One on One Mechanic

[White Rabbit Alice]

im confused with a mechanic. the definition of one on one. i recuited 2 Different Characters with this skill, one does 20% Suppoesdly. the other does 10% and -10% Damage in one on one.

one uses the QAN [00], and this is a bit of a gimp. shes not an innovator and therefore cant take advantage of some of the systems.

the other uses his stock and much lower tier in lower levels Deathsythe Hell EW.

the tier difference in damage is obvious,but i cant really seem to notice any extra damage that wouldent be too varying or abilities coming up.

how exactly is this calculated, and does the attack need to be a straight melee attack,not spcialized ie the GN Sword?

if i screwed up,i have other pilots i can give the QAN,if the gundam is the problem,any suggestions?

forgive the new questions im starting to try to understand mechanics and trying to put together builds, so...im probably not very good at it yet

[Laughing kookaburra]

you have to fight one on one to make the skill activates if you do support attack / defend or warship / raid link it won't take effect

[lPaladinl]

They're powerful skills on Normal, but they become more and more useless on higher difficulties, because enemies tend to support attack or support defend all of the time. If the enemy supports each other, then it's no longer 1v1, and you lose a lot of damage.

Obviously you also can't use support attack/defend either.

[White Rabbit Alice]

i see. thank you. i have to rethink this,i did notice, as you said. as difficulty increased the damage was going down, just even at first wing stage,but i think i understand why now.

another question, kinda mechanic related
youve just also just blown another member who at the time i thought would go well with it out of use. his abiltys and purpose seems to cancel it. ive swapped him. good to know,i think i just throw on support defend,but is his ability useful at all even on higher difficulties? Child of Fate, on normal, he barely is used as the evasion rate usually means he dosent even get to do his job, but i fear if i take him up higher difficulty i figure hes gonna get pounded, which is by design, but will he be sustaining too much damage to even make this bonus relevent?

[lPaladinl]

You'll almost never have a good reason to defend or use support defend with base game difficulties (Normal through Hell). However when you get into the Inferno DLC difficulty, Defend and Support Defend can be pretty useful to build around, and I did so for quite a while, with pilots entirely dedicated to being tanks with damage reduction and recovery abilities, using Mobile Suits with defensive parts like energy barriers or recovery.

However, just like on the normal difficulties, defensive skills and parts become less important as you go along, eventually it's more productive to just have more offensive capability and wipe out units, so long as your units have enough HP and Defense to take a few hits on their own. Give it long enough and you're back to evading most attacks.

For example I had Kira Yamato in a Scorpio which reduces all damage by a few thousand (something like 3000?) and has shield defend. I gave it resistance coatings to further lower beam and kinetic damage further, and then my teams were able to recover HP each turn. At first it was just the difference between instantly dying and being able to take a hit or two, later it got to the point where it wasn't able to take any damage at all even when other units still would take a beating when defending. And then I had him support defending and not really attacking anything, as the Scorpio's barrier ability drains a lot of EN per defend.

I tried the same thing with another character in a Super Hyperion Gundam which has a permanent barrier that ignores damage up to 5000 or 6000 damage, but I found it wasn't very effective because the Hyperion does not have shield defend and doesn't reduce damage by much. I switched to the Turn-A Gundam instead as it has a shield but also regenerates HP per turn.