Introduction
After some screwiness with the NA stream a couple weeks ago, it turns out that we're getting the fairly anticipated FMA collab after all. What a nice surprise! At first this might appear to be a pretty decent machine; with four diamond rolls among just ten cards total, the odds of pulling something decent must be at least passable, right?
Well, I wouldn't fault anyone for assuming that, but sadly it's not quite how GungHo's rates work. As more and more official rates become revealed, we're getting a better look at how they're actually assigned. It appears that higher rarity rolls are assigned whatever low rate GungHo deems appropriate (typically around 2% for the highest rarity in a collab) and then the rest is simply filled in with the lowest rarity cards.
This isn't inherently bad; it's actually kind of nice if a machine has a diversity of reasonably good low rarity cards, for instance. Unfortunately, FMA only has four diamond rolls, meaning that the non-diamond rate is a massive 90%. To make things worse, the low-tier rolls all push the lower end of mediocrity and are even more useless in dupes. If you specifically want one of the six five-star cards (Scar in particular is pretty nice for farming) this can be sort of nice, but the average value of this machine is, to put it bluntly, poor. It's slightly cruel to make a machine this top-heavy without even a diversity of low-star cards.
It's not all bad, though; if you do manage to brave the awful rates, Edward is quite the prize. Our short Elric brother stands out as one of today's best leaders. None of the other diamonds are quite in his league, though they do all have their uses. I'll personally be tossing in a few rolls regardless since I'm a fan of the franchise. This should really be the only reason for most players to roll this machine anyways.
After some screwiness with the NA stream a couple weeks ago, it turns out that we're getting the fairly anticipated FMA collab after all. What a nice surprise! At first this might appear to be a pretty decent machine; with four diamond rolls among just ten cards total, the odds of pulling something decent must be at least passable, right?
Well, I wouldn't fault anyone for assuming that, but sadly it's not quite how GungHo's rates work. As more and more official rates become revealed, we're getting a better look at how they're actually assigned. It appears that higher rarity rolls are assigned whatever low rate GungHo deems appropriate (typically around 2% for the highest rarity in a collab) and then the rest is simply filled in with the lowest rarity cards.
This isn't inherently bad; it's actually kind of nice if a machine has a diversity of reasonably good low rarity cards, for instance. Unfortunately, FMA only has four diamond rolls, meaning that the non-diamond rate is a massive 90%. To make things worse, the low-tier rolls all push the lower end of mediocrity and are even more useless in dupes. If you specifically want one of the six five-star cards (Scar in particular is pretty nice for farming) this can be sort of nice, but the average value of this machine is, to put it bluntly, poor. It's slightly cruel to make a machine this top-heavy without even a diversity of low-star cards.
It's not all bad, though; if you do manage to brave the awful rates, Edward is quite the prize. Our short Elric brother stands out as one of today's best leaders. None of the other diamonds are quite in his league, though they do all have their uses. I'll personally be tossing in a few rolls regardless since I'm a fan of the franchise. This should really be the only reason for most players to roll this machine anyways.
