rpschamp

I missed this bit about the aggro.... If this is true, then this combo may not be as useful as I anticipated. The point would be to slow the enemy down, but if Sleep Flower speeds up techs, then you would be better off doing this with Stone Cloud instead and wearing the resist Earth accessory to mitigate damage. fun fact - where I'm from a "focus group" is a collection of idiots occupied with meetings while the rest does actual useful work - hope that doesn't apply here True, but the magical focus groups cast spells at those meetings, so they're at least entertaining.

If you have the spell in one of your groups, you can test it by equipping a Wind God Bracelet with reflect armor and self casting. The bracelet should grant immunity, and the target of your spell should now reflect sleep onto incoming attackers. I have a bad habit of deleting old games, otherwise I would test it myself. Most of the status/reflect possibilities deal damage with the spell; Sleep Flower and Body Change do not. I'm not too interested in Body Change because of the Chibikko/experience issue, but Sleep Flower could be really useful for slowing down incoming attackers, especially for a magical focus group that would not keep waking them up with melee. (It would also give me that great feeling of repurposing a once useless spell.) Stone Cloud would be another fun one to try (with Gauntlet or Earth Shield), but you'll have to have a way to quickly recover that level 3 earth damage, maybe by timing a Heal Light to apply right after.

These effects are based on the last spell cast on you, in this case probably from the enemies you are fighting. Mispolm casts Stone Cloud (and maybe some Silence spell) on himself so you can get those effects from attacking him. Sleep Flower is another status spell that should work that Rune Master does not have. It also deals no damage, which should be nice here. There are a few classes with this ability, Grand Divina and Evil Shaman being two of them. Body Change is another one, but I'm not as interested in this effect.

Magical focus groups: I think the formula here is 1) Angela for her spell power and damage versatility, 2) Hawk or Carlie as a second caster, and 3) Duran or Lise for a shield runner. I've played several variations of this group up through the God Beasts and found two that I really like: 1) Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina - This was more of a mixed magical/physical team capable of ramping up either damage type, depending on the circumstance. For mobs, I could lead with Hawk or Lise, depending on whether I preferred a double hitter and Marduke or a shield runner and Fire Jutsu to complement Angela's spell barrage. For bosses, I either pumped up Angela and turned her loose for magical damage or focused more on saber spells and Fireblaze for physical damage. 2) Fenrir Knight, Archmage, Sage - Fenrir Knight was nice as a complement here since her final weapon gave her something active to do other than distract enemies while Archmage and Sage bombed them to oblivion. Maybe one of the reasons Gigas Flail worked nicely here was that I had HP coming in from Fenrir Knight's final weapon as well. The spell chain here was devastating, 80% of the time. Still, I found myself in a few situations (Dolan in particular) where I found that this group had difficulty with damage diversity. I would like to test more variations of this group. For this Duran, Angela, Carlie group, I'm gravitating towards Light Duran, Dark Angela, Dark Carlie. One advantage Duran has over Lise is shield variety, so I'd like to play on this. This is why the status/reflect strategy (using reflect armor to reflect the status of the last spell cast on you to all melee attacks, as with Mispolm and Petrify) appeals to me: Duran can choose his status immunity and also get a shield with one accessory slot. Rune Master gets several statuses to choose from with her level 3 spells, and Evil Shaman gets Sleep Flower which has the added bonus of not dealing damage. Necromancer, though, gets better damage diversity in general, helping solve the major problem I had with the Fenrir Knight, Archmage, Sage team. I have never tried this status/reflect strategy before, so I cannot attest to it's overall usefulness, but it at least gives Duran something to do while Angela and Carlie are casting. Of course, Lord, Archmage, Sage looks fantastic, but I don't think it will be very different from the Fenrir Knight, Archmage, Sage group I've already played, so I think I will be trying something different this time. Thank you, it has been a long journey for me, and while I've grown accustomed to the grad school existence, I'm looking forward to trying something new (and hopefully putting away a little more money for the future in the process).

I find Gigas Flail to be pretty useful up through the God Beasts and for random encounters most of the game, but towards the end of the game Holy Flail is definitely more effective for bosses. It's nice to have both options and choose the best for each situation. You can also equip Mad Beast Fangs for an extra 50% or so HP regen boost. Since you've played Nightblade through the whole game, do you find Ninja Master's MT Mind Down or Nightblade's Black Rain to be better for MT damage? Without having played a Nightblade through the God Beasts, I would assume that a caster team would prefer the MT Mind Down to boost subsequent spells but a physical team would just go for the higher base damage of Black Rain. Also, my thesis is wrapping up so I'm finally going to get to the Duran, Angela, Carlie team I've been planning. I've decided to give up the Duelist idea (Grand Divina's instantaneous cast time would kind of defeat the purpose of this shield/caster team) and go with Light Duran for Heal Light and Protect Up at the first class change and more class change options for my casters. At this point I'm thinking Light Duran, Dark Angela, Dark Carlie for power casting and status/reflect effects or Light Duran, Archmage, Sage for power casting and extra support spells (Aura Wave, Leaf Saber; not having to choose between Mind Up and elemental sabers). I may try a few options and play around a bit.

Just to agree, I've played both Ninja Master/Star Lancer/Grand Divina and Ninja Master/Dragon Master/Grand Divina, and Star Lancer is the better choice. Not only does she have better abilities for this team, but you'll be able to wear whatever armor you want. At least on Hawk/Lise's quest, empowered Antimagic is not worth resigning yourself to invert armor during boss fights.

Both Bill/Bens, Machine Robos Redux, Lugar, Jewel Eater, Gildervine Phase 2, and probably some others I'm not thinking of. I pretty much equip them at every boss when I have two casters going, except for Gorva and maybe Tzenker.

It should. By the way, do you make much use of the early low-chance deny-counter armor you can buy at the Dwarf Village? I've found the "low chance" description to be misleading and this armor to be indispensable to casters against bosses all the way up to the God Beasts.

For the most part you're right; its only those mobs you can't silence that also do a ton of tech damage that might leave you longing for MT Power Down (werewolves come to mind). MT Mind Down should not really be as important, since Black Curse compensates with increased base damage and that 25% always-MT bonus.

I take it that to get this to work, you'd have to reroute all the event scenes for every character. Not sure if it would be worth the effort!

Sorry, I read the term "possibly" to mean that it wasn't high on your list of priorities. Even without the Moon Coins, I still think Ninja Master would be more fun. The MT stat debuffs are really that good, both defensively for lowering incoming physical or magical damage or offensively to boost your spells. Plus Marduk is just way better than Blow Needles. The level 3 FST and Black Rain are really nice though, so Nightblade should be good as well; also his colors fit nicely with the rest of the team (Midnight Marauders?).

Duran Duran! The game has to decide who Duran is talking to.... Does the first Duran respond with Angela's text about her story in Altena? Or... the game crashes? Will Duran Duran ever make it to Seito Wenderu?

Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina - Kongo Rakan and Fireblaze against bosses, Analyze and Energy Ball for critical hits against bosses, MT stat downs, Marduk, and Grand Divina for random enemies. Nightblade has fewer advantages: Grand Divina can apply Curse faster with Evil Gate, MT Fire Jutsu will out-damage Black Rain by boosting Marduk and Grand Divina's magic by 25%, you already have MT Silence with Marduk, and Ninja Master's final weapon is much more useful. MT Water Jutsu is also useful for reducing damage from those tech-heavy werewolves you can't silence. Deadly Weapon? Moon Coins are common enough; just pick a bunch up in Jadd Castle. Save Nightblade for those groups where there's not much MT damage magic to boost or you need a Curse or Silence caster. But I think maybe Nesouk was just trying to include Nightblade for variety. TBH, Hawk/Lise/Angela is a really fun game, and there are a several cool ways to play it. Ninja Master, Vanadis, Rune Master sounds like a blast. Rogue, Archmage, Vanadis also works, but you'll be missing the sabers. Pairing Ninja Master with Fenrir Knight (with invert armor) would also give you more chances to use Fenrir Knight's counter recovery with Ninja Master's final weapon, but you'd need another way to heal for those fights where you don't have a basic elemental weakness to exploit.

and how do you get past FMH or Jewel Eater? They would be tough. It would be advisable to farm a Moon Coin for each fight, the first just outside Jadd and the second in Jadd castle. For FMH you can put all your stats into strength (with maybe one agility and two vitality) and just try to keep your HP up. It would take a few tries but I think you could eventually get through it. At least by Jewel Eater you'd have Holy Ball; everyone could wear defensive gear and use Matango Oils to try to compensate for Carlie's earth weakness and just bomb him to death. Again, it might take a few tries and you'd burn a lot of healing items. Things would get easier after the first class change. I just love the idea of three Carlies running around, pounding things to death. Has anyone seen The Brood by David Cronenberg?

Triple Death Hand party, easy Death Hand, God Hand, Dervish. Invert armor on Dervish for Protect Up when you need it. But c'mon - Evil Shaman, Sage, Necromancer. Three strong casters with at least two in each element, best healer in the game, Protect/Mind Up, MT Power/Mind Down, Black Curse, six sabers, Antimagic, Lunatic, Life Booster.... Bishop could sub for Evil Shaman if you prefer for Saint Saber and a spirit weapon. Unleash the demons.

That's fair, I used Lise in basically every team I ran in the base game and got sick of her as well for a while the good news is it's much easier to build a functional party without her in this rom hack! True that, it was almost never advisable to go Lise-less in the original :-)

I agree with this too, and I've used Lise in almost every party so far because of this. I think I've just gotten bored of her and started looking for non-Lise solutions. If I find any good ones I'll be sure to let everyone know ;-)

I don't think Bishop can be really compared to Grand Divina in terms of damage spells; Grand Divina gets the six major elements, ST or MT, and can cast these instantly by the end game. Bishop gets one element, which is great for dark enemies, bad for holy ones, and missing the 50% weakness bonus for the other four types. Grand Divina also gets Transshape and Sleep Flower, which should work great with the Duelist carrying a shield (Sleep Flower self-cast with Dragon Shield and reflect armor should put all attackers to sleep immediately). Bishop's healing is more convenient as it's naturally MT, but Grand Divina's is just as powerful. Plus, since all her damage spells are instant, she's always free to heal. The advantage I see to Bishop is Protect Up and Magic Shield, but not much else. But as an atheist, I might be biased ;-) More seriously, I've only played Bishop in one group, going for Sage in most other situations, so I could be missing something.

Swordmaster/Archmage/Sage would be an interesting alternative to Lord/Archmage/Sage; you would be trading Protect Up and a better final weapon for three extra sabers. I do prefer Lord's level 3 tech with his final weapon to Swordmaster's; I'm convinced that Ragnarok is not great unless you're on a team with Ninja Master. By the way, has anyone been brave/stupid enough to run a team without Heal Light? I feel like there are tons of interesting teams that would be possible if you based your strategy completely around item healing or alternative methods like Dragon Ring or Mad Beast's Fang. You could make better use of all that heal hurts gear. One strategy would be to skip most random battles and just level up around Gold Statues, saving your items for boss fights and relying on passive healing when you're stuck to recover HP. In general, the classes without Heal Light are more powerful, so I'm sure you could build some awesome teams without that restriction.

I forgot to make the point about Grand Divina's final weapon, so thank you, Nesouk. Also, it was your posts about running Duelist on one of your previous teams that got me thinking about what he might be capable of; because Grand Divina and Evil Shaman get Transshape and Sleep Flower, I think they could be awesome teammates. (I'm assuming this Sleep Flower self-cast/immunity/reflect thing works, but I see no reason why it shoudn't). If I could, I might try Duelist, Evil Shaman, and Sage, to get that missing Mind Up and a stronger healer with a passive heal option. Grand Divina gets better damage spells and elemental diversity than Evil Shaman, though, so she still has a lot to contribute. Duran and two Carlies would be quite a ridiculous team, but until Praetarius feels like working that weirdness out, I guess we're stuck with only one.

Thank you guys for your input and suggestions. I do love Archmage/Sage; I've run these two together in two groups so far, one with Dragon Master and one with Rogue. They wreak absolute havoc casting level 2 MT spells back to back and cover many of the essential buffs/debuffs and sabers pretty nicely. I decided to limit my options here strictly to Duran/Angela/Carlie. As with Archmage/Sage, for a magical focus team, there is really no replacement for Angela/Carlie casting back to back through the early, mid, and late game. But who to take for a third? Duran and Lise both have shields, which make this team vastly easier to use, both for random enemies and for bosses like Bill/Ben, Lugar, and Machine Golem Redux that you need to keep away from your casters. Lise's focus is on stat buffs though, rather than abilities, which are more difficult or just not possible to replace. For example, there is just no way for Lise to achieve the physical power of a Duelist with his final weapon. Duelist doesn't get the stat buff/debuffs, but other teammates can cast them, or they can be bought. I've tried several Lise/Angela/Carlie teams and loved them, but I often find myself wanting the option to get at more physical damage when I need it. Hence my idea to give Duran a shot. To think about what groups might be interesting to try, I tried to simplify my options. Since the main point of this group is spell power through Angela and Carlie, I thought about the role Duran could play beyond shield-bearing tank/distractor and came up with two cases: 1) Duran goes light so he can focus on recovery/defense and leave Angela and Carlie to focus on spell power, and 2) Duran goes dark so he can contribute a ton of that missing physical damage. 1) Light Duran - With Duran casting Heal Light and Protect Up, there are more options here. Paladin/Necromancer and Archmage/Sage are great combinations to start with. Paladin/Necromancer could work well with Rune Master or Magus; with Rune Master, you'll be missing Mind Up and Power Up (though Magic Shield should be sufficient for Duran), and with Magus, you'll be missing Earth/Air/Water/Fire sabers. I find the scales easier to replace than the sabers, plus the Rune Master gets a bunch of nice status effects (most importantly, Petrify), so I would go for Rune Master. Now, compared to Rune Master/Necromancer, Archmage/Sage would recover the missing Mind Up as well as Aura Wave, Leaf Saber, Life Booster, Gigas Flail, and a second healer, but miss out on Black Curse, level 3 status spells, and a second strong elemental caster. I see Archmage/Sage as the more defensive option and Rune Master/Necromancer as the more offensive. But I would probably take Lord here instead of Paladin for the Speed Up/Down and final weapon which should help against bosses with maxed out magical defense, since Archmage already covers Antimagic. 2) Dark Duran - This is honestly a tougher team to put together since if I want Heal Light, I need either Angela to go Grand Divina or Carlie to go light. Since light Carlie uses up her spell options with the same sabers as dark Duran, Grand Divina seems like the better option, leaving Carlie to go dark so both Angela and Carlie have access to damage spells in most of the elements. The point of this group would be to have Duelist control the field with a shield and throw techs while Angela and Carlie sit back casting. Duelist works wonders with a shield and proximity damage, and Grand Divina has a two spells that work nicely with this: 1) Transshape to protect him from melee damage, and 2) Sleep Flower, which, cast on Duran wearing reflect armor and Dragon Shield, should cause any enemy that attacks him to fall asleep. Since Duelist and Grand Divina contribute very little in terms of stat buff/debuffs, though, Evil Shaman seems like Carlie's best option to pick up MT Power Down, MT Mind Down, and Protect Up, three of the four most essential. The major missing skill here is Mind Up, so again I'd have to go with Sahagin's Scales for boss fights. Evil Shaman's MT Power and Mind Down should be all you need in terms of buffs/debuffs for random battles, and for bosses, she can purchase Bottles of Ashes, which cast Black Curse, so I can pump up my Duelist when I need the physical damage. The only Angela/Carlie classes that provide Mind Up are Magus and Sage; Magus would force me to choose light Carlie and miss out on the debuffs and spell damage, while Sage would leave me without Protect Up and force me to double up on five saber spells. Actually, I could see an argument for Archmage/Sage here; I did a calculation for both elemental weakness and non-weakness situations and Archmage/Sage should contribute ~10% more spell damage on average. They would miss the shield spells Transshape and Sleep Flower though, as well as Bottles of Ashes. Sage has Life Booster and Gigas Flail, so I can see that team having some advantages. But I think Archmage/Sage would work better with Lord or Paladin anyways. So, between: 1) Paladin, Rune Master, Necromancer 2) Lord, Archmage, Sage 3) Duelist, Grand Divina, Evil Shaman Team 2) would definitely be the most straightforward with a second healer and easy offensive/defensive options, but would not have access to a purchasable Protect Down for those bosses where you need to rely on physical damage. Team 1) would give you more diverse elemental damage and status effects, but require you to keep a stock of Sahagin's Scales for boss fights. Team 3) has some unique advantages for random enemies with shield spells and MT stat downs, and should be able to scale up damage for boss fights with Sahagin's Scales and purchasable Bottles of Ashes (a few extra items for boss fights should not be much of a burden, especially by the end game when you have unused money lying around). This team should be strongest in physical damage per time and at least competitive in magical damage per time (Grand Divina can pump out a lot of damage when she needs to with her instant level 1 spells). Given that Duelist should be the strongest shield runner with his final weapon, I would like a way to get him to work on a magical focus team that can benefit most from a shield user. Getting the buffs/debuffs to work out, though, is admittedly a struggle.

I tried the Hawk/Angela/Carlie team up to the God Beasts and decided I wasn't a fan. Having three casters clogs up the action and leaves you vulnerable; until everyone can cast quickly, it forces you to leave a character open, limiting his/her potential as a caster and defeating the purpose. Also, the lack of a shield to protect your casters made some parts of the game much more difficult than I thought it would. It was worth a shot, but for now I'd like to try something more balanced. So, I've decided to go with Duran/Angela/Carlie instead. I want to keep the concept of a magic-focus team, and Duran (especially dark Duran) seems like a good compromise between the physical damage of Hawk and the defensive tactics of Lise. I would love to run Duelist here; his tech damage should be able to compete with anything Hawk can put out. So far I'm thinking: 1) Duelist, Grand Divina, Evil Shaman For random enemies, Duelist will distract with a shield while charging his level 2/3 techs, Grand Divina will bomb and heal, and Evil Shaman will debuff and bomb. Angela and Carlie can both help Duran with Transshape to limit his melee damage and Sleep Flower (I think this should work nicely with reflect armor and Dragon Shield/Wind God Bracelet), while Duran can help Angela and Carlie with Leaf Saber. Duelist's final tech should be great with a shield, due to the proximity damage. For bosses, I'll need Sahagin's Scales (and to a lesser extent, Drake's Scales). Evil Shaman might be interesting to spec as a battle mage, sacrificing intelligence for strength, and just rely on Leaf Saber or Tree Spirit Rings to keep her MP up; this would let her contribute more in fights against bosses with maxed out magical defense. 2) Paladin, Rune Master, Necromancer What a beautiful balance of spells: six sabers provided across three characters, Heal Light and Tinkle Rain provided across two characters, all debuffs in one spell, and the two major defensive buffs. No repeats! I lose physical damage giving up Duelist, but gain some back with Necromancer's Black Rain. Paladin loses some healing power to Grand Divina, but the heal buff from Magic Shield might more than make up for that. I would also get Heal Light and Protect Up after the first class change. I'm not quite sure how to spec Paladin here: it seems he should need intelligence for his cast speed and his final weapon, but he'll need to keep his strength and agility up so he can provide physical damage when necessary; maybe a balanced growth with more into strength and less into luck would be best. Feel free to offer comments or suggestions!

This team lacks Anti-Magic, which is especially problematic for this team, considering Hawk's debuffs are elemental-based. If an enemy absorbs certain elements, the jutsus of those elements won't be able to debuff the enemy. I find this to be a problem for exactly one boss, Xan Bie. I usually fight him early to keep his attack based on your level down to reasonable amounts, when the neutral spell armor is not yet available. If you don't have Antimagic or a Specter's Eye, you can also just use a Battum's Eye, easy to grab from Rabites in Mana Holyland. Once the neutral spell armor is available, it's a really nice choice for both Ninja Master and Nightblade to level out the jutsus and Black Rain. Agreed; cast it early! But also, Life Booster is great against this boss, your max HP ceiling will be kept at 120 instead of 100, and that extra 20 HP can be life-saving. I tried this for a bit and quickly remembered how annoying it is to run two groups side-by-side, repeating the same parts of the game over and over again; until I have more time, I'll focus exclusively on the Hawk, Angela, Carlie team instead.

Back at this game after a small break with a Ninja Master, Dragon Master, Grand Divina team. Definitely my favorite team so far. With the final weapons, empowered Antimagic gives my Ninja Master a nasty justu/counter combo to quickly whittle away physical defense with Fireblaze, as long as the enemy has any weakness (true for almost all bosses, with the notable exception of Dolan). All buffs/debuffs with invert armor, Lise provides a shield, Grand Divina provides sabers, healing, and a ton of magical damage, and this team feels nigh unstoppable. God Beasts are falling in half the time they took in previous runs. One strategy this team cannot take advantage of is sabers cast on enemies combined with resist gear, since Grand Divina can only cast sabers on her teammates. Has anybody tried this strategy through the endgame? Does it work on bosses? It should result in a 45% debuff on physical damage from melee/techs, additive with other debuffs, which could be extremely useful against a ton of mobs and even several melee-heavy bosses, if it works. This strategy has been suggested elsewhere on this forum but never fully discussed; I'm wondering about its overall usefulness, considering that there are still plenty of physical and magical attacks to contend with that should not be affected by weapon element. Also, please use this thread to post any favorite teams or creative combos you have discovered. I'm trying to think of some new groups for 2020 and try several classes like Duelist, Rune Master, and Necromancer that have a lot of potential but I have never fully explored.

Interestingly, compared to most groups I play, I consider this team to be quite physically competent. I've been playing mostly magical focus teams for the past couple of years on this mod, and I don't find physical weakness to be much of a problem, as long as there are ways to correct for it when needed. For random enemies: - Most random enemies can be blasted away with MT spell damage. This is one of the reasons elemental diversity is so important for a magical focus team; almost every enemy has at least one weakness. Shields can be handy to distract enemies from your casters, especially if you're underlevelled and more than a couple spells are required. - The very few random enemies that cannot be conveniently blasted away (Power Boulders!) can be addressed with Silence, Poison, or Petrify. I usually max out my Luck stat on the character I mainly control to take advantage of the status-inflicting weapons when needed. - Reflect ("thorn") armor does a great job of making up for physical damage about halfway through the game. Combined with incoming MT spell damage, you can usually find a way to cut through most groups of random enemies pretty quickly without putting yourself at risk, as long as you have Heal Light to recover the lost HP after battle. For bosses: - Again, most bosses can be addressed by focusing on magical damage. In fact, I find that there are many more bosses for whom a lack of spell damage is more of a problem than a lack of melee power, especially for those who can't be reached with melee attacks more than half the time (Tzenker, Gorva, Xan Bie's furnace, Fiegmund). Physical damage can also be cast, primarily by Hawk, and in this way can reach an enemy anywhere on the screen. - For the bosses with maxed-out magical defense, it helps to have a way to scale up physical damage, usually through a combination of stat buffs/debuffs and sabers. Physical damage is much easier to scale up than magical damage for two reasons: 1) beyond the standard stat buff/debuff spells, sabers add an element to your melee and techs, increasing damage by an additional 50% against weaknesses, and 2) with Fireblaze, you can apply a cumulative physical defense debuff through counterattacks, so no matter how weak your party is, you can always bring down an enemy's physical defense to the point where you are dealing good physical damage. Fireblaze's cumulative debuff is unique; there is no equivalent cumulative debuff for magical damage. This means that if you don't have the magical damage to start, there is a limit to how much you can gain to compensate, whereas if you don't have the physical damage to start, there is no limit to how much you can gain to compensate. Regarding my team, Ninja Master happens to be the best Fireblaze user: his final weapon opens an enemy for counterattacks if his spells hit a weakness, so he can jutsu/counter away physical defense when necessary without needing to time his counters against an enemy attack. Dragon Master's empowered Antimagic can help with this by opening up weaknesses. After playing this team though, I've found that empowered Antimagic is not as useful as I thought it would be: there are few bosses where it is really necessary to open up a weakness, and it's rarely expedient for random enemies. To improve this team, I would choose instead: - Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina Star Lancer has a lot to offer that Dragon Master does not: 1) MT Silence through Marduke, 2) Aura Wave (extremely useful against Dolan and Mispolm), 3) Energy Ball (should be awesome in concert with Ninja Master's Analyze to bring up physical damage through critical hits), and 4) stat buffs instead of debuffs, so no need for invert armor. You asked about Nightblade; I actually chose Nightblade to start with but ended up going back to Ninja Master. I found, at least for this team, that Ninja Master's MT stat debuffs are just more useful against random enemies than anything Nightblade has to offer (mainly for the physical and magical damage debuffs), and his final weapon is just more useful against bosses than anything Nightblade has to offer (mainly for use with Fireblaze). Fire Jutsu in particular is great for buffing Grand Divina's MT spell barrage: since I'm usually casting multiple MT spells to clear a group of enemies, getting a Mind Down effect in early increases the spell damage for all subsequent spells. Curse (Magatama through Black Rain) is nice, but reflect armor is better (175% reflect versus 100%), and Grand Divina can already apply Curse through Evil Gate if I want to use a different armor. Also with this group, I typically don't even get to the point with melee where I gain enough tech points for a level 3 tech, so Nightblade's FST rarely even comes into play. I actually prefer ST level 3 techs, since they do more focused damage when I need it (against single difficult enemies or bosses), especially since this team already has so much MT spell damage coming in. His Silence would be useful, but Star Lancer's Marduke would again be better. I love Grand Divina. She can pump out so much spell damage by repeatedly casting spells, and since her damage spells become instant at high Agility, she's always available for a Heal Light when I need it. Every spell she casts also knocks moveable enemies around the room, severely limiting their ability to function. She gets more mileage out of her Spirit stat than almost any other non-Carlie class, since she can use it for Holy damage, Dark damage, and healing (Sage can do this too). She is a spell damage and healing machine. Plus, she gets the six major sabers through her final weapon (at least for self-cast) to boost physical damage when necessary. (Also: I have not tried this, but her MT Sleep Flower may be able to be self-cast with reflect armor and Wind God Bracelet to inflict Sleep on incoming melee attackers. I will certainly try this with my next group.) Honestly, I've found Grand Divina to be an awesome choice for an elemental damage dealer/saber buffer who can Heal as well as almost anyone (Sage is better due to her passive healing option through her final weapon, and Paladin and Bishop get an extra heal power buff). The group I'm currently planning takes this magical-focus idea even further: Hawk, Grand Divina, and dark Carlie. No shield, but I might not need it; I want to test whether increasing spell damage even further by bringing the two best casters is more or less useful than sacrificing a caster for a shield-bearer. Lise could substitute for Hawk, but overall I think Hawk has the advantage: his double-swing might be almost as good as a shield to distract while your other teammates are casting while increasing your chance to land status effects with Silence, Poison, or Petrify weapons (especially at high Luck), and he adds both physical and magical damage (Ninja Master can debuff magical defense, while Wanderer can cast against physical, magical, and HP-based damage with his spells). I may run Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina side-by-side with this group for steady comparison; I will report back to the forum with my findings once I get it going.