk), or mobility stuff like Guidance, Aerobatics, or whatever.

 

You even have regular EP options in either ward stacking with Eir + a flier (not recommended because all flying daggers have garbage Def), or Special Fighter Noontime armors to fight Hardy Bearing users, there's also Null C-Disrupt, of course, but honestly Nailah's good enough at that job it's probably better to just keep her on a separate team to save on resources. But they do have that option, just like how they have pretty much every other option any given dagger user has access to.

1 hour ago, Baldrick said:

You could always use Dancing Micaiah for that, but I don’t see why the dancer has to have as good combat when it won’t be initiating and will likely end up at the back of the formation.

One part of the reason is that some of our dancers have really optimized spreads. Xander is the most notable with his 35 Atk and 34 Def. And while dancers could easily be at the back of the formation (partly because they don't want to fight, partly because they just dance people rather than hit people, meaning where they need to stand is allowed to be further back), the fact that they don't have to means you can use a lot more aggressive positioning. And you do still get to use regular positioning based buffs like drives, Hones, Tactics etc. despite how well Cleaner scales with debuffs.

Another is that, well, if Reinhardt had dance then half my Reinhardts would be running it---because it is the best assist in the game.

 

And, mind, Festival Micaiah's combat is nowhere near consistent enough for me to bring her for her combat, whereas Cleaner Prf dancers definitely have enough consistency.

57 minutes ago, XRay said:

Ophelia often has Firesweep teammates.

Once I send my Laevatein in to snipe Ophelia, even with Bolt Traps activating on Laevatein, her HP is not low enough to activate Wings of Mercy on my Olivia to take out the Firesweep nuke. If I let Laevatein remain at full HP to tank the Firesweep nuke, then she would die to regular nukes like Reinhardt and Lilina.

Super Cleaner with Counter-Vantage would have the same issue.

Cleaner Prf with Counter-Vantage has more unit-turns to work with than you do. Like, just to hit Ophelia with Laevatein you need to spend a unit turn moving her forward, 2 range horses don't have that problem because their reach is huge, and Cleaner has access to horses. (Cleaner has access to pretty much everything mobility related.)

 

Like, my problems when running CC Reinhardt is not unit-turns, he can hit everyone he needs to hit just fine, because he's a ranged horse. The problem is that part where there are tons of units he can survive but his teammates can't, so resources have to be spent to control the enemy phase.

Cleaner Prf skips right past that problem because everyone on the team has the same level of combat performance as the main carry if you want them to have it. This means there's a minimum wastage of unit-turns because you don't need to spend turns making sure everyone is safe (they're always safe---or, even if some individual units have issues, you have access to multiple units to wall for them), and you don't need to spend turns making sure people can actually reach their targets (because you have access to the most mobile units in the game + you don't need to worry about the problem of needing to be in two places at once because your damage dealers are in 5 places at once).

57 minutes ago, XRay said:

If push comes to shove, then I just leave a unit behind as a sacrifice, usually Laevatein in that scenario since she is already deep into enemy territory, and then rely on BH!Lyn, bonus unit, and my two Dancers to try to take out the rest.

If you can solve a map by sacrificing a unit a Cleaner team can most likely do it without deaths. And maps that can consistently make the Cleaner team lose units will probably consistently wipe typical teams.

 

Like, adding Cleaner Prf does nothing to the game except make people run a bunch of Cleaner units. The gap between the best players and the rest won't close, the resource gap would actually get wider (since a lot of important daggers are 5* exclusive), and the game becomes even more tedious than it already is because of the kind of meta Cleaner units would create. It won't 'fix' daggers, it'll just put every single other unit type in the same category daggers used to be in. It's the same kind of thing as 'fixing' Reinhardt by releasing Legendary Azura, like, yeah, he's no longer the most broken unit in the game, but that's not exactly a win.

That said, Legendary Azura is so good in so many team archetypes that as long as you have her the game is actually more balanced, since it removed a lot of the buff and mobility disparity between unit types. The only problem is that she's freakishly centralizing.

[Baldrick]

10 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Just because something isn't as broken as it could be doesn't mean it's not broken. And just because bad options exist doesn't mean good options aren't good.

Olwen existing didn't make Reinhardt any less broken.

Bad options aren’t good just because they’re different. Olwen is less broken because Reinhardt exists.

 

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It's broken the way Reinhardt is broken. (Rein is good at pretty much everything, but not necessarily the best at any of them, which means that every other unit needs to beat him to be worth running

You can only use one build at a time. A unit would only need to be better at one job to be worth running for that role.

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. And for things like -blade, -raven, -owl, or even brave usually other units just worse than he is at running the set. Which is ridiculously centralizing.)

Since Reinhardt does not actually dominate the meta, I’m going to assume that “centralising the meta” refers to your personal meta.

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The easiest set is CC, Vantage, Atk Smoke, Spd Smoke.

Compared to CC Vantage -Blade, this set has better EP and self-sufficiency, but won’t be able to kill a Firesweeper/Ophelia/Dazzler on PP. It’s not weak to dull/panic, but is weak to Restore/Future Vision, and a human enemy can sac a unit-turn to remove the debuffs.

Very strong and useful, but not unfun to play against at all, and I’m not foddering off my Ophelia any time soon.

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For setup you'd probably want a unit with a Smoke C-slot and a combat S-slot and player phase A-slot, in order to maximize first round ORKO ability for the rest of your team to follow up.

I wouldn’t use the Cleaner for this role. You don’t have any debuffs up yet, so any other dagger would increase first round ORKO ability. You could even use a non-dagger with dual smokes, then bring in your CC/Vantage Cleaner unit afterwards, now that they have a good PP foundation.

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32 hp units can also run Fury 4 Vantage and just kill every single melee unit on the map. You no longer need CC because melee units don't exist, and you're always in Vantage range because you have Fury 4.

Assuming you can cleanly kill all melee units, the ranged units have no Firesweep/Dazzle, your dancers won’t be in range, is a lot of assumptions IMO.

 

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Special Fighter Noontime armors to fight Hardy Bearing users,

Ophelia kills them outright unless you use Goodie Boot/stack Wards.

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there's also Null C-Disrupt, of course, but honestly Nailah's good enough at that job it's probably better to just keep her on a separate team to save on resources.

I’m getting the impression the Cleaner is not even optimal for EP units, much less centralising.

 

Edit: I thought I’d properly state my argument as to why the refined Cleaner is not centralising.

 

The cleaner makes an excellent mixed-phase unit, probably the best in the game, but this game is balanced towards specialists. It’s easy to pull your nuke out and cover it with a tank using dancers and positioning assists.

The cleaner isn’t optimal as a specialised PP unit because it requires a unit-turn to dish out the damage bladetomes, pulsers and QP Moonbow Rein can do from the start. It’s not optimal as a specialised EP unit because it lacks a defensive effect to help cover all the options PP units have.

In a mode that favours jack-of-all-trades, such as one that gives you less deployment slots, the refine Cleaner would be centralising. But as it stands, we have enough slots to use all the masters-of-one we need.[/spoilers]

Edited February 17, 2019 by Baldrick

[DehNutCase]

2 hours ago, Baldrick said:

Bad options aren’t good just because they’re different. Olwen is less broken because Reinhardt exists.

 

Olwen existing doesn't make Reinhardt any less broken, is the thing.

 

Edit: Argh, wtf, I lost most of what I typed.

 

Quick tl;dr (can't be assed to retype all of it again) is that Cleaner teams have really good first round combat due to Flora having 38 base Res (which easily hits even Fury 4, +10 Ophelia with 10 flowers), and that Linde OHKOs that Ophelia fairly consistently because even that bulky ass set for Ophelia is only 74 physical bulk. We can fairly safely assume Atk Tactic (unles the guy is being an idiot with his +10 Ophelia), meaning even naked +0 Cleaner Linde with 37 (Atk boon) + 12 Atk is only missing 25 damage to OHKO. Which is 6 from Atk Tactic on her, 6 from Atk Tactic on Ophelia, a Def Ploy for 10 damage, and then 3 damage from any random junk you feel like picking up. (Fort level is the easiest if you focus on leveling offensive forts, but Flora can run a second ploy for whatever.)

 

Also, cleaner teams have 5 or 6 combat capable units, so you don't get breathing space in-between to clear debuffs, most of them all get to hit you in one turn. Having lots of different move types means that it's really easy to have overlapping threat ranges for a defense team. And for offense teams... I've actually never lost a 5v5 with Galefoce Cordelia when I'm playing at my best, and she's a 2 move melee.

6v5s are not hard enough relative to 5v5s to make up for how much easier running 3 move ranged is compared to 2 move melee. (Particularly since if your team has 2 dancers to have good threat range your team has 2 units that don't exist as far as the Cleaner team is concerned.)

2 hours ago, Baldrick said:

 

  Hide contents

The cleaner makes an excellent mixed-phase unit, probably the best in the game, but this game is balanced towards specialists. It’s easy to pull your nuke out and cover it with a tank using dancers and positioning assists.

The cleaner isn’t optimal as a specialised PP unit because it requires a unit-turn to dish out the damage bladetomes, pulsers and QP Moonbow Rein can do from the start. It’s not optimal as a specialised EP unit because it lacks a defensive effect to help cover all the options PP units have.

In a mode that favours jack-of-all-trades, such as one that gives you less deployment slots, the refine Cleaner would be centralising. But as it stands, we have enough slots to use all the masters-of-one we need.[/spoilers]

Legendary Azura is the best fucking unit in the game, Eir is only 10/10 in light season AR, Legendary Azura is 10/10 literally fucking everywhere except for scoring purposes.

Legendary Azura is the definition of a generalist unit. Her only weakness is her combat, because you need to use up her weapon slot for maximum support ability.

 

You can get away with not running her, because the game is fucking easy, but that doesn't mean she isn't centralizing. Similar for Reinhardt, you can get away with not running him---DC Vantage Laevatein does like 60-70% of what his CC -blade Vantage set does, and she's perfectly viable---but that doesn't mean he isn't centralizing. Like, DC Vantage Laevatein isn't even running at 100% of just one of his sets, and she's perfectly viable even if that was the only set she had.

 

This is honestly an argument I had with Ice Dragon all the time. He rates every unit that's 'good enough,' that is, is strong enough to complete all content as more or less 10/10. I rate units like that around 5/10. It's not that we disagreed on what units did (we actually have very similar views on most units, it's just that we like playing different teams), it's that I more or less treated 'good enough' as the starting line, and he treated it as the finish line.

Edited February 17, 2019 by DehNutCase

[DehNutCase]

Double posting since the forum isn't letting me edit. Even though it did just before.

 

Mind, even T21 isn't hard by hard-core standards (where perfect play and optimized units are expected). My CC Vantage team, for example, has 3 fliers, one of which is a bonus unit with an incomplete skill-set, Atk Tactic as the only field buff, and Legendary Azura using her Base Kit & a Drive Atk S-slot. And, yeah, Reinhardt has +10 merges, but everyone else is +0 or +1. And it's good enough to clear the majority of T21 maps deathless, as long as I take my time to play it properly.

 

I rate units based on standards that are a lot stricter than the game requires, which is why I don't even consider people like Robin for my teams despite they fact that they are, in fact, good enough to bring into teams.

 

Edit: When I say AR is way too hard I usually mean it's way too hard for a casual mobile game like FEH. It's simply not the level of difficulty I want or expect from a game like this.

Edited February 17, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Baldrick]

6 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Legendary Azura is the best fucking unit in the game, Eir is only 10/10 in light season AR, Legendary Azura is 10/10 literally fucking everywhere except for scoring purposes.

Legendary Azura is the definition of a generalist unit. Her only weakness is her combat, because you need to use up her weapon slot for maximum support ability.

I define a generalist as performing many different roles. Legendary Azura performs one role, dancing, and her unique skills make her the best dancer in the game. For comparison, Adrift Azura isn’t as good a dancer, but her tome makes her a better tank. 

Legendary Azura is a very good unit because she does one role better than any unit in the game, and doesn’t need to do any other role.

Quote

You can get away with not running her, because the game is fucking easy, but that doesn't mean she isn't centralizing.

It does for my definition of centralising. (I can beat competent Azura defences without using Azura myself)

Quote

This is honestly an argument I had with Ice Dragon all the time. He rates every unit that's 'good enough,' that is, is strong enough to complete all content as more or less 10/10. I rate units like that around 5/10. It's not that we disagreed on what units did (we actually have very similar views on most units, it's just that we like playing different teams), it's that I more or less treated 'good enough' as the starting line, and he treated it as the finish line.

 

To be honest, I don’t think we agree on how units should be rated either. Since we have different play styles and team building ideas, as well as different standards.

E.g. i would agree with Ice Dragon there, and if new content is brought out that that unit can’t complete, I would revise that unit’s rating something like 10/15.

Edited February 17, 2019 by Baldrick

[DehNutCase]

18 hours ago, Baldrick said:

It does for my definition of centralising. (I can beat competent Azura defences without using Azura myself)

Mind, by centralizing I tend to use something more like Smogon's definition. That is, the unit is flat out better than other units doing the same role.

The fact that Reinhardt exists means I don't run things like Vantage Camus, TA Raven Robin, -blade Mae, etc. His sheer access to sets and ability to run them at optimal or near optimal levels means that he keeps everyone that's not literally the best of the best out of consideration for serious teams. That said, the fact that a lot of his sets depends on perfect play to operate at that level means that you don't see it often in AI teams. In AI hands he doesn't have the level of consistency to operate at a 'broken' level---his Dire Thunder set is very consistent in AI hands, but Ophelia is nearly as consistent and does significantly more damage.

 

For Legendary Azura, the only type of support* that consistently performs better than Azura is the Herons, and that's primarily for Galeforce teams. (Even Nailah would most likely prefer Azura over a Heron, because she can spend a weapon and a C-slot for +6 all stats and have an S-slot free for drive, whereas Herons can't change their weapon slot.)

*Not just dancers, I'm including things like Future Vision Link Lucina, Eirika with a bunch of hones or whatever, and even stuff like Reinhardt when he's against a bad matchup---the classic Dire Thunder set has a lot of skill-slots free for support duties when necessary. Note that I consider Future Vision Lucina a semi-support even without Link, because Future Vision is an absurd mobility support skill.

 

And the main reason Legendary Azura doesn't have good combat is because you'd rather have her maximize her support abilities---there's nothing stopping her from running stuff like TA-raven or -blade. In that vein young Azura doesn't actually have a combat lead over Legendary Azura, because it's easier to buff Type Units & Legendary Azura's move type means it's easier for her to pick her combats. The mere fact that you're running Prayer Wheel over a combat tome already said that you'd rather have your dancer maximize support abilities than sacrifice some for combat.

 

Edited February 18, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Baldrick]

57 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

And the main reason Legendary Azura doesn't have good combat is because you'd rather have her maximize her support abilities---there's nothing stopping her from running stuff like TA-raven or -blade.

Except for the fact that Prayer Wheel is her best weapon, and most high-stakes content doesn't let you change your skill set. You could make Legendary Azura a support unit/tank if you wanted to, but you have more options for that role than you do for a Prayer Wheel unit.

[DehNutCase]

44 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

Except for the fact that Prayer Wheel is her best weapon, and most high-stakes content doesn't let you change your skill set. You could make Legendary Azura a support unit/tank if you wanted to, but you have more options for that role than you do for a Prayer Wheel unit.

What I meant was, if you run Prayer Wheel at all, you've already decided support ability was more important than combat, meaning something like young Azura's better combat when both Azuras are using Prfs is actually a demerit, since it cost her a weapon slot that could've been used for team support.

The support tomes are kind of... bad, but the other flying Azura, for example, has Hagoita for drive Def/Res.

[eclipse]

. . .if you need to argue things out, do so via PM, please.