Silver and Blood rate-up banners: the pity pull is not the rate-up unit
The pull-60 guarantee hands you an S-tier drawn evenly from 42 units, not the one on the banner. Expect about 50 pulls for the rate-up unit, and 30% of players still lack it when the guarantee lands.
On a Silver and Blood rate-up banner, the unit on the poster is 2% per pull, and the guarantee at pull 60 does not change that. It forces an S-tier, but draws it evenly from 42 units, so it is the rate-up unit only 2.4% of the time. Expect about 50 pulls for the unit you actually wanted.
The odds on one pull
Every pull is an S-tier 4% of the time, an A-tier 43% and a B-tier 53%. On an ordinary rate-up banner, 50% of those S-tier results are the rate-up unit, which is where its 2% per pull comes from. The rest are spread across the other S-tier units.
What the pity pull really does
If the first 59 pulls after an S-tier all miss, pull 60 forces one. Two things make it weaker than it sounds. First, it rarely fires: with a 4% S rate, only about 9% of stretches between S-tiers last that long before an S turns up on its own. An S arrives every 22.8 pulls on average. Second, when it does fire, the S it hands you comes from the whole 42-unit pool, not from the banner. The rate-up's 50% share does not apply to it.
The pity pull guarantees an S-tier. It does not guarantee the S-tier you are pulling for.
How many pulls the rate-up unit takes
Putting the natural rate and the pity pull together gives the real distribution for one copy of the rate-up unit on an ordinary banner:
| Measure | Pulls |
|---|---|
| Half of players have it by | 35 |
| Average | 50 |
| Nine in ten have it by | 114 |
The average sits well above the median because of an unlucky tail. At pull 60, where the guarantee sits, 30% of players still do not have the rate-up unit. At pull 120, 9% still do not. There is no ceiling on an ordinary banner: every pull is another 2% roll.
The banners that do guarantee the unit
Not every rate-up banner works that way. Of the rate-up banners listed, 16 units ran on the ordinary rules above, and 4 ran on a different deal:
| Banner type | Rate-up per pull | S-tier forced at | Rate-up unit guaranteed at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary rate-up | 2% | 60 | — |
| Guaranteed rate-up | 1% | 60 | 120 |
The guaranteed banners halve the rate-up share to 25% of S-tier results, so the unit is 1% per pull, but they promise it by pull 120. That is a real trade. On an ordinary banner, 9% of players are still without the unit at pull 120. On a guaranteed banner, nobody is. If you can only afford to plan for the worst case, the guaranteed banner is the one you can plan around. If you are hoping to get lucky early, the ordinary banner's doubled rate is the better bet.
Every banner, with its rate-up unit, rates and guarantee, is on the banners page. The full tier rates are on the pull rates page.