Bravely Default stat topic ideas

[hinode]

The other healing items are all fairly cheap, but there's no way in hell I'd allow 99x Turbo Ethers for Salve-Maker when they cost 5000 a pop. I don't think they're good for anything besides Half Elixir which is probably overkill anyways, so it's largely a moot point, thankfully.

I was willing to consider 1x Dragon Fang per fight for buffing purposes earlier, but now that I've had a closer look at Shadowflare I'm more inclined to disregard them entirely. They're too expensive to use on even a semi-regular basis in boss fights until you get far enough in the game that the damage would be fairly unimpressive in-game, yet even OPB Shadowflare would be nuts in the DL.

The other non-storebought compound ingredients can all be obtained from Collect and Experiment in addition to the Norende shop where they're dirt cheap, so I'd definately allow them in some quantity. Likely not 99x, though.

[SnowFire]

Also, I probably won't allow specials at -all- except maybe the Sword L1, being completely non-unique -and- a pain in the ass to unlock and all. They were also entirely irrelevant for me the entire game (I never unlocked anything besides the Sword L1, which is automatic).

Well, yes, if you don't get them, they won't have any relevance. :p  For what it's worth, if you do bother to get them - and I found the level 1s easy to get off of even 1 villager if you leave your 3DS in sleep mode - they are quite good in-game, if not cheaty good.  Specials definitely allowed me to beat some boss fights without grinding more, as uber damage + buffs is pretty great, and before Performer / Pirate hard to set up even intentionally.  Even then, the special music buffs are still better because they ignore character death - a character can bite it & be revived and get their buffs back immediately.  With enhancements, the debuffs can last 5 turns after the music even stops.  Also, you probably know this already, but chaining specials extends the buffs of *all* of the previous specials - I haven't done this yet, but it seems theoretically possible to even chain 5 effects at once, by opening with a Katana / Sword special that can easily work back up to a level 1 by the time you finish chaining the other 3 character's specials whenever the music gets close to ending.  But even still, chaining 4 specials is pretty disgusting, there was at least 1 boss I took on "too early" and was kicking their butt until my chained special music ran out, and then he thrashed me.  It is a significant advantage for the PC party.  (but not cheaty, like FFX bosses vs. Yuna walking in with all her Aeons in Overdrive.  the poor doomed things.)

For just a few quick examples - Withering Ripple, the L2 Rod one, slaughters almost every boss in C2 thanks to debuffing them AND sticking 'em with an elemental weakness of your choice when you have Spellblade + Black Magic available, and is just fine in C3.  Katana Ultimate offers +50% Speed for your team and easily hits 9999 damage, pretty awesome vs. speedier bosses.  You can even do silly stuff like strip Poison Resistance from bosses then use a Poison touch special.  It's good stuff!  (and it won't be nearly as good in the DL anyway, since the team buff + special chain effect are MIA, and starting uncharged means that only healers / drainers will realistically see 'em ever, and the specials probably lose out on all the upgrades.  Although...  I guess that damageless healers might fear a Katana L1?  In general Katana users would rather just 3x Default -> 8x beatdown vs. true tanks, but if somehow that doesn't work, then 5x Default -> Moonshadow + 3x Attack -> 4x Attack might do the trick.  But shame on any dueler that can't kill the BD character given 6 turns to do it in, even vs. Default in most of those turns...)

Also, interesting points from Elf on BD high-damage duelers, at least the ones whose damage is spammable and doesn't require too much setup.  Trails in the Sky might have been the wrong comparison then as the damage queen of that cast, 100 CP Estelle, "only" threatens 1.00 PCHP damage or so on turn 1...  high-damage BD duelers might yet do much better than that!  We'll see.

[Pyro]

Yeah you'll have the following Classes one-rounding with a 4x action.

Monk
Black Mage
Knight
Time Mage
Salve-Maker * (With compounding shop. Ranges from gratuitious w/Dragon Fangs to 'scrapes a 1-rounding' without)
Pirate (only if twinked for offense, which sacrifices speed/a LOT of durability)
Arcanist
Dark Knight

That is... 8 out of 24 classes! You'd be hard pressed to find that much one-rounding in a cast!

The flip side is that performance against something with, say, 3x durability is way worse than a cast with similar numbers. But simple fact of the matter is that there are a lot more 1x durability things than there are 2.5x + in a DL format.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

That definitely looks right from my kneejerks regarding the cast. Of course, in a three-turn average, pretty much all buffs will also be seen in the averages (Conjurer applies Atk and Crit Up before his string, Performer does Love Power x2... this also applies, with more strings attached, to Arcanist and Dark Knight...).

(The most egregious one from that list is Knight, though Black Mage also benefits disproportionately because of Pierce M. Def. Arcanist was pretty much obvious from the Focus Magic+Interment combo and Time Mage reaches 9999 a pop from Meteor with solely DL-legal stuff even before endgame, so it's pretty in-line with in-game.)

[Pyro]

It is true Knight is a bit surprising for those who didn't land the Jlvl 14 skill. But you can land it well before endhame so I don't think it is too bad.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's still kinda mind-boggling to me because the skill itself feels pretty inefficient. 1 BP for 6.5k range damage when you're twinked for defense?

[Dark Holy Elf]

I actually find Knight the least surprising name on that list (except Dark Knight obviously). They get Two Hands! Even if you did a stat topic based on lower-JL abilities only they'd probably be one of the better damage-dealers (unlike Monk/TM/BM).


One thing I do have to add re Salve-Maker is the fact that there are non-storebought ways to get their items isn't really relevant here; it is completely impractical/grindy to get them in the numbers needed for their DL matches without a store. For instance, in most DL matches with those items allowed, Salve-Maker is probably going to need to make their opponent weak to earth then use Earth Mallet ~4 times (less if the target is frail, but potentially a -lot- more if the target is durable... due to how Feel No Pain works I'm going to use 5 actions as the benchmark, though). This requires no fewer than 9 Desert Roses (and an Insect Antenna). It's completely impractical to run an offence off of these without a shop. It's much much worse than Rikku who at least can stock up on the one Petrify Grenade she needs to win a DL fight in a single action (not that I allow that either, of course).

In-game it's even worse. In order to do your "share" of party offence against a lategame boss with 200k HP (assuming one PC is given over to pure defense) you need to do 67k damage. In order to do that with Desert Roses you would need nearly 30 of these items. Per boss fight. This is insanely impractical to restock with Steal/Collect/whatever. So yeah, either you allow high-level Norende or you shouldn't be allowing these items in the DL.

[Pyro]

So, Question:

Thief's 150 speed (thanks to the passive *1.3 and *1.2) has a gratuitous effect on the averages. To give you an idea,
Agi: 78.25, stdev: 16.75

W/o Thief:
Agi: 75.13, stdev 7.00

Does this warrant any kind of outlier consideration? Basically Thief just makes the entire cast look 'averagish' for speed while it weighs in at +4.2 stdev...

[Dark Holy Elf]

Hmm. There's really no precedent for removing anyone from the speed averages (e.g. Alena and Kanon are considered), so I'd be pretty opposed to making an exception here. Additionally, it fits in-game pretty well too: you are fast if you have thief's speed-boosting passives, otherwise not really. In fact, there's only one other class whose speed I even noticed (in the positive direction, at least): ninja.

It will also make me feel a lot better about a cast with 7 characters who OHKO average that most of them are below average speed.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I don't think dumping all of Thief's SP into Speed +20% and 30% is DL-optimal. I mean, she also wants the Atk-boost passive on Steal, since it also activates upon using Life Thief - which is -already- most of Thief's DL damage outside Godspeed finishers). Still, that's a +40% to an already cast-best base (+10% and +30%, I'd be very shocked if the Atk-boost passive was 2 SP), so there's not much difference.

EDIT: Mainly, I think this won't really jeopardize Godspeed Strike much at all (no speed twinking involved, by the very endgame, I've had it doing 6k or so), since +40% still boosts it notably. Raising all of Thief's other damage by a maximum of 75% while -healing- sounds like a more important deal, and might even slightly raise her average damage in comparison unless the damage loss from -10% speed on GS is disproportionate.

Besides that, no-no to taking Thief out of the speed averages. Honestly, Thief being really fast, Ninja being kinda fast and everybody else failing to be noticeable (besides Knight, Summoner and Templar, who are -openly- slow) sounds exactly like in-game.

[Grefter]

According to job guide I have open it is 1 BP.  I assume there is going to be some flex in thief setup based in if they need the extra healing from the buff or are juggling default/heal turns for Godspeed Strike. 

Sitting in Chapter 3 with a fully kitted out Norende I honestly can't see myself not allowing most of it.  Unless you blitz the game faster than a week I am pretty confident that with a bit of management and checking in frequently you should be able to get any specific thing from the village in most normal play timeframes if you update online once a day.

That is as someone that would allow full flexibility for people to change specs in DQ8 fight by fight though.

[Pyro]

Thief's default setup is defender and Bloody shield and only breaks def with God Speed Strike.

An allternate setup is with a bow and a minor speed hit to gain parasitic healing at the cost of def.

Other interesting setup choices!

Power Sash and accessory for +10 atk on some classes like spiritmaster and ninja where small boosts translate to large % changes in damage.

Naked Monk! Because my god that damage.

Pirate may want to dual wield for 20% more damage at the cost of more in durability.

Red Mage wants a defensive setup with a shield instead of a 2-rod setup that does not actually win any fights ever.

Vampire wants 2 diamond staves for the boost to the itd damage. Alternate would be a more durable setup with less damage.

Knight will never pick up a sword again. Even 2-H Stomp is aub-par...

[Grefter]

I believe it is spelt au pair actually (this is a joke).

I had been meaning to ask generic mechanics questions, if anyone knows them?

Dual wield of rods doesn't seem to scale M. Atk down with skill scaling or is it just not a display thing? 

Evasion, does it only work on basic physicals?  Because if it works on special attacks then I assume stuff is either going to be ITE a lot or stuff like Mirage Vest are going to scale really weird.

[Pyro]

Dual wielding rods doesn't scale down M.Atk... it just adds both bonuses to it.

Evasion does only work on basic physicals. Except for Utsumemi.

That said, there are still some cases where a fighter may want to go for 2 main Gauches, a Mirage vest, and a Black Cowl... this will tend to nix damage/durability... but if the PC has an evade buff they can turn this into >100% evade... so that'd be only TIme Mage, Ninja, and Conjurer.

[Grefter]

So lolrodlore and ffffffffffffffffff evasion interpretation if every actually had to vote on it in the DL (and stop caring about Evasion and just worry about P.Def in future).

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Vampire wants 2 diamond staves for the boost to the itd damage. Alternate would be a more durable setup with less damage.

Diamond Rods outdo Claymore in damage? Man, the difference an S does.

[hinode]

Diamond Staff is only 2 points weaker, outdoing Claymore with an S-rank is a given.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I keep forgetting how solid attack-wise some of the rods and staves are. It actually makes them viable choices for fighter classes running weapon lore.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Staff Lore + Crescent Moon is how I learned to stop worrying and destroy chapter 3-4 randoms.

For what it's worth, I'd probably only see BD evasion working against basic physicals. (Same goes for any other games with similar evade stats.) Still lets the three classes Pyro mentioned spoil certain casts.

[hinode]

The physical damage rods are pretty bad, but several of the staves are quite good, especially with MT moves where they get +25% damage.

Ninja spoils a ton of people with Utsusemi+Transcience anyways, which is much better than the evade stat both in-game and in DL. Evasion is limited to multi-actors/multi-hitters who rely on basic physicals, which are admittedly enough to be worth noting in the stat topic.

Idly, how effective would evade-boosting setups be for people who can inflict blind?

[Pyro]

Doesn't PS4 evade work in the same way? And Grandia for that matter? Is it traditional to constrict evade in those games to basic physicals only? Should Bravely Default physical skills be subject to evade now?

Other thing worth noting...
Poison Rods are of viable use for Arcanist, even if it is only allowing them to inflict the 'dummy' of the status. Exterminate is better damage and way less MP than the 1/4 MP ultimate.

Vampires beat any PC that gives them a turn. Battle Thirst is utterly ridiculous vs. anyone vulnerable to it in a duel at all.

Status in general is of a higher rate than the raw listed numbers due to the game's algorithms. As I don't understand the algorithms that well and don't have the game to continue testing them I'll leave that out.

Planning on using 380 as the assumed enemy Atk stat for effectiveness of defense. This is the average of (physical) optional C8 bosses and the required bosses. There is only one PC who can exceed the lowest enemy Atk stat, and they nearly null the highest enemy atk stat period. Knight > physicals seems completely fair. So 380 should work to give you a feel for how good the defense stat is.

Still not sure how to correlate Mdef and raw magic durability. It isn't nearly as strong as Pdef. I'll just list the average and each class' mdef.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I dunno. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be doing it from now on anyway, though. Might be a case-by-case thing... there are some attacks which I would consider suitably close to basic physicals to be hit by this style of evade (for instance, FFT Battle Skill and Charge) but I do feel like reflecting the fact that this type of evade works against way fewer things and respecting it less as such.

EDIT: oh yeah, an example of a case where this is already common to do: Disgaea bosses. A lot of them apparently have amazing evade against physicals. Nobody gives a damn, because they can't evade techs, the source of all your in-game damage. (And, in fairness, a few things can evade techs... kind of an Utsusemi parallel?)


EDIT: Regarding Bravely Default Blind, I'm fairly sure it is independent from evasion; that is, the two are separate checks entirely. (Same as FFX, etc.) Certainly it should be noted that Blind, like Utsusemi, works on techs.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Poison Rods are of viable use for Arcanist, even if it is only allowing them to inflict the 'dummy' of the status. Exterminate is better damage and way less MP than the 1/4 MP ultimate.

I suspected as much. Though the highest-mag storebought equip is the Poison Rod anyway.

Status in general is of a higher rate than the raw listed numbers due to the game's algorithms. As I don't understand the algorithms that well and don't have the game to continue testing them I'll leave that out.

That's definitely right. As far as I could test on C8 randoms, Black Mage status went 100% outside of specific randoms having high resistance against a status in particular (the armadillos in the final dungeon, for instance, highly resist ID, but they're the only ones who do). Vampire's magical status, untwinked for Magic, had a rate closer to the listed percentage, but generally still above.

Vampires beat any PC that gives them a turn. Battle Thirst is utterly ridiculous vs. anyone vulnerable to it in a duel at all.

Because the multiple, brutally accurate match-winning status attached to damage didn't do that as it stood. And then, there's the free, rather powerful draining and the parasitic stat buffing game. Vampires are just crazy good in the DL.

EDIT: Also, Pyro, I still have my endgame BD file, so once you have the numbers up I can do some tests on effective mdef. My levels are considerably higher than the upper threshold for levels (88, endgame ranges from 75-80), but there's a fair deal of flexibility involved with number manipulation via jobs and equips. I can testify that, on the enemy end, mdef is very potent (Lamp enemies, for instance, roughly third magical damage compared to average enemies around them), but I can test how the numbers effectively pan out for PCs. Probably some self-casting would be required, since enemies tend to stick to physicals. However, the MDef curve is considerably tighter than the PDef curve.

[SnowFire]

Hmm. There's really no precedent for removing anyone from the speed averages (e.g. Alena and Kanon are considered), so I'd be pretty opposed to making an exception here.

Taishyr's DW3 topic included speed averages without Fighter and I believe he hyped that at some point?  (Hyped Sage as above average speed, at least.)  http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,1839.0.html  That said, I agree, it's a dangerous policy that should be avoided.  Also, per Jo'ou & Grefter, I'd actually be kinda surprised if that's truly Thief's optimal build anyway - the life-draining bow sounds better to me, draining is awesome in the DL and draining is even better when you can do Default -> 2x Life Thief, repeat.  That said, even given the all-the-speed build...  since this is a turn-based game, I might be willing to cap Thief's speed at some point where it becomes truly irrelevant, which isn't the same as throwing out Thief's speed.  Past a certain point, TB speed becomes irrelevant - what if Thief had 1000 speed?  10000 speed?  100000000 speed?  Fine, we get it, he goes first even underlevel vs. the speediest enemies, it stops mattering (except for Godspeed Strike damage).  Where exactly the cap should lie depends on in-game enemies.  (For an extreme example, take some hypothetical bugged game where all enemies have 0 Speed.  Well, Speed is a trash stat in such a game, all your PCs are always faster than all the enemies, so speed doesn't actually matter.)  I don't expect it'd have a huge effect on the average regardless.  So...  what's the endgame enemy speedrange?  Add +30 to the fastest enemy in the game, and that might be a sane "cap" if it's really felt to be necessary.

Also, re money amounts for Salve-Maker & Merchant: Should be pointed out that this is a case where if you do Norende, you have lots of money sinks, so I'm a bit suspicious of the idea that there's nothing to spend money on late-game.  All the Heike Armor, all the character costumes, Growth Eggs I suppose...   Still only in C4, but I imagine that the 200,000 price tags should count as something reasonable to save up for if nothing else.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Regardless, Thief's likely ramming something like 4 SDs above average at worst no matter what (1 SP on Burgle 'n Bluff+40% boost to cast-best speed by a notable margin in a game with otherwise tight speed numbers. And, besides B&B, the speed IS the best investment she can make, it boosts both her hit count and Godspeed Strike). She's hitting almost every TB arbitrary cap conceivable (what that entails for each person obviously varies). For me, for instance, she'd hit my TB speed cap at 3.5 SDs.