Record Keeping Final Fantasy Record Keeper

[Cmdr_King]

100 gem netted a Seifer's Coat.  Already had his Hyperion, so APPARENTLY they just think I should really use the shit outta Seifer.  Pity about that lack of MC2.

That said, figured what the hell and tossed together this team to get him started on learning Bloodfest.

Rinoa (Angel Wing Bolt, Angel Wing Quake Mystic Cure, Thundaja/Maduin)
Squall (Fated Circle, Blizzaga Strike/Aero Strike)
Seifer (Demon Slice, Bloodfest, Saint's Cross/Banishing Strike)
Sephiroth (Shadow Flare, Black Materia, First Aid, Indoor Spell/Flashing Blade)
Tyro (SG, Shellga/Curaja)
Shout RW

The theory is to blast them with Shadow Flare to get some breathing room, smite Fujin, win. 
This cleared but didn't master.  Annoying.  Not sure if I'm gonna bother mastering it or not, but I don't think it's happening with this party; there's just too much incoming damage with as MT focused as Seifer himself is even if Fujin wastes a turn on Esuna.  So yeah, Bloodfest isn't a bad fit for the battle but mastery is just gonna need some extra mitigation.  Agrias COULD step in for Rinoa and Thundaga Strike I guess but that's risky, a dedicated support in Seifer's slot is probably a better idea.  Eh.

[DjinnAndTonic]

If you have Tyro's SG and Lifesiphon then you have no reason you can't mitigate the damage enough to master-clear that fight. I mean, I can understand not wanting to keep throwing stamina at it, it's kinda pricey, but I think you have the tools for it.

Did an 11-pull for Zell's glove, got a pretty party dress instead! I guess my R4 Quake just got potentially useful again after languishing since Ruinga and Meteor appeared?

Fat Chocobo is probably better than Quake, but ugh trying to hone Summons in this orbless wasteland...

Team:
HealerSG-Tyro/SupportShout-Ramza/AeroraRunic-Celes/Ice&BlindShell-Balthier/ThunderBSB-Squall

Beat the Seifer losers after a couple of S/Ls (they kept focusing down Tyro before he could move...)
Once I got SG up, then it was all Squall and Wall with a bunch of level-broken Spellbladers getting my mastery req's. Grand Runic not as useful as I was expecting, but it helped mitigate damage against Celes a little. Balthier ran Blind Shell, which actually netted me some vital turns in the middle of the fight that they spent remedying their stylish sunglasses away. Lifesiphoning Burst Squall was MVP due to the ridiculous amounts of damage he was putting out making the fight much faster, but I think even with him running a regular SB the fight would have gone pretty smoothly once Wall was up.

Ultimate Weapon looks... fun.

[Captain K]

25 mythril on banner 2, got Ehrgeiz.  God Bless the Ring.

Need to test if the +crit% stacks with the extra crit on Explosive Fist.  If so that's going to be some pain.

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah, it's not that I can't so much as "well is another crystal and a few major orbs worth the time/another 60 stamina".  The orbs in question are Major Ice.  So looking at my orb piles, I recently put Fullbreak up at R3 so I'm down a bit on Major Ice.  More than that, with the White Magic Nightmare coming up I'm looking at honing up Holy.  I have the Ice orbs to put it at R2 (I'm way low on Holy orbs but hell, Friday's long since been a full grind day), but with three weeks it's possible, if a bit unlikely, I could get it up to R3, so they could well prove immediately useful.  So yeah, worth doin'.

[Magic Fanatic]

Decided to follow in people's footsteps here and threw 50 Mithril at Banner 2.

Got an Inferno Fang.  Am I allowed to complain about this one?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Decided to follow in people's footsteps here and threw 50 Mithril at Banner 2.

Got an Inferno Fang.  Am I allowed to complain about this one?

No.

25 mythril on banner 2, got Ehrgeiz.  God Bless the Ring.

Need to test if the +crit% stacks with the extra crit on Explosive Fist.  If so that's going to be some pain.

Crit rates don't stack as a rule of thumb.

[Cotigo]

Yeah, it's not that I can't so much as "well is another crystal and a few major orbs worth the time/another 60 stamina".  The orbs in question are Major Ice.  So looking at my orb piles, I recently put Fullbreak up at R3 so I'm down a bit on Major Ice.  More than that, with the White Magic Nightmare coming up I'm looking at honing up Holy.  I have the Ice orbs to put it at R2 (I'm way low on Holy orbs but hell, Friday's long since been a full grind day), but with three weeks it's possible, if a bit unlikely, I could get it up to R3, so they could well prove immediately useful.  So yeah, worth doin'.

Plus, Dualcast Blizzaja will come out in about 6 months and you'll want to hoard Ice orbs for that.

Also, lets not go giving up on battles Zenny was able to master clear in the pre hastega days. I even did it without MT. I did hone all of Bio Strike, Biora Strike, and Bioga specifically for it, though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Okay, so, Edea event bonus battles, all done while I was perceptively drunk last night. Here's my setup for the Three Stoges:

Rinoa (L80): R5 Maduin, R4 Blizzaja
Bartz (L80): R5 Aerora Strike, R4 Lifesiphon
Edea (L71): R4 Bioga, R3 Meteor
Yuna (L80): R2 Protectga, R5 Curaja
Quistis (L65): R4 Thundaja, R4 Magic Breakdown

RW: Sentinel's Grimoire

So yeah, mostly mage meta since I wanted to build mastery on both Rinoa's and Edea's SBs and my mage synergy in FF8 is downright insane. No S/Ls, though I didn't really use the AoE damage much. Quistis and Edea are kinda redundant (both run Hastega SBs), but I wanted to field both Protectga and Shellga. Regardless, Inaugural Parade is very legit, the girls were ramming caps without hitting weakness (though the synergy obviously helps). I honestly didn't notice their offense either, but the fight ended pretty fast. Kinda disappointing after how nasty they were in Rinoa's reissue.

Ultima Weapon... oof. I know part of it was me being blazingly drunk, but it took me at least four S/Ls to get into the fight's rhythm, which is bizarre given how unsophisticated the fight is. Ultima's just a DPS check, but the offense is scary as fuck and you don't want to spend even a second outside the scope of a SG/SSII cast. One of my failed runs involved eating a 3.5k damage Meteor (under Shellga and Magic Breakdown) that blew up half my party. First attempt involved Edea, Ramza, Bartz, Gilgamesh and Yuna, but I had to replace Edea with Lightning even though she was dropping 8k damage Waterjas sans buffs. Winning setup looked like this:

Lightning (L80): R4 Lifesiphon, R4 Dismissal
Bartz (L80): R4 Lifesiphon, R4 Pound
Gilgamesh (L80): R4 Banishing Strike, R2 Saint Cross
Yuna (L80): R5 Curaja, R2 Shellga
Ramza (L80): R4 Magic Breakdown, R3 Full Break

RW: Sentinel's Grimoire

Pretty milquetoaste, but that's how those fights go, really. You're running against the clock here and he hits too hard for anything else to be effective.
 

[Meeplelard]

A big thing to remember about the Disciplinary Trio is that Seifer's scary stuff only appears in his weak phase, namely his MT damage, so Seifer should be saved for last for that reason.  Raijin's mostly (entirely?) physical (though Blind doesn't do anything to Raijin Special), so he's easy to keep mitigated, so it's really killing Fuijin fast.

Granted, I admit my team can be a bit more flexible having innate Wall *AND* Shellga Soul Break Armors to allow some skill slot opening.


That said, to Djinn:

En-Earth's uses are quite limited from where I'm sitting.  Feels like it's uses are the following for someone like Rinoa:

-2 Gauges so you can use the Soul Break twice in a row getting the 2nd at an 80% damage boost
--Branching from that, when it drops, Rinoa's BSB can benefit greatly from it.
-Fat Chocobo (6.6x2 MT damage attack, almost SSB level)
-Hitting Earth weakness (which comes up for all of like FF12 Tiamat -_-) with Quake
-AoE fights when you run out of Meteor (Meteor > Quake x 1.5 I believe, but Quake is a lot easier to hone of course)
-Resisting Earth (Hey, it's more common than weakness!)

I WANT to say En-Earth boosts Meltdown, but I've heard conflicting info, in that some claim the attack is treated as Fire elemental unless the enemy either resists Fire or is weak to the other two, and I think Earth is the 3rd element on the list, so the enemy would need to resist Fire AND Wind or be weak to Earth (...which never happens...) for En-Earth to buff it.  Others claim it just always takes the most damaging element, meaning if you were in En-Earth, it would be treated as Earth elemental damage unless the enemy was weak to Fire/Wind or resisted Earth.

Either way, En-Earth has very limited applications since a boosted Quake is still weaker than a neutral -ja Spell, so unless the AoE thing kicks in, it's hard to benefit much from it. 

...now watch as the next JP event creates Quaga which is a 5* Earth Spell that is 4.5x2 in damage, which would make me shut up.

[Nitori]

Decided to follow in people's footsteps here and threw 50 Mithril at Banner 2.

Got an Inferno Fang.  Am I allowed to complain about this one?

got nothing
might mythril Ultima Weapon, that's some damage

[Meeplelard]

I kind of wanted Edea's Crown so decided to do a 3 pull on the banner...

...and got an FF12 Danjuro.  Well, that's certainly unexpected...and one event too late.  Ah well, maybe there should be more FF12 content in a dungeon update coming up soon I think.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Back to the grind. Been a while since I've done an Ice/NE daily. Mastered Edea, Rinoa and Seifer SBs as well. I have to say it's utterly bizarre that the character with the most SBs of mine is Rinoa of all people.

[Captain K]

Disciplinary Committee:  Well not having native wall or hastega made this a much tougher fight than the rest of you are having.  After some trial and error determined that Seifer has to die first because you have to kill him while SG is up or you go splat.

Selphie (Curaga, Shellga, Mako Might)
Lenna (Curaja, Protectga, Dr. Mog's Teachings)
Vivi (Blizzaja, Thundaja, Attunement II)
Squall (Biora Strike, Aerora Strike, Pride of the Red Wings)
Zell (Punishing Palm, Life Siphon, Ace Striker)
SG RW

Delay casting SG until the second turn.  Build up meter with Zell.  Recast Shell and Protectga right before Seifer goes below 50%.  Heal like crazy.  Recast SG when Seifer's at about 15% because it has run out by then.  Heal like crazy.  Finish Seifer, kill Fujin, then laugh at Raijin's single target damage.

[hinode]

My FF8 synergy sucks, but I managed to scrape by for now.

Three stooges setup (not pictured, Shout RW): http://imgur.com/2giQJqO

R2 Flashing Blade is perfect for this kind of fight, it's 24K damage per use but still doesn't push anyone into weak phase by itself. Spamming elemental damage finished the fight from there. Actually got full medals for this.

Ultima Weapon setup (Shout RW again): http://imgur.com/vLfrhCG

This one was a close call. Ramza was completely out of abilities by the end and everyone else was low, second Shout was almost certainly running out too. Full Charge can't come soon enough.

I had two S/Ls for Ultima Weapon, one because I got nuked by Meteor during a brief window where SS2 was down and one because Bartz got OHKO'd by a crit on turn 1. That one was kinda funny.

[Cotigo]

Capn: You're absolutely right that you need SG up for Seifer's weak phase, but you do have a couple options. IIRC I put it up immediately then killed Fujin while it was still up, then took care of Raijin and not touching Seifer at all while SG was down, then put it back up as I pounded on Seifer. Took many SLs and some luck, though. Anyway, cool to see there were options, and that yeah Raijin is definitely the weak link of the crew no matter what strategy you use.

[Cmdr_King]

Raijin Special does weirdly respectable damage (~1200-1500 after SG.  And I have like 3 natural 5 star FFVIII armors) but not having any MT options is just not threatening in Ultimate tier content.

Man, it's so easy to forget what not having good synergy gear looks like.  Tossed a group of ~L50 characters together for grinding dailies/RMs/stray EXP on White 5 characters, then lightly tweaked their setups for dungeon content and did the FFXIV elites.  Ifrit's Hellfire actually dealt 9k (I assume it trigged right after SSII went down) and wiped me!  Because I wasn't actually doing that much damage to it: 3500x2 or so off Maduin and 2300x2 off Saint's Cross.  I can't even remember the last time damage numbers went that low on those attacks on characters over L50.
Granted finishing that would have triggered a stamina refresh so maybe for the best not to actually finish it off right this minute.

[Captain K]

Yeah neither Raijin or Fujin are dangerous by themselves, but combined they can kill a character when SG is not up.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Dungeon update shenanigans: nothing noteworthy so far, but I'm still doing classics. Mixing up with Mondaily farming (those Gysahls don't farm themselves and I'm almost at 40k), up to Yaschas Massif 2.

[Meeplelard]

FF13 has ANOTHER Ranged Boss which remains a bull**** mechanic in RK, and it's especially insulting in FF13 dungeons.

Yes, the ranged mechanic technically existed in FF13 as I replay it there is a rare enemy immune to melee.  The difference?  FF13 can get away with it since everyone has some form of notable ranged damage as Commando AND Ravager (yeah, Fang's Ruin kind of sucks, but it EXISTS, so she's not a deadweight), as well as a game where resources didn't exist, so you can spam all that ranged damage.  It was a minor damage mitigation feature in FF13, is what I'm saying.

RK, it shuts down a large amount of the cast and you have to build around it.  Yeah, ok, in lone boss fights it's not so bad (Silver Dragon wasn't so bad for example) but having to build a team around it to get through dungeons is downright stupid.  Honestly, transferring the anti-melee mechanics directly from FF7/10/12/13 to RK is probably the dumbest thing they did.  They really should have done something like "Melee attacks deal half damage" or an accuracy penalty.  It keeps the anti-melee spirit intact while not compromising the battle system.  Those games had aspects that you work around it; FF7 had materia and limits, FF10 you could swap characters on a whim and always had Wakka available as a result, AND most ranged fights were conditional aspects you can work around (eg Evrae was only melee immune when he was far away), FF12 lets you swap weapons on the fly so "Oh crap, that thing is flying, better hand Vaan that Bow and Ashe that Hand Bomb!"and Magic exists too (also, Telekinesis exists eventually.)  FF13 I addressed.

I know it's an attempt at challenge, but it's the wrong kind of challenge; it compromises the game's strengths, not plays to them.  Having ranged enemies is fine but being "Melee characters are SOL, good day!" is dumb.  As I said, "Melee characters are penalized but still functional" would be fine.

[Magic Fanatic]

On the most recent episode of "Things that should surprise no one":

Balamb Firebomb (Zell's RM3) has a higher effect on Monk Skill damage than Dragoon's Determination.
Hardened Assassin (Shadow's RM2) has a higher effect on Ninja Scroll damage than Devotion.

EDIT:

So I wanted to try a full FF8 Synergy Team, just to see if I was ready for Fragment Ifrit.

Squall L80 - Revolver++/Adamant Bangle/Squall's Necklace - Lifesiphon R4/Mental Break R2 - Blasting Zone - Ace Striker
Quistis L64 - Flail++/Tungsten Bangle/Cerberus Relief - Blizzaja R4/Power Breakdown R3 - Salvation (Shared off armor) - Devotion
Selphie L76 - Thyrus++/Precious Watch++/Doctor Cid's Glasses - Curaja R4/Shellga R2 - Healing Moment (Shared off armor) - Knight's Charge
Seifer L65 - Hyperion/Galbadian Elite Armor/Aries - Banishing Strike R4/Armor Break R4 - Demon Slice - Pride of the Red Wings
Irvine L65 - Running Fire/Defense Veil+/Vossler's Gauntlet - Full Break R2/Magic Breakdown R3 - Normal Ammo - Master Sniper
RW: Stoneskin 2

Seifer used there instead of Zell due to Banishing Blade to get rid of Regen if it ever happened.  I got him down to 1/3 HP before he pretty much annihilated me.  Not enough damage all-around, really.  Back to the drawing board, I guess.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Palom/Porom event, 100-gem pull yields... Edge's Kotetsu. Are you trying to tell me something, game?

[Cotigo]

Palom/Porom event, 100-gem pull yields... Edge's Kotetsu. Are you trying to tell me something, game?

So what I'm hearing is Edge solo U+ Cagnazzio runs in the near future.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I just don't know what to do, for all that he at least hits weakness on Cagnazzo's rising water phase. It's just weird as hell that I have both his relics.

[Captain K]

Ugh I am so close to beating Ultima but it requires so many random events to fall into place.  Had a great run going and then he used Ultima Buster on two consecutive turns.  Fuck this game for being so reliant on Hastega and Wall.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

If it's that bad, you might consider running someone with Haste and casting it on your DPS/healer. It's at least -something-.