PAIN Mode party members?

[Huntor]

Who all did you guys use for Pain Mode in your party?
About to start Pain Mode for the first time and wanted some input as to who the best party would be for this.

[Lineder]

The best party for Pain Mode would be Birdie + RT + Mad Dog/Percy. The combo isn't very much fun, but it sure does stomp everyone.

[VR456]

Well, in my opinion, it depends on your commitment to explore the whole game and your level of patience.
If you ready to farm XP in EWC, aren't picky in choice of your Members, don't mind to explore all locations of the game and kill all enemies including optional Joy Mutants, then you can take any members, you'll still success.
But if you aren't ready for that grinding ♥♥♥♥, then I may suggest this members:

• Birdie, RT, Mad Dog/Percy/Jake – Birdie's Gas Spit oils up enemies, making them extremly weak to fire attacks, which are main type of MD,Percie's and Jake's skill attacks. RT's skills able to add strong debuffs to enemies.
  
• Olan, Nern, Rage – Your very first Members (Sorry, Hintlord, you aren't good here ) Since you can start level upping them from the very begginig, there's a huge chance that you may have them at level 25 right when you reach Area 3. Their final skills are very useful and Nern is pretty good support.
  
• Carp, Buckets, Queen – These turds suffer from withdrawl, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they deal heck-a-lot damage. Carp and Buckets attacks are multi-hit, so withdrawl don't really decrease their's attack.
  
• Terry, Fardy, Shocklord – These are bad members (Shocklord isn't really, either high level Terry), you can try beating game with them if you lack a challenge.

[TheAudacity]

I just used Terry, Nern, and Olan for the entire PAIN run just for the heck of it, and I did pretty well. So well in fact that I beat Satan on my first try in PAIN mode!
I even took both of Brad's arms, used no joy whatsoever, and got every party member!

[wcc]

Originally posted by Lineder:

The best party for Pain Mode would be Birdie + RT + Mad Dog/Percy. The combo isn't very much fun, but it sure does stomp everyone.

Just finished Pain Mode with Birdie, Mad Dog and Nern and can't recall a even single notable encounter with this team. So I feel that Nern might be a better choice here, due to Dirty Insult and Discuss Technique. Birdie and Mad Dog won't enter every encounter with enough TP, and additionally Mad Dog's Hell Ball is really TP-intensive.

[TheAudacity]

I'm currently doing a Pain mode run with Buckets, Fly, and Harvey and their actually a pretty viable team in my opinon, using lots of brute force and Harvey being able to cure some ailments.

[wcc]

Have you even tried the standard combo (Birdie's gasoline spit + some fire damage from Brad, Mad Dog, RT, Terry ...)? It's just a complete other league than Terry, Nern, Olan. And your
second team seems inferior, too: To much fiddling with statuses and group damage. It's way more effective to p1ss of the enemie's leader (with Nern). He can't even bother you with debuffs anymore and will attack his own men. The two round he might survive your fire attacks, that is.

It's not about skill, luck or grinding, this thread is about the meanest combination. And for that, Birdie + fire is the basis.

Edit: And Birdie offers group healing, too.

[TheAudacity]

Originally posted by wcc:

Have you even tried the standard combo (Birdie's gasoline spit + some fire damage from Brad, Mad Dog, RT, Terry ...)? It's just a complete other league than Terry, Nern, Olan. And your
second team seems inferior, too: To much fiddling with statuses and group damage. It's way more effective to p1ss of the enemie's leader (with Nern). He can't even bother you with debuffs anymore and will attack his own men. The two round he might survive your fire attacks, that is.

It's not about skill, luck or grinding, this thread is about the meanest combination. And for that, Birdie + fire is the basis.

Edit: And Birdie offers group healing, too.

I'll say Terry, Nern and Olan did very well in my group and I'm quite aware of how good of how some other members are. I even used Birdie, RT, and Shocklord on my first run. I just go in the run with having a group in mind seeing how it fares. I've already know all the good companion combos so why don't I try some mixing and matching some groups that haven't been done before?

Also I was incorrect earlier I am not doing a PAIN run with Fly, Harvey and Buckets. I'm doing it on normal since I knew it would be hell to get Buckets on PAIN mode.

[wcc]

There's nothing wrong with experimenting, I just don't see how it fits into this thread.
I remember having a hard time with Terry, Nern, Olan against Wally and Satan (w/o getting a permakill). On normal. Maybe Joy would have made things easier, but that's nothing the party contributes to.
Regarding Buckets on Pain Mode: it works quite well to go for ~3 rounds of roulette right after saving. If the result is okay, you follow the story till you find the next crow, rinse, repeat. With one or two crows spared before it's quite doable before his level is too low.

[TheAudacity]

Originally posted by wcc:

There's nothing wrong with experimenting, I just don't see how it fits into this thread.
I remember having a hard time with Terry, Nern, Olan against Wally and Satan (w/o getting a permakill). On normal. Maybe Joy would have made things easier, but that's nothing the party contributes to.
Regarding Buckets on Pain Mode: it works quite well to go for ~3 rounds of roulette right after saving. If the result is okay, you follow the story till you find the next crow, rinse, repeat. With one or two crows spared before it's quite doable before his level is too low.

Yeah that's what I did on my intial pain run just to get all the party members but I wanted to try and do a good chunk of the run with Buckets so I put on normal so I wouldn't have to do much of it without him.

I can understand why you might not think this is the thread for it but the original post did just ask what we chose for PAIN mode.

[Flightless Lizard]

I went for a mostly all-enemies-hit build. Brad, Bo, Fly, and Carp for single target.