TheAxolotl's Analysis Criteria
Over the past year-ish I've been doing these, I've had people both agree and disagree with my opinions, which is great! I don't want everyone to just follow my recommendations blindly. I also have had people ask me why I prioritize some things over others, so I wanted to give a bit more insight into what I look at and what I don't when I write an analysis.
The main thing I look at are the two signature skills. Everything else comes secondary or is not even considered. The reason for this is because the signature skills are what separate adventurers from each other within their roles or party functions. If you're comparing fighters, for example, race and type (element) do have a minor impact on traits in stats. Usually, though, this is pretty negligible. Similarly, no adventurer is made worse by getting a second class, while some adventurers can be made better by it. To that end, I really don't consider the secondary class unless it's a major gain. Livana getting Knight, for example, is extremely synergistic in a way that sets her apart from other Fighter/Knight combinations, which Shelirionach gaining Priest just adds the same utility that other Mage/Priest combinations have.
The signature skills, however, fundamentally impact both the role an adventurer has in a party and what they can provide as inheritance outside of a party. For example, look at Lanavaille. Her two signature skills end up providing a row-wide damage boost for very solid support, as well as a party-wide heal upon victory, which gives incredible role compression. By this, I mean the value she can provide to a single party is quite strong and diverse - her damage boost is welcome in any fight, while her post-victory heal in turn lessens the need to manually heal, thus conserving valuable party resources.
Giving her access to the Fighter class doesn't fundamentally change her role as a predominantly frontline staple in many peoples' parties, but it does improve her role compression by adding extremely solid single target damage on top of it. This combination makes Lanavaille easily one of the best adventurers in the game in terms of pure role compression. That doesn't mean I'll always use her, but that does mean she's almost always a good pick in most peoples' parties.
Similarly, one big thing that I mostly ignore in my analyses, much to the chagrin of many others, is Discipline. I do this for a couple reasons:
- I want my analysis to represent the adventurer to a large majority of the playerbase, which is going to be with Discipline 0 or 1.
- Increasing the Discipline does not fundamentally change the role or value of an adventurer. It can make them a bit better at what they do, but it doesn't have a direct impact on their usefulness.
- In general, I think that while increased stats are good, Discipline itself has extremely small per-dupe gains. A more detailed take on my opinion of Discipline can be found here.
When I'm filling out my party and evaluating adventurers is that I always ask "What can this adventurer bring to the party that is unique?"
Karkarov's Analysis Criteria
My analysis criteria is very straight forward, and even to a degree fairly simple. I evaluate based on a few key principles...
Synergy:
Specifically on the character themselves, but also with party compositions. For exmaple, lets say there is a theoretical new Ranger who is good alignment, gains +15% damage with bows, is fire element, female, and human.
The Alice formation buff is not useable and that is a better passive damage buff than this Ranger's skill. You could put them on the front row if you use Alice, but due to the way Ranger is designed they will do better damage with a dagger on the front row so the 15% is wasted unless you are using a bow only skill. Fire element sounds ok, but str barely contributes to the Ranger damage formula. As a Female character they gain no dex and dex is their best damage trait. Likewise Human doesn't hurt trait wise, but any other race would have given more dex and in many cases more speed.
On paper this Ranger looks ok, but when you look at it holistically you see there is very poor synergy on the fundamental design of the character. If their alignment were changed to nuetral this would dramatically change though.
Generic or Gimmick:
Effectively, is this characters kit or design simply "good in general" or does it need certain types of content, a specific party comp, or some intentional skill inherit choices to shine? Let's use the theoretical Ranger example from before, but look at the previously unmentioned unique inherit skill.
It is "when using a bow, assume a defensive stance, and if physically attacked nullify all damage and counter shot for massive damage". So immediately we we run into "dagger is better on front row" again, but this skill requires a bow, and you wont be likely to get physically attacked on the back row. Even worse, there is no taunt component to the skill. So on the front row using this skill is a roll of the dice unless you inherit a taunt skill and do that the round before. Lastly, outside of certain fights like Cyclops, the enemy may just cast a spell anyway nullifying the skill entirely while still hitting the Ranger for damage.
This skill is gimmicky, and has too many conditions for it to ever really be considered good.
Good Out of the Box or Needs Work:
When you pull this character and all you have is one copy, with what that character comes with, normal gear for that class, max level, and absolutely nothing else ... can they fit into a party and perform their intended role? Or do they need some discipline levels, out of class inherits, need to see the second class on rerun, highly tuned more meta gearing, only shine when parterned with specific other classes or characters, etc etc etc?
This time I will offer a real in game example, let's talk about Gillion.
As a neutral fighter he fits on the back row, front row, and has all the dps tools he really needs right there from his class. Inherit wise he just needs some basic inherits any physical dps unit would want, and nothing special or unusual.
Just like the theoretical Ranger example he does +15% damage except for him it is when using any two hander. This is generically good and situationally agnostic because you want him to use a two hand weapon and his primary role is dps. His life drain on attack hurts, but it is low enough that it rarely presents any meaningful problem. His inherit skill Cry of Ruin comes with a nasty HP loss trade off, but situationally is a strong line AoE attack that does solid damage. You just need to use it with intent and not randomly. As fighter has no stock AoE this is still a good value add.
Gillion is good out of the box. You can pull him, give him decent gear, easily slot him into a wide variety of parties, max his level, and he can just do what he needs to do.
Conclusion:
If a character has strong fundamental design synergy, is generically not situationally good, and is good out of the box without needing high levels of investment I will consider them a strong character. That said, it is critical to remember Daphne is a dungeon crawler party comp based game first, and a gacha game second. There is no such thing as a "bad" character, and every class comes with the minimum tools needed to do that classes role.
Even if a character is great based on my evaluation you have to consider how it fits in your party comp, and if you even need their character role in your party in the first place. If you want to build a character who is a total miss on all my evaluation criteria it can still work, it will just likely require a much higher level of effort and possibly be more situational in it's use cases.
At the end of the day if you love a character (regardless of why) it is my opinion you should build it as needed so you can use it in your party. This is a game, you should have fun with it, otherwise what's the point?