(no subject)

[geebs]

Hmm, the contractors are doing some painting or something, and whatever they're putting on sure has a strong smell. Thank goodness I only have to sit here for another half hour.



Intriguing, that one guy on the gamefaqs Warriors Orochi boards giving sage advice on proper weapon attributes in WO finally made a faq about it. So now I don't have to go searching through the message boards to find bv('the best') combination. I don't take his recommendations as gospel though. I mainly check his faq to look up if someone will benefit from range or will have their moveset messed up from agility, or if they're one of the few who benefit from fire (SSX is the only one off the top of my head).

While his advice is good, your choices should also be dependent on your play style as well. He forgoes brave quite often (since it only does extra damage against officers) in exchange for something with a more general use, like air, or drain. Drain's really only useful in hard, because I don't think I've ever come close to dying on easy and normal. I prolly don't even need to equip vitality skill either, because even on the 4+ star boards, I rarely drop below that second colored life bar. Absorb is recommended for folks like Kunioichi, who are expected to use their r1 special a lot. But I never seem to gain enough musou back to make it worth the slot. I guess you also have to equip the "less musou use" skill and the "regain musou even when you're active" to really keep your bar full.

Owel, I see he also says air is a must for tech characters, because tech characters do extra damage on airborne enemies which only means they're not on the ground, they don't neccesarily have to be up high in the air. Like when SSX or Yue Ying hits an enemy with their SSSSST combo. The people they're hitting are only slightly off the ground as the girls go into blender mode with their chakrams or scythe, respectively, but that still counts as airborne. So giving air to a tech character=insane damage in his book. But that's only if you play them in such a way to benefit from that! Someone like Yue Ying, even a novice will benefit from air. But he's assuming you're trying to do moves that hit the enemy in the air (even if its only ever so slightly) and then following up with triangle attacks to juggle them (as the attributes only apply to triangle hits, or elemental effect hits). So if you're not, then air is not for you.

He also disapproves of ice on tech characters, since ice will keep a foe grounded, preventing the tech character from getting his "airborne" damage bonus. But if you're better at hitting a frozen guy on the ground then hitting someone multiple times in the air, then ice may be fine for you.

Owel, and I did verify your elements still come out even without a full musou, as I had a depleted musou bar, and bolt and slay were still coming out, as the enemies had the black lightning around them when they go thit by my attacks.

Comments

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

I have found myself very loath to replace Ice, and I'm not sure why. For the characters who have it come out a lot, I am especially loath. Like Yue Ying, or the Qiaos.

I really need to get over that. But it's hard.

I noticed that Air on at least one character, one of the spear guys, hmmm was it Jiang Wei perhaps? worked really well. He's one of the few characters I've even allowed to have Air over Ice. I think Wei Yan also has Air equipped. And Multi, cuz of back-spin thing he does when he hits everyone around him about 50 times.

I also gave Okuni Air because one of her moves puts about 3 up in the air bouncing on her umbrella, so I figured she could benefit from it (and damn, does it seem to work well for her...).

So maybe the "usual" powers you'd equip are:
slay-flash-might-bolt / air-range-brave-multi

and then only switch out some of the latter four if the character 1) can't use range or 2) doesn't benefit well from air or multi

The thing you mention that that guy says about "brave" -- I have noticed that even on easy mode, the peons can be really tough! Perhaps not hard to kill, but when you're surrounded by a mob, they seem to attack you far more aggressively and intelligently than the used to in the previous games. Many times I find it impossible to get a combo off because of them (not the officers in the mob), and it gets really frustrating and annoying, "oh COME ON! they're just PEONS!"

[geebs.livejournal.com]

Well, ice was the second best after slay in previous games (at least for me), so its hard to break that habit. Its still good for some people. Mostly those people who are power characters and have a attack string where they stand in place and hit multiple times in front of them, like Sun Ce or Xiahou Huan's SSSSST. Multi's not really good for them because multi will send them flying after that first hit, and thus you lose the effect of that attack string. Ice though will hold the enemy in place, and since your character is also standing in place, they'll get hit with every hit. And since they're power characters, the combo won't get interrupted.

At the very least though, for a character I'm unfamiliar with, I'd put ice before air and multi (at least at first) because freezing the enemy at least gets them off your back, until you learn the character well enough that you don't need it and can capitalize on the higher damage potential of air or multi. Its prolly multi that's the best choice of the three, because its only Guan Ping and Ranmaru whose best combos are actually weakened by multi, so I think more people in general benefit from air than multi.

Oh, and the peon thing gets easier when you have higher levels of bolt. Since everyone who gets hit is "shocked", they can't hit you for a second or two because they're stunned. And guys who weren't hit can't get to you because there are all those shocked guys in the way. I noticed this back when I first started playing and wasn't familiar with the elements yet. I had removed bolt for some reason, and was wondering why the hell my character started getting hit way more often by the peons. So I put it back and they were less trouble.

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

Multi = multiple hits on triangle attacks as if you had several ghosts of yourself also hitting them at the same time?

[geebs.livejournal.com]

Yes. It also has a knockback effect though which is good if you want to thin out a crowd, but not so good for some people's combos. As I mentioned before, ranmaru and guan ping's SSST+ attacks are two of the lethal-est combos in the game (once you get a high level of agility on the weapon), but putting multi on their weapons, it will knock the enemy away before they get hit by all the hits of their big-ass swords.

Those are the only two I know who it adversely effects. But for the rest, the increase in damage and elemental effects going off more is worth swatting them away from your combos. The percentage of ice skyrockets if you do multi+ice. And having high slay and high multi is just monstrous.