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Duos VS Trios

Which is better?

  • Duos

  • Trios

  • Both

  • I prefer solo

Results are only viewable after voting.
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Ms. Fortune Fukua Double
Couldn't find a thread for this already.
Duos VS trios, which do you prefer and why? What are the pros and cons of each respectively?
This thread is here to discuss that kinda stuff.
 
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Duos because I think it's the balance between solo damage/hp and trio versatility.
Also, I use too many buttons and would probably screw up all my assist calls.
 
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Duo advantage:
- Life
- Damage
- Damage!!!!!!!!!! Very important in Happy Birthday scenarios, Assist punishes, Countercalls, etc
- Easier to make a team with interchanging roles

Trio advantage:
- One more assist (not just relevant for neutral etc, but also allows you to play assistbased while letting red life heal)
- More DHC possibilities (can also turn out to be negative, if one of your chars has bad DHCs and "blocks" the good one)
- Less damage taken from Doublesnaps
- Life differential often plays less of a role than it "should", due to characters dying
- Easier to make a good team
 
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IMO, once you start getting better at the neutral, trios make more sense since they give you more options.
 
IsaVulpes said:
Duo advantage:
- Life
Not actually true: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb...compare.png/700px-Skullgirls_team_compare.png

Duos have 32890 life. Trios have 42900/1.3 = 33000 life.

EDIT:
On the Happy Birthday issue, a duo that lands a 7k damage happy birthday on a trio does 14000 * 1.3 = 18200 damage, 42% of the team's total life. A trio that lands a 7k happy birthday on a trio does 14k damage, also 43% (well, actually 42.5%, but I'm rounding here) of the team's total life. In short, Duos and Trios are both affected roughly equally by happy birthday situations in terms of raw life; however, duos are affected disproportionately largely by doublesnaps.
 
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I play trio but I think duo is the strongest:

- More damage and health
- Easiest strategy, no need to check who's the first or second for assist or DHC after swapping characters or after loosing them.
- Easier to stand in front of a solobella rather than a trio...
 
Beuzer0 said:
I play trio but I think duo is the strongest:

- More damage and health
Do you guys even read previous posts in a thread before replying?
 
ignoring that. Duo is ultimately a bother because you have to have characters that are completely in sync while at the same time allowing various assist for various situations. And both of your characters better be alive or else it becomes more hard in the long run you deal 1.3 damage against some of the team compositions you face.

TLDR: Trio is better.
 
The one advantage duos have is that it's easier to create DHC synergy bombs. Things like PW/Double or other teams that have amazing DHCs both ways.
 
I like duo because my damage isn't reduced much regardless what ratio the opponent picks. This usually leaves me with a one dimensional neutral although that's probably because I'm awful at this game.
 
well the main thing is YOU HAVE TO create a team based around synergy and that's the main thing. you also want to keep both characters alive so you will DHC often. you will ultimately need
A: characters that can function by themselves.
B: Point character that can build meter fast.
C: anchor character has to augment what the point already has to the optimal spot.
those to me are the basic functions for duo teams.

its why you see Sonicfox team. or the typical fukua/bella team
 
Cynical said:
EDIT:
On the Happy Birthday issue, a duo that lands a 7k damage happy birthday on a trio does 14000 * 1.3 = 18200 damage, 42% of the team's total life. A trio that lands a 7k happy birthday on a trio does 14k damage, also 43% (well, actually 42.5%, but I'm rounding here) of the team's total life. In short, Duos and Trios are both affected roughly equally by happy birthday situations in terms of raw life
Kind of ignoring that assists take bonus damage?

- A Duo that lands a 7k Combo on a Trio (14300HP/Char) deals 7k*1.3 = 9100 to the point, and 7k*1.3*1.35 = 12285 to the assist (btw 86% life of the assist, so it's rather likely it will just die), for 21385 Damage total, or 50% life
- A Trio that lands a 7k combo on a Trio (16455HP/Char) deals the same damage except it's against a health total of 46395 (instead of 42900), so it's only 46% (more notably, against the assist it's just 75%, so a lot more likely that it will survive)
- A Trio that lands a 7k combo on a Duo (16455HP/Char) deals 7k + 7k*1.35 = 16450 for 50% life - which looks the same as 2v3; except the assist only took 57% damage, so it's very unlikely that he died

Whether an assist dies or not doesn't just have implications in itself (eg Trio loses the advantages it has over Duo since it's left with just 1 assist), but also "increases the net damage" - if you bring a Duo's assist down to 40% life with a happy birthday combo, he can sit around for 5 seconds and let his red life regen up; if the same Duo kills your Trio character, you're lost on that front.
Samecase other way round, your point dies, BAM all that red life on your 2nd character gone. Do Duos or Trios have it happen more often that their point dies early without any spot at which they can give their 2nd time to regen red life?

I don't know what these number games are supposed to prove, Spencer always does the same thing when someone says Solo has more life than Trio.
How about you just play the game and look at the life bars and things?
 
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Oh the irony here...
 
IsaVulpes said:
I don't know what these number games are supposed to prove [...] How about you just play the game and look at the life bars and things?
Believe it or not, math, not anecdotes, is the best way to determine which of two numbers is larger.

Sure, there are cases where a duo will effectively have more life than a trio because of character deaths and red health. But there's also cases where a trio will have more health, because a character death effectively removed a few thousand damage out of a given "touch" (since you can't continue the combo onto the next character).

We can make up edge cases where one has more effective health than the other all day, and since it's only anecdotal (or, hilariously, speculatively anecdotal), it means exactly zero. Or, we can spend thirty seconds doing a little bit of math and come up with a real answer.
 
Cynical said:
Or, we can spend thirty seconds doing a little bit of math and come up with a real answer.
Maybe if you had spent fourty-five seconds doing a little bit of math, you wouldn't have forgotten a very basic parameter..
 
A parameter that doesn't matter because we're just multiplying two numbers by the same number, which won't change which number is larger?

(And it doesn't change which is larger; the trio's total damage expressed as a % of total life in the case you described is higher by about 0.1%. Not material, but it's certainly NOT "duos have more life and better damage").
 
Trio has a better safety net. As a solo I can kill one trio relatively fast, but that doesn't kill their momentum completely because they still have assist presence and all benefits that comes with an extra member and is usually more flexible with their game plan.

Duo in comparison is screwed if a solo kills one of their team members (usually that team member is crucial to their overall gameplan) early because now the duo has to deal with a solo 1 vs 1 who has better health (with regen) and damage output.
 
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I don't like playing with trios because I need more resets to kill someone and Squigly is the only character that I have at least a faint idea on how to use it. I usually play solo Squigs, but I'm trying to learn Double because a safe DHC helps a lot in keeping Squigs alive (lol alive) while still having a nice lockdown assist.
 
Maybe I'm dumb, but I'm having a hard time understanding why one is better than the other, both mathematically and qualitatively:
  • What is the percentage differences between a duo-character's damage output and a trio-character's damage output? (i.e. - a trio-character deals 70% damage while a duo-character deals 85% damage—compared to a solo's 100%)
  • What is the percentage difference between a duo-character's taken damage and a trio-character's taken damage?
  • What is the percentage difference between a duo-character's HP and a trio-character's HP?
That is, what are these percentages with respect to a solo-character's values?

I don't think the correct way to approach this is to come up with situations where one thing works and another doesn't. That won't solve anything. It's be best to quantify everything, first:
  • What's the average range of damage of a B&B combo (maybe even further classified according to high-damage characters and low-damage characters)? [From this, we can determine how likely it is for a trio-character to die from, say, one combo.]
  • How many combinations of two assists can one develop where the assists each provide a different function?
  • How many combinations of three assists can one develop where the assists each provide a different function?
  • What is the dependence/usability of certain characters w/ the assists of others? (Say, Peacock can be said to have a dependence of 0 for Valentine's assists, and a dependence of .7 for Bella's assists).
I don't expect the 2nd group of questions (and others like it) to be readily answered—but I think approaching the problem in this way provides a usable—and eventually consistent—framework for determining whether duos are better than trios or trios are better than duos. For all we know, certain pairs of duos may be better than certain collections of trios. One particular trio might be "better" than all duos.
 
IsaVulpes said:
I don't know what these number games are supposed to prove, Spencer always does the same thing when someone says Solo has more life than Trio.
How about you just play the game and look at the life bars and things?

But I'm not wrong, and I think you know that. The normalized health/damage of a solo character literally dwindles per pixel of regenerated health. There is zero way around this fact.

I admit freely though that with a team, you do inherit new weaknesses, namely damage on assist and the risk of happy birthdays. Of course, you also inherit new strengths in the forum of assist calls (which adds utility, damage, and confirms otherwise impossible for a solo), DHC (adds damage, safety, and new reversal opportunities), and Alpha counters (new reversal opportunities). Are the weaknesses worth the strengths? I'd argue yes if for no other reason than it is demonstrated every tournament (last solo tournament winner was?!?).

But washing the strengths with the weaknesses and ignoring them both, the fact remains that solo loses their health/damage advantage as red health regenerates. This isn't even up for debate... at least not until/if solo regen hits live.

So I guess to directly answer your questions, these number games are supposed to prove that forgetting the utility and weaknesses of assists, the solo advantage is at best temporary if the team can play keep away and/or avoid the double snap for long enough.

Another way of looking at it, is though solo keeps their damage, a team member's health bar effectively grows and gains health as red health regenerates.

I'd be glad to discuss the normative issue of whether or not solo should be viable. I'd be glad to discuss whether assists' weaknesses out weigh their strength as both of those are meaningful and up for debate. These number games, however, are not. Perhaps you think it is meaningless? A statement which still requires justification.

@AmagicalFishy
Here are the charts for the percentages. It is strictly mathematical (how much health/damage and net health) and doesn't take red health/double snaps, assist type/optimization, etc. into account. It is a solid starting place though.
 
Rynozilla said:
This thread slowly swerving from "What are the pros and cons of each respectively?" to "Lifebars: The Thread"....

Aren't they strongly related? Ignoring any benefit of assists, solo, duo, and trio all have different life and damages which at a minimum provides a basis for the question of solo v duo v trio. No?
 
Spencer said:
Aren't they strongly related? Ignoring any benefit of assists, solo, duo, and trio all have different life and damages which at a minimum provides a basis for the question of solo v duo v trio. No?
Oh, no, you're right. I just think there're a bit too many posts about just that, so far. But don't mind me, just gonna waltz on out of here...
 
No, you're right. It is easy to get bogged down in the numbers as they are so concrete and readily available. As Isa ever politely pointed out, I have a habit of doing just that.

The rest of it is difficult to talk about though. Exactly how much benefit does Hornet Bomber give over Updo? How much benefit does having access to a lock down assist give relative to not having any assist at all? What's the net disadvantage present due to the threat of a Happy Birthday? These things are all very, very difficult to qualify.
 
If -on basic- a duo character has the same life of a trio character it wouldn't make much sense for duos to even be avaible. Sure this game is made to be played in teams so the more the better but it still has to be balanced for every option.
 
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Spencer said:
Exactly how much benefit does Hornet Bomber give over Updo?
Having both available is hugely beneficial, since they do different things.
How much benefit does having access to a lock down assist give relative to not having any assist at all?
It multiplies the number of mixups someone has to guess right on by at least 2. You basically just made someone half as likely to block your pressure correctly. That's pretty huge.
What's the net disadvantage present due to the threat of a Happy Birthday?
Literally zero, since a "team" player always has the option of not calling assist, which makes a HB impossible. Having assists can only ever be a benefit for this reason.
 
I like Duo because if you win neutral or make a good read you can almost instantly kill your opponent before he or she even knows what hit em.

I played Trio because Cerebella/Double couldn't really do this well, and Parasoul/Cerebella/Double is imo a very strong team that's hard to beat at neutral and it let me do stuff like build a bar for my dynamo catheads gimmick. Though tbh I never really liked the damage output, especially in 2v3 and I felt it was too easy to make a mistake and die.

Whichever is stronger, I feel depends on the player/team. Someone playing Painwheel/Double might benefit more by playing Parasoul too, but someone who plays Peacock/Bella would lose peacock damage output if they played trio, and peacock no longer becomes the zoner+damage character, but instead becomes the zoner+meter character, since imo its not really worth using the bar peacock builds, making her overall damage output much weaker.
 
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@Zidiane

Yeah for sure. The last two majors I've watched were UFGT and EVO. I actually don't know how you did. Sorry for the oversight, and if it makes up for it... I'm always rooting for PW > solo > everyone else in a tournament. Now, relevant to the thread, do you feel solo is viable at a competitive level either generally or character specific?

@dekillsage

Agreed, but I think generally speaking trio is going to win out over duo. Peacock/BB for instance is a very specific team, but it works because BB covers all of Pea's assist needs while allowing her to still be scary. I think Pea is largely the exception though, but I could be wrong since Noah's was rocking a duo last I knew and doing pretty well.

Edited to add that sometime it does feel like Solo beats Duo which beats Trio which beats Solo though.
 
This is the "duo vs trio" thread. Not sure how much I can talk about solos without getting yelled at. But there is totally footage different places of me beating good people who are using teams. Take that as you will.
 
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Zidiane said:
This is the "duo vs trio" thread. Not sure how much I can talk about solos without getting yelled at. But there is totally footage different places of me beating good people who are using teams. Take that as you will.
Yup, I can confirm that I perfected Zid in a "tournament" match last Friday, the first night of me being back from my 4 month break



<3
:3
 
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chickenwithtie said:
If solos weren't good people wouldn't complain Solobella being OP or some shit, ya know

Well that's not entirely true. People can and do complain about everything. Not to mention that people often make a special exception for Bella in the "is solo viable argument" (whether that is fair or not is another conversation).

I think something which is at least a little bit more scientific is top 8 tournament representation. Solo consists of Zid. Duo consists of Fox, Noah, MikeZ (probably someone else that I'm just overlooking). Trio consists of everyone else.

In any case, I'm going to bow out of the solo conversation. Zid is right that this is the duo v trio thread. I was paying more attention to the poll which includes solos.
 
One thing that's barely been hit on, but is a huge consideration in my mind is the time and effort required to master additional characters. If two players spend let's say 200 hours mastering their teams, the duo user will have devoted about 100 to each character while the trio player will have about 67 per character. This is probably less of an issue for top level players, but shouldn't be entirely disregarded because adding the character you're third best with diminishes the other characters' stats.

Tournament results seem to favor trios, at least at the highest level of play, but I don't think there's a one size fits all answer here. I wouldn't feel comfortable adding a third right now; I couldn't work enough play time into my schedule to get better with anyone (at least not until Winter Break) and there are already a ton of things that I'm working on with just these two.
 
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