In-Depth Study of Round Up

In-Depth Study of Round Up

It's not as fancy as I'm trying to make it look like


I've been really enjoying mob farming as a samurai lately and I decided to find out more about the skill Round Up. I didn't intend to share this research here since I assume everyone knows everything about it already thru Japanese blogs, personal experience, etc., but I decided to do it anyway XD if it is unnecessary, please lmk via pm so I could delete the thread.


Basic Information

To start off, we have its skill description:



It is a self buff of 10 mins and lets you do AoE damage when you kill a monster. This means that there is no AoE effect until the monster is killed by you.

The AoE works with any weapon and triggers on:
1) Auto attacks (critical and normal damage)
2) Active Samurai skills (tested on Issen and FS)
3) Active extra skills (tested on Vampire Blow [pet], Mana Wave [crysta] and Assault [crysta])


The AoE does not trigger on:
1) Damage null counters (tested on Genius)
2) Magic counters (tested on Freesia Caim II)
3) Reflect (tested on Present Rod)
4) Tsubame Gaeshi (with or without Zanshin)

*Note: I have not tried it on melee counters like Solua Coat but I assume it also would not work


The AoE is centered on your main target with a range similar to Nemesis, and hits a maximum of 3 targets. Range+/- does not seem to affect it.

Each time the AoE triggers, it consumes 5% of your MaxMP, but never lower than 50 MP. Having a MaxMP of 1,020 or higher would result in higher MP drain. Skill and items that affect MP cost do not affect the AoE trigger, but affect the buff. If your current MP is less than 5% of your MaxMP, the AoE will still trigger and cost no MP, but the buff will be gone.

The damage that gets distributed is equal to the last damage that you do and is not affected by autoskills. For example, if your last attack was an auto attack of 20k damage, with a Muramasa auto of 40k, your AoE damage would be 20k and will not count the Muramasa autoskill.


Mob-Farming

Mob-farming with Round Up can be relaxing or extremely fast-paced (or somewhere in between). I've listed below the kill speeds along with their pros and cons, all of them measured with a good chain spawn set up.

1) Shippu + Auto Attack
- If you know how to chain spawn (and you should), with a good setup, you'll be killing approximately 3 mobs every second (or 1 stack in 33 seconds) for as long as you can hold on.

Pros
a) fastest method of farming mobs (excluding high HP mobs that we can't 2-shot)
b) HP absorb items are not too important because you're killing mobs faster than they can retaliate

Cons
a) hard to maintain due to human error, non-crits, and device and network problems
b) consumes 100 MP/sec
c) a double damage Special Support buff can ruin chain spawn


2) Skill Spam
- this method works better for higher/lower HP mobs that we can't one/two-shot via normal attack. Its kill speed is around 3 kills/2 sec (or 1 stack in 66 seconds)

Pros
a) works well on high HP mobs via Issen spam, or very low HP mobs via Mana Wave spam
b) paralysis has very little effect

Cons
a) fast mobs have time to retaliate and can inflict status ailments such as blind and stun
b) consumes 114 MP/sec with Issen Lv3
c) needs HP pots (except Vampire Blow spam)
d) non-crits can ruin chain spawn


3) Shippu + Auto Attack V2: Safe Mode
- same method as the first one, but you won't be tapping mobs. Instead, when you attack, you move the movement pad a little and repeat. Kill speed is approximately 3 kills/2-4 sec (or an average of 1 stack in 99 seconds) depending on the mob's ASPD

Pros
a) Special Support and non-crits will not ruin spawn
b) consumes only an average of 33 MP/sec
c) I thought the name is cool

Cons
a) kill speed can be decent or slow depending on the mob
b) mobs can retaliate


4) Auto Attack + AFK
- this is when you set up a chain spawn and afk. Your kill speed with this method is approximately 3 mobs every 5-6 sec (or 1 stack in 165-198 seconds). Using Shippu here helps, but not to a significant degree

Pros
a) afk
b) consumes only 16-20 MP/sec

Cons
a) depending on the mob, there might be problems with maintaining kill speed (stun, blind, etc.) or survival (hard-hitting mobs)
b) slowest method
c) aggressive mobs might ruin chain spawn
d) you might miss your crush confessing to you cuz you're afk


Dealing with Non-Crits and Double Damage Special Support
I'm sure we've all been there: chain spawning at supersonic speed and a non-crit attack/double damage Special Support buff makes you commit errors that would scar you for life. I've thought of some ways to help deal with it:

1) wait for AoE animation before tapping the next mob, but this will decrease kill speed and doesn't really address the double damage problem
2) use a customized set where a non-crit would still 2 shot, but crits aren't strong enough to one shot the mob. One ofthe problems are secured with this method, but you still have to deal with the double damage buff.
3) use a customized set where a crit would do around 51% of the target's MaxHP. This solves the double damage buff problem, but non-crits can still be lethal.
4) use farming methods 3 or 4 above, but that would decrease kill speed significantly
5) tp to town when you realize you've made a mistake, but you haven't ruined your spawn yet
6) improve your reaction time lol


Dealing with MP Consumption
Now we all know that Samurais have an abysmal amount of MP (except for INT builds). That said, it actually works better for us when mob farming since it keeps our pot consumption to a minimum. Still, our MP consumption is pretty high when we're chain spawning at 3 mobs/sec and Samurais do not have any natural way to recover MP at the same rate, but there are solutions. I came upon this thread and this thread and got ideas on countering the MP problem:

1) Use MP pots (obviously :v), preferrably utilizing the Auto Item feature [afk farm ftw]
2) Use item buffs that recover MP (see threads linked in paragraph above)
3) Increase your Item Recovery
4) Decrease your Item Delay
5) Seek the assistance of a class that can replenish MP
6) Use items with MP recovery autoskills (Kotetsu[?], Lily Ring, etc.)
7) Use -MPC items when spamming Issen
8) All of the above


Dealing with High MP
There will be dreaded days when we'll get an INT fortune and it gives us 2k+ MP without our MP set. The solutions are obvious, but I'll put it here anyway in case of amnesia

1) use -MaxMP items
2) use a Dispel Card and hope you won't get another INT fortune
3) don't use fortune cards
4) suicide, if in case the increase in MaxMP is due to outside buffs like Divine Blessing
5) don't play today
6) switch builds


Dealing with Low HP Mobs
I'm looking at you, mobs before Sofya. I initially thought it was impossible to chain spawn mobs with HP below 500, but with a little research and testing I was able to find some stuff that helps:

1) use melee to [element] -100% items to decrease your damage to around 300. The problem however is that Stavros is the only item that helps against light element mobs, and it only gives you -50%. Also, there are mobs with even less HP, so this isn't a fool-proof thing.
2) use -ATK (like Toy Sword) and -critical damage (like Boss Claymore) items to decrease your damage. While this works on all elements, you still can't kill anything with an HP below 300.
3) remember when you created your character and the game asks us if we would like to use a sword, a bow or a rod? PICK THE ROD FOR A FREE MANA WAVE XTAL (they removed this from the tutorial eue). Use -MATK items (if you have DEX already or you're an INT build) and spam Mana Wave. Round Up surprisingly works with it and would help immensely with low level prod and farming nub 2s items.


That covers just about everything I know about Round Up.