Cyan Garamonde: Retainer To The King Of Doma

Cyan Garamonde
Retainer to the King of Doma

BASE STATS

Vigor: 42 / Magic: 24 / Speed: 30 / Stamina: 30

HP: 132 / MP: 0   BatPwr: 64 / Def: 42 / M.Def: 36 / Evade: 18 / M.Evade: 6

EQUIPMENT

Weapons: Katanas
---
Shield: -
Head: Helmets, Hats
Body: Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, Vests

SKILLS (Bushido)

(Note: all Bushidos are untargetable)
Dispatch (lv. 1) - strong physical attack (Vigor); ignores defense, 2x damage to humans
Mindblow (lv. 8) - MP damage
Empowerer (lv. 10) - absorbs HP/MP from foe (Magic); damage halved from back row
Flurry (lv. 12) - four physical attacks (Vigor); sets muddle
Dragon (lv. 16) - Stamina-based (magical) attack; may petrify
Eclipse (lv. 20) - non-elemental damage (Magic) to all foes; sets Blind
Tempest (lv. 30) - four powerful physical attacks (Vigor)
Cleave (???) - instant death to all foes

ESPERS

Kirin - HP+30/Stamina+1  ---  24 MP: restores party's HP (Magic) and sets Regen
Bismark - Vigor+2  ------------  32 MP: water damage (Magic) on all foes
Crusader - HP+60  -----------  64 MP: dark damage (Magic) on all foes

SPELLS

Storm - Magic
Merton - Magic
Demi
Quartr
---
Cure - Magic
Cure 2 - Magic
Life
Regen - Stamina

Cyan

The Samurai, The Retainer to the King of Doma, The Most Improved in This Hack, and the Infinitely Cooler than Cloud Strife or Sephiroth.

Strengths

• Hits like a truck
• Incredible HP espers, Heavy Armor
• Great Out-of-Battle Healer (thanks to Empowerer); Has in-battle healing
• Cleave & Flurry Bushidos for AoE control/death

Weaknesses

• No shield, forced two-handed (stats from only one weapon)
• Slow
• No party support
• Limited status control
• Bushido is untargetable (not applicable to AoE Bushido)
• AoE damage is limited (either Eclipse, or late-game Mutsuno/Quartr)

Cyan is the simplest character not named Umaro. Grab lots of HP, maybe lots of vigor, hit like a truck, and tank. He's got some minor healing, AoE, and status control, but for the most part, he's your resident heavy tank.

Builds

Samurai

Vig/HP Cyan. A late bloomer who really shines after you've cleared his Soul, giving you access to Crusader levels and all of his Bushidos. (Flurry is more about status control, and Mutsuno comes late unless you do an early Ebot's Rock). Carves enemies up left and right. Enjoy.

Not recommended to go pure vigor. Cyan's a heavy tank, not a glass cannon like Shadow. Get this guy some serious Crusader levels to go with his vigor levels.

Sentinel

Pure Kirin Cyan. Infinite HP, heavy armor, spams Dragon, and ain't afraid of anything. Pretty much dominates the whole game up until Kefka's Tower, and even then, still has his uses. All that stamina gives him a high counterattack rate, so don't forget to keep him in the front row. Oh, he's also got some AoE and healing too.

No, seriously, if the mid-game is giving you trouble, use this build.

Misc

• Stalwart Cyan dominates the mid-game, while Samurai Cyan shines best in the lategame. Ultros' Esper Reset allows you to enjoy the benefits of both. Build Cyan as a Stalwart for the mid-game, then esper reset over to Samurai after clearing his soul. This is honestly quite abusive, but Samurai Cyan isn't fun to play as in the mid-game.
• Don't forget your Force Armor lategame. Cyan needs magic defense.

Something worth noting about Cyan's healing: He's not a particularly great in-combat healer due to low Magic and Speed. Useful for patching up or reviving your real healer if they go down (since odds are Cyan isn't going to be the one dying first), but not particularly reliable even after getting the Nirvana Band. However, Speed is completely irrelevant outside of combat, and Cyan has very little use for his MP other than healing, so Cyan is one of the best "field medic" characters in BNW, able to blast a flurry of Cures and a couple Lifes after a hard fight to get everyone in shape for the next one.

Because Empowerer almost always steals enough MP to completely refill Cyan's reserves, you can just use Empowerer every 2-3 battles when his MP is dwindling and get a full restore. Result: Cyan can sustain a party throughout a dungeon's random encounters without needing to use expensive items and with no need for Tinctures/Ethers or other forms of MP restoration. This is incredibly useful in the midgame WoB where Tinctures are expensive and Ethers barely exist, and remains incredible all the way through due to the prevalence of long and dangerous dungeons in the WoR (Phoenix Cave, Narshe if you're doing the whole thing in one go, etc.).

50 minutes ago, Nakar said:

Something worth noting about Cyan's healing: He's not a particularly great in-combat healer due to low Magic and Speed. Useful for patching up or reviving your real healer if they go down (since odds are Cyan isn't going to be the one dying first), but not particularly reliable even after getting the Nirvana Band. However, Speed is completely irrelevant outside of combat, and Cyan has very little use for his MP other than healing, so Cyan is one of the best "field medic" characters in BNW, able to blast a flurry of Cures and a couple Lifes after a hard fight to get everyone in shape for the next one.

Because Empowerer almost always steals enough MP to completely refill Cyan's reserves, you can just use Empowerer every 2-3 battles when his MP is dwindling and get a full restore. Result: Cyan can sustain a party throughout a dungeon's random encounters without needing to use expensive items and with no need for Tinctures/Ethers or other forms of MP restoration. This is incredibly useful in the midgame WoB where Tinctures are expensive and Ethers barely exist, and remains incredible all the way through due to the prevalence of long and dangerous dungeons in the WoR (Phoenix Cave, Narshe if you're doing the whole thing in one go, etc.).

This is a big reason why I kept Cyan in my party throughout WoB. Extra useful having him next to Celes. If you have a turn cycle where someone else can take the last shot, Cyan can pop Cure 2 into a Runic to spread the free MP.

Also worth noting his Regen casts can turn out pretty beefy if you're pumping Stam.

2 hours ago, Nakar said:

Something worth noting about Cyan's healing: He's not a particularly great in-combat healer due to low Magic and Speed. Useful for patching up or reviving your real healer if they go down (since odds are Cyan isn't going to be the one dying first), but not particularly reliable even after getting the Nirvana Band. However, Speed is completely irrelevant outside of combat, and Cyan has very little use for his MP other than healing, so Cyan is one of the best "field medic" characters in BNW, able to blast a flurry of Cures and a couple Lifes after a hard fight to get everyone in shape for the next one.

Because Empowerer almost always steals enough MP to completely refill Cyan's reserves, you can just use Empowerer every 2-3 battles when his MP is dwindling and get a full restore. Result: Cyan can sustain a party throughout a dungeon's random encounters without needing to use expensive items and with no need for Tinctures/Ethers or other forms of MP restoration. This is incredibly useful in the midgame WoB where Tinctures are expensive and Ethers barely exist, and remains incredible all the way through due to the prevalence of long and dangerous dungeons in the WoR (Phoenix Cave, Narshe if you're doing the whole thing in one go, etc.).

You are absolutely right, we've been over this a thousand times, and I'm ashamed that I forgot about that when talking about Cyan's strengths & weaknesses.

Edited the guide above. "Great Out-of-Battle Healer (thanks to Empowerer)" has been added to the list of Cyan's strengths.

After listening to Deschain talk about stam Cyan's obscene mid-game with Counter/Cover, watching stam Cyan hard carry Nakar in his recent playthrough, and other chats with the community, I'm posting up some ideas for nerfing stam Cyan in the mid-game.

• Swap Eclipse & Dragon. Eclipse, the AoE, becomes Bushido 5. Dragon, the Holy-tier stamina-based attack, becomes Bushido 6.
• Cyan's counterfishing katanas no longer give stam+. Pulling from WT, instead, his counter katanas (Masamune, Murasame, Kotetsu) give Vig+ / Spd+. His proc katanas (Mutsuno, Kazekiri, Nodachi) give Stam+ / Mag+.
• The above also means that the Mutsuno is no longer a "perfect" weapon for Shadow to equip.

EDIT: Another idea is to swap the BPows of the Murasame and Kazekiri, making the Kazekiri stronger. (Like Masamune and Mutsuno). That way, midgame Cyan has to choose between counter/cover or raw Bushido damage.

I actually believe if I had had Eclipse in Dragon's place, it would have made Cyan even stronger. In my playthrough, his single-target damage was already excellent, the only thing he was missing was AOE damage. I wouldn't even have really missed Dragon, because with a Power Glove equipped Cyan's Flurry was doing comparable single-target damage. My two cents is that one of three things needs to happen to Cyan:
1) He needs to have less survivability
2) He needs to have less BPow
3) He needs to cover/counter less often
#1 would work because right now, he can cover pretty much any number of attacks and be fine even with minimal gearing for survivability. If he were less innately survivable, he would need to gear more for survivability, which would nerf his damage output. #2 would work because the amount he counters would be fine if his counters didn't do so much damage. #3 would work because the amount of damage he does scales pretty absurdly with how often he counters, so if he countered less often, that wouldn't be such an issue.

My personal opinion is that #2 is the best option. He is a retainer, so it makes sense that he is innately good at defending. If he wants to also be good at attacking, he should need to actively enhance it.

(Note: I know cover/counter has been nerfed between RC4 (what I played) and the current beta, and it's possible that the change that covering halves evasion may have been enough to render this post moot. We will have to test to see)

On 9/11/2017 at 6:46 PM, thzfunnymzn said:

watching stam Cyan hard carry Nakar in his recent playthrough

Where's this? There's little BNW content on Youtube, nothing for 1.9 that I can see, and I rarely ever see anyone playing BNW on Twitch.

There's some videos on ngplus of Nakar's 1.8.6 run. He lists Cyan as someone who hard carried the run, and also commented a few times that if he really wanted to win a certain dungeon / boss, he'd be bringing Cyan along.

18 hours ago, Deschain said:

I actually believe if I had had Eclipse in Dragon's place, it would have made Cyan even stronger. In my playthrough, his single-target damage was already excellent, the only thing he was missing was AOE damage. I wouldn't even have really missed Dragon, because with a Power Glove equipped Cyan's Flurry was doing comparable single-target damage. My two cents is that one of three things needs to happen to Cyan:
1) He needs to have less survivability
2) He needs to have less BPow
3) He needs to cover/counter less often
#1 would work because right now, he can cover pretty much any number of attacks and be fine even with minimal gearing for survivability. If he were less innately survivable, he would need to gear more for survivability, which would nerf his damage output. #2 would work because the amount he counters would be fine if his counters didn't do so much damage. #3 would work because the amount of damage he does scales pretty absurdly with how often he counters, so if he countered less often, that wouldn't be such an issue.

My personal opinion is that #2 is the best option. He is a retainer, so it makes sense that he is innately good at defending. If he wants to also be good at attacking, he should need to actively enhance it.

(Note: I know cover/counter has been nerfed between RC4 (what I played) and the current beta, and it's possible that the change that covering halves evasion may have been enough to render this post moot. We will have to test to see)

Thanks.

One thing with lowering BPow is that, while it does hurt the counterattack damage, it also hurts the damage output of Dispatch, Flurry, & Tempest. I'm not concerned at all about Dispatch, but I'm not sure how I feel about lowering the damage output of Flurry & Tempest. You'll lose counterattack damage, sure, but how much will you really lose? My instinct & back-of-the-hand calculations say you're only losing a few hundred points of counterattack damage. [Tested current 180 Masamune vs. 150 Masamune (Kazekiri) vs. 120 Masamune (Kotetsu)].

A small nerf won't affect his counterattack damage much at all. I was seeing only a couple hundred points at best. Also, Dragon's also there to pick up any slack on Flurry's part (for Flurry's loss of damage). So, with a minor nerf (lowering BPow by 30), nothing really changes with Cyan. You're talking a major nerf (loss of 60 or more BPow) to katana BPows, which also means a major change to Cyan's physical Bushidos. I guess you could also modify the multipliers on the physical Bushidos, so that its only the counterattack damage that gets changed. Might be odd seeing an endgame katana with only, what, 120 BPow though.

***

Looking at the other options there:

#1.....I don't know what can be done expect for weakening HP espers. Cyan's all ready got a pretty restricted set of gear anyways, most of which is all ready geared towards giving him vigor, defense, & evasion. There's also not really much you can do from a base stats perspective, not without seriously breaking the aesthetic balance. Granted, from a pure balance standpoint, weakening HP espers isn't the worst thing in the world. Highly doubt that's going to fly from a more "customer service" standpoint though. (Not really sure how much the evasion nerf is going to really affect him. Cyan isn't exactly an evade juggernaut, he more tanks through sheer HP and good armor. I guess you did gear him more for evasion than defense. I'm just guessing that you'd get the same results with a less evade, more defense set-up, in which case, the evade nerf does little. A guess on my part though).

#3....I want to see results from more Counter/Cover builds first. It may be that many characters are op with Counter/Cover, in which case, yes, the Counter/Cover odds do need to be looked at. If it turns out to just be Cyan, only possibility here is lowering his base stamina by a significant chunk.

***

The only other possibility I can think of is the late-WoB and mid-WoR enemies are underpowered, making it such that certain characters look op when they're really not. That's...I've made the claim many times before, but it's difficult for me to prove anything, beyond just "I still feel threatened in these dungeons from these randoms, and it feels like it's because of how they're designed, not from lack of experience. Whereas, these other enemies, I feel like the enemies stats/scripts just can't keep up with my character's ever increasing power/bulk/options."

I have....weak...evidence...towards my claim in that you didn't find Cyan to be op in Kefka's Tower. I guess I should ask: which dungeons, aside from the FC, did you bring him in? If he still felt op in a place like Gogo's Cave, then that's counter-evidence towards my claim. OTOH, if you only brought him to places like Owzer's (low p.def), Ebot's Rock, or Yeti's Cave, then I feel like the weakness of the foes there makes it difficult to determine whether or not Counter/Cover Cyan is truly op.

EDIT: Eh, from Discord, remembering what one returning player said about the difficulty of newer versions, and from looking at it, it may just be that BNW been slowly getting easier and easier. Each new version gives new toys to characters without really strengthening the enemies. It may just be that 1.9 is finally the tipping point to where the characters are finally op in respect to their competition.

I've been thinking of streaming a 1.9 run on Twitch when it came out officially, but maybe I could get my hands on a copy of a 1.9 beta and test some of this stuff? I've been really looking forward to doing a Cyan-heavy 1.9 run anyways, since I'm already interested in just how powerful he'll be.

There's also the issue of... let's say you really want to focus on how strong Cyan is at certain parts of the game. You end up including him whenever you have the choice, so he soaks up all those extra levels/ELs. That can be like a 10+ level and EL gap between Cyan and your rarely used characters just by the time you get to the FC.

I know Nakar overleveled on everyone's ELs (grinded up to EL 10 before even the IMF), but he kept everyone's level in check through use of "No EXP Gain." I try to avoid overleveling, and I still think Kirin Cyan is really good for the mid-game.

Can't speak for anyone else though.

Still curious on hearing in which specific dungeons was Kirin Cyan op.

Updated for 2.0

There's quite a lot going on here. Vigor Cyan gets a buff through higher base BatPwr and a Tempest that is now stronger on average (although it no longer ignores defense - that's what Dispatch and dragon are for), while Stam Cyan sees a slight nerf to Dragon's power along with the Kazekiri/Mutsunokami procs now being stamina-based. Eclipse is reverted to being magic-based so that it scales the same regardless of build and doesn't compete with the wind blades for damage (which it shouldn't - the Blinding effect is meant to be its primary draw). 

Speaking of magic, Cyan's base is now back down to the bare minimum as I effectively shrug my shoulders at the concept of Cyan's attack magic serving any actual purpose (although he does get Merton now in place of Holy and I find the prospect of someone getting mileage out of it hilarious). Cyan's magic is for cure spells, and that's not something he's meant to be especially good with (although Regen can still pack quite a punch on a stamina build). He also no longer gets any magic boosts from his weapons, instead seeing stamina become the common stat on katanas and his "magical" ones now also offering the oft-suggested (and very much needed) speed boosts.

Cyan is just easy to use and a fantastic nuke character - I just would like for Tempest to have a targeting option. I get Flurry having pseudo-random targeting thanks to the strength of Muddle - hell, I spent long parts of the game spamming it just because of how damn good it is - but Tempest being allowed to target would alleviate Cyan's main issue which is a lack of good multi-target damaging options. Eclipse is fine, but  I still find its damage lacking - the main utility being Blind is fantastic, BTW.  Overall, just change around some equipment options and maybe make some changes to Tempest.

Oh yeah, also change around his Esper options, please. Kirin as a summon is ok and the magic power helps a bit with Wind God Cyan/healing as a last resort, but Crusader/Bismark have zero value being equipped to Cyan, auto-reflect is nice but a very niche setup that doesn't really warrant the fact that you can't properly use multi-target healing on him unless you also bring Strago. He would really like something like Unicorn, Alexander or Tritoch/Bahamut. Hell, he could be the second Bahamut user after Relm, after all, thanks to his very low Magic he wouldn't be doing anything silly with Meteo/Flare. Though I would really appreciate something like Unicorn for WoB instead. The only time I equipped something other than Kirin was when I used Cyan against Blue Dragon and the entire slog through the Ancient Castle cave.

edit: Nice to see that Murasame is available in WoB, I was just an idiot.

Edit : Read an old post my bad.

You can get Murasame at Doma in World of Balance actually.

22 hours ago, NiccSucc said:

Tempest being allowed to target would alleviate Cyan's main issue which is a lack of good multi-target damaging options

Have you had the pleasure of taking the Mutsunokami for a whirl yet?

(Edit: I see you mentioned Wind God Cyan, but I think the general philosophy of this post still remains relevant.)

Cyan's Bushido has two main offensive settings: grind a solo target to a pulp (Dispatch, Dragon, Tempest, Mindblow vs undead), or crowd control (Flurry, Eclipse). His AoE options tend to be better for their rider effects (Muddle, Dark) than their damage (though Eclipse used to be more like a poor man's Shock prior to 2.0).

The buffing of the wind blades (Kazekiri, Mutsu) in 2.0 help fill this AoE damage gap for Cyan better than Eclipse ever did. Sure, it's mitigated by wind immunity (which itself seems a little less prevalent now also), but I feel like Cyan's aptitude for single-target punishment justifies some constraints on his multi-target output. We can't have everyone covering all the bases, or we could just be playing vanilla instead

Also, additional AoE healing sources to validate the use of auto-reflect include Terra, Relm, Setzer, Sabin, Gogo, Gau, and Mog. These will depend on build (RegenX wants good stamina and MP pool, Go Fish wants Magic, Mantra wants stamina and HP pool), or luck (Gau, Mog rolling the desired ability), but there's enough options on this list that there's bound to be more than just Strago in your squad to keep an auto-reflected character on their feet.