The GWJ JRPG Club - Q2 2020 - Bravely Second: End Layer

LastSurprise wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I'm still regretting picking the Red Mage. She seems only a small step above useless. Damn my morals. I'll swap her out for something else as soon as it's available. I might even go back to Bishop for a bit.

...you can use Spellcraft on other types of magic. I'm doing something similar right now: a Black Mage with Spellcraft, and it's working really well.

I confess I'm not sure I understand how this works. I'll play around with it and see if I can figure it out.

LastSurprise wrote:

Otherwise, if the Red Mage still has the "BP up after evading," skill, just sit on Red Mage until you get a Ninja, then give that skill to the Ninja. You won't be sorry.

For the time being I'll stick with Red Mage. I suppose I could go back to bishop, but Red Mage has a Cure option that heals fairly well and I'm doing okay in combat now. I'm curious to see if Red Mage improves as I level it up.

You'll either need to be a Wizard, which innately has Spellcraft, or have Wizard at a high enough level that your character learned Spellcraft. If you aren't a wizard, set Spellcraft as one of the character's passive abilities. Then, if you need to, set the other magic you want to use as the character's second, active ability. Voila!

You can use Spellcraft with the Holy Magic, Astral Magic, Summons, etc. It's really quite versatile.

Also, by the same token, you can use the Bishop's Good Measure skill with other magic too. You can even use Spellcraft on a spell modified by Good Measure.

LastSurprise wrote:

Not to mention that, if you've played Bravely Default, Red Mage DeRosa is easily one of the two most heinous members of the Eternian military.

Spoiler:

Working with the Venus sisters, he corrupted the population of Florem, in part by drugging them. The process of confronting him involves noticing that he's walking around at night with a lot of hot women, so (IIRC) you infiltrate his layer by putting Edea in a sexy outfit and using her as bait. It's a dungeon under the city, where he brings women to test out his drugs. And it's strongly implied that this it's a sex dungeon, too. Gross.

I think the only one arguably worse is Qada the Salve-Maker, who committed mass murder with chemical weapons.

On the other hand, I don't think this DeRosa is the same one that you initially encounter in BD, as (I think) this game takes place in the fifth and final parallel world that you reach during the true ending. And the Eternian forces got progressively less terrible in each parallel dimension. It's like the game started off in the worst timeline.

More commentary on Bravely Default:

Spoiler:

This is not entirely true. While most of the asterisk holders get less evil (or at least some of their reasoning gets revealed in each progressive world), Qada, the merchant, and DeRosa (they are also the ringleaders trying to overthrow Braev) are the three that actually get WORSE with each progressive world. At first Qada seems like a misunderstood (if slightly deranged) scientist who took a wrong step somewhere, but it is fully revealed that he is just a power hungry, petulant child, who wants to kill everyone.

I forget how DeRosa's arc starts (as I detested him from the beginning and always enjoyed killing him), but as you get more information, it looks like he not only manipulated the people of Florem, but also the three sisters serving underneath him. The Summoner is the least affected because she was gone for several years with Barbosa seeking the Susano-o summon. He also really enjoys what he is doing to the people. I think there is more revealed about him that I am not remembering as I really hated this character.

The bottom line is, the people who are trying to overthrow Braev are actually really nasty pieces of works without any redeeming qualities or hints at redemption arcs, unlike the other Eternian generals.

I played a little bit more last night. Left Al-Khampis into the desert to chase that side story that was now available, and was getting beat pretty hard by the random encounters. I figured that was a good sign that I needed to level up a bit (was level 12 I think), so I went back to Eternian Central Command and beat up imperials outside Edea's room for a bit. Got to level 14 and a couple of jobs to 4/5 for each character. Hopefully that will be enough to get me through the next section.

I played a bit more last night, got to Level 18 and picked up the astrologer asterisk. I immediately switched out of Red Mage to try it out.

I'm now chasing down a side quest of some sort.

Combat is working much better now that I've leveled up a bit, both overall and with specific jobs.

I do agree with the comment that sometimes the social sequences and bouncing back from place to place gets kind of long, but on the whole I like the balance. Really enjoying the game.

LastSurprise wrote:

You'll either need to be a Wizard, which innately has Spellcraft, or have Wizard at a high enough level that your character learned Spellcraft. If you aren't a wizard, set Spellcraft as one of the character's passive abilities. Then, if you need to, set the other magic you want to use as the character's second, active ability. Voila!

You can use Spellcraft with the Holy Magic, Astral Magic, Summons, etc. It's really quite versatile.

Also, by the same token, you can use the Bishop's Good Measure skill with other magic too. You can even use Spellcraft on a spell modified by Good Measure.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks! I knew a bit of that but I don't think I'd put all the pieces together yet. Super helpful!

Thanks for the tip.. with spell craft I can now use my Summoer to single hit

Malkroth — that’s right, I had forgotten about those specific plot beats from Bravely Default. Thanks for the refresher!

So as a part of the ongoing thoughts of physical attack classes that are good (Thief and Hawkeye were discussed previously), Ninja is really good. Fragile, but good, and I've got Tiz going hard on this one.

So, you have to get late into the Ninja tree to get there, but there is an ability that doubles the number of hits your character does at once. And I'm talking about when you attack just once, the attack hits a certain number of times (2-5 or whatever). So the Ninja seems to start at 9 hits with each blade. And to maximize the number of hits that actually land, I put Eagle Eye on him (from the Hawkeye class). And I've got Tiz triple wielding, so he's got three blades. Further, the Ninja has the Dual Wield ability, which means no penalty for wielding multiple weapons. But when you use that hit doubling ability, now you're hitting 18 times per blade, or 54 times across the three blades. So with a few random critical hits thrown in that seem to reliably land, I'm easily clearing 5000 of damage per attack. Now lets say that I brave 4 times, use that ability and attack three times. That's around 15,000 damage rolled out all at once mainly through the basic attack.

But let's take it further. I'm not there yet, but there's a passive ability the Ninja can learn that raises the max number of hits from 18 to 36. So this thing is going to get ridiculous at some point. And outside of Eagle Eye, it's all basically provided just through the Ninja class, so it's pretty self sufficient.

I'm currently using Thief as a secondary so I can steal items or health, but I can also see how Hawkeye would be a good secondary, as you could add elements or physical defense piercing the attacks. But that's potentially a lot of setup you have to do in a boss fight (evasion + multihit + Hawkeye abilities), so maybe letting the DPS speak for itself is the best action here.

Only downside is how fragile he is, but the ninja has a lot of abilities around raising evasion and counterattacking or boosting attack after dodging an attack. So fast glass cannon with dodging skills.

Of course, since I've gone almost entirely offensive classes, I don't have a good tank or defender anywhere to draw heat from my fairly squishy team. The other class I could have chosen from that sidequest would have been a good tank, and is probably also a good choice. But it's hard to be mad with that output.

Wow.... I will look out or the ninja, since I left Thief get away. I still have Tiz on freelancer and waiting for him to get the JP+ points ability

I did a test of how much damage a ninja could do, since I wanted to see how big the numbers could get at this point in the game. I'll put it in spoilers in case someone would rather figure stuff out for themselves.

Spoiler:

So I wanted to get a gauge of how much damage that ninja could do, so I tested it out on a level 4 Ba'al who had about 31,000 HP, which is the highest level I've fought so far. It still has really high defenses at level 4 (300+), so you're going to need defense ignoring attacks, so I flipped the Tiz's subclass over to Hawkeye. I also put Astrologist onto Magnolia to I could buff his attack. My entire party was at level 48.

The plan was simple; buff Tiz's attack with the Astrologer, and on turn one have Tiz cast Warhead on himself to turn his attack type to Wind (the weakness of this Ba'al), and to use Harpoon (to ignore defenses). I Defaulted everyone else until Tiz's turn came up again, then I Braved Tiz all the way up, and used the ability to double how many hits he got, and unloaded with three regular attacks.

So that was a lot of set up, and I don't know the exact final number, but those three boosted supereffective regular attacks were enough to take the Ba'al from 31,000 HP to zero. And I assume it will work similarly for other bosses, minus the elemental weakness. This seems game breaking.

Here's a fun little combo from Bravely Default that I assume will still work in Second:

Spoiler:

Red Mage has a passive skill that gives you 2 BP every time you are affected by a negative status effect. It can be the same status affect that you already have. Equip all your characters with this skill and then someone who can cast poison and Esuna (Red Mage works) with group cast. Target your party with poison three times then use your 4th action to cast Esuna. Now repeat this every turn and everyone get +6 BP every turn, so you can quad brave every turn or use some of the bigger BP consuming skills without fear of going negative.

Malkroth... thanks for the tip... I will give it a try
For some reson I thought the BP points stopped at 3 stacks

I've got to try some of these cool tactics. I'm not thinking at the right level.

I played a bit last night after dinner. This game is super realistic. In game my characters kept getting hit with sleep spells. I kept nodding off in real life, too, then waking up and not knowing what I was doing. After a bit I realized I was too sleep deprived to keep going, but I did get everyone to Level 19 before I stopped.

I caught up on sleep last night and will dig back in today.

Darkhaund wrote:

Malkroth... thanks for the tip... I will give it a try
For some reson I thought the BP points stopped at 3 stacks

They do (or, in the original, 4 BP with a special skill from Edea's dad, the Templar).

But, they also cap at -4. And so you could have a 6-point swing in a given turn that takes you out of negative and into positive BP. In Bravely Second, this is especially good for the whole "one more fight" thing, as you can fight indefinitely so long as you can keep generating Brave Points.

And as long as i kill them in one turn... I still dont fully understand how to accomplish it

I haven't played more since a couple of days ago, but I'll probably play some more later today. Anyway, I wanted to record a few more thoughts on where I am in the game, especially as there have been some really interesting fights.

I loved the whole Geyser Grotto sequence. Having a different bonus or malus in each room made me experiment with job class combinations, and the final room -- where everyone started with 3 BP -- was a great place to string together multiple victories and really get some good battle rewards. It's fun when the game plays with its battle systems within a given dungeon.

The two story boss fights after this also were really enjoyable. Spoiler-tagged for details:

Spoiler:

Vs. Janne, and then vs. Angelo Panettone the Patissier. Both of these forced me to re-evaluate tactics that would work well in other boss fights. Janne dropped into Aurochs Stance right away, and stayed there for most of the battle, plus he only attacked once per turn. From Aurochs Stance, he'd counter, and he hit like a tank: one attack could kill some squishy party members, and two could kill anyone. So I couldn't unleash multiple attacks in a row, and had to take this one much more methodically.

The Patissier had me working at cross-purposes with my traditional RPG habits of eliminating the support characters before concentrating fire on the boss. That one katana-wielding soldier would similarly counterattack and hit like a tank, and then she had a move that could kill anyone in the party who was low on health! That combo, and the fact that a Ghost party member counts as dead, produced a couple losses in quick succession. I found the winning formula when I just left her alone--she was much less dangerous when I wasn't attacking her--and took out the Patissier first.

Also, by the way, I am finding the Catmancer's Whisker Sense (no surprise attacks, boosted chance of "feeling brave") and the Astrologian's Precognition (enemy never gains first strike, or bonus BP at the start) to be great for stringing together multiple victories. I had a few fights in a row where I lucked into "feeling brave," and was able to get up to a 2.8x multiplier on my rewards!

Onward to the end of Chapter 2!

Darkhaund wrote:

And as long as i kill them in one turn... I still dont fully understand how to accomplish it

There are a bunch of different ways you can do it. I typically brave 4x with one character (or maybe two, if I think I'll need 8 actions). Then in the next battle, brave 4x with another, etc. Once everyone's exhausted, I'll play once more if I think I can survive all the free attacks the enemy will get until my BP is restored.

I'm using Magnolia as a support character, so I'll often have her use an attack item like the Bomb Fragment 4x. It's 500 damage to every enemy, 750 if you're hitting an elemental weakness, or 750 / 1125 if you equip the Catmancer's Attack Item Amp skill. I often use Tiz as a magical character, so I'll have him cast magic modified by spellcraft, or summon magic which is inherently powerful. Edea and Tiz are my physical attackers, so I'll often have them just attack 4x each, and this is most often where I'll need 2 people to clear a random encounter. But, sometimes I can do it with one depending on the enemies I run into and my character setup.

I see.. thanks for th tip.
Btw I am about to get either the Black Mage or the Ranger

Spoiler:

Why do they have to make it so hard to decide which job lol... I want to Destroy the BLM dude because it feels right, but I fear the Ranger will be more useful. All that sequence was a bit too much and unnecessary

The black mage is really useful, especially if you didn't already take the summoner. I'm hitting for crazy damage with black magic + spellcraft.

And I'm a fan of the Black Mage's MDEF pierce passive ability, even if it comes at the price of 3 passive ability slots.

I already have Wizard + summoner well.. what the heck.. i dont even like teh ranger outfit so ill get the blm

LastSurprise wrote:

Edea and Tiz are my physical attackers, so I'll often have them just attack 4x each, and this is most often where I'll need 2 people to clear a random encounter. But, sometimes I can do it with one depending on the enemies I run into and my character setup.

I feel like grinding random encounters is where I am really noticing the physical classes not being great. Only hitting one enemy at a time makes the one round battle really tough, while my magic-users coast through often without needing all four BP.

Update for me.

All my characters are level 33 and i just got to the fire crystal. The story is getting weirder but I am still liking it. Good to see some old faces. I need to start focusing on my JOB levels because I have been bouncing back and froth and they are going between levels 5 and 7.

Spoiler:

I just found out that Yokos is that weird Alien/monster thingy and we had that Sword of the Brave plot happen. Also, something seems odd and fishy about Agnes being so cool calm and collective while being held captive... I dont know.. it is starting to feel off.

I picked up the Summoner asterisk last night, then took on one of those Moon Ba'als. Boom! Level 21-22 in one quick battle. Nice!

GTC is a beast to have as a friend in this game. He whittles down those space Ba'als in like an hour. He's a living cheat code.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

GTC is a beast to have as a friend in this game. He whittles down those space Ba'als in like an hour. He's a living cheat code.

I generally have him assigned to one Ba'al, and everyone else assigned to another. It's worked very nicely for me.

Sundown wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

GTC is a beast to have as a friend in this game. He whittles down those space Ba'als in like an hour. He's a living cheat code.

I generally have him assigned to one Ba'al, and everyone else assigned to another. It's worked very nicely for me.

Ha! Yes! I did the same thing last night when I went to sleep.

So have GTC`S sh*t fire and attack one Ba'al and the remaining 3 on another... mmmm

I’m close to done with Ch.3, and the story is heating up now. I just completed a second visit to the Water Temple, which is a contextless way to say where I am without spoiling any plot beats.

I’m also starting to appreciate more of the options I have as sub classes. Most of my party is now at Job level 9 for their main classes (Yew – Wizard, Magnolia – Bishop, Edea – Hawkeye, and Tiz – Ninja), and the grind to 10 is ridiculous, so I’ve been trying out and grinding up some of the support classes I haven’t messed with yet. And I found some silly ways to use them. I’ll post something I came up with in spoilers.

Spoiler:

So the interesting one that I’ve found has an unusual use is the Patissier, which you get at the end of Ch.2. What makes it interesting is that the very first ability it has is to debuff enemies, whether reducing stats by 25%, giving a status ailment, or giving them an elemental weakness.

And now you see why it’s so interesting. That last one. Since most bosses don’t have elemental weaknesses, slapping one onto them helps everyone do a lot more damage. And I can confirm it works on bosses, since I’ve used it now on two different bosses to give them a fire weakness, then had everyone unload with Fire spells or fire-tinged physical attacks, courtesy of Hawkeye’s Warhead. So now I get a lot more bang for my buck from each attack. And further, some of the Patissier’s passive abilities increase the odds of the debuffs working, extend the length of the debuffs, and also have a chance to keep any items you use, and since you have to use some of the dessert items to make the Patissier’s abilities work, that’s very handy. I wouldn’t use this in random battles, but for edges in a boss fight? Absolutely.

It also gives Yew something to do support wise, since the physical attackers are now blowing my mages out of the water in terms of damage. So he mops up the adds with spells (since they always have elemental weaknesses), and then spend his time debuffing the boss and let Magnolia heal and raise our attack and defense, while Edea and Tiz just unload with hard hitting supereffective attacks that can bypass DEF if needed. It’s been a recipe for success.

Also, I took Monk and Performer in the Ch.3 sidequests, and it looks like I have one more to go. Monk seems to be a single target physical class, which I have plenty of already, so I might have gone with the other option if I had a do over. It was more geared towards physical crowd control, which I don’t really have at all outside of Hawkeye’s Sidewinder. Performer is a support class that can give allies BP back. Seems useful and could be an alternate for Astrologer since they have some overlap, but I’ll have to play around with it first.

Nice, Sundown! You are really blazing a trail.

In Bravely Default, Performer was really the way to break the game, at the end.

Spoiler:

At the end of the game, my characters were all Freelancers, which pick up the Mimic skill and also had the innate ability Late Bloomer -- giving them a boost to all stats for each other job class you've mastered. I'd have my fastest do that BP boosting skill, then mimic it a couple of times, and boom, everyone has full BP. Combined with Slow World, which I don't think exists in this game, the party could take multiple actions each turn and the boss would only get a BP every other turn.

I've now just started Chapter 3. I took the Ninja from the final sidequest, and it's really good but I don't yet have Utsusemi and I also think I need better weapons than knives. I reached level 9 with Charioteer (Edea) and really appreciate the most recent skill, Wanton Destruction, which hits the whole battlefield really hard.

I haven't yet experimented with the Patissier, but I think I'm going to switch Magnolia over soon. She's becoming my item specialist. For random encounters, that chance to keep items could be really useful in preserving high-end attack items like Bomb Arms and such. Also, it could go well with her Catmancy.

Hello just.. i just got the "Baker" guy down and I am stuck on the next boss that owns me. I was tired last night so I will give it a shot today again. What a crazy job that "Baker" lol

You guys are way ahead of me, I'm still in the Prologue (and I just got a fourth party member). In the mean time, I'm still trying to develop the moon base.

This game has so many systems, it's kind of hard to wrap my head around it.