IN WHICH THE MANAGERS DISCUSS THE BARBER'S "CONTRIBUTION"

[trevormoney1]

Introduction

Just wanted to invite open discussion about Barber Outis' place in bloodfeast teams. For the unknowing, Manager Don has a mechanic called hardblood that grants 1 offense and defense level per 5 stack, up to a max stack of 30. If she is 15 hardblood or higher, her first skill slot can be enhanced, with each bloodfiend ID upgrading a different skill. Priest upgrades S1, Barber S2, and Princess Defense, whereas S3 is always upgraded. Each upgraded attack costs hardblood, and each un-upgraded attack gains hardblood. The reason many people think the barber should be dropped from teams with Don on them is because the barber upgrades her S2, making it cost up to 20 hardblood.

S2-2

That being said, I, and many others, do not feel it's worth losing that much hardblood. S2-2 has 1 more coin, 4 more raw damage, and 1 attack weight, with the final coin changing it's scaling conditional from bloodfeast consumed (self) to bloodfeast consumed (shared) which might noticeably increase the damage. It's difficult to generate that much hardblood, as with an S1-1 giving up to 10 hardblood, and passive granting up to 6, you cannot recover all of that in a single turn without getting an S3-1 kill. The argument is that the un-upgraded version is good enough already that it's worth it dropping barber to maintain hardblood, since it also gets more attack weight from hardblood while gaining hardblood instead of consuming it, allowing you to save hardblood for S1 and S3.

The Barber Herself

Compounding this reasoning is that the Barber is not really worth it on their own to use. Even before Manager Don dropped the barber was getting mocked for being relatively weak compared to other bleed IDs, especially the opportunity cost of Ring Outis who can apply high bleed count and do high damage, with strong bleed conditionals and clashing abilities. While people talk more about Ring Yi Sang, who is a no-brainer for this team, Ring Outis synergizes well with him and with the rest of the team without causing grief to don's hardblood management.

Bloodfeast

Finally, there's simply not usually enough bloodfeast to go around. With most of the bloodfiends lacking strong bleed count, and Don wanting two slots to maintain hardblood, running all the fiends only leaves 1 slot to handle bleed count, which isn't realistic, and one of the best count applicators is Ring Outis. Without count, bloodfeast will struggle to go up substancially, and Barber outis is very hungry, and would hinder your ability to make any buffer for don to tap into, meaning if you ever lose bleed stack or run dry, don's hardblood generation goes down substancially, not to mention starving her sister, the Princess, who's supposed to be buffing her.

Invitation

I encourage people hash out how they feel about the Barber's place in fiend teams, if they are viable, why or why not, and what teams would work best to support the fiend core. I will ask to refrain from debating on the following fronts, since these areas are redundant or meaningless to speculate over:

• Potential buffs or changes to Barber Outis or Manager Don, since both are strong IDs in their own right, and it's unlikely they would recieve any changes. As much as it hurts to see a bloodfiend struggle on their archetype, asking or wishing for changes to them is nothing more than wishful thinking, and not meaningful to the discussion.
  
• Team comps excluding Manager Don, since this discussion is how the barber works together with the archetype, and the archetype exists mostly to work with and scale manager Don through bloodfeast, hardblood, and bleed conditionals. It's undeniable she works fine on the team when Don is not present, but then it becomes an argument of whether it's better to have her or Don, and we all know who wins that argument.
  
• Potential future content. We can hope and see if the Barber ends up being relevant to future teams, and I for one would be welcoming of it, but it's not meaningful to discuss or defend the barber's status on the basis of speculative future bloodfiend teams that could or could not support her.

Thanks for your patience getting through this, and please if it's not too much bother, let me know in as many or as little words as you like how you feel about the barber and what your experience with them on Fiend teams has been.

[jobhobster]

The only way I can see Barber being saved is Bleed Outis EGO on same tier as Red Shoes Rodion. It would also have to screw Ring, and work only with Barber, and then you might use her as niche DD with OP EGO crutch. Otherwise she just doesn't deals enough damage and has bad Count infliction, which means she gets boxed out by both better Bleed DDs and better Bleed Count inflictors.
(Also she can be saved by T5, but you can say this about everyone, so whatever)

[trevormoney1]

Originally posted by jobhobster:

Otherwise she just doesn't deals enough damage and has bad Count infliction, which means she gets boxed out by both better Bleed DDs and better Bleed Count inflictors.

Yeah, her bleed count conditional is laughable as well, as she can only contribute 2 count by using S2 then S1, specifically, in that order, meaning that she can average 1 bleed count a turn if she alternates S2 then S1 repeatedly, which is mental derangement at that point. Both Princess and Priest have bleed count on S2 and S3 which is far better. Not enough on their own to support bleeding, say, a boss, but enough to at least help, and with no dumb conditionals attached, on the skills they generally want to be using to boot.

[trevormoney1]

Been thinking about the team a bit. Right now I run Manager, Princess, Priest, Both Ring IDs, and Grip Faust. I'm debating dropping Grip Faust, running LCB Faust in support for the debuff to help make the ring IDs more consistent (Plus offense level down doesn't hurt), and running Pequod Ishmael in 6th slot instead. Right now Ishmael has almost no useful support passives to provide, or their usefulness is heavily questionable, whereas faust has at the least LCB and Grip Faust to offer and isn't super valuable as a frontliner, as the need for their SP support is limited. The logic is that Pequod Ishmael can still provide a bit of SP support where it's needed and Assist attack can help ramp up the bloodfiends faster, since every one of them benefits from more attacks, especially Don who would love to fire off S1-1 to get some more hardblood. Overall if this lands on any of the bloodfiends you're either getting or consuming bloodfeast which is always a good thing, and the support going around helps buff the damage. Finally, since she's all pierce, if she goes first she benefits from R Heathcliff's support, so it doesn't get entirely wasted, and her S3 will be strong on this team as well. Main complaint is that she overall has different resonances than the team, and a guard skill of pride instead of lust, but the former can be said about N Faust as well, who is arguably weaker on this team and provides less.

Am I crazy, or am I cooking? Or do you have a different preference for a 6th member on the RingFiend team?

[Astra]

The day we see buffs to id's is the day pigs learn to fly. We've been calling for said buffs for a long, long time my friend. It just won't happen and if it does, it's likely going to start with season 1.

[Birp]

I mean Barber is fine. She's good for canto 6 and 7 and RR4.

In the future, when we get more bleed ids, I will bench her because her support passive is extremely good, but for current content she's good enough to be run over other options.

[Nut]

If Ring Outis isn't a vital member of one's bleed team, you can sacrifice Barber to fuel Don more I guess, with the caveat of S2-2.

Don't know how much Don's hardblood gains get buffed from her bloodfiend teammates dying tho, does it basically multiply her hardblood gains from base skills for every dead bloodfiend or literally just add +1-3 from every skill

[jobhobster]

Originally posted by Astra:

The day we see buffs to id's is the day pigs learn to fly.

Wasn't SunCliff and DawnClair buffed directly tho? SunCliff got "SP lose on Clash Lose" for his Sanity, and DawnClair got passive changed and SP requirements lowered.

[Astra]

Originally posted by jobhobster:

Originally posted by Astra:

The day we see buffs to id's is the day pigs learn to fly.

Wasn't SunCliff and DawnClair buffed directly tho? SunCliff got "SP lose on Clash Lose" for his Sanity, and DawnClair got passive changed and SP requirements lowered.

Not really. Not directly, it was more indirectly. A mechanic of the game was slightly altered, still suncliff is one of his worst ids despite it all. That being said, the value of losing sp on clash loss isn't all that great when the premise of the game is to not lose the clash in the first place.

[Sham!]

i think barber outis looks kinda meh so i didnt pull and i use ring outis with the rest of the bloodfiend gang

[Zeru]

Originally posted by trevormoney1:

Been thinking about the team a bit. Right now I run Manager, Princess, Priest, Both Ring IDs, and Grip Faust. I'm debating dropping Grip Faust, running LCB Faust in support for the debuff to help make the ring IDs more consistent

Funny, I'm actively running N Faust to make Ring units more consistent because "The Gripping" in a singular use inflicts
1) Bleed (from Nails)
2) Nails
3) Paralyze
4) Gaze
And more importantly, 30 sanity for free, on demand, from combat passive.

On the main topic, Ring Outis just has many things going on for her.
1) Lust skill 1 and Lust defensive allows your team to resonate the most common affinity more easily.
2) Similar mechanics to Yi Sang -> benefits from the same team synergies
3) Bench passive -> even more sanity healing
4) Combat passive, free debuffs to make Yi Sang and herself more consistent.
5) Good bleed count (assuming you actually trigger the coin reuse)

Meanwhile Barber Outis
1) Better clash power
2) interesting suppost passive, somewhat inconsistent, but free bleed count is free bleed count

Originally posted by trevormoney1:

Am I crazy, or am I cooking? Or do you have a different preference for a 6th member on the RingFiend team?

Eh, we are splitting hairs a bit here. It's not like the game is difficult enough to warrant such optimization. A lot of it comes down to preferences. I'm personally running R.E.&P. Ryoshu in the team, simply because of her insane skillset, as well as having access to "Forest for the Flames" and "Contempt, Awe"

[trevormoney1]

Originally posted by Zeru:

Originally posted by trevormoney1:

Am I crazy, or am I cooking? Or do you have a different preference for a 6th member on the RingFiend team?

Eh, we are splitting hairs a bit here. It's not like the game is difficult enough to warrant such optimization. A lot of it comes down to preferences. I'm personally running R.E.&P. Ryoshu in the team, simply because of her insane skillset, as well as having access to "Forest for the Flames" and "Contempt, Awe"

I think it's worth talking about. What else is there to honestly do in Limbus Company? The whole premise is teambuilding, so we might as well discuss and debate teams we're interested in, no? That being said you make a good case for N Faust.

I've been trying out Pequod Ishmael on the team and finding success with it. The thing is I only run the 6th slot on non-focused encounters, since otherwise I want to double slot don. So my 6th member is only for the fights where enemies don't really last long enough for ring IDs to consistently get their reuse conditionals. Definitely a good point to make, though, and a good argument for N Faust on different teams using ring units, but since my team is very tight for team members there's not really space for using Faust for their skill effects.

I feel Pequod Ishmael fills the flex better because 1. Base Faust's passive is useful throughout and 2. Ishmael wasn't really providing any useful passives, best I could get out of her was Zwei Ishmael, which doesn't really seem useful nor does it have any synergy with the team in chain battles, whereas Pequod Ishmael does have bleed synergy and is generally a stronger ID.

I can definitely see using Lobotomy Ryoshu, I personally don't have her yet, thank Kim Ji-hoon for the upcoming walpurgisnacht so I can hopefully pull her, and at worst shard her. I got a long grocery list of things I need to pick up, like regret meursault, Sanguine Desire Rodion, Dawn Sinclair, Hook Hong Lu, and Lobotomy Ryoshu. I've saved up for it though, so hopefully I can pull a fair number of these that I want and shard as many others as possible. Especially hoping to get the fullstop fixers, I want to make a full bullet team for the memes, and hoping the fullstop fixers will make this an actually viable team somehow. We will see.

[Orliminecraft]

She has too much competition, and in a team where count is more valuable she loses out.