Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 79

[SnowFire]

Tide overpaid for his Body Charge.  Sticking it on Seifer is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than Citan weirdly enough.  (vs. ACF Cecilia varies by floor.)  Can't believe no one's ever thought of Seifer + BC or Speed? before. 

Anyway, from the FF8 stat topic:

Damage:

Seifer: 93
Squall: 78
Zell: 60
Quistis: 58

No Mercy: 280 (= 1.55 PCHP)

So the only fight Team Tide can potentially lose is fight 1.  After that, knock Seifer to critical, then unleash 2.02 PCHP BC'd MT damage off ~128% average speed, exterminating battles 2-5.

Gutchecking Tide wins fight 1 anyway.  Seifer & Citan kill Hahn, Ramza drops a Short Charge Meteor to kill Tia & damage others, Raynie finishes off Luna, Cecilia does whatever, then everyone beats up Seifer for catharsis.  Tide passes.

[hinode]

Unlike with the permanent FF8 PCs, I feel that Seifer's limit should be factored into the damage average somewhat since he gets it at much higher HP levels, to the point where it's really difficult to chip around. Even with no status and no dead allies, he can start getting limits around 74% HP or so and has a really high chance of getting one by the time he's lowered to around 50%.

[SnowFire]

I usually downplay that and force Seifer to get limits closer to the same way all FF8 characters do (totally arbitrary, I know) on the theory that was some kind of bizarro earlygame quirk that wouldn't have stuck had Seifer stayed in the party... for all that the DL usually takes such things literally, and I should probably let Tide get the by-the-book character he paid for, so sure, will let Seifer get his super limits I guess.

Anyway, I do not recommend this average, but as a lower bound, allowing Seifer to spam his limit and only comparing him to the other 3 available, No Mercy still does 0.94 PCHP damage, or 1.22 PCHP Body Charged.  There's some wackiness there in that since Seifer becomes such an outlier, including the other 3 cast members for a 7 character average would significantly lower the average and raise his damage, and applying some kind of 3 turn damage would also make No Mercy spam notably scarier.  (Average of physical / No Mercy / No Mercy = 218 -> 103 damage average ->  1.09 PCHP No Mercy -> 1.41 PCHP post body charge.)

I'd vote the same way even under the harsh interpretations, since a speedy 1.3-1.4 PCHP MT damage still wrecks fights 2-5.

[SnowFire]

Nephrite asked for me to vote on Team Piggyman.  I think he has around a 70% chance of winning the FFT fight, and lean toward him probably winning the FF4 fight to but having to contend with bad luck (like Yang or Edward somehow getting a status off on Athos).  So call it 50% chance total.  So...  basically a hatbot tiebreak.

[23:22] <+SnowFire> d2 for fate of pork after ruthlessly consuming some earlier
[23:22] * +Hatbot --> "SnowFire rolls d2 for fate of pork after ruthlessly consuming some earlier and gets 1." [d2=1]

Looks like a fail, alas.

[Dhyerwolf]

Teams Jo'ou and OK pass

Team Piggyman loses

Team Tide | Ramza, Cecilia ACF, Citan, RAP MASTER SEIFER (Body Charge), Raynie
[Ramza: Time Mage/Item/Auto Potion/Short Charge/FLOAT] [Chemist, Wizard, Time Mage (Summoner)]
[Floor 4: Diff'rent Strokes]
So Ramza and Cecilia can revive (Cecilia's is very expensive though; 1/4 of her endgame MP for 1 HP revival. Enemies will want to shut this off while mostly avoiding the wrath of Seifer, so killing Ramza is the key)
Team Tide vs. Hahn, Tia, Gadwin, Luna, Mareg and Shana- Enemies are loaded up on MT damage here, which is not helpful against Seifer. Luna and Hahn have the dangerous status though. Seifer and Citan can off Hahn together (Seifer's normal physical won't have the juice), but...if they go before Shana...starting with SP gives her two shots of revival to me (Which is okay for team Tide, just works to slow them down and give the enemies more time to work). So...can Ramza/Cecilia/Raynie get Luna out of the way then? Well, Ramza has to beat Luna with Meteor, which even for short charge seems...iffy. So gut is Luna gets out the 80% MT Sleep, in which case Hahn reviving is pretty bad. Ramza and Citan can immune Sleep, but the others have no such luck. This one could get messy.
Team Tide vs. Yumei, Badrach, Aelia, Lorenta and Grey- They can take out Ramza at least and force large Cecilia MP usage.
Team Tide vs. Worker 8, FFT Cloud, Beowulf, Olan, Alma and Reis- Aim status for Seifer (alternately, Cloud will aim for Ramza is Ramza opted for Sleep protection). Tide's team is not great on MT slugfesting or accurate turn 1 status themselves. Seifer and Citan take out Olan round 1. Well, I guess Cloud's level penalty could allow the others to take him out too. Beowulf can Paralyze Seifer or Ramza, W8 and Reis can combine to kill Cecilia (She may go in between them and heal. Of course...if she's healing, Cloud is probably not being taken out baring Meteor). Things could start getting a little messy here.
Team Tide vs. Albel, Adray, Roger Huxley, Noel and Chisato- This team is not good at killing, but it is good at depriving Cecilia of MP at least.
Team Tide vs. Palom, Porom, Edward, Cid and Yang- Well, at least Ramza and Citan get Sleep. Yang will choose Seifer though. Edward can status Cecilia effectively enough. A twin very likely sees a turn

Gut reaction is fail. This is fully thought out, but the key problem is that there are two revivers, Cecilia can probably use at most 3 times (maybe 2) before burning through MP so enemies can that tie up the team probably could topple them. Seifer is excellent with BC...in most ways minus status resistance and MT damage when not having a limit. So enemies aim elsewhere except with status, which this floor is heavy on. There isn't one killer fight, but it feels like the enemies consecutively work on wearing them down.

[SnowFire]

Dhyer, is there a reason why the strategy I described for Battles 2-5 doesn't work for you?  BC Seifer has a +30% effective speed bonus.  Nobody in those fights is going before Seifer.  Seifer can be safely chipped to 2% HP or whatever to basically guarantee a limit without need for much "mash triangle" hype.  Even if you don't respect FF8 limit damage at all, it's being boosted by 30%, so Seifer either OHKOs everyone or else horribly, horribly mauls the opposing team and makes cleanup easy.

I suppose disallowing teammates from attacking each other might do it, but eh, Ramza & Seifer can both hit teammates in-game, and further there is occasionally reason to do so (confusion, elemental absorption), so I'd allow it myself.