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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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The next update for DL has a whole bunch of extremely interesting stuff going on in it, and I have a whole bunch of thoughts about it, lol.

This is gonna get long so I’ll put it under a cut.

The skill share system is the huge deal that I have the most thoughts on, so I’ll save that for last and talk about the rest of the version update, and other upcoming content first.

Even aside from the version update stuff, we got an official announcement for the chapter 13 interlude that’ll come out in a few days. It didn’t exactly say much, but it does show that the Agito bosses are apparently going to show up in it. We knew already that they’ll show up in chapter 14, so this is probably just to set up for that, but it’s still exciting. At the moment they’re all kinda boring as characters, so I hope them actually being part of the main story will make them more interesting.

Nothing’s been said about it yet, but I’m also still thinking that the gala will start at the same time, since I think it’ll be right when the current event ends. The current banner’s going to go until the end of the month, but there’s still gonna be a week between the current event ending and the next one starting, so I think we’ll get the gala to fill that gap, and the new event will just have it’s own banner to go with it once the gala ends.

I’m also still in the camp of wanting the new gala unit to be Leif. I’ve already got nearly 450 summons saved up for him, so I have a lot of expectations riding on this, lol. If it ends up being Leonidas or something I might just straight up skip the entire gala out of spite. I already skipped Gala Mars, so skipping Gala Leonidas would be pretty easy at this point, if it comes to that.

Even though part of why I don’t want Gala Leonidas to be a thing is because I think he’d just be another flame sword, but it’s more about how he looks like he’d be another DPS-oriented flame sword, like all the other ones we have. I actually want Gala Leif to be a flame sword, but I specifically want him to be a support-oriented flame sword, so he’d fill a different role than the other flame swords we have. Flame really needs more variety with it’s support units, and I’m still a bit wary that the skill share system will lead to healers like H-Lowen getting shunned, so getting a flame sword who can substitute for him would be nice.

Anyway, we found out from the version update post that around the middle of next month we’ll see the first Onslaught Event, which seems to be the solo-focused event type they teased at earlier. I’m assuming it’s the one they mentioned that’s separate to defensive events like the FEH stuff. I think it’ll probably be a reworked version of the Coliseum from the FEH2 event, which I think would be really fun. Mostly I’m curious to see if it ends up being the type of event that gives us a free character, since that’s always nice.

On that sort of note, I’m still really hoping the upcoming new raid event at the end of the month is a new wind element one. We desperately need another one if only so that we don’t have to deal with Astral Valfarre this often, lol.

As for the version update itself, I’m really interested to see how the new royal regimen endeavors pan out. Mostly because it might give me an influx of wyrmite and summon vouchers in time for the gala. At the very least it looks like a massively expanded version of the jumpstart endeavors, and from what little we’ve seen of it, it’ll at least give a tenfold voucher and a 5-star adventurer voucher. But since the 5-star voucher seems to be the reward for completing 54 endeavors, there might be a whole bunch of other rewards too.

I’m at least hoping all the rewards will apply retroactively so veterans like me don’t miss out on stuff, but they said that people who’ve already started the game can obtain the rewards, so I hope that means everyone can.

Aside from the skill share thing, there’s also other big balance changes that’ll be done in this update, like AI adventurers taking less damage, HDT opening blasts getting nerfed, various changes to different weapon combos, and so on. It’ll all depend on exactly how the numbers pan out, but this could at least make it WAY easier to solo HDTs, and maybe also the Agito bosses.

I’m glad that they’re addressing the fact that HDT opening blasts are an overly punishing and outdated mechanic that can already be shut down with certain characters. Some people won’t like the change, but anything that makes those fights more plausible to solo would be great. In particular I’ve never even touched HZD since I’ve never really had a reason to, but I still want to get the shadow fafnir facility, and HZD himself as a dragon, so it’d be nice to be able to grind it solo.

Since they’re universally going to lower the damage AI characters take, I think it’ll have an impact on basically every fight in the game, so that might changes things up a lot. Especially with the later levels of Mercurial Gauntlet where part of the challenge is being able to do enough damage to kill him without making yourself too fragile to survive.

I think the weapon combo changes aren’t really going to impact anyone’s damage output much, and will be more of an aesthetic sort of change in the long run, but I feel iffy about them removing the jump animation from axe combos, since I’m so used to charging my force strike mid-jump to save time. But removing the jump animation from sword and dagger combos will make those weapon types way more convenient to play.

The real star of the show here is the skill share feature though, lol. I’m still skeptical about how much of an impact it’ll have in the long run since it all depends on how many limits they put in place for it, but it’s still exciting, and I have a lot of speculation about it.

Firstly, one thing I haven’t seen discussed is the implication that not only will different skills have different ‘costs’, different characters might have different caps on how many skill points worth of skills they can equip. They shows that Euden has a cap of 10, but some characters might have a lower or higher cap, and I think that might really dictate a lot of how this actually works out in the end. The way I hope it works is that stronger units have a smaller cap so they have more limitations on what skills they can equip, while weaker units have a higher cap, so they have more freedom to equip two really good skills.

Just as a fairly severe example, if we assume that all buff skills have a cost of 6 like Elly’s S1 does, maybe super overpowered units like Gala Cleo will have a cap of 5, so they’re straight up unable to equip any buff skills, and might even only have room for one skill to begin with. Just as an example of how to balance it so that the already powerful units can’t just equip two really powerful additional skills to get even stronger. And on the other hand, maybe weaker units could have a cap of 12 or so, which means they could equip two 6-point buff skills, which could be a real game-changer, and let those units enter the meta.

That’s basically the main reason why I don’t think it’s a good idea to get too carried away with trying to work out the numbers for if you gave Gala Cleo two buff skills or whatever, since they might intentionally shut down those situations from the start.

They’ve also said that some skills won’t be available to equip at all, which will probably apply to really unique and potentially broken skills like Grace’s S1, which would obviously be way too game-breaking if you paired it with heal skills. Going by the image they posted, I think they might only let you equip a character’s first skill, and not their second, which would eliminate a lot of possibilities. But it’d make sense to just do a blanket ban on equipping S2s, since those tend to be where the really unique mechanics and buffs go. For example, Hawk and Nefaria’s S2s that alter their force-strikes, Gala Luca’s S2 that gives a huge crit damage buff, Chelsea/V-Addis/Natalie’s S2s that lower their health and give them big buffs, etc etc.

If we assume that all S2s, and Grace’s S1, will be banned, I think the other banned skills would probably be skills that inflict defense debuffs, or major status effects like bog. Those are the other types of skills I can think of that could be way too powerful if used in the right way.

It’s interesting to note, though, that aside from the cost system, there doesn’t seem to be major restrictions in what types of skills you can equip. Like, it doesn’t seem to be restricted by element or weapon type, and Euden at least has access to damaging skills, buffs, and heals. There’s also a few examples we can see from the teaser image of skills that inflict ‘regular’ status effects, like Luca and Joe’s S1s. One really notable example is that Ranzal’s S1 is also available, and if we can use the mana spiral version of it, then that means that you can have convenient access to a buff dispel move, since it’s one of the few moves that had dispel in it that’s not tied to the adventurer’s ability.

The teaser image also gives us an idea of what costs different types of skills will have, which has some interesting implications. Most skills seem to hover around 4-5 points, which makes sense if we assume that 10 is gonna be the average limit, but the ones that are lower or higher than that stand out. We have Ranzal, Cleo, Cibella, and Zardin with skills that have a cost of 3, while Elly and Joe’s skills have a cost of 6. I can see why Elly’s skill has a high cost since it’s a universal team strength buff, but it’s interesting that Joe’s skill has a high cost as well, since it’s just an attacking skill that inflicts burn. It makes me wonder if skills that inflict burn/paralysis/poison/frostbite will have a high cost, probably to make it hard or impossible to equip two at once, but I don’t think it’d be a big deal to equip two of them at once, since if anything it’s a bad thing to have too many sources of status afflictions. Luca’s skill also has a slightly lower cost of 5, which makes me wonder why it’s different to Joe’s. I assume it just implies that story characters will have a lower cost for their skills, to make them easier to equip. Which also makes sense if you look at how Ranzal’s S1 has a cost of 3 compared to other damaging skills in the image having a cost of 5, and Cleo’s S1 having a cost of 3 compared to other heals that have a cost of 4 or 5.

Just as a side-note, I took a look at the wiki to remind myself what Laxi’s S1 does, since hers will also be available even if it wasn’t shown in this image, and lmao I forgot that it’s literally one of the worst damaging skills in the entire game. It’s base damage mods are insanely low, and if you can’t use S2 skills at all, then you won’t even be able to make use of the fact that it does double the amount of hits while her S2 is active. Which reminds me that there might be a lot of units who’s skills just aren’t worth using because they’re buffed by their second skills, on top of all of the adventurers who have abilities that add effects to their S1, like how you need to have Gala Cleo’s abilities to be able to use her force strike buff zone after using her S1.

In general I think that the only skills anyone will want to use in the first place will be buffs and heals, with damaging skills only being worth it if they do something unique like dispelling buffs, or inflicting a debuff or status effect. A team strength buff would have way more impact on overall team DPS than a single damaging skill in general, but maybe I’m just forgetting some uniquely powerful S1 someone has that isn’t reliant on one of their abilities or their S2.

I’m kinda worried that the meta will shift even more towards 4DPS comps that have at least one unit with a heal. It wouldn’t really change things much from how they are now, but it might push H-Lowen out of the flame meta, which would suck. At least his HP increase effect is on his S2, so he’ll probably still have that going for him, but still.

Realistically this would probably lead more towards the sort of thing we see in the wind meta with Tobias/Noelle/DY-Xainfried using Freyja and acting as a substitute healer of sorts, but for all elements, and without relying on dragon skills. So it’s be more along the lines of the ‘healer role’ being diversified, but it still probably means that most staff units will be shunned because the only thing they do is heal, so they’d probably be invalidated by a buffer who brings at least one heal skill.

I’m hoping that, on the flip-side, this will also lead to healers being able to bring buff skills, and thus leading them to effectively doing the same thing as buffers who bring heal skills. For example, if H-Lowen used Emma’s S1, and Emma used H-Lowen’s S1, then the only difference between them would be their S2s, and even those are fairly similar, since Emma has a team defense buff, and H-Lowen has a heal mixed with an HP buff. So they’d do slightly different things, but be similar enough that, hopefully, healers like H-Lowen could do both buffing and healing without just being shunned by the meta.

Most buffers have buff time passives going for them, which probably makes them better, but hopefully not to the degree that they just invalidate healers entirely.

Depending on how this plays out, it could lead to some really interesting possibilities with having characters focus on different things depending on what skills they have equipped. Like if you wanted to make Heinwald into more of a healer, or more of a DPS unit.

One thing to keep in mind is that staff units also have really high SP gain per attack, which might mean that they could get buff skills off substantially faster than a regular buff unit, which could at least make up for not having a buff time passive. But we’ll see if they do anything to adjust SP costs for skills to take that into account.

Even if heal skills get left to dedicated support units like Tobias, DPS units will probably still end up equipping buff skills since they should be more powerful than a damaging skill, so I can’t help but wonder just how drastically it’s going to impact the game if you have four units with access to team strength buffs, lol. I feel like that might just skyrocket the potential team DPS you can achieve, which might really trivialize certain fights in co-op. Which may or may not be a good thing.

And THEN there’s the whole topic of how on top of you needing to 50MC a unit and get them to level 80, you need to use a new type of item to actually make a skill available to be equipped, and it looks like that type of item will just be given out through events and through the shop [which probably refers to real money packs]. So basically I think everyone should just brace themselves for only being able to afford to unlock one or two skills per element. I don’t really think that’s a huge deal though, since you only have the two skill share slots to work with in the first place. Elly’s S1 is also non-elemental and immediately available to use, so everyone will have access to one good buff skill, and Cleo’s heal is also going to be immediately available if you need a heal skill. Ranzal’s S1 is also gonna be free, if you need the buff dispel from it. So there’s already some pretty good options to work with without needing to spend any resources.

In general the main skills people will want to unlock would be their element’s strength buffer if they don’t go for Elly’s S1, a defense buff, and a heal. And since defense buffs and heals aren’t element-locked, you can just use someone like Pipple or Patia in any element for their defense buffs, and someone like OG Cleo for heals. In terms of raw healing power I think the top units would probably be N-Aeleen and S-Verica, and H-Lowen provides both a heal and a defense buff. There’s also Grace but I’m almost certain her S1 will be automatically banned.

There’s various units who have team strength buffs on their S1s via skill shift mechanics, but I don’t think those would be worth using just for the strength buffs. You’d be better off just using a regular buff.

Strength and defense debuffs have a lot of potential to be worth using, especially in raid content, but for that exact reason I think some/all of those types of skills might also be banned.

There’s also the question of if it’ll be worth replacing an Agito weapon skill with a shared skill, which might also be a bit of a problem, but unless you need the alternating defensive buffs from them, I think a team strength buff would be better than even the shadow Agito weapon’s self-only attack rate buff.

Anyway this was far too many words to write about an entire game mechanic that we have vague and incomplete information about, lmao.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #did I spend way too long writing this? yes. do I have anything better to do with my time? not really :)

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