Record Keeping Final Fantasy Record Keeper

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

[Meeplelard]

My FF13 Synergy is solid enough, so I only did the 100 Gem Pull...and it yielded complete garbage!

Finished the event thus far.  Nothing stand out other than Juggernaught had me S/L right at the end when it pulled an incinerate right at the end, when mitigation was down (he was a Saint Cross away from being killed, which Snow had almost readied), and it killed off Serah.  S/L, played slightly more cautiously, kicked his ass.

Speaking of which, apparently Japan has a whole tier named after Serah, which is "Character who adds absolutely nothing to their realm" which sadly, yeah, Serah qualifies as.

I feel like only the FF4 Twins and Strago really belong on that list, though Strago at least has the excuse of Storyline PC while Terra and Kefka (his main competition) are both event/Hall of Rites PCs, so conceivable you'd have him but not those two.  Same can't be said for Porom/Palom, who compete with multiple Sages, and unique characters in their role,

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

With BSBfest coming soonish and what used to be my overriding need (hastega) finally settled, I figure it's a good idea to take stock of where I am relic-wise and figure out what I should be pulling for in the future. Thinking mainly in terms of SBs rather than synergy right now, since I can summarize my synergy needs pretty simply as "swords and daggers for FF5, 6 and 13, and any melee weapon for FF4."

SSBs:
Cloud – Blade Beam (MT damage)
Gilgamesh – Faithful Companion (MT damage, party high regen)
Lightning – Crushing Blow (MT lightning damage)
Rinoa – Wishing Star (Random 5 hit magic damage)

Medica:
Lenna – Princess' Favor (Cura+party high regen)
Yuna – Hymn of the Fayth (Cura+party high regen)
Yuffie – Clear Tranquil (40% heal, instant)
Ashe – Northswain's Glow (Cure+AOE white magic damage)

Medica/Hastega:
Eiko – Emerald Light (Cura+hastega)

Boostga:
Mog – Sunbath (30% boostga+high regen)
Sabin – Razor Gale (30% boostga+MT wind damage)
Galuf – Fist of the Dawn (35% boostga+ST single hit damage)
Desch – Selfless Spirit (35% ATK/DEF up+50% mHP self damage)

Mitigation:
Agrias – Cleansing Strike (40%ATK/MAG down+ST damage)
Kimahri – Mighty Guard X (party magic blink)
Auron – Dragon Fang (MT ATK breakdown+damage)

Damage:
Ramza – Hail of Stones (ST damage+100% stun)
Irvine – Fast Ammo (Random target damage)
Squall – Fated Circle (ST damage+lesser MT damage)
Thancred – Dancing Edge (ST damage+DEF breakdown)
Vivi – Doublecast Venom (ST poison magic damage)
Rydia – Diamond Dust (MT single hit ice magic damage)
DK Cecil – Darkness (MT single hit dark damage+self damage)

My biggest need currently is mitigation. I rely heavily on the double offensive breakdown of Cleansing Strike, which is a great move but also restricts my party composition pretty significantly -- see the coming FF13 event, where I have little choice but to field a character with zero weapon synergy rather than using my spare gun or throwing weapon. Wall obviously would be fantastic, but any move that stacks with breakdowns and comes with a character not locked to swords/daggers represents a big improvement in my flexibility.

Similarly, boostgas. I have a bunch! But they're on characters with very limited skillsets, and Desch in particular is a big offensive liability if he doesn't have an elemental weakness to hit. (On the other hand, thanks to Emerald Light his self-damage is no longer an issue because whenever I put up buffs there's a Medica along for the ride) Mog's my go-to but he is getting less and less helpful on offense as U+ bosses' RES ramps up and Diaga drops from solid damage to sub-3K.

I'm pretty well set for Medicas. Emerald Light is a very strong two-for-one deal and if I don't need to bring a native Hastega I can replace it with Yuna or Lenna's versions of HOTF or, when I eventually find a good ability combo for her, forego a second white mage and bring Yuffie.

Damage is waaaaaaaaaaay down the list, which is a nice luxury to have. BSBs would be very appreciated and take the pressure off my hones in a major way, but in terms of big damage SB/SSBs, I can't complain much.

Late, but now that I can actually look at your list, what I think you really want in terms of SBs is widening your utility (mainly strong Support SBs, which honestly are still incoming - picking up, say, Faris' BSB in a couple months or Fran's SSB could ease off the pressure on your Agrias at a minimum). For Yuffie, she works wonderfully with a decently honed Thief's Revenge once she breaks the L74 barrier (170 Speed for 5-hit TR) - if you have R4 Dismissal, just R2 on it is enough. When Ninja scrolls are useful, your Cardinal's also an okay option for her. Offensive SSBs with special effects could also work decently, and they're only going to get more common (Yda's SSB is a nice example, for instance). Regardless, ideally you want to do some research on future banners via reddit/kongbakpao and look at what may grab your fancy. And then cross fingers.

[Cotigo]

Eh, I would say pulling on BSBs is also not a bad idea for him since he doesn't really farm religiously. Since getting a comfy number of BSBs my farming is mostly useful for making numbers go up in my inventory, and the odd time when a skill suddenly becomes useful (hi chain starter) and I need to R3 it immediately. Once you have a character that can use special attacks for 4 turns (usually this is enough to cycle through to another BSB going off as well), all you ever really end up needing is an R3 lifesiphon.

[Cmdr_King]

Finally got around to Arena U+.  Man, not even Snow's ridiculous Shout RW lasted the whole thing, I don't even want to know what non-SG havers suffered in this.  That said, Sephiroth was running Dark Bargain so his SSB was plenty to finish it off.  Still, that is so much hp.

Also ran the main course XIII-2 stuff.  Since I did it last night, ran without a boostga.  Easy master but man, forgot just how much offense any other RW costs you.  Oh well.  Good to stay in practice.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I saved SG's RW casts in-between fights (didn't feel like running Y'shtola myself, kept me from running Aerith for Pulse of Life mastery), so I figure that's how they coped. Not fun, since Kimaira's Freeze is an easy 4k on a fighter even with Shell up if no other mitigation's running.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Eh, I would say pulling on BSBs is also not a bad idea for him since he doesn't really farm religiously. Since getting a comfy number of BSBs my farming is mostly useful for making numbers go up in my inventory, and the odd time when a skill suddenly becomes useful (hi chain starter) and I need to R3 it immediately. Once you have a character that can use special attacks for 4 turns (usually this is enough to cycle through to another BSB going off as well), all you ever really end up needing is an R3 lifesiphon.

Agreed, though the better idea there would be pulling on a celebration banner at the current juncture. Until BSBs become a weekly thing, the banners running those are pretty consistently underwhelming. Welp, there's the celebration coming at the end of the month, so yeah.

[Cotigo]

Oh yeah, I agree, in my mind it went without saying. BSB celebration banner is gonna be the time to get it. Cecil's Enholy BSB is probably actually better than Beatrix's Imperil Holy BSB in a vaccuum, and even the boobie prize BSBs (Terra's and Tidus') are more than servicable. Bartz's has gotten me through the last 6 months comfortably, and Tyro's is just godly for stacking mitigations (and frankly I've come to really appreciate how flexible the little brat can be in a party. I want to fit in Waifu Ramza? He's a mage now. Want to fit in Waifu Terra? He's support. Want to just wreck with a Shout RW? Tyro smaaaaaaash).

Only idiots pull on the Lightning BSB banner.

And, CK, Snow's right. Basically I had just gotten Zack's hastega, so I saved up a couple charges of that for Chimera to skip that phase, and SG'd at the start and for Carry Armor. Wasn't that hard actually.  Certainly not harder than Kuja and his bullshit Lightning spam.

[hinode]

Only idiots pull on the Lightning BSB banner.

Incidentally, how bad of a person does it make me that I enjoyed this out of pure schadenfreude?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Holy shit, he -actually- went all the way down?

[Cotigo]

I detect nothing there that indicates you being a bad person. You can enjoy that shadenfruede guilt free

[DjinnAndTonic]

Tidus' BSB is one of the best ones in Burst Fest. Top three are probably Tyro > Cecil > Tidus. Bartz's is decent for hitting some rare elemental weaknesses for mastery reqs on some regular dungeons and has decent DPS. Terra's is only serviceable as much as that pains me to admit. Cloud's is... well it was around for months before the other BSBs appeared and it's still decent for farming dailies I guess? And having a good FF7 relic doesn't hurt. Still clearly the weak link of the featured BSBs.

Still, the EnElement + Elemental Burst Command combo is too good to call Tidus' BSB a consolation prize, not matter your feelings on Tidus. Water isn't as common a weakness as Cecil's Holy, but it's also rarely resisted, and the Burst Commands are Water/Non-elemental so bosses can't even completely wall it with resistance/absorption.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Terra's BSB is better for weakness-hitting than Bartz' while Bartz' is better for burst damage. Terra's BSB commands run off multi-hit 10x mults, which is honestly amazing if you're hitting weakness and/or stacking a buff on top. This said, they're both workhorses and Bartz' BSB itself, burst mode aside, is actually worse than his SSB (same mult and targetting, but no 50% DEF party buff).

[Cotigo]

Tidus' hurts from severe deficiency of water-weak enemies in content that this discussion matters for. I suppose he does still get the bonus from Enwater, but overall I'd argue Bartz's is more useful, not just because he can hit 4 times the elements for mastery reqs, but also because Bartz has a way better skillset... specifically, he has Theif while Tidus doesn't. Don't have shout? It's cool, Bartz can steal power. Tidus doesn't really have a self ATK buff, which is a godsend when you're not running a Boostga.

In fairness, the Enwater probably makes up for that (it doubles the multiplier for water elemental attacks, right?), and if you do have shout is strictly better damage wise for sure, unless up against non-water weakness... which, again, Bartz hits more of, and Tidus can hit none of even in JP now.

(plus tidus just sucks)

ghostedit: Yeaaaaaah, Magic 10x mults are like physical 4x (this number is pulled out of my ass I don't actually know the equivalent multiplier) mults in practice, Snow, at least until the Faithgas come out and the MAG softcap gets raised, and even then physicals and magic tend to be about equivalent damage wise even with Mag *consistently* having way higher mults.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The thing with ATK is mostly the softcap problem. In -Global-, we're already at the point any self-respecting setup with Shout rams ATK softcaps, and Burst boosts + even a 30% Boostga like Mog's also gets there. Even at the lower cap of 742 for MAG, the boost from Burst has more potential - it's just harder to buff as of now on Global because the phys/mag balance right now is full swing on physical. Also worth noting that it takes until -Full Charge- for a physical ability to break the 4x mult barrier.

[Cotigo]

Yeah, gonna stop you there, because while physicals don't break 4x until Full Charge, in practice this DOESN'T MATTER. You still crank out equivalent damage numbers off of smaller mults with physicals. A lot of this probably has to do with enemy res but the reasons are moot. A 9x mult magic skill on a good setup is gonna do only slightly more than a 2-3x physical skill as long as you're building for it.

Welcome to whose stat is it anyway, where the difference in mults between physical and magic skills don't matter.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yes and no. The deal with physicals is that they scale off better than magic due to higher exponentials, so they benefit more from buffs below the softcap. The difference in mults between physical skills and physical SSBs is also a lot higher (2.3 on 4* vs. 7.99 on ST SSBs), while magical SSBs aren't even double the mult of a -ja (17.9 vs. 9 - i.e. why magical SSBs -suck- at damage), so in practice physicals crank out better damage in the age where you don't deal damage without buffs. Magic has superior -potential- due to getting nearly double the softcap later on (you get more damage out of a 1000 MAG mage than a 1000 ATK fighter given roughly equivalent -relative- mults due to the MAG cap being at 1020 or something like that while the ATK softcap's still stuck at 592. Worth noting that, past softcap, all gains are flatlined to half the increase of a stat for physicals, while below it's slightly over double. For MAG, the increase is closer to 90% before the softcap). But this only matters for JP as of now, since we haven't got the bevy of stackable magic buffs you guys have now. In fact, in the following months, until they raise the softcap for ATK again, I expect physicals to devalue further due to the tendency shown as of late, along with the very stat spread on OSBs as well as the equipment cap-breaks with Rarity 8+ equips (which now you can get with 4* BASE equips): it's now possible to ram the softcap on ATK with -synergy alone-. This seriously devalues ATK and ATK buffs, since, past the softcap, even something like Shout is going to be like a 27% increase in damage, while a lone +30% MAG buff represents a 54% damage boost.

[Cotigo]

Very salient points, and I will confirm that with proper synergy alone you can hit the softcap on attack. I don't agree that this devalues ATK, but it certainly does devalue Boostgas (relative to faithgas). More importantly than any of this, though, the fact that BLM is getting multiple, weakness-hitting multi-hit attacks in the chain series, while Physicals aren't (rightly so! the pendulum needs to swing way back the other way... I don't even know if I'd agree that the ATK soft cap needs to be raised) means that Magic will be making a comeback.

My point isn't that magic is worse than physicals and whatnot (they will be for the next 6 months or so for global, but that also isn't my point), my point is that as of now in both versions of the game bringing up multipliers in a vacuum isn't a very valid criticism or point in favor of either stat. I do think you hit it on the head that that is because of the exponents in the damage formulae (rather than relative boss RES/DEF values or what have you). I just think that the "oh look BLM mults are 9x while Full Charge is the only physical skill to break 4x" is an argument so divorced from the practical results as to be meaningless. Is all.

(also dj meeple tidus meeple sucks)

EDIT: FWIW this argument does have me reconsidering drawing on Shout... marginally! I really want to stop using Zack and want to keep using Ramza and that really overrides all rational reasons for pulling.

EDIT2: Elaborating upon the "ATK softcap doesn't need to be raised", that's mostly because way more "If weapon type, then + 20-30% damage" RMs exist for physicals. These RMs are currently having a goddamn heyday in realms I have even reasonable synergy, and they aren't crippled by the softcap. This is actually a pretty important point for the waning longevity of Physical supremacy, come to think of it.

EDIT 10: I am done correcting typos and dealing with Error 403. pretend things that don't make sense make sense. is the DL board (software, not community) just dying and we're accepting that? because I think that may be happening.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, the RM emphasis on +20% and +30% damage RMs is going to increase a lot (it's already relevant as of now, I don't use +ATK RMs when I'm running Shout anymore), while those for offensive magic are an effective waste of a slot. Physicals are better equipped to survive the pendulum swing than they were back at the age of 340 attack cap (i.e. when mage meta reigned supreme and non-synergy 5* rods dealt double the damage with -jas that synergy physicals dealt with Pound) or even mages are right -now- because being resigned to Focus for stacking buffs to MAG blows chunks.

EDIT: Also, regarding mults at base themselves: I have the internal assumption that the mults on magic still ended up accruing higher -base- damage than physicals' - for abilities at least - before any buffing is applied, all other matters equal, for most of the 4* abilities. Before the mass RES hike, a synergy Firaja, for instance, still significantly outdamaged a synergy Pound. Until 5*s and SSBs, the mult difference was still skewed in favor of magic, mainly due to the glaring leap from 3* mults to 4* (-gas hovered around 4.9x and 5.3x while 3* physical abilities hovered in-between 1.8x [-ra Strikes] and 2x [Launch]. -jas jumped straight to a 9x mult while stuff like -ga Strikes and Pound were stuck with 2.1x-2.3x mults. The strongest 4* ability, Bonecrusher, is a single-hit 2.8x... that deals 25% mHP to the caster).

The burst attacks on Terra and Bartz follow roughly the same spread (10x mult on her attacks, 2.5x? on his). It was most notably glaring for me on a U+ Vargas setup that, under Shout and Apocalypse Shield, Bartz' fire attack did about 25% more damage than Terra's Fire attack in spite of Terra -not being under Faith-, only the Burst +20% boost. That's some interesting interplay at work there, showing mostly the effect softcaps has on offense.

THIS SAID, the gap has closed a fair bit on the 5* abilities (3.4x-4.4 to 11.8-13x, for instance).

[Cotigo]

Eh, yeah. Sure. But are you ever running a party without a (Boost/Faith)/ga in content that matters? Maybe with good synergy physicals for reasons we've covered, but certainly not in literally every other case.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Eh, yeah. Sure. But are you ever running a party without a (Boost/Faith)/ga in content that matters? Maybe with good synergy physicals for reasons we've covered, but certainly not in literally every other case.

Yeah, it's mostly comparing between how things were way back. After the physical cap buffs, physicals needed buffs to stay current while magic didn't (for quite a lot of time, magic didn't need even -synergy- to outdamage synergy physicals, but before raising the physical caps, physicals were borderline hopeless. In JP, even, I'm pretty sure Planet Protector wasn't even a thing until later, we just got the cap buffs a lot earlier). Right now, -both- need buffs to be taken seriously and magic not only has more problems getting said buffs, getting -synergy equipment- for it is also considerably harder.

[Cotigo]

Eh, yeah. Sure. But are you ever running a party without a (Boost/Faith)/ga in content that matters? Maybe with good synergy physicals for reasons we've covered, but certainly not in literally every other case.

Yeah, it's mostly comparing between how things were way back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtkGtXtDlQA&t=0m38s
 
This is us.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Git outta my lawn youn' varmint

[Cotigo]

Git outta my lawn youn' varmint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXOdn6vLCuU&t=2m39s

[Meeplelard]

So...on a more objective note...

Gysahl Shop reset.  Power, Wind and Non-elemental this week, I'm buying all 3!  That's 30k Greens down the drain (the Mithril is an expected cost.)

Also, another apology mythril.  DeNA's been far more lenient about that these days.  Use to be typoes were "oh yeah we fixed it, nope, don't care if it screwed you" but now it seems any sort of error they're actually rewarding us, though the errors have generally been things that can effect gameplay (Terra and Ashe losing Summon 5 for about an hour, calling an attack "Physical" when "Magical" can screw with strategies, etc.)