Nerocrossius

Hmmm, I thought it occurred in 2.0, been too long since I played 1.9 I guess... Either way, the thematic point stands. I understand that it's probably too ingrained at this point to change though. I don't really see how it's a thematic loss there. Isn't it redundancy for dragoons to have a jump esper? Wouldn't it be like saying that Stray should only be accessible to RegenX users?

The only change that really saddened me in the transition from 1.9 to 2.0 was that Palidor and Fenrir got swapped. I understand that this happened for various good mechanical reasons, but I believe it hurt the small thematic connections the two espers had to the world. Fenrir was originally obtained in Mobliz after your first visit there as a reward from the children for fighting off Phunbaba. The fact you get the wolf/dog esper from Mobliz is thematically tied to how the only defenses the town has in WoR are Terra and a bunch of dogs. The dog motif occurs several times in the few interactions in Mobliz, so getting a dog esper there has always felt very fitting to me. Palidor was originally obtained on the beach area south of Cid's house on the isolated island. The magicite appears there the next time the party visits the area and it rests in the same place that the bird sat with Celes after the events of Cid dying. I always found it interesting that this random bird was able to "save" Celes and that it happened to have a bandana from Locke to inspire her to live. Locke mentions nothing of giving his bandana to a bird, so it just seems like a random FF6 plot hole (one of many to be honest). But if that bird was a super magical bird esper that was trying to motivate Celes with its last ounces of energy before turning to magicite than it is quite fitting that you find the bird esper in that place later on. In BNW post 2.0 the children of Mobliz now give you the Palidor esper (which is a huge help to Edgar in the early sections of WoR) and you now find Fenrir on the beach of the isolated island. Thematically, it seems so random now that the Mobliz children have a bird esper and that the wolf/dog esper is on some island. My purposed solution would be for Fenrir to effectively become Palidor: +1 Vig +1 Spd, Palidor's spell list and auto haste equip effect, Fenrir would still set image on the party and would only be usable by Edgar and Mog. This would allow Fenrir to accomplish all the same desired mechanical work and be properly retrieved in Mobliz for the thematic element. The only mechanical change would be that Edgar and Mog get a mass party image esper instead of a party jump esper. The only thematic change would be that it's potentially strange for a dog to teach the float spell... but if stray cat is teaching float then why can't a dog at this point? Palidor would then become +2 spd, Fenrir's spell list and +10 evade equip effect, the summon ability would still be a party jump and it would only be usable by Gau and Shadow. Again, mechanically the only change would be that Shadow and Gau lose party blink and gain party jump. I actually think this is an interesting, albeit minor, mechanical change since it would allow some jump strategies in a party that doesn't have one of the dragoons. Shadow and Gau already have other ways to set image so the loss of party blink is not a huge blow. I understand that BNW is basically almost finished (despite being in 2.1 development for a year) and that 99% of people wouldn't care about this thematic change, but I still think it's valuable enough to mention at least. Vanilla didn't do a lot of things right, but it seems counter to BNW's design philosophy to take one of the few thematic and reasonable things from Vanilla and get rid of it for a minor mechanical change. I appreciate anyone's time reading this and a big thank you to the developers and coders that make this wonderful mod possible. I've played it several times every year since 2014 and it's brought a ton of joy to me!

To begin, I love this mod! I've played on and off since 2014ish and it just keeps getting better. I always make my rotations through mods and am always excited to come back to BNW, I'm a pretty quiet community member, but I'm starting to get into streaming more so maybe I'll stream some runs of BNW soon. Recently, I tried a new build where I focused on using Relm's brushes more this time. I have always used sketch a lot, but never used the brushes outside of the occasionally healing. This time I built her heavy Ifrit with some Zoneseek to try to maximize her speed and brush use. I gave her the radiant gown and ross brush and tried to build a party around reflect... and... it just didn't work out that well. I ended up using the Dali brush more, it's only -2 speed compared to the ross brush and rapid shell procs are just generally more useful than trying to keep reflect up on everyone. X-magic Strago gets an entire party set up with reflect faster than Relm does and it's not hard to get healing that bypasses reflect. I did try a setup with Vig Terra and Scroll-based Shadow which would have Terra open with Carbunkl and then Shadow would use a smoke bomb on her and Relm would reestablish reflect when it dropped, but this is something that Terra or Strago could've done just as well. I tried to find new strategies and searched for "Ross brush" in the discord and forums and mostly found that people consider Mutsunokami an auto-get weapon so most just trade the Ross brush in asap. I think this is sad that Relm's "ultimate" weapon is basically just always traded in for a good sword (I have nothing against Mutsunokami, I think it's a nicely designed end game weapon for what that's worth). I wonder if it would be too much to ask if maybe the Ross Brush could have it's stats changed to Mag +7 and Speed +5 so that it's comparable with other ultimate weapon stats (like Punisher) and I wonder if making it proc Refract instead of Reflect would be acceptable? I think way back in the day it used to proc Reraise (1.7 or maybe earlier) and that proved to be too good, but I think Refract would really distinguish it better as an ultimate weapon and at least give some competition to Mutsunokami. What do you all think? Is there a Ross Brush combo/setup that I'm missing? I'm happy to try it again!