Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grim Grimoire Beta 0.7- Last Updated: 2/25/16

[Leynerishkigal]

@chocolatemoose

For Squelch I think I got it once by being on water and for gust you need to be on a soil with herb on it.

[Eternal]

Thanks all for your feedback! Chocolate, take as long as you'd like!

@Leyner: Having Doom proc Primed makes -much- more sense, and it confirms my initial belief. I was very confused when you mentioned the other statuses, but having it proc Primed makes far more sense. And it gives me a great excuse to remove Doom status~

@Chocolate: I'm aware of the Oust bug. It was yet another one I forgot to document. (I kinda suck at those sorts of things, lol.) I'm going to change the animation in a future release so that the glitch won't happen. That being said, it should just be a graphical bug. I don't think it'll cause any crashing or other issues.

In regards to Druids, Squelch activates in water tiles, and Gust is active while on grassy terrain.

[Leynerishkigal]

@Eternal

Sorry, I think I was a bit tired when reporting it and my bad memory did the rest. 
So does that really mean that Death (00E5) and the doom effect ARE linked ? (the possibilities are awesome if that the case)

But doesn't that mean you get ride of two status (Doom and instant Death) and that you need to redo all abilities that use Doom as an effet ?
So far I found a great synergy between job of a same race and between races. You were able to make me like Nu Mou (Truth to be told, I was never attracted by those guys...I was more Gun-Ho and physical attack) but you did a good job with the druid (why did they give several tame ability for every monster instead of one, such a waste of place and potential). I think coupling it with Daemon would be good but more on that later.
A full support Mog Orator/Engineer seems great at the moment.

[Eternal]

Correct, Doom and Death are linked. If I were to take advantage of Doom's link, I'd probably tie it to Quicken and make the target take an extra turn after three turns have passed or something. Regardless, that's just an idea. Every ability that inflicts Doom will be changed (it's not a huge change, and it's one I was planning anyways, along with removing Sleep/Stop/Petrify from player hands) since I don't like the idea of being able to kill a unit outright with a debuff. Debuffs should be means to an end, not the end itself.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoy the new jobs! I worked tirelessly coming up and sieving through ideas to make jobs feel new and unique, which I hope is what you're also feeling. Moogles will soon be getting revamped jobs (Corsair, Moogle Hero, and a revamped Animist), and Assassins are also being redone. I'd love to hear your feedback of Daemons and other job combinations you're using!

EDIT: I've finished revamping the Assassin job. A very broken job in Vanilla (and not particularly fun, considering you just run up to things and kill them), Assassins are now an all new job, the Kunoichi! The Kunoichi is a very risky job to use, but the reward is well worth the risk, if you know how to properly use them. Kunoichi are evade tanks, much like Assassins were. They're fast and evasive, but their defenses are lacking. The Kunoichi uses Speed and the Viera's low Defense to their advantage. How does a job use low Defense to its advantage? Simple. The Kunoichi's theme is using skills and abilities that are based on the user's lost HP.

That's right. These ninja bunny girls get more dangerous as they get damaged. This pairs nicely with the new Occultist job, whose magicks cost HP. The Kunoichi's secondary also works well with White Mages, which gives them a way to fight back. Kunoichis (like Assassins) can attack at melee range with Katana, from afar with Greatbows, or their skills are mid-range (2 Range). Knowing how to properly protect and use Kunoichis can make them deadlier than a Vanilla Assassin, but it requires far more skill to bring out that potential.

-Hamanoha: Deals MP damage in a small AoE based on the user's lost HP.

-Shikikoyo: Restores a unit's HP equal to the user's lost HP. Basically, the opposite of White Wind. This skill can't target the user.

-Yonin: A very advanced skill, this skill takes the user's current HP down to 10% of its current total and makes it immune to damage until the next turn. That being said, the user becomes susceptible to debuffs, stealing, and rending. On one hand, this quickly makes your Kunoichi a murdering machine. On the other, it makes the Kunoichi a glass cannon once the immunity wears off. Using this basically guarantees at least one giant burst of damage during the battle, but it means you'll have to spend more time healing, rezzing, or fighting without your Kunoichi if it gets sniped.

-Utsusemi: Teleports the user to a random location and bestows Evasion Up. Perfect for getting out of situations where the Kunoichi is surrounded, or for boosting Evasion.

-Shi: Deals damage equal to the user's lost HP. The bread and butter of the Kunoichi's arsenal, Shi is very dangerous late-game when HP totals are high and damage output from other sources begins to dwindle. If the -enemy- is using it, you'd better dispatch them. Quickly.

-Innin: Unleashes a weapon attack that deals increased damage from the sides and behind.

-Boukyaku: Same as Vanilla's Assassin's/Ninja's Oblivion, inflicts Addle.

-Mijin Gakure: Detonates bombs within the user's garments, causing the unit to self-destruct, dealing damage to surrounding units based on the user's Max HP.

http://imgur.com/a/4O4ig

New Moogle jobs coming soon, kupo!

[Leynerishkigal]

Oh  I am dieing to try those new jobs !

I don't like the idea of being able to kill a unit outright with a debuff. Debuffs should be means to an end, not the end itself.

: I think the same about ailments. It's fun to use them because there aren't OHKO.

From what you said I think I'll play Kunoichi ever with a greatbow at a distance or couple with cover from the Paladin or Golem from your druid.

On a side note do you have any project of a job playing only with ailments (something akind to a Dark Hunter or a War Magus from Etrian Odyssey) ?

[Eternal]

Honestly, I'm not too familiar with the Etrian Odyssey series. I probably would be if there was a feature to auto-draw maps, though. I imagine it's really cumbersome having to constantly draw your own maps.

Anyhow, the first of three new Moogle jobs is done! Introducing the Corsair! The Corsair is a luck-based jobs with a few quirks for those who don't like leaving their fate in the hands of luck. Corsairs are a support-based job, being able to stay afar with Cards and their Wild Card skills to support allies and wound foes. Wild Card works well as both a secondary or a primary skillset for reasons you'll see once you see the skillset. Having a Corsair with Cards makes the Fusilier skillset a viable secondary as well.

-Coin Toss: Deals heavy physical, defense-piercing damage to either allies or enemies in a large AoE. Similar to Vanilla Tinker skills, but revamped so that you have more control over your luck. The AoE is Summon Magick sized, meaning it's a very large AoE. This means that it's easy to catch your own units in the AoE as well, meaning that if you wish to mitigate the chances of damaging yourself by accident, you need to spread your allies out of the AoE and position them differently ahead of time. That said, Coin Toss deals a large amount of damage, and it does bypass Defense, meaning it can be very effective at killing large swaths of enemies if your luck is right.

-Jinx: Inflicts a randomly chosen debuff from a pool of debuffs onto the target.

-Fortuna Major: Improves an ally's luck by potentially increasing Evasion, Accuracy, and Critical Hit Rate. Since this was essentially the old Intel (Engineer) skill, Intel now reveals traps and invisible units on the field.

-Jackpot: Restores a large amount of HP to either allies or enemies in a large AoE based on Magick, ignores Resistance. Basically Coin Toss, but heals instead.

-Felicity: Bestows a random buff onto the target.

-Snake Eyes: Dualcasts Wild Card skills, Time Magicks, or low and mid level Black Magicks. This is where Moogle mages begin to shine. Before, they lacked the power of the Nu Mou, the grace and versatility of the Viera, and the variety of Humes, but now they can Dualcast Black and Time Magicks (and Wild Card skills, if you like testing your luck). With this, Wild Card becomes a solid secondary for a mage unit, or you can sub a magick skillset as a Corsair. Being a Moogle is great now, kupo!

-Gil Toss: As Vanilla, throws Gil with power increasing if more Gil is sacrificed.

http://imgur.com/a/mb5QY

Revised Animist and Moogle Hero coming soon, kupo!

[chocolatemoose]

Looking forward to the updates - the jobs you're sketching out appear very interesting. I'm probably going to hold off on playing more until I can mess around with the new build.

I haven't played around with the Nu Mou as much as I'd like, but so far they seem like they'd actually be useful. I recently finished a fairly completionist vanilla run and my Nu Mou turned out mostly useless for the following reasons: if you're lucky magic hits approximately as hard as physical (excluding parivir/geomancy ridiculousness) even when you have magic pow+ as a passive, and the magic classes are generally slower and have lower HP than the physical ones (viera get around this with the summoner's AoE and red mage's doublecast). So why use Nu Mou magic damage when they'll always be outclassed? This goes double now that MP is (mostly) finite. (I have similar issues with Moogles - Bard/Juggler is the by far the best vanilla combo)

The jobs you've created seem like massive improvements in that they now occupy interesting spaces that didn't use to exist (Necromancer, Daemon, Druid). What makes the Druid useful is that the skills don't use MP and sometimes come with an additional debuff (Thorns is great). This comes at the cost of conditional usage, but I haven't found that to be a problem yet. The only class that I would probably shy away from is the Scholar (damage dealing usually > buffing), but it could become a necessity depending on how hard the enemies hit.

Edit for specificity: the Necromancer could also be more or less useful vs. gimmicky depending on how strong undead units are (similar to the Dragoon with dragons).

My comments beg the question of what you're going to do with stat growths. I saw that you switched up the Daemon's growths, but it didn't look like you touched the others. In the vanilla game I'm much more likely to build Time Mages and Alchemists for the magick growth, in addition to their skill set. Alternatively, this could also be achieved through changing abilities' base power. I guess it comes down to ensuring that magick users continue to be viable late game.

I swapped in my completed save game into the GG build; caught a couple other issues:

- I can change Al Cid to other jobs, but once I change his job I can't change back to Agent
- Flame Rod has Dark listed as an a-ability (for arcanist/daemon), but it also appears unlearnable by Nu Mou (as in there's no AP number listed to learn it)

Update: one other consideration: is it possible to imbue strengths/weaknesses based on weapon type, or is it solely limited to elements?

[Eternal]

@Chocolatemoose: Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you're having fun!

As far as stat growth is concerned, very little has been changed about it, since there are still many things in the air. Namely, I'm considering capping the max level at 50, but I hate games that cap levels at 50. That being said, balancing things around 99 is infinitely harder. Until I decide for a fact what I want to do, I'm not going to be touching stats very much. As of right now, my goal is to create fun jobs and let the balance figure itself out later. I'm also considering boosting the power of -ga magicks, Flare, Holy, Meteor, etc., though I'm waiting to hear what other people think about that.

Necromancers will likely be given high MAG growth to make up for their skillset later on.

Weapon types can't be bestowed strengths/weaknesses, though that's a cool concept! Unfortunately, it's limited to elements. Also, thanks for reporting those bugs. I knew about Al-Cid (forgot to make him unable to change jobs after testing), and I'll have to investigate Flame Rod. For a while, I had Arcanists learn Dark, so I'm sure that's why.

Today I'm proud to introduce a job based on early FF games and NES RPG heroes- the Moogle Hero! Based on old RPG heroes that could use both blade and magick, and based on the Dragon Quest Hero's ability to use some defensive magicks as well as FFXIII's Sentinel job, the Moogle Hero is a tank with the ability to use offensive White Magicks and healing spells that are differentiated from White Mages. The Moogle Hero is all about taking blows and staying alive while blasting things from afar with Holy spells until they can get close and pound you in the face.

-Vendetta: Damages and knocks a target back, places the user under Defending and Counter statuses, allowing them to mitigate damage and counter attacks until the user's next turn.

-Heal: Restores a small amount of HP to all allies.

-Dia: Inflicts minor Holy damage in a small area and bypasses the effects of Reflect as well as piercing the enemy's Resistance.

-Steelguard: Bestows Defending status on allies in a large area around the user.

-Basuna: Cures Poison, Blind, Oil, Immobilize, and Disable in a small area.

-Diara: Inflicts moderate Holy damage in a small area and bypasses the effects of Reflect as well as piercing the enemy's Resistance.

-Mediguard: Bestows the user with Defending, Regen, Protect, and Shell, making the user a veritable tank, kupo!

-Diaga: Inflicts heavy Holy damage in a small area and bypasses the effects of Reflect as well as piercing the enemy's Resistance.

http://imgur.com/a/JTPTf

[Madeen]

What I like about your new jobs is that they all seem op

[Eternal]

Haha, thanks! I started my test run today and so far things are pretty interesting! I caught a few bugs that have been fixed, and so far my Druid has been my MVP. Being able to turn monsters against each other is incredibly fun and rewarding, and it's been a key strategy in certain fights. Thorns has also been a good way to whittle away at enemies with its Poison proc. I suspect that once I unlock Occultist, she'll be taking MVP in conjunction with my Druid. I'm testing in Hard Mode, and so far, I'm liking the balance of it. Magic/Resistance will definitely need to be tinkered with, but I'm not sure how I want to go about that just yet.

[Madeen]

As long as enemies dont one shot you it should be fine by me

[Leynerishkigal]

I'm starting working so my test run will be a bit slower. So far the game more enjoyable than Vanilla. My Nu mou is also my MVP and except for battle on artificial soil, he rocks.

On a side note, with the new patch (well I guess there will be one once the new jobs are done), do I need to start from scratch or can I keep my save (in case I'm not done with the game by that time) ?

[Eternal]

Enemies hit hard on Hard, but I haven't been one-shot. I develop patches in such a way that you should almost never have to restart, so your save will be just fine.

[BearPRIME]

Hey Eternal,

firstly i really appreciate the work you've put in it is fantastic.  I am just starting to play it and I really enjoy it.  Monsters are pretty powerful and the range the wolves have is nuts (can literally criple half my team on the first turn).  I will let you know if anything pops up at me while i play through it.  Thanks for the hard work!

[Eternal]

The -Blow abilities that the Wolves have have been nerfed for the next update. When I realized just how crippling they were, I changed it right away. That being said, most monsters will probably change quite a bit throughout the process. I hope everyone enjoys everything! I should be releasing an update within the next few days.

[Madeen]

I've been thinking... Eternal, may I suggest something?

I'm not sure if you removed it or not but, do you have any plan for oil?

I think as long as it's in the game I'm too tempted to gear my units toward fire.  So maybe you could either remove/change it, or add a similar debuff for other elements as well?

That way all elements are equal, thus giving a better customization option.

What do you think?

[Eternal]

Honestly, I would love for Oil to affect all elements, but I have no idea of how to make that happen. I agree that it does put Fire above the other elements though. Aside from maybe Holy, which a lot of healing skills are.

[Madeen]

Honestly, I would love for Oil to affect all elements, but I have no idea of how to make that happen. I agree that it does put Fire above the other elements though. Aside from maybe Holy, which a lot of healing skills are.

Affecting all elements would be great

Well its just an idea, not like there's a rush or anything.

[Eternal]

I did some more of my test run today and got a little further in the story. I'm going to do Pearls in the Deep on Monday, but I started the Cinqueleur sidequest. Ruuj's AI was really screwed up and only Dualcast Silence instead of using Sanguis for whatever reason, which I'll have to fix when we can edit what abilities enemy units have learned. Blue King fell easily to Quakes cast by himself through Possess (Possess has been kickass in not only using the enemy's strength against them, but allowing allies to act again). The Green King did a number on me with her heavy physical strikes, and Possess is nigh useless in that fight.

So far, Possess has become my MVP (with Tame still useful, but not quite as much since there've been less monsters in fights.) Thorns has also seen a decline in use, but that's mostly because I've been using Sagacity a lot with Water. Water has to be changed slightly. Right now there's no reason to use Aero as Water is better in every way. Aero also has a free brother in Gust (Druid's skillset). Moogle Hero's Heal has also been useful, though Dia isn't working as intended. Apparently the "Bypass Defense" flag literally means bypass Defense- not Resistance- so Dia will likely have to be buffed.

EDIT: Beat Yowie in what was a fun, and not too challenging fight. I kinda like him how he is now. Fixed a critical error with Tonberries and buffed most magick all around. I'm doing some testing and I'm liking how the damage is increased now, but we'll see how that goes late-game. Discovered a fun bug wherein if you successfully break a type of item that the enemy doesn't have equipped (like using Shellbust to destroy enemy armor, if they're not wearing body armor) the break effect will land, but instead of destroying armor, it'll display a teddy bear sprite and say that was broken. I'm sure it's because that's the first sprite it reads, but I think it's hilarious and it's staying.

Also, this happened: Used Possess on an Oracle. Both the Oracle and the target have Reflect. Had Oracle cast Stop on the target. The target Reflects Stop back onto the Oracle. The target's Counter Magick goes off, making it cast Stop on the Oracle... which Reflects onto the target and Stops the target. Yay for Reflect/Counter Magick fun.

[Leynerishkigal]

It's true that as most battle are against "humanoid" character, possess is a must have ability be it quickening a ally turn or backstabing a foe with its own allies.

Concerning the Death/Doom combo something funny came to my mind. What would happen if you give death two properties, one being what you want (X) and the second being Doom ?
Wouldn't that create a loop that auto-cast X every 3 round ?

This way wouldn't it be possible to create a burning or bleeding status ? or even recreate the mighty auto-potion ?

Also concerning Aero/Gust, well gust can only be use on grassy field so even if gust is free it can't be use on barren or artificial soil. Plus Aero got an AoE that Gust didn't got. I think the way you made it is quite balanced.