HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I actually would say tanks are optional in the series, at this point. The one class needed for sure is the healer.
EO1: Medic
EO2: also Medic
EO3: Monk (with the heal skills)
EO4: surprise it's Medic
EO5: Botanist
There are other healing classes throughout the games, but because they're a little trickier to handle I don't recommend them for a first timer. The exchange though is that they provide the party other benefits. To offset the lost direct-healing, I'd recommend a tank in that case.
True, but as a "first timer" team, I think the Dragoon makes the game easier than not.
Dragoon's Mana Guard is an extremely reliable way of mitigating any kind of elemental damage, and Mana Guard doesn't require you to have a Decoy Bunker/Turret out. It's cheap to cast, is guaranteed to go off before almost any enemy abilities, covers the whole party, and protects you from some abilities that you didn't even know were elemental. Like, if I had literally none of the other first page abilities on the Dragoon's sheet but Mana Guard, the Dragoon would still make the game easier for a first timer.
And yeah, I think getting through any EO game without one of the healer classes would be an incredible slog. I'm sure it's doable, but it'd be sloooooooooooooow going.
Botanist is not necessary at all if you have a tank and a passive healer.
Source: my M/M/P // R/D all-therian theme party.
The only real catch was having a party with only item-based revives, but that was still very workable.
The extra damage output made grinding a lot faster, too.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Botanist is not necessary at all if you have a tank and a passive healer.
Source: my M/M/P // R/D all-therian theme party.
The only real catch was having a party with only item-based revives, but that was still very workable.
The extra damage output made grinding a lot faster, too.
I'd still recommend Botanist for newcomers to the series. That's a part of what I like about EO; you can build a traditional party, and when you learn more you can start trying new things.
Botanist is not necessary at all if you have a tank and a passive healer.
Source: my M/M/P // R/D all-therian theme party.
The only real catch was having a party with only item-based revives, but that was still very workable.
The extra damage output made grinding a lot faster, too.
My team has a Rover with maxed healing passive as well as a Botanist, and I could totally see a team without a Botanist working. The healing passive together with the dog summon gives incredible attrition resistance against non-boss enemies for much of the game.
But having no healer of any kind, whether a utility healer like the Rover/Harbinger/Necromancer or a dedicated healer like a Botanist, is probably going to be a bit harder for the early going to a new player.
A botanist is a safety net. You don't need them 90% of the time but when you do, oh boy, you'll be glad you had them sitting in the team twiddling their thumbs because they now have a time to shine.
Item based healing is more than sufficient to carry you through the early parts. There simply isn't enough damage going out so long as you're keeping your gear up to date and have some form of passive healing to warrant a full time healer while doing basic exploration. That said, yeah, botanist is a great safety net.
Tanks really depend on how strong your healing and recovery are in your team comp. In EO2 I ran tank-less abusing the fact that the AI tends to hit the highest HP on the front-row first. Tends to, mind you. It's not perfect, but slight manipulation of the targeting routines because of that made it fairly predictable to channel damage onto the landshark then overwhelming encounters with higher damage. EO4 I still had a Fortress/Tank and they did do some solid work even if they were slightly suicidal. "I'll party guard and eat an AoE attack all by myself... oops". Once I rebuilt my frontline to incorporate an Imperial/Rune Landshark/Imperial combo, it was all over red rover for the Fortress' purpose in life. They went back to school to learn how to dance in plate armour though they still pray for the odd FoE to give them something to do.
What I'm finding in EO5 is that a dedicated BINDER isn't all that necessary. Really really handy, for sure like any other specialist role, but there's items that try to snag the entire enemy party and Unison attacks to deal with that. I really miss my EO4 Sniper/Arcanist...
Arcanist is probably my favorite class in the series. But one class being able to do binds/ailments/healing and deal respectable damage if needed was... a bit too good.
In EO5 I'm running smoke botanist and cannon dragoon in the sixth stratum. I will probably have to go full healing botanist at some point in the postgame, but the first few bosses were all killable with hyperaggression and lockdown.
I like the idea of smoke botanist, but mostly the smokes wind up not being used in my team except to get special loots because Fencer chasers are the vast majority of my team's damage. It's hard to give up a chaser proc with the Botanist's bow for a CHANCE at inflicting a status ailment.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I like the idea of smoke botanist, but mostly the smokes wind up not being used in my team except to get special loots because Fencer chasers are the vast majority of my team's damage. It's hard to give up a chaser proc with the Botanist's bow for a CHANCE at inflicting a status ailment.
Ailments aren't necessarily about doing damage. They are a form of defense. If you pump your Botanist up with luck and invest into the passive to make status ailments hit more frequently, it's worthwhile I think. More to the point though, your Fencer chases should not rely on the Botanist at all; if anything it should be a bonus if your Botanist has no healing or status affliction to be setting out.
I like the idea of smoke botanist, but mostly the smokes wind up not being used in my team except to get special loots because Fencer chasers are the vast majority of my team's damage. It's hard to give up a chaser proc with the Botanist's bow for a CHANCE at inflicting a status ailment.
Ailments aren't necessarily about doing damage. They are a form of defense. If you pump your Botanist up with luck and invest into the passive to make status ailments hit more frequently, it's worthwhile I think. More to the point though, your Fencer chases should not rely on the Botanist at all; if anything it should be a bonus if your Botanist has no healing or status affliction to be setting out.
I've already put 10 points into Chaos smoke and a few points into ailment up!
That's just the thing: with Amplifier + Chain Plus + Smokeblight + maxed Chain Double + 9 pointed Chasers + Chain Boost, a proc chance is just worth so much! Enemies are often getting blown up by it and I don't need to heal, or if they're not, what I need to do is heal / remove debuffs / re-apply Smokeblight... and healing is cheap TP-wise compared to higher level smokes.
I can definitely see the value in blinding/panicking enemies such that they don't hit you with debuffs and binds, but I've had so much success just wiping things out with damage that it's been hard for me to feel good about breaking the pattern haha
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Yeah my build was a smoke Botanist and a chaser Fencer, supported by an omni warlock and a doggo archer. My fifth party member was a Pugilist, who had pretty much no interaction with the team's synergies. But I like to use binds. And the one function my pugilist helped with was my archer's leg-bind ability - if the leg is bound, the doggo attacks for a crazy high amount of damage. Plus the archer makes an attack during that, triggering the Fencer's chase.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited February 2018
I accidentally beat the EOU2 boss last night (in the 5th stratum; the story mode last boss is in Ginngnggngngngn). That was very underwhelming. I just wanted to see what the boss looked like.
I never beat the original EO2.
Edit - Annnd I beat story mode. Nice subtle hint at Etrian Odyssey Untold 3 being a possibility.
(i spelled Elemancer wrong by accident but that typo is great so i'm keeping it!)
The key problems for me are:
- if the boss uses either Parry and Elemental Decoy get used, the Chain Fencer's chains are guaranteed to do zero damage that turn, same as Buster Cannon
- if the boss uses the evasion plus skill, there's a chance that many things miss on that turn, though if I could know reliably when it's going to do so I could Laudanum it with a character who's just slow enough to fire it after the Booster does that skill
- I can't reliably destroy all three of those parts right away if they all get spawned at full health, in large part because the Thruster which gives evasion plus is in the back line. Once I get to the phase where it's respawning two parts at a time, it becomes a crapshoot as to whether or not Chain All is going to accomplish anything.
Bonus fun:
- there are times when I've gotten the meter charged for Aegis Shield and it looks like I'm ready to go, but then one of my party members gets confused and now I can't Aegis Shield and I die.
On my opening turn, I do an Aegis Shield to survive dying from the big nuke.
With max level Hound, max level Hunter Shot and Alluring Body, binding is still something that happens with very low success rate following the big nuke.
Is there a way to make this less of a slot machine? It's really all-or-nothing for my party, mainly because the Chain Fencer can be entirely negated by two abilities and sometimes largely negated by a third. The bonus case where I get wiped could be mitigated if I could reliably keep the parts destroyed, but my damage output at critical moments is unreliable, and that's a huge problem. Do I just have to ditch the Chain Fencer?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Yeah don't look at me, I haven't beaten that boss yet. It's the hardest boss in the series for sure.
Nor I. I am still grinding for cash to buy all the class specific gear I am lacking for my party.
Black lives matter.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'm taking another run at the game from the ground up. New party is harbinger, dragoon, masu, warlock, shaman. Not sure what I'll do with it for end-game content.
I still have my other file to make attempts on the final (bonus) boss. I'm determined to bring that mofo down.
I respec'd my Healer Botanist to max out Reflex Herb, and I realized that I didn't need the points in the other Chasers so I respec'd my Fencer so that she could have max Resonance.
Things go a LOT better with this. Because the boss will often to many instances of damage to a random bunch of characters, Bountiful Herb is really unreliable in its effectiveness; there are times when people just get unlucky and die before Bountiful Herb goes off. With Reflex Herb, you can reliably keep your characters in good health.
Having high-rank Resonance hugely mitigates total reliance Chasers, good as Chase All is. Resonance is just physical, so while it can still miss and it can get Parried, at least it isn't also totally stopped by Elemental Decoy. Not only that, but the count for it goes up even if all of the Chaser procs from the previous round were parried! I haven't yet decided to change my Falcon Rover into a Hound Rover, because the Hound Rover has two abilities that would be hugely helpful in this (the backrow attacking shot, and the improved Hunter Shot that does stab-type damage rather than Falcon's head binder which does slash), but I lose out on Ice Peck.
Ice Peck is a strong argument to respec the Fencer's Chaser to Freeze. You really only need one Chaser maxed out, and with Freeze you get the chance to proc from the arrow hit or the ice hit (only once in total, I believe), which makes a difference when the boss activates the evasion buff: the arrow hit has a good chance of missing, but the ice hit seldom misses. Unlike the basic Warlock elemental spells, the Elemancer spells all have the same damage, too, so it's not like earlier in the game where it paid to use Fire Chaser over the others because Fireball does more damage than the others. It does mean you lose the chance to proc chaser from Buster Cannon (bash/fire), but oh well, that doesn't happen often anyway. I haven't done this yet, but I got quite close to beating the boss, so this step is probably overkill.
All that said, that time I got close, I still lost on a slot machine combo of getting one character debuffed on one turn, and Parry happen the next turn, and then a character debuffed on the turn the Parry happened, which effectively prevented me from doing enough damage or being able to do Aegis. That kind of RNG defeat still sucks.
Reflex Herb is the MVP ability in this fight, no question.
When the boss has a limited number of parts that can deal damage, you can entirely take those as opportunities to pull off a tanking/healing command to apply a buff or a replenishing action. Not fixating too heavily on getting chasers helps, too: Aerial Talons is totally worth taking over a single chaser proc if the Fencer hasn't gotten Chain All equipped. Aerial Talons binds the Energy Tube with decent success, too. Don't be afraid to use Focus Chant on a part to help bring it down low quickly: even though chipping away at the core and wearing all the other parts down helps, finish off pieces earlier to buy more time to charge Aegis or getting rid of the Agile Sword is often worth it. If the boss has just spawned the Booster Engine but your team is prepped to do an attack (e.g. Chain All is up, you're in danger of not destroying all the parts and don't have Aegis Charged), just have somebody throw a Laudanum pre-emptively. If the Booster Engine does fire the dodge chance up ability, the misses are too expensive.
The Buster Cannon will get stopped often if you just have on Dragoon. It sucks.
EDIT:
In terms of taking damage, it is important that you find out how much damage the Agile Sword's Sonic Strike does to your party members, and stay above that threshold. That ability fires before almost everything else in the game: Reflex Herb has a 300% speed modifier, and Sonic Strike still goes before it on a level 90+ Brouni Botanist!
Bring a dozen Laudanums, maybe more if your team has low damage. Laudanums are always worth throwing against any buff the boss has up. Throw one if they have the damage buff up because it creates a danger that someone will suddenly die to the Towering Sword, throw one if they have the dodge buff up because that buff is some BS, throw one if it has the durability buff up because not being able to destroy parts when you haven't got Aegis charged sucks. Unless you're in a crisis situation of needing to destroy a part or else you will get blasted and can't Aegis, prioritize safety over getting that optimal burst. A team that isn't a gimmick team designed to annihilate the boss is almost guaranteed to be in for a long fight, and a optimal burst really doesn't count for THAT much.
I didn't need too many Unihorns, and the most valuable thing to dispel is the miss chance from Exhaust. The defense debuff is a little annoying, but the miss chance is the worst.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Reflex Herb is the MVP ability in this fight, no question.
When the boss has a limited number of parts that can deal damage, you can entirely take those as opportunities to pull off a tanking/healing command to apply a buff or a replenishing action. Not fixating too heavily on getting chasers helps, too: Aerial Talons is totally worth taking over a single chaser proc if the Fencer hasn't gotten Chain All equipped. Aerial Talons binds the Energy Tube with decent success, too. Don't be afraid to use Focus Chant on a part to help bring it down low quickly: even though chipping away at the core and wearing all the other parts down helps, finish off pieces earlier to buy more time to charge Aegis or getting rid of the Agile Sword is often worth it. If the boss has just spawned the Booster Engine but your team is prepped to do an attack (e.g. Chain All is up, you're in danger of not destroying all the parts and don't have Aegis Charged), just have somebody throw a Laudanum pre-emptively. If the Booster Engine does fire the dodge chance up ability, the misses are too expensive.
The Buster Cannon will get stopped often if you just have on Dragoon. It sucks.
That would've been among the last abilities I consider trying for it, I will give it a shot on my own soon and see how it works out.
And congrats! I dunno if anyone else here managed to pull it off but you're now the Adventuring champ on the forum.
Reflex Herb is the MVP ability in this fight, no question.
When the boss has a limited number of parts that can deal damage, you can entirely take those as opportunities to pull off a tanking/healing command to apply a buff or a replenishing action. Not fixating too heavily on getting chasers helps, too: Aerial Talons is totally worth taking over a single chaser proc if the Fencer hasn't gotten Chain All equipped. Aerial Talons binds the Energy Tube with decent success, too. Don't be afraid to use Focus Chant on a part to help bring it down low quickly: even though chipping away at the core and wearing all the other parts down helps, finish off pieces earlier to buy more time to charge Aegis or getting rid of the Agile Sword is often worth it. If the boss has just spawned the Booster Engine but your team is prepped to do an attack (e.g. Chain All is up, you're in danger of not destroying all the parts and don't have Aegis Charged), just have somebody throw a Laudanum pre-emptively. If the Booster Engine does fire the dodge chance up ability, the misses are too expensive.
The Buster Cannon will get stopped often if you just have on Dragoon. It sucks.
That would've been among the last abilities I consider trying for it, I will give it a shot on my own soon and see how it works out.
And congrats! I dunno if anyone else here managed to pull it off but you're now the Adventuring champ on the forum.
What a terrible thought that I could be the champ!
This is the first EO game I've actually beaten!
If you are running chains you build your party around that, ailment aren't quite as necessary. If not running chains ailments/binds are more important.
Reflex Herb is the MVP ability in this fight, no question.
When the boss has a limited number of parts that can deal damage, you can entirely take those as opportunities to pull off a tanking/healing command to apply a buff or a replenishing action. Not fixating too heavily on getting chasers helps, too: Aerial Talons is totally worth taking over a single chaser proc if the Fencer hasn't gotten Chain All equipped. Aerial Talons binds the Energy Tube with decent success, too. Don't be afraid to use Focus Chant on a part to help bring it down low quickly: even though chipping away at the core and wearing all the other parts down helps, finish off pieces earlier to buy more time to charge Aegis or getting rid of the Agile Sword is often worth it. If the boss has just spawned the Booster Engine but your team is prepped to do an attack (e.g. Chain All is up, you're in danger of not destroying all the parts and don't have Aegis Charged), just have somebody throw a Laudanum pre-emptively. If the Booster Engine does fire the dodge chance up ability, the misses are too expensive.
The Buster Cannon will get stopped often if you just have on Dragoon. It sucks.
That would've been among the last abilities I consider trying for it, I will give it a shot on my own soon and see how it works out.
And congrats! I dunno if anyone else here managed to pull it off but you're now the Adventuring champ on the forum.
I stalled out in the middle of the sixth stratum, the floor puzzles were brutal.
I will probably do like EOIV and come back at some point and clear everything, but it does sound daunting.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I won't lie, this makes my ego cry a bit. BUT hey, it's a great series and I hope you enjoyed it. I gave up during part 3 on my replay of the series (it's too dated) but 5 is easily my favorite. A good one for new players to jump into.
I stalled out in the middle of the sixth stratum, the floor puzzles were brutal.
I will probably do like EOIV and come back at some point and clear everything, but it does sound daunting.
EO5's sixth stratum is easily the toughest as far as I'm concerned. Part 4 had a lot of bullshit trickery for the battles. But part 5, the navigation itself is shockingly difficult. The battles are a bit more brute forced rather than technical skill when compared to 4, but when combined with the time it takes to get around on any given floor it quickly adds up. I adore it.
I won't lie, this makes my ego cry a bit. BUT hey, it's a great series and I hope you enjoyed it. I gave up during part 3 on my replay of the series (it's too dated) but 5 is easily my favorite. A good one for new players to jump into.
I stalled out in the middle of the sixth stratum, the floor puzzles were brutal.
I will probably do like EOIV and come back at some point and clear everything, but it does sound daunting.
EO5's sixth stratum is easily the toughest as far as I'm concerned. Part 4 had a lot of bullshit trickery for the battles. But part 5, the navigation itself is shockingly difficult. The battles are a bit more brute forced rather than technical skill when compared to 4, but when combined with the time it takes to get around on any given floor it quickly adds up. I adore it.
I really like the unique gimmicks each floor has, and how the FOEs can interact with them. Compared to the previous EO games I tried out, I liked that you started being able to do more interesting things much earlier, Union is a ton more interesting than BOOST, and the species skills gives more room for adventure-like moments in the dungeon... I do wish that there was more to the food system, because very quickly you realize that the TP restoring foods are straight up better than all the other foods.
As for the the 6th floor, the fights in the 6th floor to me felt really all or nothing for the FOE enemies, which I don't like that much. You score the binds, you win! You don't score the binds, you lose! (until you are so high level and geared up that you just overpower them...) In fact,the FOEs in the 6th floor are so strong the first time you encounter them that it's kind of shocking. The same goes for the boss, but in a better way: it's such a huge jump in complexity and challenge that's it's kind of crazy. It's admirable what a crazy fight they've designed, but the jump is so huge that it makes you feel bad the first bunch of times.
It's a little odd to me how some of the final weapons/armor are priced. I don't actually know why the final gun costs so much more than most of the other final weapons, for instance. Same goes for the armor.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I decided to use a function of the game I haven't tried before (on my new file); changing a character to a class their race can't begin as. I only did it in two cases. I changed my masu to a fencer, and changed my warlock to a shaman.
To keep my party the same I did some shenanigans. The dragoon and harbinger swapped classes (but their character portraits don't change so ffffff), and my existing shaman became a botanist. The new shaman is going to be focused on the element stuff, which should work nicely with the fencer's chasing stuff since I have a dragoon for tanking. No way to cause binds, which I'm addicted to in this series, but I'll... manage... I'm sure...
Fencer chasing for me is being pretty good in terms of low TP reliable damage. They're not astronomical because I can only reliably proc two chases a turn, but they do decent damage if you hit the weakness and it costs like 4 TP.
I would like to know how the skill that says that creates turrets automatically works, though. Is it specifically when the Dragoon is attacked? Because I can't seem to get it to ever trigger.
Dragoon must be the one being attacked, and I think the hit needs to be guarded or negated. I've been debating how useful it is in the end as a result.
It's part of what makes Dragun the soloclass of choice.
I decided to use a function of the game I haven't tried before (on my new file); changing a character to a class their race can't begin as. I only did it in two cases. I changed my masu to a fencer, and changed my warlock to a shaman.
To keep my party the same I did some shenanigans. The dragoon and harbinger swapped classes (but their character portraits don't change so ffffff), and my existing shaman became a botanist. The new shaman is going to be focused on the element stuff, which should work nicely with the fencer's chasing stuff since I have a dragoon for tanking. No way to cause binds, which I'm addicted to in this series, but I'll... manage... I'm sure...
So your team was originally dragoon/harbinger/shaman/fencer/something ?
Aside from shenanigans, I wonder how certain team compositions would be able to beat the Star Devourer.
Maybe something goofy is possible with the Masurao or the Pugilist, but I actually don't know how a solo Dragoon would win this outside of stupid luck with the Gustav.
Binding is really dubious against the Star Devourer core because it has a lot of natural resistance to binds. You can just burn items for binding or use a Gustav if you have it... actually, now knowing what the Gustav does, I see why it costs as much as it does! Since you have a botanist, you can equip the botanist with a Failnaught to get Alluring Body, which helps. Each limb of the Star Devourer will not be able to do its thing if you bind it appropriately, which isn't quite as good as binding the Star Devourer core and outright preventing regeneration of that part, but still counts for a lot. Binding the Rocket Booster or the Energy Tube are definite good ones, because it reduces how often you need to get somebody to throw a Laudanum. Binding the Agile Sword is good just to stop it from using Parry.
Cole's Law: "Thinly sliced cabbage."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
No it was Harbinger / Dragoon / Masu / Warlock / Shaman (human, human, rabbit, elf, gnome), and is now Harbinger / Dragoon / Fencer / Shaman / Botanist (human, human, rabbit, elf, gnome).
This isn't for my run against the Star Devourer mind you, I still have my old file for that. The team there is Fencer, Pugilist, Rover, Warlock, and Botanist. Built to have chases going on, minus the Pugilist, who is a stand-alone figure for binds. And my Rover isn't exactly doing much either aside from triggering the Fencer's chases, and maybe getting a foot bind / big damage if it happens with the doggo.
The new team is meant to more easily make use of Fencer chases, as well as make the Botanist a full healer with the task of landing ailments going over to a Harbinger instead. The Harbinger can also land some debuffs in addition to that. Admittedly, the Dragoon isn't fully thought out for this group, and I'm leaning taking her down the damage oriented master class. The bunker & turret can handle the tanking for the party on a set & forget pattern.
I personally can't see myself going through an EO game more than once. In theory I like the character classes enough to, but the games are so long that just beating one of them is an achievement for me. I think the Masurao, Necromancer, Shaman, Pugilist all look like fun, but it took me so long to beat just EOV that I'm satisfied with moving on from it. Losing the joy of uncovering the map and discovering how the map gimmicks work or the various moments in the dungeon also hurts how much fun I could see myself having.
Cole's Law: "Thinly sliced cabbage."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
For me there's a curiosity about trying a different party strategy in the games. Sure the exploration element is lost, but I can live with that.
Been playing the game on my work commutes, so a nice long slow grind. Prepping my party for taking on the Hippogriff and I want to get the special drops from all the enemies before it. This is a Problem with the Gazing Stinger. I need to petrify it to get the special drop, but best as I can tell there are no petrify abilities and using 6 of the petrify item have yet to succeed with my bind-pugilist with a luck ring. Either I have terrible luck, I am not meant to get this yet as there will be an easier way to apply that status later, or there's some chance boosting technique I'm missing.
Been playing the game on my work commutes, so a nice long slow grind. Prepping my party for taking on the Hippogriff and I want to get the special drops from all the enemies before it. This is a Problem with the Gazing Stinger. I need to petrify it to get the special drop, but best as I can tell there are no petrify abilities and using 6 of the petrify item have yet to succeed with my bind-pugilist with a luck ring. Either I have terrible luck, I am not meant to get this yet as there will be an easier way to apply that status later, or there's some chance boosting technique I'm missing.
There are things which are annoying as hell to get the first time you encounter them, but you can come back for them a bit later with abilities that you might not have had access to the first time, and probably higher Luck values on your characters. Some of the things you can get quite early sell for good money (at that point in the game), but the gear that that loot lets you make is going to be expensive as hell (at that point in the game) if you acquired that loot as early as possible.
Cole's Law: "Thinly sliced cabbage."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
There's always formaldehyde as a last resort. I had to use it for a couple enemies in EO5.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Hot damn, the shaman elemental prayers combined with a fencer are just way too good. I definitely like this setup, I just wish the shaman was easier to handle on the healing end in the early parts of the game. I'm sure that by 3rd stratum (maybe late 2nd) their mana pool is deep enough to buff all the time to have the heals setup easier.
As for the Dragoon I'm sorrrta disappointed here because I have rank 9 bunkers but they take rather substantial damage from enemy special attacks.
As for the Dragoon I'm sorrrta disappointed here because I have rank 9 bunkers but they take rather substantial damage from enemy special attacks.
Bunkers have a tendency to just blow up from a lot of big enemy attacks if you don't Guard them... which is annoying, because you want to be guarding the guys that matter, not the damn bunkers.
The jump in durability from Rank 9 to Rank 10 is fairly substantial, though.
I'm increasingly wondering if bunkers/turrets themselves aren't actually that good (not counting how they allow the use of Defense Form...) unless you are using two Dragoons in your party.
The reason for this is that if you have two Dragoons in your party, you first of all gain the power of being able to summon two bunkers a turn, but more importantly, you can have one Dragoon perform a Line Guard on the summon row while the other Dragoon performs a guard on your party. With two Dragoons that both have the Gun Support auto-summon on damage ability, attacks that hit multiple people in your party give you a much better chance of summoning free bunkers. If both of your Dragoons have level 10 Gun Support and an attack hits the row, the chance of one or more turrets getting summoned is 55.5%! Gun Support normally only gets a chance at triggering if the Dragoon got attacked and the attack got blocked by a Guard ability of some kind, but it doesn't have to have been cast by the Dragoon themselves!
This is part of the reason why Aegis Guard and Mana Guard are great around Cannon Dragoons, because Gun Revenge stacks build up whenever an attack hitting the Dragoon is blocked by Aegis Guard even if the Dragoon wasn't the one who cast the Aegis Guard. If you have one Dragoon Mana Guard the team and the other Dragoon Line Guard the Dragoon line, the Dragoon line basically is guaranteed a chance to roll for turrets on any attack that deals damage. Dragon Roaring is also good when nobody else is on the Dragoon line, because even though it's pleasant to have the Dragoon attacked, it also means the Dragoon draws line-hitting attacks. But if the line just has Dragoons on it, who cares! Not only that, you get to have one Dragoon cast Dragon Roar without losing the ability to cast some kind of Guard, since you have two Dragoons.
I think it's kind of curious how much the game seems to incentivize running multiple of the same class, at least in my head. A front line of two Fencers, one tank-oriented and one chaser-oriented, should be amazing. Two Warlocks should be tremendous. Two Masuraos sounds really strong. Two Necromancers is totally great. Two Dragoons is totally good.
Nah, warlocks don't have anything that really benefits from multiple of them I think. They just stack linearly as another nuke.
Unless you have a 5-elemancer party that all have cutting costs and manaflow and just want to rain focused nukes on the enemy party forever.
The thing which two Warlocks get is that:
- Amplifier works on the whole row, so you can cast Amplifier once and it will benefit all Warlocks! Hooray efficiency! More importantly, ONLY ONE WARLOCK NEEDS TO MAX AMPLIFIER! This frees up as few as 7 (if you need the skills that require some points in Amplifier to unlock) to 10 points on the other Warlocks!
- Elemancers have a skill that gives them like +50% damage if another INT-based attack fires before they do, and you can guarantee that this happens with at least two Warlocks-types in a variety of ways.
- What you mentioned with Elemancers being able to feed each other or the rest of the party Mana
Which isn't quite as cool as a tank Fencer and a chain Fencer, or multiple Necromancers, admittedly.
This arrived in the mail today, and I slapped it semi-immediately into my basically-brand-new 3DS.
I haven't even left the first town yet (on account of sneaking in a couple of minutes while I was working). This game is beautiful. I love the 3D so far, too.
It's going to be a crossover of all the previous games in the series. All the classes are in. The force breaks / bursts / sub-classing systems are all in. Character customization from EO5 will be available for ALL classes. There's one new class; "Hero." And it also looks like all NPCs from previous games will be present? Or maybe just some of the noteworthy ones?
Posts
EO1: Medic
EO2: also Medic
EO3: Monk (with the heal skills)
EO4: surprise it's Medic
EO5: Botanist
There are other healing classes throughout the games, but because they're a little trickier to handle I don't recommend them for a first timer. The exchange though is that they provide the party other benefits. To offset the lost direct-healing, I'd recommend a tank in that case.
Dragoon's Mana Guard is an extremely reliable way of mitigating any kind of elemental damage, and Mana Guard doesn't require you to have a Decoy Bunker/Turret out. It's cheap to cast, is guaranteed to go off before almost any enemy abilities, covers the whole party, and protects you from some abilities that you didn't even know were elemental. Like, if I had literally none of the other first page abilities on the Dragoon's sheet but Mana Guard, the Dragoon would still make the game easier for a first timer.
And yeah, I think getting through any EO game without one of the healer classes would be an incredible slog. I'm sure it's doable, but it'd be sloooooooooooooow going.
Source: my M/M/P // R/D all-therian theme party.
The only real catch was having a party with only item-based revives, but that was still very workable.
The extra damage output made grinding a lot faster, too.
My team has a Rover with maxed healing passive as well as a Botanist, and I could totally see a team without a Botanist working. The healing passive together with the dog summon gives incredible attrition resistance against non-boss enemies for much of the game.
But having no healer of any kind, whether a utility healer like the Rover/Harbinger/Necromancer or a dedicated healer like a Botanist, is probably going to be a bit harder for the early going to a new player.
Item based healing is more than sufficient to carry you through the early parts. There simply isn't enough damage going out so long as you're keeping your gear up to date and have some form of passive healing to warrant a full time healer while doing basic exploration. That said, yeah, botanist is a great safety net.
Tanks really depend on how strong your healing and recovery are in your team comp. In EO2 I ran tank-less abusing the fact that the AI tends to hit the highest HP on the front-row first. Tends to, mind you. It's not perfect, but slight manipulation of the targeting routines because of that made it fairly predictable to channel damage onto the landshark then overwhelming encounters with higher damage. EO4 I still had a Fortress/Tank and they did do some solid work even if they were slightly suicidal. "I'll party guard and eat an AoE attack all by myself... oops". Once I rebuilt my frontline to incorporate an Imperial/Rune Landshark/Imperial combo, it was all over red rover for the Fortress' purpose in life. They went back to school to learn how to dance in plate armour though they still pray for the odd FoE to give them something to do.
What I'm finding in EO5 is that a dedicated BINDER isn't all that necessary. Really really handy, for sure like any other specialist role, but there's items that try to snag the entire enemy party and Unison attacks to deal with that. I really miss my EO4 Sniper/Arcanist...
In EO5 I'm running smoke botanist and cannon dragoon in the sixth stratum. I will probably have to go full healing botanist at some point in the postgame, but the first few bosses were all killable with hyperaggression and lockdown.
I've already put 10 points into Chaos smoke and a few points into ailment up!
That's just the thing: with Amplifier + Chain Plus + Smokeblight + maxed Chain Double + 9 pointed Chasers + Chain Boost, a proc chance is just worth so much! Enemies are often getting blown up by it and I don't need to heal, or if they're not, what I need to do is heal / remove debuffs / re-apply Smokeblight... and healing is cheap TP-wise compared to higher level smokes.
I can definitely see the value in blinding/panicking enemies such that they don't hit you with debuffs and binds, but I've had so much success just wiping things out with damage that it's been hard for me to feel good about breaking the pattern haha
I never beat the original EO2.
Edit - Annnd I beat story mode. Nice subtle hint at Etrian Odyssey Untold 3 being a possibility.
Cannon Dragoon / Chain Fencer
Elemenacer / Falcon Rover / Healer Botanist
(i spelled Elemancer wrong by accident but that typo is great so i'm keeping it!)
The key problems for me are:
- if the boss uses either Parry and Elemental Decoy get used, the Chain Fencer's chains are guaranteed to do zero damage that turn, same as Buster Cannon
- if the boss uses the evasion plus skill, there's a chance that many things miss on that turn, though if I could know reliably when it's going to do so I could Laudanum it with a character who's just slow enough to fire it after the Booster does that skill
- I can't reliably destroy all three of those parts right away if they all get spawned at full health, in large part because the Thruster which gives evasion plus is in the back line. Once I get to the phase where it's respawning two parts at a time, it becomes a crapshoot as to whether or not Chain All is going to accomplish anything.
Bonus fun:
- there are times when I've gotten the meter charged for Aegis Shield and it looks like I'm ready to go, but then one of my party members gets confused and now I can't Aegis Shield and I die.
On my opening turn, I do an Aegis Shield to survive dying from the big nuke.
With max level Hound, max level Hunter Shot and Alluring Body, binding is still something that happens with very low success rate following the big nuke.
Is there a way to make this less of a slot machine? It's really all-or-nothing for my party, mainly because the Chain Fencer can be entirely negated by two abilities and sometimes largely negated by a third. The bonus case where I get wiped could be mitigated if I could reliably keep the parts destroyed, but my damage output at critical moments is unreliable, and that's a huge problem. Do I just have to ditch the Chain Fencer?
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
I still have my other file to make attempts on the final (bonus) boss. I'm determined to bring that mofo down.
Things go a LOT better with this. Because the boss will often to many instances of damage to a random bunch of characters, Bountiful Herb is really unreliable in its effectiveness; there are times when people just get unlucky and die before Bountiful Herb goes off. With Reflex Herb, you can reliably keep your characters in good health.
Having high-rank Resonance hugely mitigates total reliance Chasers, good as Chase All is. Resonance is just physical, so while it can still miss and it can get Parried, at least it isn't also totally stopped by Elemental Decoy. Not only that, but the count for it goes up even if all of the Chaser procs from the previous round were parried! I haven't yet decided to change my Falcon Rover into a Hound Rover, because the Hound Rover has two abilities that would be hugely helpful in this (the backrow attacking shot, and the improved Hunter Shot that does stab-type damage rather than Falcon's head binder which does slash), but I lose out on Ice Peck.
Ice Peck is a strong argument to respec the Fencer's Chaser to Freeze. You really only need one Chaser maxed out, and with Freeze you get the chance to proc from the arrow hit or the ice hit (only once in total, I believe), which makes a difference when the boss activates the evasion buff: the arrow hit has a good chance of missing, but the ice hit seldom misses. Unlike the basic Warlock elemental spells, the Elemancer spells all have the same damage, too, so it's not like earlier in the game where it paid to use Fire Chaser over the others because Fireball does more damage than the others. It does mean you lose the chance to proc chaser from Buster Cannon (bash/fire), but oh well, that doesn't happen often anyway. I haven't done this yet, but I got quite close to beating the boss, so this step is probably overkill.
All that said, that time I got close, I still lost on a slot machine combo of getting one character debuffed on one turn, and Parry happen the next turn, and then a character debuffed on the turn the Parry happened, which effectively prevented me from doing enough damage or being able to do Aegis. That kind of RNG defeat still sucks.
Reflex Herb is the MVP ability in this fight, no question.
When the boss has a limited number of parts that can deal damage, you can entirely take those as opportunities to pull off a tanking/healing command to apply a buff or a replenishing action. Not fixating too heavily on getting chasers helps, too: Aerial Talons is totally worth taking over a single chaser proc if the Fencer hasn't gotten Chain All equipped. Aerial Talons binds the Energy Tube with decent success, too. Don't be afraid to use Focus Chant on a part to help bring it down low quickly: even though chipping away at the core and wearing all the other parts down helps, finish off pieces earlier to buy more time to charge Aegis or getting rid of the Agile Sword is often worth it. If the boss has just spawned the Booster Engine but your team is prepped to do an attack (e.g. Chain All is up, you're in danger of not destroying all the parts and don't have Aegis Charged), just have somebody throw a Laudanum pre-emptively. If the Booster Engine does fire the dodge chance up ability, the misses are too expensive.
The Buster Cannon will get stopped often if you just have on Dragoon. It sucks.
EDIT:
In terms of taking damage, it is important that you find out how much damage the Agile Sword's Sonic Strike does to your party members, and stay above that threshold. That ability fires before almost everything else in the game: Reflex Herb has a 300% speed modifier, and Sonic Strike still goes before it on a level 90+ Brouni Botanist!
Bring a dozen Laudanums, maybe more if your team has low damage. Laudanums are always worth throwing against any buff the boss has up. Throw one if they have the damage buff up because it creates a danger that someone will suddenly die to the Towering Sword, throw one if they have the dodge buff up because that buff is some BS, throw one if it has the durability buff up because not being able to destroy parts when you haven't got Aegis charged sucks. Unless you're in a crisis situation of needing to destroy a part or else you will get blasted and can't Aegis, prioritize safety over getting that optimal burst. A team that isn't a gimmick team designed to annihilate the boss is almost guaranteed to be in for a long fight, and a optimal burst really doesn't count for THAT much.
I didn't need too many Unihorns, and the most valuable thing to dispel is the miss chance from Exhaust. The defense debuff is a little annoying, but the miss chance is the worst.
And congrats! I dunno if anyone else here managed to pull it off but you're now the Adventuring champ on the forum.
What a terrible thought that I could be the champ!
This is the first EO game I've actually beaten!
I stalled out in the middle of the sixth stratum, the floor puzzles were brutal.
I will probably do like EOIV and come back at some point and clear everything, but it does sound daunting.
I really like the unique gimmicks each floor has, and how the FOEs can interact with them. Compared to the previous EO games I tried out, I liked that you started being able to do more interesting things much earlier, Union is a ton more interesting than BOOST, and the species skills gives more room for adventure-like moments in the dungeon... I do wish that there was more to the food system, because very quickly you realize that the TP restoring foods are straight up better than all the other foods.
As for the the 6th floor, the fights in the 6th floor to me felt really all or nothing for the FOE enemies, which I don't like that much. You score the binds, you win! You don't score the binds, you lose! (until you are so high level and geared up that you just overpower them...) In fact,the FOEs in the 6th floor are so strong the first time you encounter them that it's kind of shocking. The same goes for the boss, but in a better way: it's such a huge jump in complexity and challenge that's it's kind of crazy. It's admirable what a crazy fight they've designed, but the jump is so huge that it makes you feel bad the first bunch of times.
It's a little odd to me how some of the final weapons/armor are priced. I don't actually know why the final gun costs so much more than most of the other final weapons, for instance. Same goes for the armor.
To keep my party the same I did some shenanigans. The dragoon and harbinger swapped classes (but their character portraits don't change so ffffff), and my existing shaman became a botanist. The new shaman is going to be focused on the element stuff, which should work nicely with the fencer's chasing stuff since I have a dragoon for tanking. No way to cause binds, which I'm addicted to in this series, but I'll... manage... I'm sure...
It's part of what makes Dragun the soloclass of choice.
So your team was originally dragoon/harbinger/shaman/fencer/something ?
Aside from shenanigans, I wonder how certain team compositions would be able to beat the Star Devourer.
Maybe something goofy is possible with the Masurao or the Pugilist, but I actually don't know how a solo Dragoon would win this outside of stupid luck with the Gustav.
Binding is really dubious against the Star Devourer core because it has a lot of natural resistance to binds. You can just burn items for binding or use a Gustav if you have it... actually, now knowing what the Gustav does, I see why it costs as much as it does! Since you have a botanist, you can equip the botanist with a Failnaught to get Alluring Body, which helps. Each limb of the Star Devourer will not be able to do its thing if you bind it appropriately, which isn't quite as good as binding the Star Devourer core and outright preventing regeneration of that part, but still counts for a lot. Binding the Rocket Booster or the Energy Tube are definite good ones, because it reduces how often you need to get somebody to throw a Laudanum. Binding the Agile Sword is good just to stop it from using Parry.
This isn't for my run against the Star Devourer mind you, I still have my old file for that. The team there is Fencer, Pugilist, Rover, Warlock, and Botanist. Built to have chases going on, minus the Pugilist, who is a stand-alone figure for binds. And my Rover isn't exactly doing much either aside from triggering the Fencer's chases, and maybe getting a foot bind / big damage if it happens with the doggo.
The new team is meant to more easily make use of Fencer chases, as well as make the Botanist a full healer with the task of landing ailments going over to a Harbinger instead. The Harbinger can also land some debuffs in addition to that. Admittedly, the Dragoon isn't fully thought out for this group, and I'm leaning taking her down the damage oriented master class. The bunker & turret can handle the tanking for the party on a set & forget pattern.
AHEM! Brownies are NOT gnomes!
I personally can't see myself going through an EO game more than once. In theory I like the character classes enough to, but the games are so long that just beating one of them is an achievement for me. I think the Masurao, Necromancer, Shaman, Pugilist all look like fun, but it took me so long to beat just EOV that I'm satisfied with moving on from it. Losing the joy of uncovering the map and discovering how the map gimmicks work or the various moments in the dungeon also hurts how much fun I could see myself having.
There are things which are annoying as hell to get the first time you encounter them, but you can come back for them a bit later with abilities that you might not have had access to the first time, and probably higher Luck values on your characters. Some of the things you can get quite early sell for good money (at that point in the game), but the gear that that loot lets you make is going to be expensive as hell (at that point in the game) if you acquired that loot as early as possible.
As for the Dragoon I'm sorrrta disappointed here because I have rank 9 bunkers but they take rather substantial damage from enemy special attacks.
Bunkers have a tendency to just blow up from a lot of big enemy attacks if you don't Guard them... which is annoying, because you want to be guarding the guys that matter, not the damn bunkers.
The jump in durability from Rank 9 to Rank 10 is fairly substantial, though.
I'm increasingly wondering if bunkers/turrets themselves aren't actually that good (not counting how they allow the use of Defense Form...) unless you are using two Dragoons in your party.
The reason for this is that if you have two Dragoons in your party, you first of all gain the power of being able to summon two bunkers a turn, but more importantly, you can have one Dragoon perform a Line Guard on the summon row while the other Dragoon performs a guard on your party. With two Dragoons that both have the Gun Support auto-summon on damage ability, attacks that hit multiple people in your party give you a much better chance of summoning free bunkers. If both of your Dragoons have level 10 Gun Support and an attack hits the row, the chance of one or more turrets getting summoned is 55.5%! Gun Support normally only gets a chance at triggering if the Dragoon got attacked and the attack got blocked by a Guard ability of some kind, but it doesn't have to have been cast by the Dragoon themselves!
This is part of the reason why Aegis Guard and Mana Guard are great around Cannon Dragoons, because Gun Revenge stacks build up whenever an attack hitting the Dragoon is blocked by Aegis Guard even if the Dragoon wasn't the one who cast the Aegis Guard. If you have one Dragoon Mana Guard the team and the other Dragoon Line Guard the Dragoon line, the Dragoon line basically is guaranteed a chance to roll for turrets on any attack that deals damage. Dragon Roaring is also good when nobody else is on the Dragoon line, because even though it's pleasant to have the Dragoon attacked, it also means the Dragoon draws line-hitting attacks. But if the line just has Dragoons on it, who cares! Not only that, you get to have one Dragoon cast Dragon Roar without losing the ability to cast some kind of Guard, since you have two Dragoons.
I think it's kind of curious how much the game seems to incentivize running multiple of the same class, at least in my head. A front line of two Fencers, one tank-oriented and one chaser-oriented, should be amazing. Two Warlocks should be tremendous. Two Masuraos sounds really strong. Two Necromancers is totally great. Two Dragoons is totally good.
Unless you have a 5-elemancer party that all have cutting costs and manaflow and just want to rain focused nukes on the enemy party forever.
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The thing which two Warlocks get is that:
- Amplifier works on the whole row, so you can cast Amplifier once and it will benefit all Warlocks! Hooray efficiency! More importantly, ONLY ONE WARLOCK NEEDS TO MAX AMPLIFIER! This frees up as few as 7 (if you need the skills that require some points in Amplifier to unlock) to 10 points on the other Warlocks!
- Elemancers have a skill that gives them like +50% damage if another INT-based attack fires before they do, and you can guarantee that this happens with at least two Warlocks-types in a variety of ways.
- What you mentioned with Elemancers being able to feed each other or the rest of the party Mana
Which isn't quite as cool as a tank Fencer and a chain Fencer, or multiple Necromancers, admittedly.
I haven't even left the first town yet (on account of sneaking in a couple of minutes while I was working). This game is beautiful. I love the 3D so far, too.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Some Etrian Odyssey announcement coming in just two days! Who knows what it is!
https://gematsu.com/2018/04/etrian-odyssey-x-announced-for-3ds
It's going to be a crossover of all the previous games in the series. All the classes are in. The force breaks / bursts / sub-classing systems are all in. Character customization from EO5 will be available for ALL classes. There's one new class; "Hero." And it also looks like all NPCs from previous games will be present? Or maybe just some of the noteworthy ones?