Taking Aim
Fairy talents seem to be a popular topic here, as I've written about Fervor vs Damage II, possible uses for Critical II on a Parachute, and a footnote on Accuracy II. As RFHG-based echelons have dominated the meta for quite a while, it's about time to talk about the rifle-specific talent, Aim.
Aim [Activation rate 30%/50%/70%/90%/100%]
Increase all ally RF's damage by 8% and rate of fire by 10%
Value over time#
For a basic starting point, let's assume handgun damage contribution is negligible and there are no rounding/frame breakpoints associated with ROF. Aim would therefore be a net 1.08*1.1=18.8% DPS increase, a constant 3.3% improvement over Damage II's 15% FP.
This is a big enough upgrade that Aim holds out much longer against Fervor, and it would appear to be favored for all battles under 20 seconds (for longer battles, Fervor would still have a significant advantage like in this comparison (with Aim being slightly higher than Damage II)).
Even under these assumptions, no such chart will be exactly correct. Different skill timings and values will favor front-loaded or rear-loaded damage more. This chart is made using a basic model of a standard RFHG echelon: a 5* selfbuffer (75% DPS increase) on a 5 second ICD, 5/8 uptime plus three buffing handguns (25% DPS increase each) on a 6 second ICD, 8/12 uptime. If you want damage numbers for some other specific situation, you can always use a damage simulator.
ROF makes it harder#
Let's circle back to an earlier assumption I made - that there are no rounding/frame breakpoints associated with ROF. This is very wrong.
The ROF stat is converted into a frame delay between attacks with the formula floor(1500/ROF), and multiple ROF values can lead to shooting on the exact same frame. This chart shows how these values line up. As a result, a 10% increase in ROF will almost never improve DPS by 10%. Sometimes it'll do more, and other times less.
Thankfully, for a given base ROF (base stat+equipment) and total buffs from other sources (product of: sum of tiles, product of skills, fairy skill), we can figure out the exact DPS increase Aim has compared to Damage II.
To read this chart, find the intersection of your rifle's base ROF (bottom) and total ROF buff from tiles/skills/other sources not including aim. The color of that intersection represents the DPS advantage from Aim compared to Damage II, with a key on the right. A few combinations of potential interest are marked (value corresponding to the intersection to the text's bottom left, x1.034=+3.4% DPS with Aim, x0.995=-0.5%.).
If ROF behaved nicely, the chart would be a solid blue-green (+3.3%), except for the dark blue region where the rifle would be at or near the ROF cap and would not gain much from Aim's ROF buff. That is clearly not the case, and instead there are a number of brighter green/yellow bands where Aim is particularly effective (up to a net 9.7% gain from Damage II), as well as darker areas where Aim is slightly worse or barely better than Damage II.
This chart cannot quite be condensed into a simple line - the Aim talent is multiplicative with all other buffs (tiles and skills), so a simple DPS versus pre-talent ROF chart can't account for cases where some extra decimal in the other buffs is translated into an extra point of ROF by the Aim boost. If you were to completely ignore that problem (please don't), it would look something like this. For an interactive/tabular version of this chart, see this spreadsheet.
Additional note: M200 and SSG3000 do not benefit from ROF buffs during their skill. Aim is much worse in echelons that use them. The level of ROF buffs is also not constant throughout battle. Skills aren't active all the time, and some stuff like R93's skill make it even trickier. This chart may be useful to get a general idea of how the talent works, but don't expect it to give exact DPS values for specific echelons in any battle.
In short: if both your rifles fall into bright yellow bands in-skill (and optionally also pre-skill), Aim will be strong for that echelon. If not, its benefits over Damage II will be marginal and Fervor will be hard to compete with.
Handgun DPS#
There are plenty of occasions where handgun DPS is totally trivial - Hydras, Minotaurus, Cerynitis, Aegis, and many others have so much armor that any handgun not named Python will be dealing either one or two damage each hit. In those cases, it's safe to completely disregard the effects of these talents on your handguns and the above charts should apply fully. However, battles against softer targets or echelons with Python may have a nonzero handgun damage contribution, and the sometimes-narrow margins in favor of Aim we saw earlier could completely disappear.
For a very rough approximation, let's look at the results of two battles and see where they end up: the Core 8 Strelet/Doppels (day) and the Core 8 Gladiator/Gunners (night).
Discounting HOC damage, the handguns did 13.6% of the damage against the Strelet/Doppel group, and 4.1% of the damage against the Gladiator/Gunners (only HS2000 had a PEQ, the others used Suppressors and contributed almost no damage). This is with standard kiting. Keep in mind that these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt - targeting, evasion, force shields, and all sorts of factors can have a big effect on how much damage is inflicted by each doll.
If we take the simple case and say Aim makes rifles deal 18.8% more than no talent, in these cases:
- Doppel/Strelet: 1.08*1.1*0.863+1*0.137=approximately a 16.22% DPS improvement from Aim (compared to no talent)
- Gladiator/Gunner: 1.08*1.1*0.959+1*0.041=approximately a 18.03% DPS improvement from Aim (compared to no talent)
Those respectively imply a 1.06% and 2.63% lead over Damage II. This loss is large enough to convert some ROF buff+stat combinations into a net loss for Aim, but not nearly enough to take away the 7-8% lead it has on paper with other combinations. Using a DPS-oriented handgun like Python will further tip the scales in favor of Damage II/Fervor.
To summarize this section:
- Aim may not have a significant advantage over Damage II with certain team compositions against weaker enemies, when HG DPS is substantial. Such fights are likely to be on the easier side anyways, so I don't think it should be a major consideration.
- Much more worthwhile is being mindful of the ROF breakpoints, which can really make or break the talent. The DPS increase of Aim will also fluctuate over time depending on which skills are active.
- There is also the matter of fight duration, as boss battles or other long fights will probably still do better with Fervor. Even a 9% advantage over Damage II (net ~25% DPS increase) will eventually fall behind the 33% DPS increase from full Fervor stacks (although this would take a good while).
Budgeting & Conclusion#
Aim is a rather difficult talent to analyze, largely thanks to how ROF works in this game. I would expect it to usually be a little better than Damage II in RFHG echelons (but not always!). Evaluating it against Fervor is significantly harder, considering how much the value of Aim can change by echelon. Fervor could pass Aim as soon as 12 seconds in or take much longer, in the range of 20-25 seconds, to catch up.
Perhaps the biggest downside of Aim is that the fairy it's on is stuck to RFHG echelons (and, considering all the frame issues, only specific ones). Any ARSMG/MGSG/5HG/mixed echelon will be at a substantial disadvantage, effectively having no talent. Putting Aim on your sole Command, Artillery, or Taunt fairy is almost certainly a mistake. Rolling for a specific talent can also cost absurd amounts of calibration tickets and resources - spending 3000 tickets for a single talent is entirely possible.
The case for Aim is strongest when you are raising a dupe fairy that you expect to primarily use in RFHG echelons (Beach/Taunt/Illumination come to mind), especially if it came out of production with the right talent. In those situations, you can only use the Aim copy when the time is right and use the other copy for the rest of the situations you encounter. Aim would only be a problem if you really needed both fairy copies on non-RFHG echelons for high-performance situations, which is getting into incredibly obscure territory.
Be careful not to get things backward here - don't build echelons so that their ROF buffs fall into good thresholds for Aim, instead, use aim if your echelon's ROF buffs fall into good thresholds. The former method will more often than not end up giving you a subpar team, and a boost from your talent is not likely to fix that.
If you don't want to think much about talents, just pick Fervor/Damage II/Damage I. This applies for every fairy, although Armor II on an Armor fairy may be a good idea. These will all provide a strong bonus to your damage output no matter the situation.
FP and ROF have some potential to add extra value (versus armor and versus large/weak groups/Orthrus shields, respectively), but buffs on these talents are close enough that it shouldn't make a significant difference. Also, rifles are never good for breaking Orthrus shields.
Special thanks to /u/Rhasta_la_vista and /u/UnironicWeeaboo for their input on a talent discussion that led me on this track.
Bonus round: Assault#
Assault [Activation rate 30%/50%/70%/90%/100%]
Increase all ally AR's damage by 10% and rate of fire by 8%
This is very similar to Aim, so much of what I said above will still apply. Here's another chart by base ROF & total pre-talent ROF buff:
Those yellow bands are not very tall. Finding an echelon where Assault proves to be substantially better than Damage II looks unlikely, although with no other ROF buffs it does look decent on dolls with 74/75/78 ROF.
I recommend against using Assault on any fairy, even on ARSMG-oriented fairies like Shield or on your third+ dupe of a general one.Some factors to consider:
- ARs start with a much higher ROF, so it's not as important to buff.
- Many ARs already buff themselves to or near the ROF cap.
- A number of excellent SMGs give substantial amounts of ROF from their tiles (Vector, JS 9, MP7, SR-3MP, X95, and UMP9 come to mind), which again may bring your ARs to the cap.
- The #2 processor chip further increases ROF, making the ROF component of assault almost completely useless.
- Offtank SMGs tend to contribute more damage than handguns do in most RFHGs, so the AR-only nature is more limiting. A 15% stronger Uzi molotov is nothing to sneeze at, as she can make up 20-40% of your echelon's damage in the right scenario.
- ARSMG echelons have seen much less usage in recent high-end/competitive/ranking content so dedicating fairies and calibration tickets to them is less worthwhile.
- Grenade ARs benefit much less from ROF, and FP is important for tougher swarms/light armor. One could argue the same applies to charged-shot RFs, but those see limited use and Grape already has more than enough FP for most things.
More like this
Fervor versus Damage II
Performance analysis