Gameplay FAQ / Walkthrough 1.12

[Phlebas]

'Orange' skills are elemental, check their damage type. You can see what that means in practice from the guide.

[Ghaleon]

'Orange' skills are elemental, check their damage type. You can see what that means in practice from the guide.

That's what I initially thought, but.. Maybe I'm mistaking some of the math.

Most enemies have over 100% resistance, and the elemental properties of an area are often +/- up to 30, without really favoring the plus side often.

The guide says: Extra elemental attack damage: regular attack damage* (100+Elementmod)/100. So assuming the element mod is 0, (which is seems to be on average) the damage should be the same (before defense). In the most extreme cases +30, it should only be +30%

Extra elemental damage blocked: Regular damage * (resist+resistmod) / 100.

Given that your average enemy has over 100% resist (though often 0 resist mod). I would rekon that the formulas suggest elemental attacks should be WEAKER, not stronger. What am I missing? Sorry for the trouble.

Taking a literal example:
I have a level 18 Farin, who has 210% attack.

I'm currently attacking enemy on plains with +0 defense, and -5 black element
Her shrouded sword 2 with 160 power, when hitting an enemy who is not blocking should deal
(210 + 0 ) * (100 + 0) * 160 /10000 = 336
It dealt 336 damage once I bypassed their defenses and crit her (she has 2 blocks).

This enemy has 92% defense and 140% resist btw
Since she has 2 blocks it's difficult to use the same formula for her full moon sword skill. I'll do so anyway by reducing the number of blocks using Aeselia's Ether sink 1 (which has no status modifiers excluding the actions -1 to the defender):
Doing the above, her second full moon sword hit for 980 (490 twice). According to the formula (if I understand it correctly):

(210 + 0) * (100 + 0) * 240 / 10000 = 504 (normal attack value so far):
Extra elemental bonus:
504 * (100 -5) / 100 = 478.8...so yeah, just like I said, it seems to be double damage.......oooohhh I just saw that teeny-tiny plus lol Didn't notice there was a plus between the two formulas.

Sorry, I'll leave this post up in case someone else facepalms the same way as me, save yourself the embarrassment!

Edit: I double checked the page again on my phone (where I first viewed the formulas), the plus is VERY hard to see on an i-phone, I feel redeemed >=p

[Volandum]

That's right. Later you'll be able to use skills which greatly change elementmod. You'll probably see the enemy use them before you do, of course.

[Mane]

I think the first one you will see is heat floor, a worthless move that increases red affinity. Worthless because only red spirits can use it and red supporters are better off just dealing damage. At the point in the game when you see it, most red element attack skills should have less power than the defense skills on your greens. So the damage isn't really boosted that much, if at all. The modifiers to really watch out for is silent field I & II, since those often gets used with heaven's sword.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah it seems like some skills seem extremely situational or redundant. Orpha
s screw attack is one example. With one action, and the inability to target anything other than the defender when they are alive, the action loss feature is wasted often. Only time I think it helps is if the defender is dead, and the leftovers are still a threat. But I don't think you can predict who it will target.

Btw, when using an action loss move against an all-rounder, what happens? They lose one defense action, 1 random one? One of each?

[Volandum]

There's another time: vs allrounders. Ether Sink has the same purpose, and both are very useful for boss halting. They lose actions off all their abilities, attack, def and support.

[Ghaleon]

Welp I just finished the game for the first time. I'm curious though, is there some place I can view the scrolling timeline thingies and the character profile thingies during the end at a reasonable pace? Preferably in a way I can pause it or something? Oh yes, and wtf is the significance of Esperia whispering "ryokuru" (or whatever it was) at the end?

Also, is there some explanation to why some attacks are way more powerful than their power would suggest? For example, shun's aura photon break says 900 damage, yet despite having less than 300% attack, it dishes out more damage than what you'd expect something with 2500 power to do. Esperia's 20% eternal move is similar, it says 20%, but..well, I could 1shot anything with it. Same with that matriarch's 15% support spell, it would dish out more like 70%. I rekon it's 15% X the caster's attack stat / your resist stat, but if that were the case it'd be more like 15%. Even if it was multiplied by the attack stat, it should only be 30-40%. I'm curious because I want to better be able to predict what I'm going up against in the harder modes without just learning by trial and error.

[lunarium]

Those attacks are "elemental", meaning they deal extra damage (x2). Resist only lower the extra damage portion...So yeah
Exception seem to be Estranger's support nuke, which seems to have some sort of formula that ignore even resist
Oh, and Tokimi's Critical One too, it totally ignores defense skill
For percent-based move, its power is depended on its target's current hp (when entering battle).
So...Esperia's Eternal move at lv 99 is
20% (move's power) x 500% (her attack stat) x 2 (green elemental) = 200% of its target's hp, not counting target's resist/defense stat/skill and field effect . Nothing in this game can survive that, even Takios (she's the only one that can 1HKO him in Super Hard, FYI).

[Volandum]

Ghaleon, magic is multiplied by half the square of the attack stat and divided by resist.

[Mane]

Critical one (I & II) does not ignore defense. The only time it ignores defense is when Tokimi uses time leap (lv99) as an all-rounder.