Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 94

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

GlassShield is a waste of time in such a MT-heavy environment due to how its limitations work (attacks with more than one available target just cut through it. In a duel, very few attacks qualify, since the move is context-sensitive, but in a team environment? Yeah, not useful). Fascination feels like the bet to make, but how well it works depends on -who- it hits too.

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks for all the inputs again Snow, dude, Neph ~

Interesting stuffs peeps. Good to know for future reference. I guess now I'm seeing some of the limitations on Priest/why she's priced the way she is. Granted it's really more of a pacing problem in general here with two of my healers and the best one (Mesa) notably so being faster than the incoming offence and Peppita not having any healing to help with that kind of thing yet either >_> Well the reason I've been plugging the status over the blitz is for some reason I'm under the impression everybody on the enemy team has Raquel level durability <_< I've been running some low level SO3 DM tests and so far Peppita does seem to be averagish even without Berserk with L5 Power Dance > Magic Hook > Magic Hook (still have some characters left to test/the mages/Mirage though), and Peppita does break average with her short O spam but I'm kind of iffy on the legality of that here. Plus average damage might not be good enough if it's running into Raquel evade.  I'm not even going to bother with plugging/Peppita MT counter hype for the MT floor since Gallows/Rudy/Brad are all quite ranged anyway! Mmmm Schturdark is the water summon? Can Mesa immune that/doesn't Gallows need FP for it?~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

... RIGHT, Mesarthim immunes water! So, if you manage to kill Gallows and rest of the losers with Hyper off, as long as Raquel's FP is below 25, you can manage. Problem is, to make that happen, you have to go magic with Fang and it's likely you don't want Peppita to attack either. >_> If Raquel dodges two swings, you're well fucked. I'm amazed at how unkind floor 3 is to physicallers now.

[Clear Tranquil]

* Clear Tranquil nods

Anyone have a handle on how much PCHPD Priest has currently with Holy? Peppita could do a Panic Dance > Power Dance > Panic Dance > Power Dance chain or a Panic Dance > Panic Dance > Panic Dance > Panic Dance one (though given how good Panic Dance is already even unchained chaining it seems kinda redundant >_>) Since Raq is immune to chaos she won't be taking the HP/MP added effect % DM from it either so her FP shouldn't go up?~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

In that case yeah it stops from going up. I'm guessing that, if you want to win, you're probably trying Fascination and Peppita Confuse, then trying to survive Raquel's offense. You -need- to kill before her second turn, though: Raquel could just Dragon Edge instead to build FP and keep fully healed, and a turn where Raquel Intrudes wipes all of your peeps flat. In the end, it all boils down to whether your party can chip-3HKO Raquel while handling the other WA losers or not, although... I think that SHOULD be viable, but really depends. I just don't know how your magical damage pans out.

[SnowFire]

Dhyer: While I'd certainly let games with explicit Freeze immunity (e.g. FF9, Valkyrie Profile) block Frozen Daggers, I'd probably let it fall back to vanilla ID.  Even if we don't, then as CT pointed out, Peppita has Kaboom! anyway for straight-up ID against Stocke & Crono's everything-else status resistance.

Jo'ou: Well, no ACF for me, but weird, I definitely recall Follow Me as antihyped as Floor 5.  Anyway if FM is legal, then of course the team is a lot better off as Sacred Slayer starts the Turn Shift nonsense a lot faster.  That said, even assuming it's not...  Silence solves Yuna (good thing, too) and if Adachi is not great vs. magic, Turn Shifting Ivan a bunch should solve that problem.  So pass for Djinn.

For Team CT: Yeah, Jo'ou's right, FFT Reraise won't help against Raquel killing everyone.  And the team's magic damage outside of Holy is bad it seems, although if Fang goes Commando she does buff everyone else some (endgame Mesa is~.25 PCHP, Vanille is ~.25 PCHP, Fang is...  maybe ~.35 PCHP with Ruinspam magic?).  I think CT's best shot is based on Peppita statusing the rest of the WA losers turn 1 while Priest charges Holy after chipping Raquel to the point Holy will KO her.  It's just scary in that Peppita truly needs to status all of them and I'm not sure an 80% hit rate is enough vs. the mob.  (She'd have a slightly improved chance if Fang & Vanille ran Sab for the team debuffing bonus!  ...which I don't think they can afford to, more important things.)

Yeah this is mostly a case where this same fight on Floor 6 wouldn't be so bad because both Fang & Peppita would have all their nasty disabling statuses like Pain, they'd spam that, and that'd be it.  Here Fang & Vanille are stuck with their debuffing & slow, which isn't quite what they need.  So sticking by the fail vote for now, although this is admittedly a coinflippy match that Team CT has some arguments for.

[dude789]

Again though, I still don't see why we needed to make this floor so much harder than it was. People weren't losing on it that frequently, but they shouldn't be, it's floor three. At this point most of us have had 3 or 4 teams in the dungeon so it makes sense that the teams would be better and get farther because we have more experience making teams and we know better what works and what doesn't. For glass shield, I think it will still block one MT attack, it just won't counter it. In this case though I would definately allow it to counter a close range attack like a Raquel physical. 


Also, for team Djinn. I remember pretty clearly that Follow Me was mentioned specifically as picked up on floor 4. If Jo'ou is correct that she get's it at Alhazad than that is very clearly around floor 4. Floor 5 is easily after you fight Mother the first time.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, to be honest, the current difficulty spike feels in line with what it used to be around three years ago, when the typical team fell to floor 4 on average, and by then, we already -had- experience in team building. Every difficulty swap brings a new swath of teams that fall early, both due to SURPRISE FLOOR SETUP and due to the floor being plain -harder-. Once this stabilizes, I figure things will go back to the general outcome that we've been seeing for a while, with most teams getting to floor 6 and upwards, which is usually a sign that things -do- need shuffling. I don't think the current early floors have been really particularly brutal, but it just happens that CT's team just doesn't have the type of offense favored by the floor, nor does she have the right mix of status.

Tangentially, I honestly always felt that Peppita was grossly overpriced (WAY too sensitive on her skillset setups and running off poor stats and speed to boot) and this run pretty much proved it to me. She could stand to go down a whole point without even breaking a sweat.

[Nephrite]

There was never an intention to make Floor 3 harder. The MT floor has always been very black and white -- you either completely trivialize it or you do not. Whether that means it needs to be retired is something I am considering.

EDIT: Something I've been considering is making the ST/MT parts only affect the good guys or the bad guys. I could certainly make the floors easier in that regard.

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks again, cheers Snow~

@SnowFire if you're letting Peppita have Kaboom, she has Berserk as well and she definitely has Turn 1 status/average to above average damage with that due to Berserk increasing the amount of moves in a chain/decreasing fury costs and dances costing only like 7 Fury with Berserk. Also as mentioned Kaboom bypasses enemy evade/parry/AGL and it blatantly ignores Solon Salute's 9999 AGL in the battle arena. Though again YMMV whether you take that into account or not, see Snow there. Granted either way I'm not entirely sure where F3 is in SO3 and it probably depends on Triple EXP respect anyway.

L5 Panic Dance is 75% vs AVG status resist without chaining, it's significantly increased with the cancel bonus/chaining (as above Peppita can do Panic Dance > Panic Dance > Panic Dance > Panic Dance if she really has to, she has enough Fury for this without Berserk (as a note dances can be chained into each other 8 times in a chain with Berserk) Not to mention the hit rate goes up against targets with lower than average/no status resists for the peeps who take individual status resists into account >_> Really my main concern was if people didn't see Peppita getting a turn/didn't see SO3 as average speed/use skill speed tie breaks. However I appreciate your stance on the matter, so it goes and all that jazz~

Thanks for the PCHP figures =) Well if Mesa and Vanille both do 30%~ for a total of 60%~ between them to Raquel then Fang and Peppita only have to do 40%~ between them which even if you're taking 10% or so off their normal offence due to Raquel evade seems managable to me from the figures I have and that's without factoring in Holy, granted that's if Holy gets off but considering everybody goes before Brad/Gallows/Rudy that doesn't seem like a problem either unless the rest of the Wild Armers really do have Raquel level durability/two above average blitzers + two average offensivers combiled fail to finish this fight off without Holy's help >_>

Also if the rest of the them do have Raquel level durability I don't see why Fang and Vanille have better things to do than be in SAB for the role bonus/sticking status to improve the hit rates of other status >_> Vanille in particular doesn't have anything in particular to do if Ragnar does buff because nobody else has put on the hurting yet so there's no point in her healing <_< Well at least I think inflicting extra statuses does improve the hit rates of sticking more statuses as well as the SAB role bonus in FFXIII~
**

Eh I'm not going to complain. Neph's been more than fair and reasonable this round, and he's given me my chances/us materials to work with. Everybody's all been very fair, informative and helpful actually really and we've all learned a lot, we've learned the limitations of some characters but we've also learned their potential as well. I hope =)

Thanks dude =) For the input about Glass Shield, I'll do some more research on that as well for future refence ~

[dude789]

Well, to be honest, the current difficulty spike feels in line with what it used to be around three years ago, when the typical team fell to floor 4 on average, and by then, we already -had- experience in team building. Every difficulty swap brings a new swath of teams that fall early, both due to SURPRISE FLOOR SETUP and due to the floor being plain -harder-. Once this stabilizes, I figure things will go back to the general outcome that we've been seeing for a while, with most teams getting to floor 6 and upwards, which is usually a sign that things -do- need shuffling. I don't think the current early floors have been really particularly brutal, but it just happens that CT's team just doesn't have the type of offense favored by the floor, nor does she have the right mix of status.

The biggest problem I have with massive shuffling is that he really does make it a lot about when your team gets put in the dungeon. It leads to situations like this one where decently constructed teams get the shaft just because of when their turn came to enter the dungeon. Again, I think that the earlier floors should skew easier because it's not like we have a ton of teams who are making it to floor 9 or 10. IIRC, there have only been 2 teams that have made it to floor 10 and one was really early in the dungeon's life span and the other was team Tide who had a lot of kind of sketchy tactics that lead to the rules being changed so they couldn't be replicated as easily (BC shuffling, Seifer poking, and Citan's aftergame speed nonsense.) 

[Clear Tranquil]

The funny thing is I did juggle my team choice around some before deciding/thinking this was the best bet, orginal team choice had White Rose + Aeris/another 1.0 or a 0.5, and the funny thing is White Rose might have actually been better here with her spell which causes ID >__>, think she has one that can cause Blindness too <__< Think Mesa also gets ID but it's less accurate and/or based on enemy HP%.

Interesting to think of different ways I could have approached this battle, if I'd had Neo Speed on Vanille could she have debuffed the enemies sufficiently for Fang/Peppita to get rid of most of the enemies, if I'd had it on Peppita would L5 Powerdanced Fang saved the day (well this assumes taking all of FFXIII and SO3 at average >_>) if I'd had it on Mesa would she have gotten a double, or would Priest get Holy off with breathing space to spare~

That said if people aren't seeing Vanille as having Raise and Dispel now (I could have sworn she got/learned that before Fang) might be worth considering a price drop for her too~ Healers who don't get revival till F4 are kind of ehhh.

Edit - Oh. I apologise SnowFire. I was wrong about Fang's Dispel. For some reason I thought she didn't get it till Crystarium Stage 7 but I was getting her mixxed up with Hope's secondary SAB role >_> Fang gets it Stage 5. Mmmm Vanille's is Stage 6 which is F3 to me though (Stage 6 is Chapter 7 and F5 is Pulse to me, Chapter 8 is also kinda short) Kinda borderline though I guess but since most of the earlier chapters are so short I'm willing to allow some leeway here. Same goes for Raise. That's just me though. Granted if Fang does go for Dispel and Mesa/Peppita status while Vanille/Priest keep the team nice and healthy or alternatively Mesa/Vanille/Holy blow some losers up/either way with Mesa surviving till Turn 2 since she immines Gallows damage if Gallows isn't the one statuses/ded (assuming he does have Raquel level durability >_>)/gets a turn and her Life Raining my team back to fighting fit I honestly don't see how I lose Round 2 with most of the enemy team statused/ded. Peppita or Mesa's ID would be turn 2 for me too which means Raquel has to equip the blocker for it or it leaves her vulnerable/open to other status Turn 1 too. Either way I honestly don't see Mesa/Peppita status combined failing to status most of the enemy team Turn 1 especially since Mesa's Charm has a better than end game hit rate right now (I'm assuming above 50%) and Peppita's damage is really good, it must be definitely hitting something. Priest might survive Gallows offence as well since her MDEF is really good if I remember right and she could stall for getting Cure 3/Cure 4/Raise if required off which in turn might allow Peppita to set Fang up with Power Dance for turn 2 as well (Panic Dance > Power Dance chain) That's just me though~

[Clear Tranquil]

Oh yeah, right my votes. Djinn passes, I'll buy the arguments there yeah All Teams vs Dungeon Going to pass my team personally regardless because of personal SO3 status respect/FFXIII skill spread interps and/or because I refuse to believe Mesa/Fang/Vanille/Peppita/Holy offence combined (especially if Vanille Imperils/Deprotects or Deshells for Peppita's/Holy's offence or boosts the chain rate to improve status hit rates for others) fails vs the WA scrubs/they really do all have Raquel level durability but yeah >_>

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The problem there isn't so much their durability. They're all -above average- (and Brad is tanky), but Gallows screws over your chip-blitzing with heal (even if it sucks, it just keeps Holy out of mortal range for Raquel, I suspect) and I think Holy is only faster than Raquel there. Rudy+Brad just 2HKO your whole team.