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

[Clear Tranquil]

NP Djinn =-)

Nel-

Short range-Charge, Aerial, Shockwave, Shadow Wave, Poison Cloud, Mirror Slice, Divine Wrath
Long range- Splitting Sky, Flying Guillotine, Lightning Chain
Multi- Ice Daggers, Whirlwind
Other-Symbology

*In game Nel's Whirlwind has an interesting property where you can attach passives like Increase HP damage, Stun, Increase MP damage, etc to it (start up a WW > WW chain at long range then move in and tap the short range X or O, whatever you have the passive assigned to) That might take Nel two turns to set up in the DL though I dunno. Of course WW can just be used normally at short range as well.
*I *think* Lightning Chain is L/R, need to check though

Adray-

Short range- Charge, Aerial, Earth Glaive, Lightning Blast, Southern Cross, Siricco
Long range-Fire Bolt, Ice Needles, Emotion Torrent, Titan Fist, Sea Gate
Other-Symbology

* Fire Bolt, Ice Needles, Lightning Blast, Southern Cross and Earth Glaive is all the symbology Adray can set as battle skills irrc, I'll double check next time I play though < hasn't played SO3 in a while !

Thanks Djinn <(^^)>

[Bardiche]

Ephraim (2.5) w/ Firefly
Sasarai (2.5)
Garnet (2.0)
Rudy (2.0)
Raja (1.0)
Nall (1.0)

11

I call this TEAM MAGIC. Sasarai will be the main damage dealer; on the first few floors, Earthquake should clean house. There's not much that stops his Earth elemental assault, and I don't think many can top that impressive damage of his in his own game. (is there anyone that can beat that sort of damage?)

Ephraim's counters coupled with Firefly should be... interesting. Rudy can cover for Raja, Garnet, Sasarai in case of accidents happening. Nall's there to revive should things go awry, while Garnet and Raja are my main Healers. Sasarai -can- revive, but it takes away from his TRUE EARTH NUKE, so I'd rather have Garnet/Raja/Nall deal with that. Raja can restore Sasarai MP if it's reaaaaaaaaaally needed?

[Nephrite]

Just so people know, I will be adding the following two facets to the Firefly Sealstone for future teams:

Any status attack used on the character will hit, regardless of immunity to said status. The status hit rate remains the same + the natural 10%.

To clarify, if someone has ID attached to their physical, the chance of that ID activating remains the same but with an extra 10% added, no matter how accurate the attack is.

Characters who have a "Defend" command may feel free to use it, but it will not reduce damage. It will, however, do anything else a defend command in the home game does. (LoD Defend still heals, for example)

[Nephrite]

I changed my mind about Firefly. This is what the new one is going to look like:

Firefly: One member of your team becomes the target of all Single target attacks. This effect overrides any elemental and status protection. In addition, revival effects on this target take effect in the next battle. Defending or other self-imposed actions that reduce damage (such as Auron's Guardian) do not reduce the damage this target takes. This effect may not be used on Worker 8 or Jane.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Yeah, this seems like a good idea. It's amazing how much the Dungeon's natural balance is thrown off when Slow Tanks and Dodgy Counter-whores are actually -useful-.

[Nephrite]

Ouch!

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oh wow... I didn't realize how sarcastic that came out.

I'm actually being sincere here. I think it's a good change. The main strategy for both sides in the Dungeon is to focus on the Team's biggest threat. Firefly really messes that up by allowing previously less-useful characters like Slow Tanks or Dodgy Counter-whores to fill their niche more completely (and generally these types of characters were in the Dungeon for their -other- skills, and they're still getting to exploit those, too!).

[Bardiche]

So uh, Nall revival. How's that work under new Firefly rules?

[ThePiggyman]

So uh, Nall revival. How's that work under new Firefly rules?

Well, Nall made sure anyone who died one battle would be revived the next one, so I'm guessing it would work exactly the same way?

[Nephrite]

That is correct.

[Bardiche]

After careful consideration, and taking into account the proposed change to Firefly, I've decided to opt for a stronger tank to bear that Firefly Stone. Wall of text incoming since I like sharing my idea for the team. Please bear with me.

Marcus (1.5) w/ Firefly
Sasarai (2.5)
Garnet (2.0)
Ness (3.0)
Monk (1.0)
Nall (1.0)

Nall remains as my backup in case things go awry. Thankfully I don't really have much else to spend the points on. Basically, Marcus is my early-game tank, and he's going to kill a lot as well.

Sasarai gets time to level up some until the later floors where his magic's really the main damage.

Garnet is still on healing duty.

Ness is there to be my late-game tank. His Shield spell is going to be rather awesome, I should say. 50% physical damage reduction will turn him into a massive tank that reflects damage back as well. 10/10, would recruit again.

Monk is there to provide a physical smackdown on whatever has already been weakened by Sasarai's earth spells.

The team will mostly rely on Sasarai's MT damage wearing almost all enemies down, allowing for the three others (Garnet is on support duty) to pick off the enemies one by one. Even MT damage won't do the opponents much good; if it's magical, Sasarai is very likely to simply shrug it off, and Garnet's magic defense is still good. The two of them can bring back whoever falls, and somehow I think only Marcus and Monk will die from that, if at all.

Physical MT? I've got an army of buffs from Sasarai, Garnet and Ness to deal with that, and despite claims to Sasarai's lack of speed, he still scores lightly above average on stat topics, and in my experience was the first to do anything anytime I let him cast a spell. I'm confident I can reduce the physical smackdowns to nothing.

SHOULD something go wrong and Garnet and Sasarai both die and/or are unable to resurrect someone, and Ness doesn't have revival yet, Nall can pick up after the fight and raise whoever fell.

How can this possibly go wrong?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Well, if there's a status that Garnet doesn't block, there could be trouble if it's MT. But... I don't think the Dungeon has a lot of that. At least, not until the late floors, and I think Sasarai gets handed a Yellow Scarf in the late floors.

[Yoshiken]

Well, there is the fact that you won't be able to revive Marcus in that fight. If the MT does kill Marcus & Monk, as you said it could, then your Firefly's gone and you could face some trouble.
But, in all honesty, that's not likely to be too common, and I'm guessing a fight with that will have it's downsides to make it go down pretty damn quickly to the offence there. I like it.

[Clear Tranquil]

Fire Fly isn't even worth it any more imo. But that's just me >_>

[Nephrite]

Fire Fly isn't even worth it any more imo. But that's just me >_>

Good! ...I mean... um... ... *cough*

[Clear Tranquil]

<_<

*scraps evil plans*

*plots some more*

Heheheh will anyone ever outwit the dungeon master?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The toro and a few others have done that quite a few times, just the power of rebalancing is wondrous. It's one of Neph's superpowers. =]

[Taishyr]

I am probably responsible for about 25% of the random changes/tweaks to duelers/sealstones, I'd estimate? Crowley was my crown jewel of "yeah, this needs to be fixed", probably.

Seconding Snow, as well.

[Nephrite]

To be fair, no one had used Crowley before you. /nod

[Taishyr]

This is true. I'm pretty sure I was the one bringing up 3/4ths of the nasty Firefly Sealstone uses, tho.

[SnowFire]

Well, to blabber a bit, the Firefly change has made it more important that either
A) The target is a distraction to force some enemies to waste turn 1, and isn't crucial to the main plan (late dungeon Marcus, Nina3, etc.)
B) The target really is a true tank who won't die. (Ephraim, Ziggy, FF1 Knight)
C) The target has some evil ability that makes them a psuedo-tank (JANE, FFT Monk's Hamedo as the more balanced example)

Actually, Onix isn't a bad combination of both, as who cares if he dies but he randomly spoils physical damage well.

Even with the revive nerf, this new Firefly is still quite powerful, and I'd cheerfully pay points for it.  Having a distraction round 1 is pretty huge, and tanky Dungeon teams with overwhelming MT damage or status tend to slay the party anyway.  (Also, count me as totally on the bandwagon for

--

Some people brought up FE8 Ewan earlier.  Think he'd be pretty neat, but he's a 0.5 point pick.  Compared to Moulder, he's a complete puny on floors 1 & 2 (early healing and tankiness is at least something, especially in a team whose healing comes later, compared to Pupil Ewan's bad damage with no durability and getting doubled), and isn't as good stat-wise as you might expect.  He's average speed, but has horrible Con, so is below-average when using "heavier tomes" like Luna and even more so when using Nosferatu (yay FE for not making sense; how are *spells* heavy?!).  You can only buy Nosferatu 5 plot battles from the end of the game anyway.  On the bright side, his stat caps are nice and high, so he continues to get better on Floors 7-10.  And Gleipnir is a nice nuke even if it *completely* tanks Ewan's attack speed (and isn't happening until floor 7 or so due to requiring an S in Dark).  Also, as usual, Dark gets all the "interesting" spells, with Eclipse for damage, Luna for RES-ignoring, and Nosferatu for the (slowish) drain game, and it's generally hard to find much good dark-typed damage?

Think I'd see Ewan as something like:

Floors 1-2: Pupil
Floors 3-4: Shaman (Eclipse, Luna)
Floor 5: Druid (Nosferatu, the various Healing and Arcane spells)
Floor 7: Gleipnir

I assume most people would go with the Druid route, as Summoner is kind of DL fail, and there are plenty of other options for Arcane magic.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Luna in FE8 is pretty useless due to its 50 Hit. Nosferatu is something but less useful in a team setting than in a DL match. That floor progression looks too fast for Ewan to me, as well... he doesn't even -join- until Floor 4, most likely, and if you don't do randoms and so on won't hit Druid until Floor 7.

Also, Moulder is below average durability early. "Tanky for a mage" does not equal "tanky". Plus random critical rates against him, though this is less bad in the dungeon than in-game, probably.

[SnowFire]

Well, I'm assuming he joins on floor 2 after the Ephraim / Eirika split, similar to the kind of hacks suggested for Sasarai & Kurando to make them useful early.  It'd be weird to have Ewan be a Pupil for 5 floors...  how would that even scale?  Would he be sub-puny on floor 1?  (Also, the original Ewan suggestion had him classing up on floor 2, so.)

Forgot about Luna's bad hit.  Eh, it's still a useful *option* against magic tanks in long matchs, I suppose.

[dude789]

Team evaluation time!

Blue: Blue's damage was a godsend and his speed wasn't a huge problem until floor 3, although I think it would be a bit of a problem on the PC version of floor 2. His main problem is that early on he has to make tough choices for what skills he wants. Generally he wants light magic for healing and revival, guns for speed, and other magic types for unique options. It was unfortunate that he didn't start with reaction shot when I chose guns mastery as that would have helped for floor 3. For floor 4 I probably would have chosen rune magic

Zozma: I'm not sure that I chose the best floors for Zozma, but he was useful regardless. Sharp pain has the potential to make certain fights a breeze and that is very powerful in a 2.5. I think this new version of the dungeon is a little less friendly for him, but I would still recommend him.

Relm: Relm is interesting in that she's probably the best example of a high risk-high reward character in the dungeon. She's less than a puny for 2.5 floors and she doesn't really reach her point value until about the end of floor 4. However, after that she shoots upward in power until she is a godlike. I would love to see someone use her successfully because I think if she learns a few spells she could take a team pretty deep into the dungeon.

Monk: Monk was great. Even though I never got to use him with the firefly sealstone, he still was incredibly useful. Early revival and mp restoration where incredibly useful and the rest of his skill set wasn't bad either.

Rena: She's an okay healer for the early floors, but she probably can't handle the entire load by herself early on. Unfortunately I didn't reach some of her better utility moves like Anti and growth, but the skill set is powerful for a .5.

Reason it failed: Skill limitations. There are some risked that come with using a character who has not been used before and this team is evidence of it. I was a bit disappointed when Blue didn't learn his entire skill set of choice at first, but I wasn't that surprised. However, Relm not starting the floor with magic was too costly a burden to overcome, and if i had known about it I probably would have made a different team. If either of them had started the floor 3 all of the gun skills or magic the outcome would have been different.

My Next team will probably be something a little bit simpler. My last two teams have focused on having a wide variety of abilities and using tricks to pass the dungeon which has cost them when a crucial ability is learned too late. I’m leaning toward a new version of the Emily-Deis 2 team I had a while back, but changed in favor of the Purim- Jane team.   

[Nephrite]

For what it's worth, because of the confusion with Relm I have updated her sheet to indicate when I, personally, let her gain her spells!