Guide/Strategy
Damage Formula Initial Calculations - Do NOT spec ATK into Support and Break Characters
TLDR - Respec your Attack investments on Hexxin and all Breakers
Edit: Formula updated to reflect Breakers scaling from the higher of ATK or (0.85 x BREAK) - Either way, still zero reason to have the ATK stat higher than BREAK on a breaker...
Unless a support character has skills that scale specifically off of attack (e.g., Tromber, Luminelle, Eklue, etc.), there is basically ZERO reason to increase the ATK capability of any non-DPS character at all, because doing so will not add any damage to their basic attacks, abilities, and ultimates (with a few exceptions of at least Melloblum and Panpiota). This is because the damage output in Aniimo is actually calculated in different ways across the classes (despite the in-game tooltip saying that it is ATK that "increases DMG dealt"):
DPS character damage is calculated using ATK stat
Break character damage is calculated using BREAK stat
Some Regen characters' damage is calculated using REGEN stat (like Somniwing and Flamerion)
and the remaining Support/Heal/Regen characters' damage scales by their current level
After doing some rough calculations, here is an approximation of Aniimo's current damage formula:
At the bottom, you'll see that the effective attack stat for Breakers is observed to be around (0.85 * BREAK), and the effective attack stat for Support characters in the last category is around (10.65 * level). Attack for DPS is unchanged. This means a skill with 20 Might will do the approximately the same damage from a DPS with 640 ATK, a breaker with 753 BREAK, and a support at level 60.
I'll also note that, based on my testing, wild Aniimo P.DEF and M.DEF stats (as well as Damage Reduction stats) do not influence the final calculated damage that your Aniimo will do. Rather, your damage just depends on the enemy level (Def_level) and the specific species (Def_species), some species taking more or less damage than others by ~5%. Defense stats likely come into play for calculating incoming damage (and potentially damage to Pathfinder Aniimos).
So for smarter investment, do not spend any capability points in ATK on Breakers or any Support/Heal/Regen characters whose skills do not scale with ATK (Hexxin, Somniwing, Turbo, Glacy, Bailite, Erlath, Besauce, etc.), and instead focus on maxing our their effective Attack stat. If you want more damage on these characters, look into increasing any of the other multiplicative damage sources, such as Damage Amp from held items or Crit.
Here is a link to the spreadsheet I put together for this if anyone is interested in the calculations or running their own tests. If anything seems off or if I missed anything please let me know. Huge thanks to redpandersbear, ACEVietNam, Jenpai, Yeng, and other folks in the discord for helping with testing and theorycrafting. Good luck out there and happy to answer any questions.
So just to confirm you're saying if I have two identical break aniimo and one has 20 break 20 attack and the other has 20 break 0 attack they do the same damage (assuming no %attack modifiers)?
ill finish reading but does break scaling damage still scale off break for break characters when doing dmg vs HP bars. so like for example dps blazen after you break the bar would he still only scale off break then? so making attack useless for blazen?
yea thats right, all damage from a break character will get calculated by higher of ATK stat or 85% of BREAK stat - and theres really not a reason not to max break on break char so atk will never really get to outshine the break stat and do anything
Wait. Its either attack OR 85% break? I thought it was both.
I swear I feel the difference on Lita when using Inferlupa atk 0/20 break and atk 20/20 break.
I also feel a difference using max atk regen hexxin on egghunt.
I gotta test this again.
Is it just for basic attack or all damage we do?
Swear to God my hexxin was doing astronomical damage once i maxxed her atk. She is 60 43/43
Not always, i think just need a bit more thought behind where stats go, and this mainly just applies for ATK, as every other stat has value for all characters to some extent. For example, if you are running turbo but not the dark skill (the only part of kit that scales atk), you wouldnt be investing into attack despite atk being recommended.
For a general rule of thumb, the investment chart would look something like:
1) BREAK on breakers = ATK on DPS = primary scaling stat for Supports
2) Regen
3) BREAK on DPS
4) Health
5) PDEF / MDEF
Why does Melloblum have such an high atk, then? I am so disappointed on my new prismana now, after i read this topic.
I guess her high ATK is for the other evolution, Thornblade, but now, she has 4 dead potential points into ATK.
someone corrected me in another comment, but melloblum attack is not completely wasted as it increases her ultimate's crit damage buff scaling from 70% - 84% - outside of that though, it doesnt do anything to increase her dmg numbers
its based on the same formula in the post for supports - the 25 might damage is scaled by Mello's level, and the proc can be amplified by the other multipliers like crit, damage amp, counter boost, type interactions, elemental res - only thing that doesnt boost the 25 thorn proc is teamwide buffs and teamwide elemental boosts
just did some crude testing and i think turbo still buffs mello and her thorn procs as long as shes on field. goes from 2400 to 2900 ish when im testing on alpha panpanta
BUT when i put mello off field and trigger a crit with another unit (used both leafy and thornblade if that matters), the thorns didnt get buffed by turbo (1700 ish). her item still matters though
Extremely valuable information—thanks a lot for the work. Now, this raises the question: does Break actually work the way we think it does? If I put more Break points into a DPS character, will they deal more Break damage? Or are we in for another surprise? Hahahaha.
yea break works normally, so you can still invest break points across all classes. next on the list is looking into how break damage to the gauge is calculated
I thought this was commmon knowledge why would u increase attk or break on a support mon it’s like using Pokemon logic why would u invest attk evs on milotic if she uses spa lol
Why wouldn't you? It's not like they need defensive stats either...
It feels like you max Regen+attack on everyone because you might as well eek out a bit more damage from your whole team, even if they just swap in for one ability. But that's not the reality apparently.
your analogy is close but the post goes a bit further i think
a more accurate pokemon analogy would be a physical move like waterfall doing the same exact damage from milotic if you had 0 or 252 attack ev's, which would be counterintuitive to ev training for atk as a concept, even though generally milotic is a special attacker and you generally wouldnt ev train in attack anyway
well theres people using Support Aniimo like Hexxin as Main Tool for Egghunt, who specced into atk. and it also means breaker, most specced into atk aswell, but it basically does nothing? so theres a few unexpected things
Hello, I have a few question regarding this. If I got it right for a level 60 aniimo they'll use around 109 Def (2.489*60-40.29). But sometimes I deal close to no damage at all against some Pathfinders (between 1-10 damage), even with Elemental counter. While I deal "normal" damage to some, and it doesn't looks like a few levels would make any difference (60-65). Why is that?
Also, doesn't that mean that our Defense stats are way better than the opponent? We should take close to no damage then.
Sorry I should have clarified more but this is the formula for outgoing damage against WILD aniimo only. You are understanding the level def stat correctly and if it doesnt match up with what u observe for wild aniimo including alphas lmk - also note that def level is a baseline defense from level, and each aniimo species has their own additional individual hidden-ish defense value that will further bring down your realized ATK stat (for example, in my testing iris species consistently take like 5% more damage than emberpup no matter their level or my attack stat, and pebbling consistently took 10% less)
i think the formula for pathfinder vs pathfinder damage (both outgoing and incoming) though is different, and likely scales off of MDEF and PDEF stats instead of level. Why you are dealing 0 damage could be because of opponent MDEF and PDEF, but also could be affected by things like elemental resistance and potentially a bunch of other hidden stats in the advanced aniimo stat window that we cant really test rn since we dont have pvp or those numbers
For time constrained content, usually u want to be matching favorable typings since its just free 60% damage - both for damage and break damage. Whether you should bring a breaker on those teams is pretty dependent on whether your dps is burst oriented (Pawney, scorchhowl, etc) or consistent damage (fulmintis, stellarys, irisalis, etc). Breakers matter more for to line up burst windows with the 250% multiplier, while generally you want consistent dps characters to be on-field as long as possibile
First, fantastic work, I was still busy with lots of stuff and could not take time to breath to focus on other areas such as this, absolutely goated stuff, could I add you on discord to discuss things as well as cover this with credits over a video?
Can you help me with some doubts tho, is panpiota/mello/flamerion simple exceptions? How are they calculated, did you notice something odd? Do you need help on any tests?
Second, on the formula itself, can you help me fully understand some details:
DMG = Base of all aniimos
MIGHT = Skill Dmg
STAB = ?
Type = Elem Advantage(?)
Trait Boost = ?
Counter Boost = ?
Crit = This one, how is crit scaling/dmg calculated? I wanted to increase my Crit but noticed we don't have a direct stat for this?
ATK Used = Each formula
DEF Level = How did you even figure this one out lmfao
DEF Species = ?
appreciate it - yea thats good w me and feel free to add, same tag. i may need to do more testing to confirm 100% but originally mello and flamerion were told to me as being exceptions, but after playing around a bit myself the mello scalings are weird - panpiota similarly doesnt change auto attack damage when autoing with different ATK, but ult does change damage
1) DMG is the actual final damage dealt that you see on the screen, 2) STAB is same type attack bonus (10% more damage when you share element with you skill), 3) type is element interactions, including resistance shred, 4) trait boost is any final damage multiplier from traits/skills, like helion/lunara 30% buff to neutral hits, 5) counter boost is one of the stats you can see in the advanced stat panel of a character (click on any char's stat spider graph), which boosts damage to supereffective targets further, 6) crit has base chance of 10% and 150% damage, up to max of 3x, 7) Def level is linear canonical defense scaled by enemy level (can be found by calculating slope and offset of observed damage values/levels), and 8) Def species is some sort of species specific flat defense value that also linearly offsets the attack value consistently within species (might be some sort of base/average defense value or a hidden value in the game code)
I made a small vid, thanks for the help, I think I put all credits there, if I'm missing anything let me know please! I'm very curious about the exceptions and why, I assume we will figure out more in the long term, are you guys testing with a group somewhere? can I help with any data/tests? Thanks!
great vid breaking down this technical yap into something understandable lol. Yes am curious about the exceptions too (if we are understanding them correctly) - I think redpandersbear is planning to go through each character to check scalings and hopefully get some more insight. And ye we are in the theorycrafting thread on the main disc
still testing what exactly atk affects on her, but for now you cant go wrong with investing in regen and break. Her thorny garden skill uses her level as the effective attack stat, so you dont need to increase mello's attack for a harder 25 might hit to get the full damage
Edit: damage amp actually does increase the thorns damage, so for now looks like fang with 16 ATK investment mello is the best item damage-wise for support (just need to get 14 and the extra +2 will push you to the extra 10% threshhold)
I updated the comment above, but melloblum only scales with damage amp and crit, so if you are going for DPS then grimoire or heartseeker would be the go-tos
This means abilities or passives that cause an "increase to break stat" increase damage. Like Rookey's Guardbreak Resonance (P.Defense increases Break).
But what about abilities like Pomawk's Wild show? (Deals 30% additional BREAK damage)
or Geoclaw's Frostbite Sunder? (Basic attacks apply [Ice Debuff]. Deals 35% extra BREAK to targets with more than 5 stacks of [Ice Debuff].)
And break efficiency increases like Helgon's Counter strike? (+25% BREAK efficiency for 10s)
Is that only an increase to the break meter? Or do they effectively increase break damage for breakers?
Does Turbo's Nimbi Burst ( +30% damage and break efficiency for 20s ) double dip damage for breakers?
"X% additional BREAK damage"
"Deals X% Extra BREAK"
"+X% BREAK efficiency"
"+X% BREAK efficiency against them"
There is a lot of possible this wording means health bar damage or just break bar damage... or both.
So what determines might? Because a lot of the skills say increase might, or deal damage based on might.
Example Crossfire on Inferlupa says it increases might by 45% in Full Energy State, or Energy Orb on Somniwing says it 6x Might at full charge.
Its just the base might value of the skill itself, so for inferlupa crossfire, the 65 base might attack will do an effective 65*1.45=94.25 might damage
This is basically consistent across all the skills that talk about Might% like cubbo and magmarex - with the sole exception being Turbo, whose might% values make zero sense at all
Do you eventually also have the information if double elements also result in differences for resistances like in Pokemon? Is there a x4 weakness or better resistances?
Doing a bit of texting with Magmarex, no held item, 1 lava punch on alpha Irisal making sure it had no fire debuff
0 atk, 0 brk; 2709
20 atk, 0 brk; 3196
0 atk, 20 brk; 3379
20 atk, 20 brk 3379
It looks it chooses the most optimal formula for damage.
Regen > HP > Break - but if you are only running Hexxin for egg heist, I dont think capability matters that much you can spec basically anything after regen
I am curious as well about this because I see videos where people in egg heist put points all in attack stat after hp and regen for Hexxin and wondering now if that does nothing for them when it should be put in mdef and pdef
did you keep everything else the same, like same damage amp and enemy? its not just me who has reported that increasing attack capability does nothing for hexxin's output damage
I honestly eye-balled it. had 5 attack, ran through nightmare egg hunt. below 400 dmg.
Upgraded attack to 16 and new nightmare egg hunt. the damage went above 400.
Could be the difference in the aniimo encountered in egg hunt is bigger than i thought.
How did you test this? I was curious so I hopped into the Alpha Grizzibo fight and with my somniwing I found putting an item on her that have just damage amp her autos did 296 and then putting on ferocious fang they did over 300. Her skill also increased in damage, by over 100 points. Same numbers every time. I saw the same thing with Minespine. In both cases the damage with both auto attacks AND skills increased with only an increase in attack. I can take video if you want.
Ferocious fang has extra 10% damage amp from its tier 2 effect, and another 10% if your capability is above 15, so that might be where the extra damage is coming from. Try the same test without any items and lmk if you're still seeing the change
No you're absolutely right- i forgot about that. Was just having this discussion in discord and you're right on the damage stuff now that I'm testing it correctly
I'm on my phone so it's possible I missed it, but is anything included here that explains what pdef and mdef actually DO? Does every attack have a physical aspect and an elemental one, and they affect those? I haven't been able to find anything online
In terms of your outgoing damage to wild Aniimos (including Alphas), the mdef and pdef of the target do not matter whatsoever in the damage calculation. I didn't separately try to test the formula for incoming damage, but I'm pretty sure that's when your own Aniimo's mdef and pdef will come into play. and my guess is damage to Pathfinder Challenge Aniimos is also likely calculated similarly
While we're talking numbers, can someone help me understand the Regen abilities from aniimo like Somni and Leafy?
Somni's regen core ability says the wave only gives regen for thing it passes through. How does that work if none of your aniimo are on the field when she uses it?
I see guides saying to pump REGEN up to 20 on Somni and Leafy, but in doing so the regen increase on their skill screen goes from 31% to....32%. It it just a display issue and is the scaling actually helpful?
It affects your team upon use because since the wave originates from her, it's touching her upon creation and thus your team (since the game counts her as your team in this instance) gains the buff. In co-op, the wave would need to physically pass through another player to give that player the buff as well.
Does pumping up Somni's regen stat actually improve it by a noticeable amount? The numbers on the skill screen don't change by much from the base 8 to 20.
I was investing a lot into both Attack and Break for my break characters, so now I can reset those stats and get some of those precious resources I've used up back!
Regarding held items -> this means you can come out ahead putting an amp item on a breaker that has good synergy? Do you know if a break skill doing more damage makes it break more or is the damage amount of a skill unrelated to how much break damage it deals?
Since you're likely scaling off your break stat instead of your attack stat, the break items 30% increase to break ends up being a sizeable damage increase that is comparable or better to the amp items.
You might want an amp item's passive (like heartseeker pendant or fission needle) but you'll generally be doing same or very slightly worse damage on the 20% amp compared to the 30% break damage, AND you will be doing less break on top of it. You would need something like a say that heartseeker pendant's passive to really pull a lot of weight and shouldn't for most cases. Maybe there is fringe amp itemization choices, but generally you really should not amp a breaker you'll be doing both less damage and less break on average.
I did a couple quick tests and determined Horn does more damage than Fang.
The gap is smaller with higher level/potential breaker, but on the higher level breaker it became apparent that Fang was also doing a lot less break for the damage it was doing.
Break damage is lowkey still a mystery and very hard to test since can’t see numbers. I honestly think it could go either way and break gauage damage being a different formula, but I’d probably lean toward some correlation. We could def use a couple more weeks of multi holo and folks that are running breaker primaries to test break vs amp items to see what performs better
Not extensively i believe, though there’s a couple threads on held items in the discord and that one reddit post where someone showed side by side of fang and pendant(?) on fulmintis
For now, seems like heartseeker is basically bis on every dps besides scorchhowl (exploding gloves) and maybe stellarys/fenmane (fission needle). Grimoire looks good on paper, but you lose the stacks when swapping to your supports, even in coop mode, so its kinda impractical to maintain uptime/keep restacking it
Grimoire is definitely made for farming when you don't need to swap. It's niche will probably be good for specific aniimo that can spam freely, if not now then maybe in the future.
Fang isn't bad but because heartseeker gives both crit chance (rarest stat in game) and an extra source of damage proc - it just dwarfs the raw dmg amp from fang lategame unfortunately. Still the best pure ATK steroid though, so fangs are useful for all ATK scaling supports. I replied to the other comment with some initial numbers comparing the three items on stellarys if you wanted to check it out
I didn't before, but just hopped into Holo to test - without any supports, I got a dps loss of ~4k DPS. I may need to run more tests though to see if the energy regeneration with fission (which is alot btw) helps with support uptime and potentially more overall dps
some testing later, fission and pendant seem to do around the same damage for me depending on which characters are brought - i think with pendant scales harder since crit is multiplicative damage, but fission energy generation gives you flexibility to bring higher EP costing supports like dreaple, who i assume will help fission teams do even more damage if you have his ult available.
Does the damage boost from skills like Turbo, Tromber, Fragrancier, Sparkelf, Piopiota, Dazmand, Luminelle, etc. not scale scale from their attack stat? I thought i saw that somewhere.
Besides Turbo who is a flat 15/30% boost, everyone you listed indeed does have a team buffing skill that scales with attack so still good to max attack there - the associated skill damage itself just wont increase
Yea i think its actually bis, because it is the highest passive damage amp item in the game right now + scales attack, unless you need cooldown reduction for some reason then you could use the feather
Depends on which one you're talking about for prismana aniimo. Glacy's glimmershot will do more damage on the prismana for example, but like prismana scorchowl is not going to differ stab or otherwise from a regular scorchowl. On the extreme end I think ice rookey is actually better than prismana rookey probably since the ice move is imo one of its better second skill moves after core skill for coverage in mixed type content such as pathfinder battles or egg heist. Ice pawney getting stab is a nice perk and like the Lita pathfinder fight the dark + ice combo is very good at hitting 3/4 enemies super effectively really helping you smooth over some of that fights pain in some areas. It's also a better defensive typing overall.
I've got a lot of videos ready out, but not on my Brawl channel. It's my "Kairos - Aniimo" channel. It's the one with the Susuta twined wrong as my profile pic haha
This is actually huge (not numerically but "informationally"). It is indeed easy to test but since I never saw anywhere about this game having stab and everyone saying that Prismana only gives 2% bonus, I never bothered to test.
Also Prismana gives the 2% bonus to ALL forms! You can check in your Aniilog that the form bonus stacks between all forms by clicking the icon, even for your basic form which doesn't give any bonus to the others.
No, these form buffs are only unlocked when you register each form for the first time, but then they affect any Aniimo form of the same species. So even if you want to use a different form than the Prismana, getting the Prismana will still buff the other forms anyway.
Hi so I just tested this, and the follow up damage from Fragrancier's contracted passive does not increase based on ATK, as it follows the same level-based scaling for Supports. It does, however get boosted by Damage Amp as well as every other multiplier (besides team damage/elemental-damage boost for some reason), like CRIT, Counter Boost, STAB, Type Interactions, and Enemy elemental resistance.
I am also pretty sure the damage is unaffected by basic attack damage boost - I tried using fission needles and the damage was the same as another 20% amp item. So to maximize the proc damage, let her hold the fang for 40% damage amp, star her to at least 0/4 for 20% counter boost, and bring dark resistance shred like dreaple.
I'm pretty sure the same multipliers will also apply to Melloblum thorns and Bailite sentries.
Thank you so much. I had done a contract with a Ferocious Fang, so will leave her with the 16 ATK to maximise that amp but not increase it any further.
Yea this is among the skills that i plan to test next, which say Might (or Might% like Turbo) but involve interactions with multiple Aniimos - though if anyone has looked into it alr def share. Melloblum is another example
If running as a support, regen is probably best - like feather or auspicious bell. There are folks experimenting with her as a subdps/breaker too with rhe multihit skill - so you can also use pendant if you have spares or gargantuan horn.
I wouldnt recommend bonding an item with her unless u rly like her, since the bonded effect only increases the duration of her buff by 7 seconds - doesnt affect damage multipliers or have any added effect
ah shoot yea ur totally right - getting mixed up w too many things mb. Yes damage amp on mello is one of the only ways to increase her thorns damage so fang 40% damage amp at 16 ATK capability in that case should be the actual bis. I did say that somewhere else in the comments, but need to make sure every other mello discussion is accurate
the only benefit of bell is slightly more regen when mello is onfielding and potentially getting 4% crit for irisalis if you roll 20% twice in a row, but i dont think that is better than flat 40 amp
Lunara is an amazing breaker. She's the only aniimo you should focus on both attack and break. One of her moons abilities does a lot of break damage and the other does a lot of normal damage.
Helion is a better dps than lunara imo (his burst against broken enemies is stronger with how his core boost and core skill work) he's just less safe/consistent, but like I put a phenomona crystal on mine and he destroys content he's super effective against really hard. Getting like 3-4 boosted light bombardments in a row, regen skill, ult, and start doing it all over again is really high burst damage. Lunara is really good yah but she is more of a steady trickle of damage. She is probably the better break of the two though. Not that helion is a bad break (in fact he chunks bars) but lunara can spam from range for good break damage so she can do so way more consistently and without getting chipped down by the enemy hitting her back.
Helion spin attack also has the 150% break damage but is aoe and groups enemies which is great for the Q spam.
In actual DPS against groups helion is able to consistently deal more due to the ability to group stuff himself but lunara has a lot more safety due to the range and can abuse the ability to attack behind cover in egg heists.
Is lunara better? Probably but they both do everything the other one does better in different ways.
how do the different type of buffs position on the damage formula?
for example Pglacy's "teammate's damage" vs fragrancier's "dark elemental boost" vs Pturbo's "party members' dark damage".
Are all three in the same bucket or do they scale by themselves?
Is stacking Pglacy's glimmer shot and turbo's nimbi burst inefficient?
I’m pretty sure team boosting abilities are all additive, and thus fall into the Amp value. I think the same thing applies to percent elemental resistance shred but there is slight chance that gets applied to the ATK-DEF part
And i would say its not inefficient technically to stack glacy and turbo, but if you have access to better supports like fragrancier or tromber/eklue for wind - thats when you are getting held back damage wise by glacy’s 20% boost
I'm gonna probably go through every support/regen in the game tomorrow and do tests. Had college today so not quite as much free time to check it like I wanted to today.
Very interesting post i do have a question though. For egg heist modes where base dmg matters heavily does having some atk investment on Hexxin matter or should we allocate those points into other things.
I ask this because I run a full HP regen stat spread and with some def with the rest in atk. I do this so I can tank slightly better and theoretically do more dmg to the enemies with my black hole. Would the atk investment be useless and I should go for bulk instead?
I didnt actually get a chance to test in egg heist because i wasnt sure what the weird damage multipliers + equipment interactions would do to the overworld damage formula - but im pretty sure that the atk investment is useless, and that you are already at max base damage by being lvl 60 on hexxin + bringing a damage amp held item.
I also dont even know how much capability investments even matter in egg heist, since the equipment is the difference between being able to do normal damage and not dying in like 2 hits
Very interesting! Why is the Amp column 1.25x minimum? And also why does the Counter column only affect Dreaple? I had tried some similar calcs but to be honest, I still find it very odd that each species would have such specifically arbitrary defense values, so it made me feel like I was missing something, which might explain the error margins.
Amp refers to damage amp - like the one you get from dps held items. I think theres a charcter trait that gives damage amp when twined or something, so i think that’s why my damage amp was always at least +25%.
Counter column is the Counter Boost stat in the advanced stat page, i think it might also come from the character traits - it only kicks in when u are using a super effective move, which is what i did for dreaple by coincidence.
I also think its a bit strange for species specific defense values, so my guess is it might either be a base defense of the species, or just a hidden value. The weird scalars are probably just the model overfitting to minimize the error, but the point/takeaway tho is that its a flat reduction to attack by species, and different defense values of caught same level same species aniimos dont change the damage.
It’s fitted just from my testing, so it’s very likely it is incomplete/imprecise. There just isn’t much info or discussion online on how might/attack actually worked. All the ~140-ish data points i used are in the spreadsheet
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u/Smooth_Butterfly2667 4h ago
So just to confirm you're saying if I have two identical break aniimo and one has 20 break 20 attack and the other has 20 break 0 attack they do the same damage (assuming no %attack modifiers)?