|
The Final Fantasy Legthread
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2021 02:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:32 |
|
|
Vichan posted:That takes me back, thanks. That boss has gently caress-yous to everything, but only one per form, and swaps form every hit. So you find the one that hurts the least and starting there giving it three whacks in a row between its turns before patching up. Letting it stay in tornado and selfheal-at-full its MP away no longer works, but support casters or even freelancers can also use ice rods as an item to fire off Blizzara without !Black equipped. To be precise: Humanoid counters melee and offensive magic, it hurts more than you do. Hand counters heals and offensive magic, a robe just can't stand up to getting punched and it's not weak to ice like the others. Tornado counters heals and melee, you can't put damage down fast enough. Your party will be focused at least 2/1/1 on one of these roles just due to there being 3 roles and 4 slots. You can also specialize deeper in any of them easily. Pick one and exploit ATB/the transform-on-damage behavior to lock it in the form that's favorable to yotr comp. FWIW, I rolled a comp pretty close but worse to that in 4jf (THF and Mystic Knight) and had a smooth rum keeping it in hand and using the thieves to heal with potions during hand form/proc the transform from back row to avoid the ice immunity. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Nov 12, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2021 10:16
|
|
|
Jinh posted:Is FF4PR one of the ones where square tuned everything really easy for the English audience, or does it get harder later? I just got Edward and everything has been an absolute cakewalk so far, I don't think antlion did more than 20 damage total. The only trouble I've had is with the mini mages paralyzing the party and stealing all our mp lol The tune is the same worldwide, but the exp is tuned to the high end of bloodthirsty if you explore and don't run. 2x the exp/reduced encounter rate to compensate (but based on pure critical path and/or assuming that you'd run when you never have to run because you've been gaining 2x exp all game).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2021 09:16
|
|
|
Arist posted:Only because of the Chicken Knife. Chicken Knife's toned down in PR. Still does the crazy damage at max, and it's maybe even a little less physically painful to reach max since you can autobattle with !Flee rather than deathgrip LR, but the "easy" mitigations of the proc no longer mitigate it. As for Monk punching, you'll never know you miss it until you get a 4JF roll involving THF/NIN/NIN. Five-six hands to put knives in, and two-three good knives in the entire game, all of which are unique; Twin Lance isn't bad but low base/high multiplier really hurts against lategame defense.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2021 16:02
|
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:You can get more rising suns, at least? Granted it's a rare steal in the last section of the void, and they're not really that much better than twin lances, but still. Yeah, my plan (having got to Exdeath easily, pulped form 1 decently well, and then been blasted by form 2 before I could get a turn in) is THF in back with a single Rising Sun/!Image dedicated to elixirs/PDs and second NIN in back dedicated to throws. Getting enough HP to live through the first Almagest before I try again, though. E: No oneshot from Almagest or the elemental spells = mostly easy win. (First attempt, the back part squeezed in a Meteo while Magic Lamp was casting, and it doesn't go back in inventory for the surviving characters if that happens until at least the revive lol) PneumonicBook posted:Which are the easy mitigations? Mainhand/!Mug and offhand with a Twin Lance both randomly auto-skedaddle now. Haven't had it or the effect explicitly missing my whole party with !Spellblade up yet, but the only time in W3 I've really had to bother with !Spellblade was for the magic tower and preventing Omniscient from resetting, at which point it was an autobattle and go make a cup of tea fight and I wanted the added attack power on the physical side. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 16, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2021 16:58
|
|
|
Complete_Cynic posted:Pixel Remaster's Liquid Flame works differently, so it refills MP when changing modes - it's probably gotten trickier for some of the rodless jobs. Single-character's probably really miserable now, but even relatively bad 4JF rolls shouldn't be that tricky. THF/MK was a lot of command entries but never particularly risky and, while MK does decent damage to two of the forms, it's only ~= 2hand with the added negative of whiffing completely on fist unless you take a turn to apply Thunder. If you have a backline, you've got rods and/or mass Cura, so keep it locked in humanoid or tornado as appropriate. If you have a frontline, fist doesn't outdamage the whole team dropping Potions (or Chakra if available). If you have THF, you can go steal Hi-Potions from Poltergeists (or Headstones if you want more favorable formations.) Mandoric fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Nov 16, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2021 23:37
|
|
|
Found another FF5 bug - Zombied character wielding the Healing Staff will not proc the heal, but WILL continuously queue more and more attacks only while the window is active. It's not a full hardlock, you can queue another ability and alt-tab out until you hear it go off, but drat that's a weird one.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2021 21:29
|
|
|
blakelmenakle posted:I had that happen to me too, thought I was softlocked, then when I alt-tabbed to mention it in the discord it eventually stopped. I had already queued a Holy Water by then so I figured it just timed out eventually and didn't realize it was alt-tabbing that fixed it. How many get queued before it runs out definitely appears to be tied to window state; dipping immediately makes it only take a few seconds, while leaving it up holding Run for a while took well over a minute.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2021 21:43
|
|
|
dolphinbomb posted:I see this one a lot and just figured it was a weird quirk with FFV, since the last time I played the game past like.. Karnak was almost 20 years ago before I was even in high school. That one's intended; multi-part attacks (both from the player, which is bad for the player, and from an enemy, which is good for the player) proc simultaneously except if following the Twin Lance, which in PR closes out the current stack and opens a new one in order to fix ANOTHER infamous bug in terms of in-game time and then play the animation sequentially while pausing further ticks. It means you can sometimes get lucky and have a boss unload multiattacks all on someone who'd have died from the first, and while it would be nice to have NIN switch targets if their right hand killed or kill something with Assassin Knife swing damage and then Doom something else with the onhit, it makes both NIN and special weapons behave as expected. e: you can see the apply-pause-and-animate time stop most clearly in PR by trying to target a low-hp enemy after another party member steps forward to make the killing swing (especially noticable with NIN and a onhit proc; you can ie not kill with right-hand Mage Masher, have Mute go off, not kill with Assassin Dagger, have Doom go off and finally kill, but as soon as the character steps forward you won't be able to move the cursor to that enemy.) But apart from at most the cursor spoilers, which I honestly don't recall either way, that's how it's always worked. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Nov 18, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2021 23:06
|
|
|
jokes posted:Okay now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t remember a lot of bugs, if any, in FF10, FF12, or FF13. I also don’t remember any bugs in the FF3 or FF4 remakes and I 100%’d them bad boys. 4 was wild bugwise. Most lategame weapons which were supposed to have elemental flags are treated as armor for flag purposes, removing Adamant Armor makes you perma-hyper-vulnerable to all its resistances, walking repeatedly through certain sets of doors eventually Missingnos your map position, and then in GBA ATB is broken and switching party order sometimes wipes all saves on the cart, while on DS the moon is actually many tiled moons and if you try to wrap around you lose the Whale.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2021 23:56
|
|
|
Jack-Off Lantern posted:Can't. Confuse the bird enemies where you get Golem. RDM (spell), BRD (song or onhit from Lamia Harp), or Tempting Tango dance (any of your characters, just keep whacking with the Dancing Dagger until the RNG turns out favorably). To keep it up and not have to blast the thing down in one round, if you're prepared you ground Reflect Soldiers in the Barrier Tower for at least one Reflect Ring, if you're not prepared you're going to have to steal from Reflect Mages in Exdeath's castle 2F-4F. Wonder Wand would comes too late, world 3 only. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 15:46
|
|
|
Just hit it with the strongest attack possible and only the strongest attack possible, unless provoked with damage it only does one physical a turn and you should automatically be ahead of that in the turn economy even if it's an instakill, due to being able to !Dualcast Raise - Raise. I got my wires crossed with bosses you want Float for, so Reflect Ring isn't needed; it's Shoat who can be trapped in an AI loop by having an unsinkable floater. So the build would probably be: Unequip all weapons; you are never going to want to physically attack it, but may have to punch a friend out of Confuse. If you have Angel Rings, and you can go steal one from Druids in the optional cave leading to Shoat, put them on your BRD and then your RDM. All back row. SAM - sub !Dualcast (or !Red for anyone who hasn't maxed it out) RDM - sub !Sing BRD - sub !Dualcast THF - sub !Dualcast Loop: Make sure at least one Floater is alive; if not, Phoenix Down or Raise. Sing Requiem. If Old does not proc on a singer from the counters, Antidote/Poisona/punch/Cura/Hi-Potion/wait out the statuses which are inflicted. If Old does proc on a singer, and the other singer does not have Old but is vulnerable to it, equip a weapon on the SAM or THF and kill them immediately, then only raise if the other Singer is gets Old as well at which point it's time to Requiem spam and hope you outdps. Cura/Hi-Potion/Raise as appropriate after each of its normal attacks. Repeat until dead; safest way is to wait a good long time between Requiems as it also inflicts Slip. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 16:22
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:Wait what? Not if you don't roll Time Mage, Beastmaster, Blue Mage, or Chemist! It's also available on each world's dragon mountain through Confuse, which everything but MNK can eventually inflict: in World 1 where it doesn't usually matter RDM and WHM through the spell, BRD through !Sing, and DNC through !Dance, and in World 2/3 anyone but MNK can use the Dancing Dagger. Wanting it for Titan seems like an overpreparation trap TBH unless you're doing 4JF + low-level challenge, you should have enough damage to take him down before non-react Earthshaker (only a 1/6 chance of cast) in a try or two just from one member of any Wind Crystal job but WHM (who can Cura) or THF (who can easily load up on Hi-Potions). Even if the rest of your lineup is like Time Mage, Bard, Dancer who's not getting lucky with Sword Dance. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 16:37
|
|
|
Jack-Off Lantern posted:I also don't have dualcast in World 2. Then just do !Red. !Dualcast is a convenience of being able to Raise and Cura in the same action, of which you'll be skipping lots, not a necessity. But also yeah by the time you hit the option of fighting Gil Turtle gil is only for easy 4xing flame/angel/coral rings, the first two of which you can steal and the third you can just grind. Would be much more important without THF, or in a low-level run. Honestly you probably don't need to buy OR steal them, Gil Turtle is the last old inflicter where you don't have bigger problems to deal with, the fight you want flame rings for comes before your next chance to buy or steal them, the fight you want coral rings for only needs one, and the summon fights that make them relevant don't matter when you don't have SMN. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 17:02
|
|
|
Professor Beetus posted:I could see someone saying FF releases have been bug free if they only thought of bugs as like Bethesda style poo poo. Bizarre animation bugs, game breaking things, stuff like that. Most FF bugs that I can think of are under the hood things, like magic evasion not working 6 or any of the others mentioned on this page. If someone is just playing through for the story and grinding past difficult spots they're not nearly as likely to notice. I can see the first, but eh, maybe it's a generational thing. 1, 2US, and 3 in particular had very visible and well-known things that couldn't be written off to bad RNG luck: healing spells working as the wrong tier on the world map, areas of the world map which got the wrong encounter list, a long chain of "hurts these enemies real bad!" weapons which were flat downgrades; dupe glitches, elemental and back-row weapons that weren't elemental or back row, final battle hardlocks depending on gear, hardlocks around overlapping status spells, enemy formations which attacked themselves rather than the party if encountered in certain parts of the map; successful steals that didn't, Sketch in general, single-monster formations that attack from both sides. Probably also a lot of psychology around there being bugs, which benefit the player, make a suboptimal option even less optimal, or are debatably balance choices and don't count; and bugs, which hurt what the player is trying to do and do count. Most FF issues that don't need statistical analysis or disassembly either fall into the first category. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 17:56
|
|
|
Professor Beetus posted:Yeah literally all that stuff would have gone over my head when I first played the game and frankly much of it still would (like how would I know the monsters in an area weren't the right ones? Because I got hit like a truck? Oh well, explored too far I guess). If I'm just eating paste and enjoying the lights and sound and grinding past every hard fight, I'm not noticing any of that poo poo. When the first person you meet in New Vegas has their head start rotating in unnatural ways and then start telescoping out so that he looks like a giraffe, I will still take a break from eating my paste to say "holy poo poo, that's a bug." It wouldn't be known as the Peninsula of Power if it wasn't extremely noticeable as more powerful.  It's also one of only two places in the game that formations change completely, no shared enemies, without involving a vehicle, and the other one is a strangely weak patch on the unused peninsula north of the caravan that at least involves visible terrain transitions; there are other tile-based bits of weirdness around the marsh cave, earth cave, and landing zone for the CoO but they're respectively normal/dangerous mix, normal/easy mix, and a sequence of tiles that starts dangerous, changes to dangerous/normal, and is followed with all normal.(There's also the two-tile oversight of "whoops all IMPs" on the extreme south shore of the desert continent, but again, no getting to or from there without getting in the airship.) Mandoric fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Nov 19, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2021 18:33
|
|
|
multijoe posted:Just thinking ahead on FFV, how badly would I screw myself not using any offensive magic jobs? I don't think there's any barrier change gimmicks bosses or anything of that sort, is there? Several. That said, it's definitely doable. No750 is no direct casters of any sort, including WHM, Chemist, and the music jobs, and gets a good number of succesful playthroughs every 4JF. Just dropping BLM/RDM/SMN/BLU/GEO/Time Mage is going to be smoother than that by leaving you WHM (lets you make any fight a battle of attrition), Chemist (can technically solo the entire game as a level 1, spending most of it mini and frogged, if you're willing to do a lot of reloading while stealing), Bard (mass Stop/Haste and level manipulation), and Dancer (... Equip Ribbons I guess? Or the sole melee rep if you're doing specifically magic but not offensive.) Even if you define it VERY expansively, no NIN because of scrolls and no Mystic Knight because it uses MP, Ranger/Berserker/Monk/Knight, RNG/RNG/SAM/SAM, and SAM/THF/2x BST have all succeeded this time around. Ranger in particular gets to freely select between the three classical elements as soon as it unlocks, and Beastmaster can bring exactly one of nearly anything to a fight. Fork Tower is I know fine if you mix Mystic Knight in, and probably easily doable with anything but Monks only via Mage Mashers; the failstate for Silence not proccing again in time to refresh is just bouncing back to the start of the battle, so just autobattle and go do something else until RNG works out for you. Monk would need to stack reflect rings or spam Chakra and wait out his entire MP pool. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Nov 20, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2021 15:16
|
|
|
Inspector Gesicht posted:Doesnt that dude have a massive attack power if he's silenced or berserked? If Berserked, yes, he's a significantly harder hitter than Minotaur (lv53, 100 attack, 20 multiplier vs lv37, 99 attack, 9 multiplier.) But silenced he just tries to cast and fails.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2021 15:37
|
|
|
Yep. He deals heavy damage, especially if you're level 3 multiple, but if you can keep HP up (whether through actual healers or just letting your backline die to non-Zombie attacks while your frontline beats on him with !Spellblade Drain) he doesn't have any solutions to getting outhealed unless he's hasted himself and can Hurricane-Zombie Breath between your turns.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 03:04
|
|
|
You could go down a few floors and steal from Reflect Mages for Reflect Rings. At that point he can't dispel it and your challenge is just to heal the wearers without using direct magic--!Spellblade Drain works if you can sub Dualwield or Two-Hand (or if you're a high enough level), or you can also set Reflect on him and bounce it off, or !Mix Hi-Potions with themselves, Hi-Potions with Holy Water, or Potions and Ethers for added oomph.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 03:31
|
|
|
Being THF sucks. !Steal is incredible if you know when to use it (or autopilot !Mug on an autoattacker.) See RDM, GEO, or DRG.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 04:20
|
|
|
If you have Bard, Requiem makes the Pyramid a joke. If you don't, welp.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 20:59
|
|
|
Specifically, Brave Blade is (150 - escapes - Defense) * (((Level * STR)/128)+2), Chicken Knife is ((escapes up to 254 / 2) - Defense) * (((Level * STR)/128) + ((Level*AGI)/128) +2). Both will get you far, far above the 9999 clamp on all physical attacks if backed up with !Mix and !Sing. The arguments for Chicken Knife are: * Defense is very low across the game, and CK can do up to double the number of hits, the same as two-handing, while doing 84 ⅔% the damage per hit to 0 defense enemies (which are the majority), 64 ⅔% the damage per hit to Neo Exdeath, and only losing out directly on Skull Eaters, Prototypes, and Omega. Spellblade !Flare increases per-hit damage by 100 and ignores 75% of defense, meaning even into Omega each hit, of which there will be twice as many is for 227 - 190 = 37 as opposed to 250 - 190 = 60. However, it doesn't take up an ability slot. * Chicken Knife is compatible with !Dance, which multiplies the damage per hit by 4 on Sword Dance. * If you are taking up an ability slot, Chicken Knife can be mixed with Dualwield for a total of up to 19998 damage per attack. * Is usable by far more jobs. * Gives you the tactical flexibility of running if needed. * When not Freelancer, improves damage per hit by 46-72 depending on team comp endgame, compared to 10 for Brave Blade. Arguments for Brave Blade are: * Doesn't occasionally whiff without access to... maybe !X-Fight (PR)?, that, !Mug, Dualwield, and !Spellblade (other versions.)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
Inspector Gesicht posted:Are there hard numbers for the encounter-rate across games? 2 and 5 are definitely more dense with randos. There's a whole loving mess of tl;dr that can be written, not least because it's a table-lookup PRNG meant to paper over NES/SNES hardware limitations by acting LIKE roll-and-decrement logic. Key points are: * FF1-4 all use target numbers on a looping step-counter lookup table; while all are around the same place in most situations, FF2 has the highest peaks (32 in trap rooms and some parts of the tower where you get Ultima), while FF4 has the fewest peaks. * Thus 2 is the "highest". * The lookup table position can be cleared by a cold boot for each of them, and by using healing spells from the menu in at least FF3. * Even to the point of contemporary strategy guides, the roll-and-decrement kayfabe was maintained. PR reimplementation might actually use it now that they had the chance to reimplement. * FF5 and 6 use an incrementing system, but still a lookup table comparison table. * FF5 increments step counter by 256 outdoors and 224 indoors in most cases, while FF6 increments by 192 outdoors and 112 indoors in most cases. If step counter/256 is over the current value on the table, a battle occurs. * Thus 5 is the higher for any given target, as targets SHOULD be distributed uniformly in each (they're 256 sequential results from a PRNG). * However, FF5 has dungeon tiles (potentially many dungeon tiles, if you manipulate the table properly you can guarantee a no-random-battle Karnak escape) that do not increment the counter, and FF6 has peaks of 384 and 352 respectively (think the dinosaur forest). * Also, SFC/GBA FF5 step counter can be reset by opening the menu, meaning your next step will only trigger an encounter if the increment is at least 256 and the target value is 0 (delta some extra-weird math about where in the formation randomizer loop you are.)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2021 00:37
|
|
|
Mustached Demon posted:Another good strat is to plink away from the back row. You can easily out-heal the jerk as long as it doesn't splat you in one hit. You're also guaranteed a Wonder Rod shortly before him. Even clothies only take 300-400 damage in back at W3 levels, so if you've got anything that can put a rod on--essentially a guarantee if you're having trouble with him--you can work through its cycle, supported by a dedicated Hi-Potion thrower, and get a full round of !Black which should do the trick. Snow Cone Capone posted:So, as far as "OK enough jobs mastered, time for Freelancer/Mime", am I right in saying that mastering Summoner and Monk gives that character the maximum possible Magic/Strength modifiers? Yes-but; cloth armor and especially particular caster or caster-light melee weapons tend to carry significant boosts to some or all magic, and those will be gone if you've got someone who you're trying to make a physical powerhouse with Excalibur, Masamune, and a Genji set -also- be a magical powerhouse with !Summon or !Black. E: This also essentially means that you should do Mime for your casters and either for your melee. You only get one Wizard Rod, want it for both !Black and !Summon, and want !DblCast for !Black. Support casting is less demanding in that the Sage Staff only boosts !White, not !Time, but both work very well with !DblCast and combining them means the character has healing to do once they finish buffing. And from an hyperoptimization perspective, since you get ALL passives whether you want them or not, the ideal endgame caster did NOT take any levels in Knight, to avoid awkwardness where they start Covering said Genji-wearer when they could just Arise or Phoenix them next turn. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Nov 22, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2021 21:23
|
|
|
If we're talking walking-god stages of the game, Chicken Knife starts to get suboptimal and I'd go for the double Brave Blade. Loses its job versatility when it's a Freelancer either way, and either requires dedicating a slot to !X-Fight to mitigate its onhit (PR, I believe THAT still works) or can straight-up overflow damage and hit the 65536-75534 window where it goes back to doing sub-9999 (SNES, GBA). By that point only Omega is in any way a numbers question, too, and Omega's the one beefy enough boy where Brave Blade pulls ahead.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2021 22:23
|
|
|
counter-counterpoint: once you're sufficiently buff, apart from Omega you should do Twin Lance all the time since its cap is 19998 per attack rather than 9999 on Omega fists probably eventually win out over either (murasame, murakumo, probably even yoichi's bow also in contention)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2021 22:52
|
|
|
I did the math. I did the monster math,  or more appropriately 🌳  . Excel is here if you want to play with it.Trash mobs (Bare Butz; the others will act essentially as Butz as a level or two lower)  Trash mobs (STR loadout Butz; Freelancer with *MNK +26, Ribbon +5, Power Tasuki +3, and Kaiser Knuckles or Titan's Glove +5)  STR is not a road to BB viability, since CK's deal is that it gets the same STR bonus hits PLUS working AGI bonus hits. Therefore it's pointless to include the balanced loadout with *THF and definitely Kaiser Knuckles. However, things start to change as enemies get beefier and unfleeable. For NED in particular CK takes a big hit as we're now talking CK expected damage (*0.75 due to !Flee procs):  BB stands up through level 18, and the crit potential of the other weapons starts to pull THEM into closer competition.  Adding in STR makes BB/Murakumo the choices, and CK barely on par with Yoichi's Bow, the weapon you only get because if you were getting the Kaiser Knuckles anyway you may as well grab the tablet.  Conversely, balanced gear places CK back in the running with Murakumo and BB slightly worse. Up to Shinryu:  I've never really cared for FF5 crit, but this is actually changing my mind. BB stays in the mix all the way through level 41 now.  As things get more defense, BB is just gonna be more and more superior with STR gear, while CK starts to honestly suck if the wielder isn't working on multiple primary stats.  Even AGI gearing doesn't save it in comparison to the other powerhouses. Finally, Prototype, the highest defense in the game that can be pierced by anything but a very lategame MNK:  BB is technically the superior of the two, but this is all [strikethrough]Zilart jobs[/strikethrough]crit territory. Monks are eventually best, but can't even hit it until they've got a few levels under their belt, an equipment slot soon to be removed.  If AGI gearing didn't help CK on Shinryu, it helps even less here. And finally, Omega. Omega's graphs will be special, because...  If it were possible to do negative damage in melee, you'd just heal Omega HARDER the higher you leveled as you did more hits for at least -40 damage. Monk doesn't do damage at all without critting with KK until level 62, and isn't guaranteed damage until 69 (which I'm sure is nice for them). Take off the knuckles and it's 84 and 94. Instead, we need to assume !Spellblade, either Thundaga which multiplies damage per hit by 4 and nullifies defense or Flare which increases damage per hit by 100 and quarters defense.  (Can't Flare in this one, !Spellblade 6 would give the mastery)  (With MK mastery bonuses only)   Yep, CK is it unless gearing specifically for STR (which basically just means not mastering THF.) Remember, though, damage over 65535 overflows; BB is better from levels 1-2 but also 144-164 since it's still just getting clamped to 9999 while in that range CK is getting mod 65536 before the clamp for 12-9648. But why would you stop? Oh, and Flare is a bad choice on anything with a vulnerability; +100 damage/75% pierce per hit is only better than 4X+100% pierce on weapons with 33 or less attack for trash, 30 for NED, 28 for Shinryu, 25 for Prototype, and 17 for Omega. If you must, it extends overall BB viability fighting Omega to level 10 though before the added CK hits add up. You know, if you really want to fight Omega in the single digits without Slip shenanigans. Notes: * Some of the sample monsters have an evade chance. This is not addressed in the formulae as it applies equally to all the weapons; assume the expected output of !Fight is *0.05 listed for Omega, *0.3 for Acheron and *0.8 for Shinryu. * The math adds up properly for Yoichi's inherent miss rate because hit and evade are separate rolls; 90% hit into a 20% evade enemy is not one roll that fails below 70 or 72, it's a jump out of the attack sequence if d100 > 90, followed by a separate jump out of the attack sequence if a new d100 < 20. FF5 uses a rolls table and this is probably TASable pretty hard. * Masamune and Murasame aren't included because zzz. * Yoichi's Bow is included to show off the weird-rear end glitchy behavior of SNES FF5; since the AGI contribution to non-Chicken Knife AGI weapons integer divides by 128 but accidentally* uses an 8-bit rather than 16-bit divide, you can LOSE hits with bows (daggers, etc) as your stats increase if AGI*LV grows to 256-383, 512-767, or so on. It's almost definitely not an accident, just a way to nerf the otherwise crazy AGI scaling late in development without rebalancing AGI weapon bases lower (lots of work, very noticeable, turns them to complete garbage on anything with defense), changing the length of the machine code which handles AGI weapons (looooots of work as everything which comes after in the ROM and was referenced directly by address would need to be rewritten), or cut it completely (and still have to rebalance the early AGI weapons upward to compensate, probably obsoleting the earliest sword or two.) * X-Fight ignores defense completely and halves number of hits; essentially, use the trash table which likewise means 0 defense and no occasional missed !Flee. * Levels 100-255, available only through the wonders of modern chemistry, are not provided because the curves become obvious well before. Ditto for Bard buffing combat stats to 99. * Unlike FF3 which allows for damage up to 65535 and only clamps display to 9999, FF5 clamps the actual damage done to 9999. So first to hit 9999 will never be beaten from there on, only eventually tied, unless on SNES where you eventually overflow--if you're doing some hyperspecific Chemist/Bard setup on actual hardware, you should be committed enough to open the xls yourself. * If you're deeply concerned about theoretical damage, on the other hand, it's always Monk. Always. Except Prototype/Omega, shockingly. Or if you want to throw Sword Dance into the mix. Key takeaways: * BB is theoretically preferable in a hyper-low-level challenge, but only if you never run. This is for obvious reasons impossible without crazy levels of RNG manipulation or using a trainer to kill and revive the appropriate characters for bosses. * BB is theoretically preferable in some cases if you can't afford a Ribbon for Butz and want your Kaiser Knuckles on someone else. * BB has two or three fights through the game where it's unironically just better. * BB is almost identical to a perfectly reliable Murakumo at 0 defense, often outpaces CK when defense is in play, but does not outpace crit options except on Omega--where !Spellblade nullifies defense anyway. * Take the drat meme knife. The fights it's worse than BB at have other, better solutions than a BB. Just understand that you can construct a thought experiment where you shouldn't, if Thanksgiving downtime has you stir-crazy and looking for an excuse to repeatedly type "bare Butz" and chuckle by Monday afternoon. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Nov 23, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2021 05:21
|
|
|
Having The Expected Critical Path, your eventual level and wallet, and its HP/MP requirements documented, down to exactly which encounters you'll get on the shortest grab-everything path of 1-2 where the encounter RNG is definitely not affected by anything else and at least the average encounters for 3-6 where other actions can jump you around the roll table, would actually be really drat interesting. Figuring it out was definitely a part of at least the FF5 dev project, there's no way they didn't know exactly what they were doing with L5 Death all over the Ancient Library. But it's also a months-long research project. Maybe a TAS player will do it someday.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2021 05:47
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:Unfortunately Geomancer has no way to give those stat bonuses to other jobs, none of the abilities it learns boost stats. You can boost Freelancer's magic of course but as someone else said, you probably don't want to be using Freelancers so early in the game when you should be gaining JP instead. The deal with Geomancer is that you can put offensive magic on it and have a backup for if the background has bad !Gaia, or put it !Gaia on an offensive mage and have resourceless -ra.5 casts (often of hard-to-access easy-to-boost elements, there's a big window in the second half of world 2 where everything comes up wind skills just as you get cheap vendor Air Knives and level into reliable Wind Slash) for normal fights. I'm on a 4JF with it/Time Mage/WHM/DNC right now (need to grind my rear end off to reliably survive Almagest basically), and I basically used nothing but !Gaia and the occasional heal between the Lonka Ruins and the Pyramid. Sadly, once you hit the pyramid, it just can't keep up with rising HP totals and if you're stuck with a Geomancer they become some other mage with forced Equip Pajamas in the ability slot.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2021 23:22
|
|
|
wait i don't need to grind for almagest if i get Wonder Rod in the Break position Other weird interaction which might be PR or might be shared across all versions: if you almost trigger Exdeath, say hi to (grand)dad(s), etc, and then walk all the way out, a cutscene about time rewinding in the Rift plays as you touch the wheel of the airship, and the hype cutscenes before the fight play again when you walk all the way back in. If you walk out to the rift castle and then cast Exit, you can just run straight back in and jump into the tree face. e: Wonder Rod Break sucks, but just alpha striking the poo poo out of the Almagest part with Hastega-3x Holy did the trick along with a little good Grand Cross luck (went from multi-multizombies in my first run to... single-target Frog, and single-target Berserk after two parts were already down.) Now for a third playthrough that gets to autoattack. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Nov 28, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2021 00:57
|
|
|
Plenty of future chances for L2 Old - Middle floors of Exdeath's Castle, off a mob that also appears in the Rift and the Sunken Tower, or off the level-magic mobs in either the Island Shrine or the Rift ruins.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2021 07:26
|
|
|
More to you than to them. On PCs, Old reduces stats but not level. Stats govern basically everything; * Determining PC attack multiplier for any variable but not random damage attack (essentially number of hits in the FF1-4 sense, but either all hit or all miss): most weapons are 2 + ((STR*LV)/128), daggers 2 + ((STR*LV)/128) + (((AGI*LV)%256)/128), fists a flat 2 without Barehanded or 2 + (STR*LV)/256 with, Chicken Knife 2 + ((STR*LV)/128) + ((AGI*LV)/128), bells ((LV*MAG)/128)+((LV*AGI)/128), rods 2 + ((MAG*LV)/256), directly health-impacting magic is 4 + ((MAG*LV)/256). * Regen recovery is (VIT*LV)/16. * Starting position on ATB bar is 255 - ((120 - AGI + (Weight/8)), minimum 1) ticks. Commands can be entered at 255. (Or, conceptualized with the new display, length of an ATB bar is 135 - AGI + (Weight/8) ticks.) On monsters, Old reduces AGI (used only for ATB bar) and level but not other stats. * Directly health-impacting magic is still 4 + ((MAG*LV)/256). * Goblin Punch procs as a normal attack other than using the throw attack power (so very bad with Chicken Knife, good with Excalipoor and Brave Blade even if you've run a lot), but ignores enemy defense and multiplies attack power by 8 if levels are the same. * Determining spell hit% (but not evade% on the separate roll): hit% = base hit% + caster level - target level, and must be under a d100 roll or misses. Base hit% for status magic is typically 75%, so being at least 25 levels up is a sure hit and being 75 levels down (from the player side, inflictable by hypergrinding + Old) is a sure miss. * Length of hidden "ATB bar" is 135 - AGI ticks. So essentially, inflicting Old is for better proc rates on status magic (usually ignorable, !Spellblade procs if the hit lands), worse proc rates on their status magic (but NED is the only one who really matters), adding a stacking slow and magic damage down to enemies which aren't immune (no one is immune with Dark Shock + L2 Old which ignores immunity), and most notably as a source of damage for hyper-low-level challenges (Goblin Punch should always hit for 2400 with Excalipoor, or 3600 with Brave Blade, when cast by a level 1 character on an enemy on which Old has ticked down all the way.) (There is a minimum of 18 forced experience for Butz, 33 for Faris, 24 for the battle to learn Goblin Punch, and 40 each from Iron Claw and e: it's late SOME part of the Sol Cannon sequence; it's extremely difficult to distribute this in a way that leaves two characters at 1, and brings Butz to 3, without bringing Faris to 4, and L2 Old can then be learned without gaining EXP from either Azulmagia or finishing all monsters in a random battle with !Catch.) Mandoric fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Nov 28, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2021 09:15
|
|
|
On a practical level, you can always learn blue magic as a BLU, and additionally also learn blue magic as not a BLU if you equip Learning. On a technical level, passive abilities are split between innate, innate-with-drawbacks, and non-innate. A job automatically receives every innate and innate-with-drawbacks passive as long as you're in that job. Freelancer/Mimic automatically receives every innate passive from their mastered jobs, but does NOT receive innate-with-drawbacks (that is, Berserk) and receives a version of Equip x that does not supply the actual gear proficiency but only the stat bonus. Non-innate must be slotted to be active. This is exclusively HP/MP boosts and Two-Handed. So equippable passives other than Two-Handed, Berserk, and stat boosts are specifically for using those passives while in another job that isn't Freelancer/Mimic after mastery, or gaining gear proficiency as a Mimic.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2021 12:28
|
|
|
Harrow posted:Are there missable blue magics in FFV, or are they all still available at endgame if you're willing to go track them down? Everything but one is off random encounters in the sunken tower or Rift, and that one is off a random sea encounter near the sunken tower, so you're never COMPLETELY locked out. That said, there are a few things that are vital to have ASAP, that appear once or twice very and then go away until lategame, or that just suck if not gotten early: Aero - Moldwynd, Magissa. Sucks but is a cheap tier-1 spell to use until Karnak Castle/the Library. Aera - Gigas, Page 32. More gotta-get-it-then filler for an early dedicated BLU. Aqua Rake - Dhorme Chimera. Basically just a Sandworm killer, also not shabby if you're trying to fill bestiary entries for W2 desert but you can get it for then off the Manticore or the Water Crystal. Dark Spark - a bread-and-butter spell, halves enemy level so see convo earlier about Old and also useful for Lx manipulation (especially because halving rounds down, so you're never more than three casts from landing L2 Old.) Black Flame around Istory or Strapparer around Exdeath's Castle are where you can get it before W3 without Control shenanigans. Death Claw - Free !Catch. Iron Claw. L3 Flare - the best raw damage if levels line up. Can get it very early by !Control on a Red Dragon in the Barrier Tower. L5 Death - Chemist can boost an enemy to 255, and this ignores all vulnerabilities. Get it from a Page 64 and you always have an option. Missile - Controlled Motor Trap or Rocket Launcher. Free !Catch if you didn't have time for Death Claw. Vampire - Deals and restores half of your missing HP for only 2MP. Great for trash, less so for bosses. Get it from the Steel Bats in the pirate cave or it goes away until late World 2. White Wind - Massive partywide heal. You want it as early as you can, by confusing or !Controlling an Enchanted Fan in the Ronka Ruins. Oh, and while Self-Destruct isn't hard to find and is normally a turd, you can teach it to Azulmagia and he'll try it out. 
Mandoric fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Nov 30, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2021 22:17
|
|
|
Yeah, PR balance is subtly different from GBA but GBA balance is also subtly different from SNES, and "doing wacky things with FF5 mechanics" is such an old and storied tradition (the cart I bought in the early '00s was packed with gimmick run save files!) that everyone just kind of assumes SNES and sometimes points out where ports break strats. Which leaves a short dungeon full of max-HP mobs with access to the final boss's once-per-AI-loop spells, guarding slightly better weapons. And a couple non-FF (or "something with the same fluff but entirely different skills was in FFT or one of the MMOs") jobs that do things which were already in the game but with heavy RNG dependence rather than preparation, which is pretty much the antithesis of how you'd want to play FF5. Not missing much at all.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2021 21:20
|
|
|
EXP table is exactly the same as SNES, looks like.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2021 00:42
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:Well yeah that's what I'm saying. Anyone can get through FFV with engaging with the job system at a minimum, like having a party of Knight/White Mage/Black Mage/Summoner or something, where they never have to deal with learning blue magic, never have to deal with Chemist mixing, and so on. I mean, sure, you can do those things and they make the game even easier, but you never have to engage with the game beyond "hit attack, occasionally cast magic and heal" and still beat it just fine. So is FFV poorly designed mechanically? Is the Four Job Fiesta just a sad attempt by people to make the game interesting because of its poor design? "RPG" colloquially means "there's a significant plot element and number goes up"; that is, there is a hard ratcheting down of the difficulty based on time spent in-game. While originally derived from rules for balancing tactical sims with asymmetrical elements, its use in pacing and gating campaigns made it an easy way to expand the target market and make more money by loosening required execution without making people feel bad about themselves by selecting "easy mode" even though if they didn't want to feel SOME systems mastery they could just read the strategy guide and get the plot for $15. Within this, abstracted combat means that primary player interaction is setup. Can't be reliably "hard" because of that preassumption that difficulty must continually ratchet downward, only "punishing of poor decisions or bad luck for a relatively long time", but it can have a wide range of "response" or "agency"; FF5 is simultaneously extremely "easy" (in that a squad of four zerks walked in circles when necessary will eventually walk-in-circles their way to a zero-interaction NED kill) but also extremely "responsive" (in that a level 1 mini frog Chemist accompanied by three corpses can also do an NED kill.) And action combat means that primary player interaction is precise mechanical input. The definition is still that number goes up, though, and bad input will eventually win, so the response is measured by the divergence in results between it and good input. In FF15, this is relatively low; there are not really any high-required-execution options, and low-required-execution options don't carry a very significant bonus for unexpectedly precise input as that's never really been a thing in offline FF and would turn off some people who weren't expecting it (not that it can't be done in a similar system, see Mario RPG or Mother 3.) So "difficulty" isn't the right term, but "response" is, and by that measure 5 is much more responsive.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2022 19:43
|
|
|
Mr. Locke posted:Or, considering there are lv 1 Speedruns of FFXV as well, which requires considerably more knowledge AND execution then a normal play, everyone's talking out their rear end and FF as a series is one that both rewards skill and knowledge by enabeling exeptional feats, but has the levers and knobs avaliable just brute force with raw numbers, with different installments just asking different questions of what 'skill' and 'knowledge' is. The difference IMO, which becomes clear when using the word "response", is that the FF5 level 1 involves an exceptionally high degree of success in the complex core system and a lack of failure in simple subsystems while the FF15 level 1 involves a lack of failure in the simple core system. In one you can find a simple all-purpose setup like "dualwield on every melee" or "Chicken Knife damage is just spikier on bosses because the !Flee has to miss, but it's still good" and have numbers-agnostic success at first, then push it to lower and lower numbers levels with "I could probably just not bring a healer if there was no Almagest, I wonder if that head is weak to any instakills" or "actually !X-Fight is 266% damage with it rather than 200% that's even better", and eventually arrive at  where your power lives completely outside of the forced scaling or anything the devs really concretely imagined; in the other you don't really do anything you're not already trying to in every fight anyway, just have the penalty for not doing the thing increased until you must always do the thing (which must be simple enough for someone wanting to rely on that 99 in the menu to squeeze out a few of; numbers change its quantity not its quality.)But, also, Vermain posted:Undertale is one of the most beloved and celebrated games of the past decade, and its non-Genocide combat gameplay is around the level of a decent phone game. FFXV is great as a visual novel with the impression of a complex action combat system to break up the pacing Complexity, response, crunchiness, not bothering at all to distinguish it from difficulty, whatever you want to call it, isn't a measure of whether a game's enjoyable or not in itself, it's at most a measure of how many different ways can be found to enjoy it. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jan 14, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2022 21:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:32 |
|
|
Hellioning posted:As a constant FFV player it baffles me how many times the game relies on 'exploration' instead of actually telling you where to go. Sometimes it's as basic as 'head to the only town you're allowed to go to and talk to someone important' but other times you're just kind of supposed to wander around until you find something important. There's exactly three places you can go, each set up in a corner of the map to echo the plotline to that point centering around the fourth corner (and of finding something cool in the other corners if you already have), and the two of them which aren't on the critical path are by 2020s standards--I say 2020s rather than modern to avoid the implication that it's better--optional sidequests to kit out the jobs that were your DPS bread and butter in the prior two games respectively rather than wastes of time. You could cut things like this, where every option is good but one keeps you on the critical path, in favor of pulling the player straight through, and lose something in a game where the central interaction has multiple equally valid paths you're softly pushed toward based on what optional content you do, but as someone who brings up learned behavior in regard to the black chocobo (which is a pretty borderline assessment, given that it's introduced by rising from the terrain it's usable on and exists to return you to any prior point, many of which do have signposting, without letting you skip ahead) you should realize that the impulse to rush the critical path, or the realization that a critical path exists, is itself a learned behavior; the hypothetical naïf whose world is rocked by the idea that birds land in trees also isn't going to know or care that every path leads eventually to Exdeath, or even that there is an Exdeath, and is not going to be displeased that their choice that day only got them cool ninja gear or a rockin' summon--without the retrospective knowledge of where the game goes and how to finish a 4JF as quickly as possible in order to get with the other side of this year's split challenge, it's just as valid to assume that Jachol or Istory is necessary for the unknown next challenge.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2022 00:38
|
|