Is there any rpg where increasing attack and decreasing defense are actually useful instead of just mashing attack...

Is there any rpg where increasing attack and decreasing defense are actually useful instead of just mashing attack moves until the enemy is dead?

I know Holla Forums has indifferent opinion about NWN2 but it is the only game where buffs and negative effects and dispel spells are really mattered (for me).

SMT is all about dem buffs and debuffs.

Etrian Oddysey
SMT
Many bosses in FFX are vulnerable to debuffs
Baldur's Gate 2
FFXI debuffs were amazing, game is dead now

Breath of fire.
A lot of games if you're doing low level strats

Forgot to mention FFXI had multiple jobs with unique buffs, leading to some crazy dps potential.

not pokemon, that's for sure

It's actually quite lively. I just got done playing for a few months back from December to February. I only stopped because I was going full "no life mode" on it.

I forgot what server I was on (if it was that important I could check), but at any given point there were a thousand to a few thousand people online. And because of the way the game is structured, there are always people willing to do all content.

Also dat Trust system. Like henchmen from guild wars, but better.

Monster Hunter. There's even a skill that gives you huge attack buffs, but only when you're down to like 10% HP.

So people will min-max and get themselves down to 10% HP, then out-fucking-skill the monster and never get hit while dealing the most damage you possibly can as a single person.

Guild Wars was a game where you lived and died by the buffs and debuffs you had in your group.

That image.

Oh fuck I forgot all about that. They even had that 55 Monk deal where you debuffed your health to 55 points, then used a protection buff that reduced all damange to a percentage of your total health – so with the tiny health pool everything only did like 1 point of damage to you, which you could EASILY out-heal forever and ever with basic HoT spells.

But the second that prot buff fails you're dead.

Severance aka The game that Shits all over Dork Souls and was made decades before

Oh wow, the memories, I remember that, it was somewhere in the desert.

Kingdom Hearts

Is there any RPG where increasing your defence stat (your personal stat, not armour) has any value over just increasing your health?

Have you only played the stereotypical JRPG? There's plenty of games like that. Even Pokemon has insanely useful status conditions, buffs and debuffs.

Look at this fag.

Sure, there are plenty of JRPGs and western crpgs where status effects are actually worth a shit

particularly wizardry and wizardry clones where those buffs could end up lasting the entire length of a long and brutal combat

One of the brands in The World Ends With You is almost all "great gear with awful drawbacks" on its high tier items. You should have gotten good enough by that point to make it worthwhile.

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There's PoE where there's a sword that gets a damage bonus based on your Evasion stat

This picture is the spawn of satan himself.

FF12 has a weapon class with a vitality modifier and many JRPGs have a stat that gives raw damage reduction instead of health.

The last remnant

Morrowind


Severance had an infinitely better combat system that doesn't feel like simon says.

The customization is inferior though, even though you can choose your predefined class, which is more realistic, but customizing your character and equipping them different items is still more fun.

Seems to me like games are always


Personally, I don't really like either extreme, and I'd rather not bother with them at all then CONSTANTLY keep them up in every battle ever. Then it just becomes a tedious chore. So to me, the real question is if there's a game where buffs/debuffs are useful, but not universally necessary. Like, sometimes they really help, sometimes they don't, it varies. Or alternately, the game is no easier or harder whether you go with the buff/debuff specialist class or one that just focus on straight damage.

The Dragon Quest games are the only ones where buffs/debuffs were actually useful for me. I'm not sure why.

If defense is always a percentage-based damage reduction, then you could say that, roughly speaking, taking 10% less damage and having 10% more health is about the same. Except, usually healing spells aren't affected by the target's HP. In which case, taking 10% less damage in the first place is easier to heal than having 10% more HP. That's why I generally prefer defense over health.

With that said, if defense is flat damage reduction, then it can easily be different. You just have some enemies do lots of little hits and others do single big hits. Reducing damage by 1 makes a pretty big difference if you take five attacks that 2 damage each. But if it's one attack that does 10 damage, not so much. But backing up a little, if you're taking lots of very small hits, then flat damage reduction would easily be better than increasing health. Especially when combined with static healing.

As such, I think a good system has both the percentage defense and the flat damage reduction as separate factors of a character's defense stats.


They always struck me as the poster child for games where debuffs never worked when the enemy was strong enough it seemed worth the effort. I guess it got better with the later ones, like DQ VIII, but even then, by about the second half of the game, every boss just dispelled their debuffs anyway. And dispelled your party buffs too, which really made me mad. Especially when they cancel going super saiyan. Giving a game a special gimmick then having bosses be immune to it is THE WORST. I'd rather the game never gives me a can opener in the first place than give me one, but take it away whenever I actually fight cans.

I really wanted to play this game, but I was enlisted during it's entire lifespan and never really had the chance to sit down and get into it. If you know of a private server that is up and chill I would be down as fuck to give it a try. I heard it takes a lot of teamwork and communication so anything dead would be a no go.

Why is he wearing a scarf?

Yeah. Try an RPG instead of action games pretending to be RPG's.

SMT does tnis really well. Normal battles can be finished normally, but bosses really need buffs and debuffs.

+2 magic resistance

/thread

I didn't use them much in VIII. The Zenithian Trilogy is where they really came in handy for me, especially during the later boss fights.

Competitive Pokemon

I was rooting for you in the beginning user, but now you need to die in a fire

exile/avernum

Etrian Odyssey is fairly good with how it handles status effects. Regular enemies are enough of a threat to make mashing A a bad option. Poison can actually do insane damage, and the turns an enemy wastes when you paralyze it or disable its attacks can both save lives and give you time to setup buffs. Some of the games have classes that can passively attempt to apply a debuff for a couple turns after the first use of the skill fails, so they can do other things in the meantime to not be total deadweight. If you don't want to rely too much an status effects, a good tank and medic should be enough, at least in 3 and 4.