What is the point of petrification?

[なかの31]

I was facing a boss here that self heals Itself with an absurd amount of health, until came to my mind the solution of trying to petrify It, so I can deal damage on It while It can't do anything.

The problem with that strategy, is that petrified targets takes 10 times less damage from attacks.

Why should I bother with petrification, then?

[HeraldOfOpera]

If you can keep a single target (ie bosses) permanently petrified, then it literally doesn't matter how low your damage is as long as it isn't 0.

[なかの31]

Not very useful against bosses, since they have like 10% chance of being affected by debuffs.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Petrifying an enemy immediately followed by pickaxing will get you a chievo though.

[Handoiron]

The idea of both petrify and stun is to prevent all damage on non ambush levels.

This can lead to some issues with progress balancing simply because petrify and stun operate exactly the same no matter what your gear / relic progress is. You could technically just run 10 level sets with a petrify / stun group and if not unlucky, progress infinitely with naked dimension 1 characters.

That's why the resist factor and 90% damage reduction come into play. It allows the use of the skills if you actually need it for a few levels and are lucky but also makes it take forever to progress and be a lot riskier for long term runs.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Nakano27:

Not very useful against bosses, since they have like 10% chance of being affected by debuffs.

The majority of bosses are the resistance-lacking Janitor, and this becomes even more true once you hit Warrior Dimension. I agree that you're usually better off just raising stats and hitting things really hard, but that was going to be true regardless because Nurse and Mystic exist.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Mystic eventually loses her usefulness though... Moreso once you reach WD.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Cahos Rahne Veloza:

Mystic eventually loses her usefulness though... Moreso once you reach WD.

In terms of speed, yes, you eventually get to the point where it's faster to just die when/if you run out of MP. When you're talking about killing the Lord of Light for the first time (which is the original context of this discussion), being able to potentially keep fighting forever is all but mandatory because he can do so if the RNG doesn't like you.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by Cahos Rahne Veloza:

Mystic eventually loses her usefulness though... Moreso once you reach WD.

In terms of speed, yes, you eventually get to the point where it's faster to just die when/if you run out of MP. When you're talking about killing the Lord of Light for the first time (which is the original context of this discussion), being able to potentially keep fighting forever is all but mandatory because he can do so if the RNG doesn't like you.

Actually, mystic eventually loses usefulness because the only real use of mystic is the mana regen. Without the mana regen, you're better off using another class in that slot.

Mana regen loses it's usefulness once you reach the point in your total mana that you can make it from fairy to fairy without running out of mana. Not because you just die because you run out of mana but because you never run out of mana even without the mystic giving mana regen.

While I agree, using mystic in the mid to high dimension ranges during progression can help because you haven't met the max mana required to stretch between fairies yet, in any most boss fights it's better to go with a fast group and do sufficient damage quick enough to kill them before you run out of mana instead of trying to use a setup to last forever because that's how long it will take.

Considering you can start any boss run at only 10 levels from the fight, long term mana regen isn't nearly as important as killing power.