Strago Magus: Get Off My Lawn!

Strago Magus
Get Off My Lawn!

BASE STATS

Vigor: 24 / Magic: 48 / Speed: 24 / Stamina: 42

HP: 18 / MP: 60   BatPwr: 16 / Def: 24 / M.Def: 36 / Evade: 6 / M.Evade: 18

EQUIPMENT

Weapons: Rods
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Shield: Light Shields, Elemental Guards
Head: Crowns, Hats
Body: Hides, Robes, Vests
 

SKILLS (Lore)

Aqualung (18 MP) - water damage to all foes (Magic)
Bad Breath (16 MP) - sets Poison/Blind/Mute on a group of foes
Black Omen (72 MP) - massive defense-ignoring damage to all foes (Magic)
Blaze (12 MP) - fire damage (Magic); sets Sap/Blind, can target multiple foes
Blow Fish (0 MP) - 1,000 damage
Discord (5 MP) - sets Muddle/Bserk on one foe
Holy Wind (30 MP) - restores HP to party by an amount equal to Strago's current HP
Raid (15 MP) - absorbs HP/MP from foe (Magic); ignores defense
Raze (36 MP) - heavy fire damage (Magic); may set Sap/Poison
Refract (25 MP) - sets Image/Rflect on an ally
Shield (48 MP) - sets Safe on party
Tsunami (64 MP) - heavy water damage to all foes (Magic)
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X-Magic (replaces Magic) - cast two spells instead of one

ESPERS

Shiva - Magic+2  ------------------------  32 MP: ice damage (Magic) on all foes
Carbunkl - MP+25/Stamina+1  ---  24 MP: sets Rflect on party
Zoneseek - MP+20/Magic+1  ----  48 MP: sets Shell on party
Odin - Stamina+2  ------------------  99 MP: massive non-elemental damage (Stamina) to all foes; ignores defense

SPELLS

Ice - Magic
Ice 2 - Magic
Dark - Magic
X-Zone
---
Osmose - Magic
Stop
Slow
Shell
Rflect
Warp

Strago

Wise Old Man (maybe), Killer of Endangered Species (Hidon), The Man Whose Last Name is Magus (wonder if he hates frogs).

Strengths

• Incredible party support; All Buffs except Haste & Golem
• Solid elemental control, X-Dark is very powerful
• Very good AoE damage
• Lots of speed gear, Unique Hide gear
• Has Raid & Osmose for MP healing
• Tertiary healer
• Solid status control (strong trio of Bad Breath, Discord, and Raze)
• X-Zone

Weaknesses

• No HP espers, no heavy armor, low p.def
• Neutral ST damage is limited to front-row Rods or endgame magics
• Most offensive options are MP hungry
• Very low base speed; good gear set-ups are limited to lots of speed
• Holy Wind doesn't work after big attacks
• Mediocre / so-so in the WoB

Strago can make for either an excellent party support with fairly good magical damage as back-up, or as a high-end damage character with X-Magic. He can even have some surprising bulk with the right combo of elemental resistance, HP+ gear (Black Heart), and Refract/Shield. Just make sure you equip him with as much speed gear as you can get.

Builds

Blue Mage

Lots of magic, with however much MP you feel is needed. The obvious use it to turn Strago into your primary attacker through a mix of taking advantage of elemental / low mg.def weaknesses, controlling the battlefield through big AoE, or the endgame nuclear option in X-Dark. However, again, Strago also makes for excellent party support. Don't be ashamed to commit him full-time to party support instead; he can't always be a primary damage dealer, but his high magic will still find its use doing solid damage on Strago's off turns. So, equip lots of speed gear, support the party, blow up stuff, and hope you don't eat a physical.

Do not forget your Rods! Lore's great for AoE, but prior to your endgame magics (Dark, Black Omen), Strago needs Rods to fill out his elemental control and neutral ST damage. Thunder Rod does a very good job filling a gap in Strago's elemental control, while Punisher is just as good as Black Omen against a single target. Rods also pair with Black Belt, a beautiful +7 speed relic that gives powerful counterattacks, and they're nowhere near as MP hungry as Lore, so Punisher's not totally eclipsed by Strago's endgame magic. Just don't do this without at least a Guard Ring equipped, if not also a Green Beret / Red Cap as well as Refract support.

Stamina

Lots of stamina, with however much MP you feel is needed. An extreme latebloomer and somewhat niche. The idea is that stacking so much stamina allows beefy regen ticks and stamina's rather modest magic damage reduction to begin to seriously help Strago's bulk, while also granting some serious status evade. The build has its utility in big endgame boss fights with AoE magic nukes & status effects flying around, and the regen ticks & mg.dmg reduction do indirectly buff Holy Wind. The Wind Breaker rod serves as a serviceable attack, with the stamina providing a 100% counterattack rate; again, Refract, Guard Ring, and the HP+ cap that you'll be equipping anyways, will all keep the old man from dying. Just please don't try to use Strago as a Cover tank.

The flipside, however, is that Blue Mage can imitate much of this build's utility through proper gear set-ups (Ribbon, Amulet, Black Heart w/ elemental gear), while also having the flexibility of better damage on Strago's off-turns when he ain't supporting, or just switching over to "big damage" for a given fight. The regen ticks are real. But Blue Mage's regen ticks ain't bad either, the status immunity relics are right there (esp. the Amulet), and the actual extra mg.def that stamina gives, honestly, is just straight up insignificant. Also, the status evade isn't terribly reliable as a "free Ribbon" until you're hitting that 96+ mark, so, again, the build is very late-blooming.

This build does help him defensively, mind you; if you're never attacking, then this is strictly better than the Blue Mage. At the end of the day, however, the benefits are minute, and Strago's still a low HP, physically frail character.

Misc

• Black Heart combined with the proper shield & hide can make Strago quite bulky. Just be aware that Holy Wind won't self-heal a Black Heart Strago.
• Strago's one of the best for Reflect strats. Can set it quickly with X-Magic, Holy Wind pierces it, and can even restore the MP of a Reflected unit (cast Osmose on them).
• Don't discount Refract. Image is a powerful buff, especially for glass cannons, and Reflect has utility too.
• The Dark Hood is a very viable alternate to the Circlet or Red Cap.

So, does anyone prefer Stam Strago? The way thzfunnymzn describes it, it appears strictly inferior to Mag Strago. He gets bigger regen ticks, fewer status hits, and more counter attacks if you decide to do that. But does regen actually help him? Isn't he going to fall over in one or two hits anyway? And shouldn't someone else be doing physical damage?

Also, if you aren't using Strago for big numbers of magic damage, isn't Gogo a possibly better Lore user? He can be geared up to be faster than Strago, which is important for these support Lores. He'd need MP support for sure, but he could Mana Battery himself, or have Osmose if Relm is in your party.

So I guess that's two questions: 1. Is Mag > Stam for Strago? and 2. Is Gogo > Strago if you are focusing on support?

...Someone else other than me ought to respond.

1: My firm opinion is that mag Strago is strictly better than stam Strago. Even after playing stam Strago, the benefits I saw were simply rather minute. They were there, yes, but it felt more like "Eh, I'm not having Strago attack, guess I might as well give him stamina," rather than "Wow, I really want to give Strago stamina."

2: Strago can obtain almost as much speed as Gogo with correct gear. He's also got a lot more MP; it's nice to not have to Battery/Osmose every few turns. Strago's also got better attack power for any off turns that he's not supporting. Otoh, Gogo can get more support than just Lore (Tools, Throw, Magic, etc).

It's true- the number of turns eaten by Battery/Osmose kind of cancels out the speed benefit. Is Gogo any better at taking a hit than Strago?

It seems like it would be easy to give Stam/Hybrid Strago some ground by just changing some of the Lores to depend on Stamina. Since they are unique to Strago, it doesn't seem like it would have any ripple effect across the overall balance of the characters.

Only Lore I can think of where it would make sense would be Holy Wind. Change Holy Wind's formula such that, instead of healing purely based off HP, there's a baseline healing that depends on Strago's stamina. That way, at least stam Strago can boast better healing. (I'd still push for my old HP+15 / Stam+1 idea for Odin, for a myriad of reasons, including Holy Wind. Still, stam baseline on Holy Wind is at least a step in the right direction for stam Strago)

I agree Stam Strago seems niche and not nearly as useful as the Mag Version. I'm not sure that the major reduction in damage output and osmose absorb potential is worth status and magic resistance. It'd be better if more of his kit besides just Odin synergized with Stamina

You put it quite well when you said that stamina's synergy with mg.def & regen ticks simply doesn't work without actual HP backing it (not even for strengthening Holy Wind, in my experience). I'd also add that stamina's improved odds to status evade works best with HP as well. After all, if you're building a tank, you want to survive both direct offense (HP) and indirect offense (status). HP also allows one to safely use the increased Cover chances that stamina affords.

I'm certainly not asking for Odin to become an HP/Stam esper, no sirree, not at all, not me. >_>

Updated for 2.0

Strago's abilities see quite a few changes here, most notably a hard focus on X-Dark (which is now stronger and more expensive) as his best single-target damage while Raze loses its "poison" element along with a little bit of its power to make it a more of a general-purpose attack (that's now slightly weaker than Dark) until Dark is obtained. Refract is more expensive - and rightfully so - due in part to Reflect's changed behavior, but mostly just because it was undervalued before due to how useful the Image status can be. Blow Fish, finally, no longer has an MP cost: a major boon to you LLG freaks out there, but otherwise unremarkable since its damage is insignificant in a normal game environment and the change was done primarily so that enemies who use it did not need MP (and Mute would not prevent it). On the spell side of things, Strago loses Sleep (not that he needed the extra status coverage) and gets Warp back... for what good that will do him.

Strago also gets the only EL change in 2.0: an increase in the MP offered by Zoneseek, which previously was of little interest to him since Carbunkl offered more. This increase draws a much clearer line in the sand for Strago's EL options: Shiva/Zoneseek for a magic build and Carbunkl/Odin for a stamina one. And speaking of Stamina Strago... the old man loses his ill-advised ability to equip maces in 2.0, but in return gains access to a new weapon that looks like a rod but is basically a 1-handed Mutsunokami. As the random wind damage from such weapons is now stamina-based, this at last gives Stamina Strago an actual offensive option aside from Odin. Even MORE importantly, the updated Regen formula now favors stamina over maximum HP, thus resulting in a massive buff for "Viagra" Strago's... *ahem* longevity.

One part of Strago's kit that I think is underrated is the Shield spell. 

Buffing the entire team with Safe/Shell/Haste/Regen is not a requirement, but it makes later battles SO much easier. And with the exception of Zoneseek, this spell is the only method to cast safe on every party member. So having Strago on a team gives them access to 4 turns of buffs (or 4 relic spots) for the price of one.

Updated the guide to reflect 2.0. Blue Mage is updated to reflect X-Dark strats, but the nerf to Raze's damage means that I'm seriously recommending the player lean into Rod fighting for neutral st damage prior to learning Black Omen / Dark. I've updated the stamina build for 2.0 (beefy regen ticks, Wind Breaker), but I'm still rather harsh on it overall.