This [Punishing: Gray Raven] guide is a more in-depth look on gearing and team building, these two need to be talked about together because you can’t have one without the other in [Punishing: Gray Raven].
I’ll mainly be using 6-Star memories in this guide, because 5-Star and below are mainly a stop gap and you shouldn’t invest too heavily into most of them, I’ll also be using the character and gear names from the fandom wiki to avoid confusion.
Character Classes
There are three classes, each class gives the character an inherent passive
- Assault Class usually your main DPS deal 20 more damage across the board
- The Tank Class debuffs enemies they attack, to take 20 percent increased damage for 5 seconds, this applies to the QTE attacks as well
- Support class units your buffer/healer, have all their healing done increased by 20%
Aside from your main DPS, you want all your teams to have at least one tank, some of these tanks also function as backup DPS, the main DPS can trigger the QTE of the tank, causing them to come onto the field for an attack and apply their class debuff. The Tank class debuffs though do not stack so it doesn’t make sense to run two tanks.
Gear
Next we move on to gear
Memory
Every unit can equip up to six memories in slots one through six, slots one through three are the top memories, four through six are the bottom memories, the top row memories give flat hp and crit rate while the bottom row memories give attack and defense
For leveling priority:
- Elemental units want to focus on the lower row first, because elemental attacks can not crit, the top row only increases survivability, so it’s lower on your priority list.
- Physical units want both rows because they can crit
The most important aspect of memories are their set effects, there are 2-Set and 4-Set bonuses, usually you run one 4-Set and one 2-Set combinations like three different 2-Sets are only used by support class units or as a stop gap as you go for the recommended 4-Set 2-Set combo. Running 6 pieces of one memory does not give you the 2-Set effect twice.
To max out a unit you need to affix the memories, affixes are bonuses you can add to memories that grant extra stats and extra skill levels to the unit using them, each memory can be affixed twice and the affixes for 6-Star memories are bound to that unit, each affix requires a memory of the same set, to fully affix a 4-Set you need 12 memories of that set 2-Sets require six.
Once your unit reaches level 80, has a combat power of 5,500 or higher and 12 affixes in total, you will unlock their awakening skill, this increases the amount of skill orbs the unit starts to fight with, that’s pretty much all you need to know about memories.
Combat usually works by having your main DPS on the field most of the time with the tank and support landing support via buffs, debuffs and healing. Given the main DPS is your first priority and quite simple, you run a 4-Set of their element plus a 2-Set that complements them.
Importantly for team building are the supportive sets, the most important one being the Davinci set, you run this as a 4-Set always when you triggered the QTE of the teammate equipped with this, they triggered the other backline characters QTE as well, we call the unit geared with Davinci the QTE bot or QTE slave.
The other 6-Star supportive sets come in two variations: physical and elemental. The first set is Einstein for elemental damage and Katherine for physical damage they decrease specific enemy resistances with three orb skills and far more importantly QTEs 2-Sets of these are fine because the four set effect is defensive and we all know a good offense is the best defense.
While you have some freedom with Katherine because she always decreases physical defense regardless of what type the attack is, you need to be specific with Einstein, the attack needs to be of the specific element you want to debuff.
So if a main DPS is a lightning DPS, you want the attack with Einstein to be a lightning attack, so it debuffs the lightning defense, lucky for us all tanks deal their core element in damage on their QTEs.
The second supportive sets are the healer memories Ferret II and Guinea, like the previous two memories, Ferret II is the physical heal set and Guinea is the elemental heal set. Elemental doesn’t have a condition this time, both increase healing and the respective damage done, you’ll usually run this as a 2-Set, the 4-Set isn’t really worth it because it doesn’t last long, needs to be stacked and has a sizeable downtime.
You can fill the remaining four slots with 5-Star memories instead, like Richelieu and Samantha if your support class unit also deals damage on their QTE, the Voltaire and Groda sets are also possible. The event memory Lantern Gathering is also great, I believe this is obtained in the second patch “Fallen Star”.
Weapons
There is much variety when it comes to weapons, usually there’s one signature 6-Star weapon for each of the characters and 1 neutral 5-Star for that weapon category like bows and cannons with the occasional event weapon here or there.
As a rule of thumb you get the 6-Star weapon for your future proof S-Ranks, prioritizing what gives you the most dps, now we can bring it all together and start building a team, we’ll be building three different teams, one for standard gameplay like story progression, one for War Zone and one for Pain Cage, the later two being the competitive modes.
Team Building
At launch we are a bit short on units and the only complete team we can build is the physical team so we’ll do that, I’ll be building this team around S-Lee since he’s available at the start. I wanted to originally build it around Alpha but sadly I don’t have her.
Physical Team
Story Mode
First the story mode, we’ll be running S-Lee in the assault slot with B-Nanami as the tank unit and B-Liv as a support unit, the later two you get in the tutorial, you always want your main DPS to have the strongest weapon you can give them, their signature weapon if possible. For Liv & Nanami, the signature weapons aren’t worth spending summoning currency on, your best chainsaw and cannons will do.
For memories, you run S-Lee with 4-Set Barton and 2-Set Darwin, S-Lee deals a lot of hits and benefits greatly from Barton‘s 4-Set effect while a 2-Set Darwin increases damage as you use skill orbs. You can use 2-Set Darwin on most DPS because your main damage usually comes from consuming orbs to use skills.
B-Nanami will run 4-Set of Davinci making her the QTE bot with a 2-Set piece of Katherine for the physical resistance down, adding to her debuffing role from being the tank class. Who you make the QTE bot is up to you, I personally have my tanks take that role unless they function as a sub DPS in which case they get a more personalized set.
B-Liv will have 2-Set of Ferret for the physical damage up, because we lack more support class options in the 6-Star memories and debuffs by the same set don’t stack, we’ll fall back to 5-Star memories to fill the remaining slots. Richelieu, which is a 5-Star version of the Ferret set and Voltaire which is similar to the Katherine set in that it debuffs with damage dealt.
This is what the comparison between S-Liv and B-Liv for my S-Rank Selector/Reroll Guide comes into effect, B-Liv deals damage on her QTE so she can run the Voltaire set, S-Liv couldn’t because her QTE does not deal damage.
Positioning
Lastly we need to decide on positioning, this is always dictated by your main DPS, it depends on what three orb the main DPS mainly uses. Lee likes to use three orbs of blue and yellow to trigger his core passive which empowers his red orbs regardless of how many you use of them, his yellow orb gives you the most damage increase so we want to focus on using that.
Therefore we place our QTE bot on yellow, this way when Lee uses a yellow three orb, Nanami will QTE and trigger Liv’s QTE, giving us all the buffs. I’ll be placing Lee on red and Liv on blue since my playstyle is to try to fire out his core passive as much as possible regardless of how many red orbs i currently have, if I happen to get a blue 3 orb I get Liv‘s QTE as well.
This is up to personal preference and play style I would say gameplay wise you’ll only be playing S-Lee in these missions, using Nanami and Liv for their buffs, debuffs and heals, fairly straightforward and not much to say honestly.
Warzone
Now let’s move on to something a bit more interesting, Warzone, you get timed here so maximizing DPS is key, not having orbs means a drop in damage.
If you run a main DPS without a backup DPS like the story team, you’ll run out of orbs if you go max DPS all the time, by having a secondary DPS, you can switch out your main DPS which allows them to recover orbs while off field. So we’ll be replacing B-Liv with A-Karenina.
A-Karenina is a great burst unit and benefits a lot from being switched in and out of combat because it stacks her core passive. Her core passive stacks with three orb skills used and whenever a character enters the field, they do so with a set three orb skill, she’s also a phenomenal unit in War Zone, because she can gather with her QTE and blue skill.
A-Karenina runs a 4-Set of Hana with a 2-Set of Darwin, Hana again helps her core passive, team placement wise nothing changes, A-Karenina also gets great damage from her yellow orb, so B-Nanami stays on yellow, B-Nanami also stays the QTE bot equipped the same as before.
Pain Cage
Moving on to Pain Cage, in Pain Cage you fight only a single boss and you want to down him as fast as possible while avoiding damage because there’s nothing to gather here and because we can get good damage simply auto attacking the boss, after he’s been tagged with Lee‘s yellow skill we switch Liv back in to give Lee as many buffs and debuffs as possible.
The only other teams we can reasonably talk about right now are lightning and fire but both are incomplete at launch.
Lightning Team
For lightning, we have A-Lucia and A-Liv, you can run any of your tank class units as QTE bot with 4 Davinci & 2 Groda and A-Liv with 2 Einstein, 2 Guinea and 2 Samantha, don’t affix the lightning set to A-Lucia though since the S-Rank after Alpha will be a lightning DPS and she outperforms A-Lucia.
Fire Team
As for fire, if you happen to have gotten both S-Karenina and S-Nanami, you can equip S-Karenina with 4-Set Shakespeare and 2 Darwin or 2 Adolf. S-Nanami with 4 Davinci and 2 Einstein and your last teammate if they are a healer, use 2 Guinea, 2 Samantha and 2 Groda. Since Groda needs to deal damage, the healer needs to be either A-Liv or B-Liv
This guide is based on videos by Whiskey Titan
How are we supposeed to get Barton?