Wild ARMs of Oz - So, I beat a florist witch and she was actually a nice girl. Whoops. Flora really was not bad at all for a first boss fight (I suspect she was capable of some really nasty MT one-rounding on half the party through two turns if, say, she used her focus spell, then MT magic x2, and she has a solid ST 2HKO and some buffing. The support fails at life (lol ohkoed by Strawman's physical), but the fight itself was passable, if highly controllable. Now, I have access to THE JUNGLES OF OZ waitaminute Oz had jungles? Yeah, this is a slight trainwreck.
Current character evaluations:
Dorothy - Is badass. She's gotten the best skillset stuff so far: near-full healing even on Tin Man HP, solidly accurate GT sleep (something like 70%? Pretty useful for randoms, regardless) and MT speed buffing are all great tools, and she has both the MP and the speed to make use of it, along with game-best magic. Evade is also decent, and that's a noticeable stat in this game. Game-worst HP and bad defense make her not completely mindlessly retarded, but with the combo of second-best speed, 1x ratio and awesome skillset, it's pretty obvious who the MVP so far is. Excels at randoms with the easy multi-acting and has non-gameworst Strength, so she's basically game-best damage if she goes all-out physicalling anyway. Also accurate, which is relevant.
Strawman - Second-best PC by virtue of game-best speed and 1x ratio by default. Gnaw's defense down effect isn't great, but I use it on bosses anyway, and First Wind is sorta neat for giving someone initiative if you need. Like Dorothy, he pulls out a higher damage output than the other PCs if he goes straight for full physicals, and uses that often due to the lacking skillset so far. Game-best accuracy and evade along with the speed, which is cool, but second-worst HP and game-worst defense make him pretty frail. The speed also makes him an excellent back-up healer with consumables.
Lion - LVP. Fairly durable, but 2x ratio means he gets two actions a round at most. Being below average speed and not very accurate, along with a vaguely worthless skillset, doesn't help. I got mileage of his magic evade buffer on the Flora fight since she's obviously a mage, which is sorta weird, but otherwise, I just had him as padding for the fight, and I almost never bother with him on randoms.
Tin Man - 3x ratio. You get two actions -total- in a round if you use him. This blows. He's also a slug and actually inaccurate. However, he's a tank and the physically-based niche stuff has been mostly going to him - a GT physical and a perfect accuracy attack that outdamages his basic physical as earlygame skills doesn't hurt, especially given how he either GT 2HKOs or OHKOs grunts with the area attack. His damage is also enough to keep up with four Dorothy attacks too, for instance (so is Lion's physical x2, but that's even more commitment: you can slap a Dorothy/Strawman turn in addition to Tin Man's turn, averaging more damage and off better speed, and you'll be able to use some actually non-crappy skillset stuff that way, particularly if you use Dorothy). Still has to come to his own, but he's not the LVP I thought he'd be when he joined up.
