Insane Difficulty: Ecclesiastes' Official Screenshot Topic - Insane Difficulty

For purposes of being able to sporadically post without having double post issues. Or at least, without it being TOO obnoxious. Naturally, anyone and everyone is welcome to post pics.

These are from my prepping for Kefka's Tower. I wanted to lock in my three teams and their equipment, since this mod miraculously provides just enough epics to do so, and it took a while. But I ended up with a few superstars.


I'm loving Cyan. He's immune to Holy/Poison, Halves Fire/Ice/Bolt/Wind, and is weak to Earth/Water(Black Heart)(lolol). Aaaand he's wearing a snazzy Nirvana Band for when he takes breaks from laughing at incoming attacks. Naturally, he's also on Team Refract.

TL;DR Vae Victis.



Gem Box and Death Ward offscreen. Basically, Terra's a bad bitch.


1590HP/474MP. Daryl's Soul and Back Guard. As if a Back Attack is killing him, though.


I'll be very interested to see if Cyan and Setzer ever die.

Lots of stamina-heavy builds, I see.

Wow. You sure do like your defense. I'm interested to see if you can outtank the tower boss. Kefka's tower I remember being stupidly fun though, I used Celes, Relm and who cares about the other people.

Your stam Cyan is beautiful. :') Stamina's kinda low though, so his Dragon isn't as awesome as it could be. Oh well.

Looks like your running Bank (Seraph) Setzer as well. Beautiful.

I mostly neglected Stamina on my first game a long while back, with only Strago/Relm/Gau investing more than a few incidental points. Omega throws out 7k hits when Morphed, so I'm a happy customer. Decided to check it out this time, especially with Terra's new Morph. Ironically, Sabin is a Vigor/HP fighter with a mostly worthless Chakra. Like, MT Tincture with split damage bad.

These are more or less my tanks, with Terra built more for being in the range of Not Immediately Dying While Morphed. That, and I'd rather equip buffs on her than cast them, with the idea that she'd be playing clean-up on randoms. Plus Morph takes a while and I'd rather not sit through it multiple times per fight. Setzer is the RegenX spamming tank on the same team. Cyan is kind of a monstrosity in general when given 20 ELs of Kirin. Celes is also notably bulky, but that's mostly a byproduct of having amazing equipment falling on to her.

EDIT: I went with Kirin to trade some Dragon damage for general safety for some more time fighting instead of healing (Regen, I know), and for stronger Empowerers early on. I'll steal Setzer's Genji Armor and dropping the Black Heart whenever the HP/defenses don't count for anything.

Yes, Setzer is full Seraph. Dice don't need no freaking stats, and he has a few good things to burn MP on.

Ecclesiastes, on 26 July 2016 - 08:33 AM, said:

O_O

Holy good night! 7k damage with a stamina build?!

I'm never playing vig Terra again. Apocalypse can go cry in a corner. I bet even a Unicorn + Carbunkl build would still hit absurd levels of damage with this new Omega!

***

Why do you have the Mutsuno on a stam Cyan? I would imagine you'd want Masamune's +7 stamina for extra Dragon & regen. Your armor & relics aren't necessarily wrong, it just depends on the enemy & your strategy. I really like your Crystal Helm idea (hi, Myria).

Chakra's garbage. Bank Setzer is amazing.

EDIT: For that matter, with this crazy Omega, now I have to try out Kirin Locke. Holy good night...

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 26 July 2016 - 02:03 PM

I'll be real, fam. I was drinking last night, and Shadow ended up with the Masamune in his hands. I also stumbled upon a room in the Ancient Castle I last entered in 1995, assuming my savant 8 year old self discovered it. Wasn't a total wash.

Yeah, my Morphed Terra deals 6.8k-7.3k at full HP with Omega with the posted setup at Lv31. This is with 10 Unicorn/Tritoch for HP/Stam. Coming from 1.4.x where this was a secondary stat stick with modest damage, I'm losing my mind.

Of course, the downside is that if she takes a hit, that damage goes down pretty quick.

Even at 70% HP, Omega's still doing 5k defense-ignoring damage. On top of her absurd regen ticks, great magic, & great HP / MP. (MP & magic assume some Carbunkl levels). Don't forget that Omega's much more easily obtainable than Apocalypse, and none of vig Terra's other weapons even compare.

Just as importantly, Omega ignores defense, Apocalypse doesn't. Kefka's Tower has lots of high defense bosses & randoms. In fact, if Terra goes down path 1, she's forced to only fight bosses that are unfriendly do Apocalypse. Omega? Omega can at least handle everything not named Isis. (Tangentially, Apocalypse only receives a 1.25x boost from Morph b/c of mechanics, but that means little to this argument depending on Apocalypse's damage).

I mean, yeah, I gotta playtest it, but HP / MP / Stam Terra all ready puts mag Terra out of a job. Now she looks to be doing a decent job of putting vig Terra out of a job.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 26 July 2016 - 04:01 PM

i warned you about omega weapon bro

Also slightly more seriously, Kirin Locke is a hilarious damage dealer with an Omega/Valiant combo. Only loses a tiny amount of damage even at 1 hp due to Valiance's "Lost HP added to damage" mechanic and Kirin Locke having an approximately metric fuckton of health to work with.

Vigor Terra's biggest appeal is that she's only fighting one other character for vital gear instead of also Locke and Edgar, but I'm pretty solidly in the "Celes gets Illumina EVERY GODDAMN RUN" group so even then she has trouble.

What kind of damage does the Apocalypse do with vig Terra, just out of curiosity?

Math, (Brief)


It looks fine on paper for a second, but Omega is supposed to be Terra's bulky support build, not her mass damage build. It's way too close to Apocalypse in damage. And if one says "give vig Terra Smoke Bomb support," well why not give Omega Terra Smoke Bomb support?

I'll also reiterate my point that it's not just Omega. vig Te/Ce themselves aren't exactly all that great. If I could trade in Apocyllu in for a Crystal Orb or Minerva, I'd do so most playthroughs.

***

I'm seriously tempted to try out dual-wielding Kirin Locke before something happens to Omega.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 26 July 2016 - 05:07 PM

guys

what if we buffed apocalypse and illumina some more

and maybe figured out some tweaks to make to zantetsuk-

[USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST]

Terra's in sort of an odd place, actually. I figure that, because of morph, the vigor build ends up being sort of safer since - assuming you keep her unmorphed - she takes less damage. Stam Terra should take much more a physical beating due to lower vigor and wanting to always be morphed.

You're severely overestimating how much vigor & stamina affect damage variance. It's a very miniscule effect, excepting some very extreme and/or niche builds. vig Terra lacks the vigor to qualify. You could pack on Genji Shield & Hero Ring, but then she's arguably just an inferior Valiance Locke who took 10 Ramuh & 10 Phoenix (Valiance being defense-ignoring esp. helps Locke's case).

Also, if the battle's important & the potential damage is high, Image support can nullify physical damage.

Lastly, while the design goal for stam Terra is to spam Morph, in practice, she's really HP / MP Terra, more about that raw HP, powerful elementals, & strong healing. This high stamina & this new Omega are just exquisite icings on an all ready delicious & high-quality cake. Morph only comes into play for boss battles, and half the time, Morph Terra wants to use a tier-3, not swing a weapon. HP / MP Terra has the MP to use said tier-3's, so she's all ready won half the battles. (You could game the system & EL reset for Bismark + Phoenix, ignoring Unicorn, but I wouldn't balance something assuming esper reset).

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 26 July 2016 - 06:39 PM

It's more the combination of lower vigor and not wanting to morph all the time I was getting at. Even at max stamina, Terra takes 25% more damage when morphed. So I'm thinking that the way you *play* a vigor build would probably be more defensively, opting to keep her unmorphed while still dealing competitive damage.

Thank you for clarifying.

The problem I'm having with HP/MP/Stam Terra is that she's too versatile. She's good at everything. For any given style of play for Terra, HP/stam Terra is either as good or almost as good as the proper "builds" for said style of play, let alone excelling in the styles she's built for.

Let's take a 7 Unicorn, 7 Carbunkl, 7 Tritoch build:

Bulky Healer? Check. This is stam Terra's speciality.
Defensive Mage? Check. stam Terra's 2nd specialty. Maduin's only giving +1 magic. Raw HP / MP is just as good.
Elemental Hammer? Check. Maduin does little for tier-3's, raw HP & MP is just as good.
Neutral DPS? Check. Morph Omega is great. Image support & ignoring defense means you'll outdo Apocalypse.
Ultima Spam? Check. Maduin's only giving +1 magic. Raw HP / MP is just as good, esp. for a bulkier Morph.
Paladin? Check. unMorph Omega is strong, defense-ignoring, & +12.5% HP; has actual MP for Cure 3 / Life 2.

Vig Terra? She's lost the DPS war. Is she a better Paladin? Not until she gets Apocalypse at the 3/4 point of the game, and even then, it's debatable.

Mag Terra? Morph Tier-3's is more about MP & equipment than actual magic ELs. Break's mainly useful for the Floating Continent, & a few +30 HP ELs is definitely more useful than a few +1 magic ELs then. Ultima is final battle only, and even then, it's debatable if mag Terra's actually "better" at spamming Ultima than Tank Terra.

"Stam" Terra has far too many goodies. The new Omega is more of a final nail in the coffin of Terra's other builds. They basically only exist for flavor right now.

Stam Terra is nice, but she's still built around the concept of using an ability that makes her take more damage so that she can deal more, which is a really tough sell as far as I'm concerned given that it often puts her in OHKO territory. Part of the reason I made Morph affect her healing magic was so that it was not a purely offensive ability.

The other big thing is that the Omega Weapon still has that "damage based on current HP" problem that I think tends to get glossed over a bit more than it should.

funny how the "more damage at low hp" trait on the valiance is usually over-emphasized.

BTB, on 26 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

You're right, and I need to play with this new Omega for myself. My concern is just how big its numbers were, and...

BTB, on 26 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

She's built around the concept, but in practice, Morph is more of an extra gimmick, not the main selling point of HP Terra. I don't know if many people do play her as "Morph often," but in truth, she has no need to Morph anymore often than the other two builds (just boss battles, really). Yet she still turns out much superior to the other two.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 27 July 2016 - 07:39 AM