Thoughts about Maniac Difficulty Team
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:07 amPlayed through the game twice, and the second time I beat it on Maniac with Rogue/Minister/Crusader/War Monk.
In my opinion, three characters are mandatory
1) Minister - the money he generates your team is amazing and cannot be overlooked. You get +1% of your party's gold on every victory, up to a maximum of 60 gold bonus (when you have 6000 or more gold). This may not seem like a lot, but it makes grinding incredibly effective. I ground on the slimes/dogs for about 2 hours at the beginning of the game and was able to purchase 3 x Nord Axe for my team (the one that costs 6999 gold), and this was before I attempted the first mission! These Axes lasted me completely until I got Legend class weapons. If you try to grind this kind of money without the Minister you would be spending probably ten times as much effort for no real gain; buying powerful equipment makes a HUGE difference in this game.
As an added bonus, the Minister also gives your team an exp bonus later on, and provides some small bonuses to your team with coaching. Since he can equip shields, he is also one of the last to fall in battle. For better or worse he cannot equip very good weapons himself; it's good because it saves your team even more money so you can focus the best stuff on others. I would equip him with a Death weapon (like the underworld staff) to allow him some effectiveness later in the game in attacking.
2) Crusader - (the physical paladin fighter guy). His Boss Smash lets him hit a boss 5 times. That is crazy! He also has a move that lets him attack 4 times at random. That is very useful for non-boss fights. Being able to equip anything in the game gives him extremely powerful passive defense and flexibility in using the best weapon you have at any time regardless if it's a spellbook or axe. He can also boost your entire team with Resistant which is an added bonus. The 2 x attack relic is overhyped in my opinion; the crusader's 4/5 hit moves make that thing look silly.
3) War Monk - he lives to complement the Crusader. Shards of the Earth guarantees fragile status on the enemy even if they are normally immune to it, which effectively doubles all physical damage you output from the Crusader. He can also guarantee the Weak status to give you a chance to survive the hardest hitting physical attacks. As an added bonus, he can cure a lot of weird status ailments at cheap mana cost, he can equip decently hard hitting stuff like the Nord Axe so he is a great fighter early in the game, and he has an instant death move to use on the annoying Horror Spiders towards the end of the game. While you can try to make him into a later game fighter with the double attack relic, it's a bit of waste since he spends a lot of time debuffing enemies for the Crusader anyways (or using healing items in the hardest fights). I would rather stick the God's Burden in his shield slot.
The 4th character is flexible; ultimately I regretted using the Rogue. Why? She's ok for the most part being very speedy and can equip good weapons like the Nord Axe, but her abilities are actually pretty bad overall (they are all single target, they try to inflict some status ailments but this is usually done better by the Monk, and they don't do good damage; her normal attack with a good weapon will outdistance even her level 43 ability!!!). Her counterattack is OK but overall very very so-so; not that many enemies will physically attack her.
Actually the real reason I regret using the Rogue is because I realized, when you get to a really hard fight like the very last one, you will regret not having someone who can guarantee the Idiotic status. The team I used did have one (Minister's Congress of Idiots), but he was the leader and as you know the leader is disabled in the very last fight. If you can't guarantee the Idiotic status on the last fight you will suffer a lot of defeats (at least I did), even with an amazing combo like War monk + crusader.
I still made it by, but it was partly luck and partly tons of equipping resistances to elements and trying to buff the party with Resistant and light/dark/elemental protection. With the Idiotic status, you give yourself huge breathing room by cutting the HUGE magic damage in half.
I haven't used the Pyro Witch at all yet, but she is one of the two characters who can cast Air Head that guarantees idiocy. The other one, the Air Archer, I don't think I would take with me on Maniac Mode; her damage output is incredibly poor and the free shots don't kill much on Manic Mode. She also lacks some sort of "kill this Horror Spider now!!" ability. The archer's air slaughter is a convenience for some nasty fights like in the Isendra tower but ultimately not hard to get by without. And the Pyro witch can equip a War Book to get pre-emptive, which is nice.
Overall I think the optimal combination again is Minister for incredible money (and you can toss him away without a glance at the last battle), Monk+Crusader for huge damage output, then the last slot should be an Air Head character to deal with mega magic damage at the end.
In my opinion, three characters are mandatory
1) Minister - the money he generates your team is amazing and cannot be overlooked. You get +1% of your party's gold on every victory, up to a maximum of 60 gold bonus (when you have 6000 or more gold). This may not seem like a lot, but it makes grinding incredibly effective. I ground on the slimes/dogs for about 2 hours at the beginning of the game and was able to purchase 3 x Nord Axe for my team (the one that costs 6999 gold), and this was before I attempted the first mission! These Axes lasted me completely until I got Legend class weapons. If you try to grind this kind of money without the Minister you would be spending probably ten times as much effort for no real gain; buying powerful equipment makes a HUGE difference in this game.
As an added bonus, the Minister also gives your team an exp bonus later on, and provides some small bonuses to your team with coaching. Since he can equip shields, he is also one of the last to fall in battle. For better or worse he cannot equip very good weapons himself; it's good because it saves your team even more money so you can focus the best stuff on others. I would equip him with a Death weapon (like the underworld staff) to allow him some effectiveness later in the game in attacking.
2) Crusader - (the physical paladin fighter guy). His Boss Smash lets him hit a boss 5 times. That is crazy! He also has a move that lets him attack 4 times at random. That is very useful for non-boss fights. Being able to equip anything in the game gives him extremely powerful passive defense and flexibility in using the best weapon you have at any time regardless if it's a spellbook or axe. He can also boost your entire team with Resistant which is an added bonus. The 2 x attack relic is overhyped in my opinion; the crusader's 4/5 hit moves make that thing look silly.
3) War Monk - he lives to complement the Crusader. Shards of the Earth guarantees fragile status on the enemy even if they are normally immune to it, which effectively doubles all physical damage you output from the Crusader. He can also guarantee the Weak status to give you a chance to survive the hardest hitting physical attacks. As an added bonus, he can cure a lot of weird status ailments at cheap mana cost, he can equip decently hard hitting stuff like the Nord Axe so he is a great fighter early in the game, and he has an instant death move to use on the annoying Horror Spiders towards the end of the game. While you can try to make him into a later game fighter with the double attack relic, it's a bit of waste since he spends a lot of time debuffing enemies for the Crusader anyways (or using healing items in the hardest fights). I would rather stick the God's Burden in his shield slot.
The 4th character is flexible; ultimately I regretted using the Rogue. Why? She's ok for the most part being very speedy and can equip good weapons like the Nord Axe, but her abilities are actually pretty bad overall (they are all single target, they try to inflict some status ailments but this is usually done better by the Monk, and they don't do good damage; her normal attack with a good weapon will outdistance even her level 43 ability!!!). Her counterattack is OK but overall very very so-so; not that many enemies will physically attack her.
Actually the real reason I regret using the Rogue is because I realized, when you get to a really hard fight like the very last one, you will regret not having someone who can guarantee the Idiotic status. The team I used did have one (Minister's Congress of Idiots), but he was the leader and as you know the leader is disabled in the very last fight. If you can't guarantee the Idiotic status on the last fight you will suffer a lot of defeats (at least I did), even with an amazing combo like War monk + crusader.
I still made it by, but it was partly luck and partly tons of equipping resistances to elements and trying to buff the party with Resistant and light/dark/elemental protection. With the Idiotic status, you give yourself huge breathing room by cutting the HUGE magic damage in half.
I haven't used the Pyro Witch at all yet, but she is one of the two characters who can cast Air Head that guarantees idiocy. The other one, the Air Archer, I don't think I would take with me on Maniac Mode; her damage output is incredibly poor and the free shots don't kill much on Manic Mode. She also lacks some sort of "kill this Horror Spider now!!" ability. The archer's air slaughter is a convenience for some nasty fights like in the Isendra tower but ultimately not hard to get by without. And the Pyro witch can equip a War Book to get pre-emptive, which is nice.
Overall I think the optimal combination again is Minister for incredible money (and you can toss him away without a glance at the last battle), Monk+Crusader for huge damage output, then the last slot should be an Air Head character to deal with mega magic damage at the end.
