Quote from TheBoulder;964142:
Invertex is usually messiah when it comes to things like this, but some points I do wish to delve into:
LLR isn't exactly useless for Hammers. I'm pretty sure that LLR (Grand Slam Cealla?) comes out slightly faster than Crushing Arc (2) and allows you to maintain a relative distance, so in theory it is a safer move. I find myself throwing out LLRs time and again, when I want to get in some quick damage, Crushing Arc(1) won't reach, and Crushing Arc(2) will be too slow.
I was pretty sure Grand Slam Calla is the Korean name for Crushing Arc. I remember seeing that name in the promotional video for an update circa Ep5. Looked into it quickly and I think LLR is called Orchid Swing, which sounds about right from what I remember.
I mostly use Orchid as a panic move to cut off your combo, but I sort of don't like it as it's not safe. The HSC out of it is fairly slow, meaning that you could probably just get greedy and see if you can fit in a Butterfly or both hits of Crushing Arc. If you go for a Butterfly, you can always just HSC out of the 3rd normal if you think your timing is off. If going for 2 hit Crushing Arc, the second hit will usually reach far enough if a Orchid would reach, and being able to move to cancel most of the recovery makes it so that you can HS at about the same time out of it.
So I suppose I should rephrase, you should never intend to use Orchid. Only use Orchid if you realize your timing's off for Crushing Arc or Butterfly. This isn't too much of an issue though as I find Hammers are usually relegated to poking with 1 hit of Crushing Arc until the boss gives you an openning for Butterfly.
The other major issue with Orchid is that there's no skill attached to it, so it's damage doesn't get better relative to other skills. Most other skills get like 60% percentile boosts at r6 (Stigma and Crushing Arc both get 63%), while Orchid is stuck with nothing.
In terms of pure %, the initial Butterfly Swing and a single follow up does slightly more damage than an uncharged Stigma Hammer. Both moves have impressive range, although in different aspects; Stigma Hammer has a fantastic forward hitbox, and Butterfly Swing has essentially 360 degree coverage. You will want to typically avoid spamming Butterfly Swing repeatedly unless the boss is downed, or you're in Slashing High, or you're running a chump mission like Friends or something. Evaluate your situation after you do your initial Butterfly; if you require more than two extra swings, you may want to instead reset your combo into another Butterfly (9 + 9 stam, as opposed to 9 + 25 stam).
It's also worth noting that Stigma is an overhead swing, which actually gives it a fairly impressive vertical hitbox as well. This is only really relevant against Elchulus though (using PG > Stigma in order to hit his tail). It is a good general rule of thumb to avoid Butterfly spam unless the boss is downed, however as you play more you'll realize there are actually quite a few times where you can land 3+ Butterflies (often due to boss aggro on other players). I personally don't like LLLRLLLR instead of LLLRRR because if you have the time to start two Butterflies from scratch, you'd probably fit in 3-4 spins normally.
What I like to do is just play until about the 30 stamina mark, and wait for a chance to just idle back to full stamina (should be about 140 for people with Enduring and a few ranks of Stam mastery). Repeated Butterflies use precisely 26 stamina (rounding to 25 is best for mental calculations though), meaning you only need 59 or 83 for 3 or 4 swings. Leaving 30 stamina allows you to be in the sweet spot where you can Large Shield HS 2 hits, which is usually enough for most raids.
I will disagree with this point. As I have repeatedly told new Fiona guildies, the gear that you run is really entirely dependent on the raid you are running, in both your familiarity with the battle and the patterns of the boss; obviously it is stupid to use a small shield at battles like Betrayal, Thor and Glas. I personally run small shield in Ingkells, Lionotus, Colru and (Ancient) Elchulus because I know how to deal with their patterns, and how to slip in Counterattacks and swiftguarded Butterflies.
In terms of damage, Counterattacking is only slightly lower than a swiftguarded Butterfly (.308 vs .324), but it is superior in terms of utility; it not only builds great SP for you (provided you have a situation to allow yourself to Counterattack without risking breaking your shield, and it assists your party (or yourself) in bringing the boss a lot closer to knockdown than Butterfly would.
Well, I'm sort of saying this in terms of leap characters only having 20k AP. Fiona has the highest potential cap AP of all characters (somewhere in the region of 122k), and there are a lot of skills that are great in situational use. I just feel that Small Shields are too situational to warrant investing heavily into them. Spending 2.8k AP on r6 Counterattack which I'd only personally use in Colru is a bit of a bad investment if you're trying to get a raid effective character.
The issue with Small Shields is that in the 4 raids you mentioned (the ones where Small Shielding is even a smart idea), 3 of them work just as well with Large Shields (in my opinion anyways).
- Ingkells I don't run much, I'll admit that. But once he starts spawning dogs and such, typically the party will all pop trans and DPS Ingkells to death. The extra Def from a Large Shield benefits more at that point.
- Lionotus I don't like using Small Shield as I tend to use bomb dropping to kill him. Being able to not get thrown off the cliff everytime you try to lure Lionotus to the edge is far more valuable than being able to counter him (especially as I don't think he gets stunned easily).
- Colru is 50/50, it's mostly dependant on what room you're going to run. Orange and Gray can go both ways, Green is better for Small Shields, Gold is better for Large Shields. In the end they both work, and using a Large Shield is just easier.
- Elchulus is the only case where I believe Small Shield > Large Shield (instead of =). And that's cause of the r9 PG Counter. You won't be using Counterattack at all here.
So even when Small Shield is usable, I find having r9 Guard to be more valuable than Counterattack. It's a great skill, and I love it, but most raids just don't really require it. It's great for normal runs though, as the majority of non-raids get completely shut down by Counterattack.
On the damage side, I guess I forgot to factor in the fact CA got a damage buff and a second hit. Usually if you PG>Butterfly you get more than one hit in though, so I'm not sure how I feel about that. I get at least 2-3 Butterflies in every time on Elchulus. It's even less attractive if you're a Sword Fiona, as Amaranth has like a 0.5 percentile and builds up like 50 SP if it lands (which is almost the same as a CA to my knowledge). Most raids now just don't get knocked down enough to really warrant CA spam, but that's my opinion.
On that note: I sort of made some sweeping generalizations with my prior posts as I really didn't want to add too many exceptions to every single thing I said, but I'm fine with expanding if necesarry!