PSU Revisited: Wartecher

About the only online gaming I do these days is Phantasy Star Universe. I haven’t the time for anything but casual gaming online these days, and PSU fits the bill nicely. As an added bonus, it’s completely not PSO.

My primary character became a female newman wartecher. This is natural, given my primary character in PSO was a HUnewearl, who was based off a character of mine from a Cyberpunk game. (Combined with two parts epic win due to the influence of Nei and Rika, of course.) I’ve grown to love my wartecher, despite the fact that the class does nothing well. What it can do is, everything.

Tips for surviving as a female newman wartecher:

Armor:

Make sure you have a head, an arm and a body slot. Extra slots are for gimmicks – and you can wait to play with gimmicky crap until you have a Serafi Senba. Prior to that, you want a head slot to increase your casting ability. Your tech damage is far more impressive than any other wartecher – but it’s still got nothing on a full blown techer’s ability. (Which in turn, will still suck in terms of damage output.) A cheap unit will boost your tech damage dramatically.

Your arm slot should be reserved for the best ATP unit you can afford. I’m currently using a +ATP/-ATA unit, and I do see more 0′s than I’d care to. People like to insist that you won’t see 0′s unless you’re fighting something far too high level for you – well, that’s kind of the point of playing a wartecher. However, it’s a tradeoff. I think the higher ATP makes up for it. (And I’m jonesing for the release of Lightning Beasts S2 so I can pick up a Lumirus / Kaos Knight.) At any rate, this is where your money should primarily be spent in terms of armor units – melee will be your primary method of attack, so get the best unit you can afford.

Your body slot will be used for the resist of choice for the given mission you’re running. You want to eliminate the possibility of your being frozen, put to sleep, paralyzed or otherwise disabled. Wartechers have great defense, but they don’t have hit points to spare. If you’re incapacitated, chances are, you’re dead. If everyone else is incapacitated and you’re not, you can either laugh at them or be nice and use a Sol Atomizer or three.

In terms of armor itself, I prefer high EVP over high DFP. The reason being, EVP is already ridiculously high; it seems stupid not to take it to the extreme. Of course, EVP means you have a higher chance of photon arts being interrupted – this merely means you can’t be a mindless button-mashing tool. Let the window-licking fortefighters attack from the front; use even an ounce of tactics and you’ll never suffer interruption of your PAs.

Weapons:

First, get a cheap but not terribly bad wand and TCSM. These are for your buffs. As a WT, nobody will want your buffs – yet. We’re supposedly getting support raised to 30, at which point, they’ll potentially be worth stopping to cast. Until then, you should cast them whenever you’re soloing – you might as well raise them as you go, rather than trying to raise them from nothing once the change hits. They’re also better for soloing than item-based buffs. Wartechers might be able to solo anything in the game, but they do it slowly.

Pausing to cast buffs adds little time, especially compared to using four separate items. You can’t afford to waste that many palette slots on buff items, so you’ll need to open your menu if you use buff items, or use megastarides. I dislike megastarides, due to the hp drain effect. I’ve remained standing during some boss fights simply because I don’t use megastarides – with a sliver of health that would be eaten by the hp drain.

Get a decent bow. Pistols are far more awesome, and bows will make people scream, “LAWL SPACE ELF!” at you – but pistols suck in terms of damage and range. A decently grinded Ulteri is ideal and cheap.

The rest of your pallete should consist of a mix of twin weapons and single weapons paired off with a TCSM or RCSM.

I don’t use RCSMs that much; however they are useful in a few situations. TCSMs are a must. You are not a techer, despite the deceptive type name of ‘wartecher’. Pulling out a wand is asinine in all but one situation – fighting machines. When fighting machine-type enemies, your tech damage will almost always surpass your melee damage. In that case, and that case alone, a wand is acceptable. (And I recommend an Uransara – they should be much cheaper in the immediate future thanks to the Neudaiz GBR.) For general melee-resistant enemies, you’re better off pulling out your bow than relying on your techs.

For TCSMs, grab decently-ground Shatos. These are where resta, debuffs (if used/useful for the mission in question) and a general purpose offensive spell or two will go.

Twin weapons are what you’ll primarily use in melee. You have a choice between knuckles, claws and daggers. Spears are for chumps. Go with claws, or you’ll make Nei and Rika cry.

For twin claws, go with Tenora claws. Your twin claws serve one purpose and one purpose only – massive damage. Conversely, you want Tenora vs. Yohmei out because Tenora claws have a much higher ATP. PP is of no concern with twin claws – they regenerate PP like nobody’s business. A couple of normal attacks and you can pull off a three-step PA.

Conversely, you might consider Yohmei claws for your single-handed weapon choice. The extra PP will come in handy here, since single claws do not regenerate PP nearly as quickly as twin claws. They do, however, look even uglier (if possible) than Tenora claws, and you really won’t be doing much melee with single-handed weapons regardless.

Make sure your PM is a melee type. You’ll be synthing a lot of melee weapons, and very little armor or tech equipment. It’s more cost effective for you to have a melee PM, since that’s where you’d be spending the majority of your meseta in terms of equipment.

Plan to spend a small fortune synthing high elemental percentage twin claws and single claws of every element. Melee characters get shafted when it comes to equipment – gunners and techers need merely succeed synthesis in order to have kick ass gear. Melee characters, however, have to synth over and over again, in an attempt to get high elemental percentages.

Fortefighters can get away with playing around with 30% elemental weapons – they do massive damage regardless. You don’t have that luxury. Plan to synth and synth and molest your PM until she delivers you 40% or higher weapons – you need as much damage output as possible, and the easiest way to get it is by elemental percentage.

Conversely, consider restricting yourself to A-rank weapons. Yes, you heard me. If you’re lucky, you might pull a 50% synth out of your PM on the first try. What’s more likely is you’ll go through twenty to thirty attempts before pulling out a pair of 42% twin claws. Unless you’re trading sexual favors to the Sonic Team staff, you really aren’t likely to have the meseta to try and do that with S-ranked weapons. And then there’s grinding – A-ranks are a hell of a lot cheaper to grind. The ATP difference between A and S-ranked claws is minimal, and you should already be ameliorating that by using Tenora claws.

That said, if you can get your hands on S-ranked twin claws with effects and a high elemental percentage, do it. The extra damage from a virus effect, for example, is very appreciable. Worry about getting high elemental percentage twin claws of every element first though. You’ll thank yourself when you can run any mission at your highest efficiency, rather than blowing all your money and being stuck running White Beast.

General Advice:

Use resta whenever you feel the need to. There are a great many bad techers out there who cringe at the idea of breaking their nails. Conversely, you and the rest of the melee group will often be out of range for healing by them. This is where you are full of win.

Always carry 20 Sol Atomizers. If you’re smart, nothing in a mission will disable you. You can then partake in the ignoble duty of freeing the mouth breathers of your party from whatever it is they’ve managed to get themselves afflicted with. While not the most entertaining way to spend time, you can turn yourself from, “Do we really want a WT along?” to, “Hey, it’s X! Quick, invite X!”

Always carry Star Atomizers. There are times when you really don’t want to whip out a TCSM in order to cast resta; when those times occur, you also generally do not want people dying to the right and left of you. Monsters tend not to waste time attacking dead fortefighters, rather, at that point, they’ll be attacking you.

Don’t mindlessly spam PAs. This should go for any class as well, but as a WT, you want to be reflected upon as skilled, not a n00b. Twin claws, for example – renzan whatever – it’s often beneficial to simply run through the first to second stages of the PA over and over again. Kozmali, for example, if knocked down/up/whatever, disappear and relocate. Rather than play hunt the monster, you can sit there hammering on it until it’s dead. If a techer in your party is laying down area-of-effect spells, or a fortegunner starts CHARGIN’ THAR LASA, you do NOT want to scatter creatures to the four corners of the map.

Understand your damage output. My fortegunner was, at level 60, capable of out-damaging my level 105 Wartecher. We’re talking a mid-level FG with low-level bullet PAs, here, vs. my WT with high elemental percentage weapons. Did this sadden me? Sure. Then I realized something: my FG does steady, regular damage. If and when the shit hits the fan, my WT will be cackling over the smoldering corpse long before my FG has even got the target to half health. Spike damage is almost always more useful than steady damage output – fights last seconds, rarely minutes.

Use offensive techs sparingly. Techs are near useless for anyone who isn’t an actual techer, and only acceptable for actual techers because their melee and ranged damage output sucks so completely. The main exception is, again, fighting machine-type creatures. The only other exception are mixed fights with ground and air creatures. In that case, pulling out your bow will gimp you versus ground targets. Instead randomly pop off Noszonde while continuing to engage the ground targets in melee.

Make a fortegunner as an alt. Even those of us who sneer at Sonic Team and utter the names Nei and Rika at them like curses get fed up with how bad newman wartechers are in terms of effectiveness. I find fortegunner to be the best diversion; you get to see how bad your damage as a wartecher is in general, but you also get to see how nothing equals the wartecher for sheer survivability and versatility. Fortefighter would also be an acceptable diversion, however, lasers are freakin’ sweet and can’t possibly be passed up.

Play in small, random parties as often as possible; you’ll have more fun that way. A tight-knit group that’s put together with specific classes in order to provide the maximum efficiency possible… Will simply not include a wartecher. It’s a sad fact of life. However, small random parties, where key classes are limited or completely missing are the most fun you can possibly have – simply because you’ll be doing everything and making the party wonder why they’re suddenly getting their arses handed to them after you leave.