I'll go along with that, forgot about Slow Dance's speed when I suggested the change.
Not sure that 8 wouldn't be reasonable again with the change, in fact, although I don't really see a need; Dance has a good solid niche at this stage, and one that is still solidly useful lategame now, unlike before where you might screw around with Nameless Dance some but it wasn't reaaaaaallly all that worth the slot. (67% randostatus vs 50% randostatus is essentially boosting it's debilitating chances up to "Still somewhat below Petrify but usable because it hits fullscreen." from "Just hit Sleep on two people and you probably have just as good of chances of debilitating as much of the battlefield as you used to, and you're more likely to get people that are relevant.". Dance was really only good if the map gave you a couple of turns by construction, and not of lot of maps did that; Now it's still biased that way, but worth using at short range maps, but requires more thought to use due to the damage boost.)
Anyways, let's go for a general rambling:
Maps:
Orbonne Intro Stage:
I got Ramza killed. Yay!
Gariland:
Easier than normal. Got a Squire with Accumulate starting(Hey that doesn't normally happen!), got guaranteed knockback so it was easier to manage area control-the only real problem on that map-to kill things faster. Enemies never got a chance to stack up, they simply died. Fun fun.
Mandalia Plains:
Almost wiped to this. I'd been watching some LFT, and naturally I assumed the Panther was the dangerous one. Hell, the Panther is the dangerous one on normal runs.
No, the Thief's just as nasty, I just had somehow never really seen it. He butchered Algus and I barely managed to take him out. On the upside the Panther caused no problems as both of his Charm shots missed. Statistically unlikely. I've had good luck. I managed to get the Thief under control, but both Delita and Algus were dead by then and I needed to heal a bit before taking out those Squires.
Sweegy Woods:
No problems...because I ground a bit and got some more jobs because I can't really get the same feel for jobs on paper as I can in-game. Silly quirk. Anyways, I had up to date equips on everyone-my usual earlygame stopping point for grinding, and I tend to not park on maps so I get more cash killing more maps-and had enough healing to go around to prevent any real problems from the map. I don't really recall the team, but I can't say I had actual problems.
Sand Rats Cellar:
One reset. Invite never hit, Charge +7 took everyone's faces off that it targetted(;_;) and things just went downhill. I think a lack of bought Phoenix Downs sealed it so I bought more.
The second try nearly was lost too, it became Mediator Ramza blocks door and frantically Invites people while Sage sighs at his White Magic primary/secondary people being all out of MP and his Chemist being...I think she was critical and in Grefter's range(I forget exact setups at this stage, still.). Then I Invited Grefter.
Who promptly went around and Spin Fisted three critical hiding enemies to death, vastly speeding up the battle and preventing the last death that I couldn't really deal with.
Grefter also had 3k Knight JP. I ditched my Thief, gave Grefter the crystal and used Grefter from there on out instead as my melee cannon. Yay!
Thieves Fort:
Grinding kicked in again, I'm afraid. I had a Dancer for this.
Lenalia Plateau:
And this.
Windmill Shed:
Annnnd I had a Mime here and a Bard.
Fort Zeakden:
And this!
No, really, the rest of C1 was mostly that simple. Dance this early is a pain to get but it always paid off around this big. It's sorta hard to balance around. Both Fort and especially Lenalia are very, very badly built to deal with Dance, as the enemies tend to start a while away, to boot. Windmill Shed I recall potentially being threatening right until Delita broke Weigraf's sword. Oops. (I left Delita as a Knight with Cure/Raise for the entire chapter. Worked pretty well.) Fort starts WAY off and I had my Mime abuse mimicked physicals to butcher things. Was fun. Ditched the Mime after this, not because of lack of use, but because I don't like jobs that gain JP.
Dorter 2:
One reset. Maybe I should've kept the Mime.
Okay, okay, I went with Polka Polka, didn't start Singing for a bit for...some reason, and things kinda collapsed. Agrias and Gaffy had hideously bad AI, both not healing me, not reviving me, Gaffy spamming Poizn(I liked Poison on him. I didn't like him using it repeatedly to hit two people.)...it was...bad luck as well as me not taking the fight seriously enough. My bad.
Second time was still not a cakewalk though. My Dancer and Priest repeatedly and horribly died due to Andrew while everyone else got killed around him. It was surreal.
Araguay:
I can haz dance goblinz who start way away?
Zirekile:
Yeah, this ended the same way. I can't imagine what this would be like if I was abusing the 100% Slow Dance version.
Zaland Fort City:
I saved Musty. This was due to him having the best AI I've seen on any playthrough and parking his ass right above the gate. I expected this decision to cost me a reset; Nameless Dance isn't good at these things.
Incidentally, I'd like to point out that every one of these made-easy-by-Dance fights took a while because my team is spectacularly offensively anemic. When you see me talking about multiple revivers and Dance and Song and a Mime, the offense that's left over is exactly what you'd think; Grefter stabbing people in the face. It's not perfect.
Barius Hill:
Okay, this should have been harder. I didn't bring in the Dancer(Read up if you want to see why. It's Barius Hill, I should restart at least once before doing that to honor it's noble legacy of bending over SCCs and reaming them.). Did bring in the Bard.
Hey, guys, Bards are broken too.
Add in some other stuff; First, Agrias Guest gets Gained JP Up innate. So, she got Holy Explosion before this.
Why HE? I've never gotten HE on Guest Agrias. <_<
So she walks up, hits a Geomancer as the battle starts, confuses him, Geo turns around, axes the Archer behind him in the face, high variance, slow.
Summoners react by both training Moogle on the duo.
This is the most spectacularly good start I've seen to Barius Hill in...what, a dozen playthroughs or something? Yeah.
I had good luck throughout too, and Cheer Song just kicks ass. (Incidentally, I like Slow Dance being nerfed because Cheer Song is an excellent option for the same effect, but has less impact overall due to how FFT speed functions. It should have something on Slow Dance, and 100% rate of kickon vs a less reliable 66% gives it that something.)
Zigolis Swamp:
*yawn* Musty had Seal Evil for this. I don't think I brought in the Dancer-again-so the fight actually required me to think a lot, but my setups by this point were pretty damned solid(I think Grefter's a Ninja by now, I had a good Lancer setup, and two Priests.), so I wasn't worried much. I mean, it's LFT, it's miles upon miles better than the original fight, but. Also, I think my overleveling from Dance/Sing is showing around now.
Goug Machine City:
1 Reset. I played this fight several days after Zigolis and forgot who my Dancer was. Oops. So I moved that Oracle forward instead of backwards, shrugged and Danced anyways.
Now, you're thinking "Ha ha his Dancer got OHKOed.".
No, his Dancer got Charmed, danced Nameless Dance, and Charmed his Bard.
...that says enough I think.
Second run I abused Song/Dance into the ground.
And that's where I am now. Generally I have to say I really approve of the battle changes, despite my comments the stages put up far, far harder fights than they would have in vanilla FFT against the same strategy, boosts to Song and Dance notwithstanding. I definitely had people die even with those boosts on a lot of those stages, and I don't say a Dancer could solo them, that'd be stupid. Dance is just awesome early.
General job thoughts so far:
Squire: Not...actually that good of a carrier. Looks great on paper. Sounds great on paper. However, most carriers have better skillsets still. Geomancer gives you a sniper weapon. Calc is Calc. Samurai gives you Draw Out, Wizard gives you Black Magic, Oracle gives you Move Gain MP innate...I mean, I could go on, but the problem is, fundamentally, every other carrier got made better around them as well.
My suggestion would be to improve Basic Skill. It's a decent carrier, but the skillset still has holes. Replenish sounds better than it is, Chakra runs off the main stat and heals PA*(2.5*1.5 with Martial Arts) MP over an area. Chakra's just a part of the skillset(a good part, but just a part) and also HP heals. For Squire after C1, Replenish, Yell, Heal and Reinforce(And maybe Accumulate once every great while, but Yell's better ignoring the lack of self target.) are. Yell's okay, but it competes with Song/Dance for the most part now. Replenish is okay but Chakra is better. Reinforce sounds good but Reraise tends to be a lot more practical due to much cheaper JP costs and actual range. Heal is one range status curing, same thing with Esuna.
Basically it's an unfocused, hodgepodge skillset(Instead of no skillset, admittedly a large improvement.). Yell's good enough at what it needs to do, but the other three could use a boost on range, AoE(I liked the idea of making Replenish 1 range 2v0 Effect myself, as this directly competes with Chakra better, is basically better than it to make up for the fact that it's a skill with more of a requirement to be good due to Monk's larger skillset-not that anyone uses Monk as a carrier, but anyways.), that sort of thing. The effects are good, but they're just a little too limited in practice as it is, I think.
Chemist:
Is a great class where everyone got better around it. Worked out fine. Only thing I recall noting is that Phoenix Down would probably be better served a little lower in JP than 300; The idea was to make Phoenix Down not something you can just pick up, but 250-200 would do that just as well, and a Chemist without Phoenix Down's a pretty useless Chemist. Priest gets Cure/Raise 50% of the time off the bat, Chemist takes a fight to get something more than Potion. Not so bad if you just use one of the default Chemists from Gariland, but if you want one later it's conceptually annoying.
Knight:
Is awesome, much better balanced, serves a great niche, etc. Love the changes. Battle Skill feels like it could use some details hashed over but I'm not sure that skillset is reasonably able to be 100% balanced in practice(Speed Break for instance should be like -1.5 Speed was my assessment when looking at it. Obviously *that* doesn't work.).
Archer:
Also awesome, great niche, needs no changes. Haven't used it much. <_< What, I just didn't feel like it.
Wizard:
Interesting changes here. Frog feels very much like an odd skill out, as Death, despite it's hefty downsides, basically is more worth the trouble, to me. I almost feel like Frog should be radically changed, maybe make it more expensive than Death for JP/MP and 2v0 AoE or something. (Sure, it's a debilitating status and a permanent one, but the skillset already has a 8 range sniper one. Despite Death's downsides, somehow it just feels better in practice. I'll rescind this if you can find someone who's used Frog much in LFT though, it may just be observations being off.) Otherwise the changes are...Death/Poison are great, Flare is still Flare, I have no clue about the main offensive spells. Low end ones feel similar but the heavily changed high end ones...
Priest:
Replaced Chemist.
Until it runs out of MP.
._. MP.
No, seriously, this is about how I feel. Better healing, better revival, positive status, better status healing, high damage spell...then it runs out of MP and can't do any of it. Better be careful. I'm not sure that balances it, after the early game I didn't really run out of MP much, but it does make you play a lot more strategically and with thought than Chemists, who can just spam items forever, especially later.
Also, there's the subtle thing where Priests being so good makes low Faith impractical. This is...interesting and perhaps balances them against Chemists. It's very subtle.
Monks:
Monks feel about the same but their skillset feels much improved. How does that work? Mostly it's cheaper and the role of Monk is still weird niche stuff. It works. Better than it used to, obviously.
Thieves:
It's like you take a Thief and you give it twice the damage.
Wait, that's exactly what happened. They went from horrible offense miserable classes to the terror of the early game.
There's still not a huge amount of long term point to them, they steal crap, Steal Heart, and have one more skill they didn't have before that...mostly is quirky, although it's good on paper. I'm not sure how you could ever make thieves really spectacular physical fighters, so this works.
Oracles:
Mmmm. Much better status spell balance. Paralysis, Sleep and Petrify were always good niches, Zombie, Confusion Song and(to a lesser extent) Foxbird and Blind join them. Spell Absorb healing 50% MP instead of 33% makes it more useful as an MP restorer, although it's still not spectacular. Life Drain probably needed the nerf. Dispel Magic and Blind Rage still feel like odd spells out(mmmm Blind Rage probably would have been better served by making it AoE but leaving the lousy hitrate, the skillset doesn't actually have a skill that's low hit rate but AoE does it? As it is I'd rather just Confuse enemies. However, that's ignoring the buff part of Blind Rage-which I always do, I don't like Berserk as a buff, but many people do. So I dunno.).
It's probably one of the more interesting set of job changes that didn't actually radically change the base job's build.
Time Mage:
Haven't really messed with them much. Think I need their higher end skills before I can really say.
Mediator:
Worked out well. Functionally they're about as same as always, but they have more useful status options.
Insult kinda sucks though. Except, again, as a buff(Unless I'm radically wrong and it is AoE). Maybe one or the other of them should get the AoE so the other can work more like a buff. (Insult would make more sense as the ST high hit rate one, as nothing but Zodiac can impact it.)
Geomancer:
Same old Geo, just better, is my impression of it, though I haven't used them much. Nothing wrong with that, they were a cool build.
Lancer:
Great damage, accessable earlier in practice due to earlier Javelin, and tend to do very well as an early game job. Dunno about later, their edges don't seem like they'd hold up spectacularly but they're still probably pretty damn good. Armor Break on spears is nice.
Summoner:
One of the few jobs that feels nerfed, rather than everyone else getting better around them. Still pretty good, good AoEs on spells that Wizards no longer have and they still have the general utility. They're just slow. And frail. And the usual for Summoners, except that their edges don't *completely* shatter you caring about these things anymore.
On the upside, Summon's a lot less boring, better internal balance between high end spells.
Ninja:
Feels...worse but it's sorta negligably worse. 1 PA or so isn't going to crush their dreams. The durability feels more signifigant-they were frail already-but all in all it's still Ninja.
Samurai:
Better job, worse skillset. Skillset isn't hugely worse though, so that's okay. Neat job, actually, good balance of physical and magical stats and basically feels like Geos except with less status and range and more damage. I like the changes. Do miss ignore-allies DO though. (Not that it's not a reasonable change...I just miss it.)
Calc:
Only job I don't have yet. Soon enough though.
Bard:
Songs are awesome early. The MA boosting song still feels trashy, but everything else is basically okay to good on these guys. Cheer Song is so much fun to abuse. ^_^ They don't feel terribly different, but I don't have any harps yet, so I'll have to wait on serious comment.
Dancer:
See my comments about Dancer? Yeah they did that already, ignore them. The real change is that I might actually use bloody Polka Polka over Slow Dance or Nameless Dance(Not the MA dance, that still sucks. Oh well.). Add in Last Dance being okay and basically you've got far better balance. Also they get Attack Up. That's cool. I haven't tried to abuse it but it's cool.
Mime:
Is Mime. Is better Mime, but still Mime.
The real change is that it's unlock is some time this year. Screw the old reqs, 4/4 feels perfectly reasonable for these guys. Kinda broken early, sure, but so's Dancer. >_>
