If your Fes Setsuna is not maxed out, please replace her in your guest list with Fes Mari or Circus Ruby or Blu Amor Umi.

Or: How to pick the ideal SIFAS guest for maximizing your Voltage (especially for event song rankings) — a thread.

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The ideal maxed Fes Setsuna would give a total boost to your main subunit of 7% + (2% x 4 skills) = 15%.

A Fes Mari with the same inspiration skills at LB4 would give a total boost of only 14.5%.

Despite this, you should pick Mari as a guest. Why?

The key is their active live skill.

Fes Setsuna has a pretty terrible one where you get 10% of her Appeal as Voltage when you switch subunits. While this can give very nice boosts since her Appeal is so high, are you really going to be switching out of your main unit that often?

Mari, on the other hand, has a chance to give a 5% boost to EVERYONE (not just your main subunit) at the start of the live! So if Mari’s skill activates, (using the previous mentioned LB4 Mari) you’ll get a total boost of 19.5%, making her superior to the 15% from MLB Setsuna!

The other cards with the same skill are Circus Ruby and Blu Amor Umi. They’re not Fes cards so they miss out on an extra 2% inspiration skill boost in an ideal setup, but their 5% appeal boost skill at the start of the live (if it activates) definitely makes up for it.

This event Honoka also has the same skill, but she’s not available on the WW server yet If you have her in JP though, I highly recommend adding her to your team. She happens to also have a passive Appeal+ to All skill, which makes her an incredibly powerful backline card!

The next best guest is Devil Nico, who is identical to Ruby/Umi except her skill activates at the start of AC instead. While you miss out on the boost before an AC starts, this also means you have multiple chances for her skill to activate instead of it being just 30% or nothing.

Other useful guests include cards that have the Appeal+: All passive skill instead of Appeal+: Same Strategy. Top card here is Fes Kanata, who has the same “30% chance to increase base Appeal by 5% at the start of an AC” skill as Nico, and also has an extra inspiration slot.

After Kanata is the well-known OP Initial Kanan UR. Same Appeal+: All passive skill, but her 5% boost activates when you *complete* the AC mission instead of at the start of AC, making the boost a little weaker if you can’t complete ACs quickly. Also, only 3 inspiration slots

Note: this Dia has the same active skill, but her passive is Technique+: Same Attribute, which makes her not so useful.

However, she does have high Appeal, so if you don’t have any better cards it might be worth it to equip her with a bracelet and add her to your backline!

If you can’t find any of the above guests, try Forest Fairy Hanamaru. Her passive is only ideal if your team has a lot of cards that are the same attribute as your center, but she has the same powerful active skill as Nico. She also pairs well with Fes Setsuna as a backliner!

Special note: Coptori is an Appeal+ All card with a unique active skill that boosts Appeal by a 10% for 15 notes. It also has a whopping 50% chance to activate upon using your SP skill, making her more powerful than Kanata/Kanan if you can activate your SP skill often.

Coptori is kinda situational though, since despite the 50% rate her skill only lasts for 15 notes at a time instead of being permanent. Also, if you use your SP skill again before 15 notes, the Appeal increase doesn’t stack and you basically “waste” the boost for a few notes.

Still, since Coptori’s Appeal boost is so big (10% to everyone) and can be activated multiple times, she would probably rank as being better than Kanata/Kanan most of the time. The only scenario where she’d lose is if she consistently failed to activate despite the 50% chance lol

While I’m on the subject of Coptori, despite the lower boost compared to Appeal+: Same Strategy, Appeal+: All cards might be better guests if the song requires constant strategy/subunit switching. Doesn’t apply to the current WWSIFAS event’s ranking songs though (for now...)

Looping back — 70% of the time, a maxed Fes Setsuna (15% appeal boost) will be better than a maxed Ruby/Umi (13%). However, there’s always that 30% chance that Ruby/Umi become 18% — and since you can try as many times as you want for song rankings, I’d say it’s worth the gamble.

Of course, Setsuna isn’t always a bad guest. A MLB Fes Setsuna with the best inspiration skills (7% + 8% = 15%) is better than a LB0 Circus Ruby with the same inspirations (6% + 4% = 10%, +5% with only a 30% chance). But if you’re looking to grind high scores, Setsuna is...

An interesting note: Nico as a guest is potentially better than the girls above her because with Mari/Ruby/Umi/Honoka, the 5% boost will either happen at the start of the live (30% chance) or you get nothing , while Nico can activate in future ACs if you miss out at the 1st AC.

However, in the ideal scenario (which is potentially only 30% of the time, but you can always play the song again) where the activation happens, their boost is higher than Nico’s since you’re getting that sweet, sweet extra 5% Appeal on all the notes before the 1st AC happens.

If you have any of the above cards, have room in your backline, and want to play a game of chance (30%...) on whether or not you’ll get a better score on SIFAS, try them out. You might be surprised by the results!

(Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if it doesn’t work )

tl;dr: Fes Setsuna is not actually the best guest in the game despite being a very powerful card. Circus Ruby still has a place in the current meta.

So if you happen to have a maxed out Mari/Ruby/Umi...please stick her in your guest list and send me a friend request

Addendum — someone asked a very good question about whether this means that you should set one card (e.g. Ruby) in *all* of your guest slots. Please don’t — you can find good guests regardless of the song attribute if you filter the list. Explanation here: https://twitter.com/yujachachacha/status/1291826100461395968

Addendum 2: Forgot to mention Miracle Voyage Shizuku (thanks for the reminder @LikeAleh).

Same skill as Mari, but with a 50% rate! Catch is that it’s a same strategy boost instead of all, which means she’s the best guest if your main strategy team is the same as your SP center.

Addendum 3: @ReverendXil pointed out that the 5% boost actually STACKS ( https://twitter.com/reverendxil/status/1291864704399241217), so:
- LB4 Mari’s boost is actually 20.225% instead of 19.5%
- LB0 Ruby/Umi (1.10 * 1.05 = 1.155) would actually be superior to MLB Setsuna (1.15)...as long as the skill procs.

Insights are key though. For example, here’s my LB0 Ruby.

Her boost would be 6% (Passive) + 3% (Insights) = 9%, or a 1.09 multiplier. If her Show Skill activates, her boost is 1.09 x 1.05 (5%) = 1.1445 or 14.45%. This is lower than the ideal Setsuna (15%), plus only procs 30%...

So I’m gonna go off-topic here and say FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP USING GOLD/RAINBOW INSIGHT SKILLS!

Imagine if the card in this pic had 30K Appeal — OMG that’s 12K Voltage! ...once. At the start of the live. With only a 30% chance. And I doubt your cards have 30K Appeal

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For most, the ideal Insight is the Passive (blue corner) Appeal+. This comes in the forms of All, Group (everyone but the equipped card), Strategy, Year (1st/2nd/3rd), and School (e.g. μ’s/Aqours/Niji). It’ll either be 1% (regular) or 2% (bronze rarity).

No other conditions.

Despite the skill looking like low-rarity trash, Appeal+ Passive Insights boost your cards’ base Appeal, which means more Voltage for every tap in the song and every SP skill activation (and also more SP gauge gain if you’re running bracelets in your backline ).

So yeah, PSA.

Back on topic — now that we know the 5% Appeal boost stacks by multiplying instead of just adding on to the base boosts, take some time to re-evaluate your guests and their support skills.

(And of course, this wonderful boost is only wonderful IF IT ACTIVATES. 30% IS A LIE...)

Last note (hopefully): There are actually even more Passive Appeal+ Insight skills than the ones I listed (for example, Appeal+: Same Attribute), but I ran out of room. Most people focus on getting the bronze (2% instead of the usual 1%) Appeal+: Same Strategy skill anyway...