Gathering Stars: Am I getting it wrong?

[Paladin Larec]

So the gathering stars factor says (I just got enough fish to get that ring of the deep king as a reward) says it increases ATK/DEF/HIT/AVD/INT by 20% when three of the same factor are equipped. Well, I have CRT HEAL 1%HP on chisato, but she's not getting the effect. Is this me misreading it? It seems like 3 of any factor would work. Do they instead want three of the gathering stars factor instead? Somewhat confused.

[Lans]

I can't sacrifice 2 pieces of armor 20% def for gathering stars. Accessory traits are far less valuable than raw stats at endgame.

I run 3x 20% def, 1x gathering stars for armor, and 2x gathering stars on accessories. 5% mp or 20% HP steal on weapon depending on character and situation

[LazyAmerican]

Not sure if it's been mentioned already but I got all valiant armor pieces with gathering stars so it's not really a sacrifice at all....beyond rerolling factors which isn't something I've tried yet.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by Lans:

I can't sacrifice 2 pieces of armor 20% def for gathering stars. Accessory traits are far less valuable than raw stats at endgame.

I run 3x 20% def, 1x gathering stars for armor, and 2x gathering stars on accessories. 5% mp or 20% HP steal on weapon depending on character and situation

Yeah, if you're not gonna use bloody helmet, or 1HP Valiant armor with adamantite factor, then that's your next best thing.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by AH-1 Cobra:

Originally posted by Xengre:

I also want to point out Gathering Stars is a noob trap most of the time.

Gathering Stars is not a noob trap, it's meta, regardless of whether you get it from accessory slots or from certain armor pieces, all the bests builds have it, because it's a factor that can use used in any slot.

The reason gathering stars is good is because certain equipment slots can roll less desirable factors than others. It would be nice if I could just slot attack on every slot, or put HP and MP leech on whatever pieces I want, but the current limitations on factors are what makes a factor like gathering stars as valuable as it is.

No, as I stated before Gathering Stars is only viable if using Bloody Armor or the apparent Lunacy exploit because you don't care about other stats as you cannot die.

When you are not using straight invincible exploits than you need to stack your defense extremely high, a literal super feast or extreme famine if you want to not be 1-shot by attacks like the angel's wheel of death (w/e name is, where it spins around screen) on Universe mode. High enough defense and it crits? 0 Dmg. Slightly too low, but not that much lower? 9999 dmg or very close to it depending on fluctuating dmg. The key ingredient is the Factor Adamantine which makes dmg <10% Max HP become zero dmg and it works on both magic and physical dmg. Unlike the others this is a more planned non-invuln build where attacks can be dangerous but it can heavily alleviate a lot of attacks when setup right, or if truly setup right even drop it to 0 for the deadliest attacks. This requires def food buffs, Angel Feather's defensive buff, +50% Def Upper Guard formation buff, and then high def equipment and many stacks of Def % factors to survive the angel's wheel attack (its deadliest attack by far and the one it loves to spam immensely at low HP) otherwise you play Russian Roulette with it not instant wiping your entire party. You don't want to use HP drain % with this and can put another factor like Crit % or such as needed.

The only alternative to this is to otherwise use no item CD formation effect and swap characters if you're about to be hit by that attack to avoid losing formation bonus but this leaves you very on edge and is prone to failure due to the camera's antics in the remake while also having a very finite duration (kill boss before you run out of revival items). It is a silly tactic, too, that most probably don't want to bother with.

As for against enemies other than the angels? Heh, Gabriel or any other boss and mob wont stand a chance against this and 1/2, null, absorb setups and Witch Powder (which does stack with 1/2 elemental reduction for a total of 3/4th reduction).

In contrast, that +20% attack/int isn't going to help you a lot... Would you rather do slightly more dmg and get 1-shot OR take 0 dmg and do almost as much dmg?

Further, it frees up an accessory slot for +20% Hit 2x (40% total +HIT) depending on configuration which will make your dmg (esp skills) much more reliable against enemies with higher AVD where entire chunks of your dmg are lost on doing no hits. Alternatively, and potentially more preferably in some cases you want one of those accessories to be break up +10%, especially on your mages as they're easily the best breakers in the game later on (Claude is amazing early, but some later spells are top tier in this regard).

This all applies to mages, too, which can get just as high defense late game as fighters.

Originally posted by Almighty Boof:

Originally posted by Xengre:

I also want to point out Gathering Stars is a noob trap most of the time.

I am interested to know what Factors are better to take than Gathering Stars? I assume using more defensive factors would not be a "noob trap?" I think most people run with Gathering Stars because it is one of the few ways you can increase your damage with armor/accessory equipment slots. Yes, it gives ATK to mages, and INT to fighters, but it also gives INT to mages and ATK to fighters, which is the most important part. There are no other armor/accessory factors that offer unconditional stat increases the way Gathering Stars does.

Also, Gathering Stars seems to get applied a decent amount in Remaking. On top of that, Remake is an end-game activity for those who are really into the IC grind. Some people like grinding for "that one" specific bonus and get a dopamine hit when it is finally applied to their equipment after 20+ tries.

See my response above for more details.

Basically, you either have exactly enough defense or you die instantly hence all these threads about the Angels and Gabriel, and so forth being supposedly impossible without either using Bloody Armor or some type of extreme super cheese (like perma stun via no CD mind bomb > precis instant kill or such). You also want enough hit % which gathering can actually harm due to not being enough in order to make sure your skills hit reliably (this one can vary based on build and attack method).

Sadly, if you don't do the Valiant Armor + Adamantine factor setup, or the Bloody Armor, or an instant kill cheese, you are playing roulette with if that attack instant kills your party or not. For any other fight/boss, however, Adamantine is not required and you will far out perform Gathering Stars because you're taking completely sane dmg and not getting nuked by everything that breathes on you. You can waltz through the arena fights and Maze of Tribulations extremely comfortably. Exception to all this being revive card race against clock to DPS boss before you run out, but you will be using a single character at some point if everyone wipes depending on boss behavior with its attack.

Overall, the essence is dropping dmg you take to way more manageable levels at an extremely slight mere 20% atk/int decrease vs getting nuked by everything that moves and breaths is the biggest issue with the Gathering Stars meta. People like to define meta's without fully testing alternatives and frequently end up wrong (ex League of Legends Genshin Impact despite tens of millions of players regularly fail this for virtually their entire life and often doing so towards much of the deemed "trash tier / worst" characters and stuff. In similar consideration, as another comparison, FROM Souls/Elden Ring games are often hard because people go glass cannon with no HP but those who go HP find the games to be hilariously easy due to 500% increase in health and almost identical dmg due to scaling of pure offense being a small increase just like in SO2R with +20% from 3 factor gathering stars.

Perhaps the best example of this type of issue is we also see this with mages which are often being deemed basically assault formation trash only in this game yet Celine can do the most dmg in the entire game. Meteor can hit for over 500-600k damage (this is against just a single target... 2-3m+ if multiple) and even against 1/2 light setup her Mteor and Southern Cross both doing dmg comparable to Precis. I haven't even tested Leon in depth, yet. Celine and Rena are among the best breaker's in the game, too, often having broken all enemies in my Maze of Tribulation's exploration and then killed them before my characters could finish a single skill or basic attack chain in an estimated 90% of the fights contrary to the myth "melee kills everything before mage casts a single spell" claims. Note that I would still argue Precis to have slightly higher DPS against single target bosses over Celine due to animation/attack frequency being a bit faster when at close range though it depends on the boss in question such as mobile angels/Grabriel, etc, and how relevant breaking them is in the given fight.

[capocapy]

In my experience, the characters with Gathering Stars do the worst and survive the least. 20% raw stats aren't as valuable over 3 factors as having three useful factors in their place. I can get Dias to over 9,000 ATK without Gathering Stars just fine.

If you HAVE to use Gathering Stars, make sure two of them are on your accessories. But even then, you're giving up 1 valuable slot on your Armor factors that could help you survive more often, provide real utility to your toolkit, and/or be more effective during final fights.

Casters are great at clearing the field when you're fighting against a lot of enemies at once, but the only fights that matter at the end game, level 255 content, are almost all single opponent battles. While spellcasters are better in this game than they were in the original PS1 version, they are still not outshined by melee at the endgame. It's fun to try and get Leon to crank out 99,999 damage, though.

[GeminiEclipse]

If you're doing 60% def and 40% hit then using Gathering Stars would only mean exchanging 20% hit for 20% atk and int. So it's not really giving up anything. Just a question of do you want more hit or more damage.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by GeminiEclipse:

If you're doing 60% def and 40% hit then using Gathering Stars would only mean exchanging 20% hit for 20% atk and int. So it's not really giving up anything. Just a question of do you want more hit or more damage.

That was only one example of multiple mentioned and that is actually incorrect, unfortunately.

Depending on the enemy if you don't have enough hit % it can mean 50-90% of your attacks are blocked. You can test this, as an example, on Devil Aria lv9 (the Sorcerer) where some charactesr with a single +20% hit essentially quintuple their DPS because they're not being blocked.

There are some exceptions to this such as if you are using a basic attack chain rather than a KM you can regularly get behind them to reliably hit without the extra hit as it will not activate the enemy's combat skills.

Usually, you want Adamantine + 3x Def +20% for armor.

Then for the accessory you want something like Break +10%, Hit +20% (or 2x +20% hit), or another effect like Meditation. Mage may swap for a meditate as they don't need hit and/or at least one person needs the Full Bonus 120%.

Break is really important for some of those bosses because of how fast they recover it, how little break dmg they take, and in some cases they're stupid mobile so them being broken is critical (Gabriel/Angels). Other times you're simply better with a double hit % factor otherwise your DPS simply completely fails, depending. You could also fit no item CD or bomber factors for better gains, too, as an option, without it being abusively exploiting.

Really, there isn't proper room for Gathering Stars as it is a really poor trade-off unless you're running Bloody Armor in which case you're playing by a completely different and more lax set of rules and goals.

[Almighty Boof]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Sadly, if you don't do the Valiant Armor + Adamantine factor setup, or the Bloody Armor, or an instant kill cheese, you are playing roulette with if that attack instant kills your party or not.

Thank you for your in-depth description of this. After testing this myself, I can see the merit in what you suggest. My biggest question is what should the DEF read as in the Equipment menu so that you will not get one-shot? I had Dias at around 2400 DEF and he was able to survive Wheel of Death from the first angel, but the second one seems even stronger and is able to one shot, again. I even tested by putting a Blue Talisman on and having over 3100 DEF and the second angel still seems to be able to one-shot, so I am not sure if bad luck or need higher defense, still.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by Xengre:

No, as I stated before Gathering Stars is only viable if using Bloody Armor or the apparent Lunacy exploit because you don't care about other stats as you cannot die.

Bro, you didn't even test the game. You are a low information player making statements about things you literally have no clue about. You can put gathering stars x2 on rings, and on 1 piece of armor and still have your non-bloody meta set with defense +20% or evade +20% factors. You can still min-max defenses or evade while incorporating gathering stars.

Gathering stars is still meta whether you run bloody armor or not.

Originally posted by Almighty Boof:

Thank you for your in-depth description of this. After testing this myself, I can see the merit in what you suggest. My biggest question is what should the DEF read as in the Equipment menu so that you will not get one-shot? I had Dias at around 2400 DEF and he was able to survive Wheel of Death from the first angel, but the second one seems even stronger and is able to one shot, again. I even tested by putting a Blue Talisman on and having over 3100 DEF and the second angel still seems to be able to one-shot, so I am not sure if bad luck or need higher defense, still.

For Universe EQ, you can stack defense factors or evade factors, and use a silver ring.

But you still want gathering stars x3. 20% boost to all stats is too good to overlook, there's literally nothing better you can put on rings for most characters, so putting x2 on rings, and 1x on armor means you can still gear for maximum defenses.

It's not just the number on the tab. You want to use a formation for more defenses. You also have buffs like Angel Feather and Guard. You have Piano 2 (all stats). You also have food buffs that increase defenses.

Basically stack as much defenses or evades as you can.

Additionally, you're missing defensive stats on rings by not using gathering stars. Gathering stars is a 20% all stats boost for 3 factors, making it worth a 6.67% all stats boost for every piece that factor is on. Show me a better defensive factor for rings. And the 1 gathering stars factor you put on armor has the same or better value than slotting +20% def or +20% evd in that slot.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by GeminiEclipse:

If you're doing 60% def and 40% hit then using Gathering Stars would only mean exchanging 20% hit for 20% atk and int. So it's not really giving up anything. Just a question of do you want more hit or more damage.

You shouldn't need extra hit even on Universe mode if your characters are 255, and you use buffs like Angel Feather and Piano 2, or even food buffs. You also have Bless which stacks with Angel Feather, but I never needed to use that.

Literally no reason to replace Gathering stars with hit on rings for any character who doesn't use the earring of frenzy. That's the only scenario where a character needs bonus hit.

[AH-1 Cobra]

It's possible to rock an evade setup while still maximizing damage somewhat. But the AI will get killed using this setup. But for AI controlled characters, you're gonna want to stack defenses.

https://youtu.be/mEK6gcyf4FM

I overestimated the amount of evade you actually need and he showcased his setup here, which wasn't even optimal, he could have done better with 1hp levantine sword, and one of his pieces only had evade 5%.. of course he also used gathering stars.

Planeteer-mental focus(not actually needed)

Dueling suit-Avd 20%(seraphic would be better for avd increase)

Valiant shield-gathering stars

Dueling helm-avd 20%(again, odin helm is better)

Valiant boots-avd 5%

Silver charm-gathering stars(For her spells)

Ring of might-gathering stars

Battle formation is Upper caution. Its what makes claudes meteor palm hit for near max damage per hit.

This is not optimized at all. Hopefully ill have another video up at some point with much better optimization.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by Almighty Boof:

Originally posted by Xengre:

Sadly, if you don't do the Valiant Armor + Adamantine factor setup, or the Bloody Armor, or an instant kill cheese, you are playing roulette with if that attack instant kills your party or not.

Thank you for your in-depth description of this. After testing this myself, I can see the merit in what you suggest. My biggest question is what should the DEF read as in the Equipment menu so that you will not get one-shot? I had Dias at around 2400 DEF and he was able to survive Wheel of Death from the first angel, but the second one seems even stronger and is able to one shot, again. I even tested by putting a Blue Talisman on and having over 3100 DEF and the second angel still seems to be able to one-shot, so I am not sure if bad luck or need higher defense, still.

It depends on where your health lands and how much buffer you want to not die from magic. Since one attack my drop you from 9999 to 500 hp while another might only drop you to 4k depending on RNG of the dmg hit it can be hard to get further to the right value you want while also having enough HP to not die to magic unless you use null/absorb. Note this will stack with Witches potion so depending on the RNG of the spell it may fluctuate between no dmg and doing low dmg, but potentially enough to be fatal if too close to 1 HP.

You also will find it is mandatory to have light absorb, such as Silver Charm, because of the weird calculations of Meteor Swarm. Thus make sure this fits in your build.

Delectable Cheese adds +15% defense and you can also use the Upper Guard formation (def + status immunity).

Honestly, after repeated testing, though, I found that the best application was actually Bowman for lv10 Devil's Aria and the duo angel fight. I wasn't a fan of how much dmg was lost giving characters like Claude an accessory to absorb light in case of meteor swarm on top of needing a defensive accessory like Blue Talisman and due to how the spell procs dmg I cannot reliably always swap characters before they're executed so I settled on an alternative solution for those two bosses specifically that is more consistent which was Bowman super tank and breaker (or shield regen delayer, tbh Celine does a lot to help speed up breaking as do Assault break oriented actions).

With Bowman's ultimate weapon Heart of Hearts (-80% dmg when hurt at full HP) he can reliably not ever take 9999 dmg even if unlucky from the first hit of the boss wheel attack. You run no risk of instantly losing your formation because of pure luck and it is easier to take other attacks, too, with lower risk. Throw on Fight or Flight which is ATK, INT, and DEF increase as HP gets lower (max 30%) and a Blue Talisman with +20% Hit (because he absolutely needs it or he will miss almost all his attacks) and have him just act as a breaker with Phoenix Talons. In addition with Silver Ring ( dark no effect / light absorb ). Last, have Rena on Assault Action for these two fights to use Angel Feather (makes a huge difference in defenses).

This lets Bowman reliably already start taking 0 dmg around 3,000-5,000 HP which is way safer than having someone like Claude do so at <2,0000 and if Bowman gets knocked even lower his defense is even higher (for no relevant reason tbh). You might be able to swap out Blue Talisman on him for another offensive talisman but I didn't bother testing such since it is only two fights.

With this you have zero chance of losing your formation and you, literally, cannot die to either of these two super boss fights while controlling Bowman. From here you can put out revives, buffs, revive cards, faerie heals, witch pills, mind bombs / phoenix talon to delay shield regen, etc. The main focus is to break the boss which Bowman helps achieve and mostly delay recovery while Celine / assault formations do great job at the main shield dmg. The other characters will DPS though you will have to revive them sometimes. I swapped Celine to ADV oriented for this because I found after more extensive testing she is too RNG against this boss whether she lives or dies from being hit but her AI's positioning on top of ADV boost (and the +64 ADV battle item) lets her stay alive extremely well. You can swap the other two DPS to AVD builds, too, in order to reduce maintenance reviving them and buffing. AVD isn't entirely reliable unless you get lucky like in Cobra's video, but as you can also see in Cobra's video it is absolutely sufficient enough as long as your party doesn't all get unlucky and wipe at once (hence the Bowman super tank as a fallback to avoid worst case scenario). On the Silver Charm accessory I had no factor (didn't bother) but you could have put Full Bonus or something if you want and also possibly let you ditch the Blue Talisman or mix things up some.

This solution also freed up defensive accessories on all my DPS and, sure, while they might wipe from Meteor Bowman guarantees he will not die and can just revive them since Meteor Swarm is a fairly rare cast from the boss.

Mind you, you do not necessarily need to do this method because as Cobra's video shows ADV is sufficient enough that you could just press your luck with it and even if you fail 1-2 fights you will probably get sufficiently lucky enough and win your fight in only a few tries.

Originally posted by AH-1 Cobra:

Originally posted by Xengre:

No, as I stated before Gathering Stars is only viable if using Bloody Armor or the apparent Lunacy exploit because you don't care about other stats as you cannot die.

Bro, you didn't even test the game. You are a low information player making statements about things you literally have no clue about. You can put gathering stars x2 on rings, and on 1 piece of armor and still have your non-bloody meta set with defense +20% or evade +20% factors. You can still min-max defenses or evade while incorporating gathering stars.

Gathering stars is still meta whether you run bloody armor or not.

lol your becoming quite famous as a troll on here. You've now gone to three threads to spew nonsensical misnformation and falsely claim towards me because me and others proved you wrong and asked you to stop giving bad info in another thread. You even went to one thread I had responded and was inactive for several days just to attack me with like 3 posts in a row with your misinformation. Ironically, one of the issues that was raised was YOU did not "test stuff" before making claims and it was backed up by actual tested data and screenshots of things you claimed impossible, your refusal time time how long skills/spells take to use, and other straight up false information you repeatedly provided....
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2238900/discussions/0/3941272762732573894/?ctp=2

You are completely ignoring points raised about needing space for things like Breaker +10%, Full Bonus, etc. and who to place them on. You also very critically missed the issue over +% Hit. It depends on the character and weapon used because a single extra +20% Hit while fitting any of those others can mean a difference of 500% more dmg due to not having most of your attacks completely miss.

I get it. You're upset you got corrected in the other thread and Celine isn't trash tier ultra worthless and you got caught blatantly boldly lying, not just once or twice but an entire host of times. You're ego is hurt. Chill already.

Originally posted by AH-1 Cobra:

Originally posted by GeminiEclipse:

If you're doing 60% def and 40% hit then using Gathering Stars would only mean exchanging 20% hit for 20% atk and int. So it's not really giving up anything. Just a question of do you want more hit or more damage.

You shouldn't need extra hit even on Universe mode if your characters are 255, and you use buffs like Angel Feather and Piano 2, or even food buffs. You also have Bless which stacks with Angel Feather, but I never needed to use that.

Literally no reason to replace Gathering stars with hit on rings for any character who doesn't use the earring of frenzy. That's the only scenario where a character needs bonus hit.

Again, you're treating this like it is a solo game and not a team game. Some characters you want to focus on breaking or offer full bonus which means they're not running gathering stars unless you sacrifice DEF or ADV, granted if you're willing to revive them ADV is the better option for the carrier of this but they would have to be a mage...

You can use the method you showed above to break by dodging but this works so much better solo, per your very own example, rather than in a chaotic fight because you can't tell who she is aiming at to dodge and she may not even look at you half the or run to others so this doesn't work very well in a team fight which is why you don't show it like so in any of your videos as your method of breaking her shields. Even then, you had to use a ADV build to do it and eat multiple attacks before finding one on occasion you could dodge and good luck recommending dodging this boss to the average gamer solo much less in a group fight.

You have yet to prove me wrong about anything. The only thing you did mention was Bless stacks with Angel Feather which I was not aware of and am curious if true and how you tested it (or if you even did because you have a history of literally not testing stuff and getting called out for it).

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by Xengre:

lol your becoming quite famous as a troll on here. You've now gone to three threads to spew nonsensical misnformation and falsely claim towards me because me and others proved you wrong and asked you to stop giving bad info in another thread. You even went to one thread I had responded and was inactive for several days just to attack me with like 3 posts in a row with your misinformation. Ironically, one of the issues that was raised was YOU did not "test stuff" before making claims and it was backed up by actual tested data and screenshots of things you claimed impossible, your refusal time time how long skills/spells take to use, and other straight up false information you repeatedly provided....
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2238900/discussions/0/3941272762732573894/?ctp=2

It's about 7s counting the cast time + animation.

You are completely ignoring points raised about needing space for things like Breaker +10%, Full Bonus, etc. and who to place them on. You also very critically missed the issue over +% Hit. It depends on the character and weapon used because a single extra +20% Hit while fitting any of those others can mean a difference of 500% more dmg due to not having most of your attacks completely miss.

Breaker +10% is pointless. Hit +20% is not needed for any character provided they're level 255, unless they use the earring of frenzy. But on Universe they they'd probably need mental focus on their weapon, and still wouldn't need the extra hit on rings.

My characters aren't missing hits at 255 with Angel Feather buff. So adding an extra +20% hit does not = 500% more damage, this is just dumb. If hit is a problem, then by all means do something about it, but I'm stating as a matter of fact that it's not or shouldn't be with max level characters in the overwhelming majority of situations. You got buffs you should be using for every boss fight, and the +20% hit you get from gathering stars that easily put you over the mark to land your hits.

I get it. You're upset you got corrected in the other thread and Celine isn't trash tier ultra worthless and you got caught blatantly boldly lying, not just once or twice but an entire host of times. You're ego is hurt. Chill already.

She is, and I proved why. Not enough damage for such a huge cast time + animation.

-350k for meteor swarm against EQ, about 7s counting the cast time + animation. Celine can do more DPS just normal attacking with a winged bracelet, lol.

it wasn't lying, I admitted that the cast time was a bit lower than I initially stated, but what I really meant was the cast time + animation. Add those 2 together. There's no advantages for freezing the whole screen for an animation, you're just robbing fighters from doing DPS. So yes, my original point about mages being bad still stands even if didn't specify cast time + animation when I said 7s.

Extinction does a little bit better, closer to around 500k, but you admittedly didn't even test this. You make statements about what you believe is good based on personal subjective reasons totally ignoring the facts.

Again, you're treating this like it is a solo game and not a team game. Some characters you want to focus on breaking or offer full bonus which means they're not running gathering stars unless you sacrifice DEF or ADV, granted if you're willing to revive them ADV is the better option for the carrier of this but they would have to be a mage...

I 100% guarantee I've tested this more than you have. Full Bonus can be equipped on 1 character. Breaker factor isn't needed on anyone, if you want to break a boss, you parry-counter. By the way, multi-hit can sometimes strip 2 shields off EQ in 1 parry counter. If you actually played the game you'd know this. The character with full bonus can put gathering stars on the weapon, preferably a character who can heal like Opera. You only need full bonus on 1 character.

You can use the method you showed above to break by dodging but this works so much better solo, per your very own example, rather than in a chaotic fight because you can't tell who she is aiming at to dodge and she may not even look at you half the or run to others so this doesn't work very well in a team fight which is why you don't show it like so in any of your videos as your method of breaking her shields. Even then, you had to use a ADV build to do it and eat multiple attacks before finding one on occasion you could dodge and good luck recommending dodging this boss to the average gamer solo much less in a group fight.

Which is why I specifically recommended that AI control spec for defense instead of evade......

You have yet to prove me wrong about anything. The only thing you did mention was Bless stacks with Angel Feather which I was not aware of and am curious if true and how you tested it (or if you even did because you have a history of literally not testing stuff and getting called out for it).

You are the one just offering people outright bad suggestions, making claims like mages are actually good for DPS, and gathering stars is for noobs.

Literally nobody here who's actually played the game can honestly say that mages are actually good for damage.

[AH-1 Cobra]

You want to be invincible to EQ with raw defenses? Here you go. This is my setup.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3091557431

Factors:
Weapon - Gathering Stars
Armor, helmet, boots, shield - +20% def
Rings - Gathering Stars

Additional buffs;

- Guard
- Power up
- Angel feather
- Delectable Chesese (Def +15%)
- Piano 2 - all stats buff
- Immunity pill (use in battle) - if you use upper caution.
- 1HP for Levantine Sword users.

Formations:

Upper Caution (for solo Claude), he still takes 0 damage from EQ with this, and it's more damage.

Upper Guard - use this for a full team.

To be honest, this is effectively bloody armor, you take 0 damage. Decide for yourself whether you actually want to waste your time or not.

Full party used:

Claude, Opera, Ernest, Precis.

- Defense stats for all characters:
Claude - 3530
Opera - 2678
Ernest - 2812
Precis - 2954

Some of the other characters might take damage, but I just ran with this and nobody died, and Universe EQ got her ass busted. All running variations of the same setup as Claude.

[Xengre]

So you are caught making stuff up again plus you're not even properly reading detailed responses. This is partially why people asked you to stop speaking completely in the other thread... Guess I'm done with you, again, since clearly it is both a waste of my effort and in vain.

Btw, did you even bother to test your "invincible setup" on her while not using Seraphic Garb which provides a huge defense boost as you get lower HP, something your build cannot come close to compensating for? No, clearly you did not because you can't even use music during both Iseria Queen's fight via Dark Aria (since it requires its own music being played to even summon her) nor in the arena where music is not permitted to be used... /facepalm. Dude... At least test your stuff before making up random crap. We've told you this repeatedly.

In fact, I just tested your "invincible build" solo with Claude with all buffs you mentioned, even using Piano 2 just before the fight to make a point, and Upper Caution and she did 9040 dmg to me (I had 10 more defense than you and did not use Seraphic Garb either, to make a point duplicating your setup). She then immediately killed me on the next attack. So much for 0 dmg.

Seriously. I think I'm indefinitely done with you on this forum at this point. Disagree with everyone you want. I no longer care.

The only reason I even raised any points to begin with is because you stated mages were so bad they should be relegated to exclusively Assault Formation for casting buffs like Angel Feather, despite the fact that Celine and Rena both do very competent combat dmg and Celine statistically does more than the other three combined party members when used correctly for a literal 80%+ of the game (a few bosses post game and particularly early she gets noticeably surpassed).