Fritia – Turbo Guide: Going Nowhere Fast

In the vast and ever-evolving world of Neo-Victoria, where technology intertwines with history to create a unique blend of the past and future, I find myself reflecting upon one particular character who has left quite an impression on me – Fritillaria “Frit” Vega AKA Turbo. As a seasoned explorer, data analyst, and avid gamer, I’ve seen my fair share of characters, but there’s something about this speedster that keeps me coming back for more.

To clarify, I hadn’t planned to write a review for Fritia initially since she was due for an update, as the developers had hinted at “collecting feedback,” which in their language means they would be buffing her but weren’t sure how just yet. This announcement came shortly after her release, leading me to believe that the updates would be implemented quickly. However, it’s now been nearly three weeks without any news about Fritia’s anticipated buffs. I’ve yielded and here we are – congratulations, Seasun, you’ve won this game of wait-and-see!

After she receives an upgrade, I’ll write another piece that might be referenced nearby. For now, though, let’s discuss Turbo instead.

Update: she did end up getting buffed, but it was basically useless. Womp womp.

Jump to cheat sheet

Abilities

Standard Skill

To figure out how Fritia achieves her speed boost, let’s begin here. This character has a special trait that triggers when she dodges – it propels her into a rapid “Celestial Turbo” mode, where she can sprint at high speeds. During this sprint, she accumulates up to 120 instances of Supercharge. Essentially, you can imagine it as three “charges” that her other abilities can use. In case it wasn’t clear, yes – Fritia moves incredibly quickly in this state!

With this ability, Fritia can activate a stationary mode when she has at least one charge ready. During this active state, she becomes immobile but takes less damage, boosts her rate of fire, critical damage, and weapon compatibility stat (a multiplier for gun damage), enhances an aimbot overlay that targets enemies within its range, and consumes 40 Supercharge stacks with each shot fired. Essentially, this means she can fire up to three aimbot shots before needing to retreat, although the auto-aim may require some adjustment to focus on weak spots. In essence, it’s like having three charges for this skill.

The neuronics for this ability really show how important they can be to making a character function, as well as how they can be utterly useless outside of increasing the skill’s base specs and levelling up the Deiwos passive. The first neuronic restores 15 stamina per shot hit while in Fritia’s skill, which is vital to not running out of stamina after like two rotations as you run around to generate charges. The second one… halves the skill’s two-second cooldown and negates the five S-Energy that it costs. Yeah, it’s pretty useless, but you still want it for the reasons mentioned before.

Support Skill

Moving forward with the speedster theme, Fritia’s assistance ability propels her towards a specific destination. When she gets close enough to an adversary or runs out of fuel (in about three seconds…), she unleashes an area-of-effect burst of Chaos damage and leaps away to prevent being caught in the blast. This skill primarily serves as filler, as is common with DPS characters, but it can be beneficial in open-world game modes for swift navigation. The effectiveness may differ based on your gaming approach.

Ultimate Skill

This skill, similar to Fritia’s basic ability, discharges energy in a burst form, causing an explosive impact that damages surrounding enemies. To activate it, at least one charge is needed, but using more charges enhances both the damage and the range of the blast. This skill is primarily beneficial for clearing groups of common foes and can be used frequently. Additionally, it returns 30 stamina upon use. Seasun has thoughtfully ensured that you only need to watch the animation sequence once per mission, reducing unnecessary delays. Whew!

Deiwos Passive

In simpler terms, Fritia’s ability, known as Deiwos Passive, amplifies the damage she deals based on the capacity of the weapon’s magazine she’s using. Essentially, the larger the magazine, the greater the impact when she shoots targets. However, I can’t fully explain how it works as it involves advanced technology and magic, areas outside my expertise.

It’s intriguing to consider a hypothetical sniper rifle capable of carrying 20 rounds, a weapon not found in reality. To achieve such ammo capacity, you would need to venture into the Paradoxical Labyrinth and accumulate buffs. However, keep in mind that the unique magazine offered by Fenny – Starshine also contributes to its own ammunition capacity. This additional feature grants an extra boost to your Deiwos, which is always beneficial.

Assessment

At a fundamental level, Frita – Turbo is functional. By dodging, you trigger your sprinting mode, navigate around, and then unleash a substantial burst of damage using either your regular or ultimate ability. The damage output isn’t insignificant; without ideal configurations, she can still land shots with damage figures comparable to Yao – Winter Solstice when her ultimate is active. Plus, the auto-aim feature makes it almost effortless to direct your attacks towards vulnerable areas.

However, there’s a drawback to consider when playing Fritia: Each skill cast allows for only three shots, which means you’ll be doing a lot of running around. Be prepared for a significant portion of your gameplay time to consist of running in circles while waiting to inflict damage. If this prospect discourages you from choosing Fritia as your sand speedster, I can understand why.

From a fan’s perspective, having Fritia’s damage delayed after a lengthy charge-up period isn’t helping her shine in Neural Simulation. Although she boasts supreme speed, it’s frequently the high DPS characters that outmaneuver her, dealing comparable or even faster damage.

And regardless of whether you’re a casual player or a Neural sim sweater, Fritia runs into the problem of eventually finding herself all out of stamina and no longer able to charge up her skills. This is slightly suboptimal, to say the least. Or at least, this happens if you don’t buy into the solution that Seasun is oh-so-happy to sell you. More on this later.

Weapons

This round of the weapon debate is generating more excitement since players are eager to bypass the shop gun Dream Weaver and the gacha weapon Sonic Flash, opting instead to test their skills with Chocolate Filling, a high-tier Chaos sniper from Paradoxical Labyrinth that can be earned without spending money. The question is: Does it measure up against the complimentary shop gun?

Indeed, both Choco and Dream Weaver have their unique strengths. Regarding damage, Choco’s significant attack boost and bonus damage (which, unfortunately, is limited to one shot per damage cycle due to its cooldown), slightly surpasses Dream Weaver’s output. However, it’s important to note that Dream Weaver may encounter diminishing returns when support characters are considered because of its percentage-based damage skill. Yet, this difference might not be readily apparent.

This is taken to the next level with her premium gacha weapon.

Sonic Flash significantly increases dodge stamina cost reduction to 75%, enabling you to continuously endure Fritia’s damage sequence. It might not seem so at first glance, but the art of combining buffs comes into play once more, ensuring that it retains a substantial edge over free options when it comes to dealing damage. In fact, Sonic Flash boasts three skills that amplify damage.

  1. Increase Chaos DMG by 18/30%.
  2. Gain up to three stacks of Speed Pulse on dodge or while sprinting. When any stacks are present, ballistic DMG increases by 30/50%.
  3. When stationary, shots consume Speed Pulse to increase its ballistic DMG by 18/30%.

It seems like all these effects appear to be increasing your attack damage, don’t they? However, you might be mistaken. The final weapon effect isn’t actually boosting your attack damage, but rather it’s increasing the damage you take instead. Since it uses the same wording as the other two effects, it can easily go unnoticed. If this were indeed an attack damage increase, T1 Sonic Flash would only provide a minimal 20% boost over Dream Weaver! Seasun, could you please review your information?

Manifests

Looking at Turbo’s manifests (it still feels a little weird to call her that, to be honest), we find ourselves with the same situation that Seasun had going for their last DPS release, Katya – Dawnwing. That is to say, all of Fritia’s manifests make her damage numbers bigger and do nothing else. This wasn’t something that I particularly liked when they did it to Katya, and I don’t like it here either. While Fritia thankfully does enough damage out of the box to not feel too much like a brick until she gets some manifest investment, she instead has quality-of-life upgrades locked behind her shop gun and gacha weapon, which is arguably even worse. Manifests can be farmed for free given enough patience, but you have no choice but to spend Digicash in the gacha to pull for Sonic Flash if you don’t want Fritia running out of stamina in combat.

Regarding places to halt your investments in manifest scenarios, the guidance is similar to what was advised for Katya: cease when you believe the damage output has become substantial or if the associated costs seem excessive.

Logistics

Fritia’s Insight Squad logistics gear isn’t exactly exciting compared to other logistics releases since Seasun introduced character locking. When wielded, Fritia deals more damage with her skills and has a higher chance of scoring critical hits when using a semi-automatic sniper rifle (to motivate you to utilize her event and gacha weapons). Essentially, that’s the main idea behind its functionality.

In terms of substats, prioritizing attack is crucial, similar to most damage dealers in this game. Given that Fritia attacks enemies directly, the optimal pairing becomes predictable – crit damage. This is because your auto-aim’s capability to hit headshots and weak spots is fully utilized with this stat. Alignment Index can work in a bind, but it’s not the ideal choice as the damage boost from Fritia’s Deiwos gets significantly reduced when spread across multiple stats.

See the supplementary material for a logistics calculator to help you optimize your loadout.

Teams

In a more conversational style: Fritia, being a ballistic Damage Per Second (DPS) character, typically works best with Fenny – Starshine and her enhanced ammo. However, Fritia doesn’t gain as much advantage from Starshine as other ballistic characters might, such as Chenxing – Ethereal Cloud or Lyfe – Infinite Sight. This is because Fritia doesn’t struggle with ammunition like most ballistic damage characters do. Instead, her performance is more limited by the number of skill charges she has. Therefore, being able to reload during mandatory sprints doesn’t really help Fritia. Nevertheless, you’ll still often see them paired together because having larger shot damage is generally beneficial.

If you’re considering enhancing your aim-assist, Mauxir – Shadow Ka is another excellent option. She offers a stationary target that amplifies damage output, also transforming into a guaranteed critical hit target after the first M1 attack. As a Chaos operative, she occasionally switches out the Amarna Squad logistics set for Chaos resist shred from Twilight Squad. Of course, universal supports like Acacia – Kaguya and Eatchel – The Cub will perform admirably in this role as well.

For cost-conscious gamers, Fritia discovers an ally in her alternate version. Fritia – Little Sunshine proves economical and user-friendly by skillfully utilizing Amarna, serving as a budget-friendly ballistic support. Meanwhile, Acacia – Redacted can provide assistance too, slowing down opponents while boosting Fritia’s damage with either the Navigator or Twilight Squad logistics equipment sets.

Should you pull?

The short answer: Probably not.

The long answer, of course, is that it depends on your preferences and what you want out of a character, as it always does. If this kind of stop-and-go speedster gameplay is your cup of Shuozhou sand, then there’s nothing wrong with pulling for what you find fun.

Many players might find the prolonged downtime during Fritia’s damage rotations tedious, and it wouldn’t surprise me if most players prefer other options due to having to choose between acquiring her gacha weapon or running out of stamina after several rotations. Although I don’t particularly enjoy the modern trend of DPS characters being able to indefinitely loop their combos, restricting this functionality behind a gacha weapon is downright unfair. In fact, I would go so far as to label it a blatant money-grabbing tactic.

Interestingly, Fritia’s stamina issues are largely inconsequential when it comes to competitive play. This is due to the fact that both her event and gacha weapon significantly reduce stamina consumption. However, this reduction turns out to be unnecessary because there are only a few bosses she competes against, with Iron Ouroboros being the main one. The extensive periods of downtime during the fight with this snake, as it dives into the ground or is invulnerable, allows Fritia enough time to catch her breath. As a result, you can manage a decent run even with weapons that aren’t officially recommended by the developers, such as Chocolate Filling.

In environments outside of her comfortable domain, Fritia encounters tough rivals since contemporary Damage Per Second (DPS) alternatives enjoy quicker DPS sequences, greater damage output, or both. Occasionally, she manages to snatch bosses, but by then, Sonic Flash is usually required for its enhanced damage potential rather than its stamina-saving quality of life features. In summary, Fritia frequently struggles and finds little use among competitive players’ Neural Sim toolkit, often gasping in the dust of the desert.

For a player aiming for competitiveness, isn’t it questionable to spend resources on a weapon that mainly excels in one task, when the snaking technique itself remains effective without it? Moreover, characters like Katya – Dawnwing and Lyfe – Infinite Sight can deliver competitive results during snake encounters while still being versatile against other bosses. Consequently, the argument for incorporating Turbo into your roster seems less appealing, as it appears to deplete its value when considering its limited application in comparison to these multi-tasking characters.

Okay, how do we fix this?

It seems there’s ongoing debate about the equilibrium of our beloved Heimdall Force professor, Fritia. To be frank, I don’t believe she can achieve perfect balance due to the extended intervals between each damage sequence. This implies that her overall “Damage Per Second” (DPS) is heavily influenced by the number of drills she needs to execute before reaching a significant damage milestone.

Is it only Fritia who experiences this issue, or are there similar problems with other modern DPS characters? I wouldn’t confine it to Fritia alone. Other characters may struggle with the same issue, but they have more freedom in their damage sequences. For instance, Cherno – Enigma can launch orbs prematurely, Siris – Ksana can deploy her ult with fewer Resilience stacks, and Katya – Dawnwing can establish fewer Crystals before firing lasers. However, Fritia doesn’t have the same degree of flexibility because by the time you have one charge prepared, it might be more efficient to commit to it and generate the other two. Lyfe – Infinite Sight faces a similar predicament, but she has more ways to adjust if her performance needs balancing. She can reduce her normal shooting damage to decrease DPS while charging up dodge-shots, or fine-tune her DPS output due to quicker rotations. In comparison, Fritia offers fewer points of adjustment. Unless there’s a significant rework, this issue may persist for Fritia.

However, it doesn’t mean she’s flawless without room for improvement. In fact, I’ve been asked by Seasun to offer suggestions for making her more enjoyable and efficient. Here are my four primary recommendations:

Increase the amount of time that her Celestial Turbo state lasts

I mean come on, she’s supposed to be a speedster. Let her run around a bit more.

Let’s modify her special event and gacha weapons, and re-adjust her fundamental skills so that she can maintain her combo effectively without relying solely on possessing either the event or gacha weapon.

It’s entirely unacceptable to restrict character abilities through gear like this. A better approach would be to revise Fritia’s second standard skill, neuronic, to incorporate the stamina cost reduction effect from her event and gacha weapons. Since her current neuronic effect is essentially ineffective, it could instead boost the stamina recovery rate of these weapons. This change wouldn’t compromise Fritia’s damage output with her revised second neuronic, but it would enable faster skill charge generation due to the link between stamina recovery rate and skill charge generation. This modification ensures that Fritia’s event and gacha weapons continue to offer a special, valuable advantage without being strictly necessary.

Increase her overall Supercharge generation rate

This can be done in two ways:

  • Dodging instantly generates a skill charge. This lets players use her skills more quickly, but also allows for skill expression by repeatedly dodging to rapidly generate Supercharge at the cost of stamina consumption.
  • Shooting and hitting enemies while in her enhanced sprinting state instantly provides a portion of a skill charge, with it being on a short cooldown. This rewards skilled play by providing an incentive for players to still aim normally rather than only relying on her auto-aim.

Choosing either option could boost Fritia’s maximum skill level, yet it’s crucial to note that these are additional features that won’t elevate the fundamental skill level needed to utilize her. In other words, these optional mechanics cater to advanced players without affecting the ease of use for casual gamers. Additionally, this change might open up an opportunity for another adjustment:

Increase the Supercharge limit to 160, from 120

In simpler terms, upgrading Fritia’s Manifestation 1 could merge its effect with that of Manifestation 2, thereby creating additional space for another shot per rotation. This enhancement increases Fritia’s Damage Per Second (DPS) uptime, encourages players to play skillfully to generate skills faster, and significantly boosts the value of her first two manifestation levels.

In this piece, I’ve skipped over some minor points to keep things concise since it’s turned out longer than anticipated. Fingers crossed that Fritia’s enhancements pack a stronger punch compared to Agave’s, given how merciless both the desert and the current gaming landscape can be.

Update: well, that didn’t happen.

Supplementary Material

Link to spreadsheet

Offers weapon and growth rate estimations, as well as a tool for optimizing logistics.

Cheat Sheet

Read More

2024-12-19 17:30

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