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@Ygdrasill

Interesting. Would you recommend the sap/bolster combination, then? I would like to hear your opinion, as I am not married to the elemental punch stone, per se. (I just like having the shadow punch on my Culex farmer, because it's fun occasionally in lower venues where you don't have to worry about breath. I have also missed not having the arcane punch on my Mire flyer when I'm using him as my second farmer, as it is a nice alternative to eliminate over and over.)

My only concern is that sap can be expensive ^^' I'm lucky enough that rally dropped for me the other day, but I will have to purchase an eliminate, and I am trying to keep my investment cost down.

@librariesrpunk
I didn't say Haste is never useful. Bolster is a complete waste of time in my opinion. You aren't going to leveling any one group of fodder with an Anticitank long enough that its small decrease in damage should matter much. I like having sap, but once again it's use is limited in this build as well. It can help avoid a restart, but only under the right circumstances.

If I was going to replace something it would be Sap. It might be nice to have an attack that used less breath on those occasions when you get contussed. Usually, if that happens to me and there's more than one monster left, I just restart, because Sap is not sustainable. I may have to look into that myself actually. I'm not sure which would get used more.

@librariesrpunk I used to use the Bolster/sap combo and the main boon is that bolster+anticipate "stacks" so damage is reduced farther. It ultimately depends on what you get used to as far as how fast or efficient it is. There's not a huge difference between the different stone combos as long as you have the main ones.

I liked the extra durability of bolster but currently have haste/sap and am not too concerned about breath or otherwise.

You can stalk the battle stones marketplace when sap stocks, since the price is only 5500 treasure. I tend to find it pretty easily, so don't mind trading one of my extra saps for something else.

@librariesrpunk
Personally I don't use haste or bolster with mine, I didn't find much benefit in either of them so I just didn't add haste to my current primary anticitank and don't use the bolster she has equipped. I do strongly prefer sap over haste, I find it more sustainable and I like that it can act as scratch if needed (for example, rally running out but enough breath and turns to just sap + elim). You can get a lot of breath with this build, so I don't find that using sap hurts my ability to use eliminate either.

I do use the 115 STR/70 QCK version exclusively, though, and I'm not sure how well sap transfers over to the 76 QCK build if you wanted to stick with that. I think it would be worth trying, though, sap is only 5,500t in the MP and not much higher in the AH most of the time and that cost can be quickly recovered by using the build even if you end up overwriting it with haste.

@Tserin @Salamanderpie @Ygdrasill

Thank you all very much. I will let you know what build I end up using and how I like it. Thank you again for all the advice! :3

@librariespunk

I have a Nature Anticitank build, and I replaced Bolster with Sap after a few days of testing so I have Haste, Rally, Elim, and Sap. I switched it because A) I really really really disliked not having any alternative for dealing damage than Eliminate, and B) I was only using Bolster on the first fight, so Sap is more useful overall. I Haste/Rally/Anticipate on turn 1, then Rally (again lol)/Anticipate on Turn 2. (Or just Eliminate if I get hit enough on Turn 1!)

If I had one more spot, I would 100% use the elemental slash, but I prefer to have both Haste and Sap. I have a Roc Wrecker I use with some higher level fodder, and the lack of Sap is really irritating. I get around that by giving my fodder high QCK and VIT, and use their turns to throw healing potions at my glass cannon. It's been working so far!

I have a hypothesis on the effectiveness of this build (using 115 STR/76 QCK and Sap) vs. the Mire Flyer, specifically the speed of hitting various level caps. My theory is that the absolute fastest way to get 2 fodder to 7 (my preferred exalt level) with minimum restarts, is to use this build to 4/5--whenever you faint--then switch your Ghostbuster for your Mire Flyer and get up to 7 there. My reasoning is that the quick-start nature of this build vs. Mire Flyer means its super fast to hit the lower levels, but its low survivability slows it way down in the long run.

So far, my tests have borne this out, but I still need to gather a bunch more data.

@shinykari
I use my Mire Monk the same way, but same theory. It's faster to level past 5 in the mire. I don't know if the switchoff time would cancel out the extra speed a Ghostlight build can have though.

@ygdrasil Assuming your Mire Flyer and Ghostbuster are close together at the top of the list (mine are not, unfortunately) I think the switchoff time is negligible. Even so, it takes just about twice as long as a reload > battle > second page > GR/Mire.

For a while I was doing a run of fodder to 5, then switching tanks and bumping them all up to 7, but that got really tedious really fast. I didn't stop them all at exactly the same spot, XP-wise, so if I didn't match the fodder pairs back up, one would hit 7 before the other, and I felt like I wasted a whole battle. This is definitely faster, at least so far.

ETA: To be fair, a chunk of this hypothesis is that it's so much more enjoyable to level exalts when there's a little variety. I'm probably gonna keep doing this even if the time saved is non-existent or negligible.

@shinykari
A bit of variety definitely makes it a little less of a grind. WHen I'm doing the switching off routine, I just do it a pair of fodder at a time so they are always at the same experience level.