Dhyer: Eh, it does sound like our playstyles were just different. I don't feel bosses should be held against twinked setups, no, but I don't feel I had a twinked setup at all; I felt I had a pretty standard one, and don't think it was built for melee at all, or somehow skimping on killing the support. No synthed items, most characters in their base class or at least having their base class's equipment on, etc. Just once the support was dead, Formation Arts tend to be better than about anything other than Six Shooter with Fragile & Degenerator both (and even then, crits and good hit often make the Formation Art a better choice - I don't think it's reflected in the attack preview, but I've seen Formation Arts hit seemingly way more often than they "should."
While I don't agree with NEB about Haste spells being ignored in CTB systems (that is a form of damage buffing, and often a very effective one), I don't believe you should hold the XF cast's ability to cancel/slow down turns against the bosses. If you want to punish their durability for facing things like Six Shooter and a cast full of speed-buffing freaks than that is your prerogative, but debuffs are just the PC cast being badass. Badass casts usually are matched up with badass bosses.
This is a fair enough point but it's actually an issue that the DL is very, very weird about. For example if you add two zeroes to the end of all the numbers in your game, is this a case of both PCs and bosses just being so incredibly badass so let's give them credit? The fight is exactly as hard but we don't let the second crew have 100x the stats in the DL. Now, you're absolutely right that we can't just rank "in-game difficulty" either due to how radically different, say, a ST OHKO is between game systems, but I don't like it when bosses translate strangely. I'd compare it to why DDS Bat wasn't ranked - he's an ubergodlike in the DL and a wimp in-game since you're guaranteed to have Argilla be able to go wild on him with earth damage. (Apparently, never played DDS, but know his trick).
4. We don't scale bosses against speed buffing or debuffing.
Well, as I mentioned before, I generally agree! (Though I'd agree with Pyro that I would be willing to hold it against boss *HP* maybe as a damage buff.) However, I see a qualitative difference in Cancel Strike - there's a big difference to me between "getting constantly doubled" and "can't take turns." Interpreting the second I find to be a headache in the DL.
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Anyway, to be clear, the general worries about XF are just that - general worries. If it was only that, I'd probably not be voting DNR, I'd be abstaining like I am with Rupert. Chelle, already mentioned the Predator Strike respect worries, Charlton's better but I definitely think Charlton 2 is his most legal form. And on that note, now that I've taken on final Weisheit... ack, he's a weird one too. If you let the battlefield be cluttered with obstacles it seems that Weisheit just *loses* to anyone with half his speed or more (and writhes in Light, since he's not double average speed). Never saw Weisheit use his earlier skillset at all (with Divider) in the final battle, though I suppose he can drop back to one of his earlier forms. On the other hand, if you make it hard to dodge behind the obstacles, then he's Godlike, sure, but that doesn't really strike me as true to the game where you're specifically prompted to play dodge-a-Merchant. Or you could say there are some obstacles and say there's an X% chance of having some place to dodge, modified by your movement if any or else agility if you're from a game with no movement. The most true to the game, but also somewhat arbitrary. Hrmm. I don't want to be Captain Negative here, but this sounds like a do-not-rank problem as well.
