Selphea

For S3 drops, if possible, when in the planning stage maybe do a table of all bosses, as well as essential drops (techer head unit, good arm unit options, line shields, new weapons for the next tier etc) and then do a matching exercise such that each boss has a good distribution of what fighters, gunners, and techers would want. The missions without bosses can have alternate options like weapons in the same power tier but different stats, or nice-to-haves like MST head units. Maybe they could have higher rates of previous tier drops, like an easy Rabol Bistat drop or something for newbie gearing. If I had to be specific I'd really rather not see a class' essential item stuck in Lab Recovery S3 since the number of boxes at the end of that mission is just pathetic. No comment on PA boosted weapons, Special Rank Weapons and Prototypes for now. I need to see how The Upgrade Device and stuff like 0/15 protos land first, but I do think PA boost weapons shouldn't have protos.

It's because Retsuzan is really fast. Suppose the animation was doubled, like the first part throws 4 times for the same damage per hit as right now, then the 2nd part throws 4 times for the same damage per hit right now. So the total animation time is doubled but DPS is actually the same. Would that feel better to use? That's the situation Retsuzan is in right now. AF speedboosted Retsuzan non-JA 1 followed by JA2 vs WT non-speedboosted normal into JA Dezza is very similar, just that the AF presses buttons 4 times compared to WT's 2.

Probably not everything at once, since boosts can also be a way to concentrate players in one place. Maybe a Clementine Day or Clementine Week on a rotation, like this week is PA boosts, next week is EXP and MP, the one after that is Grinding boosts and 2x Olpad/Copernia/Grinder Base drop rate off a specific quest, maybe one week can be 2x BT Frag/PA Frag and so on. In a way it helps with forming parties since the thing that gets boosted will have more people wanting to run it.

For Retsuzan, 1700 and 3000 sounds like you're JAing the first part. It's more of a straight spam PA where the first part is non-JA'd. In the span of a Blade Destruction you can do 2 Retsuzans that way. JA 1 is more for PP efficiency but gives up quite a bit of DPS since part 1 is kind of not worth JAing.

It's not so much that the first part hits harder, but that the last part on PAs tends to blow stuff up. Like on Evolution's path in the last room, when something dies, chances are it's because a Fighmaster Spinning Break'd it with the 3rd part. When averaged out, Striking DPS is good but that's because JA 2 and JA 3 make up for a non JA'd 1.

To my understanding, the numbers right now are balanced around the first part being non-JA which is part of playing melee IMO. It starts off meh so that the damage can be loaded at the end to give those satisfying last hits. And it's also partly about giving choice, like do you want to start with a normal to be more PP efficient, or go straight to part 1 for higher DPS but burn PP on low damage with part 1. Auto JA is also going to be really tough to balance for 1 part PAs like Jabroga, Grand Crusher, Vivi Dezza and Cyclone Dance.

Before I ask Jess I want to figure out how to make it work first. Actually let me edit the first post, it should be more about how to use them than whether they need changes. Moubu for example is really nice now. It's very consistently hitting 2 parts on Rol Le. Just need to figure out how to use the others. For sure, I'm just 1 player and I'll gladly admit I haven't tried a lot of PAs extensively yet. it seems like there isn't a lot of gameplay talk that's why I thought I'd start a thread about it. Let me try Senten more. For bosses, I know the dragons tend to have tight hitboxes but how about the others? Is there somewhere to stand to make it work on Fakis 2 / Falz 2? I've tried it a bit more and from the looks of it, 5 targets on Navals is possible in a narrow space. On mid-size targets like Vanda, 4 seems to be the average. On large targets like Drua Gohra it's seems very difficult to hit more than 3 spots. The mini gap close is nice though.

Just starting a thread to talk about how to use some of the PAs that were recently buffed. Moubu is really good now. I've been using the movement and side hitboxes on large enemies that need to turn to hit you so the extra hitbox width is really helping. It also hits 2 spots on Rol Le nicely where previously the movement would make it miss sometimes. There are a few PAs that I'm trying to figure out. One is Rising Crush which was buffed to hit 4 targets. However the animation is short-ranged so to me it feels more like a Hishou or Rising Strike type PA for staggering single large targets like Svaltus. Has anyone figured out how to make it hit 4 targets? Another is Senten Kanzan-ga where the 2nd part was buffed. But trying it out, it seems difficult to hit 5 targets with especially compared to much wider PAs like Bukuu Saien-zan or Tornado Break. It feels like a slower Shunbu. Is there a way to make it reliably hit 4 and 5?

Gearing a Techer has very steep power bumps. Rods and Wands are high TP weapons, so going from a cheap weapon to a rare BiS is a difference of hundreds of TP. Units also feel quite extreme. There's Har / Quick or Har / Smart where there's a penalty like -100 TP or reduced range, then the next step up is Hyakka which is +200 TP but SR. I feel there should be a head unit in between Har and Hyakka, in the 10★ to 12★ range, with a similar rarity to Vijeri / Resist or Paradi Cataract, so that Techer players can hunt that before Hyakka if they want a somewhat smoother gear curve. Though possibly with drawbacks if there's concerns about maintaining Hyakka's market value. A couple ideas: Lumirus / Kaos Mage (11★) An experimental GRM upgrade unit. Lowers MST (mental strength) but increases TECHNIC speed and power. +120 TP -100 MST 300% TECHNIC Speed Lumira / TECH Blitz (11★) Upgrade unit for armor. Increases PP usage and boosts TECHNIC speed and power. +135 TP 150% TECHNIC PP Consumption 300% TECHNIC Speed

The missions with a boss seem to have nice drops and are pretty profitable. Some missions like Lab Recovery though, you wade through all those Mizura and Jarba and Polavohras just for 4 boxes at the end. That's a huge oof right there.

Agree with your post but just wanted to ask, what happens when you Ikk Hikk or Longbow a shield buffed enemy? Not saying this should be the long-term solution but just curious about how much of that is coming from the DFP formula.

Crossbow actually only hits 1 target, it's Shotgun that can hit 2 (or 3 with Zagenga). Both are good weapons with their own uses of course. As for Longbow, that's a good point that I haven't thought about. So Zalure will always multiply damage. That's what I mean by sitting on its own multiplicative layer. If your arrow hits for 1000 without Zalure, with Lv41 it will hit 1270. But Ignore Defense means it might also be ignoring the extra defense calculation part of Clem's formula. On most mobs with 350 DFP, 1000 raw damage gets x0.74'd to become 740 damage. If Longbows ignore that 0.74, in theory Longbow they might be doing 35% more damage than retail ! In the same vein, Ikk Hikk too, just that Ikk Hikk has a ton of risk attached since it's slow, close range and has no CC. So with Lv4 Zalure, a solo Guntecher's Longbows might actually be hitting around 58% more damage more than Retail... If that's true I kinda feel like Ignore DFP should be changed to Half DFP. I'm more on the conservative side. Move too many things at the same time and they tend to break each other. To me a "safe" Step 1 would be more Retail-like enemy stats and address some of the outliers caused by changes like SE override, DFP calculation, buff calculation and so on. After that change, check for new outliers -- unexpected side effects will always happen -- then try to change again.

Agree with that on Mizura, I was thinking about the Svaltus spawn. Personally I can't comment too much on things being difficult because I'm working on my Cast gunner right now and there's a lot of ways to avoid taking damage altogether. I can park far away or stand in a blind spot and rifle, I can stun laser, I can strafe-kite, use traps, corner them with grenades, spam MAGA bullet, and Killer Shot deals with a good chunk of the half-guard enemies that I should be respecting and so on. I never played Gunner on retail so there's a lot to learn and it's fun. At any given time either they can't reach me or they're stunlocked. But I know if I said things are easy everyone would tell me to STFU, and justifiably so! When I switch to a melee class I have to respect so many more mechanics and the risk-reward just makes me go "ehh". Looking at the drop distribution though, the good shields like Armas Line, Bugei Senba, components for Divine Shield, even Ouryu to complete the Shijin set are all in robot quests, and if I had to choose whether to run as a Fighter or a Gunner, yes I feel dirty for saying this but of course I'd choose Gunner. I do want to play other classes eventually though, and I'd like for them to be fun to play.

Main takeaway for now is try using Megistaride! Won't completely fix the ridiculous ATP but will mitigate it a bit. If you're AF, Riela's Lance, Promoto Duke, Stec Duke might help a bit too. Not that I advocate using specific gear as a band-aid and not that it will completely fix the problem but I'm a player not a game designer

Agree with the intent, 63% is indeed overkill and I also agree the final numbers should be close-ish to retail. As for the exact numbers, that really depends on what line shield, GAS abilities, units, buffs, debuffs and so on are being considered as the baseline. That's not my decision to make so I won't go into details on that. Ultimately I just want things to be reasonably soloable for all races and classes in decent gear.