[ August 2nd, 2023 ] Girl Skills 💡

[DvDivXXX]

That's a TON to digest. And it seems there are still some grey areas for some of the skills (and/or the bugs thereof) and we don't have enough tested and confirmed info on each to compare them meaningfully yet, or even assess some of them in specific contexts like Pantheon.

Among many things I'm currently wondering about is @Horsting's defense (drum roll? ^^) of the Shield skill. More Ego is NOT always good. It's good in situations where it makes the difference between losing and barely winning, sure.

More Ego is terrible for top-tier League fights, because it means fewer points per win. I'm basically talking about less than 1% of players, of course, only those of us competing FTW or at least a top 4 in D3. If you're actually at risk of losing fights regularly in League, then granted, this isn't a concern.

Hmm... Actually just writing the above makes me doubt again and from yet another angle. Since GS 5 skills have an effect when they trigger during the fight, the extra HP from the Shield skill should not count as part of your total starting HP (contrary to extra HP from Chlorella or Green elemental bonuses). As your points total depends on the percentage of your starting HP you have left when you win the fight, Shield might actually be the exception to the rule. If it works that way, then it's effectively a second layer of Armor/Defense rather than HP as we're used to in this game. If I can start a fight at "100" HP, go up to "140" HP thanks to the Shield but still only have to heal up to my original "100" to get a perfect 25/25, that is. Okay, I guess I see it now.

In any case, "I need more study" (that's what she said ^^).

---

PS: As for "defensive" vs "offensive" skills, I agree this is irrelevant and Ravi and I were going by radically different understandings of these terms anyways. He seems to define "offensive" as "during your turn" and defensive as "during the opponent's turn", whereas I would define "offensive" as "you're doing more damage" and "defensive" as "you're taking less damage".

[Master-17]

I read the patch note again. Here's what I came up with (let's take a player without mythic girls) :
The shield gives an increase of 32%, with an ego level of 700k units we get an increase of 224k, which gives protection from 2 attacks against an enemy with damage of 112k (without crits). If the enemy's damage is greater, you will not receive an advantage of 2 rounds; if it is less, the advantage can reach 3 rounds. If your health is higher, the bonus also increases. Best suited for the green team.
Execute finishes off an opponent who has less than 24% ego left. For the same 700k, this is 168k - this is less than 2 attacks of the average player in the D3 league (I have never seen 84k from any weakling) But theoretically it can work better against a team with a high level of ego, if you have little damage, i.e. works better against the green team.
Reflect reflects 80% of the damage dealt by the enemy in the first 2 rounds, but does not block the damage itself. Works better against a team with more damage, because you deal more damage to him. For example, if your damage is 120k, and the enemy has 120k, then you will inflict 216k (180%) on him per round, and if he also crits these times, then even more. And if your damage is only 90k, then the enemy will receive 186k (240%), i.e. more than 2 times more damage. Suitable against teams with high damage and crit chance while your own team's damage is low.
The stun blocks the enemy's moves, allowing you to deal damage only by yourself, but with only a 28% probability, which means that it may not work at all if you are finished off first. But it is guaranteed to last 2 rounds. Suitable for teams with a high level of own damage.

If you have mythics:

Shield - increase of 40%. With an ego of 700k - an increase of 280k. Protection against 2 attacks of opponent with 140k damage, and against 3 attacks of opponent with 93k

Execute - finish off opponent with less then 30% of ego. With 700k ego it's 210k = 2 attacks of player with 105k damage. Not so much difference.

Reflect deals 100% of opponents damage to him. If his damage is higher then your it's cool.

Stun chances is higher and all, nothing has changed much.

Let's look at the ratio against enemy skills:

Shield vs shield - if your ego is higher than opponents than you have better shield, but if your damage is lower - you will not have greater advantage. If you have more damage and ego, then you are in the black.

Shield vs execute - You increase your ego by 32% (or 40%) and get 132% (140%) of ego, but the enemy will finish you off at the same 24% (or 30%). That is, the profit is clear. Your opponent has no special advantage.

Shield vs reflect - You get 132% (140%) of ego, but get your own damage in reply. If your damage is high, you take more damage, but it is taken by your own shield, but it will probably only last for 1 round. If your damage is less than that of the enemy, you still retain the damage, but it may be enough for 1-2 rounds.

Shield vs stun - You get 132% (140%) of ego, and the rest depends on the luck of the enemy. If his stun works in the first two rounds, you will not be able to attack, and he will hit your shield. If it works in subsequent rounds, you will also not be able to attack, and he will hit you. But before that he hit your shield, so essentially nothing changes. And if his stun doesn’t work at all, that’s even better.

Execute vs shield - You will have to fight an opponent whose ego will be 32% (40%) larger, i.e. 132% (140%), while finishing will work on the same 24% (30%) - not the best choice if he has a very big ego.

Execute vs execute - Depends on many factors, and luck plays a major role here: the skill can either play along with you (if you are lucky enough to leave less than 24% (30%) to the enemy before it happens to you) or your opponent.

Execute vs reflect - In this case, at the very beginning of the battle you will receive more damage than your opponent. So if your damage is high - you can end before your opponent takes 76% (70%) damage. If your ego is low, this will happen even faster. You can try to use this skill if your ego is high and the damage is low - then you have a chance to get profit from this skill.

Execute vs stun - if stun works in first turns - you will not be able to cause damage, but only receive it. If this happens when with your next attack you will lower opponent's ego level to less than 76% (70%), it will also be offensive, and he will have a chance to finish you off in these two rounds. If the stun will not work on time, it is as if the opponent did not have this skill at all.

Reflect vs shield - if opponent's ego is bigger then your and his damage is greater - you will deplete it faster. But even otherwise, you will deplete his shield faster than with other skills.

Reflect vs execute - With the opponent's high damage level and his small ego, you can defeat him faster than he deals 76% (70%) damage to you. But if it's the other way around, you may not have enough higher damage in the first two rounds. Here you have to count on a case-by-case basis, but I’m too lazy .

Reflect vs reflect - if your damage is higher and ego lower it's not a best decision. In other cases - maybe, maybe not

Reflect vs stun - if opponent's stun works in first two rounds - he will take damage. If his stun works after your reflect fades off - he will have already taken damage from his first two attacks by this time. But at the same time, he will have the opportunity to inflict damage on you twice without receiving any response, which can play a decisive role. However, he will already receive significantly more damage, which means the battle will last fewer rounds, so the chance that his skill will not activate during the battle increases.

Stun vs shield - if it works in first rounds - you will have an opportunity to give damage to opponent twice and deplete his shield faster. If it works in subsequent rounds you will have two unanswered damages inflicted on the opponent. Whether this is enough to win depends on the initial size of his ego and your damage. And you must remember that the skill may not work on time at all, so you will not get any profit from it.

Stun vs execute - if it works before you have 24% (30%) of ego left, then your chances of winning will appear (increase), otherwise your skill is useless.

Stun vs reflect - You will receive damage regardless of whether the skill is activated in the first two rounds or not. So keep in mind that it will take 1-3 fewer rounds to activate your skill than if your opponent did not have the skill.

Stun vs stun - everything will depend on whose skill works first. I don’t know if it’s possible that it will work for both at the same time - then it will turn out that it essentially won’t work for either. If the skill works for you earlier - and this happens towards the end, then you will have the opportunity to finish off your enemy earlier. Otherwise, your opponent will have this opportunity. If the skill works consistently for both of you, then nothing much will change.

 

Based on the above, the best skills are Shield and Reflect, and Stun and Execution are much worse. In this case, Reflect is still the most preferable.

 

P.S. I wrote this for over 2 hours. Wow!

Edited September 13, 2023 by Master-17
P.S.

[DvDivXXX]

27 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Execute vs execute - Depends on many factors, and luck plays a major role here: the skill can either play along with you (if you are lucky enough to leave less than 24% (30%) to the enemy before it happens to you) or your opponent.

You're always "Player 1" though. You attack first, then they respond, rinse and repeat. So in any situation where the fight is otherwise a sure win for you, your Execute will trigger first. If the opponent's Execute triggers first, then you almost certainly would have lost the fight anyways (or maybe barely win by a coin toss of a margin).

Basically, against weaker opponents (or at least in winnable fights), this is a win-more skill for you, and might as well be no skill at all for them. Against stronger opponents (or at least in close-call fights), it might be less clean cut, but it would probably still be more useful for you to have as the attacker than it would be dangerous on your defending opponent.

Thanks for the breakdown and extra thoughts, though, it helps. As do a lot of long posts in this thread today, although again I'll need a lot of time to process and digest it all.

[Master-17]

5 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

ou're always "Player 1" though. You attack first, then they respond, rinse and repeat. So in any situation where the fight is otherwise a sure win for you, your Execute will trigger first. If the opponent's Execute triggers first, then you almost certainly would have lost the fight anyways (or maybe barely win by a coin toss of a margin).

There are possible options here - for example, you can leave him 25% (31%), and in return he will leave you 23% (29%) and you lose.

[DvDivXXX]

13 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

There are possible options here - for example, you can leave him 25% (31%), and in return he will leave you 23% (29%) and you lose.

Well, that's already covered by my previous post. What you're describing can only happen in a fight that would have been a very likely loss or at least a very very close call regardless.

If I'm anywhere near as damaged as my opponent by the time the combat gets near its end, then this was an uphill battle or even a sure loss for me anyways.

In an otherwise sure win fight, I would simply never get in range of their Execute, while they would definitely get in range of mine.

[Master-17]

43 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Well, that's already covered by my previous post. What you're describing can only happen in a fight that would have been a very likely loss or at least a very very close call regardless.

Well, I wouldn’t talk about a guaranteed victory or defeat. In the event of a not very confident victory or an equal fight, such a combination of skills can tilt victory to the enemy’s side and give fewer points than it would have been under other conditions. Therefore, I would not recommend this combination.
And what kind of confident victory can we talk about if in 99% of cases we are talking about a maximum of 99% chance of winning?

[Horsting]

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

More Ego is terrible for top-tier League fights, because it means fewer points per win.

Nope, the additional 40% you get from the skill do not count for the 100% (resp. 90%) needed to get 25 points in league. It means you can loose those 40% (and 9.9% more) and still get 25 points. This is the reason why IMO it is by far the strongest skill in leagues.
EDIT: I should read the whole post before answering 😅. So yes, this is how it works, and patch notes describe it as well, though not very clearly.

And we already had this discussion about whether more ego is "bad" in league, because your healing heals less of your percent when your ego is higher. I did that time and am still sure that this is a wrong conclusion: More ego means also that your opponent does less percent damage to you with its attacks. Seeing this in absolute values makes more sense. If you have 1M ego, and your opponent hits you 5 times with 100k each, while you heal 20k 6 times, you end the fight with 620k, i.e. 62% and get hence 22 points. If you have 1.3M ego instead, you also end with these 300k more at 920k or 71% and hence get 23 points. (If those 300k came from the shield skill, the percentage would be counted against 1M, i.e. 92%, hence you get 25 points, and an M6 would give you 400k, just to give an example.) So of course more ego is always better, and there is no anti-synergy with healing or anything else. There is also no positive synergy with healing, like between AP/damage and healing, so even with otherwise equivalent bonuses, AP/damage bonuses are usually still better, but that does not make ego bad.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Horsting

[renalove]

4 hours ago, Tom208 said:

It doesn't really matter if your reflect skill triggers before or after your hit since it only works when the opponent hits.

I thought there was a reason to describe it, so I guessed that the description meant that reflected damage occurs before the main damage, but maybe I was overthinking it.

When I tested what happens if the reflected damage defeats the opponent, the JSON data showed that reflected damage does not end the fight and the next turn starts even though the opponent's remaining ego is below zero. The timing of the reflection no longer matters.

Edited September 14, 2023 by renalove
Fix my bad English

[hihi1237823]

Since in league the attacker is always the first to hit and has advantage in using Leagues/All Mastery Emblem to win,
low defense player that may be one shot  may as well place a one man 100% reflect team during AFK to troll the attacker to get less points.

Reflect X% of the damage taken in the first 2 rounds

• Triggers before the hit

Of course the attacker will be force to switch to shield team🤔

[Horsting]

12 minutes ago, renalove said:

When I tested what happens if the reflected damage defeats the opponent, the JSON data showed that reflected damage does not end the fight and the next attack does.

Do you still get healing from your attack, even if the reflected damage, which should theoretically happen before your attack, ends the fight, respectively if the reflected damage would be sufficient to end the fight?

4 minutes ago, hihi1237823 said:

Since in league the attacker is always the first to hit and has advantage in using Leagues/All Mastery Emblem to win,
low defense player that may be one shot  may as well place a one man 100% reflect team during AFK to troll the attacker to get less points.

True, as defensive/AFK team (uff, wording becomes difficult), reflection becomes much better relative to the other skills, and especially execute becomes much weaker. For attacks, I'd with current knowledge anyway prefer shield over everything else, but there is a point to switch to reflection as defensive team, as the booster bonuses are usually switched around by 100% (you unboosted, the opponent fully boosted), at least for those opponents which are a thread anyway. The shield probably allows you 1 or 2 additional weak/unboosted attacks, while reflection assures 2 strong/boosted attacks to be reflected.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Horsting

[renalove]

If the defender has reflect skill, is the attacker's first attack always reflected? Does "Triggers before the hit" mean that the defender's reflect skill is triggered before the attacker's first attack? If so, I misunderstood the description.

[Tom208]

Il y a 5 heures, renalove a dit :

If the defender has reflect skill, is the attacker's first attack always reflected? Does "Triggers before the hit" mean that the defender's reflect skill is triggered before the attacker's first attack? If so, I misunderstood the description.

For me, the skill is triggered at your turn when you attack. So, the attacker's first attack can never be reflected, stuned or absorbed by shield.

[renalove]

2 hours ago, Tom208 said:

For me, the skill is triggered at your turn when you attack. So, the attacker's first attack can never be reflected, stuned or absorbed by shield.

Thank you. That's what I wanted to know and it matches the description below.

Quote

• The skills trigger every turn at the end of the Hero damage step

 

[Horsting]

BIG WARNING: I am pretty sure that skills (at least the shield) do not trigger when you do x2/x3 multi fights in league. Probably someone with sufficiently high account on test server can verify. I had the impression yesterday already: Whenever I did a single fight (most of them, as I was curious how the skill works), I got significantly more points than HH++ expected, but when doing multi-fights, it was mostly in range. Today I did take care a little more:

• I started with single fights where HH++ expected an average between 25 and 23. I got 25 points in each fight.
• Basically it is expected that every fight which has no chance to end with less than 21 points (pre-GS5) ends with 25 points, or the other way round: I start with 40% more HP, hence I end with 40% more HP, which equals to 4 points more on every individual fight result (if you win).
• So I chose a fight with worst being a very low chance for 21 points, and an average close to 24. I did a single battle, which easily ended with 25 points, and it was trivial to see that there was no chance, even with all crits, that this opponent could bring me down to below 90% of my original HP.
• Then I did a x2 fight, which gave me 2x 24 points, which should have been impossible with the skill, but was the average and highest chance outcome without the skill, according to HH++.

I am not keen to do any more more multi-fights on live server now to further prove it, basically for me it is proven, but would be great if someone else could verify that it affects other GS5 skills as well (though for others than shield it is not so trivial to know the worst outcome with the skill), and that it is not just me for some reason.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Horsting

[mdnoria]

Had a lot of stuck battle in boss bang too.

[Attirm]

So I'm heavily reconsidering my plans for skill enhancement now. With Geekette being blessed on Nutaku I had a chance to see the "finisher" final skill in action and it's... well, yeah, it's very clearly the best skill. I got to make some easy Pantheon progress with it (I'm approaching floor 1900 after getting through 1800 without the use of a headband)

I'd been building into blue eyes up until now, since a lot of the C5 and R5 girls have the blue eye trait skill which would allow me to slowly phase in the L5's I acquire blue bulbs (which, at current pace, will take me about a year. Contests reset at 4 AM in my time zone so I usually get sniped and end up with worthless yellow bulbs). However, it turns out that none of the blue eye skill trait girls that I have also have the finisher as a final skill so I have nobody to serve as my lead.

However, I do have Radka. She has the green eye trait skill and the finisher final skill. There are also loads of L5 girls who have the green eye skill trait, so I have a solid team to work towards. Unfortunately the common and rare options are slim pickings. Only Rin and Cunegonde are lower rarity girls with the green eye trait skill to fill out the roster while I acquire blue bulbs. It's going to be a long time before I get a workable roster if I go this route. 

For the time being I don't have enough mythic bulbs to max out even a single girl, so it's moot and I'll be sticking with blue, but once I do have enough bulbs to max out Radka it will be a serious consideration as to whether I want to continue with blue for a while or respec immediately to green.

 

[Horsting]

7 hours ago, Attirm said:

However, it turns out that none of the blue eye skill trait girls that I have also have the finisher as a final skill so I have nobody to serve as my lead.

Dark and red girls have eye colour as trait, red and blue have the finisher skills. So watch out for red girls with blue eyes:

Boah, seeing how much I lag behind with gems to max out all new girls is embarrassing 😅.

Btw, as some do not believe me that (in leagues, not against champs) the shield skill is best, at least in par with execute:

• It gives exactly a flat league point bonus of 4 for every fight, if you win, and up to the 25 cap, of course.
• You start with 40% more ego, you end with 40% more ego, which equals 4 points (up to original 100%). Since neither any attack nor healing value depends on your's or the opponent's ego, the whole fight runs through exactly the same with and without the skill, just with you having those 40% higher ego til the end (if you win, of course). Just as simple as that.
• This also makes knowing the odds simple, even with HH++ and Rena's battle simulator not supporting it yet: Just add 4 points to each possible outcome. Only when there is a chance you loose, you cannot know, since then the fight changes as you have a chance to do more attacks.
• Shield is however the only skill where it is that simple to know, since all other skills affect the course of the fight. Hence it does not really help comparing the skills against each other. Trying to compare the amount of opponent attacks which are blocked by the shield resp. stun, resp. which the opponent can't do anymore as of execution resp. reflection, seems to be easier. It will likely take a while until someone can max out 4 girls + one of the battle simulator supports all skills to do a real-world comparison.
• And if only the win chance is important, i.e. on all other BDSM battles aside of league, the execute skill should be slightly better.

EDIT: Ah, the +40% ego/+4 points are not quite correct, since there is no healing until your ego is below the original 100%. Hence your final ego/points is +40% minus the amount of healing that would have happened form your 2nd attack on (the 1st never heals are you are at 100% already) until you are brought below original 100%. It stays a close thing between shield and execute. Cannot wait for updated battle simulators.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Horsting

[Gartalgar]

il y a une heure, Horsting a dit :

Dark and red girls have eye colour as trait, red and blue have the finisher skills. So watch out for red girls with blue eyes:

[...]

Too bad, looks like there is no Eccentric Mythic with Blue Eyes yet (double-checked with Girl Data spreadsheet).

Edit : well, it's not like many people are able to go up to the 5th skill with a Mythic anyway ...

Edited September 15, 2023 by Gartalgar

[Horsting]

14 minutes ago, Gartalgar said:

Too bad, looks like there is no Eccentric Mythic with Blue Eyes yet (double-checked with Girl Data spreadsheet).

Indeed, my harem screenshot shows all 5* girls with that combination and I would have added any M6 if existing. For green eyes it looks better: 10 L5 and Radka M6 as mentioned by Attirm, interestingly not a single C5/R5/E5.

For newer players, the blue eyes trait however was/is much easier to make use, as many dark and red element blue eyed L5 girls were added the last months, but only a single one (Zuzanna) with green eyes (+ Azana LC revival via PoG bonus path). New Year Estelle would be probably a good compromise for those who obtained her last in Juli (sadly me not): She has blue eyes and the execute skill. Her tier 3 trait (column pose) is probably not adding much value then, but in general column is well distributed among M6 and L5, especially also among blue and yellow girls with that trait, IIRC. Sadly hard to check ingame as the harem strangely shows only 100 shard girls when filtering by pose.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Horsting

[Attirm]

4 hours ago, Horsting said:

Dark and red girls have eye colour as trait, red and blue have the finisher skills. So watch out for red girls with blue eyes:

Ah, I had overlooked that this was the rule, and actually missed those girls when I scanned through my harem for skills. I actually do have Ellie, Felicitas, Yura, and Shegobora (though only Ellie and Felicitas are awakened) so I've got some selection of L5's. No mythics, but I'm not anticipating having even a single fully-skilled mythic for some time yet.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Attirm

[Tom208]

I wonder how we are supposed to understand that part of the patch notes:
 

Citation

• !!Finish Him!! Execute the opponent, if they are under X% of their max Ego
  • Shield counts towards the 25% (100% value does not include the shield)

Let's imagine the opponent has an initial shield of 300k and it remains 100k at this shield.
Do we count the shield for 25k ego (25% of 100k) or 75k ego (25% of 300k)?

[Horsting]

"Shield counts towards the 25%" is somehow a strange note, also as there is no fixed 25% in any of the two skills, but the part in the bracket seems correct and all which matters. This would mean that you need to bring down the opponent to X% of its original ego, not to X% of its original ego + shield. This would be in line with e.g. the fact that in league your points are derived from % of original ego as well, without shield. It also makes sense the skill is working during battle: The max ego shown during the fight is reduced until your original 100% are reached. So first your original ego is shown. After your first hit, the shield triggers, and the max ego shown is increased accordingly. But after every opponent hit, not only the current ego is reduced, but the max ego is reduced right afterwards and hence the ego bar stays at 100% until the shield is all gone. So when you are getting in range for the opponents execute to trigger, the max ego shown is the original 100%, without any trace for the shield.

15 minutes ago, Tom208 said:

Let's imagine the opponent has an initial shield of 300k and it remains 100k at this shield.
Do we count the shield for 25k ego (25% of 100k) or 75k ego (25% of 300k)?

The shield is logically gone when execute can trigger, so 25% of 100k does not make any sense. And as said, the 25% themselves seem wrong and the whole sentence just bad wording. What they probably wanted to express is that you need to add the Y% shield bonus on top of the 100%, and from there you need to do damage until it is back to X% according to your execute skill, to have it triggered.

[Tom208]

il y a 9 minutes, Horsting a dit :

The shield is logically gone when execute can trigger, so 25% of 100k does not make any sense. And as said, the 25% themselves seem wrong and the whole sentence just bad wording. What they probably wanted to express is that you need to add the Y% shield bonus on top of the 100%, and from there you need to do damage until it is back to X% according to your execute skill, to have it triggered.

Thanks.
That's what I thought initially but I also imagined some weird behaviours (with KK, you never know 😄)

In the battle simulation, I consider the shield as a defence bonus rather than an ego bonus. Like that I don't have any questions to ask myself 😉

[Horsting]

5 minutes ago, Tom208 said:

but I also imagined some weird behaviours (with KK, you never know 😄)

Sadly it will take a while until I face an opponent with execute skill, in a situation where I am either okay with a defeat or have no chance to win 😊. But indeed until then we cannot be sure.

8 minutes ago, Tom208 said:

In the battle simulation, I consider the shield as a defence bonus rather than an ego bonus. Like that I don't have any questions to ask myself 😉

A better way of thinking of it, indeed. A secondary volatile defence bonus. I wished it would be visualised that way ingame as well, instead of having a strangely back- and forth moving ego bar/max value. This way of thinking about it would have made it also clear in the first place, that one cannot heal while the shield is active (heal above 100%), which I was not thinking about at first.

[Attirm]

10 hours ago, Tom208 said:

I wonder how we are supposed to understand that part of the patch notes:
 

Let's imagine the opponent has an initial shield of 300k and it remains 100k at this shield.
Do we count the shield for 25k ego (25% of 100k) or 75k ego (25% of 300k)?

I actually don't know how Execute works. Although Geekette says 18% execution, in my testing it actually triggers much earlier and seems to be modified by the strength of the opponent. Against extremely weak opponents like villains, it triggers immediately when they're at 100%. Against very strong opponents in leagues it triggers around 25%. Against players I catch unboosted in leagues, I'm getting executions between 40-50%

I have three theories on how it works. First is that it's bugged, and is actually looking at a completely different number than it's supposed to be. It just happens to be roughly correct for equal-strength fights, but for large strength gaps it can be completely different. The second possibility is that the description is inaccurate (wouldn't be the first time) and the actual effect is slightly different than what is advertised, and some other factor is modifying it. The final possibility is that there actually is a hidden attack that occurs before the execution, and if the hidden attack takes the enemy below 18% then the execution takes place and we're never shown the hidden attack. In any case, it's weirdness that will probably need further investigation. 

Anyways, I spent some time today running over plausible team combinations. Now that I have enough bulbs to actually utilize the system I'm trying it out and planning ahead. I'm not just looking at what is doable for me but what other people might be running. I am presuming that we will want to be moving towards teams that run a single trait skill and stack only girls with the corresponding trait, and want a full lineup of 7 (or, for the time being, 6 and cross your fingers that a new girl will be released later). I'm not sure if someone has already done this, but this is the possible combinations right now.

Eyes (Stun or Execute, Eccentric/Dominatrix)

• Blue Eyes: 2 Mythic + 13 Legendary + 2 Rare + 4 Common
• Green Eyes: 1 Mythic + 13 Legendary + 1 Rare + 1 Common
• Red Eyes: 1 Mythic + 6 Legendary 
• Purple Eyes: 2 Mythic + 6 Legendary

Blue and Green should be reasonable accessible options for long-time players as many of those girls came from Legendary Contests or Boss Bang and were essentially free drops for active players who were around at the time. Red and Purple are only really options for those with complete harems, and the Red-eyed girls in particular come from very exclusive event tiers that very few people would have completed. Overall this looks like the best approach since Red and Black are really strong elements. It is countered by Blue/Yellow and Purple/Orange, but these combos are really hard to build lineups for and very few players will have the right girls in their harems to do so. 

Hair (Shield or Reflect, Submissive/Exhibitionist)

• Blond Hair: 9 Legendary
• Red hair: 1 Mythic + 5 Legendary + 1 Rare + 3 Common

The only thing going for this combo is that there are a lot of girls available and it gives Shield. Otherwise it has a lot of things going against it. Green and White is double-countered by Red and Black, which will probably be the most common team composition once people invest in skill lineups. Blond is missing a Mythic, while Red is missing a Legendary. I also feel that Green and White is the weakest element combo of any of these. Overall a tenable approach, but probably not a good one. Maybe a couple years down the line once we have enough bulbs to run multiple lineups.

Edit: I just noticed that there are 4 Blond skill girls who happen to have Blue eyes, and 3 Rare/Common girls with the Blue eye skill and Blond hair. This means that you could run Blond hair as your primary and keep a hybrid Blue eye approach in reserve, which would turn you into a Red element team! This makes Blond much more appealing since it does have a way out of unfavorable matchups)

Pose (Stun or Execute, Playful/Sensual)

• Doggie Style: 1 Mythic + 5 legendary + 2 Rare + 1 Common
• 69: 1 Mythic + 5 Legendary + 1 Rare + 1 Common
• Nose Dive: 9 Legendary + 1 Rare
• Column: 4 Mythic + 2 Legendary
• Sodomy: 1 Mythic + 4 Legendary + 1 Common

While this does have access to the Execute skill, most of the poses do not have anywhere near enough released girls of the correct elements to run a full team. It's just Doggie Style, 69, and Nose Dive that can actually do it. It also has problems with Mythic equipment, since you'll be running a single pose and as a result won't be able to benefit from the most powerful mythic equipment resonance (pose resonance). However, Column resonance has something interesting: four mythics that qualify. I don't know how realistic this is, though, since not only do you need those four exact mythics you also need some of the most difficult legendaries to acquire. 

Sign (Shield or Reflect, Physical/Voyeur)

• Taurus: 1 Mythic + 5 Legendary + 1 Common
• Virgo: 1 Mythic + 6 Legendary
• Scorpio: 6 Legendary
• Gemini: 6 Legendary
• Leo: 1 Mythic + 5 Legendary

These are all right on the edge of being able to run a complete team, some of them are currently only at 6 girls so they will rely on a future release to get a complete lineup. Virgo actually looks accessible, as a lot of those girls were very easy to obtain if you were around when they were released. It also counters Red/Black, but you do run the risk of being double-countered by Green/White. 

Hair + Eye (Shield, Stun, Reflect, or Execute, Submissive/Exhibitionist/Eccentric/Dominatrix)

• Blond + Blue Eyes: 6 Legendary + 1 Rare + 2 Common

I believe this is the only multi-trait lineup that is currently feasible, and even then you're very limited in what you can run, but the specific combo of Blond Hair plus Blue eyes exists on enough girls to make it doable. Moreover, since the 4 of the Legendaries happen to be 2 Green/2 White you can be going for Blond hair as your primary lineup and using the 1 Rare + 2 Common (which happen to all be Red) to change your team element to get around unfavorable matchups. With either Alluza or Leona you could even run a balance team with this, avoiding any unfavorable matchups without having to do team swapping. Overall this looks like a really good option, the only real downside of which is that there are currently no mythics with Blond hair and Blue eyes with the right element. But one could definitely show up in the future, so we should keep an eye on that.

So as it stands right now, I suspect the vast majority of players should be looking at Blue eyes, Green eyes, or Blond hair teams. However, there are certainly tenable alternatives.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Attirm