Character Suggestions

[Vaylen 11]

Hey hey people, Vaylen here.
Just some mostly small suggestions to improve balance or make a character or two more fun. Feel free to comment!

 

Setzer

Spell Selection

Not a totally necessary change, but I'd like to Dark somewhere in his toolkit. Offensively, his spell selection caps out really early. I have not used a magically built Setzer a whole lot - and honestly, I see little reason to due to how powerful GP Toss is. I wouldn't be opposed to straight up give him access to Odin. The spells are straight upgrades to the stuff he has access to and the EL Bonus, Equip effect and Summon are all desirable - however, his other Esper options are still very real contenders, in my opinion.
To remove redundancy, I'd change Starlet's EL Bonus from +2 Stamina to +1 Stamina&+1 Magic. I'm sure Relm wouldn't mind that.

Slots

While they are not terribly difficujlt to use, they certainly require a lot more work than other abilities. I'd propose to make it a bit easier to get the result you aim for - maybe slowing down the slots by just a little bit.

GP Toss

GP Toss is REALLY powerful, even with just a moderate investment into Stamina. As Setzer is slow, a powerful option like this is par for the course, but I'd suggest a small nerf to its damage output/scaling.

Weapons

I find most of Setzers weapons pretty lacking. Normal Dice deal very little damage, most of the time. Most of his other Casino weapons simply do not have enough power or utility to be of much use. Fixed Dice is pretty decent, but that's about it. I usually run stuff like Switchblade just as stat sticks over any of his unique weapons and I find that to be kind of a shame.

There are many ways to make his arsenal more interesting. Making them proc weapons that proc status or situational spells would be interesting - like Demi, Imp, Mute or Poison. Another idea would be tune them around ignoring Defense - it's a strong, unique property that, if properly tuned, would not be flat overpowered. I am sure there are more ideas for this and I'd really like to see some work done on this front.

Strago

Defence

I know that he is meant to be squishy, but I find his magical defence just a little bit lacking. 5-10 more mdef on some of his armors would help out greatly.

X-Strago

X-Dark hits extremely hard. Strago has a rather easy time to reach insanely high Magic - mine is currently sitting at around 100 magic by endgame. While this is certainly cool - and he is damn slow and squishy to compensate - I think a small nerf is in order.

Relm

Defence

Similar to Strago, I find her magical defence just a little bit too low and would suggest the same buff as to Strago.

World of Balance

Relm is pretty weak early on, mainly due to her lack of elemental coverage. I'd be happy to see another mid-tier Spell added to her early arsenal. As the spell would probably end up on Zoneseek, this could end up being a sizeable buff to Strago(as X-Strago gets a lot of mileage out of extra coverage). This may be deemed acceptable coupled with the Strago nerf. If not, one could go for an overlapping spell - Ice 2, for example. Optimally, I'd like to add Bolt 2 or Bolt 1 to Relm.

Sketch

Sketch is a bit of a weirld ability, but it usually performs pretty well. I'd like for Sketch to be a bit more useful in most Boss battles - giving Relm a specific utility that is useful in the Boss Battle at hand. As I don't know all the sketch results on bosses, I cannot give specific suggestions here. Nonetheless, I think this is a suggestions worth mentioning.

Sabin

Early/Mid WoR Power:

I found Sabin insanely powerful for this part of the game. His Elemental Claws seriously fuck most enemies up around here - between Ocean and Hell Claw, Sabin can hit weaknesses very often and if he does, he does too much damage, in my opinion. I'd tune the Battle Power of the aforementioned claws down a bit.

Mana Battery and Chakra

This regards both Edgar and Sabin. Even with investment in their respective scaling stats, I found those MP restoration moves to be a bit underwhelming. There are nice for saving on Tinctures, but that's about it. While I think their base values are fine, they should scale a bit harder with Stamina/Magic investment, in my opinion.

Cyan

Esper Selection

While I found Cyan to be quite powerful - maybe a too powerful on a Vigor build - his Esper selection is a bit... unfulfilling. I like to use Crusader, but this is certainly not an Esper to have equipped in every battle. Kirin is very underwhelming and Bismark is just a bit... boring, I guess? Though, certainly situationally useful.
This is not a power concern, but more of a "feel-good" thing - it'd be nice if one of his options would be buffed just a bit to have an effect he actually cares about.

Terra

Power

Terra feels very powerful. Thanks to Morph, great equipment and great spell selection, she reaches high damage numbers without any meaningful investment into Magic ELs. Come lategame and this is even more accentuated due to things like Gem Box and Ragnarok. Despite Morphs downside, she also has an easy time to become really tanky, as she has solid HP options and Armor available

In that sense, I'd suggest some straight nerfs. To reign in her lategame, I'd change the equip bonus on Ragnarok to something else. That means you'd actually have to equip the scarcely available Crystal Orb on her to get the big damage bonus.
As a lot of her power comes from Equipment and shared Espers, it's difficult to nerf her without collateral, so I suggest directly targeting her base stats - base Magic and Base Mdef specifically.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Vaylen

[thzfunnymzn 87]

Terra

Non-mage builds reaching very high numbers has been a constant complain ever since early versions of the game. Honestly, the main way to restrain it would be to fiddle with the internals of how elemental damage is calculated. Make it work like all other multipliers in the game, instead of being it's own unique x2 multiplier. At first glance, +100% seems to do the same thing as x2, but it would mean that elemental damage doesn't stack as strongly with other multipliers. Yes, Morph tier-3's would still do great damage, but Terra's non-mage builds could no longer hope to hit 9999. Also advocate for changing Maduin to Stam +2, Tritoch to MP +20 / Mag +1.

Not really sold on the Ragnarok changes. Sure, it's a free boost to Ultima, but it also competes with Phoenix (HP+25%), and Terra's got other big damage options in Apocalypse or Excalibur. That, and knowing Terra can equip Ragnarok frees one up to put the Crystal Orbs elsewhere (like Relm).

Chakra and Battery

Saving Tinctures / Ethers is nice if you're guzzling MP. IIRC, you're X-Mages especially burn MP quickly. Terra and Relm also burn it quickly. Yeah, Relm's got big MP and Osmose, but it's still nice. That said, last I played, HP Sabin's Chakra managed to support a whole mage team rather fine. But ... I'm trying to put together a mod that fiddles with stamina in other way, so I wouldn't advocate for fiddling with its formula.

Sabin

Yeah, Sabin really is the main character of FFVI. vig Sabin's just kinda awesome all the way up until the very late game, when Bum Rush and his low defense can no longer keep up. I think the original design was that lategame Sabin would use Mirage Vest, granting auto-Haste to make up for Bum Rush falling off. But, Mirage Vest was never given the Vig+7 and was instead made into a vest for everyone, so, eh.

Cyan

No comment on esper equips. If he feels too powerful, could always have his base speed dropped back down to 24.

Setzer

Agreed on GP Toss being quite powerful. Also agreed on Slots being exceptional in how difficult they are to nail. Not agreeing on Dark access, but ...

One idea in a similar vein would be to give Setzer access to Sage Stone, buff up Poison's power a bit (72 BPow?), and just re-randomize Slots? X-Poison would hit like a Flare (but with Setzer's low, low magic), you could open a boss fight with Sap while still getting to do something else that turn, etc. Though X-Magic with all that healing is scary, and I'm afraid some people might use X-Mage Setzer as an excuse to take away Sage Stone from Mog.

Aside from that, Setzer's casino weapons have always been iffy. They've been revamped multiple times throughout the versions. I think one person mathed out that Dice could be decent mid-game filler if the exact statistics were modified a bit, but I think it never came to fruition. Otherwise, historically, X-Fight for Setzer is mostly about using the knives, or rolling Fixed Dice.

If Starlet were to change, it'd probably be to Spd +1 / Stam +1. The main resistance you'll get to any Starlet change is defending stam Setzer and stam Relm. I've always been of the opinion that the latter is a meme build (kill Shadow? really?), and I'm not sure Wind Breaker has changed my mind. But others do seem to like her, and won't buy a change to Starlet. It's ... not theoretically bad, but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue for it without also addressing stam Setzer and stam Relm as a whole.

Strago

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, and HECK NO!! I did not fight for so long to give Strago a proper dps move just to have it nerfed back into being "not really any better than Black Omen"!

... I'm not actually mad at you, I just have a flair for the dramatic.

X-Dark does hit really hard, but if it didn't, it's dps doesn't really come out any better than Black Omen, due to Black Omen's potential for higher speed (lower command delay, free relic slot), including something like pairing Black Omen with Black Belt Punisher strats. (Last I checked, counterattack works with Refract up). IIRC, 72 BPow was about where X-Dark and Black Omen came out to be roughly the same, which means 72 BPow Dark is mostly there for nailing the White Dragon.

Also, like with mag Celes, mag Strago's Black Omen is good, but it's not "exceptional damage dealer" strong. Comparable to Bum Rush without a Crystal Orb, and Crystal Orbs are rare; IIRC, only one is guaranteed, and Relm's rather greedy for it. So, Black Omen's solid for a character that has other things going for him, which Strago can do. Equip him for raw speed, preferably pair him with some front-row fighters, and Strago provides nice Safe, Shell, Refract, and Holy Wind utility, while also doing good damage with Black Omen. Good, just not "main damage dealer", which is strange on a character whose basically the magical parallel to Cyan.

I guess you could argue that X-Dark's concentrating that power into one move, with the benefits that provides in combat (like drawing less counterattacks). But I'd also still argue that Relm takes priority for the guaranteed Crystal Orb. Though I guess you could counter-argue that X-Dark takes priority over mag Celes, X-Mog, or Setzer, the only other people fighting over a Crystal Orb. Though I'd still counter-argue that X-Dark is competing with a spd stacked support Strago, so it kinda wants to do high damage.

... (To be fair, a lot of my argument basically revolves around how useful it is to stack speed on Strago, and Black Omen is more amenable to that than X-Dark. 90 BPow on Dark is to insure that "slow artillery" Strago actually has a place in the game. I guess you could just argue that Strago shouldn't have so much speed access)

Relm

For the Floating Continent, I think the main draw is that she sketches Flare on Atma, while also having those nice elemental rods. (The elemental rods basically are Fire 2, Ice 2, and Bolt 2). So she's a surprisingly good damage dealer in the FC. She ain't no Sabin, but who is? Also, in theory, she's a high speed character with Warp, allowing you to "nope" any fight in the FC you don't like. In practice, you just buy Warp Whistles for that, making the Warp spell useless.