Hey everyone.

Sorry for being late with this review. Had a lot of IRL errands to run. Before we start with the actual review, I’d like to mention two things: 1. This review is mainly based on Dark Visions. 2. I will change my future unit review layout to reflect the changes the game has gone through (there won’t be bugs! LOL). As such: Units will be looked at from the perspective of Clash of Wallets, Dark Visions, and Trials. I figured out that design already and hope that you guys will like it. When will I make the changes? As soon as Final Fantasy VII Remake Banners start popping up – so either next week (unlikely) or in two weeks. It’s also a good start because the damage calculations will switch from 300% stat buffs to baseline 400% stat buffs, thus requiring me to re-do all my calculations anyway. If you have any suggestions for changes on the format: Let me know! This is the best time to suggest something :)

Louise Overview

Louise’s kit in Base form really is something else. It’s convoluted, complicated for newcomers and all in all a discount version of Ling’s kit to some degree. Take the mitigation buffs as an example. Ling has 45% baseline or 50% on Grandis – Louise has 20% baseline and 40% the following turn. It’s still a nice touch but in comparison rather underwhelming. Both Ling and Louise have the same role tags in base after all. Another thing are the killers. While Ling has only 4 killers types to buff, these are 150% buffs. Louise on the other hand buffs all killer types by 100%. Whether it’s Dark Visions or Clash of Wallets, Ling wins here unless she doesn’t cover the boss’s typing. Furthermore, Louise only has a 20% fire amp for the team, whereas Ling hands out 25% amps to fire and light. But it’s not all doom and gloom for Louise. She has three main perks in her base kit: 90% SPR break, 35% Gun Imperil, and a 135% Fire Imperil. Those are the things you want from a unit that compresses two roles in one. A very neat but niche ability: Absorbing fire damage. It’s not relevant right now but maybe we will be able to imbue bosses with fire soon, so we can take advantage of this? Or maybe a DV/CoW boss is going to hit us with fire and we can just ignore this on our way to prepare for the final kill turn. It’s a sweet ability and one that shouldn’t be overlooked.

With regards to her damaging skills: They mostly shine in CoW as they have scaling based off the morale gauge. Outside Clash, they’re utterly useless with 20x base and 20x from morale mods (which, according to some still take effect outside of CoW). 40x mods are so 5* that we shouldn’t take Louise seriously as a chainer outside of CoW. In CoW however, she is a true powerhouse of a unit.

And that much is reflected in her Brave Shift kit. She retains core abilities (such as Fire Starter) to further amp fire damage for the team from the field and also boosts her own damage via her LB (stacks with itself but also further increases the mods of her biggest Nuke: Nanomachine Overload). In CoW, the ideal finishing move will be: Q-Cast Disarming Ionic Blaster x2, Neutralizing Ionic Blaster, Nanomachine Overload – in this order. Her Nanomachine Overload is the ability that we’re solely looking at in the damage comparison and that one on it’s own should tell you enough about the damaging floor of Louise. It’s ridiculous but at the same time a shame that she’s mainly a CoW unit. Her LB is a 160x mod (base 80x, need to use it twice before it reaches 160x!) finishing move, which is good but ultimately makes her fall short in comparison to phys units. Why am I comparing her to phys units suddenly when she’s a mage? Well, check my paragraph “How does she fare in the meta?”.

TMR & STMR Evaluation

Louise’s TMR at face value is bad. 175 MAG and fire element? Oof. However, if you run the Chronicle Battle Light (it’s a Brave Challenge but come on, it has the same characteristics as a Chronicle Battle) enough, you gain access to the 4 version. And that one takes the cake. A whopping 235 MAG, 50% LB and a 10x mod increase for her morale-scaling nuke. Insert shocked pikachu here. From my brief testing, having two of the TMR stacks, thus giving her access to a 20x mod increase for Nanomachine Overload. It’s best in slot on fire teams for her.

Her STMR is an H Armor chest piece with 110 MAG, 50 DEF/SPR. Also 50% Fire resist. It’s a busted STMR with the highest MAG for a chest piece in the game. If your unit of choice can wear H Armor, they want it. It’s magnificent.

Vision Card Evaluation

I wanted to copy-pasta my Ling VC comment but then I realized Louise’s card is sadly tailored towards FFBE units only for the level 10 passive. Damn you, Gumi! Jokes aside, 115 MAG card with 50% MAG passives (a little low) and 50% LB for the final passive is excellent. Funnily enough: It’s another GLEX item that stealth-buffs Ibara. The fact that she’s still relevant to this date is kind of hilarious to me. Side note: There is no immediate powercreep in sight for this card!

Damage Calculation & comparison

For the damage comparison, we’re going to look at 4 builds in total for Louise. Her main build of 2x 4 CB weapon, a build with 1x 4 CB weapon & Lazy rod, a build with DV Rod Lazy Rod (all of them DV focused) and a last one focused on CoW with 2x 4 CB weapon and using her Nanomachine Overload. Here are the screenshots for the builds.

Super important: I am ONLY checking Louise’s morale-based part. So the math I did: 2*580x (Disarming Ionic Blaster) 730x (Neutralizing Ionic Blaster) (880x 20x 20x, Nanomachine Overload) = 2810. I am fully aware that I am leaving out the baseline damage of these abilities, namely the 10x with 50% SPR ignore (Disarming) and 15x with 50% SPR ignore (Neutralizing). Why did I ignore them? It would just inflate numbers and this was to only check how much Morale Gauge influences the damage output.

Here is the competition.

Assumptions:

• 90% SPR Break
• 300% MAG buff
• 300% LB buff
• 38% total amp for Lunafreya Terra
• 50% total amp for Kaktiria
• 55% total amp for Morale Chaining Louise, 86% amp for 2 DV Builds, 104% amp for DV Wind team
• We’re facing a 22.5k SPR Boss with 60% passive SPR, 60% Ele Resistance
• Varying amounts of killers depending on gearing (no unit gains an advantage here), 150% killer buff to adjust for evocation
• 130% Wind Imperil, 135% Fire Imperil, 135% Water Imperil
• Sword/Rod/Gun Imperils (Note: Terra has 30% weapon imperil total due to mixed weapons)

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.

First of all: Yes, Louise does deal more damage than Evokers in a DV environment. I know there’s a “DV spreadsheet” out there stating she’s only half damage of Luna but yeah. I really don’t wanna throw any shade on the people doing this because I know from my own experience that managing such a list is a looooooooot of work. So let’s just say it’s severely flawed. Ask yourself this to decide whom to trust: Do you want a model that reflects reality? Use my numbers. Do you want a model that heavily favours one type of unit (evokers) over the other because the general model doesn’t account for real world application? Use the spreadsheet. I’m an academic so I use models that reflect reality. Inb4: "but the spreadsheet reduced evoke damage" - just two words: neutral race.

Anyway. As can be seen: Louise really shines the most in CoW due to crazy scaling off of morale gauge. On the other hand: In a Dark Visions environment, her damage pales in comparison but she’s still really, really strong when you adjust MAG dps versus evokers. And despite all of this, she is still the worse pull on the banner. Let me explain why in the next chapter.

How does she fare in the meta?

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Why in the world is Louise the worse unit on the banner when the numbers clearly state something entirely different? Plain and simple: She just doesn’t compare to Zidane, Noctis, and Ardyn. She also pales in comparison to Tifa and Sephiroth, two units to arrive within the next four weeks. She’s also a just another 90% breaker for Aerith coming up. Why am I comparing her to phys dps suddenly? Because for Dark Visions, dedicated Mage stages will become a thing of the past. We have two more DVs before this change takes place and past that, evokers will most likely seize to exist until we get Yuna to bring them back to life. Or maybe Crowns for Terra such that she gains relevance due to Rain getting 50% fire amps lol. So when you can choose from all your units and not just either P or M, you will automatically use your highest dps’ers. Those are Seph, Tifa, Noctis, Ardyn, Zidane, (and Hawkeye). And if you’re not bringing Mag DPS, that 90% SPR break of hers has no value.

That said. For the time being, Louise is a good investment for about 8 weeks with respect to Dark Visions. On the other hand: She will be immensely useful in Clash of Wallets because her Morale-based Chain abilities are phys based MAG-scaling attacks. As in: Imbue with whatever you like and fire away! Keep in mind that you can’t use her 4 weapon in that case because that will lock you to fire. Even when using rods she will deal tremendous amounts of damage regardless. Whereas Ling is a unit that has use in every piece of content, Louise is mainly a CoW unit. Her usefulness is great for the upcoming Dark Visions (she’ll be amazing in fact!) but as soon as GL DV removes dedicated MAG/PHYS stages, her time is up and she’ll be forgotten rather quickly. Such is the fate of all magic damage dealers until we get Yuna to revitalize evokers.

Should you pull

With all of this in mind, the best I can give you: It’s your decision. Louise isn’t particularly good for trials because her chaining abilities have 5* levels of mods. It’s as bad as it gets but the truth is: She’s a CoW unit. If you want to score well in CoW, you will need her. Badly. She’s a must pull. However, if you just wanna get this over with in CoW and rather play around in Dark Visions, she is just a “nice to have but absolutely not needed” as Terra Roy and Luna Kaktiria Melo in any comp will get the job done anyway.

Cheers

Livedili