Yeah, one of my failed attempts featured Rinoa dying to a gravity spin, ouch. I ended up using some Angelo Cannon on the first wave to try to keep her HP balanced against the other characters.
I had a Rinoa friend on my winning run, but she feels underwhelming during summon. Might do better with a Cloud friend for all the sweet bonus points for launches, plus he makes the native Rinoa much more effective during summon.
With the story Chapter tonight we will be getting Freya and should be getting awakening reworks for Zidane and Vivi. This also means we're going to have a pretty solid banner to draw on tonight because all of the characters featured will be solid options to use in even the hardest content, unlike banner such as Lann & Reynn where both Faris and Edgar are showing their age.
We will also be getting our first Cosmos difficulty battle tonight. I have a very good roster right now so I hope that means the fight will go smooth for me, but we'll see.
I'm not convinced Vivi will be that good with rework. He's pure DPS, but his main attack ability (Fire+) is three hits for 210%, which is extremely low for the current state of the game. Meteor itself is OK but not spectacular (150% overflow, split damage). The W-Fire he gets as a one-time followup after Meteor IX is pretty spicy (480% over 8 hits, with two HP dumps) but Meteor is on a Slow recharge rate, so I'm not sure what his overall rotation is going to be. If Meteor comes up often enough he'll be ok, but if you only get to do that every five turns (or worse), I don't think he's going to be that viable.
Zidane at least applies some pretty solid debuffs, in addition to dealing damage. We're kinda beyond the days of launch meta though, so his EX is not so hot.
I kind of banged my head against the wall of the Tidus/Auron banner and came away with neither EX after 35k in gems and somewhere between 100-200 tickets, so that was really annoying! So it'll be nice to have a Story chapter to refill on gems, plus a whole new set of summon boards to start refilling on tickets.
Serah is supposed to be really good so even if I haven't gotten up to 75k, I'll probably be dumping resources into her banner when it comes out (next week with Ultimate Shiva, I think?)
As for being prepared for Cosmos, I'm reasonably sure I am. I have missed nearly all of the last set of power EX weapons, though I've gotten nearly all of the 35s. My most recent EX is Rinoa's, and Kefka before that, but you've got to go all the way back to Lightning and Agrias for my next most recent EX pulls. However I have a lot of the early EX weapons, some of whom are going to be reworked into very powerful units (hello, WoL), so I'm grumpy but not too worried.
Whoof, they kept the special 2* artifact passives from the 4* base artifacts for Vivi. I did not expect them to go that way, given how unpopular they were in the JP client.
Whoof, they kept the special 2* artifact passives from the 4* base artifacts for Vivi. I did not expect them to go that way, given how unpopular they were in the JP client.
Wait, WHAT?! +1 fire use on an artifact seems cray, cray!
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
It is cray cray, but it means if you want to use Vivi and if you're even mildly interested in having good artifacts, you need to grind many, many eidojas until you get three 2* arts with +1 Fire. The JP playerbase rebelled against the notion of having to supergrind artifacts for every character on the roster to keep up with the power curve, so the devs abandoned the concept of special 4* base 2* passives right away.
GL has been delaying the 4* base arts for the six affected characters, presumably to change how they work, yet it seems nothing's changed at all so why delay them?
I'm excited to try out Zidane. I was still using him even recently so I can't imagine how much better he will be. He has always been an absolute beast for me.
Even the score requirement on the EX is tight. I went in a second time with Lenna, Vivi EX and Rinoa EX, plus Rinoa EX friend with Ifrit summon. Cleared it in 39 turns for 363k, figured that was plenty enough. It was enough, but only just; the top gem reward score is 360k lol.
I'm hoping the Cosmos is just the missions because I'm not sure how I'll do any more DPS than this!
I did Cloud, Quistis, Rinoa, friend Rinoa for the EX mission. The launches help with the score, as always. I swapped Quistis out for Rinoa during summon; getting a nice 30k+ out of Rinoa's BRV attack during launch pretty much doubles her damage per turn, yeesh.
Cosmos missions shouldn't have extended score rewards, so it's just a matter of clearing the main missions.
Buff Attack Speed is one of Vivi's crazy artifact passives, yes? Attack 20% Speed 10% seems kind of bonkers. And I'm assuming it stacks with itself if you have 2 of them equipped?
I farmed up some ok artifacts for Vivi (4* Buff Attack Speed and 108 Atk, each paired with nothing terribly good or bad) and did Cosmos with 15/35 Lenna, EX Vivi, and EX Rinoa. Ifrit summon, Quistis friend. Had five turns to spare and about 110% of the target score, so things were pretty close.
#1 tip for this fight is don't get broken, ever. Bring turn delay or lots of debuffs to make your life easier. I got them down to 60% or so before an upcoming pair of turns for them was going to be impossible to avoid a break, so I took one break and then summoned Quistis. The one who broke me never got another turn and the other was delayed enough to restabilize after pushing hard to kill his pal.
I also stumbled into these apeshit artifacts for Zidane; I'll have to see how useful he is without his EX
Edit: oh good, there's not too much power in his EX if you've got a Max brv buff in the party. Plus I have his WoI weapon mastered from many months ago, hooray!
Vayne's event co-op rewards will include Eidojas for Zack and Serah, so running that Co-Op will help you farm for the two of them. This is particularly good for Sarah's Cursed Artifacts since you'll otherwise be spending all your WoI stamina on Shiva farming.
- "Mog's Gym" Jul 31 - Aug 28
- beginner quests, themed around battle fundamentals (e.g. break order)
- get enough shards+crystals to raise one character of each color to 60
- high shard cap raised to 9,999 (with this week's maintenance)
- Shiva Ultimate Aug 1 (Wednesday night for USA)
- featured characters: Seifer, Steiner, Auron, Prishe, Serah, Thancred, super synergy through Aug 15
- Serah EX shown (presumably will be on a draw banner)
- artifact passives ("Cursed 6")
- devs decided to implement in global version to maintain game balance compared to JP version
- timing releases to match character reworks, and so that you can get them both from WoI and co-op
- Serah/Cater in August, Yuna in September, Aeris/Lion in October
- Zack LC, Aug 5
- has a gem+costume bundle
- Vayne, Aug 8
- co-op also features Eidojas for Zack and Serah, +2 other characters
- Rydia LC, Aug 16
- Fran, Aug 19
- Abyss (Beta) August 13
- heretic style quests, difficulty up to Cosmos
- "permanent" content, but limited time rewards for draw tickets and power tokens up to Aug 27
- quests feature things like "use specific crystal color" or "use weapon type"
- event draws will feature new and returning EX weapons
- sounds like it's global exclusive
- Josh said it was pretty hard on the dev build
Are the new Vivi passives only from the 4* artifacts?
You can get the new passives out of any grade of artifact, but ideally you'll want to be rolling mostly Eidojas to have the best chance of getting good passives.
They kept the Cursed Passives as-is in order to avoid any potential imbalancing compared to the JP version
Which is an absurd premise as they've shuffled around characters and EX weapons and shit all the time
They'll be releasing the six upgraded characters and their cursed passives over time so it's less of a problem to acquire them
Most folks that have been playing for a while can render a reasonable opinion on what reworks and EX weapons will not cause a problem if they show up early. And if they are too powerful when they get moved up, it will resolve itself over time as we catch up to when that particular thing is "supposed" to arrive.
Figuring out how to do a completely different way of reworking those six characters that is not dependent on artifacts is a different beast. Like sure, you can probably give Vivi another charge or two of Fire and that'll be fine, but what the hell do you do with Buff Attack Speed, or Yuna's absurd passive that's 40% Max BRV per copy? Hope you don't make it too strong, because you won't be able to nerf it later without a ridiculous backlash.
I don't like that we have to farm perfect artifacts for Yuna and Serah in particular to get them usable, but I don't know that they have good options. Joshua said they're reading all of the feedback, maybe we can get them to make the rates for those passives to be weighted higher or something.
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BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
I just got 150k gems in time for Serah and Vayne #blessed
Mog's Gym is a nice little addition; fifteen minutes of work, tops, gets you tons of 4* chocobo feathers, 275 of each high shard, thousands of smaller crystals and clusters, and plenty of orbs as necessary.
This is probably a duh thing to say, but make sure you grab the limited items first and maybe watch which unlimited items you grab, as the gym coins are finite.
Once I got all the limited stuff I was kind of on autopilot and didn't realize I used up all my coins maxing the level 1 crystals for black, then white, then yellow, then whoops I'm all out.
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I had a Rinoa friend on my winning run, but she feels underwhelming during summon. Might do better with a Cloud friend for all the sweet bonus points for launches, plus he makes the native Rinoa much more effective during summon.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
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2 Edgar 35
Faris 35
Lann and Reynn 35
2 Edgar 15
Faris 15
Lann and Reynn 15
Kefka 15 off banner
Get ready for the flood of content.
We will also be getting our first Cosmos difficulty battle tonight. I have a very good roster right now so I hope that means the fight will go smooth for me, but we'll see.
3DS FC: 2234-7230-2712
Battle.net: Kriese#1709
Zidane at least applies some pretty solid debuffs, in addition to dealing damage. We're kinda beyond the days of launch meta though, so his EX is not so hot.
Serah is supposed to be really good so even if I haven't gotten up to 75k, I'll probably be dumping resources into her banner when it comes out (next week with Ultimate Shiva, I think?)
As for being prepared for Cosmos, I'm reasonably sure I am. I have missed nearly all of the last set of power EX weapons, though I've gotten nearly all of the 35s. My most recent EX is Rinoa's, and Kefka before that, but you've got to go all the way back to Lightning and Agrias for my next most recent EX pulls. However I have a lot of the early EX weapons, some of whom are going to be reworked into very powerful units (hello, WoL), so I'm grumpy but not too worried.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Wait, WHAT?! +1 fire use on an artifact seems cray, cray!
GL has been delaying the 4* base arts for the six affected characters, presumably to change how they work, yet it seems nothing's changed at all so why delay them?
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
edit: shit now I have to farm Vivi passives megalul
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Ok then!
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
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I'm hoping the Cosmos is just the missions because I'm not sure how I'll do any more DPS than this!
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Cosmos missions shouldn't have extended score rewards, so it's just a matter of clearing the main missions.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I must say though, even just a 35/15 can push out some decent damage for the event. I just wish I could pull an EX and do stupid damage instead.
#1 tip for this fight is don't get broken, ever. Bring turn delay or lots of debuffs to make your life easier. I got them down to 60% or so before an upcoming pair of turns for them was going to be impossible to avoid a break, so I took one break and then summoned Quistis. The one who broke me never got another turn and the other was delayed enough to restabilize after pushing hard to kill his pal.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Edit: oh good, there's not too much power in his EX if you've got a Max brv buff in the party. Plus I have his WoI weapon mastered from many months ago, hooray!
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
...I might keep throwing tickets to see if I can get Zidane's though.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Which is an absurd premise as they've shuffled around characters and EX weapons and shit all the time
They'll be releasing the six upgraded characters and their cursed passives over time so it's less of a problem to acquire them
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
ewww...
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
- "Mog's Gym" Jul 31 - Aug 28
- beginner quests, themed around battle fundamentals (e.g. break order)
- get enough shards+crystals to raise one character of each color to 60
- high shard cap raised to 9,999 (with this week's maintenance)
- Shiva Ultimate Aug 1 (Wednesday night for USA)
- featured characters: Seifer, Steiner, Auron, Prishe, Serah, Thancred, super synergy through Aug 15
- Serah EX shown (presumably will be on a draw banner)
- artifact passives ("Cursed 6")
- devs decided to implement in global version to maintain game balance compared to JP version
- timing releases to match character reworks, and so that you can get them both from WoI and co-op
- Serah/Cater in August, Yuna in September, Aeris/Lion in October
- Zack LC, Aug 5
- has a gem+costume bundle
- Vayne, Aug 8
- co-op also features Eidojas for Zack and Serah, +2 other characters
- Rydia LC, Aug 16
- Fran, Aug 19
- Abyss (Beta) August 13
- heretic style quests, difficulty up to Cosmos
- "permanent" content, but limited time rewards for draw tickets and power tokens up to Aug 27
- quests feature things like "use specific crystal color" or "use weapon type"
- event draws will feature new and returning EX weapons
- sounds like it's global exclusive
- Josh said it was pretty hard on the dev build
You can get the new passives out of any grade of artifact, but ideally you'll want to be rolling mostly Eidojas to have the best chance of getting good passives.
I got their 35 though, so I'm not complaining. Multi-element BRV and HP attacks could come in handy.
Most folks that have been playing for a while can render a reasonable opinion on what reworks and EX weapons will not cause a problem if they show up early. And if they are too powerful when they get moved up, it will resolve itself over time as we catch up to when that particular thing is "supposed" to arrive.
Figuring out how to do a completely different way of reworking those six characters that is not dependent on artifacts is a different beast. Like sure, you can probably give Vivi another charge or two of Fire and that'll be fine, but what the hell do you do with Buff Attack Speed, or Yuna's absurd passive that's 40% Max BRV per copy? Hope you don't make it too strong, because you won't be able to nerf it later without a ridiculous backlash.
I don't like that we have to farm perfect artifacts for Yuna and Serah in particular to get them usable, but I don't know that they have good options. Joshua said they're reading all of the feedback, maybe we can get them to make the rates for those passives to be weighted higher or something.
(JP just got Shadow EX, which prominently features best doggo, Interceptor)
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Once I got all the limited stuff I was kind of on autopilot and didn't realize I used up all my coins maxing the level 1 crystals for black, then white, then yellow, then whoops I'm all out.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.