Should I Farm That - An Eerie Invitation (FFBE MK) and Shaula Trial (10-man) AKA Where is Succubus Charlotte Edition

Wow, Gumi is hammering us with a bunch of potentially awesome limited time units. We're getting an incubus (which as a child I thought was a person whose job was to incubate chicken eggs) and a succubus (we won't go into what I thought that meant) that will chain with Nyx and Yun. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was extremely displeased with Yun's enhancements. While chaining with Nyx is nice and all, I really wanted him to chain with Fohlen. If they did that, I would have pulled like a madman for a second Yun. Gumi, I know I give you grief for the slightest infractions but if you give Fohlen Kingsglaive frames on a GLEX ability, I'll be your shill for the Yun banner when he comes back. I figure about 37 people reads SIFT per week and I can convince at least one of them that your 50% value bundles are worth buying. That $48 should be enough to keep Intern-kun on the payroll for another 6 months (8 if you pay him in instant ramen noodles instead of cash). Screw Accumulate4Akstar or whatever the cool kids are saying these days. Cache4Chocobros!

Speaking of giant birds, my daughter wants to be a scarlet macaw for Halloween, so I spending my free time this week making that costume for her. For those of you considering fatherhood, spending countless hours hot gluing several hundred feathers to a costume just to spend time with your child and give her the costume she wants is being a good dad. Despite what Gumi is trying to tell us, disappearing for years without explanation then appearing out of nowhere just to pretend to be trying to kill your sons (to make sure they are fit for risking their lives over the bullshit you created), is shitty even by normal deadbeat dad standards. I'm convinced that Citra saw that stellar example of fatherhood and that is what made her decide her 700 years of unrequited love was probably a poor life choice. And yes, I'll take a massive shit on Raegen every single fucking chance I get.

While on the topic of poor life choices, I am strongly tempted to pull on the Halloween banner. I was dead set on not pulling to save up for Christmas units (need 1 moar Christine). I don't have even one copy of the old Halloween rainbows and getting dupes on limited banners is tricky business so it was pretty easy to decide to just pass on pulling. But they just had to add to Yun's chaining family and tempt me yet again with chocobo goodness. If I purposefully plan to make a bad decision and follow through with it, it's technically a good thing that I accomplished my goals, right? Pretty sure I'll end up with one Lilith and one Lucius to go with my one Nyx and one Yun...

Time to SIFT through this week's loot like a helicopter parent making sure their kid's candy is safe from GMOs and refined sugars before it even gets in their candy basket.

NOTE: I wrote this before we knew about the 400% stat cap change. If I miss updating something that assumes 300%, let me know.

MK Loot

Wow, this loot is a lot better than what we got for the FFXV MK event. Those dingbats are showing some signs of improvement but they still have a long way to go if they want to give us a decent MK item that isn't a ticket. (I wrote that on Monday well before we knew what the loot would be. I figured it'll be correct so I'll just leave it as is.) (Now it's Wednesday and looks like it was more or less accurate. My very reserved optimism wasn't misplaced!)

Malicious Aura
[materia]: 6% HP/DEF/SPR

Do you have indescribably profound self-loathing that you perpetuate by abusing yourself with really stupid decisions? Then get this materia! Looks like Gumi is keeping up the tradition of supplying MK materias not even a brand new player would want. You'd get 67% more of a boost if you just equipped a 10% HP materia (free from Rizer), 10% SPR materia (crafted), and 10% DEF materia (crafted) instead of 3 of these (and let's face it, if you're actually considering one of these, then you don't have anything better to fill those materia slots). EDIT: Somehow I screwed up the easiest calculation in this post...

Old King's Apocryphal
[accessory]: 20% ATK/DEF/MAG/SPR, -15% all element resists

The effects of the elemental debuff makes this extremely bad for some fights but that shouldn't matter for the vast majority unless you have a brain fart and put it on your elemental resist tank. Surprisingly, this is the second best accessory for giving you all 4 of the primary stats. It only falls behind Ring of Dominion (but trails by a huge margin of 30%). However, that is only taking into consideration gear that gives bonuses to all stats. When you focus on a single stat, this falls behind very quickly. There are plenty of accessories that give the same 20% or higher stat boost (ignoring STMR and event gear, ATK: Noctis' TMR, Jiraiya's TMR, Fury Ring from Chocobo, Gauntlets from chocobo, Demon Rain's TMR, and M Ramza's TMR. MAG: Noctis' TMR, Jiraiya's TMR, Ashe's TMR, Vanille's TMR, Grace's TMR, earrings from chocobo, and M Ramza's TMR). Flat ATK/MAG accessories are far better if TDH/TDW bonuses come into play. I'm not going to bother listing gear with better DEF or SPR stats as you'd want a mix of HP for tanks anyway. I will however note that if you have Liquid Metal Slime and you want to prepare it for the parameter missions, this isn't a terrible option (you'll need at minimum 1 20% DEF accessory and 1 15% DEF accessory. You'll need to upgrade to 2 20% DEF if you don't get a bunch of DEF from Golem).

Obviously, this is more competitive when you care about two stats at the same time but it still falls behind in most cases.
ATK/MAG: Noctis' TMR (30%) and Jiraiya's TMR (30%) are strictly better. M Ramza's TMR (20%) is just as good (or better if you want the HP/MP too). But those are rainbow TMRs and this is event gear so that's actually not that bad.
MAG/SPR: Vanille's TMR (30%) and Grace's TMR (25%) easily wins out.
DEF/SPR: This is the best percentage based boost other than RoD but those are tank stats and you'd want to focus on HP if you plan on taking both magic and physical attacks.
ATK/DEF: This is good on counter tanks. Snow's TMR wins out of you can equip fists and this ties Demon Rain's TMR (not counting D Rain's TMR equip bonus). If you're going with an evasion build, DEF is wasted and you'd want Noctis' or Jiraiya's TMRs in your accessory slots to get the bigger ATK boost and evasion.

Basically, this is a pretty good item for newer players but lackluster for established ones. This is super low priority if you decide to get it. Due to the sky high cost of 150k MK currency, I can't in good conscious recommend getting this. The benefit is too low to justify the energy cost to get it. That said, if you just want or have tons of bonus units or tons of energy to burn (those energy pots from ads really add up over time), then this isn't the worst thing to pick up.

Fiendish Smile
[accessory]: 20 ATK, 12 DEF, Lucius only: 10% ATK when equipped with dagger, sword, axe, or fist.

Flat 20 ATK makes this okay newbie gear. With a 20% ATK bonus for Lucius that will grant him a total of 53 ATK when fully potted at level 120. With 40% innate TDW that gives this a total of 81 ATK, you'd need a TDW bonus of 1.80 or higher for Desch's Earring to be better. The other sources (Aloha Lasswell's TMR - 10%, Adam Jensen's TMR 20%) aren't enough to overcome that so this is very likely to be BiS for Lucius if you trigger both 10% bonuses. New players without good flat ATK accessories should pick this up but only as a low priority. Veterans should only get it if they pulled 2 Lucius. For folks that don't pull Lucius, you might want to get it if you think there's a decent chance you'll get him next year. EDIT: Totally forgor about the conditional 20% ATK on champion's belt. That will be better with less equipment restrictions.

Succubus's Satchel
[light shield]: 25 DEF/SPR, Lilith only: 10% physical/magical evasion

Physical evasion on a shield is always awesome. The only other sources of phys evade on a shield are Gladiator's Shield (light shield, 5%, BS Sakura event), Demon Shield (heavy shield, 5%, key quest), and Zodiac Escutcheon (heavy shield, 10%, Basch's TMR). On the magic evasion side, we only have the Flax Shield (light shield, 10%, Ang's and Chow's event). Due to it being impossible to reach 100% magic evade, you should always just consider this as a nice bonus when it procs and never rely on it - much like Reagen showing up for one of his sons' birthday parties.

This is definitely worth picking up if you get Lilith (just one if she'd be your best tank, two if she'd only be worth using at 7 stars for you) as it is the only shield that mixes both types of evade. At 10% physical evade it is only matched by Basch's TMR. Like Lucius, if you don't get her and think there's a decent chance of pulling her next year, you might want to consider getting this.

Seductress Armor
[light armor]: 32 DEF, 10% phys evasion, females only

This is strictly worse than Assassin's Vest from the Echidna trial. Same 10% physical evade, but AV also gives you poison and paralyze resist - the latter being an incredibly important resist for tanks. The female requirement greatly reduces the overall usefulness as we don't have many female physical tanks.
This one is really hard to recommend. It's useful for newer players that haven't cleared Echidna yet but at the same time, if they can't clear that with current units, they probably don't have enough evade gear for it to be useful anyway. If you choose to farm it, I'd make it a very low priority. Just 10% is too low to really matter most of the time but if you are just barely losing a trial due to Ayaka taking a dirt nap from a physical attack, it's an option for you (Ayaka is the only curaja healer that can wear light armor).

Bat Hairband
[hat]: 10 MAG/SPR, 30 MP

MAG/SPR are too low to be of use for your main units (Royal Crown - Replica has better stats as does the Cat-ear Hood from chocobo), but the 30 MP is useful for MK farming (toss on bonus units so you don't need to level them to use equipped materia abilities). If you aren't already set with MP gear for MK units, pick this up. Otherwise, it's an easy pass.

(S)TMRs

Lilith's TMR
Midnight Star [mace]: 15 ATK, 95 SPR, grants Demonization -> 10% DEF/SPR, 20% HP

This is a pretty niche mix of SPR and weapon type. The only other mace in the game with any SPR on it is Thoth's Wand (Kupipi only). Obviously, this is best on Lilith but with 95 SPR, the mix of HP and SPR makes this is solid option for magic tanks. Assuming of course that unit can even equip maces.

Lilith's STMR
Malefic Heart [materia]: 30% HP, 50% fire/dark resist, xx% DEF/SPR when equipped with a mace, not stackable

I see they are still leaning on Disney for GLEX ideas (outside of Disney Sleeping Beauty lore, who the fuck uses any form of the word "malefic"?). I never watched the that movie but if Maleficent was a succubus I might consider watching it. But only if it had a young Angelina Jolie instead of the older skeletal version.

30% HP combined with the DEF and SPR bonus makes this easily BiS for any tank other than evade tanks. Elemental resists on otherwise solid gear is always welcome but this goes the extra mile by giving a huge 50% boost to two elements. The mace requirement surprisingly doesn't really reduce the usefulness of this STMR as you'd already have a good mace from Lilith's TMR (high SPR and 20% HP). The only magic tank that can't really make full use of this is Chow. Looking forward, Sieghard can't use it either but CG Charlotte can.

Lucius' TMR
Choatic Ferocity [materia]: 30% ATK when equipped with fists, 30% ATK when equipped with clothes

Yup, the incubus with no shirt has a TMR that gives you more ATK when wearing clothes. But more importantly, everyone's favorite Gumi employee, Fist-Kun looks to be back in charge of weapon development. I was quite concerned that we only had a super shitty gun gear for the last event so I used my back-door channels to ask him what was going on. I was told that Translator-kun had a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth and Fist-kun had to help him remove it. Took a while because he took the "long route" to the teeth... Translator-kun still can't walk straight. Gun-kun took advantage of that folderol to make sure we got a turd of a gun instead of a decent fist weapon.

60% conditional boosts aren't anything special and fists aren't really meta anymore but this is still a very good TMR. Those of you who plan on running with Tifa when she is released should consider dropping a few tickets to pick this up.

Lucius' STMR
Glorious Headpiece [hat]: 52 ATK, grants Glorious Headpiece -> 30% ATK when equipped with a fist, 3 LB per turn.

Who wouldn't want Glorius Head? Oh, it's just a hat? I guess that's fine too. Apparently, a pair of pugilists including Prishe and the present punching powerhouse provide plenty of potent ATK on their perfect pompadour protecting paraphernalia (that means there is a lot of ATK on their hats). On the less punchy side, Aileen's STMR with it's matching 52 ATK will be better when her killers apply, otherwise this will be solid BiS gear in GL for most physical attackers - especially fist users. The 3 LB/turn is pretty huge for any physical attackers that spam their LB.

Demon Rain's TMR
Infernal Armlet [accessory]: 20% ATK/DEF, 20% fire/earth resist

Boosting both ATK and DEF is really only good for counter tanks. If you're going for an evade build the DEF is worthless unless your unit has attacks that scale to DEF also. Other than using this on D Rain, this will probably be relegated to elemental resist duty.

Demon Rain's STMR
Demon's Gambit [materia]: 30% HP, 50% eqATK and eqDEF when single wielding a weapon with both hands (TDH), 25% accuracy.

This is a perfect materia for D Rain who is the most offensive counter tank we have. Ignoring counter tanks for a minute, 30% HP is nice but you can get that from many easier to obtain sources. Combined with the the 50% DEF, this may or may not be better than equipping a high DEF shield. Assuming this would replace a Patriotic Recall ( 30% HP, 20% DEF), base DEF of 260, and a shield with 60 DEF, then the eqDEF bonus needs to give more than 112 DEF. That means you need 224 DEF or better in equipment for this to be better for maximizing physical eHP. That isn't too hard to reach but you'll need top end gear to get it. Looking at only gear that isn't limited time and not an STMR, your best options are: Main Gauche (10 DEF), Grand Helm (65 DEF), Grand Armor (72 DEF), multiple accessories (30 DEF). That adds up to only 204. Adding Winged Saint puts up over the top but this isn't necessarily the best gear due to not having HP on all of them. All of that just means it you'd need to have pretty good gear to want to put this on any other tank.

From an eqATk perspective, 50% TDH isn't high enough to warrant eating up a materia slot if you have better options. Looking at other counter tanks you have Snow and VotE who are too fragile compared to rainbow tanks (especially in 7 star form) to worry about ATK. That leaves Wilhelm and M Ramza as the only other notable physical counter tanks who can make decent use of this. But if you want to use a counter tank and you have this STMR, you'll be running with D Rain anyway so no point in worrying if this is optimal for the others in that role.

Dracu Lasswell's TMR
Vampire Cloak [clothes]: 20 DEF, 30 MAG/SPR, 10% phys evasion

The only other clothes gear that gives phys evasion is the Soccer Jersey ($$$ bundle) so this is potentially a major piece of equipment for a lot of players. That said, the Assassin Vest (light armor) is usable by pretty much every notable physical tank so you'd only be relying on this if you are using a non-tank as an evasion provoke tank. Is evade Chorizo still a thing?

Dracu Lasswell's STMR
Gothic Amulet [accessory]: 50 ATK, Dark Disposition ( 50% eqATK when single wielding a weapon with both hands, 25% acc), Misty Shroud ( 15% physical evasion, 10% magic evasion).

This is a significant step up from Elfreeda's Marshal Gloves. With the high flat ATk and TDH bonus, this is going to be BiS more often than not. Magic evade still falls under the "nice if it happens but don't depend on it" category. The 15% physical evasion is pretty nice but unless you are missing Noctiss and Rico's TMR, you probably won't use it for that purpose. The big exception is an evade counter tank. It's like Vamp Lasswell is trying to impress D Rain or something.

Grim Lord Sakura's TMR
Reaver [spear]: 33 ATK, 100 MAG, 36 SPR, 666 HP, 66 MP, fire/dark element, 2H (dmg var 1-1.6x, 50% acc), GLS only: 3 LB/turn

As the only magic unit that uses spears, don't expect anyone else to use this as a MAG stat stick. However, the HP makes this an option for tanks. At 666 HP, a 15% HP stat on another weapon (innate, not IW) would only be better if your unit's base HP (potted) is 4440 or higher. Of the tanks that can use spears, this would be better for VotE, WoL, Basch (6 star), A Rain (6 star), and Wilhelm (6*) compared to 15% HP. Tanks at 7 star are better off with the weapon with 15% HP. At 20% all units prefer that over this spear. Of course, that assumes you are willing to pile HP bonuses from IW on this spear instead of MAG (not a terrible idea if you don't get a dupe GLS). That 66 MP has value for MK bonus units too - a minor solace for those of you that end up with only one GLS. EDIT: I forgot to do the calculation with either another weapon or shield in the other hand of the tank (it's in my notes to do it, but I just forgot). Taking that into account, you'll almost never use this for on a tank, especially with IW buffs and the new 400% stat cap.

Grim Lord Sakura's STMR
Grim Brilliance [materia]: 20% HP/MP, 50% eqMAG/eqSPR with wielding a single weapon in both hands (TDH)
Okay, I'm starting to hate doing TDH vs DW comparisons... If the unit has some form of innate DW, you'd be losing about 120 MAG. This would be replacing a 40% MAG so assuming 260 base MAG, that's 224 MAG you'd be losing. I'm not even going to check if gear from other slots will top 448 MAG. Assuming no innate DW, this would be replacing a dw materia. If it is Mediena's TMR, you're losing 30% MAG and 120 MAG from your weapon so you'd need 396 from other gear. Not going to happen. If it is replacing a materia that gives DW but no MAG bonus, now you only need 240 in MAG from other equipment to pull ahead. Again, ignoring limited time gear and STMRs: Royal Crown (50 MAG), DF Fina's Swimsuit (60 MAG), and a strong rod (using 120 MAG) gives 230 MAG. A slightly stronger rod or a flat MAG accessory will put you over the top. Oh, but we didn't take into account IW enhancements! Assuming a meager 15% MAG from IW, that means we need 318 flat MAG from equipment. Same gear as above with two accessories with 45 MAG gets us to 320 which is essentially a wash. Had enough calculations? Well too bad, we need to account for the TDW that most of our mages are getting now. Assuming a very meager 20% TDW, that means the loss is from a 120 MAG rod is now 144 MAG. 50% TDH would only provide an additional 30% eqMAG so that comes out to needing a whopping 480 MAG which not going to happen.

TL;DR: This will only be optimal for units whose kits favor eqMAG TDH over TDW (just GLS and eventually Lunera). As always, Lyrgard's builder is your friend. Similar calculations apply to the eqSPR TDH.

Of course, the HP and MP boost might make it worthwhile and any mage. You can't do damage if you're dead or out of juice.

White Witch Fina
Blessed Bow [bow]: 80 ATK, 40 SPR, Boost damage from physical attacks (50%) to birds and undead, 2H (dmg var 1.25-1.75x, 70% acc)

VLC WW Fina taunts me. I chased her two years in a row and failed to get her. Other than the Crystal Defenders units and a couple recent units, she is the only 4 star unit I don't have. Triple 4 star banner and I already have enough copies of the other gold units means I'm not pulling for her other than dailies. This causes the collector in me to feel a profound level of pain.

There are plenty of much stronger bows out there so the only interesting features are the killers. Bird killer on a bow is all but a given but this is one of just 3 weapons with undead killer (all bows). Reaper's Shaft is stronger at 90 ATK but was limited to last year's Halloween event. If you happen to have that, this TMR is worthless to you. Selene's Bow is a quest item and is pretty close at 72 ATK so you can get it without blowing trust or TMR farming energy.

Pirate Jake
Jake's Pirate Ring [accessory]: 20 DEF/SPR, 25% HP, 1 LB/turn, 20% LB fill rate

A year later this is still one of the top tank accessories. Domino's Boots should be better for physical eHP most of the time, but by only a small margin and JPR is BiS for magic tanks (eHP builds). This is one of the few non-rainbow TMRs that I always consider for farming more copies. The bulk it adds for both physical and magical damage as well as the LB boosts (flat and fill rate) makes this an amazing item on pretty much any unit whose job isn't to go on murdering rampages.

Illusionist Nichol
Magical Top Hat [hat]: 25 MAG, 45 MP, 5% MP/turn, 1 LB/turn

25 MAG is too low to be worth farming and the 5% refresh isn't anything amazing either but definitely potentially useful. The biggest draw here is the 1 LB/turn which is unique for all head pieces (not counting Lucius' STMR with 3 LB/turn). Royal Crown is the only other hat with a LB trait but it is a 25% LB fill rate buff. I've never felt I needed to farm this but I also spent most of the past two years leveling but not using LBs. Now that LBs are far more useful, that might change for me.

Black Cat Lid
Cat Hat [hat]: Induces terminal Dr Seuss rhyming 25 MP, 15 DEF, 20 MAG/SPR, 100% silence resist

Stats were okay 2 years ago, I'd say. But power creep makes its uselessness run deep. MP is okay for an MK event, but silence isn't something you often need to prevent. This is something I would not farm, but if you get it from fusing there isn't any harm.

The Insects of Guile and Deceit - Shaula

Guile? Street Fighter collaboration confirmed! Just need to figure out which version of Street Fighter we're getting. Will it be Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting? The greatly overlooked Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix? Maybe the lesser known Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha? Oh, it's going to be a version that came out after 2000? Fuck that, I don't care anymore. Fun fact: Raul Julia played M Bison in the live action Street Fighter movie knowing that he was dying. He didn't care what others thought or how he'd be ending his career with a terrible movie. He did it because his kids loved SFII. Now THAT is how to be a dad. Take notes, Raegen, you diseased pile of fetid bat guano.

Gaia Bell
[instrument]: 35 ATK, 46 MAG, 104 SPR, earth element, 30% earth resist
Apparently, all instruments with Gaia in their name need to be one handed. We've already had the Gaia Ocarina and now the Gaia Bell and its replica. That's completely useless information so you'll probably never forget this. The other 1H instruments are Holiday Bell from last Christmas, Angel Flute (Eiko's TMR), Microphone (DA's exclusive weapon so I probably shouldn't have bothered mentioning it), and Dust Horn (treasure chest).

Ignoring 1H vs 2H, the stats are anything special. Nymph Harp (4 star Ryumynui's TMR) has 102 SPR and a big 20% HP boost and Dur da Bla (4 star Joachim' TMR) has 116 SPR and 30% light resist. If I was equipping a harp for SPR and didn't care about 1H vs 2H, I'd likely go with one of those harps instead. There aren't any sources of dual wield that boost SPR so you'd potentially need to waste a slot just to dual wield.

All of that assumes you even have a unit you'd want to equip this on. We have so few instrument users that want SPR. Lunera was the perfect user back in the 6 star era but now she prefers using her own TMR (I'd prefer the other 10-man reward harp, Apollo's Harp, if I'm going to give an instrument to Lunera). Eiko strongly prefers her own TMR. Bards are an option but they've fallen out of favor to the likes of MS Nichol and our new 7 star lord and savior, Zargatingtangwallawallabingbang. Depending on how Kryla's 7 star form ends up, she might be a decent option for this. Her damage scales to SPR and you'd likely want your good SPR rods on your other units.

I think a far better use of this weapon is the earth element resist. Strong resists are still pretty rare on weapons so if you need to gear up several units with earth resist (or go super high with one unit) this is a solid option to make use of a slot you wouldn't be using for earth resists otherwise. If you have instrumental flair (Sportive Ariana's TMR), then you can put this on any unit and get a "free" 25% HP from that materia slot. Merc Ramza laughs at the need for equip instruments materias and can equip it directly. The other weapons that give earth resist are Nyx's dagger (20%, STMR), Ulric's Kukri (10%, limited event), and Rock Saber (10%, chest).

Twin Repellent
[materia]: 25% damage from physical, hybrid, or magic attacks to insects, 30% ATK with sword, 30% MAG with rod
A great materia option for any attacker unit against insects if you can make use of at least one of the stat bonuses. If you're running a hybrid that dual wields swords and rods, this is an alternative to General Offensive ( 30% ATK/MAG, limited time bundle), or Power of Creation ( 30% ATK/MAG, Maxwell's TMR, limited event). Obviously, it loses out to Adventurer V and Nature Loving Spellblade unless the insect killer comes into play.