Vi's needle skills lack balance.

[Saler]

From what I can tell, Needle Toss hits 2 times normally and 3 times with A.D.B.P Booster, dealing normal attack damage the first time and 1 less the following times, with all hits piercing defense. I'm fairly certain that it was dealing full damage to 1 defense enemies without defense down or Antlion Jaws. It also benefits from a set of medals that adds status effects to the attack. With Status Booster, it's likely you'll be able to inflict that status on 1-2 enemies in one attack.

With A.D.B.P Booster, no enemy defense and 4 damage increases (which already takes some work if you aren't using Hard Charge), Tornado Toss will deal 5+4+3+2+1=15 damage, while Needle Toss will deal 6+5+5=16 damage. Combined with the status effects and the fact that Tornado Toss is supposed to benefit from damage increases more, this already means that Needle Toss has a significant advantage for just 1 TP.

But most late-game enemies have defense. With A.D.B.P Booster, 1 enemy defense and 7 damage increases, Tornado Toss will deal 7+6+4+4+3=24 damage (it skips over 5 for some reason), while Needle Toss will deal 9+8+8=25 damage. It's very hard to stack more than 7 damage increases, and Needle Toss still can inflict status effects in addition to that.

It's even worse when compared to Needle Pincer. It costs 1 TP more, doesn't benefit from A.D.B.P Booster and, for whatever reason, doesn't penetrate defense on the second strike - in fact, it seems to be affected by defense twice.

I might have made some calculation mistakes, and Needle Toss can be blocked of by other enemies while Tornado Toss cannot, but this still looks rather imbalanced to me.

Edit: From what I observed, Needle Toss doesn't just penetrate defense - it ignores it completely. Also, each hit of Needle Toss damages Golden Seedlings, even though their description suggests it should be otherwise.

[Texus]

Really? I ended up avoiding the needle skills for a while now, because I felt like the Beemeerand skills did more than enough if not more damage. Not that I closely compared those two.

I could probably have a better set up but I have enough medal points that I feel like I'm strong enough in hard mode at the moment. Was able to go after some bountys lately with some good items in the bag.

I think Leifs skills are end up being used more by me than different skills from Kabbu or Vi at the moment. Kabbu often just heals and stuff like that and Vi does the damage lately.

I only change the medals if I notice I can't win otherwise.

I feel like some skills like one of the team attacks with Kabbu and Leif as well as that hard toss, are only good if you have nothing else that lowers the defense or really need a second chance at freezing and enemy.


I actually wanted to ask if you also feel like some skills are not needed.
I was told I would end up using Viis Needle skills more in the late game I think, but I feel like I don't need those to beat the game.

I have more trouble to built a good deck to win the tournament, now that I have to many cards it seems
Not sure if it's something I need to get done if I want 100%

[Saler]

My calculations might've been a bit off, so you son't need as many damage increases as I though to make Tornado Toss Catch up to Needle Toss. Also, Needle Pincer now deals full damage on both hits, so it can be viable if you don't have A.D.B.P. equipped.
The two biggest advantages of Vi's needle skills are them ignoring defense and getting the benefits from Shocking Needle, which makes it so that they have a chance to Numb. I'm fairly certain that from second half of Chapter 6 to the end, there's a total of 4 enemies with no defense, and one of them not only can increase it's defense, but also is immediately followed by an enemy that does have defense. Enemies also become rather resistant to Freeze at this point - Numb is more reliable and won't get removed by damage.

The Spy Cards Tournament is part of 100% completion.

[Texus]

Originally posted by Saler:

My calculations might've been a bit off, so you son't need as many damage increases as I though to make Tornado Toss Catch up to Needle Toss. Also, Needle Pincer now deals full damage on both hits, so it can be viable if you don't have A.D.B.P. equipped.
The two biggest advantages of Vi's needle skills are them ignoring defense and getting the benefits from Shocking Needle, which makes it so that they have a chance to Numb. I'm fairly certain that from second half of Chapter 6 to the end, there's a total of 4 enemies with no defense, and one of them not only can increase it's defense, but also is immediately followed by an enemy that does have defense. Enemies also become rather resistant to Freeze at this point - Numb is more reliable and won't get removed by damage.

The Spy Cards Tournament is part of 100% completion.

Hhhhmm I don't have shock needles yet, only sleep and poison but I don't think I want to use sleep.

Right now I have Vii on more or less high damage and life steal, Kabbuh on favourite one to further boost her attack and Leif to make break the enemys defense.
Even if I have a hard time to notice sometimes if that really does anything.
Somehow I'm unsure about some little things in this game but I can beat the game so far.

[Songbird]

Start using Hard Charge passing and more attack stacking (both poison attack and critical HP attack on top of your attack trade badges) and the damage difference between the two skillsets does eventually start to become apparent. Beemarang skills start hitting for 50-60 damage meaning they come out ahead even if the enemy has 3 defense (I don't think anything has more than this). The status chance and multitarget nature of needles still generally makes them the be-all end-all attack for normal encounters, though (the 3-man snowball attack is the only other one I'd generally use, for fights where the front enemy blocks the others and all are durable - I'm pretty sure if Vi is the initiator on this, it uses her attack stat and boosted status chance), and they're a good turn 1 option in boss fights to get the two free turns of damage in (generally nothing survives this until the final boss unless the status doesn't work).