Hey everyone.

Vermillion Blade Ardyn got finally released and much like everyone else, I too am surprised to see him being elementless. I will mention this here: This is focusing on Dark Visions! Keep that in mind when I’m discussing his optimal rotation.

VB Ardyn Overview

In his Base Form, Vermillion Blade Ardyn is just another Chainer that really doesn’t do very much. He can disease the entire enemy Party whilst also buffing himself with 150% Fairy killer. Might be huge though for that one boss that can be diseased. But for now, there’s no need for disease. The best part about his base form is the 25% Sword Imperil upon using his LB, which thankfully is available on Turn 1 immediately. The buffs to VB Ardyn are very strong and make him the top dog for weeks, if not months to come.

In his Brave Shift, VB Ardyn enjoys the best of both Dragoon worlds. Due to his buffs, he not only has a base 83x Warp-Strike mod. He also lands on the very next turn! Plus: Compared to Noctis, he’s entirely elementless, meaning you can imbue him with any element you want, ideally wind for Dark Visions to make the best use of Faris’s and Bartz’s buffs. This enables him to finish off stuff far more efficient and esp. quicker than Edgar and the likes. He’s also able to buff his already strong jump attack by another 6x mod but that’s probably a DV only thing as it takes away one turn of potential damage in a sustained damage rotation. He’s also able to dark by 20% (kinda low’ish if you’re asking me) and imperil dark by 120% on a 5 uses per battle Grandis ability that also hits pretty hard for a chain at 100x mod. His brave shifted LB hits hard at 125x mod (no element attached) so you technically could use him as a LB chainer (6 hits) but I’d advise not to do so as he is a Dragoon first and foremost.

TMR/STMR Evaluation

VB Ardyn TMR is a 1h Sword with 162 ATK, 100% Jump Damage and 10% P/M Dark Amp. While the Attack Base is kinda meh, the rest of it is actually really good. Now I wouldn’t use this as a main source of weapon for Ardyn but as a source of Dark Amp, this is working out quite well for everyone without an innate dark amp. But keep in mind we got Vinera with her AOE 25% Dark Amp, so this weapon doesn’t really do much in that regard. The weapon on it’s own isn’t really that special and if your main focus isn’t Dark Vision, you may aswell skip it. That is: Unless you’re severely lacking Jump Damage gear for FFXV units.

The STMR on the other hand is plain and simple: Best in Slot. At 57 ATK, this is already the highest ATK Cloth-piece we got in the game. But to add, this also provides 50% Dark Resistance AND 50% Human Killer (P), while conveniently adding another 100% Jump damage on top of things. Totally busted for Dragoons and absurdly good for literally every Phys. DPS out there. If you have enough STMR moogles: You probably should get at least one copy of this. Straight powercreep vs Mystical Ice Lasswell STMR and boy is that powercreep real this time.

Vision Card Evaluation

The best comparison for VB Ardyn’s VC is: Think Riku’s VC but … equal. Haha. No seriously. At 110 ATK at level 10 with 80% ATK% from Level 4 7 passives (Sword required), this is absolutely on par with Riku KH3’s Vision Card. The difference is only noticeable at level 10, where FFXV units gain 50% Jump Damage as well as 50% Light Resistance. The latter one is kind of my personal favourite as it might come in very handy for Dark Visions resistance tetris, allowing Noctis/Ardyn to skip resistances through the VC.

In general: If you’ve missed Riku’s or Noctis’s VC, you’re getting it’s match right here!

Potential Builds & Damage Calculations

Please take a look at this screenshot as it is important to understand where all these numbers are coming from. Small note here: I used a version of the builder prior to its update. Ardyn has 800% Jump damage in this screenshot but the builder didn’t realize it. I calced him with 800 in mind! If you wanna play around with the builder, you can follow this very link for the budget gear and set the equipment to what you got yourself. It’ll also – hopefully – include all the changes I used. The builder may or may not display the ATK correctly for Ardyn and Noctis. If you’re seeing that the ATK is too low, press F12 on your keyboard, go to console and insert this handy code: “builds[0].unit.skills.push({atk:350})” – without the “”. Close the console. Once you change a single piece of equipment, the builder will automatically add 350 ATK. If you’re wearing 2 Ultima Blades, add 700 ATK. If you want to also add the same amount to the second unit you’re checking, you need to set the [0] into a [1].

A few assumptions:

• 90% DEF Break
• 300% ATK buff
• Total of 104% Amp for Edgar & Ardyn (45% 25% from Bartz Faris and on top of it 20% from DV Wind Stage), and 74% for Noctis (45% 25%, 20% Light Amp). Rosebeef on the discord told me that this was correct and I tend to believe her. She made a good point about the 20% DV amp being on top of everything even if you have 0 amps from buffs. If it’s wrong, the numbers scale down linearly for everyone and the result at the end of the day is essentially the same!
• We’re facing a 22.5k DEF DV Boss with 50% passive DEF, 60% Ele Resistance
• 150% Killer buff is applied
• 130% Imperil (125% actually for Noctis)
• Spear and Sword Imperil at 25%

Here are the results at EX 3 shown in millions:

If you’d like to see a screenshot, here it is: Picture of it

And now let’s check out a budget Ardyn vs a budget Noctis. For the gearing, please refer to this screenshot

And here’s the results at EX 1 shown in millions:

Or in relative numbers:

Ardyn is 0.77% stronger than an equally geared Noctis with the upper hand of having the higher Amp. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Noctis does have the significantly higher jump modifier (19% higher to be specific). Ardyn is 62% stronger than Edgar. So uhh.. Yeah. Edgar is looking kinda old right now. At EX 1, Ardyn’s advantage increases to 1.15% over Noctis at the same gearing.

How does he fare in the meta?

Unsurprisingly, VB Ardyn – esp with the Global buffs – mops the floor with Edgar. That said, there are some caveats to this. You’ll have to spend quite some time to farm the Ifrit Insignias, you need 2 Crown Prince Noctis STMR to begin with and you’re going to need quite a few STMRs to make this work. Compared to Noctis on the other hand, Ardyn is just a miniscule sidegrade and with Descendent of Cetra Aerith coming in roughly 1-2 months, Noctis will reach a much higher ceiling as she’ll provide a whopping 45% Light Element Amp for him. Now, this will also buff Ardyn due to his element flexibility but with Noctis’s higher Jump mod, he will come out on top.

Should you pull?

That entirely depends on you, to be honest. There’s 3 things to consider: Do you have 2 CPN STMRs? Do you want to farm for roughly 3-5 hours to fully upgrade both weapons? Does it not bother you that Dragoons will fade out of the meta within the next DV cycle (as in: they’re relevant for May)? If the answers are: Yes, Yes, no – go for it. Edgar is still very good and his spear imperil is easy to work with, so if you’ve succeeded this far, you can skip VB Ardyn. But skipping Sword imperil in the game might bite you later down the line. 25% is huge. If you already own CB Noctis, you may want to skip. As the data suggests, the increase is tiny and with Descendent of Cetra Aerith coming up (45% Light Amp), Noctis will come out on top again because if you got 45% amp and imbue on Noctis and Ardyn, the higher mod makes the difference - i.e. 106 (Noctis) > 89 (Ardyn). Noctis will then deal at minimum 19% more damage than Ardyn, which is 106/89. If you then factor in that Noctis has a tiny amount more base ATK than Ardyn, we might be looking at 20% damage difference between the two in favour of Noctis.

Best of luck to you guys, should you decide to pull. Have a great Thursday evening, morning, afternoon or wherever you’re from! I got to do this review a little early today because I was able to copy paste many things from my Nocto review. Plus I had to do this today as I won’t be able to check the reddit tomorrow. Got quite some errands to run and I got plans for the evening. I will answer questions today and on Saturday again!

Feedback is always appreciated!

Cheers

Livedili