SpoonyBard

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About SpoonyBard

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  1. Who's your MVP?

    Terra is useless in random battles unless Storm is super effective or muddle/imp work. Other powerful spells are too MP costly to really spam until Gem Box (lategame). Morphing requires setup so that's out of the question. But against almost every boss in the game she can do *ridiculous* damage. I'm not a fan of Vigor builds, but Maduin Terra in the back row is tanky enough even when Morphed. Honestly I can't find a better boss destroyer than Terra. That doubles up as extra healer if needed, is extremely resilient when unmorphed (and if you don't get oneshot and have the right build, even when morphed thanks to regen ticks), and has plenty of utility magic in general. Unmorphing takes like, less than half of a turn. If you're in dire straits, that's all it takes to switch from monster damage dealer to sturdy healer / patcher upper (whatever the actual word is for someone who does patch-up). Shadow and Relm are both very strong, but they're a lot more "niche". All the top picks for MVP are characters that are solid no matter what party you put them in and what enemy you're facing. Shadow and Relm are awesome in a *lot* of situations, they're also very frustrating to use just as often, especially if you don't know the mod inside out. I won't argue your point because I agree with you that shadow is really good, but this MVP poll makes complete sense to me.
  2. Who's your MVP?

    Why isn't best girl Celes everyone's MVP Are we playing the same game? At 2nd place I'd tie Terra/Edgar for being really solid throughout the whole game. 4th Setzer because 7 flush is one of the best "cost-free" random encounter destroyer, and he can switch roles from AoE monster in dungeons to the most reliable healer in boss fights.
  3. Some thoughts on Stamina builds

    I wouldn't mind that, honestly. All the other frail characters are insanely fast, which means that if they die and get ressed they don't take forever and a half to get their next turn. Also, Strago would gain access to HP ELs in one of the very last dungeons in the game (by difficulty). He'd still be plenty frail for the vast majority of the game, and he really wants his magic EL to shine so you can't just dump HP on him and call it a day. Unless you want a Holy Wind slave or something (which is arguably the worst MT heal when it comes to recovering from a strong AoE attack)
  4. I put cayenne on my mash and it's delicious.
  5. Esper locations

    It would really really mess up WoB builds for Edgar and Sabin. Especially Sabin (Only stamina as option)
  6. Some thoughts on Stamina builds

    Stam sabin is poopy poop in my book. So is Strago. Incidentally, they both get +2 stam espers but can't make any use of it. I mean Sabin has uses, but they're bad. Chakra doesn't keep up with any heavy MP users, even when you literally use it every single turn. It works only on very niche party setups (3 casters). You can't take hits, HP and even Vigor+HP does a much better job at that. You cover/counter more often, that's the only advantage. Unless you really, really, really want a character that negates most status aliments in the game while sucking on every other department, stamina is a no go for him. Mantra isn't *that* bad, until you realize literally every other form of healing in the game is better, and that raw HP works as good if not better than Stamina for boosting it. Strago and stam are just uh, uncompatible. Slap a Ribbon on him and enjoy doing 50 billion times more damage regardless of the wasted relic slot. His magic def is very high, he doesn't need help. Defense piercing attacks don't happen that often and when they do, chances are he won't take them even with full stamina due to low HP. That said, every other character is fine in my book. Boosting Edgar's Stamina makes little sense to me. He can already cover so many roles excellently with just a few equip swaps. Him being also a reliable cover user while retaining his support magic, tools and good damage even without heavy vigor investment seems like pure overkill. If you really want +stam Spears, they'd have to have really, really low battle power, then you can improve his covering chances by a lot but not make him stupid strong offensively with his counters. And even then, there's stam mog with spears that covers exactly that role already, so it would be redundant. Take Mog, if you exclude dragoon/pure magic, his role is *very* clear. He puts heavy armor on, takes hits from everything and everyone like a monster, has high chance of cover, and is good as passively supporting your party. Can slow and haste and other stuff on off turns, and if you really got nothing else to do with his turns, Dance gives you basically a 50/50 chance of fully healing your party (easily, with high stamina), which saves turn for your healer to do other stuff. Want a more offensive version? Swap spears with rods and Moogle Charm with Hero Ring. No 1-turn Dance, but at this point you'll want to attack on your off turns, not dance. Giving him both feels unnecessary. In general, Stamina walks a fine line between "niche/not really useful" and "broken" on most characters. I'd rather have the former than the latter, especially cause Stamina's main asset is what it *doesn't* blatantly do for you. It doesn't allow status aliments to wreck you, but whenever you see that happen you don't think "it's my stamina that did that", which causes a lot of players to heavily underestimate the stat. IMO, it's a defensive stat and it still gets plenty of offensive options, making them OP or making every character good with stamina is as bad as turning everyone into a magic user like in the original.
  7. Honest opinion please

    Just a FYI, if you're the type that enjoys grinding, wait till you get access to Magicite then grind to your heart's content. It takes a lot of the challenge away, but everyone enjoys games differently and I had my fun doing a run of BNW where I was overleveled. To my knowledge, the only AI changes caused by leveling are in the Narshe/Figaro area. Past that, grinding does what grinding does: making the game easier.
  8. 20 evade AND magic evade is really good, especially the magic evade, especially on Shadow (he's got high natural magic evade, and +10% boosting esper on top of that). If anything, I'd give a Magic boost (+5 or so) to the Mirage Vest. Would benefit Shadow's scrolls, Gau's magic rages (they really start lagging behind by the endgame), Sabin's aoe blitzes (they're garbage for the "last" 3/4 of the game), and I guess Locke's heals/fire spells too.
  9. I think the "this is an upgrade" triangle got ditched completely. The triangle you see is simply telling you "this character can equip that item". You have some information when it comes to attack power (I think just before you try and buy the item). My suggestion is to save the game before going in a shopping spree (and I believe there isn't an instance where you can't save right before shopping). I think there's a hack that's been worked on to give a more comprehensive description of equip stats and properties inside the shops, so maybe we'll see that in future patches. For now, it's more about the game's own limitations when it comes to shops. For example, in the original game you'd get an "upgrade" symbol whenever attack (defense for armors) was higher. Nothing else was considered, stat drops or boosts, properties etc. and you had to figure it out on your own (and make it past the game telling you that you should buy that item when in reality it might not be the case). As for the above discussion, Edgar's hella good already, doesn't need stamina to be really bulky, doesn't need vigor to do good phys damage, doesn't need magic to use his magic tools effectively. He's IMO the only character that could stay at EL 0 and still be darn useful. As consequence, any extra is just a plus to make him even more awesome. Giving him high stamina would make him just too good. 1.9 stam Celes is already borderline broken with little to no drawbacks to her build, Edgar on a stam attack spear with nirvana band (while still having access to tools, very good equipment, very good support magic) would make him into a jack of all trades (and master of all), trivialize the need for vigor (stam damage), and so on and so forth. From the stupidly versatile character that he is now, which can go dps, support, magic, physical, speedy, tanky (and sometimes he jumps in and covers too!) he would turn into a snorefest. Want a spear wielder with high stam that never dies and takes hits for the party often? Use mog instead?
  10. I'd say that's pretty average especially for the first time getting there. Only times where I was lower than that (16-17) was when I really made use of chocobos in the world map and in general tried to be fast. If you just walk your way though the game without real grinding but fighting all the battles, 19-20 is what you'll end up. The battles in the FC itself give a lot of experience, so if you feel overleveled just turn exp off or run after lv21 or so. If the boss kicks your butt too hard, just take what you learned from the fight and adjust your setup accordingly. That's much more important than a few level ups and unless you really grind up, it won't take away from the experience of fighting the boss for the first time(s)
  11. At the level I was at, with powerglove and all I'd be doing around 90-120 damage and eat a megavolt to the face. To do over 200 on a high defense enemy, you were probably not level 9-11 which is the intended level for that area. It's not about how hard they are (they are not), it's more about the fact that literally every formation even lategame has (multiple) ways of being handled flawlessly, and this one doesn't. And since your options are limited to physicals with locke+celes and magic with celes at that point in the game, an enemy that isn't weak to either while countering the more spammable of the two options, automatically becomes stronger than it should be. And it's not any more special than all the other formations before and after this area, so why should it be? Even if you level high enough to the point locke can 1shot, you're still eating a megavolt. I would't call that optimal. Solution I didn't think of, replace megavolt counter with bolt, so celes can Runic and be useful. (Although admittedly, runic doesn't get shoved down your throat until the boss of that area so new players might not be aware of it, but then again who would play this without having beaten vanilla first is beyond me)
  12. Imo, BNW early game isn't that great. First good boss in BNW is Dadaluma and he sure as hell doesn't need counters to wreck you if you're not prepared. Actually, after that point counters start to become progressively less annoying. Namely, HP esper levels let you survive easily even when you make mistakes, and also you'll start meeting with "palette swaps" of old enemies that behave almost exactly the same. Example, in lete river you fight albatross and quickly notice that blitz and tools aren't a good idea. Wyvern in the world map in the vector area do the same. Dactyl at the floating continent do the same. This is true for pretty much every enemy "family", so while you're overwhelmed at the start it does get a lot better. So yeah that's where the knowledge you acquire in the early game comes into play. There would probably be more elegant solution than just making the game overly punishing early on, but unless you drastically change BNW's system, you'll hit a difficulty spike at some point no matter what. So I guess might as well start immediately so that the player is used to the idea from the start. Yeah it does make some enemies frustrating. Then again, 9 tough formations out of 10 can be neutralized by noiseblaster in the early game, and that gets rid of counters in the process.
  13. BNW 1.9.0 Playthrough

    Done some WoR: - Everything up to the Falcon - Owzer's Mansion - Mt.Zozo + Storm Dragon - Cave in the Veldt, some colosseum shenanigans
  14. BNW 1.9.0 Playthrough

    Done with WoB! I also get to sing horribly for 30 seconds on ep.22.