Valatar
Dec 8, 2006, 07:52 PM
Poor Wartechers, only 8% of the polls indicated they were going to choose this expert class. And on the surface of things, it's perfectly understandable, as the things Wartechers lack are very obvious.
Wartechers lack:
Rank 21-30 weapon skills.
Rank 21-30 techniques.
Rank 11-30 bullets.
Almost all S-rank weapons except daggers and twin daggers.
Yeah, that's pretty hurtful. The Wartechers will never have the spiffy third attack with their weapons, nor the super-big explosions of the 30-rank techniques, and their skill with firearms is frankly sad. They'll never be as good as a Figunner with their weapons, nor as good as a Fortecher with their techniques.
Let's just all not play them.
What?
Oh, the upsides? Well, there may be a couple.
Wartechers get the most HP of any class, tied with the Fortefighters.
Wartechers get the second-best evasion, tied with Forces.
Wartechers get the third-best MST, just behind Forces and more than twice that of the melee classes.
Wartechers get access to every technique in the game.
What does this mean? Well, first and foremost, the Wartecher is the sturdiest type in the game, with a great big HP pool, a high evasion rating, and no particular vulnerability to melee or techniques. Fortechers are better at resisting techniques but have half the HP and very little armor, Fortefighters have better armor but less evasion and half the MST, while the Wartecher can stand up against any attack in the game. Put a good shield on them and a MST-booster in the head slot, and the Wartecher can stroll through a mission dodging the melee attacks and shrugging off the techniques while the rest of the party takes a beating.
Daggers
The dagger and twin dagger are the only two weapons in the game that a Wartecher will ever be able to equip at S rank. However, a thing to bear in mind is that Wartechers actually have a much better weapon list than a Hunter, with a sizable pile of A rank weapons at their disposal. A Wartecher who doesn't want to use daggers can do so without any hassles. That being said, daggers are obviously the weapon that the Wartechers are meant to use, so daggers are what we'll look at.
Dagger (Single)
Daggers are surprisingly good melee weapons, doing a decent amount of damage with lots of slashes. The only thing that has ever annoyed me about them was their short reach, but honestly that only comes up when trying to pop a row of boxes in a single chain of hits. When fighting monsters, I've never been shy about getting right on top of them, so range isn't a real factor. Wartechers' good health and defense come in handy at times like that; it wouldn't be as wise for other people to try to go toe to toe with some of the critters out there.
Buten Shuren-zan is an excellent skill, one that I adore. However, it needs to be used with care. The second step of the skill involves a kick that tosses monsters away from you like bowling pins, which just looks fantastic, but makes any forces in your party plan to murder you in your sleep. Please, show consideration for anyone in your party who uses AoE attacks and don't go kicking all the monsters away while they're trying to get them lined up. It makes them cry. You can spam the first attack of the skill without any fear of knockback, so fall back on that when you need to. The thing that makes Buten Shuren-zan such an excellent skill is the way the character moves while using it. It's easily possible to dash forward, hit one opponent, spin around and hit another, jump over to hit a couple more, then kick yet another pair over the horizon. Even better, once you get some practice with the skill it becomes easy to dodge attacks while using it. Learn and know and love this skill and it will treat you well.
Twin Dagger
In most things, I actually prefer the single dagger to the twin. Single lets you hold a pistol in the off-hand and has a great PA skill, and while the twin hits more often, it doesn't really hit that much harder.
Renkai Buyou-zan should not be ignored, however. It isn't the most exciting skill, appearance-wise, but it offers a whole pile of advantages. One is that it's almost impossible to interrupt; it goes off almost instantly upon hitting the button. Two is that it's a whirling blender of death to creatures with multiple hit locations. Snuggle in close to the side of a big critter or boss and fire off this skill, then giggle as you watch the white numbers come pouring out. I don't know for certain whether the crea weapons can get multiple hits per swing on a single creature with lots of hit locations, but if they can, this skill will quickly gain a reputation as the best means to completely assassinate a boss. And as icing on the cake, the skill can hit things all around you, no need to worry about whether something's coming up behind you when you set it off.
Techniques
I started playing Phantasy Star with PSII, and they're called techniques, not TECHNICS, dammit. Ethan can bite me. Anyhow, techniques are the second side of the Wartecher coin, and they're where things start to get a little murky. Fortechers utterly outclass Wartechers in technique damage. They get to use better equipment, higher ranks, and have a much higher technique power. There is no contest whatsoever, the Fortecher is better than you are and will always be better than you are.
But the Fortecher is also a pansy who has to run away like a girl when a monster even looks at them, so the Wartecher can at least get a few laughs out of that.
Now Wartechers can use any and all techniques, which is good. And they can get them up to rank 20, which is respectable. The trick being, which techniques are worth using? You can't use a dagger with a wand, so any time you switch to cast you lose access to your melee weapons, and that makes things awkward. Casting the buffs is an obvious choice, but unfortunately for us the buffs aren't in the game yet.
Healing
Resta and Reverser are two no-brainers, take them. Don't argue with me about not being a healbot, if your teammates die it comes out of everyone's hide, so don't be shy with whipping out the wand to save someone's life. It's for your own good as well as everyone else's. Make sure you level those two technics to their cap; the higher their level the greater their range and the less you have to bother finding the injured person you're trying to heal. One trick that I use often is to hustle to the doorway when the party is exiting a room and heal when everyone's going through it. That way the party's tightly bunched together and you don't have to worry about some straggler being out of range. Just toss out a Resta once or twice per block and your party should be in good shape, not to mention grateful. Likewise, using Reverser to un-sleep people can make a big difference in a fight, so keep an eye out for those debuff icons on the left side of your screen.
Offense
This boils down to personal preference. I personally prefer to use my daggers for damage, relegating techniques to longer-range attacks and putting debuffs on monsters. Because, like I said, if you want to use techniques for most of your damage you may as well be a Fortecher. However, if you want to toss techniques around there's nothing to stop you; Wartechers are decent enough with them. The point-blank gi class of techniques is a good fit to Wartechers in particular, as they can run into the middle of a big pile of monsters without any real danger and proceed to fry them all. Likewise, the short-range cone damu techniques (when they get released onto the US servers) can be used by a Wartecher without much risk. Longer-range techniques are good for things that the Wartecher can't reach, as their bullet skills are pretty pathetic. Speaking of which:
Guns, guns, guns
Well, on the upside, Wartechers are moderately better with guns than Hunters. On the downside, they only get to use bows, pistols, and cards, and they only get to use them up to level 10. All of them are decent weapons, but not so decent when you can't use better than level 10 bullets with them. In all honesty, a Wartecher really can't consider their ranged weapon as anything more than a means to tap distant monsters for experience, or as something to do when a monster is way up in the air. Even a Fortecher looks like an olympic marksman compared to a Wartecher, it is simply not a viable option. That being said, it's not unwise to be packing a pistol with your dagger and wands for tapping monsters, shooting boxes, or shooting at flying critters when they're out of reach. Just so long as you don't expect to actually kill anything with it.
Wartechers lack:
Rank 21-30 weapon skills.
Rank 21-30 techniques.
Rank 11-30 bullets.
Almost all S-rank weapons except daggers and twin daggers.
Yeah, that's pretty hurtful. The Wartechers will never have the spiffy third attack with their weapons, nor the super-big explosions of the 30-rank techniques, and their skill with firearms is frankly sad. They'll never be as good as a Figunner with their weapons, nor as good as a Fortecher with their techniques.
Let's just all not play them.
What?
Oh, the upsides? Well, there may be a couple.
Wartechers get the most HP of any class, tied with the Fortefighters.
Wartechers get the second-best evasion, tied with Forces.
Wartechers get the third-best MST, just behind Forces and more than twice that of the melee classes.
Wartechers get access to every technique in the game.
What does this mean? Well, first and foremost, the Wartecher is the sturdiest type in the game, with a great big HP pool, a high evasion rating, and no particular vulnerability to melee or techniques. Fortechers are better at resisting techniques but have half the HP and very little armor, Fortefighters have better armor but less evasion and half the MST, while the Wartecher can stand up against any attack in the game. Put a good shield on them and a MST-booster in the head slot, and the Wartecher can stroll through a mission dodging the melee attacks and shrugging off the techniques while the rest of the party takes a beating.
Daggers
The dagger and twin dagger are the only two weapons in the game that a Wartecher will ever be able to equip at S rank. However, a thing to bear in mind is that Wartechers actually have a much better weapon list than a Hunter, with a sizable pile of A rank weapons at their disposal. A Wartecher who doesn't want to use daggers can do so without any hassles. That being said, daggers are obviously the weapon that the Wartechers are meant to use, so daggers are what we'll look at.
Dagger (Single)
Daggers are surprisingly good melee weapons, doing a decent amount of damage with lots of slashes. The only thing that has ever annoyed me about them was their short reach, but honestly that only comes up when trying to pop a row of boxes in a single chain of hits. When fighting monsters, I've never been shy about getting right on top of them, so range isn't a real factor. Wartechers' good health and defense come in handy at times like that; it wouldn't be as wise for other people to try to go toe to toe with some of the critters out there.
Buten Shuren-zan is an excellent skill, one that I adore. However, it needs to be used with care. The second step of the skill involves a kick that tosses monsters away from you like bowling pins, which just looks fantastic, but makes any forces in your party plan to murder you in your sleep. Please, show consideration for anyone in your party who uses AoE attacks and don't go kicking all the monsters away while they're trying to get them lined up. It makes them cry. You can spam the first attack of the skill without any fear of knockback, so fall back on that when you need to. The thing that makes Buten Shuren-zan such an excellent skill is the way the character moves while using it. It's easily possible to dash forward, hit one opponent, spin around and hit another, jump over to hit a couple more, then kick yet another pair over the horizon. Even better, once you get some practice with the skill it becomes easy to dodge attacks while using it. Learn and know and love this skill and it will treat you well.
Twin Dagger
In most things, I actually prefer the single dagger to the twin. Single lets you hold a pistol in the off-hand and has a great PA skill, and while the twin hits more often, it doesn't really hit that much harder.
Renkai Buyou-zan should not be ignored, however. It isn't the most exciting skill, appearance-wise, but it offers a whole pile of advantages. One is that it's almost impossible to interrupt; it goes off almost instantly upon hitting the button. Two is that it's a whirling blender of death to creatures with multiple hit locations. Snuggle in close to the side of a big critter or boss and fire off this skill, then giggle as you watch the white numbers come pouring out. I don't know for certain whether the crea weapons can get multiple hits per swing on a single creature with lots of hit locations, but if they can, this skill will quickly gain a reputation as the best means to completely assassinate a boss. And as icing on the cake, the skill can hit things all around you, no need to worry about whether something's coming up behind you when you set it off.
Techniques
I started playing Phantasy Star with PSII, and they're called techniques, not TECHNICS, dammit. Ethan can bite me. Anyhow, techniques are the second side of the Wartecher coin, and they're where things start to get a little murky. Fortechers utterly outclass Wartechers in technique damage. They get to use better equipment, higher ranks, and have a much higher technique power. There is no contest whatsoever, the Fortecher is better than you are and will always be better than you are.
But the Fortecher is also a pansy who has to run away like a girl when a monster even looks at them, so the Wartecher can at least get a few laughs out of that.
Now Wartechers can use any and all techniques, which is good. And they can get them up to rank 20, which is respectable. The trick being, which techniques are worth using? You can't use a dagger with a wand, so any time you switch to cast you lose access to your melee weapons, and that makes things awkward. Casting the buffs is an obvious choice, but unfortunately for us the buffs aren't in the game yet.
Healing
Resta and Reverser are two no-brainers, take them. Don't argue with me about not being a healbot, if your teammates die it comes out of everyone's hide, so don't be shy with whipping out the wand to save someone's life. It's for your own good as well as everyone else's. Make sure you level those two technics to their cap; the higher their level the greater their range and the less you have to bother finding the injured person you're trying to heal. One trick that I use often is to hustle to the doorway when the party is exiting a room and heal when everyone's going through it. That way the party's tightly bunched together and you don't have to worry about some straggler being out of range. Just toss out a Resta once or twice per block and your party should be in good shape, not to mention grateful. Likewise, using Reverser to un-sleep people can make a big difference in a fight, so keep an eye out for those debuff icons on the left side of your screen.
Offense
This boils down to personal preference. I personally prefer to use my daggers for damage, relegating techniques to longer-range attacks and putting debuffs on monsters. Because, like I said, if you want to use techniques for most of your damage you may as well be a Fortecher. However, if you want to toss techniques around there's nothing to stop you; Wartechers are decent enough with them. The point-blank gi class of techniques is a good fit to Wartechers in particular, as they can run into the middle of a big pile of monsters without any real danger and proceed to fry them all. Likewise, the short-range cone damu techniques (when they get released onto the US servers) can be used by a Wartecher without much risk. Longer-range techniques are good for things that the Wartecher can't reach, as their bullet skills are pretty pathetic. Speaking of which:
Guns, guns, guns
Well, on the upside, Wartechers are moderately better with guns than Hunters. On the downside, they only get to use bows, pistols, and cards, and they only get to use them up to level 10. All of them are decent weapons, but not so decent when you can't use better than level 10 bullets with them. In all honesty, a Wartecher really can't consider their ranged weapon as anything more than a means to tap distant monsters for experience, or as something to do when a monster is way up in the air. Even a Fortecher looks like an olympic marksman compared to a Wartecher, it is simply not a viable option. That being said, it's not unwise to be packing a pistol with your dagger and wands for tapping monsters, shooting boxes, or shooting at flying critters when they're out of reach. Just so long as you don't expect to actually kill anything with it.