CCP - Discussion Topic

[dis astranagant]

Welp, Zalera was a pain til I gave everyone heretic swords and stuck engrave on a couple people.  Worker 8 did most of the heavy lifting til I noticed Zalera's water weakness via dolphin kick.  Got kinda boring watching him spam void at mel all day and I didn't pick up flare2 but in the end it worked.

[dis astranagant]

Not sure NOGIAS is even possible with float not working.  Thought I was figuring things out then out came the 999 titan.

[Celdia]

I don't know what's causing that for you, dis. I just went and tested the NOGIAS battle myself - put Winged Hats on everyone and even double-checked by trying to cast Stone Strike on my own party. Every single one of them Guarded it and the boss there never once tried to use Titan Call.

[dis astranagant]

Well, he never did it again so idk.  Slogged through the DD (is it unfinished or did I just have bad luck drawing special fights past the Belmonts?) and finished the game.  Cyan is pure cheese, even with tacticians doing all the heavy lifting.  He broke Altima's brain so she only got one spell off the whole fight, wasting it on Alma.

[Celdia]

DD is technically unfinished. I only had a few ideas for battles to put in there that I could actually make work. There's the battle at Nogias, the Belmonts and the Chocobo Elite battle. Everything else is vanilla load-outs which with the new jobs makes for some odd combinations. Cyan is intended to be completely over the top since he is so completely optional to get. A kind of reward for wasting all the time and energy needed to get him at all.

[dis astranagant]

Well, while he may be pure cheese, I only ever used 2 of his skills.  Stunner made the perfect finisher after a couple shots of spike pit trap and instant golem had all of its AI breaking fun.  Other than that he just stabbed people in the face for the only decent damage any of my guys could pull out besides terminar.

[TigerKnee]

Hey people, I have a bit of free time and I decided to start another playthrough of CCP. Last time I've played, the Loremaster was instead a cheesy class whose name I can't remember that could OHKO everyone on the map and I feel that I might not have a proper view of the end-game because of it.

But now the class has changed and a bunch of other stuff as well, so let's begin.

Disclaimer: I'm not a very good FFT player, I suspect people might be a lot smarter and found more use for certain abilities compared to me.

Unfortunately, I have less free time in my life compared to the past, so while I was fond of doing things like draw out battles to eat crystals and get treasure chests, I will probably not do said strategies nowadays. Also I probably won't quite go into too much detail. Anyway let's begin/.

Chapter 1 always kind of felt like pulling teeth to me and in this current patch... it's better than the really old versions where enemy's equipment scaled to your level, but worse than the one after said patch.

I think one of the problems is that a lot of the early game classes have abilities that are really nice as supplementary options, but aren't exactly "workhorse" abilities to build a core strategy on. Also, a lot of classes don't have an easy way to build up JP the way Throw Stone did in Vanilla FFT. The Butler is one of the classes most hit by this IMO because he's too squishy to auto-attack but his abilities (that you can afford at chapter 1 anyway) are too niche to give him any useful actions to build JP. Homemaker gets off because Sugary Candy is like a reverse healing Throw Stone. I think some of their starting abilities really needs to be cheaper (and yes, I know 150 JP is pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things but with early level characters it feels like it takes forever only to receive a niche ability)

Also, randoms are a pain in this version. A battle with a Siren can basically wipe out your party in one action if you get unlucky and get 3 people frogged or something and stuff like Bombs seem to deal ridiculous damage with their new moveset to early game player characters. Ironically they aren't that great if you actually recruit them because in story battles the enemy always kind of seems to have a positioning advantage over you where monsters terrible average 3 move really hurts.

Now that being said, the change of being able to control guest AI now means that it's MUCH easier to just play through story missions without stopping to grind. Having control of Algus and Delita makes Dorter significantly easier and I love that because I hate having that stupid level wall me.

Once you get to Chapter 2, I find that propositions and the more interesting jobs opening up means the patch is a lot more fun to play.

Assorted early game stuff:
Charge is a pretty lame skillset in Vanilla and it's not particularly groundbreaking here... HOWEVER, most other early game abilities are so niche that Charge +4 actually ends up being quite exciting in comparison and quite possibly one of the few things that I would consider a "workhorse" ability for consistent damage (if you want to burst early, you'll have to go with Red Mage)

The skillset could honestly use some JP reductions though. Charge +4 or perhaps +5 is basically the only cost-efficient skill on the list. By the time you get something like Charge + 20 it doesn't work anymore.

Early Homemaker: Sugary Candy good for grinding, Boil is actually surprisingly good as a secondary skillset on the magic using classes early for picking off key targets (assassination missions, mostly).

Butler: Yucks. Silverware as a starting ability really doesn't work due to how the charge system in FFT works. Blackmail is solid though you can only really use it like 2 or 3 times before your MP runs out. I would basically just buy +1 Move and then not use this class until you can get over the hump using propositions.

Champion: The early game abilities aren't great. Healing Touch can't really heal very well but it's there to grind JP. Rejuv Touch is terrible until Heavy Armor actually becomes strong enough to provide enough HP to regenerate off.

Really in early game, this class basically just exists for 2-H sword beatdown, which has been nerfed compared to the past now that those swords don't provide their own element. Still, put Charge on this guy and you'll have a solid consistent attacking unit.

Red Mages: Workhorse for early game. It has a big list of abilities and if you don't want to grind, you really got to know which ones to pick.

With the free JP, definitely buy Jolt and Freeze. Jolt will always be useful because it has no charge time and Freeze is a solid ability and especially useful for killing goblins. Aura is optional but helpful if you need healing although I find Ramza and Delita bandages work fine.

After that, upgrade to Thunder by around the time of Sand Rat Cellar because the entrances are PERFECT for lining up enemies.

Then get Simoon at around Thieves fort. It's significantly better than Scorch which I never found any use for. The battlefields are set in such a way that the next few battles up to Fort Zeakdan has the enemy bunched up in such a way that Simoon deals a huge blow to them.

Wall is a nice splash for Red Mages who AREN'T you main for battles where you can afford to wait a little instead of having to rush strategic positions ASAP. I had Algus take up this duty for me.

Nomad: A niche unit overall that you really only pull out when you can gain access to a height advantage which... isn't often. Dorter and Zaland fort city comes to mind.

Niche niche abilities as usual. Updraft is probably the best one early and even then it's niche. Put Charge as a secondary and just use his access to bows as your advantage.

That 2 movement and inability to wear boots, I find to be kind of unbearable. Seeing as how Nomad gates Bandit, you almost have to make these guys male until you get propositions.

Loremaster: This really isn't an "early" game class IMO but somehow I managed to stick Ramza in Red long enough to access this.

I like the concept and it's definitely less overpowered compared to the previous incarnation. Fireball is hilariously good for all the early assassination missions and can one-shot (or close anyway) most of them but if you don't end the battle immediately then its MP cost makes it unfeasible so I won't consider it overpowered.

I was expecting the final Chapter 1 Algus fight to be a long slog but Algus just rolled over dead instantly when a fireball was dropped on him. Maybe I had good compatibility or something.

Tactician: Kind of want to make this class work for me, I remember the last time I played it, it was super buggy. Well they're fixed now but I think they're hard to use when guests are still being forced into your party all the time limiting your deploys to 4. We'll see I guess.

Question: How does dual elemental abilities work? If I cast boil on a Fire Bomb, what sort of damage would I do?

[Celdia]

Glad to see there's still enough interest in the patch you make you come back for another pass, TigerKnee. Keep an eye out here for something new, hopefully before the end of the month.

Question: How does dual elemental abilities work? If I cast boil on a Fire Bomb, what sort of damage would I do?

It inverts the damage to healing and then it applies the normal Weak multiplier regardless of the fact that it's a healing effect now. So it becomes super-charged healing.

[Reks]

And i'm again reminded that I need to play CCP.





..... *again gets distracted by Etrian Odyssey*

[TigerKnee]

Got walled a bit by Execution Site which I kind of expected. Loremaster doesn't work because it's too squishy and enemies are too spread out/too many for a decisive Fireball victory.

Decided to use a tanky Demagogue/Engrave setup. Didn't even use any of the Demagogue skillset actually, just needed access to Heavy Armor + not terrible MA.

Adrenaline serves a hilarious double purpose against Chocobo Codex wielders. Not only do you stop them from using skills, they also helpfully provide you with free healing and reraise. Just awesome.

Tactician hasn't been that useful for me other than providing haste to 4 other people but that's about it.

[Otabo]

Tactician hasn't been that useful for me other than providing haste to 4 other people but that's about it.

Just learn Spike Pit Trap + Take High Ground and you might be saying otherwise. They're both very useful and effective.

[dis astranagant]

Definitely.  Spike pit trap is the best skill in the game by miles and a couple tacticians will shred any fight with it, while being untouchable half the time.  Once you get a couple dragon poles you don't even need time to set up.  Give them sunken state on top of that and anyone who does manage to attack them just got rid of a set up turn.

[TigerKnee]

Yeah, I just got access to Fresh Herbs and the only thing my Tacticians do now is lie down on the floor and then shred the map.

I feel kind of disappointed, because

1) it reminds me of old Loremaster (Actually, I think they were called Warlocks or something) which overfocused the battles on themselves... well, except the AI was better at using those guys because they're braindead simple and not that good at using Tacs and Warlock battles were at least challenging in a sense that you're going to have to fight a way to kill those guys fast.

2) Tacts have one of the bigger skillset in the patch and you basically just use 2 of them over and over.

Zalmo is slightly hard than I thought due to the fact that enemies get first strike because of level scaling and starting position is really terrible and his unique spells hit pretty hard.

I regret not stealing stuff from Wiegraf 2. His armor is pretty strong for where it is.

The deserters battle are somehow still using old sprites (Monk/Chemist/etc)... funny, I thought those sprites were replaced in the game but I'm not sure about the technical details of FFT hacking. Good stuff to steal here.

What's up with random battles and monsters? A lot of monsters seem to be missing attacks, such as the Squid family where only 1 of them have Mind Blast. For some reason I can't seem to breed the 3rd tier of certain monster classes (Sirens and Bombs, I managed to get a 3rd tier Skeleton) and also it seems like I never seen a single human unit appear in a random battle anymore (which is bad because I would like to save some money by stealing stuff off them. Equipment is expensive in this patch.)