Final Fantasy

[Kobold-Bard]

...

On a similar subject, does anyone like axes and hammers? I always found their random attack power to be significantly worse than the swords available at the same time.

No. They are the stupidest idea ever.

[Traab]

Are the axes and hammers setup so they can potentially hit the hardest out of any weapon type, but also can hit pretty weakly and so is unreliable in a fight?

[Kobold-Bard]

Are the axes and hammers setup so they can potentially hit the hardest out of any weapon type, but also can hit pretty weakly and so is unreliable in a fight?

Generally they're the most powerful weapon by a fair amount, but the damage is random so yes, they are unreliable as hell.

[Traab]

Generally they're the most powerful weapon by a fair amount, but the damage is random so yes, they are unreliable as hell.

Ah ok, I was vaguely recalling a game I played where the axes and hammers or something had the highest possible damage potential, but also had the widest damage range, or a lower chance of hitting, or something. So that yeah you COULD see the huge screenshot worthy hits, you also saw a lot of misses. Or you saw a 9999 hit, followed by a 6666 hit, while swords and such hit consistently for around 8888.

[Gnoman]

Axes and hammers in FFT have a high attack power for their "level", but the actual attack power for any given attack is randomly between 1 and the stated level. IIRC, XII uses the exact same system for axes, hammers, and grenades.

[Triaxx]

Head to head, Axes and Hammers suck. Thrown only worries about the attack power, making them some of the mightiest thrown weapons around aside from the rare swords.

Axes, hammers and bags all use the formula: (1..PA) * WP. So there's quite a bit of room in the damage spectrum.

Throw uses: damage = (Caster_Speed * ThrownWeaponPower)

So there's no randomness.

[Gnoman]

Not having used Throw often, I did not know that. That might change things next time I try 1.3, assuming that he didn't alter that.

[Triaxx]

I tried 1.3 once. I got dead in that first cadet mission.

[T.G. Oskar]

I tried 1.3 once. I got dead in that first cadet mission.

I still have to complete 1.3, but it's not as bad as you think.

I've reached, with some difficulty (haw!), to the fight with Wiegraf after a tough battle with Miluda. Ironically, the Dorter battle isn't as tough as the original one, even if the enemies scale with you.

Windmill Shed is a tad tougher because it's a small stage and you're limited to 4 units, and Boco is now a special creature instead of a common yellow Chocobo, but there are ways to handle it. Oddly enough, Thieves are pretty strong in the first few levels because of their ability to charm opponents, particularly if you have a male and female Thief. Windmill Shed is heaven with a male Thief because you can attempt to charm any of the females, and thus change the tide of battle a bit.

Oddly enough, I'm not a fan of difficult games, and I've recently attempted three games in the hardest difficulty (those being the Insane Difficulty/1.3 patch for FF Tactics, Penny Arcade's On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness 3 which I finished, and Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare), and despite the frustration, I've actually progressed pretty far on all three.

However, I haven't reached far enough to check on the Ninjas, or the new abilities given to Ramza. Guess I've been too distracted between DA: Origins and tweaking with the patch-making tools for FFT.

[DigoDragon]

You forgot to include on that "don't use Orland(ea)u". He's just as cheap as the Calculator.

Oh Three-Goddesses yeah. I used to call him "Haxlandu" for the sheer unfair power he contained. He pairs well with Mustadio's sniping ability to stop enemies from moving away or spreading out.


Different game--
Recently I've been playing a modded FF6 on emulator where Gau's rages only last one turn and then you gain control of him again. This suddenly turned Gau from one of my least-used characters to one of my most used. HUGE difference one little detail can make.

[Eldariel]

Different game--
Recently I've been playing a modded FF6 on emulator where Gau's rages only last one turn and then you gain control of him again. This suddenly turned Gau from one of my least-used characters to one of my most used. HUGE difference one little detail can make.

I actually use Gau quite a bit as he was; well, after stocking up on forms at any rate. Between Catscratch, Meteo, elemental weaknesses and few others, he was fairly darn efficient most of the time (though of course, he chooses to attack about half the time).

[Kobold-Bard]

I actually use Gau quite a bit as he was; well, after stocking up on forms at any rate. Between Catscratch, Meteo, elemental weaknesses and few others, he was fairly darn efficient most of the time (though of course, he chooses to attack about half the time).

I could just never be bothered running through his huge list of options to find the actually useful ones. Much easier to just use a different character.

[Eldariel]

I could just never be bothered running through his huge list of options to find the actually useful ones. Much easier to just use a different character.

Definitely. But where's the fun in easy?

[tyckspoon]

I could just never be bothered running through his huge list of options to find the actually useful ones. Much easier to just use a different character.

It's easier if you aren't an obsessive completionist, already know the useful Rages, and only bother to acquire ones you plan to use, but yeah.. mostly this. It never seemed worthwhile to me to set up Gau when you could use Blitz/Tools/magic/Fixed Dice (Fixed Dice + Master's Scroll feels like cheating) for much more reliable access to the same kind of damage output.

Edit: Gau does have the advantage that he can equip the Snow Scarf and become nigh-invulnerable to physical attacks, which is handy if you decide to ignore Rage altogether and just make him (another) mage.

[DiscipleofBob]

A party in FF6 I could never bring myself to try: Mog, Gau, Umaro, and Gogo.

Team Autopilot.

[Eldariel]

A party in FF6 I could never bring myself to try: Mog, Gau, Umaro, and Gogo.

Team Autopilot.

Such a pain to get Water Rondo for Mog. But so worth it; the only Dance I actually found myself using (really efficient on the Floating Continent). But I actually used that group as one for the final dungeon. It was fairly efficient too; granted, Mog was a dragoon.

Then again, I'm something of a completionist so I had to get everything for everybody, and then figure out what everything does -_-

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Wind God Gau is also a pretty nifty setup, although a bit cheesy. Basically Stray Cat rage + Merit Award + Tempest. Hitting all enemies repeatedly with powerful air-based attacks. Combo with the quad-attack scroll for even more ridiculous damage output.

It's at least 'legit', as in 'not a bug', but still OP enough that Gau was prohibited from wearing the Merit Award later on. Unlike, for example, Psycho Cyan, which WAS a glitch.

I don't know if Vanish + Doom was considered to be a glitch or just plain OP, but it also got removed in later editions. Considering the amount of MP consumed by the trick, it wasn't a particularly useful trick, except on certain bosses.

[tyckspoon]

I don't know if Vanish + Doom was considered to be a glitch or just plain OP, but it also got removed in later editions. Considering the amount of MP consumed by the trick, it wasn't a particularly useful trick, except on certain bosses.

It's a glitch; Vanish makes magic hit rate=100%, which over-rode the status immunities to instant-kills (I assume they were coded as '100% dodge against these kinds of spells' rather than 'this kind of spell just doesn't do anything to this target.' Or possibly they forgot to flag Doom as an Instant Death spell for purposes of immunities.) It wasn't supposed to.

Such a pain to get Water Rondo for Mog. But so worth it; the only Dance I actually found myself using (really efficient on the Floating Continent). But I actually used that group as one for the final dungeon. It was fairly efficient too; granted, Mog was a dragoon.

It's a bit late for the Floating Continent, but they gave one more opportunity to get ahold of Water Rondo if you're playing the Advance remake- the Leviathan Esper fight is on Underwater terrain.

[Ogremindes]

It's a glitch; Vanish makes magic hit rate=100%, which over-rode the status immunities to instant-kills (I assume they were coded as '100% dodge against these kinds of spells' rather than 'this kind of spell just doesn't do anything to this target.' Or possibly they forgot to flag Doom as an Instant Death spell for purposes of immunities.) It wasn't supposed to.

It always seemed more like an unintended consequence rather than a bug to me. I mean, being vanished makes you more susceptible to status magic, dead/swoon is a status effect, ergo being vanished makes you vulnerable to instant death spells. None of that says bug to me.

[Gnoman]

The bug is that it eliminated immunities. Enemies that you could spend a thousand years casting the status spells on without effect suddenly became influenced by them in one hit.

[Ogremindes]

The bug is that it eliminated immunities. Enemies that you could spend a thousand years casting the status spells on without effect suddenly became influenced by them in one hit.

You sure that's a bug? Because I know that there -are- bosses with straight-up immunity to Doom (and a few also immune to X-Zone, I believe) that Vanish doesn't change.

It seems to me that all the individual parts of the vanish/doom interaction are working as intended. Maybe an encounter designer didn't get the memo to assign hard immunities to bosses, but that doesn't make it a bug.

[Traab]

All I cared about in ff6 was the narshe river infinite loop and the dino forest +exp egg. I never had the patience to do anything with gau. None of his attacks really struck me as worth using, but then, I never really bothered to hang out in the veldt training him up with stuff. In order of awesome I would have to put it,

1) Gogo/Cyan Im sorry, but quadra slice + that relic that lets you hit everything at once, plus that relic that lets you swing two swords at once? Freaking epic. Gogo is gogo, i really dont need to say more about why he rocks.

2) Edgar - Man had awesome tools and they made stuff dead. Autocrossbow, chainsaw, yeah, I love em.

3) Sabin - His blitzes did some fairly massive damage, even though I only used like two total through the course of the game.

4) Everyone else. Sorry, but against those guys, everyone else just doesnt stack up. Some are good, but not as good as them, others just flat out suck. Its why I hated those split into 2-3 team dungeons so much. Oh sure, i can send cyan with gau, mog, and umaru and let him clean house with ease while they just go do whatever the hell they want, but its still annoying.

[The Second]

You sure that's a bug? Because I know that there -are- bosses with straight-up immunity to Doom (and a few also immune to X-Zone, I believe) that Vanish doesn't change.

It seems to me that all the individual parts of the vanish/doom interaction are working as intended. Maybe an encounter designer didn't get the memo to assign hard immunities to bosses, but that doesn't make it a bug.

It seems that Vanish/Doom works as intended for normal enemies, but was never intended to effect bosses or enemies with Death protection. In fact, using Doom on an enemy with Death protection should result in the enemy being revived with full HP. Such is not the case with Vanish/Doom.

The glitch works like this:

Cast Vanish on an enemy. This adds the Clear status to the enemy.

Cast Doom, or any other spell.

The game checks a list of statuses effecting the enemy...

If status is Clear, the spell hits.
If status is Boss, Death spell does not hit.
If status is Death Protected, Death spell revives the enemy with Max HP.
etc
etc
etc...

Since the Clear status is checked first, any other statuses the enemy has are skipped.

1) Gogo/Cyan Im sorry, but quadra slice + that relic that lets you hit everything at once, plus that relic that lets you swing two swords at once? Freaking epic. Gogo is gogo, i really dont need to say more about why he rocks.

Well, if Gogo had decent stats, I'd agree with you. Even when he's slinging Ultimas left and right he's only doing maybe half the damage of anyone else. Add in the fact that Gogo can't equip Espers and he becomes perfectly meh. Only time I ever used him was in the arena so that I could fill all of his action slots with Capture. Makes getting a bunch of Economizers a relative breeze.

[Gnoman]

You sure that's a bug? Because I know that there -are- bosses with straight-up immunity to Doom (and a few also immune to X-Zone, I believe) that Vanish doesn't change.

It seems to me that all the individual parts of the vanish/doom interaction are working as intended. Maybe an encounter designer didn't get the memo to assign hard immunities to bosses, but that doesn't make it a bug.

Pretty sure. I haven't code-dived it or anything, but cross-referencing the bestiary in the rereleases shows most monsters that are supposed to be immune being vulnerable to the tactic in the original.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

All I cared about in ff6 was the narshe river infinite loop and the dino forest +exp egg. I never had the patience to do anything with gau. None of his attacks really struck me as worth using, but then, I never really bothered to hang out in the veldt training him up with stuff. In order of awesome I would have to put it,

1) Gogo/Cyan Im sorry, but quadra slice + that relic that lets you hit everything at once, plus that relic that lets you swing two swords at once? Freaking epic. Gogo is gogo, i really dont need to say more about why he rocks.

2) Edgar - Man had awesome tools and they made stuff dead. Autocrossbow, chainsaw, yeah, I love em.

3) Sabin - His blitzes did some fairly massive damage, even though I only used like two total through the course of the game.

4) Everyone else. Sorry, but against those guys, everyone else just doesnt stack up. Some are good, but not as good as them, others just flat out suck. Its why I hated those split into 2-3 team dungeons so much. Oh sure, i can send cyan with gau, mog, and umaru and let him clean house with ease while they just go do whatever the hell they want, but its still annoying.

Mog is actually one of the most powerful characters, without his dances. He can be a very painful Dragoon build with Dragon Horn, and is one of the few characters who can net perfect defense and magic defense (effectively immortal) without needing the Medal.

Gogo... meh, sure you can set up some combos, but otherwise completely forgettable.

Cyan is nice, if you want to Gingi Glove/Offering him. But there's other characters to do this with (Terra with Illuminata/Atma, for example). About the only thing he does nice is Tempest + Offering for some area effect damage output. His sword techs take too long to be worth bothering with.

Speaking of, both of the girls blow everyone else away. Terra can be a physical AND magical nightmare, even without her special ability. Both of them can equip Ragnarock/Illumina/Atma Weapon for serious physical damage output, and both have superior magic attack stats. Either one can be set up for 8x 9999's for physical damage, or set up for quad-9's with magic from Gem Box/Economizer combo.

Gau has several useful setups. Of course, the most infamous is Wind God Gau, but there's also the Imp Dragoon build, which uses the full imp gear setup with being Imped and using the dragon horn for quad jumping. Since he's Imped, he can't Rage, so he jumps around. Just don't teach him the Imp spell, and he makes a great Colosseum fighter, since he can't spend turns doing worthless things.

[Eldariel]

Cyan is nice, if you want to Gingi Glove/Offering him. But there's other characters to do this with (Terra with Illuminata/Atma, for example). About the only thing he does nice is Tempest + Offering for some area effect damage output. His sword techs take too long to be worth bothering with.

Well, you can often use the bar + animations to load Quadra Slice without losing turn timer though anything beyond that is kinda hard. Tho yeah, it's always a tradeoff. Still, I like using characters' inherent kits as possible and I didn't want to give him Offering so I was Quadra Slicing at the final dungeon.

And Esper Terra is like cheating. It's like take the strongest base chassis in the game, give it an offense multiplier and call it a day Then again, I don't mind Terra being ridiculously strong one bit.


I mostly used Offering on Setzer since that's about the best thing he can do unless you begin abusing the Joker Doom set up. While many people can of course make great use of Offering, everybody else tends to have their own niche without it. For Gau I find simply having access to the key Rages (Magic Jar, Stray Cat, Tyranosaur, Rhinox, Mesosaur, White Drgn, Prussian, Evil Oscar and a dozen I'm forgetting) is quite sufficient to make him really useful, and without Merit Award too.

Then Relm has the highest Base Magic in the game so she's generally my dedicated mage, and then I split up Terra and Celes making one a mage (generally Terra) and one a warrior (generally Celes, though really, either is fine). Edgar and Mog both make great Dragoons, Sabin...keeps beating people up (as long as you don't screw up the Blitz input). Locke has Valiant Knife, Strago Lores are pretty good and he doubles as a good mage, Shadow's Throw is amazing (Falchions, Elemental Swords or hell, Imp Halberds), and well...Gogo and Umaro kinda just are there.

Really, you'll be hardpressed to find a weak character in the game though some are of course stronger than others.

[Starwulf]

I remember that my favorite character was always Setzer. Genji Gloves and equipping dice(I can't remember if you can dual wield them, if you could, I'm pretty sure I did). He dished out a ton of damage, and was just so cool ^^. I don't think I ever really abused another character like I did him. Especially not Cyan...all this talk of him and Gau being so super-powered kind of surprises me, I don't remember either particularly being all that powerful on the SNES version(never played any remake).

[Eldariel]

I remember that my favorite character was always Setzer. Genji Gloves and equipping dice(I can't remember if you can dual wield them, if you could, I'm pretty sure I did). He dished out a ton of damage, and was just so cool ^^. I don't think I ever really abused another character like I did him. Especially not Cyan...all this talk of him and Gau being so super-powered kind of surprises me, I don't remember either particularly being all that powerful on the SNES version(never played any remake).

Cyan is from the weaker end far as raw potential goes but he has good stats and so on for Offering (and natural Tempest access, though of course he can't learn Catscratch) so he's strong enough. And really, no character in FF6 is really weak per ce; anyone can be made work and be strong enough.

Gau's strong but he has easily the highest information threshold in the game to make full use of, and grinding Veldt for all the forms you want takes long. Unless you just go Catscratch-only, which definitely works (and is the basis of the Wind God Gau with Merit Award + Tempest).

[DigoDragon]

A party in FF6 I could never bring myself to try: Mog, Gau, Umaro, and Gogo.
Team Autopilot.

I tried that! It's... odd.
It'll work fine on most normal fights, but lack of control during one of the goddess boss fights got the team killed.

4) Everyone else. Sorry, but against those guys, everyone else just doesnt stack up.

I would always raise Relm's magic power and make her my hardest-hitting spellcaster. Terra and Celes were great "Magic Knights" with the right equipment. They can potentially do both physical and magical damage and do it Well.

Whoever mentioned Setzer with dual-weilding dice gets my vote. I did that once and it's pretty fun!

[danzibr]

As crappy as Umaro is, I really like him. Dunno.

Also, what do people think about the Gogo-is-Terra's-mom theory?