Hashidoi

Hi Again! So, after a roughly 220 hour playthrough, here are my observations: My MVP through all the tough late-game things was a Shaman-classed Iuria, because she was a Shaman and she could innately fly. Second place went to Olivia, a Shaman who by virtue of a ring, could teleport. Mobility is, hands down, the most valuable aspect any character could have. Straight up, no melee, and no ranged attacker can compete with the effectiveness of magic. In my earlier post, I had distressed over the power of the Ninja's mobility in comparison to other classes, and while this was true for a time, but they also wound up being more or less worthless contributors to the combat effort not long after Lv.30. A lack of mobility in other, non-Ninja physical classes simply led to the use of none of these classes being viable participants in the end. There is nothing any melee class can do that a casting class cannot address either through their damage, or their ability to control/suppress (sleep/petrify/stun/etc) the opposition. There were two separate maps where bosses/objectives killed themselves by using a particular skill that consumed a portion of their Hp as a preamble to performing some other effect and resulted in my immediate victory on those maps. I wish I could remember who they were, or what maps they appeared on, but I don't quite recall. I'm reasonably sure they were pre-Coda, though. I'm very sorry for not paying more close attention. They were probably Berserker-classed people, though. While I appreciate the innately higher move you granted to units, the fact is that an overall "+1 move" ultimately still renders all land-bound units less mobile than their unmodded counterparts. Moreover, all my units simply wound up slotting in Jump I/II in an effort to gain as much mobility as they could. Early on, in story maps with relatively friendly movement for all, everything seems pretty okay! But after two runs through the Palace of the Dead, and a visit to the San Bronsa Ruins, there are clear disparities between unit value. I wound up using CW codes to lock my characters at Lv.30, because I found that around roughly Lv.35 or so, anyone who was dealing physical damage (melee or ranged) was dealing 25-50 damage to most opposing front-line units, whereas a casting unit would deal 300-400 damage. Sometimes AoE. Sometimes even more. (My Iuria and Olivia had a fantastic Air/Earth synergy, that made them an inseparable pair, and by keeping their RTs tight, a force that literally nothing withstood.) There was no reason to use a physical/melee person to deal 50 damage, when a magical person could deal 300 damage. My melee so often wound up being a tile or two short of being able to contribute, I simply wound up not needing any melee in the end. I don't think that it's because casters are too powerful. I think it's because melee is too worthless. Their lack of mobility is an innate hindrance, and their late game weaponry options don't scale well enough to keep them viable even as defenders. Any skill that provides a base 30% chance of success, +10% more success per rank, ultimately resulting in 100% success to lay down a status ailment at Rank 8 is... really decisive. I'm sorry if this comes across as kind of harsh or negative, but I do hope it helps!

Hey there! I've really been enjoying your mod, especially your changes to crafting. I've fumbled around with ws codes to mess with palettes and portraits and stuff, but what you've managed to do, however you've managed to do it, is incredible. I can't stress how great it is not to have to farm crazy specific things anymore, and making some of the more uncommon class cards available through crafting is wonderful. Also, geez, this wound up being way more wordy than I'd intended. Sorry about that! While I'm not all the way through it yet, I'm near the end of Chapter IV. But in terms of gameplay, here are my observations so far: 1) More Movement is Good I'm glad that most every class has been afforded more mobility. It leads to faster skirmishes, and requires more careful planning so that your formation isn't blitzed through and your casters murdered horribly. It makes things like Rampart Aura more valuable. But it does bring me to my next observation: 2) Ninja's Are Still Crazy Powerful It just seems that Ninjas have better movement than the other classes because that's how it was originally, rather than out of any sense of balance. I know Ninjas are all light and nimble and stuff, but Rogues should kind of be that way also, but they have a Move of 5. I would probably advocate setting their movement to 5 with most of the classes, because my thoughts on the Ninja's strengths aren't done yet! A Ninja can put anything not outright immune to sleep, right to bed with unfailing accuracy with just a little bit of ranking up Torinoko. Even after a scant two rank ups, it's like 50/50, which is still pretty good odds, and it only gets better from there. In my playing so far, I've been able to hit a thing, put it to sleep, then another round goes through, hit the thing and wake it up, and then put it to sleep again right afterwards. It's really quite funny. My advice here is that if the status ailment applied must remain Sleep, then I'd suggest making it maybe not 100% at max rank. Maybe 70-75% tops. If the +10% per rank effect must remain, then I suggest an ailment that isn't quite so singularly decisive, like Blind (and if possible maybe pair it with Hobble or something, because I think that even just Blind might be a little weak. Or if it were only Blind, then maybe lower the TP some also.) 3) Art of War So far, Benumb (stunning) has been far and away the spell I've used most with Ninja. There's no point in using silence because all casters crumple under a hit from double attack anyhow. Poison is a no-no because it messes up the 100% sleep/resleep strategy. The damage spells are okay, but really they're only ever options when you can't double attack something. Which is rare, because your movement is so great. For Swordmasters it's a little bit different of a story. I think a good portion of a Swordmaster's abilities are dependent on their TP using skills, which puts these effects in competition with their War Dances. A cost of 20 basically means you can't even do a buff until the second round, and by that time it probably won't even hit half the party. The healing one just simply seems much too expensive; I've only ever used it as a comedy option when Hobryim was hiding in the corner with some other low-level classes I was getting experience for. The debuff ones also don't seem worth it, with low chances of success for application to maybe two targets top. In most cases it's always more prudent to save the TP for Preempt and Blade Focus. 4) Swordmasters This is to say nothing of Steelstance, which for 100TP is something I haven't even tried to use. Even if it provided one turn of perfect immunity, I'm not sure that would justify a 100TP cost. I'm thrilled to see they can Double Attack, which I haven't used (Preempting is better with the two-handers, I think), but kind of makes sense they should have. 5) Rogues & Stealing I am some kind of sucker for punishment, because somehow I always gravitate towards classes where stealing things from other people is an option. Unfortunately, even at rank 8, I haven't seen any really worthwhile items come out of it from anything, and at max rank the percentages are still abysmal. I think one rank adds about 2% more to your chance to succeed. A 43% chance to steal a log unfortunately isn't the best use of a Rogue's single Skill use during an action, not compared to the more reliable results of Sneak Attack or Speedstar. However, going full circle for a moment we come back to mobility: Sneak Attack is a skill that relies on mobility and positioning, but the Rogue is no better at movement than most of the classes and has no means of capitalizing on any advantages other than how the enemies position themselves. If they could get a skill to move through Rampart Auras without it costing more movement or something, that might be worthwhile. (The fact that the skill that does this takes away one move already is kind of evil. I'd consider just having it take up a skill slot as being cost enough.) 6) Valkyries & Dragoons This is the last thing, I promise! (For now, at least!) I was kind of surprised to learn that Dragoons couldn't use the two handed crossbows anymore. I'd always had better success with Dragoons as ranged attackers than melee ones, but seeing as this was now a thing I figured I'd give it a go. But I've discovered that my Dragoon now is just basically a Valkyrie. Same attacking spells, augments and instills. I'm not really clear on how these two differentiate from one another unless it's kind of like the Knight/White Knight situation, where they are basically the same only one is just better. 7) Oh! Weapon Skills Okay, I lied there. This is the last thing, I promise! I noticed with the two-handed Crossbows, the underlying mechanic of their weapon skills were all the same: More TP = More Accuracy. Then with just a status effect tacked on. This is just straight up personal opinion, but I've found that my ranged attackers aren't really hurting for accuracy as-is, so that all weapon skills that use TP for that instead of for damage is kind of disappointing. Many of the other weapon types feature skills with more varied effects (sometimes aoe, sometimes accuracy, sometimes physical, sometimes a double attack, etc.), but the 2h Crossbow ones are all the same.