Should I Farm That - Running Through Daybreak (6-legged Rain Story event), Ultima Weapon Battle (FFVI raid week 2 trial)

Note: I'm posting this with the 15 minutes of time I'll have on my laptop between now and Monday morning so I haven't proof-read this as much as I normally do. Sorry for the typos and mistakes that I'm sure are plentiful. (And yes, I did write a good chunk of this on my phone...)

Well, gumi surprised us with their solution to Summon Fest. Permanent 5% rainbows, JP's summon fest units will be permanently in the general pool, UoC only gives prisms and costs less, and a lot of older shit rainbows are only in the non-rate up banners. Only real drawback here is that I can't double UoC CG Terra when her banner finally arrives and I fail miserably pulling for her. But I also will have a much easier time getting CG Cecil so I'm calling that a wash. I'm so pleased with this that I'm typing out "gumi" in all lowercase which is the official correct spelling. No more passive-aggressive attacks by purposefully using a capital G (wait... Is that redundant? Should it be capital g? Just G?). I'm just that gracious.

But you know what gumi didn't fix? Rain's extra 4 legs. He's not the only ugly CG unit we have with 4 extra legs. CG Lightning does too but if you look closely at her sprite, her legs are horribly deformed and far too small for her body. She needs that horse to get around. I don't mock people with obviously physical handicaps (even if they have the personality of a block of wood), so she gets a pass.

But if they are going to give him 4 extra legs, why is gumi hiding those extra legs? We know they're there but can't see them. Rain should take lessons from Rubicante. The hidden legs are clearly what is really wrong with his sprite. I'm sure everyone would love the sprite if the legs were visible.

Let's SIFT through all the extraneous legs and check out this week's loot.

Let's get the lapis purchased gear out of the way first.

Ruler's Might (3000 lapis purchase)
[materia]: 50% eqATK TDH, 25% acc, 30% LB damage

3000 lapis for a 5 star TMR worthy materia is definitely worth considering. On average, you'll spend more lapis than that to get a specific rainbow with a good rate up. So it all comes down to how good it is.

This is the only materia in the game that mixes TDH and LB damage boost which alone makes it noteworthy. That also makes it a huge pain in the ass to review.

There aren't many sources of LB damage in the game. And of the materias, none of them can't be stacked (due to a lack of more copies in game in the case of War Goddess' Insignia) except Wayhem's TMR (3 star, 20% ATK, 10% LB damage) which is almost never worth using.

In the case of Squall's STMR ( 55% LB) and Kyanos' TMR (4 star, 50% LB), it's a question of whether or not the 20-25% less LB damage is worth the 50% TDH.

Let's assume this would allow you to replace a 40 ATK TDH accessory with Red XIII's TMR (excluding STMRs, it's most ATK from a non-limited unit. 50 ATK, 10% ATK). With 300% TDH and a base ATK of about 300, you'd gain about 70 ATK overall.

If total attack does from 3000 to 3070 that's only a 4.7% increase in base damage. Even if 100% of you damage is coming from LB, you'd need to have an LB boost of ~325% to break even. That's not going to happen. Even more so if your accessory gives better than just 40 ATK and 50% TDH. So overall value is less than those two materias in most reasonable cases.

But there's 4 materia slots so you still have space for this one! Let's see how it compares to War Goddess' Insignia (trial, 30% ATK, 30% LB). Calc for this is simple. Same LB boost so it's a matter of how much eqATK you can add. 30% ATK with 300 ATK base comes out to about 90 ATK. So you'd need to replace a 40 ATK 50% TDH accessory with a 63 ATK one (you'll need a good STMR for that).

Basically, this should be good but it all depends on your other gear. Go do some test builds and FFS, make sure you compare the final damage output, and don't just choose which gives gives a higher value. 3000 lapis is a great deal for 5 % increase in damage. Probably not for a <1% increase.

Overall rating needs to factor in the usefulness of TDH (very common) and the usefulness of LB damage boost (slightly niche but includes new meta unit and presumably more in the future). It tends to lose out in a head-to-head with other similar materia (assuming no STMRs) so I'm reluctant to give the Potential BiS rating. That said, plenty of people are reporting that it is BiS for Six-legged Rain with their existing gear. Potential BiS is probably the fairest assessment but with a big asterisk (test builds with your own gear!).

Story Loot

Split Edge
[greatsword]: 90 ATK, grants dual wield

The would have been amazing 3 years ago. Unless you're running with a pretty old unit, you probably don't need dual wield from equipment. And if you do, it's likely on a support unit that has no need for a greatsword. Bowie Knife (3 star TMR, dagger, 82 ATK) is far superior for that purpose because daggers get a much better IW rare ( 150% LB fill rate) than greatswords (and your support unit probably can't even equip greatswords)

Ignoring the DW, 90 ATK is pretty forgettable. Apocalypse (103 ATK) is something you'll get on the way to getting the Great Raven's Cape for farming. You can craft a Diamond Saber (85 ATK) but if you've done enough explorations to have the materials for that, you probably have been playing long enough to get much better gear already.

90 ATK is decent starter gear though so this gets the newbie gear rating.

King Rain's Cloak
[accessory]: 30 ATK, 2 LB/turn

Cloak count: 7 clothes, 2 robes, 8 accessories, 2 angry shitposters.

I'm waffling between newbie and niche rating. I'm not sure which is the batter rating until I iron out the details.

30 ATK is a solid option for a new player. There are a few alternatives from trials: Omega Medal (35 ATK/MAG, 10% HP/MP), Bomb Engagement Ring (30 ATK, 30% HP, 30% fire resist, -50% water/ice resist), and Ifrit's Claw (30 ATK, 10% HP, 20% fire resist, blind resist). But the LB/turn on provides different utility so newer players might still use it over those.

For vets, the 2 LB/turn is still a decent option on a lot of support units (although there are better options out there). Unless you're seriously hurting or LB/turn gear, you probably won't ever use this.

Newbie gear rating.

Silence Resistance
[materia]: 100% silence resist

About as useful as teaching calculus to a chipmunk. Trash tier.

(S)TMRs

Six-legged Rain's STMR
True Crimson Saber
[greatsword]: 174 ATK, 50% eqATK TDH, 2H (1-1.6x dmg var, 25% acc)

Oh, so this is the True Crimson Saber? No wonder he didn't mind letting Icy Hot Lasswell keep his sword. It was a fake all along!

The STMRs of Cloud (180 ATK) and Khloud (190 ATK) have higher ATK but they don't have the 50% TDH. Assuming it let's you drop a 40 ATK 50% TDH accessory, if you have an accessory higher than 46 ATK, this will be better than Cloud's STMR. If you can beat 56 ATK, it's better than Cloud (KH)'s STMR (although I'd say Lucid Lenses at 55 ATK is just outright better for the guts passive).

Edit: forgot to mention Esther’s TMR (45 ATK, 10 DEF, 20%HP, 15% LB damage) is also a good upgrade for the accessory slot. Even if the damage is slightly lower, that HP is extremely good on an offensive item.

BUT six-legged Rain already has 200% TDH so depending on your gear, that 50% TDH on his STMR might be worthless. Also, the higher average damage on fists will make Aigaion 2.0’s reward (2H fist) an extremely good option for 6L Rain.

It’s technically “Potential BiS” but I would not spend any extra resources going for this.

Six-legged Rain's TMR
King Rain's Armor
[heavy armor]: 28 ATK, 45 DEF, 10% HP, 30% LB damage

So, he's a king instead of an emperor? Is that supposed to be a positive thing? Why is being an emperor negative and being a king positive? Both are equally terrible forms of government. "Hi, I'm a good-hearted king. I should be making decisions that affect the livelihood of my slaves subjects despite having no skills other than breaking things with my sword. My qualifications for ruling you is that my ancestor was the most effective killer and took power over this region." FFBE tried to pull a fast one over us and show Rain and Lasswell relying on others to actually run the government. Well, if they are doing all that, what the fuck do they need a King for? Oh sure, the king gets final say in what happens but if he was capable of making that simple yes/no decision he wouldn't need the experts in the first place.

Flat 28 ATK on heavy armor is extremely good - you need STMRs to do better. With that 30% LB damage boost, this should usually beat those STMRs whenever you plan on spamming LB.

This is also very good for survival for any physical attacker that prefers heavy armor. The only other ones that give HP don't have any ATK on them: Wilhelm's STMR ( 20% HP, 110 /DEF/SPR) and Knight Delita's TMR (rainbow, 15% HP, 72 DEF, 28 SPR).

Potential BiS due to both high flat ATK on heavy armor and LB boost.

Diezell
Fierce Greatsword User
[materia]: 50% ATK with greatsword, 20% ATK with heavy armor.

Is this supposed to be a fierce user of greatswords or a user of fierce greatswords? Great, that's going to keep me up all night...

Double conditional ATK boost for a total of 70% follows the pattern we saw with Gravey's TMR (50% with katana, 20% with clothes) for the top end of 4 star TMRs. Obviously the double condition makes this somewhat limited in use but very few materias can compete with this (all but 2 are STMRs). You could argue a potential BiS rating on this but I'm giving it "very good but niche" due to the heavy armor requirement.

Maisie Mouse (can you tell I have young kids?)
Magian Brooch
[accessory]: 3 DEF/SPR, 20% MAG, 1.5x mod on some earth magic

Apparently magian is a real word. I'm still not sure if the translators use obscure words because they are infatuated with their thesaurus or if they just don't realize that nobody knows what the fuck they are talking about.

I was originally planning on being a lazy ass and point out that nobody uses earth spells. Quake is such a shitty chaining family that gumi didn't even give it a chaining family icon. But the nerd in me refuses to outright avoid doing calculations...

The strongest spell this works on is Stonega V which is available from Mildly Annoyed Shantotto's enhancements. It's a backloaded CW frames attack (what a huge surprise from Alim!) with a 4x and 8x attack. So this would go from 12x to 15x which is a 25% increase in damage.

That's more than enough to justify the loss of MAG compared to another accessory.

None of the other spells are really worth considering due to the low modifiers, so this is pretty much limited to CW earth chaining with Displeased Shantotto. Very niche rating.

FFVI raid trial

Assassin's Dagger (FFVI)
[dagger]: 102 ATK, 40% change to inflict poison or paralysis

The most comparable dagger is called... Assassin Dagger (trial, 116 ATK 5% chance inflict any status ailment). Not only are they similar in name, they both also sport status ailments that are almost never useful.

Assassin Dagger is relatively easy to obtain (you just need a magic tank and a halfway decent attacker. To give you an idea of how low of a bar that is, I did it with a solo Kydia) and daggers are rarely used for ATK so this is safe to skip/sell. However, 102 ATK is high enough to be useful to a newer player so this gets the newbie rating.

TL;DR:

Potential BiS:

• Ruler's Might (limited time lapis purchase, materia, 50% TDH, 30% LB damage, CHECK BUILDS WITH YOUR OWN GEAR BEFORE PURCHASING)
  
• Six-legged Rain's TMR (heavy armor, 28 ATK, 10% HP, 30% LB damage)
  
• Six-legged Rain's STMR (greatsword, 2H, 174 ATK, 50% TDH, 2H fist from upcoming Aigaion 2.0 trial might be better depending on your other gear.)
  

Very Good but Niche:

• Diezell's TMR (materia, 70% ATK with greatsword and heavy armor)
  

Very Niche:

• Maisie's TMR (accessory, 1.5x mod on earth spells, pretty much only Irritated Shantotto will use this)
  

Newbie Gear:

• Split Edge (greatsword, 90 ATK, grants DW)
• King Rain's Cloak (accessory, 30 ATK, 2 LB/turn)
• Assassin's Dagger (FFVI) (dagger, 102 ATK)

Trash:

• Silence Resistance (materia, ...)
  

SIFT Index