FINAL FANTASY: RECORD KEEPER

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Craze, you should do the bonus battles soon. Nightmare gate opens in a few days, in addition to another double greens weekend, which carries into the next event.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Grumble grumble fine. Also, nice Ingus shield. If I didn't get lunatic high from the anniversary lucky draws, I woulda pulled harder for it.

Did Geryon. After slamming on Leila a bit, she actually got her chance to shine here. I took almost no damage outside of the Maelstrom/Tornado attacks, and won first try. THANKS LEILA!




Tyro - SG
Fran - Whip Kick (wallbreak)
Lightning - Blaze Rush (damage)
Yuna - HotF
Leila - Captain's Command (hastega/shellga)
RW - uh, Garnet's SSB (I forgot the name)

I had quite a bit of fun with him, actually. The Cursed Elegy counter-spam was obnoxious, but actually gave the fight a new, different cadence and meant that I built my party waaay differently than normal.
I forgot to even post about Geryon. I forget the details except that I used Sephiroth as a retaliator.

So do you not have the other Mako Might unlocked yet? That Knight's Charge RM is kind of shitty.

Also noticed how Pretty Cecil's swords look the same. That's boring. Drunk Cecil's are all cool and unique.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Jude
So do you not have the other Mako Might unlocked yet? That Knight's Charge RM is kind of shitty.

I like it a lot for fights where I'm gonna be Hasted and hit with lots of AoE. You're right, it's trash.. for single-hit fights, but ones with lots of incidental damage it shines. I do have both Mako Might/Dr. Mog's, though =P Still working on Ramza's second Ace Striker though.

Jude
Also noticed how Pretty Cecil's swords look the same. That's boring. Drunk Cecil's are all cool and unique.

YEAH :< I can't even tell them apart in the menu. SSB sword has 118 atk, SB has 113 but 10 Mind. It's a pretty lame SSB weapon (thankfully the actual SSB is terrific... but not against Geryon).

Also Pulse Kindness was total overkill, as I don't think I even ran out of Curaja. In fact, I barely cast it after Shellga went up the first time (Leila turn 3 or 4). I should have given her Vivi's auto-attack changer.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Knight's Charge is so much better than Mako Might for any soul break that you don't need to immediately cast on round 1.

Geryon took me like five different setups to master, I kept not having the right balance of offense and defense for each of its forms.

Cagnazzo took me only two tries. Lost the first time because I didn't bring enough offense to win before the second Runic wore off. I overestimated how much damage he could do while I was buffed with Runic (I was totally invincible as long as shell was up), and understimated how much damage he could do when Runic wasn't up (he could do 12000 damage through shell + magic breakdown). Went back in with maximum firepower and had no problems. Didn't lose a single medal, in fact.

Spellblade Master and Blood of Espers materia were fantastic against Cagnazzo. They make spellblades and black magic sometimes hit twice, which meant that stopping Tsunami was absolutely no problem.
author=LockeZ
Knight's Charge is so much better than Mako Might for any soul break that you don't need to immediately cast on round 1.

No it's not. You're underestimating how many rounds it takes to generate 500 meter. You need to be hit about 25 times to outpace Mako Might. Ace Striker is only better than Mako Might if you're pairing it with Lifesiphon or Wrath, which Knight's Charge is only half as good as. Craze is using it on a support that can't meet those requirements. Knight's Charge is your absolute last option for meter generation.

Here are your rules of thumb, from best to worst, and assuming you plan on getting your speed medals:

1. Ace Striker with Wrath.
2. Lionheart on a tank with 20+ hits (this position fluctuates).
3. Knight's Charge on a tank with 25+ hits.
3. Ace Striker with Lifesiphon
4. Mako Might
5. Ace Striker with elemental weakness.
6. Ace Striker
7. Knight's Charge on a tank with 20+ hits.
8. Lionheart against AoE
9. Knight's Charge

They're rules of thumb because it depends on how many turns it takes to kill the boss and what abilities you're using. Both Lionheart and Knight's Charge assume that the tank is using offense on most turns. As of Ramza, the only scenario where you'd use Knight's Charge is one where everybody needs meter, the boss doesn't spam party-wide damage, and you aren't bringing a tank. That's rare. I haven't estimated High Scorer because I rarely use the Attack command.

Recently, when I've been able to bring Apocalypse Shield and a Shout RW, it's even better to bring Heroic Stance/Adventurer's Dagger on Sephiroth instead of Ace Striker because the boss dies too soon for SSB-spam, so if your goal is damage rather than meter then Ace Striker might not even be optimal. I still bring Lifesiphon so that I can use Black Materia twice, which is better than once but not better than thrice when factoring lost damage on individual actions. Meter trumps damage for utility purposes, obviously.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Hmm. Looking at the math now. I thought Knight's Charge and Ace Striker gave nearly the same amount of soul gauge, just for doing different things. Nope, they're +25% and +50%.

Looks like, during boss fights that have no trash battles, Knight's Charge beats Mako Might any time you plan to use at least five soul breaks with that character. And Ace Striker beats Knight's Charge any time more than half of your soul gauge is coming from your own actions rather than from being hit.
When are you ever going to use five soul breaks on the same character in a single boss encounter? Three is my maximum before it dies.
I use Knights Charge because I don't have all those other RM unlocked yet T_T
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
My Pecil/Tidus/Sephiroth/Tyro sometimes get ~5 off, but that's normally with Lifesiphon + Ace Striker. I can't remember which Ultimate it was, but one time I had like 6-7 casts of SG just to beat it... thankfully nowadays I'm much better at spreading mitigation and can just use Mako Might on Tyro.

TIME TO GO 0/12 ON FF3 TONIGHT WOOO
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I use Shield Grimoire five times a lot.
Are you guys just never getting your speed medals, then? I use Stoneskin and Black Materia 2-3. And I doubt my gear is that much better than yours. I imagine your speed would improve if you finally honed something and stopped using Launch, Craze. And if LockeZ is killing Cagnazzo in the span of two Runics, then he only needs two Sentinel Grimoire since they have the same duration.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
What else was lightning supposed to use in Geryon fight? Drain Strike was taken and her damage wasn't important enough to use Lifesiphon. Leila could have used Thief Revenge (giving Lightning Dismissal) but it's only 4 uses and she wouldn't get 5 hits. =/
author=Craze
What else was lightning supposed to use in Geryon fight? Drain Strike was taken and her damage wasn't important enough to use Lifesiphon. Leila could have used Thief Revenge (giving Lightning Dismissal) but it's only 4 uses and she wouldn't get 5 hits. =/


Physical abilities without an element that are more powerful than Launch and usable by Lightning: Pound, Barrage, Bonecrusher, Shadowbind, Dismissal, Paralyzing Shot, Quick Hit, and Break Strike.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I nearly always miss a speed medal on ultimate and ultimate+ battles, yeah.

The thing about Sentinel Grimoire's duration is that even though it lasts 25 seconds, I recast it a lot more often. I use Tyro as a healer, so I recast it as soon as I have a turn where Tyro doesn't need to heal, so that I won't get stuck later needing to do both at once. Knight's Charge gives me enough soul gauge to be able to usually use it every third round.

Cagnazzo was an anomaly because of how well Runic protected me, I actually never used Sentinel Grimoire even once. Geryon was a really long fight though and I ended up using Sentinel Grimoire six times actually.
author=LockeZ
Knight's Charge gives me enough soul gauge to be able to usually use it every third round.

That requires Tyro to get hit more than once every turn, which very few bosses are capable of, and certainly not Geryon nor Cagnazzo.

My temptation overpowered my fear of Desch's Gauntlets and I pulled Luneth's Royal Sword. Two successful pulls in a row feels good. Maybe that white mage lucky draw will favor me, and then Kuja 2. Not sure exactly when the soulbreak festival is, but I'll only need to accumulate 30 Mythril until then to do an 11-pull, and hopefully I can get another 50 to cover one of Serah's banners because I've never done an FF13 pull before.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
0/12 as expected ;V

also those 4/5* attacks for lightning aren't R5 and aren't worth it with current orbs available.

edit: when Jude loses, I win. When Jude wins, I lose. Jude stop getting relics on your pulls.
Ultimate+ Bahamut mastery party:



Drunk Cecil was dope against Leviathan, but Bahamut resists everything so I dropped him for this fight.

Bahamut is very straightforward but has very high damage. I'd suggest dual healers, a group cure, self-sustain, or a major regen SSB/RW, or some combination of all of those. Bahamut will hit somebody for like 4.5k damage with his first attack before you can get mitigation up, so enjoy that. Either I'm unlucky or Wing Buffet seems to crit really often, so the damage adds up quickly. Consider using +DEF accessories instead of +ATK ones--I wish I had, because I cut it pretty close at times.

Two scripted Megaflares--you'll figure out the timing pretty quickly. They're easily survived, but it's not rare for him to drop a heavy 2k Flare right afterwards (that's after mitigation). You can probably Magic Blink the Megaflare pretty easily.

Sometime around the second megaflare Bahamut acts twice per turn, so I opted to save my burst for that part. Bartz's Blade Wing was capping at 20k and whatever Luneth's SB is called was tagging Bahamut for about the same with a good chance to interrupt. So, yes, Bahamut is vulnerable to interrupt if you bring a Celerity user.

I just noticed I forgot to swap out Basch's shield after Leviathan--was taking advantage of the +Holy boost on it.

I imagine the damage would be a lot more tolerable if I had gotten Luneth and Ingus up to Level 70+.
author=Craze
What else was lightning supposed to use in Geryon fight? Drain Strike was taken and her damage wasn't important enough to use Lifesiphon. Leila could have used Thief Revenge (giving Lightning Dismissal) but it's only 4 uses and she wouldn't get 5 hits. =/

The difference between a four hit TR and launch is more than double the difference between launch and lifesiphon, so unless your lifesiphon is poorly honed it should be a clear improvement even before considering the heal + extra soul gauge.

The typical low hones of a 5 star ability is usually only a problem when you can't afford to put a damage skill in the other slot.
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
Huh. Garuda has way more defenses than I thought he would have. After I completely burned through my skills, he wrecked me.

Time for some honing and aerora strike making, I guess.