Well, I learned that Mog is still quite strong even in a physical team. He can't make use of his Hero Ability to boost ATK like he can MAG, but the additional speed and stacking damage boost he provides is really good, even when compared to 100% crits from Tyro.
I also picked up on the fact that Relm is a really nice character to pair with him. Being another FFVI character, she makes the weakness damage boost on Mog's Awakening2 jump up to its second tier, which is part of what really helped the team get past the boss's defenses, even though it took a while for me to get crits and a crit boost active. In addition to fueling Mog's Awakening, Relm is also just a decent pairing with him in a physical team generally. She's got access to Wrath, so she can build meter effectively while sped up. Her USB1 gives him an instant turn to use his USB1 (which gives the team 3 quick turns), and she's got a half-price SB (Brush Up) which provides 50% Crits to the party. Not as great as 100% crits, but any boost like that is effective.
See, before this fight, I was skeptical about using Mog in a physical team; I need to wait to use his Awakening, and he can't do anything with Wind Rhapsody! Aaah! But this setup with Relm honestly worked out better than Tyro and Elarra. In this case, anyway. Elarra's still my go-to for Argent Odin, and will be when the ice-weak one comes out, but that's moreso because of Elarra's Awakening having a Raise effect. Maybe I can experiment with giving Relm Reraise for those fights. Hmm.
Generally, I kinda realized how good it can be to make proper use of the realm-based buffs from Cardia-bait soul breaks. Both Mog's and Leo's Awakenings get a significant jump from having multiple FFVI characters. I recently got an Awakening for Faris that behaves similarly for FFV teams. So I might make an effort to put Bartz in my wind teams these days.
I sorta learned that I was being stubborn about my Chain holder. Yes, Ingus has an Awakening, while Machina only has a USB named "Awakening", but Machina gives a much stronger buff, and I could never get Ingus to break cap in the first place. So, I sorta learned to change up my team more if something's not quite working out.
Aaand I kinda learned that 50% crits are still really nice. But Ode to Victory is kinda slow.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Probably a bad idea, but Bartz is good; 1/2 price draw:
Seraphie AASB, Bartz AASB wind! The one that combos with all his other ones. Calling that a win.
I know that the Volcano way has Bartz, Cid, and I think Serafie. The one north of that crystal has Vaan, Freya, and I think Wedge (I'm certian about Bartz and Cid, as well as Freya and Vaan). That leaves Gau, Marcus, and Eiko for the route south of that crystal.
I would guess, then, that the map is like the last season's map, with these groups in the same locations that the corresponding groups last season were.
If you can associate weapons with characters (eg Core Dagger is Wedge, IX spear is Freya) then you can look it up in game; there's a drop table for each dungeon
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
I have run the 70 stamina dungeon almost exclusively since the group started, and zero Marcus Swords. Have at least one of everything else from the three top dungeons. Not all usable passives yet, but that's more normal.
FFXV dragon king was way rougher than I thought it'd be, seemed to have so much hp which meant I ate both megaflares and limped across the finish line at 50sec. A kill's a kill though.
Daily draw got me two awakenings - a hone for desch, and hauchefaunt, which has a ffiv full boost and "extra boost based off number of ffiv characters" boost which seems solid for cardia.
Couple pulls on the XIII banner got me a Sync and Dyad for Snow. Add in a ton of ticket pulls on the realm banner, a pile of honing scrolls for Orran, and a bunch more lenses for Snow and Vanille USBs and LMRs, and I have a Bahamut clear. Didn't actually use Sazh, even though I bought his hero ability.
Maybe I'll take the extra nodes and do the dream breaker, maybe not. Edit: I did it! Snow's USB for party ATK and crit is super duper helpful, highly recommend if you have BDLs for him
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
I seriously fucking loathe Dreambreaker Raines.
Beginning of phase 3 sets your HP to 1, then takes a turn and kills everyone before either of my healers has a turn. No Guts means I "win" the fight immediately before I can react, wasting a gigantic amount of my time. Whichever Dev made that design decision is the stupidest most hateful human in the history of game design.
Mid-fight completion rewards are nice to get, depending on what they are. But I do very much think that they should give you the option to restart the fight, instead of automatically booting you 4 loading screens away from a retry.
+1
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Are you dealing with the phase 2 dispel? DB Wing Blast is normal cast time, same for the move after. You should have plenty of time to heal in there.
Phase 2 doesn't have any poison/sap (at least, not until the later turns) so hopefully you can clear that before your HP is set to 1.
(Yes, I was too wrapped up in complaining about three DB FBs to complain about dispel and sleep)
I refreshed haste instantly after getting Dispelled; my issue was casting something right before DB Wing Blast, which also raises Raines's Rage, which speeds up his turns from ~2.0s to ~1.8s. Even with sources of HQC, my turns are longer than that.
I should really just have the AI open, but I changed some things up this time and pushed Phase 3 faster and more cleanly, which led to eating DB Wing Blast unprepared. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
I usually change my healers' behavior when I get to the last phase of a fight. Early in a fight, I'll typically mash Holyja ASAP because I'll need meter eventually. Once the last phase starts (or is about to start), I'll often sit on a healer's turn if I know the next hit isn't going to kill me (because I'm high HP, have Last Stand, or can remember that the next hit isn't lethal). Then after the attack lands, I can decide between medica or holyja.
For characters that have a small AOE heal ability or chase (e.g. Mog/Cait, or Elarra with AASB active), the calculus is more like
- do I have Last Stand up? Yes -> Wait (and heal after a hit, to save from sap ticks)
- if No, does my party have enough missing HP that I will get full value from the heal? Yes -> dance/bard/whatever now, maybe it'll save people from going down to this hit or the next
- otherwise, wait for the hit and heal after
Aw crap. Not only are Sandworm's phases out of order compared to Kalavinka Striker (Labyrinth Mode is phase 2, paintings are phase 3), but the paintings are in a different order as well, so I need to change how I approach grabbing those paintings.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
edited July 2021
Finally managed to get DB Raines. Doing anything without a safety net of Last Stand is scary. Once everything lined up and I pulled my head out my ass and healed correctly, it went surprisingly smooth.
Vanille G+1, USB4, De'Diaja, Protectga
Raines AASB Necro Countdown
Nabaat AASB Forbidden Magic, Memento Mori
Hope USB2, AASB HA
Cait Sith hAASB, AcM, MAG song
Odin deck
silence1186 on
+3
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Maintenance tonight from when Daily Quests reset, for 5 hours, until the Login Rewards refresh.
Dusted off FFXII DK as well while procrastinating on the lab bosses. Vaan is disgusting. I didn't have Mog ready at P3, but he just kept on capping through dragonking fullbreak like it was nothing.
3DS: 1392 - 5070 - 7853
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
How have people been leveling up Hero Artifacts?
Best practice seems to be feed 1 rainbow crystal each to three copies of a HA, then use those 3 copies to level break a 4th level 1 copy.
From there, feeding identical items 1 rainbow crystal, then feeding them to the main piece is the most gil efficient, but then you're missing out on copies to augment. Maybe it's better to just feed rainbow crystals to level 99, and use copies to augment?
As I understand is, augmenting is very marginal so I don't take it into account at all.
I've just been feeding dupe relics into the relics I reasonably expect to use and that's it. Even giving them the 1 rainbow crystal feels like too much effort really.
By the way, we can now change the music that plays when Historia Crystals are summoned. They can be any song from the realm in question that you've picked up for the jukebox.
The FFIV discount draw got me Kain's second Awakening. And now his damage potential is kinda silly.
Awakening1 boosts his damage cap by 2 levels, to compensate for how they used to not give dualcast to Dragoons. Awakening2 boosts his damage cap by 1 level, lets him dualcast, and has an Awakening mode that stacks with his first Awakening. And his Glint++ boosts his cap level by 1 as well.
If all 3 of those can be chained together, he can temporarily have a damage cap of 49999 per hit. Which is just really funny to me.
I think I'm gonna have to rework my Lightning team to feature Kain, now.
Best practice seems to be feed 1 rainbow crystal each to three copies of a HA, then use those 3 copies to level break a 4th level 1 copy.
From there, feeding identical items 1 rainbow crystal, then feeding them to the main piece is the most gil efficient, but then you're missing out on copies to augment. Maybe it's better to just feed rainbow crystals to level 99, and use copies to augment?
You get slightly more XP or augment by feeding matching HAs to each other (eg 5 augments instead of 3), so that's a thing to keep in mind
I am now sitting on like 3000 rainbows after fest finished, and I have not been stingy with them. I've been taking realm artifacts to max for DKs for a while now. For HAs, I max leveled the two or three characters per set that I'm actually going to use, then dumped all the redundant accessories in for augments. The augments are marginal, but I went ahead and pushed those to max before trying Labyrinth bosses just in case; I'm already up to hundreds of the new Rosetta Stones, might as well use those, too.
By the way, we can now change the music that plays when Historia Crystals are summoned. They can be any song from the realm in question that you've picked up for the jukebox.
I was thinking that's a neat update, then I remembered I turned off HC music because it annoys me that HC music keeps resetting the fights music, and I don't want to hear the intro three times per fight.
+1
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Best practice seems to be feed 1 rainbow crystal each to three copies of a HA, then use those 3 copies to level break a 4th level 1 copy.
From there, feeding identical items 1 rainbow crystal, then feeding them to the main piece is the most gil efficient, but then you're missing out on copies to augment. Maybe it's better to just feed rainbow crystals to level 99, and use copies to augment?
You get slightly more XP or augment by feeding matching HAs to each other (eg 5 augments instead of 3), so that's a thing to keep in mind
I am now sitting on like 3000 rainbows after fest finished, and I have not been stingy with them. I've been taking realm artifacts to max for DKs for a while now. For HAs, I max leveled the two or three characters per set that I'm actually going to use, then dumped all the redundant accessories in for augments. The augments are marginal, but I went ahead and pushed those to max before trying Labyrinth bosses just in case; I'm already up to hundreds of the new Rosetta Stones, might as well use those, too.
By the way, we can now change the music that plays when Historia Crystals are summoned. They can be any song from the realm in question that you've picked up for the jukebox.
I was thinking that's a neat update, then I remembered I turned off HC music because it annoys me that HC music keeps resetting the fights music, and I don't want to hear the intro three times per fight.
I think GIl is the limiting factor if you use new Rosettas or Accessories to Augment.
Again, since I'm only intending to do 2-3 characters per labyrinth group, Gil is not going to be a factor. Still sitting on over a billion, without having ever really farmed it.
Don't forget that you can also sell off your mountains of 1-5* orbs, growth eggs, adamantite, scarletite for gil if you start getting low
Continued tossing tickets at the dark banner as I get them, trying to get my first person with two BDL on dark.
Got Ardyn sync to go with his awakening and g+
Uh....guys, I think Ardyn is pretty good with these.
Fire or dark infuse, awakening does 3 turns of IC and imperil 1/boost 1 while keeping double cast, sync does trance 0ATB/IC/100% crit2, and cmd1 builds to 8 hits.
I think this makes not just my dark team, but my fire team, too.
Posts
I also picked up on the fact that Relm is a really nice character to pair with him. Being another FFVI character, she makes the weakness damage boost on Mog's Awakening2 jump up to its second tier, which is part of what really helped the team get past the boss's defenses, even though it took a while for me to get crits and a crit boost active. In addition to fueling Mog's Awakening, Relm is also just a decent pairing with him in a physical team generally. She's got access to Wrath, so she can build meter effectively while sped up. Her USB1 gives him an instant turn to use his USB1 (which gives the team 3 quick turns), and she's got a half-price SB (Brush Up) which provides 50% Crits to the party. Not as great as 100% crits, but any boost like that is effective.
See, before this fight, I was skeptical about using Mog in a physical team; I need to wait to use his Awakening, and he can't do anything with Wind Rhapsody! Aaah! But this setup with Relm honestly worked out better than Tyro and Elarra. In this case, anyway. Elarra's still my go-to for Argent Odin, and will be when the ice-weak one comes out, but that's moreso because of Elarra's Awakening having a Raise effect. Maybe I can experiment with giving Relm Reraise for those fights. Hmm.
Generally, I kinda realized how good it can be to make proper use of the realm-based buffs from Cardia-bait soul breaks. Both Mog's and Leo's Awakenings get a significant jump from having multiple FFVI characters. I recently got an Awakening for Faris that behaves similarly for FFV teams. So I might make an effort to put Bartz in my wind teams these days.
I sorta learned that I was being stubborn about my Chain holder. Yes, Ingus has an Awakening, while Machina only has a USB named "Awakening", but Machina gives a much stronger buff, and I could never get Ingus to break cap in the first place. So, I sorta learned to change up my team more if something's not quite working out.
Aaand I kinda learned that 50% crits are still really nice. But Ode to Victory is kinda slow.
Seraphie AASB, Bartz AASB wind! The one that combos with all his other ones. Calling that a win.
FF13 tickets:
1st - Sazh USB2?
2nd - Snow CSB dupe, Vanille USB4!
That's h55, HQC3, and Regenga, and can't be bought with Lenses. SUPER pleased with that; it's a big upgrade to her BSB :rotate:
38thDoE on steam
From FFRK Reddit Wiki:
https://i.imgur.com/SJ9lRYT.png
I would guess, then, that the map is like the last season's map, with these groups in the same locations that the corresponding groups last season were.
Three DBFB is excessive.
Maybe I'll take the extra nodes and do the dream breaker, maybe not. Edit: I did it! Snow's USB for party ATK and crit is super duper helpful, highly recommend if you have BDLs for him
Beginning of phase 3 sets your HP to 1, then takes a turn and kills everyone before either of my healers has a turn. No Guts means I "win" the fight immediately before I can react, wasting a gigantic amount of my time. Whichever Dev made that design decision is the stupidest most hateful human in the history of game design.
Phase 2 doesn't have any poison/sap (at least, not until the later turns) so hopefully you can clear that before your HP is set to 1.
(Yes, I was too wrapped up in complaining about three DB FBs to complain about dispel and sleep)
I refreshed haste instantly after getting Dispelled; my issue was casting something right before DB Wing Blast, which also raises Raines's Rage, which speeds up his turns from ~2.0s to ~1.8s. Even with sources of HQC, my turns are longer than that.
I should really just have the AI open, but I changed some things up this time and pushed Phase 3 faster and more cleanly, which led to eating DB Wing Blast unprepared. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
For characters that have a small AOE heal ability or chase (e.g. Mog/Cait, or Elarra with AASB active), the calculus is more like
- do I have Last Stand up? Yes -> Wait (and heal after a hit, to save from sap ticks)
- if No, does my party have enough missing HP that I will get full value from the heal? Yes -> dance/bard/whatever now, maybe it'll save people from going down to this hit or the next
- otherwise, wait for the hit and heal after
Vanille G+1, USB4, De'Diaja, Protectga
Raines AASB Necro Countdown
Nabaat AASB Forbidden Magic, Memento Mori
Hope USB2, AASB HA
Cait Sith hAASB, AcM, MAG song
Odin deck
8/12 - Labyrinth rotation
8/24 - last Argent Odin (finally)
That seems especially spiteful.
Best practice seems to be feed 1 rainbow crystal each to three copies of a HA, then use those 3 copies to level break a 4th level 1 copy.
From there, feeding identical items 1 rainbow crystal, then feeding them to the main piece is the most gil efficient, but then you're missing out on copies to augment. Maybe it's better to just feed rainbow crystals to level 99, and use copies to augment?
I've just been feeding dupe relics into the relics I reasonably expect to use and that's it. Even giving them the 1 rainbow crystal feels like too much effort really.
The FFIV discount draw got me Kain's second Awakening. And now his damage potential is kinda silly.
Awakening1 boosts his damage cap by 2 levels, to compensate for how they used to not give dualcast to Dragoons. Awakening2 boosts his damage cap by 1 level, lets him dualcast, and has an Awakening mode that stacks with his first Awakening. And his Glint++ boosts his cap level by 1 as well.
If all 3 of those can be chained together, he can temporarily have a damage cap of 49999 per hit. Which is just really funny to me.
I think I'm gonna have to rework my Lightning team to feature Kain, now.
You get slightly more XP or augment by feeding matching HAs to each other (eg 5 augments instead of 3), so that's a thing to keep in mind
I am now sitting on like 3000 rainbows after fest finished, and I have not been stingy with them. I've been taking realm artifacts to max for DKs for a while now. For HAs, I max leveled the two or three characters per set that I'm actually going to use, then dumped all the redundant accessories in for augments. The augments are marginal, but I went ahead and pushed those to max before trying Labyrinth bosses just in case; I'm already up to hundreds of the new Rosetta Stones, might as well use those, too.
I was thinking that's a neat update, then I remembered I turned off HC music because it annoys me that HC music keeps resetting the fights music, and I don't want to hear the intro three times per fight.
I think GIl is the limiting factor if you use new Rosettas or Accessories to Augment.
Don't forget that you can also sell off your mountains of 1-5* orbs, growth eggs, adamantite, scarletite for gil if you start getting low
You can do the same one you did the overdrive again.
E: discount 7 got me 3 dupes and seph aosb, which is a nice tool
Got Ardyn sync to go with his awakening and g+
Uh....guys, I think Ardyn is pretty good with these.
Fire or dark infuse, awakening does 3 turns of IC and imperil 1/boost 1 while keeping double cast, sync does trance 0ATB/IC/100% crit2, and cmd1 builds to 8 hits.
I think this makes not just my dark team, but my fire team, too.
And you can do up to eight of them for more tickets!
Not sure that a ticket is quite enough incentive for me to wrap my head around Ifrit again. Really don’t like the pillars mechanic.
Just don't go fast and it's no problem at all. I forgot the berserk was a thing and had to just let it run out on its own and it was still fine.
My problem is with the same 5 relics that I've been pulling with 7 tickets on FFT already. Just one more gaffgarion AOSB and it will be 2 bars.