Struesdell's Tier Lists, 9/28

struesdell's Tier Lists, 9/28

THIS IS MY OPINION, BASED ON MY ANALYSIS.
I don't have every card, and I can't compare them individually in any empyrical way so you're stuck with my guesses and math.
I'm not posting my graphs anymore because they lead to nitpicking. Now you just get broad categorization.
NOTE: This also has nothing to do with the applicability of these cards to the current event, and is balanced more around how useful they are in the single-unit events or quests. The team battles have a very different system and need their own tiers and considerations.

Tier 1: Octavia*, Nina, Monica
Tier 2: Anastasia, Petra, Cecilia, Vlad, Aggripina, Abel
Tier 3: Gloria, Succubus, Dorothea, Reinhard, Faith
Tier 4: Cornelia, Alexander, Beatrix, Charles

Octavia... oi. Okay so she's got better stats than Nina, same speed, same skill, same type.
That said, she's twice as expensive to deploy. So I think RIGHT NOW, for this event and other similar one-character events, Octavia is better. For events like the Colosseum we just did, Nina is better. Take your pick they're both great.

Tier 1: Sheryl, Joachim, Heidimarie, Rose, Edgar, Meg
Tier 2: Franziska, Victoria, Sophie, Bernhard, Erhard, Ignat, Stefan, Kiki, Seraphina, Camille
Tier 3: Ploutia, Margarite, Lucrezia, Vivienne, Sarah, Julia
Tier 4: Caecilia, Hildegarde, Thrain, Elena, Emma, Adolph, Gerhard, Fiona

Meg is great. Long range poison means more ticks sooner.
Kiki is good! Area attack with balanced stats make her pretty strong but squarely in tier 2.

Tier 1: Samantha, Yuriya, Scarlet, Chris, Georgine, Dhimitrios, Agnes, Livia, Blad, Anton
Tier 2: Gloria, Gleb, Miriam, Django, Partenope, Walpurgis, Lieselotte, Felicia, Vilhelm, Mermaid, Paige, Achillea
Tier 3: Zenobia, Maia, Angela, Estlin, Sergei, Mylene, Dorothy
Tier 4: Robert, Charl, Fredrike, Alfonso, Christof, Biance, Avril, Alex, Helmut, Gunnel, Benedetta

Samantha: Attack speed C Slow for 15 points? Yes please.
Walpurgis and Paige are decent. I've bumped up Achillea also, because her attack speed synergizes well with the Knockback control ability.
Benedetta is the new bottom of the list. Attack Up (Men) is good. But her stats are worse than Alex's. In both cases I think Attack Up (Men) gets a little devalued right now just because all the best cards from the Gladiator, Military, Witch and Black Dragon Reincarnation sets are women.

Tier 1: Hans, Prudence, Piper, Maxim, Harvine, Wolf, Fernando, Simon
Tier 2: Heinz, Geronimo, Hector, Harpy, Carl, Sabrina, Phoebe, Elvira, Kinderik, Katherine, Marlow, Albert
Tier 3: Auguste, Julian, Niel, Leevi, Matvei, Gustav
Tier 4: Evert, Julietta, Johann, Percival, Theresa

Four new three stars, all pretty reasonable. Prudence and Piper are great at this level, while Sabrina and Pheobe land squarely in Tier 2.

Tier 1: Kirill, Alicia, Jane, Pernilla, Iwan, Willie
Tier 2: Adelaide, Damien, Elmer, Anna, Kyra, Bjorn
Tier 3: Orlando, Yakov, Enrique, Igor, Dominic, Solveig
Tier 4: Veronica, Claudio

Nobody caaarrreessss

Tier 1: William
Tier 2: Nils, Kevin, Gordon, Ada, Emily
Tier 3: Ian, Miranda, Markku, Clair, Badouin, Dain
Tier 4: Dennis, Jonathan, Carol, Natalie

Whyyyyyyyyyy

I love your theory posts Strue

Keep up the good work for all of us!

Strenhelden wrote:

I love your theory posts Strue

Keep up the good work for all of us!

I like that every time I post one of these, it's gets harder and harder for me to trade my Thrain.

"But struesdell, you clearly show that it's not a great card in your thread."
"I know! That's why I want to trade it away!"

Also fun:
When I started, everyone told me Hildegard was awesome. She's always in high demand. I think it's the graphic.

Could someone enlighten me as to why Scarlet is such a highly sought after card, (besides art work, I know, I get it, artwork of 1/2 naked women boosts a card's value drastically, blah blah blah). She has a great sea attack, but is slow and lacking in the other areas.
What am I missing?


I have kicked and punched Scarlet Johansson no small # of times, how do you think she got the Black Widow role?

Pugilist wrote:

Could someone enlighten me as to why Scarlet is such a highly sought after card? [sic]

Ooh, fun!
I'm going to build a new tool for myself to break down the value I'm assigning to a card by part, so that I can show it all numerically. Neat! Cool idea!

I don't know myself. As I was making my way up quests/leveling up I never used the one or two Scarlet allies I occasionally had. Yes, her sea is really strong, but her land/air, which is what I mostly wanted -- not so much.

I suppose for events with water enemies or where highest attack stat is taken she's more useful.

Yeah, it's also her 200 Range.



200 range is awesome. It means almost 55% more time-on-target by itself on a straight-line route, which means she starts shooting sooner and stops shooting later. Her Land and Air attacks aren't great it's true, and there really aren't enough hard sea monsters to make sea damage a big deal, but overall she's a great support piece and she can put the hurt on stuff your other units are slowing/knocking back pretty effectively.

Ok, so that I'm sure my brain is thinking the same thing I am...
200 range is great, but since she's a D speed, don't these somewhat cancel each other out?
She's a great support unit...without knockback/slow she's just bleh?


I once punched ____________________.

Pugilist wrote:

Ok, so that I'm sure my brain is thinking the same thing I am...
200 range is great, but since she's a D speed, don't these somewhat cancel each other out?
She's a great support unit...without knockback/slow she's just bleh?


I once punched ____________________.

Don't punch ___________! That's where I put my stuff!

D speed is like a 20% malus vs the 200 Range 55% bonus, so overall it's a net positive.
Yeah, she's not a champion outside of specific quests where you need the sea damage (Wait, are there any? I need to up my +sea skill and I haven't found a quest that's good for sea critters).

For largest damage output I think I tend to prefer Dhimitrios or Chris. Each have broader stat lines and so their Air and Ground damage are more respectable. Chris has bigger numbers, Dhimitrios has faster attack speed but low range.

Yuriya though. Mmm. High power numbers overall, poison, fast attack... awesome.

If I were to diminish the value of sea damage overall, I think that might change the value of a lot of things. Right now, I'm giving land a 10% bonus and sea a 10% malus, so I'm already KINDA incorporating that. It's just not a big swing.

[edit:] as a follow on, I experimented with dropping the value of all sea damage for all units by 25% across the board. Scarlet still comes in above Chris somehow. I double-checked the math, and it's not broken.

I'm considering changing my formula. Right now it compounds all the modifiers multiplicatively, which means that the more bonuses you have the more each one matters. I might want to switch them to be additive instead which would even some of these things out.

I would not consider Hildegarde and Alexander to be bottom tier. They are both extremely useful due to their 200 range which allows you to fit more damage into your CC (crowd control, KB/slow) zone.

For example, ideal unit placement is a variant of:

Castle Start
S| |D S - Slow
K| |D K - Knockback
D| |S D - Heavy Damage (Poison, AOE, No Ability)
K| |D/K <- (Depends on how many D are AOE)
_________
Castle Finish (Leak)
... Obviously the left and right sides can be interchanged freely.


The top 4 units (Slow, Knockback, DD x2) should achieve stunlock on between 2-4 mobs dependent on their speed and hopefully kill them before they advance further. The four below will catch leaks and act the same as the top 4 rows, in general focusing on trying to stunlock a group of mobs into a small area for AOE units to demolish. AOE units have fairly unimpressive single target DPS stats, though when you consider they'll be hitting 3-4 units at a time, the damage begins to look quite exceptional.

The main unavoidable problem is that the bottom four do not contribute at all unless the top four fail. The reason being: You can only fit so many units into a stunlock zone, units behind are only used once the top ones fail. Keep in mind, one hero/unit occupies 50 units of space. That means the extra 50 range (over 150) of a 200 range unit has will allow them to attack over the 2nd row unit, making the 3rd row actually useful before the top four fails.


Aside from that, I believe your calculations do not stress land-target DPS nearly enough. During castle siege (and the other player has a ridiculous defense), Vlad is infinitely more useful his land-target DPS trump's Nina's by quite a margin. Range is not a significant factor unless it's 200 because your stunlock cell (4 heroes) will always keep things stunlocked at max range (130,150,175 - no difference). When units pass the max range, it means your current stunlock group cannot handle the volume of enemies coming. If you use a lower DPS (66k/C) unit like Nina, you will often not be able to out-kill the spawns and you will be overwhelmed.

That's not to say Nina is a bad card. She is the most cost efficient unit in the game at the moment meaning that using her in events where cost matters gives you a lot more flexibility. However, for the TD portion, you're better off using Vlad. When Agent Dana comes out, she is basically as Monica is to Petra -- better in every way and a better choice for Leader-only events. I would not consider Nina top tier in anything except a cost-implemented event because her low land attack stat severely limits her usefulness. If we see more aerial enemies in the future, that may change -- However as it is now, virtually every enemy (including bosses) are ground units and take damage from the ground stat.

</long explanation>

Charl=Charlotte?

I really like your tier design, bravo my friend bravo

Tier 1: Nina, Vlad
Nina - Highest range second only to Alexander. Balanced damage, C speed and ranged projectile is fastest in the game. Unmatched utility. 15 unit cost.
Vlad - Lots of Vlads sure, but in all rank events, the raw damage of Vlad is hard to beat.

Tier 2: Annastasia, Cecelia, Aggrapina
Annastasia - Highest ranged unit damage, and projectile speed. Anna is a rapist in every way. Anna defeats Monica's damage, projectile speed and outdamages Monica in land and air. Who really cares about sea? Oh and she's only 20 unit cost. Anna is slightly below tier 1. There's a reason why Anna is still viable in JP decks even with all of the cards currently out.
Cecilia - Value is high right now because there is no other poison melee. Good damage, and putting a poison skill as your leader will benefit your +1 skill ability. Poison damage will reach over 40k per tick easily. Cecilia will have one of the highest damage output if her poisons stick.
Aggrapina - Value is high because it's a rank prize. Roughly same tier as Cece with a little less air and a lot more land and sea, if you need that. For most events, Aggra will beat Cece in melee and poison damage except when she needs to hit something above her head.

Tier 3: Monica, Reinhard
Monica - Monica is high damage across the board. However its highest at (lol) sea damage. Her 30 unit cost and slow magic projectile speed makes her value inflated. Anyone who's asking for 2-3 6* for her is delirious. 30 unit cost is a bummer considering she's only a slight upgrade from Petra. But more is better for the most part...
Reinhard - Sure he has wings on his ears and that's queer. B speed, good utility and very high damage output on events like DT makes Reinhard always a solid choice. B speed makes his damage competitive and the utility of slowing units at B speed is of great value.

Tier 4: Abel, Dorothea, Succubus (aka doro 2.0)
Abel - Extra points for looking pretty cool. The KB unit of choice until Nina rained on his parade. Solid damage across the board, fast projectile speed and KB offers good utility.
Dorothea - Doro and a slow or KB unit in the front will just do ridiculous damage. Solid damage across the board and each poison tick does 35k damage. This is without making her your lead giving her the level 7 poison skill.
Succubus - Roughly equivalent to Doro, though I like the way doro's card looks more.

Tier 5: Gloria, Petra
Gloria - Solid land damage.... That's about it and she's rare. I won this rank prize, and really tried to get the most out of her, but she's underwhelming. Magic projectile speed is slow. You will hate life when you're a sliver from beating a DT boss and the projectile is still mid-flight when the boss delivers the killing blow. 20 cost helps balance her underwhelming stats. Fun to look at -- that's always a plus.
Petra - Good damage, and 20 cost -- though magic projectile speed is slow. Good utility with slow. Most 6* are high unit cost. Petra is a good balance of damage, utility and low unit cost which can be of use in anyone's deck. For 20 cost I'd rather have Anna though unless the monster is range resistant.

Tier everyone else. Yeah everyone else is just a slight upgrade to 5*.

Projectile speed is a metric I would LOVE to be able to incorporate into my chart.
I'm going to experiment with adjusting the chart to further prioritize a unit's "highest" single attack so that I'm not under-valuing Vlad so much.

Petra, Anastasia and Monica seem really similar in terms of being Speed D, 150 range, slow. Total power looks really close together as well. But if I want to penalize Monica and Petra for being sea-focused and further penalize based on projectile speed, that might shift my numbers around to look more like jdelmundo's list.

That said, while I appreciate people discussing the list I've provided coming in here and just stomping my list with yours is kinda rough. I'd rather get feedback on my list and make adjustments than have readers bouncing around the thread trying to decide who they trust most.

So here's how I'm going to read your post, because I'm sure you weren't trying to be rude.

Quote :

Nina - I totally agree with you on Nina's placement. Her flexibility as a unit and her high speed and low cost make her great.
Vlad - You should try to bump up Vlad, because his ground attack is unmatched and that matters more than his weakness in the other attack types. He's super popular for events because he hits so hard.

Annastasia - You've got her in the right spot, I totally agree.
Cecilia - Value is high right now because there is no other poison melee. Good damage, and putting a poison skill as your leader will benefit your +1 skill ability. I'd consider moving her up because I think you're over-valuing Petra.
Aggrapina - Value is high because it's a rank prize. Roughly same tier as Cece with a little less air and a lot more land and sea, if you need that. For most events, Aggra will beat Cece in melee and poison damage except when she needs to hit something above her head.

Monica - I think you over-value Monica. Monica is high damage across the board. However its highest at (lol) sea damage. Her 30 unit cost and slow magic projectile speed makes her value inflated. Anyone who's asking for 2-3 6* for her is delirious. 30 unit cost is a bummer considering she's only a slight upgrade from Petra. But more is better for the most part...
Reinhard - I think you are under-valuing Reinhard. Sure he has wings on his ears and that's queer. B speed, good utility and very high damage output on events like DT makes Reinhard always a solid choice. B speed makes his damage competitive and the utility of slowing units at B speed is of great value.

Abel - I think Abel is good, but not as good as Reinhard. Extra points for looking pretty cool. The KB unit of choice until Nina rained on his parade. Solid damage across the board, fast projectile speed and KB offers good utility.
Dorothea - Doro and a slow or KB unit in the front will just do ridiculous damage. Solid damage across the board and each poison tick does 35k damage. This is without making her your lead giving her the level 7 poison skill.
Succubus - Roughly equivalent to Doro, though I like the way doro's card looks more.

Gloria - You have Gloria all wrong. She has Solid land damage.... That's about it and she's rare. I won this rank prize, and really tried to get the most out of her, but she's underwhelming. Magic projectile speed is slow. You will hate life when you're a sliver from beating a DT boss and the projectile is still mid-flight when the boss delivers the killing blow. 20 cost helps balance her underwhelming stats. Fun to look at -- that's always a plus.
Petra - Good damage, and 20 cost -- though magic projectile speed is slow. I think this places her lower on the list than you have her. Good utility with slow. Most 6* are high unit cost. Petra is a good balance of damage, utility and low unit cost which can be of use in anyone's deck. For 20 cost I'd rather have Anna though unless the monster is range resistant.

Tier everyone else. Yeah everyone else is just a slight upgrade to 5*.

The internet makes jerks of us all.

jdel speaks the truth

Haha I took no offense to that. Generally I think projectiles have an edge over magic. If you watch magic projectiles they are kind of slow. We haven't seen an encounter yet where magic is overwhelmingly useful.

That can change. I hope it will to encourage diversity on our decks. Look at Venus coliseum. Normally we overlook area attack but they are supreme in this event.

This tier list is just an over generalization but may be useful for people who are vague on the game mechanics.

jdelmundo wrote:

This tier list is just an over generalization but may be useful for people who are vague on the game mechanics.

Thank you! Exactly!

So why is Anton better than Achillea? It seems that Achillea has similar attack and range, but B speed compared to Anton's C speed.

retrospectc4 wrote:

So why is Anton better than Achillea? It seems that Achillea has similar attack and range, but B speed compared to Anton's C speed.

It's just the way my metrics reward the flexibility of a unit over raw power. The two ARE super comparable in land damage and Achillea does have higher attack speed, so in straight up melee:ground killing it seems like Achillea isn't that far behind. But my metric sees Anton's higher sea attack as a benefit overall to using him instead. He's more flexible, he's more likely to be useful in more situations.

Thanks for the quick response. Another question for you; where do you get your max stats for each card? Do you calculate it, using their growth rates? Also, are these growth rates fixed (i.e. gains 250 land attack per level)?

retrospectc4 wrote:

Thanks for the quick response. Another question for you; where do you get your max stats for each card? Do you calculate it, using their growth rates? Also, are these growth rates fixed (i.e. gains 250 land attack per level)?

It's all pulled from the Japanese wiki. From what I can tell, growth rates don't seem to be consistent between cards, but I havent done a through scrub of unit generation Maths.

TBH i didnt think Nina was that good of a card, until i got her.... shes amazing definitely deserve the highest tier.

Growth rates are not fixed. Example below.

Annastasia:

LV1	3750	3200	2800
LV120	92 313	72 620	59 480

Monica:

LV1	4600	4200	5000
LV120	90 010	63 870	103 150

also, refer to vlad's stats, which are fairly balanced @ lvl 1