@/Fledhyris I am by no means an expert (so hey, if I get anything wrong, folks, please say so!), but I am going to take a flying guess based on my own experience at what your sticking point is, here.
First, Elemental strategy
in Mire comes into play the most when using a 2-fodder trainer like I have always used there, barring a brief grindhunt for a particularly elusive toad familiar. This is because 1 trainer is more likely to take hits along the way than 2 would be. (Or, if bootstrapping an initial team, which is how I got started, using Oran [below] and my Wind progens as my team.)
My favorite reference point here is that
Azakar, my Plague fighter, before his respec to be used in other areas, used to be my Mire trainer - on purpose, in spite of recommendations against using Plague there - and I was also using an old 2-hit build, rather than having enough STR for Rally-Eliminate 1-shotting things.
(That last part was just me not knowing about 1-hit Mire builds yet, because I was new and using an out-of-date guide.)
Azakar going from scarcely scratched to instantly annihilated in the space of one Brilliant Psywurm spellcast is a thing I just got used to, and it taught me a lot about when elemental damage is a factor or not, and why.
The thing is, "thing of element X does more or less damage to / takes more or less damage from, thing of element Y"
does not apply when the thing in question is giving or taking Neutral damage. Neutral damage includes Scratch, Shred, Eliminate, Sap, Contuse spell, the general damage of Neutral (O) enemies -
and the initial Breath-building attacks of elemental melee enemies.
So, yes, for example, a Sickle Kamaitachi in Mire
is of the Fire element, but enemies in the Coliseum are always encountered at 0 initial Breath, which is why the first thing every caster in there does is Meditate.
How often does it live long enough to actually USE its Fire-elemental Slash, given that its first use requires just as much Breath-building as for a Scratch-based dragon using the same ability? It uses the same animation as for a dragon, too, a fiery swipe, so you would probably have noticed after being in that area for a while, whether they managed to use it on your team.*
*(Unless you have animations completely off, or any other relevant reason you could miss this.)
You probably only ever saw that animation when the Fire toad boss used it, though - and they have to build Breath first, too.
The same applies to every melee Elemental enemy, unless I am forgetting an exception. Even melee bosses like that toad (also see: both GW bosses) do their Elemental-based attacks
only after doing enough Neutral attacks to build the necessary Breath.
Once they have it..... IF they get it.....
If you have ever run with a dragon equipped with a "Field Manual" stone, which lets you see the enemies' Breath bars - like when I put one on my Coli trainee for kicks while leveling them up - you also know that enemies making those special attacks or using spells, even when they miss, consumes Breath the same as with most Breath-using dragon attacks. Just like when an Eliminate is Dodged or does not finish off its target. So even bosses cannot just keep on using their elemental-whatever spell or attack indefinitely after building the breath for it once, be it by Meditate or by Scratch.
So - taking a test pass through Harpy's Roost with a team like this, Fire, Ice, and Lightning, all with identical stats which include DEF (melee defense) 5 and MND (spell defense) 5, and bribing my team to sit around and take hits....
.....The initial hits a trio of Windcarve Bladedancers (Wind
, Melee) score against all 3 of these dragons, do the same damage, even though Wind
Elemental attacks do better damage against Fire. Those initial attacks are Scratch (Neutral damage),
not Gust Slash (Wind Melee).
Run into one of those Blue Tang Hippogriff casters with this team, and Mohala, the Lightning Pearlcatcher on the team, just laughs them off even if I futz about and let them Meditate, spellcast and hit him, and the grey numbers which pop up when their
Shock Bolt hits show just how feeble Lightning damage is against a Lightning dragon, even if the sub-140-point damage number was not enough.
If they fire off a
Shock instead, and its stun actually manages to stick, it is
annoying, sure, but he is still pretty unlikely to die of Lightning hits while waiting for it to wear off.
The other two WILL take more damage from the Blue Tangs' spells, because those do Lightning damage. Oran, Ice Noc, will take the most, as Lightning does somewhat increased damage against Ice, while Odile, Fire, takes "neither boosted nor decreased" damage from Lightning unless his defense is artificially increased (such as by Defending).
Cardinal Hippogriffs, being Neutral, on the other hand, will do Contuse (Neutral) damage if they get off a spellcast (and be annoying, because Contuse includes a lingering damage debuff which always lands, causing a dragon to do less damage output until it wears off). All dragons having MND (spell defense) 5, Contuse will deal the same level of damage against all 3 dragons.
Meanwhile, Wind effects are rated Bad against Lightning (but not AS bad as Lightning vs. Lightning). The initial 3 hits by each Windcarve Bladedancer against Mohala are still
the same as against either of the other dragons shown, even though they do not all share the same resistance to Wind damage either.
And odds are, if I was not literally sitting there letting them take their shots, none of a group of 3 of these enemies would ever live to DO any Wind damage, except in my initial combat encounter of building Breath, or if I am coming off of back-to-back bosses or had a nasty visit from the Dodge Fairy, as this team can annihilate anything in this venue once it has its one round to get rolling. A team of all 3 Meditate Melees is even smoother sailing, which is why it is my favored fest grinding team for everything below
the Workshop. (I meant below Kelp Beds, but the fact Oran is also on my Kelp Beds team tripped me up.)
Outgoing damage is really simple here, as all 3 dragons only have Sap and Eliminate with which to deal damage, and both of these deal Neutral damage. Against each specific creature type, all 3 dragons using Eliminate will deal equivalent damage, same for Sap. Same for Scratch or Shred if they all had those stones. Only the creature's DEF or the dragon having Rally or landing a critical, makes any real difference here, as no Elemental damage is being dealt.
(Forget counting on crits btw. It has been calculated already that trying to run a crit build is a waste of breath, literally, unless you are messing about with a suboptimal team for kicks as I sometimes do.)
Tackle a team of 3 Brush Dodos (Water, Melee), for example, and all 3 dragons, if equipped with Scratch and none have Rally increasing their STR, would do 488 damage per Scratch to these enemies, unless they crit. Even though Odile is Fire (rated Bad against Water) and Oran is Ice (rated Best against Water). Because, again, no Elemental damage is being dealt in this scenario.
The Dodos hitting back will only do increased damage to the Fire dragon, or reduced damage to the Lightning dragon, if left alive long enough their Water-based attacks see any
use, which requires a
minimum of 4 combat rounds (3 to build breath + 1 to use the elemental ability).
Further complicating things - just because an elemental melee creature builds breath enough to use its Elemental attack, does not mean that it will. For example, the abilities of a Masked Harpy (Wind, Melee) are, Scratch, Shred, Gust Slash. Both Gust Slash and Shred require building enough Breath to use. So, I let one sit around clawing up my team until it built enough Breath to use a special. It used Shred - Neutral damage (the initial hit and the bleed).
I did the same again, and it used Shred again. It could, in theory, have used an Elemental Wind attack, but I got bored and mashed it before it ever did.
Elemental
spellcasters, on the other hand, ONLY have Elemental damage-dealing abilities, and Meditate to build the Breath to use them. So when they get done Meditating and unload that Breath on your team, any damage which lands WILL be of the creature's element; how much damage depends on your dragon's MND score, your dragon's element, whether they are Defending (or Guarding or Anticipating) or not, and whether the spell happens to crit.
So, you can see why one of those Brilliant Psywurms from Mire critting a cast on my glass cannon Plague trainer was an instant YOU DIED for that dragon, and why even a non-crit at anything but full health was just as lethal. Lower negative protection against an element is LESS dramatic, but is still going to make a deeper dent than if the dragon was middle of the road or resistant.
But none of this has
specifically to do with Golem Workshop, a venue where this team would actually have to
work for a win. So, let us take a jaunt on over to Odile's hunting ground of choice, with this same team.
(On the way there, Mohala
and Oran
will be swapping out their usual grindteam Meditate for Scratch, which Odile
already has, for demo purposes. Neither dragon is happy about this, especially Mohala. But, FOR SCIENCE!, they soldier on.)
(Also, how about I get a stack of health potions out of the vault, as sitting around intentionally taking hits for science is going to
h u r t, no matter the damage types being done.)
Right off the mark, my team encountered 2 Mechanical Destroyers (Melee, Neutral). Nothing to see here, as my dragons were taking only Neutral damage, and dealing only Neutral damage against Neutral creatures, but a good start to build some Breath on.
The very next battle was 3 of those Scrapmetal Trackers (Shadow, melee) you mentioned.
Shadow damage is Best against Ice (Oran), Good against Fire (Odile), and has no modifier either way against Lightning (Mohala). So, if not for everything I just explained, this team should be quaking in their nonexistent boots.
In the first 3 rounds of Tracker attacks, the Scrapmetal Trackers landed multiple hits on all 3 dragons (who, once buffed, sat there chugging health potions and sulking about not being allowed to Defend). And
every hit incoming save for 1, did 246 damage regardless of which dragon was hit - because, in these early rounds, all the Scrapmetal Trackers can use is Scratch, which does Neutral damage. And that 1 exception was a critical, not an Elemental attack.
Then, in Tracker round 4 - suddenly Mohala took a hit for over 400 damage (forgive me for not catching the rest of the number here, but I believe it was about double the Scratch damage above, based on Mohala's health bar), with no crit animation, but with a Mist Slash animation - finally, some incoming elemental melee damage!
....in Tracker round 4, which any of them are only ever going to live to see while the dragon team is initially building Breath, and/or if something has gone very, very wrong (looking at you, Dodge Fairy).
Melee and caster bosses both do live long enough to deal some Elemental damage, yes, but melee bosses like both of GW's are are not going to be dealing very much of it except to a pretty suboptimal team, especially if purely grinding with a team of 3; a team of 2 is going to be feeling it a bit more. Elemental spellcaster enemies, meanwhile, CAN (though not always
do) unload a hefty chunk of Elemental spell damage on their* round 2, as they can Round 1 Meditate, Round 2 bring the thunder (or the water, or the whatever).
*specifying, because dragon attack turns and monster attack turns are not necessarily going to be 1:1
TL;DR - Calculating the damage a dragon of whatever element is likely to take in a given venue is not as simple as adding up the number of creatures of each element in the venue and Job Done, even without considering the average frequency of appearance of every particular possible encounter group in said venue.
When the people who nigh-obsessively keep up to date on Best Element (check whether a venue's creature selection has changed since a post was last updated), say certain elements are Best or Worst for a particular build type in a particular venue, I am pretty well inclined to believe they know what they are talking about. There
could be trouble if you are basing an Elemental
damage-dealing team on Best Fors calculated assuming your team will be dealing Neutral damage, of course.
No smartmouth intended, I genuinely hope this is helpful (and hope it is by and large correct, I did try). I spent a few hours checking my work in real time in the Coliseum before making this post, not just going off what other people posted, to be Really Sure, but by the time I got to GW my already suboptimal eyes were tired, thus having more trouble catching exact numbers. I could sure see the difference of damage type on their health bars, though!
And, sorry about the length, I thought actual examples from my confirming runs might be more helpful than generalizations!
[edit - fixed a paragraph where I merged 2 chunks of text and forgot to edit, so it no longer made any sense]
[.....and made a couple of things clearer below!]
In addition, a team which is laid out unconscious on the floor does 0 damage, a team which cannot survive everything else in pretty good shape is not going to be fighting a lot of bosses anyway, especially in GW or Portal where the basic battles are already rougher on a team, and a team of 2 dragons leveling a trainee is at a disadvantage compared to a 3-dragon fighting team.
A 2-dragon team leveling a trainee is most likely going to be aimed toward optimizing for the venue in general for XP and drops, not for defeating bosses, even though fighting bosses is still possible at least some of the times that they turn up.
Boss damage type is relevant, yes, but if you want to
seriously hunt bosses there, as in be able to defeat them every single time they appear, you might want to bring a third actually useful dragon and leave the trainee at home.
Getting to and beating GW bosses with a team of 2 dragons is often possible, I have done it, with a melee team, a caster team, and a team of 1 of each, using Fire or Wind or a mix of the two (and medium health potions, when running without a healer). I got some boss kills, just like Azakar could still be a 2-fodder trainer in Mire. A team does not HAVE to be exactly optimal to still work.
But a team of 3 of Best Elements is still likely to do
better.
Sometimes you have to pick your primary objective, just like using a 2-fodder trainer means, "Sure, you are sometimes going to be able to beat a boss in that area! And sometimes, probably rather often with bosses, the timing will stink or a crit or dodge will wreck you, and a boss or a normal encounter will kick your dragon's tail into a new postcode. That trainer sure can train 2 dragons at once, though!".
^I do not know of a viable 2FT for GW or Portal, and I found the Kelp Beds one too annoying to use, though others apparently do. Just in case that last bit made you wonder. It was a general reference to the difference between usable and optimal.
