THIS GAME BALANCE THO

[BWS-1]

To allow melees to have a hit or two, maybe I'll just roll an Ice Fo/Te... or would that still be OP?

[isCasted]

Force could use a nerf. Like, at least:
- halve the damage from compounds;
- remove Charge Tech Advance 2;
- nerf Fire S Charge to 70-75% instead of 50%;

At the same time, techs like Ra/Sabarta lack good crafts, and Gi/Na/Grants feel way too weak for their extended charge time.

With those nerfs other classes should become more useful. But then, Force's damage as it is now balances out its disproportionate squishiness during solo play. So, we need to nerf something for other classes. Like, defense.

Iron Will and Automate Halfline need to go. IW+NGU are essentially an RNG-based reward for sucking.
Automate Halfline = you won the game. It used to be "balanced" in SH days when enemies could shave off big chunk of your HP gauge, but now... Lv75 Tokyo and Kuron enemies hit me with 2-digit damage. I can pop Massive Hunter + Limit Break and go full ham as if there's no consequences. Hunter has All Guard and Charge Parry, Fighter has a million of iframes and autoguards, Bouncer has Megiverse, Braver... Fuck Braver. There's no need for AH and IW when melee has so many defensive capabilities already.

Now, Ranger and Gunner... Obviously, nerf CT and WB and rework Dive Roll to actually be safe. WB can be 120% (minimal multiplier to make Weak Hit skills proc), but Bullet Keep should work with all weapons and not be main-only. Even better if firing a special bullet becomes its own weapon action instead of replacing normal attacks.

[Touka]

It was always like this in every phantasy star. Sega just sucks at refining their games.

This really.Sega can't balance for shit which is why the other greater evil braver is still fucking op as shit.

[Nilkemios]

When was the last time Sega got anything truly right?...

[Touka]

Infinity was pretty good actually but it had it's fair share of problems.

[Zyrusticae]

Well, I've been playing with my Force lately, got her geared up and everything, and I've learned quite a bit.

I've been using dark techs exclusively for awhile now and they have a shockingly high skill ceiling in comparison to other schools. Megid moves like a snail, Ilmegid does *nothing* if you don't have an active target when you release it, Ramegid is point-blank and very random, Gimegid is slow as fuck and hits only a single tiny point, and Namegid requires uninterrupted charging for 5 seconds.

Meanwhile, there's Rafoie. Oh, Rafoie. Why does something as effortless as Rafoie do as much damage as it does? It is truly a mystery to me. Near-instant cast times with no projectile travel time and an AoE on top of that? I'm shocked that it hasn't been nerfed to the ground, really. I'm just sitting here watching people spam this one single technique non-stop because why bother putting in effort when you're rewarded for this shit? At least Gifoie requires you use a talis or position yourself properly, and Ragrants is a completely immobile line AoE. Rafoie has nothing to justify the amount of damage it does. N-o-t-h-i-n-g!

I mean, look at fuckin' Grants in comparison - completely single target, LONG cast time, and does fuck-all for damage. How is this balanced? Who the hell looked at these two techs and thought "yeah, that's fine"? I mean this is AFTER several massive balance passes that were specifically supposed to fix cases like this, and yet here we are! Fuckin' good job there, m8s. Yep. Good fuckin' job.

I don't even mind compound techs so much anymore. At least you're completely immobile while channeling them (which makes you fodder against big bosses), and Fo/Te is still one of the squishiest class combos in the game. I feel so much safer playing Hu/Br or Gu/Ra that I feel they can be justified at least a bit on that front. Compound techs should still be doing like half as much damage as they do, but eh. I can live with it.

But Rafoie has got to go. Effort-reward is a thing, and that damn tech's effort-reward ratio is completely fucked. Really, that's the only thing that completely pisses me off when I'm playing TD. Just the ridiculous absurdity of people sitting in one place just clicking on things repeatedly 'til dead. Never repositioning. Never thinking. No timing. Just spam spam spam spam spam.

Every tech school should be like dark. Lots of skill to pull off big things. Not this no-effort bullshit.

[Zorafim]

I think I quadrupled my performance when I went from an ice mage to a fire mage. And yeah, Rafoie spam was all I did.

Sega has always had terrible balance. Hell, take the original games.
Odin was way better than the other characters, and Noah was near useless. Guns hit every enemy on screen, always did fixed damage so that defense didn't matter, and did high damage. Against weak enemies, it effectively two shotted the entire group. Against strong enemies, it did more damage than melee strikes. The final storebought gun always outdid the ultimate melee weapon you got by doing a tough dungeon.
Noah? His MP was greatly limited, so he could rarely contribute. You wanted to save his magic for tough fights, while Odin was always at his peak. And even in those tough fights, he only did 50% more damage than Odin... until he ran out of magic.

PSII? You get eight characters, and have space for four. One dies, leaving you three characters to leave behind. One has pathetic stats and can hardly equip anything, so it's not worth using her. The other two cast magic which is only effective against half the enemies in the game (one does one half, the other does the other), so half the game they're useless. And the other half, they aren't even better than your other choices.
So that effectively leaves you with four characters to use anyway. Luckily those are good.

PSIV? You have a fixed party of four characters (who, luckily, all get their moments to shine. But let's not kid ourselves, Wren's the best one.), with a fifth member you can bring along in the final dungeon. Gryz has no skills or magic, isn't much stronger than the characters you already have, and is a melee when you have three other melee. Demi is just a weaker Wren with less skills, with one healing tech that isn't that strong and runs out too quickly. Hans can do everything, badly. Your only real choices are, what's her name... Kira? And Raja. Kira's good overall, but Raja's a healer in a damage and defense heavy team He has amazing synergy. And if you're worried about his damage choices, he can refill everyone's MP, allowing them to spam techs harder.

That's just the Phantasy Star series. You can see their poor balance in other games too. Even in Sonic, Tails is basically Sonic with an added ability. Panzer Dragoon Saga, there's almost no reason to pick the defense form since the speed form allows you to evade any attack that the defense form would soak (except for the rare times you're forced to take heavy damage, which you don't know ahead of time). And because you can't spam spells, there's no reason to go spiritual form when you can just power up your lasers with the attack form... until you get the gun that makes lasers obsolete, so there's no reason not to go spiritual form since you won't be using lasers anyway.


Yeah, Sega sucks with balance. Always have, always will.

Also, yes, this is a rant. It doesn't have to be coherent. Why? Because fuck you and fuck Sega that's why.