DL Team Battles VII
~SnowFire

Ah, the heroes who saved the world from Metagod and Cardinal Simon. Let's see, there was Godlike Champion Yuri dishing out the damage, recent Middle Champion Alice doing the healing, and...maybe some others? Well, the Shadow Hearts' "B squad" is out for respect, and the best way is to earn it in a proper team match. Their opponents? The sanity-reducing duo of Albedo and his fellow mad killer Testament Luis Virgil.

The Godlike Testaments are certainly worthy opponents, with Virgil making it to the Semifinals in Season 43. The sidekicks will have only a choose of doom when they decide who to attack first: Both Albedo and Virgil have powerful limit abilities that activate at low HP. Albedo can blow away all of Zhuzhen or Halley's MP - if they're even still alive, rendering their healing powerless. Virgil can unleash his mighty Victim's Hail, probably breaking the entire party and inflicting excellent icy death in the process. The weight of inevitably is on their side as well - if the exorcists mess around too long chipping their HP, the pair will have time to build their boost gauges and slay them all in a single mess of destruction. With Virgil using Overtaker at the start of the battle, that's not likely to be too long a time. As a final insult, Albedo's excellent elemental resistances should definitely slow down the mostly elemental attacks of the Shadow Hearts also-rans.

Exorcist Zhuzen, long mocked, will provide some healing, and his Flames of Fudo exploits Virgil's Fire weakness. Halley can also heal, and more importantly, revive anyone taken down by the Testaments. Meanwhile Keith and Margarete will smash with their best damage, which is respectable enough. Like Zhuzen, Margarete even has the multi-target Diving Bomber support for some spectacular fiery explosions to take Virgil down with. The whole team can easily block any attempts to poison, confuse, or stop them with handy Cosmic Bracelets, too. If nothing else, there's the sheer weight of four people smashing into a boss at once. With their HP being only so-so, it really won't take that much firepower to finish off the freaks.

So who wins? The classic combination of vampires, spies, exorcists, and annoying psychic kids? Or does absolute power mixed with madness take the day?
  • Keith-Halley-Zhuzhen-Margarete have this one tied up.
  • Albedo & Virgil drive some more foolish heroes insane.

SageAcrin
Oh, come on, now.

One team has Albedo on it.

The other team has Halley on it.

One team has Virgil on it.

The other has Keith on it.

With two of the most natural mental counters on earth to the SH1 team on the Xenosaga team, the match is obvious. Margarete finds something less suicidal to do, Zhuzhen has less forethought, Halley gets to go through councelling longer than MOMO had to and Keith is still mumbling miserably about how horrid Virgil is.

Though, it wasn't all good for XS's team.

Albedo still is desperately insisting that Halley was a girl. Of course. He doesn't swing that direction for his mental rape. Right. Naturally.

Team Shadow Hearts: 19
Team Xenosaga: 29

Djinn
Interesting bonus. My vote goes to the 'classic combination' of vampires, spies, exorcists, and annoying psychic kids. It's too bad Koudelka herself doesn't get to get in on this action...