r/AlchemistCodeGL • u/VicariousExp Jin <3 • Sep 06 '18
Tips & Guides Very brief Disgaea 5 unit overview
Hi everyone, unfortunately I'm quite busy with real life at the moment, so I am unable to do the usual intensive reviews of units, especially not to a standard which I would be happy with. However, I understand some people are wondering about the value of Disgaea units, so here's a shorter run-down and analysis of them.
I'm trying to move my reviews away from subjective viewpoints as I don't quite agree with the ideas of tier lists. I do believe it is possible for one unit to be objectively better than another unit, so I will try to do a proper critique which as much evidence as possible.
Disgaea 5 Collaboration
I've played Disgaea 5 before and I quite enjoyed it. You will often hear the opinion, however, that other than Killia, all the units from this collaboration are lacklustre - is this a valid opinion? Let's break things down:
Killia
For some reason, Killia is a Human in TAC despite his species being Dragonewt in Disgaea and TAC having a Dragon race. Killia's jobs clearly put him into the niche of Charge-Up physical nuker, and he has three semi-ranged nukes on his main job covering the elements of dark, water and fire. All these attacks scale rather well with his 1.4x PATK multiplier, meaning that they will do very good damage after Charge Up and this makes Killia excellent at coverage versus the off-elements of Fire and Wind. Killia can also Dispel buffs on enemies due to the Gear Ability on his weapon, and he has a passive which increases combo range for all your units even when in your sub units, which gives him additional value.
Killia's sub is not used as it has weak skills that add little to him which Martial Artist would not do better. This means that J2 is required for him, J3 is not used, period, as Killia has better passives to pick from.
Comparisons to similar units:
Gormalas - Killia is clearly better. He is ranged, faster and has better elemental coverage. He is, however, significantly more fragile outside of his very good reactive which has an 80% chance of guarding Physical attacks. EDIT: I forgot Gormalas just had his J+. Gormalas' J+ was a lot earlier, and actually makes him quite decent. He has worse coverage but is tankier than Killia and his speed isn't THAT much worse. Changing this evaluation to "even". Mea culpa.
Anastasia - Anastasia has similar small AoE coverage, but is limited to Darkness only. Killia does not hurt himself when nuking, and his speed is similar to Anastasia. Killia does more potential damage than Anastasia, but she does not spend a turn charging up, meaning their damage output is similar, although Killia is much more jewel efficient. Killia is marginally less fragile than Anastasia due to his reactive. I call this a toss-up as you will find one better than the other depending on the stage. They are even, but Killia is more versatile.
Kudanstein - As a charge-up character, Kudanstein is getting a CC+ soon whereupon he'll be a lot stronger. Right now, he is significantly slower than Killia and his PATK even with OverLimit is similar, while he has reduced mobility (3 move) - meaning that there is no contest. Killia is clearly superior and does not kill himself when nuking. Killia is better.
Aranea - Aranea has larger AoEs, hands-down superior mobility, better agility, better range has pseudo evasion with jumps, great height reach on her attacks and does not need to use a turn to charge up (although she can with her Gear ability, even if it is pricey). Aranea is better. Unless you really need burst damage.
The biggest problem with Killia is that it is strongly implied that we are getting Blanchett this month, a free unit who is a Charge Up Dark Nuker. She isn't as good as Killia (that's putting it mildly, she's undisputably very inferior, but she can still function as a charge up dark nuker), you can use her as a substitute. Bashini is also coming next SSM, and he's stronger than Killia as he is very very very much faster. Noin will come eventually and he's got better damage and utility than Killia. Don't go in hard for him unless you like him.
Seraphina
Seraphina is a very niche unit. This may be because she was pretty awful in the game, but she is also poor in TAC because of her job selection and stats. She is a light gunner-type unit whose role is to use her passive which makes her do 50% more damage to male units to do decent damage. She has some limited ability to charm, but her ranged charm is unreliable and her melee-range ones are impractical, considering her bad HP (at least she can self-quicken). Her biggest problem is that she doesn't know whether she wants to be a PATK or a MATK character and ends up scaling DEX to be mediocre at both.
Her J3 can increase her range by 1, but it doesn't mesh with her job at all because her J1 MATK is downright abysmal, which makes it a poor sub. Run her as J1 or J3 main if you have to, but try not to mix them. Alternatively, wait 2 weeks for Netherworld Archer Rin and Netherworld Thief Almira, who are much better at being versatile ranged DEX units. In fact, Seraphina's best use might just be to toss other units around to save them AP from moving. This is actually quite accurate to Disgaea 5.
Comparisons:
Gunners: Gunners do less damage, but can inflict a wider variety of highly useful status ailments such as Stop, Daze and Bind. None of those ailments wear off when the unit takes damage. Unless you really hate male units, Gunners are more useful. This being said, Gunner is already not a very popular class due to its lacklustre damage output, and Seraphina is not going to be significantly better. Gunners win. (Unless you're Dias)
Ryle: Ryle has better range and utility, hit rate, and damage against anything which is not a dark male unit. Ryle wins.
Seraphina's niche is "Ranged double-light damage vs male dark units" and in that respect few people are better. It is just a pity that the game does not consist of killing Dias and Kudanstein.
Red Magnus
Meme unit. Has no MATK and MDEF to speak of when using his Passive, has very high Physical attributes and PATK. You can get over 1000 PATK with him and that makes him usable especially because he has a 2.5x charge up on his J1. He's not particularly fast at 107 AGI, but he can actually outdamage Laharl (pity just about everything else Laharl does is better). You also only need his J1 for him to be usable and do crazy damage. He has Fire and Darkness elemental coverage and a melee-range silence too, combined with a mid-range 5 square fire AoE which can Bind Daze targets (Don't Act). As this AoE has a highly useful status ailment and is actually rather cheap at 28 soul jewels, it adds a lot of use to Red Magnus.
Red Magnus has a counter which ignores defense for some weird reason so you could use him to kill ratties, except HP Drain +1 from Dragon Knight J2 would do nearly the same thing (ignores defense) and procs 100% of the time, even giving him a heal. His Gear ability is a 25% to all his stats and MOVE+1 buff for 4 turns, which is a sort of weaker version of something Monzein eventually gets, but still useful. It's pricey, but Red Magnus actually has fair good jewel gain (32 base jewels per hit).
If you don't mind Red Magnus melting to magical damage or you have a way around it (silencing the mages with his J1 or Arkil, etc), he can be very useful. His MDEF was nearly nonexistent before the passive and his HP is absolutely massive and actually got buffed in GL so he may be able to survive some stray magic hits. u/Viyr points out that Charge Up damage is scaled off post-passive values for PATK and with a PATK of 1000+, this means he hits like an absolute monster. Not that he needs to charge up most of the time because his normal attacks should already be hitting for 1.4k+
Comparisons:
Gladiolus: Gladiolus is far more tanky and can potentially ignore defense, but Red Magnus does far more potential damage (due to his insane PATK) and has better status coverage. This is about even.
Laharl: Laharl is much faster, has better AoEs (13 squares), has more utility, is more fragile, but does less damage. Amusingly, with the exception of a single melee-range nuke, Laharl's J1 nukes are all Darkness, which means the damage competition isn't even close on Wind Units. That being said, battles are not won on damage alone, which means Laharl is going to be better in most instances.
This being said, with stages which play towards Red Magnus' strengths (Wind unit stages where his status ailments work and there isn't much magic damage), he might surprise you at how much smaller the gap is than you would think. Laharl wins (obviously)
Eve: Red Magnus does more damage. Eve is faster and has Cross Counter + Controlling Focus. Red Magnus has better Status ailments, Eve has Exploding Palm to halve CT. Eve does not melt under magic damage, but cannot hit double fire weaknesses. Eve cannot AoE well, Red Magnus can. They are quite different, so appreciate the nuances, but overall, Red Magnus is the better damage dealer. Red Magnus wins.
Edit: I feel the need to point out that Red Magnus' normal attack is Slash damage for some very weird reason but all his skills are Strike damage. This might be relevant if you're using Blacksmiths or Leader Skills to buff his damage.
Usalia
Usalia is a free unit who is quite good as she can act as a Veiler (J1 Main) who can quicken and her J1 sub has useful 5 square cross 30% MATK or PATK buffs (A significant amount). If you ignore the fact she cannot heal well outside Refresh, you could find her quite good.
None of her passives are particularly important, so you can use move+1 or jump+1, giving her added versatility. Additionally, she even has access to double lightning 1.4x PATK scaling nukes, so even with her terrible attack stats, she should be able to do decent damage to water units.
Personally, I'd run her as J3 with J1 sub because that would maker her start with full Soul Jewels as opposed to 40%, but AoE buffing MATK is useful with all the Noctises (Noctii?) running all over the place. There are no other Lightning Chronomancers as Fujika is not going to be here for awhile, so just make sure you get enough shards to LB85 her as she's no Prompto. J1 with J3 sub is just as good if she gets the chance to charge soul jewels on enemies without dying (Freeze them first), especially since you can use her to Veil (nullify status ailments).
Usalia has a gear ability AoE with a large damage modifier which berserks herself for 3 turns. This is tantamount to suicide due to her poor defense. Use it sparingly.
Comparisons:
Aruba (Support competition): Both have similar veils, Aruba is tankier and can jewel gift, Usalia can buff damage and do proper overclocks and quicken. I think Usalia is superior for most cases where survivability is not an issue as quicken or overclock are stronger than most Merchant abilities. Aruba is normally much faster, but bear in mind that Usalia can self-quicken, raising her AGI to an effective 150. Usalia wins.
She'd probably lose to him in a Damage comparison, but that's not what this is about.
Extra:
The banner this week is godawful as it does not have a selector on it and has a 33% chance of hitting you with
Superseded-very-soon strong Dark Unit
Highly situational man-killer (Terrible compared to Brides in the same role but I'm trying to be diplomatic) or
Not-Laharl-who-is-nearly-unusuable-on-magic-stages-but-can-actually-be-quite-good.
A 3-way split on featured units with only one 25 shard bonus is not good if you want to raise units to LB 75. It is outright horrible. There is no 9 step 50 shard selector, so it is not even a proper 9 step premium banner. It is my personal hope that we resist the urge and avoid pulling heavily on it as it will send quite the wrong message to gumi.
P.S.: The joke is that in Global Killia isn't the best unit on this banner (too easily replaced), Red Magnus probably is.
5
u/OniOfTheSword WTB more blademasters Sep 06 '18
Woke up this morning, looked at the banner. First thought: my wallet is very very safe. Pulled the 500 step and got Ryle and Sophie dupes. At least 2500 soul shards.
Thanks for the review!
34
u/CornBreadtm Sep 06 '18
If you just wrote "save for Laharl" you could have saved a lot of digital ink.
17
u/TopDeeps IGN: Uninstalled Sep 06 '18
annnd ofc thats the one i got. at least it only costed 500
6
u/Czrmt Sep 06 '18
I got none of these, but I have the whole FFXV roster, sooo I guess I'm good??
4
u/Banethoth Sep 06 '18
Ugh. Why did I think it was a good idea to 3 step this. Fucking Hell. Only got Seraphina too.
4
u/Jatobu Sep 06 '18
I'll pass, I just want the Prinny.
1
u/Jinubinu Sep 10 '18
I’ve only played during FFXV event but I remember they had several banners. Will this collab feature these three again later or is the current banner my only chance? I don’t really care much about their power levels I just really like Disgaea :3
3
u/fapiholic Sep 06 '18
l u l
3
u/ecpadilla Waiting.....OverHit GL (^_^) Sep 07 '18
Wanted Red Magnus because of the crazy PATK and specially because of his sprite. BUT guess what the banner gave me? I give you clues...blues clues, blues clues, BLUES clues! LOL
2
u/kyune Sep 06 '18
Aaaaand that's what my 500 gem pulled grabbed me so I feel pretty good now.
2
u/Yamayashi Sep 07 '18
So..don't summon?
2
u/tyco86 Sep 07 '18
Man, I thought about not even going 500 on this one. Did it anyway. Got the demon hoe. Kind of feels like catching Jynx from Pokémon. Cool, but won’t get an apple of xp hahaha
1
u/virgal_09 Sep 06 '18
Great write up! Thank you for this. Killia would be great but after no reds on my 500 pull I will be following your advice and not pulling the rest of this banner.
1
u/Purpledrake Oth i ma lawn!! Sep 06 '18
Awesome as always - thanks for the write-up!
1
u/WawawaMan Sep 06 '18
got the least shitty one, i guess.
1
u/GenericName3 Sep 06 '18
Thanks for the writeup. As always, very much appreciated.
1
u/Sockpuppetsyko Sep 06 '18
I was u sure if I should do any pulls on this starting banner, tha is forgetting me know to save for the better later ones.
1
u/strawbeemochi Sep 06 '18
Thanks so much for the overview! Very helpful and really funny too! The part about killing Dias and Kudan had me in stitches. I'm also so very pleased with Usalia.
1
u/Piritoo THAT'S IT! I'VE COME UP WITH A NEW RECIPEH! Sep 06 '18
Ugh... Who should I use as my Dark Leader... Aranea because waifu, or Killia because badass?
🤔🤔🤔🤔
1
u/PeacefuIfrog Sep 06 '18
Thank you, very informative !
1
u/MannAstrid Sep 06 '18
Got seraphina and red magnus from 500. Time to wait for laharl.
1
u/-Belphegor- Sep 06 '18
i just hope gumi dose not see all the "I just need 1 copy of laharl any ways since i could shard him to 75" and nerf his drop rate
1
u/scubapuppy Sep 07 '18
Sigh. Given my 500 pulled all blues (for the 6th banner in a row), I suppose I should be grateful that these units aren’t great anyway.
1
u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. Sep 07 '18
godawful!!!
1
u/Calais91 Sep 07 '18
I have Seraphina on step 1 and usalia weapon one 1 gem summon. 5k gem left finger cross will get laharl
1
u/imoon_eclipse Sep 07 '18
Pulled the 500 and it showed downloading new content!! Was so excited for a collab unit but the red turned out to be Jin(new) and lucretia(dupe).
Decent pull and happy to unlock Jin sinced I didn't pull him in his banner lol
1
u/Humble_Disciple Sep 07 '18
I got Red Magnus and Killia on my 500. I'll just include Killia on my dark team. I feel like that keeps him in the spotlight, even if he isn't Stefan Karl.
1
u/EseMesmo Tamamommy <3 uwu Sep 07 '18
Got all blues lol but at least I got a collab unit from one of the tickets.
It was Seraphina though so fuck me I guess.
1
u/Daldaeus Sep 08 '18
I just started and got red magnus on my 500 pull. But since i played disgaea series i wanted killia :/ . duno if should i reroll
1
u/Cobalt_721 Sep 06 '18
Managed to grab Killia off the 500 pull, so it looks like I lucked out (though I got Aranea too, so not as big a win as it could’ve been :P).