(no subject)

[kjorteo]

What's this? An EO3 post that isn't me agonizing about more build possibilities? :O

Yeah, I finally made a decision--I wasn't kidding when I said I think I finally figured it out with that last one, and other than making TP Up for Julian a bit more of a priority, I haven't changed my mind on anything since then. In fact, I actually retired my characters, added the subclasses, and saved, so it's actually done now. :O :O :O

How are they faring? Well, after getting in enough fights to re-gain two of their lost levels (everyone retired at 32-33 or so and came back at 16, now they're at 18 again, I'm going to keep grinding until... say... 25-26 or so should be good to actually start the third stratum) I'll tell you how they're doing. Report card time!

• As a Gladiator, Julian suddenly has a lot more HP. He's basically tied with Samuel now (Samuel has a mere two more HP) and Samuel has a point in HP Up that Julian does not. This is... actually not a good thing, as part of Samuel's strategy was to have by far the most HP so that he was more of a target. It's not that Gladiators have better HP than Hoplites--they don't--but it's a really close second (easy way to compare stat proficiencies: find an accessory that boosts the stat in question and compare how much of a boost each character gets from it. The Life Belt, with three +HP elements, gives Julian +23 HP, and Samuel +25.) The problem is that Julian has a Beidana (a surprisingly good sword for the fact that it's made out of Abyssal Twigs, comes with a built-in +HP element) and Samuel "only" has a Sarisa (a spear with the exact, and I mean exact same attack as the Beidana sword, but no +HP element.) Things should be all right again if I can "upgrade" Samuel to having a Beidana as well. I'm going to need a lot, and I mean a lot more Abyssal Twigs if I mean to forge anything useful on it, though--that's sort of why I settled for the Sarisa for him in the first place. But hey, guess who has Keburi no Double Crop now....
  
• Julian doesn't have any actual attack skills yet (he's working on Sword Mastery with the eventual goal of saving up for Blade Rave,) but he seems more competent as a fighter already just with the Attack command alone, probably due to the Gladiator's stats and Sword Mastery. TP is only slightly higher than Simone (in other words, it's awful, especially for someone who's in charge of most of the expensive Prince buffs) but I'm working on it.
  
• Samuel feels about the same as ever. Alertness is sort of an invisible skill so it's hard to see how sexy it is in action or anything--I just need to keep in mind that I'm getting ambushed less often and that that's a good thing.
  
• Simone is awesome now. Lv. 1 Front Mortar is surprisingly easy to achieve for a final decision on the main attack of an endgame build--a mere seven skill points and it's yours (Lv. 1 Bolt Mastery --> Lv. 5 Heavy Shot --> Lv. 1 Front Mortar.) It's a little strange to think that at level 16-18, I already have the same attack at the same level that I'm going to be using on the endboss, but... I do, and I'm certainly not complaining. Meanwhile, Brave Heart is awesome. Even without it maxed yet (she only has it at level 3 so far, and thus "only" regains 3 TP per round in which she still has full HP) having a passive auto-TP regen on an Arbalist is exactly as amazing as I thought it would be. She's not going to be spamming Front Mortar every single round of every single fight now or anything (even with max Brave Heart, -9 +5 = a 4 TP loss per round if she tried) but... she can actually do things like use Front Mortar on particularly worrisome opponents in random encounter groups, then get the TP back after a few rounds so she's ready to do it again. She can use Front Mortar in random encounters if she uses it sparingly. That... never happened before; before, she could never do anything but Attack, because every last TP had to be saved for a boss/FOE, against which she could fire Armor Piercer three times before needing an Amrita anyway.
  
• Rachael feels about the same as ever, maybe a tiny step backwards just because she needs skill points more than anyone else (Refresh needs to be at a high level before it will actually target everyone, etc.) so she's hating being 16-18 again even more than everyone else. She'll get there, though.
  
• I'm not going to lie; Ninjas have absolutely horrible equipment options. Jonas used to be a pure Farmer, and compared to that, his weapon selection is basically almost identical now, while his armor selection is (incredibly enough) even worse. They have enough neat toys in their arsenal that I'm sure an actual Ninja that is actually used as a Ninja (rather than my glorified Farmer who's mostly in it for Keburi no Sue while he continues to mostly be a farmer) can work out amazingly well if built right, just as any class can, but... I would have to recommend either subbing Ninja instead or, if you just have to have Keburi no Sue, subbing a class with better equipment options and the Mastery skills to let you have them. Thank God I changed my mind about Julian going Ninja--sure, TP as a Gladiator/Prince is going to be tight, but yeesh.
  
• That being said, since I'm not trying to make an actual competent battle Ninja so much as a glorified Farmer with Ninja support for the farming (Keburi no Double Crop, etc.,) the new Jonas is amazing. This is actually an upgrade for him, since he can actually do damage now. Not the most damage of anyone in the team or anything--I mean, even with Keburi no Sue negating the back row attack penalty, every class in the front row just happens to be better than him at hurting things anyway (I blame the equipment) but... he used to be the guy with the Pedant's Book because it's not like he had anything better to do. The fact that he's doing damage at all now is new and impressive, quite honestly. And he definitely has the Ninja speed going for him; I've yet to see him not go first. Still, that's icing; as someone who's still a Farmer at heart, his main addition to the team continues to be how well he can manage the dungeon exploration. If you need damage tiles disabled, FOEs scried on, and the drop rate increased, he's your man. And if you need to gather items from gathering points, oh boy.

Overall: strong approval. My new team is awesome, and I'm having a lot of fun playing them.

In other news, someone on the EO3 GameFAQs boards happened to notice a discussion in which I had been floating some of these ideas around and decide that he wanted to give me some official recognition for one of them--he has a somewhat poorly-written... like, English-might-not-be-his-first-language poorly-written Synergy FAQ (but it's the thought that counts, I guess?) that's basically just a list of neat combos people came up with. Ctrl+F for "Kjorteo" and you'll see that I apparently got him to add Keburi no Double Crop. :D Which makes sense; it is awesome. I like that there's a counterpoint to it that basically boils down to "this isn't a good combo, because yeah, you have near-infinite gathering, but you have to press the A button a lot to keep casting it, waah." Oh, well, sorry, I guess I'll have to start over on my builds then!! *Ahem*