Union Formation Guide Updated

[thepowerofmediocrity]

I have come back to this forum to present the most updated version of my comprehensive union formation guide. This guide, along with fixing some of the errors I had in my previous version and moving the character spoilers further along the guide so people can look at formations without knowing character details, places the 5-man unions in a separate section to better illustrate the bonuses each unit position receives. I can probably fix the formatting a little more to leave enough space to flesh out the Mystic Art Unions, but for now I will leave it as is.

If I were to add anything else to this guide, it would be listing the locations of finding all of the formations so that I can guide the player to the best formations for a brand new run, as the best formations do not come until near the end of the game. In addition, due to how onerous some of the formation requirements can get, I can also add some recommendations as to who can replace one of the units and have a Union II be just as good as jumping through the hoops to make a Union III. I added the percentages to provide an idea of how much each upgrade boosts the bonuses, but I don't have the mechanics as to exactly how much do bonuses to stats like STR and INT affect the units' ability to give and take damage.

[PinkPаптҥэя]

First thank you for keeping contributing to this community; it's a very comprehensive guide now, full of compressed, useful information.

As far as the influence of these stats is concerned, you can see this in the damage formula:

For a regular attack, the damage is more or less proportional to:
(ATK - Enemy Defense) * (STR + Wield Style Skill)

Defense = (STR + DEF) * 0.3
Wield Style Skill is the number you can see in TLRPlanner/RemnantAssistant, typically from 1-30
ATK always has a RNG part of 0...1/8 added to it, that's where the randomness comes from (except from critical hits).

For combat arts, the formula is extended by 'Art Base Dmg', which depends on the respective Art and Tier:
(Art Base Dmg + ATK - Enemy Defense) * (Art Base Dmg + STR + 2*Wield Style Skill) * Art Base Dmg

Defense = (STR + DEF) * 0.25
An example of Art Base Dmg is 100 for Peerless Bladedancer V

From this you can make some observations:
- ATK is more important for regular attacks than for combat arts
- STR is more important towards defense than DEF
- The above translates into the fact, that upgrading weapons becomes less important once you have good stats
- Wield style skill is a significant part of damage output
- A higher Art Base Damage of a combat art dominates the damage, thus weapon upgrading becomes less important.

As a rule of thumb, increasing STR by 10% results in a damage increase of ~4% in a typical case. ATK a bit more, typically ~7%, since there's nothing added to that side of the equation, only subtracted (Enemy Defense).

I have no formula for mystic damage, but I assume similar mechanisms for INT / MYS / MDEF.

[thepowerofmediocrity]

Firstly, it's my pleasure; it was a shame I missed the recent long threads regarding everyone's favorite unions- I may not run another playthrough for a while, but I've been very intruiged in theorycrafting how the units mix with union formation to determine whether there is an optimal union set-up that takes the most advantage of the advanced formation bonuses. When you consider union set-up, classes, and weapon upgrades, it can get very complicated, but the more it promotes a diversity of unique and generic leaders, the better.

I very much appreciate the work you've put in on the damage formulas. I am a bit confused about the defense formula: I'm assuming the Defense part of your calculations - (STR + DEF) * 0.3 - is input back into the "enemy defense" part of the equation, and the STR value is input again in the second half of the equation, which is why STR is a larger component of damage calculation than DEF.

In which case, tanking unions would want to take the unions with more STR bonuses, especially as a good number of these formations limit the STR gains to Slots 1-3. For a tanking union, that's the best location for these bonuses as the Union leader may want to spend a turn in Deadlock defending, which is only applicable to the first 3 slots of the union.

[PinkPаптҥэя]

It's such a pity that the formations worth using come so late in the game; in my opinion most of them are only worth acquiring if you plan to do a NG+.
The bonuses from early formations only make sense if you stack them with other bonuses, e.g. from classes, accessories & effects. Then you might be able to achieve 3-4 times a [xxx] +5 bonus, resulting in a total bonus of +45...+60%.

The damage formulas are not my work; I found them long time ago on a forum (probably GameFAQs), from guys who took the time to disassemble the code.
What I did was to simplify them a bit and to find the missing Art Base Dmg values by doing damage tests.

'damage' in these formulas means the generic term for damage of either party, so it relates to enemy damage as well as your own. It's the same damage calculation for either side.
Enemies have a DEF/MDEF value as well.

For tanking it would be beneficial indeed to put high-STR units in STR boosting formation slots. And as you mentioned with a leader using the Defend command, that would be slot 1-3, while slots 4-5 should be best occupied by Scouts/Healers, for their ability to reassess to healing while the Defend command is being executed.