I've been looking at the list of Techniques available to forces in PSU and noticed that there are quite a few new ones. Including direct damage dealing techniques, there are also ones that focus on landing both good and bad status effects - enough to keep a hyperactive little force busy. The question though, is are they worth it, and will there be a demand for them?
In my opinion, the two main factors that will determine this are as follows:
1. The effectiveness of these spells
2. The difficulty of Online Network Mode
First, we will explore factor #1, the effectiveness of these spells. It is common sense that the higher level a technique is, the more powerful it is likely to be. Because forces have the highest level techniques, they are our top candidate for the job.
Most people who played PSO probably agree that casting the highest level Deband and Shifta were well worth it - they cost a small amount of TP/MP/PP/whatever, had a decent land radius, and lasted multiple minutes.
The debuffs were a little more optional, depending on how fast monsters died. In a party full of spread needles, by the time you ran into the room to cast Jellen and Zalure, everything was already dead. Not worthwhile. Soloing offline mode, however, they were welcome. For my melee-happy fonewearl, the method to defeat monsters without going through a full stack of 10 trifluid every few rooms was to gather up all the monsters, cast my debuffs, and then whack away with my huge plantain fan or mechgun until everything was dead. Rinse, repeat. The buffs and debuffs were all % based on the level of the technique, so it didn't matter what my gear was.
And then there's the other debuffs! Freezing enemies was great in PSO's PvP until everyone learned the ice trick. Freeze traps were also nice when dealing with annoying enemies like dark gunners that were only attackable by physical attacks for short periods of time. (And unlike the techniques, traps had a near 100% land rate.) Sadly, all bosses were resistant to ice and shock. And then there's the classic spread needle example again... someone walks into the room, freezes the target, but .5 seconds later it's dead because everyone just unloaded their spreadneedles again.
Now in PSU, apparently you need to bind a technique to some sort of wand, rod, or other mage weapon and have it equiped in order to cast a spell. The easiest way to go about this seems to be to bind all your buffs to the same weapon, equip it every few minutes, cast your techs, and then go along yor merry way with whatever other weapon you choose. But wait! If you bind techniques of the same element to a weapon, you are supposed to get some sort of % bonus. Each element has its own set of buffs and debuffs. Does that mean in order to get the biggest boost for my precious pp that I must bind all my buffs and debuffs to different rods? Do mental stats influence the power of buffs? In PSO, the answers were no, and no, but that could change for PSU! It could also be the birth of some crazy weapon swapping. (Which some of us already do anyway!)
My final thought is that PSU parties support 6 people, not 4. The general rule for most RPGs seems the more people you are advised to bring, the more challenging your mission or raid is likely to be. If you are attempting to do the mission with a smaller or lower level group of players, more strategy will be involved. More strategy usually involves a wider use of tactics and abilities. And that includes buffs and debuffs.
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