Vaylen

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.

Gau is complicated by nature, I'd suggest using the printme to get the hang of him. He is quite powerful and easier to use than in vanilla, though. Repo Man on Dadaluma was a good choice, so good work. You can leap everywhere onto any leapable Formation. That means: All enemies in that formation need to be a rage. However, rage-hunting on the Veldt has become far easier, too. You get the option for respecs later on. So don't worry about it too much about spending your Esper levels. Some builds are only really realizable with certain late espers, so the respecs come in handy. Stamina has various effects, depending on character. Cyan does also get access to a few stamina-based Bushidos. At baseline, stamina gets you a bit of magic defense, helps evading status moves and affects stuff like sap and regen. One of the more important effects of Stamina is cover/counter: Stamina boosts your counter chance as well as the chance to cover a backrow ally. This is something Cyan can make great use of, as he hits hard with his counters, is tanky and you can get the WInd-Katanas - which have a chance to fire off a stamina-based wind-attack on hit. As you can see, while stamina has few baseline effects, it has very interesting synergies with each character. Even characters with no stamina-based moves can make use of stamina - like Locke or Celes. Feel free to ask or look at the character discussions to get a few more ideas on stamina builds, most of them are quite enjoyable.

I agree on Edgar having enough options to be effective, tbh. However, another spear wouldn't hurt. It's not more Firepower for the cool factor, it's about a proper powercurve for proc-sword based builds. For Terra/Celes, an Oath Veil build seriously falters in WoR, until Apocilluminalypse. Aside from utility options, there is no good proc-sword in that powergap - and it's a sizeable gap. That's why I proposed a rather neutral option in Break. It's, more or less, a precursor to Holy and Flare. The powerlevel should be similar to Rune Blade and it'd fill a definite powergap. Poison would be another option - it'd increase coverage(especially juicy for certain Locke and Edgar builds) while being a sensible "upgrade" for proc sword in mid WoR. Disclaimer: I am tired right now, I am sorry if I did not formulate this reply clearly. Have mercy.

Save states are usually kept intact.

lol, I like the Bomb. I sometimes just go "ahh, fuck it... boooom". If anything, I think Bomb could be buffed to 3 or 3.5 times power.

Hello people. I like most of Gau's rages and think only a few of them are not quite in the right spot. Any comment would be appreciated! Adamantite I find this rage a little weak. Holy Wind is not especially powerful on Gau, due to his low health. Innate Safe is nice, but there are no resistances on this rage. Offensively, it doesn't have much going for it. I'd buff the attack from 2x to 3x. Belladonna Raid is extremely annoying on the Belladonna. Aside from often being a dead turn, it severely hampers the effectiveness vs Undead, where it would otherwise shine. It also has undocumented Auto-Regen which, due to the Belladonna being Undead, is actually Auto-Sap. Flan A very specialized Rage and intentionally niche. Extremely great resistances, but not offensive or straight healing capabilities. The main problem I have is the extreme unreliability of this Rage - the chance to actually revive an ally is pretty low in most situations, due to the random targeting. Feel free to enlighten me on a few more use cases on this one. For a change, I'd suggest changing the 1/3 move from SlowX to Life2, focusing the use firmly on revival which also leads to an increase in reliability. Kudzu Raid again. It doesn't do much of anything on Gau - he rarely even uses his MP and his health is low. I'd change this to something else or, more preferably, change Raid to not be capped by missing health. Locust&Leafer Gale Cut is very weak for this stage of the game. The Leafer's Wind Slash, on the other hand, is very powerful early on. I'd swap Gale Cut and Wind Slash on these 2 Rages. Scarab Megavolt is very weak for WoR. Incidentally, I also think that most enemies using Megavolt could use a buff on that move, so I'd suggest buffing Megavolt directly to around~ 45-60 power. If that is not an option, a different, stronger move in place of Megavolt - maybe simply Bolt 2 or Plasma - would be good. Tek Armor A pretty niche rage, due to the heavy focus on buffing. I'd simply buff the attack from 2x to 3x. making it a bit more appealing to use. Vagrant A fine Rage, but a bit weak for WoR. I'd buff attack from 2x to 3x. Werewolf Decent Rage on paper, but I rarely found a use for it. Ice is not the most common element and single-target healing/buffing can be pretty hit-or-miss. I am not quite sure what would be a good change here, though. RegenX seems a bit too powerful. Windrunner Blight seems a little bit too weak. A small buff of about ~10 Power would be appreciated here. Zombone Seems weak, even compared to other Fractional Damage/Instant Kill Rages available at the same time. I'd change the Zombie-Setting attack from No Damage to 1x Damage, increasing the versatility of this rage by a bit. That's about all of them. Thanks for reading.

Hm... For the Edgar case specifically, you can't forget the spears. He has both Holy and Water element(holy on an especially strong spear). No procs, but added power on jumps. In that sense, adding another elemental spear would be an option. Does kinda feel like a good spear is missing in certain swathes of the game. In terms of power vs coverage, I think the lack of a good "neutral" option hurts especially. Break seems like a great neutral option. Added bpower and secondary stats over elem swords, but those elem swords will certainly outpace the break blade on weakness. Poison is another sensible option - a number of enemies resist Dark but aside from those, a strong neutral option and extremely good vs humanoids. The added bpow is important, though. Recently discussed "uncapped drain" - so that drain type spells can deal damage even when you are at full health. Turns Blood Sword into a pretty good neutral options. Yeah, I also never found a use for Excalibur. Looking at it closely... it really doesn't seem useful. Only 4 can equip it and it's only good in very rare, specific cases. I think it's largely due to the weapon feeling a bit restrictive - you kinda want to 2-hand it, but that's pretty difficult to justify, cause all of those characters can equip the good stuff as shields or are inclined to dual wield. Soul Saber is better for a caster. Spears for a jumper. MP Crits are not exactly good on Locke or Edgar, imo, due to their limited MP pools. It doesn't really have a place and in the rare situations where it does, I think a very decent substitute is available. It's also not as interesting as Zantetsuken(I use that one on a Hybrid Locke).

I agree with most of your points regarding rods. I probably underestimated their damage potential even from backrow. I also excluded Gogo from this, cause Gogo is pretty prone to break stuff. My train of thought was more along the lines of "Why use a rod from backrow when I can just cast spells?" - rods are not 100% procs, which decreases their average output. Additionally, Front Row is not a problem for Mog(he has a really easy time to get tanky, unlike the other rod users). But, I concede, I think you guys are right on this one. Mutsu scales off of Stamina, something Shadow can get quite a lot of pretty easily and naturally. But yeah, I see the use of Orochi. Looking at some numbers, looks like Mutsu outperforms it even against flying foes, though. Least on my build(15 Phantom and a Genji Armor). As mentioned, I think my main problem with the weapon is that it's kinda boring. Force gear is strong if you like magic and/or really want the mitigation, true. It also has a lot of competition from other gear. While there are many characters that'd want force gear, in theory.. in practice, you probably won't build them all that way. And even if you were to do that, there is good competition on Chest and Shield slots, so you won't end up with a "bad" slot on a character. I am arguing that, most of the time, you do not need that much force gear and, if you do, you have desirable alternatives. Thinking about it, one could even please both sides of this argument by utilizing the coliseum, re-arranging some stuff there and make the piece that replaces a Force Gear drop trade into a piece of Force Gear.. Would need to take a deeper look at equipment to figure the details out, but that would be an option.

Hey there, a few thoughts on equipment throughout the game as well as late/endgame gear. Midgame Proc Swords I miss a proc sword to bridge the gap between the Elemental Blades and Apocilluminalypse. During a decently sized chunk of the game, you got the elemental blades and Blood Blade/Soul Saber as the only options for proc swords. The latter aren't good at dealing damage, they are more about utility. The former are pretty weak and only see use for weakness sniping(which, granted, is pretty good). The power gap between those options and Apocilluminalypse is massive. I'd like to see another proc sword become available to bridge that gap, probably placed in Mt. Zozo or Cave on the Veldt or replacing the Rune Blade(Haven't found much use for it, personally). Casting Poison or Break seem like decent ideas to me. Break Blade sounds pretty snappy and Break fits the theme pretty well, as it is - more or less - a downgrade of Flare/Holy. Scimitar and Elemental Swords Mentioned this in my difficulty feedback, but I reiterate here. You get access to both Scimitars and the Elemental Swords right before the Imperial Magitek Research Facility. The thing is, they absolutely wreck said Facility and turn it into a cakewalk, especially combined - many battles were over before I even executed a single command. The Scimitar is a bit out of the way and, from what I can remember, quite expensive. It also makes you give up a Shield - which isn't that much of a problem, considering Shields aren't that strong this early. In light of that, I propose to move the Elemental blades to after IMTRF. You still get them as you explore the facility via chests, likely powering you up during the IMTRF, which is a fine reward for exploration, in my opinion. Rods Is the backrow penalty on Rods a necessity? Most Rod users have a really tough time in the frontrow and the reward for the risk of putting them in the front is not exactly game-changing. This relegates rods, for the most part, to stat sticks with gimmicks that aren't worth considering. If you want to seriously use rods for damage, you'd probably build a Cover/Counter set-up, which requires frontrow. Rod-jumping can be done from the backrow with no drawbacks anyway. In short, I don't see a problem with Rods dealing full damage from the backrow, it'd only make their gimmick a bit more appealing to use. Orochi I don't really see the point of this weapon. It lacks something unique going for it. Strong vs Flying is nice and has some use, but I think Mutsunokami and Avenger outperform this weapon most of the time. Feel free to correct me on this one, though. Overall, I guess it's just kind of a unremarkable weapon. Mutsunokami and Windbreaker Those two weapons are pretty difficult to get, cause you have to give up something unique and powerful for them. And it's not a natural switch like Daryl's Soul <-> Heiji's Coin, as you swap for wildly different equipment. I propose placing Mutsunokami as a Unique drop somewhere, keeping it a one-time item. For Windbreaker, I'd place it in a chest in place of one Punisher. Additionally, I'd change some Coliseum trades a bit: Remove Punisher from the Wing Edge/Avenger trade loop and make it trade back and forth with Windbreaker. Mutsunokami and Ross Brush could trade back and forth with Masamune, or simply trade into a consumable. Force Gear(Armor and Shield) I feel you get too many pieces of Force Gear(I think it's 4?). Force Gear is pretty specialized and has a few restrictions(as well as competitors) that do not make it all that appealing to most characters, in my opinion. I'd remove one piece of Force Gear, replacing it with something else. Radiant Gown This piece of unique, character-locked equipment stuck at as particulary weak to me. While the effects on Brushes is nice and the 25% MP boost is appreciated, I find it lacks a bit too much in raw stats compared to its competitors. I'd suggest a small buff to Mdef and/or Magic/Speed. That's it. Thanks for reading and please leave a reply!

On the issue regarding infringing on Rasp territory: I don't think that will be that big of an issue. The amount of MP stolen is far lower than the amount of HP stolen. My Strago with around ~100 Magic can still up to ~500 MP, but more health(At least around 700). Looking at the Character Planner, Cyan can steal up to 314 MP. And against undead foes, he'd also kill or heavily damage himself. So Mindblow would still be as useful as ever. Bedevil has the same base power as Raid. That said... how about making all of them not depend on max health? The rule of thumb is not all that intuitive. Many things look or sound like spells, but aren't spells. More clarity is a good thing, isn't it? And yeah, I get that the limitations are deliberate and generally agree with them. Lifting some of them is more about broadening the use-case for Reflect and making it a bit more appealing, but by no means something I'd push for. Oh and yeah, Float goes through reflect. I thought it wouldn't, cause you can use single target Float in the menu. That's probably true, but if you could have both(current and max health fractional damage, depending on ability), it'd open up more options. I'm guessing this isn't possible/feasable for one reason or another. I believe the limitation on Surge to not be necessary and just complicating an already rather complicated playstyle. Ultimately, removing the grounded-limitation is more of a QoL than a big change in power, in my opinion. Incidentally, it would also buff up a few enemies.

Well, reflect is not readily available. Only few characters get access to reflect.

A few small~ish suggestions for some spells, mainly to improve their usability Drain-Type Spells Due to how drain-type spells work, their potential is pretty much capped. It's especially annoying with things like Rage and Dance, as the drains they have are often just dead turns. I'd suggest making all hp-draining spells/effects, except for the OG Drain Spell, work off their base power alone and not factor in missing HP. This would make Love Sonata as well as some Rages way more appealing to use, in my opinion. Surge This is specifically for Mog's Dances - Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz. While making sense aesthetically, I don't believe Surge should be a ground-based attack. It's a problem for Surge, as it heavily reduces the reliability of the aforementioned dances in a lot of encounters, as quite many enemies are floating. If enemies aren't floating, a magic-based Mog can hit them quite well with Quake in the first place. I'd slightly decrease the base power of Surge to compensate. Reflect Reflect is always a bit of a contentious effect. It can be amazingly powerful, but there are a lot of factors to consider when using reflect. Most importantly: Does it do anything in the battle at hand? I noticed that far more abilities than I previously assumed can be reflected. It'd be nice to have some sort of indication of that - like a blue dot. Additionally, if desired to make reflect a tad easier to use, one could make certain buff spells ignore reflect. Safe, Shell, Float and maybe even Haste come to mind. Fractional Damage Is it possible to let fractional damage work on max health instead of current health? If it's possible, I think this would open up some interesting changes for some rage or dance skills. That's about it. Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think.

I see. Weird I haven't noticed that earlier, tbh. Is it possible to change the priority order? The "fizz" should have a lower priority than status effects.

Recently got muted as Gau, but the visual effect for mute - the little bubble - didn't appear. I was in a pincer attack and was definitely muted(raging Shokan, unable to cast the spells). May or may not apply to other situations/other status effects. Many status effects are hard to notice on a raging Gau and he is oftentimes outright immune to status effects thanks to his rages, so it would be something that comes up somewhat rarely.

I like Ross Brush being the Reflect Brush, tbh. Its a very solid Niche option. As BTB said, reflect is kind of a love-it or hate-it type of effect. Incidentally, Brush-healing works well with reflect, so that's extra cool. Haste is rather abundant, that's true. I'd still create one and put it into the WoB over the Monet Brush - I think it fits there very well and increaes her usefulness. A Remedy Brush would be redundant. However, a Regen Brush has a number of things going for it. For one RegenX is damn expensive. If you want just a single regen - which happens frequently enough - you got the Brush for that. Furthermore, Regen also heals. You'd basically get a big single target heal out of the Brush for no cost. So a Regen Brush would mainly help with MP management. Stats could be tuned a bit higher for this one For more options, just a few come to mind. Image would probably be too good in the first place. Beserk would be kind of a fun option with some niche uses. If it could be worked, MP healing is always desirable - steps too much on other characters' toes, though. And lastly, safe+shell at once would be a really powerful option. No idea if you could work 2 spells on a single weapon, though. So, we'd have~ A haste-brush for WoB - in my opinion, that's a bit more useful than safe for her early performance and might find use later on in some parties. A Regen Brush - basically a heavy healing Brush that helps with MP Management and probably slightly higher stats. The same old safe and shell brushes, only with similar/identical stats. And lastly, if possible and if a really powerful option is desired, a safe+shell brush. It could have lower stats/healing output than the other Brushes to compensate.