Learned a two things on ++:
Killing Biren first makes Yanke cast hast on himself, guess that's why one of the objectives is to slow him (made the mistake of slowing him at the start)
Aqua Breath seems to be the party killing ability this battle which is used by Yanke and is magic (had protect instead of shell on).
Probably need to rework the team a bit. Get a second WHM with shelga/dispell, get both magic and weapon break. End party probably will look like
Offense is a little low so probably will get 1 star for actions taken but with three objectives I could probably tank Actions and Damage taken and still get master. Does anyone know what Biren does if you kill Yanke first? Would rather fight someone with fairly manageable physical skills over the AOE magic death.
Went alright, but ended losing 4 stars to damage and action taken and that was enough drop me to expert. 2nd try with advantalate won in eight turns with full stars...
Tried +++ twice, first time battle went on too long and lost people after SG ran out. 2nd time went defensive and ran out of skills, was auto attacking with my makes to get SBs. Still died only much, much later. Guess I'll wait for tomorrow for my advance RW to refresh.
6 out of 16 GSOs
5 out of 16 SOs
5 out of 16 nothing
it looks like a drop of around 33-40% which means somewhere around 50-60 stam per GSO
which is nice.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Since using Retaliate to clear trash is becoming less and less effective for 120+ difficulty trash, I did something impulsive and took the plunge into Mage Meta. I honed Valefor and Shiva from R1 to R3 each. Took this party to Galbadia Garden 3:
Cloud; Blitz Sword/Adamant Bangle/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Tempo Flurry/Retaliate; Self-Sacrifice
Quistis; Thyrus/Edincoat/Angel Wing; Biora/Boost; Attunment II
Rinoa; Full Metal Staff/Ten Gallon Hat/Angel Wing; Biora/Quake; Mana Spring II
Rydia; Flail++/Estharian Hat/Magic Amulet; Valefor/Shiva; Summon Spring II
Aerith; Healer's Staff/White Robe/Giant's Ring; Kirn/Carbuncle; Double Hit
RW: Lunatic High
The theory was Rinoa could take out a wave of trash by herself, and Rydia could take out the other two. Cloud with Retaliate (and Boost) can mop up the leftovers. Aerith even has Double Hit!
In practice, this went terribly. The only thing that could one shot a wave of two guys was Valefor. Maybe I need to hone Alexander to R3 as well. Neither Shiva nor Quake was doing the job, so it was little better than Retaliate + Double Cut. Regardless, the very first monster on the very first stage was a Death Claw, a single large enemy, and I spent twenty minutes S/Ling before I could figure out a way to kill it with abilities to spare, and then get perfect ATB bars to pull it off. Death Claw was a real bastard, who would either attack first for 2k to a mage in the back row (WTF?!) or sleep my team, resetting their ATB bars, and THEN attack mages in the back row for 2k, who start with empty ATB bars, allowing him to attack a third time to my not at all. To top it off, Valefor + Biora from Rydia and Rinoa wasn't enough to kill it! So I had to wait for the perfect set of ATB bars so Cloud, Quistis, Aerith and one other character could all go first. I didn't bring Auto-haste because I didn't think I'd need it with Mage Meta! So much for that.
The good news was the actual boss fight was easy as eating cake and pie together. Carbuncle + Lunatic High = no more damage, Kirin healed the few physical attacks that came in, and Seifer dropped like a rock with three mages nuking him. Edea similarly couldn't touch my team, and was cut through like a hot knife through butter with just Retaliate and Boost. My only gripe is that in 8 Tempo Flurries, neither Seifer nor Edea was slowed. Such a fucking pain in the ass.
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
Since using Retaliate to clear trash is becoming less and less effective for 120+ difficulty trash, I did something impulsive and took the plunge into Mage Meta. I honed Valefor and Shiva from R1 to R3 each. Took this party to Galbadia Garden 3:
Cloud; Blitz Sword/Adamant Bangle/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Tempo Flurry/Retaliate; Self-Sacrifice
Quistis; Thyrus/Edincoat/Angel Wing; Biora/Boost; Attunment II
Rinoa; Full Metal Staff/Ten Gallon Hat/Angel Wing; Biora/Quake; Mana Spring II
Rydia; Flail++/Estharian Hat/Magic Amulet; Valefor/Shiva; Summon Spring II
Aerith; Healer's Staff/White Robe/Giant's Ring; Kirn/Carbuncle; Double Hit
RW: Lunatic High
The theory was Rinoa could take out a wave of trash by herself, and Rydia could take out the other two. Cloud with Retaliate (and Boost) can mop up the leftovers. Aerith even has Double Hit!
In practice, this went terribly. The only thing that could one shot a wave of two guys was Valefor. Maybe I need to hone Alexander to R3 as well. Neither Shiva nor Quake was doing the job, so it was little better than Retaliate + Double Cut. Regardless, the very first monster on the very first stage was a Death Claw, a single large enemy, and I spent twenty minutes S/Ling before I could figure out a way to kill it with abilities to spare, and then get perfect ATB bars to pull it off. Death Claw was a real bastard, who would either attack first for 2k to a mage in the back row (WTF?!) or sleep my team, resetting their ATB bars, and THEN attack mages in the back row for 2k, who start with empty ATB bars, allowing him to attack a third time to my not at all. To top it off, Valefor + Biora from Rydia and Rinoa wasn't enough to kill it! So I had to wait for the perfect set of ATB bars so Cloud, Quistis, Aerith and one other character could all go first. I didn't bring Auto-haste because I didn't think I'd need it with Mage Meta! So much for that.
The good news was the actual boss fight was easy as eating cake and pie together. Carbuncle + Lunatic High = no more damage, Kirin healed the few physical attacks that came in, and Seifer dropped like a rock with three mages nuking him. Edea similarly couldn't touch my team, and was cut through like a hot knife through butter with just Retaliate and Boost. My only gripe is that in 8 Tempo Flurries, neither Seifer nor Edea was slowed. Such a fucking pain in the ass.
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I've found giving the Quaker (Rinoa in your case) a -ja level spell really helps when you get the one giant monster, hopefully not more than one in a set of waves otherwise you limit some power on the boss. I also am fine burning through quakes since they are so important on trash, but generally meh on bosses. I haven't really had to use summoners yet, and they seem like they would be fairly dead weight on bosses. Swapping it out with a standard melee striker can usually finish off a weakened mob rather than have to get retaliate going.
Outside of that, I'm debating havinge a dedicated person running Shellga/Protectaga with concentration and putting those up at the start of everey wave. Would be nice to have someone like Cecil with WHM 4 so you can still auto attack, currently looking at Tyro.
I get the feeling they balance the elites for the next content worth of stuff, in this case level 65 broken charecters. I mean, they are beatable but I usually will return to the elites after a month or so and wonder why I was having so much difficulty before.
Since using Retaliate to clear trash is becoming less and less effective for 120+ difficulty trash, I did something impulsive and took the plunge into Mage Meta. I honed Valefor and Shiva from R1 to R3 each. Took this party to Galbadia Garden 3:
Cloud; Blitz Sword/Adamant Bangle/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Tempo Flurry/Retaliate; Self-Sacrifice
Quistis; Thyrus/Edincoat/Angel Wing; Biora/Boost; Attunment II
Rinoa; Full Metal Staff/Ten Gallon Hat/Angel Wing; Biora/Quake; Mana Spring II
Rydia; Flail++/Estharian Hat/Magic Amulet; Valefor/Shiva; Summon Spring II
Aerith; Healer's Staff/White Robe/Giant's Ring; Kirn/Carbuncle; Double Hit
RW: Lunatic High
The theory was Rinoa could take out a wave of trash by herself, and Rydia could take out the other two. Cloud with Retaliate (and Boost) can mop up the leftovers. Aerith even has Double Hit!
In practice, this went terribly. The only thing that could one shot a wave of two guys was Valefor. Maybe I need to hone Alexander to R3 as well. Neither Shiva nor Quake was doing the job, so it was little better than Retaliate + Double Cut. Regardless, the very first monster on the very first stage was a Death Claw, a single large enemy, and I spent twenty minutes S/Ling before I could figure out a way to kill it with abilities to spare, and then get perfect ATB bars to pull it off. Death Claw was a real bastard, who would either attack first for 2k to a mage in the back row (WTF?!) or sleep my team, resetting their ATB bars, and THEN attack mages in the back row for 2k, who start with empty ATB bars, allowing him to attack a third time to my not at all. To top it off, Valefor + Biora from Rydia and Rinoa wasn't enough to kill it! So I had to wait for the perfect set of ATB bars so Cloud, Quistis, Aerith and one other character could all go first. I didn't bring Auto-haste because I didn't think I'd need it with Mage Meta! So much for that.
The good news was the actual boss fight was easy as eating cake and pie together. Carbuncle + Lunatic High = no more damage, Kirin healed the few physical attacks that came in, and Seifer dropped like a rock with three mages nuking him. Edea similarly couldn't touch my team, and was cut through like a hot knife through butter with just Retaliate and Boost. My only gripe is that in 8 Tempo Flurries, neither Seifer nor Edea was slowed. Such a fucking pain in the ass.
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I've found giving the Quaker (Rinoa in your case) a -ja level spell really helps when you get the one giant monster, hopefully not more than one in a set of waves otherwise you limit some power on the boss. I also am fine burning through quakes since they are so important on trash, but generally meh on bosses. I haven't really had to use summoners yet, and they seem like they would be fairly dead weight on bosses. Swapping it out with a standard melee striker can usually finish off a weakened mob rather than have to get retaliate going.
Outside of that, I'm debating havinge a dedicated person running Shellga/Protectaga with concentration and putting those up at the start of everey wave. Would be nice to have someone like Cecil with WHM 4 so you can still auto attack, currently looking at Tyro.
I get the feeling they balance the elites for the next content worth of stuff, in this case level 65 broken charecters. I mean, they are beatable but I usually will return to the elites after a month or so and wonder why I was having so much difficulty before.
I run a double healer with protectga, curaga and Concentration 2 and the other with Diaga and shell.
then 1 mage with mana spring and either quake waterja or waterja something else depending on boss.
then my last is usually a ret + armor break and a boost + bd.
I had no problem with any of the elite trash since I could use one protectga and curaga per level.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Since using Retaliate to clear trash is becoming less and less effective for 120+ difficulty trash, I did something impulsive and took the plunge into Mage Meta. I honed Valefor and Shiva from R1 to R3 each. Took this party to Galbadia Garden 3:
Cloud; Blitz Sword/Adamant Bangle/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Tempo Flurry/Retaliate; Self-Sacrifice
Quistis; Thyrus/Edincoat/Angel Wing; Biora/Boost; Attunment II
Rinoa; Full Metal Staff/Ten Gallon Hat/Angel Wing; Biora/Quake; Mana Spring II
Rydia; Flail++/Estharian Hat/Magic Amulet; Valefor/Shiva; Summon Spring II
Aerith; Healer's Staff/White Robe/Giant's Ring; Kirn/Carbuncle; Double Hit
RW: Lunatic High
The theory was Rinoa could take out a wave of trash by herself, and Rydia could take out the other two. Cloud with Retaliate (and Boost) can mop up the leftovers. Aerith even has Double Hit!
In practice, this went terribly. The only thing that could one shot a wave of two guys was Valefor. Maybe I need to hone Alexander to R3 as well. Neither Shiva nor Quake was doing the job, so it was little better than Retaliate + Double Cut. Regardless, the very first monster on the very first stage was a Death Claw, a single large enemy, and I spent twenty minutes S/Ling before I could figure out a way to kill it with abilities to spare, and then get perfect ATB bars to pull it off. Death Claw was a real bastard, who would either attack first for 2k to a mage in the back row (WTF?!) or sleep my team, resetting their ATB bars, and THEN attack mages in the back row for 2k, who start with empty ATB bars, allowing him to attack a third time to my not at all. To top it off, Valefor + Biora from Rydia and Rinoa wasn't enough to kill it! So I had to wait for the perfect set of ATB bars so Cloud, Quistis, Aerith and one other character could all go first. I didn't bring Auto-haste because I didn't think I'd need it with Mage Meta! So much for that.
The good news was the actual boss fight was easy as eating cake and pie together. Carbuncle + Lunatic High = no more damage, Kirin healed the few physical attacks that came in, and Seifer dropped like a rock with three mages nuking him. Edea similarly couldn't touch my team, and was cut through like a hot knife through butter with just Retaliate and Boost. My only gripe is that in 8 Tempo Flurries, neither Seifer nor Edea was slowed. Such a fucking pain in the ass.
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I've found giving the Quaker (Rinoa in your case) a -ja level spell really helps when you get the one giant monster, hopefully not more than one in a set of waves otherwise you limit some power on the boss. I also am fine burning through quakes since they are so important on trash, but generally meh on bosses. I haven't really had to use summoners yet, and they seem like they would be fairly dead weight on bosses. Swapping it out with a standard melee striker can usually finish off a weakened mob rather than have to get retaliate going.
Outside of that, I'm debating havinge a dedicated person running Shellga/Protectaga with concentration and putting those up at the start of everey wave. Would be nice to have someone like Cecil with WHM 4 so you can still auto attack, currently looking at Tyro.
I get the feeling they balance the elites for the next content worth of stuff, in this case level 65 broken charecters. I mean, they are beatable but I usually will return to the elites after a month or so and wonder why I was having so much difficulty before.
Well in this case it was Biora for Seifer, but in general Quake/-ja seems like a good plan.
Law of The Ronso ++
(iii) Win without Kimahri being KO’d.
EDIT: whoops thought we were still on the last page
Gonna have to dump some eggs onto Kimahri
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I got both Zeal and Pirate's Pride (?) for Haste at the start of Battles just for this. Hopefully it'd allow me to get at least one boost and 1 hit in before the enemy has any time to react
Law of The Ronso ++
(iii) Win without Kimahri being KO’d.
EDIT: whoops thought we were still on the last page
Gonna have to dump some eggs onto Kimahri
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I got both Zeal and Pirate's Pride (?) for Haste at the start of Battles just for this. Hopefully it'd allow me to get at least one boost and 1 hit in before the enemy has any time to react
The irony is that I used to run those on my Retaliator and Booster, but took them off when I got mages with AoEs, thinking the Summons/Quake could handle things. WHOOPS!
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Sanctuary Keeper. Killed on first try, zero S/L, lost one medal to Actions Taken.
I, uh, what the fuck. It takes me 20 minutes to beat trash in Galbadia Garden, and then I beat the most bullshitastic boss without breaking a sweat? Gogo variance.
(yes, my gear is insane at this point. No, I haven't spent any money, I've just been playing since the beginning).
RW: Advance
The theory: Sanctuary Keeper is vulnerable to Dismissal, so I hoped by giving Tidus Dismissal and Haste, as well as Protect/Shellga and Haste to Tyro, I could maximize my chance of getting Protectga, Shellga, and Reflect up on the boss in 1.5 turns. I'm not even sure if Dismissal procced, but I got Protectga up in time, and boss's first attack was the AoE tail whip for 5-600 a piece. I got Shellga up before his second attack, the Mana breath, which hit for about 2200. Slow and Poison both landed on the second Flurry/Buster (so the third turn), so that was super lucky. From there, Advantaliate the dude down, healing people as necessary.
Still a little shocked. I don't understand how people can farm this fight without a Friend Summon every time. I feel like who your RW is forms the linchpin to any strategy, since RW's can do basically anything.
I don't think I'm going to try the ex+++ fight, I had to use a mythril on the Seymourfest. Ronsofest is just a straightforward slug out fight though, so that wasn't too bad.
Also, I got double cut RM when clearing out an old FFII elite, so I'm stoked for that.
That ability compendium posted last page is really strong on boosts usefulness. Is it that good? If it is how do you normally use it, on a retaliate char? Thinking mainly of if it's viable to take advance less often in favour of boon/lunatic high/ss for the defense/haste.
That ability compendium posted last page is really strong on boosts usefulness. Is it that good? If it is how do you normally use it, on a retaliate char? Thinking mainly of if it's viable to take advance less often in favour of boon/lunatic high/ss for the defense/haste.
At this point, I don't even know why they bother with having some of the extra objectives be "Win without anyone being KO'd". For regular classic dungeon bosses and such, sure, because you should be progressing at an even pace, using the time spent earning stamina shards and mythril on relic pulls. The death isn't likely, but you can usually recover from the medal loss because you probably went through 3-4 stages of fights and have them to spare.
But then you get to the point where you have full teams of characters at 65, several high end relics, capped on stamina, able to do the bleeding edge content, and bosses and trash can ONE SHOT you. What is even the point of having that objective to win without any deaths since that usually results in a non-mastery, particularly in these 1 fight ++ or harder events? And it's not like we even have control over that death. Start the fight and don't immediately have anyone who can pop a defensive skill with a full ATB bar? You're probably screwed. No one's going to bother using an ability slot for a revive. It's just pure luck whether you fulfill that objective or not, and usually forces a restart if it happens later in the fight. It's asanine.
That ability compendium posted last page is really strong on boosts usefulness. Is it that good? If it is how do you normally use it, on a retaliate char? Thinking mainly of if it's viable to take advance less often in favour of boon/lunatic high/ss for the defense/haste.
advance stacks with boost
Boost shines all around.
It's easy to hone, a lot of characters use it, and you can use it during the tougher trash while still having uses for the boss. You use it like you would Advance, on your retaliator or main dps. And it stacks with Advance/Hand of the Emperor.
Use it with Advance, and use it with a mitigation RW.
hmm. i actually have a solid portion of that recommended ability list. I guess I'm not as far off as it feels sometimes. just need to get more memory crystals and more people to 50 to break
IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
edited October 2015
Not really, those are their usefulness in battle. However, some worker tier characters and core class characters have extremely useful record materia that make it worth leveling them. Namely WHM/BLM/SUM's RM2 for ability refreshes, Josef's RM2 for help with retaliate strats, Balthier's RM for auto-haste.
Ilpala on
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Right now I'm using Main Hero guy/ Wakka/Rydia/Cloud/(Just got Auron)
I also have Knight, BM, WM, Summoner, Ranger, Josef, Kain, Cyan, Kimhari.
Does that seem decent?
Eh, not really. It depends too much on what meta you're playing and what MCs you have. A lot of the highly ranked characters on that list are only good if you have their MC and a specific SB weapon.
I'd prioritize something like this:
-Get a good party of 5 characters that can fit your meta -- for example, with retaliate you need a samurai, a white mage, a support, one general combat character, and a black mage. It could be something like Cloud/Aeris/Wakka/Zack/Vivi... but if you're missing MCs for these characters maybe choosing other characters that you do have the MCs for would be a better choice. Get them leveled up so you can use them to clear content. You might want to replace one because you get a new SB weapon or MC or whatever -- that's fine, it'll be easier when you're just changing out once piece of the puzzle instead of building the whole thing from scratch.
-If you can clear +/++/+++ stages of the events, then you'll probably need to level specific characters to attain mastery on them. That's your next priority, I'd say.
-After that, level characters for their record materia. This here is a really good list of what you should go for. You'll note that it recommends leveling a lot of characters that are really low on the tier pyramid. That's because even though they're garbage characters (see: most of the core job characters), they have great record materia that'll make clearing hard content possible.
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
RM's are Record Materia. They give special passive abilities to characters. You get them by breaking the level cap of a character and they can only be equipped by characters who have broken the level cap. Memory crystals, the things used to break the level cap, are usually handed out through events on the harder half of the dungeons, but some (including the currently available ones for core characters) are earned through regular dungeon rewards.
The difference between RM and RM2: RM usually means the first record materia given to a character, the one for breaking the level cap. Some characters have more than one though (hence RM2), and the other can be earned through various means, the most common being to just get in fights with the character in your party and hope for it as a random drop.
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Hmmm, I'm starting to feel like I'm kind of hamstringing myself by doing ALL available normal dungeons before I start doing elites. I've still got quite a few normal dungeons left to unlock I believe, I just beat Cleyra in FF9. But a lot of elites have really good rewards that would help craft/hone a lot of 4* abilities, that would really come in useful, especially for events, since I'm at the point now where I can easily clear everything but the 95-99 difficulty dungeons.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Okay that's information overload. I started playing on Sunday, so Probably I won't be able to get the memory crystals for anything anytime soon, looks like they are in the elite dungeons?
Hmmm, I'm starting to feel like I'm kind of hamstringing myself by doing ALL available normal dungeons before I start doing elites. I've still got quite a few normal dungeons left to unlock I believe, I just beat Cleyra in FF9. But a lot of elites have really good rewards that would help craft/hone a lot of 4* abilities, that would really come in useful, especially for events, since I'm at the point now where I can easily clear everything but the 95-99 difficulty dungeons.
I've started just picking which dungeon to do next based on whatever's the lowest difficulty available. I could go do that difficulty 90 classic dungeon, or clear out all these difficulty 80ish elite dungeons for better stuff and less challenging fights (assuming the boss ain't some bullshit).
Okay that's information overload. I started playing on Sunday, so Probably I won't be able to get the memory crystals for anything anytime soon, looks like they are in the elite dungeons?
Just starting out; I mostly picked characters that could use the strongest equipment/abilities I had. Specific characters don't really matter unless you're going for specific builds, which won't be for awhile. I used Tyro for a long just just because he could use everything, but eventually you're going to want to gravitate towards characters who have niches, ie Sephiroth because he has really high strength and HP, Vivi because he has really high Magic stat, etc.
At this point, I don't even know why they bother with having some of the extra objectives be "Win without anyone being KO'd". For regular classic dungeon bosses and such, sure, because you should be progressing at an even pace, using the time spent earning stamina shards and mythril on relic pulls. The death isn't likely, but you can usually recover from the medal loss because you probably went through 3-4 stages of fights and have them to spare.
But then you get to the point where you have full teams of characters at 65, several high end relics, capped on stamina, able to do the bleeding edge content, and bosses and trash can ONE SHOT you. What is even the point of having that objective to win without any deaths since that usually results in a non-mastery, particularly in these 1 fight ++ or harder events? And it's not like we even have control over that death. Start the fight and don't immediately have anyone who can pop a defensive skill with a full ATB bar? You're probably screwed. No one's going to bother using an ability slot for a revive. It's just pure luck whether you fulfill that objective or not, and usually forces a restart if it happens later in the fight. It's asanine.
I think the generic "don't get KO'd" extra requirement is not supposed to be a hindrance; but supposed to help you in the end.
It's less of an issue now with the easing of the medal requirements for damage and actions taken; but for some fights (many EX's specifically) that are designed to be longer, without those 'free' extra KO medals, championing would be actually impossible mathematically. Those 3 extra medals change the requirements enough to make losing medals on damage and actions still feasible to gain champion.
I'm sure there would have been a better way to do it, but honestly it seems to work fine to provide that needed leeway.
Yeah, they're all or nothing, but whenever I see 2-3 'special' requirements it feels like a load off, because more often than not, meeting those requirement means that fight will allow for a bit of creativity and selection of characters and abilities (for damage and abilities taken). Whenever I see only Don't get KO'd on harder fights, I basically know it's 99% of the time going to be advantaliate or gtfo.
Yeah I love the extra medals, because they always correllate to strategies that also make the fight easier. It'd only be bullshit if it were some kind of 'challenge' objectives, that only rewarded weird strategies or had you go against the grain of the encounter.
bleh. i really wanted to get paladin cecil since I liked FF4 a lot, but apparently that boss is a nightmare even though the difficulty is only 41. I have little trouble with the difficulty 41 dungeons i'm doing through the story, so i'm sad i wasted like 55 stamina to try this I wish the number actually meant anything, it's really frustrating cruising through the trash just to get smacked all across the wall by the boss.
Hahaha I mastered the boss rush even though my party wiped at Seymour Flux. Didn't bring any healing spells except for Selphie's unique SB and it wasn't up to save poor sapped Auron in time. My very last turn was to put defend on Selphie and wait for poison to tick
bleh. i really wanted to get paladin cecil since I liked FF4 a lot, but apparently that boss is a nightmare even though the difficulty is only 41. I have little trouble with the difficulty 41 dungeons i'm doing through the story, so i'm sad i wasted like 55 stamina to try this
I've found that in dungeon progression, the 'difficulty' of elites is kind of overtuned compared to its normal equivalent. a 50 difficulty elite dungeon is usually going to be more difficult, just based on numbers and tuning, than a 50 difficulty normal dungeon.
bleh. i really wanted to get paladin cecil since I liked FF4 a lot, but apparently that boss is a nightmare even though the difficulty is only 41. I have little trouble with the difficulty 41 dungeons i'm doing through the story, so i'm sad i wasted like 55 stamina to try this
I've found that in dungeon progression, the 'difficulty' of elites is kind of overtuned compared to its normal equivalent. a 50 difficulty elite dungeon is usually going to be more difficult, just based on numbers and tuning, than a 50 difficulty normal dungeon.
I think someone said the other day (or maybe on reddit) that the difficulty level of a dungeon is actually based on something to do with trash, and not the bosses. So you can get a 110 level dungeon with balls hard trash and a joke of a boss.
That said, yeah the difficulty levels of classic vs elite don't seem to correlate at all. Taking on a level 50 elite vs 50 classic, as you said, usually isn't apples to apples.
Regardless, someone mentioned earlier doing all classics before elites, and that's a 'trap' I fell into also. It's a completionist thing for me. I know the multitude of elites I have left to do (anything 48+ basically) will be way way way easier than the most recent DU classics...I just have something in my brain that says no you must do classics first!.
I just finished up the last of the Elites, and I was the same way for a long time. In some ways it does make it easier because you can later just get a synergy team together and knock out an entire FF without having to tinker as much, but the rewards on classic are not there. I can do a level 90 classic and get 3* orbs or I can do a 60 elite and get 4* rewards. It's kinda silly.
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++ requires kimahri
Went alright, but ended losing 4 stars to damage and action taken and that was enough drop me to expert. 2nd try with advantalate won in eight turns with full stars...
Tried +++ twice, first time battle went on too long and lost people after SG ran out. 2nd time went defensive and ran out of skills, was auto attacking with my makes to get SBs. Still died only much, much later. Guess I'll wait for tomorrow for my advance RW to refresh.
5 out of 16 SOs
5 out of 16 nothing
it looks like a drop of around 33-40% which means somewhere around 50-60 stam per GSO
which is nice.
Cloud; Blitz Sword/Adamant Bangle/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Tempo Flurry/Retaliate; Self-Sacrifice
Quistis; Thyrus/Edincoat/Angel Wing; Biora/Boost; Attunment II
Rinoa; Full Metal Staff/Ten Gallon Hat/Angel Wing; Biora/Quake; Mana Spring II
Rydia; Flail++/Estharian Hat/Magic Amulet; Valefor/Shiva; Summon Spring II
Aerith; Healer's Staff/White Robe/Giant's Ring; Kirn/Carbuncle; Double Hit
RW: Lunatic High
The theory was Rinoa could take out a wave of trash by herself, and Rydia could take out the other two. Cloud with Retaliate (and Boost) can mop up the leftovers. Aerith even has Double Hit!
In practice, this went terribly. The only thing that could one shot a wave of two guys was Valefor. Maybe I need to hone Alexander to R3 as well. Neither Shiva nor Quake was doing the job, so it was little better than Retaliate + Double Cut. Regardless, the very first monster on the very first stage was a Death Claw, a single large enemy, and I spent twenty minutes S/Ling before I could figure out a way to kill it with abilities to spare, and then get perfect ATB bars to pull it off. Death Claw was a real bastard, who would either attack first for 2k to a mage in the back row (WTF?!) or sleep my team, resetting their ATB bars, and THEN attack mages in the back row for 2k, who start with empty ATB bars, allowing him to attack a third time to my not at all. To top it off, Valefor + Biora from Rydia and Rinoa wasn't enough to kill it! So I had to wait for the perfect set of ATB bars so Cloud, Quistis, Aerith and one other character could all go first. I didn't bring Auto-haste because I didn't think I'd need it with Mage Meta! So much for that.
The good news was the actual boss fight was easy as eating cake and pie together. Carbuncle + Lunatic High = no more damage, Kirin healed the few physical attacks that came in, and Seifer dropped like a rock with three mages nuking him. Edea similarly couldn't touch my team, and was cut through like a hot knife through butter with just Retaliate and Boost. My only gripe is that in 8 Tempo Flurries, neither Seifer nor Edea was slowed. Such a fucking pain in the ass.
Still, trash is becoming miserable in these Elite Dungeons. Like scream in frustration until your throat bleeds bad.
I've found giving the Quaker (Rinoa in your case) a -ja level spell really helps when you get the one giant monster, hopefully not more than one in a set of waves otherwise you limit some power on the boss. I also am fine burning through quakes since they are so important on trash, but generally meh on bosses. I haven't really had to use summoners yet, and they seem like they would be fairly dead weight on bosses. Swapping it out with a standard melee striker can usually finish off a weakened mob rather than have to get retaliate going.
Outside of that, I'm debating havinge a dedicated person running Shellga/Protectaga with concentration and putting those up at the start of everey wave. Would be nice to have someone like Cecil with WHM 4 so you can still auto attack, currently looking at Tyro.
I get the feeling they balance the elites for the next content worth of stuff, in this case level 65 broken charecters. I mean, they are beatable but I usually will return to the elites after a month or so and wonder why I was having so much difficulty before.
I run a double healer with protectga, curaga and Concentration 2 and the other with Diaga and shell.
then 1 mage with mana spring and either quake waterja or waterja something else depending on boss.
then my last is usually a ret + armor break and a boost + bd.
I had no problem with any of the elite trash since I could use one protectga and curaga per level.
Well in this case it was Biora for Seifer, but in general Quake/-ja seems like a good plan.
(iii) Win without Kimahri being KO’d.
EDIT: whoops thought we were still on the last page
Gonna have to dump some eggs onto Kimahri
I got both Zeal and Pirate's Pride (?) for Haste at the start of Battles just for this. Hopefully it'd allow me to get at least one boost and 1 hit in before the enemy has any time to react
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The irony is that I used to run those on my Retaliator and Booster, but took them off when I got mages with AoEs, thinking the Summons/Quake could handle things. WHOOPS!
I, uh, what the fuck. It takes me 20 minutes to beat trash in Galbadia Garden, and then I beat the most bullshitastic boss without breaking a sweat? Gogo variance.
The setup:
Sephiroth; Armor Break/Retaliate; Nodachi++/Wizard's Armlet+/Hyper Wrist (VIII); Katana damage+
Tidus; Dismissal/Tempo Flurry; Fencer's Blade++/Adamant Bangle/Gauntlets; Auto-haste
Auron; Venom Buster/Boost; Fencer's Blade++/Brightguard++/Giant's Ring; Double-hit
Tyro; Protectga/Shellga; Sentinel's Grimoire/Golden Armor/Soft Bracer; Auto-haste
Yuna; Curaga/Reflect; Thyrus/Defense Veil/Touph Ring; +Def/-Atk
(yes, my gear is insane at this point. No, I haven't spent any money, I've just been playing since the beginning).
RW: Advance
The theory: Sanctuary Keeper is vulnerable to Dismissal, so I hoped by giving Tidus Dismissal and Haste, as well as Protect/Shellga and Haste to Tyro, I could maximize my chance of getting Protectga, Shellga, and Reflect up on the boss in 1.5 turns. I'm not even sure if Dismissal procced, but I got Protectga up in time, and boss's first attack was the AoE tail whip for 5-600 a piece. I got Shellga up before his second attack, the Mana breath, which hit for about 2200. Slow and Poison both landed on the second Flurry/Buster (so the third turn), so that was super lucky. From there, Advantaliate the dude down, healing people as necessary.
Still a little shocked. I don't understand how people can farm this fight without a Friend Summon every time. I feel like who your RW is forms the linchpin to any strategy, since RW's can do basically anything.
Also, I got double cut RM when clearing out an old FFII elite, so I'm stoked for that.
advance stacks with boost
But then you get to the point where you have full teams of characters at 65, several high end relics, capped on stamina, able to do the bleeding edge content, and bosses and trash can ONE SHOT you. What is even the point of having that objective to win without any deaths since that usually results in a non-mastery, particularly in these 1 fight ++ or harder events? And it's not like we even have control over that death. Start the fight and don't immediately have anyone who can pop a defensive skill with a full ATB bar? You're probably screwed. No one's going to bother using an ability slot for a revive. It's just pure luck whether you fulfill that objective or not, and usually forces a restart if it happens later in the fight. It's asanine.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Boost shines all around.
It's easy to hone, a lot of characters use it, and you can use it during the tougher trash while still having uses for the boss. You use it like you would Advance, on your retaliator or main dps. And it stacks with Advance/Hand of the Emperor.
Use it with Advance, and use it with a mitigation RW.
oh well, just spamming the daily dungeon today anyway since i desperately need 2* power and black orbs.
Is this a good priority for what heroes to level or just player's choice?
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Fuck Joe Manchin
I also have Knight, BM, WM, Summoner, Ranger, Josef, Kain, Cyan, Kimhari.
Does that seem decent?
What is RM2/RM?
I'd prioritize something like this:
-Get a good party of 5 characters that can fit your meta -- for example, with retaliate you need a samurai, a white mage, a support, one general combat character, and a black mage. It could be something like Cloud/Aeris/Wakka/Zack/Vivi... but if you're missing MCs for these characters maybe choosing other characters that you do have the MCs for would be a better choice. Get them leveled up so you can use them to clear content. You might want to replace one because you get a new SB weapon or MC or whatever -- that's fine, it'll be easier when you're just changing out once piece of the puzzle instead of building the whole thing from scratch.
-If you can clear +/++/+++ stages of the events, then you'll probably need to level specific characters to attain mastery on them. That's your next priority, I'd say.
-After that, level characters for their record materia. This here is a really good list of what you should go for. You'll note that it recommends leveling a lot of characters that are really low on the tier pyramid. That's because even though they're garbage characters (see: most of the core job characters), they have great record materia that'll make clearing hard content possible.
The difference between RM and RM2: RM usually means the first record materia given to a character, the one for breaking the level cap. Some characters have more than one though (hence RM2), and the other can be earned through various means, the most common being to just get in fights with the character in your party and hope for it as a random drop.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
I've started just picking which dungeon to do next based on whatever's the lowest difficulty available. I could go do that difficulty 90 classic dungeon, or clear out all these difficulty 80ish elite dungeons for better stuff and less challenging fights (assuming the boss ain't some bullshit).
Just starting out; I mostly picked characters that could use the strongest equipment/abilities I had. Specific characters don't really matter unless you're going for specific builds, which won't be for awhile. I used Tyro for a long just just because he could use everything, but eventually you're going to want to gravitate towards characters who have niches, ie Sephiroth because he has really high strength and HP, Vivi because he has really high Magic stat, etc.
i don't think i'm actually using either though. but hey, progress.
i was carrying whm around to get hers to drop and just read that it has a different unlock condition. i wonder how hard beatrix is
bonus quests are just there to give players access to characters that they missed in events
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it was from like my second pull and I never looked at it.
I think the generic "don't get KO'd" extra requirement is not supposed to be a hindrance; but supposed to help you in the end.
It's less of an issue now with the easing of the medal requirements for damage and actions taken; but for some fights (many EX's specifically) that are designed to be longer, without those 'free' extra KO medals, championing would be actually impossible mathematically. Those 3 extra medals change the requirements enough to make losing medals on damage and actions still feasible to gain champion.
I'm sure there would have been a better way to do it, but honestly it seems to work fine to provide that needed leeway.
Yeah, they're all or nothing, but whenever I see 2-3 'special' requirements it feels like a load off, because more often than not, meeting those requirement means that fight will allow for a bit of creativity and selection of characters and abilities (for damage and abilities taken). Whenever I see only Don't get KO'd on harder fights, I basically know it's 99% of the time going to be advantaliate or gtfo.
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Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
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I've found that in dungeon progression, the 'difficulty' of elites is kind of overtuned compared to its normal equivalent. a 50 difficulty elite dungeon is usually going to be more difficult, just based on numbers and tuning, than a 50 difficulty normal dungeon.
I think someone said the other day (or maybe on reddit) that the difficulty level of a dungeon is actually based on something to do with trash, and not the bosses. So you can get a 110 level dungeon with balls hard trash and a joke of a boss.
That said, yeah the difficulty levels of classic vs elite don't seem to correlate at all. Taking on a level 50 elite vs 50 classic, as you said, usually isn't apples to apples.
Regardless, someone mentioned earlier doing all classics before elites, and that's a 'trap' I fell into also. It's a completionist thing for me. I know the multitude of elites I have left to do (anything 48+ basically) will be way way way easier than the most recent DU classics...I just have something in my brain that says no you must do classics first!.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand