Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 36

[Talaysen]

Also, sorry about that, Tal.  Guess my interpretation of what I was looking at was wrong, then.

Not everything, just that part.  Lady's counter only hits spells you cast in-game.  Something that's never cast and just innate (like... maybe Hilda's bat form if you want to stretch things a little) don't get touched.  Scream is something that is cast, so I'd agree with Lost Progress smacking that.

This is all irrelevant anyways, but I just wanted to say it.

[Excal]

Team Miasmacloud | Terra, VP2 Lenneth, FFT Chemist, PC Seifer
[Floor 5b]
Team Miasma vs. Lich Warren  -  He'd be a threat if he weren't so frail.
Team Miasma vs. FFT Cloud and FFT:LW Argath - Argath isn't a threat, and Cloud can't do enough to get past Nomalise and the Chemist.
Team Miasma vs. VP2 Brahms, VP2 Hrist and VP2 Lenneth - I...  think I'll go against here.  Just a little too much offense, and I don't recall Terra being that exceptional on attack at this point.
Team Miasma vs. Lufia 3 Gades - Don't know him well enough, so I'll go with the others.
Team Miasma vs. Narshe Kefka - Fast and hits like a truck.  But doesn't matter against this much healing.

Team Magic Fanatic| Tir, Riou, Lilka, Lucia, Mint
[Floor 3b]
*All ST is MT
Team Magic vs. Eirika - Deadly Fingertips = Win
Team Magic vs. FFT Time Mage, FFT Wizard, FFT Priest and FFT Monk - Hamedo means spells.  Tir doesn't have spells yet except for ID, Riou does, bu they're holy.  And Team FFT has a piece of equipment that blocks ID and absorbs Holy damage.  Lucia, so far as I can tell needs the rest of her team to be good, so Magic is really relying on Lilka to be good.  Quick I don't see as affecting anyone on turn one, and there's a good argument she goes before Tir/Riou which means hoping to get Reflect up is a poor hope on her part.  Not that it matters, because two Monk Physicals + Time Mage stick beat means a dead Lilka/Mint, and once Lilka's down, this fight is over.  So, even getting reflect up doesn't win this thing.

Team Magic vs. Hellion and Luc - Eh, Luc does have good ID chances on that one spell of his.  Of course, this is still a fight since Tir/Riou can reliably hurt him.
Team Magic vs. Lilka, Yulie and Emma - Honestly, this is the kind of fight Magic was designed for, so I can see him doing it here, easily.
Team Magic vs. Alma, Ramza and Zalbag - And back to facing the ID immune, if not quite so annoying to hit.  Of course, I don't see Scream or stat ups as being dispellable by average dispel effects, and Alma going after Lilka with a Quick that won't be effective right away.  Which means MBarrier has a round to work its magic.  Along with Speed Ruin, very likely to hit and going to screw over Magic's day in the worst possible way.  He doesn't have the offense to blitz, and I'm not sure anyone is defensive enough to tank this team.  Of course, this is all pointless since he doesn't even make it this far.


Team Lady Ashe | Raquel, Arnaud, Guv, Yulie, Ricardo
[Floor 1]
Team vs. Rufus and Reno - I respect Rufus, really I do.  And Reno has Pyramid.  That said, Yulie is a fast healer, and Arnaud is fast and can keep Yulie out of pyramid.  So, that settles this easily enough.
Team vs. Shuckle, Fred (S3) and Cecil - Shuckle's defenses mean nothing to Raquel SMASH!  Neither to Fred's or Cecil's for that matter.
Team vs. Alice and FFT Priest - Yeah, Yulie's got running out of healing juice just yet.
Team vs. Solt, Peppor, Alenia, Zahhak and Miluda - Enter the Boomerang.
Team vs. Lundgren, Zalmo1 and Graham Clay - Oooo, Lundgren, plus Raise2, plus...  uhh...  does Clay add anything here?  Regardless, only really Raquel and Arnaud can hurt Lundgren, and he'll do a number on Raquel.  Enough to take her out?  If she attacks him before Guv or Yulie can hurt him, definatly.  Odds are, Guv will take him out by Tensioning up and then unleashing a huge beat down that way (assuming you even let him attack Guv while he's tensing, Yulie fixes all of those issues handily, and he's NOT doubling Guv).  So the team takes down Zalmo, then Cray and after that, it's the amazing WonderGuv to the rescue since...  yeah, I'm not sure even Raquel can tank a Lundgren double.

[Magic Fanatic]

Still on the tangent:

Yeah, I understand what you're saying, I was just thinking (for some reason) that the sword had something similar to initiative (different from Cid himself) that cast Haste on him at the beginning of battle as an initiative action, and then any time it's dispelled, it's reapplied at the cost of 0 CT (basically, a free action; again, different from Cid himself).

...I'm not even sure what made me take that train of thought, though, so I'm totally inclined to agree with you on that point, since I can't access what I was directly thinking when I wrote that.

I'll take any help I can get to make my essay more waterproof.


Still, me actually looking at the battle mechanics guide for FFT, in regards to the Ruin skills specifically, makes me question their usefulness to above-average MDEF...  Hell, even though the 60/70 is the max you can get from the recruitment guild (and some people use that), would I be right for what people take as average Faith and Brave is highly interpretational?  I'll agree with plot characters getting set Brave and Faith values far apart from that, but generics...  I don't think I can be as nice, considering that the 60/70 perfection character is extremely rare - there's a LOT of variance (like getting weird early with a 30-Faith Chemist in the first battle, I wanna say?).

[Excal]

Eh, it's easy to get a character with the Faith/Brave/Zodiac you want if you have five minutes to burn and a bit of patience.  So assuming appropriate Faith/Brave is easy when it comes to generics.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Not to mention those variants don't matter for this, in the same way that getting speed-blessed Oswins and Str-blessed Guys don't matter for FE averages. You're grasping for straws, and you've been for a long time. Just lay it down, okay? You made a poor choice in the dungeon and paid the price for it. It happens. Plus, it's just a game.

[Magic Fanatic]

If it was anything other than something I considered competitive, then I would've given it up long ago, since I could just go back and try again.  Now, though?  I don't stand a chance of being able to try again for a LONG time (waiting this long without saying anything was hard enough; 10th to post a team and 21st or 22nd to get in?  Yeah), and I'm almost like the Gensokyo Tengu - I'm just fighting to save face.  If it wasn't me on the chopping block, then I'd be far less persistent.

I'm just making arguments I believe hold water.  If you wanna poke holes in it, sure.  I still think they work.


Still, I'm pretty sure the variants do matter.  What faith they have affects what kind of damage they put out, so you take 70 Faith (that's the average right now, right?), yeah.  IF you take 20 Faith less as an average, they lose about...  29% of their power, I think (considering that 5/7 is about 71%)?  About 25% if you adjust for averages?

Besides, in my opinion, it's...  Way too hard to adjust for averages if you use 60 or 70 as the Faith average.  I'm not quite sure, but that punishes games with above-average magic damage, I think (I dunno, I'm confusing myself on the numbers somewhere.  It's either MATK or MDEF, I'm not all entirely sure).

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

No, what I mean is that random, impossible to jot down into consistency variance on character generation doesn't matter for averages. Which may be your confusion.

[Magic Fanatic]

...Isn't it, though?  Just assuming best case scenarios on stats on a RANDOMLY GENERATED character and calling it average kinda strikes me as...  Wrong.  I mean, if the tester took something like 50 or 100 different randomly generated characters, jotted down their Brave and Faith on recruitment, and then took the average of all that and it was the numbers displayed, I'd be less worried, but as is...  It just looks weird to me, is all.

[Talaysen]

If you use lower Faith, only the magic users lose damage, not everyone.  So they would do less damage compared to average.  And then physical users would do more damage compared to average.

[Excal]

It's also the fact that it doesn't really represent in game, since if you're going to make a mage, then you raise faith, and you recruit the people with high base faith.  And getting someone with 65+ Faith isn't hard.  Just as you'd get a pure melee character and they'd start with around 30 Faith.  The main reason the Monk isn't godly here is because I'm not sure if he'd be low faith as usual, or high faith to get healing since he doesn't have a chemist here like he would in game.  (Odds are saying no to that, he'd stay low faith as dungeon battles very rarely involve the enemy having time to make healing count)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Oh, by the way, Magic: assuming both Hamedos hit and Lilka casts Reflect (since she goes last out of Riou/Tir/Lilka)? The enemies go "thanks for all the fish" and kill you with STAFF THWACKS. Lilka is nearly dead, and so is Lucia. And even one or two FFT mage physicals will be enough to kill Lilka by then (she got hit by two physicals, after all, and nobody healed, and the FFTers are going before Mint), let alone accompanied by a Monk physical. And, as soon as Lilka dies, your team is hopelessly lost, since you have no other reviver. And that's assuming -only Lilka dies-, odds are your other healer and Lucia bite it too. So, um. No, it's not really happening in any way.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just to chime in on FFT mechanics...

Re the generic stat topic,

The generics have 70 Brave because eh, why not. Makes reaction abilities come up more, makes Monk physical suck less, both strike me as viable in the DL. (This is the max that recruited generics get. You can get lucky with up to 74 from the the initial crew, but not reliably.)

Faith is either 70 (max) or 60 (average) depending on what the PC in question wants. Faith could be dropped as low as 40 if you wanted, but as I said in the topic, I don't like the idea of saying "all generic non-mages are magic tanks!" so I don't go with that.

Obviously you can form your own judgements here if you'd rather. Seems a bit harsh on the mages to make them average faith when you can so easily get well above that in-game, though; it really hoses their damage and effectiveness compared to what you'd see in-game.

[hinode]

Oh, by the way, Magic: assuming both Hamedos hit and Lilka casts Reflect (since she goes last out of Riou/Tir/Lilka)? The enemies go "thanks for all the fish" and kill you with STAFF THWACKS. Lilka is nearly dead, and so is Lucia. And even one or two FFT mage physicals will be enough to kill Lilka by then (she got hit by two physicals, after all, and nobody healed, and the FFTers are going before Mint), let alone accompanied by a Monk physical. And, as soon as Lilka dies, your team is hopelessly lost, since you have no other reviver. And that's assuming -only Lilka dies-, odds are your other healer and Lucia bite it too. So, um. No, it's not really happening in any way.

Haven't read Magic's last mega-long post, but Meteor ignores reflect anyways, as do the crappy L4 elementals.  Also, Priest can get Reflect up before Flare resolves due to being faster, so you could argue for bouncing it off the PCs onto the enemies... though it's FFT Reflect, so that's a dubious argument.

[Clear Tranquil]

Wait when did this topic become undead?

Anyway this means I can do something that I forgot about .... which is ... vote on Mia's team!

Team Mia vs Dungeon - Neph claims another victim ;p  No to allowing PC Seifer limits that he can't use as a PC in game. Thus he's becoming outdated now. Sure he still has his speed and perhaps his strength ... but with just physical attacks and No Mercy to rely on ... bah. There's the possibly that Terra could fry Brahms even with a low level magic spell given her elite magical prowess and Brahms' awful magic defence but ... the other Lenneth can revive and heal as well whilst Hrist smashes things. Mia Lenneth may get tied up in trying to keep her party alive so there goes the main offence. Don't know what Chemist can do but not getting killed has to be part of it.

**

Also are we *sure* Lucia is slower than Priest/ess? Back on my old SHC dungeon reference file both Yuri and Lucia had 30 speed at L22 and L24 (with Lucia being the higher level) As I've said before Lucia (and Ana) is not SHC's Slow - that's Joe and Gep. This is telling in game turn order where Lucia will still get a turn before the enemies (and thus be able to participate easier in any combos the player is setting up) whereas Joe and Gep won't~ So I especially don't think Gale or Quickened Lucia is slow at all~

Learning a lot from this topic though like what Monk's Hamedo is and what it does >.>

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Priest is above average speed, SH2 Yuri is average. If your Lucia had the same speed as Yuri, then she was average, thus slower than Priest. And, in DL topic levels, she is clearly below average speed, so.