Day 18: The Week of Mixed Feelings
This last week man. There's been a lot of things happening. Some good, some bad. Some that just leave me feeling completely confused. Emphasis is mostly on a LOT of things having happened. So we're going to be breaking it down and covering each major point in detail in a manner that feeds on topic into another. Let's begin. As a heads up, this ultimately turned out to be a longass post.
*Game Updates
We're not gonna talk raids, fortnights, or anything else here other than two things. The first is no more sitting through animations. The second is the 20 stamina increase. Now sure, the former is nice. But we really didn't rely on specials that much to clear content at this stage in the game, we've been relying on an arms war of better and better captains to smash our way through to victory. But the 20 stamina increase?
...
Please allow me this, just one time.
Bumping us up by 20 stamina is HUGE. We've spent the last 2+ weeks getting limited by team size, but now? Now we can go nuts. And by nuts I mean...
*Evolutions
Legend Lucci? Evolved
Monster Chopper? Evolved
Diamante? Evolved
Kalifa? Evolved
Marco? Evolved
Capone? ....eh
Heracles'n? ....see above, but almost!
Buggy? Evolved
Baccarat? Evolved
That boost in stamina let us evolve so many units that were sitting there, waiting for that magical moment. I'm happy to say, that magical moment was now, and my teams are all the better for it, but more on that later. And of course, evolving units is only half the challenge. You gotta level up units to evolve them, and even then, evolved units require levels to be useful. Happy to say, we got that covered too.
*Level-Ups
Lv.50 5* Lucci -> Lv. 70 and evolved -> Lv.50 Lucci
Lv.5 4* Chopper -> Lv. 70 and evolved -> Lv. 50 Monster Chopper
Lv.65 Diamante -> Lv. 70 and evolved -> Lv. 45 5* Diamante
Lv.10 FN Kalifa -> Lv. 50 and evolved
Lv.5 5* Kyros -> Lv. 45
6* Marco -> Lv. 30
Lv.10 4* Squard -> Lv. 50
Lv.5 5* INTvankov -> Lv. 50
Lv.5 unevolved Baccarat -> Lv. 60 evolved Baccarat
*Fortnights
Before covering this week's fortnights, let's finish up talking about last week's fortnights. Or really, the only fortnight we were actively bothering with, Alvida. Last post, I did a whole lot of humming and hawing to justify farming 30 Alvida books. So the question is, was that goal accomplished? Nope. We had the capacity and the time, but real life complications kept me from getting all thirty copies. What we did get was 28 Alvida books, and 4 out of 5 autoheal sockets. In other words, very close on all fronts, but not quite there. I figure that the next I'll get a chance to max out Alvida is when her coliseum rolls around at this point, but them's the break. With some luck, we'll max Alvida's skillup but failing that, it's not the end of the world. The next time Mihawk rolls around, her 10 turn cooldown can turn into 6 turns with double Diamante and could turn Mihawk into a speedrun. Thinking about it, max skillup Diamante while running double Diamante captains turns into a 13 turn cooldown 2 turn delay + 71k damage at the end of every turn for five turns. Sounds like straight murder IMO. On a funny side note, I'm sitting on 33 Ashura Zoro books thanks to the Alvida fortnight, and that's going to get maxed no matter what.
On to this week's fortnights, the shorthand answer is that we cleared everything easy. Got Buggy(and his fodder), got Khalifa and Paulie, and got Baccarat, Dice, and Mr. Tanaka. All three stages can be cleared reliably at 30 stamina without using a gem, but my current favorite to clear is easily Khalifa's because of my large roster of good STR units. Getting Paulie took a while, so I'm sitting on six copies of Khalifa at the moment. DEX Khalifa is IMO worth skilling up due to her high cooldown + ability to give you full DEX orbs with Zeff. It also helps that I pulled RR Khalifa, so one way or another I'm going to need lots of copies of Khalifa, and now seems like a good time to get started on that.
*Raids
Mihawk was cleared easily, albeit stupidly. Why stupidly? I ran a double Lucci team and missed in the middle of my three STR orb opening attack, got zero STR orbs on the next two hits, and failed to KO him by 30k damage on the final turn. The moral of the story is, don't fuck up your perfects. My current pirate level being 111, farming him isn't gonna happen yet as my stamina bar sits at 75, still just shy of 80.
*Miscellaneous
As mentioned above, we hit Pirate Level 111 far faster than anticipated thanks to gemming for Alvida. Other things that I've been gemming for includes Cotton Candy Island and Turtle Time, which we go super hard on now thanks to our deluge of new units. A few days ago, most of our units were sitting pretty and mostly at higher levels? Now? Shit man, we're back to scrub tier with most of our units underpowered. More on that later. But thanks to cotton candy island, the Merry hit Lv. 10! Watch out 15 stamina, more like watch out 30 stamina at our current pace. Now the question is, what's the next ship to dump stamina into now? I just cleared Jaya so I'm not too far off from the Thousand Sunny, and just about every other guide video relies on it for easier clears, so I suppose that'll be the ship goal now.
*The Moment of Truth
Okay fine, I know you want to know what happened during the Law Sugofest. The answer is confusion. On the one hand, I got a large number of useful units. I'll touch lightly on why they're useful in my specific situation, but if you want real unit analysis I'd recommend the Reddit community.
*SW Zoro - Best DEX captain? Best DEX captain, unless 6* Zoro makes us all lose our damn minds. Honestly has me contemplating chasing after the Moby Dick too since I have a nice pile of DEX units.
*Kyros - A nice, self-sufficient Slasher/Powerhouse/DEX sub at worst, and at best facilitates some super flexible rainbow teams. Call him Sengoku-mini
*Monet - This is why I pulled yo. This is why I pulled. We have 6* Marco, meaning we can slap her onto any team that runs him to great effect. And it's not just Marco, we have Trebol, we have 5* Shanks, and we have...
*INTvankov - Excellent sub, and the best Free Spirit captain in the game outside of Sabo. Ivankov's special heals us, halves damage, and cures poison. That's some mad utility
*Doma - Orb manipulators are always cool. Low on the priority list
*Sugar - I don't have Whitebeard or a maxed Mihawk yet, but when I do....whoo! Low priority atm
*Leo - He health cuts, he locks slots, and he delays with a decent cooldown. Excellent and flexible sub
*Bon Clay - An orb manipulator that I was farming just drops onto my lap. I'll take it, oh yes I will
*Squard - A 1.75x orb booster for Slashers and Powerhouses? Decent, decent. He's no Senor Pink, but he has his place in my current teams, for sure
*RR Khalifa - Another excellent sub for getting you over that threshold to clear content. She'll do nicely for rainbow Trebol teams
*Inazuma - ...is he supposed to be good? If he is, I don't see it, someone please let me know if I'm off here
*Mansherry - She looks like a big middle finger to Doc Indigo should he ever come back around, and for that, she gets all the love in the world.
*Vista - Tanking captain? Tanking captain. Happy to have him
*Koala - I'm sorry Ideo, you've been replaced on my Fighter teams as a class booster. I still think you're dope and super flexible, and actually still by far my best Fighter captain, but like...It's Koala man. Don't take it personal.
*Rakuyo - A reliable orb manipulator and a good Turtle Time captain? Yes please
*5* Shanks - ...you'll do. I guess
*Hack - Welcome to the 'We're waiting on Whitebeard' party, right next Sugar. You're very welcome to stay with us, but it isn't your true time to shine yet, friend. But welcome to the Fighter crew
*Kid - I already have Vergo, but I'll be damned if you're not a good and easy to use unit as a sub or for stages where STR is optimal
*PSY Marco - Unlike Shanks, you're good. You're damn good, and have your place. Welcome aboard, King of the Monday Turtle Times
Why was I heavily confused on how to feel about this Sugo? Well...
First I saw this
and got really hyped.
Then I saw this
and got like this
Now, if I didn't have Legend Marco, I'd be really excited, because her captain ability, while liable to get messed up is still a strong multiplier. But...I have Legend Marco. I was mostly bummed out that what could have been the chance to start angling for a whole new set of teams under someone like Sabo, Cabbage, or Rayleigh is instead 'I guess...I'll use you as a sub for my Ivankov teams. I guess.' Write me down for the list of people hoping she gets the Sengoku treatment to differentiate her.
What was the bad side to all of this, if Hancock is more of a mixed good and bad? The duplicates. God the duplicates. I got:
4 SW Zoros
3 Koalas
3 Kyros
3 Domas
2 Leos
4 Bon Clay
4 Monet
6 Ivankovs
And that's ignoring vanilla Strawhats or random fodder like Kaya or Nojiko. To those wondering how many pulls I did, the answer is 3 multis and 5 singles, IIRC. My first two multis gave me a lot of units that I didn't have before and only 1-2 dupes/fodder each, including Hancock. Feeling lucky, I went for a third. 11 dupes in a row. 4 of those 11 were Ivankovs ;_;. From there, a friend later talked me into doing a few singles with him where I got Hack, Rakuyo, Kid, and PSY Marco, stopping once I got another dupe(Bon Clay).
I suppose the bright side is that since I'm gunning for a Powerhouse team, all these Rare Recruit dupes are actually useful fuel for the Rocket Man once the Rayleigh Shop drops. Hopefully it's sooner than later though, this amount of fodder units is eating into my box space.
*Goals
We're at an interesting point, aren't we? Lots of useful units were obtained recently, although they're all pieces to larger puzzles at the moment and not particularly useful. Let's talk short-term first.
First up, we're going to clear Gild Tesoro at 60 stamina on Sunday. Once, then never again for the forseeable future. He's excellent as both a captain and a sub, and making a strong PSY team out of him is incredibly easy. For example, throw in Impact Dial Usopp/3D2Y Chopper, Fortnight Coby, Monet, and, I dunno, Domino for turn two shenanigans, or PSY Marco to guarantee your full PSY orb board. That's a team that can output a whole lot of damage both turn one and turn two, and is almost entirely F2P outside of Monet. He's just too damn useful to not get a copy of him, so no matter if it takes us five, hell, even ten gems, Gild Tesoro falls on Sunday as well as his be-damned evolver.
When not burning all our stamina on a run at Gild Tesoro, we're going to be farming the hell out of Khalifa off of natural stamina. I touched on this earlier when I mentioned how I own both FN and RR Khalifa; one way or another, today or some day, I'm going to wish I'd worked Khalifa's FN. May as well start that now. But that brings up the question, what about Gold Tesoro's FN? Didn't I just spend a paragraph a few scrolls up rambling about how sweet it'd be to have a maxed out Diamante? Well, this brings us into next week's goals. Next week is half stamina Extra Island. You know what that means? That means we're gonna farm the shit out of Gold Tesoro for Diamante books. As well as get a copy of Lola, Hina, Fullbody, and two Djangos on the side. But the main priority is to go akimbo for those Diamante books, gemming as needed to make sure it happens.
Pirate level has become 'I'll take what I can get' atm, as it's not a massive handicap beyond hitting 80 stamina. That'll likely be hit next week thanks to farming Gold Tesoro. For unit levels, thresholds aren't quite as big a deal anymore now that I have a sizable pile of units to use, even if they're still my system of benchmarks for when a unit is 'complete' for the moment. Likewise, leveling has become the longterm goal because of my large pile of units to level; projecting an estimate of when they'll be 'done' has become a lot harder. Instead, it's more about what units I'm prioritizing for leveling now. these are the units I'm prioritizing, top being most important, bottom being the least important of the important units to prioritize, and by color:
STR:
-Diamante to Lv. 50
-Kid evolved and to Lv. 50
-Hack evolved and to Lv. 50
DEX:
-Kyros to Lv. 50
-Mihawk evolved and to Lv. 50
-Koala to Lv. 50
-Paulie to Lv. 50
QCK:
-Marco to Lv. 50
-Ideo to Lv. 50
-Capone Bege evolved
-Enel evolved
-Leo evolved
-Doma evolved
PSY:
-Monet to Lv. 50
-Heracles'n evolved
-Squard evolved
-Rakuyo evolved
-Shanks to Lv. 50
-Marco to Lv. 50
INT:
-Vista evolved and to Lv. 50
-Sadie evolved
-Young Buggy evolved and to Lv. 50
-Buggy to Lv. 50
