CN Anon's general account bricking guide

Questions I answer before you ask

• Why is it so long?
  • Fucking read you retard, if you want a tldr there's one here
• Only S ranks?
  • You'll S+ every non S construct eventually, if you really need to focus on one A rank you can always just farm the fucking interlude.
• What if I'm lucky?
  • It should still be helpful to check it out, kill yourself though.

Introduction

Cool, the new character is dropping in a few weeks and you've got your BCs ready, or maybe you saw a video of the new frame 1.5 years down the line, you went to discuss it on [Social network] and there's at least 2 people immediately telling you the character is fucking useless without being SSSJ3++.
Is the character really that bad? What the fuck does SSJ3 mean? Where do I put my BCs now?

That's what this document is for, I want anyone who's reading this to have an idea of what they're getting into before blindly dropping their pulls, realizing they fucked themselves over for possibly multiple versions unless they use THAT to fix the mistake, or getting a breakpoint that doesn't really do shit for them in context to their account.

I'm gonna do that by covering a few topics:

1. Character and C.U.B evolution breakpoints, Signature Weapons (Basic concepts)
2. Costs
3. Babby's introduction to Opportunity Cost
4. Human Friendly Character Rank Up Summary
5. The Spending Horseshoe and Common Misconceptions
6. Account power level and (You)

And as a disclaimer: This isn't a guide on what to pull for (your account is yours to brick, just don't bitch about it if you do).

1.Basic Concepts

Character Evolution

The mechanic unlocks an additional passive skill per full rank up, we do this with shards that are acquired through dupes of the construct in question or other limited means; each subsequent evolution requires a higher amount of shards than the last one.

For reference, each S rank dupe will give you 30 shards, and the amount of shards required per rank upgrade is listed here:

A fully ranked up character is worth a total of 300 shards when pulled through the gacha, there are a few that don't require pulling for their base copy but the unlock requires 50 bringing them to a total of 350 (it doesn't matter since they're free).

Starting from the version update "A New Divide" and its titular character Karenina: Scire, the fairly straightforward Evolution mechanic is adusted; Now instead of needing to upgrade your construct all the way to the next rank for the new passive, you can instead use a lower amount of shards to unlock a part of said skill.

The unlocks and fragments needed are here:

Still the same amount of dupes needed in total, but you can stop earlier or pull a bit more for a specific upgrade, more details on that later.
It's worth mentioning that you can get construct shards when pulling in the banners, but these shards aren't limited to the rateup character and are also pretty rare.

C.U.B.

Just like weapons, not all C.U.B.s are made the same, and is also a topic that's covered by other resources (a bit more detailed at least)

A signature C.U.B has 3 skills slots, one which is taken up by the active skill and two that you can select, ranking your C.U.B. up will let you equip more skills at a time, and their breakpoints are almost the same as the old character Evolution.

Signature weapons

Not all signature weapons are made the same, some will make a character easier to play or change the way you use them compared to not having it, but that's a topic that's covered by other resources out there

We have Resonance, which caps at 3 but the good part is that it doesn't have to be the same 6*, so you can use others, and resonance selectors are available to non spenders.

Resonances themselves vary in usefulness depending on the character's role and their mechanics.

Since the weapon banner is not a guaranteed weapon drop, we can at worst look at a total of 3 offrate pulls to break and trade in for the signature we want.

2.Costs

Now we know the upgrade breakpoints, as well as the amounts of shards/dupes needed to hit them, let's convert them into the resource we use to get them.

Since the currency needed to do a single pull is the same across all banners (250 BC) we can put everything into a cute table here:

The rest of this document will be working with max pity values, not weapons since being offrated in the weapon banner twice or thrice isn't THAT likely (it's still not 0%), I'll add the absolute max cards that you would need either way.
Since C.U.B and weapons have higher rates, the final amount of BC you need for various things can be lower as well.

How much does one copy of everything cost in full?

Assuming you hit pity on everything and there were no offrates in the signature banner: 27,500
One offrate: 35,000
Two offrates: 42,500
Three Offrates: 50,000

We can substract from these totals if you're skipping something on the update.

3. Babby's introduction to Opportunity Cost

The BC average per update is about 7100 BC minimum effort, meaning you'll have enough cards to pity a construct every 2 updates, the downtime between S ranks is 1 update, so you'll pull the next new toy at almost the same point in a patch as you got the previous one.

In a f2p scenario, anyone who plays the collection game just has to exist to get the new toy every update. You'll only really have the opportunity to go for non base constructs once you have a BC surplus, either from patch contents/duration, monthly cards or lucky pulls, assuming you don't drop the rolls into the construct banner immediately anyways.

If you're not interested in collecting everyone, you've been building resources off lucky pulls/monthly card or you want to use your foresight privilege, this is where we'll look at the actually relevant section.

Let's sort it out in the same order we used for explanations.

Character Evolution

Not adding S to SS since we can use skulls for that.

Didn't list every iteration you could do out there while we're at it.

This is assuming you're at the previous breakpoint, meaning that the resources you need to go from SS3 to SSS are the same you'd use for the iterations listed in the Opportunity Cost column.

If we looked at it in big rankups instead, going from SS to SSS would be the same cost as

• 6 Weapon Pity
• 9 C.U.B Pity
• 3 Construct Pity
• 2 Construct Pity + 1 Weapon + C.U.B Pity (10 pulls left over)
• 1 Construct Pity + 3 C.U.B Pity (SS) + 2 Weapon Pity
• 1 Construct Pity + 3 Weapon Pity + 1 C.U.B Pity (10 pulls left over)

C.U.B

Simpler since there's no partial unlocks, we're assuming you're at the previous breakpoint again.

Weapon

Resonance has the potential to be cheaper than you'd expect since we can use other Signature weapons, battlepass toilet paper and there is a slow trickle of shards from Norman.

Not only that, but you might not get fucked over too hard with the offrates, pull a good weapon you were missing that would be worth more than simply feeding it to another Signature, but if you're a total lucklet it adds up really fast.

Here's where you use the section below to help you decide if [Thing] is worth more than [Other things] you could get

4.Human Friendly Character Rank Up Summary

Linking to a separate rentry since it's going to be long from the get go, please give this shit a read before you continue.

CN Anon's Human Friendly Character Rank Up Summary

You'll notice that almost everything past SS is moderate, this is because most of the time the upgrade isn't worth the resources you'll put on it aside from E-peen or competitive results (also e-peen, but global is dead as fuck so people can top rank with very low investment accounts what a joke)

5. The Spending Horseshoe and Common Misconceptions

We're just about done here.

So far we've looked at how dupes work, how much shit costs, what you can spend your resources on instead of certain power increases, and what some of those increases do for a character, now comes the first fun part, putting all of that shit up there into context down here.

You've probably come across something like this at least once, whether it's in a video's comments, a post in a thai basket weaving board, a discord server, you name it.

Amplifiers

The numbers compared are usually the buffslut capability. However, if you're f2p or low investment, that's a very incomplete comparison, because the difference of that buff tends to not be significant enough to matter.
It only matters IF that buff differential is large enough that you can kill the boss within a single Davinci window. As soon as you cannot and you need to swap off, the Amplifier is worth using because the damage output is much higher than the Support's, let alone the fact that the newer constructs have exclusive memory sets and Time Lag Calculation (timer pauses until you're done looking at the long ass animation).

A counterpoint to this is that you should just use the healer for a bigger buff, but because you won't be able to kill the boss in a single rotation at your investment level, you'll still want to swap to the Amplifier for the most part.

Tanks

No one in their right mind will tell you that Vera, Nanamech or Watanabe need a certain breakpoint to replace their respective older tanks (Nanami....).
This is because they bring a fuckload of damage on top of the Tank utilities or let you do what you were already doing for cheaper (like having no need for sig or doing it with less ranks), so let's turn to the rabbit in the room, Karenina.

It's another incomplete comparison, because the statement is based on the application of dark resistance reduction only, with the assumption that Kamui's rank is SS.

With both at base S, the dark resistance reduction on QTE is on karenina's favor (15% for 12 seconds to Kamui's 10% for 6 seconds), and while the upgrade to her resistance reduction is tied to the signature weapon, Kamui's is behind the SS rank of a character dated even by global standards with a standard pool that keeps growing as time goes on, making it increasingly harder to land on him with your standard ticket pity.

In terms of damage output, Karenina will start dealing damage faster and has access to exclusive memories (no need to run a crutch memory like Hannah), as well as Time Lag Calculation on her Signature move.

The Spending Horseshoe

Something that's not mentioned often is that there's a funny bell curve where F2P and gigawhales have the ability to do full character rotations optimally, but middle tier spenders do not.

The more resources you drop on a single character, the more time you'll spend fielding it, and factors like buffs/shred from memory setups and other character breakpoints start mattering way more when compared to even expenditure since you'll only have two characters (or in some more extreme cases one) to deal the bulk of your damage.

The Rabbit Hole

Okay, you got the character and their SS3 like [social network] told you to, so why does it feel like your score go up as much as you expected?

• Did you get the signature?
• What about the damage reduction decrease on matrix resonance?
• And the final atk on 3 ping one?
• But do you have the other final atk one?
• Where's your tank's signature?
• And it's additional damage type shred resonance?
• And the one that increases the shred duration?
• Why is it missing [rank breakpoint] that improves it's shred? you NEED it bro
• Your support?
• But it has to be [rank breakpoint] or you're missing on buffing value
• It's signature?
• It's buffing resonances?
• Your DPS cub? Why isn't it SS you're missing out on 5% extra dmg bonus
  Miss a few of these modifiers and the final difference in damage to ["F2P BTW" Youtuber/Bilibili creator] will be a bit funny. We're still talking about a SS3 dps here, mind you.

6. Account power level and (You)

Readily available advice and character evaluations are often done in a semi-vaccuum, with things like spending brackets, account tenure, available characters, weapons, etc. being standarized.

What does your account need? Would pulling the newer construct benefit your one of your garbage teams more than pulling an additional copy of a construct in a team you're satisfied with? Should you pull or rank up the C.U.B instead of getting the Signature?

I listed a bunch of shit and ran numbers, cleared common misconceptions and summarized the walls of text of passives and kits just for (You), but now what?

Now comes the part where you're a big boy/girl and put everything into practice to make your own opinion.

Just in case you need them again, here are the Signature Weapon and C.U.B resources.

As a Tl;dr

Aaaall of that shit up there summed up in case you still don't have an opinion or are physically unable to either read or think:

Do I skip the new character for something else?

New character every single fucking time, don't miss out on design-creep.

I have leftover rolls how do I spend them?

If you want power then breakpoints are: S>SS>Signature or Cub>The one you didn't get first > SS3 > * (Sig and Cub order depends on who you're pulling shit for so you have to READ)
There's always gacha skins to save for if you're into getting the 20th Liv skin.

What about weapon resos?

Weapon Resonances are relatively less shit to get, so as f2p/low spender: Really orb hungry shit (Deadline Timing) > Tanks (damage formula favors res shred over self damage mods) > Amplifiers > Additional DPS resos
At least you can switch them around too.

But I really want to do [THING]

Go fucking read the document, if you still want [THING] then remember that your account is yours to brick, just don't bitch about it if/when you do.

Do I pull on the fate bann-

DON'T, fuck the fateschizos.

As a final recommendation, if for any reason you want to spend money at some point, remember to spend only what you're comfortable with. Don't fall into FOMO, stay clear of the rabbit hole. This is a 5 minute and done game most of the time.