Record Keeping Final Fantasy Record Keeper

[Veryslightlymad]

Takes orbs I don't have. I have R1 in both Protectga and Shellga, and... uh.... two of the breakdowns (not power, since I do that anyhow)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, now you know what to aim for your next hones. And grab Concentration II/Mana Spring II if you haven't already. You -will- eventually want Power Breakdown regardless, since breaks/breakdowns don't last very long (about three turns) and you should reapply them periodically. R2 lets you last a whole fight with judicious application, R3 and onwards lets you spam them. Also, at what speed do you run the game, idly?

[Captain K]

Eh what you have is okay for mitigation.  I had pretty similar stuff not too long ago.  Breakdowns are not worth wasting orbs on, don't listen to Snow.  Power and Magic Break + Sentinel Grimoire RW are enough mitigation for almost all content.  Protectga and Shellga you can hone to r2, don't go any higher on those.

What you lack is offense and yeah you're pretty screwed there.  Amarant is a wall of hp and with no synergy there's not much you can do about it.  I'd say start paying attention to the 2++ items you can make with synergy in realms you're weak in.  They're still bad but better than nothing.  FF9 doesn't have any useful farmable gear.

[hinode]

Magic Breakdown is the only Breakdown that's really relevant for high level content right now, since it's still a respectable -40% damage reduction even resisted. It's easily the best use of Greater Power Orbs in the game.

Power Breakdown is only -14.5% physical damage for any +++ boss unless you stack on additional debuffs (and Full Break isn't enough for some bosses, you'd need Heroic Harmony as well). It's still useful for a lot of story bosses who don't resist it as well as ++ and lower level difficulties, but I wouldn't call it a must-have skill these days. Steal Power is better because the +50% attack is great so long as you aren't running something like Planet Protector already.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Magic Breakdown is the must-have skill out of the Breakdowns, due to that -and- the fact bosses tend to have more threatening magic than physicals. 3* Breaks against any Break-resistant content (i.e. anything above + nowadays, and slowly creeping into just about -any- content above Classic, see this event's Elite Amarant's Break resistance), however, are borderline useless. 15% reduction means you reduce/raise damage by less than 10% on average. You only run them as filler if you're running -no- Support 4 PC, but that always feels like a poor idea (I can't think of a single serious party setup of mine where I ever think "hm, running a *insert relevant Breakdown* somewhere wouldn't be optimal").

[DjinnAndTonic]

Draw and Retaliate with Tyro with your Evil Pumpkin and you shouldn't have any trouble with Amarant? You can even throw Advance in there to make sure you're getting the damage you need. Apart from that, throw either a bunch of double hitters or Mages into the other four slots to help with the damage race before you run out of reta charges?

[Captain K]

Finished Zidane event.  Setup for Evil Tree That Is Not Exdeath:

Level 65 Garnet (Curaga, Diaga)
Level 64 Bartz (Steal Power, Tempo Flurry)
Level 65 Vivi (Waterja, Flare)
Level 51 Eiko (Curaga, Protectga)
Level 50 Zidane (Dismissal, Dark Buster) + Diamond Plate and Mako Might
Boon RW

Flash on first turn with Zidane, set up other mitigation, whack with Garnet, Vivi, and Bartz.  Took some resets due to first turn pre-mitigation shenanigans, but once it got rolling it worked fine.

EDIT: Math stuff https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/comments/3uwy0w/mathcraft_steal_power_punishing_palm_vs_armor/

[DjinnAndTonic]

Heh. I was totally about o post that awesome mathcraft thing on Punishing Palm too. Very nicely researched. And even if some of his assumptions might not always hold true, it does make a good argument for Palm being the most reliable physical damage ability short of crazy Barrage hones.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Tuesdaily has this odd tendency to greet me with a shower of Greaters early in the morning. Today, we had four GPOs and a GBO on the first 120 stamina. May as well, considering R4 Mental Breakdown led me back to R4 Blizzaja before Calamity Exdeath being an unrealistic expectation.

[Scar]

Didn't master +++.

Upsetting. Gonna try again.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Soulcage is honestly one of the most dickish +++s since at least Sanctuary Keeper. The real clincher there is the ridiculous speed (350 or so when your fastest characters won't even have 160), making getting the drop on it honestly hard and all of its offense is MT, meaning you'll often start at a disadvantage. I managed Eiko to land Protectga first turn -just- before Soulcage's first turn, which really eased up on the pressure, but pulling that off can be ridiculous without something like an Auto-Haste RM (good thing cap-breaking Zidane, who is a target score req, hands you one!). This said, with two Hastega relics, serious blitzing shenanigans happened on my end. Fun, if brutal.

[Cotigo]

Tried the 凶+ fight for the collab event again, and ugh no it just isn't happening. I think, IF I get Meteo to R2, and IF I get Bartz to L65 Sunday and get his Air Knife in the guaranteed Relic draw, I have a decent shot, since honestly Ramza isn't helping that much and Mog can take care of the lower MATK requirement. That said, I may spend some time before spending the mythril trying my build out with swapping out Ramza for Gilgamesh with Flaming Weeb, Wind Jump, and a Hastega RW instead of Sentinel's Grimiore. That may make it doable. Ideally, Good Time or Lunatic High will also let me keep Faith in addition to Breakdance Fever, meaning I don't completely gimp Terra's damage. Still, that one almost certainly hinges on me scraping together enough NE orbs Saturday to get R2 Meteo.

Fortunately, there's nothing actually all that scary in the fight except for the big fuck you Sandstorm attack. I should actually be able to get this done without SGSRS as long as I can make sure the adds are dead and not respawned before Sandstorm goes off.

In other news, I got like two Major Blacks today after I got flooded with Black orbs from the event. Ain't complainin, that shit can go to spellblades or R4 Thundaja, which it's looking like I'll need in order to beat the Ultima Buster guarding the Soul of Ultima.

[Scar]

Landed blind 1st Turn really helped the 2nd go around.

Lost 3 medals.

Mastered.

Phew...

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Fortunately, there's nothing actually all that scary in the fight except for the big fuck you Sandstorm attack. I should actually be able to get this done without SGSRS as long as I can make sure the adds are dead and not respawned before Sandstorm goes off.

Regarding that attack: it's gravity-based. If you have equips (accessories, armor, what have you) that grant ID resistance, you can use those to gimp the move's accuracy. Depending on the equips you use, it can -drastically- neuter those moves (for instance, the Safety Bit I got from Tidus' event way back in June borderline trivialized stuff like the Oilboyles' Oil Blasts). This said, ID resistance stuff is generally rare and I'm not sure if any was handed to you in the periods you've been playing the game.

[Cotigo]

I did get exactly one ID resist accessory, during the Relm/Shadow event, because of course they gave you a Memento Ring for that. Thanks! I figured out that it was gravity based, but did not know that ID resist helped against gravity attacks.

With that in mind, if I toss that on Aerith, save up her SB charges, and use a hastega RW with Gilgamesh instead of Ramza, that may well work (and I don't have to spend 50 mythril that could go to a potential SG banner). Neat.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

There was another ID resistance accessory from Minwu's event from skimming over Kongbakpao's event page, and it wasn't from the Misfortune fight. You might want to check it up for an extra layer of protection on someone else.

[Magic Fanatic]

How shameful.

Because his Inferno caught me off-guard about how much damage it did, and how much time I'd have to S/L the fight, I had to blow a Mithril on Bahamut in Elite Fifth Arc Part 3...  Mostly because I didn't want to wait 5 hours to have another shot at it.  Flipside is that it's done, I mastered it, and now I don't have to worry about it ever again.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Five Greater Blacks, Five Greater Powers so far, still a few runs left to go. Lulu event lands tonight, but not sure whether I'll save some stamina for rushing the time-wasting parts of it or save all of it for tomorrow and Thursday. This said, ETA for R2 Full Break: Friday night. I also need to plan my strategy for Yojimbo, though, with the sheer volume of FFX synergy I have, the only trouble I may have with him is likely Zanmato's ID proc. We'll see.

[Captain K]

Don't underestimate Spherimorph on the new event.  His aoe hit for 2500 damage on 30 difficulty.  Granted he has no hp, but he hits stupidly hard.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Speaking of which, ended up doing three pulls on this event. First pull yielded nothing, second one ANOTHER Emerald Shield (hello, my first useless 5++*). Third one, netted myself a Gold Bangle and the gorram Lullaby Rod. Took long enough to get a relic for my favorite FF PC.

EDIT: R2 FULL BREAK HAS ARRIVED, BITCHES

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Main battles on Lulu's event done. Sanctuary Keeper sorta tried this time with Break resistance, but having only 110k HP sorta makes him crumble fast, especially given how ridiculous my general FFX synergy is. Thanks for the Major Lightning Orb, though, I have R2 Full Break thanks to that. Spherimorph gets fixed by Sentinel's Grimoire and exploiting his AI quirks and interrupts. All that's left until Friday is farming for Greater Winds/Lightnings and then for Tidus' RM2. I lost count of how much stamina I wasted trying to proc it and I need that to unlock his RM3 when Rift of Recollection sweeps in.

[Shale]

I would like to formally thank the game for putting two memory crystals on Zorn and Thorn, since in the course of this event I went from having none to having three, one of which is even on a non-suck character.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I assume you're happy about Vivi finally getting an easily accessible MC. For all that Eiko is an annoying git in FF9, though, she's a really good PC in RK. White Magic and Bard synergize very well and Shellga as a default SB is good times.

EDIT: Apparently, JP FFRK released Edea's event bonus battles today. And guess what, guyze: THEY'RE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK

EDIT #Grefter: Yay, DeNa updated the login bonuses! The draw now has an extra mythril per ten-day cycle, 4* upmats, eggs and better gil rewards.

[Scar]

Finally.

[Magic Fanatic]

Things that happened to me in Lulu's event:

Auron to L65
Wakka's MC, RM1, and RM2 obtained.
Kimahri's useless RM2 obtained.

So far, all the Classic and Elite stages are done (Still have Elite Moonflow to do, but I have a L65 Auron with R5 Retaliate and a Nodachi++ - things won't last long).