I was ignoring Excalibur, let alone post-brave twinkery Excalibur, since you have at most one.
Depends--are you running a mixed party or a mono-typed party? Like...if you're planning 2x Dance, 1x Elemental Gun, 2x Melee or something like that, then Excalibur might represent fully half of your melee setups.
*shrug* When the damage gap is high enough, it works better. I'd take a skillsetless Geomancer SCC over a skillsetless Mediator SCC any day, even waiving the part of the game before guns. I don't have quite the same high opinion of guns that you do, and possibly range in general. (It just happens that in unbanned FFT, lots of ranged options are really powerful ANYWAY... and even can strike many enemies at once.)
"Skillsetless" in this case presumably still means R/S/M is allowed, yes? Because Geo has R/S/M abilities and Mediator...doesn't have any that are relevant on the SCC. And there's also the whole "skillsetless Mediators would be painfully bad before guns" (Barius Hill, oh god). So...I agree!
These weaknesses become less of an issue when you have 8 classes. In Chapter 1 don't use Mediator. Get your mediator some R/S/M abilities from other classes.
See, I don't see how that's not an obvious losing trade, given how clunky 3-4 line of sight range only is (and you lose 1 off your effective range due to archer move anyway).
It's more about the kiting/staying alive. Attack and step back without the enemy ever getting in range of you.
It's...a trade that's probably better in some fights, worse in others. (In assassination missions you don't care about other enemies hitting you back after you kill the target, of course; so if we're in an SCC where we're forced to pick one for the entire game, I can see the argument that you pick melee. I feel like in "defeat all enemies" fights, though, I lean ranged unless the damage gap is stupidly large--which is to say, I mostly elementaled on the Geo SCC, but on the other hand I basically ignored Demi/Throw Stone on the Ch2-TM/and Squire SCCs).
Sure, but Charge isn't always practical. In order to match Attack Up provided you have 12 PA already, you need Charge+4... an 8 CT attack. If your speed is only 8 due to it being a Twist Headband fight, and there are enemies who are speed 10, this is already untenable; the best you'll manage is Charge+3, and that drops to Charge+2 against enemies who move-wait first turn (which is usually the case for melee enemies). And then there's charging enemies (which includes several bosses) who just need to be killed right away, usually.
Charge gets bad at the end of Chapter 4, yes. Charge is good in the earlygame. In Chapter 2 you only need Charge+2 on a Geo to match Attack Up, and can usually get away with Charge+5 or Charge+7. In Chapter 3 it's more like Charge+3 that you need to match Attack Up on Geo (and you can still sometimes pull off Charge+5/Charge+7 if you have them).
The thing is, even as you noted before, Nameless Dance has diminishing returns, and you have one guaranteed non-Dancer even if we're going for four of them. So no matter what, you're reliant on something from the Geomancer tree
And no mater what, reliant on something from Thief, and no matter what, reliant on Archer. But yes.
to have a maximum-killing-power fighter running around dealing with the things which escape status and can threaten your party. (I guarantee you the Dancer SCC would be waaay easier with this!)
Agreed. Dancer is good against everything but singletarget damage.
Archer deserves a mention here. You will be using Charge, especially on assassination missions. Doesn't really matter if your class is Geo, Archer, or Mediator here--if your plan A is to physically attack, you really ought to be using Charge.
So are you arguing that the #13 is archer? I'm not really convinced; Attack Up damage already gets pretty high, and Charge/Concentrate are both kinda situational in different ways, unlike AU which is a strict improvement, always, and Geo still has a much better carrier (bows still suck).
Nah, I'm more just thinking...if the optimal strategy is attacking physically with humans that aren't leaning heavily on absurd Invitation/Solution/Dance shenanigans, then Charge, Concentrate, and Attack Up are all very centralizing. (And if you're leaning on melee, Move+2 is also very centralizing).
(Still, to spoil things for the bottom of the post, I'm beginning to think it's the best competition. And that is a weird thing to confront.)
Well, right, obviously you lean towards physical attacks.
Yeah, fair. (Although I don't think Move+2 is worth beelining to because there are other important things I need to grab... in jobs that don't have 40-70% of Geomancer damage at various points in the game. And under your definition of a dead job, it's still better to be in Monk than in Thief.)
If you're beelining, then you're beelining in Chapter 1, the chapter of 4 WP Knife (which means like 20 damage Thief with both genders--Geo, if you had it unlocked at this point, would be 20-25 damage depending on gender. 24-30 a bit later in the Chapter. Monk is 36 Male/21 female, but with 3 move).
So...with females, Thief is...arguably their best Chapter 1 melee class. Males...there are better classes, but it's going to be less painful to go Thief now than it ever will be later.
As for higher-priority stuff...what's higher priority at this point? Chapter 1 Elemental is pretty meh (12 damage). Rushing to dancer...Thief is on the route to Dance anyway (and again, you want to be done with Thief in Chapter 1, even with female). There's no point in rushing to Mediator (no guns until Chapter 2). The big thing you might want to rush to is like...Charge+5/Charge+7 to power-smash the early chapters. Most other stuff can be delayed due to not being great until later, I think.
-Attack Up being factored in for guns is a silent testament to what Geomancer is doing. You'll notice I have no trouble ignoring the sum total of Mediator's contributions to the game (faith lowering is the cool, but hardly necessary); the fact that you're having trouble doing the same for Geomancer strikes me as evidence for which class is overcentralising.
Eh?
1. I've said multiple times before that several classes right now obviously get used for certain things (Geomancer included). I've had no hesitation saying that Attack Up is good and that you do get it (although you probably don't use it in every fight unlike Move+2).
2. If you want to talk about ignoring stuff that takes a little grinding, there's people who've done speed runs ignoring calc (the first few speed run attempts were Ninja and Summoner focused). You absolutely don't need to spend some time with the party sucking due to being in calc to 0-reset FFT. So...do you agree with banning calc before Ninja and Summoner, then, or do you feel it shouldn't be, because calc is perfectly ignorable?
-Getting 1-2 speed faster isn't very useful for the most part here, given that chapter 3 enemies are rarely if ever more than 1 above even unboosted speed.
Eh? It's pretty relevant. Mediators can usually attack wait and doubleturn if they feel so inclined. Admittedly, this usually isn't an option for Geos or Archers, who will usually need to move in order to attack. Speed 6 is also disastrous in a few fights (Izlude, Velius).
And as usual, if Geomancer desperately needs that point of speed, they can grab it; Mediator has no such recourse for a damage boost.
But...why would you use the speed boost Concentrate Geomancer if you have Mediator unlocked? They deal the same physical damage, have the same speed, but one is range 1 and the other is range 8.
If you want unblockable damage, you class change to Mediator. If you want high inaccurate damage, you class change to AU Geomancer. (Now that I think about it...I'm actually not seeing Concentrate as being viable in this part of the game because guns are too damn good right now).
I would contend that it is. All manner of inoffensive tactics at this point are suspect; they can miss (Dance, Battle Skill, much of Talk Skill)
I'm not convinced that stuff that can miss is bad. Yin Yang Magic. Teleport. And hey, if missing is that bad, why would you ever use Attack Up over Concentrate in any fight where you have even a chance to miss?
Reliable vs unpredictable is an interesting debate to be had. Obviously if it's a 1:1 ratio in average output, you take reliable. How much more average value do you need to go for the unreliable move? I would argue not that much.
Let's say you're choosing between a flail that deals a random amount of damage (100 average) and a sword that deals consistent damage, but less (80 damage). I'd...probably pick the axe. I'm open to arguments here, though.
I'm not so much optimising melee damage as I am damage in general; it just so happens that, at most points, melee is too far ahead to consider and ranged must be relegated to a role of backup
Just talking classes here, not abilities...In Chapter 2 and 3 AU guns and Concentrate geos deal very similar damage. In Chapter 1 and 4 melee is decently far ahead (although it's Knights that win Chapter 1, and Chapter 4 Geo is often the top damage but there's potential side competition from Excalibur, elemental guns, invited Dark Behemoths/Tiamats).
It's hard to say which of us is right on the best thing to optimise, but my personal experience drawn from a variety of challenges I've done (including all the relevant SCCs in question), is that high damage is the best ward against being overwhelmed, especially when you lack healing and revival. Even Yin Yang Magic, the (non-Math) king of debilitation, would be substantially worse without an instant-kill status (effectively the same as damage) for speeding up fights in an emergency, and of course the immensely damageing Life Drain to deal with bosses.
Very good point, and yeah, thinking on that, I agree. And that's actually a good argument against higher-speed lower-damage setups--if a fast unit dies, the rest of the party still only gets three turns to clean up.
OK, if things go wrong, the panic buttons are...
*High damage to kill the battle fast
*Invitation
*Excalibur's auto-haste only applies when you're alive, so your countdown timer in death is extra slow.
*If you can act-wait, you can gain 60 CT on dead people
That said, umm...if the focus is going to be damage, we should probably look at Dance's damage.
Nameless Dance actually -does- help you clean up--Frog and Sleep boost your physical damage. Sleep in particular can let you get off a Charge+7. Confusion tends to add some bonus damage either from an enemy knocking that person out of confusion, or the confused enemy hitting the closest target (which will almost never be you when using a Dance strategy). Poison deals some small pittance of damage. I don't think Nameless Dance is quite as much damage as a physical attack, but it's not like you're putting yourself way behind in terms of emergency cleanup capability.
Wiznaibus, however! Wiznaibus deals...about 12 per hit in Chapter 2 (144-192 total damage per turn depending on the fight--216-288 on turns you 3x Wiz. remember that competing damage numbers in Chapter 2 was like...50). Later on, if you go for PA+7 equips, it's like 21 damage per hit (252-336 damage depending on how many enemies there are in the fight). More if you brave-raise. (This is generally more total damage than melee attacks).
Now, there's downsides to this--it's better to kill one target and have them no longer be a threat, than injure multiple targets. And of course, in assassination missions, no! use singletarget.
But point is, even if the best tactic is "Damage Blitz", Dancer can actually play that game, arguably better than other classes (in defeat all enemies fights).
Not sure what class the Dancers use as a carrier in this scenario. Possibly Archer, because any other class doesn't give them access to Charge for the post-dance cleanup, and because females appreciate the speed formula? Mediator seems bad because of the 75 PA multiplier hurting Wiznaibus. Geo...maybe; they have the PA for Wiznaibus blitz, but they're not a female friendly formula and don't have charge. I'd have to run some damage numbers.
