MATCH OF SPECTACULAR DOOM

[Tide]

Oh yes. We started off with a discussion about AI2 Chaos failure and brought up a list of Lights who he would lose. Eventually it came down to this before dying off.

So here's the deal: AI2 Chaos has 20HKO damage and above average dark resistance. Which according to Tal, translates to a Light weakness. Along with his OPB buff, this looks to be a potential match sealer already (...).

HOWEVER! Mist Dragon is pretty tanky, and if his attack IS Holy elemental, he will suddenly do more damage and MAY break out of his 30HKO damage of doom. And Chaos himself isn't particularly tanky IIRC. It could very well be enough!

So... WHO WILL WIN THIS EPIC SLAPFIGHT? ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Any estimates on Chaos' own durability? The match seems to hinge on that.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Is Mist Dragons 30HKO only taking into account Kain and Cecil?  Sure only those two fight him, but that's like taking FF1 damage average against a group of Knights!  (Stat topic for bosses isn't up yet, so yeah.)

If Mist 30HKOs Kain and Cecil, odds are it 15-20HKOs normal people or something?  Then throw in the holy ownage and you got a damn solid 10HKO!

[Tonfa]

:psyduck:

Want to say Chaos at least has PCHP so BUFFED DAMAGE TO THE RESCUE. Mist Dragon is a slug, too.

[Talaysen]

Any estimates on Chaos' own durability? The match seems to hinge on that.

In his duel form (the one with 20HKO), he's just above PCHP if you give duel bosses benefits for fighting a lone character.

In his other form (which has 10HKO buffable to 5HKO) he has about... 0.8 PCHP.

If you take Break spam into account, the non-duel form usually dies before getting a turn, so... respect can vary a lot there.

P.S. Buff increases defense by 100% for non-duel and 200% for duel.  More headaches yay.

[Shale]

I vote for Shiho to arrive and save us all from the horror of this match. All hail Shiho, the avenging hero!

[Dark Holy Elf]

TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT, SHALE?

Anyway, since I'm inclined to take non-duel forms over duel forms whenever possible in a DL setting (irony), and don't give Mist Dragon extra credit for fighting only two PCs (though Mep's point about the durability of the PCs he does fight is valid.... hmm), I am currently leaning towards Chaos. Seriously, 5HKO after buffing? What is this crap? Overpowered. (How long does the buff last, anyway? Tide calling it OPB makes me assume it's not infinite, otherwise its OPB-ness wouldn't be relevant to an opponent who lacks dispel.)

[Talaysen]

TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT, SHALE?

Anyway, since I'm inclined to take non-duel forms over duel forms whenever possible in a DL setting (irony), and don't give Mist Dragon extra credit for fighting only two PCs (though Mep's point about the durability of the PCs he does fight is valid.... hmm), I am currently leaning towards Chaos. Seriously, 5HKO after buffing? What is this crap? Overpowered. (How long does the buff last, anyway? Tide calling it OPB makes me assume it's not infinite, otherwise its OPB-ness wouldn't be relevant to an opponent who lacks dispel.)

I think I also force non-duel forms as well if they exist.  Saves headaches.

Eh, difference is that Mist Dragon can ONLY fight Kain and Cecil.  There is no other choice.  While FF1 bosses can fight any number of teams.  And since I doubt people use 4 Knight teams often, I'm not inclined to scale them that way.

FF3 bosses, on the other hand, are different since you can change jobs on the fly.

The buff lasted I think 3 turns or something.  Not very long.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Obviously I'm not supporting scaling an FF1 boss against four knights.


Besides that, it's a bit of a grey area. If, for instance, at one point in the game, Cecil+Kain and Rydia+Fusoya each fought separate, physical bosses (through a quick splitpath a la WA4 Spriggan), both of which did 40% damage to their opponents on average, I would be inclined to say the one that is beating up on Cecil/Kain has a hell of a lot better damage in the DL. Just as if Auron and Rikku both had to solo a midgame boss in FFX, and each boss had speed to match the PC he fought, I would consider the one Rikku fights to be way faster.

In those cases, though, it's easier to make this judgement call, because the game is beating you over the head with the fact that you're using only a non-average portion of your PCs. With Cecil/Kain vs. Mist Dragon it's less clear, because the other PCs don't even exist yet. Arguably, how should you know about them when you're fighting Mist Dragon? For all you know Cecil/Kain could be the two frailest PCs in the game. It's probably not reasonable to assume knowledge about later-joining PCs for scaling, thinking on it... which yeah, would mean I agree with you on Mist Dragon. But I'm open to argument here.

... why do stupid Puny matches prompt worthwhile ruminating on RPGDL conventions? The world may never know.

[Shale]

TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT, SHALE?

Hell yes.

[Nitori]

*loads up FFIVDS, plays for about 30 minutes*

Well, that settles that. *Votes Mist Dragon, spins away~*

[Talaysen]

Besides that, it's a bit of a grey area. If, for instance, at one point in the game, Cecil+Kain and Rydia+Fusoya each fought separate, physical bosses (through a quick splitpath a la WA4 Spriggan), both of which did 40% damage to their opponents on average, I would be inclined to say the one that is beating up on Cecil/Kain has a hell of a lot better damage in the DL. Just as if Auron and Rikku both had to solo a midgame boss in FFX, and each boss had speed to match the PC he fought, I would consider the one Rikku fights to be way faster.

Well, the first thing I'd have to ask is how much credit would it be reasonable to give these bosses for fighting someone above average in def/speed/whatever?

Here's an extreme example:  Say there are two PCs who happen to have 2.5x average division defense and average HP.  They fight a boss that does 40% damage to them.  This boss is probably a complete joke in-game due to lack of damage.  However, if you took that boss against the full PC average, it now OHKOs?  Seems really silly to me.  Same thing works for speed and other things.

The big thing here is that bosses are likely scaled to who they fight from a design standpoint.  If they weren't, they wouldn't be very competent or would be too difficult.  Giving them a benefit for that in the DL seems like asking for trouble.

... why do stupid Puny matches prompt worthwhile ruminating on RPGDL conventions? The world may never know.

Because stupid Puny matches make things that don't normally matter ACTUALLY MATTER.  They're epic like that~

[Dark Holy Elf]

The other side of that argument, Tal, is that if DW4 Nara (below half average HP) had to solo a boss who 2HKOed her, that boss would be hard... but it would be hard because Nara is terrible. Its own damage isn't actually impressive at all and I wouldn't have a whole lot of respect for it in the DL.

Though yeah, outlier cases are going to screw with things regardless of what interp you take, with this.

[Grefter]

Tilde invading forum.

If a character does not exist yet for the player it clearly shouldn't matter for a bosses averages.  Especially with plenty of characters not even reallistically being available in the level range you want to scale them against, so any stats you get there are purely hypothetical.

Bosses that have forced party members and splits?  Ehhhh yeah it is probably worth scaling them against the other party members, the party average still exists there, they are just not available in the fight.  On the other hand.... I don't like giving credit to bosses that you do have a full party availalble against credit for "Hey gais i liek to use jogurt becuz he is funny" types of play where using clearly subpar characters that would never grace combat in a real game skew the averages.

[Meeplelard]

A few things I want to point out about the "Mist Dragon's Attack might be holy elemental!"
A. There's no reason to assume Mist Dragon's attack is Holy Elemental.  Its called "Cold Breath" in some translation or another, and FF4 Enemy physicals are always Non Elemental anyway.  The animation further supports this, as it looks similar to the Ice spell.
B. Using the "He absorbs Holy!" as a reasoning to assume he's Holy elemental is similar flawed.  Case in point, Cagnazzo, the WATER fiend, is actually *WEAK* to Ice/Water attacks when the Waves aren't rising (when the Waves are up, he's weak to Lightning; usually, Tellah or Palom gets a turn after this fact, so you never actually realize he's truly weak to Ice before then, furthermore, he tends to die really fast as his weakness is a W4 <_<)
C. Mist Dragon's summon form is Non Elemental.  If anything, its animation implies, again, that its Water/Ice elemental (it has some similarities to Shiva's animation...heck, think it even uses the same sound effects.)
D. There would be no possible way to prove whether its Holy elemental anyway, as FF4 has a complete lack of Holy resistance on the PC End (or Holy weakness, for that matter.) Making an enemy attack Holy elemental, when PCs can't use it, would be utterly pointless as PCs have no special ways of dealing with Holy attacks, one way or another (now, enemies ARE weak/resistant to Holy, so things that PCs actually use is a totally different story.)

And thinking on it, Mist Dragon's attack is probably used by some mid game enemy like Basilisk or something, as an Ice attack.

In any event, its best to NOT ASSUME the Holy Elemental Breath thing, as I really can't see a good reason to assume its Holy.  If nothing else "Mist Dragon absorbs Holy!" is the only basis behind this, and its a rather silly way to figure things out.

[superaielman]

FF4a has holy resist actually. Normal 4 doesn't, and I'm pretty sure MD's attack is non elemental anyway.