Insane Difficulty: Ecclesiastes' Official Screenshot Topic - Insane Difficulty

I'm not going to make any guarantees, but I will have an answer as soon as I get home from work.

All I can ask for. Thanks.

To clarify, since I like to post while I'm half-asleep, my playthrough is on the zsnes.

I do indeed have a save/state just before the FC, whichever your preference. What's more, most of the character have all their ELs free.

Terra - 5 Unicorn 4 Bismark
Locke - 10 Ramuh
Strago - 5 Carbunkl 2 Shiva
Everyone Else - No ELs Spent

There's also a Black Heart, 2 Mystery Eggs, 6 Stat Hats, 4 Ghost Rings, 6 Rename Cards, and IIRC no consumables used that aren't currently buyable, if that's at all relevant to your interests. Mog has 7/8 Dances, and Gau has all the Rages pre-IMTRF. I strongly recall beating at least one valid Defender formation, but the bastard never showed up in my farming, so my memory may be faulty. I'll send you my email via PM, and anyone reading this is more than welcome to it.

Thank you. That will work wonderfully. A save, preferably.

So it was easier than I thought it'd be to decide my Statue parties, as I wanted Cyan and to a lesser extent Edgar to test their testicular fortitude against Myria.

I love running into bosses without looking at equipment loadouts. This thing of (mostly) locking in gear is actually quite relieving.


Closest Cyan's come to tasting death so far. S. Cross is a pretty effective check on elemental protection and magic defense, going by Edgar's numbers.


Fire 3. More like Beta Fire AMIRITE.


Aero is even lamer overall. It dealing full damage on Relm is a hassle, though.



The battle was long-ish, ugly punchout full of Cure3/RegenX (Black Heart Cyan being what it is), Sketches for free Flares (single cast Osmose misses enough to be a potential turn sink, and I want to conserve items) 8k Gungnir Throws, Strago spamming Shield/Black Omen/Holy Wind/2x Osmose/2x Shell like some demented Monster Hunter version of Tellah, and Cyan just standing in the front row spamming row-ignoring Dragons like a grandmaster douche. Paragraphs are at least three sentences long. So yeah.

It was an easy enough fight to manage before the Mind Blasts started coming in in full force. Lots of Imp, Poison, and Muddle, one or two cases of Blind, Relm was hit with Stop once (Yay Remedy), and nothing else. Zombie not removing status effects was a pretty heavy blow in recovering momentum, which I never did maintain after my one Unicorn was played. Imp Edgar was half of the Gungnir Throws, dealing 2k per Throw (FU Polarity). Tyrfing was more or less considered a OHKO when it landed, except on Cyan who took like 700-800 damage from the front row with Safe up when it ever got through his Evade, which was much higher than the listed 28% in practice. Edgar would survive, but put him in kill range of any attack not named Aero, and I'm pretty sure he was still within damage variance of that.

Muddled Relm kept painting on Myria, which was more of a brief annoyance than anything, and Muddled Edgar had a great habit of hitting Myria and allies at 0HP. Only once did a Muddled ally actually drop someone; Imp's damage penalty was VERY helpful throughout the battle in this regard.

Edgar countering as an Imp landed the killing blow. He and Cyan probably dealt half their damage though counters.





THIS GUY.


Shout out to Edgar and his 8k Gungnirs. Unicorn and Remedy were assets as well.



Looking at my menus, Cyan and Relm have three spare ELs, and Edgar/Relm have one. Celes has 3 ELs, Sabin has 2, Locke/Shadow have 1, and Team 1 actually have their surplus allocated. Mostly because they're mostly still sitting at 19/20. My laissez-faire approach to playing this final dungeon is causing these miserable psychos to hide their powerlevel. Final Fantasy VI confirmed for best corridor shooter.

8k Gungnirs are pretty impressive... what kind of build does Edgar have?

10 Golem 10 Palidor. Fairly comfy setup.

What kind of Chainsaw damage is he doing with that setup, just out of curiosity?

(Bearing in mind that swapping the Gungnir for a Sword and Shield would bump it up significantly)

Swapping Gungnir for Excalibur/Genji Shield has Chainsaw dealing just over 6k on Myria.

...which is peculiar, as using Chainsaw with Gungnir deals less than 4k. Is there some epic benchmark with Vigor in the 70s? Unless I'm hitting other criteria with swapping out Sprint Shoes for various stat blocker relics, it seems reaching 73 Vigor is producing a ridiculous boost to Chainsaw.

Sounds like a job for Funnyman >.>

See: Next Post

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 31 July 2016 - 09:07 AM

Numbers from 1.7.4 beta (save file copied from 1.7.0).

http://pastebin.com/KS3drB4A

Nvm, things look good. Testing 1.6.0, things look fine there: Level 31/23 vig Edgar with 93 vigor only hits for 4.5k damage. As expected.

That still doesn't explain what's happening with Ecclesiastes though, unless Edgar was berserked. He doesn't have the levels or vigor to hit 6k with Chainsaw, and Myria doesn't turn her back for a back attack. I've seen Chainsaw hit 5.5k before, but I think last I saw that, Edgar was high leveled & Chainsaw was still 255 BPow.

Ecclesiastes, you sure Edgar wasn't berserked for that 6k Chainsaw? Berserk would give those kinda numbers. If not, I blame FFVI's wonky mechanics & this being a back attack. We've all ready seen back attacks / pincer attacks mess auto-crit MP usage before.

EDIT: Ecclesiastes, how is your 70 vigor Edgar even hitting 4k? A Lvl.30 Edgar should need roughly 85 vigor for that?

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 31 July 2016 - 09:27 AM

My Chainsaws were the first couple of attacks in the Myria battle, done multiple timeas, so he wasn't berserk. The damage increase occurs with 73 Vigor, getting the +3 from a stat blocker. +2 stat blockers offer a negligible increase. Amping out on Vig gear doesn't create a jump like that 73.

The chainsaw setup is exactly the same as posted in the Myria pics, trading Sprint Shoes for a stat blocker. This was done with various Vigor relics, all with the same increase once 73 was reached.

As for the 70 Vigor hitting 4k, I have no idea. Cyan was hitting like 3.8k with his counters, so it fell under the radar.

Do you also get an increase at 74+ vigor, or is it just 73? Honestly, I have no idea what's going on, but I don't disbelieve you. FFVI's mechanics are wonky. Probably ask Think or Synchysi.

Maybe something funky is going on with is being a back attack? This version is the first to allow defense-ignoring moves to receive damage multipliers from things like back / pincer attacks. Maybe something else funky is going on with it? (Wasn't my issue with auto-crit using up 100+ MP also an issue with pincers / back attacks?).

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 31 July 2016 - 02:57 PM

There were marginal increases with other stat differences, going into 80+ Vigor, but no notable damage jumps ocurred. Specifically, going past 72 Vigor is where 4.xk becomes 6.xk.

If a back attack were happening, it'd be incredibly weird, as the boss is one side of the field, and absolutely no physicals had any variance outside of damage range, Row change, and Imp status in the actual fight. Still, I've seen some stuff with FFIIIus.

Yeah, something's funky going on, and I can't say that it's only your ROM, as I still think I've seen something like it before for many previous versions now. Haven't been able to reproduce it, but it's not unfamiliar.

This issue is beyond me.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 31 July 2016 - 03:57 PM

Okay, now that Team In is off getting wasted on top of the mountain, it's time for A Tale of Two Fillers.

Turns out, Gau is pretty sexy support. Of course, at 88 Speed, he could be mediocre and still put in the work. Behold as I performed one of the verboten equipment adjustments and gave him a Bone Club just before going into a support role(more on that). Hell awaits me, I'm sure.





So my first run against Asura was going well enough before I stopped caring about counters and got overwhelmed. Fenrir was a great early boost, even if Cerberus wholly failed on maintaining Image. Like at all. Mog spent his time Jumping for middling damage, and while Setzer was boss as usual, he was essentially playing clutch for two part time healers/part time damage dealers. I blame not keeping a healer on standby, which is a good idea when gradually putting in the damage, but I'm not joking when I make snide comments about going in guns blazing. I know how to set up characters and teams, and there are methods to my madness - I think. I just seem to make a point of doing things as simply and stupidly as possible in practice, and outright counter productive as with that lovely Bone Club. I kinda feel bad about it, as it seems like I'm trying to belittle all the hard work that went into this mod. But eh, 'Murica.

Rolled this lovely set of Dice. 6/5/6 at this level is a clean 9999.


I lose Float on most of my crew, I neglect it, Magnitude hits me at a bad time, and I wipe. Most of my boss fights have been first attempt victories, and most of my failures were going after Dragons with like 800HP and not knowing the LLG pro strats, so this is irritating, especially because it was straight up my own damn fault. Seriously, this screen will never fail to take the wind out of my sails.


Mog undergoes the dark ritual and gets an Iceguard in return for his soul(party setup shot was taken just after the battle). Terra changes her Esper to Phoenix which goes unused, and keeps her Gem Box because the revolution will not be intellectually sound, dammit.


Round 2 is taken a little more seriously, trading Cerberus for Witch - still with a Bone Club. Refract is great, and Fire 3 is a decent attack averaging around 3k. Terra deals over 5.5k anytime she's over 1000HP, and she's usually close to max meaning her damage is basically never suffering. Setzer uses RegenX when more than a couple of people get his by Dispel, and heals mostly through failed Slots. Mog spends a lot of time in Wind Song for Sun Bath, which heals for a good bit and unfreezes people, most importantly Gau/Terra. There were a few rough patches with Gau insta-dying due to using Fire 3 right out of the gate rather than Refracting while I healed/buffed, but Terra's 2MP Cure healed over 400 to everyone, which nearly undoes a random Tsunami. Terra and Setzer didn't die at all the second attempt.

Loc-Nar deals roughly 800 to Morphed front row Terra, provided Refract and her Evade don't catch it. This didn't happen more than twice, and a point was made to always be attacking with her ASAP. I could've been dealing an extra thousand or so per Fight with Bserk, but I wanted the ability to delay an attack while she got healed or she needed to heal. I was already babysitting Gau's chance of Fire 3 and Mog's fairly high chance of not using Sun Bath, and I didn't want to add Terra to the list of moody brats in Setzer's care. Incidentally, Mog and Setzer spend a lot of the last third of the battle hanging in Defend while Regen and Refract keep everyone out of kill range, and Mog was only brought out to use Sun Bath. Got into a real groove by the end, but an undetermined amount of that comfort rested in the hands of Gau spamming Refract like a good boy, which he did.

Gotta post this random summon of the most badass of summons.


Standard death shot.




Time to get ready for Isis. I remember having a lot of "fun" with this boss.

You could've used Earth Blues for the extra Avalanche damage. >_> Also, nice Gau strategy.

As if I'd do something smart like that. I will admit I've done a poor job of being familiar with Dance/Rage, compared to when I was a scholar of the skills my first run of BNW.

Isis completely wrecked me on two attempts. Major props to making the pincer formation a liability, however incidental it may be. This is a tricky party to be dealing with Love Token, I tell you what. No screenshots of the fight this time because the gratuitous violence would probably breach ToS. So, BONUS FLASHBACK EDITION.


Can't go wrong with Underwater Alexander.



Gau took 0 damage from this elemental Lance, and proceeded to not run away. Which is great, because I was sure Mog had just screwed me out of a Dragon rage.



Damn, was this scene fun.

Ecclesiastes, on 03 August 2016 - 10:48 PM, said:

Terra was originally... much more threatening right here since I rewrote the scene to match the character actions >.>