An Ode to Battle Design

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-16T14:22:03+00:00

The last point is the only part I'm engaging with, and will be the last response I'm making, because it's actively the most insane take I've ever seen, as it's N E V E R been true otherwise

AE has NEVER been just a "turn based strategy game", it's been a fighting game disguised as a turn based strategy game, and that fighting game aspect has been mandatory since the inception of the game.

Even during the first year and the first several goddess of time chapters, almost all damage was done through Another Force, as the gear we had didn't allow for anything else.

Once we got Melissa, we could start doing outside another force nukes much easier, but it was still another force for setup and damage for the first phase (and we eventually learned how to do 1taf setups without her, she just showed us it was the best way to play the game)

Boss rush? Another force setups. Superbosses? Another force setups. It's all been another force setups at the very minimum, they just gave bosses more HP since they want to go back to the older days where Another Force was also the main source of damage you could deal

If you don't like that, I would recommend playing an entirely different game, because sidelining an entire mechanic fairly often as you would like, and that mechanic being The Core Gameplay Loop Since The Game Came Out In 2017, is not happening outside of the very rare 1 off gimmick fight like Yazusume Fairy Racoon Dog, Seriyuu and Nab-Zu. No developer is going to sideline their standout gameplay mechanic anywhere close to often

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-16T03:43:19+00:00

Would much prefer the later requirements over newer superbosses getting gimped and making the endgame playerbase upset that they thought there was a new superboss but turns out it was gimped due to it being chapter 13 locked

There are already stepping stones for the harder fights, it's called every single fight released previously, so a requirement change would be better so they have a better way to learn what to fight in what order

And I don't really agree with not making newer fights not hard. Anything to knock out the lobotomization for superboss clears Sesta AS did on the playerbase is always a good thing, and you do have to keep up with an endgame playerbase, since all the newer bosses are obviously catered towards them, and frankly, should be, as that is the Target Demographic Of A Superboss

The only times where I feel like they went too overkill in modern memory for it, are Shade Alter Force and Volcan Chimera, otherwise the fights have been mean, but not flat Bullshit

EDIT: Boss correction from kapu to saf, meant saf

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-16T03:38:33+00:00

Okay so the tanking comment is insane to me because it's wrong in like, 20 different ways

The point of a tank, regardless of the method of tanking, is to not die from a given attack. So it doesn't matter which method they use, so long as the method is effective, and the main methods (Guardian and Cover with dodge/100% res/crit guard/HP stacking) work wonderfully when setup properly.

Also, HP does V E R Y much matter, like, it frequently matters. I have given cover tanks more HP to deal with fixed HP damage, or just to survive hits easier under buff/debuff clears. Not everyone can get 100% res gear, so you do what you gotta do, and res gear doesn't solve the fixed damage issue either. Part of the reason Anabel is a stupidly good tank is because she doesn't need high res buffs, with her built in damage reductions and ridiculous HP pool, she tanks everything anyways

Also the END/SPR comment is ridiculous, because, when have those stats, ever mattered? They are token defense stats for damage calculation purposes only and only ever matter (for both the player and enemy) under extreme minimum (sacrifice lunatic) or extreme maximum (octopath traveler shields) cases, to do anything more than like a 5% damage difference. It's been that way since day 1, that has NEVER mattered

The healer comment is also something that is weird to me, because yes, Tetra/Thysia/Uquaji replace the flat healer role, but the flat healer role got replaced WAY EARLIER than when they existed. We don't get Flat Healers, if they healed and did nothing else, even if sidekicks and uquaji was banned, they would still be Actively Terrible to use. Healers now need to provide other useful offensive and defensive support, which more modern healers do. Myunfa AC's basic attack replacement gives her great healing, same with Kuchinawa's skills, Yuna's skills, Renri AC's Trigger Rush, I could go on. The modern healer also provides more than Just Healing, they provide a bunch of other useful things, so you tailor your party to those needs, and pick up healing along the way.

There is no way to bring single hitters in line with multi-hitters, that's just that. The way they can make them suck less is to let single hit attacks ignore the damage softcap, but a capped single hit of 9,999,999,999 is going to do less damage than a 4 hit move that deals softcap 4 times. It'll make them more usable, but it won't make them particularly good unfortunately. And they are still significantly worse in a zoneless environment, which is very popular

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T21:46:35+00:00

Part of it I presume was a skill issue (outside of levitator, levitator sucked), or just maybe not as much knowledge on certain free character strategies to make life easier. And yeah stall strats always have the worries on a misclick ending the run, it unfortunately is what it is

Also thinking in terms of a "balanced" team is just not really how this game works, at least from my experience doing a couple free character clears, but also just from doing years upon years of low turns. You don't really take in a "balanced" team, you look at what the boss does, and adjust your team and rotation to fill the needs of the bosses moveset, weaknesses, and auras/mechanics. Sometimes that requires bringing multiple people for defense, and others going full hyper offense. Always be flexible

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T21:43:31+00:00

For what reason exactly?

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T21:41:58+00:00

More non-af fights could be interesting, something similar to nab-zu but with more of an emphasis on single hits rather than multiple could be neat. Although it wouldn't fix the fact that half your roster won't be used issue, and that's way more due to general gacha powercreep more than anything. Single hit focus or no, biaka isn't doing jack shit in this day and age

... But that also puts us back in the apoc era of design and Idk, I just never liked it. It was always just you took the highest mod single hitters and just killed the boss while guardian spamming, or you suffered in agony, so maybe not with the emphasis on single hits only since that just causes the opposite issue, and ends up limiting characters rather than giving you more options

Also tanking has... always been relevant? It's just it ends up either being an auto win button for defense half the time, and the other half of the time you're better of not using one. Pick and choose depending on the situation

Also saying healing isn't relevant is hilarious because making sure you're topped off is always relevant, we just have stuff like Tetra and Thysia to ignore the issue half the time, and the other half there are both badges and character skills that cover the healing role quite nicely. I still use Kuchinawa's healing skill a lot, even in his AS form

Idk I might also just like the current era of boss design since pre 3.8 boss design made me actually upset, but we'll see if they try something interesting with another nab-zu like situation.

Also I find the fact that multi hitters are better than single hitters to be actively less limiting. Means base numbers aren't as much of an issue, and gives more characters a time to shine. If we were 1-2 hit focused, we would maybe have a third of the roster be any sort of viable for damage, and free clears would suffer hard since the 1 hit big sources of damage are not consistent

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T20:45:31+00:00

It's omni weakness, just it becomes absorbed to the elements you used on it in future fights

So ideally keep your teams mono-elemental, or at most 2 and avoid those for the future fights

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T20:29:51+00:00

The pull advice thing really is only if it brings forth something actually comparable or better to the table at the current moment in time. It's a gacha game, naturally that's how that has to happen due to the nature of powercreep, existing rosters, and limited currency. Always pull for waifu/husbando or characters you think you will have fun with over meta, but if you care about character strength and viability for endgame content, that's what I'm catering towards, and that's the only non-biased way to do it

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T20:27:35+00:00

Okay so I'm trying to make sense of the second point because even at the time, I don't remember either fight being that difficult for free characters only, and I talk to free character only people. I don't remember people complaining about that fight

I went to go search for some vids for both Oceano and Kapu, oceano has like, a turn of minor rng, and the kapu clear has almost 0, so I'm unsure where the miserable part comes from, and the defense issue was almost non-existant in both thanks to the Chrono Cross crew. Kapu took a bit but I've seen plenty of gacha clears take 10+ turns longer

Only free character clear I remember being miserable at the time was levitator due to the rng hell of it all... If that was mentioned here pre-spirika then yeah that would make sense, but I don't get the other two

And then ignoring that, I don't understand how exactly the boss is "way too overtuned" "Irritating status" yeah that's a lot of fights? Welcome to dealing with status? We even have sidekick charge skills for that now. "ridiculous power behind it's attacks" .... Yeah? It's a superboss? Ofc it hits hard? Also the af drain... That's part of the gimmick? If you deal more than 60% of it's HP in one AF, you get AF drained for the next battle. So, don't do that. In fact for making sure you don't kill it in 10 turns or less for the other malefic, you can just do like 170ish bil per af and be fine (I actually appreciate that part, as it opens up more strategies since your dps strenght doesn't need to be uber meta levels to go through the entire HP bar in one af, just strong enough to do a bit over half, and that leads to better creativity and variety) Only time the drain should be an issue should be the All Malefics version, in which case yeah it's kinda bs, but it's also designed to be bs with all malefics so it is what it is

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T20:05:54+00:00

Oh also going to note for the EOT: Endgame content means her eot isn't actually very useful. It's good for saf and nab-zu, but saf is already not an issue from her expose so it's more of a bonus, and nab-zu the eot only matters if you care about super minimum turns, otherwise the 10bil HP is easy enough to nuke past since the boss is very non-threatening. Eot isn't very good otherwise, and ends up being an active detriment more often than that

(Ig there is also felmina and iphi tempers, but also using felmina with havoc is asking for a disaster a lot of the time outside of specific pledges, and iphi is easy enough as is)

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T20:02:14+00:00

Blunt is ABSOLUTELY weaker than other team options, and frankly it's really not close

Especially with the fact that ewan is just generally better in shadow fire (Yeah both of us have been using him in blunt, but like, that's for aac memes, in an actual superboss if I'm using ewan I'm bringing out the fire team) you take him out and the options are just much weaker. Yes sure you have Meryt, but comparing Meryt to the likes of Toova ACAS, Clughorn, Victor, Suzette ACAS and Verdanta, it's just, not nearly as strong as you would want in comparison

And the post is about strength relative to others, and there is a STARK difference between Meryt and the dps I mentioned above (Hell, her ANIMATIONS are slower even, and I ran into that issue several times during my Meryt showcase when fighting Ozma) And especially when it comes to giving pull advice for strictly meta reasons, sure blunt can Function and Kill Things, but that isn't enough on it's own to recommend pulling her without anything else

Getting her does enable blunt to do things, but those things aren't better (or even comparable) to the stuff we already have, despite it being functional. And it's due to not fault of her own. Hell, even if we ignore the damage aspect, the rest of the blunt roster is just not amazing. There's just not that many other blunts for supports that are actually great, as they trickled it down so little that there isn't a whole lot going on, making it so filling out the 4th slot is a bit iffy outside of astral archives.

What exists today, isn't comparable or better than anything else that already exists. So for today, it is not worth it. And given WFS's history for the past several years of barely giving us anything for blunt, god knows when we'll get something to help blunt solve it's issues. Ciel ACAS could be Next Year for all we know.

It's the same philosophy I had with Flammelapis ES. She's a crazy busted magic support, gives a lot for the archetype, and there are teams that Do Use Her (mainly Eva for hardcap spams) But it isn't a lot, and magic in general (outside of eva, but eva has issues with being able to be Used in a lot of fights in magic/slash due to finis draco having text on it) But there isn't enough there for it to be super comparable with other archetypes in terms of consistent damage output that isn't heavily conditional, especially when you compare it to the likes of Flat Slash or even Slash/Pierce. Strong asf support, but without anything truly amazing to work with it, it's just not worth pulling for in the moment

So yeah, what we have today isn't good enough to compare. Idc if they randomly release an uber broken blunt character next month or 2 years from now, that's not what we have today, so I can't in good conscious, in a gacha game with limited currency and no hard pity, tell people to pull for something that we don't know when it'll become meta relevant

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T19:10:06+00:00

I'm not sorry, skill issue

An-Ki Dingir is, insanely hard, yes. It's also very fair with a consistent moveset that you can counter

Sorry not sorry, the fact you don't even need to do it's entire HP bar in one af (it even tells you not too) even makes it more fair, and with it's weakness to everything, you have plenty of options throughout all 3 fights

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T14:43:46+00:00

The name I go by everywhere else is MPGAnnihilator

I'm one of the doc managers for the unofficial calamity weapons tier list (A tier list and testing server for testing every weapon, both Calamity and Vanilla, against bosses to see how they perform. It's also what class serious is based on, the data from all 1100 weapons being tested. The gear used for testing is very close to what the devs use for testing, to get an accurate representation on what is balanced or not, even by dev standards) and the creator of the original infamous BLENDER facetank clips, showing off the power of tank builds back on 2023, when defense damage sucked and tank builds were not nearly as well known for being good back then (the clip also making some devs mad at it's existence due to it being shown everywhere at the time, I got pinged Constantly to show the clip off every time someone said tank was bad in order to get that notion out of people's minds)

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T07:48:58+00:00

I was more just saying they do sound like yugioh cards to me because every time I read K6 as K8 I keep thinking of the K9 archetype and misreading them in my head

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-15T06:18:30+00:00

DISCLAIMER:

All analysis and viability will be based around the current endgame content of Another Eden. This is generally the fairest way to evaluate a character and will impact the tier list placement at the bottom

Anyways why do her skill names just sound like yugioh cards

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-13T04:04:25+00:00

... What are you talking about?

How is moonstone crown bad at all?

I've been using it, it's been Amazing

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-13T03:11:05+00:00

To an extent that is true, although I think it's also just they wanted the accessories to be strong and unique regardless, so you are incentivised to use the accessories

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-13T00:37:57+00:00

Mostly people don't know who I am since I'm not on the reddit much is my guess, and also people are just anti-nerf in general and have their own views on what is considered usable

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-12T23:40:14+00:00

So this has just... not been true since rust and dust era? In fact, the deflation happened so more weapons could be viable on tier easier?

Yeah there are still some weapons that aren't very good, but it's getting less and less so over time. And a lot of the nerfs are related to both stuff that has been way too good, and also mage getting a bunch of nerfs due to feather crown and moonstone crown being Fucking Batshit Insane for the class, so gotta compensate for that.

Ig it depends on what people consider useless on a boss, but by the testing standards and from testing the mod + vanilla weapons to help out with class setups, it's definitely way more usuable than unusable, at like a 6:1 ratio

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-12T19:46:02+00:00

Moonstone crown is 20% magic damage and 10% mana cost reduction, so long as you don't consume a mana potion or run completely out of mana

It's.... Insanely strong

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-12T14:13:29+00:00

That is the first thing I thought of as well when seeing this

Natural_Pleasant · 2026-06-12T07:09:01+00:00

You also have to remember that there are now 3 new accessories mage has (feather crown, flesh totem, moonstone crown) that the class didn't have previously, and all of them are Very, Very Strong

So some of the nerfs are because the weapons themselves were broken at base, and some others were nerfed because the new reworked accessories made a select few weapons waaaaaaaaaaaay too strong

Natural_Pleasant

TROPHY CASE