O Gawd. Time to trot out my little soap box again!
Storm Dragon Elite:
- Has ~200k HP
- ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you're gonna get 3 action medals on the 4 trash stages unless you blow -ja spells per stage (I believe it's 3 actions per mob for 3 action medals at this point
- If you get 8/9 for all trash stages, you need 8/12 for the boss stage to attain Mastery
- Cyclone AOE reduces HP to 1 with an attach rate of maybe 50%, meaning more often than not it's an instant savescum because he AOEs more than half the time right after
That being said though, I found it was actually... pretty well tuned. I'm not sure if the difficulty for this was intentional some time after gives you a Zantetsuken and after Friend Summons were added (in JP) but I scraped by with about a half hour's worth of savescumming and attempts. Sentinel Grimoire saved many asses, and lasted almost exactly 100k hp, along with Kirin.
I think it's better tuned than Jenova Birth just on the sole basis that the game gave you a free 5* Record Synergy weapon, so there's a baseline power level people can attain that's RNG-independent.
The only ways I can see making this more painless would have been levelling everyone strictly to 65 (avg. level was 60 except Cyan who was 50) or going 4-mage.
Speaking of that, it's becoming more and more apparent why Retaliate was falling out of favor for 4-mage around this point in JP. Vivi and a 4* RS rod was hitting for 9.5k with Thundaga, without Mental Break, and using Concentration (as in, no additional boost from the RM). while Retaliate hits went for about 3k with Boost and Armor Break (no Breakdown, not enough uses and this was another endurance test).
I do recall that somewhere along the line, JP had a balance pass that juggled the physical damage calc incl. the soft cap, but I still don't see how that's gonna overtake 4-mage, especially when getting good melee weapons is RNG, but honing the shit out of elemental 3* and 4* spells is just grinding.
p.s. There was one hilarious attempt where I counted up to ~180k damage, and then Tidus hit Cloud with a Zantetsuken proc because I misjudged retaliate timing. Literally was the first time I hit Cloud by accident in upwards of half a dozen attempts, and Zantetsuken immediately procs. DERP.
At least the 5* was a Flame Sword (IV) with physical fire damage SB. Even though I only have one character-specific SB (Squall) I at least have some good generic ones: Gaia Blade (Quake, pretty bad SB though, but nice stats - good if you have a decent SB armor), Thunder Blade (thunder AoE), Gold Armlet (adds protect buff) and the Viking Coat (physical water AoE)
