Neat things you don't use

[x_equals_speed]

I've had a few discussions now that go "X is useless" "What? I use X all the time, it's the best" and I've been on both sides of them.

I love discovering new ways to do things in this game, so I was curious about two things:

I wanted to write about some of the things in the game that I think are cool but never use and to ask if you use them and how do you make them fun.

I wanted to ask you to write about some of the things you think are neat, but never use and to see if anyone's got a place for them.

My list:

Irene's overdrive - The thing about cascading into other moves feels like a trap. It's relatively rare that you find something tough enough that you want to unload all of her moves on it and the AT costs added together are painful.

Giselles seasoned hunter personal mastery - Getting extra items and making them free to use sounds like it could be fun. Combine it with some other masteries and you could easily get 6-8 grenades that are free to use. It always feels like there's an edge to be had out of putting traps and pushing people into them with wind grenades or something but it never quite works out.

Deep sea escape - I keep trying builds to get this (and its associated mastery set) to trigger, but it feels like it never works and when it doesn't you've taken one of your characters out of play for what feels like basically forever.

Nocturnal (and various others) - I never want to build for a scenario but since you can swap mastery boards and the mission select screen I keep wondering if it'd be worth having mastery boards specialised like that. "It's night time, quick, everyone be batman"

Threat - I love the idea of hitting an enemy and having them flee in fear, but it only triggers on a critical hit which often means it only triggers if the target is already dead. I'd love to see a mastery set that made this more usable.

Goddess of Fortune - I'm a sucker for random buffs, I think the game's more interesting when you're playing around some collection of tools you didn't plan to have. But Lucky 7/8/9 are such bad masteries and cost so much for what little they do I feel like I can never justify it.

Escape Death - I really like the idea of this one. You've got a chance to revive and you're trying to do the right things in battle to get that chance high enough before you die. That feels like excellent gameplay. It's also vanishingly unlikely you'd get it high enough to trigger twice in the same game so you should probably just equip Third Heart instead.

Revolutionary/Conqueror - I'm a big fan of buff auras and have a little robot that follows us around just to supply them. I never liked the masteries that depend on being a higher or lower level than your target though, that seems like it'd wind up being so wonky, especially with challenge mode and such. So I never wind up using these. (On a side note I figure there's a Bianca build in there somewhere since Black Witch increases the size of the Conqueror aura but I never wind up using her that way, unless she's procced immortal having her in the middle of enemies to affect them all with an aura never seems smart)

Blessing of Avalon - I'm sure there's a build in there somewhere that bounces fatal hits by spending all of your vigor, counterattacks, goes up to full vigor by killing an enemy and does it again. It never quite seems to work though, it's a lot of masteries for a complicated defence that does nothing against a couple of guys with guns.

Forced Duel - The idea of taunting everyone and holding them off my team mates seems really thematic. Unfortunately my team mates are probably better equipped to deal with being attacked what with the fantastic defences and self healing that other classes can access.

Wildcat Engine - I've not tried this again since the update made the reactive strike work against diagionally adjacent opponents. I might try it, but running towards the second nearest opponent is often moving 0 spaces and then not getting an attack because you didn't move :(

Magic Shield - I think this would see more use and some sort of vigor management blocking engine could be fun to play. Except the alternative witch powers are too much fun and battle mages are invincible anyway so it never gets a look in.

Hellgate - Controlling a host of enemies is really fun and everyone should try hellgate at least once. I'm yet to find a reliable build for it though. Bianca doesn't get a lot of defence slots, though I suppose that's less important in a strategy based around dying. Maybe I should try a sacrifical Anne instead. It seems reasonable to sacrifice a child for victory.

Linked Trap - Traps are fun! I had a devil of a time trying to get them to work well though, their damage is pretty medicore and this mastery is the only one that boosts them but lumbers you with an AT expensive reactive shot that you didn't want. In the end I found the common mastery sets linked fire/lightning tactics more useful than any of the hunter masteries that are supposed to focus on traps. It'd be nice if the specialised stuff didn't all feel like expensive point sinks that didn't offer much improvement.

Nimble Responsive Attack - I use this all of the time and responsive fire drones using it are great, but the thing that makes me curious is Kylie also gets 20AP back for reactive attacks. This seems to include bond based reactive attacks. I'm sure there's some sort of psuedo infinite turn two person combot that this is half of, but I can't put my finger on exactly where it is

[RexEviL]

Before advanced classes, epic and legendary items. We used blue items on Irene and she was still extremely weak to 1 shot bosses. Right now each char can one shot with right build so Irene's role changed. You can still use it on bosses with lots of life saving masteries but Albus/Alisa/Kylie better for this role.

We used have 500-1k AT joke builds , deep sea escape was added after that.

[Delayed Hopkick]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

My list:

Irene's overdrive - The thing about cascading into other moves feels like a trap. It's relatively rare that you find something tough enough that you want to unload all of her moves on it and the AT costs added together are painful.

If you're using [Phoenix] on Irene, you'll need to use this ability if she's in threat of dying before her next turn when she only has 1 turn of overcharge left. Killing an enemy with this ability will empty her SP gauge, and Irene's innate SP mastery will grant 20 SP immediately after - this lets her revive with 200 HP should she go down before her next turn. Failing to use her Overcharge ability in such a situation leaves Irene with 0 SP once her turn ends, so she'll die without revival before her next turn since you will fail to meet [Phoenix]'s condition.

Giselles seasoned hunter personal mastery - Getting extra items and making them free to use sounds like it could be fun. Combine it with some other masteries and you could easily get 6-8 grenades that are free to use. It always feels like there's an edge to be had out of putting traps and pushing people into them with wind grenades or something but it never quite works out.

[Seasoned Hunter] can grant her 3 Immortality potions, 5 Smoke Generator uses, or even 3 Scourges if you're using a Skull Seal. On maps that grant Night Sight, I find that Hunter tends to not need the extra sight granted by [Reinforcing Scope] as much as Sniper does.

Nocturnal (and various others) - I never want to build for a scenario but since you can swap mastery boards and the mission select screen I keep wondering if it'd be worth having mastery boards specialised like that. "It's night time, quick, everyone be batman"

Of the 11 available violent cases, only 2 don't take place in Evening, Night, or Dark Indoor. I think it's safe to build using [Nocturnal] with this knowledge in mind.

Escape Death - I really like the idea of this one. You've got a chance to revive and you're trying to do the right things in battle to get that chance high enough before you die. That feels like excellent gameplay. It's also vanishingly unlikely you'd get it high enough to trigger twice in the same game so you should probably just equip Third Heart instead.

I found It works well with [Argonaut]; they even share 2 of the same set components. Perhaps the best user of these two is the Big Mutant Negoori: Its SP type benefits from being in Overcharge, and it has an overcharge ability that's worth spamming. I use them on mine.

Forced Duel - The idea of taunting everyone and holding them off my team mates seems really thematic. Unfortunately my team mates are probably better equipped to deal with being attacked what with the fantastic defences and self healing that other classes can access.

Taunt is (unfortunately) one of the very few reliable ways of stopping a Yasha from going onto the ceiling and stalling out the mission length. Taunted ranged-based enemies will try to move within 1 til of you before attacking, so they'll end up triggering [Forestallment] despite being perfectly capable of attacking you from a distance. Taunted enemies apparently only use their Basic abilities and nothing else.

[x_equals_speed]

My infinite phoenix Irene uses the mastery that causes you to exit overdrive with 20SP - it's only infinite if she's within 4 spaces of 6 or more fire tiles so moving to deliver her overdrive rather than doing a kick to create more fire is the weaker option - but I see how it's got a use in a more traditional build.

I didn't think of Escape Death on summons that I'm less concerned about squandering their resources early because I can just summon something else. I guess you also stick Awaken on it and do it's overcharge three turns in a row? That's still only a 25% chance to revive. Lets say you roll luck every turn you're still only on 46%, it seems like you'd be better off on average taking the revive mastery on and putting second heart in its place (even without its mastery set)

What's your list? You've been playing a lot, I'd be really interested to hear what sets/abilities/moves you've not found a use for yet.

[Delayed Hopkick]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

What's your list? You've been playing a lot, I'd be really interested to hear what sets/abilities/moves you've not found a use for yet.

This is really hard for me. There are a lot of masteries, abilities, and items that I would personally never use, but I can imagine the type of player that would use them, and through that I can conceive a use for it; I think you can find a purpose for anything if it aligns with your interests.

Some masteries that are very niche tend to be a part of mastery sets that are quite strong [Threat] is a good example). Even elements that are on the cusp of being objectively bad in the hands of players tend to be incredibly strong should an enemy unit possess them (you and I aren't very fond of [Goddess of Fortune], and it's hard to envision the type of player that would willingly use it, but could you imagine someone like Hellfire with this set? They would be ridiculous). Additionally, we tend to fight units who use a lot of game elements that a player can't truly take full advantage of due to the difference in squad count and pre-mission-start positioning ([High Ground Sniping], [Gathering], and the Yasha's Fancy Shell come to mind).

Maybe the Mark of ___ tools? I feel stuff like that are low-hanging fruits, though; I see them more as novelty items for collection (does that give it a use?).

[x_equals_speed]

I dunno but I collected them all and marked "Do not sell" as well :D

Nice to hear threat is part of a set :) I'm deliberately avoiding guides on mastery sets so I've only found 315/349 sets so far. I was sure I put it on someone and checked whether it was part of any set before, but perhaps they were set to equippable only and it'll be a beast or class set. I'll look forward to finding it :)

Yeah, luck is one of those mechanics that's kinda okay when you get it and outright scary when the enemy uses it, I see why it does them more good than you. I think I feel like I'm missing out because I like mutant and (that berserker one that gives random buffs for killing while enraged) and (the two sets that harvests enemy buffs) so I would like to make it work but it's component masteries are just so bad I can never bring myself to.

I can see how everything has a use sooner or later, but I reckon it's fair to say that some are more useful than others. If the next update said "We're upgrading goddess of fortune" I'd think "Neat, I'll check that out" and if it said "We're beefing up final resistance" I'd think "Is someone over there drunk or high?"

[Null Winter]

Pretty much the only reason I find myself using Irene's ult is the undodgeable aspect; it can be used to slap down a particularly annoying Yasha or Water SP enemy. The chain attack doesn't really see much use for the reasons you stated. If only it chained to nearby foes.

Free active item use kind of tapers off at higher levels; early on, especially before Anne, items are your only meaningful healing or inflicting pushes/stuns. Once you have characters that can do it with their natural abilities, then items lose their value. Giselle also doesn't really do much for the player as a pack mule.

I was under the impression that Deep Sea Escape was intended to help NPC bosses escape from lockdown inflicted by the player or to allow counterattack builds to not require a bunch of AT reduction mastery sets... except pretty much any meaningful counter build is going to end up with AT reduction. I can actually watch my Albus climb UP the action ladder with every counter.

A looooot of missions take place at night or indoors where it's counted as night. Past the start, you'll pretty much rarely be seeing daytime missions. Come to think of it, there also aren't many missions outside of the Winter set that have the Cold Wave effect. I get a lot of mileage out of any night time masteries and don't even bother swapping mastery boards for missions where they don't work; the game isn't hard enough to demand that level of micro-management.

I think Threat's biggest issue is bosses are the only ones with enough durability for it to affect them without taking them out... but almost every durable boss runs Final Resistance to negate crits. Womp womp. Perhaps if it is one day combined with a mastery that leaves enemies at 1HP when hit with that character?

Luck every turn is actually kind of powerful; that's a guaranteed dodge or critical hit. Heixing dropping Sweeping Fire with Luck can clear the map, in some cases. Several missions go on long enough that you'll be getting a lot of Luck procs and buffs. I actually got some good mileage with a Luck-stacking Ray when I was grinding out the (Un)Equivalent Exchange achievement with her.

Escape Death is just a worse Second/Third Heart, yeah. It only really pays off if you play risky and get almost back-to-back revives.

I think the devs have figured out that level difference masteries become useless once everyone's at the same maxed level, so I've noticed that several of the new sets with them add functions independent of levels or that proc at the same level.

Magic Knight Albus was so grossly unappealing to me that I never bothered to test any of his unique stuff, so I can't comment on this.

Forced Duel has potential, but we'll need to see how things get buffed or nerfed in the near future.

Skipping down to Hellgate: Pretty sure Hellgate was developed by the devs deciding to teleport Bianca right into the Yasha nest in Shadow Culvert and laughing. It also does nasty things in the Draki nest or near clustered gang bosses.

Eh, Linked Traps seems to exist solely so I could drop Overwatch from Giselle's Ability slots. It can do some work with her other Hunter sets when you toss traps on her tanky pet.

Any responsive attack that moves you up the ladder is a good thing.

[x_equals_speed]

It's hard to blame them, it *is* fun to teleport Bianca into that nest. I'm pretty sure I do it half of times I play that level and I'm not even using hellgate.

I bladestormed my way to the level cap, but changing to magic knight has been pretty neat. The cursed sword stacking gets quite decent, the drawback is barely noticable and the reduction in enemy block chance really adds up.

What's your list? Got anything you think looks fun but that has never fit into your builds?

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

What's your list? Got anything you think looks fun but that has never fit into your builds?

Pretty much any bush mastery or set, which sucks because Timas are my favorite beast species. Some of the bush effects are really good, but bushes aren't present on every map; even when they are there, there are usually only about two in isolated sections where the pavement has broken up. You can pretty much only use these in Iron Forest missions.

I like the idea of the sleeping beast masteries and sets, but there are just so many associated drawbacks that I don't even want to bother trying it out. When you run those, you're effectively choosing to give up control of a character and hope for the best.

Water/Poison sets. First of all, we still don't have a Water human user (Dual ESP option for Anne, please?), so only beasts can use Water masteries. Most of the Water sets directly contend with "core" survival sets on beasts, and sometimes even conflict with non-Water poison related sets! The Mutant Negoori you can pick up from the mutant beast storyline doesn't have enough room to run a good chunk of both the Negoori poison sets and the Water poison sets; you are forced to choose between dropping a large number of useful masteries and sets because they conflict too much.

The default Physical Resistance 1/2/3 sets. Running Physical Resistance 3 does give a truly insane amount of damage reduction, but it eats up 3 precious Defense slots that most of your frontline characters need for their class mastery sets or a counter-attack set-up.

Elemental Blessings. Unlike the Physical Resistance sets, these don't further buff your resistance to insane levels; instead, you get the easily obtained Regeneration effect after you've just been heavily poisoned, set on fire, frozen, or whatever because these sets don't even give basic immunities. Anne already hands out Regen for free just by existing as a White Mage, so I've never bothered with these.

[x_equals_speed]

It'd be neat if one day we saw some terrain alteration to bring more use into those things. Like I could imagine a mastery set that made constricting roots grow bush type terrain in the area for example.

A water user looks like it would be fun! I'm presently running an Irene that keys off fire tiles existing and a Heixing using poison bullets so having the ability to make poison people explode into fire fits neatly. I wondered if the witch mastery that gave options for earth, wind, and water ESP was hinting at the existence of a water witch in the future. It'll probably turn out to be a villian though ;)

I've never used the elemental or physical resists either, but unlike a bunch of the other things in this thread it does't bother me at all because I don't feel like I'm missing out on something interesting! If they provided a unique powerful buff (instead of regeneration) maybe I'd feel like I was missing out more, but then if they did that maybe they'd suck less :D

[Zloth]

I used Goddess of Fortune on Anne pretty early in the game. A really nice thing about that mastery set is that it's easy to discover. One mastery leads to another leads to another... and you've got everything needed. It seemed pretty obvious that all of them together would do something special, too. It may not be good for even the mid game, but I think it's a nice beginner mastery to help players get familiar with how things work.

I love Irene's overdrive. She's my legend killer! Works great on heavily-hitpointed robots, too. And she's my security blanket. There's some scary monsters out there and you won't always know when one will show up. As long as I've got Irene around, though, I've got a shot!

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by Zloth:

I love Irene's overdrive. She's my legend killer! Works great on heavily-hitpointed robots, too. And she's my security blanket. There's some scary monsters out there and you won't always know when one will show up. As long as I've got Irene around, though, I've got a shot!

Neurotoxin.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

Originally posted by Zloth:

I love Irene's overdrive. She's my legend killer! Works great on heavily-hitpointed robots, too. And she's my security blanket. There's some scary monsters out there and you won't always know when one will show up. As long as I've got Irene around, though, I've got a shot!

Neurotoxin.

Cauterize. With Final Flame active, debuffs even heal her, as long as she has Fire SP.

[RexEviL]

Final Flame takes too much space, magic conversion more reliable hp recovery.
Sadly almost all elemental masteries are useless on characters, since they have access to advanced class masteries.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by The nameless Commander:

Originally posted by Null Winter:

Neurotoxin.

Cauterize. With Final Flame active, debuffs even heal her, as long as she has Fire SP.

That last part is key~.

Back on topic for this thread, her potential Fire builds seem nice but lacking in comparison to Martial Artist. They also put allies at risk due to all the fire patches Irene will be leaving in her wake.

[x_equals_speed]

I'm having a tremendous time with her on a fire build, but it only worked when I went all in.

The key skill is joy of burning since that lowers your AT as your turn ends and so is not subject to the minimum turn time. Twilight of pain has the same rule. So running the two together it's very possible to make the delay between her turns 0 and have as many as you want.

The first consequence of this are that if she has the move that kicks a fireball and the talent that extends its range everything in that radius dies. Doesn't matter how weak it is because you've got as many shots as you want.

The second is that if you run the talent that gives her SP when overdrive expires and the phoenix set she's functionally invincible as long as the flames keep burning. If she revives as long as there are enough flame patches you can click "wait" nine times and the revive cooldown will be gone before the enemy can act again.

The rest of the build is just speed. Items that give speed. Talents that give speed. I think I originally had two mastery sets for speed, but ditched one as redundant because of diminishing returns.

Battle mage of steel also fits without competing for the key slots, which means she's not a pushover when there isn't fire and has the vigor recovery to keep the infinite attacks rolling without needing to recover vigor (which will delay her turn unless you've managed an absurd amount of fire)

Finally it has catharsis and...I forget, the fire one that lowers cooldowns when you kill burning enemies...so that she can do the kick that generates a radius of fire almost every turn.

Often she can happily kill half of the enemies on the map solo so in theory I wouldn't need to worry about what the fire does to her team mates. In practice having Giselle with mutate and fire tactics dropping confusing fire traps that create an Irene radius of infinite death while buffing herself for the trouble and Kylie sending a fire drone with reactive fire to create extra rows of three fire has been worth it.

It's weird in how it forces you to play because the number of flammable tiles in a 4 tile radius isn't usually something you think about and the shape of the maps starts to be something you consider in a different way.

Also completely falls apart if it's raining ;)