What Games are you playing 2015?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Physical and magical attacks have slightly different formulae, so a direct comparison of attack to attack and multiplier to multiplier won't work.

Physical: [Atk^1.3]*Atk^(0.5)/Def^(0.5)*Mult, part in brackets maxes out at 346
Magical: [Mag^1.15]*Mag^(0.5)/Res^(0.5)*Mult, part in brackets maxes out at 742

Offensive White magic use Mind instead of Magic, otherwise same formula.

The obvious takeaway is that physical damage scales higher with attack than magic damage with magic until you hit 346.

Oh, Snow's right about magic scaling better with higher level abilities though. 4* -ga strikes are 1.4x as strong as 2* basic strikes, while 4* -ja spells are more than triple the power of 2* -ra spells.

Out of curiosity, how quickly does that Attack hit 90 normally (since that's when it seems like it will hit 346 in brackets)? And yeah, Magic ends up mattering until you hit 310 approximately the the stat (so I guess 255 likely is not the cap here). That's...odd...balancing.

Uh rarity-5 weapons routinely break 90 attack by themselves with minimal upgrades. This means that a L1 physical fighter with a rarity-5 weapon immediately rams into the soft cap. Hitting 310 is -a lot- harder, though: my Vivi, with his unique Rod, L53 and mag-boosting equips, only breaks past 300 Magic with realm or equipment synergy bonuses. Regardless, the double usage of the attack stats means mostly the stat scaling slows down rather than entirely halts.

The formula also has the effect of making earlygame magic look -really- horrible when not hitting weakness, especially since L1 spells have THE SAME MULT as a basic physical. So, at the beginning, without weakness-hitting, mages rely on initially highly limited resources to deal less damage than a basic physical, which is just sad.

[hinode]

Oh, the part in brackets maxes out when the attack/magic/mind stat specifically hits 346/742, before the exponent. Sorry for the miscommunication.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Oh, that's a fair deal less insane. Idly, do we have any sort of formula handy for status accuracy?

Final Fantasy It'll End In Autobattle - Picking up the rest of Balamb Garden event's Elite battles and, unlike previously predicted, I am using Squall because I can't possibly master the Norg fight without him in my party. Good thing the event itself shoves a ton of high-rarity Growth Eggs down your throat. I can't really see using him in the long term outside of landing his unique weapon, though: L3 Spellblade is nice enough, but I kinda need the extra Support slots provided by Tidus, and I'm so not giving up Wakka of the Support 5 and back row physical.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: Woohoo, I managed to beat Hein on Elite with my Black Mage still alive! It took some planning because Hein is annoyingly all-but-immune to physicals and he took damn near all of my magic charges on his own so I couldn't waste any on the randoms leading up to him. A pretty interesting resource puzzle, but I managed to kit out Rinoa with a chakram to be backup damage and that helped. Hein himself was me using four mages + Wakka with Aim to hit his weakpoints and get around his stupid evasion. Hein's damage wasn't very strong, so it was mostly just a slog and I didn't come close to using all my Curaga charges. It could probably have been done more easily with only one healer and letting Rinoa focus on hitting more elements instead of trying to play triple-duty as my Ice magic damage, my random-slayer physical-type, AND as my backup healer. Vanille handled the healing just fine on her own, particularly after Wakka managed to land a Magic Break and nerf Hein's damage. I just wanted to make sure that damn frail Black Mage didn't die. Notably, when the Black Mage was hitting weakness with a -aja level spell AND the "increase damage when hitting elemental weakness" record materia equipped AND Wakka and Vanille had lowered Hein's magic resistance... he was able to hit 9999 damage! (yay! He was contributing! ...kinda!)

Anyway, with that completed, I snagged Black Mage's Mana Spring II... or as I like to call it "Vivi casts Quake for free~"
It only refills once per battle (not per round unfortunately) but it's still great for clearing randoms.

I also got Kain's Break Materia... *shrug* it came with beating Hein. I threw some Growth Eggs I had lying around onto Kain and now I've got the amazing "Heart of the Dragoon" Record Materia! IT INCREASES THE DAMAGE OF JUMP YOU GUYS! Oh man, I am so excited. Gonna Jump all day. (Serious talk though: Jump could have an instant cast time, that would make it actually pretty cool in this game and give it a niche without it being overpowered... but well you know how it goes, Dragoons always have cool designs but end up being crappy in practice~)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Jump in the early midgame has the niche of being the only 2x mult damage physical attack off barely more charge than a regular physical (the air time is -very- short) running off rarity 2, at least. But yeah.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Autobattle and Kisses - Still chugging along the Elite event dungeons, in which I discovered you can reapply status before it runs out. Archaeosaur never even saw the light of day.

[hinode]

If you bothered to egg Kain up to L50, considering unlocking his second Record Materia at some point for laughs. Props to whichever programmer came up with that one.

Also for future reference, the best way to carry a mage-heavy team through randoms is to give Cloud a honed Retaliate and have all the mages attack him, Boost him first if he's not OHKOing otherwise. Buffs carry over through multiple rounds of a single battle so you only need 3-4 Retaliate uses to get up to a boss.

This is one reason why Cloud is going to stay near the top of the tier lists even as high level teams shift to be increasingly mage-heavy, even for people who aren't lucky/rich enough to get the latest in his line of increasingly overpowered relics.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You gave me a -great- idea for tackling the Hein dungeon.

[Fenrir]

Dark Souls 2 new PvP strats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oULkkFD8s

[Grefter]

Been a while since I threw that track on.  Still beautiful every time.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: dear hinode,
I took your advice and had an outing with Mr. Kain today wherein he discovered a newfound ability: getting brainwashed. Apparently it is such an integral part of his character, it is actually his unique passive.

I suspect that it's actually useful if Record Materia skills work for Roaming Warriors? That way he gets the 20% bonus without the whole "attack your own party" thing.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy I Lost My Autobattle To A Starship Trooper - Oilboyles are -brutal-. I have the strategy to put them down set in stone, but I need to parcel my resources a wee bit better throughout the dungeon to pull this off. Hopefully replacing Squall with Tidus will make the difference here.

The main problem is that their Oil Blast counters are -really- dangerous when they go off, so you -must- Silence them stat. And even then, they have a 2HKO physical skill. And they're immune to Blind. And I undersold their durability to boot. Hopefully, packing extra Curaga charges instead of Silencega and leaving all the status slinging to Wakka will help too, since the real problem I had last fight was -running out of healing-.

EDIT: And yeah, Kain's second passive is absolutely hilarious and I love whoever came up with that at DeNa.

[Cotigo]

My strategy for that was to use a friend summon with Zell twice to blitz one down, then take down the last one with spellblades and what have you while having two healers constantly heal. Took several tries but it worked.

Though, I also didn't have the resources to even get silence so maybe that won't be as effective in the global version.

[NotMiki]

Dark Souls 2 new PvP strats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oULkkFD8s

That is a lot of dancin'

[Dhyerwolf]

Oh, the part in brackets maxes out when the attack/magic/mind stat specifically hits 346/742, before the exponent. Sorry for the miscommunication.

This makes it seem like a difference in mults isn't really that insane since until point 347 of strength, strength basically is running at a double advantage given the same mult. If magic mults are running at double the power of physical, this is mostly a wash.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

My strategy for that was to use a friend summon with Zell twice to blitz one down, then take down the last one with spellblades and what have you while having two healers constantly heal. Took several tries but it worked.

Though, I also didn't have the resources to even get silence so maybe that won't be as effective in the global version.

Against Elite stats, it's a bit of a different deal. Elite Oilboyles on Squall's event actually pack a punch, as stat-buffed enemies are wont to be. REGARDLESS, having more Curaga and spell charges did the trick pretty nicely. Landed sleep on one of them first turn, then Silenced the other and killed it in time for the other to wake up and face breaks, more Silence Buster and a lot of Firagas. The two healers strategy also works (Oil Blast counters are actually -gravity-., after all. Caveat is that, at base, the Oilboyles have a very solid 2HKO on Elite Balamb event, so a counter+Oilboyle turn is often fatal if it focuses, so your healers need to be on point at almost all times), but it does take longer.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Autobattle In The Bottom Of Sea - Okay, just mastered the final dungeon of Squall's event on Elite and it was just the best. The last boss of the event is NORG, and he functions just like in FF8: as long as the the two orbs aren't in the red, he'll almost exclusively cast menial status (Silence, Slow), defensive buffs (Protect, Shell) and ST -ras and WATER (low 2HKO at best). And, once the pod opens, NORG becomes IDable. Problem is, unhoned, Death starts at only one casting. So, my one shot of magic ID naturally missed. Sure, let's keep at it, I had plenty of healing still and the fight is very controllable (NORG almost NEVER uses offensive actions and the status is kinda inaccurate), just goes very slowly because the bastard has 160k HP. I've been reduced to basic physicals for a while to boot.

Thing is, I have Zantetsukens on both my sword users. It has a low chance of ID attached to it. It matters approximately never, given how you use basic physicals on randoms, who should get 2HKOed at -worst- by them.

Zantetsuken's ID procced on NORG. Cue sitcom laugh track.

EDIT: That done, I proceeded to prepare for grabbing Black Mage's second Record Materia. I still hadn't done Elite Darill's Tomb and, upon mastery, it hands you a 4-star Feathered Hat that -just- happens to be a FF3 equip. Sure, I go for that. Angler Whelk is surprisingly decent with MT 3HKO in El Niño and accurate petrify, but having a Fire weakness makes it astonishingly fragile against my party. Dullahan... well, is vulnerable to Paralyze. Fail.

That done, I deck out Vanille and Black Mage (good thing I still have those FF3 4-star Light Rod and Gaia Vest!), hand Boost to Garnet and Retaliate to Cloud. Four mages+one Boost+Cloud Retaliate is actually amazingly efficient randombusting, makes all your attacking turns productive and hugely saves your resources. Not to mention it also improves your OHKOing ability against them rather notably. I may end up adopting this setup eventually, though maybe with one more physical fighter (debuffing is really important for bosses, after all).

Anyhow, Hein. I picked Sentinel Grimoire Tyro as my RW and uh holy -crap- Hein fails hilariously hard. Sentinel Grimoire badly shuts down his already sparse offense (he's inordinately fond of casting MT Blind. That sure works against a party of mages. MT Confuse is better, but four mages mean that using physicals to dispel that is trivial and PC defense stats are so much higher than enemy defense stats that even your physical fighters only 4HKO your mages -at best- with a basic attack) and he's really easy pickings against a high-offense multi-elemental setup. It'd be even funnier if I had Runic instead, but Celes wasn't in that list. Regardless, I full-medaled Hein and grabbed my free casting of Quake per battle. This is really hilarious.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Oh, the part in brackets maxes out when the attack/magic/mind stat specifically hits 346/742, before the exponent. Sorry for the miscommunication.

This makes it seem like a difference in mults isn't really that insane since until point 347 of strength, strength basically is running at a double advantage given the same mult. If magic mults are running at double the power of physical, this is mostly a wash.

There's a reason magic sucks until -ga spells, though you still need it to grab target scores upon hitting weakness (which is the only point where magic outdamages non-Spellblade physicals in the early game). Physicals frontload their 1.7-2.0 mults into 2-rarity skills (magic doesn't outpace 2x until rarity 3) and rarity 1 magic has the same mult as a basic physical, which is horrendous. HOWEVER, physicals don't... really improve from that mult area until rarity 4 with 2.1, and they max out at 2.8x at rarity -5-. Rarity 3 on magic leads you to minimum 3x mults (usually 3.26 to 3.67), rarity 4 leaps to 5.87x. And the mult doubles upon hitting weakness (which only Spellblade can do on the physical end and its mults on the current global version maxes out on uh 1.8x).

Another caveat: enemy DEF stats are usually considerably higher than enemy RES, which often mitigates the issue (enemy magic tanks are nearly non-existant). This isn't terribly noticeable on the earlygame, but gets increasingly bigger as the game goes on.

[hinode]

Snow: The absolute multiplier for Fire/Blizzard/Thunder is 1.5x, not 1x. There are some sources that report the power of all Black Magic as multiples of those three basic spells and summon magic as multiples of Goblin/Bomb, which works out okay for comparing black magic with black magic and summons with summons, but not to different schools of magic or relative to physicals.

http://happypluto.com/~misterp/r/ffrk.pdf has all the accurate multipliers for stuff available in global, as well as a bunch of other info in a concise package.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

This is great stuff. Thanks, hinode. Also, the jump on mults is -considerably- bigger than I thought, holy hell.

[Fenrir]

Her Story is great so far, cool people should play it.

[Grefter]

Still got Life is Strange and Dreamfall Chapters to get through bro.

[Sierra]

Arkham Knight: Apparently Gotham police HQ is actually Batman's trophy room. Also Poison Ivy evidently never learned to walk at any pace other than Catwalk Strut. That must have been awkward when she was a kid. Girl, you haven't got heels on, stop moving like it!

My guess for mystery man's identity remains Jason Todd. It makes too much sense in context, ignoring the fact that I think I heard he got brought back for other purposes in the comics.

[Fudozukushi]

I was really hoping the Knight turned out to be Razor, that Thug that kept getting killed in ridiculously more absurd ways.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire -

Archie: You're not the only one who can use Mega Evolution! Watch and learn!
*Archie proceeds to switch his Sharpedo into a stray Earthquake which OHKOs it, before he can Mega Evolve it*

Much psyduck was had by all. I actually kinda like Archie/Maxie at least compared to every syndicate leader since, but god they have awful signature pokemon.

Anyway this game has been really easy so far but Kyogre proceeds to be the hardest legendary to catch in a while. 3 catch rate + fucking Aqua Ring regen + I try to use Sandstorm to offset it but it can't be set against him = argh, after repeated failures I come back with 20 Dusk Balls and of course then proceed to catch him on the first try. Still rather jarring compared to the rest of the game.

I definitely don't think this game is as good as either X/Y or Emerald at all but further comments can wait until I'm done. Still Pokemon, still enjoyable, etc.


Final Fantasy Dimensions - Up to the bard chapter. I am amused that they made a class whose skillset is not impacted by being a frog, and then curse the guest with it to be a frog.

The two-path thing is interesting. At first I was pretty lukewarm to it because the worst effect comes early as both parties get the exact same set of seven starting jobs, so playing with one then the other when both have only these jobs means you're making all the same decisions again and feels repetitive. But as each party gains access to a different pool of jobs to add into the mix it becomes more interesting. I kinda wish there would be more crossclass stuff, but that'll come, and even at base it's not that much worse about it than FF5 is. Challenge remains in a pretty good place overall, most bosses manage at least some respectability (I lost to the boss of the ranger chapter, even), and it remains fun to tool around with the class system as you might expect. Fun game so far and it feels like it's only getting better, although the terribad plot and some polish concerns will keep it from being great.