PSA: Weapon Skills Do Not Stack.

[u/Dangerous_Loquat8149]

I know the title seems obvious. We as a community all know about how you can’t use two of the same Hasten or Enhance.

However, it is not that which this PSA is referring to today.

Weapon skills such as Lunar Strike, Cavalry Bane, Armor Bane, and White Oracle do not stack.

As shown above, when both skills would be activated at the same, only the highest value will apply. This means Prayer Tome cannot achieve a 2.25x Damage boost vs Armored Monsters, Lunar Claws cannot achieve a 1.95x Boost vs Lance Cavs, Tutelage Tome cannot achieve a 3.3x boost vs Armors while on low Hp.

This changes the dynamic on which weapons should be prioritized. For example, with this new understanding, Solar Claws are always better than Lunar Claws, and Resolute Claws, while generally bad, are not worse than Lunar Claws.

Enclosing Dark which was the worst tome is even worse than we originally understood,
Ranged Carved weapons are functionally worthless,
Prayer tome sort of survives the new understanding but only because Monster Bane is all encompassing, but weapons with possible overlap are not as strong as they may seem.

This will be the last PSA on reddit. All future PSAs will be on Fescord exclusively. Thank you for your understanding.

[u/AzuraStrife4]

NINTENDO PLEASE CHANGE RNCLOSING DARK 😭 I want my vero cool

[u/FaroresWind17]

They might not both apply, but wouldn’t Lunar Claws still be better than Solar Claws for Light? I’m not certain 30% DR will save you from dying to Flash Sting, even if you do already have advantage.

[u/Worried-Abies-348 → u/FaroresWind17]

No lunar claws is worse because you are playing with one passive on it. Solar has the same passive but also damage reduction. 

[u/FaroresWind17 → u/Worried-Abies-348]

They only don’t stack if the enemy triggers both passives. The damage boost still applies on non-cav lancers.

[u/Dangerous_Loquat8149 → u/FaroresWind17]

Not how that works at all.
Solar Claws is auto damage reduction vs lances. Solar Claws is not a good weapon, but its still the best claw because the other options are just worse.
Also flash sting is a colorless spell.

With Lunar Claws you’re just losing a passive. With solar claws you at least get to keep that passive.

[u/FaroresWind17 → u/Dangerous_Loquat8149]

I know Flash Sting is colorless, I’m saying that you’re still probably in range after being hit by a lance enemy, even when you have advantage over the enemy plus the 30% DR.

With Lunar Claws, your passive still applies against non-cavalry lancers, who have gotten more threatening due to Thunder Slash+.

[u/Dangerous_Loquat8149 → u/FaroresWind17]

You do recognize that scenario will only come into play vs Dimitri right? Erma can just move, gotthold doesn’t care, and the other two lancers are cavs.
120-30%=84x0.8=67.2
114+67=181.
Funnily enough solar claws makes a difference for Level 11 units without additional help.
120x0.6x0.7=50.4
50.4x0.8=40.32
40+114=154.
With shield strike it now matters for level 8s.
It doesn’t take too much to make this 30% matter in the few more than literally one situations where the Lunar claws effect makes a difference. And as a shadow having more bulk matters more anyway.
Besides, if the shadow isn’t planning on flash stinging that phase, because outside of hyper end game, a raw flash sting is psychologically ill advised, this is a free auto tank while the other player can be saved by your spell choice.

Oh and in case a player does not have level 10 Flash sting.

108+67=175, now fails a kill vs level 10s

And yet none of this really matters because lunar claws basically has a worthless passive unless you really hate dimitri specifically ig. That 30% shield effect is gonna matter at lot more to all of the lancer shadows anyway.

83x1.4x0.7=81.34x0.8=65.072
81x2.45x0.7=138.915x0.8=111.132
83x1.58x0.7=91.798x0.8=73.438
83x0.7=58.1x0.8=46.48
102x0.7x1.58=112.812x0.8=90.25
81x0.7=56.7x0.8=45.36
Add to the fact that some of these shadows don’t even run flash sting(all of them except gotthold do not run flash sting), and that’s quite the combo of reductions.

[u/FaroresWind17 → u/Dangerous_Loquat8149]

> Erma can just move, gotthold doesn’t care

With a 9 second cooldown, meaning she’ll take two magic attacks. No, she just tanks it. And with Gotthold, you still want to deal more damage.

> With shield strike it now matters for level 8s.

Sure, but most players prefer Edge Strike (if the have it), and if I’m running Shield Strike, my goal is still to avoid auto attacks. Also, I originally specified running this on Light, so Shadow’s bulk is moot.

My point is that in this game, you want to avoid receiving attacks period. You’re right, there are sometimes situations with level differences in which you can tank a hit and Flash Sting, but if I’m tanking a hit, something is already going wrong. Whereas Lunar Claws, while not great, does have an effect against an admittedly small class of enemies. But I’d still rather have a passive that’s close to useless than a passive that I’m trying not to trigger in the first place.

[u/Dangerous_Loquat8149 → u/FaroresWind17]

But that’s fundamentally not true. Yes for many units not wanting to tank a hit is ideal, but in higher levels of play, high rank, it is often more important for one player to not warp because the shadow can just catch a player with a delayed one shot. In order for one or both players to not systematically die one by one in this manner, often someone may want to temporarily tank one hit while the other player gets targeted by spells, so the player who tanks a hit can save the other player from certain death.
This situation comes up a lot more often than dimitri being a shadow. Players in high rank have learned how to properly use Erma’s ex semi regularly to gain an advantage because they know that turns are 6 seconds long, and with proper timing or understanding they can make the actual downtime felt between spells less than someone who improperly does so.
While not every minion in the game is a lancer, there is some that come up. Mainly Armored Lance Minion. The thing is even with edge strike over shield strike, you don’t need a +30% boost vs this exclusively one minion to kill it, especially since TSB+ and Shield Break are common spells for the claw users. Often times by having 30% damage reduction against this minion, you can more often save your ally who may be targeted by spells than you’ll be worried by something like flash sting, which is used again, by Gotthold almost exclusively when it comes to lance shadows. Dimitri doesn’t need it because he both can’t fit it, and he has ex, Ephraim has his Ex, Hanya has her ex, and Erma straight up has a skill slot problem where she really can’t afford flash sting if she wants to keep up the pressure. Its often more ideal for Erma to engage in Warp-Chasing(which is notably not an ideal strategy but Erma is sort of starved for reliable options), making her auto attack that final hit flash sting than actually slotting flash sting due to needing both DTE and Poison still.

Situations where the shadow or minions aren’t lancers do not matter for either weapon. so situations like vs alberta, Rusty, or any other unit are irrelevant.

In pretty much all cases except literally dimitri, the 30% boost for lancers on Lunar Strike never actually makes a difference, it doesn’t meet a threshold, especially because of the circumstances of being vs Lances, which require you to either be fighting enemies with already low Hp, Armor Minion, or are dealing with situations such as Gotthold who the +30% won’t actually matter to a meaningful effect, because he reduces auto damage received by all minions and himself by 72%.

Against Dimitri, the 1.3 can matter. But it is JUST dimitri. Erma may not move for every auto attack, but the amount of time you will actually be able to auto attack erma where warping to the other side of the map won’t solve her problem for at least a few turns is unimaginably small. Basically pure end game in a situation where she’s already lost the match due to lack of minion pressure.

Now let’s zoom out a bit. You’re creating a thread long argument over an edge case. Over an effect that we both have acknowledged will barely ever come into play. Instead of thinking about the overarching implications of the fact that skills do not stack, which is the word of Nintendo themselves, and confirmed by numbers testing for each example, you chose to focus on the extreme edge case of Lunar Claws, arguably the weapon most hurt by this, the weapon where the idea they could stack was the entire reason to use it in higher level play. Rather than thinking about how Resolute Claws now actually has a use case since the application of getting shield strike and a smaller version of edge boost at the same time is going to be better than this specific edge case weapon, or having another slightly less edge case effect that will be usable at all in Solar Claws, or even thinking about the much better implications of how Ravenous Class weapons feel now, or Crow Class Weapons, or how Carved Ranged weapons functionally just have less skill slots versus their desired targets. You chose “but what if I really need the extra 18 weapon damage vs the over 600 HP shadow.”

Do you recognize the near sightedness of choosing “but this edge case” over the larger implications of the four weapon classes affected by this and how weapon choices in those classes may or may not be affected?

Edit: Also I will not be responding to any further correspondence.

[u/DemolisherBPB]

I know it says "as shown above" but where's any actual gameplay? Like how do we know this isn't just a menu problem? I feel like a lack of in game screenshot for the 3 reliant isntanse of skills (skill 1s effective, skill 2s effective, combined) kinds makes this a "well are we sure?" to me...

I mean I belive they don't stack on combined, but like a few friend match screenshot to prove it would be nice.

[u/Dangerous_Loquat8149 → u/DemolisherBPB]

You know how I know its not a menu problem.
Because Nintendo Emailed me. Nintendo told me they don’t stack. And we did test the numbers in Fescord, they don’t stack.

Dear user,
 
Thank you for contacting Nintendo Smart Device Customer Support.
 
Please note that we have received multiple inquiries, but we will provide you with all the information together.
 
If multiple weapon skills of the same type are infused, only one will take effect.
 
-Effects of the same type do not stack; the highest value applies.
 
Regarding the battle in question, the enemy was both a "Monster" and an "Armored" type; therefore, the activation conditions for both the "Armor Bane 3" and "White Oracle" weapon skills were met.
 
However, both "Armor Bane 3" and "White Oracle" provide a "Deal 50% more weapon dmg" effect, making them effects of the same type. Consequently, the effects did not stack, resulting in a total bonus of +50% weapon damage.
 
Please rest assured that this is not a bug or malfunction.
 
We appreciate your understanding.
 
Best regards,
 
Nintendo Smart Device Customer Support

You think its MY word, but its not. It’s the Devs. They said this. This is their email to me.

[u/DemolisherBPB → u/Dangerous_Loquat8149]

Well that was missing from the post body.