Season 46, Week 2 - It's Menardi/Maxim revengefic week in Heavy! Oh god.

[DjinnAndTonic]

So... is the argument for Peppita that Poco is statused since he's not equipping CureAll? Or is it that since he's equipping CureAll that his MP bust doesn't OHKO?

Let's see, by all averages Poco should go after Peppita. I don't see Peppita OHKOing, but she -could- use Turn 1 status if Poco's not blocking statuses w/ CureAll. So Poco blocks status, takes a hit from Peppita. Then he uses MP Bust. This sounds like it would normally OHKO MP Kill Peppita, but I guess the argument is that without the Magic Book (since he has to block status w/ CureAll) it's not 100% MP busting? This means Peppita gets another turn, uses her best damage and finishes off the 2HKO, if you see Peppita as having a 2HKO. If she doesn't, then Poco gets another turn to use MP Bust again, which should be more than enough to finish off Peppita's MP supply, even if Peppita has regen'd some MP.

I see Peppita as having 2HKO, so if these assumptions are correct, then I need to change my vote.

-Djinn

[Pyro]

It doesn't take much at all to 2HKO Poco. The little guy is pretty frail (70% Pdurability).

[Talaysen]

Can't AtL2 characters equip two armors?  Magic Book + Cure All should be fine I thought.

[Pyro]

That might get him OHKOd though. Poco's base defense is bad to start with, and he takes a 24 Def hit to do that.

[Dhyerwolf]

Geshp (SF2) vs Yuffie Kisaragi (FF7) - I allow Limit Meters to start full, so...

Imoen (BGs) vs Chelsea Torn (ToD) - No BGs, but I'm of the opinion that they both fail pretty hard.

Would that actually help Yuffie all that much here? That would mean that moves like Omnislash, Catastrophe, a full Tifa physical chain, and Highwind now all have to be compensated in the averages more directly somehow.

Also, Imoen is one of the most evil Lights around, which both some physical immunity and ST magic immunity spells.

[Monkeyfinger]

I never did post a full field.

Godlike

Elc (AtLC) vs Ness (EB)
Deis (BoFs) vs Asgard (WA3)
Zenon (Disgaea 2) vs Brahms (VPs): It doesn't even matter whether or not Brahms can 2HKO, since he goes second.

Heavy

Dryst (Brig) vs Berserk (WA1)
Cecil Harvey (FF4) vs Fenril (OB)

Middle

Poco (AtLC) vs Peppita Rosetti (SO3): Anything about an SO3 charactert having turn 1 status is news to me. Poco doesn't need the cure-all.
Red Wizard (FF1) vs Lexis Shaia (Lufia 2)
Zidane Tribal (FF9) vs Kimahri Ronso (FFX)
Feraligatr (PKMN)  vs Jill Fizzart (FE9)

Light

Olan Durai (FFT) vs Suo (VP1)
Sue (G1) vs Guile (CC)

[Talaysen]

That might get him OHKOd though. Poco's base defense is bad to start with, and he takes a 24 Def hit to do that.

I didn't think his base defense was that bad, it's just that he uses the Magic Book as default.  Regardless, if he does get OHKOd that would be a problem indeed.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Geshp (SF2) vs Yuffie Kisaragi (FF7) - I allow Limit Meters to start full, so...

Imoen (BGs) vs Chelsea Torn (ToD) - No BGs, but I'm of the opinion that they both fail pretty hard.

Would that actually help Yuffie all that much here? That would mean that moves like Omnislash, Catastrophe, a full Tifa physical chain, and Highwind now all have to be compensated in the averages more directly somehow.

I don't figure OPB moves/ moves that can't be performed reliably into averages.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Then the entire cast overkills? When the entire cast uniformly relies on a front-loaded attack type in that sense, you need to toss a balancing measure. I don't think anyone hypes the entire LoL1 cast OHKOing, and full limit gauges are a similar situation in practice.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Damn, you're right. I have to rethink this. I'll get back to you on how I'm going to view this.

-Djinn

EDIT: Right, well - I guess the caveat is that if an entire cast has OPB moves they should be included in a three-turn average.

For reference:
3-turn Average assuming first-turn full Limit Meter: 8731 [kill point: 21828; avg endgame enemy HP:15000]
Cloud: 17267 (Omnislash - Bolt/Ice3 - Bolt/Ice3)
Cid: 11100 (Highwind - Physicalx2)
Yuffie: 9250 (Doom of the Living - Physicalx2)
Red XIII: 8816 (Earth Rave - Physicalx2)
Barret: 8433 (Catastrophe - Physicalx2)
Tifa: 6400 (Lvl4 Limit chain - Physicalx2)
Cait Sith: 4833 (Physical [4500] - Toy Soldier [7000, best semi-reliable Limit] - Physical [3000, being generous])
Vincent: 3750 (Chaos Sabrex2 - Satan Flare)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I posted a couple corrections to that average in the stat topic. Kill point is 23875, as I said.

Not really seeing how this helps Yuffie at all. She gets one turn of 63% PCHP damage and gets her face smashed in, here.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Someone needs to dedicate a post somewhere to explaining PCHP because it seems very counter-intuitive to any of my math.

Why is 2.5 average the kill point? The kill point I listed was the average HP of endgame enemies.

So Tifa always gets full Yeah! Limits? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with what that would imply about the rest of my views concerning criticals and non-accurate multi-hit attacks in ARPGs,. I went with the non-Yeah! numbers because I figured it was the 'safer' choice.

-Djinn

[Dhyerwolf]

PC HP being 2.5x average damage is balance a variety of factors, including healing, status,  and MP limitations. Set PC HP really high and healing and status are ubered, and any games with MP limitations are going to feel them badly. If you set it too low, then healing and status lose a lot of worth, and you'll have OHKOs flying around everywhere. 2.5 is just what most of the board agreed was a good number, although you may disagree and go with another number.

I also don't give Tifa full Yeah's, but it's not going to make a large enough difference on the damage average here (Puts the kill point at around 22000?).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Kill points:

Some games have durable enemies. Some games have frail enemies. We do not, as a general rule, use their HP to determine how much damage PC casts do. Otherwise, you'd get cases like Grandia 2, where the entire cast has OHKO damage (G2 endgame HP average is about 3000) and cases like Xenosaga 2 where the entire cast would be Punies. (Or, to choose a less extreme but more DL-relevant case, the entire Tales of the Abyss cast would be pretty wretched on damage, as I remember randoms hanging around the 30k-50k region in the final dungeon.)

It makes most sense to compare casts to each other. If I do more damage than average PCs in my cast, I do good damage. If I do less, I do bad damage. This strikes me as personally very intuitive, and to a lot of others in the DL, which is why we adopted it.

Now, why does 2.5x average damage kill 2.5x average durability? The answer is: No reason at all. It is in fact completely arbitrary, chosen simply because some of us decided that made for the most interesting balance of matches. By choosing a higher kill point, you'd lower all damage, which would cause healers and status attacks to dominate too much (even an outstanding damage-dealer can be beaten easily by a healer if you set a kill point of 5x average). By choosing a lower kill point, you'd raise all damage, making OHKOs more common and turning more matches into quickdraws, where alternate strategies would be less effective.

Now, if you take issue with 2.5x, and want to use something else? Terrific! Please do so; use whatever you feel makes most sense to you. All I ask is you be consistent about it. Use 2x average for one cast? Use it for all of 'em.


On Tifa's limits:

Usually, when moves require skill to be pulled off, we assume the player has that skill. We don't assume Yuri misses Judgement rings, even though it's easy enough to do on some of the high-end skills. We don't assume Sabin misses blitzes, even though I certainly botch a Bum Rush now and then. And we assume Tifa gets Yeah!s. It helps that the first 4-5 are ridiculously easy to get. Not sure what ARPG stuff you're talking about in comparison; note that we usually DO assume that combos can be executed properly, and those can certainly take some skill for some games.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Kill points:

Some games have durable enemies. Some games have frail enemies. We do not, as a general rule, use their HP to determine how much damage PC casts do. Otherwise, you'd get cases like Grandia 2, where the entire cast has OHKO damage (G2 endgame HP average is about 3000) and cases like Xenosaga 2 where the entire cast would be Punies. (Or, to choose a less extreme but more DL-relevant case, the entire Tales of the Abyss cast would be pretty wretched on damage, as I remember randoms hanging around the 30k-50k region in the final dungeon.)

This seems more like a problem of what levels stat topics are using than anything inherently wrong with the 'take kill point as the average of endgame enemy HP' to me. If enemy HP is far outpacing character damage, then obviously the characters need to be higher levels. Alternately, if enemies are far too weak, then the characters are overlevelled.

That's just my knee-jerk reaction to this claim. I guess if Endgame Boss durability is wildly different from Endgame randoms durability, there can be discrepancies between what is 'endgame level'. But I already take some issue with a few choices for 'endgame level' in the stat topics, so I won't comment further.

I can understand -why- the 2.5x average damage = kill point view arose, it makes less debates over things like what 'endgame level', 'average endgame enemy durability', etc. are in each game. ...I just don't agree with it personally. I may end up accepting it anyway simply so I don't have to do something outrageous like stat topic every game myself just so I can satisfy my views, though...

Alternately, I may start hyping all G2 characters as Godlike and all XS characters as Punies just so I don't have to think about this anymore.

Interestingly enough, about your TotA example - since I'm going to have to figure out an average that includes Mystic Artes, this already brings the characters' average damage closer to the 30k HP range you mentioned. ...>.>;;

-Djinn

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Okay, so you're proposing that, as an example, G1 enemies fail too much against a party at normal endgame levels, so let's LLG the game and base the stat topic off the LLG because they might not fail then. No. Enemy competence varies from game to game, it's a fact of life. Adjusting the playstyles/levels to the level of competence of the enemies just doesn't happen. This isn't a matter of levels -at all-. There are games that have more competent enemies and less competent enemies, and their HP isn't the only factor. Your proposal is far more counter-intuitive than any arbitrary kill point setting could be, since it doesn't account to the typical power level of an endgame party nor it accounts for that natural difference. Do you honestly think that the fact that, say, Shadow Hearts 3 randoms are better than Chrono Trigger randoms stems solely from levels? Instead of simply the fact they were designed to fulfill different roles, or with more or less thought regarding the player's assumed power levels? I'd be baffled if you said you do.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that there are many ways to streamline things. Trying to do so by trying to make all enemies equally competent is just about the most difficult, pointless and finicky of them, though.

[DjinnAndTonic]

You might say the enemies are incompetent, others will say that Justin & co. are exceptionally strong. I choose to say that an RPG cast will be doing about average damage to whatever strength their endgame enemies are. It should give about the same end result as using an arbitrary kill point with an arbitrary endgame level. The way I view it sets endgame level directly in proportion to endgame enemies' levels. Not counter-intuitive at all, but trying to be more faithful to the game's mechanics while still giving a balanced average for the DL.

-Djinn

[Dhyerwolf]

No, those enemies are incompetent. Grandia enemies do horrible damage, and if they 10HKO PCs in game, that's pretty amazing. And they aren't ever really good, so unless Justin starts uberized, it doesn't really make any sense. In terms of scaling, comparing to what endgame randoms can do and how much damage they can take doesn't really make any more sense than saying VP characters own because their HP is way past 9999.

And honestly, in G2, no ones particular damage matters because everyone is so close and all randomly falls below any damage. Do they really seem better than someone in a game where randoms take 10 hits to die, and maybe someone can do it in 5 instead. It seems like that characters would be badass and standout. In Grandias, it seems the characters are pretty interchangable on the damage front. And really, should someone in Grandia be more tanky than a character have better defensive tanking than Raquel? Raquel's defense is awesome in game, but Grandia PCs might be 20 average attacks. Raquel won't.

[DjinnAndTonic]

If characters are all uniformly OHKOing endgame enemies and it's taking endgame enemies 20 hits to kill, then I'm positing that this team of characters is overlevelled.

I'm not proposing direct scaling like zOMG all VP characters with their 10k HP >>>>> FE characters with their 30 HP or anything like that. I don't see why you brought up VP1 HP at all, really.

-Djinn

[Clear Tranquil]

By that logic Peppita should be allowed her powderdanced Faerie Friend/Dream Hammer/high hit Kaboom combos Elf >.> My Peppita using skills are champ <.<

Monkeyfinger- Like hell he doesn't. You've said numerous times *yourself* that you see Peppita's chaos counters as 100% almost all of the time due to the testing you did on battle arena enemies. Well Panic Dance is the exact same thing in that self same battle arena. In fact it has even more chance to inflict chaos on an opponent since it's 7 - 10 hits of chaos waves at L1. Then the number of chaos waves increase as Panic Dance gains skill levels up to over 20 hits at skill level 10. Frozen Daggers is also over 50% against battle arena opponents again (i.e hello Devil Childs)

If near 100% isn't turn one then what the hell is it? xD I thought people considered anything from 50 - 100% Turn One.

[Dark Holy Elf]

If characters are all uniformly OHKOing endgame enemies and it's taking endgame enemies 20 hits to kill, then I'm positing that this team of characters is overlevelled.

But it's NOT. You can do a Grandia LLG and the enemies will still fail (because a lot of Exp is given by bosses). There is no level low enough to make these enemies competent.

[DjinnAndTonic]

If characters are all uniformly OHKOing endgame enemies and it's taking endgame enemies 20 hits to kill, then I'm positing that this team of characters is overlevelled.

But it's NOT. You can do a Grandia LLG and the enemies will still fail (because a lot of Exp is given by bosses). There is no level low enough to make these enemies competent.

But it is. In this one case, Grandia, it may be impossible to have low enough level characters to evenly match the endgame bosses. In this case, I would apply a theoretically lower-level cast. I wouldn't particularly like doing it this way as it goes against the gameplay mechanics, but this is one arbitrary decision based off of one game's extreme situation. It's not that different of a decision as the arbitrary 'kill point' that's been artificially imposed on -all- games.

I'm not saying PC HP is an innately bad way to balance a cast, I'm just saying that it's less intuitive than comparing against average endgame enemy HP. In Grandia's case, this apparently doesn't work, so a theoretical view would have to be taken for consistency's sake.

-Djinn

[Clear Tranquil]

So... is the argument for Peppita that Poco is statused since he's not equipping CureAll? Or is it that since he's equipping CureAll that his MP bust doesn't OHKO?

Both ;p

He's statused if the voter doesn't allow Cureall to block all statuses. In the stat topic for example Dyher says he allows them to equip one and block one status of choice otherwise they'd be horribly overpowered and broken for a DL status blocker. Personally that seems fair enough to me. Poco gets the option of blocking Chaos or Freeze from my point of view =) Being unfair I'd say who knows if ATL characters can block Freeze so I'm allowing Frozen Daggers to go through anyway >.> I have been trying to be fair here though!

If the voter does allow him to block all statuses then yeah the argument is that MP Buster doesn't OHKO without Magic Book.

Also in the spirit of fairness I've been assuming Peppita's damage thus far from L1 skill proficiency (for the sake of this debate that is because OK doesn't have Power Dance/skill proficiency factored in his topic yet and it confuses people if they don't have a stat topic with damage values right in front of them >.>) She does also have the option of using L10 Power Dance > Faerie Friend (with or without Berserk/cancel combos), L10 Power Dance > L10 Faerie Friend + L10 Critical Hit MP (with or w/o Berserk/cancel combos. Don't know what you take for proficiency SO3 wise Djinn but normally I usually take at least Power Dance as L10. Peppita's dances like symbology take less usage to level up that other battle skills so they can be spammed to level up fairly quickly/at a reasonable rate. Like Maria's Scatter Beam =D For actual voting purposes I'll be going with Peppita using a L10 Power Dance and something like a L3/L4 Faerie Friend combo.


Pyro + Tal - I see. Thanks. Yeah I'm done with being nice to Poco. He equips the Magic Book + Cureall, lowers his DEF to 35 and gets horribly, horribly overkilled. Or he equips Magic Book + Guard and turns into a spinning top or popsicle.

70% PDur for default Poco? Super said that Peppita's damage is 1.5 times the average (using OK's topic) Is that 150% damage or am I doing this wrong? ;p

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

If characters are all uniformly OHKOing endgame enemies and it's taking endgame enemies 20 hits to kill, then I'm positing that this team of characters is overlevelled.

But it's NOT. You can do a Grandia LLG and the enemies will still fail (because a lot of Exp is given by bosses). There is no level low enough to make these enemies competent.

But it is. In this one case, Grandia, it may be impossible to have low enough level characters to evenly match the endgame bosses. In this case, I would apply a theoretically lower-level cast. I wouldn't particularly like doing it this way as it goes against the gameplay mechanics, but this is one arbitrary decision based off of one game's extreme situation. It's not that different of a decision as the arbitrary 'kill point' that's been artificially imposed on -all- games.

I'm not saying PC HP is an innately bad way to balance a cast, I'm just saying that it's less intuitive than comparing against average endgame enemy HP. In Grandia's case, this apparently doesn't work, so a theoretical view would have to be taken for consistency's sake.

-Djinn

Problem is that this is an issue consistent to -most- games. Random enemies' HP just isn't a good measuring stick on average for how damaging the cast members are because they get blown up by stiff breezes. Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 7, Xenosaga 1, SaGa Frontier, Wild ARMs 1, Wild ARMs 2, Wild ARMs 4, Dragon Quest 8, -every single Suikoden ever-, Final Fantasy Tactics, Shadow Hearts 1, likely Shadow Hearts 3, Fire Emblems and so on and so on. The list is huge and ever growing. Your defense is that not comparing to average enemy HP is "unintuitive". However, doing that comparison makes the damages between PCs often not matter, because everybody does varying shades of OHKO in that case - which is far more unintuitive, because it completely disregards the synergy and general functioning of the PCs in the games, and even creates the monstrosity of inflating PC casts because their enemies fail.

PC damages should be compared amongst themselves, not against enemies. This just doesn't work for comparative measures, unless you're fine with a system where everybody OHKOs everybody and the few people who don't because they happen to be in a game where enemies can take a hit weep and fail. That's just entirely unrepresentative of the casts themselves. We already use enemy stats for most comparative measures, so they're not unrepresented in that sense. However, using -their- durability as the killpoint threshold doesn't work if you ever want to create any sort of a sensible duelling setting. It's an arbitrary method that we use, sure, but you might want to give it a little bit more thought before dismissing it as unrepresentative and unintuitive. The alternative is even worse.

[Ayra]

Just listing my votes since this whole discussion is a bit over my head

Godlike

Deis (BoFs) vs Asgard (WA3)
Zenon (Disgaea 2) vs Brahms (VPs)
Gilgamesh (FF5) vs Rolf Landale (PS2)  I actually played both, but I admit I really didn't like FF5 enough to really remember monster stats...


Heavy

Geshp (SF2) vs Yuffie Kisaragi (FF7)  I kinda like Yuffie... oh well. Any SF2 char winning is good in my book anyway!
Cecil Harvey (FF4) vs Fenril (OB) Gah... When I nominated both, I didn't actually want them to fight together on first round... Got to give it to Fenril due to general physical ass-kickery.


Middle

Poco (AtLC) vs Peppita Rosetti (SO3)
Red Wizard (FF1) vs Lexis Shaia (Lufia 2)
Zidane Tribal (FF9) vs Kimahri Ronso (FFX) Played both, not really certain either way.
Feraligatr (PKMN)  vs Jill Fizzart (FE9) A beast-hating woman against a beast. Poor beast.


Light

Olan Durai (FFT) vs Suo (VP1) And Suo wins! Sad that he can't hear those words very often...