Official Acrofighter Thread

[Pillan]

It’s very hard for me to agree that any class can ever be EVP dependant when a Newman fT can’t block even one third the attacks that come toward it with 200% and the class has the second highest DFP in the game. An extra 30% won’t change that, but you might have some hope if you stick to TW brand armor.

Now, someone mentioned an EVP buff to me earlier (right now you really can’t tell the difference between Newman and Cast blocking on WT, but the DFP difference is equally if not more BS), but, regardless, if you can’t block more than half the attacks it’s impossible to argue that a class is more EVP dependant than DFP dependant. On the other hand, I will agree with you if you call it a defender that takes advantage of high evasion, but it’s not an evader that takes advantage of high defense.

Yes, we all know EVP has big numbers and, yes, they're even bigger on human and Newman, but what do those numbers actually do? That’s what really bothers me with the flow of this topic so far.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Pillan on 2007-05-04 08:38 ]</font>

[Shiro_Ryuu]

Cool to see someone who likes EVP, I've been getting tired of this whole "EVP SUX" stuff. I could list a whole bunch of stuff that I would much rather evade:
Svaltus tornado swords + Zalure
Hentai worm pop out + jellen [As PJ said one time, Wurms be popping out]
Piggy stomp which can also stun you
Palavorha [spell check?] stomps
Vil De Bear big punches which can either stun you or cast Jellen on you
Onmagohg/Dimmagolus/Manbearpig punches and rock/enemy throws
The list goes on but you know what I mean. While people hate evasion for its PA interruption, there are attacks that can knock you down or send you flying, and as a result, you lose both HP AND PP. Which would you prefer? Blocking a potentially painful attack and losing PP, or getting hit by that attack, being knocked down, and still having you PA interrupted. Some would say "Oh, thats why I work on my DFP", but come on, I'm sure that even a female CAST fF would still get knocked back or at least flinch and still have her PA interrupted from these attacks, or in other cases, be inflicted with a status effect, which is WAY worse than losing a few PP. Besides, Hunters have normal attacks for a reason. Just because you do normal attacks doesn't mean you're playing a gimp Hunter. You can even use the normal attacks on week monsters like Ageetas, Badiras, etc, and save the PP for the dangerous monsters like Lapuchas[dude, they friggin deadly] or for those that have so many targets that its just so tempting to use them like Kamatozes and Drua Gohras.

[Pillan]

On 2007-05-04 08:27, Shiroryuu wrote:
Cool to see someone who likes EVP, I've been getting tired of this whole "EVP SUX" stuff. I could list a whole bunch of stuff that I would much rather evade:
Svaltus tornado swords + Zalure
Hentai worm pop out + jellen [As PJ said one time, Wurms be popping out]
Piggy stomp which can also stun you
Palavorha [spell check?] stomps
Vil De Bear big punches which can either stun you or cast Jellen on you
Onmagohg/Dimmagolus/Manbearpig punches and rock/enemy throws
The list goes on but you know what I mean. While people hate evasion for its PA interruption, there are attacks that can knock you down or send you flying, and as a result, you lose both HP AND PP. Which would you prefer? Blocking a potentially painful attack and losing PP, or getting hit by that attack, being knocked down, and still having you PA interrupted. Some would say "Oh, thats why I work on my DFP", but come on, I'm sure that even a female CAST fF would still get knocked back or at least flinch and still have her PA interrupted from these attacks, or in other cases, be inflicted with a status effect, which is WAY worse than losing a few PP.

I’ll agree with you on most of those situations besides the worms. You can easily reduce that to zero damage with a 10% fire YC armor (slight exaggeration, but you get the point). On the other situations, I can’t see myself or any decent hunter using a PA in the middle of those attacks because you expect to either block it or collapse on the ground. Also most of those attacks have extremely low ATA and I block them more than half the time on a Caseal fG or WT. You’re not getting too much of an advantage as a human or Newman aF or aT there since anyone with decent ATA can block them. But, most importantly, that doesn’t describe the majority of the situations you experience on PSU. It’s like arguing Mayelee Fury is great on everything because it works on Gol Dova, Bear clones, worms, and SEED Vance.

I also agree that blocking is better than being thrown aside mid PA, which is obviously better than being shocked, stunned, or frozen, but I disagree that this is a major issue. How often do you fight Gol Dova aside from Crimson Beast spam? How many missions does Svaltus appear in? When can you ever find a team on Neudaiz?

The standard situation I’d consider is 2-3 medium-sized enemies standing in front of you in a team of 4-6 players. These enemies won’t throw you around if you block, nor will they land some annoying status effect that kills your PA. Now, for the 5 minutes out of the 25 minute mission where you’re actually dealing with those annoying enemies you mentioned, EVP does become very useful. But, even if you do get stunned by a Gol Dova’s slam, odds are a teammate will use Reverser or a Sol Atomizer on you. (As a small aside, stun doesn't cancel your PA for some reason.)

Really all the defensive stats stop mattering when you have a decent team and you can focus on optimizing damage. That’s the main reason Newman fT is preferred to something less squishy.

On 2007-05-04 08:27, Shiroryuu wrote:
Besides, Hunters have normal attacks for a reason. Just because you do normal attacks doesn't mean you're playing a gimp Hunter. You can even use the normal attacks on week monsters like Ageetas, Badiras, etc, and save the PP for the dangerous monsters like Lapuchas[dude, they friggin deadly] or for those that have so many targets that its just so tempting to use them like Kamatozes and Drua Gohras.

It’s impossible to argue that you’re not gimped unless you’re using a Double Saber (6 hits to 4 enemies at 100% ATP is a lot more damage than most PAs…). I can’t name anyone that I play with who doesn’t PA spam the entire round, even with the negligible EVP issue.

The EVP won’t make or break the class, but it will get annoying on medium and even more so on small enemies and everyone will enjoy it when it stops one of the attacks you mentioned if your DFP is low enough to be blown away by it (which is likely when the enemies are several levels higher than you). And it definitely won’t kill your PP from all the canceled skills. Not to mention EVP and DFP are inversely proportional on each race and since aF is extremely high in both, you’re going to do great defense-wise regardless.

Honestly, I’d say you’re fine regardless of race, but I’ll also say higher offensive stats are greatly preferred to defensive stats since team efficiency is primarily based on damage/time and every race and class combination will be alright in terms of survival in a party. That’s why I’ll argue that Cast and Beast are clearly the better choices for efficiency as any class with War or Figh in its name. Cast and Newman are clearly the best for anything that focuses on low ATA weapons. Techer has its issues though, since aT and WT will realistically do about the same damage with both melee and techniques in a party, but everyone can agree that human and Newman are the best at fT.

[Shiro_Ryuu]

Well, either way, I'm sure that the majority of Acrofighters are still gonna be Humans, just like 95% of the Fighgunner population. Hell, I'm sure that a pretty big majority or so of the Human population probably go to a melee class, including me, especially if they were PSO vets who played HUmars, like me. I mean, I've seen more CAST fT than I see Human fT, and more Human fF than CAST fF. End of the day, Panzerunit may be right in saying that race and stuff are all bullshit. Also, for ATP, there is a very minute difference between Human and CAST, and we use high ATA weapons too, so ATA isn't an issue. And for male newmans, this is great for those that are feeling inadequate about their masculinity(No Vanhalen, not you, you've proven your masulinity by being fF) by being fTs all the time(I mean, if I was in the back casting magic and a member of a physically weak race while a female beast is using a huge axe, I'd feel my masculinity being threatented too) and wanna prove that they are still men. But I'm curious to see how a female Newman Acrofighter will do with a Rabol Rappy. Man, I wish I could have hunted that armor down.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shiroryuu on 2007-05-04 10:07 ]</font>

[Pillan]

I would have to disagree there. The majority of the Fighgunners I see now are Caseals. I do agree that if you look at the first generation of players, all the Newmans are fTs or WTs, all the Casts are fGs or GTs, all the Beasts are fFs, and all the humans are FGs. However, since all the Newman females have their mains at level 80 with all maxed techs, they all began making Caseal fGs and FGs. Plus when you take into account that Cast is currently the most popular race to play, just based on the numbers game Casts outnumber humans on every class (except WT for some reason…). But I’m on the US PS2/PC servers. It may be different for you if you play elsewhere.

What I see happening is this: a huge flux of people of all races switch to aF and aT just because they’re new and very few stick with them because they miss the wide weapon selection and cool PAs that the other classes offer. After that I’ll say you’ll see more Cast aFs for the same reason you see lots of Casts in every class. But we have like 10 months before we can even test that calculation and I doubt Casts will have a clear majority, just a plurality.

As for the ATP thing, it’s clear to everyone that Caseals and human males have close enough to the same ATP that no one really cares that Caseals have a bit more, but I’m not so sure about the difference between human males and Casts. I’ll go ahead and do a calculation based on PSUpedia’s level 100 stats and level 30 Buten Shuren-zan. I agree with you that ATA is pretty negligible until you try to use Twin Mayelee/Penetration or Penetrating Hit (which I’ll assume are all the average aF uses twin handguns and handguns for).

Anyway, onto the calculation. I really have no idea how this one will turn out, so it will be a surprise to all of us. Cast male has 732 ATP and human male has 673. I think aF has 124% ATP, but I’m too lazy to check. I’ll assume humans get a 3% ATP bonus just like FG, so Cast male has 907 and human male has 854. That’s a 52 ATP difference, or about 10 or 11 damage. Now we add in the PA and 20% element weapons and that difference jumps from 10 damage to 406 or 407 damage per complete Buten Shuren-zan (note that this calculation does not take into account that the first 8 hits gain an extra 20% ATP). Of course 407 out of the 5000 or so damage you’re doing isn’t that big an issue, but it is a little noticeable (we’ll say a 10% efficiency sacrifice).

I’m also curious to see how well a Newman would evade with TW armor. I wonder if it would actually block 50% of the time.

[AC9breaker]

I'm a bit disappointed in you panzer especially after you've written this.

Newmans - I want to be nicer, but I think newms would just be way better off as a GunTecher or ForteGunner, because they'll be even farther behind humans for the melee side of the Protranser job. Go for more ATP with the same weapons you would actually be using as a PT, and more elf-friendly defensive stats.

You have to admit that Sega had specific roles in mind for each race when they made them. Sure a Newmen can do Fortefighter, if you'd ever played with Aweofshe you'd say without a doubt that they can do Protranser too. When it comes to the melee classes every Race can do it since Melee in this game is more about skill(which is questionable) unlike spamming diga all day where its more dependent on your stats. But you've got to admit that a Cast Fortefighter will be much more efficient then a Newmen fortefighter. Now consequently I've stated that Newmens and Humans make for more efficient Acrofighter becuase it is a defensive class that depends on its evasion. I feel the same way Pillian does, I don't understand how Evasion works but to be honest I really don't care enough to figure out. But being a Protranser main, switching from Ranger on Beta, I totally noticed the difference the 210% evasion had. Which increased each time my job leveled up. So being that Humans and Newmens have much more evasion I simply did 1+1. Still though, wouldn't you think that I would choose cast and beasts with their higher defense and greater attack?


First, lets get off the talk of an offensive Acrofighter because quite frankly if you wanted Offense your Better off going any of the Forteclasses or all of us just playing Fortetecher. Plus thats a bit of a misleading statement you made Pillian.

"but I’ll also say higher offensive stats are greatly preferred to defensive stats since team efficiency is primarily based on damage/time and every race and class combination will be alright in terms of survival in a party."

Going by that logic then you could argue that Protransers suck because we have the shittiest stats, fortegunners can use all the traps we can, and since offense is the only thing that matters in this game they're outclassed in offense by everyone else. Acrofighter is a defensive class. Weather it relies more on Evasion then on Defense I can't say because I only played the job as a Cast. But like I've said before, the EVP boost was so noticeable that it was a big reason for me leaning towards Human and Newmen. Just like I lean more towards Humans and Casts in Protranser. Acrofighter also seems to have as much strategical value as a Protranser. Shadoogs serve both as an equalizer and basic component to Acrofighter. By making it necessary to use one-handed weapons it makes the argument of greater ATP moot because everyones attack will fall in a similar range. The only speed weapon that really takes advantage of ATP boosts like in cast or Beast are Spears and Twin Daggers. Probably the only place where that ATP difference will really shine in Acrofighter is in Cards and Twin Sabers. Which I have already mentioned isn't as optimal a combo as Shadoogs and Single handed weapons. Now something I forgot to mention in my last post is Acrofighters having MST comparable to Guntechers. This was another reason why I consider Acrofighter the Human and Newmen combo of choice. With half decent elemental armor you could be an impenetrable tank. Its easy to avoid attacks you can see, but its always the attacks that come from off-screen that get you like techs.

I'm not saying that as a Beast or Cast your gonna have a hard time playing Acrofighter. In fact, I had a blast playing as a cast Acrofighter relying mostly on my Single handed dagger and shadoog combo. Though I', quite sure if I was a Human or newmen I would have taken a lot less damage then I did as a cast. I view the job like Protranser, each Race will have it's own way of playing it but there are still traits of the Job that put it more in favor towards a certain race then others.

[Shiro_Ryuu]

I kind of curious on the level of status effects on the different Shadoogs. Do they go up as the Shadoog is higher ranked?

[chibiLegolas]

Just out of curiosity, and a question for beta testers:
Is there a clear role for AF's in a party? And what is it?
Are they a different type of tank?
Decoy/distractions?
Damage dealers with a side of SE with shadogs? (isn't that similiar to certain FiG's role though? Just different SE availability? Therefore same roles, just different flavor?)
PA usage solely for knock/up/down/back, etc.?
Fighters who techers can have less worry for?

I could imagine AF's jumping in front of a techer to start "taking it" for the team. And techers having less worries about healing them as appose to a FF.

And what about single crea weapons?
I remember hearing in passing that crea weapons suck. I don't know the details since it didn't concern me (not a newman/human fighter).
But if AF/AT's are good for newmans and humans, do the single crea weapons have a new found usage with the AF class? Maybe there's finally a hunter who doesn't need to PA spam all the time?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: chibiLegolas on 2007-05-04 13:49 ]</font>

[Pillan]

To AC9 (darn you people for posting before I finished...):

Actually, I would have to agree with you that PT is pretty useless right now. However, when you add in the fact that they get EX traps on top of G traps, they begin to shine based on the extra trap damage on enemies with insanely high STA that are immune to bullet effects. Yes PT sucks right now, but I’m discounting the future just like I do when I consider S ranks.

As far as aF, you do lose some damage based on spears, axes, and swords, but sabers and claws tie for the 4th highest ATP of any melee weapon and daggers are pretty high too. I’ll continue to argue that Gravity Strike can compete with most melee PAs (besides the spear ones) just based on number of hits and BSZ is pretty much useful in any situation you’d want to use RBZ. And as for the damage difference, it varies with the multiplier like you said, but I would argue that it matters on anything with a ridiculously high multiplier (all the twin saber PAs) or ridiculously high number of hits (RBZ, BSZ). You do lose a bit of damage from the lack of spears, twin daggers, and axes, but you gain a lot from Shadoog effect spam, making them useful and efficient for basically the same reason PT is. However, you further increase that efficiency in both cases with more ATP (we’ve already been over the fact that ATA doesn’t really matter for hunters).

As for the MST thing, well, I’ve never had trouble with magic damage as a Cast fG. Sure Casts do have noticeably less MST (about 1/3 the value of Newmans), but once you add in armor and the HP difference, it’s pretty negligible until you switch to fT.

But, yes, I do agree with you that aF replaces WT for the perfect wall class and I do agree that human makes the most out of the wall stats. I just disagree that it will be a big deal regardless of race choice. I also agree that the ATP difference isn’t that big an issue on any hunter class since all the weapons at least double your ATP by the time you can use them, but when people ask “which is the best?”, I define the best as the one that’s most efficient in what I call the standard situation. If you define the best as in who survives the most, human clearly wins. If you define it as who evades the most, Newman wins.



I think I’ll add something to the EVP consideration. I mean, a lot of people see that EVP is a ridiculously high stat and 230% is a ridiculously high multiplier, but most people don’t see that 140% DFP is an equally ridiculously high multiplier. Consider the median DFP and EVP values for each class: fG has 140% EVP and GT has 90% DFP. Anything around those values is at least decent, below is weak, and high above is godly. Now when you consider how far each is from the median, the DFP is around 1.55 times the median and the EVP is around 1.64 times the median. The EVP is a bit higher, but it doesn’t seem as ridiculously high as it did before.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Pillan on 2007-05-04 13:53 ]</font>

[Arika]

Just want to say for ppl who trying to be AF in the future and get attack boost speed
Alseva Cresa + 38% Ice on my shop