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This is a really long post about Seliph.

So Seliph is the hero who'll probably receive the most dramatic upgrade when the weapon refinery launches. (Divine Tyrfing is such a ridiculous weapon.) With his father’s sword and the Deflect Magic seal, Seliph can be a more budget version of Sigurd for those of us who weren't lucky enough to pull him. The most remarkable thing Sigurd can do is survive Reinhardt, so I ran some numbers in Kagerochart to see if Seliph can do the same, and this is what I found:

The devs obviously built Sigurd very carefully. Any Sigurd, unmerged and unbuffed, can survive a +10 merged +atk Death Blow QP Moonbow Reinhardt who's under the effect of Hone Cavalry (-res Sigurd survives with exactly 1 hp). Seliph, thanks to having more hp and res than his father, survives even more easily (most of the time). He can even survive the upcoming new Glimmer if Reinhardt chooses to run that instead, which Sigurd can't always do (though he can if he's +res or merged enough).

BUT. This is assuming a speed-neutral Seliph. Given that his speed is already godawful, a lot of people are going to want to run Seliph with a speed bane. -Spd Seliph, if unmerged and facing a +10 speed-neutral Reinhardt under the effect of Hone Cavalry, gets doubled and dies. (And man, it is a sad day when you get doubled by Reinhardt.) This can be avoided by merging Seliph to +7 or higher, running a Seliph who isn't -spd, or praying that you don't run into any speed-neutral Reinhardts merged past +4. (Or, y'know, running an A-skill like Fury, I GUESS. :P)

I don't think Seliph is going to outclass his father any time soon. Sigurd has more defense, more speed, slightly more attack, and access to horse buffs, so he just plain wins more match-ups. But Seliph can be a substitute for those of us who weren't lucky enough to pull Sigurd, or an alternative for those looking for easier merge potential.

Now, here’s the question: other than Divine Tyrfing and Deflect Magic, how do we build Seliph? I have so many ideas and I’m having trouble deciding between them and it’s making me crazy, so any input or additional suggestions are appreciated.

For his A skill, Close Defense mirrors Sigurd and will definitely help his physical tanking capabilities, but he’s still going to be inferior to Sigurd in that regard. Fury will also improve his tanking (and help avoid the occasional Reinhardt double), but at the cost of recoil damage. Fire boost would synergize great with his high HP, but it’s a rare skill and may or may not be enough of a buff when you consider that he basically can’t double anyone. Distant Counter is a bad idea when running Deflect Magic.

B skill: Unlike Sigurd, Seliph has his B slot open, giving him some interesting possibilities. Swordbreaker immediately jumps out at me, to allow him to at least double a few people. Quick Riposte would help against melee units, but doesn’t help him answer back against the mages he’s tanking at all. His native Brash Assault has a similar problem as it doesn’t work against units who can’t attack back, though I suppose if you wanted you could give him armored blow, sturdy blow, or defiant def with brash assault, have him take a magic hit to get his health low, then unleash him on some unsuspecting melee unit. (This sounds like a really silly build, though I guess it’s not far off from what people run on current Seliph, if they run him at all.) Wrath, on the other hand, sounds like a great idea…if you have access to it, which I currently don’t, but I’m putting it in here for the sake of completeness.

C skill: Panic Ploy if you’ve got it, whatever you want if you don’t.

Special: At neutral stats, Seliph will get exactly the same amount of damage from Bonfire and Draconic Aura, so which one you want will depend on his IVs and his skills. (If one or both boost his defense, go with Bonfire, if they boost his attack, go with Draconic Aura. If neither or both are boosted, give preference to Bonfire, as it will scale faster with merges and buffs.) You could also run Moonbow, the new Glimmer, or even Reprisal, to ensure that after he takes two hits from a mage (which he will), he’ll have a guaranteed special to unleash on whoever he hits next. (You could achieve a similar effect with Bonfire/Draconic Aura/Vengeance if you’re running Wrath.)

This was a long post. Thanks to everyone who made it this far, and I welcome your thoughts on Seliph.

Asked by SourPeridot1 year 1 month ago

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Answers

Thank you for the ideas I just pulled a Seliph and was going to feather him until I remembered the update for the upgraded weapons. I like brewing builds so this was a great read.

Thanks! I'd had all these thoughts floating around in my head for the last day or two, so I'm glad they were useful to someone!

Actually looking at both Sigurd and Seliph's stat lines I think Seliph could easily have a -Res bane and still tank magic just fine with Deflect Magic 3 and Divine Tyrfing. Give him a +Atk or +Def bane with Steady Breath, Quick Riposte 3/Wrath and Panic Ploy because of his stupid high HP and he will almost be a budget red Brave Ike. Plus if you are running Panic Ploy you don't have to worry about horse/flier/armor buffs because he can reverse them. I'm going to test this in the simulator once the update hits.

It's funny, I've been leaning toward -spd +res for Seliph because that's actually the only iv set I've got right now, but given that Sigurd's res is actually lower than Seliph's, he could probably do fine with -res, and +atk or +def would really give him some good options. (And not being -spd would solve the Reinhardt issue for the most part.)

See thats the funny thing is Reinhardt with -spd or Neutral spd would need horse buffs to quad a -spd Seliph but if he gets hit by Panic Play from Seliph he won't ever be able to kill him much less quad him. I think a lot of people forget that Panic Ploy is a good answer to Horse Emblem and having multiple Panic Ploy users is a good way to take Reinhardt and Brave Lyn down.

I'd personally consider myself unluck if I pull a seliph as I sometimes did.
With or without the weapon refinery update he remains pretty bad. His stat-line is really bad and requires specialization to work at something but then you'll always find another sword user who can do the same job in better.

For the moment his legendary weapon built-in effect is so bad that you'd rather use any other special sword. Now if he has Divine Tyrfing it will indeed be a HUGE power-up for him, especially with Deflect Magic 3 seal but still inferior to Sigurd. With his lower atk and smaller mobility I don't see him very outstanding.

All that being said, the build you have in mind for him (with Divine Tyrfing) seems like the best option to me, really. Go for it if you like him as a character, I personally have other underrated units to salvage first :p

All of this is the ramblings of an f2p who's bitter she never pulled a Sigurd, really. I fully understand that Seliph won't be high on the priority list for people who already have Sigurd. ;)

It is true Sigurd can outperform him(And I have a +5 one as part of my arena team) but I could see trying to build him as a poor man's Sigurd for something like Arena Assault where you get no repeats.

Or for those of us who never got Sigurd to begin with, exactly. :)

As infantry, Seliph has one sole niche of being able to useSteady Breath... which could help his melee-baiting combat with QR.

I wonder if Steady Breath + Reprisal would work well with his high base hp. Then again... Reprisal itself is pretty bad because you have to take pretty significant dmg (30hp worth) to match the avg Moonbow output.

How about Aether? He can also support his fellow teammates with Infantry Pulse.

I was playing with a Steady Breath/Wrath version in the simulator and it was pretty good. I do think there could be merit because Seliph does get infantry exclusive skills. Though I have noticed that most units that want to use Aether really should just be using Ignis. Especially if it is proc off of Steady Breath.

Thing about Aether is that a unit like Seliph with no speed to speak of, running Steady Breath and QR, will proc either Aether or Ignis on the second counter attack assuming he gets doubled, so there's no functional difference in the cooldown in this case. Granted, Ignis will do more damage, and given that it would be Seliph's second hit, he wouldn't necessarily recover that much hp. On the other hand, if we're assuming the extra damage from Ignis would make a difference, then that would mean there would be plenty of HP left to recover, and Seliph could use the top-up to keep QR active. (Plus I haven't actually encountered too many units who can survive my Brave Ike's Aether.) It's an interesting conundrum, and I'd be very curious to see the results in practice.

My Brave Ike uses Ignis and nothing outside of Armored red units survive it. I would imagine it would be pretty similar for Seliph with Steady Breath Ignis. While Aether is great in theory I often find that I would rather just one shot people with Ignis and be done with it rather that try and be cute and top off my health with Aether. Though I would still like to have Aether as an option for Tempest Trials and other PVE content.

Oh my god, I'm kicking myself for forgetting Steady Breath, what a great idea! Couple that with QR and he could potentially be better than Sigurd at melee-baiting.

Steady Breath + Moonbow would probably give more consistent damage than Reprisal, but if you assume Seliph's running QR, you could run a 3-turn special instead, and if you assume he's getting doubled (which he probably will be, let's face it), he could run a 4 or 5 turn one, so Aether actually sounds like a cool idea.

I completely forgot about Infantry Pulse, but that's a great alternative to Panic Ploy if you've got it.