WAoO - Dicking around the Frozen Castle, L36 across the board. I think I can make overall assessments on the PCs now that I have all their skills, sooooooo:
Dorothy - Remained badass. The game-best skillset is just too significant, although her issues became eventually apparent: above average speed is good, but bosses are good at outspeeding her, so you can't simply drop her mindlessly, and they also often have the offense to cause her grief. Granted, they tend to be mages (and to have horrible physicals), so her survivability ends up better than you'd think thanks to the MDef, and healing+Overclocked are still brilliant for bosses (even if it gets dispelled - a turn dispelled is a turn they're not doing offense), while 1x Ratio+solid speed+Dream Land = randoms usually hate you. Never found much use for Mirror Skin, Power Boost is nice. Melt Down, her only attack spell, is -ridiculous-, but expensive, so it works for a desperation random skip button, but not something you'd spam. I'd still consider her MVP, but the fight for this spot between her and Strawman is actually surprisingly close.
Strawman - While Dorothy really showed her colors from more or less the get-go when the skillsets started forming, Strawman took a while to really come into (keep in mind that he was the 2nd-best PC from the get-go), but once his strengths began gaining relevance, along with the obtention of a few key pieces to his skills, he just exponentially improved. Strawman's combo of 1x Ratio+game-best speed is always cool, but once he gained Tomato Bomb to compliment the party's status game (Confuse is the best status you can inflict on enemies hands down, I feel, and running off "I go first" speed just makes it all the better), he suddenly turned into the most valuable character for randoms. Then, on bosses, going before them to use items became -paramount- at some point: Strawman is the guy to go when you need a Tree of Life Ash or a Moonfly Powder tossed before a boss screws you up. Falcon Swoop is sorta niche and rather expensive, but it's accurate enough ID to make good often, dispatching a few pesky creatures that can't be, say, OHKOed even by Tin Man and aren't in groups to make status the absolute option. More importantly, Fox Hunt is quite a good accuracy debuff (useful for the Dragons, if nothing else, and given how you need to fight them to learn skills... yeah) and his dispel is very useful, as bosses -also like to buff- themselves and are very dangerous when they do so. Fish-type enemies also tend to be insanely annoying, so him hitting weakness against them is welcome. Plunder remains a useful niche throughout the game, although the steal accuracy started having issues later. However, it's a cheap, ITE attack that deals as much damage as a physical, so it's worth trying to steal often as long as Strawman doesn't need to pull something else, like status. Oz item resources are very scarce and the consumables are strong, so it's an idea. The fire weakness was -painful- on Holly, but otherwise? Probably my favorite PC, and actually stands toe-to-toe with Dorothy for the MVP spot.
Lion - Hmmm. Still feels like the clear LVP, since his niches are a lot more specialized and he has the overall worst stat spread in the game. Accuracy and speed are both below average and his magic durability actually -is- problematic in practice in spite of the HP. Alert helps there, though, and that's a very good, if not amazingly reliable, spell on bosses (mage prominence and all). D-Formation isn't very useful: as said before, bosses are primarily mages, and for the -physical- bosses, Fox Hunt ends up more relevant than D-Formation because the accuracy busting is so good. What really saves Lion is suddenly gaining a big damage move in Lion Dash: this makes him often as good an offense option as Tin Man on bosses, which plugs a real huge hole in his use. Accuracy woes are not negligible, though, as Lion Dash is a bit less accurate than his physical to boot. Elements is an option I want to mess with more, but I'd have -killed- to have that on Holly (75% resistance to elemental attacks? That would've kept her from nearly OHKOing Strawman all night long ;_;). In the end, Lion is mainly an odd PC with very clear uses and he's quite good at them - just the people surrounding him are very standout at what they do - and they cover more ample niches than Lion does.
Tin Man - Hilariously, Tin Man is quite good at randoms with the right mindset. He's the only PC with damage crowd control for most of the game, and that crowd control often OHKOs groups - but his speed just fails and things -will- go before he gets a turn. However? Pair him up with a Dream Land or a Tomato Bomb and watch the fireworks fly. Tin Man specializes on offense period - from being the only character to be able to hit weakness on all types with skills (that are uniformly stronger than other damage options for most of the game) to getting GT, full MT and ITE that's stronger than his already game-best basic physical, having him out actually ends up increasing your overall offensive output in that turn more often than not, as much as the earlygame seems to indicate otherwise: Dorothy and Strawman have to use their skillset way too often, and Lion is very lacking in damage until lategame (and his accuracy with his best damage means he's often being outdamaged by Tin Man, which is weird, considering how Tin Man is the one with the game-worst accuracy stat, not Lion). Tin Man's final skill, I thought would be underwhelming - just a limit skill? Meh. But then I tried it out, and it's actually solid at base: nearly 300 damage, which is just about 1.5x the HP of the most durable randoms I've met so far in the Frozen Castle. >_> As a DL damage skill, it's underwhelming (at 10% HP, it stops short of 500 damage), but ITE full MT damage that near-uniformly overkills everything off the character with second-best MP (why does the dedicated physical fighter have second-best MP!?) is worth the trouble. His durability also means that you don't have to spend a lot of time healing him either, and he works as a sponge to keep the enemy busy while Dorothy heals somebody in the back row or Strawman sets up his crazy junk without you having to work turns with basically zero offense (Lion is inferior at this even after Lion Dash, and Lion himself is often using his defensive stuff instead as well). Weird how he works out, but once you work the kinks of battle in practice instead of looking at theoretical max output, you realize Tin Man works quite well. If you need a sponge that will clean the enemies' clock off uniformly in a fell swoop, he's your man.
Cool little cast.
