Tidus non celestial weapon

[Nezkeys]

Okay so i suck at the chocobo race (despite doing this back on ps2 in 2002 i guess my reactions are slower now lol) and have decided to make my own ultimate weapon.

First of all I know celestial weapons have the ignore defense property but ive accepted i cannot get caladbolg so just making next best thing. I need some opinions/advice on the 4th slot or maybe 2nd and 3rd need reworking too.

1) Break Damage Limit
2) Triple Overdrive
3) Evade and Counter/Str +20%
4) Magic Counter/Str +15%

Other Alternatives:
Piercing/Firstrike/Deathstrike/Alchemy/1 mp cost/Gillionaire

Str boosters...well these are permanent boosts that dont seem to be replicated in any other way. This is a strong pull for me despite the fact he is already hitting 99,999 on all arena bosses

Piercing...can this be negated by just using a frag grenade? Is it also useless against dark aeons? If so then piercing is out.

As for the counter abilities when they happen im like oh that was nice but they jist dont seem to happen all that much as enemies dont use magic that much or i kill them begore they attack. Theres the fact that an enemy could also just attack rikku.

With regards to deathstrike i assume most arena creations and dark aeons are immune so yeah this probably has no business on an "ultimate" endgame weapon.

Alchemy though sounds pretty useful if phoenix downs revive for 9999. Since his damage will be lower anyway he will br the support character so to speak

One mp cost sounds good in theory but three stars at the start of battle kinda male me think this is a wasted slot

I also considered first strike but then realised auron has it on his CW and i can just switch him out. Its a shame all the celestial weapons come with Double AP which is useless once youve maxed the grid...and inferior for levelling when you can just get a triple ap weapon easily from one eye. For the remaster they should have added triple ap to the CW at least or just one of the abilities mentioned here :) Once youve completed grid ap double or triple is a waste so not what i class as ultimate.

Finally Gillionaire...well i would only put this if it stacks with other gillionaire bit then i woild be thinking that gillionaire is useless against dark aeons so maybe i leave this for a secondary "farm weapon".

Anyway sorry for the long post lets try to make tidus as best as he can be without caladbolg lol.


EDIT:
I made three custom weapons so i could just test them to my hearts desire lol XD

BDL
Triple Overdrive
Alchemy
Firststrike

BDL
Triple Overdrive
Str +20%
Str +10%

BDL
Triple Overdrive
Evade and Counter
Magic Counter

I use the middle one the most now as i dont care about ambushes now or use auto phoenix anymore (bhpl all the way). I dont really care about what move dark aeons hit me with either and the ones that i would wa to evade are unevadable i think. The reason triple overdrive is on them all is so i can entrust it to rikku or wakka

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

I havent really done much testing but tidus is able to 99,999 almost every enemy in the arena without using clear spheres(180 ish str). Compared to rikku (god hand) and wakka (world champion) though eho have same str stat...his damage is noticablely different against armoured enemies.

Defense stats vary wildly depending on who you are fighting. Arena bosses such as species creations are usually in the 100-150 range, but serious superbosses like Dark Aeons will have considerably more, and are usually in the 230-250 range. This will GREATLY reduce your damage output against the enemies where it matters most.

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

My thoughts were can piercing be negated by just using a frag grenade?(id need to farm 99 of them though which is kinda a pain at x1 a battle). Is piercing useless against dark aeons too? If so then piercing is out.

Piercing does NOT reduce defense. All it does is negate the "armored" effect on certain enemies. Armor Break (from the skill, Auron's Banishing Blade overdrive, or a Frag Grenade) both removes "armored" AND reduces defense - however all truly relevant enemies will be immune to this effect so it doesn't help (though notably some relevant species creations are not immune, such as Juggernaut and Fafnir). Armor will still reduce the damage of Celestial Weapons, though at max STR you'll usually hit for 99,999 anyway.

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

However...would a phoenix down revive with alchemy revive more than 4999??? Maybe thats a serious contender because when they revive at 4999 they dont seem to use x potions until damaged again but not killed (hard against superbosses lol).

Not worth the armor slot. There's practically no situation where it would realistically be useful, as you either get hit for <9,999 and thus an X-Potion from Auto-Potion heals you to full immediately, or you get hit for >9,999 in which case it doesn't matter that you get Auto-Phoenix'd to 4,999 rather than full. And Auto-Potion is only really used on Penance as most other relevant superbosses will just kill you with their attacks anyway.

If you really absolutely can't do the Chocobo Race (and don't want to circumvent it with game editing tools) then you should probably use someone else with an easier CW to get. Rikku, Auron, and Yuna get their CWs for almost free. Wakka's only takes time and very little skill or randomness. Lulu and Kimahri are even worse than the Chocobo Race though ;)

[Nezkeys]

I already have wakkas rikkus aurons and yunas CW. personally I have found alchemy very useful with auto phoenix and auto potion even at endgame as it means you don't have to waste time healing people (auto potion doesnt use an xpotion after you revive) because in yellow hp some people do less damage with their CW. I guess auron is ok to just keep in yellow though.

aside from all of that...I made bhpl + auto regen + auto haste + ribbon and its better imo than the auto haste/protect/potion/phoenix.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

aside from all of that...I made bhpl + auto regen + auto haste + ribbon and its better imo than the auto haste/protect/potion/phoenix.

Why is it better? What does it allow you to do, that the other one does not? And does that justify the MUCH higher cost of making it?

[Nezkeys]

well ive found the statement "all attacks can be reduced under 9999" to be false in a practical sense. sure a lot of them are but some atatcks still do like 13k or whatever so you have to have rikkus hyper null all or cheer x5 up I guess. you can have hyper null all up for all 5 dark yojimbos for example...and if any of them die to anything...they lose the mix effects. also dying and reviving then dying again to an attack over 4999 unless you manually heal with an xpotion again on everyones turns. because of bhpl I can remove auto protect tbh and get ribbon on. you will miss all the abilities on that 4 auto armour whereas no auto protect on bhpl is hardly noticeable. the character with the bhpl regen ribbon armour dies way less often

the game requires a few different niche armours for things anyway...for example death ward+deathproof for farming earth eater. since I only had two slots to work with I just used a bhpl+3 slots yojimbo dropped as that was cheaper than making auto protect/auto haste. auto regen is essentially free since kottos drops 40 healing springs and then you dont have to keep stocking 99 xptions via bribes, and phoenix downs lol (using the loner strat to spam attack reels on him).

also on a lesser note...it looks better and more badass to see 99,999 lol XD

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

well ive found the statement "all attacks can be reduced under 9999" to be false in a practical sense.

That's not the whole statement. It's "all attacks can either be reduced below 9,999, or can just be eaten with a death and Auto-Phoenix, or can be blocked by aeons/Auto-Life."

There's no attack that deals >9,999 to everyone on a regular basis. For those that deal 9,999 to one person, just taking it and resurrecting with Auto-Phoenix is usually more efficient than using BHPL and healing the damage - especially since it's very hard to heal for >9,999 healing, forcing you to give up ANOTHER passive slot for Auto-Regen.

Auto-Potion is only used on Penance, where no one will ever die if you do it correctly (and hence won't lose the Cheer bonus either). For fights where you use Auto-Phoenix, you don't need Cheer so losing the bonus to death doesn't matter.

You CAN make BHPL/Auto-Regen work for sure - there's just no reason to. It's not needed for any fight, and doesn't save you any time. It's simply a more complicated, more expensive option to do the exact same thing. If you want to invest more time and effort for zero gain, you're free to do so - but there's no reason to.

Two sets of armors are sufficient to do any superboss in the game. Auto-Haste/Auto-Phoenix/Auto-Protect/Stoneproof will do for any Dark Aeon or Arena creation, while Auto-Haste/Auto-Protect/Auto-Potion/Defense +20% is for Penance. There's no real reason to invest into other armors, because the extra effort is unlikely to ever pay off in time saved.

[Nezkeys]

well I heard ixion uses sleep and some arena creations use more than just stone? I prefer ribbon but agree it takes a long time to get one if you use the first dark matters you get on a custom BDL weapon. I know you're gonna say theres no point in that because of CWs defense ignore but custom wep with bdl is still second best by a huge magin over anything else without bdl, and you can still get a lot of mileage from that in Omega Ruins and arena bosses in prep for aeons if you suck at CW trials. tbh I have killed yojimbo several times with no caladbolg despite my crappy luck stats. If I never miss with max luck...then I don't need caladbolg anyway. sure id do more damage but just saying its still easy without if every hit lands?

for earth eater death ward/deathproof with solo overdrive on wakka seems better. im not saying haste protect phoenix isn't good (cause it is as I use potion with it on one armour and it worked for most stuff as an ultimate armour)

im not trying to be an ass to people who create guides but some of the guides everyone suggests for victor mode farming include killing dingo when you can just kill sleep sprout in the same time and get teleport spheres which are handy for moving around the grid. personally I think one eye is better despite it being a 2hko because the drops give you debatably a better source of gil than any other method, for like what an extra 5 seconds if that?

[Nezkeys]

one thing that is confusing me is I don't remember ever doing less than 99,999 with overdrives on any dark aeon back on ps2. I don't have the save file to check but does max luck make you hit for 99,999 every time on overdrives? maybe it was always like that or maybe I just used zanmato I really don't remember

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

well I heard ixion uses sleep and some arena creations use more than just stone

There's more statuses than stone around, but none of them matter. You can either ignore them (like sleep, poison, etc.) or they come with attacks that kill you anyway (like the few instances of confuse, berserk, etc. on superbosses) or they can't be stopped by Ribbon either (like doom or breaks). Petrify matters because getting killed while petrified will shatter you and remove the character from combat permanently - that is something you actually need to prevent. You can (and should) totally use the two Ribbons you basically get for free, but it's not worth it trying to farm for more. Not because Ribbon isn't good (it is) but because it's too much effort for what it gets you.

Originally posted by Nezkeys:

If I never miss with max luck...then I don't need caladbolg anyway. sure id do more damage but just saying its still easy without if every hit lands?

CWs have nothing to do with hit rate, only with damage. Much like with the earlier example, you CAN beat superbosses with custom BDL weapons, but it's simply a lot more effort for no reason. You're better off getting 3 easy CWs and using those characters instead of making a BDL weapon on a character where you don't want to get their CW. Characters all have the same stats. The only real difference is in their overdrives, and you don't NEED need any of those. Several of them are still useful without CWs, too (like Rikku's Mix, Auron's Banishing Blade, or Yuna's Grand Summon for Anima's Oblivion). The difference that Wakka's and Tidus' overdrives make is very small, and you can absolutely kill every superboss without them (though Wakka's CW is one of the easier CWs to get).

As always, it's a matter of what's BETTER rather than what's GOOD/BAD. I don't like to deal in absolutes, because they tend to portray binaries where there are none. It's not literally impossible to beat the superbosses with custom BDL weapons - it just takes a lot more time for no real reason. If you WANT to spend that extra time for a non-real reason (like e.g. personal preference, which is totally legit) that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that doing it differently is better by objective metrics.

[Nezkeys]

on the subject of dark yojimbo whats the best overdrive mode if youre farming him. it looks like random battles disappear during his attacks so victor is out. does hero fully charge the overdrive bar unlike victors 60%? I mean ive tried stoic/comrade/warrior etc and they seem bad because he was evading so much. also auto protect seems to make stoic/comrade charge slower. basically I just went with ally so I know 100% it will charge as its just charged when I get a turn

[Hinnyuu]

Don't fight Yojimbo if your Luck is too low. Use that time to up your Luck instead. Why are you "farming" it anyway?

If you absolutely insist on fighting it via overdrives at low Luck, then yeah, it's probably best to charge on turn, and use Entrust to make sure all overdrives come from Wakka (assuming you have his CW) since he's the biggest damage per overdrive.

I'm not too well versed in optimizing non-optimal strategies, though, so there may be other, better ways of doing those things that I'm unaware of.

[Nezkeys]

ive already beaten him about 5 times with 25 luck but in the end I just decided to go back to the arena and get luck up (currently only on 1 character). its not as slow as I originally thought with the wakka loner strat equipped with death ward/deathproof.

Anyway the reason im farming it is I want ribbon+ 3 slot armour as getting 99 dark matter whilst not difficult just takes a long time (inquantifiable tbh) as based on rng. After that I will customize the remaining 3 abilities

[Nezkeys]

it takes a long time with ally too anyway...but maybe now im 255 luck I can actually just hit the mofo 100% of the time

[Hinnyuu]

205 Luck is enough to hit every enemy in the game 100% of the time.

114 Luck is enough to hit every enemy except Dark Mindy 100% of the time.

It's perfectly feasible to just get 114 Luck and kill Dark Mindy with overdrives, since she only has 2m HP.

(At least I hope I'm remembering those values correctly it's been a long time).

[Nezkeys]

oh well. I already got 255 (one character) last few hours . just deleted some mp as don't need 999 even without 3 stars. not sure whether I should put luck on the other two or just be done with wakka at 255. tbh I think ill kill DY easy with just wakka hitting 100% of the time now

[Nezkeys]

yea with everyone hitting 100% he was a joke. wakka 255 rikku 130 tidus 130. tidus still wasn't critting all the time (normal hits around 40k) but when he did it was like 85k - 95k. maybe with str+20+ he would do 99k but really its not even needed especially when I just sorta use him as my support character so im ok with it not being on my custom weapon tbh. also if he gets the final hit and its not a crit its not an overkill so that's another reason why