thzfunnymzn

artemi, if this is about getting information on 1.9 Mog: I also play slow, so I'm willing to wait to hear on your feedback.

Stamina Sketch has been discussed many times before, and has been rejected each time. Main problem is that, come the WoR, Sketch doesn't do too much that Flare & Meteor can't do, except save on MP. And even that one is questionable, since a lot of enemies have bad Sketches. I pitched having caster's magic/stamina affect the strength of buffs/debuffs before. It was rejected because it would be impossible to code. Dunno if "check user's stamina for accuracy" is impossible to code, but I'm betting it probably is.

You can still use Forest Suite & Earth Blues as solid healing / magical damage dances. He won't be the best healer, but it's free, it takes pressure of your main healer, and you have your choice of either a really powerful attack (Earth Blues) or an added Remedy effect (Forest Suite). Just stop trying to use him as a solo / primary healer.

Spitballs for Setzer: Seraph: Random low % chance to cast Magic (but not Summon) for free. Shoat: Random low % chance that any Slots command will also follow up with a random esper summon. Starlet: Random low % chance that GP Rain will be used for free.

With stamina affecting several unique character mechanics, Cover/Counter, and status evade, I'd say that stamina does have as much an impact on the game as vigor, magic, and speed. It's mostly Strago & Relm who don't make good use of stamina. They are poor candidates for Cover/Counter. They also either lack unique mechanics for stamina (Strago) or said mechanics aren't of major importance (Relm). Characters like Sabin or Mog may or may not make the best use of stamina, but that's less of a "stamina is a useless stat" problem and more of a "individual character balance" problem.

IMO, from a balance perspective, stamina needs to be catch-all in order to keep up with the other stats (vigor, magic, speed). For Cover specifically, that's a defensive strategy, so it's logical for the defensive stamina builds to be better at covering the party. I'm apathetic to counter keying off of stamina though. I wouldn't mind stamina affecting both magical damage variance and physical damage variance. It seems more intuitive than "stamina for magical damage, vigor for physical damage."

Idea: Shiva Strago Ignores Elemental Resistance (iow, elemental attacks always do at least neutral damage) Magic/Lore has a 25% chance of an extra Poison proc (X-Magic would have two chances for an extra proc) Odin Strago Resist: Poison damage. (Not status, but element. Poison chosen to avoid abusive resist stacking with Black Heart)

Please put everything into one topic. I will answer your other questions here. The Drill is bought in South Figaro. The mystery egg is something you'll have to PM the creators about. The Rage Belt acts as a Power Glove for Gau. For stamina, IMO, the major things it does is provide a higher status evade rate; raise the counter/cover rate; and occasionally strengthen an attack, heal, or unique character mechanic. The magic defense portion of stamina & the physical defense portion of vigor are insignificant. Regen ticks are strengthened just as much by HP levels as by stamina, with HP also providing a higher maximum HP to boot. Weakening poison/sap ticks, IMO, is more of a nice extra rather than any significant benefit. I should also mention that, of the 3 significant things that stamina does, only the status evade is truly universal. Not all characters have a stamina-based attack, heal, or unique mechanic to use. Also, not every character is in a position to actually use counter or cover. Also, the base counterattack rate is all ready ~50%, and the strength of counterattacks depends off of vigor. Stamina provides a lot of little stuff, certainly, but for some characters, all of those little things either don't add up to anything important and/or their basic character design just doesn't get a lot of use out of lots of stamina (excepting status evade). For example, see: stamina on Strago or Relm. (Though others will contest me on that point).

IIRC, it's possible to program the game to understand how many of each esper has been taken. But to give it advanced logic in understanding build complexity, or even just moderate logic? Ain't happenin'. And a look-up tables of pre-defined builds & hybrids is another form of restricting the free form system. After all, whose to say that those of use deciding on the pre-defined builds to be used know all possibilities? Therefore, I believe we'll just end up with a simple class that simply states which esper you've taken the most of. As for how that won't interfere with the free form system, again, I think the only way is to make sure bonuses are small and fairly universal in nature. For example, you'll notice for Phoenix Terra, I simply put up the idea of "No delay on Fight command, Reduced or no delay on Magic command." Just about any Terra build that takes primarily Phoenix will benefit from this, yet its still specific enough to be tailored to why someone would take heavy Phoenix. So it works for all possible builds involving Phoenix and, in theory, non-Phoenix builds will still be possible because the Phoenix bonus doesn't work as well for non-Phoenix builds. Course, deciding on two types of bonuses like that for each possibility is a lot of work & theorycrafting.

Thing with hybrids is that, IIRC, there's not going to be a way to code the game to understand a hybrid build. Golem + Stray on Sabin? The game will only understand "More Golem levels, so it's a Golem build." So, in this case, we have to select bonuses for the Golem build that not only work for the pure Golem build, but also for a Golem + Stray hybrid. One positive, one negative, while it sounds like an interesting way to prevent power creep, I'm worried will violate the "don't ruin the free form nature of builds." If a Golem Sabin gets on positive and one negative, that one negative may be fine for a pure Golem Sabin, but it will adversely affect the hybrid build. For your example, you'd be locking Maduin Terra into a "frail mage" set-up, even though Maduin + Phoenix is a real possibility for a more bulky mage set-up.

I'm definitely in the camp of minor, flavorful buffs. Enough to help further differentiate builds, but not enough to seriously buff characters. The major areas where I introduced major buffs were on builds / classes I felt are mediocre. Which...actually is probably better handled by first fixing said build / class without resorting to class bonuses. That way, the class bonus can be kept as something small & simple yet meaningful & flavorful. So, stam Relm could just get Brush Cover without resorting to class bonuses, with her class bonuses focused more towards some minor extra stuff. And I am most definitely in the camp of not destroying the existing free form system. You'll also notice that, for character like Terra & Celes, who have a huge amount of possible builds, I try to keep the class bonuses fairly generic. Stuff that would contribute to all builds, yet is still unique between different "classes." This plus keeping buffs minor shouldn't interfere with the free form system, but still provide some meaningful stuff via classes.

pogeymanz & BTB, I'll keep those things in mind. As it currently stands, Carbunkl Terra has the greatest ability to spam tier-3's. Not saying its the best thing in the world, but if you're giving Ifrit Locke something...

Spitballing Gau Ideas: Beastmaster: Controllable Rage. Gau doesn't fly into a berserker frenzy when selecting Rage. You still cannot switch Rages. When you hit "Rage" again, you just trigger the next attack in the Rage you all ready selected. Green Cherry is still needed to allow switching Rage again. This bonus allows Gau access to spot healing (Item/Regen) and some buffs/debuffs (HasteX) while Raging. Berserker: Rage Counterattack. Gau now counterattacks with his actual Rage command, instead of his measly Fight. Still subject to 2/3 and 1/3 odds for the two attacks. Being on the non-stamina Gau helps control the power of this bonus. ************ Unfortunately, both these ideas are powerful & game-changing, which is something I tried to avoid with my suggestions. Rage Counterattack is definitely op with Rage as it currently is (see: Hurtmore counterattack). Still, it's another idea on the table. EDIT: Last idea for determining class is to just do a straight "Whichever esper has the most ELs, that's your class. If two espers are tied, whichever one got there first determines class." Boom, simple. Flows perfectly with the mechanics, doesn't arbitrarily punish or reward certain builds, doesn't require any new events.

OK, rough draft of class ideas in. Every class gets two bonuses. Before we start, may I point out that "No class until 10 in a given esper" is....not the best idea for BNW? Some classes gain 10 in a given esper early (vig Sabin), while other classes will take a while to get 10 in a given esper (healer/mage Terra). This hurts the fluidity of builds, forcing the player to aim straight for 10 in one esper to get their bonus before branching out, even though that's rarely a wise idea. More appropriately, I'd say that For WoB, 5 in any given esper qualifies as a class For mid-WoR, ? in any given esper qualifies as a class (somewhere between 5-10) For end-WoR, 10-12 in a given esper qualifies as a class What exact formula / mechanic / programming is used is up for debate. I'm giving a rough estimate. You really need class to take into account the ratio of any given esper to the total amount of ELs taken. That way, you're not "forced" to take 10 of single esper early, since the game will generally reward you with a class just for taking your natural specialization. That said: One thing I notice a lot is that a lot of "Quickcast: Such and Such Spell" seems arbitrarily assigned. I know it's an easy bonus to give out, but don't do it. A lot of these builds have no purpose of quickcasting the spell that you've assigned to them. Also, for class bonuses, you want to expand the character, open up options, or provide minor buffs to what they all ready are good at. You don't want to replace critical gear or hand out huge buffs. Do stuff like "Can Cover more types of attacks," "Damage +12.5%," etc, etc. Not "Inherent Cover" or "Free Power Glove" or "HP+25%". Also, HP/MP espers do not have to give the same bonus to different people. You aren't doing that with vig/mag/spd/stam espers, why do that for HP/MP espers? The characters are different, even if they're similar. Therefore, even if the buff is similar, it does not mean that it has to be the same. Case in point: Phoenix Terra vs Phoenix Locke, or Alex Celes vs. Alex Cyan. Lastly, there are several cases here where I think the poorly assigned class bonuses isn't your fault. It's more a problem with still not having figured out the balance / design of certain classes yet. Mostly looking at Strago, Relm, Geomancer, the HP+60 espers, possibly Gau. I got nothing for the HP espers, but I did recommend ideas for the others. ************************************************ EDIT: Something I failed to consider: Is it possible to change "No dual wield penalty" into "Reduced dual wield penalty"? So, instead of no penalty, just weaken the penalty to 87.5% damage for both weapons? It ends up being the same as "Two-Handed Bonus Raised from 50% to 75%." That might not be quite so bad.

I know Nakar overleveled on everyone's ELs (grinded up to EL 10 before even the IMF), but he kept everyone's level in check through use of "No EXP Gain." I try to avoid overleveling, and I still think Kirin Cyan is really good for the mid-game. Can't speak for anyone else though. Still curious on hearing in which specific dungeons was Kirin Cyan op.

There's some videos on ngplus of Nakar's 1.8.6 run. He lists Cyan as someone who hard carried the run, and also commented a few times that if he really wanted to win a certain dungeon / boss, he'd be bringing Cyan along. Thanks. One thing with lowering BPow is that, while it does hurt the counterattack damage, it also hurts the damage output of Dispatch, Flurry, & Tempest. I'm not concerned at all about Dispatch, but I'm not sure how I feel about lowering the damage output of Flurry & Tempest. You'll lose counterattack damage, sure, but how much will you really lose? My instinct & back-of-the-hand calculations say you're only losing a few hundred points of counterattack damage. [Tested current 180 Masamune vs. 150 Masamune (Kazekiri) vs. 120 Masamune (Kotetsu)]. A small nerf won't affect his counterattack damage much at all. I was seeing only a couple hundred points at best. Also, Dragon's also there to pick up any slack on Flurry's part (for Flurry's loss of damage). So, with a minor nerf (lowering BPow by 30), nothing really changes with Cyan. You're talking a major nerf (loss of 60 or more BPow) to katana BPows, which also means a major change to Cyan's physical Bushidos. I guess you could also modify the multipliers on the physical Bushidos, so that its only the counterattack damage that gets changed. Might be odd seeing an endgame katana with only, what, 120 BPow though. *** Looking at the other options there: #1.....I don't know what can be done expect for weakening HP espers. Cyan's all ready got a pretty restricted set of gear anyways, most of which is all ready geared towards giving him vigor, defense, & evasion. There's also not really much you can do from a base stats perspective, not without seriously breaking the aesthetic balance. Granted, from a pure balance standpoint, weakening HP espers isn't the worst thing in the world. Highly doubt that's going to fly from a more "customer service" standpoint though. (Not really sure how much the evasion nerf is going to really affect him. Cyan isn't exactly an evade juggernaut, he more tanks through sheer HP and good armor. I guess you did gear him more for evasion than defense. I'm just guessing that you'd get the same results with a less evade, more defense set-up, in which case, the evade nerf does little. A guess on my part though). #3....I want to see results from more Counter/Cover builds first. It may be that many characters are op with Counter/Cover, in which case, yes, the Counter/Cover odds do need to be looked at. If it turns out to just be Cyan, only possibility here is lowering his base stamina by a significant chunk. *** The only other possibility I can think of is the late-WoB and mid-WoR enemies are underpowered, making it such that certain characters look op when they're really not. That's...I've made the claim many times before, but it's difficult for me to prove anything, beyond just "I still feel threatened in these dungeons from these randoms, and it feels like it's because of how they're designed, not from lack of experience. Whereas, these other enemies, I feel like the enemies stats/scripts just can't keep up with my character's ever increasing power/bulk/options." I have....weak...evidence...towards my claim in that you didn't find Cyan to be op in Kefka's Tower. I guess I should ask: which dungeons, aside from the FC, did you bring him in? If he still felt op in a place like Gogo's Cave, then that's counter-evidence towards my claim. OTOH, if you only brought him to places like Owzer's (low p.def), Ebot's Rock, or Yeti's Cave, then I feel like the weakness of the foes there makes it difficult to determine whether or not Counter/Cover Cyan is truly op. EDIT: Eh, from Discord, remembering what one returning player said about the difficulty of newer versions, and from looking at it, it may just be that BNW been slowly getting easier and easier. Each new version gives new toys to characters without really strengthening the enemies. It may just be that 1.9 is finally the tipping point to where the characters are finally op in respect to their competition.

So....Ragnarok Terra is a return to crazy pink monster flying around the world, unable to speak?

You said you needed names for all possibilities. Those two & Bahamut Relm are missing. They're definitely cracked builds, but then again, you gave a name to Alexander Celes and Terrato Mog.

So....we gonna get a class name for Carbunkl Terra and Ragnarok Terra?

What kind of class-specific bonuses are you thinking of? Sounds like you're thinking of very minute stuff, or simply minor things to help differentiate a class or two in a meaningful way.

>_> You know I never think outside the box like that. Yeah, good point.

After listening to Deschain talk about stam Cyan's obscene mid-game with Counter/Cover, watching stam Cyan hard carry Nakar in his recent playthrough, and other chats with the community, I'm posting up some ideas for nerfing stam Cyan in the mid-game. Swap Eclipse & Dragon. Eclipse, the AoE, becomes Bushido 5. Dragon, the Holy-tier stamina-based attack, becomes Bushido 6. Cyan's counterfishing katanas no longer give stam+. Pulling from WT, instead, his counter katanas (Masamune, Murasame, Kotetsu) give Vig+ / Spd+. His proc katanas (Mutsuno, Kazekiri, Nodachi) give Stam+ / Mag+. The above also means that the Mutsuno is no longer a "perfect" weapon for Shadow to equip. EDIT: Another idea is to swap the BPows of the Murasame and Kazekiri, making the Kazekiri stronger. (Like Masamune and Mutsuno). That way, midgame Cyan has to choose between counter/cover or raw Bushido damage.

Hmm. It's been a few years since I've played this mod, so I can't remember anything beside what I said in the other topic. Once the endgame grind issues have been ironed out, I'll replay the mod. Maybe even move on to Risen Star, who knows.

Yeah, you're own game is more important. Focus on that instead of a complete revamp.

It's been a while since I played Fallen Star. I enjoyed it up until the endgame, where I got bored of grinding the Tornado Lizard and just stopped. I remember equipment juggling being a HUGE pain in the butt later in the game. Also remember the Psynergy gained from equipment being a LOT more important for damage output than psynergy gained from class. Never did pick up Risen Star. One thing I found when exploring Golden Sun hacking was that someone made a hack such that Psynergy spells actually GROW in power throughout the game, instead of being locked to a certain power. That seemed HUGE, though I doubt you're at all considering re-visiting these. Good to hear from you, Vanish Mantle.