is the only one who can use magical damage from the get-go,
Nel? Nel starts w/th Fire Bolt. Meru? Starts w/th Blue Sea Dragon/Freezing Ring. I wouldn't have made the Nel/Meru picks otherwise. Nel also just picks up Ice Needles on F1 (L10) I think she gets Lightning Blast too. Edit: Ok so no Lighting Blast F1 (L18)
And SO3 menu magic does not register as damage in the curve ever. Fayt's L3 spells are like 2/3k damage to an average that hovers in the mid-five digits, for an example, and Nel's Thunder Flare is even worse. That's Mint-level damage. Even early, those are going to be like half-average damage, and that's absolutely horrible. You're not outslugging anything short of Jogurt with those.
and those not only are limited in supply (you can't get more than 32 in-game, assuming you have absolutely nothing else on the inventory.
Well yeah in game I usually have nothing else in the inventory because w/th Meru/Miranda in the party I don't need healing items because if they're not killing things dead they have healing >_> The only other thing usually in my inventory are the stat up/down items. Attack items work great on bosses as well though I stop using them once I can spam BSD w/th Meru.
I know Sharanda w/th attack items is limited in supply. That's why I picked two others w/th magic as insurance for those w/th no/less respect for LoD attack items. Didn't work I guess >_>
It's not so much about respect, you just need to look at the facts and numbers. It's the same thing I told magic, but here I repeat it without the vitriol. Just your own respect won't really cut it. You need to back your argument within a DL-based environment, using hard facts. I already went over why your team killing things doesn't pan out well, DL/Dungeon offense and in-game offense are two entirely different things. In-game, Virginia's Mystic is great offense midgame because it OHKOs randoms easily with weakness-hitting. Once dropped into averages, even hitting a 3x weakness, that damage doesn't look so great - and it's downright terrible when it's not. That's the kind of facts you're going against. It doesn't matter if randoms in their own game got OHKOed, or if Maria can kill Iseria Queen in less than one minute. In a purely theoretical sense: if Maria deals 1M damage and the rest of her cast deals 900k, she's only going to deal slightly above average damage in the dungeon and in the DL. And spamming is generally something that's hardly considered at all. The way SO3 offense pans out in-game doesn't work in these environments.
That's not going to get a lot of resource respect, and they're rare and expensive in the first couple floors, which won't help),
They are storebought and cheap.
Not in the first two floors, they aren't cheap. Money in LoD is hard to come by early.
Meru. Even frailer than Sharanda, has the same short and long-term issues. Her healing is worse (4PF, 50%?)
5PF
Yes, and one more casting of poor healing per floor (4PF to 5PF is very little) doesn't make it all better. It's still very limited and unrestorable outside of dungeon fullheals. The dungeon won't cut you any slack there either. And don't forget that it's basically mutually exclusive with her other dragoon spells.
she's even more easily picked apart than Sharanda and her damage isn't much better (she needs her final tech to do averagish damage with her physical. The ones coming before that are awful).
Well this is why she's a 0.5 >_> I asked Neph about the stat up/down items, dunno about any feedback about that. Or maybe she and Sharanda could share an item bag of attack items >_>
She does have Cool Boogie/Pretty Hammer before her final for SP farming at least.
It's something like floor 5, though. What about the rest of the dungeon floors? And SP farming doesn't solve the primary issues anyway. Nothing changes the fact that your party is slow to get going and highly limited in resources.
BSD has the same issues as WSD for resources, and doesn't even give you the healing (2HKO MT damage that has a one-turn windup doesn't work in the dungeon. A team with multiple healers eats that for free, for instance, and people can easily kill both Sharanda and Meru before they get their next turn).
Since BSD is the most damaging spell in the game half of that damage (Freezing Ring/Diamond Dust) was good enough from where I was standing. I wasn't planning to abuse WSD/BSD spam until Peppita picked up Magical Dance.
I'd see BSD as picked on something like floor 4/5 at earliest and you can't use it until turn two at the earliest unless you saved up SP earlier (your party does -not- have the durability and healing to stall for that either). SP farming is slow, and I obviously don't take grinding into account ever in the dungeon. Magical Dance has the exact same issues as Healing Dance, so you're not getting much mileage out of it. WSD/BSD are too limited and obviously not quite damaging enough to make up for the hellish limitations.
Both of those PCs are quite effective in-game, I know, but the way they're good in-game just doesn't translate to the dungeon. Dungeon enemies are far more durable than LoD enemies, have far more offense and can pick apart the typical LoD mangling strategy with ease. The transition isn't kind to them, sadly.
Fair enough~
Even on floor 1, if you don't have at least close to full healing, you're getting overwhelmed).
By what? Aren't all the F1 fights jokes apart from Rampage Drive and maybe Marle/Alice?
Let's make a test run.
[Floor 1]
Team CT vs. Palmer and Mist Dragon - This one is simple, although Palmer hits weakness on Meru. You pass.
Team CT vs. Steelix, Shuckle and FF1 Knight - Here is where you start having problems. You can't hit weakness on Shuckle as of now (Meru has no Dragoon spells, nor does Sharanda, your items probably don't even cover water-elemental yet, it's floor 1, before they're even buyable). Nel doesn't have Ice Daggers either - in fact, her damage sorta sucks right now because her starting skills are trash. And your healing is... 17% mHP healing ST. You struggle to outpace Steelix, who 2HKOs Sharanda because his damage is dark elemental. He can also Sandstorm, hurting your accuracy and making the entire party lose 12.5% mHP every round. I.e. this is damage you can't outheal. Shuckle is just going to be a pain in the ass: he can Encore Nel as soon as she casts Healing to guarantee she won't be able to try and keep people up (not that -she would be- with Healing sucking ass...), he madly resists the party's sad damage and owns it with friggin' Rest and Wrap will also screw with their turn orders. And given how you will be busy with Knight, you won't be able to even focus on him properly. Because Knight is going to be -mean- to your party. Resists the elements you will have at this point, 2HKOs your whole party, OHKOs Meru. And half your party -goes after Knight-, the rest that doesn't being stuck to either really bad physical damage or very limited elemental damage that gets halved by Knight, who has tons of HP and defense to boot. Knight more or less 2HKOs everyone in your party through Nel's healing. Pray tell, how -are- you making any headway here? You're getting outhealed pretty bad. If you even get past this, there are other issues.
Team CT vs. Marle, Alice and FFT Priest - This team is able to wind down your resources very badly, of which you probably already have very little after the hellfest that is Knight for your party. Alice and Marle have sucky damage, but you have no status healing, poor offense at this point and any damage you suffer sticks because your healing is so goddamned awful. You probably fare better than you did at Knight, but you're in bad shape. If you left the last fight with people dead, Advent/Ice 2 do horrible things here. Remember that part where your healing is really, really bad? Sharanda doesn't immune Holy until floor 6 to boot, nor does Meru immune Water/Ice until then.
Team CT vs. Rampage Drive - If you used items to make headway at all back then, I'd see you fresh out here. Which means you're relying on FIRE BOLT (which probably fails to 5HKO Rampage Drive. Sharanda items probably fail to 2HKO it) to beat Rampage Drive, who OHKOs Meru with his physical, has 25% odds of criticalling for a OHKO on more or less anyone in your party plus an extra turn to make things just a little bit more cruel and can Tarukaja to OHKO half your party. Mazio MT 2HKOs your party in a hurry after Tarukaja as well. Your healing at this point can't handle ST threats, let alone MT.
Team CT vs. Lich (FF1) - And hey, Lich hits weakness on Meru and OHKOs, while resisting everyone's damage and paralyzing them with reckless abandon. Assuming you were in top shape, you'd handle this fight, but your team probably dies -twice- in this floor.
Don't underestimate floor 1.
Nel's damage is also easily walled and entirely ST, and it takes until floor 3 to pick up.
Shockwave + Aerial + Shadow Wave are GT. She has other GT moves later too.[/quote]
Terrible GT. The area those hit may as well be ST, I certainly wouldn't give them MT credit for anything ever.
She has Berserk/Ice Daggers F2. Maybe that's too generous for you but she definitely has it as far as I'm concerned (pegging roughly ten levels per floor)
A bit too generous. Floor 3 sounds right to me.
Since she's your best long-term damage dealer, you'll need to rely on her way too much to blitz, and she can't do that by herself. She's a lynchpin with that team design, your team crumbles into dust the minute the opposition pegs her down.
Bah she's always a lynchpin anyway.
In a sense, that's sorta right. She's pretty good and threatening, and teams will want to go after her. But that's why you have to devise strategies to keep her safe instead of going "bah humbug" and pretend it's not an issue if you want to make headway. The latter is a poor approach to team design.
And her damage in-dungeon doesn't translate to what she does in-game. I'll have to add, what the people do on those videos is generally not what people will see happening in these fights, they -will- rein that in.
The videos are fun anyway >_> They're also not lying or anything, that's really what Pep and Maria's damage is like in game. Nobody apart from Fayt + infinite juggle loop comes close. Cliff Max Shockwave is slow and it has nowhere near the number of max hit Dream Hammer does.
Yes, but people won't be generous to Peppita and give her max hits on her Dream Hammer or full Faerie Friend. Those things are very hard to accomplish in-game (Dream Hammer, particularly, is easily interrupted unless you have the insane coordination shown in the vids you had in the exhibit) and I certainly hold that against those skills in the DL and the dungeon. Spamlocking in the dungeon is also not possible, and those videos relied on that quite a bit. >_> That's where Maria's offense shines in-game, and that does not make a transition to the DL.
SO3 PCs don't like the transition to the turn system much, but there's not much you can do about it. Maria's damage in the dungeon suffers for it, and a lot of people will see it as below average by endgame, and it's not even that good on averages midgame. That's not blitzing well.
Well Scatter Beams is her money move in game because by the time another character does one move Maria has already squeezed a lot of Scatter Beams out but yeah I suppose if peeps hold her to one SB chain per turn in the dungeon and don't give her any bonuses such as her next turn coming up quicker (which would sort of mimic her two SB chains to another move in game thing) then I suppose she is bad w/th Scatter Beams. She has Magnetic Field/Triple Kick/Gravity Bullet though. They have higher damage modifiers than SB but don't merit much use in game because of SB's speed. They might be more DL relevant though.
She only starts with Scatter Beam in the dungeon, and Scatter Beam is her money move for damage in the DL too. And sadly, her Scatter Beam combo in the DL is below average damage if I remember those Berserk averages right. It looks better early, indeed, but the SB combo is still fairly slow to come out and Maria is still frail.
Her healing dance is gradual and starts off very bad, both things being easy to overwhelm (and if she gets hit, it's interrupted to boot.
Yeah but Meru/Sharanda may have stored up SP by then and Meru has Cool Boogie.
And why does that matter? You need the healing -all the time- with your durability spread, and I already went over why this doesn't work. Any person with average physical damage will force you to heal. This means that you'll be under pressure from the beginning. You can't really afford to store SP off -that- durability, and even if you do, you're burning precious resources that you -will- miss on fights where you need blitzing. The line of thought even works in a vacuum, but it falls apart badly when you start making the comparison to dungeon floors. You're expecting to be able to store SP and stall with a team -that arguably gets killed by two floor 1 fights, one of them being against a solo boss and one having two of the worst-damage pokémons ever-. It's going to be a rude awakening if you do go through with the idea.
Healing Dance is terrible in the DL, and it won't be any better in the dungeon).
OK ... why is it that Maria is held to turned based but Peppita isn't? Healing Dance is a battle skill chain just like anything else. If all the SO3 characters are restricted to turn based w/th their battle skill chains then so is Peppita. She gets to heal in peace. I just don't think this is fair, I really don't. She does have No Guard which prevents her from getting interrupted in game though. It's one or the other for me though. If everyone is held to turn based for everything so is Peppita. If it works the way it does in game then so does everyone and everything else work the way it does in game.
I force Healing Dance to heal a set amount of HP per turn (probably not better than 20% or 30% mHP when built up), and give it a bit of a penalty on the amount for being so easily interrupted. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that.
Power Dance most likely won't get initiative or speed bonuses from the people voting (and wouldn't get them from me).
Why not? It is a bonus she has in game w/th the Escape Formation. Peppita/Cliff/Maria team Power Dance Peppita doesn't even have to move Maria/Cliff run forward and completely and utterly demolish enemies within seconds. Even below L20 Cliff and Maria at her default level w/th Power Dance crush the likes of Azazer within ten seconds. Edit: I mean yeah I wasn't banking on peeps giving her initiative/speed bonuses here anyway but just wondering why you wouldn't personally =-)
Because ARPG speed interps are a trainwreck and so are range game interps. If you want to argue that she gets godly speed bonuses or whatever, be my guest, but you're not going to garner a whole lot of support. To me, it's especially notable because, while she can do it from afar, she can't do it all that fast and she is entirely vulnerable while she does the dances, and any enemy with half-decent speed can reach her without special formation babying (babying that they won't get in the dungeon, formations don't exist in the setting). Her initiative depends entirely on starting range, and I don't give credit to those outside of -very glaring- exceptions like Zeon's impressive failure at getting the first hit on you despite the speed (and that's a SRPG).
Peppita isn't even worth a 1.5 then due to starting bad (and she does, I'm not arguing that - I really believe her support is worthy of respect later though but if that's just me)
I know. Peppita just doesn't translate to the dungeon because the dungeon is -mean-. I actually think she shouldn't have been added because her support is poor for dungeon purposes and it's also very difficult to properly interpret, which means that kneejerking against it is going to be quite natural. The nature of the beast is as such.
Also, don't worry about getting locked in a damp cell by Neph. You've done nothing wrong. >_> And it's fine to want to make teams with people you're a fan of, but there are ways to make them work into a fairly strong team. I mainly used favorites in the teams I devised, but they are also people that synergize well together. The main thought ought to be "where do the characters I like fit in a team dynamic and what can they contribute" when looking this up.
