DFFOO [JP][Krile IW] Stalling for Kain with Papalymo + Braska
17It is honestly getting increasingly enticing to just HA+3 Braska's armor and get more HP dmg cap up for the entire party. That speed charging and FR simply allows you to finish the fight before it gets ugly when their FG is full.
This time is more about partners for Kain (+Braska) before getting to the FT. His old good Papalymo makes a glorious return after Kain has got his BT+. Obviously you can use a BT character instead of Papalymo, but LD characters are still extremely relevant, so why not have a bit of fun.
Honestly this pair was good before with a 3rd support character, since Kain did not have any support capabilities. Now that he has a BT+, giving BRV /HP dmg up and HP dmg cap up support, this pair becomes even more lethal. So I decided to just let him BT+ early and fly off.
Then you add Braska into the mix, not only he is a staller himself, but also a mild support character with a strong FR and speed FG building. So when start looping between his skills, not only does it trigger countless of Kain's Lancets, it also give Papalymo stacks in the process. So Papalymo would just get so many polyglots to spawn even more Lancets.
Because of all these stalling and Lancets, the boss gets pushed back so much that the 2nd turn of Raijin's LDCA did not even get to wear off. Before switching out Papalymo with Ramza preparing for the FT phase, they actually shaved off 30% within 10 turns, which is 10% more than what the tight turn count limit asks for.
Technically I got a little bit too trigger happy with Papalymo that I forgot to let Braska finish his LD phase before going straight into FT. So I ended up calling the 3 turn Ramza friend a little bit early, thus may have hurt his active turn dmg potential inside FT without building a big bonus first. Though in the grand scheme of things, this did not matter much as Kain was supposed to finish the fight using Cross Jump (his FR) on the last FT turn. Instead him jumping back down hurt too much and killed both bosses before that could happen lol. So practically that extra bit of Ramza's potential dmg is not needed at all. (At 600+% with 2 HP dmg cap up BT+, Cross Jump would easily go through 10M+).
This team also works really well in Ch8 part 2, since the stall with Papalymo + Lancet would pretty much destroy the pegodas as the FR gauge approaches 100%.
I feel that Kain as both a off-turn dmg dealer and a BT+ user is a very strong character that you can use in a lot of places. He also goes very well with characters that spam non-attack abilities to build FT HP dmg bonus as you can still get some dmg out while they do their work, even though his Lancet may or may not contribute to the HP dmg bonus building itself.
At the same time, there are other partners that Kain can benefit from. For example, the almighty Cid Raines actually also goes well with him and Braska. I tried him once and the result was really great (case in point, 9.7M at 449% HP dmg bonus with EX). Not only does he launch such that Kain can participate, his turn manipulation /delay also speeds up Braska's FG building and push back the enemy for full party launches.
Selphie is another obvious example that speeds up Braska's EX and makes all enemies practically perma launchable. The BRV gain up and refund is an extra bonus for Braska.
The pairing with Papalymo actually makes me really curious the FL awakening or FR for characters that repeatedly spam certain attack abilities. They tend to have lower dmg per turn and require more turns for the dmg output the show, so I wonder how they would calibrate the bonus and guage building.
So far I don't think FR takes away any identity that LDs grant the characters. It is still the most required piece of equipment for a single character and even if you don't have the FR of a particular character, you can just utilize the FR of another or even just a friend to churn out some ridiculous dmg. This era simply asks for even more intricate team building than ever to win big.
(Unless you are doing the Snow trick with 3 BT+ and in which case, you can probably roll over most of the content, and that's why I refrain from doing it in the actual clears.)
Probably the last episode focused on Braska and his associated teams. (unless I see a Yuna BT+ friend)
If there is one last thing to add to Braska, his S2 has BRV refund, so there is a point in using it to prevent being broken and pushed back other than filling EX or for meeting elemental dmg requirements.
As much as I want Kam, I probably want the rumored Gabranth BT+ coming on Divine Odin around the corner more and should save a little bit. So ... contemplating on skipping all of 2nd half of Nov lol.