Umaro: Hulk Smash!

Umaro
Hulk Smash!

BASE STATS

Vigor: 90 / Magic: - / Speed: 24 / Stamina: 90

HP: 255 / MP: 0   BatPwr: 99 / Def: 60 / M.Def: 60 / Evade: 6 / M.Evade: 6

EQUIPMENT

Weapons: Clubs
---
Shield: -
Head:  Skull Cap
Body: Parka
 

SKILLS

Fight - just a regular attack (Vigor)
Tackle - same as above (Vigor), but ignores defense
Rage (???) - throw a random ally at a foe for critical defense-ignoring damage (Vigor)
Blizzard (???) - massive ice damage (Stamina) to all foes

ESPERS

Nope

SPELLS

HahahahahahahahahahahahahahaNO

Berserker

GIVE IMAGE!! UMARO SMASH!!

Equip Storm Belt and your pick of Black Belt or Hyper Wrist. Pair him up with Mog, set Image on Umaro. (Set Berserk if you equipped Black Belt). Smash stuff, throw allies. Throwing Mog nets 9999 damage. Could even have some Dragoons on the team (not Mog, obviously; rather, Edgar and/or Gogo) to increase Umaro's chance to throw Mog.

Big, Dumb Bodyguard

WHY UMARO NOT SMASH?!

Equip Black Belt & Knight Cape. Let Umaro tank hits for the whole party with his stupidly high stamina stat, and counter those hits nearly 100% of the time. Don't set Image (doesn't work with Cover). Safe & Regen support preferred.

Abominable Snowman

HOW MAGIC WORK?!

Equip Blizzard Orb for Ice weak foes or for random clearing. Probably still use Rage Belt as your other relic.

I've found Umaro to be a fairly reliable Colosseum combatant. Depending on the fight I'll throw him in with Rage Belt and either Life Bell or Sprint Shoes, prebuff him with Float, and watch the magic.

Pros: He doesn't have a long list of potentially useless spells to waste actions with. Just consistent, sometimes massive physical damage.

Cons: Very low dodge rates, Ogre Nix rips him apart. If your opponent uses Vanish you're SoL unless you brought Blizzard Orb.


I think a properly tailored Shadow would fair much better, but Umaro's a good plug-and-play right out of the box. Strong, pretty tanky, and predictable. My Shadow's underleveled this run so Mr. Samsquanch has been my go-to choice.

Like Gogo, half of Umaro's game is who you group him with. Big guy needs support, period. And he isn't picky about who he works with, but has a fondness for Moogle-tossing which results in bonus damage on his Toss-attack.

As such, here is my favorite Umaro set-up and the simple logic behind it. I admit this set-up is more fun than effective.

Edgar/Gogo/Mog/Umaro

Edgar is a dragoon; mixing Golem/Unicorn for bulk with Golem equipped. He supports with Golem, Tools and Magic.

Gogo is set with Magic, Lore/Throw, and either Runic/Bushido/Tools/Item, bringing more support.

Mog is The Dancer; mixed with Maduin/Terrato for blend of bulk and style. Moogle Charm is crucial to this set up. He brings a little bit of everything, including much needed 'tude. 

Umaro smash! Rage Belt is mandetory, and I like to use either the Black Belt or Sprint Shoes on this monster...anything that will improve his likelihood of causing damage.

------

First round will be situational buffs/debuffs. Edgar casts Golem at the start while Gogo doles out Image via Smoke Bombs or Refract, or Runic for spell absorption so long as Mog takes his turn first. Mog slows. After that its party time!

From this point on Edgar will spend most of his turns jumping. The point of this build is to maximize hang-time, which acts as a third layer of protection, so to speak. Ideally, Gogo will immediately use Mimic after Edgar uses Jump so it too can take to the air. When necessary, these two can add more support between jumps, such as casting Shield or using Defibrilator. 

Mog will stay grounded, dancing his little heart out. He is build Ford-tough with this set up, ready to share hits alongside his sasquatch buddy but also to be chucked at monsters when it is convenient. Since Edgar and Gogo will generally be far away when Umaro gets the urge to throw a party member, this strategy maximizes the chance he will throw Mog for extra big damage...

...and we all know how desperately he needs to see those 9's because  damnit he needs something! He needs this!!! He can't even wear a *burp* h-hat Morty! What kind of contribution are you really going to bring towards saving the world when you can't even figure out hats?!

That's actually a pretty unique way to maximize Umaro's damage output. I really like it.

1.9's changes to Cover & Counter also means Umaro will have an actual alternative set-up to Rage Belt. He'll be able to choose Black Belt + Knight Cape for a nearly 50% Cover chance and a nearly 100% counterattack chance. As someone in Discord described it, he'll be the parties Big, Dumb Bodyguard.

With your fancy set-up & an actual second "build" to Umaro, the dumb Yeti is showing some surprising nuance to his strategy. I....don't know what to make of this development.

That sounds really promising. I just feel like he really needs something. I hacked Daryl's Soul into his shield slot to give him 2x attack and that made a huge difference. He will benefit from the cover and counter changes more than anyone I'm sure.

7 minutes ago, Brave New EarlHi said:

He will benefit from the cover and counter changes more than anyone I'm sure.

Yeah, with 90 base stamina? I'll bet.

On 7/27/2017 at 4:23 PM, thzfunnymzn said:

GIVE IMAGE!! UMARO SMASH!!

We're done, ladies and gentlgiants.

Updated for 2.0.

The nerf to Umaro's base speed is undone by a +5 speed bonus now on one of his special relics, and I finally went ahead and axed his (completely unused) magic stat. Also, Umaro can now wear the Skull Cap you find in Kefka's Tower.

I think the intention with Umaro is to retain a semblance of choice for the player despite a lack of ELs by allowing us to choose between either a Storm Belt / Blizzard Orb setup for damage, or a Knight Cape / Black Belt setup for tanking.

The problem is that I don't think either build holds up to what the other characters in the game can do at that point in the game.

If you go with the Storm Belt / Blizzard Orb setup, the damage is alright. Blizzard is actually pretty great aoe vs. random encounters, but it's not guaranteed. Mog Toss will deal 9999 damage, but that requires you to group with Mog who is another character that I'm pretty lukewarm on. Even though the damage is unpredictable and sometimes can be disappointing, Umaro is still super tanky unlike the other characters that specialize in damage. Unfortunately this means that you can often find yourself in a situation where Umaro is the lone survivor on the field, but is then doomed since he can't do anything to revive the rest of the party.

If you go with the Knight Cape / Black Belt setup then Umaro can actually make use of those defensive stats with an unbelievable 50% chance to cover and a 100% chance to counter attack. Unfortunately those counter attacks are going to be doing 25% less damage now, and he loses the damage output of his Blizzard and Toss abilities. This setup is also a bit faster and probably just all around a bit more useful than the above setup, but it still seems lacking compared to all of the other tanking options in the game who are controllable and tend to do much better damage with things like GP Toss or Dragon. These characters also tend to have a lot of support options as well, or at the very least can use items.

To solve this, I think that Storm Belt should give Counter and Blizzard Orb should give Cover. This takes away that one pseudo-choice that a player had to make regarding Umaro, however it would combine his strengths together into something that might feel really fun to use through the end of the game.

I will recognize that the better at the game you are the worse that Umaro is, and for newer players he does tend to be quite good already. It's a difficult balance to get right I imagine. If we determine Umaro to be too strong after those changes (which I doubt), then I think it could be easily solved by reducing his base stats a bit. I already think that the Bodyguard Umaro build is super interesting, it just needs some more offensive firepower.

TL;DR: Add Counter to Storm Belt and Cover to Blizzard Orb and let's see how Umaro performs.