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GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice
I sound like a broken record but holy poo poo the nightmare dungeons suck. I don't even care for the endgame anymore because of how loving stupid these fights are. Lich counters each attack with a group death attack? :downsbravo: A boss that can't be hit with melee attacks? Another that counters any attack? :suicide:

At this point I'm only doing this poo poo because I have a strong feeling that they're going to lock the final parts of the story mode (that is it's own separate thing and shouldn't matter) behind that book of trials. :argh:

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Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Just blow them up with an AOSB RW :shrug:

Boogaloo Shrimp
Aug 2, 2004

Fister Roboto posted:

I'd say Delita is the best lightning spellblade, since Lightning can't use Stormspell.

Sora is better. He can equip Stormspell and has enelement, dualcast, and a USB with chase hits. Delita is missing the enelement. Issue with Sora is that if you didn't get his stuff from the KH event, you're SoL (with the remote possibility that a KH event occurs as a tie-in to the KH3 release).

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






0 - Rem OSB
T - Mustadio LMR
15 - Noctis LMR
14 - Estinien BSB
13 - Serah USB1
12 - Ashe BSB
11 - Aphmau USB

Guess which one isn't a dupe. :ughh:

Arcon
Jul 24, 2013
RNG is treating me well this RoP

11 Shantotto AOSB
12 Balthier USB1
13 Vanille USB1 (Dupe)
14 Papa LMR (enfire), Yda BSB (Dupe)
15 Noctis BSB (Dupe)
FFT Agrias LMR (wcast)
T0 Seven USB

New: 5 Dupe: 3 Disco: 4

pichupal
Mar 23, 2013

Poochy ain't Stupid.
I might be.
XI breaks my new relic streak with an Aphmau BSB dupe. I'm pretty good for XI relics so I'm not very sad about it.

0 - Seven BSB
Tactics - Marach BSB
XV - Ignis LMR
XIV - Yda BSB
XIII - Noel BSB3, Fang BSB2 (dupe)
XII - Vayne USB
XI - Aphmau BSB (dupe)

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

Fister Roboto posted:

I'd say Delita is the best lightning spellblade, since Lightning can't use Stormspell.

He and Sora are in competition and Queen is there too. Queen will likely never get an ASB, and Sora is stuck in (c) Disney hell, but they have ready access to enlightning that Delita lacks. In return they have to rely on LMRs for doublecast, which Delita has natively.

Past that, he definitely does beat out Lightning there, and is the most likely to fall into the Awakening USB bin where Real Ultimate Power lurks.

goons posted:

RoP

So far:
0 - Ace LMR2
T - Meliadoul LMR
15 - Dupe Aranea USB (MY THIRD :argh: )
14 - Y'shtola USB
13 - Lightning LMR2
12 - Dupe Balthier BSB2
11 - Dupe Aphmau BSB

Aside from Ace and Lightning's enelement LMs, everything has been trash or dupes. Both 6*s have been crap nobody wanted (a dupe and The Worst USB In The Game) in realms where I have very little in the way of 6*s. :negative:

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Dec 15, 2018

DeadButDelicious
Oct 11, 2012

Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!
Shantotto LMR today. It's good, but my Shantotto is in a weird place with only her ASB, glint and a super to her name. She's not quite there yet but I appreciate more lightning tech. Now if Monday's draw would give me Garnet CSB I'd be set.

eelmonger
Jun 20, 2008

pichupal posted:

Vayne USB :toot:

Don't care much about the character, but the flexibility of using him in physical and magical dark teams will probably make me give him a dive. Would've loved Ashe's USB but I can't be sad with this.

Sup fellow Vayne USB puller? Pretty much feel exactly the same way. Also, the XII torment switches immunities, so he was already on my 280 team with just BSB+LMR. I just find it hard to get jazzed about pulling holy/dark stuff since I probably won't even cast it for 3 months.

Everything else has been pretty ho-hum so far. For whatever reason the game thinks I really need Holy BSBs:
0: Rem LMR (the 1 hit chase one)
T: Marche BSB (dupe)
15: Noctis OSB (dupe)
14: Minfilia BSB1
13: Hope BSB2 (dupe)
12: Vayne USB
11: Curilia BSB

Ayndin
Mar 13, 2010

I got Vayne USB in the daily draw like a month ago, it's real nice. Not much of note out of the daily draw since then, I think I got some lovely shared/blank item and have had about three weeks of nothing since.

RoP:
T0: Queen LMR. Not bad but not super useful on its own.
T: Marche LMR dupe.
XV: Gladio USB
XIV: Yda LMR, Yshtola USB dupe
XIII: Raines OSB dupe
XII: Basch OSB
XI: Lion BSB

A decent crop of not-dupes and more 6*s than I'd expect, but nothing outstanding.

Augus
Mar 9, 2015


Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

I sound like a broken record but holy poo poo the nightmare dungeons suck. I don't even care for the endgame anymore because of how loving stupid these fights are. Lich counters each attack with a group death attack? :downsbravo: A boss that can't be hit with melee attacks? Another that counters any attack? :suicide:

At this point I'm only doing this poo poo because I have a strong feeling that they're going to lock the final parts of the story mode (that is it's own separate thing and shouldn't matter) behind that book of trials. :argh:

They’ve been pretty soundly left behind by the power creep so you only need to half pay attention to mechanics, but as a general rule of thumb, your party should be customized to suit the challenge and the roles that it’s based around. That’s what the nightmare synergy is there for. The boss that can’t be hit by physical attacks expects you to have a full party of mages. For the summoner dungeon you bring summoners. Combat dungeon you bring physical attackers. Etc.

Neutral Zone Trap
Nov 6, 2011

It's in the garbage. Where it belongs.
This post is going to be a grown man complaining about a final fantasy themed slot machine so skip if that's not something you care about.

I liked the 3* magicite era, the 4* magicite era and the especially the beginning of nutorments and 5* magicites. Yes, the latter two were hard as loving balls but it really meant something when you got them done. You couldn't beat them as they came out but wasn't that the point? To make progress in small steps once you got handle of the strategy and got better gear? I beat D??? VI torment and that felt pretty drat good as someone who doesn't spend money on this game. We had a good thing going where the content was extremely rough but you could plan your pulls and make progress here and there with new relics. It was a stable time.

Then we learned about 4th anniversary and Awakenings. Awakenings will change everything. Essentially the game will reset at that point and there will be two kinds of keepers. Those with awakenings and those without. Some relics will still be usable, few even good. But the awakenings are not just your average power creep, they are strictly on another level. Not spending any money on the game means operating with finite resources. You obviously want the Awakenings so that means maybe you cut back on myth spending until they are out. Six months back then, four and then some now. So now it's just waiting for them to come while pulling only on absurd steal deals.

Now let's pretend it's March and we're at 4th with awakenings on the table. We look three months ahead. Aether Lenses. I have this huge loving pile of mythril but do I pull on a banner with one awakening, chasing a single relic, when I could save three more months and go for banners with 2-3 awakenings per giving me doubled or tripled rates to hit and get lenses on top for free USBs? Is there an end to this? How absurd a deal will the JP fest six months ahead then cut us?

Let's look at this from another angle, exploring the current hardest content of nutorments and the options available. I feel like there are two possible courses of action:

1) Coast to 4th anniversary poking at the torments with full understanding and intent that the real push is going to come with awakenings much later.
2) Pull heavily now and actually attempt to clear them.

First let's see what hand option one dealt us. We have awakenings. We're doing nu torments with this insane new power that this content was not supposed to handle. They are getting obliterated. Trampled. Crushed like ants under a grown up's steel-lined boots. I can't have fun doing this. What's the point of beating an opponent who can't even fight back?
Option two lets us have fun with current content but we're left heavily disadvantaged when awakenings come and basically cannot compete with the next tier of content that's about to come. All you can think about is starting another account from scratch to rebuild a mythril pool to pull from. I can't do this either. I have no interest in being that much disadvantaged and don't have the time or will to put in the effort to start again.

You're hosed either way if you ask me. Many people will probably be fine with the options available but I'm not. We always had future sight but it was never this impactful. Yes, you could skip this VIII event banner and pull on the next one for marginally better odds. That was actually fun and interesting pull planning. This is on a whole another level.

This time future sight screwed us from an entire tier of content, a period in the game.

iamsosmrt
Jun 14, 2008

That's one way of looking at AASBs. Considering how whale-ish a lot of the current endgame is, I think DeNa was somewhat forced into the AASB era. The game couldn't really continue linearly at it's current pace without becoming stale. The real test will be where they go from there, which is still TBD.

Currently I'm putting like 10 pulls towards Bartz/Terra and seeing where things fall.

Personally I'm fine just pulling on discount banners between now and 4th anyway. The other problem before AASBs was that they didn't make a lot of interesting new relics for about 1 year. Literally the best one in recent memory is still Ellara's USB. The next 3 months of banners were imminently skippable even before the 4th banners powercrept them.

poe meater
Feb 17, 2011
I pulled Steiner's USB on the daily draw. What the hell is this thing lol?

Arcon
Jul 24, 2013
People don't think its going to happen but I'm sure by this time next year AASBs will be much more common, much like USBs have become, and there will be some new power creep on the horizon.

Theyll give it to Cloud to restore his glory and it will be a push-to-win button for even that post-5* magicite boss they teased

Power creep is eternal and the only way its gonna stop is when the game does

Which, when they do kill FFRK, I'm leaning more towards 'we never catch up to JP, game just ends for both' over 'well, at least we've got a few months notice to never buy gems again'

Edit: Auron LMR 1, :rip:

Arcon fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Dec 16, 2018

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Neutral Zone Trap posted:

This time future sight screwed us from an entire tier of content, a period in the game.

There's literally always going to be something better on the horizon. That's true even for the JP players, even if they don't know what the exact details of it are. At some point you just have to pull.

pichupal
Mar 23, 2013

Poochy ain't Stupid.
I might be.
Basically the only interesting relic format in between now and Awakenings are some unique chase USBs (Penelo's USB2;medica chase off dances, or Ace USB2's three part chase) to compete with BUSBs, and a few decent buff Glints.

Possibly the only unique relic was hilariously Tellah's USB, which is Allegro con Moto, Enearth and Auto Dualcast Black with an Overflow finisher that also instantly kills Tellah. So an interesting proto-awakening with a suicide finisher, which sadly was immediately be obsoleted by the release of the actual Awakening SBs.

~~

Braska BSB this time. Nothing special really. Apparently my RoP dailies are pretty lucky though - got Galuf's Invincible SSB today. Nothing outstanding, but it's something unique compared to another fire burst.

0 - Seven BSB
Tactics - Marach BSB
XV - Ignis LMR
XIV - Yda BSB
XIII - Noel BSB3, Fang BSB2 (dupe)
XII - Vayne USB
XI - Aphmau BSB (dupe)
X - Braska BSB

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

Fister Roboto posted:

There's literally always going to be something better on the horizon. That's true even for the JP players, even if they don't know what the exact details of it are. At some point you just have to pull.

:agreed:

Power creep happens. :shrug: That's part of the reason I've always despised future sight in general; knowing the curve is going to be obliterated six months from now isn't nearly as bad as knowing what is going to obliterate it. Sure you can hype yourself up for The Next Big Thing and save up to whale out on that banner, but what then? The New Hotness Six Months From Now will be watching and smiling, six months in the future out of your reach.

"Hello," it says, "is it me you're looking for?"

Remember when Orlandeau USB was gameshatteringly obscene? Cloud USB1? Ramza's Shout SSB? Fast Ammo?

Planning ahead will just make you more depressed and burn you out on the game faster. Just pull what feels good to pull on, don't stress about non-timed content you can't clear (because it will be trivialized in the future), and do what you enjoy doing.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Fister Roboto posted:

Just blow them up with an AOSB RW :shrug:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.

Augus posted:

They’ve been pretty soundly left behind by the power creep so you only need to half pay attention to mechanics, but as a general rule of thumb, your party should be customized to suit the challenge and the roles that it’s based around. That’s what the nightmare synergy is there for. The boss that can’t be hit by physical attacks expects you to have a full party of mages. For the summoner dungeon you bring summoners. Combat dungeon you bring physical attackers. Etc.

Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

This is the loving worst because I'm literally being gated from all the other content at this point just because I can't bother to waste my time trying to throw level 99 idiots at overleveled enemies. It's not fun at all.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Which bosses are these? I don't remember the preparatory bosses being an issue beyond "follow the gimmick" and the actual Nightmares are just more so.

Electric Phantasm
Apr 7, 2011

YOSPOS

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.


Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

This is the loving worst because I'm literally being gated from all the other content at this point just because I can't bother to waste my time trying to throw level 99 idiots at overleveled enemies. It's not fun at all.

They survive because of the Nightmare boost, the reason Ultima Buster is doing that poo poo is because you're using Cloud. The game explicitly tells you this.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
Nightmare bosses are basically puzzles. You can't just bring your A team and wipe it.

XavierGenisi
Nov 7, 2009

:dukedog:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

This is the loving worst because I'm literally being gated from all the other content at this point just because I can't bother to waste my time trying to throw level 99 idiots at overleveled enemies. It's not fun at all.

Each particular Nightmare Record is geared towards a basic class of attacks, such as the Ultima record wants Black Mages, Crushdown wants Combat characters, Reraise wants White Magic, etc. And then the Nightmare bosses themselves are gimmick puzzle fights that basically ask you to make a team based around it's gimmick and follow the strategy listed in the game.

Example: Ultima Buster is designed around a team of black mages, where after dealing enough damage to it with spells, it gains reflect and summons a Mana Sphere that reacts differently depending on what element of spell hits it. You'd then use the right elements to cause the mana sphere to backfire on the boss before it charges up it's Nightmare Ultima.

Bringing a team that can gets a Nightmare Boost is important so you can follow the gimmick (or at least follow it enough to not get punished), because if you try to circumvent the fight with the wrong types of abilities, it will usually just destroy you outright, such as if you take Cloud to the Ultima Buster fight, Ultima Buster will just murder him outright if you attack with Cloud. You need to carefully read and understand what the boss does and what it's expecting out of you, because it plainly lists the strategy for it underneath the mastery requirements when you're in the final fight in that Nightmare record.

eelmonger
Jun 20, 2008

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.

https://friends-ffrk.com/

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/comments/4bhdph/ultima_record_guide_our_first_nightmare_dungeon/?ref=share&ref_source=link

MF_James
May 8, 2008
I CANNOT HANDLE BEING CALLED OUT ON MY DUMBASS OPINIONS ABOUT ANTI-VIRUS AND SECURITY. I REALLY LIKE TO THINK THAT I KNOW THINGS HERE

INSTEAD I AM GOING TO WHINE ABOUT IT IN OTHER THREADS SO MY OPINION CAN FEEL VALIDATED IN AN ECHO CHAMBER I LIKE

Just google the nightmare fight and find the reddit write-ups, I guarantee you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing which is getting you killed.

You should basically be able to beat 80% of the bosses by having leveled 3 melee characters, 3 magic characters, creating/honing various 5* abilities and following the gimmicks. I highly recommend bringing a healer with dr mogs/mako might so you can drop a big BSB/USB heal early. Make sure you have proshellga and haste up and try to bring wall, or just RW godwall and shell out damage.

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Some of the nightmares can be easily brute forced. Most cannot but are a lot easier nowadays even if you have to invest in their gimmick. And then there's a couple that insist you buy into their shtick just as much as you used to (hi Valigarmanda).

Note: you don't need to master them right away, just clearing them gets you the abilities and will unlock magicites.

Attestant
Oct 23, 2012

Don't judge me.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.

Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

This is the loving worst because I'm literally being gated from all the other content at this point just because I can't bother to waste my time trying to throw level 99 idiots at overleveled enemies. It's not fun at all.



The thing with Nightmares is that they are 2-3 year old content now, and have been heavily powercrept by modern DPS soulbreaks. You can quite literally oneshot Ultima and Crushdown with the appropriate type of roaming warrior AOSB. (Magic for Ultima, physical for Chrusdown)

Generally, you want to build a team that uses 3x of the appropriate synergy characters, a healer, and probably Tyro running support or dancer skills and Sentinel Grimoire. Maybe post your team for Ultima Buster so we can take a look at it, and list what mage relics you have available, so we can craft a better team?

ImPureAwesome
Sep 6, 2007

the king of the beach

Attestant posted:

The thing with Nightmares is that they are 2-3 year old content now, and have been heavily powercrept by modern DPS soulbreaks. You can quite literally oneshot Ultima and Crushdown with the appropriate type of roaming warrior AOSB. (Magic for Ultima, physical for Chrusdown)

People keep saying this, and maybe it's true for people who've been playing for years, but it sure wasn't the case for me. It took me awhile to build up teams/hones for some fights as I had gotten through most content before the nightmares just spamming the same 5-6 fighters

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.


Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

This is the loving worst because I'm literally being gated from all the other content at this point just because I can't bother to waste my time trying to throw level 99 idiots at overleveled enemies. It's not fun at all.

Add YNeM to your friends list. Use the RW in battle. Congratulations, you've now beaten Ultima Buster. You're welcome.

Baku
Aug 20, 2005

by Fluffdaddy

ImPureAwesome posted:

People keep saying this, and maybe it's true for people who've been playing for years, but it sure wasn't the case for me. It took me awhile to build up teams/hones for some fights as I had gotten through most content before the nightmares just spamming the same 5-6 fighters

Hones (or fight-appropriate BSBs) are the biggest deal for the ones with weird gimmicks like expecting you to fight with Summon/White/Ninja magic.

That being said, if you can't handle Nightmares even paying attention to the gimmicks, Magicites and Torments will probably hand you your rear end anyway. The endgame content ramps up ridiculously.

DeadButDelicious
Oct 11, 2012

Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!
Rad, I got a double on X's RoP.

Jecht LMR, which is bleh but will be nice if/when I get other tech for him down the line.
Paine BSB, which isn't impressive in and of itself (I did legend dive Paine about 2 seconds before the game decided to vomit Bartz gear my way though :doh:) but it's a +water katana so I'm boosting the poo poo outta that.

ceaselessfuture
Apr 9, 2005

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."
I don't want to be that guy or anything but simply reading the Nightmare descriptions and having a team of level 99 bodies and relevant abilities is enough for them at this point. Additionally, If you can't beat them yet, there's certainly nothing beyond them that you'll be able to tackle. Guides were posted above and they are phenomenal resources that we've all used.

I'm looking forward to AASBs, but I understand NZT's frustration -- after this fest I'll be saving for three months and the last time I did that was for TGC USB. It wasn't particularly fun, and I'm still unable to beat Quetzalcoatl, but it doesn't concern me all that much. I'll throw a few more attempts his way and hope for the best (I should, by all rights, be able to beat this fucker), but I'm pretty easy when it comes to content clearing.

Ultimately whenever I don't feel like playing FFRK I only have to dedicate 10-15 minutes a day to it, so I don't feel like it's too much of a chore to keep up with.

I do worry about AASBs in terms of power creep though, because these seem way beyond the level of ASB/Glints, or even the jump from BSB -> USB.



edit: oh hey I'll be updating the thread this week, hopefully, and I'll need more thread titles so give me the best poo poo you got

ceaselessfuture fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Dec 16, 2018

ImPureAwesome
Sep 6, 2007

the king of the beach

ceaselessfuture posted:

I don't want to be that guy or anything but simply reading the Nightmare descriptions and having a team of level 99 bodies and relevant abilities is enough for them at this point. Additionally, If you can't beat them yet, there's certainly nothing beyond them that you'll be able to tackle. Guides were posted above and they are phenomenal resources that we've all used.
Im not saying they're impossible or anything, I got through them eventually, but there's was definitely a gap in time from when I unlocked nightmares and when I could field relevant full teams with enough sustain against all of them. They definitely weren't in trivial "killed by a RW" range for me at least

MarquiseMindfang
Jan 6, 2013

vriska (vriska)
Like everyone else I'm saving for 4A as well. I've budgeted a massive 18 pulls to split and most of those are going on B3. Frankly there's not much that can help me (neo-torments, 5* fire magicite) on the horizon til then anyway. I could throw away all my mythril chasing Water/Ice/Wind Chains, or I can attempt that absolutely hilarious Bartz and Friends build when AASBs come out. Honestly the broken poo poo sounds way more fun to me. I just have to keep telling myself it's only 2 months until hype starts building once fest ends.

D??? Torments are all but impenetrable to me anyhow. At least Bartz will let me make some headway.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






All that said, after looking over Ultima Buster this is definitely a case of just needing to follow the instructions and to comply with the school-based gimmicks. In particular:
  • Yes, Ultima Buster counters PHY attacks with 33% single-target Instant KO. But this is a magic fight. Also this was from the era when top-tier content actually paid attention to your resistance accessories, so if you really want to go with a physical team then pull out your Instant KO resist. It's only 33%, so even trash like minor resistance will still bring that down to 18% after the formula.
  • The 9999 AoE only shows up if you let Ultima Buster power up all the way after 16 seconds without you destroying the Mana Sphere or killing Ultima Buster through gimmick damage first. At this point its RES is on par with 3* magicites but it only has ~40K HP, so odds are that either Ultima Buster will drop from x10 backlash on fire/lightning or the Mana Sphere will drop because powercreep exists. Either way, if you're working with the gimmick because you should and because very few things will even do damage to Ultima Buster at this point*, you should pull this off before Ultima Buster gets four charges and tries to obliterate you. And Last Stand still exists if you're being extra obstinate.
  • If the Mana Sphere drops before Ultima Buster does, probably because you're throwing fire/lightning 9999s at it and it can't pass through overflow damage with its backlash, Ultima Buster's Ultima Nightmare does at most ~3K HP. Annoying but eminently survivable. At this point Ultima Buster starts chucking attacks that ignore RES buffs, which sounds rude until you realize that it only has 539 MAG. They should still hurt, but compare this to the nonsense that 5* magicites toss around with 2000 ATK/MAG after mitigation.
  • One of the consistent things about the Nightmare bosses is that Phase 3 should not last for long. At best a Phase 3 is a damage race; at worst it is a death sentence. (Less so nowadays with blinks, Stoneskin, and Last Stand.) If you end up in Phase 3 with any Nightmare boss, treat that as a damage race and dump everything you can into the boss.
  • Nightmares are balanced primarily for single-hit abilities. At this point we had access to a few 5* abilities but they were mostly limited to 2 hits, nothing like the 4-hit stuff you see now. (Most got updates, thankfully.) So when I say things like "the boss counters this ability type with an Instant KO counter" or "Phase 3 is a damage race", understand that any 5* or even 6* abilities you have will accelerate things dramatically to the point that you can often bypass gimmicks with preparation. Ultima Buster only has 190K HP, so if you somehow end up in its Phase 3 after dealing ~90K** from Chain -ajas then you need three more to kill the boss.

*It doesn't care about PHY or NAT. PHY attacks will still get the 33% Instant KO counter, but corner cases like Yuna BSB1 with NAT typing should work.
**Assuming every hit is 9999, this is how the math works out given the quirks of the fight.

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

ceaselessfuture posted:

I do worry about AASBs in terms of power creep though, because these seem way beyond the level of ASB/Glints, or even the jump from BSB -> USB.

Last time we had a power creep spike like this, it was the jump from SSB -> BSB. And for a good year of the game, BSBs were the only soul break that mattered except for Shout (or Sheep Song, aka mage shout). A character with the worst soulbreak (Hi Tiny Bee) was still seen as better than a character without, because hey, that +20% to all stats made a difference, right? They just did everything better, and so on and so forth. Power creep happened to those and we started getting things like Squall BSB2 and OK BSB, and...

Well. Nowdays BSBs are seen as "meh" tier. Space filler and little else. USBs didn't really make a hard jump in the power scale quite like BSBs did, even if Cloud USB broke the Roaming Warrior mechanic across its face. Instead it's been a slow creep upwards over the life of 6* items instead of sharp violent plateaus like the BSB era had.

The question is, honestly, which will break first - the time-honored character level cap at 99, or the game itself? We can only escalate so much with relics without making the game actually "pay to win", and I think DeNA knows that. It keeps pushing the envelope, and as far as I can see fewer and fewer people go for it each time. We're reaching critical mass with powercreep, not because things are getting harder, but because the constant upwards momentum is making the difficulty more number-based and less strategy-based.

ceaselessfuture posted:

edit: oh hey I'll be updating the thread this week, hopefully, and I'll need more thread titles so give me the best poo poo you got

Final Fantasy Record Keeper: Auto-Hit Instant Debt
FFRK: Alone In The Dark Orb Daily
FFRK: Stop Trying To Make Poison Happen

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice
This is getting frustrating because I have no idea what the gently caress you guys are saying half the time with these RSPWs and ROFLS and whatnot. It's also frustrating because Torment dungeons were not locked this time last year and I was able to at least win that once in a while.

Also gimmick puzzle fights in Final Fantasy have always been stupid.

XavierGenisi
Nov 7, 2009

:dukedog:

Then tell us what your party loadout is and what boss you’re fighting so we can tell you what you’re doing wrong and help you instead of you just angrily yelling about how you can’t do anything because you’re missing something.

Cowcaster
Aug 7, 2002



the torments that would’ve been around last year would’ve been around the difficulty of nightmares, but they got rebooted into something completely different and way harder

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Qwertycoatl
Dec 31, 2008

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Oh yeah, because the people near me use those all the time. Nope; they like to use mega heals and other useless poo poo that I can do myself.

If you swipe up in the roaming warrior list you get some more added to the bottom, and you can press refresh to see even more. It shouldn't take too long to find some random person with a magic-based arcane overstrike.

Not all of them can be just cheesed, but many can - when we talk about powercreep, we mean that Ultima Buster can be literally one-shot by roaming warrior.

quote:

Except the Master requirements forbid black magic on the magic boss and dumb poo poo like Ultima Buster just loving hit you with max damage all-party attacks that even my maxed out Cloud dies to in a few hits and he has the most ducking health of any character I own. If he can't even tank hits how the gently caress are a bunch of paperweight shitbirds like Terra or Lulu supposed to even survive long enough to cast spells?

Huh? The master requirements on Ultima are "hit some elemental weaknesses". (don't stress the master requirements though, stuff unlocks even if you don't master them and you can come back later and chump them).

As for tanking hits - are you using Wall and Shellga (or roaming warrior divine veil grimoire)? Do you have a decent healer?

Qwertycoatl fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Dec 16, 2018

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