Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 127

[Nephrite]

"It has been quite some time since I've seen your faces! I hope you don't mind that I changed a few things!"


Link to the Dungeon Wiki!

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**Full Heals reset limit and other types of gauges when teams pass through them.
**Characters that join after the start are locked into the relative stats they have at that time until they would officially join.


Team Pyro | Rikku, Ryu2, Lilka, FFT Chemist, and Rand (Firefly)
[Floor 8: Maze of Trials]
*Lilka has been granted Wild Arms 2's Sheriff Star!
*Ryu2 should be considered against the end-game averages, even with post-game stats.
Team Pyro vs. Mascot Yuna (FFX-2)
Team Pyro vs. Belial
Team Pyro vs. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (WoZ)
Team Pyro vs. Orphan (FF13)
Team Pyro vs. Myria1 and Myria3

Team Super | Orlandu, Emily, Kevin, FF1 Knight, FF1 Monk (Bravery Sealstone)

Floor 3a: Unified Strength
**On this floor, party and enemy HP is pooled together. If someone is fatally statused, likewise if a character is hit with gravity, that health should be removed.
Team Super vs. Citan, Billy, Bart and Rico
Team Super vs. Hashmalum and Velius
Team Super vs. Seymour Omnis


Team MICHAEL | Yuna, Alys, Arnaud, Tidus, Raja (SSL)
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team President vs. Big Joe, Evil Gaia, 10 Jogurts, VP1 Hrist, Euram Barrows, Gobi, Sinspawn Ammes, Garland and Igglanova (PS4)
Team President vs. Cecil, Cid and Rosa
Team President vs. Augus and Joker (BoF2)


Time Capsule Team Rozalia | Chris (TWR), Tidus, Ephraim, Jane, Nall
[Floor 2b: Magical Mystery]
Team Rozalia vs. FFT Wizard, Oracle, Priest, Summoner and Time Mage
Team Rozalia vs. Sarah (S3), Estella, Joker and Piccolo
Team Rozalia vs. Boss Magus
Team Rozalia vs. Narshe Kefka
Team Rozalia vs. Rasputin (SH2) and Nicholai (SH2)

Firefly - The first attack of each enemy will be redirected at the bearer of this sealstone. Multitarget and status moves are not affected, however status attached to damage is.

Life - One character's healing effects now also allows for revival, however the healing also only revives characters with 1 HP. The healing received from spells that hit more than one target may be used as revival once per battle.

Bravery Sealstone - Enemy damage is reduced by 25% and enemy status rates are cut in half (90% status becomes 45%, round down if needed) due to how brave it is to go into the Dungeon without a healer.

[Pyro]

Team Pyro | Rikku, Ryu2, Lilka, FFT Chemist, and Rand (Firefly)
[Floor 8: Maze of Trials]
*Lilka has been granted Wild Arms 2's Sheriff Star!
*Ryu2 should be considered against the end-game averages, even with post-game stats.

WA2 Sheriff Star grants ID/status immunity and elemental damage halving.
I'm very fortunate that I won't have to worry about "BOW DOES 999X2 DAMAGE" hype eroding respect for G.Drgn.

Team Pyro vs. Mascot Yuna (FFX-2): The team has the offense for this courtesy of one dragon.
Team Pyro vs. Belial: Belial by herself will not go through the team. She does not instant-double Rikku and her first shot of 4-D Pocket must target Rand. Beyond that both Lilka and Ryu2 can smack her down fairly well, and she can't beat the WHOLE team with 4-D Pocket because it just doesn't last long enough and she can't keep a lockdown of it going due to the random nature of it.
Team Pyro vs. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (WoZ): Put the buffs up and he can't punch through them.  Beyond that G. Drgn works rather well and between Rikku and Lilka he can't stop the healing.
Team Pyro vs. Orphan (FF13): Lilka takes the fangs out of Orphan by being status/ID immune here and having MT status healing, and MT "Grant ID Immunity". G. Drgn being ITD is a godsend here.
Team Pyro vs. Myria1 and Myria3: Oh wow this is really mean. Keep Protect on Lilka so Myria1 can't OHKO her (and Myria3's can't finish her off thanks to damage halving) so that she can keep the healing/status healing going. Myria 3 will likely constantly be using Sanctuary to prevent buffing from ruining their damage/offense. Ryu2/Chemist will likely be putting out G.Drgns. Myria 3 will fall first (maybe even after just 2 G.Drgns) and then Myria 1 is rather boned. That initial part of the fight might be a doozy. Rand's Firefly can prove very useful here, as is the fact that Rikku outspeeds em.

Team Super | Orlandu, Emily, Kevin, FF1 Knight, FF1 Monk (Bravery Sealstone)

Floor 3a: Unified Strength
**On this floor, party and enemy HP is pooled together. If someone is fatally statused, likewise if a character is hit with gravity, that health should be removed.
Team Super vs. Citan, Billy, Bart and Rico
Team Super vs. Hashmalum and Velius
Team Super vs. Seymour Omnis


Team MICHAEL | Yuna, Alys, Arnaud, Tidus, Raja (SSL)
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team President vs. Big Joe, Evil Gaia, 10 Jogurts, VP1 Hrist, Euram Barrows, Gobi, Sinspawn Ammes, Garland and Igglanova (PS4)
Team President vs. Cecil, Cid and Rosa
Team President vs. Augus and Joker (BoF2)


Time Capsule Team Rozalia | Chris (TWR), Tidus, Ephraim, Jane, Nall
[Floor 2b: Magical Mystery]
Team Rozalia vs. FFT Wizard, Oracle, Priest, Summoner and Time Mage
Team Rozalia vs. Sarah (S3), Estella, Joker and Piccolo
Team Rozalia vs. Boss Magus
Team Rozalia vs. Narshe Kefka
Team Rozalia vs. Rasputin (SH2) and Nicholai (SH2)

[Dhyerwolf]

Team Super | Orlandu, Emily, Kevin, FF1 Knight, FF1 Monk (Bravery Sealstone)

Let's start here

Floor 3a: Unified Strength
**On this floor, party and enemy HP is pooled together. If someone is fatally statused, likewise if a character is hit with gravity, that health should be removed.
Team Super vs. Citan, Billy, Bart and Rico- This match will be kind of slow going because Billy is going to get a turn and start the MT healing off 18 speed. Bart will lower accuracy. Granted, for all the that the enemies aren't very dangerous themselves,
Team Super vs. Hashmalum and Velius-  The team is very well equipped to handle this one though.
Team Super vs. Seymour Omnis- So...this match seems like it would go very badly. I mean...a group of physical sluggers with no real ITD against Seymour. And they have no MT healing on top of it? Even with the normal damage potency, this match plays against their worst weaknesses. Seymour has close to 15 PC HP Pdur and has some MT damage, so things are going to add up very quickly.

[SnowFire]

Taem super passes.  Sure, Seymour Omnis MT 2HKOs off high speed with Ultima even through Bravery SS, but he's 100% dependent on defense hype according to the stat topic, and yet he's vulnerable to Armor Break in FFX which is absolutely ruinous to tanks.  While normally this'd be a bit of a stretch, I am totally fine with letting Shellburst Stab work here for an "armor break" effect even if the FFT mechanics are different.

The only risk is that fight 1 causes the team to lose too much HP so that they're MT 1HKO'd by Seymour, but Orlandu will break Citan's weapon -> break everyone else's weapon, and the ether fallbacks are pretty crappy and can be kept up with by Kevin's awful healing?  Actually did super declare which class Kevin was going?  (If he wants a fail, feel free to declare it was the Dark class...)

Also pass to Pyro.  Mascot Yuna is the toughest fight, actually, G. Dragon might be ITD but I don't think it'd turn off auto-Protect/auto-Shell so it barely 2HKOs Mascot's insane tankiness.  However, Rikku's FFX Haste is better than FFX-2 Haste.  Yuna can still make the fight interesting by aiming 100% Confuse at Ryu and hoping he nukes his own team, but eh.  For Belial, I limit her to 2 4-D Pockets max, and she needs to pocket all of Ryu / Lilka / Rikku to win.  Beating Orphan is about being able to stall & buff through the first forms and then smash through the final form which Rikku -> Ryu does just fine.  Myria1 offense sucks to me (Agni) and Myria3 will be way too low on life after the opening G. Dragon to win out.

[Dhyerwolf]

I would be pretty against not only letting that break Seymour's defense (Just like I am against it being anything but a max HP lowering effect in the DL), but it doesn't even work in game versus Lucavi, which is definitely what Seymour would be analogous too (Maybe if it somehow cancelled Defense Up in FFT, but it doesn't).

[SnowFire]

Well, Armor Breaking would work on Rofel or Undead Balk, and it's just as possible that final Seymour is comparable to them, too.

I agree that mechanically you're correct, but in-game equipment breaking works on lots of bosses, probably about as many as the FFX bosses that are vulnerable to Auron's Armor Break.  I'm willing to throw Team Super a bone due to the 100% flavor match here.  It also helps that super quite possibly zerg rushes out Seymour anyway even without ITD hype, that is a hell of a lot of damage on super's team and .8 * 5 = 4 PCHP, and Orlandu gets in 2 attacks.

[Dhyerwolf]

I'd be surprised to see Super's team averaging 0.8 PC HP. You'd need too see Orlandu with his storebought accessory, and Emily picks up steam as the games goes I think (since getting more speed is integral to getting more swings).

Just checking, yeah, Seymour caps at about 15.5 Pdur. So even 4 PC HP a turn is still taking 4 turns to take him down. As noted, they may not come into the match with full life bars. So basically, you probably need to see Shellburst Stab working here.

(On a plot note, I would say that Seymour being some Sin manifestation definitely is far more Lucavi than undead lackey. Now if this was Seymour 1, yes).

[SnowFire]

15 PCHP with no scaling, but I'm using scaling so that drops it to the 4 PCHP range.  I do agree that my kneejerk is that team super wouldn't quite make it without either Shellburst Stab hype or else "baking in" Armor Break to the damage average, similar to holding FF13 bosses against debuffs....  which I think most people do to a degree, so even light baking in of Armor Break may be enough here.

More generally, in FFX, [FFX defense debuffing] works on some bosses but not others, in FFT equipment breaking works on some bosses but not on others, and Seymour is vulnerable to his game's defense debuffing.  Similar to arguments on if bosses immune a status or not.

[Random Consonant]

Tenatively thinking super passes.  No way do I buy Shellburst Stab hype (I mean really, even if I considered it, Omnis is closer to a lucavi than Rofel/Balk/whatever so uh hell to the no there) but on the other hand I certainly don't allow Seymour to spam Ultima and see him around 4x phys durability myself.  Granted I could be overestimating the team's damage and ability to reach the fight in sufficiently good shape.

More generally, in FFX, [FFX defense debuffing] works on some bosses but not others, in FFT equipment breaking works on some bosses but not on others, and Seymour is vulnerable to his game's defense debuffing.  Similar to arguments on if bosses immune a status or not.

If Seymour had equipment he would have FFX equipment, and FFX equipment doesn't exactly modify either physical or magical defense stats, so there's not much reason to believe Shellburst Stab would do anything to them even if there were reason to believe it would even work in the first place.

[Pyro]

Team Super | Orlandu, Emily, Kevin, FF1 Knight, FF1 Monk (Bravery Sealstone)

Floor 3a: Unified Strength
**On this floor, party and enemy HP is pooled together. If someone is fatally statused, likewise if a character is hit with gravity, that health should be removed.
Team Super vs. Citan, Billy, Bart and Rico: Break Citan's weapon, pound on Billy. Proceed to bust Billy's MP and win. Don't think the other team will be able to sneak in too much damage, but there will be some.
Team Super vs. Hashmalum and Velius: Can Hashmalum get off a Meteor? I seriously doubt it.
Team Super vs. Seymour Omnis: Yeah Seymour gets at LEAST one Ultima off. But two? Probably not unless his HP is unscaled, and I don't do that for bosses. Can the team put out 3-4 PCHP physical damage before Seymour's second turn? That'd be 3x Orlandu (I think), 2x Emily, 1x Kevin/Knight/Monk. Assuming ~60% PCHP damage attacks, that'd be 4.8 PCHP so yeah I think they got this.


Team MICHAEL | Yuna, Alys, Arnaud, Tidus, Raja (SSL)
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team President vs. Big Joe, Evil Gaia, 10 Jogurts, VP1 Hrist, Euram Barrows, Gobi, Sinspawn Ammes, Garland and Igglanova (PS4): ALYS saves the day.
Team President vs. Cecil, Cid and Rosa: Raja keeps his head down... Illusion and SSL make this not too much of a threat?
Team President vs. Augus and Joker (BoF2): Illusion Augus and then the team has it made. I think Arnaud has Illusion really early? Or am I wrong? This gets kind of ugly otherwise, since Joker + Augus KO Raja and then the team has issues. It's not like it is that solid on damage output where they won't let Augus see mulitple turns and Joker will last a while too. And I don't think Yunie has Life this early? Even if she did it'd be hard to keep Joker from just mocking that with the MT that puts Raja down again.


Time Capsule Team Rozalia | Chris (TWR), Tidus, Ephraim, Jane, Nall
[Floor 2b: Magical Mystery]
Team Rozalia vs. FFT Wizard, Oracle, Priest, Summoner and Time Mage: Hurray for Silent Lake.
Team Rozalia vs. Sarah (S3), Estella, Joker and Piccolo: This is funny.
Team Rozalia vs. Boss Magus: Should have enough healing? But this would take a lot out of them.
Team Rozalia vs. Narshe Kefka: Can Chris get off SL first? Otherwise Kefka blows her up and things fall apart.
Team Rozalia vs. Rasputin (SH2) and Nicholai (SH2): I rather doubt that the team can manage this with the anemic offense.

[Nephrite]

I THINK Alys should have Saner by that last fight? I don't know what kind of evasion that really offers at this point though.

EDIT: I lied, she starts with Saner.

EDIT2: Arnaud gets Slow Down at 14 and Illusion at 28. He does also come with Fragile at 8.

[Pyro]

Alys' Saner never really offers any evasion boost since she is dead&Gone before stats go up to that point.

I was mixing up Slow Down and Illusion for immediate availability.

So that would mean Arnaud can Slow Down Joker/Augus instead of Illusioning Joker. That is... probably good enough, combined with Saner to grant an absolutely nutsy speed difference? Joker & Augus will both get one turn each at least. But Arnaud can Fragile Joker to remove most of his durability. Tidus may use an Overdrive here as well.

[Dhyerwolf]

If most people still scale down solo boss HP Neph, I would suggest dropping them for the most part, because it makes them horrible (I have to imagine that considering that Belial is alone on floor 8 though, that scaling isn't intended).

[Nephrite]

It isn't, but if it leads to huge splits then I'll modify things.

[superaielman]

Abstain on my team and team Pyro. Team Michael passes. Team Rozalia fails. Not enough healing. Magus's barrier is going to be a problem, as the entire team's offense is physical.

[Pyro]

I actually thought perfect-AI Belial was utterly awesome at nixing teams until I realized that 4-D Pocket wasn't as good as I assumed. If 4-D pocket lasted, say, 3 player turns? Belial could just go down the list of your team and own you that way. She may have to take a few hits though.

But the realization that 4-D Pocket just isn't that effective makes her a pretty crummy solo boss in this format.

[Dhyerwolf]

Even if 4-D pocket lasted a while, it would be 0.67 PC HP facing 3 PCs or 0.67 PC HP facing 4 PCs where the first needs to just kill the Distortion. Might be scary early but never a threat versus any team that gets to floor 8. I would say the split here is probably going to pretty big (I mean...if Seymour basically is hitting on all the weakpoints of Super's team and is still getting owned somewhat easily, then imagine him versus teams that actually line up well against him. Or the Jecht fight on floor 3. HP scaling completely neuters him).

[Pyro]

The bosses are getting perfect AI, so scaling should still apply unless you remove that perfect AI from them too (Most of them probably prefer perfect AI).

HORDES of bosses might prefer no AI but improved durability (they would be less susceptible to blitzing and more likely to overwhelm a team over time) but one or two bosses probably wants AI over durability to take actions that preferentially remove major threats/healers/buffers/etc

[Dhyerwolf]

But in DL terms, the perfect AI and the scaling aren't really tied together. Bosses are scaled because they are facing 1 PC instead of the typical 3-5 in game, so there HP is lessened to reflect that (Alternately, the Tal method of scaling bosses as fighting clones of multiple PCs doesn't take away perfect AI). Perfect AI was to make the bosses more interesting and also saner.

[Pyro]

But why only do bosses that fight alone?

The dungeon seems balanced for bsses that are scaled. Otherwise most or all teams would lose to floor 1, likely.

If Neph wants an 'Unscaled boss' then he would need to aay so.

[Nephrite]

I really didn't think it was that big of an issue.

I made bosses fight by themselves on this floor because if I gave Belial any help whatsoever it would be impossible to win.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bosses are scaled because they are facing 1 PC instead of the typical 3-5 in game, so there HP is lessened to reflect that

That's certainly not why I scale them! I basically agree with Pyro here... a good part of the reason to scale down boss HP is to compensate for the better AI they get. (Another reason is that PCs are banned from using items, universal magic, certain accessories and equipment, skills which require teammates, etc.) Not all of these apply in the dungeon though. What to do with boss HP in the dungeon isn't terribly clear to me.

[SnowFire]

I am totally fine with whatever Neph says, I just have always voted scaled bosses and kept in check some of my odder interps because people deserve to at least get SOME consistency from the Dungeon, there's enough inconsistency already, and "DL bosses w/ scaling" was the dominant interp for a long long time.  (Also the "reason" for scaling is kind of irrelevant here.)

Also Firefly does make scaled Belial + support quite beatable by F8...  although it does require some amount of "no infinite 4D Pocket spam" type ruling.  (Not sure I agree with Pyro on duration antihype, I seem to recall 4D Pocket duration being at least ~3 turns or so vs. Slow Down's Belial, so more like 6 turns vs. non-Slow Down'd Belial, so yeah if you let Dungeon-Belial do it she can 4D Pocket everyone if she isn't killed.  Which since Lilka nearly OHKOs her is actually quite doable.)

Unscaled Seymour with Perfect AI is extremely badass.  He loses to teams with powerful MT healing or buffing, but Ultima spam on that floor will flatten teams fast and eat through any MT healing that isn't really solid, and he's fast even with Pyro's turn 1 FFX speed antihype.  He's harder to blitz out even with a magically slanted team, too.  So yeah, scaling or not is pretty important for that fight.  It's fine either way, of course, just it'll have a very important effect on how brutal the floors are.

[superaielman]

Fail to my team. I should stomp most of the floor, but Omnis is a bad match. I don't have any respect for his speed or HP in the DL, but it's unscaled here. Cid's draining is just going to suck against that level of defense, and no one else in the team is any damn good at damaging Omni

[superaielman]

Fail to my team. I should stomp most of the floor, but Omnis is a bad match. I don't have any respect for his speed or HP in the DL, but it's unscaled here. Cid's draining is just going to suck against that level of defense, and no one else in the team is any damn good at damaging Seymour. Also probably a fail for Pyro's team, Myria 1/3 is just cruel.