MASSIVE RH POINTLESS DEBATE WOOOO.
Yeah, you can buff her HP of course. Granted, it'd take two accessory slots to match e.g. Marco/Raynie durability, and they could use those two slots to match/beat her speed. I was kneejerk overestimating how large the gaps were in both directions.
Looks like my complaints about Aht's speed were a little suspect, looking at it; it's not too hard to get Stocke faster than her, and his overall stats are good enough that he can afford a bit less durability without it being a problem.
Of course this also invalidates your whole point about her speed letting you control battles, since others can match her while she covers your HP (as you suggest she does. I agree).
Wait, didn't you say that getting items mattered more than equipment earlier? You'll need some money to get those accessories.
You're backing off, but that's okay. I'll agree about being able to afford both equipment and a reasonable amount of healing items. (this is still far from having infinite 300 HP healing) This does invalidate the point about Aht's insane speed letting her control battles, and we have Aht with potentially roughly the same speed and durability as Marco and Raynie then.
Ok!
Stocke + Marco (or Eruca) is already two thieves effectively. I don't exactly need a third. If you aren't running from everything in sight you don't run short on cash for good items, trust me. I even finished below the stat topic levels and ignored most sidequests, so it's not like I grinded or anything! You're also really exaggerating Area G-Heal vs. other healing options; it's only 60 points better than Area Heal, 50 points better than the 100 MT healing items which are almost free, while it's 150 points worse than the uber healing items which I could easily afford enough of for bosses (you don't heal in randoms).
You might not always have Marco in your team, and using Eruca to trans-turn to Stocke so he can steal is just awful. Really.
Stealing does give you money (not that awesome, but always nice) AND it also nets you neat items from bosses, like the best studs. The stealing rate is pretty low; this is almost like FF9, where I would have certainly LOVED to have someone other than Zidane to steal things.
"Only 60 points better than Area Heal" sounds bad until you realize it's 150 vs 90 healed. There's a world of difference here. If you have Marco and Aht in the same team too, Marco can switch to Aht instead of using his own Area Heal, to heal even more.
About money. You still save a ton of money by using Aht. You can use that money to:
- Fully equip both Marco and Raynie (so you can switch at will between, say, S/A/M or S/A/R)
- Buy A LOT MORE of those great healing items (Aht can use them too!)
- Buy some equipment for Aht (obviously) so she and Stocke can beat the optional arena bosses.
- Buy equipment for Gafka so he can beat his difficult optional boss battle.
- Order a wheat beer in a pub and reflect on how worse your life would be without Aht.
Polaris' resistance doesn't seem that incredible to me (I actually thought it was 20% but not sure where I got that idea now; guess it could be better?). I used Marco with status resistance stuff (since he doesn't need offence or durability anyway!) and used Area Recover if things really went south. Final's the only boss with good enough status that I found this especially useful anyway.
I don't have numbers, but I've only seen status get through Polaris once, and I used the spell against almost every status oriented boss. I could have gotten lucky!
About Aht vs Marco. Comparing Aht to only Marco for status healing is not necessarily the best way to debate (I'll say more later), but I'll play along.
The main problem is that it's hard to get good, reliable status resistance with accessories. You can't just give Marco a ribbon and call it a day.
- First, those slots are used for speed boosting items if Marco wants to match Aht's speed. Let's not forget that!
- Second, there's like only one status resistance item that protects against every status, and it's late and weak (+2 against everything) Most other accessories only protect against one status. Restarting a battle just to switch accessories is a pain too, just use Solaris to make everything better.
- Third, I had everyone loaded with sleep resistance items against the optional boss and the status still had a crazy success rate (This might be because it's an optional boss, I'll give you that)
- Fourth, those accessories cost money. See my earlier point. Fully equipping your team AND buying speed boosting accessories AND buying a bunch of status resistance accessories AND buying a ton of items is starting to be a stretch.
Before Raynie gets G-spells: It's got a case, though I'm skeptical (Aht is fairly underlevelled here, and immobile enemies throw a wrench in its offence more than S/R/M).
After Raynie gets G-spells: These do the same damage as traps, but you don't waste the action pushing a group of enemies into them, giving you an extra target per round. Raynie is clearly better than Aht here.
After Star Traps: It's really a matter of damage vs. targets, now. Spells target one more character, traps do more damage (provided speed-twinked Stocke). It's worth noting that if you want to target one less enemy with S/R/M, you use Air Assault after the first two pushes and suddenly G-spell damage isn't far from Trap damage, though does still lose. And the usual concern of immobile enemies. Feels like a push, honestly.
After Wind God Strike: Best party is Gafka and someone who can deal big damage to the group he collects, no contest. As mentioned, you can't reliably trap the centre, so Raynie or Eruca is a better choice.
Mobile solo bosses: Yeah, probably, except for the part of the game between G-spells and Star Traps. This situation pretty much negates all the weaknesses of traps, besides incompatibility with Air Assault (which closes the gap certainly, but traps still generally win outside the aforementioned point in the game).
Immobile solo bosses: I can't see it at all. This team lacks the Regeneration buff, so right away, Area G-Heal is matched by Regen + just plain Area Heal and the team does't even win healing like it should. Never mind the offence is just lame; Stocke x2 is worse than Stocke+Raynie, and Stocke x2 + Aht is way worse than Stocke + Raynie x2. There's S/A/R as an option, but... compared to Aht Marco offers the magic buff and the flexibility of Trans-Turn, while all Aht can do is slightly improve your MT healing on turns where you aren't willing to shell out the cash. Defence buff is probably better than Polaris too, especially since Marco can cover status with Area Recover (which works better requires precise Polaris knowledge which we lack; regardless, status isn't so common as to lend this much weight, and if we FAQ the game we can prepare for each boss with blockers anyway).
Now hold on a second. You're only comparing all of Aht's qualities to the best options available: Is her healing better than items? Is her damage always uber compared to Raynie? (at least you didn't say Eruca) Is Polaris as good as Marco's MT status healing?
Let's use that logic on Stocke:
Stocke is worthless. His stealing doesn't matter because Aht can steal too, his damage is awful compared to Raynie and Eruca, his healing is awful compared to items (and Aht) He's the best person for pushing things around in the earlygame.... Then Marco gets better because he can push left, right and back, and Trans-Turn to Aht or Rosch to push forward. (or Stocke)
In truth, while he looks bad here, Stocke makes for a really good jack of all trades in game. (Unless you're MF) Similarly, the sum of all of Aht's qualities makes her the MVP. (or at least better than freaking Eruca, dude)
That's why I won't nitpick about everything here.
I'll mention a few things though.
- Regenerate only works once a round (worthless if your team is fully healed, inferior if your team is hurt and you want to use a lot of healing in one turn), is weak and needs to be cast every few rounds. It just stops being useful after the earlygame.
- Did you know that Star Traps target two panels? So, either Aht gets an additional turn whenever she uses a star trap instead of a trap, or Stocke pushes his enemies into two traps at once for uber damage.
- Wind God Strike actually works well with traps. You CAN target the center... But you can also target one of the 3 of the squares surrounding the center and have Stocke push enemies into it in a single round.
- Raynie gets G-Thunder kinda late, you want it against thaumachines. She gets G-Ice even later. This is not significant, but she never gets G-POIZN or even regular POIZN (there was at least one boss is weak to Aht's poison trap)
- We're not FAQing the game. We're real men (and women)
This is making me reconsider Aht vs. Eruca, though. Eruca's damage is just so damn high in that window right before she leaves lategame. I sorta figured this was worth more than Aht's spiky performance against mobile solo bosses but now I'm not sure.
Eruca is really made of tissue paper (she dies all the time), she only has one element and you can pretty much forget about fighting the final boss with her.
Gafka's clearly worse too. He is extremely one dimensional, his one big damage move can often be hard to use (unless you have Aht!), Wind God Strike can't compare with all that Aht brings to the team.
Both have a level disadvantage compared to Aht.
That said, how about Marco for best PC? Four people have commented on RH parties in this thread and the only thing we've all agreed on is we seem to be assuming Marco in many parties. Trans-Turn off good stats (i.e. not Eruca HP) and availability really lets him do everything without having to worry about his own stats, and fit most any party. You need to add someone with good damage, but there are plenty of options for that (Raynie, Eruca, Gafka, Aht w/ traps), and as soon as you do he pretty much has their damage.
To be fair, Marco's in most parties because he goes well with anything, with pushing skills, not awful durability and speed, and Trans-Turn. You wouldn't pair Raynie with another character with no pushing skills for example. I'll agree that he beats Stocke.
