Record Keeping Final Fantasy Record Keeper

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The problem with not leaving Seifer for last was that once he hit 50% and started going nuts Fujin/Raijin would inevitably finish off whoever was left weak from his AOE, wall or no wall.

I think the ideal order would go Fujin => Seifer => Raijin, especially since you can troll him to some degree with Blind (waste turns with remedy or evadable physicals) and he's entirely ST. Fujin and Seifer, having AoE and emphasizing magic and unevadable damage, are inherently more dangerous.

[Meeplelard]

I killed Raijin before Seifer.  The thing is that while Raijin can be blinded and is entirely ST, Raijin Special ignores Blind and can't miss, and him following up a Seifer attack can be painful if he hits the wrong person.  Gunning down Raijin first when Seifer is in his relatively benign phase has the advantage that you only have to worry about a weak Seifer.

The whole "Raijin is ST Only therefor not a threat!" sounds good to keep him last in theory, but ST damage can still pile up if paired with legit MT damage and is an extra variable to work with.  Blind doesn't stop his best attack, after all.  You can generally get away with less mitigation if you go after Raijin first, since Seifer's also entirely ST before his weak phase IIRC, so you can save a 2nd shot of Wall or whatever for Seifer solo.

ALSO, if you have strong soul breaks, killing Raijin first means you are building up that much Soul Break gauge to help just blast through Seifer's weak phase all the faster.  Going the other way around, you do have more charges honed, but you're still stuck with MT damage complimented by legit ST damage that can lead to a dead PC, and you get more gauge to gun down the weaker character.  I dunno, the claim that Raijin last just doesn't jive with me since you're still dealing with the strong Seifer in some manner but now with extra damage on the side, and again, Blind doesn't completely deal with Raijin (I know I didn't bother.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, which is why I said "to some degree", since Raijin Special mocks Blind. Granted, I killed Seifer last myself, but I probably shouldn't talk about FF8 content difficulty given my current loadout for the realm.

[Captain K]

Granted, I probably shouldn't talk about difficulty in any realm given my current loadout.

Been working on Ultima Weapon last 4 days, still not getting anywhere.  Tried single target Haste, it sucks ass.

[Meeplelard]

So I saw Maria got buffed to 154 Magic at level 65, which is the Terra, Rinoa, Rydia, etc. Tier.  This means at level 80, she'll have only 2 magic lower than Serah.  Why do I bring that up?  Because Serah and Maria are so freaking similar.  Maria came first and it felt appropriate, Serah's the headscratcher because she not only came much later, but she had a lot to work with to make her unique but instead just Black 5, White 3.

So I compared the two!  Here's what I came up with:

Maria has +100~ HP, +27 Attack, +9 Def, -2 Mag, +19 Res, +7 Mind vs. Serah at level 80.  Pretty clear who has the advantage there.  especially notable is the +27 Attack meaning Maria can do actual Auto Battle stuff with Bows in the back row.

Then you look at how Maria can use Swords now, meaning she has everything Serah can use equipment wise AND Spears (Dusk Lance hype?!) so she wins on equipment too.

Won't go into Soul breaks since they cover different aspects.  What I can note is Maria is FF2's lone Black Mage, so she's the only one with synergy from that realm should it come up.  Serah has to compete with Hope and Raines, Hope being one of the best Black Mages in game (and one of the best Sages to boot), and Raines has Support 4 and Darkness 5, on top of stats to work with.

Honestly...I'm not sure what they are thinking with Serah.  They've had opportunities to buff her, but it's very clear she needs some major buffs.  It's similar to the Vivi vs. Palom thing I brought up before frankly, even down to the "lone Black Mage of Realm gotten from story vs. character with plenty of competitions in event Only."  Ok, Vivi has Kuja to compete with, but shh!

[Nitori]

100 gem - Elven Bow

3 hits so far on this gem purchase

[Meeplelard]

Bonus fights beaten.

Geryon was straight forward.  Went in with a bunch of Instant Death resistance which ultimately wasn't necessary.  Didn't use anything particularly special, just a lot of beat downs with Terra (Blizzaja/Thundaja wielder), Auron, Vaan, Yuna, and Tyro.   Only notable thing is one reset as a result of targetting Auron before any mitigation and I think Dragoon's Determination killed him.

Cagnazzo...was a bitch.  Really, really dumb fight, not sure how you're expected to do that without like 5 levels of mitigation or one of Indomintable Blade, Runic, or Grand Cross.  His damage is crazy, he can pull water surging out of nowhere and screw you over, and blech.  Luckily, I had Celes' SSB so just a case of getting things together.

My winning team was...


RW: Mighty Guard VIII (for go to Hastega and Heavy Regen; extra Haste to offset slow is nice too)

Some failed runs included:
Auron instead of Vaan using Lifesiphon/Venom Buster.  At first I tried without any Dispel, so Ramza was Magic Breakdowning.  Then realized I need Dispel, so gave Ramza Banishing Blade...oh wait, I need to lower Magic, that won't work, Magic Breakdown goes back on Ramza, and Celes gets Dispel since her damage is less meaningful than Terra's, and she's mostly there for extra Lightning and her SSB utility.   That didn't really work since Ramza is covering 2 important aspects at once: Lightning damage and Magic Breakdown, and I can't have him really alternate.

Vaan subbed in because his SSB means only a little less damage than Auron's, and having someone who can Venom Buster AND Magic Breakdown while still having good damage would help a lot, since I can alternate between the two, and always keep him Magic Broken while trying for Poison.  This frees up a slot for Ramza who can Banishing Blade, letting him do actual damage while dispelling, and Celes can try to sneak in Blizzara Strikes for quicker gauge building.  Seems that was the right call, if my winning team wasn't an indicator.

This is, again, a dumb fight.  If he opens with Water Surging, you're basically SOL since you're scrambling to get Lightning damage up quickly (or getting 3 layers minimum of mitigation) or he nukes you with big Water moves and you die.   Worse is how you have to hit him with Ice damage while he's not surging OR using his shell, which can be a pain.  It's just a really, really dumb fight and ultimately further emphasizes just how bad a realm FF4 stuff is as a whole.  I think it's honestly the dumbest of the Ultimate(+)s thus far.  Other contenders?

Bartandelus was dumb but only because of the idiotic requirement to bring Lightning AND Fang, meaning you're team options are incredibly limited, as are your approaches (want to use Mages to reflect attacks off?  SCREW YOU FANG CAN'T DO THAT!)  The fight itself felt like it wouldn't be so bad if you didn't care about mastery.  Emperor was dumb because of that Starfall RNG req.  Bahamut Sin...well, they basically admitted they screwed that one up when they redid the Turn Reqs for Ultimates because yeah, that was too complicated a fight in the turn limited provided for something like that.

The one saving grace about Cagnazzo is he's an Ultimate+ so it costs 1 Stamina.

[Cotigo]

Uhhhh what

No sorry if you're underpowered Fujin->Seifer->Raijin is NOT going to work. His weak phase DPS is just TOO ridiculous to risk having a Raijin Special go off, even if you've neutralized him otherwise with Blind. It has been a while for me obvi but yeah I don't buy that happening with a peasant build.

Heck I'm not even sure I buy that Seifer before both is really optimal with that damage, but I'd believe it if you're set up to blitz him down before the first SG wears off, and it's certainly conceivably possible.

Re mages getting Aero, I kinda like having that element be the wheelhouse of other classes… or rather, I would if it didn't just mean "use spellblades". Dark being mostly darkness characters with a bit of BM and I think Summon, and Holy being mostly Knight characters and WMs make those elements a lot more interesting. Having Earth only be accessable by say, Samurai, Monk, and Dragoon would make those classes more interesting and give you a real reason to use them against bosses weak to the element, even if you don't have a relic for them. Buuuut given Rinoa and whoever have Enearth SBs I don't think that's feasibly gonna happen.

Also, finally got the Goldfes MC3 and will probably blow that on Cloud because his RM4 is just that good compared to the others. 30% Sword Damage on someone like Bartz who hits the ATK softcap regularly and can use steal power is too sexy for me to pass up. I suspect Sundays will be dedicated to getting Cloud and Buttz to L99 for a bit.

[Meeplelard]

Well, Aero has appeared as White Magic in a few FF games, namely FF3 and FF14!  Not saying they should do that but there you go.  The fact that we don't have a Wind Elemental summon though is kind of obnoxious; Syldra in FF5 is Wind elemental, but they made it Lightning elemental here because of animation/name.  Ok, fine, but we have 2 other 4* Lightning Summons, and one of them, Ixion, is clearly way better than Syldra, it's a total waste.  Maybe they'll crack down and put Typhon in as a Wind Elemental summon (FF7 being the basis...shut up about it's actual element in that game, I'm convinced that's a labeling mistake), since hey, if Ultros is in, why not him?

I can buy saying Black Mages shouldn't get Wind just as a hole in their options (alongside Holy, albeit a lot of Black Mages get around this anyway either having White 4+ to use Diaga (assuming you have a decent Red stick), or having Summon 4+ for Alexander.  Then there's oddballs like Hope who get a BSB that does Holy damage), albeit Meltdown does have Wind but that's a 2 shot spell that won't be hone-able in forever, so it's an exception.  It's more the fact that Aero has been around in the game forever, and used by enemies, but they seem adamant against releasing it because "we coded it as Blue Magic and we refuse to put in Blue Magic, so SCREW YOU ALL!"  It makes those Wind requirements obnoxious when Mages cannot actually hit wind weakness unless they're like Rinoa and uses WIND SLASH LOLOLOL.  I feel a Wind Summon wouldn't muck with things though; Summons already have so much limiting them as is between scarcity of Summon orbs and their 5 Charges tops, there's no reason to limit the skillset.



That said, I completely agree with your assessment about the Disciplinary Trio, and that was kind of the point I was making.  You don't want to fight Seifer in his Weak phase where he still has a 2nd source of damage that can squeeze hits in, and Blind as I said doesn't solve the problem, just mitigates it some.  You're playing with a lot of variables keeping Raijin alive with Seifer in weak phase; it makes way more sense to gun down Raijin when Seifer's not a threat, so when Seifer IS a threat, he's the only thing you need to worry about.

[Cotigo]

Ah yeah I mean the reasons for it not being put in are dumb, I was speaking more to that it makes for an interesting dynamic in the differences to classes that I wouldn't mind not being fixed and even expanded upon.

Making spells and skillsets faithful to other FF games doesn't really interest me, making the game itself more interesting does. Yes WMs get Aero in FF3 but does giving Wind to WMs make FFRK more interesting? No.

Re Seifer, I should have noted my comments were directed at Snow there.

[Captain K]

@Shale, you need to kill Seifer first with your gear.  Accept the word of one who knows.

And you have no idea how many times I've been this close:



(the single pixel is from a regen tick when he cast Ultima, he was at no pixels)

I've heard Cagnazzo is worse, so not looking forward to that.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I actually really agree with Zenny about the elements being more limited to different jobsets making FFRK itself more interesting and forcing more meaningful decisions. I'm actually not that happy with the new Stone elemental Black Magic line, since it seemed like they were priming Monk to be the new 'best way' to do Earth damage. If Black Magic gets a full Aero line, that kinda kills the small niche that Spellblade/Dragoon had right there.

Now, Meeple's point about tossing Summons some Wind-elemental love makes a lot more sense, but eh... FFRK isn't always perfect. I'm always pretty impressed overall with the game balance and the flavor choices, but every once in a while they do annoying things.

Flipside, I recall seeing that Irvine gets Machinist ranks in his Record Dive? That means that VSM can finally be happy that Irvine gets a gunner-themed skillset (still no Celerity, but honestly Machinist is more fitting anyway as literally all of those skills are Ranged and named "Shot" or "Shell").

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Cagnazzo is one -hell- of a dick. I managed to run him through without Wall by virtue of Celes' Indomitable Blade spoiling a lot of his offense and status, but that's -hard- to replicate (I don't think Magic Lure works on status, for instance, and Reflect doesn't work on his AoE sleep, which at least is someone guaranteed to stay awake after it's cast). Zenny worked it out using Carbuncle and Poison, IIRC, but that's pretty risky and I want to say you more or less need Hastega because Tsunami -wrecks shit-. I found the fight a hell of a lot of fun, but I sure as hell wouldn't without uber Runic, and whoever came up with that design is an evil sonuvagun.

[Cotigo]

Specifically, Carbunkle, Poison, and Zack/Butts/Tina with Thundara/ga Strike and Thundaja respectively.

It was a bitch but once you get POZN to proc first round it's just a matter of staying alive and cancelling Tsunami. Two WMs and 3 people with Spellblades can do the trick. Still a S/L fest of course (everything fucking is without Hastega or better relics than I had), but honestly I only had two or three goes with POZN proccing early, the vast majority of my SLs were attempts were just trying to get POIZN to proc.

EDIT: I can't stress enough how key cancelling Tsunami is. It got to the point where I would ONLY let the three Thunderfucks take turns immediately after a Cagnazzio turn because otherwise you get caught up a creek without a paddle. POIZN takes care of your DPS (it's pretty good, 9700~ a tick) and Carbunkle neuters the majority of his non-Tsunami damage. I think I still used SG though, just so I didn't run out of Curaga/ja charges before POIZN did my work for me.

Also, feel relieved when this gimmick returns with FFVLeviathan... this time you have 3 turns to cancel Tsunami and you'll literally never see it. Feels good man.

EDIT2:

So now that I'm off of vacation I finally went through and looked at what I could hone. I could get R4 Meteo or FB but honestly 6 charges of both is enough. I decided for getting Chain Blizzaja to R3 and will probably get Chain Firaja to R3 soon.

Chain skills, Hastemarche/other Mag Buffs RWs, and the boost of the Mag Softcap really gave mages a new lease on life. With properly honed Chain skills I can probably justify bringing mages into a battle again! Sure, they may not have great SBs (Terra aside), but SBs matter a lot less when I can easily crank out 15000+ damage PER TURN (vs. weakness ofc) instead of ~20000 damage per SSB charge. My relics make physical characters still outright better, but Mages are on their way back. It's pretty nice actually.

To put this to the test I did the colliseum battles, and mages (especially ones who got synergy, so this was particularly true with the FF4/FF5 fights) really shined there. It's nice to have options again (though I haven't tried the U++ fight for Eiko's event yet, which I have the feeling I'm gonna have to just stick to my A-team for that one.

[Captain K]

OMG I fucking did it.  Went back to my original setup since it was getting closer than any other method I tried.  Only difference was I put Boost on Kimahri and moved Magic Break to Cloud's useless ability slot.  Kept boosting Gilgamesh and Cloud.  Lost two damage medals only.

Lenna (Curaja, Protectga)
Kimahri (Armor Break, Boost)
Cloud (Magic Break, Lifesiphon)
Gilgamesh (Banishing Strike, Saint's Cross)
Zell (Punishing Palm, Lifesiphon)
SG RW

Also just noticed that hinode sabotaged his Stoneskin II RW.  Was wondering why it kept running out so quickly.  No telling how many runs that ruined.

[hinode]

SS2/SG duration is fixed, equipment doesn't matter at all. Mind only matters for named status effects (Protect, Haste, Sleep, Paralysis, etc.), not straight stat buffs/debuffs.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Also just noticed that hinode sabotaged his Stoneskin II RW.  Was wondering why it kept running out so quickly.  No telling how many runs that ruined.

See hinode. The -real- troll was a guy who ran a naked Y'shtola with Medica II.

[Nitori]

who invented this

Agrias (Hallowed Bolt, Freedom's Wish)

Thundara Strike R5
Banishing Strike R4

Tyro (Last Judgment Grimoire, Devotion)

Swift Bolt R4
Poison Shell R1

Terra (Magitek Missile, Vow of Vengeance)

Thundaja R4
Blizzaja R3

Ramza (Tailwind, Self-Sacrifice)

Lifesiphon R3
Magic Breakdown R4

Garnet (Divine Guardian, Mako Might)

Curaja R4
Shellga R2

Synergy equipment: Mythgraven Blade on Agrias, MAG+30 accessory and Ice Rod++ on Tyro
RW: Indomitable Blade
one more turn from dying, i'm good

[Captain K]

SS2/SG duration is fixed, equipment doesn't matter at all. Mind only matters for named status effects (Protect, Haste, Sleep, Paralysis, etc.), not straight stat buffs/debuffs.

Just searched the subreddit and found nothing supporting what you just said.  Whenever it was discussed there was no definitive answer.  My anecdotal evidence over the past 5 days of hundreds of battles with Ultima leads me to believe that it is a thing.  Put some mind gear on your RW.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You haven't searched hard enough, that info's pretty clearly spelt on the happypluto .pdf (aka the best, most complete compendium of FFRK mechanics around). It should be on the most recent updates as well.

[Captain K]

First place I looked.  Mind in relation to soul breaks is not addressed on there.

[hinode]

Soul break duration for direct stat modifiers like SG, Heroic Harmony, are listed at 25s, 10s, etc. because their duration is fixed. Page 31 of the current pdf then shows how stuff like Protect, Regen, Stop, etc. are modified by mind, but not abilities like Rallying Etude or Power Break. Page 31 only lists abilities and not soul breaks because there are like a million of them that buff or debuff a stat at this point.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

First place I looked.  Mind in relation to soul breaks is not addressed on there.

That's because it's addressed as a set timer. The compendium lists SG's ID (608, DEF+RES, shared by Memento of Protection) and points out its duration at 25s, unaffected by other factors.

[Meeplelard]

To be clear, isn't it 25 Seconds based off 3 Battle Speed?  It matters because obviously it'll be more or less based off what speed setting you're at.  I think the general rule is 5 seconds is akin to about 1 turn, assuming no Haste + a standard action.


Anyway, Spring Login Bonuses dropped.  Yay More Mithril!  Also they're actually giving us the free crap from Logres Event we didn't get because seriously that was the dumbest collab event they ever did (we'll probably never see the Soul Breaks they gave there for that matter.)  Free Waterga Strike and Tornado Strike?  I'm game.  Also a free 5* Staff which is more of a 4.5* Staff that gives White Mage a Medica!  I suppose it'll be useful for the upcoming White Mage abyss if you need more White Sticks.

[Captain K]

I was having to recast after three actions (SS2, Saint's Cross, Saint's Cross, Saint' Cross, SS2) to have continuous coverage.  Granted Saint's Cross has a 1.8 second cast time, but even with that and cast time of the RW I wasn't getting 5 actions worth.