strategy Awakenings & Leagues - Comparing Different Strategies

[JustVisitingReborn]

1 hour ago, blaa said:

@Slyniaalready pointed out what elements/girsl to choose

I'm still trying to see where you're seeing the advantage here. I understand why some Dominances are considered stronger than others. @Slynia did a fantastic job of explaining this. What I'm not seeing is where you would apply this.

So above - I can see some small application where you have girls of equal power. If you are filling out your team and you're going to select between Undercover Valentina, the Royal Housemaid or Golden Lupa - all of whom have the same overall power - you choose the Royal Housemaid because because Dominatrix (black) is higher up the ladder. But the frequency with which you get a choice of this nature isn't high. For instance, in the above there is no choice - there is a power difference between the 7th and 8th girl, so you'd choose Bianca rather than Laylay unless you were looking to create a Submissive team to counter a Dominatrix team. In that instance, it's creating the Counter team rather than the Dominance (and hence bonus of that Dominance) of the individual girl that makes the decision for you.

I understand that if you're pushing for a 7 Mythic team you are going that this makes more of a difference. You're broadly ignoring the Blessings and instead pushing to have a fairly stable team. Choosing a rainbow team but with 2 Sen (blue), 2 Dom (black), 2 Ecc (red) and 1 Phy (orange) or Exh (green) gives you the best team overall in that instance. But is there some other application of this that I've not covered above?

Thanks for your time gents

[DvDivXXX]

So... @JustVisitingReborn:

To answer your questions and further share our thought process (me and Blaa's and also a number of other top tier D3 competitors'), JVR, generally speaking it's the better players who adjust their teams to their strategy and situation rather than simply following Zoo's list as best as they can. Otherwise we wouldn't even need his amazing spreadsheets at all, because if you just want your "top 7" girls on paper, then the in-game team building tab already shows you that (not in advance, though, and not taking into account some of your girls could be more powerful than what you currently have but aren't upgraded or leveled up enough yet, but still, you get the idea).

One super important distinction to clarify here, as I feel you tend to use the same term for both things but they are immensely different:

"Dominance" (aka "Domination Schemes") and "Active Bonuses" (aka the ACTIVE part of the "Synergy Bonuses") are two completely separate things. Both relate to Elements, but they don't work the same way at all. My old Paint masterpiece is still relevant to lay out Elements and all the different things they do, so I'll just repost it here:

I should have added in the top "Domination scheme" section: Only if you face A TEAM with one of these/those COLOR TAGS.

So, the one crucial thing I'm typically referring to when saying a color is good or bad is found in the second part of the image, under "Synergy Bonuses". It's also not super explicit there, I now realize, as I was primarily concerned with the PASSIVE bonuses back when I made this image (having not yet maxed them all out, as I have since). So I'm talking about the ACTIVE BONUS you get, eg "1 Dark girl in the team? BOOM +2% to your Attack!" versus "1 Purple girl in the team?  LOLZ +2% to your Harmony...".  

That's exactly what @blaa's screenshots also highlight: his team is STRONGER with an Unblessed Matcha than with a Blessed girl of a garbage-tier color instead. So yeah, these bonuses matter a whole lot more than you seem to realize, regardless of and often despite Blessings.

So that's ACTIVE BONUSES in a nutshell. Each of your 7 girls in the team is a mini booster, at all times and regardless of any other consideration (including the Color TAG of your TEAM). Dark ones are mini-cordyceps. Purple ones are mini-jujubes. Green ones are mini-chlorellas. And yes, the differences between those three mini-boosters are pretty much on par with the differences between the bigger versions you can equip for your Player Character (that's where the logic that "Dark is top tier", "Purple is garbage", and "Green is decent" comes from). You would not willingly equip a Jujube, would you? ^^ Then why would you equip a mini-jujube instead of something good or even great, unless you absolutely have to?

No color is a mini-ginseng, kinda surprisingly, and the 5 remaining colors are all miniature versions of boosters that don't exist as such, although some of them are inspired by the old Class special hits. But it doesn't mean these boosters can't be evaluated and compared, which is indeed what Sly did in the Performance Handbook. I don't 100% agree with his tier-list, and circumstances can switch things up a bit, but only a bit.

Dark, Red and Orange are amazing active bonuses slash mini-boosters to have in your team.
Yellow, White and Purple are garbage mini-boosters to have in your team.
Green and Blue are somewhere in between, at least decent, arguably good even.

And, according to Sly and a few others, Blue possibly becomes insanely strong once and only once you reach Player Level 500 and are otherwise super strong. That's not a legend I can verify or even confirm having seen at work myself just yet (not even in my good Level 500 opponents' teams), but it makes sense at least on paper.

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Then, there's the other consideration behind what you seem to also refer to as "Dominance" interchangeably. The "Domination Scheme" on top of the picture. That only ever comes into play when both teams have at least one Color Tag and there's a relevant interaction between them. And it IS pretty trivial, easy and highly recommended to avoid most of the time. Whenever Blessings allow you to, it's safer to show your opponents a Rainbow (eg Tagless) team as the defender, even if you yourself switch to a Tagged team (or different Tagged teams) as the attacker depending on what your opponents' show you.

And most weeks, it doesn't matter much more than that. I will go out of my way to make up a Rainbow team instead of ending up with any Color Tag if I can avoid it, at least for defense. Except for the past few weeks on HH where specific Colors have been Blessed themselves. And, not always, but in some cases as we're currently experiencing and about to experience some more next week, that's where the magic of Double Tags come in.

The current Blessings on HH are +35% to Green Element, plus some irrelevant one. Zoo's tab for top girls right now is greener than chlorophyll. And yet... Here's my best team according to the game (with some input from myself, because the game doesn't know that my Alt. Finalmecia holds a garbage mini-booster whereas my Royal holds a mini-cordy, my Alexa holds a full extra cordy albeit just for crits, and my UV holds a much stronger version of a full jujube):

That's what I use against Rainbow opponents right now. But it's neither what I show, nor what I use against most opponents. As the defender and when I attack those who actually show full Green, I use this instead:

As the attacker against all the full Green teams out there, this gives me +10% Damage (and +10% HP), which is well worth it even if my team is a bit weaker on paper. And as the defender, to avoid giving me that boost, my opponents must either adopt the same Double Tag strategy, which evens out, or go Rainbow (which makes their team A LOT weaker no matter what).

This is actually fairly rare, but when it does come into play, it makes a world of difference. And it also creates a lot of insane opportunities when you know and you can afford to be there when they show up. Case in point, as I mentioned in the League Addicts Anonymous thread, the switch from last week's Orange Element blessing to this week's Green Element blessing this past Monday left tons of my opponents wide open, not only with weak teams but also offering me a free extra cordy and a free extra chlorella for having switched to the new Blessings before them. Some of them were double-tagged with Green already (to counter the formerly dominant Orange), which made the Green+Red team just as strong against them too.

And starting this Monday, we will switch to +35% for White Element, and a better but still not super impactful secondary blessing (+30% to Capricorns). So yeah, it will be near impossible to build a viable Rainbow team and avoid having the White tag... And no spoilers (especially to my current and future opponents ^^) but I can tell you right now that at most half of my team will even be on Zoo's tab's top 20. And I think it will be the correct choice in my position (although it would be much better with Matcha and, in this case, with Bunna and her seemingly perpetual blessing ^^).

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Linking all of the above the larger strategy for Awakenings & Leagues: I could have sacrificed more resources and set myself back a lot more in order to have a full line-up of girls made strong enough by the Green Element blessing to outmatch my non-Green Mythics this week. And I could be burning resources away right now to perform slightly better next week during the White Element blessing as well. But that wouldn't be worth it imho. That's also what I mean by a "hybrid" strategy. I'm still banking on Mythics first and foremost as my evergreen baseline (and preferably Mythics with evergreen great or at least non-garbage mini-boosters), even though I'm not completely ignoring Blessings and I keep a decent portion of my strong 5-star legendaries up to date along the way.

PS: I know technically the mini-avatars in both Blaa's and my own screenshots are tidbits of advanced poses and not all of them are readily available as avatars. But we all see them all every day in Season and Leagues, and changing each girl's pose just for these couple of screenshots was too tedious. So I'm voting for a pass in this particular context. Fellow mods, please confirm (please!), or if you think we should still edit these to initial poses, let me know, I'll go back and edit. Thanks.

PPS: Err.. @JustVisitingReborn, you're not making my exception proposal easier by including 16 girls' avatars slash partial advanced poses in your own post. ^^ Even though I honestly think this is exactly the type of discussion in which applying the no-spoiler rule too strictly wouldn't make sense. But I'd rather have the okay from my fellow mods before going all-in.

Edited February 12, 2022 by DvDivXXX
PS

[blaa]

9 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

And, according to Sly and a few others, Blue possibly becomes insanely strong once and only once you reach Player Level 500 and are otherwise super strong. That's not a legend I can verify or even confirm having seen at work myself just yet (not even in my good Level 500 opponents' teams), but it makes sense at least on paper.

blue is not only for 500 a good element, but also for other high level players; i often use a team of 3 blues instead of a rainbow (mythic)/only blessed team. As far as I can tell, it gets better the bigger the difference in level/power is.

Overall that's a pretty good explanation. That should help a lot of player to understand the current system (even more).

 

[DvDivXXX]

20 minutes ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

I understand that if you're pushing for a 7 Mythic team you are going that this makes more of a difference. You're broadly ignoring the Blessings and instead pushing to have a fairly stable team. Choosing a rainbow team but with 2 Sen (blue), 2 Dom (black), 2 Ecc (red) and 1 Phy (orange) or Exh (green) gives you the best team overall in that instance.

(My post above is already one of the longest in history and I was still working on it when you posted this, which I read afterwards. The " is there some other application that I've not covered above" part is huge and my giant post answers it all in details. So I'll just address this much smaller point here separately.)

My ideal Rainbow Mythic team would actually definitely include 2 Darks, 2 Reds and 2 Oranges. Most likely 1 Blue as the odd girl out. Maybe in the distant future once I reach Player Level 500 and if Sly's prophecy comes true, then and only then would I consider switching out 1 Orange for a second Blue. Definitely no Green unless they're blessed.

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6 minutes ago, blaa said:

blue is not only for 500 a good element, but also for other high level players; i often use a team of 3 blues instead of a rainbow (mythic)/only blessed team. As far as I can tell, it gets better the bigger the difference in level/power is.

Noted, and good to know, thank you. I'm still not quite there yet, though (comparing our respective screenshots, makes sense that 27 Player Levels above, the effect is getting a lot stronger for you than for me). Also, I've been stuck with two Greens so far and my first Blue  Mythic (Norou) isn't even battle ready yet. So I didn't get much chance to experiment with it so far. But I'll definitely keep an eye on how well she does compared to Arcana or GL once she's up to date.

Edited February 12, 2022 by DvDivXXX

[blaa]

38 minutes ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

 

 

so, look, I already pointed out in my posts that the difference in power between a voyeur and dominatrix girl is so big, that even if the voyeur girl has 10% more power it's still weaker overall (at lest for me). So in this case, I would change bianca and royal housemaid. I might consider changing valentina and the other voyeur girl too, but i am not that convinced from physical bonus.

to be fair, i obviously can choose from a bigger pool of girls, so it's often easier to adjust to the situation at hand. This kind of stuff is also optimising league play, something you might not want to consider yet. But 20-50 poitns can make a difference in my case betweeen top4 or top1.

edit: deleted the overview cause of poses

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23 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

My ideal Rainbow Mythic team would actually definitely include 2 Darks, 2 Reds and 2 Oranges. Most likely 1 Blue as the odd girl out. Maybe in the distant future once I reach Player Level 500 and if Sly's prophecy comes true, then and only then would I consider switching out 1 Orange for a second Blue. Definitely no Green unless they're blessed.

in my case my perfect mythic team (which I will have when KK gives me some blue gems) will look like 2 dark (match, housemaid), 3 blue (estelle, norou, lenaelle), 2 reds (alexa, radka), but for defense i would swap one blue for green or orange. But I am not gonna push to 750 in the next few months (unless something big happens (a lot of free gems)), so I am almost ever have at least some upgraded 5* in my team.

Edited February 12, 2022 by blaa

[Rarum]

Some form of an idea of what works when fighting for the very top ranks can be gleaned from my replies on this topic:

 

 

50 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Except for the past few weeks on HH where specific Colors have been Blessed themselves.

Well, it depends a bit even then if an elemental team is recommended for defense.

 

Attempting to make something more rigorous for comparison of the elements (different situations should be accounted for too, since it seems dominatrix is better when the player is low-power and stuff) would certainly be interesting but with me getting nothing out of it while helping enemies, ehh, maybe not right now. Also because I don't yet know how I would set something like that up; there are so many situations to account for when the player level can change and the girl level can change for both the player and the opponent. And how do you select which girls the opponent should have in the comparisons? Each situation would of course have to be modelled across each blessing which becomes unworkably much computation really fast besides not being easily presentable. So it's kind of difficult to make a comparison that really holds water.

And I think the playful element might still be a bit busted when modelling hypothetical players, even though now it works properly in normal usage. This is something I do kind of dislike about BDSM, it's very difficult to work with in simulations.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Rarum

[DvDivXXX]

6 minutes ago, Rarum said:

unworkably much computation

Please, don't take our long discussion above as a push to make you and your army of sentient super computers work even harder.  Some of us are still going at it by ear, at least to a certain degree, and these are of course broad guidelines that can serve as a basis for various strategies in various situations. No computation required. I love your graphs, but still, I don't want to be responsible for a power outage in your neighborhood because I mentioned something. ^^

10 minutes ago, Rarum said:

And I think the playful element might still be a bit busted when modelling hypothetical players, even though now it works properly in normal usage. This is something I do kind of dislike about BDSM, it's very difficult to work with in simulations.

To be clear, you're strictly speaking about how well your simulations take Yellow into account, not how bad the mini-booster itself is for gameplay? Because it's bad. It's baaaaad. It's so bad even the mini-jujube doesn't suck as much. Just making sure. ^^

[Rarum]

Yes. I'm talking about a possible bug in how the playful element gets handled in the hypothetical scenario modelling that's going to be really annoying to find out if it exists or not.

And yeah, because it's so bad as an element I didn't think this Schrödinger's bug affected the findings about the awakening strategy all that much, and thus didn't bother attempting to pin it down and fix for those. But if we are comparing elements, well, then it might be kind of important that even one of those is busted.

[JustVisitingReborn]

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

generally speaking it's the better players who adjust their teams to their strategy and situation rather than simply following Zoo's list as best as they can.

Apologies - I wasn't clear on my thinking here. I 100% agree. My comment about "weaker players" wasn't suggesting that weak players change their team. Rather, at the start of the week I record every player, there sim value, whether they are currently boosted and whether there is a dominance to exploit. What I find interesting is that it is the exception, rather than the rule, to find players with exploitable dominances at the start of the weak that don't have them days later. Effectively, there's about 15-20% of the league that are leaving up teams with exploitable dominances for days at a time. That's what I meant by "weaker players" as I cannot see any good reason to do that

BTW - at this stage I want to give a big thanks to @zoopokemon - I didn't see the full potential of the booster detector until the start of the new league. While it's not necessarily reduced my work load, it's made my decision making worlds more confident

 

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

One super important distinction to clarify here, as I feel you tend to use the same term for both things but they are immensely different:

"Dominance" (aka "Domination Schemes") and "Active Bonuses" (aka the ACTIVE part of the "Synergy Bonuses") are two completely separate things. Both relate to Elements, but they don't work the same way at all. My old Paint masterpiece is still relevant to lay out Elements and all the different things they do, so I'll just repost it here:

Again, my apologies - that has been an ambiguity in my writing rather than my thinking. I think of the two more as 'Dominance Team' or 'Dominance', but the same functional concepts as you lay out. I realise I may have been interchanging the terms in writing in a manner that I understood in my head, but that would not be clear to the reader.

 

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

That's exactly what @blaa's screenshots also highlight: his team is STRONGER with an Unblessed Matcha than with a Blessed girl of a garbage-tier color instead. So yeah, these bonuses matter a whole lot more than you seem to realize, regardless of and often despite Blessings.

Thank you - I've been trying to get to that understanding.

My point on that though would be that @blaa's comparing apples to oranges in a 5* vs a 6*. I would expect a Blessed 5* to be somewhere around or just below an Unblessed 6*. And I think this is what I'm getting thrown by - in the screenshot the 'total power' of the team with Bianca (168883.84) is HIGHER than the total power of the team with Matcha (166580.84), but the implication seems to be that Matcha is the better choice due to her Active Bonus.

 

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

You would not willingly equip a Jujube, would you? ^^ Then why would you equip a mini-jujube instead of something good or even great, unless you absolutely have to?

And I agree with this. But does zoop's spreadsheet not take precedence? In a situation where you have several girls that are of equal value, you then make the decision based on the hierarchy of Dominances (Active Bonuses). For example:



If I have 6 out of the 7 top girls, and I have both Stacy and Venus that could fill the 7th spot, I'll choose Stacy because she has a better Dominance with a more beneficial Active Bonus. But is this the only type of situation that the Active Bonuses influence? Or is there some process to establish when it may be better overall to take Himari, who has the top tier Active Bonus, but a slightly lower Max Base Sum? (I realise that there is some debate about whether Sensual is actually the best Dominance, this was more of a general question rather than a statement that I view Blue > Red). Or perhaps it'd better to take Path rather then Venus if you had two spots open?

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

PPS: Err.. @JustVisitingReborn, you're not making my exception proposal easier by including 16 girls' avatars slash partial advanced poses in your own post. ^^ Even though I honestly think this is exactly the type of discussion in which applying the no-spoiler rule too strictly wouldn't make sense. But I'd rather have the okay from my fellow mods before going all-in.

And apologies again - it was late and I wasn't thinking. I don't think I can edit the offending post in a manner that would make it compliant without simply deleting the image which would make the post a little difficult to understand. If the mods decide that's the best course of action, it's not going to put my nose out of joint

 

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Overall I can see why a Dominatrix Mythic would be preferably generally because of their stronger Active Bonus. Where I'm struggling however is:

a) with the implication (or potential misunderding) that there are situations where you'd prioitise the Active Bonus over the Max Base Sum. I understand breaking away from the Max Base Sum rankings to either present a rainbow defensive team or achieve a Counter Dominance on offense. That's not in question here. So I'm talking solely about "the Active Bonus for this girl is better than XX.XX extra Max Base Sum points". Where's the data coming from to make that decision? Or is it just a gut feeling? Is that decision being made at all outside of making and breaking Team Dominances?

b) why the Active Bonus would be a bigger benefit overall than the Counter Dominance. I understand that Voyeur has a poor active bonus, but where you're facing a Dominatrix team having a Voyeur Mythic gives you a very strong team (less of a drop in total power) generally to put together a Counter Dominance with a 20% boost to Crit chance. Surely having that option for a stronger Counter Dominance team offers a very strong benefit to having a Voyeur Mythic?

c) why the Active Bonus would also be a bigger benefit than the Blessings? Every colour will come up an equal proportion of the time - a Voyeur Mythic may be a weaker Active Bonus option week to week, but having that Voyeur Mythic when Voyeur catches a Blessing is going to be a significant advantage). Having 2 Dom Mythics vs 1 Dom and 1 Voy means you're going to be very strong when Dom gets Blessed, but are going to be very short on options for a Voyeur Blessing. Is the thinking 'it's better to have a shot at #1 and a top 15, rather than 2x 2-4 finishes'?

Effectively, in b) and c), what I'm getting at is that while the Active Bonus IS better just comparing Active Bonus to Active Bonus, there are two other significant benefits to having a Voyeur (just using the weakest colour as an example) that would seem to me to offset ignoring this colour due to its weaker Active Bonus.

EDIT - There are also two other bonuses to ensuring you have a Voyeur Mythic:

i) Because of the low use for them elsewhere and high availability, Voyeurs are far cheaper to upgrade in terms of gems. Practically the cost for them is just GXP.

ii) If other top tier players follow the logic of avoiding Voyeur Mythics, having a Voyeur Mythic for when a Voyeur Blessing lands is even more advantageous. Fewer other players will be able to counter your Mythic.
 

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by JustVisitingReborn

[DvDivXXX]

6 minutes ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

And I think this is what I'm getting thrown by - in the screenshot the 'total power' of the team with Bianca (168883.84) is HIGHER than the total power of the team with Matcha (166580.84), but the implication seems to be that Matcha is the better choice due to her Active Bonus.

Yeah but "Total Power" is a rather abstract indicator at best. Check Blaa's screenshots again and focus more on the actual battle stats. The ATTACK is higher with Matcha, while the other stats aren't significantly lower; that's a stronger team for PvP than the other one.

I gotta go right now, I'll answer to your other points later. This one was just quick and easy to address.

[Rylarth]

Total power is for sure a weird indicator if I only checked total power i would lose way more battles since the bdsm patch harmony seems to play a bigger role than it used to since it affect how likely you are to crit and in my experience the first to crit is always the winner though i agree with most people that this crit thing involves very much Rng 

[DvDivXXX]

2 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

BTW - at this stage I want to give a big thanks to @zoopokemon - I didn't see the full potential of the booster detector until the start of the new league. While it's not necessarily reduced my work load, it's made my decision making worlds more confident

For sure, and also for his awesome spreadsheets. And I'd also like to give a shoutout to Numbers @45026831 who also worked on the booster detector, but most importantly dropped his ultimate masterpiece with the latest update of HH++ yesterday. ❤️ I'm on a self-imposed Discord-less week, but I just had to give him praise somewhere for that (and more).

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2 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

If I have 6 out of the 7 top girls, and I have both Stacy and Venus that could fill the 7th spot, I'll choose Stacy because she has a better Dominance with a more beneficial Active Bonus. But is this the only type of situation that the Active Bonuses influence?

It not only isn't, but this is almost a perfect example of the other extreme. You have 3 double-blessed 5-stars legendaries plus 4 blessed mythics... (And they naturally constitute a Rainbow team just by chance). It's very hard to justify not including all of them if you can, here. Most situations in which the Active Bonuses matter more (or at least as much, depending on your available pool and strategy) than the base sum stats have far less clean-cut extreme bonuses from Blessings. For instance, next week on HH, Ankyo (the OG 5-star Starter girl) will have +76% to her stats due to Blessings, which will make her ridiculously strong, stronger than anyone but the 3 single-blessed Mythics (Bunna and Alt. Fin +35% and Nike +30%). Now, all 4 of these girls have garbage active bonuses, but that big of a bonus on their raw stats more than makes up for it. It would be silly not to use them if you can.

Where it becomes more interesting is when you go down in temporary value (due to Blessings) and you face situations such as, for instance if I was on Nutaku instead of HH and I had to make up the least worse team from that table... Yikes. I'd be in a lot of trouble. For starters, I do have all 3 of the double-blessed 5-stars, but they're all at Level 1 and I wouldn't even have the resources to push them all the way to my current Girl Level 650 even if I wanted to, which I don't. The same applies even more to any 3-star girl; it doesn't matter if she's quadruple-blessed at +250% for that one week, I'd rather take the loss than burn a whole pile of precious long-term resources to make her work one week, then return to the garbage pile for aeons to come (and you guys had a ton of double-blessed 3-stars this week). Then, I only have two of the four blessed mythics... Again, yikes! I guess I'd prepare for a beating during that particular set of Blessings and do my best to squeeze the bulk of my League fights before the switch for League A, and then after the switch for League B. In the meantime, my temporary team would look something like this: Level-up Red, Alt. Fin, Stacy, Venus, Himari, Rina, Royal. I would still try out a few variations on this rough first draft, though. I do have Venus at level 600, and Bianca at 550; they're both pretty boosted by the Blessing and Purple gems are always good to burn BUT I'm not convinced my team wouldn't be stronger (or less weak, let's be honest) with my unboosted Alexa and UV instead of them. Because yes, 32-ish base sum stats is nice, better than 28.5-ish, BUT a full extra cordyceps when I crit and a full extra +2% to my actual Crit Chance is also a hell of a lot better than +4% to my Harmony (aka +4% to my hypothetical share of the potential half of my Crit Chance bonus compared to my opponent's and capped at 50% no matter what).

And again, that's an extreme case. In many situations, a strong mini-booster is worth a ton more than a few extra base stats.

Gotta run again. ^^ Catch you later.

[Rarum]

16 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

You have 3 double-blessed 5-stars legendaries plus 4 blessed mythics...

Some reading comprehension would be nice here before going on this long of a rant. They specifically talk about having 6 of the top girls instead of all 7 (and later on also talk about having just 5). If they were all already upgraded for whatever reason, I'd say Venus is the worst choice of all the four that are being discussed. Path is a 3-star legendary; an absolutely HORRIBLE idea to upgrade even if they were a game-changer on some week. So really your choice comes down to Stacy and Himari. I'd say it depends on your relative power in the league which one is better.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Rarum

[JustVisitingReborn]

29 minutes ago, Rarum said:

Some reading comprehension would be nice here before going on this long of a rant. They specifically talk about having 6 of the top girls instead of all 7 (and later on also talk about having just 5). I'd say Venus is the worst choice of all the four that are being discussed. Path is a 3-star legendary; an absolutely HORRIBLE idea to upgrade even if they were a game-changer on some week. So really your choice comes down to Stacy and Himari. I'd say it depends on your relative power in the league which one is better.

You've picked me up right, but in all fairness a) @DvDivXXX was just trying to be helpful and giving his time to do so, I'm thankful for his time even with the misunderstanding and b) I made just as glaringly obvious a mistake in my post when I thanked @zoopokemon for the booster detector that @45026831 made. Not that I'm not thankful for the hugely useful spreadsheet zoop made, just that it was disrespectful, albeit unintentionally, to credit someone else for numbers work. We all act a little too fast sometimes I'm pretty sure DvDiv caught my mistake and subtly corrected it lol.

And I totally agree that about Path in a real world sense. It's far too expensive to upgrade a 3*. But my question was simply trying to create an artifical example to try and gain insight into the thought processes of where/when more experienced players are selecting via a girl's Active Bonus rather than Max Base Sum. So forgetting the cost of upgrading altogether - if I had only 5 of the top 7 in the screenshot above, and all 4 of the other girls and all of them are maxed out to my Awakening level, which ones would be the best pick generally? No matter what I pick I'm going to end up with a rainbow team. But is it worth picking Himari or Path for their better Active Bonus, even if they are slightly weaker in terms of Max Base Sum?

 

44 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

I do have Venus at level 600, and Bianca at 550; they're both pretty boosted by the Blessing and Purple gems are always good to burn BUT I'm not convinced my team wouldn't be stronger (or less weak, let's be honest) with my unboosted Alexa and UV instead of them. Because yes, 32-ish base sum stats is nice, better than 28.5-ish, BUT a full extra cordyceps when I crit and a full extra +2% to my actual Crit Chance is also a hell of a lot better than +4% to my Harmony (aka +4% to my hypothetical share of the potential half of my Crit Chance bonus compared to my opponent's and capped at 50% no matter what).

This is getting to the heart of the matter! And it seems like this is what I thought the answer might be - it's more about a gut feeling about what is worth more than some specific data point where we can say 'X is better than Y in these conditions'.

Edited February 13, 2022 by JustVisitingReborn

[45026831]

4 minutes ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

I thanked @zoopokemon for the booster detector that @45026831 made.

That's fine, the booster detection is a joint effort between zoo and myself.

[Rarum]

39 minutes ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

it's more about a gut feeling about what is worth more than some specific data point where we can say 'X is better than Y in these conditions'.

I'd like to say it's based on complicated simulations in my case, but really, it's not. I tried doing that at one point, and you really don't want to be running that often. I do have something in place that records how well teams work as defense teams as I switch through different ones, but yeah, it's still for the most part gut feeling.

I don't place super high importance on having the best possible defense team; even though it matters, there is a lot of other stuff you can do. I forget to switch to it often enough (and I don't like wasting Kobans on having boosters on all the time) to think a serious opponent won't be attacking me at my strongest regardless. I almost see good defense as a placebo strategy, something that makes you feel you're doing well while not actually mattering all that much.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Rarum

[DvDivXXX]

56 minutes ago, Rarum said:

Some reading comprehension would be nice here before going on this long of a rant.

Well, that's a good example of communication issues some players tend to have on the forum in general and with me in particular. JVR already covered a fair bit of the issue, but not all of it.

First of all, I think it's a frequent enough misunderstanding I encounter on this forum more than anywhere else that I'll clarify it explicitly. I'm a member of the vast community of English speakers worldwide who sometimes use the general "you" to describe a general situation. It's usually clear for most people from context, but it's not the first time someone specifically on this forum assumes I meant "you, the person I'm speaking to" instead. The part you quoted is such an example:

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

You have 3 double-blessed 5-stars legendaries plus 4 blessed mythics...

"You" in the above refers to "you guys on Nutaku this week", or even more simply "anyone looking at this list of blessings". It wasn't "You, you".

I guess it's something I can maybe make an active effort to avoid using in this community, as I previously had to do with the term "noob" that used to earn me a lot of problems with a lot of people here, because it's understood in a very different way than in most other gaming circles I've been in over the years...

So yeah, I guess that's where your conclusion that I had read and misunderstood JVR's rhetorical question must have come from? But there's also your incorrect assumption that I was answering that rhetorical question in my post, perhaps because I included it in my quote? I wasn't. He answered it himself immediately, and it was rhetorical, which I comprehended fine, thanks ^^

4 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

If I have 6 out of the 7 top girls, and I have both Stacy and Venus that could fill the 7th spot, I'll choose Stacy because she has a better Dominance with a more beneficial Active Bonus.

My so-called "rant" wasn't me answering that. It was me answering his actual open question that followed in my quote (and beyond that, further elaborating on the topic we've been discussing for the past few long posts):

4 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

But is this the only type of situation that the Active Bonuses influence?

Also, I was absolutely not ranting. You do know that ranting means complaining or otherwise being negative about something (usually for a long time, but not necessarily)? I was genuinely in brainstorming mode, sharing tips and tricks and just generally having a positive mindset when I wrote that post. What made you perceive this as "a rant"? 

Anyway, @Rarumsorry if you disliked that post of mine, but at least dislike it for what it is, not what you mistakenly imagined it to be. Also, JVR isn't wrong that I was in a bit of a hurry and I didn't elaborate as much or perhaps as well as I wanted to. But still, that was a pretty harsh and unexpected way to react to me just continuing a discussion that's interesting to me and trying to help JVR (and also being opened to other's help, like @blaa's tips about Blue previously, for instance).

-----------
Back on topic... (I'll actually cut my posts in two here).
 

[DvDivXXX]

6 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

a) (...) Where's the data coming from to make that decision? Or is it just a gut feeling? Is that decision being made at all outside of making and breaking Team Dominances?

No strict hard data in spreadsheet form or anything as formal for this specifically as far as I'm concerned. The closest would be Sly's tier-list, which was after all just his own review of the 8 possible mini-boosters, my own review of those, and more importantly, the long exchange I had with him about our different ratings, primarily for Red (and then with my wife, who was the one to convince me of just how strong Red actually is).

I make the vast majority of my strategy decisions in this game based on the sum of my knowledge and understanding of all aspects of the game and meta-game (which I'm always open to increase and improve), including my own track record and also obviously tons of info, ideas and data picked up from the community in general, including maths wizards like Shal, Tom, Numbers, Zoo, Rarum etc. but also a lot of shared experiences from players who go more by trial and error, observations from my opponents, discussions with other hardcore players in chat and through the LAA thread, a lot of my own trial and error processes, and yeah, also a lot of gut feeling and educated guesses.

And it's almost always decisions I make outside of making or breaking "Team Dominances" (or Color Tags and the way some of them can counter each other). That's very rarely a major factor, except when one of the active Blessings is actually an Element (an even then, the "counter" needs to be worth running). Otherwise, most opponents are Rainbow by default, and so am I, and this doesn't come into play at all. And more often than not, even if someone has a Color Tag, changing my own team to have the counter Color Tag is not worth it (and vice versa, hence why I'm more comfortable leaving my defense team as Red/Green than Rainbow right now on HH, with Green being super blessed and countered by Red, as I mentioned earlier on).

6 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

b) why the Active Bonus would be a bigger benefit overall than the Counter Dominance. I understand that Voyeur has a poor active bonus, but where you're facing a Dominatrix team having a Voyeur Mythic gives you a very strong team (less of a drop in total power) generally to put together a Counter Dominance with a 20% boost to Crit chance. Surely having that option for a stronger Counter Dominance team offers a very strong benefit to having a Voyeur Mythic?

Definitely not in my perspective. If I'm facing a Dark team, then unless I'm facing a casual who just ended up with that tag without paying attention, it's almost guaranteed that Dark itself is Blessed that week. So my own team is primarily Dark for sure, and I only need the bare minimum of 3 not too weak Purple fillers to give me the precious +20% Crit Chance against them. That bonus is typically worth way more in that situation than the difference in sheer stats from including 3 Purple girls, and one of them being a Mythic would only slightly reduce that gap. Just like in my current team I posted earlier on, it's nice to have Alexa among the three Reds I picked specifically to get the +10% Damage and HP against pure Green teams, and it would be even nicer if I had Radka instead of Sai, but even if I had 3 Stacies I wouldn't perform dramatically worse than with Red Mythics in this situation. It would be the same for a Dark Blessing and me selecting 3 Purple girls to get the double Color Tag. 3 Venuses are enough in that situation, even if having a Nike or two would be a bit better. The rest of the time, having 0 Nikes is absolutely fine, whereas having one or more Alexas is really strong. Because an Alexa gives me a full extra cordy when I crit, whereas Nike gives me basically nothing extra (just like my Alt. Fin does most of the time).

6 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

c) why the Active Bonus would also be a bigger benefit than the Blessings? Every colour will come up an equal proportion of the time - a Voyeur Mythic may be a weaker Active Bonus option week to week, but having that Voyeur Mythic when Voyeur catches a Blessing is going to be a significant advantage). Having 2 Dom Mythics vs 1 Dom and 1 Voy means you're going to be very strong when Dom gets Blessed, but are going to be very short on options for a Voyeur Blessing. Is the thinking 'it's better to have a shot at #1 and a top 15, rather than 2x 2-4 finishes'?

No. The thinking is "it's better to have a strong Mythic when unblessed, which is most of the time". Having 2 Dark Mythics means I can squeeze almost half an extra cordyceps in my team at all times, while also benefiting from two girls with the strongest stats when unblessed. Having 1 Dark and 1 Purple means I can only squeeze half as much of that juicy mini-booster, while there's another bad Mythic sitting on the bench next to my White Element one (and in the distant future, also next to my Green ones, most of the time). Any girl can be strong one week when they're blessed. Mythics are strong all the time. Strong Mythics are stronger than weak ones. Thus, since I can't actually afford to catch them all (or even half of them), focusing on the strong ones makes sense, regardless of Blessings.

6 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

(just using the weakest colour as an example)

Just yanking your chain, here, as it doesn't matter much, but you're actually not. Yellow is even worse than Purple (which is worse than White), although they're all very bad. ^^ And Blue is only top-tier according to Sly, Blaa and others at least at Player Level 480+. I'll soon be able to test it for myself 20 levels behind that, but so far I'm not convinced it'll be on par with Dark or Red, let alone outperform either. It's certainly better than Green as long as you hit very hard, and possibly even better than Orange at a certain threshold. But for sure, there are different situational uses for each of the good to great colors, and some active bonuses are better in some situations (or at certain levels) than others. It's not all written in stone just yet, and that's actually nice.

6 hours ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

i) Because of the low use for them elsewhere and high availability, Voyeurs are far cheaper to upgrade in terms of gems. Practically the cost for them is just GXP.

ii) If other top tier players follow the logic of avoiding Voyeur Mythics, having a Voyeur Mythic for when a Voyeur Blessing lands is even more advantageous. Fewer other players will be able to counter your Mythic.

Hey, what happened to d) through g) here? ^^ 

1) Sure, and that's why I have even less incentive to invest in a Purple Mythic when I can actually afford to level up most of my 5-star legendaries for that color, and I've even started including Purple Rares as fodder on top of the few Common ones to aim for the next Awakening thresholds.

2) Thankfully most players operating in top tier D3 are either not that deeply involved in all of these considerations and/or they're Scrooge McDuck rich in resources and can afford any and all Mythics by default. Even if they didn't, though, having a bad Mythic even when she's blessed wouldn't give me a tremendous advantage either. Just look at Bunna, which I don't have, but most of my opponents do, and she has got to be the most frequently blessed girl of all time. It's still a bad Mythic, and even when she's blessed, I have yet to get crushed in League just because my opponents had her and I don't.  

All in all, I think you focus on Blessings and on counter Color Tags too much, and not enough on the permanent mini-boosters in each and every girl, and the permanent difference it makes to the permanent long-term value of each girl whether she comes with a built-in mini-cordyceps, a conditional full cordyceps, a flat and absolute Crit Chance boost, a +3% to your new and secret Lifesteal skill (which you already have at 10% if you maxed out your harem-related passive bonuses, tbf), a mini-chlorella, or some garbage like "+2% Defense", "+2% to maybe a partial and capped Crit Chance, hopefully" or "-2% Defense for your  opponent" instead. I might be focusing on it too much, mind you, but hopefully this will help either way.

[Rarum]

31 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

But still, that was a pretty harsh and unexpected way to react

Yeah, I apologize. I don't remember what exactly was said, but I remember hearing that when somebody says something hurtful, it's often because they themselves are feeling negative in some way. But it's no justification; there were clearly more constructive reactions I could have chosen (maybe even leaving up to JVR) even if there was miscommunication in some place or another. I at least didn't even consider the "you in general", since to me the questions don't appear completely rhetorical but concrete examples of problems that they might want to hear some thought process on for solving, to bring concreteness into the discussion.

 

51 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

including maths wizards like Shal, Tom, Numbers, Zoo, Rarum

A lot of the heavy lifting of finding out how the combat system works has been done by other people. I'm more of the programmer guy, and even that I don't feel I'm much of a master of despite some amount of formal education and stuff. "I just have a lot of time on my hands to throw stuff at the wall until something sticks."

 

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

And Blue is only top-tier according to Sly, Blaa and others at least at Player Level 480+.

I've been trying to resist saying this but I guess I'm the exception who likes their sensuals at player level 472 now (and I was already using them a decent bit ever since I was in my early 450s or late 440s, but that was even before awakenings so things might very well be different now). The thing with sensual, most notably of the elements, is that it's situationally superb, like you probably have also come to understand. It's just much more often so for very powerful players.

But yeah, despite all the simulating experience, I don't actually know what's good in what situations. I have hunches, sure, but it's such a vast problem space that despite attempts at shrinking said problem space, there have been exceptions that cropped up for all but the most generally applicable of heuristics I've tried. And even those are tailored for my specific situation; maybe players of other power levels would have had to develop different heuristics.

[blaa]

so, a lot is written. I understand, that you, JVR, are now seeing that i didnt compare oranges and apples, but made use of the difference of total power and elements and how they determine your overall strength in different ways? I am just asking, then if not, i could elaborate a little bit on why it's not IMO. Otherwise i am currently not seeing any need to response to something else. But maybe I am just not seeing it?

[Liliat]

Il y a 2 heures, DvDivXXX a dit :

Hey, what happened to d) through g) here? ^^ 

What about h)?

👻

I also think "blue" makes sense against opponents you vastly overpower, in terms of attack, but also in terms of defense. Being able to out-heal whatever little damage you take means you get closer to 24-25 points for each fight (Of course, unless you're fighting very weak unblessed, unboosted opponents, you'll never actually out-heal anyone completely; but it should be close enough to make a real difference).

(Also, if I read the graphs correctly, Rarum loves blue & grey as well; unless a strong elemental blessing is present).

If you take 2 players at 85k (Att)/35k (Def)/550k (HP), one with 4 blue/3 grey and the other with say 4 orange/3 grey (Greys canceling out), we get:

- Healing power for blue: 22% (4x3 + 100x0.1)

- Crit chance for blue: 7%

- Healing power for orange: 10%

- Crit chance for orange: 15% (4x2 + 100x0.07)

Ignoring harmony for the sake of simplicity.

On each hit, each player does 50k damage. On crits, that's 100k.

On each hit, blue team heals 11k damage. On crits, 22k. Orange team heals 5k/10k.

So that's a total of 50k - 11k = 39k damage taken per round for blue (28k on crits), and 50k - 5k = 45k for orange (40k on crits)

In other words: blue can last 14 rounds (and a bit), whereas orange can last 12 rounds (and a bit). Blue crits are also more powerful (same damage, but more healing capacity). Orange needs 2 extra crits to win the match. Might even tip to 3 if blue gets just enough healing capacity to last one more round, after a crit. Quite difficult with only +8% crit chances.

(Note: I'm ignoring the fact that the attackers always have a bonus, since they attack first, and need one less hit overall, since everyone is always the attacker in their own scenario, so everyone gets this bonus).

So actually, in this scenario, with evenly matched players (not even strong vs weak), healing seems stronger than critical chances (Although, admittedly, my "simulation" of the critical bonus is... lacking at best because I didn't take Harmony into account, so calculating the actual chances didn't make a lot of sense. But the average would be 2 crits for orange vs 1 crit for blue, over 12-14 round, so blue still wins by 1 round).

Edited February 13, 2022 by Liliat

[JustVisitingReborn]

On 2/13/2022 at 7:04 PM, blaa said:

so, a lot is written. I understand, that you, JVR, are now seeing that i didnt compare oranges and apples, but made use of the difference of total power and elements and how they determine your overall strength in different ways? I am just asking, then if not, i could elaborate a little bit on why it's not IMO. Otherwise i am currently not seeing any need to response to something else. But maybe I am just not seeing it?

Sorry - RL caught up with me in the last couple of days and I didn't want to respond until I had some thinking space.

If I'm being totally honest, my answer would be "yes and no". I do see that in your example the Unblessed Dominant Mythic could be considered stronger than the Blessed Voyeur 5* in this instance. However it does seem situational and I suspect that the same dynamic could occur for many other L5*s that are not Voyeur. Binaca, specifically, is an older L5*. How would Sponsor Sara Jay hold up under the same conditions? She is Exhibitionist and only fractionally stronger than Bianca? I'm not suggesting you spend any time trying to expand on this for me btw, time will show that. I'm just saying that Bianca is about as close to a garbage 5* as you can get without considering her Dominance. It's no great surprise that she can be outstripped by Unblessed Mythics even when she catches a Blessing.

So, the next question - do the simulators take into consideration the Active Blessings, or are they looking only at Total Power/Team Dominances? I ask as I've been playing around a little this morning. I'm holding off on posting screenshots due to @DvDivXXX's previous - and legitimate - warning about spoilers, but effectively the 7th spot in my rainbow team this week would by Total Power go to Layla (Submissive - white), but Scorpio (Eccentric - red) is only fractionally below on Total Power. Based on this conversation I thought to myself 'it's probably better to have +10% to critical hit damage than +2% to defence' and decided to test this out, using Seasons to get a look at how it impacted my win %. Switching in Scorpio saw me gain a fraction of a % on one opponent but lose it on the other two. That's somewhat confusing. If the simulator was based on Total Power alone, I'd expect all 3 to go down (due to Scorpio's lower Total Power). If the simulator is taking into consideration the Active Bonuses, and Scorpio's active bonus was sufficient to more than compensate for her slightly lower Total Power, I would expect all 3 to go up. (all 3 are rainbow btw).

My first guess here is that the sims aren't working with a large enough sample size to get a rock solid XX.XX%, and as such there is a +/-0.XX% variance in their predictions. I've seen this many times just clicking on/off various opponents. As such I'd guess that what I saw here is actual just falling within the error margin rather than telling me anything useful about Scorpio/Layla. Hence my question - can the simulators give me any useful information about this aspect of play?

[Liliat]

il y a 18 minutes, JustVisitingReborn a dit :

Based on this conversation I thought to myself 'it's probably better to have +10% to critical hit damage than +2% to defence' and decided to test this out, using Seasons to get a look at how it impacted my win %. Switching in Scorpio saw me gain a fraction of a % on one opponent but lose it on the other two. That's somewhat confusing. If the simulator was based on Total Power alone, I'd expect all 3 to go down (due to Scorpio's lower Total Power). If the simulator is taking into consideration the Active Bonuses, and Scorpio's active bonus was sufficient to more than compensate for her slightly lower Total Power, I would expect all 3 to go up. (all 3 are rainbow btw).

Don't forget that the battle system has a huge "round to the upper value" result.

If your opponent needs 10.99 fights to defeat you (11 Rounds), having a tiny bit of extra defense (+2%) can change this value to 11.01 fights instead, leaving you with 1 HP after 11 rounds (Meaning he'll actually need 12 Rounds instead).

Crit, on the other hand, will always give you 1 Extra round, but may only happen 20 to 30% of the time for example. So in this very specific example, Defense would always give you one more round, whereas crit would give you 1 Extra round from time to time.

This doesn't mean that defense is better overall; but there are some specific situations where this small extra defense or small extra HP can save you. In many cases, however, it probably makes 0 difference (Going from 10.2 Rounds to 10.8 Rounds means you gain nothing at all; and that's probably a more common situation with regards to defense).

[Rarum]

1 hour ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

So, the next question - do the simulators take into consideration the Active Blessings, or are they looking only at Total Power/Team Dominances?

The simulators (that I know of) are agnostic to the current blessings. Furthermore, Numbers' simulator doesn't even acknowledge the team's total power. It's not necessary in the simple case where you just have a set of known stats; all it already is part of the more regular stats. I do have to take the total power into account in my simulations because it goes beyond the simple case of known stats. I actually have to simulate new stats for all the hypothetical scenarios.

 

1 hour ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

and decided to test this out, using Seasons

Umm, maybe not the best place to make comparisons, but maybe not atrocious when only worried about player synergies. According to Numbers:

Quote

Seasons still doesn’t provide opponent synergies. [The simulation is] up to date in the sense that it uses the dynamic caracs_per_opponent, but still has to estimate worst case for water, fire and stone

Also, what Liliat said about how sometimes a girl with a weaker active bonus can still have an advantage in edge cases.

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, JustVisitingReborn said:

can the simulators give me any useful information about this aspect of play?

Definitely yes. It's always been the case in the old battle system, more or less (always with an error margin due to RNG and to exact battle mechanics' intricacies not being officially revealed, only always reverse-engineered by expert players, especially those with a hand in HH++ in general and its sims in particular). Since the switch to BDSM and Awakenings and Blessings and tons more variables, the old sims failed a significant number of times for months, with quite a lot of cases in which the script gave the green light for a likely loss (when checked by a human) and even more frequently a red light for what was actually an almost sure win (again if checked closely with a good player's human eyes). @Tom208's version partially made up for this by using a very conservative "worst case scenario" sim by default (giving the estimate for only 1 crit for you and 2 for your opponent, IIRC). But it wasn't perfect, still, obviously.

However, Numbers @45026831 changed the sims for his version a few months ago to probabilistic ones, and likely fine-tuned them beyond that (and they also give an exact list of how likely each possible outcome is estimated by % instead of just a global estimate of the expected average as before); since then, it's been very reliable overall.

There will always be freak incidents, especially for super impactful but RNG-reliant things like crits. That's why especially with a tiny sample it's not surprising you didn't see a clear improvement in your results by swapping in a Red girl, whose power shines over time but can always whiff completely in a single fight.

PS: Don't worry, and no need to apologize. Real Life > virtual hobby, always.  

Edited February 15, 2022 by DvDivXXX
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