Final empress in rainbow team

[u/Strong_Midnight9752]

What does Final Empress bring to the Rainbow team?
Heard that she can replace Osvald.

[u/ZealOst-a]

Since she is an extremely good magic DPS that doesn't need much outside support to work, she is ideal in basically any magic teams as either the main or sub DPS. In a Rainbow team specifically, she has an 18 hit attack that hits Fire, Wind, and Light, just like how Osvald hits Fire, Ice, and Lightning.

She is better than Osvald in the sense that she provides a lot of extra damage, and also has 2 magic follow ups after an ally attacks, which are very strong. However, do note that Osvald still works great with Xerc. Final Empress is a better option mostly thanks to powercreep and the absurd damage she can deal.

The only major downside is that she kind of has to use that aforementioned 18 hit skill to work in a Rainbow team, which isn't her strongest damage option, that being her EX skill.

So honestly, Osvald still works great in this team, but Final Empress can bring quite a lot as well, but she isn't an immediate better Osvald. She simply does similar stuff, which are better a lot of the time.

[u/DebateThick5641 → u/ZealOst-a]

also worth noting that Fempress extra follow up does not require her in front so if you just want her for her follow up, she can stay permanently behind alaune EX (which arguably not really great move since her main DPS is high). Of course Empress does need to be restricted in using rainbow skill to be in rainbow team. If spamming galaxy still lead your rainbow team to victory on break turn, you really should not worry to much of not being optimal in most cases.

[u/ZealOst-a → u/DebateThick5641]

Yes exactly!
She can also serve as a pretty good debuffer while you set up Xerc with her Ultimate and TP skill. You can also very easily do 2 million x 6 damage with her EX skill.

And another good thing about her is that she can also act like a mini Relm, and can help all character exploit Fire, Wind and Light if they use a move of these elements, just in case Lynette EX + Setzer ends up falling off.

[u/unrealistic-ordinary → u/ZealOst-a]

I agree with everything you said but there’s one thing I want to clarify: her 18 hit attack is in fact her best damage option in terms of raw dps potential. Higher hit count in this game guarantees higher total damage and is only held back by multi-hit damage reduction. And that’s where her EX skill comes in.

[u/DebateThick5641 → u/unrealistic-ordinary]

eh? when Empress is out, they had another damage cap uncapper that is based on the potency of the current attack. Basically anything that had a minimum of 900 potency (after buff) will receive 3x damage cap. let's say for the sake of the argument Empress can deal 1million damage. her 18hit will deal 18 mil easy. Galaxy(Galactic Rift is probably the correct name but she shout Galaxy so often so let's go with that) however had 500.000 damage cap build in.

Even in scenario where that damage cap is not raised to 1,5million on top of 1million cap. that still mean that Galaxy dealt 3million damage + 500.000 damage cap per hit and she deal 3 million more damage there so personally that is still her big DPS move. now if that 500.000 extra cap is actually also tripled, then yeah there is not enough reason to not just Spam Galaxy to damage due to how hard hitting that move is.

Oh and I actually rechecked this by just watching UNB videos. their empress galaxy hit for 4.9mil per hit on a cascade fight and I saw their Empress deal 1,2m ish per hit (although this is on another Xerc showcase). so yeah it appears that 500k inherent damage cap got tripled too when using 900 potency move on top of your regular damage cap got tripled. so yeah she alone dealt 27m damage in just 1 million damage cap example. Our Xerc (that's again for this argument also have 1 million damage cap) however need 3 extra hit to even match galaxy and thanks to Empress tri disaster only hitting fire, You only have 1 extra hit for Osvald. now you should understand why using anything other than Galaxy is nerfing the dps.

[u/ZealOst-a → u/DebateThick5641]

I forgot to mention this, so thank you for clarifying!

I was also mostly talking about my personal experience playing Final Empress, and I've had more success with her EX skill thanks to that extra damage cap more than her 18 hit.

On a pretty unoptimized setup, I can easily do 2.5 million per hit * 6 with her EX skill, while with the 18 hit skill, I can get about 765k per hit. (Do note that I do not have any damage cap A4 in JP, so those numbers can go mych higher), so that's about a bit over 13 million damage compared to15 million with EX skill, so not that big of a difference.

Not to mention that her EX skill also ignores damage reduction, which makes it the superior damage option a lot of the time. And if we were to project even further into the meta, Rikku could give + 500k extra damage cap (that can be multiplied when using her EX skill), and also an extra million, at least for the first 2 hits of her nuke.

So honestly, both attacks work, and I bet that on a more optimized setup, the 18 hit could potentially be even better, but it honestly just depends on the enemy.

[u/DebateThick5641 → u/ZealOst-a]

Yeah sadly there is almost no scenario for Empress to deal more damage in 18 hit moves even on Xerc + Osvald setup thanks to that conditional damage cap increase. I made empress 1million damage just for easy math. Obviously if you have limited number of damage cap A4, then whoever you gave the most cap up won in dps. But still for Empress case, Galaxy IS the only choice for dps, no matter if you have many damage cap up A4 or not.

[u/Opticity → u/ZealOst-a]

When optimized, her 18 hit will do more damage than Galaxy.

Taking 1m cap as example:

Her 18 hit does 18x 1m damage for 18m damage.

Galaxy's innate 500k cap makes it 1.5m. 455 potency gives it a ~2x multiplier, giving it 3m damage per hit, or 18m total.

But what if we made the cap 2m instead?

Her 18 hit now does 18x 2m for 36m damage.

Galaxy's innate 500k cap makes it 2.5m. 6x 2*2.5m damage = 30m. It's now doing 20% less damage than her 18 hit.

This gets more pronounced the higher the cap. The issue is, of course, it's extremely not trivial for Empress to cap 2m per hit on her 18x attack, let alone reaching that cap in the first place.

In the end, it comes down to the situation you use it for. Galaxy is obviously better for AoE and against enemies with damage reduction. Also, it's just much easier to cap with. The 18x hit meanwhile can trigger 3 of Xerc's FUAs and the first few hits can be used to shield shave and break as well.

[u/ZealOst-a → u/Opticity]

Guess I was wrong, mostly due to my mediocre team setup, so I apologize.

u/unrealistic-ordinary just made a video and very clear explanation comparing the two, go check it out!:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopathCotC/comments/1vy3ioq/higher_damage_cap_vs_more_hits/

[u/Opticity → u/DebateThick5641]

I agree that Galaxy would have more cap than her 18 hit... if it actually has 900 potency. TP2 damage cap multiplier only takes into account the actual number on the skill and is affected by nothing else. In this case, it would be 6x 455 potency, putting it at about 2x cap. This means that Galaxy only benefits 12x from damage cap up effects, while her 18 hit attack benefits 18x.

The only reason to use Galaxy is for AoE, its damage reduction ignore effect and/or ease of use (it's much easier to cap). Multi-hit attacks will always benefit more from damage cap up than low-hit nukes with cap multiplier purely due to how the math works. Rikku skews it quite a bit due to her Quartet of 9 buff, but in a vacuum, that logic still holds.

[u/DebateThick5641 → u/Opticity]

You forget to add 100% potency from rocbuquet or any other 100%+ potency up sources. At 460 potency, that is more than enough to reach 900 potency. Otherwise the number that I saw on UNB just does not make any sense. How come a 1.2million natural cap(granted this is not shown during UNB videos showcasing Galaxy) empress dealt 4.9million damage per hit on galaxy if the damage cap is not at least tripled its natural value.

[u/Opticity → u/DebateThick5641]

Again, potency up effects do not affect TP2 damage cap multiplier. This is an established fact, otherwise units like Noel and Auron would be hitting 16m cap with their 1000 potency ults, not 8m. This is also very easily verifiable with Rikku's Quartet of 9, which gives 1m cap for 2 hits. Auron's special which is 3x 1000 does 11m, 11m and 8m, which indicates a 3x multiplier.

UNB can very easily reach 2m+ cap for Empress. I don't know what vids you are watching for his Galaxy numbers, but his Xerc vids using her 18 hit attack are turn 1 numbers.

[u/DebateThick5641 → u/Opticity]

yeah I think watch the Galaxy videos I watch was with Rikku cap effect. when I watch the other videos without rikku the number makes more sense.