Surprised Cressy has dropped out of OU since it was near the top there for a while as a good Specsmence counter. I assume the metagame has moved on from that. (If it's not clear I haven't paid attention to the metagame in quite a while, over a year anyway.)
I see a Garchomp, and I just have Weavile ice punch them, so I don't see the big deal. >_>
Token Grefter enjoying mc analysis goes here. Numbers, conclusions, good times.
I am, however, unsure as to the standing of Focus Sash in tournaments, which would bring it back around in Weavile's favor.
Yache Berry is really the key item you are missing in your analysis here, as that's what pushed Garchomp over the edge. It takes something silly like Choice Specs Glaceon Ice Beam to actually OHKO Yachechomp, which means typically you need *two* Pokemon to stop it: one to remove the Yache Berry and one to finish the job.
but I suspect the fact that it is taking them forever to get through Garchomp/Deoxys-S/Skymin/Latias/Latios/Manaphy has a lot to do with it
Under Wobbuffet - damn your Smash Brothers form - there is only one setup listed. ( http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/wobbuffet )
It is "Oh, no! It's Wobbuffet!"
They're testing Shamyn-S? Hmm...
They were testing, rather. You can see what the results are, although Skymin managed the curious feat of apparantly performing much better with Garchomp/Latios/Latias/Manaphy - it was extremely controversial when tested alone and only got a 51% Uber margin, but got a supermajority when tested in a metagame with all the other 'Suspect' Pokemon (except Deo-S which completely dominated the first week and got a swift boot - although Scarf Skymin can actually beat Deo-S one on one!).
I think both of them were created because psychic types really needed a counter of some sort and a new type or two seemed to be the best way to accomplish that.
| Tot_Stat | HP | Def | SDef |
| 34 | 0 | 17 | 17 |
| 102 | 34 | 34 | 34 |
| 234 | 100 | 67 | 67 |
| 302 | 134 | 84 | 84 |
| 334 | 150 | 92 | 92 |
| 368 | 168 | 100 | 100 |
| Tot_Stat | HP | Def | SDef |
| 20 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| 60 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| 220 | 100 | 60 | 60 |
| 300 | 140 | 80 | 80 |
| 380 | 180 | 100 | 100 |
| Card | Mana | Stats | Extras | When you cast |
| Artisan of Kozilek (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193429) | 9 | 10/9 Annihilator 2 | return a creature from your graveyard to play | |
| Kozilek, Butcher of Truth (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193632) | 10 | 12/12 Annihilator 4 | draw 4 cards | |
| Ulamog, the infinite Gyre (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=194911) | 11 | 10/10 Annihilator 4 | indestructible | destroy target permanent |
| Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193452) | 15 | 15/15 flying Annihilator 6 | can't be countered, protection from coloured spells | take an extra turn after this one |
On a related note, how decent is Scizor's coverage potential with the standard set? I'm blanking off-hand.
print "hello world"
# [No,Fr,Wa,El,Gs,Ic,Ft,Po,Gd,Fl,Ps,Bu,Ro,Gh,Dr,Da,St]
Types = [[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1,.5, 2, 1,.5,.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1,.5,.5, 2, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 2,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2,.5,.5, 1, 1,.5, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 0, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[.5,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1,.5,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1],
[.5, 2, 1, 1,.5,.5, 2, 0, 2,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5]]
typenames = ["Normal","Fire","Water","Electric","Grass","Ice",
"Fighting","Poison","Ground","Flying","Psychic","Bug",
"Rock","Ghost","Dragon","Dark","Steel"]
print len(Types), "and"
for i in range(0,len(Types)):
weak = 0
strong = 0
null = 0
for j in range(0,len(Types[i])):
if( Types[i][j] == 2 ):
weak = weak+1
elif( Types[i][j] == 0.5 ):
strong = strong+1
elif( Types[i][j] == 0 ):
null = null+1
elif( Types[i][j] != 1 ):
print "ERROR ", i, j, " fails"
print typenames[i], " has ", weak, " weaknesses ", strong, " defences and ", null, " nulls."Normal has 1 weaknesses 0 defences and 1 nulls.
Fire has 3 weaknesses 5 defences and 0 nulls.
Water has 2 weaknesses 4 defences and 0 nulls.
Electric has 1 weaknesses 3 defences and 0 nulls.
Grass has 5 weaknesses 4 defences and 0 nulls.
Ice has 4 weaknesses 1 defences and 0 nulls.
Fighting has 2 weaknesses 3 defences and 0 nulls.
Poison has 2 weaknesses 4 defences and 0 nulls.
Ground has 3 weaknesses 2 defences and 1 nulls.
Flying has 3 weaknesses 3 defences and 1 nulls.
Psychic has 3 weaknesses 2 defences and 0 nulls.
Bug has 3 weaknesses 3 defences and 0 nulls.
Rock has 5 weaknesses 4 defences and 0 nulls.
Ghost has 2 weaknesses 2 defences and 2 nulls.
Dragon has 2 weaknesses 4 defences and 0 nulls.
Dark has 2 weaknesses 2 defences and 1 nulls.
Steel has 3 weaknesses 11 defences and 1 nulls.
for j in range(0,len(Types[i])):
if( Types[j][i] == 2 ):
weak = weak+1
elif( Types[j][i] == 0.5 ):
strong = strong+1
elif( Types[j][i] == 0 ):
null = null+1
elif( Types[j][i] != 1 ):
print "ERROR ", i, j, " fails"
print typenames[i], " hits ", weak, " weaknesses ", strong, " resistances and ", null, " nulls."Normal hits 0 weaknesses 2 resistances and 1 nulls.
Fire hits 4 weaknesses 4 resistances and 0 nulls.
Water hits 3 weaknesses 3 resistances and 0 nulls.
Electric hits 2 weaknesses 3 resistances and 1 nulls.
Grass hits 3 weaknesses 7 resistances and 0 nulls.
Ice hits 4 weaknesses 4 resistances and 0 nulls.
Fighting hits 5 weaknesses 4 resistances and 1 nulls.
Poison hits 1 weaknesses 4 resistances and 1 nulls.
Ground hits 5 weaknesses 2 resistances and 1 nulls.
Flying hits 3 weaknesses 3 resistances and 0 nulls.
Psychic hits 2 weaknesses 2 resistances and 1 nulls.
Bug hits 3 weaknesses 6 resistances and 0 nulls.
Rock hits 4 weaknesses 3 resistances and 0 nulls.
Ghost hits 2 weaknesses 2 resistances and 1 nulls.
Dragon hits 1 weaknesses 1 resistances and 0 nulls.
Dark hits 2 weaknesses 3 resistances and 0 nulls.
Steel hits 2 weaknesses 4 resistances and 0 nulls.
As my thoughts no longer belong to Activision
QuoteAs my thoughts no longer belong to Activision
Yay!
Generally speaking I'd say it's more important to avoid resistances than hit weaknesses so you can't be forced to switch out, though it does vary on the pokemon (e.g. revenge killers). Also it might be more practical to count not types, but the typings (including any duals) of all OU pokemon (or uber, or whatever).
As far as metagame-specific numbers, X-Act has previously calculated which attacking types did best for each metagame based on the proportional usage for each ladder. The results from the last set of numbers are here:
http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue3/attacking_types
This was eight months ago, but I doubt the general results (i.e. special Fire being the best type in OU) will have changed much - especially in the standard metagame, which is pretty stable.
print "hello world"
# [No,Fr,Wa,El,Gs,Ic,Ft,Po,Gd,Fl,Ps,Bu,Ro,Gh,Dr,Da,St]
Types = [[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1,.5, 2, 1,.5,.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1,.5,.5, 2, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 2,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2,.5,.5, 1, 1,.5, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 0, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[.5,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1,.5,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1],
[.5, 2, 1, 1,.5,.5, 2, 0, 2,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5]]
typenames = ["Normal","Fire","Water","Electric","Grass","Ice",
"Fighting","Poison","Ground","Flying","Psychic","Bug",
"Rock","Ghost","Dragon","Dark","Steel"]
nummoves = 4
moves = []
for i in range(0,nummoves):
moves.append(nummoves - i - 1)
print moves
tophitters = []
while True:
total_hit = 0;
for i in range(0,len(Types)):
for j in range(0,len(moves)):
if( Types[i][moves[j]] > 1 ):
total_hit = total_hit + 1
break
#print moves, " deal ", total_hit
#okay, this is hacky, but I haven't touched python in a while, so...
#the first number in the array will be how well the moves perform (for
#sorting purposes) and the next X numbers in the array will be the
#moves.
temparray = []
temparray.append(total_hit)
for i in range(0,len(moves)):
temparray.append(moves[i])
tophitters.append(temparray)
if(len(tophitters) > 32):
tophitters.sort()
tophitters.pop(0)
#increment the move list; this is a basic n choose r construction
#we move the first variable all the way to the top, and then we
#increment the second variable and reset the first variable to
#be just to the right of the second (avoids repeats).
shouldexit = True
for i in range(0,len(moves)):
if( moves[i] < 16-i ): #17 types, but array indexing means we don't want to increment if we're at 16
moves[i] = moves[i]+1
shouldexit = False;
for j in range(0, i):
moves[j] = moves[i]+(i-j)
break
if shouldexit:
break
#print moves
#Right, remember there's nothing special going on in the above code,
#just iterating over all possible combinations of X different moves,
#where X is nummoves. The above code is just dealing with the fact
#that we don't know X, so can't just write 4 nested for loops.
print "WE MADE IT"
print tophitters
tophitters.sort()
for i in range(0,len(tophitters)):
#translate from array indices into english. Again, remember we don't
#know the number of moves, hence the for loop.
englishnames = []
for j in range(1,len(tophitters[i])):
englishnames.append(typenames[tophitters[i][j]])
#remember the hacky I mentioned above? The first number in the array
#is how well this move combination did, and not actually a move.
#Yeah, I know: cringeworthy code.
print tophitters[i][0], ": ", englishnames
6 : ['Dark', 'Fire']
6 : ['Dark', 'Ice']
6 : ['Dark', 'Rock']
6 : ['Steel', 'Ice']
6 : ['Steel', 'Ground']
7 : ['Water', 'Fire']
7 : ['Grass', 'Fire']
7 : ['Ice', 'Fire']
7 : ['Fighting', 'Fire']
7 : ['Fighting', 'Water']
7 : ['Fighting', 'Electric']
7 : ['Fighting', 'Grass']
7 : ['Ground', 'Electric']
7 : ['Ground', 'Grass']
7 : ['Psychic', 'Fighting']
7 : ['Bug', 'Fighting']
7 : ['Rock', 'Grass']
7 : ['Rock', 'Ice']
7 : ['Rock', 'Bug']
7 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting']
7 : ['Ghost', 'Ground']
7 : ['Dark', 'Fighting']
7 : ['Dark', 'Ground']
8 : ['Ground', 'Fire']
8 : ['Ground', 'Fighting']
8 : ['Flying', 'Fighting']
8 : ['Flying', 'Ground']
8 : ['Bug', 'Ground']
8 : ['Rock', 'Fighting']
8 : ['Rock', 'Ground']
9 : ['Fighting', 'Ice']
9 : ['Ground', 'Ice']
10 : ['Rock', 'Flying', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Rock', 'Flying', 'Ground']
10 : ['Rock', 'Psychic', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Grass']
10 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Fire']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Flying', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Flying', 'Ground']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Ground']
10 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Fire']
10 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Dark', 'Flying', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Dark', 'Flying', 'Ground']
10 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Fighting']
10 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Ground']
10 : ['Steel', 'Ground', 'Ice']
11 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
11 : ['Flying', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
11 : ['Flying', 'Ground', 'Ice']
11 : ['Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting']
11 : ['Psychic', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
11 : ['Bug', 'Ground', 'Ice']
11 : ['Rock', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
11 : ['Rock', 'Ground', 'Ice']
11 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Ground']
11 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
11 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice']
11 : ['Dark', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
11 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice']
12 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
12 : ['Steel', 'Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice']
12 : ['Steel', 'Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
13 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Electric']
13 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Grass']
13 : ['Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Electric']
13 : ['Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Grass']
13 : ['Psychic', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Bug', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
13 : ['Bug', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Bug', 'Flying', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Rock', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Rock', 'Psychic', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Ground', 'Grass']
13 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Flying', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Flying', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Psychic', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
13 : ['Dark', 'Flying', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Dark', 'Flying', 'Ground', 'Ice']
13 : ['Dark', 'Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting']
13 : ['Dark', 'Psychic', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
13 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Ground', 'Ice']
14 : ['Flying', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
14 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
14 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
# [No,Fr,Wa,El,Gs,Ic,Ft,Po,Gd,Fl,Ps,Bu,Ro,Gh,Dr,Da,St]
Types = [[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1,.5, 2, 1,.5,.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1,.5,.5, 2, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5],
[ 1, 2,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2,.5,.5, 1, 1,.5, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5,.5, 2, 1, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 0, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1, 2, 1, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1,.5, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[.5,.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,.5, 2,.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2],
[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0,.5, 1, 1, 1,.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1],
[ 1,.5,.5,.5,.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1],
[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1,.5, 1,.5, 1],
[.5, 2, 1, 1,.5,.5, 2, 0, 2,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5]]
typenames = ["Normal","Fire","Water","Electric","Grass","Ice",
"Fighting","Poison","Ground","Flying","Psychic","Bug",
"Rock","Ghost","Dragon","Dark","Steel"]
OUPokedex = [["Scizor","Bug","Steel","",28.69],
["Tyranitar","Rock","Dark","",21.51],
["Salamence","Flying","Dragon","",20.91],
["Heatran","Fire","Steel","Flash Fire",19.49],
["Gyarados","Water","Flying","",17.35],
["Latias","Psychic","Dragon","Levitate",16.9],
["Gengar","Poison","Ghost","Levitate",15.97],
["Metagross","Psychic","Steel","",15.55],
["Swampert","Water","Ground","",15.27],
["Jirachi","Psychic","Steel","",15.2],
["Infernape","Fire","Fighting","",14.15],
["Lucario","Fighting","Steel","",13.47],
["Starmie","Water","Psychic","",12.51],
["Blissey","Normal","","",12.23],
["Skarmory","Flying","Steel","",11.13],
["Machamp","Fighting","","",10.49],
["Gliscor","Ground","Flying","",10.4],
["Breloom","Grass","Fighting","",10.33],
["Azelf","Psychic","","Levitate",9.89],
["Vaporeon","Water","","Water Absorb",9.76],
["Rotom-h","Electric","Ghost","Levitate",9.53],
["Magnezone","Electric","Steel","",9.1],
["Suicune","Water","","",8.11],
["Jolteon","Electric","","Volt Absorb",7.55],
["Bronzong","Psychic","Steel","Levitate",7.34],
["Flygon","Ground","Dragon","Levitate",7.31],
["Celebi","Grass","Psychic","",7.23],
["Dragonite","Flying","Dragon","",7.12],
["Togekiss","Normal","Flying","",7.11],
["Aerodactyl","Flying","Rock","",7.05],
["Kingdra","Water","Dragon","",6.91],
["Zapdos","Electric","Flying","",6.86],
["Forretress","Bug","Steel","",6.69],
["Empoleon","Water","Steel","",6.25],
["Electivire","Electric","","Motor Drive",6.14],
["Weavile","Ice","Dark","",5.69],
["Dusknoir","Ghost","","",5.22],
["Snorlax","Normal","","",4.93],
["Mamoswine","Ice","Ground","",4.93],
["Ninjask","Bug","Flying","",4.8],
["Hippowdon","Ground","","",4.49],
["Tentacruel","Water","Poison","",4.3],
["Roserade","Grass","Poison","",4.04],
["Smeargle","Normal","","",3.96],
["Heracross","Fighting","Bug","",3.79],
["Umbreon","Dark","","",3.6],
["Porygonz","Normal","","",3.16],
["Alakazam","Psychic","","",3.01],
["Rotom-w","Electric","Ghost","Levitate",2.86],
["Rotom-c","Electric","Ghost","Levitate",2.72],
["Abomasnow","Grass","Ice","",2.7],
["Ludicolo","Water","Grass","",2.58],
["Yanmega","Flying","Bug","",2.43],
["Cresselia","Psychic","","Levitate",2.35],
["Crobat","Poison","Flying","",2.33],
["Gallade","Fighting","Psychic","",2.29],
["Arcanine","Fire","","(50% usage) Flash Fire",2.27],
["Dugtrio","Ground","","",2.25],
["Rhyperior","Ground","Rock","Solid Rock",2.24],
["Ambipom","Normal","","",2.23],
["Milotic","Water","","",2.23],
["Froslass","Ice","Ghost","",2.13],
["Clefable","Normal","","",2.05],
["Porygon2","Normal","","",2.04],
["Charizard","Fire","Flying","",1.97],
["Uxie","Psychic","","Levitate",1.9],
["Kabutops","Water","Rock","",1.82],
["Donphan","Ground","","",1.79],
["Slowbro","Water","Psychic","",1.69],
["Honchkrow","Flying","Dark","",1.69],
["Walrein","Water","Ice","",1.63],
["Spiritomb","Ghost","Dark","",1.61],
["Registeel","Steel","","",1.57],
["Blastoise","Water","","",1.55],
["Venusaur","Grass","Poison","",1.49],
["Sceptile","Grass","","",1.47],
["Weezing","Poison","","Levitate",1.41],
["Mismagius","Ghost","","Levitate",1.37],
["Shuckle","Bug","Rock","",1.32],
["Hitmontop","Fighting","","",1.29],
["Claydol","Ground","Psychic","Levitate",1.28],
["Lanturn","Water","Electric","Volt Absorb",1.27],
["Feraligatr","Water","","",1.25],
["Cradily","Grass","Rock","",1.25],
["Electrode","Electric","","",1.23],
["Houndoom","Fire","Dark","Flash Fire",1.22],
["Shaymin","Grass","","",1.2],
["Typhlosion","Fire","","",1.18],
["Marowak","Ground","","",1.12],
["Blaziken","Fire","Fighting","",1.1],
["Raikou","Electric","","",1.1],
["Espeon","Psychic","","",1.05],
["Azumarill","Water","","",1.03],
["Staraptor","Normal","Flying","",1.02],
["Steelix","Ground","Steel","",1.01],
["Miltank","Normal","","",0.99],
["Absol","Dark","","",0.96],
["Aggron","Rock","Steel","",0.88],
["Rotom-f","Electric","Ghost","Levitate",0.88],
["Hariyama","Fighting","","(50% usage) Thick Fat",0.86],
["Tangrowth","Grass","","",0.85],
["Slowking","Water","Psychic","",0.84],
["Drapion","Poison","Dark","",0.84],
["Toxicroak","Poison","Fighting","Dry Skin",0.81],
["Ursaring","Normal","","",0.81],
["Gardevoir","Psychic","","",0.78],
["Drifblim","Flying","Ghost","",0.77],
["Torterra","Grass","Ground","",0.77],
["Cacturne","Grass","Dark","",0.77],
["Glaceon","Ice","","",0.76],
["Medicham","Fighting","Psychic","",0.75],
["Magmortar","Fire","","",0.75],
["Leafeon","Grass","","",0.74],
["Swellow","Normal","Flying","",0.73],
["Rampardos","Rock","","",0.72],
["Mr.Mime","Psychic","","",0.71],
["Ninetales","Fire","","Flash Fire",0.69],
["Nidoking","Poison","Ground","",0.69],
["Slaking","Normal","","",0.68],
["Lapras","Water","Ice","Water Absorb",0.68],
["Qwilfish","Water","Poison","",0.66],
["Exeggutor","Grass","Psychic","",0.65],
["Poliwrath","Water","Fighting","Water Absorb",0.62],
["Jumpluff","Grass","Flying","",0.62],
["Cloyster","Water","Ice","",0.6],
["Floatzel","Water","","",0.6],
["Shedinja","Bug","Ghost","Wonder Guard",0.6],
["Pikachu","Electric","","",0.58]]
def process_ability( ability, list ):
if( ability == "" ):
return list
elif( ability == "Flash Fire" ):
list[typenames.index("Fire")] = 0
elif( ability == "Levitate" ):
list[typenames.index("Ground")] = 0
elif( ability == "Water Absorb" ):
list[typenames.index("Water")] = 0
elif( ability == "Volt Absorb" ):
list[typenames.index("Electric")] = 0
elif( ability == "Motor Drive" ):
list[typenames.index("Electric")] = 0
elif( ability == "(50% usage) Flash Fire" ):
list[typenames.index("Fire")] *= 0.5
elif( ability == "(50% usage) Thick Fat" ):
list[typenames.index("Fire")] *= 0.75
list[typenames.index("Ice")] *= 0.75
elif( ability == "Dry Skin" ):
list[typenames.index("Fire")] *= 1.25
list[typenames.index("Water")] = 0
elif( ability == "Solid Rock" ):
for i in range(0,len(list)):
if( list[i] > 1 ):
list[i] = 0.75*list[i]
elif( ability == "Wonder Guard" ):
for i in range(0,len(list)):
if( list[i] < 2 ):
list[i] = 0
else:
print "ERROR, no such ability"
return list
OUTypechart = []
for pok in range(0,len(OUPokedex)):
thispokemon = []
type1 = typenames.index(OUPokedex[pok][1])
type2 = -1
if( OUPokedex[pok][2] != "" ):
type2 = typenames.index(OUPokedex[pok][2])
for i in range(0,len(Types)):
thispokemon.append(Types[type1][i])
if( type2 != -1 ):
thispokemon[i] *= Types[type2][i]
thispokemon = process_ability( OUPokedex[pok][3], thispokemon )
thispokemon.append(OUPokedex[pok][4])
OUTypechart.append(thispokemon)
for i in range (0, len(OUTypechart) ):
print OUPokedex[i][0], OUTypechart[i]
Scizor [0.5, 4, 1, 1, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 28.690000000000001]
Tyranitar [0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 4, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 0, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 2, 21.510000000000002]
Salamence [1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.25, 4, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 20.91]
Heatran [0.5, 0, 2, 1, 0.25, 0.25, 2, 0, 4, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 19.489999999999998]
Gyarados [1, 0.5, 0.5, 4, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 17.350000000000001]
Latias [1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 16.899999999999999]
Gengar [0, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.0, 0.25, 0, 1, 2, 0.25, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 15.970000000000001]
Metagross [0.5, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 2, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 15.550000000000001]
Swampert [1, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 4, 1.0, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 15.27]
Jirachi [0.5, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 2, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 15.199999999999999]
Infernape [1, 0.5, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 0.25, 1.0, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 14.15]
Lucario [0.5, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0, 2, 1.0, 1.0, 0.25, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 0.5, 13.470000000000001]
Starmie [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 12.51]
Blissey [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 12.23]
Skarmory [0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.25, 1.0, 1.0, 0, 0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 11.130000000000001]
Machamp [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 10.49]
Gliscor [1, 1, 2, 0, 1.0, 4, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 10.4]
Breloom [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 4, 2, 1.0, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 10.33]
Azelf [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 9.8900000000000006]
Vaporeon [1, 0.5, 0, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 9.7599999999999998]
Rotom-h [0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 9.5299999999999994]
Magnezone [0.5, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0, 4, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 9.0999999999999996]
Suicune [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 8.1099999999999994]
Jolteon [1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 7.5499999999999998]
Bronzong [0.5, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 0, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 7.3399999999999999]
Flygon [1, 0.5, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 4, 1, 0.5, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 1, 7.3099999999999996]
Celebi [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 7.2300000000000004]
Dragonite [1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.25, 4, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 7.1200000000000001]
Togekiss [1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 7.1100000000000003]
Aerodactyl [0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 1.0, 2, 1.0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 7.0499999999999998]
Kingdra [1, 0.25, 0.25, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 0.5, 6.9100000000000001]
Zapdos [1, 1, 1, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 1, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 6.8600000000000003]
Forretress [0.5, 4, 1, 1, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 6.6900000000000004]
Empoleon [0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 0.25, 2, 0, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 6.25]
Electivire [1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 6.1399999999999997]
Weavile [1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 4, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 2, 5.6900000000000004]
Dusknoir [0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 5.2199999999999998]
Snorlax [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 4.9299999999999997]
Mamoswine [1, 2, 2, 0, 2, 1.0, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 4.9299999999999997]
Ninjask [1, 2, 1, 2, 0.25, 2, 0.25, 1, 0.0, 2, 1, 0.5, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.7999999999999998]
Hippowdon [1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.4900000000000002]
Tentacruel [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 4.2999999999999998]
Roserade [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 2, 0.5, 1.0, 1.0, 2, 2, 1.0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.04]
Smeargle [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3.96]
Heracross [1, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 4, 2, 0.5, 1.0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 3.79]
Umbreon [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 3.6000000000000001]
Porygonz [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3.1600000000000001]
Alakazam [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3.0099999999999998]
Rotom-w [0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2.8599999999999999]
Rotom-c [0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2.7200000000000002]
Abomasnow [1, 4, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 2, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2.7000000000000002]
Ludicolo [1, 1.0, 0.25, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2.5800000000000001]
Yanmega [1, 2, 1, 2, 0.25, 2, 0.25, 1, 0.0, 2, 1, 0.5, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2.4300000000000002]
Cresselia [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.3500000000000001]
Crobat [1, 1, 1, 2, 0.25, 2, 0.25, 0.5, 0, 1, 2, 0.25, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2.3300000000000001]
Gallade [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 1, 1.0, 1, 2.29]
Arcanine [1, 0.25, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2.27]
Dugtrio [1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2.25]
Rhyperior [0.5, 0.5, 3.0, 0, 3.0, 1.5, 1.5, 0.25, 1.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1.5, 2.2400000000000002]
Ambipom [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2.23]
Milotic [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2.23]
Froslass [0, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2.1299999999999999]
Clefable [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2.0499999999999998]
Porygon2 [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2.04]
Charizard [1, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.25, 1.0, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.25, 4, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.97]
Uxie [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1.8999999999999999]
Kabutops [0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 2, 4, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.0, 1.8200000000000001]
Donphan [1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.79]
Slowbro [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 1.6899999999999999]
Honchkrow [1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1.0, 2, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 1.6899999999999999]
Walrein [1, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.25, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1.0, 1.6299999999999999]
Spiritomb [0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 1.0, 1, 1.0, 1, 1.0, 1, 1.6100000000000001]
Registeel [0.5, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.5700000000000001]
Blastoise [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.55]
Venusaur [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 2, 0.5, 1.0, 1.0, 2, 2, 1.0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.49]
Sceptile [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.47]
Weezing [1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.4099999999999999]
Mismagius [0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1.3700000000000001]
Shuckle [0.5, 1.0, 2, 1, 1.0, 1, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1.3200000000000001]
Hitmontop [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1.29]
Claydol [1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 1, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1.28]
Lanturn [1, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.25, 1.27]
Feraligatr [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.25]
Cradily [0.5, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 2, 2, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1.25]
Electrode [1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.23]
Houndoom [1, 0, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0, 1.0, 2, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.22]
Shaymin [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.2]
Typhlosion [1, 0.5, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.1799999999999999]
Marowak [1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.1200000000000001]
Blaziken [1, 0.5, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 0.25, 1.0, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1.1000000000000001]
Raikou [1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.1000000000000001]
Espeon [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1.05]
Azumarill [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1.03]
Staraptor [1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1.02]
Steelix [0.5, 2, 2, 0, 1.0, 1.0, 2, 0.0, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.01]
Miltank [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.98999999999999999]
Absol [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.95999999999999996]
Aggron [0.25, 1.0, 2, 1, 1.0, 0.5, 4, 0.0, 4, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.88]
Rotom-f [0, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 0.88]
Hariyama [1, 0.75, 1, 1, 1, 0.75, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.85999999999999999]
Tangrowth [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.84999999999999998]
Slowking [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 0.83999999999999997]
Drapion [1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 1, 0, 1.0, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.83999999999999997]
Toxicroak [1, 1.25, 0, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 4, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.81000000000000005]
Ursaring [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.81000000000000005]
Gardevoir [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0.78000000000000003]
Drifblim [0, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.0, 0.5, 0, 1, 1, 0.25, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0.77000000000000002]
Torterra [1, 2, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 4, 1, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.77000000000000002]
Cacturne [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 2, 0.5, 2, 0, 4, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1, 0.77000000000000002]
Glaceon [1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.76000000000000001]
Medicham [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 1, 1.0, 1, 0.75]
Magmortar [1, 0.5, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.75]
Leafeon [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.73999999999999999]
Swellow [1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.72999999999999998]
Rampardos [0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.71999999999999997]
Mr.Mime [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0.70999999999999996]
Ninetales [1, 0, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0.5, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.68999999999999995]
Nidoking [1, 1, 2, 0, 1.0, 2, 0.5, 0.25, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.68999999999999995]
Slaking [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.68000000000000005]
Lapras [1, 1.0, 0, 2, 2, 0.25, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1.0, 0.68000000000000005]
Qwilfish [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.66000000000000003]
Exeggutor [1, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 2, 0.5, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0.65000000000000002]
Poliwrath [1, 0.5, 0, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.62]
Jumpluff [1, 2, 0.5, 1.0, 0.25, 4, 0.5, 2, 0.0, 2, 1, 1.0, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.62]
Cloyster [1, 1.0, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.25, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1.0, 0.59999999999999998]
Floatzel [1, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.59999999999999998]
Shedinja [0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 0, 0.59999999999999998]
Pikachu [1, 1, 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.57999999999999996]def attack_score( opponent, attacktype ):
#this function references the global OUTypechart
#
#EDIT ME! This function is designed to be edited. Want to put more
#weight on avoiding resistance than hitting weakness so that you don't?
#get walled? Try inverting the damage. Want to do the calculation
#assuming you have Ice STAB?
#If( attacktype is ice ) multiply result by 1.5
#Want to calculate assuming the Tinted Lens ability? Just multiply the
#appropriate moves by 2.
#
#This function returns a number. Higher numbers will be chosen over
#lower numbers when the pokemon picks its best damage.
#Here's the simplest version of this function, just maximize your
#damage (doesn't stop you from being walled, but will get a lot of
#weaknesses).
#
return OUTypechart[opponent][attacktype]
nummoves = 1
moves = []
for i in range(0,nummoves):
moves.append(nummoves - i - 1)
#print moves
tophitters = []
while True:
total_percentage = 0;
for i in range(0,len(OUTypechart)):
max_output = -9999
for j in range(0,len(moves)):
max_output = max( max_output, attack_score( i, moves[j] ) )
total_percentage += max_output * OUTypechart[i][len(Types)]
#print moves, " deal ", total_hit
#okay, this is hacky, but I haven't touched python in a while, so...
#the first number in the array will be how well the moves perform (for
#sorting purposes) and the next X numbers in the array will be the
#moves.
temparray = []
temparray.append(total_percentage/575) #575 just because Shoddy percentages add up to 600% (6 pokes per team)
for i in range(0,len(moves)):
temparray.append(moves[i])
tophitters.append(temparray)
if(len(tophitters) > 32):
tophitters.sort()
tophitters.pop(0)
#increment the move list; this is a basic n choose r construction
#we move the first variable all the way to the top, and then we
#increment the second variable and reset the first variable to
#be just to the right of the second (avoids repeats).
shouldexit = True
for i in range(0,len(moves)):
if( moves[i] < 16-i ): #17 types, but array indexing means we don't want to increment if we're at 16
moves[i] = moves[i]+1
shouldexit = False;
for j in range(0, i):
moves[j] = moves[i]+(i-j)
break
if shouldexit:
break
#print moves
#Right, remember there's nothing special going on in the above code,
#just iterating over all possible combinations of X different moves,
#where X is nummoves. The above code is just dealing with the fact
#that we don't know X, so can't just write 4 nested for loops.
print "WE MADE IT"
print tophitters
tophitters.sort()
for i in range(0,len(tophitters)):
#translate from array indices into english. Again, remember we don't
#know the number of moves, hence the for loop.
englishnames = []
for j in range(1,len(tophitters[i])):
englishnames.append(typenames[tophitters[i][j]])
#remember the hacky I mentioned above? The first number in the array
#is how well this move combination did, and not actually a move.
#Yeah, I know: cringeworthy code.
print tophitters[i][0], ": ", englishnames
0.680495652174 : ['Poison']
0.769773913043 : ['Normal']
0.815291304348 : ['Steel']
0.884752173913 : ['Psychic']
0.93302173913 : ['Bug']
0.943917391304 : ['Grass']
0.979139130435 : ['Dragon']
0.990086956522 : ['Ghost']
1.01332173913 : ['Ground']
1.01410869565 : ['Dark']
1.02669130435 : ['Water']
1.03828695652 : ['Flying']
1.06770434783 : ['Electric']
1.08676521739 : ['Rock']
1.11244347826 : ['Fighting']
1.21026521739 : ['Fire']
1.21363913043 : ['Ice']
#This is a first pass at minimizing walling; just inverts the damage
#taking 8 for a null damage result (worse than a W4)
if( OUTypechart[opponent][attacktype] > 0 ):
return ((-1)/float(OUTypechart[opponent][attacktype]))
else:
return (-8)
-3.17783623188 : ['Ground']
-2.94306086957 : ['Poison']
-1.86510869565 : ['Electric']
-1.85143043478 : ['Psychic']
-1.83008695652 : ['Normal']
-1.78062463768 : ['Grass']
-1.70187536232 : ['Fighting']
-1.66867391304 : ['Bug']
-1.6484173913 : ['Ghost']
-1.58449275362 : ['Steel']
-1.46804289855 : ['Fire']
-1.34724637681 : ['Water']
-1.3165 : ['Ice']
-1.26288695652 : ['Dark']
-1.2364173913 : ['Flying']
-1.18893043478 : ['Dragon']
-1.18579130435 : ['Rock']
-0.891043478261 : ['Flying', 'Fire']
-0.888079710145 : ['Ghost', 'Ground']
-0.884741449275 : ['Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.87887826087 : ['Bug', 'Electric']
-0.877905797101 : ['Fighting', 'Electric']
-0.871557971014 : ['Ground', 'Fire']
-0.87154057971 : ['Flying', 'Ground']
-0.871115942029 : ['Dragon', 'Water']
-0.86772173913 : ['Ghost', 'Rock']
-0.862230434783 : ['Dragon', 'Electric']
-0.855515942029 : ['Flying', 'Water']
-0.854715942029 : ['Rock', 'Water']
-0.85452115942 : ['Dark', 'Fire']
-0.849986956522 : ['Dark', 'Electric']
-0.848724637681 : ['Dark', 'Water']
-0.836644927536 : ['Dragon', 'Ground']
-0.833692753623 : ['Flying', 'Fighting']
-0.82937826087 : ['Ghost', 'Electric']
-0.825628985507 : ['Ghost', 'Water']
-0.823779130435 : ['Ghost', 'Fire']
-0.822005797101 : ['Dragon', 'Fighting']
-0.816809565217 : ['Electric', 'Fire']
-0.815657391304 : ['Dragon', 'Fire']
-0.80741884058 : ['Dark', 'Ground']
-0.805688405797 : ['Rock', 'Ground']
-0.799808115942 : ['Rock', 'Fire']
-0.794475362319 : ['Ice', 'Electric']
-0.79251884058 : ['Rock', 'Fighting']
-0.784710144928 : ['Dark', 'Fighting']
-0.774066666667 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting']
-0.771053623188 : ['Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.726692753623 : ['Ground', 'Ice']
-0.684095072464 : ['Rock', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.683410144928 : ['Dragon', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.680873333333 : ['Rock', 'Bug', 'Fire']
-0.679353043478 : ['Bug', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.677112463768 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Fire']
-0.675884057971 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Electric']
-0.675592173913 : ['Dark', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.67474057971 : ['Rock', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.674507246377 : ['Fighting', 'Ice', 'Grass']
-0.672948695652 : ['Ghost', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.672892173913 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Fire']
-0.669653623188 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Ground']
-0.668834202899 : ['Dark', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.666462318841 : ['Bug', 'Ground', 'Ice']
-0.665290724638 : ['Rock', 'Grass', 'Fire']
-0.665112463768 : ['Ghost', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.663971884058 : ['Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.66368057971 : ['Rock', 'Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.662920289855 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Grass']
-0.659284057971 : ['Fighting', 'Ice', 'Electric']
-0.659166666667 : ['Dark', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.658019710145 : ['Dark', 'Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.656523188406 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.655376231884 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.654644927536 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.654597101449 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.652001449275 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.650837101449 : ['Ice', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.642427536232 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Electric']
-0.640527536232 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice']
-0.637884057971 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice']
-0.625327536232 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.596116811594 : ['Rock', 'Fighting', 'Grass', 'Fire']
-0.595638550725 : ['Ghost', 'Ice', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.595568115942 : ['Rock', 'Ground', 'Grass', 'Fire']
-0.595551594203 : ['Ghost', 'Electric', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.595341449275 : ['Ghost', 'Ice', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.592949275362 : ['Flying', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.592773333333 : ['Ice', 'Electric', 'Water', 'Fire']
-0.590163188406 : ['Dark', 'Fighting', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.589833333333 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Grass']
-0.588571014493 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.587519710145 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.587189855072 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Grass']
-0.585927536232 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.585627536232 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Electric']
-0.585157971014 : ['Bug', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.584150144928 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.582497101449 : ['Dark', 'Rock', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.582105797101 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Electric']
-0.581506666667 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Fighting', 'Fire']
-0.581197101449 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.579853623188 : ['Ghost', 'Rock', 'Ground', 'Fire']
-0.579462318841 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Electric']
-0.578553623188 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice']
-0.57824057971 : ['Ground', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.571129855072 : ['Fighting', 'Ice', 'Grass', 'Fire']
-0.565842028986 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Grass', 'Fire']
-0.565584927536 : ['Fighting', 'Ice', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.565467536232 : ['Dark', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.563505797101 : ['Ground', 'Ice', 'Electric', 'Fire']
-0.562824057971 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.561605797101 : ['Dark', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
-0.558962318841 : ['Ghost', 'Ground', 'Ice', 'Fire']
#This is a more explicit "minimize weaknesses" calculation
if( OUTypechart[opponent][attacktype] > 0.5 ):
return 1
else:
return 0
0.496069565217 : ['Steel']
0.509391304348 : ['Grass']
0.516817391304 : ['Bug']
0.518382608696 : ['Poison']
0.609495652174 : ['Psychic']
0.613843478261 : ['Ground']
0.620347826087 : ['Normal']
0.623113043478 : ['Fire']
0.637773913043 : ['Ice']
0.648991304348 : ['Fighting']
0.686330434783 : ['Dark']
0.688939130435 : ['Ghost']
0.714886956522 : ['Flying']
0.716156521739 : ['Water']
0.740713043478 : ['Electric']
0.757686956522 : ['Dragon']
0.76107826087 : ['Rock']
0.915530434783 : ['Flying', 'Electric']
0.919965217391 : ['Fighting', 'Normal']
0.921130434783 : ['Electric', 'Fire']
0.922469565217 : ['Ghost', 'Fire']
0.930173913043 : ['Bug', 'Electric']
0.930608695652 : ['Psychic', 'Electric']
0.939756521739 : ['Ghost', 'Rock']
0.943391304348 : ['Electric', 'Normal']
0.947704347826 : ['Dark', 'Ground']
0.948886956522 : ['Rock', 'Ground']
0.951652173913 : ['Rock', 'Fire']
0.956156521739 : ['Flying', 'Fighting']
0.956365217391 : ['Fighting', 'Ice']
0.956852173913 : ['Ghost', 'Ground']
0.959008695652 : ['Dark', 'Electric']
0.962 : ['Dragon', 'Fire']
0.962730434783 : ['Dragon', 'Ground']
0.963234782609 : ['Dark', 'Water']
0.964573913043 : ['Rock', 'Water']
0.973947826087 : ['Poison', 'Water']
0.976817391304 : ['Ice', 'Electric']
0.976973913043 : ['Ghost', 'Electric']
0.977269565217 : ['Dragon', 'Electric']
0.982086956522 : ['Ground', 'Ice']
0.982817391304 : ['Flying', 'Water']
0.983686956522 : ['Ghost', 'Water']
0.983982608696 : ['Water', 'Normal']
0.983982608696 : ['Dragon', 'Water']
0.985773913043 : ['Rock', 'Fighting']
0.987895652174 : ['Dark', 'Fighting']
0.994852173913 : ['Dragon', 'Fighting']
0.995895652174 : ['Ghost', 'Fighting']
If 1x physical is needed to kill target with 15% evade:
TS: 98% to kill in one round
TH: 85% to kill in one round
If 2x physical is needed to kill target with 15% evade:
TS: 72% to kill in one round, 99% to kill in two rounds
TH: 85% to kill in one round, 98% to kill in two rounds
If 3x physical is needed to kill target with 15% evade:
TS: 89% chance to kill in two rounds
TH: 72% chance to kill in two rounds
If 4x physical is needed to kill target with 15% evade:
TS: 52% chance to kill in two rounds, 95% chance to kill in three rounds
TH: 72% chance to kill in two rounds, 94% chance to kill in three rounds
print "hello world"
Hit = 0.75
Miss = 1-Hit
Crit = 0.05
DontCrit = 1-Crit
TFHit = Hit*0.9
TFMiss = 1-TFHit
def mult_arrays ( input, factor ):
#we will need more space for the output
return_value = []
for i in range(0,len(input)+len(factor)-1):
return_value.append(0.0)
#now I make a messy loop
for i in range(0, len(return_value)):
for j in range(0,len(factor)):
if( (i-j >= 0) and (i-j < len(input)) ):
return_value[i] = return_value[i] + input[i-j]*factor[j]
return return_value
def add_arrays ( input, addition ):
#we will need more space for the output
return_value = []
for i in range(0,max(len(input),len(addition))):
return_value.append(0.0)
#and now we add. Yes, there's more efficient ways of doing this than
#constant if statements; inefficiency shouldn't be a problem today.
for i in range(0,len(return_value)):
if( i < len(input) ):
return_value[i] = return_value[i] + input[i]
if( i < len(addition) ):
return_value[i] = return_value[i] + addition[i]
return return_value
def get_TH_array():
return_value = []
for i in range(0,5):
return_value.append(0.0)
#miss
miss = [Miss]
hit = [0.0,0.0,Hit]
#hit but don't crit
justhit = mult_arrays(hit,[DontCrit])
#crit
critspread = [0.25,0.5,0.25]
crit = mult_arrays(mult_arrays(critspread,hit),[Crit])
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, miss)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, justhit)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, crit)
return return_value
def get_one_hand_TS_array(CurrHit):
CurrMiss = 1-CurrHit
return_value = []
for i in range(0,3):
return_value.append(0.0)
#miss
miss = [CurrMiss]
hit = [0.0,CurrHit]
#hit but don't crit
justhit = mult_arrays(hit,[DontCrit])
#crit
critspread = [0.5,0.5]
crit = mult_arrays(mult_arrays(critspread,hit),[Crit])
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, miss)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, justhit)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, crit)
return return_value
def get_TS_array():
return_value = []
for i in range(0,3):
return_value.append(0.0)
#miss
miss = [Miss]
#if you miss, the second hit gets turn-faced
miss = mult_arrays(miss,get_one_hand_TS_array(TFHit))
hit = [0.0,Hit]
#hit but don't crit
justhit = mult_arrays(hit,[DontCrit])
#if you just hit, then the next hit is normal propability spread
justhit = mult_arrays(justhit,get_one_hand_TS_array(Hit))
#crit
critspread = [0.5,0.5]
crit = mult_arrays(mult_arrays(critspread,hit),[Crit])
#if you crit, you might knock back. Technically knockback is 50%
#although there's a number of cases where it can't happen, so I'll
#take 40%
knockbackfailure = [0.4]
noknockback = mult_arrays([0.6],get_one_hand_TS_array(Hit))
crit = mult_arrays(crit, add_arrays(knockbackfailure,noknockback))
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, miss)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, justhit)
return_value = add_arrays(return_value, crit)
return return_value
TotalTurns = 20
def get_per_turn_probability(ThisTurn, killing_point):
Spread = [1.0]
prob_each_turn = []
for i in range(0,TotalTurns):
prob_each_turn.append(0.0)
for turn in range(0,TotalTurns):
total = 0.0
for i in range (killing_point,len(Spread)):
total = total + Spread[i]
#now store this information for further use
if( turn > 0 ):
prob_each_turn[turn] = total
Spread = mult_arrays( Spread, ThisTurn )
#print prob_each_turn
#now isolate the each-turn probability
non_cumul_prob = [prob_each_turn[0]]
for i in range (1,len(prob_each_turn)):
non_cumul_prob.append( prob_each_turn[i] - prob_each_turn[i-1] )
return non_cumul_prob
def get_average_turn(ThisTurn, killing_point):
per_turn_probability = get_per_turn_probability(ThisTurn, killing_point)
average_turn = 0.0
for i in range(0, len(per_turn_probability)):
average_turn = average_turn + i*per_turn_probability[i]
return average_turn
for durability in range(1,5):
print "If ", durability, "x physicals kill, then Two Swords kills in ", get_average_turn(get_TS_array(), durability), " turns, and Two Hands kills in ", get_average_turn(get_TH_array(), durability), " turns."
I was hoping to hear more from you on the species restrictions rules.Sure.
It seemed interesting, but you really didn't come to a conclusion about their purposes or implementations in various game genres.
They cleanly outclass stalkers (over twice the damage output vs them, same range, Blink doesn't really help)
In practice, hydras kill pretty much all Terran bio and Protoss gateway units on the ground barring caster use when going against them.
Hydras have mobility issues where they aren't easy to move around off creep and are later tier than the aforementioned units, but at appreciable army sizes they do quite soundly beat out other ground forces that don't have splash. The general accepted counter to them is either tanks (and not so much with the advent of the latest patch), colossi, or storm.
Ooh, wonder if you could do a specific analysis. Since you looked at why Garchomp was moved from OU -> Ubers, any notes on why Salamence was? I still can't quite get my head around that one. >.>
Marine/marauder/zealot/stalker is the backbone of nearly all army compositions in SC2 and come into play extremely often.
It may be because it's so much easier to clump hydras together and shoot en masse whereas stalkers don't have that advantage (despite being faster, they are larger).Hm, yeah, that's a good point I didn't take into account. (I wonder how the size varies between Marine and Hydralisk too--Marines were a lot smaller than Hydras in SC1, but I think marines are larger now).
If you want to test this out on some map at some point, I'd be more than happy to do so.
They're mid-game and late-game units. Both storm and colossi require a significant amount of time to reach, and while they certainly are major factors the main army composition is still going to be gateway units (unless they're rushing or their opponent sucks and lets you expand/mass without much issue). In particular, colossi and HT take roughly the same amount of time to reach (Twilight Council/Templar Archives + research Storm, or Robotics Facility/Robotics Support Bay + research Thermal Lance), and are massive gas investments.
A surprising number of games, whether in Bronze League or Diamond, end before tech even gets that far. Believe me, I can attest to that >_>
This is significantly later than hydra, which just requires Lair and a Hydralisk Den and is much more gas friendly.
Basically, if you're going to pick on any Zerg unit, pick on the roach. Or zerg tier 1 in general - they basically have speedlings as a bread and butter option, with banelings as a niche choice, and.... I'm just far less impressed with roaches (die to marauders, die to stalkers
and you almost have to use roaches to counter certain builds, but they really peter out quickly (matching Hydra food and being a generally inferior unit the longer the game goes on does not help).
(Admittedly, a lot of this anti-hype is because many Z I see aren't using roaches the way I feel they're intended to: you probably shouldn't build then en masse, but use them as meatshields in conjunction with lings, the same way Protoss utilizes chargelots or Terran utilizes marauders.)
As a side note: Zealots are actually horrible against stalkers. The firing animation is considerably faster than dragoons from SC1, so kiting is of minor issue (the shot goes off relatively fast).
Roach really doesn't beat stalker, though. Off creep, they're criminally slower and basically picked off by stalkers with zero issue (2.25 speed vs 2.95).
and then Pokemon BW started getting revealed all over the place, so I'll probably end up writing about my expectations for new bannings from BW.
Quoteand then Pokemon BW started getting revealed all over the place, so I'll probably end up writing about my expectations for new bannings from BW.
If you do theorymon on this, bear in mind that the tenatative (http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78764&page=4) plan (http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3012200) is to start with everything unbanned (http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79462) and rebuild the ubers list from scratch.
* Taitoro looks in. Meloia/whatever can't start in Step form, has to transform in battle by using an attack (Ancient Song IIRC) according to the info I've been reading.
660 BST Ice Dragon with Pressure
95 speed. 130 in both attack stats. Tanky. No W4 (in fact, Ice resists Dragon's Fire weakness, and Dragon resists Ice's Fire weakness, so only four W2s). Obviously nice STABs, but they overlap a little. Both Ice and Dragon are stopped by Steel, but Focus Blast exists for that. Nothing hugely outstanding in support moves.
verdict: uber. Less automatic than you'd expect for a 660 BST pokemon, but y'know, 95 speed, 130 attack stat with good STABs would be suspicious on a 600 BST pokemon.
I kinda suspect they'll auto-ban him for 660, but that really seems shockingly unimpressive for an uber. 660 isn't as high as it sounds once you realise the 130 atk is pretty much wasted (well, there will probably be some nasty surprise Outrage sets, but the physical coverage is quite poor otherwise, 100% walled by steel)
Also weak to Stealth Rock, assuming that abomination has persisted unchanged.
Well, it's uber, guess they can do what they want. And yes, I noticed fire is the same after the fact, although special fire wasn't as hard up for attacks as physical electric (in particular, Fire Blast was the co-holder of the aforementioned strongest drawback-free attack title before).
I don't think you'd want to go pure physical, but mix-sets seem fine, and free you up to Draco Meteor indiscriminantly. In addition to Outrage there's Dragon Claw, Shadow Claw, and Stone Edge, all of which have proven useable before. Consider: would you think of this as an impressive possibly Uber pokemon if it was 600 BST with 70 atk instead of 130? My gut instinct is "probably; that's borderline."
It's... honestly impressing me less than Salamence or Garchomp or Latias at the moment, certainly (though yes, none of those are OU any more either...). It probably has a leg up on Dragonite (+15 speed and better durability is a big deal, and while it lacks Dragonite's flamethrower and Earthquake options, it does do the hit-either-defence thing better otherwise) though so it's certainly quite good. I could also be underestimating its worth as a tank, since I tend not to think of dragons that way intuitively except for obvious cases.
Dragon Tail has negative priority, same as Roar/Whirlwind.
Balance
PROTOSS
Buildings
Nexus life and shields increased from 750/750 to 1000/1000.
Void Ray
Damage level 1 increased from 5 to 6 (+4 armored).
Damage level 2 decreased from 10 (+15 armored) to 8 (+8 armored).
Flux Vanes speed upgrade bonus decreased from 1.125 to 0.703.
TERRAN
Buildings
Barracks requirement changed from Command Center to Supply Depot.
Supply Depot life increased from 350 to 400.
Medivac
Acceleration reduced from 2.315 to 2.25.
Speed reduced from 2.75 to 2.5.
Reaper
Nitro Packs speed upgrade now has a Factory Requirement.
Thor
Energy bar removed.
250mm Strike Cannons is now cooldown-based on a 50-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown available (useable immediately after upgrade is researched).
ZERG
Buildings
Hatchery life increased from 1250 to 1500.
Lair life increased from 1800 to 2000.
Spawning Pool life increased from 750 to 1000.
Spire life increased from 600 to 850.
Ultralisk Cavern life increased from 600 to 850.
Corruptor
Energy bar removed.
Corruption is now cooldown-based on a 45-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown expired (must wait for full 45-second cycle before usable).
Infestor
Fungal Growth now prevents Blink.
Roach
Range increased from 3 to 4.
EDIT: Oh hell, I mis-read the Void Ray change (they use a level 0-1-2, I always thought of it as 1-2-3). So it looks like...you might use them with your main army now? So the 2nd charge level, before the final one, is stronger, while the last one is weaker? Seems like people will need to use less micro now, since level 2 comes faster than level 3, and it does decent enough damage...still overall nerf, but more back-ended than front-ended.
I think a void ray does slightly more DPS than a stalker vs. armored before hitting level 2 charge
Probably won't get too verbose as this risks not getting copied to the next forum but...
Dreamhack happened, and Terrans used Tanks against Protoss. Like...every game. (For their part, Protoss seemed to almost all go Storm, which is also a meta shift).
For a while, there seemed to be some impression that Tanks are bad in SC2, and I'm not sure where this comes from. Unsieged Tanks are certainly much improved, with a cooldown comparable to stimmed Marauders (in fact, 6 pop of unsieged tanks does about the same damage as 6 pop of stimmed Marauders; slightly less against armoured). In fact: fun fact--if you're just trying to clear out buildings quickly, don't siege (the opposite of SC1, where siege mode had more DPS). Siege Mode...has a slightly faster firing rate than SC1. This makes it better against small units than SC1 (against whom it deals 35 in both games) and fractionally worse against armoured due to 50 per hit rather than 70 per hit. (And of course Siege Tanks are a little more expensive between 25 more gas and 3 supply. Not enough to stop their midgame use, although yes, the maxed army of nothing but 3/3 Siege Tanks is no longer a good idea the way it was in SC1)
The big downside of Siege Tanks in SC2 has always been army mobility compared to MMM, but on the other hand, as was the case in SC1: if you get siege tanks to your opponent's natural, you win. Naama (the guy who won Dreamhack) set this up in the following way: cloaked Banshees. Cloaked Banshees force the opponent to huddle inside his or her base, which allows Tanks to siege up outside of the opponent's natural. And...that's pretty much GG.
Sentries serve to make fights longer and win them.
Monster Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total
Number spawned x10 x5 x4 x4 x4 x3 x3 x3 x2 x1 39
Item selection is not equally distributed within the Item Rank limit. Only the final shop created will be able to pick randomly from the full limit. The rest pick from a subset of the list based on what items have been unlocked and how many shops are to be created. If 9 shops were created, then the first shop would only be able to choose from the bottom 9th of the list; the second shop would then be able to choose from the bottom 2/9ths of the list, so long as it doesn't pick whatever the first shop has. This continues until all shops have selected the item to be sold.
So what do you think are the best classes to do Gauntlet Mode in? I'm at level 10 right now and it's getting kinda painful.
I don't know if my copy's glitched, but Binlor doesn't spawn ENDISWALL on-worship like the wiki says it does;
I don't know if my copy's glitched, but Binlor doesn't spawn ENDISWALL on-worship like the wiki says it does;
I think he only spawns it if it doesn't already exist. If it does, even if it's ferreted away behind 3 level 9s or something, he won't spawn it at all, which I always thought was dumb (he should at least transport the glyph over, same problem I have with Annur)
That said, this shit is fucking awesome and flavoursome to the max (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=214386)
I don't have much to add other than to really question that people seriously expected Magic to be broken by giant creatures in the follow up to Mirrordin? Do people forget what the fuck was truely broken in Mirrordin in the first place? I know giant indestuctible 9/9s look really good or Artifact angels that make it so you can't lose also look batshit insane, but seriously, they didn't think it was going to be equipment?
If it is there it will be game changing unless there is only one end game unit for each race or you half gimp one build order for its defense vs a type of play until the final unit. If you have multiple end game units that you need to keep viable then you are already balancing on a razors edge. Adding in something like that, even if it is flavoursome is going to be game changing at a high level of play especially.
Edit - Also if the bonsues aren't big enough to actually have any real effect then you create noob traps as well. What do you mean firebats are terrible to use against zerglings they have a bonus to biological?!?!?!? kind of situations might turn up (NOTE: Example only, not factual statement). Stuff like that is very much counter to the core philosophy Bilzzard have been doing in games for the last couple of releases.
You are right, the mode is easier than the higher levels of Gauntlet.
Although the enemies there also get "boss" special abilities. For example, Medusas get 100% death strike instead of their usual and bandits are super annoying because these version have First Strike meaning unless you get a level up heal off killing them, they will always annoy you with Poison/Mana Burn. Makes for a very weird set of strategies despite being easier overall.
Also, the Orc class has been changed. Their old EXP bonus conversion was given to Goblins and Orcs now have a "Base Damage increase" glyph conversion. I'm not sure how that works out mathematically (1 per level/conversion, scaling like dwarves?) but it seems to me that Humans are still better overall for increased damage? Might be worth looking into though.
It is fairly counter to my understanding of the balance of WC3 (which to be fair is very loose) and Diablo 2's balancing in later patches as well. Could be looking at the wrong groups though.
The general sentiment is much less there being stray units that are odd counters to something that does bonus damage to them and much more just things that are supposed to be hard counters to things straight up not working (Which you have stated happens).
Yay respect for SC2 design down.
If it's 1 per level/conversion then that's...really strong. Way better than Human. (Without any outside percentage bonuses, that's equivalent to +20% per conversion. With outside percentage bonuses that's arguably more-like +30% per conversion). So...I'm guessing that's not the formula. And...just in general, I'm not expecting a scaling formula, because it's too similar to what human does. Not sure what would be a good non-scaling formula; maybe +3 per conversion? That's enough to make you stronger than human early, but weaker than human by level 10. This is pure speculation, though--I haven't seen the formula.
I'm a bit sad about this change, though; Orc was an interesting race--let you level up at a timely moment to get a full heal.
I'm dumb and didn't take picking up attack powerups in account. I think it's just a set 2 Base Damage per glyph, I believe. I don't know how that adds up but for me it works better for like... Thieves and Rogues, and not great on Monks. I don't know how it adds up on a "neutral" user.
Good things can certainly come from hands off design! Let the gamers shape and form the meta game. The biggest problem with competetive SC1 was always that insanely high barrier of entry though. SC2 did something about it by making it a far easier game, but it is still there. I prefer my info to be accessible and/or fairly self evident. Without constantly updating the in game info (Something WoW does actually -try- to do from Blizzard) then you are just going to run into the same problems again.
It makes for truely impressive high level play to have things like that! But it doesn't really help you develop an e-sports community unless you have a massive influx of people based on brand power and whatnot. This isn't like Baseball or Football where people have grown up playing Starcraft or watching their parent's favourite Starcraft team on TV (although the former may be true in 2-5 or so years! It is going to be pretty amazing come time for the final Starcraft 2 episode when we might have a crop of 16 year olds that have been surrounded by the game for their entire lives/nearly their entire lives).
That is mostly why I really like shooters as the e-sports game, they are fairly easy to understand the direct outcomes to even the more amazing pieces of technical prowess. Also really lets me know what bothers me so much about this idea of turning MMO PVP into a pro gaming scene. They are just nearly impenetrable without playing the game given class balance and whatnot.
And...FPSs are not always intuitive. Bunny Hopping, for instance: it moves you faster than running. Also, speaking of "unit counters", Pyro sure seems like it's built to counter soldier with its deflection ability. Pyro does tend to counter Scout, particularly in numbers. ...and most 6v6 teams run two Soldiers, two Scouts, zero Pyros. And as far as spectatorship goes...you can watch a Starcraft match without having played an RtS. If you haven't played an FPS then it's damn near unwatchable.
how does it work mathematically anyway? It seems to really hurt strategies which combine both magic and physicals since drinking a pot means dedicating yourself to tossing fireballs.
Nowadays, while the fact that there are fewer crap rares is appreciated, it seems like commons have a tough time standing up to modern rares and Mythics.
And with Archer gone, the next to go becomes mind-numbingly obvious.
My instincts tell me that Nameless Dance is just brutally unfair in 50% of fights
Elemental Gun healing is miles better than Ice Brand Healing at endgame
And notably Geomancer is not Monk: you can't optimize both. An Ice Brand Ice Shield PA boosted Geomancer deals like...50 damage with elemental; half of optimum.
And Wiznaibus is usually considered pretty underpowered by dance standards.
But regardless, I feel that once you're at the level-of-effort needed to have 6300 JP (unlocking Mime), Elemental Guns are pretty reasonable.
it's not a 20% damage penalty for, say, Geo physicals
A class that specializes in one thing grows in value compared to their SCC. (Wizard, for instance, is the highest damage in the game, but a lousy SCC).
Totally remember your Mediator vs Wiegraf/Velius, though. It happened at about 2am, and had I think 4 resets on Wiegraf where you were trying something silly like Death Sentence before you went "oh, wait, duh: shoot him and run away" (which with Sprint Shoes and Green Beret you could do at speed 9 and...yeah, it was a slaughter).
I don't really consider the Archer/Geomancer durability gap to be too noteworthy, especially as both have shields.
2. Singletarget damage...Not in earlygame. Tied with Knight in midgame. Yes in lategame. Technically no in endgame (Mime wins, technically...).
4. Well, there's four options for elemental gun healing (the fourth being Equip Shield Mediator).
Yep, 4 move is there and it's cool. But I mean...most of the power moves are still ranged.
I really don't agree that AU is ahead of Concentrate.
Weapon Guard has a better claim to be centralizing than CF.
The one place I do feel a "You Must" is Attack Up: it's not always the best option, but you absolutely want it learned for fights like Velius.
But AU does...not feel like the worst such offender. Move+2: if you don't have it on pretty much everyone, you're doing it wrong. Faith: unless you're planning on elemental guns you'd better Solution yourself to 20 or less Faith.
Totally remember that, yes. Was the Velius battle a slaughter, though? I actually don't recall but I don't see why it would be. Geomancers just subject him to curbstomp since with PA+7 equips and Attack Up they hit 324 on him without charging, a 3HKO once you factor in that there's an elemental or two to finish him off if he rolled well on HP, and before factoring in zodiac (though to be fair someone will probably need Boots to get behind him? I forget).
Archer doesn't have shields if using longbows, and aside from the ability to equip longbows I'm not especially sold on Archer. I guess the argument is "Equip elemental Gun, and you can get Charge + a secondary" which is... reasonable, but I'd usually call the loss of the accessory slot more important than the loss of secondary, never mind Geo's +1 move and +5% HP.
Just as a note, I think it's a bit weird to call Chapter 2 the midgame when the game's midpoint is quite clearly in chapter 3. But that aside... Knight beats Geomancer in damage until Level 6, at which point they're tied... and then Headgear shows up and Geomancer eithers win or is tied with Knight for all of chapter 2. Then they win chapter 3 and chapter 4. So they lose to Knight in, generously, 6 battles when both exist, and Geomancer has wins in about... 35? Yeah.
(Also uh Geo smashes Mime at raw ST damage. Attack Up? Equipment? Unless you were factoring in Mimic in some way. Regardless, lol Mime.)
Remember: it's quite unlikely you have more than 1-2 of these elemental guns. Everyone not using a gun itself is going to want Attack Up and to do something physical, so... probably be in Geomancer! Archer would have to use lolcrossbows (or non-Attack Up Mithril Guns), Mediator is again non-Attack Up Mithril Gun, Knight is just Geo minus.
Especially later on, it feels like the "power move" is Geomancer's physical to me, so I can't agree with that sentiment. I mean, before Attack Up and Charge...
Mithril Gun: 64
Level 40 Archer with Windslash/Thief/Power/Gems: 104
Level 40 Archer with Gastrifitis/Thief/Power/Bracer: 150
Level 40 Geomancer with Thief/Power/Bracer: 210
Level 40 Geomancer with Twist/Power/Bracer: 238 (+42 damage, +1 move vs. knight, for the record)
Smash. (EDIT: See below for more damage comparisons and why I think they're the crux of why Geomancer is clearly the best class remaining at this point.)
Yeah, very good points about Charge, there. I will point out that AU is hilariously ahead for what is probably the best non-Geomancer strategy for damage (guns... just not much respect for either type of bow).
Attack Up does turn a lot of 2HKOs into OHKOs, though (and just to be clear, I mean before Charge); we aren't facing things with infinite HP, so while, say, an enemy with a Wizard Mantle may feel like a close fight between the two (1.33x vs. 1.22x), if there's a OHKO line to worry about, it may not be.
QuoteThe one place I do feel a "You Must" is Attack Up: it's not always the best option, but you absolutely want it learned for fights like Velius.
This is fair. For everything else, Geo isn't "you must", but it is probably the best option for... almost everything. It's virtually impossible to make a party that doesn't rely on something from Geomancer without going "okay this is clearly sub-optimum".
On the other hand, could I see ignoring Dancer and Mediator entirely? Yeah, you bet. If Dancers could be male you could argue me into saying no Dance = stupid choice, but as is I don't think it's unreasonable.
Mediator's tricks feel highly ignorable to me (we haven't yet reached the point where the game is hard enough to justify wasting time with, say, brave raising and poaching).
The only other "You must" choice is possibly Thief
buuut hilariously Bard is actually giving it some competition. In fact, I'm going to argue Geomancer's move as more important than Move + 2! Let's see what happens when we remove Thief/Geo from the game.
Basically, there are three stages of the game: Before you get M+2, before you get M+3, and after getting M+3 (you may or may not reach all stages with each character, but you get the idea).
In stage 1, Geo has 4 move, while all other classes (excluding the unpleasant thief, which is probably the #5 carrier) has 3. As you have already alluded to, 4 move is a big deal: you can walk behind a knight with this. Remove Geo and you're -1 move. Remove thief and... no change (I'm assuming you switch to knight/etc.).
In stage 2, Geo has 4 move, while Thief is giving its +2 to other classes so they can have 5. Now, 4->5 isn't as big a deal, but it's still 1 move, and this section lasts a while.
In stage 3, Thief is no longer doing anything useful, while Geomancer still has 7 move to everyone else's 6 (except females I guess, but if you're using one it's for Dance so whatever at them being still stuck at 4).
It's really a question of how long each stage lasts. If we assume the game is split 25%/50%/25% for these stages, then it's a tie... but a tie I'll break in Geo's favour because of 3->4 being a more important boost than anyone else. I could still see arguing Move + 2 over Geomancer's movement, mind. But it's actually close enough that everything else Geo brings to the table is making for an obvious win (whereas thief is bringing... almost nothing! +1 speed sometimes and a possible grab at trinkets I suspect aren't worth the JP/time investment).
How'd I get on that tangent? Oh well.
Hilarious fact: Lowering faith notably below 40 actually starts making the game harder again. Sure, you wall magic EVEN HARDER (it doesn't do well against 40) but very quickly guys like Velius and Adramelk start moving over to their status which makes them scarier (especially since our ability to heal status is uh... not actually existant. Black Chocobo hype?). Now, I'm sure lowering Ramza's faith in particular is useful (and if you're optimising, 40 faith isn't perfect... probably closer to 30-35), but I'm not seeing it as terribly overcentralising.
That said, no. The combination of Geomancer + Attack Up is the most centralising thing in the current metagame. Want melee damage? Remove Geomancer and your best bet while still equipping a hat is Equip Sword Archer... Geomancer has 33% more damage. Want gun damage? Geomancer's Attack Up is adding 33% to that as well. Want a melee fighter with concentrate? Geomancer is ahead of everyone else by... like double. I mean Charge Goncentrate Geomancer can actually pull ITE OHKOs with some reliability, something no other setup can manage. (Obviously this setup speaks highly of Archer too, but it definitely needs both.) There's no way to ignore Geomancer without losing considerable damage in the second half of the game.
PA+7 equips? You could afford multiple Bracers at that point?
The problem with running forward to hit Velius physically (with speed 7 Geomancers) is that if Velius doesn't die, then all those Geos are dead.
35 doesn't sound right to me--there's plenty of ties/very small wins and I'm not sure quite what to do with brave-raised Excalibur (which is obviously Knight favoured, but only on one character).
I feel like it's more along the lines of: Knight and Geo are close to tied in 30 battles (sometimes favouring Knight, sometimes Geo, but usually a 1 PA gap), and Geo has a strong advantage in 15 battles (basically Chapter 3).
I'm skeptical about stuff that measures strictly damage over, say, 8 range.
As for "lolcrossbows", if you have elemental guns, then you have Gastrafitis. (Ok, that's not strictly true, but pretty close). Gastrafitis is 71% of the damage of Rune Blade in exchange for 4 range.
*I've been assuming Archer can get Ultimus Bow; they tend to swing that on their SCC. Hell, they can sometimes get Yoichi bows on the SCC. And this is when they're not likely to have someone with Invitation in the party to make getting Ultimus Bows fairly easy.
If you're OHKOing using AU without Charge, then Concentrate+Charge will guarantee a OHKO.
Dance setups use nothing from Geo--if anything the optimum Dance setup is something like Equip Armor, P-Bag, sit around tanking for your party while Nameless Dance does horrible things.
Archer deserves a mention here. You will be using Charge, especially on assassination missions. Doesn't really matter if your class is Geo, Archer, or Mediator here--if your plan A is to physically attack, you really ought to be using Charge.
Interesting...but I really can't agree with the 25%/50%/25% split.
And even if you have one or two high-faith members as your "Velius/Adramelk bait", you can safely be aggressive and run forward with your low-faith units, and force enemy mages into any position you want with your high faith units.
Want melee damage? Frankly, I don't. Melee damage gets you countered. Melee damage means moving into range of the enemies, which is bad when you have no healing or revival.
For instance, for most of Chapter 3, Attack Up Mithral Gun is about the same as Concentrate Sword. (Concentrate Sword goes 81, 90, 110, 132 whereas Attack Up Mithral Gun stays steady at 80...but Mediator can also be expected to be 1-2 speed faster, so that's actually the equivalent of 93-106).
So...basically, I question your premises. I don't at all see why optimizing melee damage is important, when range 8 damage is often competitive. And I'm thinking that optimizing damage isn't the most powerful path.
I hadn't really considered this before (given that I've gone for Elemental Guns but not Chantages). That's...a fairly small investment (2 resets; maybe 30 seconds each) for a big gain in power later on.
Which begs the question, do we expect 3+ resets later in the game given this set of 8 classes without Chantages? Because if we do, then we should reset until Uribo every time.
Riovanes Rooftop: 1. Doesn't count, Chantage wouldn't prevent this.
Bed Desert: 1. Interesting; I can't think of a surefire, "always win" strategy here given that none of these classes did, for me. I'd still not expect to have resets with a more balanced team (we can do things like Dance to thin numbers AND shields to resist ice AND damage to finish), but they're possible.
Bethla Sluice: 2. Possibly needs to be disqualified as an "Elfboy finds this battle harder than most" fight; it's one I don't "get". Still, regardless of out strategy here the usual SCC problem of "any death is unacceptable" rears its ugly head. Move+2 on Ramza probably helps a -lot- with making that less true, though...
Removing Mediator removes Chantage as a strategy, but does this drive our reset count up significantly? Doesn't look like it. I suppose the argument is that Mediator is otherwise close enough to most overcentralising class for this to push it over the top (I don't agree, I think it's third at best right now).
The real question is, though, if we do decide Chantages are worth it, what does it change? Thief/Mediator are getting joint credit for it (with Mediator being the better of the two otherwise).
I'm a bit baffled by Death Sentence hype. It's a "funny" strategy but rarely ever actually useful in my experience (excluding when the enemies do it to you, in which case, thanks for the free positive status)... and that's with Secret Fist. Talk Skill Death Sentence itself hits like... a third of the time. A bit better with good internal zodiac (still not likely breaking 50 except in rare cases of best compat or really suped-up MA, maybe for Elemental?) but still this is a terrible idea in anything except an act of desperation.
Not really interested in discussing this warped-around-Chantage metagame
Death Sentence is like a bad version of Phoenix Down. It keeps your death counter under control, particularly on at-risk targets (like people who just reraised from their Angel Ring). Which is to say, of course you don't use it on the Monk SCC: you have Revive, and Revive blows it out of the water (Revive being "a balanced version of phoenix down" rather than "a bad version of phoenix down").
Fair, but I certainly never used it on the Mediator SCC either!
I guess the idea is... someone revives from their Angel Ring, you Death Sentence them to buy yourself some time? You'll tend to use 2-3 actions (and if they all miss, you just lost the battle) to apply this, and you hope you get those actions back in the future by the extension of the timer (if someone dies again this round because of your lack of doing much to the enemies, this probably goes to waste).
Idly, I am currently playing through the game with only the 8 classes right now (up to Dorter) and the first thing I noticed is that, at the Igros checkpoint at least (no longbows, no Elemental), wow, females are a huge liability (-2 PA as a knight, although this shrinks at Level 3 granted... still, even -1 is quite notable when you have no healing so you have to outslug). This makes me strongly question the idea that four of them are optimum, though it's possible I'll be singing a different tune in a few battles of course, so take it with a grain of salt. Just... there's a lot of game to go before females actually pay off (mid-late C2).
I was ignoring Excalibur, let alone post-brave twinkery Excalibur, since you have at most one.
*shrug* When the damage gap is high enough, it works better. I'd take a skillsetless Geomancer SCC over a skillsetless Mediator SCC any day, even waiving the part of the game before guns. I don't have quite the same high opinion of guns that you do, and possibly range in general. (It just happens that in unbanned FFT, lots of ranged options are really powerful ANYWAY... and even can strike many enemies at once.)
See, I don't see how that's not an obvious losing trade, given how clunky 3-4 line of sight range only is (and you lose 1 off your effective range due to archer move anyway).
Sure, but Charge isn't always practical. In order to match Attack Up provided you have 12 PA already, you need Charge+4... an 8 CT attack. If your speed is only 8 due to it being a Twist Headband fight, and there are enemies who are speed 10, this is already untenable; the best you'll manage is Charge+3, and that drops to Charge+2 against enemies who move-wait first turn (which is usually the case for melee enemies). And then there's charging enemies (which includes several bosses) who just need to be killed right away, usually.
The thing is, even as you noted before, Nameless Dance has diminishing returns, and you have one guaranteed non-Dancer even if we're going for four of them. So no matter what, you're reliant on something from the Geomancer tree
to have a maximum-killing-power fighter running around dealing with the things which escape status and can threaten your party. (I guarantee you the Dancer SCC would be waaay easier with this!)
QuoteArcher deserves a mention here. You will be using Charge, especially on assassination missions. Doesn't really matter if your class is Geo, Archer, or Mediator here--if your plan A is to physically attack, you really ought to be using Charge.
So are you arguing that the #13 is archer? I'm not really convinced; Attack Up damage already gets pretty high, and Charge/Concentrate are both kinda situational in different ways, unlike AU which is a strict improvement, always, and Geo still has a much better carrier (bows still suck).
(Still, to spoil things for the bottom of the post, I'm beginning to think it's the best competition. And that is a weird thing to confront.)
Yeah, fair. (Although I don't think Move+2 is worth beelining to because there are other important things I need to grab... in jobs that don't have 40-70% of Geomancer damage at various points in the game. And under your definition of a dead job, it's still better to be in Monk than in Thief.)
-Attack Up being factored in for guns is a silent testament to what Geomancer is doing. You'll notice I have no trouble ignoring the sum total of Mediator's contributions to the game (faith lowering is the cool, but hardly necessary); the fact that you're having trouble doing the same for Geomancer strikes me as evidence for which class is overcentralising.
-Getting 1-2 speed faster isn't very useful for the most part here, given that chapter 3 enemies are rarely if ever more than 1 above even unboosted speed.
And as usual, if Geomancer desperately needs that point of speed, they can grab it; Mediator has no such recourse for a damage boost.
I would contend that it is. All manner of inoffensive tactics at this point are suspect; they can miss (Dance, Battle Skill, much of Talk Skill)
I'm not so much optimising melee damage as I am damage in general; it just so happens that, at most points, melee is too far ahead to consider and ranged must be relegated to a role of backup
It's hard to say which of us is right on the best thing to optimise, but my personal experience drawn from a variety of challenges I've done (including all the relevant SCCs in question), is that high damage is the best ward against being overwhelmed, especially when you lack healing and revival. Even Yin Yang Magic, the (non-Math) king of debilitation, would be substantially worse without an instant-kill status (effectively the same as damage) for speeding up fights in an emergency, and of course the immensely damageing Life Drain to deal with bosses.
-This gun limit remains until after Grog Hill unless you take a massive, inefficient detour (risks 8 randoms) when Mithril Guns show up in Goug.
*Lenalia Plateau checkpoint again at the start of Chapter 2 if you skipped it; you start at, what, Orbonne? 4 potential randoms. (You do get some free swords from Gaffy/Agrias, though).
*Zirekile Falls checkpoint. 5 potential randoms, and you only have two fights until you get to Lionel anyway.
And of course, it's to the credit of guns that if you're going for a mix, you can probably get the guns you need through Invitation + the Grog Hill war trophy.
I think I want Ramza with a gun for the Wiegraf duel (not that there aren't other ways to win, but it's the safest?).
4. Mediator (who cares about Talk Skill with this offence? Main use of the skillset is snagging a few guns. Of course, guns themselves are very solid, but very reliant on Geomancer/Archer and need an extra hoop or two to get, and gunners either have lower move/durability/bad primary OR give up the AU possibility)
You prioritized Attack Up over Move+2, which means that you value +33% damage over +50%/+66% movement.
In the event of Taurus/Capricorn Ramza in the Altima fight for a Cantage team, go Knight, drop his faith, use an evade focused setup (Excalibur).
Speaking of which, if we're taking this hardline approach, then propositions become a definite no, except for propositions in connected citie (Dorter-Orbonne) that you're passing through anyway.
Air unit vs ground unit calculations in SC2 are pretty tough because of the fact that the air units can ball up and all fire, or focus fire even, without impediment
I stopped playing StarJeweled when the ultimate strategy became clear: Stockpile energy, then release 3 Ultras at once, then stick everything into Storms to support them. (Or Warp Cells if your opponent goes Ultras as well). Storm is just stupidly overpowered; there seems to be a lot more strategy if Storm costs double. Take banshees for example; interesting unit, has counters, and counters Ultras... except... a single Storm pretty much ruins a Banshee. Catch some nearby marines and you have parity. If you ever release 2 Banshees or more, they tend to stack up, so you're now just donating points to the coming Storm. Zealot / Roach / Hydra / Ghost / Muta are all nearly worthless except as a way to use spare change thanks to Storm, too.
So, yeah. 1 Banshee to force a Storm and maybe scare Ultras, 1 Siege Tank or Immortal if you have the advantage and want to blow a cannon, and then Ultra spam. Although the Ultras only work if you do the stockpile energy + release simultaneously approach, since otherwise you die to Warp Cell. Make Warp Cell cost 250 and Storm cost 600, and I'd totally be interested in StarJeweled again.
the_rowan posted...
You can't really find a decimal value without a calculator or memorizing tables.
You can; I mean logs have been around since the 1600s. Obviously someone had to make the log tables.
Here, let me start grinding some stuff out by hand.
2^10 = 1024, which is really close to 10^3
therefore
10 * log 2 ~= 3
therefore
log 2 ~= 3/10 = 0.30
(actual value: 0.3010...)
3^2 = 9, which is close to 10.
Therefore
2 * log 3 ~= 1
log 3 ~= 0.5
(actual value: 0.4771...)
Or, and admitedly, I didn't calculate this by hand:
3^21 = 10,460,353,203
Therefore
21 * log 3 ~= 10
log 3 ~= 10/21 = 4.76 (and that I did calculate by hand)
Log 4 = 2 * log 2 ~= 0.60
(actual value: 0.6020)
log 5 = log 10 - log 2 ~= 0.70
(actual value: .6990)
log 6...well I could just add the log of 2 and 3 together, but I cheated a little on log 3, so let's see...
6^1 = 6
6^2 = 36
6^3 = 216
6^4 = 1296
6^5 = 1300*6 - 4*6 = 7800 - 24 = 7776
6^6 = 7777*6 - 6 = 46662 - 6 = 46656
Ok, I don't want to compute much further by hand; the one that looks the most useful at a glance is 6^3 = 216
3 * log 6 ~= log(200) = 2 + log 2 ~= 2.3
log 6 ~= 2.3/3 = 2/3 + 0.1 = 0.76666...
(actual value: 0.7781)
Log 7...
Right away, 7^2 = 49 ~= 50 jumps to mind.
2 * log 7 ~= log(50) = 1 + log 5 ~= 1.70
log 7 ~= 0.85
(actual value: .8451)
Log 8...
Log 8 = 2 * log 2 ~= 0.90
(actual value 0.9031)
Log 9...
Well...I did cheat a bit on the log 3 stuff, so let me go back and use the log 6 result to re-calculate log 3.
log 3 = log 6 - log 2 ~= 0.77 - 0.30 = 0.47
(Actual value: 0.4771)
Which means...
Log 9 = 2 * Log 3 ~= 0.94
(Actual value: .9542)
So there you go: all the one-digit logarithms hand calculated to *almost* 2 digits of accuracy (I was off by 0.1 in a couple of places--3, 6, and 9. Damn you multiples of 3 *shakes fist*).
Actually, let's see if I can get a better estimate on log 3/6/9. I know 12^2 is 144. I know the square root of 2 is 1.41.... So...without even calculating it, I know that 12^4 is going to be pretty close to 20000 (closer than 216 is to 200, anyhow).
4 * log 12 ~= 4 + log 2
log 12 ~= 1 + 0.30/4 ~= 1.08
(actual value 1.0791)
Which gives us...
Log 3 = Log 12 - Log 4 ~= 1.08 - 0.60 = 0.48
(actual value: 0.4771)
Log 6 = Log 12 - Log 2 ~= 1.08 - 0.30 = 0.78
(actual value: 0.7781)
Log 9 = 2 * Log 3 ~= 0.96
(actual value: 0.9542)
Arg, nooo, I'm still off.
Wait, 81, is pretty close to 80.
2 * log 9 ~= 1 + log 8 ~= 1.90
log 9 ~= 0.95
(actual value: 0.9542)
There--now I've gotten estimates for every one-digit logarithm that's accurate up to two digits. All calculated by hand. Yaaay.
So, an inquiring reader might ask, how would I go further? How would I get, say, three digits of accuracy? And how, without looking up on the internet, would I know that I had three digits of accuracy?
Ok, let's cover accuracy first.
You'll notice that when we were very close to powers of ten (2^10 = 1024) that we were quite accurate. Notably, 1024 is only 2.4% away from being 10^3, and 0.30 is actually even more accurate--0.34% away from being log(2). We can predict this with a good degree of accuracy using Calculus.
The derivative of Log( x ) at any one point is...well Log( x ) = ln(x) / ln(10), so the derivative is 1/x * 1/ln(10). I don't even need to know ln(10) here, just that it's somewhere between 2 and 3 (cal it 2.5).
So, this means that at x = 1000, the slope is roughly 1/1000 * 1/(2.5) = 1/2500. Going 24 away from this, we'd expect the answer to be off by 24/2500, or ~0.01. And indeed, log(1000) = 3. log(1024) = 3.0103. (Actually...we'd actually be freakishly accurate here if we had a better estimate on ln(10) than 2.5. My initial plan had just been to show that we could get a pretty good guess on the error, but this might be worth pursuing...).
Man, I was going to go calculate the square root of ten, cube root of ten, etc by hand, but now I'm tempted to screw that and just get a really good estimate on log(e), and trusting in the power of calculus. Well...square root of ten is still going to come in handy, and is honestly probably easier to calculate by hand than e.
Ok, square root of 10, let's do this!
Pass 1:
3*3 = 9
4*4 = 16
First digit is 3, second digit is small.
Pass 2:
3.1*3.1 = 9.61
3.2*3.2 = 10.24
Second digit is 3, third digit is largish.
Pass 3:
3.17*3.17 = 3.1*3.1 + 2*(3.1*0.07) + (0.07)^2 = 9.61 + 2*(0.217) + 0.0049 > 9.61 + 0.43 + 0 = 10.04
3.16*3.16 = 3.1*3.1 + 2*(3.1*0.06) + (0.06)^2 = 9.61 + 2*(0.186) + 0.0036 = 9.61 + 0.372 + 0.0036 = 9.9856
Third digit is 6, fourth digit is smallish.
Hmm...well, let me state up front that I'm not going to calculate the fifth digit because this is becoming a pain, so that lets me cut a couple of corners here
3.163*3.163 ~= 9.9856 + 2*(3.16*0.003) ~= 9.9856 + 2*(0.009) ---- (Nope--too big. That's adding 0.018. We're looking for 0.0144)
3.162*3.162 ~= blah blah + 2*(3*0.002) ~= blah blah + 0.012 ---- (Yep, that's better--closer to the 0.0144)
(Fourth digit is 2, fifth digit looks small)
So to four digits of accuracy, sqrt(10) = 3.162
Ok, how much of a pain is it going to be to compute e?
e = sum( 1/n! ) from n = 0 to infinity
e = 1 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/24 + 1/120 + ...
~= 2.5 + (20 + 5 + 1)/120 = 2.5 + 13/60 = 2.5 + 1.3/6 = 2.5 + 1/6 + 0.3/6 = 2.5 + 1/6 + 0.05 = 2.55 + 1/6 ~= 2.55 + 0.16667 = 2.7167
The next term is 1/720, which we can totally ballpark as roughly 1/700 ~= 0.0014. So...that brings us up to 2.7181
The next term is 1/5040, which we can totally ballpark as roughly 1/5000 ~= 0.0002. So...that brings us up to 2.7183
And the term after that is going to be too small to register at 5 digits of accuracy. Bam, 5-digits of accuracy on e. That was remarkably painless. Man, four digits on the square root of 10 hurt more than that.
Ok, just a ballpark, though, I'm going to take it back down to 2.7.
e^2 ~= 4 + 2*(2*0.7) + 0.49 = 4.49 + 2.8 = 7.29 ~= 7.3
With three digits..
e^2 ~= 7.29 + 2*(0.02*2.7) + something_tiny = 7.29 + (0.108) ~= 7.4
Well, at very least this gives us a very rough bead. We know to a good degree of accuracy, that log(8) = 0.90, and log(7) = 0.85, so let's say that log(7.4) = 0.87. That means log(e) is pretty close to 0.435, which in turn means that ln(10) is pretty close to 1/0.435.
And...I don't really feel like calculating 1/0.435 right now. Stupid long division....
Unarmed damage
Chapter 1: 15 damage
Chapter 2: 35 damage
Chapter 3: 77 damage
Chapter 4: 96 damage
Chapter 2:
Choco Meteor is 44
Chapter 3:
Choco Meteor is 68
Chapter 4:
Choco Meteor is 100
they probably actually poach Zorlin Shapes
In particular Chapter 2: level 10, Chapter 3: level 18, Chapter 4: level 30 is...probably not a remotely accurate description of a Thief SCC. (I don't suppose you still have level numbers recorded for your Thief SCC Elfboy?)
You might want to completely break the Dycedarg fight with Fly Bards
(a) Thief > Bard for a chapter and a half by virtue of existing.
I think you may be underrating Steal Heart a bit. Sure, Steal Heart is mediocre... when you have the ability to blitz safely and effectively. The Thief SCC doesn't, nor does the Bard SCC, and I doubt the intersection of the two (with Mimes lategame maaaaybe) is much better.
On the other hand, Steal Heart is very dominantly useful when your slugging ability is poor. (As such I don't think you'd only have one female, for instance.)
(b) Later on, thief still provides Steal Heart, and up 1-3 Chantages depending on taste.
Three females is unlikely to be optimum. However, it's almost certainly 1 minimum. Chapter 4 is already a potential sticking point for the all-male team due to a lack of enemies to charm and Sing depreciating, tossing in one female not only ups your charming power, but it makes the whole Sing strategy far more viable due to Chantage. Think about it, the singers run away while the Chantage-user charges forward to distract some enemies from chasing the males, and even charms some of them if you're lucky. This is a pretty obvious improvement and I don't think "slightly better Power Song -> punch" strategy in chapters 2-3 is going to offset this.
I do think you've overestimating the number of battles where you can run away for two turns. I've done a Dancer SCC (which doesn't have the crazy move, but does have a faster-working gimmick) and watched a fair bit of the Bard SCC and I recall quite a few battles where the enemy starts in your face with nowhere to run. It's not a majority, but it certainly keeps this strategy from being dominant.
chapter 4... which is also when Sing is at its worst.
Suppose the two classes left were Thief and another high tech class--let's go with Samurai. Would Thief win that just because they win almost half the game "by default" and are still somewhat relevant during the rest of the game?
Late, butQuoteSuppose the two classes left were Thief and another high tech class--let's go with Samurai. Would Thief win that just because they win almost half the game "by default" and are still somewhat relevant during the rest of the game?
They very possibly would! The reason you kneejerk Samurai > Thief (and indeed, it is better in the vast majority of circumstances) has a fair bit to do with oodles of other classes doing the "easy to unlock, unimpressive fighter" better than thief, but a metagame that lacks all of those makes the comparison, at the very least, a far closer one. Samurai may still win that comparison, but it's far from a foregone conclusion and would merit some pretty serious analysis.
Ok, tried to get a real read on unit HPs.
Marine- 2 cannon hits
Banshee- 8 cannon hits
Mutalisk- 6 cannon hits
Zealot: 4 cannon hits
Hydralisk: 6 cannon hits?
Roach- 9 cannon hits
Ghost- 5 cannon hits
Tank- 5 cannon hits
Immortal- 15 cannon hits
Colossus - 25ish cannon hits?
Ultralisk - 35ish cannon hits?
I'm fairly certain that Cannon damage is unchanged--which is to say, one cannon hit is 20 damage. This seems to line up with Storm dealing 100 damage. So...this puts my best estimates for HP at...
Marine: 30
Zealot: 80
Roach: 180
Hydralisk: 120
Ghost: 100
Mutalisk: 120
Banshee: 160
Tank: 100
Immortal: 300
Colossus: 500
Ultralisk: 700 (doesn't line up with Heal Wave's description, since Heal Wave heals more than half an Ultra's HP. Possibly there's armor in the mix here? Possibly my HP estimates are a little high? Possibly it's due to zerg units having some passive regen--I suspect Mutalisk is actually 100 HP, and just regenerates the 1 HP required to survive a storm/five canon hits)
And yes, Hydralisks, Mutalisks, and Banshees all survive one storm.
Regrowth's an interesting one. Reclaim and a better version of it, Noxious Revival, are both available at the moment, which are effectively Regrowth for 1 mana instead of 2, but skip your next draw. And, yet again, they're completely unplayed, even as sideboard cards.
I'm curious to see what you'd think of recosting other early edition low-cost, restricted cards such as Sol Ring, Fork, Demonic Tutor, Balance, and Regrowth. (Note that I'm pretty out of the loop and it's possible that some of those are reasonable enough to be brought back as is, depending on what the metagame looks like these days.)
Eternal Witness is above the curve and saw play *everywhere*,
inclined to think a Regrowth reprint would be similar - not format dominating, but a staple in Green decks.
Believe it or not, Pyretic Ritual sees play in Modern storm decks since Rite of Flame got banhammered. 2 Storm decks made Top 8 of hte most recent Modern Pro Tour, and had 7 Pyretic Rituals among them: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gptur12/welcome#1
But yeah, Pyretic sees play strictly because Storm is one of those mechanics that becomes more and more insane with a large card pool, and they're just playing spells for the sake of playing spells. Since Storm is never coming back, its use anywhere else is limited. (And I'd honestly be pretty cool with banning more Storm cards, though I'm not even certain where to begin. I don't play competitively but Storm is a classic example of a fishbowl deck. There are hosers, yes, but you don't really interact with Storm, and Storm doesn't interact back. Maybe just go to the source and ban Empty the Warrens, Grapeshot, and Dragonstorm?!)
You know...every once in a while I analyze the metagame for Starcraft or Magic the Gathering or Pokemon or Advance Wars. I don't always have anywhere to put my thoughts (and notably, some of these communities will flame you off the board for theorymoning/theorycrafting/etc...and not without reason--it's easy to overlook stuff when you theorize). But I just happen to find theory fun, so as long as I'm entertaining myself by theorizing, I may as well store my thoughts somewhere. And the DL seems like the place that would most appreciate analysis just for the sake of analysis.
So...without further ado, I'm kicking this off with...Pokemon:
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of serious analysis of Pokemon assumes the existence of tiers (i.e., banning of ubers as at least a possibility) because for a long time there were so few ubers that they were completely overpowered and overcentralising. This trend long predates the existence of Smogon.
Luck is an important aspect, but not something that should be relied upon, which is why OHKO moves are generally frowned upon - they're a bad strategy, worse than the actual top attacks, but because they're reliant on luck, they can beat a team that is technically better. The best strategy in Pokemon, and in a number of games that come to mind, will be one that can mitigate luck, not rely on it.
Think the only perfect accurate -> OHKO, other than Smeargle, is Articuno. Possibly Froslass too? Either way, not many.
And.. I'd be surprised if Leaf Storm OHKOs a Ho-oh, since they do tend to run HP EVs, so I guess you're excluding Ubers? (Hell, I'd be surprised if it OHKOed Lugia, since that thing's a tank and a half.) Not to mention things like Ferrothorn or Multiscale Dragonite...
I have OHKO a moltres but I never faught a Ho-Oh (for some reason they seem unpopular in battles being a physical fire attacker, but it does have boss special defense and x4 grass resistence)with my bellossom, the legendaries and dual types I've OHKO'd are: Deyxos (multiple forms but never defense form no one seems to run that), Lugia, Moltres, Articuno, Zapdos, Entei, Suicune(lol to easy that one though), Darkrai(got lucky since it was faster than me that darkvoid failed >.>), Dragonite, Charizard, Arceus(This time though it was on my phsyical attack bellossom and it was a double battle where I boosted its attack with the confusion atkx2 booster), Jirachi(that was surprising), Mewtwo(never fight mews), Hydragedon, Tyranitar. That is about it, the other legendaries I have fought are too fast still and usually running a choice item or choice Gyrados with fireblast >.>
You: Turret the hell out at +8
Mitzu: Yea sure
what's the difference
o.o
You: Then salvage when the zealot leaves, and turret the hell out at +16
Mitzu: Ohhh
you meant at +8 income
You: yes
Mitzu: thought you meant level 8 turret
You: no.
Level 8 turrets suck
Mitzu: was like..
how is that going to help..
You: Mass level 4s into mass level 6s.
Mitzu: yea
just don't worry that much
about eco right?
You: Yeah, stopping the zealot's eco is higher priority than ecoing yourself
Mitzu: Mm hmmm
You: You do kind of eco just by existing; sitting on +16 gen is a decent amount of income.
Mitzu: mm hmm
should be better than zealot's
You: If you were really rushing you'd sell your generator.
(There are some builds that sell their generator; they're pretty hillarious).
Mitzu: Haha, I don't think I've seen any
at least not recently that I can remember
You: I wouldn't bother with them outside of 1v1.
Mitzu: Haha yea I thought not
You: Well...arguably it's worth it to sell your generator for your first legendary (as long as you immediately rebuild and reupgrade it).
Mitzu: mmm
You: But it only gets you about 10 seconds ahead anyhow.
Mitzu: that's true
actually
You: So...I usually don't bother.
Mitzu: ehh
You: (Honestly, there's a lot of stuff with econ as probe where I'm ok with losing 5-10 seconds. Like...leaving my depot built on +32 gen; that's 8 wasted seconds, but I don't really care that much).
Mitzu: ahh yea
I dont normally salvage either
just because I might built more
later
Not worth taking probe out again
You: Yeah
Mitzu: For 256 to 512
I normally don't build workers though, I just end up buying minerals
in bulk half the time
You: But if I were more daring I would just head out with my probe every time.
Mitzu: As long as prices aren't sky-high
You: Ehh...256 to 512 is the one area where I almost always get extra miners. Prices usually spike sometime around that time, and even if they don't, if you buy 200, you just raised the price by 100 all by yourself.
Mitzu: YOu do what, sell wall and buy 2 professionals?
You: 1 pro on gold will usually do it
Mitzu: Mmm, i feel like
4k for pro,
isn't really that much more then buying one set
You: 2 pros on gold generally means you plan on doing a lot of selling (1 pro implies buying if you just have 2 average + 1 advance)
Mitzu: in bulk
Does the pro, mine over 200 buying it at 256 to 512?
You: Hmm...it's about a 120 second upgrade time, so...
mines 240 I guess?
Mitzu: Ehhhhh
and buying 200 will purchase at the cost 50 higher then the current on average right?
You: More to the point, though, if it stays alive after 512, then you have some extra minerals; can sell them on the market as other people hit 512.
Mitzu: I feel like
after people hit 512s and even 256s
minerals just become dirt cheap
You: 100 higher, but 50 higher on average.
Mitzu: especially when everyone proxies the gold
You: 'Well yes, depends on the market
Mitzu: Yea, so as long as the price is 150 or less
You: Gradient certainly likes buying to 512.
Mitzu: isn't it just faster to buy in bulk?
Especially since
mineral income is pretty negligible after 512
since you rush ultra anyway
You: Mineral income is nonnegligible if you can sell at a decent price
Mitzu: After 512
why would people need to buy minerals?
You: And often enough it'll spike to 200 or so as other people reach 512.
Mitzu: That could be true
I guess it really just depends on the other plays
players*
You: (A lot of my builds are tuned for being ahead of other probes on econ >_>)
Mitzu: LOL
that could be why, I'm never as ahead of you
;)
You: Yeah, if I get to 512 first, the mineral price will drop.
Mitzu: Maybe that's why i buy in bulk
after you
haha
You: But anyway, as far as getting a miner between 256 and 512...usually even with one Pro I still have to do SOME buying on the market.
I just don't buy everything on the market
Mitzu: Yeaa, and you don't buy in bulk right?
You: Yeah, I'll buy like...50-80.
Mitzu: Buying in bulk isn't actually cheaper than buying in 10's is it?
o.o
You: Which doesn't spike the price too much.
I....don't think so?
Mitzu: I used to think it was at a discount, but then I realized it isn't
lol
XD
You: I've never actually checked.
Mitzu: if the way it calculates is based off individual sales, then it's equivalent
i Used to think it was 200 minerals at the starting price you buy
but that's definitely not true >.>
You: yeah, I remember looking at it, and thinking "that looks equivalent, or very close."
Mitzu: Haha yea
For +32 to +64
how many minerals do you normally end up selling?
you go 2 average 1 advanced
But I always seem to fall behind you in that step
You: I go 2 average for 32 to 64 usually, and sell about 40.
Mitzu: no advanced?
until 64?
You: I get the advanced by selling the wall at 64.
But...it all depends on the market
Mitzu: Ohh
That's what I've been doing wrong
I end up selling like 60-80 instead
and then i'm behind you
You: I've done things like getting all my miners on +32 when the market was doing crazy things (like hanging out at 350)
Mitzu: Yea
If it's at 250
you still wait for 64?
You: Buying all my miners on +32 is actually how I got my 14:38 solo max gen.
yes
250 isn't that much
Mitzu: Mm hmmm
You: If anyone else is selling, that can tank fast
Mitzu: Also, in games where the zealot is good, do you still bother trying to take gold with miners?
You: yeah
Mitzu: It seems like if the zealot is assuredly good, he'll just scan and kill
and then you get set behind a lot
You: If the zealot is really good, the zealot will usually ignore gold miners
They don't feed.
Mitzu: Doesn't it hurt players more than zealot?
That's basically stopping at least 50-60 percent of the mineral income
You: Ehh...as long as they last about 70 seconds before getting killed, it's probably still better than mining blue
You catapult ahead on gas income by upping your gen faster.
Mitzu: if they die
Do you just end up buying rest
or do you rebuild at blue?
Or does this all just depend on the price
You: Buy the rest to get to the next gen up, and then rebuild on gold.
Mitzu: Ahh I see
You: Depends how close you are to gen up, really
Also, you can do stuff like send one miner to each gold base; if the zealot wants to run around that much, sure, don't get feed, that's fine.
Mitzu: Yea, kind of what I did last game I guess
but I only split it off into 2 golds
Of course after you chased, I never retook the gold either
You: I only killed the one gold set because there were like...10 miners on there, and it was on my way home anyway.
Mitzu: haha
You: If you'd sent to the top gold, I wouldn't have bothered detouring that much.
Mitzu: yeaa
so far from my base though
T+T
You: Just drop a depot in there; you knew which base I was going to be returning to repeatedly; you can guess my path
(Good zealots are predictable; it's bad zealots who might kill you in transit)
Mitzu: I honestly thought
you were going to camp top right
so I figured safest base would be left gold
It's only when that other guy
went to left gold too
that I put one in the other one
You: Yeah, I knew there were miners on the left gold, but I never went in there; too much of a detour.
Mitzu: ahh
Then when zealots scan the golds
You: I was mostly scanning the golds to see if anyone would be dumb and actually move in.
Mitzu: do you run?
You: Sometimes
half the time running turns out to be wrong, and my scvs die on the way out
may as well get in the extra mining time
Mitzu: yea
You: Ideally split up the miners and send them different directions.
Mitzu: mm hmm
You: and hope he wastes time by chasing XD
Mitzu: I've tried doing that, but with only 3-4 miners
and zealot's speed and damage, they normally don't get very far
but I guess any time wasted is still good
You: Yeah, my splits are bad.
Mitzu: Ohhhh second point! What is your build for zealot?
You: I sometimes get like...1-2 out alive.
Mitzu: Damage, attack speed, health?
You: Most important thing with zealot is damage.
Mitzu: yea
You: overall DPS I mean.
Mitzu: Err
You: So...you'll notice that level 1 attack up is +2, and level 1 attack speed is +20%.
Mitzu: don't get level 2 attack
before you at least get attack speed
?
You: Thing is, +2 is actually a 40% bonus over 5 damage.
Mitzu: ohh yea
jk
XD
You: Yeah, it's an imbalanced square.
Mitzu: So damage over speed, until you get the 80%
thing right?
or after a certain point in damage, speed becomes worth it
>.>
You: You generally want to spend about 250 more on attack power than attack speed.
Mitzu: What about for armor life and regen
Life first?
I see a lot of people go regen
You: Basically, if you had 10 base power, then +2 would be a 20% bonus.
Regen sucks.
Mitzu: Really?
You: I generally never buy regen.
Mitzu: just pure life and armor?
You: Yeah.
And mostly life
With a cheap armor, because it's a percentage bonus
Mitzu: mm hmm
You: But like...better to double up on life than to get 9% more damage reduction.
Mitzu: Yea true
You: (The typical ratio I go for is to spend about 4x as much on life as on armor).
Mitzu: I see
You: (That breaks down a little towards the expensive armors, because it's harmonic).
(The gap between 63% reduction and 72% reduction is much larger than the gap between 9% and 18%).
Mitzu: So many things to think about =.= just being a probe is hard enough haha
You: But yeah: other stuff: never buy level 4 attack speed (but that's kind-of obvious).
Mitzu: err which one is the level 4 attack speed
100 percent?
You: yep
Mitzu: ahh yea
i normally just go from 80 to 200
You: 800 minerals for +100...when you can spend 400 minerals for +80
Yeah, 80 to 200 is right.
It's actually correct to stick on 80 for a really long time (like up around 50 damage).
Mitzu: mmm
You: But...yeah, past that, in the lategame I focus builds around dealing with T11s, because T11s are that good.
Mitzu: Mm hmm
so what, armor and life? XD
You: If you don't have gas, stacking two 128 HPs, and one 128 armor will let you survive an 11-void with a teleport
Mitzu: Really?
You: Barely; you survive 6 hits.
Err...the 6th hit kills you
But void only lasts 5 seconds.
Mitzu: mmm
That's not bad at all then
normally you'd have gas by 11 though right?
You: Well...yes, normally I have gas around the time people are still on +64 gen >_>
Mitzu: XD
what is that, 7 and 8 turrets?
You: You can support a level 9 turret on +64
Mitzu: mm
You: I mean, not without delaying yourself, but that's about what the Mega Wall 1 costs, which is what you need for the upgrade.
Mitzu: mm hmm
You: And yeah, other post-gas stuff: 1 gas HP, and 128 armor makes you pretty safe against 11s--they kill in 15 seconds (denies feed, but you'll live).
Mitzu: and not everyone should have 11's
You: 1 gas HP, 1 gas armor lets you live 45 seconds against 11s (feed as much as you want).
Mitzu: mmm
You: I usually stop getting durability around 1 gas HP 1 gas armor, unless I just have spare gas (in which case I'll get 2 gas armor, then 2 gas HP).
Or the probes are making multiple 11s, of course.
Mitzu: i thought you said life over armor
You: Gas armor is different
Mitzu: doesn't it just go
from 92 to 96?
You: 92% to 96% = double
Mitzu: ehh
does life double too?
You: Yes.
Mitzu: so then it doesn't matter
You: So...it's pretty much equivalent.
Mitzu: which one you get?
ahh kk
You: (Armor is still slightly better due to your innate 500 HP and innate passive regen >_>)
Mitzu: heh
XD
You: And 8 gas armor is just flat out better than 8 gas HP.
Mitzu: For sure
You: (armor doubles again, HP goes from 320000 to 490000)
Mitzu: yea
You: Oh, and Regen 11 is actually good; arguably better than 490000 HP.
Mitzu: it's the 20 k hp per sec right?
You: Yeah
Quadruple the previous one.
Mitzu: coupled with armor, I'D ASSUME SO
oops
caps
XD
You: Well....so here's the thing
IMO all the regens (Except regen 11) should be doubled in how much they regen
Here's why
for the most part, 100 minerals buys you 250 HP, or 4 regen.
In order to get more than 250 life regened in a single visit, you have to keep knocking on the probe's door for 62.5 seconds.
It's basically never worth it to stay that long without returning home to upgrade.
Mitzu: yea
You: Double the bonus from regen, however, and now you're looking at 30 seconds; that's quite attractive
BUT: regen is still vulnerable. If you go all regen, and someone gets a T9, one void and you die.
Mitzu: mm hmm
life is just safer
You: Yeah; if regen bonus was doubled, I'd....still go life a lot of the time, but go regen when I feel I should take a risk.
Mitzu: so you never buy rege
until max?
You: Pretty much
Regen 11 is good; it also stacks
Mitzu: Mk, sounds good to me!
You: If you have to deal with multiple max turrets, for instance, you can have one damage sponge wearing 4x regen 11.
They can absorb 3-4 T13s.
Then load a kitty up with like...four max blades to kill the final wall.
Mitzu: wait
4 x regen 11
with what
armor and life?
You: Yeah
Mitzu: won't they just kill
your cats?
o.o
or damage is too high
You: You have to hope they don't focus fire
Mitzu: for them to focus in time?
ehh
without kitties you lose
as soon as they hit final
You: Well yes
Mitzu: right?
You: Well...ok, no not exactly
Double max weps can break it.
If there aren't too many repairs.
Mitzu: but then if they build turrets
in time
you die right?
You: Well...one max turret isn't too bad; regen 11 and 99% pretty much nullify it.
Two max turrets means you can only stay for 20 seconds, though.
Mitzu: ouch
so by 4
it's auto kill
with void?
or wait..
8 is auto kill
o.o
You: 4 kills in...7 seconds? Something like that.
But yeah, you need a kitty if you want to break 4 max turrets and a final wall.
Mitzu: Mm hmm
You: One max turret and one final wall is breakable solo, at least if they only have one probe repairing.
But...more to the point, it's very very rare that you ever get to this point; either probes or zealot tend to pull ahead and kill/completely feed deny long before final wall.
Mitzu: haha yea
like that game where we had like 15 final walls and like 8 turrets
XD
You: Haha, not actually the best way to do the endgame though.
Just cover the map with final turrets and zealot detectors.
Mitzu: yea i figured
You: What's he going to do, attack one of the final turrets?
Ok, he dies.
Oh, yeah, the other thing you can do against final wall if you catch them just as they get it, but before they get a final turret, is 3x max blades.
Mitzu: =0 lol, just pure damage
XD
You: You still have HP and armor >_>
Mitzu: well yea >.>
You: (Although, if you want to play really risky, you can sell the armor too, and go for 4x max blades)
Mitzu: lol
You: (You'll be fine as long as they don't have a 13....)
(But you'd have to run from like...a 12 x_x)
Mitzu: haha
You: (Well...you could stay for like...20 seconds against a 12, which might be enough time to knock down the wall)
(Wait...20...no that isn't right is it? Hmm...ok, no more like 8 seconds).
Mitzu: lolol
XD
not to mention, that'sonly 1?
Most people would have like 2 -3
if they already have final
at the minimum
You: Some people will sell all turrets when they realize they're not even hurting you.
(Which is actually not a bad strategy)
(Might as well try to econ faster)
Mitzu: mmm
Anyways, I'm pretty tired, gonna call it a night. Thanks for all the info and tips :P Let's play again sometime
You: ya later
My obscure character to use in tournaments was Luigi. His air game is a lot of fun, and I have a lot of control of his movements in the air. I love trying to predict an opponents movements when they are sailing and try to juggle them for mass-hysteria.
Another thing, I was never a wave dashing person. I figured that I wanted to test my skills against players that did wave dash, and I was not too far behind them. Sure, there are advantages to knowing how to do stuff like that, but I'd have to re-learn so much and I never wanted to get that focused. I was having fun with what I was doing, so I left it at that. Plus it was always fun to beat wave dashers.
Most of those legendaries you listed are not considered "ubers" and are not banned from normal play. In fact, most legendaries don't have especially great stats. The ones that are banned to ubers....
Deoxys A (glass cannon)
Deoxys S (Mediocre durability--badly distributed stats for it)
Lugia (Unholy tank; and takes half-damage from grass, and most EV builds pour even more into defences. Err...yeah, this is strange--you sure it was level 100 with EVs?)
Darkrai (Mediocre durability--kind of like Deoxys S but not as bad)
Arceus (Fantastic tank, but as you mentioned there were special circumstances here)
Mewtwo (Much more known for ridiculous speed and offence than durability, but his durability isn't bad)
would be better if there we more viable strats for endless other than cob cannons and winterpults everywhere
Probably should have linked this earlier but...
Remember this? Highest finite combo from an MtG deck that can't go infinite?
http://www.rpgdl.com/metroidcomposite/phpconversion.php
Well we've been updating the combo this week, and are in the process of going through new cards:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/19003230/Most_turn-1_damage_in_a_deck_that_cant_go_infinite?post_num=70#529619129
FFS.
Its a bloody registry change ... go make a reg file so you can 1 click update the registry.
HKEY_USERS\xxx\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\StarCraft II Editor\Preferences
Singapore = Physical location of SEA server
"BattleNetHost"="sg.logon.battle.net"
"BattleNetHost"="us.logon.battle.net"
"BattleNetHost"="eu.logon.battle.net"
Only works for the editor, don't try be a smart ass and change it for the game, won't work.
And yeah, I figured this out myself, no one told me how. Its how I quickly upload to all servers.
In this chart we see the average Converted Mana Cost, the average power and toughness, and most importantly, we see the average differential between power and toughness. The converted mana cost is definitely on the high side, coming in even higher than Avacyn Restored. Furthermore, it has the highest average toughness of any set for which I have done this type of analysis. But the most telling statistic is the power and toughness differential. As I’ve mentioned, this is the difference between the power and the toughness, and it is a key indicator for the speed of the format. Whenever we have a format with a P/T Differential that is either a small negative number, or a positive number, we end up having an aggressive format, like with GTC or AVR. When you see a large negative differential, you end up having a much slower format. The number -0.5 is the biggest negative differential that I have seen in any of the sets I have analyzed. The best set to compare this to would be something like Rise of the Eldrazi.
If we add up all of this data, along with the fact that this is a multicolor format that will almost certainly require you to play three colors, as well as a cycle of ten cluestones to ramp decks to higher mana during the midgame, we are certainly looking at a very slow format. If we were drafting DGM all by itself, it would be the slowest format in years. I suspect that even after adding GTC and RTR, that this will still be the slowest format since Rise of the Eldrazi.
Was all excited for more MtG meta in a format I don't toy with.
Any insight as to why the change? Was speed always optimal upgrade before or have all the scales been changed here?
So, I was thinking about absurd magic decks. And I became curious about the following question: what's the most damage a deck without an infinite combo can do in one turn? ...<snip<...
So far, the best I've come up with is 125,049,445 damage on turn 53 on the draw. Can you do better?
From an email to a mailing list with interest in Magic & board games at my company:QuoteSo, I was thinking about absurd magic decks. And I became curious about the following question: what's the most damage a deck without an infinite combo can do in one turn? ...<snip<...
So far, the best I've come up with is 125,049,445 damage on turn 53 on the draw. Can you do better?
<3<3<3
(I had the perfect links in response, of course. It seems the combo's since been updated for Dragon's Maze, too, and uses a rather different engine now involving Cowardice & In The Grip of Chaos.)
http://soniccenter.org/sm/mtg/megacombo.html for those too lazy to check met's earlier links.
Speaking of which, minor nitpick to maybe pass on to SadisticMystic... he mentions a Snow-Covered Island that's animated for Natural Emergence. Is that just a holdover from the earlier draft? Or does he mean "in later loops, we can use a Tundra Kavu mutated Mothdust Changeling?" (or is he CHEATING and introducing a Snow-Covered Island not in the decklist?!)
Going back to the extremely-large-but-not-infinite combo shenanigans, M14 offers Path of Bravery to add an extra layer at the end, I think.At this point, we're more limited by the 60 card restriction.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=370798
I don't think this is actually better than just using more critters that can't target themselves for the chain, though. Maybe worth a footnote or something?
Flip side, I think Skullclamp is on the game-breaking side of things. It's obviously fantastic but I'd cut that before Craterhoof if you're concerned about "playing fair."
Phyrexian plaguelordSac outlets. In fact, really good sac outlets. I shied away from these a little bit because I'm not aiming to make an impossible to deal with deck (like...Greater Gargadon has no way of turning off the sac outlet). Phyrexian Plaguelord would be fine, but the precon comes with Fell Shepherd, which is very similar. Worse, of course, but I'm not looking to jack up the power of the deck.
Greater Gargadon
Lands (high market, miren)
Dragon broodmother (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=189648)Another sac outlet, another source of tokens, and just a ridiculously overpowered card in multiplayer formats where it makes 4+ tokens per turn because it triggers every upkeep. Actually, I'm not sure why I don't have this one in. The logic in my head was that "Ideally I want to attack with prossh, sac it after combat, and then re-cast it, and Broodmother doesn't allow that. Also, Mycoloth is even more ridiculous." And these are true, but I think something that does all three of makes tokens and allows me to sac, AND that is a good method to turn 0/1 kobolds into damage (6 kobolds make a 13/13 dragon token). Yeah...I probably should find room for it. >_>
Feed the Pack (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262857)I ended up choosing Korozda Guildmage over it, for some of the similar logic to the above (lets me recast prossh the same turn). Also, it's a creature and thus fuels Tombstone Stairwell (which is often a pretty weak card in the deck, but it's funny so I want to support it). I feel kinda bad, though, as it's a totally forgotten card that would be great in the deck; oh well.
Avenger of zendikar, deranged hermit
Sarkhan the mad
Trading Post
Champion of Lambholt (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=279608)
Masked Admirers, Solumn Simulacrum, Yavimaya Elder
Hellion Eruption (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=271158)
Ogre Battledriver (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=370662)
Instigator Gang (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=227415)
Junkyo Bell (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=80280)
Varolz, the Scar-striped
Slate of Ancestry (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=159501)
You say "I had this brilliant plan, but it didn't matter because 40 pegasuses" like it is a bad thing. It is probably the Whitest thing a girl could get say.
So I can clearly see you invest a fair bit into this here, but want to ask some of the process anyway.
I am starting back up in Magic with the actual physical product instead of just faceroll in Duels of the Planeswalker, specifically looking to jump in to EDH.
How the hell do you go about starting to build a deck for this? I threw together a deck quickly based mostly in the cards we got out of a box of each of the Return to Ravnica block that we bought. Suffice to say it sucked pretty hard. (Trying to make something generic Boros ish with a splash of other Red and White stuff with Tajic as Commander, was slow and sucked. No way to accelerate at all)
I am wondering what your starting point really is? I found it hard to sit with cards and try to craft something. I would really like to be able to sit back and pick a few things as a starting point and then be able to work down from a macro level instead of being looking through a bunch of cards and trying to put together something coherent.
Do you find a hand full of cards that seem neat and blow out a bigger idea from there or do you make a big pile and then cut down from there? Is there some kind of tool you can use to build things without doing it with physical cards? I feel like I lose the forest for the trees there.
although Grave-Troll is weird in that half its value isn't in the creature itself.
and they had to print special anti-Thragtusk tech to deal with it in standard. (I can't recall what that card was, though... ugh.)
The stupid Orzhov 5cc stuff from Return to Ravnica are good but somewhat restricted by casting cost, so they feel "solid for Standard, not gonna matter in other formats."
The SNES game Super Metroid had various ways you could bypass the normal sequence of the game, and get items out of order. These seemed like they weren't intentional, and players felt quite clever for finding them. So.....Nintendo collects some feedback about Metroid, and finds that players like to find tricks to beat Metroid games out-of-sequence. And then they make Metroid Zero Mission where the developers deliberately placed some hidden tunnels to skip areas, and I believe they even had some kind of "you've found a hidden bypass tunnel" notification. Players hated this; the sense of discovery was gone. The sense of "I outsmarted the developer" was gone.
(This may be influenced by my general feeling that Metroid Fusion's script was written by a marmot.)
im at work but i think its like this:
4 Metalworker
4 Kuldotha Forgemaster
1 Steel Hellkite
4 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Platinum Emperion
4 Lodestone Golem
3 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
3 grim monolith
4 Trinisphere
3 Lightning Greaves
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Staff of Domination
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Cloudpost
4 Glimmerpost
3 Vesuva
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Darksteel Citadel
SB:
3 Ratchet Bomb
2 tsabos web
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Duplicant
4 faerie macabre
3 tormods crypt
Myr Battlesphere is a card I tend to fangirl over.
That Ugin deck is cool, but I definitely can't see assembling real life Legacy decks unless you plan on playing in tournaments. Just way too expensive, and probably "too good" for casual play anyway. I guess there's always proxies?
So what I am saying, buff red plz. Make a Bowser card, make it MT and give him the skill.
Hold on a sec - how does Balancing Act win so consistently again?
It wins if you go first, because you make them discard their entire hand and they never get to play their threat.
QuoteIt wins if you go first, because you make them discard their entire hand and they never get to play their threat.
That's a draw though unless I'm missing something obvious - YOU now have 0 permanents left too (you had to sac Squire to equalize at 0 permanents on the board, not just cards in hand) so it's a draw.
Is this list still going to be based on assuming the classes already ranked higher are "banned", or is it just attempting to show each class's contributions to a hypothetical strong team?
I think you're overthinking the nerf to Move+2. The good movement abilities got increased JP costs across the board, and the reason for this isn't so much that they were too good but because Laggy wanted you to consider other movement abilities besides just "buff your move" (that is, Move+X and Teleport). The best evidence of this is that the JP cost of Move+3 was actually increased, and nobody would consider that ability to be too good in vanilla (it has virtually zero non-aftergame use as far as I'm concerned).
Flipside, Thief has loads of weaknesses which LFT addressed in a big way, by literally doubling its damage output (sometimes even more; yeah I know they took a PA hit, but knives improved substantially) and giving them Quick Attack to improve the value of Steal as a secondary. Arguably no class got a bigger buff than Thief did. That speaks to them being a pretty bad class in vanilla, which they are. One of the tougher SCCs (in particular: one of the very few in which level-grinding is strongly suggested), doesn't have a good chapter 1 like knight, one of the single most unpleasant jobs to be in (low PA, low MA, bad weapons) with Move+2 about the only useful thing about the job outside some weird item acquisition utility. I've written in this space before that they deserve little credit for Chantage poaching even in a metagame which is restricted to "bad" jobs, let alone normally where you shouldn't care at all.
There is no way they are better than Monk, Geomancer, or Lancer as far as physical jobs go (Thief vs. Knight or Archer is more interesting, although intuitively I still am not favouring Thief). Nor Oracle of course.
There's a very real argument that Samurai is worse than the likes of Knight, who also have a point in the game where they're pretty good if still inferior to the top classes (C1) but unlike Samurai you can drop them in the part of the game where they're bad. I don't think I buy this argument myself, but it's there, and the more seriously you take Math Skill crushing the game from C2 on the better this argument looks.
so if you're using criteria that somehow gets them as high as ninth you should clearly state what those criteria are and understand that they aren't the norm.
I think Life Drain is the boss-killer and that strikes me as more important than Invitation. I know Lich/Demi replace it, but there's an analog there of Steal to Invitation. We can debate the specifics here but I feel that Oracle's "rest of the package" (Sleep, Silence, Defence Up, Move-MP Up) is considerably better than Mediator's (Equip Gun, faith modifying, Gun + robe).
Draw Out doesn't really outperform Summon even at endgame.
Punch Art's an easy way to raise the ranged damage of your Ninja (or other physical jobs, for all that only a few with high PA can use it well), and you get some limited multitarget, ITE (while still having Martial Arts instead of Concentrate) and you get some crappy revival and healing along with the ride. Is Ninja + Punch Art worse than Ninja + Item? Possible, but that's debatable.
what class should Ramza be?
Monk
Samurai!
Hmmmmm
You should reaaaaaaaally be thinking about Samurai.
Am I safe in reading the cliff notes of this asQuote from: metroidcomposite year 2000ADwhat class should Ramza be?Quote from: Excal then and foreverMonkQuote from: elfbot2000Samurai!Quote from: the metroidcomposite of now and the futureHmmmmmQuote from: DankHolyElftron2020You should reaaaaaaaally be thinking about Samurai.
I'm noticing I put Oracle both higher on the low cost skillset list than Priest, and higher on the mastered skillset list than Priest, so Oracle should move up above priest (+5 spaces or so >_>).
:)
Penalty classes (classes that can be painful to get JP in)
20. Calculator
19. Mime
18. Bard
17. Thief
16. Squire
QuotePenalty classes (classes that can be painful to get JP in)
20. Calculator
19. Mime
18. Bard
17. Thief
16. Squire
Mmm. In paper this makes sense, but in practice it's never felt like an issue. Early C1 Squire isn't much of a liability if it is one at all, and then later on you can get lots of spillover from special characters like Agrias, Orlandu, C4 Ramza, etc. I guess if there was a hypothetical uberskill that required 2000 Squire JP it would matter more, but in vanilla FFT you can get the Squire skills that matter easily enough.
Even assuming it IS easy, Chantage breaks the game badly enough that relative power rankings aren't super-important anyway, except for the likes of Wiegraf / Roof / Elmdor where it's either Ramza alone or else Reraise doesn't really stop how you'd lose the fight.
Ninjas aren't particularly valuable in Yardow. The enemy ninjas have 9 speed, so even your ninjas won't outspeed that (the only +speed equip you can get that they don't have is the Green Beret, and that at best will make up for the fact that the ninjas have ~25 levels with Ninja speed growth and probably 5-10 levels on you to boot) so they don't prevent the (very slim) chance that the ninjas gank Rafa with unusually powerful Throws. Meanwhile, pretty much anyone can prevent Malak from finishing her off (the rare times he even has any chance of doing so), and she is pretty much never in the Summoners' range.
Math Skill also honestly deals with the roof pretty well! Protect or healing on Rafa, some status or other on Lede (paralysis should work offhand, or just killing with damage, though you'll probably have to be Level 18 to manage that (so that you can go Wizard). Priest with Green Beret + Sprint Shoes will be the 9 speed required at any reasonable level, Ubersquire as well most likely.
This is why I'm not terribly comfortable with 100% assuming we just blow everything up with Math Skill, it kinda makes all but a very small number of other jobs pointless. Despite some on-paper advantages, Ninja is honestly one of them. (Their biggest thing is being the fastest possible carrier for Math Skill, but I'm not sure that a ~10% edge over Priest is worth the trouble of unlocking them.)
1) I don't assume that this is hardcore min-max world where Math Skill has beaten the game by the start of C3. While I'm going to give Math Skill some credit for its capability to reduce every fight to a single ability, the truth of the matter is that is not how most people play FFT. It's a little difficult to articulate this because this is ranking jobs on their effectiveness at beating the game, but it also assumes that you aren't setting up your entire party to optimize/synergize the way a CT5 Holy strategy demands. IOWs, there is some fun factor being weighed in where the more degenerate/boring a strategy is, the more I'll squint at giving it credit. People simply enjoy blowing up their enemies with giant space rocks and/or angry thunder gods, or punching demonic blobs and goats for absurd damage, in a way that watching Holy cast 10 times in a row as the only fight interaction doesn't provide.
Dancer at rock bottom surprises me. Sure, they're a pain to get to, not good at bosses, and inconsistent. But once you're there, they make it much easier to gain JP in anything else (especially Calc!) and the skillset *can* YOLO RNG solo any non-boss fight. No matter how bad the rest of your team is, "have someone Nameless Dance and protect them a turn or two" is always an out that gives you a floor % to win any fight it can work on - I've certainly seen multiple casual runs fall back on it. On Hatbot-style runs I'd much rather be randomizing to Dancer than to Bard, Knight, Archer or Thief.
Also on the LFT end, Dance went through quite a lot of revisions! Turns out skills that autotarget every enemy on the battlefield and can't be defended against are very hard to balance. There is not a lot of middle ground between "useless" and "oh wait, we made Slow Dance 100%, now two Dancers and a Mime win every fight in two turns."
Yeah, ok, point taken, Ninjas aren't as special as I thought they were. Mostly this makes me wonder if Ninja is too high at 6th. Like...certainly there's always been an argument for Time Mage above Ninja. Maybe Priest/Oracle are worth considering too.
I have a hard time seeing Dance > Punch Art by a big enough margin to make up for Monk's other advantages, or Dance > Draw Out period, so really I guess I'm saying that I don't really see Dancer rising above anything besides maybe one or more of Knight/Archer/Thief.
EDIT: Re: viability of Punch Art over Draw Out, you get to access Monks and use them for a period before not wearing a hat is utterly crippling
And MA Ninja w/ Earth Slash alone is pretty okay, you don't really need to master Punch Art at all
Remember that Koutetsu is 2 range and Earth Slash is 8 range, too. It kind of evens out, and Koutetsu looks especially worse when the still-common Bolt in C2 has 5 range - at least in some situations the extra aoe and ranged chip on Earth Slash can be relevant.
Is it though? Like...I'd hazard a guess that Throw outdamages Earth Slash...certainly throughout Chapter 2, and probably during a decent chunk of Chapter 3 (I'd have to run the numbers). And like...it's pretty similar range (6 range; 7 with Battle Boots. But not height or line restricted).
I do think your levels are erring slightly on the low side for what it's worth. You're proposing that we gain only 5 levels over the course of chapter 3, so that's... 45 Exp a battle per PC (assuming no randoms, which isn't really reasonable given the crossing of Zeklaus Desert thrice and potential backtracks for equipment), in a chapter where average enemy level is like 26 (i.e. every action which targets an enemy should be netting you almost a quarter of a level, so the average battle ends in 1-2 rounds?
The more other skills you can pick up (Wave Fist for the extra 13-17% damage, Chakra, Revive) the better Punch Art looks
Mmm...maybe I should go for something more organic and assume all battles take 3 rounds (except for obvious assassination missions like Roof and Wiegraf 2).
My knee jerk is that you want to take SCCs as a point of reference here. Not because they are a great data point for average plays, but the SCC rules are a pretty damn good reflection of a moment in time where FFT was a wonderful new mystery to people and your "average" player was fairly decently represented. My knee jerk was to say 3/4 of the level "caps" of the challenge would be your target, but even that I am sure over targets it. 2/3 is a bit more in line with what I think of as "average"
"Well we have all these studies of "regular" play throughs in LPs, I wonder what the data in a meta analysis shows your actual average level is."
That said, no way is Time Mage 13 for Velius. Time Mage needs to hit Level 12 just to start casting Meteor, something they do in chapter 2.
MC: Nice idea with the MOBA-esque draft, except... I have to think that allowing multiples of a class is going to render a lot of the draft nearly irrelevant. e.g. in Draft 1, if playing "competitively", Team A is probably going to run something like 4x Summoners w/ White Magic, and maybe one Geomancer or Samurai for giggles. Draft 2 Team B can also credibly run 3-5 Summoners while building up 0-2 Ninjas w/ Item or whatever. As a comment from the peanut gallery, I'd think a draft with a Four Job Fiesta-esque requirement of "maximum of 1 person in each class" (barring the very early game for training up JP of course) would be interesting. It still wouldn't fix the issue of "4 people running Summon as their secondary" but it'd make the lower tier picks more relevant. I guess you could also use a "no Secondary / no imported RSM" requirement, but that'd be less fun.
so if we're including Ubersquire hype, I can see Ubersquire > Mediator
I think a lot of people just plain like variety in their teams, so forcing that variety seems legit. Same reason people usually won't run 3+ of the same class in a Fire Emblem game even when that can technically make sense.
If speed is valued... it's probably worth noting that the current no math speedrun routes lean heavily on Time Mage/Samurai. They also use JP Scroll to insta-learn those skillsets - but the result is very strong.
It is a general truth about optimising durability in RPGs, and why it's so rarely worth it, though. Also why tank characters tend to be kinda weak in most RPGs prior to WoW/D&D4-style tanking made its way into the genre.
Ah. Separate views of proactive tanking, basically.
I consider it kinda a two step progression.
MMO tanking was literally AI control (I have generated X threat, as long as no generates more, I will be attacked) and has existed since at least Evequest (I know it showed up in most games back then). I see 4th Ed as an evolution of that idea, where the tanks generally incentivize targeting them as opposed to literally forcing it.
But this is sidetracking real hard. Sorry. Poke me if you'd like to continue this talk >_>
This is... not so right? (now anyway and well technically in EQ days because EQ didn't have much in the way of threat boosters and raw damage was how you built threat, but lolEQ)
WoW moved away from EQ style AI control through flat boosters after Lich King (and were trying it even during it). These days the WoW archetype and things that follow it is very much the same way as MOBAs, Tanks do okay damage. Not as much as a DPS, but still decent. If your tank can't maintain a rotation they are going to be a burden.
Also bro that same skill set that lets you be a threat in MOBAs is why tanks were PVP viable as well. They were always in the skillset. Stuns, snares, interrupts. Is all there. They are just brought way more to the forefront in competitive play against humans that all the skills work on VS raid bosses that are immune to everything but the one mechanic that the fight uses.
Add in some bonus movement skills and you have why in Cata and onwards Warriors were flag carriers in PVP. Tank the world, charge out of the way, dump CCs like a boss and slam dunk the flag. Add in hilarious Vengeance stacking shenanigans (long since fixed) on point defense maps where they get beat on fore a minute building up damage buffs for damage taken then cleave down groups of enemies with AoE.
I think the hardest thing for me is actually pinpointing where it originated. WoW started getting into that kind of balance in 2008ish by my timeline, which is when 4th Ed released (lol 4th ed totes 100% rips off WoW though rite??). MOBAs might be the inspiration there with DotA really blowing up around 2005, but most of the tools for that are present in the classic Warrior archetype of WoW (which again rips hard from EQ) AND the original DotA heroes are riffing on stuff that was present in base Warcraft 3... so does it go back to that? Even Warcraft 3 it felt like riffs on classic archetypes from D&D (or maybe EQ lolololol).
I can't tell if it is piles of incestuous inspiration, some parallel design principles or what was going on.
It could be as simple as two different problems having the same results in their answer. Tanks were boring in MMOs, so we should incentivize them to be more active whether it be maintaining tanking abilities or doing damage. "Tanking" in both tabletop gaming (and MOBAs I guess) was kind of bullshit because well the DM and other human players can just focus fire down the squishies, so they should get things that make them a more appealing target (by whatever means necessary). The result to both problems is the same though, targets that soak damage and do stuff.
Djinn: Similar to how FE7/FE8 drafts usually let everybody have Marcus or Seth for the first half of the game.
I guess it comes down to expectations of player skill? Snowfire says that high skill players are hard to consider balance for, while I'm operating on the opposite and feel that high skill players are the only ones who balance *can* be adequately considered for.
Oh, to be clear, there, the only things I'm valuing from Mediator at all are Praise and Preach. The job description reads "a small investment in this class gives your mages (and/or monks and ninjas) a permanent passive damage bonus, and makes your reaction abilities trigger more often." Is +~30% damage on your Ramuh or Black better than Auto-Potion? Yeah, absolutely, that enables a lot of quick kills that wouldn't otherwise be possible. On Meteor... hm, I guess there is the argument that Meteors are going to OHKO or overlap 2HKO anyway, so the damage boost may be overkill if you're on Time Mage or TM/Priest as your only casters? That does lower it somewhat.
With Calc in the mix, there are now three battlefield nuke classes so they're going to be split. This makes them less important to ban, but also means Team 2 has to be very, very on point with what they plan to do. I can already say in their shoes I would not ban Squire, I would want to first pick Squire + nuke class. When your competition is Math, you aren't winning the long game, so getting out to a strong early lead is important. Gained JP Up does that better than Item, IMO. If Squire is banned, then Summon + Time at least gives you Short Charge summons to work to, that's the best thing you can be doing without Math or Wizardry. Chemist just does not make sense to me.
Picking Chemist early comes at a significant cost in offensive team power. I feel like all of these drafts are taking it way too highly. You don't need Auto-Potion and Phoenix Down when every fight gets one-rounded, which is honestly what should happen in a draft format with skilled players and only one ban per team.
So Team 2 gets the better of this one, cleanly. Team 1 feels all over the place. What is their plan? Holy and weak classes until Samurai comes online? Let's see what MC said. Dance? Dance + Holy? Is... is that even better than Wizard SCC, even when fully set up? And Team 2 has all that other stuff? This may be less close than the Math draft.
Ok, it took a ban to do it but this looks more like what I was envisioning at the outset, with an even split of the mage classes and then a fight for support. Monk/Ninja looks like a suspect pick here. Is Team 2 really going to actually use those physical jobs over potential picks of Oracle, Mediator and Samurai? Revive was mentioned, but really, who's ever learning and setting that? Oracle at least would give Move MP Switch and sticks, if you're worried about running into situations where magic is somehow bad.
Oh, also, Bard going dead last when magic is in play, that probably shouldn't happen. Ramza is still a forced male PC, Bard is still an acceptable-ish job for a mage to be in, and Move+3 isn't that big of a dip compared to some of the stuff teams have seriously considered.
Time Mage is a very strong pick to me, roughly equal to Wizard and Summoner. My ideal composition is (strong lategame MT magic) + (strong magic support) + (strong earlygame carry). Time Mage, Summoner and Wizard each provide 2/3 of the puzzle. TM lacks earlygame, Summoner lacks support, and Wizard lacks lategame.
General thoughts: Drawing conclusions from these drafts runs a danger of circular logic, where we as drafters pick a thing high or low because we already think it's good/bad and then look at the results and go "thing got drafted high/low, it must be good/bad!"
General eyeballing job strengths in ban format:
Calc >> Summoner > Wizard > Time Mage > Squire > Priest > (Ninja and Samurai if you are moving in on them) > Mediator > Chemist > Oracle > Geomancer > Thief > Monk > Bard > Lancer > Archer > (Ninja and Samurai if you are not moving in) > Knight > Dancer > Mime
Queklain is Level 20.
To be clear, I think 15 for Orbonne is reasonable enough, it was 15 for Riovanes that I was questioning (beyond the lowest-level classes).
That said, no way is Time Mage 13 for Velius. Time Mage needs to hit Level 12 just to start casting Meteor, something they do in chapter 2. (Everything before Meteor involves lots of Haste and staff whacks so they actually gain large amounts of Exp early). Now, they finish battles in such a small number of actions after Meteor that they probably aren't 18 by the end of C3, that I'll grant, but they should be ~16 just based on getting one level every four battles post-Meteor (which sounds right to me).
Samurai/Squire I'm both really skeptical about and I'm certain I wasn't that low myself (despite not grinding), but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Keep in mind that if I recall your playstyle right, you tended to reset if you got in randoms so right there that's a fair bit of potential lost Exp, especially for Samurai which will absolutely backtrack for Kiyomori post-Yardow thus having 7 potential randoms (~2.3 on average? They're 1/3 chance, right?) in chapter 3.
Hmm, that makes me want to put this together...
List of potential randoms, for reference:
Chapter 1:
5 unavoidable (Mandalia, Sweegy, Mandalia, Mandalia, Mandalia)
1 if we backtrack for Silk Robe/Chain Vest
2 if, in addition to the above, we backtrack for Mithril Sword, Silver Bow, heavy equip upgrades, etc., after Miluda
Chapter 2:
4 if we backtrack for the first spear and/or the Ice Bow
3 if we backtrack for the Triangle Hat, Rainbow Staff, Power Wrist, and/or sticks instead of waiting for after Zaland
4 if, in addition to the above, we backtrack for Coral Swords before Zaland and Bariaus Hill [very unlikely]
2 if we backtrack for Green Berets and Wizard Robes before Zigolis and Goug
4 if, in addition to the above, we backtrack for katanas and balls
1 if we backtrack for Brigandine, Wizard Staff, and/or Bizen Boat
1 unavoidable (Bariaus Valley)
10 if we backtrack for Cross Helmets [extremely unlikly!]
Chapter 3:
4 if we backtrack for various new weapons at chapter start (sword, spear, bow) instead of waiting until after Goland
3 unavoidable (Zeklaus x3)
8 if we backtrack for Mithril Guns [unlikely]
2 if we backtrack for Platinum Sword and +30 heavy armour HP after Yardow
2 if, in addition to the above, we backtrack for Ninja Edge and Kiyomori
Chapter 4:
12 unavoidable (Yuguo, Grog, Finath, Bed, Finath, Dolbodar, Zirekile, Araguay, Sweegy, Mandalia, Mandalia, Sweegy)
Plus a bunch more if we do the Beowulf sidequest, don't feel like counting that up.
I think how much backtracking one does is open to player choice, though I'd typically rather not do any backtracks that involve 5+ battles at least, and a few more in there are certainly questionable too. Some obviously depend on the party contribution; the first backtrack of chapter 2 is a no-brainer if you plan on running a Lancer in the first half of the chapter, but if you aren't you will probably skip it.
QuoteThe thing is, if "few resets" are the main metric, then past a certain point really good players all have 0 resets. It's like 2 students getting a perfect score on the test: you can check things like "how fast did you finish the test", "did this hype require weird or nonintuitive bug/AI exploits", and "were you forced to go grind up rare steals / poaches to study for the test to really guarantee a perfect score", but it's a little arbitrary. I'd argue hard-focusing offense can help with the tiebreaker issues like "number of turns used" assuming elite players, but also potentially lead to resets and & more frequent crystalizations if you mess up.
Basically this, except I think this is vastly underrating how powerful FFT offense is and how easy it is to have 0 resets, which makes "how fast" the real competitive measurement in question to me. Like... resets are kinda rare in the good SCCs to begin with. Summoner + Item is certainly better than Summoner + nothing, but when you're adding not just two jobs together, but half the jobs in the game, with some choice allowed? That's overkill, without restrictions of some sort. Something has gone horribly wrong if a reset is ever in the picture.
Uh, anyhow, sorry, didn't mean to be all contentious!
Edit since new post - as far as character building goes, I do tend to assume that some amount of JP gain is frontloaded and done in chapter 1. Not necessarily "frog an enemy and grind your full skillset" but "poke your teammates with rods in between Delita murdering the enemy at a moderate pace." The specifics are hard to work out without hashing things like "how do you get through 'banned' jobs in a draft anyway?" One rounding fights starts in mid chapter 2, except for Summoner, and even then is somewhat of an exaggeration.
I will agree that any of MC's drafts with Summoner (and no Calc for the opposition) probably favors the Summoner team, because Summoner is just plain one of the most dominant classes out there, with a Summoner SCC probably being on par with "your choice of your least favorite 14 classes". Summoners don't even *need* MAU or Short Charge to be good. That's why I mentioned that with MC's ruleset, I'd be tempted to run 3-5 Summoners regardless of whatever else I drafted if I somehow grabbed Summoner. (My 3rd playthrough of the game - without reading FFTSB or GameFAQs or anything - was a "-1 deploy limit" run, and I had something like Summone/Time Mage, Summoner/Priest, Summoner/Oracle, and Ramza as Ubersquire/Geo w/ White Magic. Yeah, 3/4 summons is good times.)
The Quickening exists, if it isn't banned.
Priest that high is due to synergy with other mage jobs, considering that magic is usually going to be the main strategy of choice. If your options are just Priest vs Ninja in a vacuum, Ninja's better, but if you're looking for "second class to support Wizard, Time Mage or Summoner" then there's no real reason to give Ninja the time of day - Priest can help your earlygame while remaining relevant later.
The specifics are hard to work out without hashing things like "how do you get through 'banned' jobs in a draft anyway?"
Basically this, except I think this is vastly underrating how powerful FFT offense is and how easy it is to have 0 resets, which makes "how fast" the real competitive measurement in question to me.
Idly, how did you end up handling the randoms (especially the backtracks that may or may not happen)?
What's the DC check for "with no training, jump out of a third story window, and land gracefully on the toes of your feet so that you don't snap your stiletto heels"? Hmm...yeah I don't really have an answer to that.
hat's a side-effect of 18 Cha; you carry a reality-warping field of "everybody looks up when you enter the room." In all seriousness, this is one of the nice things about roll-play rather than role-play; sometimes a shy player wants to try their hand at a super-charismatic character, so sure, even if you can't charm them off their feet yourself, go ahead and roll a Diplomacy check... okay, yes, Bella knows the right things to say, and her brown hair is shimmering at just the right angle from the sunlight, etc. etc. you're fine and your character just naturally knows what to do even if you don't.
Just based on your rough descriptions I would assume they are something closer to 19-25, but more information would be helpful.
You're probably overrating the strength somewhat too. Leafing through the 5e monster manual... a kraken (gargantuan creature, can lift ships let alone 2000 kg objects) "only" has a strength of 30, so it seems unlikely that Twilight vampires are better than that. The stat appears to be strongly logarithmic past a certain point.
(Actually, in general, D&D stats tend to work a bit differently at certain ranges. 3-18 is supposed to cover the range of human experience with a distribution you'd expect from rolling 3d6. 1 and 2 cover "worse than any human" which can be a wide range in some cases, e.g. animal Int stats. Then higher numbers cover everything from the barely super-human to godlike creatures... but for the most part, don't go much past 30 if at all, and are scaled to cover this range.)
DC 45 Tumble check allows you to treat a fall as if it were 30 feet shorter. If you want to add extra credit, DC 60 allows you to treat a fall as 40 feet shorter. And a DC 100 check allows you to ignore fall damage completely.
I will also note that DC 120 Balance checks allow you to stand on clouds.
B) Bella is 18 Charisma. Not because the author is remotely convincing at making her authentically charismatic (a la, say, Kefka or Balthier), but because everybody just wants to be friends with her on meeting her or just generally thinks she's Important and should be Paid Attention To despite being a random mortal high schooler (e.g. for the villains). That's a side-effect of 18 Cha; you carry a reality-warping field of "everybody looks up when you enter the room." In all seriousness, this is one of the nice things about roll-play rather than role-play; sometimes a shy player wants to try their hand at a super-charismatic character, so sure, even if you can't charm them off their feet yourself, go ahead and roll a Diplomacy check... okay, yes, Bella knows the right things to say, and her brown hair is shimmering at just the right angle from the sunlight, etc. etc. you're fine and your character just naturally knows what to do even if you don't.
Bella as a transfer student instantly gets a network of (mortal) friends at the high school who are for the most part pretty decent. She *whines* occasionally but nobody actually is mean to her or the like in a way that matters.
Additionally, it's not just vamps who think she's the bees knees- Jacob & co. all think Bella is totally awesome and should be protected blah blah blah, for the some-mortal-friend / some-supernatural crowd.
Sand Rat Cellar: Level 3, (20 actions)
Meeting at lionel: Level 10, (70 actions)
Orbonne: Level 17 (120 actions)
Bethla: Level 27 (170 actions)
Before final dungeon: Level 36 (220 actions)
-Well Wave Fist should really be mentioned for Monk. 60 ranged damage probably keeps them off the "painful" list, at least as much as it does Archer (who has less damage but more range/move).
-Priest is obviously better than many of the random leftover classes, and may even compete for that 5-6 slot. They do only slightly less damage than other fighters, have decent enough MA/MP for magic secondaries, and Cure alone is a cooler skillset than most others at this point (it's great economy if you can AoE it effectively, in particular). I'd certainly value it above Haste, though TM's +1 MA may make them slightly better anyway... still, it's competitive.
Yeah...I don't count JP scroll as legal. Some skillsets are JP scrollable. Some are not, and this means that some jobs that aren't scrollable are just arbitrarily garbage.
I should also point out that calling 5e a "three stat game" can be a little misleading, and certainly isn't always true. (e.g. some builds such as non-arcane rogue pretty much only care about two stats for combat; not everyone uses Dex for AC; some characters needs durability far more than others in general depending on role) And everyone is different, but personally a 15/15/15/8/8/8 stat build makes me twitch: that's going to be a lot of skills you're hideously bad at, and anyway no race is well-positioned to use 15/15/15 besides human (as you'd need a feat to improve the third 15 to an even number, and the only other race that boosts three stats, half-elf, boosts one of them by +2 anyway).
e.g. some builds such as non-arcane rogue pretty much only care about two stats for combat
If I’m a cleric/druid with the Disciple of Life feature, does the goodberry spell benefit from the feature?
Yes. The Disciple of Life feature would make each berry restore 4 hit points, instead of 1, assuming you cast goodberry with a 1st-level spell slot.
Halfling is the best class for smugness toward fellow players though.
It depends what elements of the character you want to emphasize. If you want to push the Sailor Scout part you want Half Elf. If you want Cthulhu worshipping you go halfling.And what's the reason to go Human? >_>
Your formula is too """"""complex"""""" for Fifth which is pushing that simplified mechanics wagon hard. It exposes a lot of the moving parts to the design, you would need to define a class's spell progression rate etc.
Finally, it is ham fisted but it does hard cap potential abuse with multi classing which after Third and Fourth I think was high on the to do list
SPOOOOOOOOOOOKY FRAAAACTIONS
Hinoka as mom -
Marrying two primary sky knights results in a parallel class to both. In this case, you get Troudabour for both Subaki and Hinoka. Hinoka honestly doesn't mind this and because you have the same primary, it will pass down Hinoka's secondary which in this case is still Spear Fighter! Pretty cool actually. The main downsides are the opportunity cost (as mentioned Seigbert wants Hinoka as his mother too) and that for mods, you get less defense, more magic defense and slightly more offense. However, the main reason youmightwant this is obviously the hair color. Don't you want to make Not!Cordelia look more like Cordelia and at the same time make her still relatively useful and not hose either parent?
Something about Fates that is a bit different than Awakening optimization is that grinding out off-class skills feels way, way more annoying. Awakening has EXPonential Growth which means you can Second Seal over to a class that is wholly horrible, get the skills you want, and get out reasonably fast even if the character is fairly helpless in it.
But... part of the reason to use Xander is to use Siegfried. Which he can't do in Malig Knight. And he needs to be there for 4 levels somewhere in L11-L19, a part of the game that does not screw around. UGH. Do not want. It's similar with a lot of potentially useful skills that you can get via marriage/friendship... yes, I'd like that skill, but I don't want to go to an E weapon rank for several levels and lose whatever niche this character was filling.
As a side note, I realize that you're taking into account both "normal game" and "optimized future DLC / PvP", but for Rally skills on males, I'd definitely only want to hype Rallys good for normal usage that don't require crazy cross-classing. If we're gonna go optimized, skip the cRAzY cross-classing and just get a Fell Brand for Rally Spectrum instead. Bang, optimal Rally achieved, thx Grima.
Great Knight gives Camilla access to a job which still has axe rank and above average move, which is nice enough as an option if you want to avoid arrows with her, for all that I think Hero/Berserker especially are of more value to her (though she can get one or both of these quickly and easily through her retainers).
You definitely underrate how good Healing Word and its ilk are in combat, I think? Remember that it doesn't just 1d4+5 (or whatever) damage, it also restores any damage which had been used to overkill the character when they dropped to 0. 5e bous action revival is really powerful and makes the classes with it much better.
if you're trying to figure out the best class, you'd probably be better served to focus on almost any other level besides 20.
(except wild sorcerer, but who cares about them).
Also, I see no mention of the fact that Wizard has 20 less HP than any other caster
I'd honestly kneejerk wizard one of the weakest casters because of this, except that Meteor Swarm is super-dumb at 19-20 (ahead of other damage spells by... a ridiculous amount) and a bunch of other casters lose out a bunch due to not having this.
Spiritual Weapon allows you to unload a bunch of free damage with bonus actions.
Life Cleric really does heal notably better than anyone else (even its Cure Wounds beats out Goodberry for a L1, and Prayer of Healing is way ahead of like everything).
Some of the channel divinities are quite cool... I'm a big fan of Radiance of Dawn in particular, generally somewhat weaker than Fireball, but an even bigger radius and IFF (granted, you can get IFF Fireballs via some Wizard/Sorc builds).
Wild Sorcerer might actually be better than Dragon Sorcerer at 20. Like...Wild Magic is on average positive, and breaks various rules (doesn't require concentration). And you have a ton of control over it by this level (you get to roll twice and pick the result you like. And if both of them are bad, you can often just counterspell the wild magic).
I mean...we're talking 20th level Wizard. Take Spell Mastery on Shield, basically add 5 to your AC. (Combined with mage armor your AC is now 8 + DEX).
I mean, Sorcerers also get Meteor Swarm, and Bards can learn it. I don't know that it's necessarily the be-all-end-all of level 9 spells...
I mean, presumably there's a tipping point somewhere when in-combat healing becomes a good use of spell slots (for actions other than resing) if the healing amount is high enough. I'm...not really sure how to translate this tipping point into math, however.
(True Polymorph, I'll grant, might be. Not so impressed as you are by Foresight/Wish/Prismatic Wall... you realise that Foresight only grants disadvantage for enemies specifically targeting the 1 target, yes?). I don't really think this is an advantage Wizard(/Sorcerer/Bard) enjoys as convincingly at lower levels.
And... the other spells you list don't change my point! My point was that Wizard (and Sorcerer and Bard, yes) specifically spike up a lot with that spell, and others like it, if you feel any are as good
It's the most overtly powerful, and the spell which I've generally seen the most hype for online. It's also a huge upgrade over the most damaging L8 spell, which is around 50 points for AoE or 96 ST.
Mass Heal is honestly excellent and I may be underrating it as a L9, it is "fully heal and revive party" which comes pretty damn close to "win an encounter". (Granted, not the only L9 spell which you can say that of.)
The lower-level stuff is more interesting since the resource is less valuable. And... Life Cleric healing is kinda uber once it's maxed. Mass Cure Wounds is 36 to all allies at a L5 (+9 per spell level), which is potentially terrific, but really depends on both party size and how much the enemies distributed their damage. And for action economy, Mass Healing Word is 14/19/24 MT for L3-5 which seems potentially useful as well. But... I'm not 100% certain how much.
I've never seen a Life Cleric in action but they look extremely powerful to me on paper.
Side note--I was wrong in my reading of Contagion. The target needs to fail 3 saves before the negative effects kick in.
I'll admit it depends a little on the DM, however. Apparently the official guideline is for the DM to give 8 encounters per day, and 4 short rests. Meteor Swarm wins one encounter. Foresight helps you in all 8 encounters.
Like...ignore material components of spells, and the spell always takes 1 action even if it's replicating a spell that normally takes 12 hours to cast
The problem is that mages aren't really the source of damage in 5e--or, ok fine, they're solid at AoE damage.
Doesn't look like it. Certainly neither my Cleric player nor I myself read the spell that way. Let's check again...
"Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, you inflict the creature with a disease of your choice from any of the ones described below." (The list below includes Slimy Doom.)
Failing three saves simply extends the effects of the disease to 7 days. Whereas succeeding on three saves... well. "After succeeding on three of these saving throws, the creature recovers from the disease"
That leaves it pretty inarguable, at least as written. A DM can make the call to nerf it (and I've read discussions online debating how best to do that, though I choose not to beyond encounter design), although I'd certainly say that the spell having no effect until 3 failed saves would be going waaay too far for a L5, at that point it pretty much becomes "non-combat spell, make someone sick for a week". Contagion's a very strong spell, though you're at the mercy of disease immunity/resistance with it, so you'd better have other tricks, as any DM will respond to repeated use of a powerful toy like that with increasing incidences of monsters who spoil it, particularly arc bosses and the like. (For instance, my PCs just hit Level 11, a big milestone. One boss had legendary actions and a Potion of Vitality, the other just had Shield/Counterspell/Dispel Magic. Neither was completely immune to this tactic, but they were resistant enough, and my player guessed they would be and opted to use the L5 slots for other things.)
That's true. I will admit I don't intuitively think this way because 8-fight days strike me as insane. I like my campaigns to have a reasonable story component and it's pretty difficult to have 8 fights in a day (really? The enemies didn't try to team up at all?) AND not give the PCs the ability/desire to long-rest somewhere in the middle without this whole setup feeling very contrived. One-fight days are more common than eight-fight days (though of course, the DM should keep the PCs guessing as to whether this will actually be a one-fight day), and I'd probably take something like 4 as closer to the norm in order to achieve a desirable level of balance while still being grounded in reality. But this will vary campaign to campaign, as well as day to day within that campgaign, for sure.
(and... other than Rogue/Fighter/Paladin, can the others even hit that much? Will be interesting when you get to them)
I will say that storyline-wise short rests have a lot of the same problems as long rests, which is to say, if you're running from people who are tracking you, or you are racing after an enemy...stopping for an hour sounds bad, and stopping for 8 hours also sounds bad.
If the spell needs a touch attack AND a majority of saves over 3-5 rounds to do anything, it's completely useless in combat and pretty close outside it.
Lesser Restoration will remove it and it's a L2! If you're Level 9+, any Important NPC you might conceivably want to hit with this (assuming you could even do it in a way that doesn't trigger combat, meaning you'd be better off just having striking her with a sword) is gonna be able to talk to a a healer who knows Lesser Restoration. Or just use a potion/spell.
By contrast, it's expected that you allow all the standard PHB armour. So what I'm saying is... while I'm fine with putting half/full plate on the same "tier" as the uncommon magic items (in terms of how many each PC can afford), I don't think they should be treated as more rare, since I don't think you'll find many campaigns where that is the case.
A sequence where the PCs chased a CR ~5 NPC
Barbarian notes:
Y'know I normally dismiss Great Weapon Master, because lol 40% have fun being unreliable, but it's actually pretty solid with advantage to make up for it and yeah Reckless Attack is cool. It does leave you extremely vulnerable to non-physical AC attacks... though yes, Bear Totem deals with that weakness! The reason I kinda assume otherwise is the Wolf effect at that level is good, though harder to quantify as it does depend on party somewhat. Of course, if Wolf is indeed the better choice, well, you've already proven shown its baseline with Bear, so more power to it. Psychic damage is extremely rare.
Bard:
While it's probably not as good overall, should mention that Valour Bard has 17*0.65 = 11 damage with a Rapier and 17? 18? AC with a shield. (Not sure exactly what equipment you ended up allowing, or rather how many.) Losing Fireball/Aura of Vitality kinda sucks but reasonable spammable damage + Shatter (13.5-18 AoE) and Hypnotic Pattern along with the revival healing is a pretty nice all-around package? Uberhealing Bard is probably more optimised, though. It'll be interesting to see how other healing figures compare.
I mean, I keep wanting to dismiss the -5 accuracy +10 damage effects, but usually when I run the numbers they end up being more average damage. Even when the hit rate sounds hilariously awful like 35%. If you hit 35% of the time, that means you'd hit 60% of the time without using this feature, so +10 only has to roughly double the damage to be a better trade (and +10 usually does roughly double the damage).
Tempest Cleric:
Call Lightning is fine and all, but let's talk about Shatter, which feels the more important spell to note here. It's got a bigger radius than Call Lightning, and deals more initial damage as a L3 (18, channel divinity is 32), and doesn't require 100 feet of space above your target. And it can be used as a L2 as well, for 75% effectiveness. Call Lightning can be better, but you have to keep your concentration (and not have other good actions) to justify it. And... yeah, generally, in practice AoE feels really important. Shatter catches extra enemies a LOT compared to Call Lightning-esque spells in my experience.
Druid:
One of two 5e classes I've yet to see played at my table, I have nothing to add about them at this time.
Mmm.
The thing is, which is better? 100% chance of 10 damage, or 50% chance of 20 damage?
And the answer is, the reliable one is definitely better. There are two reasons for this. One is that, we aren't usually just wailing down a huge solo, but taking out enemies who have considerably less HP than this. Which is to say... a reasonable share of your attacks are kills. And if you're targetting something with 4 HP left, then your damage doesn't matter, only your accuracy. (Granted, Great Weapon Master and its ilk are a bit better about this, since if you KNOW something only has 4 HP left, then you can use the more accurate version. But you usually won't know an enemy's exact HP, I'd say.)
The second reason to prize reliability is that... well, honestly, in most D&D campaigns, if the players approach things with some bare minimum of intelligence, most fights will be slanted in their favour; that is, almost all fights will be ones they have greater than a 50% chance to win. Usually quite a lot better! So the players are massive favourites. And that means they need to play like favourites, employing Goliath strategies (http://smartfootball.blogspot.ca/2009/05/david-strategies-and-goliath-strategies.html), that is, reliable ones. Because with things slanted in their favour, to lose they need to get unlucky, and trying to go for big 40% hits is an excellent way to get unlucky.
Of course, the opposite is true if the player team is trying to win a fight they really "shouldn't", like picking a fight with someone the DM has advertised as too strong for them. At that point, you need luck to win, so sure, fish for criticals and low-accuracy high-damage shots!
To return to the specific case of Barbarian... 16 Str, +1 weapon, +2 rage damage, right? Greatsword. 14 base damage per swing, 65% hit, 88% reckless. With ASI, 15 and 70% hit, 91% reckless. With Great Weapon Master, 24 damage, 40% hit, 64% reckless. Times 2 in all cases.
Great Weapon Master: 48*0.64 = 30.7 (I think you missed the +1 from magic weapon)
18 Str: 30*0.91 = 27.3
So... 12% more damage for the wilder build. Again, reckless attacks certainly makes this more palatable than it would be otherwise. But is the 12% damage difference worth the lower reliability? I don't really know the answer to that. I could see going either way.
(It's also worth noting that the GWM build has bonus action attacks on a kill/crit (10% chance!), while the 18 Str build has +1 damage/accuracy with javelins and is 5% better at athletics/strength saves/etc. I'm willing to assume those advantages roughly offset.)
There's also Thunder Wave as an option, which is the same damage as Shatter, but a 15 ft radius. Requires you being at the center of the radius, though.
Alternatively, using Crossbow Master but not Sharpshooter. 4+1+d6 = 8.5 damage. Your hit is +10, so hit 80% of the time. 6.8 average damage. 20.5 damage across three attacks.
Not super-impressed by bow fighter.
First of all, while I agree that it works by RAW, I think Trip Attack is begging for a DM to slap a "melee attacks only" flag on it for reasons which are obvious. Fortunately, Feinting Attack and Precision Attack also exist.
Secondly, bows can't opportunity attack. You're a fighter. One of your big advantages is that you are more durable than the party average, can get in enemy faces and make them attack you, or risk your opportunity attack (which can potentially trip or push). If you can't opportunity attack... too bad, so sad, you don't get this advantage, and the enemies will probably work on hitting your more fragile allies. If you want credit for your durability, better have a melee weapon.
Thirdly, ranged attacks have disadvantage at melee. You're not a rogue, you don't have free disengage. Nor do you have saving throw spells like a pinned mage. If enemy(s) close to melee with you, and you don't have Crossbow Expert... what are you gonna do, exactly? Use Evasive Footwork for +4.5 AC against the opportunity attacks, or accept disadvantage. Neither sounds great.
Duelling rapier fighter, 2x ASI:
Damage is 1d8 +2 (duelling) +1 (magic) +5 (stat) = 12.5, with 75% hit. If we use Precision Attack we... basically don't miss. 91-94% accuracy depending on if your DM lets you recover from rolling a 1. So... 23 damage with two attacks. 19-20 AC. So... less damaging than the crossbow build, but more reliable, more durable, and can actually tank/defend.
Greatsword fighter. Your armour is more expensive, and you have -2 accuracy, but you still have opportunity attacks and you do hit harder when you hit. Without GWM, first, that's... 20 Str. Greatsword with the damage boost is 8.33, so that +5 +1 = 14.33 per swing, 28.67 for two, 91-94% accuracy. So... 26-27 or so. Beats the crossbow build in practice. 17-18 AC depending on if we allow plate. Lower initiative than Dex builds, stealth disadvantage, Dex checks/saves are more common than Str ones for what it's worth.
Greatsword fighter with Great Weapon Master? Base hit drops to 70%, if you fish it's 45%. This is lower than I'd like, even with Precision Attack, which makes it like 60%. Still, 23.33 per swing = 46.67 * .6 = 28.3 or so... it's there if you want it.
Like...they CAN play the role of the tank, and if your party doesn't have a tank and you want to play a fighter, sure, that's a good way to build them. They're not inherently any more durable than, say, a Ranger, however. (In fact, of the classes covered so far...Barbarian and Druid have clear tanking abilities, and Priest might be more durable too just because they can put everything into AC without losing much).
But I did end up getting Crossbow Expert after evaluating going without (Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter had the most damage...).
OK...the issue I have with this build is where do you go from here? I guess you use your ASIs at this point on...better guarding (Sentinel) and then tankiness (CON, Heavy Armor Master or Medium Armor master depending on whether you're dex or str based?) Yeah, that works.
Compared to...I'm actually calculating precision attack only brings the 75% hit case up to 89%, which is 22 damage.
QuoteCompared to...I'm actually calculating precision attack only brings the 75% hit case up to 89%, which is 22 damage.
Not that it -really- matters but this isn't right. Let's say we make 20 attacks.
75% hit means we already land hits on 6 or higher. So... 15 hits.
5 means we use a superiority die and automatically hit. 16 hits.
4 -> superiority die makes you hit 7/8 of the time. 16.875
3 -> superiority die makes you hit 6/8 of the time. 17.625
2 -> superiority die makes you hit 5/8 of the time. 18.25
91% chance to hit, 20% we burn a die.
1 -> if your DM rules that a superiority die can save this AND you think it's worthwhile, 4/8 chance. 18.75. 94%, but 25% chance we burn a die.
You may want to recheck your other calculations I suppose.
Well, a shield Fighter is pretty high up the tanking list? d10 HP, high AC, some defensive maneuver options or Protection/Defense, Second Wind. Sure, not Barbarian/Druid though, but in a random party of four classes, there's a non-negligible chance your fighter is the most durable, and they'll pretty much always be above average. "Being able to protect lower-durability units" is a thing Barbarian, Druid have too, mind (and will be a point in their favour when the casters are saying "check out my Fireball, you can't keep up with this") but it's also an advantage Fighter has. You're proposing erasing it and... not gaining all that much damage.
I'm pretty leery on using Precision to amp your bonus attacks too, you're gonna run out of maneuvers pretty fast that way as you note. Remember these will have to last multiple combats most likely. I propose that to keep the playing field level we try to make everyone burn through these dice at the same rate... so either 20% or 25% on the two attacks they all get (your call which, I don't really care).
You're never running out of good options for level up bonuses, even as a fighter. Tough is quietly really good, for instance. (Equal to +4 Con for HP purposes, though no boost to Con checks/saves... winning trade for someone who doesn't make concentration checks surely.)
Also, the math for the Ki usage you had in that chain is slightly off, as you would only need 1 Ki point to both knock the enemy prone and knock them away, as the Ki point is spent on activating FoB, not on activating the trip/push add-on.
Stunning Strike! It isn't about advantage for Monk, though that's a nice perk. It's an enemy which can't do anything back. AND all your allies have advantage too! Even many mages, because their dex-based spells always hit! I think at some point this analysis has become kinda over-focused on 1v1s which hardly ever happen in D&D. Like... knocking an enemy prone hurts your ranged attackers. Stunning them helps everyone. This is much better and you don't acknowledge this because you seem to be only focusing on how the attacker's own moves are affected.
There is zero doubt in my mind that monk is better than barbarian at this level because holy shit stunning strike (multiple chances! Per turn!) can ruin elite monsters.
Just to briefly step in... yeah, there's something to be said for assessing characters in the Gygaxian style of dungeon crawling D&D was originally intended as, where in room A there is an Orc guarding a pie, in room B a dire spider, in room C a baby green dragon, all just waiting for heroes to walk in so they can attack them. I... don't think that's a campaign I'd ever play in, and even very hacky campaigns like to have big show-up set piece boss battles often times. This means that "burst" damage from unloading everything gets quite a bit more respect from me. If Meteor Swarm is down, fine, whatever, go home and rest. Unless there's a freaking war going on, it can wait.
I haven't looked closely enough at 5e to comment too much more, though!
At this level I don't think any other class can compete with Warlock for damage output (unless your DM religiously keeps her monsters very, very far apart or uses very few at a time)! I mean... sure, Eldritch Blast only does 13.3, but Fireball at... say, 65% hit (+2 dex) hitting 3 targets does 69.3 and is hyper-reliable, and you get two of those per short rest, with a third once per day. That beats out fighter until... *Calcs* actually only the fifth action per short rest ignoring the Rod of the Pact Keeper recharge, so hey, more competitive than I was expecting. Of course if those Fireballs hit more than 3 enemies it gets much harder to keep up.
Just to briefly step in... yeah, there's something to be said for assessing characters in the Gygaxian style of dungeon crawling D&D was originally intended as, where in room A there is an Orc guarding a pie, in room B a dire spider, in room C a baby green dragon, all just waiting for heroes to walk in so they can attack them. I... don't think that's a campaign I'd ever play in, and even very hacky campaigns like to have big show-up set piece boss battles often times. This means that "burst" damage from unloading everything gets quite a bit more respect from me. If Meteor Swarm is down, fine, whatever, go home and rest. Unless there's a freaking war going on, it can wait.
I haven't looked closely enough at 5e to comment too much more, though!
I mean, if this is the way the party always plays, with lots of preparation, getting in one fight, and then just GTFOing to a pocket dimension...then the DM scales up the fights accordingly, and gives you enemies too durable to die to a single Meteor Swarm. So...you can open with Meteor Swarm, and it might still be a good idea given how much damage it does, but maybe it only takes off a fraction of the HP on the tanky enemies you're fighting. So...basically your DM would respond to how your party was playing, and scale up fights accordingly.
We're also giving out magic weapons from table F, right? So...Wand of Magic Missiles? Cast Magic Missile as a bonus action 6x per day? 10.5 guaranteed damage from a bonus action. Circlet of Blasting is Scorching ray 1x per day, which is...6d6, the attack bonus of the circlet is +5 (which...is pretty bad; 55% hit rate). So...average damage from the Circlet is 11.55 (uh, yeah, I'd rather have the multiple use wand).
We're also giving out magic weapons from table F, right? So...Wand of Magic Missiles? Cast Magic Missile as a bonus action 6x per day? 10.5 guaranteed damage from a bonus action. Circlet of Blasting is Scorching ray 1x per day, which is...6d6, the attack bonus of the circlet is +5 (which...is pretty bad; 55% hit rate). So...average damage from the Circlet is 11.55 (uh, yeah, I'd rather have the multiple use wand).
I like want this to just be a whole class. Trying to pick where you should place it. Like I knee jerked to it could be a variation on Bard (some kind of implement focused caster). But man who likes bards? Tallychu , thats who. Who wants to be like Tallychu? Well other than healthy well balanced people but fuck that noise.
Maybe just some kind of ritual based caster (YESSSSS EXCUSES TO USE D&D RITUALS) who has no power for themselves. They aren't a vessel for a greater power like a Warlock is, but maybe an actor or agent for something? Or just something akin to the flavour for Arcane Tricksters but far more mundane.
By tying their combat strength completely to items you can have a pretty fun place where you have people that wield power but are not themselves inherently powerful.
I suppose thats just wizards without the Vancian magic fluff, but it is still a thing I kinda want. I am envisioning something like restrictions on stats so you are just like a shitty fighter that can do some stuff.
Rogue stuff: If we're invoking 1v1, I'm not sure how on earth rogue is successfully hiding then hitting something with a melee weapon, since you can't hide from something which can see you (even if you have cover) and moving breaks your hide check. Even a ranged weapon would require some convenient hiding spots which you couldn't just be flushed out of, and of course will randomly fail if the monster's perception check beats your stealth check. I mean "Rogue usually can get sneak attack" is true in-game but... not so much 1v1! I actually threw a bunch of 1v1's at my party and certainly the rogue had more trouble than most of the rest (barbarian, bard, monk, warlock).
Also where are you getting bonus action magic missiles from? Fast Hands explicitly doesn't work with magic items. Am I missing something?
Warlock stuff: Warlock's DC is 16, because Rod of the Pact Keeper is great.
One-on-one Warlock might want to consider Hellish Rebuke (reaction 22, dex save half, so 79% of a Fireball but you don't lose your action so you still get to Eldritch Blast that turn). Also remember that Eldritch Blast is two beams and that if the first one pushes away, the second won't have disadvantage any more (at least... probably? I could see a DM ruling that one differently). There are probably some kiting arguments with pushing and running, too (which given that we're making the ridiculously unfair assumption of warlock vs. solo enemies I'm inclined to give credit to).
(But 5e PHB isn't always that well-written...)
More to the point, though, even with the shove working...it's just not a good situation. 51% of the time the first hit will miss, and you won't shove. It increases your damage a little (average damage across both beams is 9.3 without the shove, 10.3 with the shove). But you still would really rather not be stuck attacking from disadvantage.
For the Warlock situation, if they use the Darkness/Devil's Sight combo, they no longer have to worry about disadvantage on their Eldritch Blasts, as they can take a 5-foot step away from the enemy monster and then have advantage against them, can't they? So while it would cost an action to activate, it would significantly increase their durability and flip their disadvantage to advantage on EB.
Fighter only gets two ASIs (at 6 and 14; they don't get one at 10). So Tinkerer certainly shouldn't have 3 (and even 2 is kinda pushing it, that feels like it's stealing fighter's "thing" for all that it's still balanced so hey go for it if you feel it fits).
I would shy away from literal infinite healing, as well. While it won't be broken in some campaigns, it completely ruins some others, and it feels like something D&D has gone to pains to avoid.
I approve of all of this. Especially edit 6.
It is slightly different flavours than I envisioned hut it is still deliciously flavourful.
Yeah the "right after Extra Attack and L3 spells" is a bad part of the game for Rogue offensively.
Hm. Rogue really likes getting second attacks (two weapon fighting, Crossbow expert, etc.) because they only need to land one for Sneak Attack. Not sure how much those would help here, since I know you're assuming they use the bonus for constant hide spam (this is not generally reflective of how I've personally seen rogue played, not least because you can't always hide... well, halflings usually can). Rogue does benefit a lot from other sources of advantage: barbarian wolf totem, invisibility spells, allies who knock people prone, Assassinate, etc.) but that's hard to reflect here.That's a good point--if you take two attacks instead of one, it's kind-of like having advantage to hit (except you can also hit both, so the average damage is slightly higher). You don't have a shield or anything, either, so there's no real downside to TWF. Crossbow Expert is good, yeah, but takes an ASI, takes a bonus action...which unlike fighter Rogue has lots of good things to do with their bonus action, and lowers your AC if you prioritize it over DEX.
Rogue 12, Fighter 8 gets more ASIs by level 20 than any other build in the game (8 ASIs))
Ways of granting people advantage are good, of course, but they also usually apply to anyone making attack rolls. (Like...if you had a Warlock instead of a Rogue in your party, you could stick greater invisibility on the warlock, and Eldritch Blast away).
Nah, just 7? The usual five from every class level divisible by 4, the one from Fighter 6, the one from Rogue 10. So, same as normal Fighter. The only other bonus ASI is Fighter 14, which you don't hit.
For what it's worth I think I agree that rogue is probably one of the weaker classes overall, but they serve a valuable skill niche and can take apart some fights well depending on build (like, while you won't surprise things very often, Assassin is very very very good the rare times you do).
It is control of you pressure your opponent not to interact on the board with that creature. But yeah it is mostly burn and turning board control cards into extra reach.But if you're playing a control deck, the punishment isn't really relevant. Control decks don't race down their opponent's life totals, so if your opponent is a fast deck they can probably just eat 7 damage and kill you first anyway.
What's a GM meant to do when player characters are capable of doing anything at all???????? What do you mean there is opportunity cost that isn't enormous but has a net positive outcome????????
I've actually seen someone on a forum ask "why play Paladin when you can just play Sorcerer instead?"
The biggest benefit to GFB is the splash, which if you're fighting smart enemies they can pretty easily work around that anyway.
Granted, since this is being compared to Extra Attack, it's not that special, I suppose.
Archer...mmm...possibly this should be above Geomancer as a focus? (I actually don't remember the consensus on which SCC was easier, although a lot of SCC ease comes down to stuff like Counter Flood vs Arrow Guard as reactions, which...whatever, you probably get a better reaction). Charge, at least, can be taken to gun classes.
- How much JP will one earn over the course of a game? Not counting spillover JP here; there's no guarantee it will be in the classes you want.
- What about JP investments to unlock classes? Angel Song and Nameless Dance are both useful tools and only cost 100 JP but unlocking their classes takes investing over 1000 JP (after factoring in the 100-199 JP every unit starts with in every class). 1100-1200 JP is a more likely minimum commitment since the investment is unlikely to be perfectly distributed.
- Crystals: is there in impact? Uncooperative teammates are a thing, I guess.
- How many classes and/or setups can use a skill well? Ramuh is awesome and 200 JP isn't too far out of the way though needs good MA and enough MP to make use of it so mainly the five main mage classes and maybe Geomancer will get mileage from it. Without high PA, Punch Art come out like a cherry tap and some will argue Martial Arts is needed as well. At the other end, Item with Potion and Phoenix Down can contribute to sandbagging at worst and Time Magic for Haste and Slow can be viably wielded by many classes. These are just examples.
- Golem seems like a handy Summoner skill to have access to. Or is it?
- Shield using setups like Abondon sometimes, even if it only shines in chapter 4.
- Magic DefendUp is handy at Velius and a few other select places. I guess offensive supports are more favored?
- Everyone benefits from Maintenance in the three fights with Mighty Sword using opponents. Though Math Skillers can escape without it at Rofel 2 due to AI manipulation.
- Pray Faith is one of those skills I never seem to want to spend JP on yet it has its uses with mage allies.
Geomancer I feel need Rune Blade to be notable as a magic user. So for most of the game, I find them mediocre mages. I have run one with Time Magic secondary (and Gold Hairpin for MP) at Velius since I wanted a durable Slow and Demi caster but that's a setup for that fight specifically. Rune Blade and Aegis Shield do outmagic Priest at certain level ranges, heh.
Post-Rune Blade/Aegis Shield they actually hold up well compared to any non-Wizard job for MA.
- Squire flat out sucks. If hitting things with swords is the goal, then Geomancer does it better. Only unique thing Squire has over Geo is Scorpion Tail jumping which, haha. (oh, and knockback but that comes into play rather rarely)
- Knight gets the short straw outside of Chapter 1. Geos are better at whacking things with swords come Chapter 3 and its abundance of PA boosting armor. The breaks are used better by gun or bow users or Ninjas. Being subject to Counter and getting shut down by evasion just makes things worse.
You know, I remember Dark Holy Elf did a spreadsheet of how good each class was at physical attacks at every store checkpoint, and Squire came out overall 5th.
Late game DKs are notably worse without Drain Sword, especially if B ends up running a bunch since they lack other healing, so pick that up.
How much better are guns than bows? Well...bows to match the accuracy of guns would need Concentrate, and if you're attacking uphill it's usually crossbows, so like 6 WP compared to Mythril gun's 8 WP for most of the game (similar enough damage if the crossbow user uses power sleeve twist headband). Guns are 8 range compared to 4 range. Downhill or flat you can go Windslash Bow for 8 WP (different formula again though; damage will be similar to guns or slightly higher). 5 range on flat, tons of range if shooting downhill. Crossbows get up to 10 WP in the second half of chapter 4.
How much more damage are swords than bows? Swords in chapter 2 and early Chapter 3 are kind-of bad actually--more damage than bows but not a lot more. Late chapter 3 early chapter 4 swords just power spike, they're like...double the damage of bows. Late chapter 4 Gastrifitis catches bows up a bit, swords are 40% more damage or so.
1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Oracle
12. Monk
13. Geomancer
14. Knight
15. Mediator
16. Archer
17. Dancer
18. The Infernal Spawn of Boco (Red Chocobos)
(It doesn't look like you decided on whether Thief or Bard was higher.)The biggest changes are that Chemist and Priest are higher this time (and Mediator, though I'd argue it needs to drop), while Samurai, Ninja, and Knight are lower, Priest being the largest overall. I'd be curious for you to re-read your earlier thoughts and decide which ones you think are more correct. I'm not really sure, myself!
but I'll just say that I still find it weird to see Squire so high up, essentially on the basis of Gained JP UP alone.
You weren't really expected to play FFT without access to it.
Just for giggles, if Gained JP Up is thrown out (either because we decide we're willing to grind for the JP, or because we just declare it blanket legal), where does vanilla Squire end up by mc rules otherwise? My kneejerk is just above Bard, but maybe I'm off. They do still offer Move +1, but Thief is #18 and offers Move +2, so that only goes so far.Um, it moves several things around--for one thing, assuming Squire doesn't go earlier over Move+1 (not too likely, but...more likely than Thieves getting banned early for Move+2) then Knight doesn't get banned 14th (or I guess 13th if we're assuming Squire hasn't been banned yet). Knight getting banned 14th was partially about being able to slap Equip Sword on a Thief, but Squires already have swords and 4 move (they do have slightly worse stats than Thieves, but they can set Concentrate and Thieves with Equip Sword can't).
It's also worth noting that in traditional SCC rules, you do some Mandalia Plains / Sweegy Woods grinding with Gained JP Up allowed solely to unlock the challenge job. If we assume some sort of similar exception in "vanilla but with a deep ban list" - i.e. it's okay to grind through the "illegal" classes in random battles to unlock the legal classesNo, this isn't SCC rules for dead classes. The assumption is that you use dead classes in story fights, and just don't use anything from the class that's particularly strong and would carry the party through fights. (E.g. no: you don't get to learn Black Magic on your Wizards while you head to unlock Bard). If you read through Elfboy's playthrough, there were plenty of instances of female Lancers who were on the path to Dancer.
As a general matter I think your general assumptions (PSX NA version, generics only, full mechanics knowledge and high faith wherever applicible) is inevitably going to skew heavily towards the mage classes because they have far and away the best skillsets for anyone who understands how all the game mechanics works - magic feels like it was balanced around the obtuseness of Faith and charge times, both things that I've seen a lot of FFT novices struggle with. Moreover class mixing helps a lot to cover for the weaknesses of individual mage classes, so they all wind up ranking better than on, say, a pure SCC difficulty list.
My only minor comment is that I'd definitely be down for some Geomancer hype with the constraints you've set up. If some light grinding is factored in, then sure, I'll take Monks or Samurai over them, but with the fairly strict "we are motoring through these story battles and not bopping each other while a survivor cowers in the corner" rules, Geomancer looks very appealing. They come online extremely fastEhh...Geos don't really come online any faster than Monk. By the time you could get a Geomancer, you already have 350 JP in Monk and thus have Wave Fist if you want it. If you skip all elementals and rush for attack up from Geomancer you could have Earth Slash from Monk skipping everything else (600 JP). Not to mention geomancy is not cheap--150 JP per geomancy adds up pretty fast if you want your geomancy to be relevant in more than one map.
I'd be inclined to move 'em up to #10, ahead of Lancer, but that might just be me.
Byblos at 4 makes me think this is disregarding availability.It's merely not throwing out characters for reasons of "they join too late" (sounds like there will be another list coming that does that).
This makes the amended hard ban list (where carrier classes, Gained JP Up, phoenix down, etc get banned)...
1. Calc
2. Chemist
3. Summoner
4. Wizard
5. Squire
6. Priest
7. Time Mage
8. Ninja
9. Lancer
10. Oracle
11. Monk
12. Geomancer
13. Archer
14. Mediator
15. Knight
16. Samurai
17. Dancer
18. Red Chocobos (from Boco)
19. Thief
20. Bard
21. Mime
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while Dark Archons are practically never built and Archons (as raw combat units, not emergency templar-recycling) do get built (e.g. vs. Mutalisks)
(S tier?)
Zergling, Siege Tank, Mutalisk
(gap)
(A tier?)
Zealot, Vulture, Reaver, Dragoon
(gap)
(B tier?)
Scourge, Corsair, Goliath, Overlord
Science Vessel, Defiler, High Templar, Shuttle (maybe on the low end of tier)
(gap)
(C tier?)
Medic+Marine, Hydra, Carrier, Arbiter, Probe, SCV
(gap)
(D tier?)
Dark Templar, Observer, Dropship, Lurker, Wraith, Dark Archon
(gap)
(E tier?)
Battlecruiser, Valkyrie, Archon, Ultralisk, Queen, Drone
(gap)
(F tier?)
Scout, Guardian, Firebat, Ghost
(gap)
(G tier?)
Devourer
Mm, I think upgrading Devourer may be generous. There are some concocted situations where they are *moderately okay* (generally when they are performing the role that Blizz intended, e.g. softening up Battlecruisers for a pack of Mutalisks or something) but even when in fights that are completely their niche, only mildly outperform the competition, and when out of their niche are just garbage. At least I can see some sort of bizarro uber-late game Terran building Ghosts if they had resources to burn and godlike Lockdown micro, and Scouts merely by being a unit that can be built comparatively early that both shoots air & ground will very slowly hard-counter certain units that don't shoot up with its tickle laser. Very bad, but as you've noted, Devourer is basically a style build that isn't great even when fulfilling its theoretical role.
Incidentally, while talking low tiers, I might defend Firebat a bit, albeit mildly... I think it's a little tricky to gauge how good it is because the stuff it counters is situational. They're obviously garbage in TvT and TvZ is usually where they're hyped (Dark Swarm, stick them in a bunker to stop Zergling attacks), but if in TvP you *know* you had an opponent going mass Zealots, then Stim'd Firebats are great.
And hell, Protoss does tend to threaten Terran with Zealots early these days, just the problem is that Vultures also counter Zealots, but are much more useful long-term and vs. everything else due to mines, being able to threaten runbys to kill workers, etc. Whether that's enough to hit E tier, I don't know, but you can argue that the mere existence of Firebats makes it so certain strategies aren't seen, and if in some sort of "unit reshuffle" fantasy scenario, they can potentially have their niches shine (e.g. if alternate T lost Vulture access, or if Z lost Mutalisk access). I dunno if it's enough to move to E tier, but throwing that out there.
On Zealots vs. Firebats: Yeah, but the Zealots deal single-target damage, while the Firebats deal splash damage. You don't want firebats vs. a 1-zealot harass, but 10 zealots vs. 13 firebats should be firebat favored, right? The firebat attacks should be hitting ~3 Zealots at once.
(S tier?)
Zergling, Siege Tank, Mutalisk
(gap)
(A tier?)
Zealot, Vulture, Reaver, Dragoon
(gap)
(B tier?)
Scourge, Corsair, Goliath, Overlord
Science Vessel, Defiler, High Templar, Shuttle (maybe on the low end of tier)
(gap)
(C tier?)
Medic+Marine, Hydra, Carrier, Arbiter, Probe, SCV
(gap)
(D tier?)
Dark Templar, Observer, Dropship, Lurker, Wraith, Dark Archon
(gap)
(E tier?)
Battlecruiser, Valkyrie, Archon, Ultralisk, Queen, Drone
(gap)
(F tier?)
Guardian, Firebat
(gap)
(G tier?)
Devourer, Scout, Ghost
Anyway, going back to the Firebats debate earlier, the casters mentioned - and this is super super SUPER niche - but there is one cool play Firebats are notably useful at if you have godlike pro APM: Zerg can sometimes stack Lurkers in the exact same spot when defending a ramp, because apparently a burrowed, Irradiated Lurker doesn't emit splash damage? So basically you can do that and make it so that science vessels can't Irradiate all the lurkers quickly, they have to wait for them to die one at a time so they can click on the next one. BUT some player had a Defensive Matrix'd, Stimmed Firebat run up the ramp instead and could clear all the stacked lurkers quickly. That's cool, if weird and impractical for 99% of players!
Also, Best vs. Action in the round of 8 featured amazing DARK ARCHON action. Check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiXDOyBSLGQ
Knight is hardcore dominant early. Double the damage of Archer. Gap shrinks a little after you get Iron Swords + Longbows (although... the latter comes first) but Knight's durability is also quite useful. I was using Monk a lot because I wanted to unlock Geomancer... similar damage to Knight but way less HP. Generally I felt, especially for maps like Sand Rat Cellar, that I just couldn't afford to lose damage/HP.
My first goal was to get to Geomancer (shocking, I know); the one battle I had it for it made much easier. Really can't stress enough how useful having both ranged (ITE) chipping and an actual good damage option is (Charge makes it even better). Knight will probably still win chapter 1 in my eyes because you get it right away whereas Geo is actually a pain to unlock in the world without Gained JP Up, but there's no question Geomancer is better once you have it. Archer quietly chips in Charge+1 or +2, but is not a happy place to be for the most part if you're male (damage compared to knight is... 15 vs. 30 after Igros, 20 vs. 36 after Sand Rats; unacceptable) but this should close a bit in the last two maps due to Silver Bows plus them possibly starting to hit that PA point.
Possible mistake: I should perhaps have made my girls archers as soon as Longbows showed up (20 damage instead of 24-28 isn't so bad when you have range) but since they were already partly done Monk I figured I'd tough it out because Monk isn't getting any more pleasant to be in any time soon, whereas Archer is getting more appealing with better bows (and the Headgear in Chapter 2). However, it's possible them being in Archer could have saved me a reset.
The other five classes don't exist in Chapter 1 as far as I'm concerned. There's a slim argument to be in Thief if you're female but it's clearly the worst place to be; I'd probably rather put time in there when the game gets a bit easier due to options showing up.
Compared to chapter 1, chapter 2 just basically got curbstomped. I only had two resets and both were extremely avoidable/the result of stupid mistakes on my part (although I won't claim my Execution Site team could have won 100% of the time, needed some luck with either getting through shields OR landing status with elemental... just not much. Also, luck would have been greatly reduced if I wasn't trying to keep moving forward with JP and using, e.g. a Lancer and an Archer).
Some notes:
-I've thus far been ignoring propositions, although Goug/Warjilis does exist for 'em. This is possibly a bit unfair, I dunno.
-I finished chapter 2 with dancer not yet unlocked. The girls have been basically doing nothing but working on Dancer prereqs, though of course they sit out about 1 in every 4 battles on average and of course sometimes I have to sacrifice their choice of class for the "must win this fight now" attitude (e.g. extra time in knight).
-Chapter 2 was, somewhat predictably, the Geomancer hype show. It's not a significant exaggeration to say that the optimum way to play this chapter is as a Geomancer SCC with Charge+1/2. Much of this is Elemental being very solid in this chapter (as you've hyped) but a good deal of it is also Attack Up and how good Geo is as a carrier right now (everything else does less with Elemental and deals less damage at melee, and... generally has less durability, and less move).
-Yeah the portion of the game before you get Move+2 practically is more than 25%. I'm just starting to pick it up now. No, it is NOT worth beelining too because you want to get Elemental first (5 range is good times) and a good support skill is also pretty important. I think we're both too used to assuming a metagame where Gained JP Up exists; everything is harder to unlock/get now.
-On the melee/range thing: I do use Elemental more than physicals, but on the other hand, the physicals do play a crucial role sometimes. There's little doubt that a Geomancer with elemental far outperforms an archer or gunner, for instance (and the archers also set and get reasonable use out of Elemental, it must be noted)
-But even when it's not doing damage, Elemental deserves some note for "makes any class more tolerable to just plain get JP in". Most of chapter 2 is easy so you can afford people in sub-optimal classes; the problem is that thief will be locked to melee or the "slows your JP gain rate by 40-50%" Steal Heart (and just getting that is a multi-battle delay to Move+2). However, it's not SO easy you can afford to waste many turns attacking each other, so Elemental gives you something that is always useful to do (even with loltastic MA, it's still 25% stop, sometimes GT). Hell Ivy is the only terrain I picked up until I started getting superfluous Geomancer JP, incidentally (then I started getting Kamaitachi or Carve Model on some people).
-Attack Up is winning out over Concentrate in a pretty big way. Part of this is that, with a few exceptions, enemy evade is fairly low, of course. But the bigger part is just accessability. Yes, yes, they both cost 400 JP... but Geomancer is just so much more pleasant to actually be in, and Charge creeps in as competition for that Archer JP (this second point of course does not discredit archer).
Only two battles had resets on them:
Golgorand: I had one because I forgot how to avoid the knights and got blitzed pretty fast by them. Second try I mostly just kited them.
Lionel Gate: Had a bit of a brain fart and forget that Gafgarion's Night Sword would, uh, heal him. Second try I just stuck Ramza in Geomancer so he'd reach the gate turn 2 and it wouldn't even matter. I'd still have won the first try if I hadn't missed something like half a dozen attempts to stop Gaf, or if my party had been five Geos instead of uh Archer/Archer/Thief/Lancer/Lancer (why yes, Rubber Shoes made me disrespect the fight). And really, that's sort of the story of chapter 2; its challenge (even the execution site's) is negated if you play it as a Geomancer SCC plus a little help, the only reason to really consider other classes is for later-in-the-game preparation.
Chapter 1:
1. Knight (PA, HP, swords)
2. Geomancer (Knight remix plus Elemental is a winning trade, but a bit too late for the top spot)
3. Archer (Charge. Bows are kinda okay after the halfway point, outright good for Zeakden)
4. Thief (... at least it exists)
5-8. Classes which are either impossible to unlock without grinding or massively suboptimal to unlock due to dead class traversing plus chapter 1 being hard.
Chapter 2:
1. Geomancer (Elemental, Attack Up, clearly the best carrier overall due to HP/PA/MA/move/equips)
2. Archer (Charge, possibly Concentrate. Bows are kinda serviceable)
3. Mediator (while I didn't personally unlock them until the end, you could, and Romanda Guns are nice, though pretty reliant on at least one ability from the above two since 36 is outperformed by Elemental)
4. Thief (provides Move+2. A bit of a JP sink and an awful carrier, though)
5. Knight (might look better if you banned Geomancer, but as is, a grossly inferior option. Entire skillset has been devoid of value so far, and they're no longer a good carrier)
6. Dancer (two chapters of inferior stats and don't really exist in Chapter 2 unless you grind)
7-8. Classes which are completely unreasonable to access in the current metagame at this point.
Chapter 1 finished at Level 5-6, Chapter 2 at 11-12, for the record. Current build plans involve Ramza picking up Charge but also having Invite (possibly switching over to gunner duty later, or alternating between that/Geo as needed), the male Geos focusing on Geomancer/Charge/Move+2 beatdowns, and the girls very close to getting Dancer (once they have that and the three key dances, they'll probably work on Mediator too).
No Mimic Daravon yet. Steal Heart... I learned with one person and... never used. That hit rate!
Elemental sees uses on Archer because (a) sometimes the MT is worth it, (b) sometimes more range, (c) sometimes ITE is worth it when you know the rest of your damage kills anyway. Overall it isn't exactly pinning ears back, no, but it's still a decent addition to the toolbox.
Knight JP I'm really not sure about. I'm sorta sitting on it in hopes that one of the Equip X abilities will be useful, or maybe I'll feel a certain Battle Skill could turn a fight down the line. I could buy Weapon Guard (it's not terribly crowded out yet because archer/geo want to spend JP on other things), and it's possible that at the end of the day, having +5% evade on most of my units may end up a better payoff than the Equip abilities, but for now I'm not ready to take that chance.
Zigolis Swamp random enemy was a Flotiball. I didn't have Mediator unlocked at that point anyway, though. (One reasonably could, certainly, if the invite lottery or resetting there was a high priority.)
*checks Drain Touch* 60+MA. Revenant MA is roughly 4.81+0.69*Level, so... 78.6% to 92.4% hit rate at levels 20-40, say (this can swing a bit with random MA of course)? Good zodiac can make that really shine I guess, for some boss-killing. You'll probably want to do a little breeding regardless, but it is quite an interesting boss-kill tactic if needed. I kinda doubt we're at the point where it feels worth it, though... and sadly, we may not hit it until Mediator is banned. A shame.
Chapter 3 finished. Stompstompstomp I thought this was supposed to be a challenge. Chapter finished at Level 20-21 (though the last two fight were of course too short to really change this... notably, I generally hit 18 around Grog Hill).
One reset to report, against ZALMO. Same reason as Lionel Gate, I had an absolutely horrid team due to trying to milk the battle for skills (Archers/Thief/Lancers). The Archers were supposed to be the kinda competent units but I totally forgot Zalmo has ARROW GUARD, lolspoiled. But yeah with an even slightly competent party (Geomancers, people with Mithril Guns, Dancers...) this would go down hard.
I tried to invite the Goland chemists, but due to bad luck I wasn't able to (first one had to die because he was a threat to Olan, the second was just an unfortunate critical hit killing him). This was kinda fluky, normally you'd be able to easily snag at least one gun here. I ended up making the Goug trip to buy 'em so that I wouldn't be disadvantaged by this. I reset a little to avoid some (but not all) fights. This was also the point I finally got Dancer (one of the girls got there from the Zalmo fight, the other right after). I only bought one because they cost a lot.
Izlude was minorly worrying because my archers missed four times in a row to start the battle (yes, yes, Concentrate hype!) and my gunner died fast but eventually I landed the hits I needed, combined with Dance, to not completely die.
In both the big Riovanes fights I made some pretty big errors but not enough, I just had too much firepower. I lured Velius to the wrong place so one of my Geos couldn't hit him, but when the other two did just shy of 700 damage between them (ps one of them was a girl) and Ramza does well over 200 before Velius' first turn it hardly matters. Did the fight with gunner Ramza, one other Mediator, and three Geos for the record.
Roof, I just didn't realise that the assassins could only be hit by one melee attack from each side before they moved. Didn't matter due to my two speed 9'ers and two naked PCs.
All other fights generally scanned as complete jokes, beyond Olan who can be frustratingly difficult to save (bows/guns both have serious problems reaching the top of the roof, didn't buy Blizzard) if he decides to be stupid. Yardow could have been okay except that by late Chapter 3 I was mostly done with my class monkeying and was actually in generally good setups (one archer was the main weak point and even it's okay there).
I could afford two Bracers, for the record. That, three Platinum Swords, five Power Sleeves, four Twist Headbands, two Sprint Shoes, a Chameleon Robe, and the aforementioned Mithril Gun were the major purchases of the chapter, though I also snagged a few extra swords/bows/Judo Outfits/Flame Shields. No propositions yet, still. At this point I'm going to stick to this; we can quibble with its effects later.
I started picking up Move+2 late chapter 2; by mid Orbonne, everyone except gunner Ramza had it. Reaction abilities are only finally starting to trickle in, mainly in the form of Counter Flood just for ease of getting; everything else either has a negligible effect or doesn't feel worth the time spent in an inferior class. My Dancers may end up with Arrow Guard since Archer/Geo are comparably good carriers for them; we'll see. Towards the end of the chapter I could finally start to pick up Concentrate, although it remains to be seen if it really justifies the time spent in an inferior class.
I don't really have anything good to say about Talk Skill. Faith monkeying has some uses I guess, we'll see if I ever care about mages enough for this to score points (for now, I'm not doing it), Mimic Daravon I basically only use when there's an obstacle in my way because it misses so often and I have crazy damage to lay into everything between AU/Charge/Swords and all that PA-boosting/Guns. Maybe it'd find a little more use without Dancer. Certainly I would if we got rid of our best methods of damage, but... not sure this will happen until both Geo and Archer are banned. As is, it gets the Steal Heart treatment (though I did finally use Steal Heart with my useless Thief in the Zalmo fight! Better idea: don't use Thief, and don't buy abilities that make you spend more time in Thief.)
Oh, and a serious "lol" at brave/faith raising is needed at this point. Bad internal compatibility is pretty clearly the way to go even if you decide to optimise zodiac at all (I don't anticipate ice healing to be very useful, but there have certainly been times when I wanted to take less from destatusing myself) and it makes the already terrible hit rates of Praise/Preach even worse. Not to mention there's so little reason to raise either (reactions are just... not a priority or impressive). If I'm wrong about how chapter 4 plays out I'll rescind these comments, but at this point I don't expect I will be.
Chapter 1 still by far the hardest part of the game! BAN KNIGHT? (Well, if there's any debate about Knight vs. Bard later on...)
Opinion of classes in chapter 3...
1. Geomancer (high-end carrier for basically everything, Attack Up still great even with competition in some fights, Elemental's niche compromised now but still the best skillset for a melee male)
2. Dancer (yeah, the mook smash is good, although chapter 3 is kinda boss-heavy which holds them in check a bit)
3. Archer (Charge is a preferred skillset unless you have Dance. Concentrate/Arrow Guard get it some very minor points)
4. Mediator (who cares about Talk Skill with this offence? Main use of the skillset is snagging a few guns. Of course, guns themselves are very solid, but very reliant on Geomancer/Archer and need an extra hoop or two to get, and gunners either have lower move/durability/bad primary OR give up the AU possibility)
*drop*
5. Thief (Move+2 and a big pile of garbage)
6. Knight (Light equips take off in this chapter, Battle Skill still sucks)
7. Bard (hahaha I guess you could open it by now but WHY)
8. Mime (is Mime)
The main remaining question I have for how to play chapter 4 is... do I even look at Bard? Maybe with Ramza? I don't see much reason for my males to bother with that side of the tree. If Thief were banned, the effort spent would easily be worth it, but as is... while I would like +1 move for my melee powerhouses, I probably can't justify it.
Really can't imagine anything shaking Geomancer's hold on #1 at this point, though. It has very clearly won to this point and the only way its competition can pass it is if chapter 4 is much harder than I expect (which might justify things like monster taming, elemental guns, or faith modification).
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And chapter 4 beaten!
Jokerun - Is the jokerun. Snagged a Uribo. Ended up breeding a Porky by Limberry, which I imagine is very lucky? Didn't bother with Chantage though.
Balk 1 - So I decided to do this with five Ice Shields. Then I realised "hey I have ice brands, time to remove Counter Flood from everyone". So I do so. Unfortunately, what I don't notice is that, in Ramza's case, instead of removing Counter Flood, I removed Equip Shield. So the entire battle falls to pieces. Shockingly I still win pretty easily, offence!
South Wall - Not sure this was the right choice. Being blitzed is a little scary here. I pull it out though it would have gone better if everyone had Arrow Guard certainly (just... ugh to getting 450 -more- Archer JP, and there aren't many battles late enough that it feels significantly useful).
Sluice - Site of the one and only use of ice healing in this playthrough as I use it to ensure my Geo on the left survives a spell before one-shotting Shale/the head wizard back. I could have set up for this better like with White Robes/Reflect Rings on the left side probably but oh well.
Everything up to Elmdor - lol
Elmdor - I get one shot through Blade Grasp which really turns the tide. Otherwise I do badly at my abusing of this battle (fail to bait a Blood Suck, which results in only one Ultima to be redirected) but yeah, a little luck sees me through. Coulda been a reset.
Zalera - Super horrid luck on this one, Nightmare keeps causing sleep. I -should- have just Kamaitachi'd it away right away probably, since my team was set up for the fight excellently otherwise and I could afford the hit. As is I didn't do it until a desperation move late in the fight and ended up winning this on the very last clocktick.
Adramelk (1 reset) - I misjudge my offence against Dyce here (a fair bit of my team is bad zodiac with him, hadn't noticed) so my timed blitz of him falls short and he finishes someone off. I come a few clockticks short of outracing the crystallisation. Without this error I don't lose, second try was pretty easy.
Everything else until Altima - lol. I get a Tiamat from Balk (Flame Shield/Rubber Shoes/Thief Hat makes the fight easy). End up not using it, but could have; it would have torn Altima apart with the 999 damage off 550 HP and all. Rofel gets his weapon snapped, only other notable thing. I'd have won anyway but it was necessary for a one-rounding, I think?
Altima (1 reset) - I lose once because I try to keep Alma alive. This ends up killing Ramza. Second try I don't do anything so stupid. Sweep demons, break her speed, murder.
Thoughts on various things in chapter 4...
Knight - Excalibur is interesting. An excalibur knight is faster and more durable, but less mobile and generally less damaging (especially if he keeps Elemental over Charge) than Geo. That alone is kind of a push, but a few small things push the knight into the "worth using" category; the fact that he saves you a bunch of money (free Excalibur/crystal gear), the versatility of trading durability for power without being fragile, and Battle Skill being (gasp) actually useful against Zalera, Rofel, and Altima. Weapon Guard is also actually worthwhile for the Excalibur user. It's... still probably the least valuable of the six "real" classes in chapter 4, though.
Archer - Concentrate loses pretty decisively to Attack Up overall (analysis forthcoming) but it's still nice to have, Arrow Guard is pretty cool if you can stomach its cost, and a few charges help (nobody had more than 3 for me) and round out a good skillset for most. Not much else changed here; I kinda regretted not having bows against Rofel and Altima a bit maybe? But not much.
Thief - They have Move+2. Otherwise you run screaming. Still, it was nice to have +2 move without trekking over to Bard, so while it certainly isn't in the running for most overcentralising class, it does have a nice grip on one of the five slots (carrier, secondary, R, S, M).
Mediator - Guns definitely decline in value as the chapter goes on (nice for battle skill, pity my battle skiller didn't have Mediator unlocked! But that's only ~3 battles as mentioned). Tiamat is a pretty good "I win" trick against Altima, though. Persuade's a much weaker one, though it's there. (By the way, Revenants? Not so much, 160 HP just dies there, and no Angel Ring.) They're mostly about a host of minor tricks; my general feeling that they could just as easily be ignored at no major cost stands; puts you in a bit of danger against Wiegraf though.
Geomancer - They could honestly just coast on Attack Up being brutally important, but their 6 move + high power is pretty much the best way to just cut through most battles in C4 anyway (knight does end up providing competition, yes, but it's only competition, and only for one slot). Everyone except Ramza hit L8 in this, nobody hit it in any other job, as a note.
Dancer - Dance remains pretty cool, declining only slightly from chapter 3. Bad when you go into blitz mode, though, and of course the worst thing about it remains forcing females. Still, it's probably optimum to have one or two. The skillset also lets them gain JP anywhere really easily, always a plus, although all the time spent unlocking it instead of other things makes this less of one.
Bard - I can't say I really regret not unlocking it. As I keep coming back to, it would look much better if Thief were banned, and its main role is to stop Thief from overcentralising the movement slot utterly (i.e. I'm pretty sure if I carried these analyses to the end that thief would end up #18, since in the final four Kn/Th/Ba/Mi showdown, knight gets to rest on its laurels as workhorse while cheerfully settling for whichever of Move+2 and Move+3 ends up as unbanned)
Mime - AHAHAHAHA. Man I'm pretty sure I didn't get the 6300 JP needed for this the entire game!
On Attack Up vs. Concentrate:
Going through chapter 4 on my attack geos (so ignoring gunners and dancers), I tended to use either AU, Concentrate, or a mix. Generally speaking, looking back, you want Concentrate for people with shields or generics who are high-enough levelled to use mantles reliably, and AU for everyone else (as well as evasive-types who can be baited into charging). When a boss is present, the strategy which defeats the boss is of course optimum (you -may- take out randoms more optimally with something else, but the gap is usually negligible by comparison if you even bother, and plus you may be neutralising them with Dance anyway). Here's what this ends up looking like:
Doguola Pass: Mix
Meliadoul: Concentrate
Finath: AU
Zalmo: Mix
Balk 1: AU
Walls: ... mm, I'm still unsure which wall you should take, -and- what you should go for here... probably north and a mix?
Sluice: Mix
Germinas/Poeskas/Limberry Gate: AU
Elmdor: Unsure. Optimally you don't care.
Zalera/Adramelk: AU
Outside Murond: Mix
SK Trio: Doesn't matter (Kletian dies either way)
Zalbag/UBS4: Concentrate [EDIT: missed Zalbag]
Rofel: AU
Kletian: Dies either way (though if you got Elemental haxed or something, AU would win?)
Balk, Hash, Altima: AU (Balk has a mantle, yes, but he's not the threat; controlling the monsters is).
Ignoring Elmdor and Kletian, and calling the "mixes" half a point each, the score is 13.5 versus 5.5, before guns are in the mix. It's also worth noting that AU acquits itself much better in a hypthetical "ban archer" scenario since it pretty much always does -something-, while Concentrate just sits there useless (or near-useless) in any fight against charging enemies, monsters, pre-L40 archers, or others who lack evade.
Think that's it for now! Playthrough was pretty fun, final level going into the last battle was 34-35 or so. (Well one dancer reached 39 in the Altima fight, but... dance against L66 target.) Definitely not overall hard with the possible exception of chapter 1; most of my resets could be avoided.
Chapter 1 still by far the hardest part of the game! BAN KNIGHT? (Well, if there's any debate about Knight vs. Bard later on...)
1. Calculator
2. Chemist
3. Summoner
4. Wizard
5. Time Mage
6. Priest
7. Squire
8. Lancer
9. Oracle
10. Geomancer
11. Monk
12. Ninja
13. Knight
14. Archer
15. Mediator
16. Samurai
17. Dancer
18. Thief
19. Bard
20. Mime
So...I've been rethinking the whole trade approach to the starcraft unit tier list, and concluded it gets a bit weird when there's stuff like A-tier being all protoss units. So...we get a bunch of looks at how good a unit would be in the hands of protoss, and none or very little in the hands of other races.
Thinking it's probably better to just look at a unit in all 9 matchups (extrapolating for the matchups where the unit would be traded).
Going with a simple scoring system like
4: matchup defining (defilers in ZvT, vultures in TvP, Siege Tanks in TvT)
3: mostly core, weird to play without them, but possible (Marine/Medic TvZ, Lurkers ZvT, High Templar PvT)
2: Nice to have (Dark Templar in every matchup, Ultras ZvT, Valkyries TvZ)
1: Has uses, but won't come up much (Dark Archons PvZ, Queens ZvT, Battlecruiser TvZ)
0: no use in the matchup.
So eg some samples with S tier units:
Zergling
ZvZ: 4/4 (matchup defining).
ZvT: 4/4 (matchup defining). As impressed as I am by the hydra lurker defiler build, it still leans on zerglings for a long time.
ZvP: 3/4 (mostly core). Used for early defence, some rushes, defiler food if the game gets that late. But two builds stand out as mostly abandoning lings--lurker contains and hydra allins.
TvT: 3/4 (mostly core). Are they more important than...any of the factory units? I...don't think they are. Like if one Terran had Vultures and one had Zerglings, I'd favour the vulture player. If one terran had goliaths and the other had zerglings, I'd favour the goliath player. But they are a superb unit to drop on tanks.
TvP: 4/4 (matchup defining). Pretty sure Vulture Ling just destroys protoss--absolutely can't get map control.
TvZ: 3/4 (mostly core). The rushes would be a problem; zerg's vulnerable to zergling rushes. But going with all the other standard assumptions, which is to say terran zerglings would be coded to not fix terran's weakness to dark swarm, and would not get healed by medics...I think eventually terran would stop making them past some earlygame rush options.
PvP: 2/4 (nice to have?) TBH, I actually haven't thought about this one too deeply, I assume they would drop off fast but there would be some kind of cheese cause they are better than zealots when in small enough numbers.
PvT: 2/4 (nice to have?) Long games I think Zealots are generally better, but lings might be better when dropped out of dropships onto tank lines? Might be worth making one or two to run in front and mine drag. Might be worth it for just having a mobile army with map control sometimes.
PvZ: 4/4 (matchup defining) Um, yeah, zerglings destroy hydras cause unlike zealots they can catch them, and that seems like a big problem. Add to that some really good cheese/pressure builds toss would pick up.
---
4s: 4
3s: 3
2s: 2
29/36
Siege Tank
TvT: 4/4
TvP: 4/4
TvZ: 2/4 (it can come up as a response to heavy lurker or heavy ultra play, but not an every game thing, and not the only possible response)
PvP: 4/4 (siege tanks would break this matchup)
PvT: 4/4 (Terran can't deal with siege tanks)
PvZ: 3/4 (Honestly I'm not super confident about this one so I'm hedging a little. Siege Tanks might just be better against hydras than protoss tools like reavers and high templar, but...then again maybe not? Could be anywhere from 2/4 to 4/4)
ZvZ: 0/4 (can't shoot up, lol).
ZvT: 4/4 (So...terran has to open either with goliaths or marines to handle mutas. I assume zerg siege tanks would just break either of those comps unless zerg lost something super extreme like mutas or zerglings).
ZvP: 4/4 (a zerg hydra contain or hydra lurker contain backed up by siege tanks just sounds like it breaks the matchup. Unless zerg loses like...hydra this sounds awful).
4s: 6
3s: 1
2s: 1
0s: 1
29/36
Mutalisk
ZvZ: 4/4
ZvT: 3/4 (technically possible to play without them as Shine demonstrated, but...still tempted to call this 4/4 just due to how much everyone hypes them up here).
ZvP: 2/4 (You don't need to make a single muta in any given ZvP, but the option is nice)
TvT: 4/4 (A little torn between 3 and 4 here, I don't think this would devolve into pure muta vs muta like ZvZ, but also we're talking about a flying unit that can fight goliaths and turrets reasonably well, and is way better than wraiths at picking off tanks, that sounds like it would suddenly become a real focus of the match).
TvP: 2/4 (I don't know that you make mutas every game, cause you do know that toss will at least have mass goons, and can really shut them down with the right tech, but the option for cheese seems nice).
TvZ: 4/4 (Zerg dies to mutas).
PvP: 2/4 (I think both players are kinda forced to go stargate. If one player skips stargate, well, mutas can fight pure dragoon just fine. But once it's clear that both players won't just die to mutas, probably don't actually build them, just make the opponent worried about them).
PvT: 4/4 (Mutas break this matchup beyond recognition. Vulture Tank can not shoot up).
PvZ: 4/4 (Zerg dies to mutas).
4s: 5
3s: 1
2s: 3
29/36
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Okay, I did not plan that at all, but all three S-tier units came out at 29/36. That's...kinda neat, although who knows if I ranked everything perfectly here.
The real test will be some of the lower tiers, of course.
So...ok, let's just list out what is left
Monk, Dancer, Bard, Archer, Mediator, Samurai, Thief, Mime
I am certainly thinking about charge guns at this point. And maybe Monk finally, they still have revival, and now some of the best blitz damage.
Equip Gun Archer with punch art for revive and stigma magic sounds reasonable. Just building a monk also sounds reasonable, maybe ending up in Archer with Martial Arts secondary, or in Monk with Concentrate. Arrow Guard and HP Restore both good reactions.
I think it's going to for sure be one of Monk or Archer. Just the two classes that aren't pathetic in chapter 1, while playing different roles. (Mediator is pathetic in Chapter 1).
So like...I intuitively feel like this really ought to be Monk. They're just generically seen as a good class, and Archers are generically seen as a bad class.
The thing that's making me hesitate on just slamming Monk is that like...I'm kind of feeling like Archers probably bring a bit more to Chapter 1, a bit better at handling Sand Rat Cellar, and Monks are really suffering from gear woes in Chapter 2. But surely the long term must be better for Monk? And like...yeah I think it is, but Mediator SCC kinda stomps most of the game pretty good once it gets guns, and add charge and shields and arrow guard, and you can slap equip gun on people while they unlock Bard and Dancer and Samurai for whatever you want out of those classes, and man, that really doesn't sound all that bad. Archer just seems like it flows better into the remaining classes.
I guess Archer is also now the one remaining way to get a shield. Which matters for like Balk fights, and not too much else. White robes are also decent for those fights (but those are now only available on Mediator and Samurai, and if you ban Archer, then Mediator drops in value a notable amount).
Let's see...I think Archers are better in Chapter 1 (though not by a lot, I just value the 4-5 range), worse for Zaland/Barius Hill in Chapter 2 (monks only need to get to level 5 for 7 PA, and Power Wrist shows up after Zirekile Falls, bringing that up to 8 PA for 60 damage wave fist, whereas Archers are still looking at 5 WP here, so like 30 damage--longer range and higher HP of course), worse for the next four fights that matter in Chapter 2 cause Romanda Guns are storebought. Chapter 3 I think Archers are ahead until Bracer (even with power sleeve, monk's hitting like 10 PA, so like 90 damage wave fist. Yeah, give me Mythril Gun over that--64 damage base, and charge+3 brings that to like 88. With 8 range instead of 3 and no chance to miss).
And then bracers surely put Monks ahead for the last four fights of chapter 3, and then earth clothes as well in chapter 4 for earth healing, and also somewhere around part way through Chapter 3 Monks start having revival for emergencies.
But in terms of how much of the game each class is better, this is a surprisingly even split.
The numbers gap is going to be quite wide in Chapter 4 and late Chapter 3, so that's one argument to break the tie towards Monk. But Archer routes will still have the range edge and the option of shields and the ignore evade edge (against earth immune enemies only, since earth slash is ITE, but there's lots of earth immune enemies), and the edge in terms of portability (Equip Gun+Charge unlocking bard/dancer/samurai much more comfortably than martial arts+punch art).
I...feel like I'm leaning Archer here?
13. Archer
I guess you can use fliers to maybe get back in the game, but once you start winning the ship race, you can just mix in destroyers that can shoot up.
But if I'm thinking of "what's the best way to protect saving throws with Paladin and Wizard banned" it's not a bard with bardic inspiration, it's not an artificer. It's any party member grabbing a 1 level Peace cleric dip.