Season 48, Week 3 - Tentacle hentai Les Yay in Godlike. Look away.

[SnowFire]

Oh, wait, that's what this was about?  Er.  Well, to clarify, obviously - just like, uh, every other debate in the RPGDL - "absolutely" was a random adjective I threw in without all that much thinking and only means "absolutely in my not-so-humble opinion which others are under no obligation to share."  To my knowledge nobody tries to boss around how others vote, but plenty try to convince others.  Which is the point.  Yeesh, I hope that nobody assumes that to be true, ever.

Anyway, back to the debate.  Well, you can justify a lot by argument A, that "Game X's enemies fail, so you can get away with this strategy."  Sure, there are various cute completionist advantages you can get by not using HP+ materia, but you're still handicapping yourself overall; faster limit gain isn't as good as "can't really die."  I did replay FF7 without HP+ or MP+ materia, and Disc 2 and 3 were considerably more difficult, since enemy damage suddenly didn't as fail as hard.  This is salutary for game balance and enjoyment, but, well, still not a "standard" playthrough in my book.

[Ultradude]

Godlike

Chris Lightfellow (S3) vs Yuri Volte Hyuga (SHs) - SH1 isn't even a fight.
Patriarch Sergius (XS2) vs Sephiroth (FF7) - Ahahaha

Middle

Fred Maximilian (S3) vs Aigis (P3) - FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. Lightning. Kill it.

Light

Melody Vilente (WA3) vs Titania (FE9) - Wow.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Anyway, back to the debate.  Well, you can justify a lot by argument A, that "Game X's enemies fail, so you can get away with this strategy."  Sure, there are various cute completionist advantages you can get by not using HP+ materia, but you're still handicapping yourself overall;

That's the argument, really: using tons of HP+ materias is less efficient than not and using them for more effective stuff for your slots, because enemies failing at damage = you don't care as much about your durability, and limit building being based off mHP shaving, you get limits more often by staying with lower HP. Since enemies can't punish you for it properly, it's more efficient and effective than carrying more HP+. I can certainly see using one capped HP+ materia, but more than that is very excessive and gets in the way of more interesting and powerful setups.

[Shale]

Heavy

Queen Zeal (CT) vs Beowulf Kadmus (FFT)
Easy.
Alicia (VP2) vs Keith Valentine (SH1)
No blockers.
Dycedarg Beoulve (FFT) vs Claude Kenni (SO2)
Yeah, pretty sure.

Middle

Eileen (S1) vs Barret Wallace (FF7)
Things I Will Never Do: Eat Limburger cheese, play more Suikoden games, hype FF7 limits above level 1.
Sania (AtLC) vs Ronnie Bell (S1)
Woo, status.

[Tide]

I'd see 9000 HP+ as pretty standard for non-challenge playthroughs.

...what.

*looks at his level 55 file standard file where Cloud has 5500 HP* And I considered this to be way too much HP.

Building upon Snow's point, there's a lot more better set ups than loading people down with 4MHPs. Personally, I find something like putting Max'd Cover on a backrow person + Long Range Materia (if needed) and elemental armlets to be far more effective. Saves the entire team a huge amount of materia slots and probably accomplished more or less what you need. Throw in Sadness on that person and you've got a team that's already tough to take down.

Not that you EVER need 5500 HP anyway. So 9000 HP not being the norm? Not surprising to me >_>.

Oh right, matches...
Godlike
Patriarch Sergius (XS2) vs Sephiroth (FF7) - Space pope against physicals. Let alone the slashing kind. This is not close.

Heavy
Alicia (VP2) vs Keith Valentine (SH1) - Block ID. I don't respect enough of Keith's other status. Unfortunately for him.

Light
Melody Vilente (WA3) vs Titania (FE9) - Inclined to believe NEB on this one. I don't feel like thinking on it anyhow. I'll attribute it to WA POIZN not failing

[Monkeyfinger]

As Elfboy kinda sorta said, if you forgo HP+ materias in favor of defensive boosting setups that do not involve HP boosting, you should still hold that against Sephiroth, and see his raw damage values as lower than the stat topic says. A lot lower, depending on the setup. Or if you ignored durability buffing entirely and optimized for offense, you should see him as quite fragile.

Anyway, even taken against 9999 HP Sephiroth still has about double Patriarch's damage, taking the stat topic numbers at face value. And he's a little faster (or a lot faster if you respect ATB speed more than I do), and has similar durability when you consider Patriarch's defense, and has wall.

Patriarch's in godlike because of how effective he is against PCs and mages. Against a curse-immune fighter he's a heavy.  Sephiroth, even if you see him as overrated as I do (I used lots of HP+), can beat heavies easily.

[SnowFire]

Hmm.  Well, I'm standing by my theory that HP+ materia is probably the simplest way to break the game.  But yeah, if you didn't use it because you were using super awesome other setups, that should probably be held against Sephy then as per Monkeyfinger, which would give him HP problems.

Strangely enough I actually thought(?) I had more Sephiroth respect than most prior to this conversation, as I certainly don't hold a lot of the brutal damage-dealing and twinked out setups possible in FF7 against him due to the ultimate weapons and fancy materia being at least somewhat obscure (while I *do* assess penalties to bosses of games which have extremely broken PCs that might cause bosses to seem tougher than they "should"), so I have a reasonable amount of Sephiroth HP respect.  I do hold HP+ against him, because it's easily storebought and seems to be pretty intended for even casual players to use.  HP is like money: more is almost always better, and this pretty much holds true in FF7.  If nothing else, more than 5000 HP is good for Sephiroth, as this discussion shows!

Anyway.  Now that I actually look...  standing by my kneejerk to Sephiroth anyway.  I have pretty high XS2 boss respect (they all took for freakin' ever for me to kill, Patriarch has two forms chained, etc.), so the Patriarch's HP is pretty awesome...  but yeah, Sephiroth has Wall, and his physical damage is still decent (if not OHKO).  So Sephiroth probably wins the slugfest anyway.  To make it more of a slaughter, I think Patriarch's attacks were in fact all close range aside from the Phase Transfer cannon after all, so Wall would almost totally kill his offense regardless.

[Clear Tranquil]

Godlike -

Patriarch Sergius (XS2) vs Sephiroth (FF7)

Heavy -

Alicia (VP2) vs Keith Valentine (SH1): I allow multiple accessory slots to be utilised.

Middle

Eileen (S1) vs Barret Wallace (FF7)

Start w/th FLB = Mind Blow?

(can't read previous page due to being blocked by library PC)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't think Mindblow would help him much (Eileen still gets off one turn with spells due to being faster). If you let him start with a full limit bar for any level, though, Hammerblow does indeed win it for him.

[Taishyr]

Quick notes: Maya's status options on weapons are as follows:

85% chance of ID (rather questionable legality, the only real way for Maya to have it is if you don't consider her unranked counterparts)
~60% chance of Shock (opponent loses next turn)
~35% chance of Freeze (Same)

As such, status weapons aren't likely the way to go here.

I'm getting really bizarre ID tests thus far, going to work on it further and provide notes.