New Nyarlathotep's Dungeon Topic, Updated 10/1/14 with new rules

[Nephrite]

My team has apparently gone missing somewhere, but it was something like NeoSpeed Yuna, Yukari, Yosuke, Demi and.. Teddie, I think?

Just do you know, you have half a point to work with there since I moved Yuna down to 3.0.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Equipment changing comes up -constantly- one way or another and the very idea of impeding equip changes in a fight-per-fight basis is downright stupid, especially considering how the general dungeon design feels tailored to consider equipment swaps. That's not even taking into things like equipment dynamic changes that could happen in the middle of a floor and swap general stat dynamics, like Raquel's midgame offense spike with Macha Brand and Mia's speed jump with Wind Cane. I cannot fathom why you wouldn't allow equipment changing in the middle of the floor, in-between fights, and I never followed that particular guideline because it was so egregiously dumb. I honestly haven't seen it enforced in any way either, and people don't seem to take it to heart, so, if nothing else, the static equipment clause should go away and never turn back.

I think the reason why No Equip-changing is a thing is because if you're allowing them constant access to the Menu between fights, why the hell aren't your healers being allowed to spam menu spells to get everyone back up to full health before the next fight?

This is why I am okay with Equipment changing at Full Heals. I assume this is literally the team getting to a Save Point and using a Tent or equivalent, so why not let them access the equipment menu?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Equipment changing comes up -constantly- one way or another and the very idea of impeding equip changes in a fight-per-fight basis is downright stupid, especially considering how the general dungeon design feels tailored to consider equipment swaps. That's not even taking into things like equipment dynamic changes that could happen in the middle of a floor and swap general stat dynamics, like Raquel's midgame offense spike with Macha Brand and Mia's speed jump with Wind Cane. I cannot fathom why you wouldn't allow equipment changing in the middle of the floor, in-between fights, and I never followed that particular guideline because it was so egregiously dumb. I honestly haven't seen it enforced in any way either, and people don't seem to take it to heart, so, if nothing else, the static equipment clause should go away and never turn back.

I think the reason why No Equip-changing is a thing is because if you're allowing them constant access to the Menu between fights, why the hell aren't your healers being allowed to spam menu spells to get everyone back up to full health before the next fight?

You know, I honestly considered that before. But the difference struck here is a matter of balance, mainly. Healing in-between fights breaks fights open far more than any equip-changing ever will. Also, the caveat for not allowing equipment changing hits things like mid-floor (in case you consider that) equipment dynamics and massively inflates idiocy like equip breaking (storebought equipment breaking screwing you over for an entire floor is neverendingly stupid, for instance. Nowadays, it's far less of a factor, but back in the days where we had ORLANDU AS A FLOOR 3 ENEMY, um yeah that clause was fucking dumb).

I personally advocate allowing equip shuffling in-between fights in a fight-per-fight basis instead of only at full heals for one particular reason, though: the idea that a single floor should contain no equipment change break is pretty dumb, and the solution to avert that is giving -all floors- at least one full heal. That's kinda inelegant. I'd rather just institute free in-between fights equip shuffling and be done with it.

[dude789]

I always thought that the equipment clause was to prevent characters from picking and choosing elemental and status resistance options. It seems like it creates a really large rift between the haves and have-nots when it comes to equipment options.

Also question, where do most of y'all peg Zalmo's durabilty factoring in his MP Switch. He's got about 1000 health between his HP and MP, but he has to deal with that boss scaling in FFT when he has support. I just want to check if people actually respect his durability (I see him at about 2.5PCHP myself) so that I don't get screwed once it's too late to make a change. If most people peg his durability below 1.5PCHP then he probably deserves a price drop because that's pretty much all that sets him apart from the other healers.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I always thought that the equipment clause was to prevent characters from picking and choosing elemental and status resistance options. It seems like it creates a really large rift between the haves and have-nots when it comes to equipment options.

It... honestly doesn't do much to mitigate that rift. In fact, it doesn't really do -anything at all-. The gap -inevitably- exists anyway and it's humongous even with a clause like that, and its effects on average are felt mostly late in the game outside FF9 and SH, which are poster children for elemental walling abuse and statusblocking cheese, respectively. All I see that clause doing in practice is screwing over even more teams over equipment crap, and that's not very fun. Most fights where those are relevant generally carry multiple statuses or elements at -once-, so I'm not sure what that even accomplishes other than making floors more annoying to interpret.

[SnowFire]

Since Jo'ou is apparently on the warpath, I will say that I like disallowing equipment change (and also disallowing Job / setup change)  for two reasons:
* It makes voting easier.  There's too damn much to keep track of already.  It makes running a team easier too, as you pick one setup and hope for the best, rather than getting to obsess over Ramza's job set for each individual fight.
* It does keep in check things like FF9 elemental cheese, so if you want to wear a midgame armor that has Fire nulling or whatever, fine, but you'll eat the worse armor the entire floor.  This isn't something people commonly are able to abuse in-game.

Now, to be sure, I know that there was an old idea in the Dungeon that any kind of equipment changing at all was forbidden, which was of course ridiculous (e.g. DQ8 Jessica must pick whip or staff for the FLOOR despite having free choice per turn in-game).  So I know that Neph has since allowed weapon changing when the system allowed it, and I know I've always allowed equipment changing for characters with explicitly legal equipment changing in battle - DQ8 Weapons, Ramza if he set Squire's equip change, etc.  Anyway, I've always viewed the dungeon as a series of "random" battles before a "boss" battle, and in most games, you don't know exactly what enemies you'll fight when, so you need to have a general use set of equipment up.  If you really fear the fire monster random that you know you'll have to fight, sure, you can equip fire resistance, just you'll also have that gear on for other enemies.  Something like "pretend you know the 5 fights you must face on the Nyarlie Dungeon floor, but not their order, so pick an equipment set that's appropriate for defeating all 5."

Also, I'm pretty sure everyone already lets broken equipment be fixed at Full Heals (=Full Resets) anyway and there was never a rule against that.

That said, the biggest concern is still #1, ease of voting. So I say keep it as is, or at most allow equip / setup changes only on Full Heals.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Since Jo'ou is apparently on the warpath, I will say that I like disallowing equipment change (and also disallowing Job / setup change)  for two reasons:
* It makes voting easier.  There's too damn much to keep track of already.  It makes running a team easier too, as you pick one setup and hope for the best, rather than getting to obsess over Ramza's job set for each individual fight.

The only way I could disagree more with you would be if you were trying to extoll the moral virtues of slavedriving to me (disregard the venom, it's merely rhetoric). With the no-equip change clause, you have situations like "oh they have a thunder-walling equip and a fire-walling equip and there are two different fights where they want one but not another and NOW I'LL HAVE TO MULCH WHICH OF THEM THEY WANT MORE OH WAIT IN WHICH OTHER FIGHTS THE STATS OF THESE ARE RELEVANT". With changable equips on a battle-per-battle basis, this situation becomes "the PC handles both fights, the effects on stats are reduced to -this- fight, move on". In practice, no equip changing makes battles more complicated rather than simpler because macromanagement is far less intuitive and far more long-reaching than micromanagement.

* It does keep in check things like FF9 elemental cheese, so if you want to wear a midgame armor that has Fire nulling or whatever, fine, but you'll eat the worse armor the entire floor.  This isn't something people commonly are able to abuse in-game.

In-game, if the armor is storebought and the person needs it for only one fight, there's no reason why the individual won't do just that. In-game, you don't run a whole dungeon underequipped for one determined fight unless you really like hamstringing yourself. Which is a playstyle choice, but intentional hamstringing should have no place in the dungeon as an institutionalized design device.

Anyway, I've always viewed the dungeon as a series of "random" battles before a "boss" battle

This makes your defense even -more- incomprehensible. On series of random battles, you can, guess what? CHANGE EQUIPS IN-BETWEEN SINGLE FIGHTS. In games with fixed randoms or visible randoms, you can freaking tailor your equipment for each set - you certainly can't account for all possibilities, but you can account for the majority of them at least. In a game where you could know all the randoms you fight beforehand, you would -always- tailor your setups to each individual fight in terms of pure efficiency (player laziness not withstanding, but accounting for that -also leads to poor design-). Like you do in games like SRPGs! No equipment changing for a floor utterly flies in the face of in-game micromanaging as a general rule. Are you seriously telling me you'd run a crappy fire armor that immunes fire because the boss, and only the boss, uses fire damage? The dungeon already strips players of a gamut of flexibility options available in-game. Making things even more set in stone against the player is -not- something it needs. I agree with the idea of limiting skillset setups in the cases of job-based PCs like Bartz given how in-game there are choices to be made regarding that kind of switch (you want to build a job for abilities/stats, that involves spending time in a class, you have to ponder whether a situational setup is worth the advancement loss, the works). Equipment, though, where the punishment choice happens mostly in a battle-by-battle basis and not long-term outside of cases where equipment ties into your skillset/learning (and this is inherent to the nature of skillset and learning system, not equipment)?

Also, I'm pretty sure everyone already lets broken equipment be fixed at Full Heals (=Full Resets) anyway and there was never a rule against that.

And what about the fights -before- the full heal? In the games where equipment is breakable, you ALWAYS have the option to re-equip post-battle. There's never a situation where you have to run a gamut of enemies with no equipment because of a single whatever break. You can argue that you can't buy the exact equipment back immediately in some chains (which is true), but even so, you always have the option to rearrange with SOMETHING instead of idiotically running naked. The way this happens, a single equipment break early in the floor can screw you over for the entire duration of it unless -every single break fight is before a full heal or every floor with equipment breaking has a full heal as well-, which is both obnoxious and binding in terms of design. Making bad design decisions and then trying to find ways to turn them acceptable don't make the bad design good. This is a lesson just about every SMT game ever teaches ad infinitum.

[Nephrite]

My own views on this were always as follows:

The battles were intended to be like Gold Saucer, they were fought one after another without any breaks. However, in light of how things have changed over the years of doing this, I like the idea of them each being independent "DL" fights, I don't really have any problem with people being able to change their equipment for each fight -- that's usually taken into account in the actual cost of the character, and if it isn't then I should fix that.

Ultimately I don't think there's a solution that solves both problems.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Outside, you know, being OHKO'd by too many things because Ninja is your most durable PC.

Chemist has more HP than Ninja. </nitpick>

Also Zerase has a bit less pdur but waaay more mdur and is probably as such the most durable PC in practice.


Remarkably little opinion on the equipment debate here.

[Nephrite]

Outside, you know, being OHKO'd by too many things because Ninja is your most durable PC.

Chemist has more HP than Ninja. </nitpick>

Also Zerase has a bit less pdur but waaay more mdur and is probably as such the most durable PC in practice.


Remarkably little opinion on the equipment debate here.

Make a Dungeon team.

[SnowFire]

Re making voting easier: The problem is that if someone's equipment varies by fight, then you have to do things like say "oh Eiko's effective PCHP is .67 vs. physicals now, but it's .85 in this other fight, and .73 in this fight."  If there are worries about what equipment should be used for the floor?  That's the runner of the team's problem to clarify what setup they want to use.  They pick one, and then it's easy for everyone else - use that set.  Only one person needs to worry about the "how much do I need thunder nulling for this one fight," and a dueler's stats stay constant and only need to be researched once.

Re the flavor of the Dungeon: Yes, that is one way fights can happen, but there's also the Gold Saucer style fights (see Nephrite) which are continuous and semi-random which is exactly what I'd bring up, where there's no trip to the menu in-between.  More generally, most games don't have Chrono Trigger style set enemies in set locations.  If you're travelling in a dungeon that has 5 different random encounter sets, you can't optimize for each one individually, because encounters are random and by the time you're in an encounter, you're not on the menu screen anymore and can only use whatever rules exist for in-battle swapping (which does exist for some systems!).  You need to have a setup that can deal with ANY of the 5 random monster types.

Don't get me wrong, if you see each fight as right before a save point where you can save, get in a fight, see exactly how the enemy fights, then equip perfectly to "spoil" the fight, and do this 5 times in a row, you end up with your interpretation.  And sometimes that happens in-game.  More common, though, is the case described above where you say "huh I'm using Eiko's best armor because it's the best all-around for the encounters here, even if a spoiling armor is better for one specific fight," unless of course that one specific fight wipes you, in which case you DO use the suboptimal-otherwise armor and deal with it elsewhere.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Feeling less antagonistically argumentative today! Regardless, we obviously take different strokes of what one sees as simpler, then. Under the interp you go by, you have to assess the entire floor under a specific setup, then assess the entire floor under -another- -and- then make that full floor assessment under the default setup if you force them to make that choice. If they can pick and choose, you may have to study what that does to that specific fight, but it's self-contained, which, to me, simplifies the process overall. Not to mention that my fundamental problem with that equipment enforcement is that the -player- should make that choice -and- it should be made specific on floor setup, and there's no equipment enforcement set by the player whatsoever in-dungeon besides Ginny's mediums (and honestly, I think it's better that way). One interp allows for simple handwaving, the other forces some sort of macromanagement from both sides in order to be fair to the player. And I quite frankly prefer to streamline this process as much as possible.

An aside to enforcing that equipment rule is that it hamstrings defensive setups further by limiting a team's options on spoiling fights, instead encouraging people to kill everything faster and harder -even more-. I don't like adopting interps that make the dungeon's rocket tag nature worse by proxy. Funnily, such flexibility has never been less necessary than it is right now (not allowing equip swapping at all back in the days of Orlandu as a dungeon enemy on the fourth floor of floor three with no full heals anywhere turned that setup absolutely NUTS, for an example. It's really necessary to consider how enemies -will- act in favor of the dungeon as a whole, and this comes up in many contexts one way or another. Most recent example? Atma Weapon rasping Jane in order to screw over her Sucker spamming on later fights the floor fight Magic's last team lost), but it's the principle of the thing.

Ultimately, though, what I'd advocate as a general guideline is: no set rule on equipment changing, but pointing out the existence of differing interps. This way, if someone wants to view it differently, sure, go ahead, but it's not something people building teams will have to worry with at depth. Simplifying team management and construction is a good thing!

[Yoshiken]

My team has apparently gone missing somewhere, but it was something like NeoSpeed Yuna, Yukari, Yosuke, Demi and.. Teddie, I think?

Just do you know, you have half a point to work with there since I moved Yuna down to 3.0.

I noticed that, and I think I spent a while looking at options, but given the idea is NulShock and smash here, I don't think there's anyone in particular that really helps for those extra points? Once the Electric weakness is out of the way, the team is hilariously good for the cost.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Actually, is it? Yuna's offense is terrible until floor 6 and her awesome support skillset is mostly wasted by her needing to spam ThunderNul whenever Lightning comes up. Yosuke's never a very good damage dealer and his utility has issues (Tentarafoo is inaccurate, ST evade buffing until floor 7 is a waste of time). Yukari has a lot of MT damage, but her offense nears game-worst with getting zero in the way of boosts and amps, and she's frail and average speed. Teddie is even frailer than Yukari and is actually -slow-, not to mention his buffs don't come up until floor 5 at the earliest. Demi's magic durability has issues in general until Barrier comes up and her durability doesn't start off so hot either, not to mention her good damage is highly limited until floor 5 as well.

There's a lot of healing and revival (all PCs heal! Almost all PCs revive!) and the abundance of crowd control helps mitigate the crappy base offense, but the actual stalling needs work due to the limitations brought by the weakness gimmick and the actual blitzing power isn't really there (I.e. you're not generally finishing tough battles in two turns or less). Nor is the long-term offense, really (you can do better than lategame Tarukaja off a slow, frail character as far as dungeon options go. To make things worse, your second-best damage dealer -immunes offensive buffs-. Whoops). The setup would be a -lot- better if it involved protecting only one PC from the weakness and trying to build a cohesive whole, but as is, the team is brought together by a liability, and that gimmick that pretty much hangs itself on the roof the minute the likes of Crono knock on your door. ThunderNul isn't even any good if there are multiple thunder-slinging foes...

[Clear Tranquil]

I agree with Pyro's orginal suggestion and Snow mostly. I've been pretty flexible on it as far as it goes already with allowing the likes of ARPG characters/anyone else with the ability to change weapons in battle in game to do so in the dungeon and yeah allowing stuffs like example Hilda changing her skill sets before important/boss fights also makes sense to me 

Pretty much stuffs which can be changed on the fly as you're going through the game picking up skills/etc without any excessive grinding like multiple Job mastering/etc~

**

Well, Peppita's durability is always going to be a little bit lower than the others (I think?).

Yep! Peppita's durability is a tad on the underwhelming side especially vs nukage. In game this is not a problem because you can use Convert Damage to MP and eventually make her an MP tank with like 60'000~ MP and MP Regen via equips/synthing/accessories, also Magic Dance and yet also still manage to max ATK via Power Dance,  since Power Dance frees up her ATK boosting slots this allows her more for MP boosters so she can get more MP than any other potential MP tanks who are using their slots for ATK boosters. Of course you could just have Maria -in- the same team as Peppita and make Maria have like 70'000~ MP while Power Dance maxes ATK but I digress (they can't both get that much MP respectively because's there's a limit on the MP boosting berries/food before factoring in MP boosting equips/etc too) Peppita also has her counters which in game combined with her MP tanking potential make her pretty sturdy both as leader as well as on AI and if you're maining her you can just rapid fire cancel chain combo her dances into each other to extend the dance invincibility frames/windows for extended invincibility times but yeah. Without all her hax/in the DL/dungeon she's kinda frail  A glass cannon (eventually)~

**

Some questions -

*Are Soul Rune/Light Sword MT/targetable? Do they boost Speed?
*White Rose's ID (FlashFlood if I remember right) and Blindness (FlashFire?) do work in the dungeon right?
*Should I replace Fang with somebody like Asellus or Raquel? The idea is kinda to get Soul Rune/Light Sword/Power Dance up -before- the main physical blitzer goes not after/Turn 2 >_> Or how would Neo Speed or Speed? on Peppita work?~ I could also think about losing Vanille but then I lose the more accurate defensive debuffs (plus I also want the debuffs to come out before the main physical blitzer too)
*Alternatively I was thinking of going with a Toro baitish team of Maya/Mesa/White Rose/Vanille/Peppita~ Thoughts?~

Thanks

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I don't remember exactly if you can target SoulRune, but I -think- you can. On the other hand, SoulRune, if I remember correctly, is a Gift spell, so you don't get it until at least floor 4. Not sure if it's the best option for speed buffing either, since it runs off the target's base speed and it's only ST. If you're emphasizing that kind of strategy, you often want something more akin to Saner or Acceleratle (SoulRune has its own perks, of course, being an omnibuff, but still. I think that, in order to maximize its usefulness, you want it to enhance someone who already enjoys some degree of straight-up stat dominance and who can make good use of it. Example: SoulRune on Speed? Raquel, to stick with people you do know). LightSword is self-only, but the parry effect affects the whole party. FlashFlood doesn't give rewards (stat gains or money/items) if you use it to end a fight. This makes it useless for a lot of people, myself included. Blind just isn't very useful period.

No real thoughts on the rest of the questions.

[Yoshiken]

Yosuke's never a very good damage dealer and his utility has issues (Tentarafoo is inaccurate, ST evade buffing until floor 7 is a waste of time). Yukari has a lot of MT damage, but her offense nears game-worst with getting zero in the way of boosts and amps, and she's frail and average speed. Teddie is even frailer than Yukari and is actually -slow-, not to mention his buffs don't come up until floor 5 at the earliest.

Guys, are these widespread interps? Yukari's one of the best damage dealers for the majority of the game (pretty much until Amps start showing up, since her stats make up for the lack of Boost), Yosuke has solid damage of both types, and Teddie joins in F3, when his damage is absolutely fantastic, and Matarukaja is Lv 42, with the end of F4 being Lv 45. (Maraku-, on the other hand, is probably F6.)

I can't really comment on Demi, since I've barely played PS4, but if these interps are pretty common, then I'll have to change my team and.. probably all of these three need lower prices, because shit, this makes them practically useless.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Guys, are these widespread interps? Yukari's one of the best damage dealers for the majority of the game (pretty much until Amps start showing up, since her stats make up for the lack of Boost)

They really don't. Even with just Boost, in-game she was consistently below Mitsuru and even -Koromaru- for her offense, which I'd instantly peg as "below average damage". Floor 1-3, she's solid enough, but she both gets the higher-level spells a bit later than other PCs -and- never gets boosts and amps. The high magic stat doesn't compensate for the multiplicative boosts.

Yosuke has solid damage of both types

"Solid" as "middling 3HKO as its absolute best", and he sees a gigantic lull in his physical damage. Until floor 6, he's stuck with fucking Sonic Punch for physicals, and that starts sucking at floor 3! Due to the stupid physical offense jumps starting floor 6, he dips from "averagish" to "5HKOs unless he wears Auto-Taru armor", and that's not what you want in a team whose offense is already anemic.

and Teddie joins in F3, when his damage is absolutely fantastic, and Matarukaja is Lv 42, with the end of F4 being Lv 45. (Maraku-, on the other hand, is probably F6.)

Okay, my bad on Mataru, L42 is a -lot- better than I thought. I'd dispute his offense being fantastic, though: he doesn't start with Ice Boost at a point where PCs start getting it. Earlier game, the damage averages are also quite tight, so you don't see huge damage leads either. I don't think he'll ever 2HKO anything at -any- point in the game without buffs.

I can't really comment on Demi, since I've barely played PS4, but if these interps are pretty common, then I'll have to change my team and.. probably all of these three need lower prices, because shit, this makes them practically useless.

Well, Demi... her immunity to attack buffs doesn't come up often, because that's really not what she's about, and her perks honestly make up for her deficits (Medic is absolutely hax, MT revival and full status healing is a bailout of doom and destruction even if the healing isn't that good, and mdurability buffing that's MT, powerful, permanentand persists through death = holy shit that's amazing. PS4 defensive buffs are some of the bestest things ever). As for Yosuke/Yukari/Teddie pricing... honestly, I consider both Yosuke and Teddie overpriced. Wingman just doesn't cover niches very well and the Thunder weakness for the first three floors can spell instant loss to a team because P4 weaknesses are broke as fuck against you. Teddie has -that- issue for the whole game and frail, slow healers are a huge whatever (on the other hand, you really don't have much lower to go from 1.5 >_>. And Teddie has -some- perks. Matarukaja isn't that potent a buff at base, since it's not even quite 1.5x to damage, BUT it affects both offenses, and -this- is hard to come by and can see itself slapped into a lot of parties). Yukari... well, without that weakness, she'd be worth a 1.5, probably, maybe even a 2.0, the healing skillset is quite potent - she's kind of a Nina4-lite, and look at how Nina4 fares herself. P3 weakness doesn't spell QUITE as much doom for a whole team either, even if it's considerably worse individually.

Ultimately, though, I think you just emphasized putting in people with crippling elemental weaknesses too much. Just because you can have a move that immunes one casting of that weakness doesn't mean you should pile them up like that, especially when three of those people give the opposition extra turns to work with when slapped around. One suggestion could be keeping Yuna and Teddie, slapping him with Body Charge (suddenly he looks very attractive with 30% more durability, damage and speed for only 2 points, and even if his damage needs work by the end, the MT emphasis off non-liability quickdrawing power is a nice boon), then building up the team's strengths with other PCs.

[SnowFire]

Awesome teams > "good" teams, and "Team NulLightning" is pretty dang awesome.  (I don't know P3, though, so will defer to others on if the characters are overpriced and Yoshi can sneak an upgade in.)

Re Jo'ou: Think we've both said our piece, but hamstringing spoiling, especially equipment-rotation-based spoiling, is a feature not a bug from some perspectives.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Re Jo'ou: Think we've both said our piece, but hamstringing spoiling, especially equipment-rotation-based spoiling, is a feature not a bug from some perspectives.

Indeed. Bad design can be and often is deliberate in a lot of cases. Doesn't make it less obnoxious to me, though. I just personally don't agree with design that purposefully limits your options in very base ways, especially when the fundamental designs are already heavily stacked against the player.

I also mostly chimed in on Yoshi because he seemed to sincerely think the team was better than it actually is, baroquely elaborate design aside. Details, details!

[Nephrite]

Yosuke I'm happy to move to 1.5, Yukari is good enough at 1.0 in my opinion.

Teddie... I dunno. He seems too good for 1.0 to me.

[dude789]

Yoshi instead of using Yuna, why don't you just slap on the Elemental Advance seal stone on the team cause Neph changed it so it now removes weaknesses from the team (although the seal stone list hasn't been updated to reflect this). Then you could add in someone who can help your teams damage because they already have enough healing. Looking over the list, another one of the PS4 characters could help. DQ3 Sage is also an intriguing option if you're familiar with him.

Also, still no opinions from you guys on Zalmo's durability?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Teddie is one of those weird cases whose pricing actually feels right -after- you consider Body Charge. I'd also argue that being overpriced in the 1.5 range isn't a big deal, since 1.5 lies in the range of low-impact picks and whatnot. Yosuke at a 2.0 is clearly overpriced, though. He's one of those cases whose in-game usefulness just doesn't translate into DL numbers. His Red Mage bent is favored by the game's enemy design decisions in a very specific way (wind weakness on enemies being pretty much the most common one, midgame floors putting in entire formations of dangerous enemies entirely spoiled by Tentarafoo, in addition to his solid stat mix). The environment he sees in the dungeon favors him magnitudes less.

[Yoshiken]

Oh, I know full-well that I don't build good teams, I build interesting ones (or, well, try to.) That said, it's not interesting to see a team scrape its way to F4 and then get blown up in predictable fashion.

@Teddie price: Even with BC, he seems overcosted. BC Teddie is still below average speed, if I'm not mistaken, and still has below average durability, even if it's not horrendously bad any more. Yeah, the damage suddenly becomes pretty sweet and he can possibly last long enough to throw around buffs, but that'll be rare and the fights he can last that long in.. are probably decided before he even gets that far.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It really depends on your build and how you mitigate Teddie's problems. Him being 1.5 means he'll -never- be a high-impact pick, regardless, but he's very versatile for a 1.5, and with BC, he has options worth a 2.5 rating on paper.  Compare Teddie to most Light healers - he has comparable durability to most of them and notably better resources and alternatives.