What Games are you playing 2015?

[hinode]

Idly, does anyone know which version of FF4 came up with the Scarmiglione/MilonZ counters Fire damage gimmick? The FF wiki claims this happens in every version except Easytype and FF2us, but none of the PSX/GBA/PSP faqs I've checked mention anything of the sort, just the DS guides. I don't personally remember anything of this sort either, but it's been years since I'm played any version of FF4 so my memories are hazy at this point.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Every site seems to have different values for the multipliers, I have no idea what the correct ones are.  I wouldn't call Sap a menial status though.  The constant ticks add up quickly in elite dungeons.  It also doesn't seem to expire over time, so you're stuck with it.

If it works exactly like poison (which it seems to -at best-), it deals 1.5% HP damage every six seconds on battle speed 3, which amounts to kicking in every 1.25 turn or so, sometimes less. For it to start actually denting your health significantly, you'd have to let a fight go on for longer than it has any right to. In general, just healing whenever the character is under risk of a KO (i.e. at 50% health or below), like you'd do -anyway- in any situation, is enough to completely negate Sap's effect. It's only remotely significant if you're running a no-healer team -and- you get seriously unlucky on potion spawning. Hell, even Regen more than counteracts Sap's effect, since it heals 3% of your health every 6 seconds. That's so worth taking 20% less damage from physicals and dealing 20% more damage overall with both basic physicals and techs, it's effectively a net gain even for durability. For an overall use physical RM, I'll take Sacrifice over Double Attack any day.

Of course, I'd take Double Attack for any setup where I'm relying on Reta-meta, it's very good for that, but unfocusing 0.65x dual hits that only apply to the basic physical is something that isn't even necessarily all that good for auto-battling trash mobs. Which is why I don't understand why people are getting more excited about Double Attack than Sacrifice.

[Meeplelard]

Idly, does anyone know which version of FF4 came up with the Scarmiglione/MilonZ counters Fire damage gimmick? The FF wiki claims this happens in every version except Easytype and FF2us, but none of the PSX/GBA/PSP faqs I've checked mention anything of the sort, just the DS guides. I don't personally remember anything of this sort either, but it's been years since I'm played any version of FF4 so my memories are hazy at this point.

Pretty sure it's the DS version only; they modified a number of bosses to be less boring in that one.  The other 3 fiends had recognizable gimmicks and beyond some stat adjustments (...and giving Valvalis an MT Lightning spell for some random reason, as well as making Ruicante's Scorch MT and heal him while still keeping it stupidly strong...), they were kept in-tact.  Milon was completely changed because...well...he sucks.  Oh no, he might Curse you or Poison a character!  That might scare you if you forget that Palom can 2-3HKO him.

[Captain K]

I guess the question is if it is 20%.  Most of the sites have it as 10% attack and defense, which is much less significant.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's 10% to the stats, which is, in practice, a 19~% or so boost to the effective damage output and durability because the formulae are weird.

[hinode]

It should be about +19% damage if you're still under the 347 soft cap and +8% physical durability.

PC-side defense/res gets a ^0.84 exponent applied for reasons only DeNA can explain. This makes Protect/Shell "only" about an 80% increase in durability despite doubling the stat in question. Meanwhile, enemies get a ^0.5 exponent instead, because yes, the damage formula is actually different depending on whether the target is a PC or an enemy.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

THAT explains why enemies take considerably more damage than PCs do despite often having better defense stats than your party. Exponentials are silly.

[Fenrir]

RK: Got mastery on wedding ++. That was intense. I lost one medal on action and one on damage.

I made a lot of small mistakes (Magic Breakdown on Seymour) and greatly underestimated how durable enemies were going to be. At the end I had nearly no charges of anything anymore except 10 useless Curagas. At the end it was down to Wakka, Cloud to use basic physicals and to Seymour to blast himself with his own spells like an idiot. Why are you punching yourself, Seymour?
I still didn't bother with Yuna's damage limit break and just had her pass turns. That's how bad her limit break is.

If you have two shots of Carbuncle (one for the first fight, one for the last) + Magic Breakdown, you have enough damage mitigation. Do not even bother with Curaga and give Diara to Yuna instead. If you don't have two shots of Carbuncle, you're probably not going to get the mastery anyway.

Mage meta is a lie, Vanille was a total dead weight in my team. I suppose she could have been better with a honed mental breakdowns. With just a regular mental breaks on Anima, she was doing sub Wakka damage with Waterja. That's very bad. I should have went with my trusty lvl 65 Sephy instead.
Vivi's still cool though.

Great fight.



EOU Bard SCC:

Beat Fenrir! I can barely believe it.

Fenrir himself has: Lots of HPs, a damaging ice move that hits two PCs, pretty good physical attacks, a MT fear skill (random stun), a fire weakness.

Around Fenrir there are four lesser wolves running towards where the Troubadours vs Fenrir fight is taking place. On the 3th run, one of them joins the fight, then another on the 5th, another, etc. They are very durable (like, they die in 5+ turns of boosted focused attacks from 5 bards) and their physicals hurt. They are very bad news.
Fenrir can also do a two-turns Howl that summons even more doggies around him.

Troubadours are so cool they could negate all of Fenrir's strength. Expensive +30 HPs accessories for everybody. Ice resistance on helms. A very powerful (for now) regen skill that heals half of the team's HPs at the end of a turn, for 5 turns. Fire swordspells.

Friendly doggies are the worst part of the fight. But you can buy flash bombs, which halt any FOE's movement for one round.  I just bought 30 of those bombs and had one guy use them every turn, so the dogs were never a factor. Meanwhile, regen handled Fenrir's damage just fine.

[Clear Tranquil]

Diara probably would have worked better for Vanille as well better than Waterja maybe, she has the same base Mind as Yuna at L50, well assuming if the player didn't manage to get Yuna much over L50 yet ~ Of course depending on best available rod/staffs and such as well~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Memories Of Autobattle - In which PALMER has a solid 2HKO to average (high 2HKO on Vivi and Yuna) and you don't even care because Mako Gun is physical and he's vulnerable to both Blind and Paralysis. Hahahahaha.

EDIT: with my 4* spare staff, Royal Crown and FF7 Earrings, my Vanille was dealing 4.4k to Anima with Firaja. Not great, but could be worse.

[Fenrir]

Diara probably would have worked better for Vanille as well better than Waterja maybe, she has the same base Mind as Yuna at L50, well assuming if the player didn't manage to get Yuna much over L50 yet ~ Of course depending on best available rod/staffs and such as well~

This largely depends on what rod you have on Vanille. I had Lenna's SB weapon, which raises both mind and mag by a lot. She still did around 3800 damage with Waterja, Wakka doing around 4100 with Danjuro breaks. Unless you have a ton of honed -jas, her damage's not good.

Diara on Yuna doesn't do much damage either, but it's a really good option. If you give Carbuncle to Yuna, you only have one slot left, so you need a lot of charges on that slot or she'll just sit there doing nothing during the battle.

Vanille's very useful usually, but the lower max level and lack of materia hurts her a lot here.


I now have R5 Firaga and at least one of every orb, everything's cool

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You probably should have handed Vanille Diara, though. Higher MND and also takes advantage of Healing Staff's Holy-boosting properties.

[Fenrir]

Oh man I didn't even know my SB staff did that.
No wonder why I was the only one who thought Dia was actually really good.

I should have still given that to Yuna and replaced Vanille with Sephiroth, though

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FF5 - Completed Forest of Moore. Catoblepas has seen pretty healthy use on that dungeon - completely trivializes Wyrm in a single action, which is nice. Will likely see use on Carbuncle, too, which would otherwise be horrifying (50% MEvade what the fuck why). Also grabbed Liliputian Lyric because why not. The Guardians were pretty much a straight blitz: Titan until three of those fuckers die (doesn't take long, considering each Gaia Gear shaves off almost 1700 HP off their 7777 pool), Ironback => finish off Earth Guardian. He still got a couple Earth Shakers off, though, which killed Galuf. Weirdly appropriate.

Apparently, Exdeath Castle comes with a bunch of neat tools for Blue Mages (L2 Old! L3 Flare! Aeroga!), so I'm hoping for a field day there. I'll buy a fourth Air Knife before going there, though, because I need to be ready for the age of glorious Syldra spam.

EDIT: Fenny: problem there is Seph can't use Break nor Death, only L3 Black Magic, unless you're really confident you can kill the Guado Guardians fast. I'm actually considering replacing Vanille with Red XIII there, though.

[Captain K]

Why are you punching yourself, Seymour?


Beat Fenrir!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I love you.

[Fenrir]

EOU: Floor 7. Plot twist: Troubadours are now awesome, nothing can stop them. The 3 buffs limit actually helps keep things sane and makes me use some strategy instead of just steamrolling everything, so I think it's fine now.

Right now, the regen song is too powerful. Like the same bard song in FFT,  it's too OP for the beginning of the game, and gradually becomes obsolete.
But, by the 3rd stratum I'll also have maxed the other healing skill, so I'm not too worried about healing.

I have a song that raises max HP by 1,5, and as long as I use the defend command on PCs sometimes, even FOEs cannot really do enough damage to kill anyone.

Maxed songs are expensive, buuuut I respecced one bard to get a song that restores TP, so resources are pretty much unlimited right now.
Ailments could have been a problem, but I'll soon have a song that raises chance to recover from ailments, this base is also covered.


There is one very cool thing about buffs that I only just noticed in game. EO has a boost mechanic, which is yet another kind of limit break system. When the boost bar is full, you can you select boost, and then have to select another action, that action will be improved for that round.

This works with songs. The regen song heals 2x as much, for example.

The best part is that EO is very generous with buff/debuff refresh. They stack in all the best ways.
So let's say you have a -30 HP per round POIZN skill that lasts four rounds.

If you use it on the first round, the enemy loses 30 HPs and has 3 turns of POIZN damage left = You do 120 damage total

If you use it again on the second round, the buff will now last 3+4 rounds = 7 rounds, and still remove 30 HP per round. = 240 damage total.
You don't need to wait until buffs are over, or almost over, to benefit from recasting them; it's very easy to keep buffs/debuffs on all the time because of this.
You can have buffs/debuffs on up to 9 rounds max, which is plenty.


Now this is where it gets interesting / broken; if, on the second turn you use a boosted POIZN that removes 60 HP per round, the game considers that the boosted POIZN takes prevalence over the unboosted POIZN, and you'll have 7 rounds of 60 HP damage instead of 30. = 450 damage total

Now obviously this is ridiculous, but it also gets even better: You can use a normal unboosted POIZN afterwards to refresh the boosted POIZN. The enemy will always lose 60 HPs per turn, and not 30, as long as he has POIZN on him, even if you use the weakest POIZN spell on earth to reapply it.


tl;dr: All my buffs are now 2x better and last forever if I want, huzzah

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Autobattles Are Mosaics - I decided to spend spare Mythril on single pulls because eh why the hell not we'll get a new event and a new dungeon batch this week. Result: a second Official Ball. Hello, third 6* weapon. I also cleared Mt. Nibel and Wutai, currently working on Temple of the Ancients, after which I'll have completed all current dungeons, though I still need mastery on Mt. Zozo II (requires not getting Cyan KO'd, lolnoes) and Veldt (there, I just need to not be an idiot and use Curaga on zombie Sr. Behemoth before casting Raise on him, so it's plausible). If I Master TotA, I'll also have enough Greater Holy Orbs for R2 Carbuncle, so there's that.

EDIT: Mastered the Temple, honed Carbuncle to R2. I may be able to pull off the Seymour mastery yet. Also, should do a run on the equipment upgrade material dungeon for punting up the Official Ball to L25. My luck with gatcha pulls is honestly kinda weird, but I'm not complaining.

For Seymour, my considerations: running Cloud/Wakka/Red XIII/Yuna/Vivi, Cloud geared for full offense (Drain Strike/-ra Strike or a defensive break), Wakka with Power/Magic Breakdown, Red XIII with Death/Break (Death is well over double Break's base accuracy, so if I land it first turn, I'll have a better shot over the next two with Break. And hey, he can also contribute with pelts and Lunatic High), Yuna with Carbuncle/Diara, Vivi with his premier offense (Waterja or Firaja/-ga spell). I'm honestly scared of Anima's damage potential without any sort of healing to deal with her searing Pain shots, but I may bring Sentinel's Grimoire to mitigate that, worst comes to worst.

EDIT2: HELL YEAH MASTERED THE SEYMOUR FIGHT. Indeed, Carbuncle R2 did the trick, though the Runic Blade RW I brought (no SG on that particular RW lineup, so eh) also guaranteed a smooth transition, since neither Break landed (the Death -did- land, at least). Drain Strike also did wonders to mitigate Sap... until the status RAN OUT. Yeah, the downside to Self-Sacrifice is fucking menial. At the end, I still had a Runic Blade left and Seymour did almost half the damage to himself due to Carbuncle ruling that fight. Made it in the fucking brink, I lost exactly the three medals I could afford (two on actions taken, one on damage because Anima landed two full damage Pains. That was very scary). This was a great, fun fight and I hope the following EX++ battles are as interesting and involved as this. Now, to run the EUM dungeon once for L25 Official Ball.

[Fenrir]

Keep the official balls uncombined, you never know!! </weird reddit posters>

I got Double Cut from my first FF2 dungeon with Josef, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Too little, too late, I already combined it. I just need to level it up. Regardless, reddit's pretty full of it, what the hell would I do with the spare? Give it to Tidus, who ain't even getting any further airtime from now and gets no SB from it? Not to mention he gets outdamaged by Heat Lance Balthier anyway. Regardless, a ranged character running a +100 weapon is fairly shiny. Wonder if anyone else will step up for the spare Hawkeye in my inventory eventually.

[Fenrir]

I don't know. Something something two 5* are more powerful than one pseudo 6*. Don't ask me. I always combine ASAP

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, you have that right (though Hawkeye is a natural 5*, I'll just never draw one again unless they decide to pull another Locke event). I guess I could slap it on REFIA when I decide to level her up, there'll be a FF3 event at -some- point and eh, I need a L50 FF3 PC for one of the quests anyway. Maybe on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Also, since final rarity also factors into the stat boost provided by synergy, I can't imagine not boosting the weapons in the fortunate case you get multiples unless you badly need spares of a certain weapon type. That's more prevalent with mages, though (I certainly could use a second 5* rod and staff, for instance).

[Excal]

Breath of Fire 4 - Slowly working my way through this.  Game is still as beautiful as I remember, though the pacing is still super slow and the game is still basically "you are traveling west."  Seriously, Chapter 1 is we need to take a shortcut to the Western Empire.  Chapter 2 is that worked horribly, so what do we do now?  And Chapter 3 is of course, just take the long way west!

I'm at a point where I probably should backtrack for masters I can get now but don't currently have.  I'm also at a point where I need 3k fish points in order to unlock two masters.  Unfortunately, the fishing minigame is proving less enjoyable than it did last time, and different kinds of fish are refusing to come out.  Once again, my weakness against timed hits is showing.

Regardless, as those listening in on chat no doubt know, I've crossed the great sea of water, and am approaching the sand flats.


Codename Steam - Gave it a try, got to the Mecha Lincoln, decided it's not for me.  Not entirely sure why, because I want to like this game.  And I like both Fire Emblem and X-Com.  But I just can't get into this.

PersonaQ - What, I still haven't beaten this?  Oh right, last time I went on a bender I got past some tricky stuff only to put it down for a moment, forget that I didn't save, and turn the thing off, wrecking a huge amount of progress.  Anyways, waited long enough that each step forward was more of a "Why did I put this down" as opposed to a monument to my own stupidity.  At this point, barring stupidly durable enemies, Mamudoon and Mahameon are my only offenses.  I can see why this is the game where they really shine.  a) They have a stupidly good hit rate, and few enemies block either, and not sure any block both.  While several enemies have a weakness against one or both.  b) Unlike the Atlus games, the elemental spells aren't as good.  You're not guaranteed to down someone when you hit weakness.  You're not guaranteed an all-out attack even if you do knock everyone down.  And the enemies feel durable enough that they'll usually survive all of that if it goes off, while in 3/4 if you get the All-Out attack it's rare for it not to kill.  So, yeah, just spam the ID.

As for puzzling, I'm on a stage where you're clearly supposed to use some sacred flame to create slippery bits of floor to squeak by the FOEs.  Me, I got lazy about the puzzling and just did things the crazy way, you can disrupt the patterns of the FOEs by strategically picking fights with them and running away.  Why run away?  Because they have three attacks, a buff, a turn waster, and a MT 2HKO.  If buffed, that 2HKO turns into a 1HKO for Yukiko, and isn't really healthier for anyone else.  Somehow, I managed to get to the far side of the floor without wiping.  Unfortunately, it looks like in order to open the door to the next floor I'm going to have to slip n slide the flame down past the FOEs anyways.  Kurses.

[Fenrir]

Codename Steam - Gave it a try, got to the Mecha Lincoln, decided it's not for me.  Not entirely sure why, because I want to like this game.  And I like both Fire Emblem and X-Com.  But I just can't get into this.

Might it be related to the fact that there's a mecha Lincoln?


Also, I didn't know Persona Q had FOEs. I'll grab it.
For me now the 3DS has become an Atlus console with some unimportant Nintendo games on it

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Persona Q is pretty much Persona Odyssey, made by the same team and all. You didn't know?