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Battle of IVs, Cecilia

So, I started wondering tonight as I was looking over some of the comments and builds people were making on Cecilia's page.

I read that a lot of people were actually running +Speed variants of her with Darting Blow instead of her typical +Attack, Death Blow set.
And this got me very curious. They both seem like equally strong choices as one focuses on literally one-shotting the enemy, while the other focused on buffing her speed to a very respectable 42 (with Hone) by sacrificing her single hit damage to outspeed enemies and deal damage through doubles and Desperation.

At the end of the day, I just wanted to share something that I thought (think?) is very underrated and ask for your advice as to which one you guys prefer?

I actually happen to have both variations, so I thought I might perhaps start creating a merged 4 star version. Hearing what you guys think would help tremendously. Cheers lads.

Asked by InFinite1 year 4 months ago

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Answers

I'd still prefer the one-shot +atk Cecilia. The condition to activate desperation can be a problem. Also, I've found that putting a close counter and vantage on a buffed Cecilia is ridiculously powerful.

F2P players don't kill their Takumi on Cecilia, dear friend.

I do agree tho, Cecilia doesn't need any other A-skill really. She is tanky enough to use Raven+ without TA and she doesn't need extra stats (i.e. Fury) when she runs Blade+ so Close Counter unlocks new defensive potential.

While her B-skill, most likely Gtomebreaker or WoM/EscRoute, can then be replaced for Vantage to synergy with Close Counter, making the most out of her B-skill.

Yes... However, Takumi has become increasingly unpopular with the introduction of newer and stronger characters. I think it is time for him to become a close counter bento.

I agree, he has a lot of competition nowadays to even be put into a slot. But sacrificing one of the only two Takumi's I'll ever get into a Cecilia doesn't seem ideal lol. I think if I had gotten a Hector, I'd probably keep him, no matter if I use him or not.

Although, I see Vantage is quite popular on her, do you think it comes into play more often than Desperation? Or is the typical G Tomebreaker better?

1) Desperation on +spd Cecilia is not reliable enough to be effective. Even with all the buffs, her speed is not top tier. +spd Cecilia might be viable and will net more kills if desperation can be activated, but it is not optimal in my opinion.

2) I also find G. Tomebreaker of little use for blade tome build (since blade tome Cecilia one-shots green mages anyway). Therefore, the skill becomes entirely enemy phase and it is too specific. Vantage, when activated, can achieve the same result for not only green mages but also all enemies when combined with CC (bye bye Takumi).

3) The synergy among CC, vantage, and blade tome is beyond ridiculous. Cecilia is able to take a hit from almost all non-red units and kill most of them in return. Her firepower? 83 green damages, which is probably enough to check all blue, all green, all colorless, and lots of red.

4) Before CC, I was using attack +3 as Cecilia's A-slot skill. But even that is overkill, not to mention death blow. Units that will die to death blow Cecilia will still die to CC Cecilia, and units that will survive CC Cecilia will still survive death blow Cecilia. For this reason, it is quite optimal for Cecilia to inherit CC and vantage, as it doesn't decrease her kill count while making her a very hard blue and green counter that is extremely difficult to kill due to vantage.

This is pretty much what I needed.

I think my initial thought about Desperation was that anyone with more than 37 speed should die in one hit anyways, but Vantage with her monstrous damage is pretty scary.

So in this case, would you recommend a +Atk/-Def or +Atk/-Res version? And is it better to 5 star or 4 star +10 if I have a pretty limited amount feathers to go around. I can get exactly a +5 4 star merge right now, I also had another 3-4 more of her before so she's not exactly uncommon for me.

Shouldn't matter if it is -def or -res. If I had to pick, maybe -res. Personally, I will use 5* Cecilia for potential future improvements. It might be fast to build a 4* +10, but that silver color will make you feel bad after a while...

Yeah, I didn't it really mattered, thanks for the confirmation. I think the reason I haven't done any 4 star merges was because it sounds like a short term investment and you're right, Silver pokes at me OCD.

I think I'll add and bump her up on my very long "Needs Feathers list" haha, Been trying to build a Berkut recently, so this will probably come right after that. Thanks for the help mate, can't thank you enough!

Just vote for Hector when CYL comes around. :)

But I must confess that a +10 4* Cecilia is perfectly capable of doing her job. It is very economical as well. So, it depends on what you value.

I actually share your thoughts. I wonder if I should merge my -HP +Spd or my -Def +Atk one. I also wonder if should merge them at 4* or at 5* (I'd love to get her to 40 HP for best Ardent Sacrifice + Desperation/Vantage synergy).
Doing something else as burden you even more questions I can say though that I like Vantage best on her. Even with Attack+3. It makes her insanely difficult to handle and has terrific synergy with Gronnblade. I like it better than Desperation because it makes her a unit that can destroy multiple units in a row (the enemies phase enables a unit to perform much better in this point). And the classic Vantage-counters usually destroy Desperation as well.
Atk is not necessarily the best boon for her then because Spd protects her from some doubles (Nino, Summer Elise,...) which would kill her before she can trigger Vantage and has similar offensive utility. In addition Spd increases her BST more which is mandatory for the unit with the least BST in the game.

Well, you can't possibly make the choice harder even if you tried, so don't worry mate ;)

I'm probably just going to spam the same question, but, how often does Vantage come into play? How useful do you think it is in a typical fight? Comparatively to her other player phase B-Slots.

I'm sorry, I just saw that question now, I'm still new to that system...
I think Vantage especially comes to use against archers and green mages, so without Close Counter it targets less heroes than Desperation. Desperation is less useful nevertheless, because I don't think there are so much units which take a hit from her, can counterattack and have lower Spd than her. Trust in her power, she can handle it in most cases.

I don't think +spd is underrated at all. In fact, I think +atk is overrated. If we only account for equally merged units, the +atk db3 variant's only notable wins I can think of that the +spd dartingb3 cannot do are -res ryoma, g tome breaker julia, and neutral res ike (all with assumed fury3). And frankly, these kind of enemies should be dealt with by your rein/camus/etc or xander/etc respectively for the red/green enemies.

Now realistically speaking, unless you're already at the +10 5* mark, we know you will generally be facing units that have a higher merge than yours, thus decreasing the number of units the atk variant can one shot. This of course also decreases the number of units the spd variant can double, but most of said units are either one shotted anyways (nino, etc) or are easily demolished by one of Cecilia's horse partners.

The icing on the cake is that the +spd type is far more useful for muscling through ghb/cc/etc where units that the +atk variant would normally one shot have far too much bulk, while the +spd variant may still double and kill them anyways, especially when paired with desperation.
Granted, I have never had a +atk type to use, so I cannot test how it works in the field, but there have been many scenarios in the high end CCs where that 42 speed was vital for getting through with a single team.

tl;dr:
76 atk on the speed variant can almost always kill the same units and more than the 85 atk slower attack variant. Anything leftover is crushed by a more suitable colored horse that she is paired with.

It's good to hear from someone with experience using the +Speed version.

I think the thing I want to know most is how much trouble does she have without Desperation when running this build, and if getting into Desperation range is a hassle for you?

Thanks for the answers guys!

Sorry I couldn't reply faster, it was pretty late when I wrote this. However, hearing what you guys had to say helps very much.

From what I'm deducing right now is that I'm guessing it mainly comes down to your personal play style with her. She seems better at the get go with her +Attack variant and allows her to run more flexible B-Slots, while her +Speed version will allow her to do more damage when the conditions are met.

Please correct me if I've butchered someone's opinion with the way I've looked at it.