The TM i used was dualcast on my refia. I want to clear content without it, but my units cant solve the puzzle Abraxas gives to me.
Tilith: Basically rainbow veil. Why i didnt use Cloud of Darkness? Because her Omniveil IS NOT ENOUGH to mitigate damage with those units and equip. Also Tilith has Goddess Miracle, that just Like CoD's comeback, it heals ailments, but tilith also cure your party.
Abraxas: The Final Battle. Basically here i cant cast meteor because Abraxas will swallow 2 party members at the same time. But i can cast Wicked Light, and the good thing is that Abraxas is a little weak to holy. With deep blue and defend, both exdeaths and tilith can survive "Release" without trouble. It was a slow battle but with refia and her dualcast, i have control of the table all the time.
And there goes this event. Im a little sad because i cant clear it TM-free, but also is true that almost most and most players have at least 1-2 TMs, and the more recurrent ones are the TMs of base 3 star units, like dualcast and Dual Weild.
Ok, snipped your post a whole bunch, but kept the parts I really want to focus upon.
Upon watching the video, that really brought a smile to my face. Incredibly well done, given what you brought to the fight. I can honestly say that you maximized the potential you had for that team and there is literally nothing more you could have done here outside of adding TM weapons/gear to the units. I'll explain further below.
First and foremost, that's a mighty fine unit box you have there. As someone who likes to level units, that's a very impressive and diverse collection of units ready to go on demand. Kudos, indeed.
Let's deconstruct your mechanics:
Team Comp: 3 Healers, 2 Mages + 1 Support
The thread discussed this situation briefly yesterday, about marginal healing utility and damage attrition. Essentially, the team requires Refia + Luka + Tilith to keep up with the marginal damage threshold of the dungeon. Bartz is there as a mana exploit, while the 2 Exdeaths are there as magic damage.
So, essentially a heavy defense mage team, using Bartz as a way to ensure longevity of MP pools of high MP-burning units. Solid concept here.
What actually happened:
-- Very long grind per fight
-- Healers kept buffs up to lower incoming damage
-- Exdeaths kept chipping away enemy life via Meteors
-- Bartz suicides to replenish everyone's MP as needed.
These fights are a perfect example of the long-run outcomes of any fight given these conditions:
1) The enemy has no "damage race" conditions (kill me in X turns or the party auto-dies)
2) The enemy cannot achieve total damage over the marginal healing potential of the party (the party can fully recover each turn from the total damage of the enemy)
3) The player has unlimited resources to the team.
Given these conditions, no matter how long it takes, the player will always will in a battle of attrition.
BUT, when one of these conditions fail, the player will lose when using a grind team.
Such a situation happened, during the Abraxas fight, and the ability to recover from that demonstrates the clear power of Dualcast.
So, what we have here is a teachable moment.
/teachermode on
Class, please advance the video to 53 minutes, where we will review minutes 53 to 57 of the fight.
The scenario: At 53 minutes into the video, Valentus has maintained control of the fight the entire time. Buffs are up, and everyone is at full life. Here, we watch everything go bad quickly through an unfortunate round of random attacks.
Tilith goes down, and as Valentus checks, buffs have naturally expired on that turn as well. It's a classic "Oh Shit, the Run May Be Over" moment. At this point, condition #2 above is now threatened. With Tilith down, the reduced healing capacity introduces the potential for all that missing life on each unit to become accumulated damage attrition and risk a complete wipe the next turn.
So, at minute 54, Valentus weighs his options and optimally addresses the situation. Refia via Dualcast raises Tilith and heals the party via Curaja. This frees up Luka to recast Deep Blue to restore defense buffs to the party.
Note that at this point, not all of the damage is healed on everyone, and becomes damage attrition. This is a significant problem, as this increases the odds of bad RNG the next round wiping the team. I think Valentus realized this (the long pause) and forwarded a masterful gambit. He used Bartz as a sacrifical lamb via Provoke to eat as many attacks as possible the next round in an attempt to increase the chances of all the healers surviving that round while suffering from damage attrition. As minute 55 shows, the gambit pays off because of beneficial RNG and everyone survives that round. Thus, by minutes 56 and 57, Valentus is able to restore the team to full health and restore all buffs to regain control over the fight, which ultimately led to the win.
Now, could he have recovered from the scenario without Dualcast? I'm not going to say a complete no to that, but I will say that the probability of him surviving the next turn would have been much, much lower otherwise and probably close to zero outside of a blessing from RNGesus.
Those four minutes were the Plays of the Game for this run.
Class dismissed.
/teachermode off
Honestly, I can't see any faults here. The run was as letter-perfect as it gets.
Also, in the future, I can't see runs like this happening. For example, in PAD, there are specific mechanics that can be used (and often are) in the game to intentionally cause damage-race conditions or to prevent a grind team from attritioning out a long battle for a win. I would expect at some point similar conditions to appear in FFBE to prevent 75 minute grindfests from occurring.
Further, as an additional aside, once the crystal change is implemented (~2 months?), I would drop the no-5* condition for teams. Similar to the logic on how many F2P teams should have at least 1-2 TMs now, many F2P should be able to "trip" over 1 or 2 5* base units once rainbows are guaranteed in the future.
As always, a tip of my hat in respect to a masterful run.
