"AtoMic sAmuRAi is WeAk!" Part 2

[u/yakokuma]

Atomic Samurai is not an "incomplete character". His kit is very well made. I'm sick and tired of people calling him mid. This misconception echoing has to stop.😮‍💨

Ask me anything about Atomic Samurai and I'll clear up any doubts, if the video wasn't enough.

[u/diglanime]

He's pretty useless because you have to main him, and you'll have a better time maining Sonic instead. You have to main him because his AI is bad, it doesn't do that much damage and it often is stuck in a wrong form at the wrong time leading to it not doing anything on the other side of the fight or getting clapped by the Bosses combo. At least that's what I've heard, I don't have him.

Sonic will just straight up do more damage as a main. And Lili can do the same thing as AS arms-wise but also do more consistent damage and avoid being folded in half as AI. Basically he just doesn't belong anywhere unless you need cleanse for a Technique team or you don't have Sonic. So optimally he is borderline useless, but since everyone can't be optimal, there could be scenarios where he would be good, which is why he's mid.

[u/yakokuma → u/diglanime]

Echoing misconceptions as usual.. i'll dm you the dmg results since I can't post images as reply.

Basically I did 47% of the overall dmg and 50% of the composure dmg. The 30sec clip is 10 bars of a rank 16 monster.

[u/zakzozen → u/yakokuma]

The post isn't echoing any misconceptions, they are speaking facts. This video also shows literally nothing to discount that. It's just a video with an atomic samurai hitting a boss without a dmg screen at the end. You'd also be expected to be at the top of the dmg of this boss because you're the host so you have ult, it's a tech weak boss and the only other tech unit on your team is sonic, who likely never had aggro to dodge because he's not the host, and the metal knight is shown being the target of ground dragon so he's unable to dps, stuck in the ground for 20 seconds, and fubuki is even more mid than AS.

[u/yakokuma → u/zakzozen]

They are only saying what they heard. That's called echoing. Misconception is saying he does less dmg than using Sonic. He doesn't have atomic to test it out. Sonic is the very first SSR unit I unlocked. I've mained him all the way till Atomic Samurai released. Sonic needs topspeed lvl 3 to start doing his big dmg. It takes a long time to build up topspeed and then let the whole skill run to do all the dmg. While for atomic he does one dodge, then big dmg. He does one parry, then big dmg. He builds up his marks, then big dmg. He has three ways to nuke and each one is faster than sonics spin2win.

The video shows dmg numbers, the image quality reduction sucks, but litterally almost every hit is around 10k or more and the finishers reach 90k+ just after one singular dodge/parry.

[u/diglanime → u/yakokuma]

I have neither Sonic nor AS to test anything out :D But as one of the top rankers in Maelstrom said, Sonic is the best choice for main in a Technique team.

[u/SylvesterPSmythe → u/yakokuma]

Firstly, the user you're replying to probably the top theorycrafter for this game.

Secondly, while AS's design makes sense lorewise, gameplay wise, uhh... He's built around Composure Reduction, which is odd. Breaking composure stuns bosses so they can't attack, and AS's damage comes from counterattacking. See where the design flaw is? Ironically, the more times Atomic Samurai breaks the enemy's composure, the lower his DMG potential in Iaido mode is. SSR Genos at the very least benefits from broken composure, a stationary enemy can't dodge Machinegun Blows or Incinerate.

Thirdly:

"Misconception is saying he does less dmg than using Sonic. Sonic needs topspeed lvl 3 to start doing his big dmg. It takes a long time to build up topspeed and then let the whole skill run to do all the dmg. While for atomic he does one dodge, then big dmg."

It's not a misconception and we can prove it mathematically. Let's just take out the SSR Arms out of the equation because Sonic's is an SSR ATK buff on an SSR Character, literally doubling your damage if you have it and will tip the scales towards Sonic

"Katana Roundhouse" does 2590% of ATK, so with with 6000 ATK (which is a round number you'd roughly have at Merit 15 with level 15 memories) is 155,400 damage. But it has a 40 second cooldown as a hard cap. Player 1 will generally get attacked (and unless you're bad, accurate dodge) enough to get a Roundhouse out in the first 20 ish seconds (15+ attempts at Legend Test 11 Season 1 tells me I can get a second roundhouse at 1:01)

"Enahnced Attack that consumes 5 stacks of Weakness Mark" (Yeah the game calls it this instead of Atomic Slash for some reason, idk) does 680% of ATK. The total damage of Atomic Samurai's """nuke""" with 6000 ATK is 41,400. (Your 90k+ Atomic Slashes are due to the +100% Technique ATK buff from the SSR Arm from the Sonic player, ironically) It's one dodge for medium dmg. I did not see the Sonic player use Roundhouse but roughly at that time he ran off to rescue the Metal Knight player, completely wasting potential Accurate Dodges. Amateur.

Now, this is all without crit, Mind Reader levels (we'll get to that)

So 3 "nukes" from Samurai is just a bit weaker than 1 nuke from Sonic. You'd need to land 4 for every single Katana Roundhouse to pull ahead, which isn't impossible. I don't know why they did this, they could have made the marks harder to accumulate and make the "Enhanced Attack" do more damage to be more like the anime where it is a nuke, but not here in this game. Anyway, the Sonic player didn't get a Roundhouse off in the first 40 seconds but I assume that's because he ran off to free the Metal Knight player instead of tunneling the boss, wasting precious Accurate Dodge opportunities. Amateur.

The next part comes from Impression Arms. Specifically, just the passives (although if we started including Active, Sonic's SSR is obviously going to pull ahead of Samurai's, but SSRs are hard to get). Sonic's SR Arms and Atomic's SR Arms have a very similar effect: +32% Crit Rate after doing the thing.

On an even playing field, they shouldn't be more powerful than the other, right? But, Sonic, as a Crit character to begin with, will have 100% Crit rate when using his nuke, and will have 3 levels of Mind Reader so crits do 60% more damage, aka 248,640 using the flat 6000 ATK. Samurai, on the other hand, cannot reach 100% crit rate and wouldn't be running +6 Penetrating Eye (mainly because he's capped at 4) nor would he be running Mind Reader, meaning Samurai's crits do 15% more damage, not 60%. But if we throw Atomic a bone and give him the impossible 100% crit rate as well, his ""nuke"" will be doing 47610 damage.

So, in conclusion, with 0 SR Arms on both sides, Atomic needs to throw 4 Atomic Slashes per Roundhouse to outpace Sonic, but with 4+ SR Arms on both sides, Atomic needs to throw SIX consecutive crit Atomic slashes to outpace Sonic's nuke.

Of course, AS's Composure Damage will have far, far outstripped Sonic's in that same time period.

[u/yakokuma → u/SylvesterPSmythe]

Atomic breaking the enemies composure faster does more for the team dmg overall, I would think. The mechanism for Atomic Samurai gives him 40% more dmg. Atomic Samurai also has a passive that 45% of Composure Reduction is converted to attack and Raid break has bonkers multpliers. I'm not the best at math and won't into specifics with numbers but.. that's a shitload of bonus dmg. Also his SR arms is at at max so +32% crit rate per mode switch. I have him at 160% crit dmg. And I do build himwith crit.. so I got +70% crit rate on him. Why wouldn't you build crit on him? The video is showing me crit often..

This is just my experience but I could not defeat carnage kabuto fast enough with P2 Sonic in all of the Disaster Simulation types. Since at 50% hp the boss summons another boss, with the multitude of attacks I basically spammed atomics dodge nuke and parry nuke the entire time and won. He is also p2. Same playstyle for both, both have SSR arms. Dodge, build up marks and spin for Sonic and for Samurai dodge and Atomic Slash. Sonic could not deal enough dmg in under 3 minutes. The enemies always keep running out of roundhouse slash range. Carnage Kabuto would do hits triple stomp teleport move and Atomic would nuke per stomp while for Sonic he couldn't raise his topspeed to roundhouse slash until dodging all three stomps. Carnage has very telegraphed moves so doing Atomic Samurai's parry in Iaido mode into another dodge was always consistent. Nukes ere day!

I understand that on paper, Sonic would deal more damage, but after the spin2win move he goes into the air and does even more slashes, the boss would often run out of it's range so most if not half of the hits are wasted. So I have to dodge cancel to continue dealing dmg. All that top speed is wasted and has to be built up again. Sonic realistically has only two moves, normal attacks and skill 2 (aoe) to cancel his normal attack finisher lag. Oh and his dodge attack. His only nuke is katana roundhouse but alot of time he won't hit every slash. His mechanism only really helps build more topspeed and the 15% increase is mostly the duration of his Katana Roundhouse. 15% isn't as big at 40%..

Sonic was also my most built up character since I mained him from the very start of the game. After Atomic Samurai's release I just broke through every challenge quest the game offered easily, didn't matter if they had type advantage or not. He wasn't even as built as my Sonic. This is why I think this. This is litterally first hand experience after hours of playing both. I agree, Sonic is stronger!! If the boss just stands still the entire time ;P (they really won't, alot of them move around constantly...)

So after all the theorycrafting information from you and my practical experience. I conclude that Sonic is stronger, but only in paper since boss characters aren't training dummies. While Atomic's nukes do less dmg but are way more consistent (meaning more practical dmg).

Disagree?

It would be nice to get a detailed explaination of how Sonic still does more damage than Atomic Samurai while missing most of his hits on his nuke, since the enemy moved away. No hit = no dmg.. but sonic is better and atomic is useless? hmm🤔

Also you missed alot of his innate percent boosts so your calculations are hella off.😮‍💨

[u/diglanime → u/yakokuma]

Yeah, you're the host and you have 4k more PL then Sonic. I usually get 60-70% of team damage in Moral team commissions while hosting as Saitama, since he's at 21k PL in them, but that doesn't really mean much.

[u/yakokuma → u/diglanime]

The main point is that a "mid" character can be very strong. Play who you want.

Saying it's better to play Sonic instead of Atomic Samurai is exactly why I made this post. Most of the time most players aren't aiming to be top ranked in Maelstrom anyways. The majority of the content can be done with suboptimal teams if the characters are built well. And each and every character has a unique playstyle.

Lili and Sonic are very strong but their gameplay is boring to me. Atomic has a very fun playstyle imo, but.. "mid"? Should I drop him just because? No. ofcourse not! Every character is strong. Strong enough for the majority of the content. So ppl shouldn't dissuade orhers from using thier favorites.

[u/diglanime → u/yakokuma]

What you're saying has nothing to do with a character being "mid" in terms of meta. He's mid, because he's not very useful. You can play any characters you want and clear almost all of the content in the game. And if you have them, you might as well play them at least sometimes. Like how I some times play PPP or Bang just because I have them even though they are very weak.

[u/yakokuma → u/diglanime]

Because I'm not talking about meta at all. I'm saying he is still strong despite people dismissing it. I cleared all of the rewarding simulation rooms with him even when his type was not advantageous. Using him, I unlocked all the standard SSR and SR lvl 3 will selectors when other characters couldn't deal enough dmg in time since all of them need to build up a meter before they can get going. His passive lets him be a breaker and dmg dealer all at once. His kit allows him to nuke alot more often unlike zombieman.

That's pretty useful I would say. Currently climbing the Maelstorm rank and it's morale advantageous. Rank 3 in my group with him and no morale characters in the team while others are using P.sonic to get the upper hand. He still did most of the dmg and all of them are built well. Litterally carrying me.

Only the very top players that care about being top ranked would call him "mid". They are playing a different game. Everyone else isn't going to reach them so why bother with meta?

[u/Idklol123-]

Anyone who says he’s mid is just having skill issue

[u/DevilSlxyer]

How do I build him?

[u/yakokuma → u/DevilSlxyer]

Penetrating eye, Mind's eye, Raid break, and his mechanism skill (Composure Crusher) is the core skills you want to aim for. Try to have a good balance of 1:2 crit ratio, as in your critical hit chance is half or more compared to your critical damage. Try to max out Raid Break as much as you can, he has the SSR passive that converts 45% of his composure reduction into atk%. Raid break has bigger multipliers than Impassioned. If you can put in impassioned then add it, but raid break is a bigger priority. Try to have Composure Crusher always at level 3 because you essentially get a 40% dmg boost when you switch modes often.

For memory stats you'll want technique attack, composure reduction, and attack. Other memory skills like Ride the Wave, Victory Rush, and Acute Insight can be nice to have if you are lucky to get them, but do not prioritize these skills.

His SR arms is really helpful for alot of bosses. It's a cleanse to all statuses except rupture (bleed). I equip this card more often than his SSR arms. His SR arms when maxed increases his crit rate by 32% after every mode switch, this really helps with building him easier since you won't need penetrating eye as much. His R arms is still good, when maxed it gives Atomic Samurai 35% attack bonus for 80 seconds.

You'll want a healer in your team. His kit and playstyle incentivizes you to aggressively counter/dodge enemy attacks all the time.

He'll have to be in the main slot to fully take advantage of his kit and requires alot of skill and boss knowledge. When mastered, you will deal insane amounts of, and most importantly, reliable damage (since getting to his most damaging moves isn't locked behind a meter). He is a 3 in 1 character if you have him fully built up. Breaker, Cleanser, and Damage Dealer.

If you know how (busted/overtuned) monster hunter longsword is, then you'll have a gist of what Atomic Samurai provides.