User talk:Mokoi

Democalypse

Introduction

Democalypse is a Faction based event that is all about who can do the most damage for a specific element. In the following write-up I will try to give in-depth information for specifically team building and considerations that go along with it.

For explanations of mechanics like how multiplier works for Prelim or general information like rewards or schedule refer to: https://dx2wiki.com/index.php/Democalypse

Generalists

With the addition of Bonus Areas a lot of factions will tackle every single element and switch between them every week. With 12 Demons needed per element and 6 non Physical elements that would be 72 different demons specialized for each element. Not only is it basically impossible for Beginners to build enough demons for each element this way, it's also fairly wasteful since the personal returns are fairly low for large investments in Democ.
Therefore it is usually good idea to invest in a group of Generalist type demons first, that only need minimal investment, like a transfer of a skill of the appropriate type and element, to perform well. This way you can save resources like Mitama, Evolving materials or Magnetite.
Generalists are the first demons you should focus on building for Democalypse.
A good guideline is to have around 6 or more generalists to vastly decrease the initial investment to prepare for an element. Once you have enough left over resources you can start optimizing your teams by slowly switching out the lower performing generalists with more specialized demons.

Generalists

Boss	Prelim	Any

Damage Optimization

In this section I will try to explain ways to increase your damage using a very simplified way of looking at the damage formula that breaks it down to the parts you can influence the most with how you set up your teams and demons.

For the full non simplified damage formula check out: https://dx2wiki.com/index.php/Formulas#Damage]

DAMAGE = Offensive-stat * Skill-Power * (1+(Damage Boosts/100)) * Buffs

Offensive Stats

Base Stat

The offensive stat a demon uses will usually be either Phys ATK or Mag ATK. There are special exceptions like Phys DEF for demons that use Earthquake or Muscle Punch and Ragnarok which scales with both MAtk and PAtk.

Base stats are dependent on a demons stats (STR, MAG, VIT) and their level.

PATK = STR * 2.1 + LVL * 5.6 + 50
MATK = MAG * 2.1 + LVL * 5.6 + 50
PDEF = VIT * 1.1 + STR * 0.5 + LVL * 5.6 + 50

This means the most basic way to increase a demons damage is the obvious way of awakening your demons and leveling them to 50.
Though the damage increase from a higher base Stat doesn't scale linearly, more specifically the damage difference between a demon with 140 and 170 Magic is larger than between a demon with 200 and 230 Magic (this non-linear scaling mainly applies to Democalypse, not for other content).

Offensive stats can also be increased through Panels by a flat amount (usually Panel-2 on most demons).

Brands

The main way to increase your demons stats after they are fully leveled and awakened is Brands.
For information on how to Brand your demons and specifics for Brand stats refer to this: https://dx2wiki.com/index.php/Brands#The_best_Stats_to_look_for

This is a quick reference table to evaluate your Phys ATK and Mag ATK brand sets. Not all sets will fit perfectly into this scheme, but by converting flat bonuses to % (Every 8+ Flat = ~1%) and comparing that way.

Primaries

	Brand %	Flat	Set Bonuses in %
Optimal	95-	200-	30
Good	75-95	100-200	20-30
Usable	60-75	0-100	20
Bad	-60	0	0-20

Brand Management

Assembling a decent full brand set for Democalypse is already hard enough, even more so 12 or possibly 72. Therefore it is much more ideal to make 6 Brand Sets each for Phys Atk and Mag Atk and use the switch brand function to move them between your teams and between elements depending on Democalypse. Doing this requires a large administrative overhead, but will increase your scores significantly.

Things you need to do for proper brand management:

• Assemble at least 6 brand sets for both Magic Atk and Phys Atk. You might need to make additional ones for demons with special brand requirements (Surt, Gogmagog) and for demons you are using to cast Buffs
• Organize your teams in such a way that you can quickly look up from who you have to switch brands to whom
• Run a simulation before every actual run to make sure you didn't mess up one of your brand switchups

Skill Power

Always use the highest base power skill you can afford. While skills with a random number of hits (i.e. Bolt Storm, Twister, ...) have a higher potential for maximum damage, their average power is slightly above -dyne level skills just with a way larger final damage range (~60-140% vs 95-105%).

• The skill boxes available in the Duel point exchange shop provide excellent genomes for all elements, so in case you are missing good transfers for an element consider picking some of them up.

The best way to find out from what sources you can transfer from and which skill you can most easily obtain for transfer either look up the skill on the Wiki or use the Skill Tab at the top of the fusion calculator (https://oceanxdds.github.io/dx2_fusion/#en)

Damage Boosts

Damage Boosts refers to anything that mentions a %-increase towards damage. These can come from a variety of sources:

• Skill Levels
• Skills
• Panels
• Team Boosts from unique skills

All of these percentage boosts are added together and then multiplied with the original damage. This means that leveling a unique skill that increases damage by 20% is equal to transferring for example Merciless Blow onto the demon for Democalypse.

Damage Transfers

Usage	5%	10%	15%	20%	25%
Element specific	-	-	<Element> Boost	-	<Element> Amp & <Element> Enhancement
Single Target	-	Assassin	-	Master Assassin	-
AoE or Multi-Hit	-	Serial Killer	-	Butcher	-
Universal	-	Back Attack & <Element> Enhancement	-	Merciless Blow	-
Physical Attacks	-	-	-	Death Blow	-

Buffs

Buffs and Debuffs are one of the most essential ways to further increase your damage. Damage Bonuses for buffs are calculated like this for example

• Own Attack up: +20% to damage you deal
• Enemy Defense Down: +20% to damage you deal
• Own Attack up and enemy Defense down: +40% to damage you deal
• Own Attack down: -20% to damage you deal
• Enemy Defense Up: -20% to damage you deal
• Enemy Def Up + Own Atk Up/Enemy Def Down + Own Atk up: No change to damage dealt

Since there is no manual play in Democalypse applying buffs and debuffs is non trivial, but there are still ways to do so.

Prelim

The most effective way to obtain buffs is by using Auto-Taruka and Auto-Rakunda. These are very rare skills though so demons that have them innate are the easiest way to integrate them into your party. Examples: Garuda, Agni, Ananta for Magic based elements or Zhong Kui, Nergal for Phys

You should not try to get your demons to actively cast buffs during Prelim since with how multiplier works you want your demons to attack with every Press Turn you get. This means only use the previously mentioned Auto-Buffs or for some elements demons that have a unique skill that can provide the buffs without costing you Press Turns and while still using AoE attacks (i.e. don't use Tokisada's unique skill on prelim).

Boss

There are two essential differences to consider between the Boss and Horde waves when it comes to buffs.

• 1. Auto-skills of any type do not activate on Boss waves. This is true for any skill that uses the words "at the beginning of the 1st turn", which also means Auto-Rebellion for example will not work. On the other hand skill that activate at the beginning of a boss battle like Moment of Fate or Lord of the Abyss will work.
• 2. It is not necessary for every attack to exploit the weakness of the opponent. While it is still optimal to use demons that apply buffs as part of their skills (i.e Susano-o, Panel 3 Vasuki, ...) it is still possible to actively cast a buff and end up net positive as long as the buff is cast on a half-Press-Turn for optimal turn usage.

Manual Buffing/Teching:

While it is impossible to get a demon to cast any debuff skill (Rakunda, Acid Breath, War Cry, Debilitate, Offensive Cry) it is possible to get the demon AI to cast a buff skill as long as a few conditions are met.

These conditions are:

1. The buff has to buff at least one other thing aside from Attack. This means skills like War Dance, Blood Rush, Luster Candy, Barong Dance
2. Demon AI has to be changed to Support using an AI tendency selector from the Karma shop.
3. The demon casting the buff has to be below a certain offensive stat threshold. This threshold varies depending on the attack skill the demon uses to attack, their HP (higher HP = higher threshold) and how many things their buff increases (Luster Candy has a higher threshold than War Dance for example). Depending on how much extra HP the demon gets from brands (Life set bonus, +HP%) or skills the thresholds are: 
	 War Dance / Blood Rush : 1000-1500
	 Luster Candy-type buff : 1500-1800
(4. You want the demon which is casting buffs for you to go second. This is not a requirement, but otherwise you will have suboptimal Press Turn usage, making you lose out on a solid amount of damage)

Using a demon for manual buffing will give higher returns the harder the other demons in the team hit, because increasing the damage of your hardest hitters will frequently give higher returns than just using a third mediocre damage dealer.
Demons that are commonly used for manual buffing are: Abaddon A, Panel 3 Mot, Agni

Element Specific

Here I will go more into demon evaluations and differences between each area and what to look out for.

Tierlists:

• Tiers are generally sorted by Left > Right
• For demons without a skill of an innate skill of the appropriate type and element the highest tier transferable skill is assumed for the evaluation.
• Depending on Transfers/Panels/Skill Levels/Mitama/Level/Archtype each demon can move up and down in the rating. Gaps between tiers are generally larger than gaps within tiers.
• Tech Demon in general refers to demons that apply buffs, though exceptions where this isn't necessarily the case like Panel 3 Mot exist. Usually you want a maximum of 1 Tech Demon per team
• These lists are based on testing and extensive calculations in places where no testing could be performed. While there is still room for error due to the subjective nature of this type of list, it is still largely accurate and should at most have minor issues. I'm always open for debate and input on these ratings though.

For now I will only put Imgur links to each tierlist, since I feel like I shouldn't use up too much server side space for this personal project.

Phys

Phys Tierlists: https://imgur.com/a/u7pCO1I

Phys Notes

• Crits: Physical attack type skills have the chance to land a critical hit which is 1.5x the normal damage of the attack, which is a significant difference. This leads to a large damage variance depending on how often your teams manage to score critical hits. Therefore I chose to evaluate demons that can minimize this variance slightly higher. Some examples:
  • High Critical Rate Attacks: Susano-o A
  • Crit Aura: Asura Lord
  • Rebellion from Skills or Panels: Panel3 Zaou-Gongen, Kali
• Missing: Physical attacks also have the possibility of missing. This needs to be taken into account, because a miss will be disastrous during either part and vastly hurt your score. If during simulations you notice one of your demons repeatedly missing even if you have to decrease the damage for additional accuracy it will be worth it for the sake of consistency. Ways to increase a demons accuracy are Brands or skill transfers like Good Aim or Great Aim
• Prelim Special: Jack the Ripper's unique ability Terror of London will hit randomly 1-3 times at the start of prelim giving you +0.1 multiplier for each hit, which also leads to a higher maximum multiplier. But his base stats are fairly low which means unless the other two prelim members deal large amounts of damage they might be unable to make up for his lack in damage. Therefore this is only a strategy for the very top end of teams.

Fire

• WIP

Ice

• WIP

Force

Force Tierlists: https://imgur.com/a/8JcaX4H

Force Notes

• Red Oberon vs other colors: Red Oberon will use Twister which will be slightly higher average damage, still I would recommend against it for consistency

Elec

• WIP

Dark

Dark Tierlists: https://imgur.com/a/3H2900y

Light

Light Tierlists: https://imgur.com/a/lsoiySk

Thanks

• For various information and general resources: Sushimuffin, Reika, Puddi, Maaster, Rancher
• imheeout faction members that helped with testing and ideas: Maho, Big B, Ryuchi, Putri, Noa, Nobody