Daytime AR equipment comparison
For the plots alone, see this album.
Setting aside special equipment and dolls with unusual slots (AR-15, for example), the standard equipment set for day ARs is a gold crit scope, HV ammo, and optional X-exo. The case for HV ammo and X-exos are trivial to make (being the only in-slot equipment to improve or not reduce damage), but crit scopes do have a few competitors that almost never get mentioned. Night battles are going to be ignored here as you basically always use a PEQ there.
So, how much of a difference is there between these scopes? Is it ever worth using an EOT or ITI on an AR?
For reference:
- VFL = VFL 6-24x56, aka crit scope or telescopic sight. Provides +48% critical hit chance at max calibration and enhancement.
- EOT = EOT 518, aka holo sight. Provides +14 accuracy, +8 damage, and -4 rate of fire.
- ITI = ITI Mars, aka red dot sight. Provides +30 accuracy and -1 rate of fire.
Green equipment has their own name set (PSO-1, EOT 516, COG M150 for these scope types, respectively). The impact of the rate of fire penalty will vary per AR based on what breakpoints are near their default ROF and other buffs they may have.
Fairies used are assumed to be at 5* with the Damage 1 talent. G41 stars in all these comparisons as the "standard" AR. These numbers are all for direct-fire ARs; grenadiers would be a separate matter.
Optimizing against Evasion
Most enemies' stats, including evasion, can be viewed on https://gf.hometehomete.com/en/maps/ by mission. Typical SF mobs have 12-16 evasion, with scouts sitting around 80. SF bosses are usually between 30 and 60 evasion.
On her own, G41 with a crit scope maintains a solid lead until just before 60 evasion, where the accuracy bonus of an ITI becomes worthwhile. Adding UMP45+M4A1 pushes this crossover point past 100 evasion due to the crit rate bonus being more valuable with a crit scope. In either case, an EOT seems to provide no unique value at low, moderate, or high enemy evasion.
As one of the top DPS fairies, you may often end up using a command fairy in your ARSMG team. Unsurprisingly, the crit damage boost it provides makes a crit scope far more valuable, and even with no external crit boosts it outperforms other scopes far past 100 evasion.
With some acc buffs (like the 100% boost from a Warrior fairy), the benefits of an ITI/EOT also fall off, with a crit scope leading even past 100 enemy evasion.
In summary: use crit scopes. If you only expect to be seeing scouts, and cannot get any accuracy buffs (fairies/tiles), you could use an ITI. I don't think such a situation is ever going to happen though.
Optimizing against Armor
As before, hometehomete is handy for finding enemy stats including armor. Armored SF/KCCO usually cap out between 100-135 armor. Hydras have 199 armor, and Paradeus Doppelsöldners/Uhlans can vary between 100-225 armor.
Now for some comparisons with armor.
With no fairy, EOTs show some utility past 80 armor (if no crit support), or 150 armor (with crit support). However, overall performance is quite low in either case regardless of equipment.
With a command fairy, an EOT gains a slight edge past 170 armor/250 armor in the two cases above.
For a pure damage focus, here are the same charts but with a 5* Artillery instead. EOTs start to pass crit scopes at 120/210 armor here.
In summary: use crit scopes. If you are trying to kill hydras with ARs and don't have sources of crit rate/damage, (a) don't, and (b) you could use an EOT.
Equipment on a Budget
With your equipment priorities on a maxed-out team established, let's take a step back and look at it from a new player's perspective where equipment is limited and VFLs may be scarce. For the purposes of this comparison and due to the existence of universal parts, all equipment will be assumed at max enhancement/calibration. 15 enemy evasion and 0 armor is used to represent a typical SF encounter in the main story chapters, which is most of the content faced before getting fully upgraded and geared teams.
The left half of this chart is with gold ammo (+20 damage), the right green (+12 damage). Interestingly, while gold EOT>ITI, the reverse is true for greens. Also, gold ammo+green crit scope is slightly better than green ammo+gold crit scope.
Fairies, skills, and tilebuffs will change things so don't take these as absolute hierarchies. For specific setups you can always plug your team into a combat simulator and try out different equipment combinations.
For Fun
Here're a few charts of each equipment as a function of evasion and armor (no fairy or external support). Color also shows DPS (yellow=highest, dark blue=lowest).
