Insane Difficulty: worst summon - Insane Difficulty

multiple votes allowed. can you tell that i'm supposed to be working?

edit: this may be broken hang on.

edit2: only 20 choices are allowed per question. and you must vote in each question to vote in any. so vote blank if you don't want to vote in the other question.

Voted Phantom & Siren. Considered voting Terrato & Alexander, but the other two are worse.

...Whose the joker who voted Golem?

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 30 August 2016 - 09:31 AM

thzfunnymzn, on 30 August 2016 - 09:30 AM, said:

Technically speaking, it would be Ramuh, since it's eventually completely outclassed by Bolt 3.

At least it has a timeframe where it's useful, though. Palidor? Trash from the word go. Jump just isn't a good command in general, requiring multiple pieces of unique equipment to be viable. Making other Vigor builds use it just hurts their DPS, let alone making a rod-less mage try to be physical for a turn.

Julford, on 30 August 2016 - 06:33 PM, said:

The point of Palidor is not to necessarily do damage, it's to avoid damage. You know how some of those bosses use periodic super attacks that can screw you over? Palidor can actually avoid that if you time it correctly. While you can argue that you could use reraise or just have barrier, it's a good way to avoid damage and retaliate with damage.

It's actually one of the ways people used to beat Kefka's tower. Use Palidor to jump and avoid the Ultima.

BTB, on 30 August 2016 - 04:20 PM, said:

Not really. As i showed in my recent playthrough, Ramuh, Ifrit, & Shiva can all be used to hammer Number 024 for 2k+ or 3k+ damage. Bolt 3, otoh, only really has some easy endgame bosses to boast, its possible that Celes will never get the chance to really use Bolt 3 (learns to late, wrong team for Kefka's Tower), & its the most expensive of the tier-3's. Ramuh could also slay the IAF, & I've used Ifrit on a spd Relm to help wreck the Narshe randoms. If that's still not enough, just lower their MP cost to 36; now they're useful even when you have the tier-3's.

Terrato & Alexandr, now, there the argument works well. Especially Terrato.

Augestein, on 30 August 2016 - 07:42 PM, said:

Problem is that it's the most niche way to tank super attacks. For LLGs & challenge runs, sure, but that's it. Otherwise, learning the timing of a bosses' super attack is far more of a hassle than just finding the right elemental protection, casting Shell / Reflect, or bulking up with HP. It's also only a one-time shot.

Kinda liked Palidor when it was a multi-target physical. Dragoon build's weaknesses held it back, but it at least made sense then.

Augestein, on 30 August 2016 - 07:42 PM, said:

Can you ... can you avoid Fallen One this way?

The first fallen one, I'm pretty sure, is unavoidable and the rest you can't really time because he doesn't give a cue to when he's gonna do Fallen One.

Lolwayup, on 01 September 2016 - 09:11 AM, said:

He kinda does.

Ehh, any cue Kefka gives for Fallen One is pretty subtle. But worse than that, Palidor's way of dodging Fallen One would trigger one or more counterattacks from Kefka, and in such a situation that you may be unable to recover. So, again, ultra niche way to dodge an attack; not worthwhile outside of specialized LLG or w/e situations.

You also could only dodge one Fallen One since you can only summon the Esper once (Unlimited if you brought Setzer and can time and get lucky with BarBarBar)

In terms of spells learned, my vote goes to Alexandr.

I have never manually casted Holy ever; Celes has the Illumina proc and I don't think I've ever wanted Cyan to cast Holy over, say, using his physical attacks/Bushido. And I know I've never bothered with Demi/Quartr, I've personally never liked fractional damage and I can probably count the number of times I've used them on a single hand. Most enemies that are vulnerable to it aren't worth the MP cost, have little enough HP where it won't do much, or have better and more efficient ways of being dealt with. The HP EL is alright for Tank Cyan, but I prefer my Celes going HP/MP ELs for a more balanced/mixed build when I want her to be defensive support.

In terms of actual Summon ability, though? Madiun, no contest. Air is a pretty lackluster element as-is since it never hits a weakness, Terra has Break for single target air nuke and Storm for AoE (and there aren't many enemies that resist air and water that can't be taken out in easier fashion), and Mog has a ton of other, better things to do with his time than dump his MP on a single cast. Dance dance moogle time, y'know?

Then again, I'm not a particularly big fan of the "hit everything with X element" summons in general. Too costly early on, too irrelevant later on, no particularly singular place for them to shine. Such is the fate of one-time use abilities, I guess.

The behemoth enemies in kefka's tower can be quartered, it's useful for at least those battles to speed things up a bit.

Does queuing attacks while Palidor is being summoned still allow them to be executed upon landing? Because if that's still the case, you aren't even really sacrificing characters' turns to get the damage from their Jump. Considering that the person summoning it might not have much use for their MP and can be decked out as a Dragoon, it can be more potent than using Jump if used correctly. If you don't like Jump already that's fair enough, but for a Dragoon build I still think it's useful (unless the enemy has a threatening counterattack, in which case you're just exposing the others to damage).

I voted Terrato. It's hard to compare since I don't remember exactly how strong it is, but I feel like Sabin and Mog can't use it that effectively over their other options.

I don't really summon Espers often though, except the obvious ones like Golem, so IDK.

I know it works in vanilla, but I don't know if it works in BNW due to natb. It probably can work in an earlier version (whichever version didn't have natb patched to the game already.)

Terrato has 180 BPow, vs. Quake's 48 defense-ignoring (roughly equivalent to 120 normal). Magic based, so Sabin cannot use it effectively. Mog's X-Break is roughly as strong as Terrato.

An idea for Palidor is to change it to an assured double Jump for the dragoons. Not amazing or anything, but it's at least a somewhat useful opening attack for boss fights (or hard randoms, I guess). Still, competing with Golem (Edgar) is hard.

thzfunnymzn, on 05 September 2016 - 03:42 AM, said:

Yeah, that was my guess as to how it works out. Sage Stone Mog can't even summon it, which leaves its only niche on a Magic Mog that doesn't use the Sage Stone.