Edit 1: I mistakenly put in Last Guardian in the Builder but I'm using the correct Dragon Killer value for the damage done. Sorry! It should've been Dragon Vanquisher. Updated the picture.

Hey everyone.

I think I was late for the last 3 weeks in a row. I swear this is not on purpose! I had an exam yesterday, started a new job on Tuesday and Vivi is a huge pain to calculate. Took me about 5 hours to figure out a half-decent way to do this. Luckily, rosebeef came to the rescue with an updated sheet of hers which I’ll be using going forward. My approach would’ve been a rough estimate.

Pure-Hearted Vivi Overview

First of all, I’d like to mention that Vivi suffers from the same issue that Zidane has: Taking ages to finally burst away. Vivi’s preparation is just as convulted, if not more, than Zidane. He’s got to LB in Base and Brave for his magic attack mods (10x and 5x respectively). In Base Form he can imbue the team with Lightning, Ice, and Fire. Though Fire is obviously the best on here as he also amps the party’s fire damage (P/M) by 30% whereas the other imbues only amp for 15%. PSA: His LB is Dark Magic Damage to the whole field of play, including your own units. Gear for 100% dark resistance or else you will be sorry lol. Another thing: I’d advise you to equip his base with Erinyes Ring for Q-Cast. Whoever thought locking his Q-Cast to Brave: Stop drinking.

His Brave Shift is barebones. A Cooldown, Focus, and MP/LB fill next to his magic abilities. The start of our Pokémon-esque units is starting. I am okay with that. Me, personally, I didn’t like the bloated messes that were Kaktiria and Behemy. And that is about it. We will discuss the optimal rotation depending on your gear down below.

TMR & STMR Evaluation

His TMR is useless on himself. He gains 250% TDH MAG from passives (requires TMR or STMR), so Azure Radiance does the rest for you. At least to me, there’s no unit coming to mind who’d like to have a 75% (!) TDH/TSW materia as of right now. In an ideal case you got Vivi on Thursday and run him through the Shard Dungeon for the full 14 days. That way you'll get 70 shards in addition to the 30 Login Shards and 50 Shards from the VIP Coin Shop, thus giving you access to his STMR for no additional cost (provided you got enough VIP Coins).

The STMR on the other hand is gorgeous. It is the highest MAG on any Hat-slot so far and it adds another 100 MP to that. “But MP doesn’t matter, Livedili” – I’d agree. However, after running into troubles on the Amon Trial, I just wanna point out that it’s a nice bonus on top of things. In short: Amazing. I want the STMR. And you should, too!

Vision Card Evaluation

Uhhhhh… Should I really copy-paste my Zidane Vision Card Review here?. It’s a shame Vivi didn’t get his own.

Potential Builds & Damage Calculations

Alright, so here is the part that I hated doing the most this week. Vivi is a Reflect Meme character. He gains 20% increased damage to reflected spells, so you want to ideally pair him with Steiner every single time. His optimal rotation depends on whether you are using his best in slot or not. You want to LB in each Form, so Base and Brave. The stacks are infinite and cannot be dispelled. The question is: Are you going for 10 Stacks Focus without “Life’s Radiance” or 9 stacks Focus with “Life’s Radiance”? Generally speaking: The lower your MAG (= the worse your gear), you are better off using the Cooldown and 9 Stacks of Focus. This “rule” applies to all EX-levels. So, whether you are at EX 1, 2 or 3, it will stay the same. The better your MAG, the more likely it for your damage to be higher when using maxed Focus.

Just like last week with Kafetiria, sorry Kaktiria, we’ll be looking at a Dragon boss to make things equally unfair to everyone. Check out the gearing of Vivi for this hypothetical fight. We are going to add a 150% Dragon Killer buff for everyone. As you can see, I also opted for the 10 stacks of Focus (indicated by 800% MAG increase).

The kicker is: The 500% from Focus ONLY apply to first cast, which also has a lower total modifier, namely 5.8x chain mod. Why? Because it’s something along the lines of 1 1.6 2.2 2.8 (the increasing chain mod) etc. This is assuming that the abilities are weighted evenly. Thanks rosebeef for helping me with that while we are at it! In general, that implies the first action gets the 5.8x chain mod, the remaining 3 are calculated at 6x chain mod. As I wrote in the introduction, this is the complicated part.

And here’s the competition, namely Shui Yu, Kaktiria, Roy Mustang, and Ibara. So here’s the gearing of everyone else. Kaktiria’s gear can be found here.

A few assumptions:

• 90% SPR Break
• 300% MAG buff
• 300% LB buff for everyone (yeah, it’s broken currently … let’s just hypothetically assume it’s not)
• 22.5k SPR DV boss with 60% passive SPR, 60% Ele Resistance
• Best possible amount of Killers (varying amounts) & we’re buffing 150% Killer to adjust towards the Evokers
• 135% Water/Earth Imperil, 130% Fire Imperil
• Rod Imperil at 35%
• Total of 110% Water Amp for Kaktiria (50% own, 25% Lunafreya amp, 20% stage on top – 100 damage before amp, 175 with amp and 210 after stage amp = 110%), Shui has 80% (25% self amp, 25% Luna amp, 20% stage), 56% Fire Amp for Roy Mustang & Vivi (30% own, 20 stage on top), 32% for Ibara (10% Ardyn TMR amp from base, 20% from stage).

Here are the results at EX 3 shown in millions:

If you’d like to see a screenshot with a few more details, here it is: Picture of it.

Vivi looks suuuuuper strong here, right? Combined damage of Lunafreya and Terra. That’s too good to be true, right? Well, that is because the numbers are somewhat skewed. You have to sacrifice one slot for Steiner, who’s basically a dead unit. Yes, he is enabling Vivi to do all this damage. If you were to take Luna and Terra to a fight, you would roughly get the same result, just a little bit more. While I think it is a meme to say “You gotta half Vivi’s damage because he a 2 in 1”, I somewhat agree to an extent. Without Steiner, Vivi is useless. Without Vivi, Steiner is useless. However, Vivi’s high potential allows you to easily cap DV bosses as he chains scores at at least 154 while dealing absurd amounts of damage. I have seen clears of the Magic Reaper boss with just a Vivi EX 2 dealing 10.5b damage. That is literally the damage my Luna and Terra (both EX 3, mind you) did last week. Also: Inb4 “Just use Beatrix 3x Reflect and T-Cast with Vivi” – yes, possible. Sinz did this and it proved to be good. In that case you will need another or two finisher(s) though.

How does he fare in the meta?

Vivi is undoubtedly strong and will surely find a way to sneak into your team comps. Be it as a chain bot to make DV runs easier or to easily deal with Trials. The latter one is an interesting topic on its own. If you’re done with all the Trials by now, Vivi has no place in the meta outside of DV. The last remaining Trial we are getting is perfectly suited towards Vivi, yes. However, it is about 2-4 months away depending on how long Gumi will make us suffer through the drought (I think it’s 10 banners away?).

From my point of view, Vivi is a super fun unit to use and opens up new strats in DV. His damage is second to none and while he takes two slots in your party, that sacrifice is usually worth it – provided the boss is weak to one of his elements. His super long wind-up, just like Zidane, is a turn-off for many people I’m sure and I will acknowledge this. Furthermore, his Focus stacks are used up upon casting the first Firaga, so the 2nd, 3rd, 4th cast do not take the higher MAG into account. Sad but it is what it is.

Should you pull?

Do you NEED Vivi? No. Is he good to have? Absolutely. You’ll be totally fine without him, and you’ll breeze through content/DV with him. It is a question of: How much do you value your time? Even when just Q-Cast-reflecting his basic spells, you will easily chain score cap while finishing off the boss with either Lunafreya or Terra. I pulled for fan favourite and the extra QoL in DV going forward.

Again, sorry for being late. If you wanna watch this whole review in a video format, you can check out my video review of this. I’m also showcasing the reflect gimmick of his in the video. Hope you guys don’t mind me plugging my youtube this one time.

Feedback is always appreciated! Huge thank you to /u/rozebeef once again for providing me her updated spreadsheet. She is the real MVP this week! If you want to gild someone, gild her.

Cheers

Livedili