Season 54, Week 1 - Kids getting beaten up with a table. This is the DL.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I was under the impression that the FF8 limit range started at 33% (Which is why Zell got votes over Kongol)?

I think it starts at 33% if there are other conditions raising that threshold (like status, dead allies). Could be wrong, but 33% for the limit range to kick in does seem a bit high in the DL environment.

[Dhyerwolf]

Think 33% might be when the chance of it kicking in occurs. Granted, I might have much respect there, but given Ard's speed and that some type of full curing should probably come up pretty quick, makes the match at least close to me. I guess I'd need to know actual limit breakdown.

[SnowFire]

FF8 characters definitely limit at ~33%, no need for dead allies or status or anything like that.

The interp question is whether the character limits in time if they are chipped to 31% health or the like, since you have to hammer the menu button longer at higher HP, so there is a bit of a lag before the limit actually comes up.  Assuming the player is even half-decent at hitting a button quickly and then stopping when a distinctive tone sounds, though, an FF8 character shouldn't get lapped while waiting for the limit to come up unless they're facing WA4 boss-level speed.  Admittedly, if it's relevant for anyone, it's relevant for Selphie since she then has to spend MORE time looking for a Full Cure...  but against Ard level speed, that's not really an issue.

Fei Fong Wong (XG) vs Celia (FFT) - This really is a tie, but inclined to tiebreak against Fei because Maria in the land-averages making everyone else look awesome is slightly shaky.  She's blatantly meant to be a mech-only character even if they do force you to use her for one dungeon.  If she's counted even slightly less in the averages, the average speed goes up a bit and Fei loses the tiebreak.
Richard (S5) vs Nephenee (FE9) - Oooh good match.  Inclined to think that Nephenee doesn't quite make the 2HKO, though.
Jean (Lunar:EBC) vs Yulie Ahtreide (WA4) - Lack of respect for Yulie's ability to pressure means that even if it takes some time for Jean to status Yulie, she has it.

Baal (G1) vs Kain Highwind (FF4) - .. man, the stat topic claims that Kain's damage is worse than I remembered.  Because if his jump could even do a mere ~50% PCHP or so, I'd be inclined to let him win.

Ard (WA2) vs Selphie Tilmitt (FF8) - See above.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Dhyer: No Swallow crits (OPB moves doing things like that is just no, to me) mean the damage is closer to 1600 than 2400.

People are really overrating FF8 limits here, as usual. No way are they turn 1 at 33%. Additionally, if she does get one, she isn't using Full Cure, which risks botching a limit next time it comes up, but just killing with a half-decent attack spell. On the other hand, Selphie outslugging with her physical doesn't seem horribly wrong here, so I won't be horribly disappointed if the match goes the other way. Just grah.

[Cmdr_King]

Fei Fong Wong (XG) vs Celia (FFT) - This really is a tie, but inclined to tiebreak against Fei because Maria in the land-averages making everyone else look awesome is slightly shaky.  She's blatantly meant to be a mech-only character even if they do force you to use her for one dungeon.  If she's counted even slightly less in the averages, the average speed goes up a bit and Fei loses the tiebreak.

Quite apart from being strongly opposed philosophically to such an interp (it makes the entire cast more boring), and ignoring that Maria is in fact ranked and thus must be in the averages, this is also silly because however much the game makes it obvious that Siebzhen >>> Maria as a character, you are still forced to use Maria on foot.  It's a reasonably long dungeon, in fact.

[hinode]

FF8 PCs without speed junctions get tons of cracks at triggering a limit, though even then it's pretty unlikely at the minimum threshold. My own kneejerk has always been that 25% HP is needed to get one reliably, but it's been a long time since I've had characters without speed junctioned so my opinion might be skewed - I don't have access to the game right now to doublecheck.

For what it's worth Selphie also struggles with the need to reroll for something non-fail, which makes her limit pretty useless after you get Speed-J unless you cheat with ejecting the disc. She should have less margin than the rest of the cast in the DL.

[SnowFire]

Selphie: Yeah, actually, since Ard is kinda meh on durability, Selphie has it even easier.  Full Cure still wins it for her, but so does any attack magic, so she doesn't have to spend too much time hunting about.  As for the respect split in how long it takes for her to get a limit...  this might be an ATB interp split?  I generally hold FF4-9 PCs to a full party doing actions (most notable for FF9's case, where characters like Zidane and Lani go from being theoretically super-fast alone to actually just having a fast first turn and then being averageish after).  If Selphie's fighting alone, then it does take more "time" effectively thanks to the magic of ATB.

Fei Fong Wong (XG) vs Celia (FFT) - This really is a tie, but inclined to tiebreak against Fei because Maria in the land-averages making everyone else look awesome is slightly shaky.  She's blatantly meant to be a mech-only character even if they do force you to use her for one dungeon.  If she's counted even slightly less in the averages, the average speed goes up a bit and Fei loses the tiebreak.

Quite apart from being strongly opposed philosophically to such an interp (it makes the entire cast more boring), and ignoring that Maria is in fact ranked and thus must be in the averages, this is also silly because however much the game makes it obvious that Siebzhen >>> Maria as a character, you are still forced to use Maria on foot.  It's a reasonably long dungeon, in fact.

Well, it is just a tiebreaker (though I don't follow about making the cast more boring).  I don't think it's unfair as a tiebreaker, since...  well, Maria doesn't have deathblows.  Has anyone ever seriously used her outside of that forced dungeon (which I mentioned)?  And again, for tiebreaking purposes, all that matters is adjusting her to 80% of a character, and there you go.  If you find this unsatisfactory I'll use Dark Holy Elf's tiebreak of "better in game" except in reverse: Fei was okay in XG for me, but hardly MVP.  Slightly better than Elly, about as good as Emeralda, but beaten out by Citan & Billy in in-game use.  Meanwhile Celia & Lede are ARGH RIOVANES CASTLE ROOF.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Given how the true difficulty in Riovanes Castle Roof stems from Rafa's suicidally retarded AI, I'm not sure that's a very fair tiebreak. >_> I mean, Celia is even the least scary of the assassins in-game due to how proper enough statusblocking leads her AI to use her shoddy offense instead of the heart-stopping status. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

For the record I heartilly agree with Celia > Fei in-game. Not sure what comment Snowfire was reversing. <_<

I am voting for Fei but I will shed no tears if the guy who relies on a Level 80 move loses.

EDIT: Snow, it's nearly impossible to block all of Celia's status in-game (needs a Barette/Ribbon). The AI exploit to get her to use crappy damage generally involves having HP so bad she can OHKO with Ultima, and then you kill her/someone else while she's charging since she'd rather kill with damage than use status.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Ah, right. I guess I was just mixing it up with the -other- fight where I had to exploit AI failures to get Ultima. Then, how did I steamroll the Riovanes Castle fight in my replay?

EDIT: Wait, I remember. Ninja could reach one of the assassins' walking range and divert attention so the mages made the boomies happen. And sorry about the derailment.

[Pyro]

I'm pretty sure a proper Ninja could actually reach an assassin and kill them... (maybe two?)

Also, I think I will switch my vote on Lamington/Arc. I don't believe Weak Enemy should hit there and Arc can't do anything outside of that. The question of whether or not WE works is a valid one I guess, but Arc just doesn't have a chance outside of that. At worst Lamington eventually scores a critical hit.

[hinode]

The map ends after any one enemy is reduced to critical HP, so...

[Dhyerwolf]

Fei Fong Wong (XG) vs Celia (FFT) - This really is a tie, but inclined to tiebreak against Fei because Maria in the land-averages making everyone else look awesome is slightly shaky.  She's blatantly meant to be a mech-only character even if they do force you to use her for one dungeon.  If she's counted even slightly less in the averages, the average speed goes up a bit and Fei loses the tiebreak.

While I see where you are coming from with this, many games have some fodder characters that have nearly no use for any reason (Although, at least Maria is usuable in gears, which is more than I can say for a lot of worthless fodder characters). I certainly might not factor in Maria when I consider what XG foot bosses face, but the fact that she sucks isn't really reason to not include her. There are a few PCs I can see as exceptions (Non-star Suikoden characters, for instance), but Maria is more than valid enough. If this was a case where Maria was good on foot in game but for some reason gets notably worse in the DL (Raja or the anti-Dragon character in PS 2 for instance), I could see the validation (Since I do deal with characters like that a bit differently).