Season 54 upgrade/downgrade pools

[superaielman]

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto, Fei
Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi, Kanji, Yukiko
Light/Middle: Kain, Aigis, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

[superaielman]

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto, Fei

How I'll vote

Rashidi>Lamington>Naoto>Tidus>Fei=Raquel

Rashidi has no trouble with anyone in the field besides for Lamington, who doesn't have quite enough offense to hang here. Raquel gets one rounded before she can go, Tidus has similiar issues (Sonic steel doesn't buy him enough time), Noato is not good against middle level bosses, let alone Rashidi, and Fei has the wrong physical damage type. Raquel/Fei both are better than Naoto and Tidus but largely get spoiled. Fei/Raquel is excellent but doesn't matter for results. Tidus spoils fei, and Raquel can't OHKO hiim without her normal physical. The actual speed split is staggering once Tidus gets going- I think he can eke it out against Raquel, but open for arguments there. Naoto IDs three PCs, and I die on the inside. Lamington's durability should be enough to handle Fei/Tidus, though his fight with Raquel's close.

How I think it'll go:

Tidus down, Naoto up? This is a hard pool to read.

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi, Kanji, Yukiko

How I'll vote:

Richard=Demi>Yulie=Kanji>Yukiko>Bowie

Richard beats everyone but Demi, who beats everyone but Yulie. Bowie is fodder, Yukiko outlasts Bowie easily enough. Kanji outslugs Yukiko, OHKOs Yulie and owns Bowie.  Yulie outlasts Demi, loses to Richard, gets slaughtered by Kanji and beats the rest.

How I think it'll go:

Bowie down, Kanji up.

Light/Middle: Kain,, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

Everyone>Kain>Serph. Moving on.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Heavy/Godlike: Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Fei

Raquel > Lamington > Tidus > Fei

Tidus would do better, but he doesn't like counters, and Raquel spoils his speed game by getting a turn (which she does reasonably quickly, since Tidus using First Strike can barely damage her) and poisoning him. He spoils Lammy's ice damage but counters spoiling back trumps that. Fei gets owned by E&C of one foe and the raw pdur of the other two. Raquel beats Lamington by forcing him to use Armageddon and then Dragon Edging through that crap.

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi

Demi's pdur and speed are enough to handle Richard, and Barrier stops Bowie's Bolt 4 offence, too. Yulie I think beats her. Do I have enough respect for Richard crit nonsense to beat Yulie eventually? Given her game, sure. Richard can probably deal with Bowie as well, halves Lightning and parries physicals well enough and long enough to win. Yulie beats Bowie, who is a sad camper in this pool

Demi = Richard = Yulie > Bowie

Light/Middle: Kain, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

No. Just no.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto, Fei

Rashidi > Raquel > Naoto > Tidus > Fei.

Rashidi just sorta bumrushes the whole pool. Raquel immunes ID and cleaves Naoto in half, somehow manages to spoil Tidus' spoiling game (Tidus dies to a counter, and Poison Bite makes his turnhax eat his ass off) and walls Fei's physical damage. Naoto IDs Tidus of the godly MDef/death resistance and not good enough to get past Miori Shirt accuracy (for added insult to injury, he can't one turn her with a single salvo of Sonic Steel QHs either) and insultingly gets a second win in a freaking Heavy/Godlike pool, because spoiling Fei wasn't ridiculous enough. Tidus spoils Fei too, who probably fails to upgrade. That's just funny.

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi, Kanji, Yukiko

Demi > Richard > Yulie > Yukiko > Kanji > Bowie as a kneejerk. Small detours, though, as Yulie > Demi and Kanji > Richard.

This is pretty clear-cut. Demi nearly solos this whole pool with ease: Kanji can't OHKO Demi with anything and is far slower, Richard Swallow crit overkill hype can go die and Demi may be faster and mocks the evade, Yukiko just gets 2HKOed, can't dodge and Demi quite possibly has more resources than her anyway while definitely having more stats. Agidyne is a borderline 4HKO against Demi -before- Barrier due to the elemental resistance to boot, so Yukiko's just hopelessly grasping for straws trying to stay alive. If Carlie couldn't do it, Yukiko can't either. Bowie just sorta sucks: Demi Barriers and his OPB Bolt 4 is now no threat, and she just outheals him too easily. Yulie, however, outstalls Demi because that's what she does (Sleep immunity clinches it nicely).

Rest of the pool is academic enough: regarding Richard, Swallow Rune is enough to OHKO Yulie of the 65% PC HP on pdur, he resists Yukiko's status by enough to make it useless, immunes her actual damage and just heal-locks with a physical after Miori runs out and Bowie just isn't a Heavy. Kanji, however, puts that crazy durability to use, as he 2HKOs Richard, isn't 3-2'd nor 2HKOed and bypasses the parry rate because S5 parry sucks against anything that isn't a basic melee physical. Yulie outstalls Yukiko with a vengeance, does the same to Bowie, and isn't OHKOed by Kanji after Protect and goes first, and Quick should let her gnaw at him down to no Primal Force range fast enough before crit hype kicks in, and turns where he's using his physical are turns Yulie usually isn't being pressured enough - not to mention that him using Primal Force even once in the middle of the match is costly for him here. Kanji has issues against healers he can't OHKO. Yukiko herself manages Kanji, and mocks the hell out of Bowie with Lightning resistance, better speed first turn (...), magical damage and tons of healing. Kanji handles Bowie as well (Lightning immunity is just particularly insulting, not that it -mattered- given the durability), and Bowie just hauls his sorry ass to Middle.
 
Light/Middle: Kain, Aigis, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

Okay, this is a disaster. First, I'm assuming Wing Edges are reasonably storebought.

For the easy part: Aigis solos this pool with unwavering fury. Nobody hits her weakness and the entire pool weeps bitter tears against Orgia Mode. Aigis is sort of a Heavy when she's not getting spoiled, and tossing her against a bunch of unimpressive Middles and actual Lights without thunder damage is roadkill.

Besides that, Amarant more or less solos this pool outside Aigis because it freaking sucks. His 40% healing owns Tio (...) and, if Wing Edges are viable, he just 2HKOs her and avoids any arguments neatly. Serph gets elementally walled because FF9. Landis also gets 2HKOed, and is slower. Kain just fucking fails and, even if he didn't get elementally walled, Amarant would outslug him in his sleep. Heck, CHAKRA just mocks him even further.

Landis beats Serph and Kain. Tio should actually beat him, though. faster, 3HKOs, and while Landis 3HKOs back, that pathetic "evasion" game might actually pan out here, since two stackings of Whisper to the Stars, she probably has enough evade/defense to avoid even a 4HKO and enough punch to 4HKO, not to mention she's now a lot faster.

Tio also beats Kain of the mighty 4HKO and nothing else in Middle, gets handled by Serph, who doesn't give a fuck about her buffing game. Kain, however, gets a free win against Serph because DDS weaknesses fucking fail. Fuck you, Serph.

The Heavy/Godlike and Light/Middle pools redefine trainwreck.

[superaielman]

if I saw -Rika- OHKOing Rashidi with Holy elemental physicals, Fei ain't doing any worse).

Rashidi doesn't take holy elemental physicals any worse than he does normal physicals; due to the way OB mechanics work it only smacks into the one resist stat and not both. We didn't know that at the time.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Is that like the SaGa elemental tiering bullshit where people argued for it not hitting a defense stat because it selected the weakest resist available? Or are you referring to something else?

[superaielman]

OB uses a dual defense system. Resists and the physical stat. A holy physical won't hit Rashidi's physcial resistance and his holy resist, it'll hit his holy resist and his STR.  His physical resist and his holy resist are in the same ballpark as well, so he functionally takes holy physicals as well as he does NE physicals.

The stat topic goes into this a bit more in depth in the PC end; it's why I had to calculate six different physical resist stats for each PC.

[OblivionKnight]

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto, Fei

Lamington > Raquel > Rashidi > Naoto > Tardus > Fei

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi, Kanji, Yukiko

Yukiko > Demi > Yulie > Kanji > Bowie > Richard

Light/Middle: Kain, Aigis, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

Aigis >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Amarant > Kain > Tio > Serph > Landis

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

OB uses a dual defense system. Resists and the physical stat. A holy physical won't hit Rashidi's physcial resistance and his holy resist, it'll hit his holy resist and his STR.  His physical resist and his holy resist are in the same ballpark as well, so he functionally takes holy physicals as well as he does NE physicals.

The stat topic goes into this a bit more in depth in the PC end; it's why I had to calculate six different physical resist stats for each PC.

Ahhh, that makes sense, then, and it's not stupid like I thought it was. Yeah, guess I'm changing vote, since apparently Rashidi more or less immunes Dark anyway.

[superaielman]

I forget what the functional resist to dark physicals was, but it should be more than enough to make Kokei his best damage. I'd bet Fei's third best DB outdamages it as well, but that depends on how bad his resistance is to that element, and well fuck calculating more OB mechanics at this time of the morning.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm not sure if it even matters, because if a low 3HKO is outdamaging Yamikei in practice, um yeah that's really sad (seriously, Fei's non-overlevelled skills are such trash).

[superaielman]

70 resist in general is right around the border of being really badass against that type of damage. Yeah, at a quick look Rashidi knocks 60-70% off dark physicals and takes an extra 26% from holy or normal elemental physicals. It's not normally a winning tradeoff in Godlike, but does work here. He also slightly resists ice, which probably sinks Lamington as well.

[Sei]

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto

Rashidi laughs at Raquel's speed as he slaughters her with sixtuple spells. Rashidi does much the same to Tidus, either splattering him with triple-turns, or just killing the magically-frail athlete first with more superior damage output if Tidus tries to go for the Sonic Steel route. Rashidi hates my interpretation of OB turns letting him only double-turn the speedy Fei, but between his badass Darkness resist laughing at Fei's Yamikei and Fei's secondary damage being too weak to OHKO him even with Holy weakness, the evil wizard survives to launch a fatal third and fourth salvo.

Raquel equips Morrigan Brand to increase her counter rate to 34% so she can either splatter Tidus with a Hi-Counter that slips past his E&C, or lower his ITD HP-based damage enough that he will hit her insta-turn Red Zone and let her strike him with 25% mHP damage, perfect accuracy Poison to make his speed game go against him in a quick and fatal manner (Non-HP based equipment will lead to much the same result, as they will be dealing sucky damage against Raquel defense and make Red Zone inevitable). Raquel's evade, parry and defense then proceeds to give Fei enough fits that it allows her to get the two turns she needs to kill.

Tidus' Evade & Counter is Fei's worst enemy in a pool that really hates him.

Rashidi: 3-0
Raquel: 2-1
Tidus: 1-2
Fei: 0-3

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Yulie

Richard's Swallow Rune makes Yulie explode.

Richard: 1-0
Yulie: 0-1

Light/Middle: Kain, Amarant, Tio, Landis

Kain loses to Amarant in a slugfest even before Chakra hype comes in. Kain loses to Tio in a slugfest even before evasion hype comes in. Kain loses to Landis in a slugfest even before Freeze hype comes in.

Seems like Amarant's Chakra heals as much damage as Tio's best technique deals so he can just run her out of her meager SP, sad. Amarant then proceeds to 2HKO the slower Landis.

I see Paralysis resist as covering Freeze, so Tio equips the Priest's Robe then 3HKOs Landis first.

Kain: 0-3
Amarant: 3-0
Tio: 2-1
Landis: 1-2

[Monkeyfinger]

Just a couple comments on matches that deserve it.

Lamington sweeps the GL pool. He OHKOs Rashidi and might be durable enough to get 2 turns. He 3HKOs and 4-3s Raquel, Raquel can't come close to 2HKOing or dragon edging off enough damage with the turns she gets, and evade hype vs. D1 techs fails (not to mention that, being an overlevelled final boss, Lamington has a hit stat well into the thousands)

Richard beats Demi by heal locking with a basic physical and being either faster or really close to Demi in speed. The mere threat of a crit means she can never afford to not heal.

Kanji does OHKO Yulie through protect, with a boost from tarukaja if need be. If Yulie's opening with protect she's also risking getting lapped by Kanji's second, average speed turn. I really don't see any way she can win that.

[hinode]

Demi vs Bowie is the only match I can vote on in the pool, and doublechecking the stat topics Bowie should be heal-locking Demi with his physical after Barrier; Bolt4 should do about 70% damage range to Demi post-Barrier and her defense isn't enough to reduce Bowie's above-average physical below 30%.

I don't think Demi gets enough doubleturns to win here if you see Bowie as average speed after turn 1, though I may be underestimating her speed with SDs applied as they aren't listed in the topic and I don't feel like opening Excel to grab the PS4 speed SD. I still see him as slow on later turns though, she gets enough doubleturns pretty easily for me.

[Dhyerwolf]

For the easy part: Aigis solos this pool with unwavering fury. Nobody hits her weakness and the entire pool weeps bitter tears against Orgia Mode.

It is time for Lightning weapon Grandia 2 physical hype!!! (Oh wait, most people actually see Aigis auto-losing to that. She might lose to me anyways!) Or just normal P3 Aigis anti-hype!

Heavy/Godlike: Rashidi, Lamington, Raquel, Tidus, Naoto, Fei

Rashidi loses to Lammy, beats rest I believe.
Lamington beast the rest.
Raquel beats rest then.
Tidus loses to Naoto, beats Fei.

Lamington 5-0
Rashidi 4-1
Raquel 3-2
Naoto 2-3 (So wrong in Godlike)
Tidus 1-4
Fei 0-5

Middle/Heavy:  Richard, Bowie, Yulie, Demi, Kanji, Yukiko

Richard beats Bowie, Yulie, Demi (He has a 60% a chance of doing double damage!), and Yukiko. He...doesn't he have evasion for Kanji too?
Bowie loses to all but Demi. Honestly, looks like he's giving her a pretty bad wallop even after Barrier. And yeah, he's basically average speed after turn 1? Demi doesn't double anywhere near enough for me to vote for her. Suprised.
Yulie beats Demi, is asploded by Kanji, beats Yukiko.
Demi...wow, I'm not sure Kanji is much different than Bowie. Doesn't have that speed issue after turn 1, Demi needs a horrid number of turns to kill him, and he's certainly have a heal lock with Lightning.
Think Yuki beat Kanji so...

Richard 5-0
Kanji 3-2
Yulie 3-2
Yukiko 2-3
Demi 1-4 (Hmm, yeah...)
Bowie 1-4


Light/Middle: Kain, Aigis, Amarant, Tio, Landis, Serph

Aigis beats everyone but Amarant and Tio. Normal P3 Aigis' Orgia Mode is pretty bad (Can't use techs, only lasts two turns). Amarant can use out-heal it, I think. Tio...grah, Lightning Weapon. One that I think paralyzes too. Orgia Mode helps with the paralysis, but Tio opens with Attacking->Buffing, Attacking->Buffing...etc. Even worse, she may then 4-3, and Aigis is spending so many turns down. My gut is that Tio may take this since Aigis is going to need 2 connecting Orgia attacks (Orgia gets a nice hit boost, but is that enough when she's already facing 50%+ evasion on her first attack?). Blah, mess, and gutting in Tio's direction.

Amarant beats rest (think I'd see Locomotion getting Stun/Paralysis). Tio beats Landis (Blocks Paralysis, Evasion), loses to Serph beats Kain. Kain...resists Ice. Fire lance wouldn't win alone.

Amarant 5-0
Tio 3-2
Aigis 3-2
Landis 2-3
Serph 1-4
Kain 1-4