Favorite teams/combos? (Plus saber questions)

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.

On 31.12.2019 at 11:06 PM, rpschamp said:

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.

This sounds like a nice party, especially since I've been trying to find teams where Grand Divina is useful. For weaknesses, the group is physically quite weak, and doesn't have very good options for physical AoE, except for Lise's level 2 FST. Do you think the team would work better with Hawk as a Nightblade instead? With Grand Divina providing Dark Saber via Evil Gate, Nightblade can use a boosted Black Rain for AoE damage. Blow Needles is useful for silencing spell-casters, and Deadly Weapon lets you reduce enemies' max HP. Sure, Dragon Master also has Lunatic, but if you give her the invert armor, her Lunatic will increase the target's max HP instead.

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.

On 16.1.2020 at 5:50 PM, rpschamp said:

- Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina

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.

By the way, if you have Grand Divina cast elemental spells at your party and she has her final weapon, how much damage do her spells usually cause, i.e. how risky is it to cast spells at your own team?

Gran Divina spells damage with her Final weapon are extremely reduce when cast on the team, I never saw them exceed 40-50 damage so usually there is no issue.

You can get around the problem of ennemy nullify or draining Hawk's Jutsus by equipping him with the armor that make spell neutral, generally you want at least Water and Fire Jutsu to work so this shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Well, it can at least be an issue vs Xan Bie if he hits you before you can heal that damage because of the way his maxHP damage works.

HA I always forget him  well he is kind of the big exception (he is a big exception for a lot of thing actually like Anti Magic not removing his Fire Absorbtion or at least only for a few time before he drain fire again).

He is an exception for exactly 3 things

• his special type of max HP damage
• absorbed damage is increased to 999 (because of the max HP thing he needs a low damage multiplier which would would make natural absorbed spells give him like 100-200 HP, pointless at that stage in the game)
• fire absorb gets reset when he takes an action (otherwise his gimmick would kill him after anti-magic)

That might actually even be the highest number of special hacks a boss specifically for themselves got, not sure.
Final bosses don't count since they recycle most of the stuff.

On 1/19/2020 at 12:30 PM, Serafie1999AD said:

On 1/16/2020 at 10:50 AM, rpschamp said:

- Ninja Master, Star Lancer, Grand Divina

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.

On 1/19/2020 at 5:21 PM, praetarius5018 said:

Well, it can at least be an issue vs Xan Bie if he hits you before you can heal that damage because of the way his maxHP damage works.

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.

On 1/16/2020 at 10:50 AM, rpschamp said:

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.

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.