Table of Contents
This is part 3 of a series of guides that aim to tell you everything you need to know about gearing, from the basic mechanics, to progression and endgame builds. Check out Part 1 of this series if you need a refresher on the gear system, or Part 2 if you’re still progressing through the early and midgame!
- Gear Guide – Basic Mechanics
- Gear Crafting Guide – Early and Mid Game Progression
- Gear Guide – Endgame Builds
Preliminary Information
Disclaimer
While I will discuss the general principles for endgame builds, builds are content dependent. For example, Fiend Hunt sometimes requires specialized builds, HP thresholds, and whatnot for higher stages. PvP builds also end up being slightly different from PvE builds.
I do have builds laid out for specific characters, so do check it out if you want more info.
Exclusive Gear
For the purpose of this guide, I will talk solely about crafted gear. If your unit has an exclusive gear, the main stats of that piece should be equivalent to the crafted counterpart in this guide.
Gear Calculator
After reading this guide, you may want to check out my Gear Calculator! This is a theorycrafting tool to check out the stats and damage of your units after equipping gear. Just go to File > Make a Copy, then feel free to play around with it.
Refining and Rerolling
- You typically want to stop at refinement grade 17 (CBS) or 18 (BBS) for endgame gear.
- As for rerolling, you typically want to save your crystals for either UR EX or UR4 gear. You may use them on UR3 gear, but only sparingly to get a decent substat or two.
- The best way to “farm” refining crystals is to simply dismantle the SR gear that you get from weapon banner daily draws (save the 5* SR weapons though if you need them), or the fodder UR gear that you craft. Dismantling crafted SR gear is technically a non-timegated source, but it’s hardly worth the effort.
Offensive Gearing
The offensive gear slots are the weapon, gloves, and accessory (although the accessory can also be defensive). Units with offensive skills will usually fall under one of three categories: Fixed, Crit, or Special. (Note that when I talk about ATK or ATK%, it also applies to MATK or MATK% for magic units.)
Fixed DPS
Weapon → ATK + ATK, Gloves → ATK% + ATK, Accessory → CR + HP%
Justia, Alec, and Beatrice deal fixed (or true) damage. Fixed damage does not crit, but to compensate, it bypasses DEF, MRES, and damage reduction effects. Since it doesn’t crit, these units do not care for crit stats. Thus they build the aforementioned gear.
Flat ATK is actually added onto base ATK before being multiplied by ATK%, thus we want an equal amount of flat ATK and ATK% main stats. The gloves get double ATK% because this piece is used on a lot of other builds. Accessories only have crit and HP stats, so we choose the piece with HP% on it. Note that Justia, Alec, and Beatrice all have weapons as exclusive gear, so you may not even have to build the javelin.
Crit DPS
Weapon → ATK + CDMG, Gloves → ATK% + ATK, Accessory → CDMG + CDMG.
The vast majority of DPS costumes deal standard crit damage. If the skill does not deal fixed damage, and does not have special scalings (see Special DPS), then it is simply a standard crit DPS costume. Standard DPS units build the aforementioned gear:
Double % Gloves
Whether you use double % gloves or half flat gloves depends on the bond potentials you're using for the unit. If their bonds have M/ATK%, you'll typically want to use M/ATK% + M/ATK gloves. On the other hand, if their bonds have flat M/ATK, you'll typically want to use M/ATK% + M/ATK% gloves. Do keep in mind however that the differences between the two gloves aren't that significant for a lot of units, it usually ends up in less than a 5% difference in damage output.
PvP Gear
Because consistency is very important in Mirror Wars, you will want to build crit rate gear on your units for this content. Of course, don't bother crafting PvP-specific gear until you're geared out for PvE content, since rewards in PvE are more important. Crit rate gear, which are used in PvP, are a lot less useful in PvE.
Crit DPS units may use the following gear for PvP:
Brazier is what you typically use on your DPS units as your accessory, while Rebellion and Ring of Fury are typically your choice of gloves.
Special Scaling DPS
Weapon → ATK + CDMG, Gloves → ATK% + CR, Accessory → CDMG + CDMG.
There are some units with costumes that don’t scale off their own M/ATK%. This includes units like Angelica and Android Queen Lecliss, who scale off their or enemy HP, Gray’s Sharpshooter and Vanguard costumes, which scale off of enemy ATK or MATK, and knockback skills that scale off enemy HP. Since they don’t scale off their own ATK or MATK, we simply focus on crit stats:
Supports and Tanks
These units typically don’t care about their offensive stats, so you often don’t need to bother investing in them too much offensively (Android Queen Lecliss being an exception). However, if the unit has healing in their kit, you may want to optimize that healing, since healing can crit (refer to crit DPS if it scales off M/ATK, or special DPS if it scales off HP).
Defensive Gearing
The defensive gear slots are the body, head, and sometimes the accessory.
With the exception of very specific content (fixed damage dealing bosses in Fiend Hunt), you will always want to build either 90 DEF or 90 MRES before investing into HP, if at all. This is because while HP stats scale your survivability linearly, the two resistance stats scale polynomially. Having 90 DEF (or MRES) means that your unit takes 10× less physical (or magic) damage. On the other hand, having 80 RES means that your unit takes 5× less damage. 90 RES is thus twice as good as 80 RES. That is how important getting to 90 is (which is the cap for DEF and MRES). As such, it is very important to invest in UR4 gear if you’re building defensively. The pieces you will want to build depends on the base stats of the unit (RES refers to either DEF or MRES):
DPS, Glass Cannon, 0 Base RES
Body → RES + RES, Head → RES + RES
Just the main stats from these two pieces alone (UR4, Refinement BBS) is enough to get to 90 RES. Reminder that DEF gear cannot roll MATK substats, and MRES gear cannot roll ATK substats. So if your DPS is running the opposite type, you’ll have to get crit subs instead. This also means that fixed DPS units do not benefit from the substats of opposite gear.
Bruiser/Support/Tank
Body → RES + RES, Head → RES + HP% —OR— Body → RES + HP%, Head → RES + RES
Because DEF and MRES cap at 90, getting 4 main stats like with the DPS build would result in overcapping, wasting stats. It’d be better to build 3 RES + 1 HP%, then getting to 90 RES through substats:
- 0 Base RES → 5 RES substats
- 10 Base RES → 3 RES substats
- 20 Base RES → 0 RES substats
Supports and tanks will want to be built this way. You may also want to build a DPS unit this way if they’re reasonably tanky (2800 - 3500 base HP before collection bonus) and you want them to better tank something, such as in PvP. If however you don’t have the investment required for this build, you can instead opt for the 4× RES build with UR3 body + head.
Accessory → CDMG + HP% —OR— Accessory → CR + HP%
Your accessory of choice for tankier builds will depend on the content: generally you use CDMG rings for PvE and CR necklaces for PvP.
DEF or MRES?
Whether you build DEF or MRES on any specific unit is content dependent, and in the case of PvP, formation dependent. Definitely look out for guides for these modes if you’re still unsure.
Closing Remarks
This ends the last part of my gear guide series. Hopefully you have the knowledge required to build your characters. Until next time!
