CONTEST ZEJ Statistical Contest ~ Iteration 4

So the background philosophy behind changing the meta of each Excess Process-- nerfing E-Triggers slightly and encouraging their effects to be more focused and intentional, and trying to drive away from the burst Piercing Damage X-Abilities-- is, at least in part, meant to give each of them a reason to be used. In the past, both have just been buttons which generally gave you an increased damage output, and that was very nearly the only thing they did and the only purpose in their designs. Not only was this unfitting as far as Unit's roles go, it made the core distinction between E-Triggers and X-Abilities extremely minimal-- if your goal in using either is to get more damage, you'd obviously want to use whichever one was more efficient. Our thinking was that most of the time, that'd actually end up being the E-Trigger-- most of them were buffing an Offensive Stat and giving you extra Actions per Turn, which in principle will actually end up conveying more Total Damage done to the Enemy Team than a burst of 200% Piercing Damage, most of the time. Now burst damage is more valuable than sustained, and Piercing Damage obviously has its own merits, but this difference in Total Damage will likely end up significantly favoring an E-Trigger, especially since the ways it supplies that extra Damage is inherently more versatile than a straight Damage Instance of 200% Piercing Damage. And this isn't even bringing their costs into the equation, because that ends up clearly making E-Triggers the more efficient Excess Process. So then, if the E-Trigger is just better than an X-Ability... why would you use the X-Ability? That's one of the driving forces behind the initial change here-- to push E-Triggers and X-Abilities to have purposes beyond simply Total Damage dealt.

At this point, Shadow's already posted and essentially summarized what I was going to say (and have already said). However, yes, one of the main reasons behind keeping E-Triggers a sustained effect and X-Abilities an instant one is to help keep them from treading on each other's toes and make sure they both have as wide a distinction behind why you would use either as possible, which when all is said and done can only serve to add strategic depth, which I think must be accepted in principle as a desirable thing. I'd also like to posit that both Excess Processes are fundamentally tools which you use when you need them-- if a battle is going favorably, there's no real reason to waste the precious resource of X-Levels on simply making it go faster. In this sense, both E-Trigger and X-Ability function as safeties, and it's in each Unit's best interests to try and make sure they have access to a variety of ways to get themselves out of trouble. With the encroaching popularity of unique mechanics which can both limit and empower Units, I like to identify the E-Trigger as the perfect candidate for the safety one can use in order to stay viable in a fight, since it's more easily-accessible than the X-Ability. The X-Ability in turn is the safety to use when you need the entire fight to change (and fast), rather than your own Unit's viability.

 

I have two cents to input.

1) If E-Triggers are "superpassives" and X-Abilities are "Superactives" then what constitute "Supertriggers?"

2) Considering Celina's X-Ability is basically a massive delayed buff, I think we need to consider that the line has already been blurred. Yeah, it's more burst like and active, but it still provides a bunch of passive effects in addition to adding cells to the field.