Predator's ranking guide (In progress)

Although I respect Struesdell's tier format and ranking, I wanted to see if I could use a different formula and get some harder numbers (I really dont mean any offense.) So I wanted to introduce my formula and some preliminary numbers to the community so they could give me some feedback or advice/criticizm before I continue, while also addressing a couple of bumps I ran into. Also, I just wanted to let you know that the numbers I am using for max stats are from the IGN page and three are from the dragon recruitment page. IF the states have been updated/changed since then please inform me so I can update my numbers. ALSO, I could not find the info for Caecellia/Octavia/Aggripina and Cornelia so if someone would be so kind as to post them here
Also, I started with the 6*'s because they have the highest numbers and when formulas are muddy bigger numbers mean large inconsistancies on which to find faults in your work. So eventually I may need 5-1* stats, but not now. Finally, I beg thouse with sharper minds and better resources than mine to try my formula, but PLEASE make sure to keep the order consistant, as changing it changes the final number. But if you have good reason to change the order then by all means go ahead, just remember that the earlier in the formula you put something the more it affects the outcome.

On to the formula:

I began by taking the max stats of the unit in question, and multiplying them in the following way:
Land*2
Air*1.5
Sea*1
I took the final number and added them together. From there I got what I call the Total(T) number.

Then: I focueed on the speed. I took the speed values and muliplied the total value as such:
S:T*1.6
A:T*1.4
B:T*1.2
C:T*1
D:T*.8
E:T*.6

I took the product from that and mulitiplied it based on the characters skill. If they did not have a skill I multiplied the number by .8 If they had an area attack skill I multiplied it by 1.4. If they had any other skill I left it as is.

Then I looked at all the cards with 6*'s. it was melee<missile<magic in terms of population. I figured that the amount of units in that type definitly had an effecton their overall usefulness, so as a final precaution if the unit was melee I multiplied my number by 1.2. If it was missile I left it as is and if it was magic I multipled it by .8.

The product of all that I called the Final(F).

***Thus concludes the working formula***

Now I did want to factor in cost to make a seperate colleseum ranking but I do not know the cost so If someone could add those it would be great. If I did have the cost I would simply go F/cost. That would give you A number representing how much overall points a unit is getting(roughly) per unit of cost.

I was also wondering if for that same reason I should take the F/number-of-levels To find out once again how much of the overall score you are getting per level.

Finally, I didnt try this but I was wondering if I should have three scores:
T*speed multiplier
T*skill multiplier
T*type population multiplier
and once I got those three scores average them: (Tspeed+Tskill+Ttypepop)/3
to get my final score. This would only serve to make sure that everything after getting the T score was weighed the same, and thus it wouldnt matter what order you went in. Also, for units like charles with no skill and an S speed, it would drastically affect his final score.

Just so you have something to look at, I did Vlad Georgis Charles and Reinhard already using the initial formula and got:

VladT:366475
VladF:351816
ReinhardT:225235
ReinhardF:324338
CharlesT:177045
CharlesF:271941
GeorgisT:446887.5
GeorgisF:429012

Thanks for your time

Why such high valuation for land compared to air & sea?

How did you get your speed numbers?

Why is range and therefore time-on-target not accounted for?

As a follow-up, why is melee better than missile better than magic (I realize there are animation etc concerns, but in general melee has lower range --> hits in a smaller range).

Why does area attack receive a 1.4 weighting while more "useful" (in my opinion) skills like slow and knockback don't receive one?

Charles is definitly the oddball here, having the lowestTotal and Final score but also being affected the most dramatically. This made me think that I should not only weigh speed differently, but Overall I may have need for more drastic multipliers in all of the areas above. Also, I find it odd that Vlad and Georgis's speed didnt kill them nearly as much as Renhards bossted him, but then I realized that Reinhards boost was boosted by the type pop while Vlad and Gergios's were countered. So this is also something to think about.
100*.8=80*1.2=96. while 100*1.2=120*1.2=144. That "extra" -4 and 4 being applied respectivly, being multiplied hundreds and thousands of times in a maxed units stats, has a big effect.

1)generally there are more land opponants than air and more air than sea so that's why there were multipled as such

2) I used the speed numbers as working numbers while I substitute to find more accurate ones. Unless anyone objects, I used C as the base because S is (in most Japanese games) only assigned to things that break the scale. so in an A-E scale C would be the median

3)I figured that as far as usefulness goes, There isnt really too mant nano seconds between different ranges to affect the outcome, so I left it out. If you think otherwise and have values you think I should start with I would love them

4)I didnt say melee is better than missile etc. I said that in 6* units, it was rarer, and thus had less competition in its type and players in need of a melee 6* have less options, making them more usefull theoretically if you pull one than say a magic user, of which there are many.

I have to go drive, back in20

Back!
And just to let you know this is intended to be a formula to rank characters based on usefulness, not price or rarity

Well... at the start I noticed that you put much more emphasis on land units. On that note, almost any pure melee/hero with a large ground attack (Plautia comes to mind even though she's a mage) would be deemed much more useful then say Rose, even though with boosts she's doing almost 40K attack in each category, making her much more useful in any scenario than Plautia would. I would recommend reworking this area.

Plautia:
51650
11675
23650
total before multipliers: 86975
total after multipliers: 144462.5

Rose:
36250
38800
35240
total before: 110290
total after: 165940

First: thanks Crowex for such a great example, I was trying desperatly to find one but could not!

Second: as you can see, although on paper it looks like plaut would be unfairly advantaged early on it's really not the case. Because usually a unit having a high stat in one/two areas means that the other stats are left lacking in comparison. I ASSUMED (I dont like to but you have to when trying to work for everyone's benefit) that the community valued high land more than simmilar stats across the board because land enemies are most populus. If that assumption is true then my formula is beneficial in that it closes the gap between overall stats (where Rose is clearly the better pick) so that cards like Plautia will land higher in the rankings. At a glance I would say that Rose would still finish higher than Plautia if I finished the calculations but Plautia would be considerably higher than if I did not weight land/air/sea the way I did.
If I was wrong however and balance is more coveted than land dominance (the classic Vlad v. Reinhard) then my formula needs a lot of work. So I need you guys to tell me which is more important.

P.S. An alternative to those who like balance would be
Land*1.6
Air*1.6
Sea*1.2

Is there a reason you start weighting at 1.2?

Struesdell's weights are 1.1, 1, 0.7.

e: sea is really not used very often, hence it's slightly devalued, but land and air are somewhat useful at the same amount (yes, land is used slightly more often, hence the 1.1, but at the same time you'll want air attack and if you don't have it, you're disadvantaged).

I am sure that right now my numbers are not perfect. But as I run tests to see which final numbers I get look the best, I prefer even numbers because it lowers the amount of wierd decimals I end up with. For me, decimals are a distraction. I was thinking weighing land at 1.75 initially and air at 1.35, but one quick glance at the numbers turned me off of that. Later in my work I'll get into messier numbers.

Also, the numbers I've put here are simple so pretty much anyone with an idea of how they want things to look can grab a calculator and go at it.

No one's numbers are perfect, so by all means, do what you're doing. The worst that can happen is a healthy debate over your weightings versus Stru's, which is a good thing for both lists.

With the past couple of event, I see that the only important attribute of a unit is its ability to help take down a boss in one round. Efficient use of TEs depends on this. Therefore, the unit class and attack type weights should solely revolve around being effective against .

Lets take for example the Black Dragon, which has 120% melee, 160% missile and 130% magic defense (thank you Chinese website). Meaning that a melee unit will deal about 83% of his max attack power (63% for missile and 77% for magic). Vlad would deal 131,935 damage per hit (131,925 max land attack * 1.2 for attack boost * .83 land multiplier), while Oktavia would only deal 49,800 damage (66,400 max land attack *1.2 *.63 missile multiplier).

So if you take the defense values of the major bosses, convert them to an attack multiplier and average them, you can come up with pretty reasonable, objective and defensible weighting.

shouldn't higher population mean less rarity thus lower value?

Why does a higher population (melee) get a bonus multiplier?

Also, I personally prefer knockback/slow than area attack.

Something else you need to factor in is range.

predator852 wrote:

I took the product from that and mulitiplied it based on the characters skill. If they did not have a skill I multiplied the number by .8 If they had an area attack skill I multiplied it by 1.4. If they had any other skill I left it as is.

Why does area attack multiply by 1.4 while other skills aren't?

It's obvious that having a skill is better than having no skill.

You can say, D speed with KB/Slow...equivalent to...C speed with No skills, BUT.
1) D with KB/Slow is BETTER than a C with No skill - because KB/Slow also allow other units to re-attack.
2) With Skills bonuses, Skill units get the benefit of (skill+).

NO SKILLS unit
Strength+
Distance+
Speed+

SKILL units
Strength+
Distance+
Speed+
Skill+

So if we're talking about the same unit, you can say
D KB/Slow, with Skill+.....equivalent to.....B No Skills


DISTANCE
A simple multiplier is
100 = 1
130 = 1.3
150 = 1.5
175 = 1.75
200 = 2

clocksprocket wrote:

Why such high valuation for land compared to air & sea?

How did you get your speed numbers?

Why is range and therefore time-on-target not accounted for?

As a follow-up, why is melee better than missile better than magic (I realize there are animation etc concerns, but in general melee has lower range --> hits in a smaller range).

Why does area attack receive a 1.4 weighting while more "useful" (in my opinion) skills like slow and knockback don't receive one?

-Land generally is more valuable than air and sea (try attacking anyone with an "impenetrable defense", you will need exclusively high land attack units if you wish to succeed). I don't necessarily agree with him that ground is weighted 2x as much as sea, however.

-I think we need more data on attack speed in general. Preliminary theory-crafting led me to believe that Minerva was a bad unit. However turns out she is the fastest attacking Knockback 6* unit in the game right now and therefore the best knockback utility unit (Octavia and Nina are the same and both slower despite the same C speed).

-Range is a non-issue. In combination with other units (knockback/slow), range becomes unimportant as units become stun locked in range at all times with proper placement. Once units leave stun-lock range they are considered "gone" anyways (for the purposes of attacking a player with an insane defense, you will realistically have 2 slow, 2 knockbacks at the top and bottom, creating a stun-lock zone for the entire area). Besides that, many events don't even use range.

-I really dislike when people group melee, missile, and magic together and compare them; Again, they should be evaluated separately against the same type. Use of each is situational based on target weakness. Most melee units are generally bad even in comparison to missile and magic units against targets they should be strong against. Vlad and Georgios are the obvious exceptions and possible Cecillia/Agrippina for their poison -- because there are not many good options for poison.

-I personally value AOE as the "best" stat, despite not owning any AOE units myself. I can say that 100% without fail you will fail to breach the defense of a player with multiple 6* maxed monster's in their defense if you do not use AOE (Thankfully I have many allies with 6* AOE). "Good" AOE units are difficult to find whereas good units with Slow/Knockback are plentiful. At the moment, Cornelia and Alexander are really the only viable AOE units because of Cornelia's massive ground attack and Alexander's 200 range allowing him to attack from the back row -- though Alex is pretty useless in most events because of his DPS.

An important thing to keep in mind that in terms of stat "rarity", Melee > Magic = Missile. This is not directly related to value per se, though it does indicate how many options you have available. eg:

Worthy Melee Units:
-Vlad
-Georgios

Worthy Magic Units:
-Monica
-Cornelia
-Nine Tail Fox
-Petra (undervalued for her stats due to being overshadowed by Monica)

Worthy Missile Units:
-Octavia
-Nina
-Anastasia
-Abel (undervalued, highest land attack missile unit)
-Minerva

As you can see, filling your magic / missile line-up with hard hitters is typically not difficult although getting a decent melee unit is because you really have only two choices and one of those choices is not realistically affordable. Vlad's unmatched damage against the Black Dragon has proven his worth in this and the prior event, causing his value to skyrocket lately.

area attack got the 1.4 boosed because the dev's nerfed cards with area attack because they would be hitting more than one mon at once

Valhades wrote:

An important thing to keep in mind that in terms of stat "rarity", Melee > Magic = Missile. This is not directly related to value per se, though it does indicate how many options you have available. eg:

Worthy Melee Units:
-Vlad
-Georgios

Worthy Magic Units:
-Monica
-Cornelia
-Nine Tail Fox
-Petra (undervalued for her stats due to being overshadowed by Monica)

Worthy Missile Units:
-Octavia
-Nina
-Anastasia
-Abel (undervalued, highest land attack missile unit)
-Minerva

As you can see, filling your magic / missile line-up with hard hitters is typically not difficult although getting a decent melee unit is because you really have only two choices and one of those choices is not realistically affordable. Vlad's unmatched damage against the Black Dragon has proven his worth in this and the prior event, causing his value to skyrocket lately.

Valhaldes better articulated my reasoning for weighing melee units higer than missile higer than magic. Because (I only had the max stats for 18 6*'s) 4 were melee, 6 were missile and 8 were magic. That meant 4/18 possible pulls from a card pack (or 22%) were melee units. In a world of perfect probability, only 22% of the 6* cards owned by players would be melee, meaning that owning a melee unit would be considered more useful than the other two because you only had about a 1/4th of a chance to pull one. Not saying that their rarity makes them more useful, but because you have fewer choices the ones you do have become more useful because they have less competition.

I also do not like grouping melee/magic/missile together either. It's equivalent to claiming axes are the best weapon ever because they can hack through bone better than lances or blades. It's essentially comparing things made for different jobs and claiming one is better simply because it is made for the job at hand.
BUT i figured that for a coprehensive ranking they must ultimatly all go in one list and weighing them the way I did was the best solution at the time.

I've been running these things through my head all day (I actually conceived what I did in my critical thinking lecture [it's a drag]). I'm glad that people are giving me the criticizm and questions they are, tomorrow I will be able to narrow it down in my anatomy and phisiology lecture
Keep the feedback coming please!

sagemacleod wrote:

DISTANCE
A simple multiplier is
100 = 1
130 = 1.3
150 = 1.5
175 = 1.75
200 = 2

I was thinking that, but you have to think to yourself, How much does range really affect dps? In a boss fight range is N/A, and even in quest's like 24-6 the shortest range hits the first mon at the same time the longest range does. Also, in unfourtunate cases where a slow/kb is first or second nearest their range allows them to push monster units back or slow their movement before they can get to the real damage dealers (especially if said unit is your leader and you've got the skills maxed!) which can actually be LESS useful and thus completely rework the formula. At most I could only stand to factor in range as
100=1
130=1.03
150=1.05
175=1.075
200=1.1

and even then with a axed six star stats I doubt the range would do enough to tip the scales in anyones favor.

I still don't see why AOE is weighted so heavily. Why is it considered the best skill? Just because slow & knockback are common, doesn't mean those units are more useless -- if you want to sort by skill, that would be different entirely anyway. Smilarly, beating people in battles is ... great, but not really the main draw of the game compared to events or boss battles (Valhades' reasoning for AoE). And even if damage is lower to compensate for AOE, wouldn't it make more sense to calculate how AOE works and then apply that extra damage as DPS (which makes assumptions about that unit hitting more than one monster, which is not necessarily the case in things like tower events or bosses either). Shouldn't poison get a better weighting for "ticking" extra damage -- something you don't see just by looking at unit stats either?

lol Clocks, you sound so angry about this. But you are right, both of our reasoning (Valhaldes and I) are partially flawed. Personally, I think Slow+Poison are my fave skills. Someone else made a good point too about the skill bonuses we can get with luna. (I havent factored it into my skill category, and I need to) So I will work on it tomorrow. You're right AA shouldnt be given as big a boost as it is, and all skills need a boost because they are all useful in some way.
But do I remove the .8 multipler I gave to skill-less units? Or make it .9 or 1? How do you guys feel? When you see a skill-less unit how much does it turn you away from using the unit? Are there ever any situations where you prefer a skill-less unit?

Not to be a huge stick in the mud, but instead of trying to create another generic and thus flawed rating or tier system would it not make more sense to focus on one aspect of the game.

You have seemed to discuss monster defense the most, so why not design your ranking around how useful any unit is at beating peoples defenses (It seems like this is the focus of your rankings already) and disregard how good they are against the black dragon.

Boss killing and defense beating require completely different things so it would be better to just focus on one.

predator852 wrote:

Distance
100=1
130=1.03
150=1.05
175=1.075
200=1.1

S:T*1.6
A:T*1.4
B:T*1.2
C:T*1
D:T*.8
E:T*.6

This is quite unfair to slower units, since they tend to have the high distance. If anything, you should give them equal weight, Distance~Speed. The difference of your multiplier between E-S speed is 2x+. Distance200 can hit 2x amount of Distance100. That's is a fact.

If you're formula favors Boss battles, then another formula for Quest-type/Miina's Trial is required. Since what's needed is completely different between the two. For example, skills don't affect BOSS battles at all, so it has no value. Your formula should be generalize, not circumstantial. Unless circumstantial is how you want it, then you should state that it is a TIER system for BOSS-type battles.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound angry or anything! Just asking questions about what I think is off about your particular model (but, well, we all have our opinions, so in the end it's your choice whether to change things or not). When I do that I tend to be more pointed & blunt, but don't take it personally.

For struesdell's rankings (which I post), having no skill is just a plain weighting of 1, while all the other skills weight above that (slow and knockback being a little higher than poison and AOE, etc etc).

A unit with no skill can still be useful when it has really high attack stats (look at 5* examples of Sheryl/Rose/Sofia).

e: that said, I do agree that models should perhaps focus on different things. A colosseum event is different than a tower event, which is different than Mina's Trials, which is different than battling another player. Struesdell has different weightings slightly for Colosseum events, which I might look into next time we have an arena-type event (for example there, range doesn't matter at all, but speed and skills matter a lot. Also, the formula for damage is something like largest stat + 1/3 of all the other stats combined (and bonuses and all that, of course) so that would be another factor).

clocksprocket wrote:

I still don't see why AOE is weighted so heavily. Why is it considered the best skill? Just because slow & knockback are common, doesn't mean those units are more useless -- if you want to sort by skill, that would be different entirely anyway. Smilarly, beating people in battles is ... great, but not really the main draw of the game compared to events or boss battles (Valhades' reasoning for AoE). And even if damage is lower to compensate for AOE, wouldn't it make more sense to calculate how AOE works and then apply that extra damage as DPS (which makes assumptions about that unit hitting more than one monster, which is not necessarily the case in things like tower events or bosses either). Shouldn't poison get a better weighting for "ticking" extra damage -- something you don't see just by looking at unit stats either?

I did not mention events because I thought it was obvious as you were here for the Venus Colliseum event. AOE is by far the strongest ability in PVP events because typically they inflict 3-4x as much damage on active ability than a regular unit. I don't recall ever saying slow or knockback is useless -- The 6*s I own are all either slow or knockback. I merely said AOE is harder to get so a good AOE unit is more lucrative than a good Slow/KB unit. Regardless, AOE should be ranked against itself in tiering and Cornelia is currently a top tier AOE unit.

Poison has limited usefulness because it does not stack -- One poison unit is sufficient for an entire line-up (your units and allies included) because multiple poison strikes are wasted. Generally event-wise, poison gets the short end of the stick as events heavily favor hard-hitters with high stats (or AOE in the case of PVP events).

Boss battles are another beast entirely, especially because abilities typically don't come into play there -- everything is raw stat DPS then.

Oh, AOE in terms of arena-type events? Sorry, when originally reading the thread I read it as more focused on boss battles (ie black dragon) than arena-type events, in which case AOE doesn't mean much. And in tower-events, where there is very rarely a rush of units, AOE is similarly not so useful.

To be completely honest, I had like two AOE allies who sometimes appeared (and thus AOEd even more rarely) so I didn't see the full effect in the arena -- though I do remember reading their skill effect is to do something like 2x their normal damage, which I'm sure is really powerful with 6*s, so you're right that in terms of Colosseum, AOE would be very useful (especially the higher the stats of the unit doing it are, which can be calculated).

And like you said, Colosseum v. boss battles (v. all the other things I mentioned in my previous post) are all completely different and would require different processes, so I didn't mean to imply AOE is never useful or anything.