Fortefighter or Acrofighter?

[Delta62]

Hello PSO-world I'm having trouble deciding which class I should make my CAST and I was hoping to get some input.

Which class would you suggest is overall better? I know Acrofighters are the faster class but do their limited weapons hold them back?

I do like the idea of just zipping around and slicing things with a saber but in the end would I do more damage with an axe or a spear?

Any input on you could give me on this would be great! Thank you in advance!

[milranduil]

There are some missions where AF and fF can pull pretty comparable mission completion times. However, there are also some where fF is a bit faster due to Majarra and Jabroga. I find AF quite though personally.

[RAGNAGELPPOD]

I've seen Jabroga kills things much faster than slicers in general.

[NDW]

inb4 "make a Fighmaster or Gunmaster".

[Magus_84]

AF will have an easier time against any flying bosses. And I find them far less boring.

But the Majarra/Jabroga instawin combo is still horrendously powerful. FF will overall kill stuff with more ease, once you get used to it.

The upside is, you can try both.

[that cast named kai]

either will get the job done i guess

although i guess AF tends to be more fun, or at least to me

as well as have better eva or mst stats which can help you keep going a during a run

[Tetsaru]

Both are very good classes, but if I had to choose one over the other, I'd go with FF because of their stats and weapon selection. My beast, when nearly capped, had over 5000 HP(!) and had a shitload of ATP to go with it.

AF is fun too though, as they are crazy fast with their weapons. A good S rank slicer with max-level Chikki can wipe out large mobs from afar in no time, plus your range-mags can inflict all sorts of status effects while you're attacking.

Just try out both and see which one you like better!

[Pillan]

It might be interesting to note that Fortefighter does more damage than Acrofighter with every weapon type that Acrofighter can equip even after the speed bonus is taken into account. So, realistically, the only way an AF can keep up with and surpass an fF is if they kill in the same number of hits. Acrofighter's main advantages over Fortefighter are higher MST, less-limited ranged options, traps, high PP S rank slicers, and the occasional status effect from Shadoogs. You can list evasion as well, but that's a whole 'nother debate.

[Genoa]

Hize/Concentrate with high % A-rank shadoogs and melee weapons have tons of DPS.
I always felt like I was clearing house better than I was as FF.
But that might just be because of the attack speed increase...
Regardless, I find AF to be my favorite Fighter class.

[Gibdozer]

FF is a great brawler style, lots of weapons and the power to use them. AF is more about evasion and speed than raw power. FF will clear out a room faster, but AF will clear the room without taking as much damage.

Personally I like FF as a masculine class, and AF for feminine.

[Gen2000]

AF can be about power too if know what you're doing.

[hunterseifer]

Well since your using a cast I'd say FF, cast stats are good for most fighter and gunner classes but as AF...casts have the worst evp in the game so your handicapping yourself somewhat. As FF they boost the strong points for any fighter,hp,atp,def and ata. So I'd say go with FF, they also have a great selection so you can take any mob or boss by yourself. If you want to try AF, try being a human. They get a bonus as AF and they have alot more evp than a cast.

[Gibdozer]

AF can be about power too if know what you're doing.

No, as previously stated in this thread FF can out damage AF with every weapon type. Likewise FM, GM, and FG can consistently out dps AF.

Don't get me wrong AF is one of my favorite classes, I prefer it to all the aforementioned ones. So "If you know what your doing" don't waste time trying to make AF into something it's not instead enjoy it for the unique class that it is.

[Gen2000]

AF already has enough evade so no matter what race you choose you will have high evade to block whatever you want. Cast is good race for AF, they build up SUV meter very fast with Slicer spam. About as fast as GM at least.

Yes FF does more damage with AF weapons, this is not news to me, but that doesn't matter since AF is faster and still puts out enough damage. The game is more about speed than power nowadays which is why FM/GM are better than FF/FG. The enemies don't have enough HP anymore that absolute high raw damage of FF/FG matters anymore.

If your slicers are right you will kill enemies in the same number of Choutou tosses as FF...except you'll be doing it faster as AF. Trying to play to FF like a stronger AF is a bad idea anyways and not why FF would be doing comparable or slightly times to AF. It's mainly because of Majarra and Jaborga.

AF can basically be played like a slightly weaker GM, again if you know what you're doing. 46-50% Slicer/RCSM are your Lasers and Knuckles/Twin Claws are your Shotgun vs. single enemies for clean-up. You can even use Chuei Jitosushin like a bootleg, somewhat crappier version of Tornado Dance if you're playing in frameskip 0 to move faster than anyone else not FM or FI.

Their main weakness is their first-person damage (decent but not good as GM's Rifle), no good instant-kill gimmick vs. robots, and multiple target big mob/boss damage (they can't compete with Jaborga or multiple shot shotguns) and that's mainly where the gap in their run times vs. other better classes comes from.

I don't think they're better than FM/GM (no one is duh...why even bring it up) but it seems a lot of people underestimate AF and from what I see in randoms don't even abuse their best qualities.

[Hrith]

People don't underestimate AF, it's just not that good, even FI is faster at killing things.
AF has good stats, but it's too lacking in powerful melee weapons and very severely lacking in good guns.

For one target, twin saber >>>> knuckles > twin claws, there's really no reason to use twin claws in that situation.

Speed is not everything, apparently.
Remember Gunmaster is faster and more powerful than Fortegunner.

Having played AF as human and cast, I agree that human > cast.

[Gen2000]

I say they're underestimated because the impression I'm getting is that people think they're down their with ATs or a random basic class even...like they can't kill anything at all within a reasonable time at all or something. Only real delay roadblocks I have when playing AF solo are what I mention above.

Way too late in this game's life for this to even be an argument anymore. Tiresome and overall pointless. I disagree with nearly everything you said, but whatever. Thanks for your input on the subject.

[Pillan]

I would personally advise against playing AF for evasion.

Experimenting with Cast AF/AT throughout the last GBR, I found myself blocking around 60-70% of Maggas' sword attacks, and even more so on the machinegun fire. People don't seem to realize that extra EVA is essentially as useless as extra ATA because they both have diminishing returns as you increase them beyond a 50% evade rate. Not to mention that the attacks that you're most likely to block are generally attacks from small enemies that don't interrupt skills anyway. Sure you can always Just/Exact Counter, but the enemy would already be dead as anything with lower EVP. And with a decent team the enemy won't last long enough for you to worry about getting hit at all, so defensive stats become even more useless.

With that said, as an AF, I'd go for more of the offensive stats, centering around ATP, as I would with all hunters. So, from there, it's just a preference of Nanoblasts versus SUVs.

[milranduil]

I would personally advise against playing AF for evasion.

Experimenting with Cast AF/AT throughout the last GBR, I found myself blocking around 60-70% of Maggas' sword attacks, and even more so on the machinegun fire. People don't seem to realize that extra EVA is essentially as useless as extra ATA because they both have diminishing returns as you increase them beyond a 50% evade rate. Not to mention that the attacks that you're most likely to block are generally attacks from small enemies that don't interrupt skills anyway. Sure you can always Just/Exact Counter, but the enemy would already be dead as anything with lower EVP. And with a decent team the enemy won't last long enough for you to worry about getting hit at all, so defensive stats become even more useless.

With that said, as an AF, I'd go for more of the offensive stats, centering around ATP, as I would with all hunters. So, from there, it's just a preference of Nanoblasts versus SUVs.

When we get invincible just counter, I think you'll think twice about EVP being useless.

Also, just to put a little more umph in this thread for AF, I'm going to make a Sakura Blast S2 video as Cast AF and see what people have to say.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwWX8NNaiF8

[Pillan]

Unfortunately, being invincible for the duration of your next attack doesn't change the fact that you would have done as much or more damage faster if the combo that was interrupted by the block went through in the first place. Just Counter will always be a less effective strategy in any situation where the enemy attack can't knock you out of the combo and when a lower EVP race or class would kill the enemy faster.

There are really only three types of situations that I run into in PSU where EVP is or would be effective: high damage-low accuracy attacks, high damage-high accuracy attacks, and low/moderate damage-low accuracy attacks. In case one, your class is the biggest factor and you dodge the move more often than not regardless of race (e.g., all of Maggas' attacks except the lock on missiles). This is the only situation where I would like EVP, but because this only occurs with high HP enemies, this is also the situation where higher ATP helps the most. In case 2, the attack is easy to physically dodge (e.g., Maggas' lock on missiles). And in the general case, case 3, you're left saying "[Insert expletive]! There goes 6000+ damage and 40+ PP." every time you block.

It makes it more useful, but nothing will never be as useful as not getting hit in the first place because the four to six of you have effectively stun-locked the enemy and killed the entire spawn within three to five seconds.

But, yeah, human's ATP is so close to Cast as an Acro-class that the Shadoog damage nearly makes them equal with any single-hand weapon. So you could easily argue that the extra TP, EVP, and MST is worth more than the Cast base stats. And they'll be able to surpass Cast with a couple weapons on those classes with GAS customization. However, it's always a safe argument that the SUV will be worth more.

[milranduil]

There is a video you can watch on nicovideo if you subscribe. It used to be different in that you could click a link below and watch it anyways without subscribing but they've since changed it. It shows how broekn Just Counter is with Ikk Hikk. Literally 1-3 attacks hit and there is a block from the start of the mob->JC constant 5.5k damage per hit to anything in his path. He faces several Vanda Orgas and first fire attack he blocks->kills the entire wave with first combo. If you wanna try to figure out how to watch it:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm6610740

[Ceresa]

AF only evades 100% of the time when you cherry pick footage for your video!

Realistically he's gonna get knocked the hell out of that ick shit 50% of the time.

58 seconds in, he takes like 25 seconds to kill 4 Vanda? That's nothing impressive, it's not horrible but it's not broken in any sense. Any decent AF can hit 1800 + 3500 x 2 to everything every 5 seconds with Chikki, from further back...lot more if they GC 40% element to some hiken/c ohoho. And Chikki doesn't fail if you get a shit evade streak.

[Pillan]

The link didn't seem to work for me, but it's not necessary for me to imagine the utility.

I am willing to admit that you got me there and that would be a situation where I'd like to be able to go ahead and evade fast to deliver a long and powerful attack like Ikk Hick. But it still doesn't say much about the general use of the move and only forces me to modify my previous statement to "Not blocking is more useful in every situation outside of soloing against a Vanda fire breath pile up while equipping a pair of knuckles with Ikk Hick." I hope we can both agree that such a specific case is far from the norm on PSU.

And, tying this back to comparison with Fortefighter, wouldn't you be just as well off with a single combo of Chikki or Jabroga as soon as they spawned? Plus I'm pretty sure Vanda breath doesn't knock you out of a combo, so you can just pop a Trimate mid attack with any other skill if they lower your HP that much when you aren't blocking. Unfortunately, it's unrealistic to assume you won't block since that move has such a low accuracy mod. That is unless you're playing with a team.

[Gen2000]

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm6610740

For those having trouble watching nico videos you can use this redirect:

http://mmcafe.com/nico.html

Just copy/paste the link there. It's what I use to watch random BlazBlue videos.

[milranduil]

The point being was that AF blocks consistently enough to make Ikk Hikk pretty good when used properly. I'm not saying it's more useful than Chikki or Jabroga...hell I rely on Chikki a lot for bigger groups. But there are more situations than just Vandas that Ikk Hikk is also useful in. I'd also like to add that Ikk Hikk even now is a great boss PA when used properly. Again not saying it beats Jabroga OBVIOUSLY but it does do pretty well.