Table of Contents
Potential upgrade details
| Bond stats | Skill upgrades |
| HP 62.4% M.RES 13.4% | CD-2 +10% C.DMG buff +15% C.DMG buff |
Overview
Pros:
- The first buffer in the game to increase crit damage
- Long buff duration
- Fulfils the SP battery role for fiend hunts
- The only buffer so far that has 2 offensive team buff costumes. Good synergy with PWB.Refi makes her one of the best buffers, as she can grant multiple kinds of buffs at the same time.
Cons:
- Weak buff on her own: Crit damage does not scale so well with units that already have high crit rate
- Can't buff crit damage past max cap of 700%
- Battery charge can only be used once every 8 turns
- Low range that is not improved by potential
Does Refi allow you to buff crit damage past the cap?
Crit damage is capped at 700%. Testing shows that Refi cannot increase your crit damage past the cap.
This means that if you are running Refi at +5 full potential, you should aim to build your units to have no more than 575% crit damage (so that with Refi's buff, you will reach the cap at 700%). This shouldn't be a problem though, as you can focus your gear stats on ATK/M.ATK instead of crit damage.
How good is Refi's crit damage buff?
As +crit damage is a new kind of buff, let's see how it compares to other kinds of buffs.
Example: Let's say you have a unit that has 1000 ATK and 300% crit damage. The damage from a normal attack would be as follows:
- Crit, without buffs: 1000 x (100% + 300%) = 4,000 damage
- Crit, with Arines 70% ATK buff: 1000 x (100% + 70%) x (100% + 300%) = 6,800 damage
- Crit, with Refi 190% C.DMG buff: 1000 x (100% + 300% + 100%) = 5,000 damage
As you can see, in the above example G.Refi's +100% crit damage buff is not as effective as Arines' +70% ATK buff, because G.Refi adds to (rather than multiplies) existing crit damage. The previous guide for Pure White Bride Refi explains how damage is calculated from buffs.
The lower your character's crit damage (before buffs), the more Refi proportionately increases their final damage. On the other hand, characters that already have high crit damage will get a relatively smaller boost to their final damage.
In PVE, most players will gear for high crit damage, and will therefore receive only moderate damage improvement from G.Refi. This makes G.Refi, on her own, less powerful in most cases than other 5-star buffers.
Why bother with G.Refi then?
On its own, G.Refi is not that impressive as a buffer. However, Refi's true power lies in the fact that she has 2 buff costumes: G.Refi and PWB.Refi, both of which give offensive and defensive buffs. When the two costumes are used together, Refi now does pretty much everything: she can simultaneously give 3 types of offensive buffs (crit damage + property damage + chain stacks) AND she gives your team two kinds of defensive buffs (energy guard + damage reduction) AND she can charge SP for the team. That’s fairly impressive to fit all of that into a single package, taking up only 1 slot in your team.
Refi is the only character right now with two offensive buffs, and that means that G.Refi into PWB.Refi is now the strongest possible buff combo you can get from a single character. PWB.Refi has a comparable power level to Diana, but when Refi combines her two buff skills, Refi is on average stronger offensively than single buff Diana.
Refi for PVP
For completeness, Refi is not recommended for PVP. Her range is very small, forcing your units to bunch up together to make use of her buffs. Her buffs are also not that impactful compared to say Red Hat Rou, who gives big energy guards and crit rate buffs to your entire team, and has plenty of great follow up options from Rou's other costumes.
Conclusion
Even with her pre-launch nerfs, a full-powered Refi with both costumes maxed is still arguably the strongest PVE buffer in the game. However, it's a huge investment to max out both costumes to full power. Refi's additional buff power compared to a +5 Diana is only moderate, but not game changing.
Therefore, Refi is now a must-have for those players wanting to high score in PVE game modes. This is especially the case for Fiend Hunts, where high ranking players need enough strong buffers to fill 2-3 teams.
For everyone else though, it's not really necessary to chase every round of powercreep, especially when the investment cost is so high.
