Odds and Ends: FFRK, WoW, and Fallout Shelter

FFRK
Photo-2016-08-01-21-48-57_7636Record Keeper was put on the back burner a bit in light of Pokemon Go and our return to WoW. I still need to clear the FFV U+ fight as well as Ifrit. The Support Nightmare fight wasn’t that hard once I had the timing down, but it did take a few tries and party configurations. The general idea is:

  • Phase 1: Shout and zerg the two nodes down. Keep in mind that when a node dies, it will respawn in about 1 to 2 turns.
  • Phase 2: The CPU will cast the physical barriers first so keep your Power Breakdown and Armor Breakdown (and Multi-Break if possible) users on standby. Finish off the nodes with other party members, PBD and ABD need to be queued as soon as the nodes respawn to avoid double barriers.
  • As soon as the nodes respawn: Queue PBD on the top one and ABD on the bottom one. Wait a second then queue Multi-Break. The idea is to time it so that Multi-Break goes off after PBD and ABD, doing this will make the nodes go haywire.
  • DPS the boss when the nodes to haywire. As soon as the second Barrage and Heal go off (from the nodes), queue Multi-Break. The idea is to cast Multi-Break before the CPU has a chance to put a barrier up. If you do it right the nodes should go haywire again.

WoW
WoWScrnShot_073116_145644Hopped straight on the gear treadmill despite Legion looming off into the not-so-far distance. My retribution set is sufficient enough to do okay damage in LFR HFC raids. Working on my healing set. I may actually start healing again; If for nothing else, so that we don’t have to sit in the LFR/LFG queue for 30 to 40 minutes. There were literally two healing buttons the last time I had bothered healing back in Vanilla so we will see how that goes…

My hunter has a near full set of 630+ gear tokens from the Tanaan dailies, garrison missions, etc. I can’t however, seem to bother to quest out the last 60% of a level to 100 so that he can use it. I’m bad at alting. I am not sure which character I am going to burn my insta-100 boost on. I am thinking that it will most likely be either a my lowbie druid or lowbie shaman.

Fallout Shelter
I was surprised to hear that a significant amount of content had been added to this game so I redownloaded it on my phone and have been poking at it on-and-off over the past week. The missions are pretty fun though I can tell that my interest in the title is starting to wane.

[FFRK] Caius (Ultimate+)

My goal was to create a post about each FFRK event and other games for the sake of being more active on this site. Major league Overwatch obsession and being busy in general kind of pushed that off of the menu unfortunately. But alas, I am back to playing FFRK beyond just completing the events and then ignoring the game.

I am pretty tempted to pull during this banner for Lightning’s BSB. It’s not the best BSB, but given that she has decent stats and I already have her SSB, she is one of my Shout party staples. She will be even more of a staple once Full Charge and Chainstarter are released (5* Combat and 5* Celerity abilities that combo together rather well). If I recall correctly, the only characters with both 5* Combat and 5* Celerity are Lightning, Gau, Tidus, and Zack. 

There was not a lot of strategy or finesse required for this one. It was pretty much: Apply full mitigation, cleanse Regen off ASAP (because it ticks for 9k+…), charge SB bars, reapply full mitigation and Shout at around 50%, burn him down. Cauis’ “gimmick” is that his damage increases greatly as the encounter progresses. Once he reaches his weak phase, the fight is more-or-less a DPS race. I was however, fortunate enough that his opening bit was spread out enough to not gib one of my characters. It is probably worth noting that FFXIII would be one of the realms in which I have decent synergy. I have been patiently awaiting for this event for the sake of reaping the benefits of lopsided pull RNG…

[wpdatatable id=12] Roaming Warrior: HotF

His damage output was high enough to warrant bringing two supports to fit in both Full Break, Power Breakdown, Magic Breakdown, Shellga, and Protectga. Full mitigation gimped is damage during his Normal phase and made it tolerable during his Weak phase. During the last quarter of the encounter, I had underestimated exactly how much Caius’ damage had increased and ended up not casting Medica when I should have. Consequently, Selphie ate it and everyone else’s health dipped below the medal loss threshold. I was luckily still able to master the fight, but not perfectly.

Snow’s SB did significantly less damage than Saint Cross and was thus fairly useless. I probably should have taken Cecil along for his taunt SB. If I recall correctly, a few of Caius’s abilities are tauntable. Regardless, I am very glad that I chose to invest in Saint Cross. With Shout it does 2×9999 damage.

[FFRK] Bahamut’s Lair (U+)

Decided to experiment with AirServer + OBS Studio and record the entire encounter. Bahamut wasn’t nearly as bad as U+ Cagnazzo (…in which I pretty much ran out of every single ability and barely scraped by with a mastery). Having literally zero Final Fantasy III synergy hurts though.

[wpdatatable id=11] Roaming Warrior: Lenna (Princess’ Favor)
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Air Strike, Shout, Tailwind, Sentinel’s Grimoire, Dreamstage

Two re-dos of this fight were required: The first because I had forgotten to swap out Thundaga Strike with Aerora Strike and the second because I had forgotten to equip Power Breakdown. Aside from that, it was a straightforward encounter. Bahamut hits pretty hard with both physical as well as magical damage even with full mitigation up, but it is manageable as long as you recast Wall/Shellga/etc before it completely drops off. The first half of the fight is physical AoE damage for the most part. I couldn’t fit Protectga into my party configuration but Power Breakdown mitigated enough of the damage to make it survivable. Dreamstage + Air Strike during the second half of the fight = MVP.

I probably should have equipped a damage RM over Ace Striker on Cloud since Aerora Strike was hitting pretty high with Shout, but not at the damage cap. Also, I ended up accidentally fat finger casting Tailwind instead of Shout about half-way through the fight, which cut my damage by quite a bit :3.

[FFRK] Ultima Weapon (Ultimate+)

DPS race. This Ultimate+ encountered required a bit more thought than the bonus battles from the last few events. I had tried 2 previous configurations in an attempt to squeeze Tyro in for a full holy trinity but that wasn’t working so I left him at home. I was banking on the fact that two casts of Sentinel’s Grimoire would be sufficient whereas two casts of Dreamstage would not. Aside from some mistiming on my part, both were true.

[wpdatatable id=10] Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Air Strike, Dreamstage, Shout, Crushing Blow, Blade Beam

Ultima Weapon was a fairly straightforward albeit messy fight by virtue of the sheer amount of damage that he outputs: Pop Shout + mitigation ASAP, let Cloud, Lightning, and Zack build up their SB bars all the way then go to town. I may have been better off swapping out Drain Strike and Dismissal with something like Power Break and/or Armor Break to mitigate/increase damage.

It is well worth noting that Ultima Weapon is not immune to stun. As such, Air Strike’s 100% stun chance was immensely helpful. Dismissal of course, did not proc a single damn time and ended up just being a waste of space. I am pretty sure that I mistimed my second cast of SG and popped it a turn or two too early because it ended up running out way before I had expected it to. Consequently, 3/5 party members were basically eaten alive during the last quarter of the fight. Having several charges of Dreamstage ready to go effectively saved my ass and allowed Cloud to soak an AoE Magic attack and deal the final blow with Blade Beam.

[FFRK] Nightmare Demon Wall

I really wish that I had something more insightful to say about this encounter but to be honest, I had effectively brute forced Demon Wall down with Shout boosted SSB spam towards the end of the fight. I had somehow managed to master this fight despite entering phase 3 and losing all but Pecil and Lightning. As it turns out however, he is neither that beefy nor does he have all that much health. If you have enough physical gear with synergy and can in some way deal with his damage output, you can just burn him down.

[wpdatatable id=9] Roaming Warrior: Ramza (Shout)
Notable Soul Breaks: Sentinel’s Grimoire, Blade Beam, Crushing Blow

I did have a native wall (SG), but ended up leaving both Shout and Medica out for the sake of full party synergy. Draw Fire really wasn’t all that useful in any sense. I would probably have been better off swapping it out with another healing spell.

The one and only thing that I did read about this encounter was to place your highest damaging party member dead in the middle. The main gimmick of the counter has something to do with Royal Tomb, which will target 3 consecutive party members at a time (the top 3, the middle 3, or the bottom 3).

I am pretty sure that the trick is to make sure that only the party members targeted by Royal Tomb are the ones who are attacking. Everyone else should either be on standby, healing, or support. Since the party member in the center will always be targetted, s/he should stack as much DPS as possible.

Phase 1 of the fight is a straight burn. Ignore mitigation, get Shout up ASAP and burst him down to phase 2. If you take too long (like I did during my first attempt), he will Gravija your entire party and you will lose the mastery condition.

[FFRK] Musings, Ultimate Gigas, and Nightmare Ultima Buster

Happy 1st anniversary Final Fantasy Record Keeper. This would mark the longest span a time that a single one of “these” apps has ever held my attention. With the anniversary gifts and what have you, I once again have mithril to spend. I had considered forgoing the lucky draws earlier this month in favor of saving all of my mithril for either SSB Fest Banner 5 or FFT. Ultimately, I ended up caving in and getting supremely lucky by pulling both Crescent Wish (Selphie: Medica + Avoid one magical attack) and Sage’s Staff (Lenna: Hastega + 30% Boostga). So at this point I have a natural medica and hastega/boostga .

So the question is, do I go for Sentinel’s Grimoire from SSB Fest or Scream from FFT? I was thinking that overall, SG will add the most utility to my team, particularly since I have several Boostga SBs. If by the good graces of RNGesus I do happen to pull SG, all leftover Mithril without blowing the entire stash, if any, will go towards pulling on FFT. I currently have enough mithril for 3 11x pulls. Given that dungeon update #20 is due out on the same day as banner 5, I may have enough for 4 pulls, but we’ll see.

Ultimate Gigas

Several S/L’s because of bad RNG before mitigation was set up. Aside from that, it’s a relatively straightforward fight if you can manage the massive damage output. Personal goals for this encounter were to use both Blind Shell and Thief’s Revenge since both are fairly new abilities that I had bothered honing (Thief’s Revenge in particular).

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Cloud  Gaia Blade (II)  Lifesiphon  Blizzaga Strike  Ace Striker
 Zack  Bladefire Saber (XIII)+  Lifesiphon  Temp Flurry  Knight’s Charge
 Zidane  Ultima Sword (IX) Thief’s Revenge  Blind Shell  Pride of the Red Wings
 Selphie  Power Staff (V)  Curaja  Shellga  Dr. Mog’s Teachings
 Lenna  Sage’s Staff (V)  Renewing Cure  Heathen Frolic  Mako Might

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Air Strike, Dreamstage, Flames of War

…in retrospect, I should have leveled Lock a bit more and used him instead of Zidane. Mitigation was setup ASAP then slow/blind for the medal requirements. After debuffs were applied, the Gigas’s were focus fired downed in the following order: Fire -> Ice -> Thunder (least to most HP).

The medal requirements were nerfed hard. I did not reapply the second charge of SG in time, ended up losing both Zidane and Zach at some point, and only lost 1 medal for party members KO’d. Zack’s stun all SB is great, but I really wish that I was able to use it more than once. As always, Boost + Blade Beam spam saves the day.

Nightmare Ultima Buster

I forgot to cast waterja on the sphere. Whoops. Otherwise, no medals lost. Easy gimmick, mage meta for the win. Well, given that physical attacks are countered with death + massive synergy for mage characters, there aren’t too many other viable party configurations I guess. Wall and Shellga were way sufficient for mitigation to the point where healing was probably not even needed. Hastega > Wall for your RW in my opinion because of the soft time limit in all phases.

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Rydia  Magistral Rod  Valefor  Thundaga  Impetuous Youth
 Terra  Oak Staff  Waterja  Thundaja  Vow of Vengeance
 Rinoa  Valkyrie (VIII)+  Firaja  Drainga  Witch of Succession
 Tyro  Cardinal (VIII)  Flare  Firaga  Devotion
 Lenna  Crescent Wish (VIII)  Curaja  Shellga  Dr. Mog’s Teachings

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Flames of War

Phase 1: Apply mitigation and get him down to 80% to start phase 2 ASAP. If I recall correctly, you have about 3 to 4 turns to do this before he meteors his party. His resistance seems pretty low so this phase shouldn’t be much of a problem with a half way decent mage party.

Phase 2: Ultima Buster gains a non-dispelable reflect and will counter all AOEs with death unless they are specifically marked as not being counterable (summons are okay and also count towards the non-elemental requirement). So in other words: Focus all attacks on the mana sphere.

  • When a spell is cast on the Mana Sphere it will react with a different counter depending on the type of spell cast. For both fire and thunder based spells, Ultima Buster will take damage equal to 10x damage that the sphere has taken.
  • The general idea is to not kill the sphere and do as close to 900ish damage as possible (900 damage on the sphere means 9000 damage to Ultima, 10*900=9000).
  • The sphere will periodically charge Ultima. When he receives 4 charges, the sphere will die and phase 3 will begin. The idea is to never enter phase 3.
  • Multi-hit single-target fire/thunder SB’s work well.

Phase 3: If you have the misfortune of getting to phase 3, DPS him down as fast as possible. Everything that he does is effectively a OHKO. Magical Blink will negate one of his -ajas.

In a nutshell: Get him to 80% to start phase 2. Once the sphere appears, hit it was a water/fire/thunder spell to make the medal requirement, continue to spam fire/thunder.  He does piddly damage with wall + shellga during phase 2 to the point where healing wasn’t really necessary. So if you are pressed on damage/don’t have Hastega, it may be worth not bringing a healer. With synergy, Rinoa’s had 523 MAG and was doing 2k damage to the sphere per -aja cast. In retrospect, I could have swapped out firaja with a lesser fire spell.

[FFRK] Ultimate Adel

One shot. If I had to rank bosses, I would have to say that Adel was easier than Maduin, who at least had a gimick. Adel was pretty just 100% physical DPS brute force. Since she deals out 100% magical damage and punshes magical damage with a drain counter, not a very hard party to compose. Continuing with my glove curse, I pulled yet another 5* glove during Banner #1: Gauntlet. It has an okay Soul Break (3*171% single target physical hits with haste/protect/shell) but for a B-List mediocre character. Decent enough damage with Synergy + Lifesiphon + Knight’s Charge though.

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Cloud  Blitz Sword (VIII)  Lifesiphon  Drain Strike  Ace Striker
 Zell  Gauntlet (VIII)  Lifesiphon  Dismissal  Knight’s Charge
 Pecil  Blazefire Saber (XIII)+  Armor Strike  Banishing Strike  Bastion
 Irvine  Ras Algethi (XII)  Magic Breakdown  Full Break  Master Sniper
 Aerith  Sage’s Staff (V)  Curaga  Shellha  Dr. Mog’s Teachings

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Meteor Barrage, Planet Protector

Shellga + Full Break + Magic Breakdown + Sentinel’s Grimoire effectively neutered Adel for most of the fight. In summary: Set up mitigation as soon as possible, build up your SB gauge, reapply wall/shellga at about 50% health, then go to town with SB/SSB spam. As always, Planet Protector + any multi-hit SB with a decent multiplier is MVP this fight.

Adel’s AoE spam duirng the weak and very weak phases of the fight still hurts with full mitigation (around 1.3k damage or so to all characters). I didn’t find it very hard to single target heal through and it shouldn’t be a problem as long as you can burst her down.

Sidenote: I am really really really bad at saving mithril. 😕

[FFRK] Ultimate Bahamut SIN

This one was harder than I had expected, given the number of Soul Breaks and the amount of record synergy that I have for FFVII. I think above all, hastega would have been a great help. Bahamut’s overall damage output wasn’t nearly as bad as previous Ultimate fights, but burst damage is necessary to kill the Giga/Petraflare bars in time as well as nuke him down. I guess I was lucky and paced the fight just enough to spawn/kill 8 dogs without taking too many extra actions. I did lose a medal for actions taken but managed to just make the cutoff for champion.

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Cloud  Organics (VII)  Lifesiphon  Firaga Strike  Ace Striker
 Zack  Zack’s Gloves (VII)  Lifesiphon  Bladeblitz  Knight’s Charge
 Sephiroth   Basilisk Claw (VII)  Fire Blossom  Pound  Attunement II
 Aerith  Storm Staff (IX)  Ifrit  Shellga  Mako Might
 Lenna  Aurora Rod (VII)  Curaga  Protectga  Dr. Mog’s Teachings

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Air Strike, Planet Protector, Princess’ Favor

Try to delay using the first Sentinel’s Grimoire charge as long as possible. As long as you get Protectga and Shellga up ASAP, the dogs are easily survivable without a wall. I ended up popping SG after the first Gigaflare and then again when he was between 40% and 50% health. Also, Petraflare is survivable with Shella, Wall, and full-ish HP. I had the misfortune of eating a Petraflare towards the end of the fight. Luckily, wall was still up, everyone was topped off, and an AoE heal was on standby.

Bladeblitz, Fire Blossom, and Ifrit were obviously used to AoE down the dogs. Blade Beam and Planet Protector were paced and kept in reserve for Gigaflare and Petraflare (with the added bonus of AoEing down the dogs).

The real MVPs of this encounter of course being: Planet Protector boosted Blade Beam and Air Strike. Air Strike doesn’t do that much damage but it does have a 100% chance to stun all, which was great for stalling Bahamut for just long enough to kill (most of the) the gigaflare and petraflare bars (why is Zack’s weapon a glove of all things?). Blade Beam, as always, is great for burning down just about everything.

[FFRK] Ultimate Seymour Flux

Everyone tired of fighting Seymour yet? Not the hardest encounter and not the easiest encounter; Definitely one of the easier ones though. Ultimate dispel + Total Annihilation was really his only major trick and even that is mostly just a timing thing. That said, I do have decent Final Fantasy X real synergy. I went with the standard 3x physical + Medica + Boostga party that I use for most things. The only major difference between my usual party configuration being that I swapped out a 5* support character in favor of Lightning for the sake of having a second Soul Break damage spammer.

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Cloud  Thief Blade (X)  Lifesiphon  Tempo Flurry  Ace Striker
 Pecil  Fencing Sabre (X)++  Armor Strike  Venom Buster  Bastion
 Lightning  Heat Lance (X)  Dismissal  Drain Strike  Knight’s Charge
 Aerith  Sage’s Staff (V)  Curaja  Protectga  Mako Might
 Lenna  Magistral Rod (X)  Curaga  Exhausting Polka  Dr. Mog’s Teachings

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinel’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Planet Protector, Blade Beam, Blaze Rush, Sentinel, Princess’ Favor

I have mentioned this before but I really like Armor Strike because it multiplies off of DEF and not ATK. I usually have enough attack gear to equip for two characters, but not three. Armor Strike also works very well with Bastion and Cecil’s Sentinel Soul Break

Ultimate Dispel  is cast at two fixed points Seymour’s health bar: About 75% and about 50%. Subsequent casts will occur after a certain number of turns if I recall correctly. One of the medal conditions is to default him before he casts it 3 times.  After the second Ultimate Dispel, Mortiorchis will cast Total Annihilation (massive AoE damage) periodically; The first cast being a few turns after Ultimate Dispel. The trick to the fight is to not eat an unmitigated Total Annihilation and to burn him down after the second Dispel.

Phase 1: Use Exhausting Polka and Protectga for mitigation. Slow damage to build up SB bars. Cloud uses Tempo Flurry on Mortiorchis to obtain the slow medal condition, Cecil uses Venom Buster on Seymour to obtain the poison/sap medal condition.

Phase 2: Cast Protectga, Sentinel’s Grimoire, and Medica (if needed) after the first Ultimate Dispel. Recast Exhausting Polka if needed though, since it is effectively an AoE Magic Breakdown, Lenna should be keeping the debuff up in between healing rotations (or at least making a point to cast it before 75%~ 50%~ HP). I also had Pecil cast Sentinel to soak all of his single target damage and to buff his Armor Strike Damage output.

Phase 3: Lenna and someone else will need to be held in reserve when he is getting close to 50% health to cast medica and Sentinel’s Grimoire’s respectively. If you do not get mitigation up in time, it will pretty much be a S/L. A raw Total Annihilation will instagib the squishy party members. After TA: Heal up as needed, pop Planet Protector, burn him down with Blade Beam and Blaze Rush.

The vast majority of his attacks are physical based so I dropped Shellga. Total Annihilation however (if I recall correctly) is NAT typed magical damage. Luckily, Sentinel’s Grimoire was sufficient mitigation, though just barely for certain characters.

[FFRK] Ultimate Maduin

The Internet was right, Maduin wasn’t a very hard ultimate fight. After dealing with back-to-back Beatrix and Vossler, it’s nice having an easy one for once. His damage output is a joke until the end of the fight as long as you have some mitigation up. Magic Seal is mildly irritating, but it with decent enough damage output, it doesn’t last long enough to be that much of a threat. Here is the team that I went with:

 Character  Weapon  Ability 1  Ability 2  Record Materia
 Cloud  Kotetsu (VI)  Lifesiphon  Thundaga Strike  Ace Striker
 Celes  Rune Blade (VI)  Fire Strike  Blizarra Strike  Pride of the Red Wings
 Edgar  Blazefire Saber (XIII)+  Armor Strike  Banishing Strike  Bastion
 Setzer  Zantetsuken (VI)  Magic Breakdown  Power Breakdown  Zeal
 Aerith  Sage’s Staff (V)  Curaja  Shellga  Dr. Mog’s Teachings

Roaming Warrior: Tyro (Sentinal’s Grimoire)
Notable Soul Breaks: Planet Protector, Blade Beam

I don’t have much to say about this encounter as there was not a whole lot of finesse required: I just applied mitigation at the beginning of the fight and then again after mass dispel. He casts Mass Dispel after Chaos Wave. As long as you time it and get your mitigation up ASAP, it’s no big deal. Aside from that, powered him down with PP and Blade Beam towards the end of the fight per usual. It’s worth noting that I do have decent weapon synergy for Final Fantasy VI.

Small tangent: Armor Strike is an ability that I find myself using more and more. It is perfect for situations where there isn’t a synergy weapon to around for each character. It doesn’t have a secondary benefit such as Lifesiphon or dismissal per se, but having DEF based damage means that Armor Strike provides super beefy damage characters that aren’t going to compete with other characters for ATK gear. That and it’s really great for Pecil with Sentinal. I really like Pecil so any excuse to use him is a bonus