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.

7 hours ago, deno46 said:

But the thing that it takes using to is gau. So little hp, and the rages are different.

From my understanding, if I meet an enemy formation that has an enemy that can be raged, gau can use leap even if he is not in the veldt?

The way the esper system is made it's to avoid people getting low levels to min max their characters, but if I know there is the chance of a better esper with better stats, or stats that can be of better use to the character build that i want, why would I spend them early.

For example, cyan has kirin, that has hp and stamina, not very useful I think, because he needs vigor and magic.

Or there are bushidos that use stamina?

I don't really fully understand stamina. Do I get better defense or just less possibility of having statuses on me?

Besides affecting poison, sap and regen.

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.

32 minutes ago, SirNewtonFig said:

Break is Wind. It's a fart joke.

Let's not all forget that BNW is all about creating niches for characters. Edgar can Jump for 5 elements (with a mix of physical and magical focus, as noted above), and hit another with his Tools — I think he can afford to leave Wind and Earth for someone else.

Another proc sword is not needed in the midgame. The T2 elemental blade procs carry themselves against weakness until late game options open up. If you're more Vigor focused, then you want Falchion and/or Rune Blade instead in the early WoR.

I get that sword procs are cool, and there's a tendency to want to make them more of a thing, but BNW isn't in the business of handing out more firepower for the cool factor. There is no current mechanical need (and furthermore, the challenges are balanced around the options currently available), so why throw a wrench into the mix?

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.

22 minutes ago, SirNewtonFig said:

Shocked not to see Bomb on here!

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.

7 hours ago, MorteTheSkull said:

I think the early elemental swords actually do stay viable until fairly late in the game, but you're right about them basically being for elemental sniping and nothing else; I think that's the point and is fine, but it would work better if they had more coverage.  That being said, I wouldn't *mind* a mid-tier option, particularly for the non-Celes/Terra characters who can use elemental swords (Edgar, Locke) I just think that may be hard to balance/ends up becoming undeniably the best option instead of a niche pick that requires thought/investment. 

 

I did a red-mage Edgar build in my most recent playthrough and his combination of healing magic, support from tools, and element sniping with dragoon elemental swords was good even into Kefka's tower.  It was a viable build basically all game, but the issue was more that it didn't feel good/fun to use the same weapons for Edgar (or whoever is built this way) for almost the entire game.  Expanding this roster of weapons horizontally rather than vertically (ie adding more spells/effects to proc rather than scaling them up in power) would be a good solution to this that would keep this sort of build feeling fun without overpowering it.

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.

7 hours ago, SirNewtonFig said:

How about this: you have multiple sword users running magic builds, and the Soul Saber is spoken for. Makes a pretty good stat stick, and the crits help close the damage gap somewhat. If I'm using Locke more as a healer than a fighter, I'll often toss it on him.

If you're willing to 2Hand it on a vigor build, it hits like a truck... but I don't really go for that sort of thing with the characters in question.

I agree that it's a bit underwhelming given its late placement.

8 hours ago, MorteTheSkull said:

Also, I've mentioned this to BTB a few times, but one thing that really stood out to me on my most recent playthrough is I can't think of a *single*  situation the Excalibur is the best option for any character of any build at the point that you get it.  I think it needs some sort of tweak, even if it is so late game it's not a huge deal.

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).

22 hours ago, Nowea said:

Without the back row penalty rods are better than casting the spell, thanks to MP Crit. In addition, rods doing full damage from back row would make rod jumping strictly worse than rod swinging. As is, jumping is better defensively due to not needing the front row.

19 hours ago, SirNewtonFig said:

To add the the rod thing, front row rod smacks from the starter rods give you a chance at the equivalent of a cheap tier 3 spell, effectively. There is no faster way to dispose of any of the bosses in the end WoB/FC. Punisher procs are effectively a tier 3.5 spell (only Esper summons can compete in terms of spell power). And don't discount what Gogo can do with them with a 3x rage multiplier instead of the 2x from MP Crit.

You can mitigate the downsides with things like Rerise, Image, and Golem. One of a differing opinion to yours might instead say that the downsides of rod fighting from the back row aren't worth the increase in safety. Different strokes, and all that. Having multiple viable options to appeal to different players' tastes is a sign of good design.

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.

22 hours ago, Nowea said:

"Strong vs Flying" weapons all have the "Randomly throws" effect, which has a 50% chance to do 100% more damage (or 200% more vs flying) so its bpow is effectively closer to 300 (400 vs flying) on average. This means it'll perform as well as Avenger on average vs weakness (vs holy and vs flying respectively). Mutsu is its own formula that I don't really feel like looking at too much, but I'd blindly wager that Orochi outperforms it vs flying enemies if you don't go out of your way to get a +Mag damage booster on Shadow.

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.

22 hours ago, Nowea said:

You do get 4 Force Gear, however I'd disagree with it being specialized and not appealing. Of the characters that can use Force Gear, Cyan doesn't have a strong magic build. Cyan likes Force Armor as it's basically his only source of elemental mitigation, so against Fire/Ice/Bolt it's a viable piece of armor for him. Terra and Celes are better served by Minerva usually, yes. But Minerva's also a late game piece of gear. I'm also looking at 2.0 documentation though and don't remember if 1 force gear was swapped to something else for 2.1 or not.

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!

57 minutes ago, SirNewtonFig said:

I definitely sympathize with this, though there's two issues here that I can think of. One is that these effects all use the same branch of the damage formula currently, so differentiating between OG Drain and the others would require implementing a secondary one (it's not as easy as unchecking a "cap damage to current HP/MP" flag on each effect, sadly). This would not be an issue if removing this constraint across the board, however, as a single subroutine could simply be skipped.

However, the larger issue is that there's no differentiation between spell power for the HP side vs the MP side for the effects that concern both (e.g. Empowerer, Bedevil, Raid). As such, something that is balanced to restore up to 1000HP would also mill the enemy of 1000MP, which intrudes heavily on the value of Rasp and pretty well renders Mindblow utterly obsolete not long after you get it.

I'm not actually sure how complicated it would be to have separate calculations for the HP and MP portions, using a reduced (maybe 1/4 or 1/8) spell power for the MP portion. Probably more effort than it's worth for the sake of 4 Rages and 1 Dance 

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?

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

The general rule of thumb with Reflect is that it protects against anything magical that is single- or free-targeted, whether it is a "dot" spell or not. There are some exceptions to this, such as Lifeshaver, Barrier, Discord, Blow Fish, Refract, and Atomic Ray (there are probably more, just pulled these few from where they were mentioned in the Readme/Printme specifically). Conversely, if an effect is not capable of hitting a single target, it is unreflectable as a general rule.

As such, I think Float should already ignore reflect? If it doesn't, it may just be a vestigial holdover from when it was a free-targeting spell.

Safe can be set on reflected targets using the Shield lore or Monet Brush, and Shell can be set on reflected targets using the Zoneseek summon or Dali Brush. Rerise can be set on reflected targets with Seraph, for Regen there's Stray or RegenX, and for Haste there's HasteX.

The limitations imposed by the Reflect status are deliberate: it is an inconvenience to both you and your enemy. This isn't FF9 where you can just Reflect your whole party with no drawbacks. As I've highlighted, though, there are ways to work around these limitations, and having to rely on those is the cost of having a very reliable safeguard against some very dangerous effects.

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.

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

My concern with this would be for the player. So many fractional damage enemy attacks would have to be rescripted to avoid easy wipes. I think they're fine as is.

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.

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

As we touched on with Reflect above, limitations are not necessarily a bad thing. Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz are both very good, and Water and Ice weaknesses are quite common. The grounded nature of Surge reigns them in a little. In terms of boss battles, this really only impacts Gold-D, who is water-weak but flying (so 3 of 4 Rondo steps are still applicable, 3/16 chance of a whiff – not terrible); Red and Brown can both be affected by grounded attacks.

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.

27 minutes ago, Raxistaicho said:

Huh, I thought I was being clever

 

Guess I was just lucky

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.

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

I think the battle engine can only show one non-aura (safe, shell, reflect) overlay effect at a time, so it prioritizes between things like poison, blind, mute, etc. The "fizz" that indicates Rage status is one of these. You'll notice a similar thing when you get hit by Bad Breath and are Muted, Blind and Poisoned at the same time, and can only see the Poison.

In short: not ideal, but also not a bug.

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.

2 hours ago, SirNewtonFig said:

What spells would they proc? Haste used to be on the Ross Brush, but it was deliberately changed to Reflect by BTB. Not sure if that was just for the symmetry of the three main defensive buffs being on brushes, or to keep her from overlapping with the characters with Haste (of which there are already very many), but I doubt you'll see it back.

What else is left? Curatives would be redundant, as the brushes already heal, and she can just cast Remedy, RegenX, or Rerise.

Something to set Image would be the strongest case. It would establish the Thamasa trio as the go to Image setters, each with their own unique way of doing it. Plus it fits into the theme of light and optics that goes along with her artistry kit. There's no "spell" to set just Image outside of Smoke Bomb though, so what would the proc use?

I think the only buff left is Float, which wouldn't be the worst, I guess. But is there any point adding a brush for it?

I want brush casting to be cool, I really do, but without altering Relm's standby kit or gutting a spell to make room for an Image brush proc, I can't think of how to go about it. You can bet BTB won't buy in to anything that involves a significant rework of character options — he wants to call BNW a finished product.

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.

20 minutes ago, SirNewtonFig said:

 

That's just the way spellcast procs are implemented. Imagine you're making a game, and you come up with a system for weapons to cast spells, and you decide 25% chance is the sweet spot, with a booster for 50% chance on certain gear — would you then spend additional space in your game accommodating further additional exceptions to the probability that you don't intend to use? Likely not in the SNES era.

Fast forward to today, if you want something other than the standard proc rates or behaviour, you need to write custom hard-coded proc routines to do it. The wind blades, Kagenui (I think?), and Zantetsuken are pre-existing examples of this. Or you could probably relocate/rewrite the routine that determines the proc success and add new exceptions to it on the basis of item type or other equipped things or whatever. There's just nothing within the system as it is defined right now to do what you propose.

That makes sense. Well, that means it may be possible with some work. Space might be a concern, I'd wager.

Tbh, I'm pretty fond of the changes - they create more gameplay depth in an intuitive way.

Aside from that, adding 1-2 more brushes to the game and rebalancing the stats of Brushes still feels like a good idea to me on its own.

5 hours ago, copperflame said:

I am a fan of the current brush set up:  Strike x2 with potential buff.  It gives her some healing method without having to spam Cure 3.  
I wouldn't mind higher proc rate for Radiant Gown (or if that is not possible, then a little something else).

But going back to brushes - I typically use brushes on Gogo as well.  It would be great to see a brush with Remedy on it.  I don't know how many brushes you would want when only 1 character (2 counting Gogo) a play experience would need... but I definitely would cheer to see one with Remedy on it.  

Changing from 2x hit to single hit doesn't necessarily alter the healing aspect(bpow can be adjusted to compensate). So you wouldn't lose that aspect.
Remedy Brush probably won't happen, because it serves basically no purpose on Relm.

A regen Brush seems possible. While Relm has RegenX, single target Regen would hold some utility. Also a Regen(and also Remedy) Brush would heal for a LOT, as the cast heals on top of the Brush hit.

I mean, Shadow and Sabin have quite a few weapons to their name. I'd like to see about 2 more Brushes and a balance pass on their stats and chance(if that's possible, I really hope so). Regen or Haste Brush both seems good. Regen would be pretty big healing and haste just expands Relms repertoire.

12 hours ago, Dyne said:

There's no way to do a 100% proc. I think the way the game is hard coded, there's only 25% and 50% options available. The brushes actually got changed from hitting once to hitting twice, just to make the proc more reliable.

That'd be a shame. Weirdly restrictive, but I wouldn't be surprised. I hope there's a way around that.

Hello all, I thought up a few suggestions for Relm, tell me what you think about them.


Interceptor

It's possible to get Interceptor on Relm, but only via giving up Shadow. But why not have Interceptor protect both Relm and Shadow? Probably as a reward for seeing all of Shadows dreams. I guess he couldn't protect both of them at the same time but, aside from real world logic not applying to video game logic in the first place, the vast majority of attacks Interceptor intercepts are single target anyway.
I believe it would be quite a thematic addition and some tuning may alleviate balance concerns.

Brushes

I find brushes quite interesting. It's a unique form of healing and support that could be played up a bit. However, as they currently are, I feel they are more of a nice gimmick than an actual asset. The lack of reliability and the opportunity cost of using them on a character that is all about the big guns sidelines the brushes by quite a bit.

Dropping the hits twice property for 100% chance of the cast(and adjusting bpow accordingly) would be a start. Alternatively, Brush casts could start off at 50% chance and get buffed to 100% with Radiant Gown. Trades raw healing power for reliability of the utility.
Furthermore, a few more brushes could be added to the game to expand the choices. Remedy, Haste or Regen come to mind.

The stats of brushes should be balanced around enabling choice. Most brushes should have similar - or even identical - bpow and secondary stats on them, so you don't feel like raw stats outweigh choice. Brushes with less powerful/redundant or difficult to execute effects could have slightly higher stats.

I think Brushes have an adequate pay-off, too.
Getting a bit of a heal along with a standard buff is not that much more powerful than simply casting the buff in the first place.
While there is great versatility in theory, you ultimately only have one buff available for any given battle.
The aforementioned opportunity cost is pretty high on someone like Relm, even with her high speed. On the flipside, a support-focused Relm is more of an actual option with buffs to brushes. One could even let their healing scale with stamina which would really open up a speed/stamina build, especially together with the Interceptor change... no idea if that is a desired direction, though.
And lastly, raw stats. Brushes could give, in general, less secondary stats than Rods - or even none in most cases. This would be the most direct trade-off - trading some damage for utility.

That's it. Tell me how you like the suggestions and feel free to criticise.

Hello there, I think I may have found a bug/oversight.

I recently read that self-damage is reduced, a behaviour you see whenever you got someone muddled.
In a string of events, my muddled Cyan flurried on my party, muddling everyone before I could remedy him and the turn after, he attacked a party member, procced the windblade effect and got me a clean game over. Happened a while ago, on the Floating Continent, so I can't be sure about the numbers. Might be worth looking into.

Thanks for reading.

5 hours ago, Dufaux said:

Please ignore everything I just said before the edit, I just checked the printme.

I cannot ignore what I haven't even seen! I demand a revert for historical accuracy..........!

Hello there, I am currently playing through 2.0 and thought I'd make some notes while I'm at it. Here, I wish to discuss the challenge of encounters throughout WoB as well as early WoR until ~Daryl's Tomb.
I hope any of this will be useful to the devs, so here goes...

As a note on my levels: I generally try to keep my levels low and always use the lowest level characters, if possible. I don't speed through the game, but don't grind a lot if at all, so my levels should be in very "normal" ranges, a bit low if anything.


World of Balance

Figaro Cave(Both Visits)

The enemies here could stand to be a bit stronger, but there really isn't much to work with this early in the game.

Sabins Scenario, especially Phantom Train

Enemies in the whole scenario could be a good deal more difficult. Cyan, Sabin and Shadow(if you don't skimp too much on Shurikens) are all early powerhouses, in my opinion. You also have a decent amount of tools at your disposal. I'd crank the difficulty a good bit and would probably add Shurikens&Image Scrolls to the vendors on the Phantom Train. On the train specifically, one might be able to do a bit more with the ghastly companions you get throughout the train, to increase strategic diversity.

Battle of Narshe

Pretty fine as it is, but I'd like to see some more enemy variiety.

Zozo

While the enemies are decently threatening, I still believe they could use a small buff to their health pools, especially Hobos and Slam Dancers.

Imperial Magitek Research Facility

Enemies here pose a threat in theory, but you also get the very powerful elemental swords around the same time, which just demolish this part of the game. In addition, you also get the Scimitar. Running Scimitar+Elem Sword turns most battles here into absolute cakewalks and even the bosses buckle a bit too quickly under the pressure you can exert.

I'd suggest moving the Elem swords to post-IMTRF, but keeping them in the chests you get throughout the dungeon. Aside from that, bosses deserve a small buff, so you got to interact with their mechanics a little bit more.

Sealed Gate Cave

Difficulty here seems almost right, it's just a bit on the low side.

Burning House

It's pretty easy, but I see how it is hard to create a challenge here.

Floating Continent

An appropriately big jump in difficulty.
Sky Armors and Spit Fires are pretty dangerous, but you also have great tools to deal with them in almost any party.
Chupon, Ulros and IAF are all good fights.
The continent randoms can be very threatening. The most threatening one I found was the double Behemoth. Their meteo hits hard and can easily wipe if they go double meteo. They counterattack physical and are overall really bulky.
The one thing I'd change is their(and probably Atmas) weakness. Ice is not an element available to anyone - importantly, it is also not in Shadow's repertoire. That the hardest encounter on the FC as well as the boss are both weak to ice is quite restrictive on party composition.
I'd change their weakness or add another one, preferably one Shadow can hit(as he is the certain baseline in this part of the game) - probably Water?

Character note: Relm

Relm is quite the latebloomer, as stated by the readme, too. However, the main reason she doesn't perform well during FC is her lack of offensive versatility. Somehow adding one more mid-tier damage spell to her arsenal could make her a much more useful character for this stage of the game. I'd also buff up the stats of the Monet Brush to about the same levels as the Dali Brush. In a sense, Monet Brush is actually an "endgame" weapon, if you want to set Safe with Relm and its stat should reflect that. As it is a pure defensive weapon - and her spell coverage/utility would be very limited regardless - I think it'd be fair for her Monet Brush to be brought up so that it feels a bit more useful later on as well as on the FC.

World of Ruin

World of Ruin Overworld - especially Deserts

I'd appreciate if the desert encounters - aside from Figaro desert - would be a good deal more threatening and maybe even really difficult if you tackle them early on.
The reason for this is more atmosphere than gameplay, really. It'd add onto that atmosphere nicely and would be a good place to put XP/GP/EL farms for later on. (lvl 23-25, 15-20 EL, 4 characters).

Aside from that, the encounters you get once you have 4 characters could be beefed up a bit.

Figaro Cave&Figaro Castle Basement

The cave enemies were REALLY weak, in my opinion. The Robots in Figaro Castle B2 were fine, but could hit a bit harder. Sabin really puts on the hurt on everything here. I really enjoyed the tentacle fight. Could be made a tiny bit harder, but that's about it.

Daryl's Tomb

The encounters here are latently threatening, but not quite enough. The enemies fall extremely quickly to your obvious options(Hell Claw hits, Poison) and do not deal enough damage to be an actual threat to your party. I like how Powerslaves are designed, they are really annoying on your MP pool. The enemy status moves also seem to have quite a low hitrate at this point.
As we know what the party will be when going in - Setzer, Celes, Edgar and Sabin - I think you could build the encounters a bit more around their strategic strengths to create a more enjoyable experience.
Dullahan fight, on the other hand, felt pretty great. A beserked Hell Claw Sabin pretty much rips him a new one, though(5-10k dmg per turn). Tbh, I think the output of Sabin should be toned down a bit for this part.

So, this is about it. I'll keep making notes for Feedback and have a good chunk of feedback on system and characters, too, but I'll finish the game first before presenting most of the rest. I just thought I'd give my opinion on the difficulty of the "rail-roaded" part up to Daryl's Tomb. Feel free to disagree with me on anything, I am happy to get my mind changed. I hope this will at least be a little bit useful to the development. Cheers!

Hey they, currently playing through 2.0.
It seems that Setzer's Tarot is bugged.
 

lvl 22 at the time and had Daryl's Soul equipped.

Tarot deals about ~400 dmg to Powerslaves at 51 Vigor and 164 bpow.
The Maneater, on the other hand, dealt twice that much damage at 56 Vigor and 184 bpow.

Everything else is working, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a bad patch or something like that.

On 3.8.2018 at 3:34 PM, velsper said:

I was looking up blue magic because after I updated the files, I had a few new spells. Quarry Fuse instead of Level 5 suicide. The documents only mention how to get the old spells. Could you provide the info on where the new spells are? 

You get the spells the same way, that's the thing.

Quarry Fuse is gotten just like lvl 5 suicide. So it doesn't matter a whole lot.

Only problem I found was with the "Alpha" skill(From Zolom).

Sidenote: Magnitude8(Which is now Time Flare) is a bit annoying to get. You need to use limits to trigger it as a counterattack. Hope this helps moving forward.

5 hours ago, Hapanpappa said:

Speaking of overleveling, is flat out just reducing exp gains, at least in some critical areas, something worth considering at this point? With overleveling turning out to be such a common problem among players.. At least, many peeps in this community seem to struggle with it to some extent, whether a veteran or not - and even though it gets a bit murky where the difficulty is in the players' hands anyways(turning exp off etc), maybe it could stand to be just a little more conservative?

Some work to prevent people a bit more from overlevelling seems like a good idea.
However, one more feature I'd like to see: Turn of EXP without turning off EL gains. I find EL-training(Especially in Early-mid WoR) to be incredibly annoying. Some characters can really fall behind the EL curve - and, opposed to lvls, ELs represent a lot more... fun. Level ups aren't fun(No choice, "boring" powerboosts).

Burning House being rather easy(As an introductory stage or smth) is fine... But it is not easy - it is a joke. That is not good, in my opinion.

Ebot's Rock and Ancient Castle feel like they could be buffed up, that's true.

Owzer's Mansion, Phoenix Cave and Cultist Tower stuck out to me as particulary easy. I did stuff in order(Aside from Veldt Cave) and did not grind one bit, often turning off exp - think by Cultist Tower, my party was about lvl 27-28, ELs at about 15-17.

So, to summarize the areas I felt were too easy~
FC(With proper setup, multi-party dungeon could alleviate the problem there).
Magitek Research Facility.
Burning House(And basically anything Thamasa).
Sealed Gate Cave.
Owzer's Mansion.
Phoenix Cave.
Ebot's Rock.
Ancient Castle.
Cultist Tower.