Insane Difficulty: Mishrak - Viewing Profile - Insane Difficulty

Nowea, on 24 April 2017 - 10:33 PM, said:

He means 1.8.4 and 1.8.5 respectively.

Relm, Mog, Gogo and Strago all swing rods pretty well.

The Rage multipliers do affect Rod damage and procs (like Dragon for example).

Relm is fast and gets great magic, so she's a good option.

Mog is pretty tanky and does a nice job himself.

Gogo has Rage Multipliers and does very nice damage with them.

Strago of course has crazy magic, and can still be pretty speedy despite his old-man status.

BTB, on 23 March 2017 - 09:42 AM, said:

So I'll make the case that she actually is probably the best support character in the game because of Runic.

Runic is one of the strongest magic mitigating abilities, period and is relevant all the way until the end of the game. It's even still extremely useful for Kefka. Her speed builds are especially potent users of Runic because she can basically have a 100% uptime. This is why I feel like Crusader is her best support build. While Siren can have the same result with Runic, she wants to be casting offensively rather than focusing on Runic.

That doesn't include all of her amazing support abilities and spell options.


On the topic of Phantom Celes, I will argue that you're rather better off taking Ramuh and Crusader if you want to go that route. If you split the EL's decently, you're looking at 20 Vigor, 10 Speed 10 Stamina, versus 20 Vigor 20 Stamina. The speed is far more significant in a supportive role than the extra Stamina. This is even more important if you want to take Seraph or Alexandr levels, because you'll never really get enough of Stamina or Vigor from EL to have a noticeable impact on incoming damage. It's outright just better to focus your EL down one path than it is to mix them.

Merton is a slippery slope. On one hand it has a really high mpow. On the other it respects defense and hits two elements, which means it's quite resistable. Add to that the fact that it hits both sides and it becomes a spell that's hard to use.

If you buff it, by making it defense ignoring or increasing the pow, it goes from borderline useful to god tier magic spell like Ultima. Ultima only works because you get it at the very end. Merton is gated pretty late, but not /that/ late and an experienced player could kill White-d first. So it is rather underwhelming but I think this is partly because defenses are as high as they are on the end game bosses.

Those (both mdef and pdef) are coming down in 1.8.5. This is also why vigor builds struggle to keep up late. Defenses are too high and favor defense ignoring stuff too much.

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Ramuh + Alex is nice. Really wants Bserk. Consider using a Zantetusken or Wing Edges. Oath Veil + Ele swords for weaknesses. And ofc Illumina for smashing things.

Pure Crusader is a very support oriented role that utilizes full uptime Runic and support spells. The big heal is Remedy. Shock is fueled by Stamina but is mostly a random clearer. Omega Weapon is also respectfully damaging, esp w/ Bserk. She'll never hit Terra levels of damage per hit but she's way faster.

Hapanpappa, on 23 March 2017 - 03:25 AM, said:

I realized I never actually addressed this.

While nearly all builds are equally viable, not all builds are equal in performance relative to other characters. That's really just the way it is. Some of it is by design, some of it is by technical limitations. But overall every character excels at something that others don't. If you're the type of player who wants the best build for each character than some stuff isn't going to line up. When you build teams to synergize and shore up weaknesses of builds, that's when some of the less obvious builds start to shine.