XF: fourth playthrough complete.
Time to wrap this up.
5-1 (a man and her golem): The golems here are pretty tough but obviously fear Electrigger. I lure Asgard over and he wipes out people, then revive them on the other side and go after Weisheit. Cheap but hey, it works. Weis is vulnerable to gravity again unlike the desert form which speeds things along some as I have pretty good luck with it, Slow Down and playing hide-and-seek works well enough otherwise.
5-2 (Gate Victims): CAs are a pretty good way to deal with these tanky little buggers. They are fast and have lots of annoying status I can't deal with too well, but Revive Fruits make this simple enough.
5-3 (bird): Bird is anti-physical this time, which pretty much means more CAs and Electrigger. After the gravity has done its work. I take out any demons who get annoyingly close. This battle always feels like it should be harder than it is, but I guess it's mostly a warmup round for...
5-4 (final boss) [1 reset]: Tough but manageable. CAs mean less teleporting which certainly helps, and they're my best offence here. Form Shift is the best thing ever, if it weren't for her wasting turns on it I'd certainly have lost the second time too.
Stage one of the fight is the toughest. Katrina will use 2HKO elemental magic (3HKO to Clarissa, high 2HKO to Alexia) and always chooses the best one, and it's GT so no bunching up. The demons constantly threaten and annoy from all sides, with 4HKO (6HKO to Clarissa) magic and 3HKOish Hard Smashes if they actually get in range. Keeping up with healing is important, keeping the boss in Slow Down even moreso. I mostly focus on killing the demons (leaving a couple trapped stragglers in the back) with elemental spells and petrify, though I do chip in CAs and Electrigger to the boss as well.
Once she drops below 3600 HP I finish up the remaining demons besides a token straggler, break her shield and start attacking her again. She gets faster and faster which makes things a little trickier, but on the other hand she stops using elemental spells, just attacks and Shrine Maiden Glancer. Reviving is easier since revived people don't immediately die to GT damage, though they still do immediately die, and it costs her less and less time to do it. By the third phase, the only reason I'm able to keep afloat of the battle is because she occasionally wastes turns with Form Shift, and even Materialise (the summoned guy is annoying but I slow him down, don't need to worry about cover due to CAs). Again, recast slow down as much as possible, etc. Victory obtained with only two PCs left as Valiant-boosted Alexia does the finishing blow. Hooray!
Thoughts on the fiesta classes...
Fantastica:
-Fantastica OC is great. Everyone had it, everyone used it. Rush enables several abilities at range, notably including Slow Down, the best boss/tough enemy control spell. Feeble Mind also neuters some bosses. Invoke is mostly worthless but decent early when I used basic attacks more.
-Bells are decent overall weapons at first due to 2 range and okay stats at everything but later I wanted either more atk or more mag/range.
-Badges are great for Formation Arts, which are terrific early though quickly go obsolete later. They'd have been better if spears weren't so finicky at FAs.
-Zone Effect is a handy little passive buff/debuff which I often set but didn't go out of my wy to do so.
-Arts Support is generally around 15-20% more damage with FAs and CAs, and this is obviously great in a playthrough where my offence often centered around one of the two.
-CSP Up made mastering Berserker and learning Exploit Weakness faster. That's something.
-Object Attack is lulz.
-Stats are overall okay and unremarkable.
Overall: Oh man bosses would have been much scarier without them! Second most valuable class to the playthrough which is unshocking.
Excavator:
-Excavator OC... well, Switch is nice for finishing off some MP-killed enemies. In&Out extends item resources which is nice because I had to use a lot of them due to no Sacred Slayer and weak offence! Detect owns Stealth Stalkers. Not a very good OC but having Fantastica pulled it up a little.
-Slingshots are good stuff. Decent MAG and great range, the best weapon for combination arts pretty much. There's a reason I used them so much. Eventually mostly dropped them for more MAG, though.
-Shoes are decent, light equips with fairly good Def (depending on height) and evade, nice enough to pick up with Excavator equipment.
-Almost all of their support abilities suck. They slightly extend your finances and resources but I don't really care.
-5 move and climb is certainly useful, and the reflex is decent. Outside their lack of useful abilities, a decent carrier at least... like the other classes they look better with Elementalist/etc. banned.
Overall: I underrated excavators a little (used to consider them one of the worst classes). They aren't great but I did appreciate their mobility, slingshots, and occasionally the OC.
Berserker:
-Berserker OC has a move buff which is sometimes handy (move tends to pay for itself, climb is when it really pays off), Charging Thrust which is quite potent, and Sonic Boom which is nice for mobility. Both of the latter two basically need Rush so I'm glad I had fantastica.
-Spears have decent stats, but the difficulty in using them with FAs was a huge bummer seeing as I had badges and Arts Support. I'd have considered using something else but they're needed for the Berserker skills. On the other hand, hitting two enemies sometimes is handy.
-Headgears suck. FA resistance! oh boy
-Move and Heal MP is a handy enough resource stretch, though nothing worth hyping.
-Exp Up is decent longterm, but I never actually set it. Penetrator is lol.
-Move Up is good in theory, but I never use it because if I'm mastering Berserker I want...
-Valiant is pretty awesome! It's difficult to count on because enemies gang up on people (often not who you want) and since I lack non-self healing I often need to heal at low HP (or go for a last glory attack then die) but the damage buff is just huge, and applies to everything that does non-zero damage against gravity (including Electrigger and CAs). Nice.
-8 move is nice though largely balanced by the straight-line thing. Overall stats are solid.
Overall: Not one of the better classes even with Rush to help them out, but Valiant is sometimes just so good. Weird case.
Emulator:
-The OC is stupid, nothing new here. With Exploit Weakness, Electrigger and the elemental spells are incredibly powerful. Petrify, even at 50%, is great. Many bosses are vulnerable to one of the big emulator tricks such as sleep or misery. Everyone gets this, everyone sets this.
-Bombs were my highest-MAG weapon, and thus important for having stronger attack magic and CAs (although if I just cared about CAs I'd use slingshots for range).
-Pocketwatches I mostly ignored due to the lack of special property and low def/eva (though def gets better later in the fight), though I maybe should have invested in them for their res in certain fights.
-Action Replay is a handy offence booster sometimes, especially with bosses.
-MP Recovery is a slightly better Move and Heal MP, same comments apply.
-Exploit Weakness is an awesome damage buff, obviously. A must-learn for any of my former Emulators who wanted to set up shot in other classes.
-Conserve MP keeps the class a great carrier even after that, Emulator spells are a little pricy and this lets me use them more.
-Speed is a bit low, but the other stats are quite great, decent MAG and HP in particular, while still maintaining 4 move.
Overall: Still the best class in the game, it largely kept the lategame to be much easier than it could have been. The rare battles where its tricks aren't much good (such as the Tormenta Triad!) are its main downfall, and also unshockingly where I had the most difficulty.
