Cecil188

I would disagree with the sentiment that magical Rages fall off over time. Gau will steadily get faster over the course of the game unless you're slam-dunking all your Esper levels into Stamina(at which point, it is absolutely defensible to disregard the elemental precision and focus exclusively on the Rages that scale with Stamina). But if you're putting ELs into Speed, Gau's damage will increase, moreso than most characters in this fashion because Gau will never really need to wait for you to input his command for him. Combine this with the fact that a lot of his more powerful Rages use spells/skills with a high Spell Power, and he doesn't need a heavy investment in Magic to do a lot of damage overall, even if his damage per hit isn't notably impressive very often. Though higher Magic Power certainly helps. In particular, Shokan is a devastatingly powerful Rage when applied in the right context. It devastates anything that has a weakness to Dark, which is a pretty hard weakness to exploit effectively. It also keeps up Seizure for free, since Gau will use Raze reasonably often just by virtue of the sheer number of turns he will take.

I personally can't stand Locke as a healer myself. X-Magic's delay is just too grievous for me to actually consider it worth it. You can use X-Magic Cure proactively, or you can just use Go Fish, for example, reactively. Locke's revival prowess does nothing for Shadow; Phoenix Downs are faster, and Shadow's roughly as tanky at 1 HP as he is at full HP. i.e. he's perfectly good at surviving even without having a dedicated healer for him. Similar arguments apply for Gau, Gogo, and to a lesser extent, Relm. Relm has enough MP to rarely need to Osmose during a fight unless you're literally spamming super hard or if you didn't really take many levels in MP. But since ZoneSeek is her only source of Magic ELs, she will generally have a lot of MP to go along with it. And if you need Life 2, you generally need it somewhat frequently, and Locke just doesn't have the sustain for that unless you're willing to burn Ethers and the like.

I can't be sure whether you were unlucky in the previous version, lucky in the current version, or perhaps a combination of both, but Atma's script has been essentially untouched between 1.9 and 2.0. And the infinitesimal edits that *were* made were wholly unrelated to the attacks that it uses on you. Atma's not programmed to target Terra with Rasp: that's a reasonably expensive clause to put in a script in a circumstance where Terra isn't even necessarily going to be there. It just happened to be the case that it targeted the same character twice in a row. Rasping Atma to death is surely not easier. Among other things, Atma no longer dies at 0 MP, because Atma is not undead, and so, it would be against the current design decisions to allow it to die at 0 MP.

It's not a take that particularly resonates with me, but I don't explicitly disagree with really anything you've said. I'm surprised you found Goner to be underwhelming, though. It was a major danger point for me. If the fight were just Kefka alone, it's likely I would have prepared to shrug something like that off(especially with frequent Meteor as well), but Goner was one of the more troublesome attacks in that fight for me.

For what it's worth, you also cannot evade Flare. Runic/Reflect are the way to go to avoid taking damage.

Setzer ends up being my MVP for ultimate meme Slots. Triple-BARs has a lot of potential; even if you don't get what you're looking for, the result can still be super useful. Edgar gets an honourable mention for taking 51 damage from Havoc Wing and ~250 damage from a single target Bolt 3 from Kefka...or something. Not dying is a useful trait.

Shokan line of enemies die at 0 MP despite not being undead.

Diffuser is not just Lightning elemental, but Earth elemental as well. Seems weird, not sure if intended.

To quote my theory(which I have significant confidence in) from Discord for the sake of clear documentation: "(Damage * [225 - (Vigor or Stamina * 3/4)] / 225) + 1 This is the reduction factor for the low end of Stamina variance. Of note here is the factor of 3/4. At 85 Stamina, this factor reduces it to 63.75. At 86 Stamina, this factor reduces it to 64.5. I highly suspect that this reduced factor is overflowing once passing 64(which is 2^6), and causing issues.(edited) If it is indeed overflowing, the floor becomes higher than the ceiling, and may account for the complete lack of variation."

One thing to note is that 5% of the encounters being "soul-crushingly difficult" is that those were the encounters *you* found difficult. In comparison, most of the stuff *you* found difficult were things that I found trivial, whereas some things that beat me the first time around were things that you have never mentioned and thus I assume you had no difficulty with. The idea here is that there aren't specific randoms that are overtuned(necessarily), but instead randoms that counter the setups that we're running, and as long as we run different setups, we will find different encounters difficult. The trick is to be able to handle *everything* in an area passably well, instead of being able to handle some things very well and some things poorly. In this instance, having Sabin/Gau as your damage dealers worked poorly, as Locke and Celes have the more consistent options against them. However, against the other randoms, (Gau's)Fireball and Sabin's Fire Dance worked well. Furthermore, I watched portions of the fights, and characters were sitting idle at times. While Sabin's claws were indeed insufficient on their own, I never stated that they would be sufficient; they *would* be sufficient when paired with other characters working in conjunction with him. And this brings me to my other point: It is possible to know what works well ahead of time, through several manners. The first is that you've already fought the Albatross. This lets you be aware of options such as Sabin's Suplex, Edgar's Noiseblaster, and by extension, Cyan's Flurry, as well as Imp susceptibility from experience using it with Terra. Given that Albatrosses are problem enemies in themselves, it's reasonable the player would have felt encouraged to use status ailments there to aid them, and thus not unreasonable to expect that *something* status related was used against them on the Lete River. The second is the tutorial house, which I assume you visited. There, you will learn, among other things, that flying enemies are susceptible to Bolt. And thus, now the majority of the strategies listed above are fully within access without suffering a single death. There's also the note within the tutorial house that scrub enemies are typically vulnerable to plenty of things unless it's undead, which now allows you to include Bserk and Sleep as viable strategies. And while there's no way to know that these would work ahead of time, it certainly wouldn't take many attempts to ascertain that they do.

And while Siren is one specific option, it's certainly not the only option. Locke can dual wield Full Moons, which I hear is sufficient. Locke can use either Bolt 2 or Bolt in conjunction with Celes to take one out. Celes is guaranteed to have either Ramuh or Siren equipped, Siren effectively guaranteeing that they're shut down and Ramuh either one-shotting them or getting really close(I did a calculation assuming level 10 with absolutely no Magic boosting equipment except for a Magic Cube, and I calculate it does 861 damage, which is sufficient). Regardless, Bolt 2 as well would certainly kill one. Aside from that, Celes and Edgar potentially have access to Bserk. Edgar can use NoiseBlaster or Drill in conjunction with Locke/Celes's Bolt. Cyan likely has access to Flurry. Sabin has access to Suplex, which admittedly randomly targets, though I suspect he could get close just by punching them down, certainly with Locke/Celes's help via Bolt. Sabin and Gau potentially have access to Imp and/or Sleep. Gau likely has access to either Wind Slash, Air Blast, Fireball, x3 Special, Rock, Plasma, Sand Storm, Antlion Rage(both options are fantastic), Eye Goo Rage(both options are fantastic), Chickenlip Rage if taken on a detour around the continent, or Rain Man Rage on subsequent battles. The point is, while any specific option may not be obvious/possible to an arbitrary player, one of them should be, either through being a fan of Noiseblaster, experimenting with Rage and enjoying Air Blast, or doing the "hold A and pray" strategy with Sabin. Given that nothing else there is super powerful, it should become evident that taking them out first is a good strategy. Does that mean they shouldn't be nerfed? No. However, is it necessary to nerf them to be able to progress? Absolutely not. On another note, the EXP required to get from level 10 to 11 is twice that of the requirement for getting from level 11 to 12, with the aim of sort of regulating character levels to some degree. Thus, the trip from Bob->Zozo via Chocobo may do more than you(and I) initially assume. It's a tad easy to get characters "stuck" at level 10 as a result of this EXP curve, though once you get past that, the EXP requirement doesn't reach that point again until going from level 15 to 16, so getting from 11-15 is a tad easier than anticipated.

Had Terra with 2 Stamina, Strago with 128. Sand Storm failed to Blind Terra despite her only having 2 Stamina(tested 4 times, chances were 1/16777216 of this happening by circumstance). Strago was killed, and Terra was Blinded by the next Sand Storm, to confirm she wasn't immune to Blind. I suspect the Stamina save needs to be failed by all party members before it will apply to any of them(at which point it will apply the status to all of them barring immunity to the status). Similar yet different: Set four characters to 1 Stamina. Grav Bomb missed 5 times in a row. Applied Float, Grav Bomb connected the next attempt. Seems Grav Bomb misses on non-floating targets.

Dragon has a success rate of 170 when it's intended to be 128. Note that I haven't downloaded RC 27 yet, I'm making the(rather safe assumption) that it wasn't fixed in RC 27. (Added to bug list)

https://clips.twitch.tv/ProudNeighborlyIcecreamMikeHogu Tier 1 seems to use Meteo whenever the heck it wants.

Tzen does not sell the Hyper Wrist in the WoR. (Fixed in RC-22) Bouncy Balls do 0 damage. (Added to bug list) Polarity seems to only have a graphical effect, and does not change the actual row of the target. (Likely got fixed with the RC-22 shit. Can someone confirm?) Steal often doesn't display that the enemy has been relieved of an item, but the Steal command is still perfectly functional anyways. (Confirmed fixed in RC-22)

Thanks to seibaby for testing insights: Being Blinded while Jumping causes Jump to respect row; this is the cause of dealing half damage in this circumstance(proc damage is affected as well). Normal damage without blind was ~650, Front Row+Blind was ~650, Back Row+Blind was ~325. (Dark) Proc was about 3100 Normal, 1400 Blinded(wasn't paying too close attention to normal proc, might have been less than 3100, either way, it probably falls within variance).

Intangir's mid battle switch can crash the game. I don't know exactly what I did here, but maybe I panned up into the Esper menu during the short pause between phases and this caused a crash. Details here: www.twitch.tv/cecil188/clip/WanderingSlickRadicchio4Head