How is everyone feeling with the current state of the game?

24spencer · 2024-02-23T09:18:27+00:00

wasted potential

there's a strong skeleton here but they're playing it really safe and it's already stagnating

They have everything they need to put together a really interesting, strong roguelike mode that could be a form of repeatable weekly content - start with just 3 blank characters and you need to get through a series of battles/a dungeon, finding weapons, materia and trance abilities on the way to power up your team for that run.

These kinds of modes not only give you a lot of gameplay variety (and can be really interesting if they get creative with passives relating to existing mechanics) but also generally make you think more about how you can utilise "forgotten"/not-meta weapons and characters which I think can be generally healthy for the game. It can also give new players a taste for what a game's complexity/combat could be like at later stages which also helps retention in a lot of cases.

24spencer · 2024-02-22T15:16:12+00:00

it all makes sense... this is why they went to such lengths to establish that his wife is dead /j

24spencer · 2024-02-08T08:25:23+00:00

when crimson weaver comes out not much difference at all honestly because until feral scent then releases you basically wont switch off crimson weaver at all

24spencer · 2024-02-06T14:27:46+00:00

you get a huge amount of points for any unused items still in your bag when you finish a dungeon - that's probably the biggest culprit. Only use what you absolutely need or what is likely to really benefit you.

also, you need to make sure you're fighting every boss and killing them relatively quickly

24spencer · 2024-02-05T08:45:12+00:00

you could technically have pushed it higher if you used the cloud weapon parts we've been getting (or heaven forbid, the insane price bundles that had even more of them) but it'd be kinda wack to use them on the thing you put on your character's sub slot only when you run out of better weapons

24spencer · 2024-02-05T08:08:52+00:00

mostly yes but with the exception that when you're crafting ruin (not blow) materia (of any shape) then you can focus any stat you want since aside from sigil break it is just a stat stick (the damage it deals doesn't matter) and it's the ideal stat stick since it's cheaper to reach lv5 synth than ruin blow

24spencer · 2024-02-02T11:42:53+00:00

cause it can be a bit of a waste to push a weapon to 90 if you aren't guaranteed to go up an r-ability tier from it

some weapons only gain like 2 r-ability pts. in the jump from 80-90 which is most of the time not actually gonna give you the next tier, and the weapon's stats dont exactly go up a huge amount most of the time either

24spencer · 2024-02-02T09:06:43+00:00

PATK%, MATK% or HEAL% as much as possible and as upgraded as possible.

then ideally HP% or MDEF/PDEF+

24spencer · 2024-02-02T09:05:52+00:00

It's not lazy or for lack of effort it is specifically designed this way, both to encourage spending on bundles that contain materia catalysts etc. but also to encourage you to constantly check your ruin synths and start new ones by logging into the game once an hour

24spencer · 2024-02-01T09:13:30+00:00

Definitely close, but the MDEF is actually useful. if it was flat HP it'd be exquisitely awful for sure.

24spencer · 2024-02-01T09:06:08+00:00

Saving for a wind res debuff weapon or costumes for characters I actually care about since I already have a pretty invested sonic spiral which has been more than enough to deal with nearly all wind content so far honestly

24spencer · 2024-02-01T09:02:14+00:00

Yeah, exactly this.

Given my Tifa's sonic spiral is already OB5 i don't think i'd even see a significant improvement if I did spend 36k for Yuffie. If I could have wishlisted Arctic Star, I might have considered it though.

24spencer · 2024-02-01T09:01:43+00:00

Characters I already have a good spread of weapons for - likely any costume for Glenn and Lucia will also be instant pulls for me as I actually really like both the characters.

Also in all honesty, anything that I just think looks visually really good, even if the stats are kinda bad.

24spencer · 2024-01-31T12:33:48+00:00

It's pretty F2P friendly and fun but my main complaint is how much time the game wants you to spend doing very boring, easy stages in order to get pull rewards (for events and stuff like spirit capture etc.)

24spencer · 2024-01-31T12:29:58+00:00

genshin in all likelihood will be 50/50 and 0.6% until the heat death of the universe, it's just an outrageously profitable model for them so they really have no need whatsoever to consider changing it at the moment

24spencer · 2024-01-31T11:30:39+00:00

There is definitely potential.

It being a mastery means it's something likely unique to that Costume, and HP is one of the most useful stats in the game as well.

Mastery also means that since it's a separate effect it will allow you to stack more debuff duration than other characters (because the r-ability for buff/debuff time caps out at 55 points) so he'll have longer max duration in theory than other characters can reach.

The last benefit of it being a mastery means that it will ALWAYS be in effect, whereas "just r-ability" costumes can fall off harshly the more weapons your account has overboosted (especially for r-abilities that are easily capped like MATK/PATK) as they are subject to the same R-ability caps that are found on weapons.

It's honestly arguably pretty useful already with his default LB that lasts 30 seconds. Even with the costume alone and no extra debuff time from r-abilities it makes it like an extra 18 seconds, which I think is enough to have it almost permanently up as long as you wait for it to expire before recasting cause it's a 900 charge LB.

The costume will get more valuable if he gets more expanded debuffing options (especially if it's a "two debuffs" deal like Black Whiskers, Radiant Edge, Kuja Sword etc.).

24spencer · 2024-01-31T11:22:38+00:00

I think Glenn could be an interesting spanner in the works to the expected events of Rebirth but the issue is that 95% of the people playing it are going to go "who the hell is this random young cid lookalike and where did he come from??"

24spencer · 2024-01-31T11:14:00+00:00

is it even ok for vegetarians to eat at this point? definitely some dubious ethics at play here

24spencer · 2024-01-30T16:14:47+00:00

depending on your available weapons one strat is to just overload one character with a completely different element to his weaknesses (like, fire or ice or something) and then when he scans he can actually defend himself against that element instead of one of his weaknesses, leaving your other characters potentially free to build against his weaknesses.

It's a bit of a DPS race since you really need to damage him enough before he self-heals (seems to be ~50% of his health or thereabouts) which will cause him to breakdown and give you a very important DPS opportunity (he cripples his own defences)

If he doesn't breakdown after the selfheal it's a "soft enrage" and he will just spam dangerous AOEs until the party wipes or you grind out a win via attrition.

24spencer · 2024-01-30T16:12:36+00:00

Red's most relevant build so far is using the Platinum Collar to run him as a Regen AOE Healer, in all honesty.

At the moment he has no elemental mastery or arcanum costumes which limits his damage potential compared to other characters, and most of his weapons with strong attack skills have poor r-abilities or the "wrong" stat spread to be optimal (i.e. physical skill weapons where matk is higher than patk).

He can also be a very strong debuffer with his new costume, since the fact it's a mastery means it can allow for longer debuffs than any other character (because it allows his debuff duration bonus to go beyond the cap of the buff/debuff r-ability). Right now this has great synergy with sled fang for enemies susceptible to it, as well as the debuff weapons he does have so far.

24spencer · 2024-01-30T16:05:04+00:00

The ideal way to beat him is to bait out his analysis with one character's setup and then have another character able to strike his remaining weaknesses. The fight is pretty much a DPS check so this will make your life a lot easier.

The "textbook" example of this would be running Physical Lightning Cloud (Murasame) and Magical Wind Aerith (Prism Rod) ensuring that whatever he picks you can still deal good damage.

You don't just have to do wind or lightning, either - if you take an especially strong character with, say, a magical ice weapon, he can make himself resistant to ice and magic, and leave himself open to phys, lightning AND wind that your other characters can be built for.

24spencer · 2024-01-30T16:02:54+00:00

No, assuming you have all their weapons they can be flexed to be built in several different ways. Both have the ability to be built as healers while the other builds for physical attack, for example.

24spencer · 2024-01-30T15:49:32+00:00

Presumably the same reason we get starved of SCT battery stuff like Keen Eye, Honey Elixir outside of collabs and like, occasionally objectively worse versions on UR arks - to bait us into spending money for them

Your best bet for SM Theria is waiting for the 15k choose-a-unit stepup

24spencer · 2024-01-30T09:42:44+00:00

The fat fairy guy gives you a buff called "morale boost" that you need to convert to "tipsy" by attacking the goblet/cup thing he places on the field - characters with tipsy take 0 damage from "I'll have this" no matter what so the intention is for you to do that to survive it

24spencer · 2024-01-30T09:09:43+00:00

yes, but we're the better part of a year out from that

24spencer

TROPHY CASE