Board 8 > ~FIGHT!~ Raiden/Garrus/ Vrtra/Zeratul & Co Vs Zenos/Selvaria/Yu & Co

(+) Yeah! (+)

Raiden, Garrus Vakarian, Zeratul, Estinien Wyrmblood, Vrtra, Slave Knight Gael, and Haurchefant Graystone have challenged Zenos viator Galvus, Selvaria Bles, Yu Narukami, Tifa Lockhart, and Kazama Kiryu to a fight! Location of the fight: Ala Mhigo - Capital city of the namesake country, now a war-torn battle site in the final days of Garlean occupation, as seen in the duty of the same name and the Royal Menagerie trial. Attackers will begin at the staging point, while defenders will begin at the Hall of the Griffin. All enemies are absent and all obstacles impeding passage have been cleared, but the unmanned pieces of military hardware still remain, free for mercenaries to use as they see fit.. Which side will win?

Guidelines
- The fight will occur in real-time (like an FMV sequence). Gameplay mechanics are less important than how the characters would function in a real-time environment.
- The members of each team are ideal teammates capable of executing a prearranged battle plan.
- Unless stated otherwise, characters have access to their full arsenal of abilities and equipment. They may not always work at full power, however (e.g. a petrifying spell may have only a partial hindering effect not seen in gameplay or even fail outright against sufficiently powerful mercenaries). Use your own discretion.
- There may be SPOILERS from all of the games the characters are from.
Rules for Voting
- Bold your votes (using bold HTML tags).
- You do not need to require justification for your vote, though the admins reserve the right to disqualify votes in the advent of obvious alt voting and other similar scenarios.
- Leaders cannot vote for their own teams, but they are free to argue their case.
- If you want to switch your votes simply bold the change; there's no need to delete your post, though you may if you wish.
- This match will end in 24 hours.

Raiden is as seen in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with access to all of his weapons (save the Fox Blade) and upgrades available in that game, including the Murasama blade, as well as a full complement of grenades and stinger missiles. Raiden will start battle entrapped within a cake larger than him, completely indestructible to all attacks save eating through it. Raiden is are free to exit the cake as soon as they and their team have eaten them a way out, and will automatically emerge from it when Kiryu or the majority of his team encounter the cake, attempting to surprise them.

Garrus Vakarian is as he appears in Mass Effect 3, with his Black Widow sniper rifle and M-7 Lancer Assault Rifle and all powers seen therein. He has entered the battle one minute early to do whatever he'd please.

Zeratul is as he appears in the Starcraft series and Heroes of the Storm with all of his skills except Void Prison. He is permanently invisible, only detectable by the shimmer of light refracting off his cloak. Zeratul has the ability to "rewind" up to 15 seconds as seen in Life is Strange, up to two times.

Estinien Wyrmblood is as he is seen in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, with all of his gameplay, cutscene, and trailer feats from every expansion of the game. He also has the full PvP Dragoon kit, sans elixirs. Estinien has been hit by Tifa's Whirlwind Uppercut, Rise and Fall, Starshower, Dolphin Flurry (FF7:R versions), and Final Heaven (FF7 version) Limit Breaks! After sustaining all damage from these attacks, he will start the battle dazed for 3 seconds, taking quadruple damage from the next attack that he receives, and knocked into the air next to Tifa.

Vrtra is as he is seen in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, with all gameplay, cutscene, and trailer feats from it. Varshahn is absent, so he possesses both of his eyes. Vrtra starts next to Estinien.

Slave Knight Gael is as he is seen in phase 3 of his boss fight in Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City, although he starts at full health and retains his sanity from before his bossfight as well as his moveset from previous phases. The lightning storm around him only extends to his immediate vicinity and does not hurt his teammates.

Lord Haurchefant Greystone is as he is seen in Final Fantasy XIV, including all feats in-game and in cutscenes.

~VS~

Zenos viator Galvus is as he appears in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker. He has access to all of his attacks seen in his final battle, as well as any from previous appearances and cutscene showings, save for Storm, Swell, Sword. He may transform into Shinryu at will, possessing all of the attacks seen in The Minstrel's Ballad: Shinryu's Domain, save for Reiryu, though none of his attacks will have enrage properties. He may not summon any allies, save his avatar.

Selvaria is as seen in Valkyria Chronicles, with access to her Valkyrur lance and shield as well as her Ruhm machine gun. She cannot use her Valkyrur Flame self destruct power.Selvaria will prioritize the safety of Zenos over all else, even if they're on different teams. She is equipped with the Persona, Sraosha, as it appears in Persona 4 (with Null Fire, Ice, and Wind. Mamamaon may not necessarily instantly kill targets on successful application).Slave Knight Gael has reduced Selvaria to a hollow! She will be considered undead, and will be berserked and ravenous for the duration of the battle.

Yu Narukami is as he appears in Persona 4: Golden and Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax. He has the persona Izanagi available, may not summon Izanagi-no-Okami, and may freely switch to his persona Kohryu (with Heat Riser).

Tifa Lockhart is as she appears in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and continuations, with full access to all of her moves and Limit Breaks seen therein. She has access to the Chakra, Prayer, Assess, Deadly Dodge, Parry, Steadfast Block, Breach, Provoke, Poison, Elemental and Carbuncle materias, fully mastered.

Kazuma Kiryu is as he appears in the Yakuza series, at the peak of his fighting prowess. He comes into battle equipped with three bottles of Staminan Royale, the Ama-no-Murakumo blade, Extremely Sturdy Brass Knuckles, a 9mm handgun with unlimited ammo, the Transcendent Body Armor and a motorcycle. He may use any of his fighting styles, Heat Actions and techniques as he sees fit, and starts the battle with full Heat, which will not drain unless used. He is equipped with the Persona, Vishnu, as it appears in Persona 4 (plus Tetrakarn and Blade of Fury).

trdl's argument:

There have been an awful lot of walls of texts here, and some people have said they don't bother reading them. So let's keep this quick. Three main questions are important to answer: A) Can Vrtra get out of the Hall of the Griffin? B) Can Raiden beat Shinryu-Zenos? C) What effect does Garrus have here? Let me answer these for you:

A) Yes, Vrtra gets out of the Hall. Selvaria is Hollowed and thus lacks much of the technique that makes her arsenal so scary -- and I'm willing to bet she focuses on finishing off Estinien if my playing of Dark Souls has given me any indication. Take the kill she knows she can get. Vrtra will be super sad to leave Estinien for dead, but he's a wise ruler of a subcontinent, and he knows when the greater good needs him most. He's also a huge fuckoff dragon and can force a way through. Finally, he knows Zenos and knows what makes Zenos tick since they met on Sharlayan - he can promise Zenos a fight with a being that may even surpass Zenos's "friend," and Zenos will slobber at this and let him go. He has a habit to let people go when he knows there's a greater fight to be had later. Vrtra flies back to his team start point and gobbles up the cake to get Raiden free. Nobody else packs enough firepower to hit Vrtra hard enough to be relevant in a small skirmish.

B) Absolutely. I'll hold off on showing Raiden's feats, you already know what they are. Shinryu could easily just try to cast magic from a distance... but this is Zenos we're talking about. He will ALWAYS go for mano-a-mano for the thrill of it - in FF14, he even gladly extends his tail as Shinryu to bid his rival run up it toward him for a melee brawl.

C) Garrus makes everyone else irrelevant. There's a plaza choke point right here he will absolutely reach first and trap to hell and back: https://youtu.be/AcjclS3M0pQ?t=285

This is a grand sniper who held a bridge against three massive merc companies, solo. Hollow Selvaria can't parry him with her technique. Only Zenos matters.

Kanz's argument

TL;DR: Vrtra and Estinien are dead. Sneak attacks don't work. Buffs and war of attrition favor us.

---

Our final match of this showcase is going to be an explosive one. Unfortunately, this explosion will consume the enemy team in a blaze of nuclear hellfire.

To start things off, I want to very quickly dismantle the value of Garrus' ambush time. To do this, I want to propose a fun little game to you. Check this video out:

https://youtu.be/uRDQJcAzq7Y?t=39

No, I don't want anyone to watch this in full. Instead, simply count the seconds where the characters are moving forward, deeper and deeper into the depths of Ala Mhigo, and skip over any and all instances of battle until you hit a full minute of walking. Then look at how much more video there is left. This is a massive, sprawling terrain, and Garrus won't get into position to ambush my team in time.

Estinien is dead. There's no way he can survive an uppercut, Rise and Fall, Starshower, Dolphin Flurry AND Final Heaven from Tifa, and then take a quadruple damage ANYTHING from anyone. It's just too much. He's gone. Which leaves Vrtra all alone with the rest of my team. The Hall of the Griffin is very large, and Vrtra should be able to move, so it's likely he'll try to escape. Unfortunately, the Hall is very sturdily built (you can see it in the final segments of the video above where Zenos appears), and even more unfortunately, there's a much bigger, badder dragon in the way.

https://imgur.com/Ls1Ok4x

This is the size of Vrtra, relative to my character, a 5' 10'' human (I'm the guy with the flaming halo, hi everyone).

https://imgur.com/tveBjVi

This is the size of Shinryu's top third or top quarter, seen from a distance, with my character as a reference.

https://imgur.com/YyTMZ9J

...And this is Shinryu's size from up close and personal. Note the halo as my character clings on for dear life to him. It's not even possible to capture a full shot of the size of Shinryu's bladed tail using an unmodded instance of FF14. The best I can do is show you how it covers the arena with plenty of room to spare.

https://imgur.com/pISgQ50

Vrtra will try to fly away, and he will be put in a tail hold or simply slammed against the ground by Zenos. The rest of the team will butcher him afterward. He's simply too small and too weak to escape this fate. Once taken care of, that just leaves Zeratul and Garrus to deal with as active threats, as Raiden is in a cake and can be dispatched at leisure. Enter Yu and Kiryu. Yu's Izanagi persona has the Rakunda skill, which inflicts defense down on a chosen enemy and will nuke Garrus' defenses, leaving him vulnerable to Yu and friends' attacks. Kiryu, for his part, has the persona Vishnu, which not only allows him to combine its attacks with his for a devastating tandem physical offensive...but also has Tetrakarn, a buff that reflects *any physical attack* an ally is hit with to the attacker, and doesn't fade away until consumed. This turns Zeratul's sneak attacks into liabilities because he'll try to kill someone and end up hitting himself with his warp blade. He's not very resilient to them -- one good stab from Artanis' own blade killed him in Starcraft 2. Even if he survives his own botched assassination attempt, he'll be heavily wounded, and his team has no way to patch up wounded allies. His and Garrus' preferred fighting styles heavily lean on physical attacks (especially Garrus, whose only non-physical attack is Overload, a lightning strike...and Yu's Kohryu persona passively reflects lightning). Taking those away from them turns them into sitting ducks. Raiden is tough enough to take his own hits reflected back at him and continue attacking, but unfortunately, he'll be debuffed and facing an overwhelming numbers disadvantage before long -- and what's worse is, his enemies will keep getting back up if defeated, and Yu's Heat Riser buff will turn Zenos, his most dangerous foe, into an even greater menace by buffing everything he can do. It'll likely be a drawn out battle, but the outcome should never be in question. These upstart invaders will not snatch Ala Mhigo away from its true owners. Their invasion will be repelled, and their defeat will serve to remind them of the most important constant they should have remembered before challenging us: their own inferiority.

So I was still half-asleep when I was making that, and important point:

Zeratul has two chances to rewind time, up to 15 seconds each.

Even if he gets fooled by Tetrakarn once, he can Ctrl+Z that and, I don't know, chuck a rock or something to break the barrier before going in for the kill. It also keeps his place in space, so he can use it to get into places he normally wouldn't be able to.

Rewind certainly does give Zeratul a chance to be more useful (read this as: do anything before dying horribly). Unfortunately, even deciding to hang back and wait for Tetrakarn to be popped by someone else means his team is stuck fighting without him for a hot minute, and they're naturally out numbered already. It's kind of a no-win situation either way. His team needs him to be massively impactful to have a shot in hell and Tetrakarn ensures he can't be, and then on top of that Yu can just fix any damage he does (and if he falls, Tifa will get him back up). Team Yu has a lot of redundancies in place to deal with assassins...and of course, Zenos can sense his incoming approach with his Resonance, so his sneak attacks are of suspect efficiency anyways.

Well.

Estinien is dead.

If theres someone I expect to be loyal even as a hollow, its fuckin Selvaria.

Raiden will start battle entrapped within a cake larger than him, completely indestructible to all attacks save eating through it. Raiden is are free to exit the cake as soon as they and their team have eaten them a way out, and will automatically emerge from it when Kiryu or the majority of his team encounter the cake, attempting to surprise them. - this is nonsense what is going on here.

Since this place is so big, there's nothing stopping Kiryu from Tetrakarning his entire team, right? Maybe SP is an issue, but I think even Kanji has enough SP to Tetrakarn his entire team.

Raiden cannot exit the cake until either Kiryu of his team encounters it, or until he and his teammates eat him a way out, p much

Feel like Zeratul with rewinds wrecks everyone even though Raiden is never getting out of that cake.

Aight, so here are some issues:

1) Zenos has no showings of him being able to just grab Vrtra's tail in human form "so long, gay Bowser" style. Crazy strong, sure, but he can't pull the shit Raiden pulls in MGR to Excelsius. If you're arguing he immediately turns into Shinryu instead of moving forward as a humanoid to savor the hunt, A) bullshit, and B) he's absolutely just flying the fuck out of there to get to the fight the fastest and leaving his "allies" behind, weak and feeble as they are.

2) If you really think there is a dearth of rocks or other mediocre projectiles to chuck and break the tetrakarn barriers without actually using lethal weapons in an active war zone, that argument's faith is so bad it's rotten.

3) Zero shot anyone besides Zenos gets out of the plaza, especially if he decides to go hunting in Shinryu form.

wait where is gruntildas lair, I've grown accustomed to it

Oh wait Raiden jumps out when the other team approaches?

Yeah. Zeratul kills some with Garrus prep and Raiden finishes off everyone else. Not even a close battle.

Team Cake Revengeance

We thought Gruntilda's Lair was here,
but now it's gone and disappeared.
Instead we have some dusty place,
It's kicking salt into my face!

Mewtwo59 posted...

Since this place is so big, there's nothing stopping Kiryu from Tetrakarning his entire team, right? Maybe SP is an issue, but I think even Kanji has enough SP to Tetrakarn his entire team.

Nothing stops them at all, yeah. For reference, Kanji has like 300 SP or so at max level and I would expect Kiryu to not be quite so inept at magic to begin with. More than enough margin to foil sneak attacks.

trdl23 posted...

Aight, so here are some issues:

1) Zenos has no showings of him being able to just grab Vrtra's tail in human form "so long, gay Bowser" style. Crazy strong, sure, but he can't pull the shit Raiden pulls in MGR to Excelsius. If you're arguing he immediately turns into Shinryu instead of moving forward as a humanoid to savor the hunt, A) bullshit, and B) he's absolutely just flying the fuck out of there to get to the fight the fastest and leaving his "allies" behind, weak and feeble as they are.

2) If you really think there is a dearth of rocks or other mediocre projectiles to chuck and break the tetrakarn barriers without actually using lethal weapons in an active war zone, that argument's faith is so bad it's rotten.

3) Zero shot anyone besides Zenos gets out of the plaza, especially if he decides to go hunting in Shinryu form.

1) You're arguing Vrtra tries to escape. Do you think Zenos would let his prey go? Nonsense. He absolutely will just pin Vrtra down and slay him if he turns tail. Zenos does not respect cowardice.

2) Why would Zeratul immediately assume a rock would break the barrier? This is severe metagaming, IMO. He has never faced persona users before. He has no idea how their defenses work. In fact, he's liable to assume they work like Protoss shields but better, because that's his frame of reference, and those are persistent until broken by excess damage. A rock would not cross his mind as a reasonable use of time, given that.

3) If Garrus tries to blow people up with a mortar, he dies to 5x Tetrakarn reflections. This is not the genius argument you think it is.

Just some brief thoughts:

-I actually buy that Team Garrus is the one who will be defending mostly. Selvaria is... not in the best shape for complex thinking beyond MURDER, and Zenos is not in the best shape for not wanting to wait patiently for a worthy foe to slowly chip themselves out against all these reflect barriers. Garrus is smart enough to figure out a good place to trap, I'm more than confident on that.

-Tetrakarn hurts stealth HARD. ME bullets are explicitly supermagnet-fueled metal, warp blade would definitely qualify as physical if Akechi's laser swords in P5R are also physical. If Zeratul didn't have rewind, this would be really awful.

-Zeratul has Rewind! I do think he has to blow through them in real quick succession, he's got no way of knowing that EVERYONE has this barrier and Garrus probably triggers a shot on himself, which'll suck (though not terribly if he lives it, those shields will get back up right quick).

-Vrtra I dunno if he lives or not. I totally buy that Kiryu, the newest model of hot bar owner he's hanging out with, and the newest kid he's adopted make very, VERY short work of this turbodead Estinien, but I dunno, I've learned from experience Zenos is very fast at charging an opponent and Selvaria is sure to do some good damage. Even being generous and assuming Vrtra gets out, I think he's taking a lot of damage to the dome.

-I think it would be hilarious if Haurchefant gave a dramatic speech to buy his team more time. If there is a "hold up, let him cook" character, it is 100% Haurchefant.

So I suppose the tipping points for me are if Garrus can survive one of his own sniper rounds coming back at him, how well he and Zeratul are communicating and if there's any plan there, and basically how much support does Zenos have by the time to gets to Raiden. Because I don't think Raiden chops him down quickly, Zenos has way too much AoE crap to get in the way of a clean advance for Raiden, but that's manageable unless he's also being flanked by some Persona magic.

The key things I feel are worth noting are the following:

-Garrus has no way of reaching the mortar in time. It's much farther away from his team's starting point (which is where he'd start) than from Team Zenos, and one minute of even all out sprinting is barely enough to get you like, what, a quarter of the way there, maybe?

-Mass Effect mines last ten seconds. He can't build persistent trapzones without resorting to the hardware lying around Ala Mhigo, which is not nearly as killer. IIRC he can have like, 3 mines active at a time.

-Team Zenos has total control over the terms of engagement. Zenos has allowed someone he considered a comrade to climb on top of him to ride his Shinryu form before, and this allows Yu and Kiryu to rain death from above before everyone drops down to fight. Garrus is the only character with meaningful ranged options on his team. That 1v5 goes very very poorly for him methinks.

-In the event you don't think Team Zenos would take to the skies, there's still the matter of how Garrus is split up from the rest of his team. Is it plausible Zeratul can reach him? Sure. Not Gael or Haurchefant though, and pulling the trigger on an ambush attempt with such critical numbers disadvantage is not a good look even before factoring in that my team can reflect back absolutely everything Garrus and Zeratul can bring to bear. Imagine Garrus going for an Overload and then stunning himself. That's GG, right there.

-Anything less than a disastrous victory where most of the team lies dead is recoverable from. Tifa has carbuncle to rez allies and Yu has Samarecarm. Both need to bite dust while being protected by Kiryu and Vishnu, and that's just not likely to happen.

Also, it's worth remembering that Team Raiden doesn't know the cake is unbreakable. They're likely to try to free him for the opening minutes of the match...minutes they can't afford to waste because Vrtra and Garrus are out there and will get mauled if they fight solo. Out of the people on the field who are going to be accompanying Raiden, only Haurchefant has a functional jaw, so they cannot eat him out nor will consider that an option. Far more likely that they try to smash a way out of the cake and waste time before giving up on it.

Garrus should be able to survive a mass effect gun sniper shot unless it's to the head

Don't think Tetrakarn reflecting headshot damage makes particular sense. So there are two possibilities. Garrus shoots more times and starts piling up bodies or he gets spooked and reevaluates. Given observation is a strong point and most buffs have some sort of visual effect I feel he might just try shooting again, which is the right move.

Lopen posted...

Garrus should be able to survive a mass effect gun sniper shot unless it's to the head

Don't think Tetrakarn reflecting headshot damage makes particular sense. So there are two possibilities. Garrus shoots more times and starts piling up bodies or he gets spooked and reevaluates. Given observation is a strong point and most buffs have some sort of visual effect I feel he might just try shooting again, which is the right move.

He can absolutely try to shoot again, the issue is just that firing a shot announces his presence and that means Zenos and Selvaria rush him (or in Zenos' case, teleport in to him slice him from the back) and everyone else goes for cover. The Black Widow isn't that quick to shoot that there's no time to react to it afterward.

Terrain is big enough that he can choose a space to shoot from that isn't just "he gets rushed before he can shoot more"

Also it's not super easy to spot a well placed sniper. I'm sure someone will see him but it's still going to be chaos. Garrus absolutely bags someone.

Zeratul probably bags two. Keep in mind Zeratul is a smart assassin and probably coordinates his attack with Garrus sniping, that gives him a lot more data with which to process exactly how the Tetrakarn works. With 2 rewinds can he figure out the gimmick and lead a sniper shot with a gut punch to dispel? Or do gutpunch -> warpblade?

Tetrakarn is pretty good but with an intelligent assassin with rewinds I don't see it have any real effect. It is good against the sniper (unfortunate he's beefy and has shields-- like a random human gunner sniper shot tetrakarn absolutely one shots them) BUT yeah ultimately the problem I'm seeing is that Selvaria is berserked and Zenos doesn't have a lot of high caliber backup aside from that.

I think saying some people die is reasonable. It's hard to believe there won't be casualties because Garrus and Zeratul command respect. The thing that makes the ambush not work well though is that Team Zenos can get back up from dying. Samarecarm is not banned, and neither is Diamond Dazzle from Carbuncle. Say for example Tifa and Selvaria die getting Zeratul, then Yu gets Tifa up and dies alongside Kiryu getting Garrus down -- that leaves Tifa available to resurrect everyone after, rendering their work all for naught. The team knows Yu and Tifa have to be protected to ensure that their fighting strength can be maintained (Yu especially as he can keep playing battlefield medic repeatedly, and also has extremely potent healing tools to boot). They'll work to guard them and keep them safe, and as long as one of them makes it out, everyone will be up and ready to face Raiden. Those 'redos' they have access to serve to greatly level the advantage of retries for Zeratul IMO. Say he burns his first rewind on uncovering Tetrakarn -- say he burns his second rewind on realizing he needs to shank Yu. How does he find out Tifa had an ace in the whole as well?

(Note I'm not even arguing that the priority people don't die up there -- it's that they both have to die at once for damage to stick. That, I think, is what is distinctly unlikely. The battle strategy is liable to make this unlikely to occur in the first place.)

Can Selvaria even be resurrected/healed due to her undead status? At the very least Final Fantasy type healing and resurrection would hurt/kill her-- not sure about Samarecarm and undead but yeah

Lopen posted...

Can Selvaria even be resurrected/healed due to her undead status? At the very least Final Fantasy type healing and resurrection would hurt/kill her-- not sure about Samarecarm and undead but yeah

Uhhh

...Good question actually. It's not Final Fantasy undeadness, so I'd hazard a guess that yes? Dark Souls undead get up after being killed at bonfires and can drink Estus to heal themselves, which is IIRC described as liquefied fire (which is a gift from the gods). Fully admit this is up to interp, but it feels more like how vampire characters in shadow hearts could be healed normally than Zombie status, if that makes any sense

Well Final Fantasy healing works like that against all undead in the series not just the zombie status. In my opinion FF healing is definitely off the board unless there is specifically "holy type healing" that works on the Dark Souls undead.

Samaecarm and Persona type healing now that's worth talking about. Not sure if there are any concrete examples/counter examples to that interaction.

Re: holy type healing:

https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Miracles

Several Miracles offer healing. I think that counts? As far as Persona healing, I do know that in Persona Q1, one of your party members is already dead and can be healed just like everyone else (though their being so is a twist). Trying to research Persona 1 and 2 to see if there's any instances of undeadness there that are more clear, but for now I think it's a grey area.

I can't think of any counterexamples either, although I would definitely argue that Persona rez can't rez from "actually dead" since anyone in your party who "dies" in Persona is set to 1 once the battle is over. It's much more of a "KO" status.

That's really interesting.

Those definitely feel "holy" in nature but it working could entirely be tied to how the nature of their gods work.

It would require a deep dive into the dark souls lore to be sure. I would probably abstain if I thought it actually mattered but I'm more just bringing it up out of interest.

I better see that DRG pic in every Estinien match.

For example Dungeons and Dragons has healing spells (most of them) that work similarly to how the FF spells work

But then it also has spells that aren't "positive energy based" (mostly Druid type healing) that can actually heal undead

And then it ALSO has races that are similar to undead in most regards but are able to be healed by positive energy type spells

So I'm sorta seeing some sort of complicated mesh of interactions possible here. Is it the Dark Souls spells that are undead neutral, or the Dark Souls undead race that is able to just be healed. I will say that the way this affliction is described is very much like the FF "Zombie" status so I'm leaning towards she can't be healed by healing that is "holy" or "positive energy" in nature and the Souls magic is based primarily on actual belief in the deity rather than a "holy" type of energy

zenos + persona dudes are durable enough to get through sniping i think and with all the big-ass aoes that team is gonna be throwing out anyway, zeratul's gonna have a rough time

FWIW, Hollowing is something that you see with a lot of enemies in Dark Souls. Gael himself is an example -- by the time you fight him, he's succumbed to Hollowing and thus fights like a mad beast, crawling on all fours and swinging his sword wildly before he pulls himself back from the brink in the back end of his bossfight. What I'd liken it to is a 'Madness' or 'Berserk' status, more than anything else -- Hollowed characters aren't clumsy, stumbling shells, just devoid of higher reasoning because they've lost their purpose. This is also consistent with why Gael manages to get his shit together in his boss fight, in turn -- he's hollowed out because he thinks he failed at his longstanding goal, but when he bleeds and realizes he actually achieved it, he manages to regain a sliver of his humanity to die with dignity.

(this isn't an attempt to argue for Selvaria here, to be clear. Moreso express my feelings on how undeadness in Dark Souls works in general. I wouldn't argue that Yu could cast Salvation to oneshot Gael either and would argue vehemently against 'phoenix down kills zombie, gg next'. I think arguments about whether FF magic specifically functions on any kind of undead are interesting and valid, but not just all healing magic period.)

team cake

Good terrain for sniping. Garrus is gonna clean up the mooks and Zeno's vs the rest of them is not gonna be pretty. Raiden probably never gets out of the cake though. Also estienen is super dead.

Selvaria berserk really kinda nerfa her tbqh

I had a bunch of stuff written but then accidentally refreshed and my form recovery isn't working ffs

team cake

KanzarisKelshen posted...

I think arguments about whether FF magic specifically functions on any kind of undead are interesting and valid, but not just all healing magic period.)

True. It's case by case imo. Gun to my head I'd say Persona magic I believe tends to favor working on undead as I'm SURE some sort of persona is of an undead nature and healing works. But I also can't remember anything specific.

Johnbobb posted...

I had a bunch of stuff written but then accidentally refreshed and my form recovery isn't working ffs

team cake

Is this for the team that put a guy in the cake or the team with the guy in the cake lol

I guess thats unclear so I'm voting for garrus

Well your vote imo was clear due to the surrounding text but Johnbobb's literally has no other text due to being eaten

The whole undead thing in Final Fantasy is made even more confusing with Auron. He can be healed normally the whole game, even after the revelation.

...Shoot I forgot Auron

Yeah that's a fairly convincing argument in favor of FF healing working here. It seems to only not work on like, completely decayed creatures like zombies. So it's likely the entire party can be kept up I think.

Unsent aren't undead for any of these purposes as far as I can remember. Zombie is a status condition that some enemies have which makes healing hurt them, but no enemy that's specifically an unsent has it I don't think, and all fiends are essentially unsent anyway

Yeah I think the thing is more whether this ability more closely resembles an unsent vs an FF undead.

Souls undead might more resemble an unsent but the behavior more closely remembles an FF undead so who knows.

Lopen posted...

Oh wait Raiden jumps out when the other team approaches?

Yeah. Zeratul kills some with Garrus prep and Raiden finishes off everyone else. Not even a close battle.

Team Cake Revengeance

Ok yea this is the part that I needed to untangle

lol raiden wins

team raiden

valiant effort tho

lmao being caked is a buff here

Let's not get silly

Being caked turns this into three split fights. If you think Trdl's team wins the gauntlet, that's fine, but a complete inability to merge forces is not a buff by any stretch.

Raiden flipping out of a cake and hellmurdering all survivors is a pretty great sight to imagine though.

Raiden in ripper mode all like "HEH HEH. SURPRISE!!" and just brutally destroying everyone is a scene that could literally be in revengeance