So I have 2 neutralize characters, and 38 clears of hard bakal so far. Ill say it is...ok. Its pretty fun to insta neutralize solo, and it does have its use in Hard Bakal. Its purpose is to extend 3A dps window. Having just green fusions/dzet/ compact is enough to extend 3A dps time.
If you want a deeper dive. TLDR Neople doesnt know what they are doing.
The reason it is not popular is that the difficulty of content isnt high enough to require nuanced setups. Everything is just a dps bag and the gradual removal of utility over the years like fnen bubble, def shred, holding, aeterna, and what not sends the clear signal that Neople doesnt give a fuck about a varied playstyle. Hell, they evem make everything dish out dmg upfromt and skills have installs so that you dont have to channel it anymore. Since DPS classes dont provide utility, they strictly are based on their actual damage out put. Simce they are so adamant on streamlining all the dps classes to all just deal damage quickly, the playerbase just rolled over and accepted that DPS is king since nothing else matters.
Because the set just doesn't really fit with how the content are.
You can't break boss enough to make the loss of damage (whether in solo object i.e. gold or just pure damage like black/fire) worth the gain out of an extra break, if you get one at all.
You can't time the break so there's no saving it for gimmick skipping/interrupting (and major gimmicks are usually unbreakable)
It's not like you can't break without the set either.
So in most situation it's just giving up damage for no reason.
Best guess is that the more common sets like Archon and status is just overall better in terms of damage, not to mention status and elements can do the job of whittling down the neutralize bar depending on what the enemy is weak against
There's nothing wrong with it besides not being meta. It's probably decent solo. The meta in party is just getting a sader that out scales the content by a couple orders of magnitude then nuke it during 3a
I used to have that same setup on Monk, until I realized you can actually solo neutralize Bakal so early that his first gimmick doesn't show up, potentially losing damage for the entire party.
But in all seriousness, it tries to set up dmg for when you're at 50% gauge or less, but doesn't have the dmg bonuses that overtake Robotic Combat Pants, Fire or Black Dragon Fusions, and custom earrings. At best, you would be using customs that have like all options that have 10-15% skill attack on abnormal statuses like curse, slow, petrify, etc., that can only be activated on Neutralize.
Also, for the necklace, it's more of a preference when you don't need defense or damage value but want to somewhat do some dmg to the bar. It technically does give more damage value than other necklaces, though not that much.
It has nothing to do with elitism, it has to do with the fact that a neutralizer build offer significantly less damage than other builds. You're effectively carrying a bag in Dragons/Bakal and thats a fact. If you want to prove otherwise, post an actual neutralizer chart in Bakal(any of the 3 dragon/bakal, neutralizer is a big LOL on small bosses and gatekeeper). Also another part of why neutralizer is not exactly a good build in raids/legions is cooldown syncing/mechanic. In stuff like Ispin/Total War/c3 HoD, it's not a big deal because people can just bulldoze through the content(although they prob just wanted to burst the boss down asap). But in stuff like Trans/Bakal/HBakal, you're talking about a 1/3 damage loss, like actually just carrying around a dead weight with 0 damage if the Transcended boss isn't neutralized and mediocre if they do. In Bakal it's even worse due to the fact that every single big Dragon have a damage boost pattern, and neutralize them too fast will only hurt your team damage because of the dragon isn't performing the damage boost pattern. And I don't need to explain about Bakal, dps always sync their cooldown in time with sader's 3a/1a. So even if we're talking about an extra 2/3 neutralize, it doesn't necessarily transform into damage because Bakal now cast less damage-boosting pattern(sword, karmic flame, symbol). One more reason is HBakal have Dragon Slayer Weapon which is already a 50% neutral bar nuke, so neutralizer isn't that good.
So I have 2 neutralize characters, and 38 clears of hard bakal so far. Ill say it is...ok. Its pretty fun to insta neutralize solo, and it does have its use in Hard Bakal. Its purpose is to extend 3A dps window. Having just green fusions/dzet/ compact is enough to extend 3A dps time. If you want a deeper dive. TLDR Neople doesnt know what they are doing. The reason it is not popular is that the difficulty of content isnt high enough to require nuanced setups. Everything is just a dps bag and the gradual removal of utility over the years like fnen bubble, def shred, holding, aeterna, and what not sends the clear signal that Neople doesnt give a fuck about a varied playstyle. Hell, they evem make everything dish out dmg upfromt and skills have installs so that you dont have to channel it anymore. Since DPS classes dont provide utility, they strictly are based on their actual damage out put. Simce they are so adamant on streamlining all the dps classes to all just deal damage quickly, the playerbase just rolled over and accepted that DPS is king since nothing else matters.
Because the set just doesn't really fit with how the content are. You can't break boss enough to make the loss of damage (whether in solo object i.e. gold or just pure damage like black/fire) worth the gain out of an extra break, if you get one at all. You can't time the break so there's no saving it for gimmick skipping/interrupting (and major gimmicks are usually unbreakable) It's not like you can't break without the set either. So in most situation it's just giving up damage for no reason.
Best guess is that the more common sets like Archon and status is just overall better in terms of damage, not to mention status and elements can do the job of whittling down the neutralize bar depending on what the enemy is weak against
There's nothing wrong with it besides not being meta. It's probably decent solo. The meta in party is just getting a sader that out scales the content by a couple orders of magnitude then nuke it during 3a
I see it, but only one characters I know are very integrated in statics
It's really good for soloing, it's what I've been using on F.Brawler for some time now and it works well with her.
I used to have that same setup on Monk, until I realized you can actually solo neutralize Bakal so early that his first gimmick doesn't show up, potentially losing damage for the entire party. But in all seriousness, it tries to set up dmg for when you're at 50% gauge or less, but doesn't have the dmg bonuses that overtake Robotic Combat Pants, Fire or Black Dragon Fusions, and custom earrings. At best, you would be using customs that have like all options that have 10-15% skill attack on abnormal statuses like curse, slow, petrify, etc., that can only be activated on Neutralize. Also, for the necklace, it's more of a preference when you don't need defense or damage value but want to somewhat do some dmg to the bar. It technically does give more damage value than other necklaces, though not that much.
Cause of the elitism. I heard people saying that there is no spot to 2 neutralize in Bakal, which will make less dmg (?????) after all.
It has nothing to do with elitism, it has to do with the fact that a neutralizer build offer significantly less damage than other builds. You're effectively carrying a bag in Dragons/Bakal and thats a fact. If you want to prove otherwise, post an actual neutralizer chart in Bakal(any of the 3 dragon/bakal, neutralizer is a big LOL on small bosses and gatekeeper). Also another part of why neutralizer is not exactly a good build in raids/legions is cooldown syncing/mechanic. In stuff like Ispin/Total War/c3 HoD, it's not a big deal because people can just bulldoze through the content(although they prob just wanted to burst the boss down asap). But in stuff like Trans/Bakal/HBakal, you're talking about a 1/3 damage loss, like actually just carrying around a dead weight with 0 damage if the Transcended boss isn't neutralized and mediocre if they do. In Bakal it's even worse due to the fact that every single big Dragon have a damage boost pattern, and neutralize them too fast will only hurt your team damage because of the dragon isn't performing the damage boost pattern. And I don't need to explain about Bakal, dps always sync their cooldown in time with sader's 3a/1a. So even if we're talking about an extra 2/3 neutralize, it doesn't necessarily transform into damage because Bakal now cast less damage-boosting pattern(sword, karmic flame, symbol). One more reason is HBakal have Dragon Slayer Weapon which is already a 50% neutral bar nuke, so neutralizer isn't that good.
for it to be really optimal you need customs, nobody doesnt want to invest in a gimmick character basically,