RPG Progress Report

[MrPopo]

The best part of Ranger is the Rapid Fire ability, which is four attacks at half damage that ignores defense and evasion. A good secondary is their Equip Bows skill gives you the agility boost of a Ranger; since most jobs have a negative agility boost this can be a major speed increase if you don't need that slot for something else (it's amazing on Berserkers). Given your current job setup the Ranger actually isn't going to be as amazing as it usually is; it'd probably synergize best with the Dragoon (Chemist is busted enough on its own, Samurai has Gil Toss and crits from the Katanas, Dancer is going to be using Dance).

I'd say based on your current set of jobs you'll want the BM and Summoners to use each other's skills, Ranger gets Rapid Fire, and then the rest depends on the last job.

Samurai - Give the Samurai Equip Bow for the agility boost. If you're feeling a bit grindy you can have the Samurai get Rapid Fire as well, but it's more important for the Ranger to have it.

Dragoon - Rapid Fire is more important here, especially since it would let you keep the Dragoon grounded to soak some damage (you've got a fairly squishy party so a 1/4 chance of a tank taking a hit is better than nothing).

Chemist - Lawlz. Farm Turtle Shells before you go to World 2. Give Mix to everyone.

Dancer - Here I'd actually go max Summon as the secondary for the Dancer to power up the two drain dances. You'll get some equipment in World 3 that replaces Tempting Tango with a second instance of Sword Dance (and it's great equipment on its own). So at that point you'll definitely be dancing constantly so the boost to the non Sword Dance damage is nice.

[alienjesus]

The best part of Ranger is the Rapid Fire ability, which is four attacks at half damage that ignores defense and evasion. A good secondary is their Equip Bows skill gives you the agility boost of a Ranger; since most jobs have a negative agility boost this can be a major speed increase if you don't need that slot for something else (it's amazing on Berserkers). Given your current job setup the Ranger actually isn't going to be as amazing as it usually is; it'd probably synergize best with the Dragoon (Chemist is busted enough on its own, Samurai has Gil Toss and crits from the Katanas, Dancer is going to be using Dance).

I'd say based on your current set of jobs you'll want the BM and Summoners to use each other's skills, Ranger gets Rapid Fire, and then the rest depends on the last job.

Samurai - Give the Samurai Equip Bow for the agility boost. If you're feeling a bit grindy you can have the Samurai get Rapid Fire as well, but it's more important for the Ranger to have it.

Dragoon - Rapid Fire is more important here, especially since it would let you keep the Dragoon grounded to soak some damage (you've got a fairly squishy party so a 1/4 chance of a tank taking a hit is better than nothing).

Chemist - Lawlz. Farm Turtle Shells before you go to World 2. Give Mix to everyone.

Dancer - Here I'd actually go max Summon as the secondary for the Dancer to power up the two drain dances. You'll get some equipment in World 3 that replaces Tempting Tango with a second instance of Sword Dance (and it's great equipment on its own). So at that point you'll definitely be dancing constantly so the boost to the non Sword Dance damage is nice.

The Dancer could easily have Rapid Fire as a secondary imo. They're the best user of the Chicken Knife he'd have in his team if he pulls it. I mean, it'll do a crapload of damage with Sword Dance too, but it'd be more reliable with Rapid Fire

[MrPopo]

Very true. I guess I'm biased to Sword Dancing Dancers because I tend to roll Dancer with no good secondary or Dancer Ninja.

[Markies]

I'd say based on your current set of jobs you'll want the BM and Summoners to use each other's skills, Ranger gets Rapid Fire, and then the rest depends on the last job.

Samurai - Give the Samurai Equip Bow for the agility boost. If you're feeling a bit grindy you can have the Samurai get Rapid Fire as well, but it's more important for the Ranger to have it.

Dragoon - Rapid Fire is more important here, especially since it would let you keep the Dragoon grounded to soak some damage (you've got a fairly squishy party so a 1/4 chance of a tank taking a hit is better than nothing).

Chemist - Lawlz. Farm Turtle Shells before you go to World 2. Give Mix to everyone.

Dancer - Here I'd actually go max Summon as the secondary for the Dancer to power up the two drain dances. You'll get some equipment in World 3 that replaces Tempting Tango with a second instance of Sword Dance (and it's great equipment on its own). So at that point you'll definitely be dancing constantly so the boost to the non Sword Dance damage is nice.

Samurai has been my go-to class for the longest time in that game. The final dungeon, after mastering all classes, I would just Gil Toss my way to victory. I always had more than enough money, so this was the easiest solution for me.

Chemist would be very useful just for the healing aspect. However, I don't know how much damage they would be able to do. So far, I don't have a concentrated healer and it has been fine. I'm hopeful I can go through the game like that, but it would be nice to have a concentrated healer just in case even though my party would be super squishy.

Dragoon would be nice to have somebody that can take a hit. Plus, all 4 of my classes would be living in the back row and still be able to do good amount of damage with the added defense. Much like Dragoon in other FF Games, I'd be wary of using Jump considering I want them to take the hit, but the Jump does give me a good amount of damage.

Dancer could help in some healing, but I feel he would be more offense. In that case, I'd have 4 offense squishies and that is a recipe for disaster. It would be different, but that is the class I fear the most.

I do know I have a couple of hard battles coming up with some nasty bosses. The one I am not looking forward to is the ArcheoAvis. If a boss has a magic weak point, I can kill it quickly. However, if it does not, has high HP and hits hard, then I am in a world of trouble. I like that I am killing things super quickly, but I am also hesitant because I have played Final Fantasy V before and I know some of the bosses can be real pricks.

[alienjesus]

Samurai has been my go-to class for the longest time in that game. The final dungeon, after mastering all classes, I would just Gil Toss my way to victory. I always had more than enough money, so this was the easiest solution for me.

Chemist would be very useful just for the healing aspect. However, I don't know how much damage they would be able to do. So far, I don't have a concentrated healer and it has been fine. I'm hopeful I can go through the game like that, but it would be nice to have a concentrated healer just in case even though my party would be super squishy.

Dragoon would be nice to have somebody that can take a hit. Plus, all 4 of my classes would be living in the back row and still be able to do good amount of damage with the added defense. Much like Dragoon in other FF Games, I'd be wary of using Jump considering I want them to take the hit, but the Jump does give me a good amount of damage.

Dancer could help in some healing, but I feel he would be more offense. In that case, I'd have 4 offense squishies and that is a recipe for disaster. It would be different, but that is the class I fear the most.

I do know I have a couple of hard battles coming up with some nasty bosses. The one I am not looking forward to is the ArcheoAvis. If a boss has a magic weak point, I can kill it quickly. However, if it does not, has high HP and hits hard, then I am in a world of trouble. I like that I am killing things super quickly, but I am also hesitant because I have played Final Fantasy V before and I know some of the bosses can be real pricks.[/quote]

Golem is your friend for a lot of the tougher bosses.

Chemist is capable of doing ridiculous physical or magical damage, great healing, ridiculous buffs and stupidly good debuffs. It's the best class in the game. However, just be aware that you'll have to take some time grinding for ingredients to mix if you do get it.

[MrPopo]

As a short answer of what makes Chemist so good, the best stuff are:

A extremely high damage drain attack (as in, more powerful than rank 3 magic usable starting from the point you first get Chemist and learn Mix)
The ability to quickly toss a bunch of defensive buffs onto each character, including several unique buffs
The ability to increase your level all the way to 255

The last one is the really key one. FFV uses a fairly simple formula for damage: (attackPower - enemeyDefense) * M. The M is a multiplier that starts off as LVL * stat / (128 or 256), where physical attacks use STR and 128 (except bare hands, which is 256) and magic attacks use MAG and 256. M then gets modified for things like back row or shell (and gets rounded down to the nearest integer). So you can see that your damage will go in terms of breakpoints; if your STR is 32 then your physical damage increases every 4 levels. Since the average run will end somewhere between level 30 and 35 (because of how insane the exp curve is) adding an extra 60 levels to that 32 STR character is going to take them from having an M of 8 to an M of 23, which is nearly tripling your damage.

Or to put things in more perspective, a solo Chemist can take out both superbosses. It does require some luck with the AI pattern to get your defenses up.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Well, that was a trip.

Review coming... tomorrow maybe?

[ElkinFencer10]

I started Fire Emblem Gaiden last night. The last battle in Chapter 1 kicked my ass hard until I realized that I was supposed to kill the general's butt buddy, not the general himself. Then it became slightly less brutally difficult.

[MrPopo]

Trails in the Sky the 3rd just hit GOG with a 10% launch discount.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Beat SUCH a mother fecker of a boss in Tales of Innocence yesterday. That was probably one of the toughest Tales bosses I've ever fought. Especially one that wasn't a final boss or anything. You've got a giant fat-HP boss, like usual, but this guy has two little cronies who will follow your casters around and just murder the crap outta them. On top of that, these guys are undead, so not only do the cronies only stay dead for maybe a minute at a time (each on their own separate timer), but BOTH of them AND the god damn boss have a chance to hit you with the fear status every time they land an attack. I haven't seen "fear" in any other Tales game I've played, and that's good because it's absolutely miserable: You can't combo or do artes. You can only do one basic attack at a time until it's cured. No status-immunity equipment at this point in the game either. The best you can do is just a 50% resistance to fear

The boss after that was just another nimble-ish humanoid and was nowhere near as hard. That undead bastard was definitely the biggest random difficulty spike I've seen in the post-Symphonia Tales games. Why can't this just be like Final Fantasy where I can just phoenix down an undead boss to immediately kill it?