Starting a new charicter(All forces please come)

[Mindblade]

(Didn't know if I should put this in Tech, so if i'm wrong, the mod will move it)

I won a new VMU, so after I get a good snapshot of my friend and I, i'm going to start a force.

The question is, which one should I start?

FOneweral is out of the question. I am not starting one. I like what I see in FOmarl, because it's got the accuraccy for a TP-Draining Handgun, or something like that. FOnewm is OK, although it doesn't look quite as nice as FOmarl(hehheh) What do you think?(callout to all other forces)

(Credits for new sig go out to josh)

[Mistkerl_Zwo]

FORCES ARE LAME

i would recommend no be a force at all. But if you must, then i say fomarl is best of the 3 and she doesn't look like a pansy either. Just remember, at level 65, you will only have 320 HP, and sure you will have 1000 TP or so, but every spell will drain 35 pts, only do maybe 150 pts damage, and when thats all you can use... well you'll be burning the midnite trifluids. Not to mention, yer ata / atp stats will be so low u cn't use jack for weps (but even if u did you would get knocked the !@# out every other attack).

I am a fonewearl, and there is nothing wrong with her, so don't discount her out of hand, i think the best thing about her is she is such a rare character to see online.

ok, i feel better now that i have vented.

[Xtra]

The key to being a Force is understanding that your start will be slow. Once you get to level 18 or so, things start to speed up.

Get urself a TP stealing gun and you'll be set for life. I have a Mind Railgun + 15 that steals 36 TP per hit. Needless to say. I only use fluids during boss battles now and I let the Razonde, Rafoie, Deband, Gibarta, etc. FLY. Play with me and i'll show you a Force that wreaks shop.

[Mistkerl_Zwo]

yeah, you wreckin at lvl 30, but the higher your force get, the weaker he becomes relative to the other classes. See how much fun it is to play dark falz on vhard as a force... it sucks!!!

[Neojin]

Enough with the Force Sucks stuff http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_frown.gif

I like casters and this Chicky is kewl as all git out. Heres the deal, as a force your NOT SUPOSE TO TANK!

/drooooool TP stealing gun
/bounce

Umm i'm only 10 right now, what zone do those drop? I've cleared the Dwagon finaly, but the caves are purty darn hard, thank goodness for mobs not goin past the zone line.

[b]Ryiko! lv 10 FOnewear[b]

[b]GYRL POWA!!![b]
?

[Moiraine]

I guess it all depends on how you like to play.

I have a level 72 FOmarl and I enjoy my character a lot. Even though the other Forces can achieve higher TP, I would recommend the FOmarl of their better ability with weapons (eventually).

I agree that playing a Force is tough in the beginning, since you are so weak. However, I think it pays off in the long run, because at very high levels, Forces are some of the most in-demand characters in the game when it comes to assembling a party. Some Hunters/Rangers on these boards will rip on Forces and say they suck....but they sure like to have them along on difficult quests, etc. I can drop into any lobby online and immediately get bombarded with offers to play.

I've found a lot of success (and popularity) by playing more of a support role in a party rather than an offensive role. I did this quite abit in my mid-level phase. I would drop the necessary attacks to receive experience, but I mainly spent my time casting all of my support spells, healing players, and dropping the necessary Reverser when needed. This might sound boring to many of you, but I actually enjoy it. On top of that...I made a BOATLOAD of friends by playing this way. At low and mid levels, players really appreciate having someone play the support role. However, if I'm playing with high level characters, I tend to switch to offensive play (which is more fun now that I can finally use some cool weapons).

Playing a Force is not for everyone, but I think it's something everyone should try at least once. If all you love to do is Hack and Slash...then you will probably find it a bit dull.

One more thing...one severe downside of playing a Force is OFFLINE play at Very Hard levels. I'm convinced that it's nearly impossible to defeat Dark Falz in Very Hard with a single Force. However, I might change my mind when I get closer to level 100.

[Xtra]

Good post Moiraine. Good to see you here as well. You sure do level fast http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_wink.gif. LOL.

[Neojin]

Agree nice post http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif
Gives me something to look forward to.

Ok now grrrr, where are all my spells?
I know im only level 10, but I would think I would have more.

I have the fire spell, up to lv 3, Ice, Lighting, the defense buffer one, and heal. My question is how do I cast like the heal and buff on other players? Or can I only do that at higher levels and right now its self only

[b]Ryiko! lv 10 FOnewearl[b]

[Zephyr]

I may be misremembering this since it was a while ago but I think all the support spells become area effect at lvl 3.

[frostbite]

Well I just started a Force and she's great! not as much endurance but Its not a prob if you know how to play them. I don't even mind gettin nice and close to all the monsters, as a matter of fact I enjoy running around them and tryin to get a hit or two from their back, much more exciting then the hunter who just sit there n hack away.
Nakoruru

[Z-man]

I just lost a level 48 Fonewm due to a crash. I really liked using the character. Yes, it?s slow going at the beginning, but it picks up in the late teen especially if you keep increasing your spell levels.
I too played the support role quite a bit and found it to be a fun and rewarding spot on a team. While buffing the other players, I?d cast area affect spells for mucho exp at every turn. In turn, I leveled up while making lots of new pals who were always generous with the force loot.
One of my favorite games ever was in the ruins on very hard with a team of three high level droids as an assault squad and myself as the buffer. When I joined the game, they were soooooo excited to find that it was a force! We cleaned house and made out like bandits.
I started a new character, a hunter, and I?m ambivalent about it. I want my old Fonewm back!

[Mistkerl_Zwo]

yep, you all sound just like i did when i started my force, and i said all the same arguments to people who were dissing forces then...

I really really want the force to not be lame, but the fact is, they are very weak compared to the other classes. They are given nothing that makes them special. I mean, they don't even have unique spells! I chose the force because i thought it would get progressively more powerful but the fact is that they don't. I think sega let us down really bad with the poor force stats:

force hunter
max power 483 710
max mst 670 590

a high level hunter is just as effective of a spell caster, can wear much better armor and use much more powerful weapons. A hunter can easily roam vhard by himself, but any force trying to better beware.

you can believe or not, but all you low lvl forces that think it will get so much better when you are over lvl 50, well just wait and find out for yourself. don't get me wrong, its fun to support other players etc etc, but it just gets old when you have to rely on other players to even play.

[Deedlit]

Anyone who say forces suck go on a JAP server.. its amazing all the forces on there.. i saw my friend go fight Faltz on V.hard.. he is a HuCast everyone else was a force.. they pounded him in minuets... the only problem is most people don't use forces correctly.. so whoever says forces suck.. just don't know how to use them efficiently...

[Mindblade]

Thanks guys. I'm going to start a FOmarl, just to try it out, and maybe just level up for fun, when i'm not ripping it up with my RAcast and his Visk or my HUmar and his Double saber/Chain Sawd/Stag/Last Survivor/Flowen's Sowrd http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif A friend of mine hooked me up with some sweet weapons. He said he counten't use most of them, because he is a force. Sweet!

[Zephyr]

It isn't the fact that they're using them correctly that allows those Japanese forces to handle Dark Falz on V.Hard with a group, it's that they're over lvl 90 and they can finally take _one_ hit from his sword... or even more likely they're 100 and then you have no idea how many HP's they have since there's no cap. Also if they have a def and power heavy mag and a decent weapon (GUSH raygun +9 or a Vice +9 50% against dark) they can be a poor man?s hunter and do ok. So the issue isn't whether or not a force can be successful, they can. It's if when they're very high level they're only performing on par with Hunters 30 levels below them. Forces being relegated to a support role would make more sense if they were the only ones capable of it, but in general the hybrid versions of the hunter and ranger are just as good at it where it matters... the freezing effect of rabarta, healing, buffing and curing. I think probably one of the biggest problems is how Forces max out their MST at around lvl 40-50. Once they get their techs in the lvl 13-15 range it dawns on them that that's it... their spells will never become more powerful from that point on... and that's when they really start to fall behind the rest of the classes who keep improving.

Don't get me wrong, I like playing my Force. If my save got corrupted today I'd probably make a new one... it's just that when forces gripe about game balance they do have a point ;p.

[addsig]

<font size=1>[ This message was edited by: Zephyr on 2001-02-27 21:49 ]</font>

[TheHangedMan]

Some notes here, coming from a lvl 100 FOnewm...

As some have said there is a bit of a slow start, but once you have any of the GI or RA spells, you'll also level quicker than everyone else, so while you start off weak for the first few levels, you'll quickly gain levels much sooner than the Hunters or Rangers.

Yes, you will do less damage on a creature with techs than a hunter the same level (unless you have a sufficiently high level grants). However, the Hunter can't hit everyone in the room at the same time.

Other classes are not required to play. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif The fact is, when you're a force, you have to do a lot of running. You just do even more of it when you're alone.

On the lower levels, you're going to go through fluids like water. The TP stealing guns, while popular, are mostly ineffectual due to the force's low accuracy. When you can only steal TP one out of 5 times, it becomes rather pointless to try. When you get to a higher level, you can switch to the double saber (or even sooner, depending on whether or not you're carrying over a mag to your new force). The double is especially effective with other players, because while your hunters & rangers are taking on the enemy, you can come up behind them and hit them with it, gaining around 40 TP per hit, with six possible hits. You can also play, as someone said, a poor man's hunter. However, you can do this at much lower levels than they'd have you believe. All you need is a soul eater, and you can dish out weapon damage from a fairly good distance (for a weapon), saving a bit of TP here and there when you only have a couple/weak enemies to finish off. While some of the rare force weapons (magical piece) are beautiful and fun toys, I spend most of my time with the soul eater & double saber. As soon as you have a high enough level razonde to start freezing the enemies, you'll also start saving more fluids, because you can use physical attacks when they're frozen. This also makes it easier on the rest of your party, not having to worry about anything attacking them as well.

DF on V. Hard:
Eventually you get to a point where you have enough HP to survive the grants. That's really the deciding factor between being able to beat him by yourself and not. The rest of the attacks can all be avoided. There's also a sort of tradeoff here, regarding a ranger vs. a force. With a hunter or ranger, you can do much more damage to DF in one hit. My lvl 15 Foie only does 47 damage per hit to DF's last form. However, it reaches across the entire circle, and it hits every time. So while you may see the other classes doing much more damage than me with a single hit, I'm constantly hitting him, so it still averages out.

Now, some of the drawbacks of being a force:

We're screwed as far as weapons. Level 100 and my best weapons are soul eater and a double saber? Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? Even the rare force weapons, while nice, just don't do enough for me. They're much more suited to the upper mid levels. Why use magical piece when I can use soul eater which does more damage and attacks like a sword-class weapon. I also want to know just why the hell I can't even use some of the stronger variants of the few weapons that are actually available to me. I can use soul eater, but not soul banish. Double saber, but not stag cutlery or twin brand. Photon claw, but none of the other claws. Why? This is why: The techs are intended to be the equivalent of the Hunters' & Rangers' weapons. All well and good in theory. However, there's a severe problem with the frequency that the techs are dropped. While not every high level hunter may have a chain sawd or twin brand, they at least have something that will do some pretty respectable damage. Forces are forever stuck with not having high level techs. When you're level 100 and you're still walking around with Grants 10 (as I am), something is wrong. They also seem to have forgotten that weapons can be dropped. Once you use a disk, it's gone. Now, take into account the rarity of the disks (with some people who still don't even so much as have either grants or megid), and distribute that not only among forces, but among all classes, since they can use the disks as well. It's virtually impossible to find those grants & megid 15s that will make a force truly... a force.

My pointless solutions to the problem:

Frequency of the high level disks needs to be seriously increased (especially considering the use once, gone forever nature of them). It's ridiculous how hard high level grants & megid are to get. It would have also been a good idea to restrict the higher level classes of spells to only forces. It would have provided more disks to the forces, as they wouldn't be used by the other classes, and it would have made the forces more unique and better at what they're there for. Possibly grants & megid could have been force-only, or the entire "hard" class (RA-s/grants/megid). Either would have been a good start to solving some of the problems with forces, while not unbalancing things and making them too strong.

After it's all said and done though... I've enjoyed a force, and really, if you're a good one, everyone else will enjoy you being a force as well. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_wink.gif A friend who has a high level force told me just today, as he was playing his new Ranger, that he had always felt as if his force was a burden to the party. Now that he was a ranger, he appreciated how great it was to have a force in his party.

[Zephyr]

I agree with you on the Soul Eater and the Double Saber. I got my Soul Eater at around lvl 50 or so and I grindered it to +35. It?s a nice weapon for a force though not nearly as impressive as it is in other classes? hands. If you?re soloing offline it?s a really good choice? though as you progress through V.Hard it becomes increasingly lackluster. Once you get to the mines you need something that can do more focused and fast damage for the groups of Sinows. I was playing around with some vices (Which are the weakest of the rare mechguns and the only rare mechgun a FOnewm can use) and it turns out they work quite well. If you grinder one to +9 and it has +30% machine and you have your shifta running a combo hits 9 times for like 120 x 9 at close range? and knocks the enemies back. Since they?re the most common rare mechgun hopefully I can assemble a collection of them with decent photons for each area. As far as Dark Falz Hard and V.Hard are concerned I?ve always used a heart-series (heart ? drain ? fill ? gush) raygun on him to relatively good effect. On V.hard it hits for 50-60 + 90 HP drain? and you can hurt him even when he?s flashing and invulnerable (it's also kind of cool because it clues you in to when he's almost dead... if it starts draining less than 90 HPs Dark Falz won't be around much longer). When I find a Vice with decent photons vs Dark I?ll see if that works better.

I think, like you said, once Forces get area effect spells they can level the fastest online? but once they hit 100 I think they progress the slowest because they can?t solo V.Hard Ruins or even Mines as effectively as the other classes to collect techniques, equipment and materials. I suppose ideally you?d find a group of friends online who share loot with you at that point, but most players seem to have the notion that lvl100 players who pick up stuff are being greedy http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_razz.gif.

[addsig]

<font size=1>[ This message was edited by: Zephyr on 2001-02-27 23:06 ]</font>