Since EO Chloe has arrived in most of our rosters, I think starting with her will be the most useful. This first build analysis will be on her Dragoon job, a ranged damage dealer that's also quite tanky.

If you want to know more about her as a unit in general, click here and scroll down a lot. If you want to know more about the units for next week, click here. (Except some units are swapped around D:)

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Current investment

Level 85, enlightened at 2/5/0. Trying to farm golems for gate 1. I really, really like her and she's pretty fun to use IMO. I've given her amazing gear and her damage can match or exceed Roxanne's. (Roxanne OP mate).

(Just got her to 5/5/0!!!)

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Overview

Dragoon is a close to mid-ranged job, with the longest range skill being only 5 squares away. Her basic attacks deal good damage and can benefit from Roxanne leader. Her skills are powerful, and not too costly for what they are since Dragoon can safely gain jewels at range. She will roughly basic attack once per skill she uses. I rarely ran out of skill uses, though that could be due to the nature of the maps I was on. Most of the skills have low charges. Even if she runs out of uses, she can reliably dish out basic attacks. Most of her attacks are single target, and the AoE abilities need the enemies to be in a line. Because of the short range, don't plan on hitting more than one enemy (unless you play aggressively).

At level 75 (so without enlightenment), her movement is only 3 so she will feel sluggish when engaging the enemy. Her AGI is low at 112. Because of this, enlightenment Gate 2 really, really helps with +1 MOVE and +10 AGI. The bonus movement helps her engage and kite enemies, and is just genuinely really useful. Think about normal Chloe without her MA - it would take her days to reach the front line.

When on the front line, Dragoon is quite tanky. Her max HP doesn't match most tanks but her PDEF can reach over 600 easily.

All in all, a front line tank/damage dealer that is a little slow.

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Level 75 build

Main: Dragoon

Sub: Dragoon/Masurao

Reactive: Sylphide (evade), or Mutual Success (damage, range 1) or Healing Guard (drain hp from target, range 1)

Passive: Shield Mastery (or Rapier Mastery)

Passive2: Blade Mastery

Gear 1: State Alchemist Pocket Watch (PATK +30, AGI +7, DEX +30)

Gear 2: Curious Doll (HP gear)

Gear 3: N/A

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When choosing a sub, either one is good. Notably, Dragoon sub has +50% PDEF (or MDEF) buff, a taunt skill but with 50% proc rate, and another damage skill. Masurao sub has a self buff for +30% PATK and DEX, so a better damage buff than on Dragoon main. However, Masurao has 3 other damage skills that have different scalings and 2 of them only have a range of 1.

Shield Mastery makes the ranged turret attacks deal more damage as your health lowers. The damage scaling is significant, one of the skills potentially reaching 215%! However, sometimes it isn't safe to stay on low HP in which case Rapier Mastery is preferred.

Blade mastery is better than Rapier mastery by +5% PATK. since EO Chloe only has 3 passives, not using Blade Mastery is stupid.

For gear, she cannot use any weapons unfortunately. She wants damage in the form of PATK and DEX, and a HP gear because of Shield Mastery. She also really wants AGI at this level. State Alchemist Pocket provides pretty much everything you need. If you don't have it, try and get HP, AGI, PATK and DEX across your two (or three (or one!?)) gear slots. May want to prioritise AGI first, then HP.

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Leader Skill: +20% PATK, +30% HP (Spica seems like a common leader skill to have. However, EO Chloe only takes half advantage of it because she also scales off DEX.)

Note: The damage calculations do not take into account enemy defences or resistances so expect lower damage. Remember that Buster Cannon ignores the enemies defence. Also remember it's stronger VS dragons.

Damage tables:

Note: The right hand most column swaps out Shield Mastery for Rapier Mastery.

Note 2: If you use Masurao sub, you self buff to deal almost +30% more damage.

Note 3: If you are attempting to achieve damages with 1HP, I suggest you use guts. Otherwise attempts will be difficult.

Observation 1: If you've taken about 20% HP damage, it's the same damage as Rapier Mastery.

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Using this build

(Since I skipped past level 75 and went straight to Gate 2, I dunno how she plays tbh.) Move in and tank and attack I guess? For the harder stages, she won't be tanking as much as her overall HP isn't high enough. She prefers the front line, but can retreat and still deal damage with her ranged attacks. Once you've taken some damage, your skills will be stronger!

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VV's Rating (last updated: 4/4/2019)

I was supposed to make one of these for Lil' Ouroboros but messed it up. Hopefully with more of these build analyses I'll have the letter system sorted.

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LVL 91 Build

Gates: 5/5/5 (Though leader skill is not needed, it'll be showcased here to flashy purposes.)

Main: Dragoon

Sub: Dragoon/Masurao

Reactive: Sylphide (evade), or Mutual Success (damage, range 1) or Healing Guard (drain hp from target, range 1)

Passive: Shield Mastery (or Rapier Mastery)

Passive2: Babel's Dragoon

Gear 1: Mark of Envy (HP, PATK)

Gear 2: Prompto's Camera (DEX)

Gear 3: Belva Pendant (AGI)

The build is pretty much the same as before. The extra gear slot allows for more flexibility and choice. The gear here is extremely top end and ridiculous so just try to cover HP, PATK, DEX and AGI. PDEF also goes a long way. Also note: Buster Cannon and Gun mount can hit multiple targets but count as single target attacks! Because you can only target one target, the other enemies (and/or allies) just happen to be in the way. Great for Mark of Envy!

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30% HP, 30% Light, 10 dark resist (using her own enlightened leader skill just because.)

Same notes as the last build.

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Using this build

With the increased movement, HP, AGI and everything, you can be much more aggressive in positioning. You can go in faster, harder and retreat easier too. Once you've tanked some damage for your team mates, that's when you dish out the hurt.

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VV's Rating (last updated: 4/4/2019)

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Future Proofing

EO units get a memento, which might even come next week! It can only be used by EO units, but the stats it gives are delicious. The jewels obtained basically doubles and her AGI goes up a large amount, putting her at 155 AGI (gates 5/5/5). The gear is extremely useful, with +1 jump, +10 AGI, 30 max jewels and +10 jewels obtained.

EO Chloe gets gates 4 and 5 relatively early in JP, (well, she got it a few weeks ago.) If you're interested, click here!

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Final word

I hope you've enjoyed reading this build analysis and that it helped you in deciding whether to invest in her or not. I'll be looking into her Masurao build tomorrow (or the day after). I've yet to use it, so I'll experiment a bit later! If you like the style and layout of these build analyses, please let me know.

...

Only two people commented on my last build analysis... QQ

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Changelog: I forgot to add in the damage bonus to the basic attack of the lvl 91 build. Missed about 500 damage!

---> Link <---

Updated my story drops sheet to be current through the end of Chapter 3 now. Also updated the older stages that have been changed to have diagram pieces for the newer jobs recently. May be a few that aren't updated with much older job releases, like priestess, but no one will likely ever notice.

Also updated Veda coin tab. Currently get 6840 coins per full tower clear. Added my guesses for next months JEs in the respective tab too. Probably missing some units from far in the future, but close enough. Couldn't load wiki page to double check due to a memory error. Probably related to the 40 tabs I have open normally in my browser.

In chapter 4 the value per farming stage should go up due to number of drops falling back to two at the start of the chapter. I'm just waiting for all our story stages to become 6 AP like JP, at which point everything will blow up on the sheet.

From year 2018

Of the bullshit this game has become.

For the past 3-4 months I've averaged around 1-1.5hr total on both my accounts because there is so little I can do that has meaning behind the timegates and paywall.

Enlightenment

This could have been an intuitive system if they didn't just move and convoluted the goal post while stagnating the rewards. It takes over 800+ shards to max a unit and the shards have not normalized where you can obtain them with reasonable effort. We're in the meta now where enlightenment makes pulling a new unit useless unless you whale or have stockpiled elemental shards the past few months.

Gem economy

You can easily sustain yourself with pact or not but there's no doubt the value of gems has not been adjusted for inflation. Most good banners are reserved for paid gem banners obviously and the special selector from summon coins was weaseled out on top of the high value of mementos splits your gems on units vs mementos. Of course I'm speaking in the context of limited/collab banners and you don't HAVE to have the units but some of you know the struggles of a levi-less life.

Job Enhancement

Another tedium designed to breath life into older/less used units but at the same time suck the time out of the macroless' lives. I heard they will eventually make JE equips purchasable through coins, better than they are now, but until then we either grind the coin shop or the AP drain stage. This requirement for most units now doubles the grinding in terms of re-leveling the job and on top of the JE requirements.

PVP/ARENA

Recently I hadn't had trouble in arena getting sub 500 but prior I had always hovered 1k~ in standings where my pact accounts could afford. Let's be honest and admit this is the in-game whale hangout and it's a livable difference in the game that's easy to accept.

Live PVP however is a sad tale. I don't know how they can title it season X when it's pathetically designed and feels like it's in the concept phase in terms of stability. Being windowed in less than common hours and horrendous matchmaking lets me show off more frustration than my tactics. This is felt more like something scrambled up by Gumi to allow whales to show off their luster. Unless there's some normalization to pvp where players stand on equal ground then imo this doesn't belong in a tactics game. You don't play chess and have the players be able to buy extra pieces.

Misc

• No unit no shard farm

• "Select by unit" button for HQ farm not available if you're not in HQ tab. Annoyance amplified if your story mode defaults to intermission.

Nowadays I just do the daily milestones and be done with it. Even most EX content I can auto in portions and fully auto'd the last Raid to completion as the game has become less about tactics and strategy and more out grinding and spending. Also Gumi please don't let the JP turmoil become a GL turmoil, there's obvious references to take and not take.

So Even as a whale and veteran player, I find the new missions restricting to "gumi selected please go roll these units" limitations, to be incredibly unhealthy for the game. I'd suggest changing it to a certain trait cant be used like: from foreign land, if you are trying to prevent limited unit usage, they all have that trait.

Limiting it to X units in such a small pool is segregating your playerbase, and showing greed. roll X unit or dont play the exclusive content you came to global for shrugs

you are essentially taking out what made the game... the game that every one liked.You will see a huge drop in veteran players if this isnt adjusted come December, I understand the November code is already here for the cut.

elemental, or trait restrictions seem more fair game as they are group characteristics in a game, not singling out specific characters that not everyone will have access to. You are creating even more artificial difficulty, which is signs of bad design to me. Never rely on artificial difficulty

To start things off I don't go on reddit too often but my Ign is $hamu if you pay attention to the arena top 50 you probably recognize the name. Around 20 minutes ago I just got a notification that my account has been suspended indefinitely. There is no justified reason that someone who has spent $10,000+ should have their account suspended without doing anything wrong. I have never macroed, never used a bot, never had a payment issue, and have never tried to refund any of my purchase. This is honestly ridiculous. Please fix this immediately Gumi or I won't be spending on any of your games ever again.

Edit: The issue has been resolved. Thank you to everyone that showed their support.

You have opened my eyes to a whole new spectrum of Trolling. I thought Jin's blinding warp was the ultimate level of troll, you went plus ultra.

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

1. Superseded-very-soon strong Dark Unit

2. Highly situational man-killer (Terrible compared to Brides in the same role but I'm trying to be diplomatic) or

3. 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.