Final Fantasy Hacktics

Stardate 12/01/2012: I masochistically call Time Mage, in part because I genuinely believe they're the worst class at present (so I have an excuse when I get my ass handed to me horribly as per usual) and in part because I've been tempted to try to make one as soon as I came back. Admittedly, I probably would have chosen Wizard if I could have thought of a seemingly decent team for them that didn't get seem like it would get curbstomped despite them being the only mages that don't have to run Faith for their Primary class attacks now. As such, I was glad to see that CT5Holy picked them up since he's among one of the most competent team-makers.

I was also admittedly tempted to be lazy and go with the all-Samurai team that I made up around that time, but considering how horribly the Fujiwara clan got its ass-kicked by Barren's Lancers...yeah, probably a good thing they're not here.

12/03/2012: Oddly I seem to have the same urge to switch to Oracles around here. I also have the same urge to switch to Priest after being surprised that it was one of the last classes picked despite being literally the only class where one's entire team was capable of having resurrection on every unit from just their primary class and access to the rare flails.

12/05/2012: I made a preliminary version of the team around here by the latest since the focus was "easy": Dark-based attacks. With the Demi skills being their only really threatening damage since Comet is fixed and they have utterly rubbish HP, meaning I completely wrote off Balance from the beginning, it seemed "obvious" that I would need everyone to absorb Dark to get around needing to heal so constantly. This because squishy Time Mages that are faster than almost every other team and charge forward idiotically are going to die at least once.

Of course, that ran into a problem because I also felt that I needed all of my team to be immune to Silence since I pretty much had "Must Block" Silence" as a mandatory for all my mages until rather recently. Due to their equally garbage weapon selection of Staves and Bags, though, it seemed rather like they needed to keep up their spell offense if I didn't just want to "phone it in" and be really lazy by having two of Draw Out and then probably two of White Magic(k) or Summon Magic(k). So my equipment selection was quickly limited to a rather boring pool of N-Kai Armlets (which I like and have always used anyway), Golden Hairpin (because duh), Robe of Lords (for N-Kai users) and Black Costumes before I had any "wiggle" room with weapons that weren't usable as attack weapons (sans Gold Staff and Wizard Staff), the two left-overs hats and either Magic Ring or Defense Ring. And then I remembered that Cursed Ring existed...and that I had wanted to try out Move=0....

And thus the first member of my team, Bleed, was born. I suppose before I ramble on further that I should explain that the name is a reference to the missing Time Magick spells from FFXII with an at least slight thematic focus on all of them. Thus from the beginning, Bleed had Lore to "bleed" the opponents while healing his (pre-sex change) allies, Countdown always had a focus on Short Charge & Stop, Float always had Float & was going to be the primary reviver, which necessitated Projectile Guard because Spellguns frakking hurt and Warp always had Teleport and thus quickly became an Item-bot. Things followed rather quickly from that, especially with my remembering the way reinoe's Short Circuit has been destroying people with units that didn't all have 70 Faith; I'm pretty sure I had the Zodiacs easily assigned by just making Bleed a Libra first because of Balance (even though I was never planning on using that). So this had me surprisingly leaving it so that two units were able to be Silenced, two couldn't restore their own MP and one of them couldn't move (though that in itself is still something I want to test out).

I then left things to sit before I proceeded to inflict a lot of Bad Things on myself in real life that I'm not going to go into here....

12/13/2012: Around this time, I waste time coming up with two theoretical all-Bard teams that I lament not being able to use even though I know Reks genuinely likes that class a lot, probably the most of anyone on the board. So no big last, especially since I don't even like Phoenix Blade really.

I still wasn't able to think of a satisfactory all-Wizard team, but by then I'd decided to just wait to see what CT5Holy came up with.

12/18/2012: Barren asks me if my team is ready because I'm such a slow, lazy bastard and probably the last person to send his (or hers) in as always. So I then proceed to spend about an hour just looking at and going over my team, both noting how my most recent failure happened almost exclusively because I lacked M-EV at all and noting with some frustration that there seemed to be more Dark absorb than I had expected from posted teams, especially via Cursed Ring. The latter was especially frustrating since Float was never going to have the JP for Raise 2, at least if I wanted to keep her (now his) namesake Movement ability and wanted revival abilities that were 100% given my abysmal luck's ability to make 80~% revival miss way too often. I also didn't want to bother with Raise 2 because, again, Time Mages have frankly abysmal HP, so they'd probably be one-shot as easily as by something threatening at 50% as they would at 100%; so long as they were revived above 100 HP, which Raise did, then I figured things were fine.

It was around this point that I realized that I had entirely too much revival given that one of my units was technically immortal and the other three all had revival. Things quickly "solved" themselves even though I had to e-mail Barren thrice in a row to make "last-minute" corrections; I also lamented that purple palette's crystal is still game-crashingly buggy:


1. Countdown lost Fairy for Silf. She also got Haste because I realized that I had miscounted JP totals like always, this time under-counting by 100 instead of the opposite. I figure since she's the fastest and got Haste alongside Short Charge, she'll probably be able to not as incompetent about as the AI tends to be. She also ended up being the only person not to get a sex change ultimately. She did however lose her White Robe for a Robe of Lords just because I figured "why" not, especially since she has the only method of assured MP-restoration between Move-MP Up, Absorb MP AND Carbunkle.

2. Bleed lost Demi 2 after I realized that I should probably give him something speedier for self healing considering his otherwise having Bio 3 was pointless in that sense. So he got Demi (after Warp lost it) and I waffled about giving him Haste despite having 100 JP left over given the AI's obsession with it, but I figured it would be something to do since he was still fast enough to get it off before even Countdown moved since he only has to build up 80 CT compared to 100. Bleed then got a sex change to a she because I realized that undercutting Lore by that much just to make sure that Float's revival was slightly more accurate wasn't worth it; the same for when it was decided that Warp would no longer absorb Dark.

3. Float lost Summon Magic(k) and got White Magic(k) for both Raise & Esuna. I then decided to give her Demi instead of Demi 2 due to her lack of Short Charge, which freed up 100 JP for both Regen & Protect, which are probably going to screw me over "hilariously" but meh. Other than that, I gave her a sex change to a man eventually since Bleed got changed and I wanted them to keep being Besties.

4. Warp ended up getting the most changes, in addition to the sex change from a man to a slightly more squishy woman, she was the only one to get her starsign changed, going from Aries to another Sagittarius. This was because I figured I needed M-EV on someone due to aforementioned loss by "Donate Blood Today!" and she was it, especially as the front"man" with back-up revival. This meant losing N-Kai Armlet since there was no in hell I was giving her Black Costume with her necessary Thief Hat since that turn her MP into crap and I'd rather not waste turns having to Hi-Ether. So she got Small Mantle rather quickly because it both has decent M-EV and blocks Holy, meaning literally the only element that neutrally hits her is Dark, which should just get Auto Potion'd away for more damage than it does in theory; in theory only, given my luck. Beyond that, she also was the only member to get a weapon change, getting a P Bag instead of a Wizard Staff, which prompted me to change her Demi to Comet since I figured that I could shuffle some of her Item abilities around and she didn't need the MA for Comet's damage. As such, she lost Antidote, partly because Float has Regen now and partly because Warp has X-Potion herself, and got Maiden's Kiss just because I'm paranoid like that.


So we'll see how things go even though I didn't get a chance to play-test it all due to the still-existent Excel 2010 issues.