Physical attacker choice : main char as Hugo or Geddoe?

[Punkaiser]

I'm going to continue S3 this weekend (the last time i stopped at everyone's chapter 2 or 3), wondering who should be picked as flame champion between hugo and geddoe. Any advice if i tend to stick to physical offence? If you could clarify their pros and cons in battle, that'd be much appreciated since i don't like to put personal liking into account.

[patapi]

Why not choose Chris? She's certainly the Flame Champion successor candidate specifically geared towards physical offense.

[Punkaiser]

As far as i browse your sources this morning, i find that Chris is better at defence than offence. My style in suikoden is always glass canon, take offence to cover up defence.
-Chris is average at str growth
-No free rune slot
-The fixed phoenix cause unbalance,
-barely have 3 swings, no continuous attack.

Other than making her a tank, i can't see her fit in my ideal attacker image.

[eldrasidar]

Chris is a tank and you don't really have to do any work for her to fill that role, but she still does ton of damage because of her high damage and heavy damage skills. She'll average over 1000 damage every time she attacks without using any runes, and she'll critical quite frequently. Her level 99 trick will also negate a lot of her average stats, simply by getting extra levels in, so her third swing is far less in doubt than Geddoe's. Other characters are able to do more damage, but considering Chris really can't do magic, she becomes the default physical attacker choice for flame champion. She won't be a glass hammer, but she's still a solid hammer that can beat you over the head for an extended time.


Geddoe is alright at doing physical damage, but he's really much better using runes(he's the best of the three of them at magic by far). His high pwr stat is somewhat misleading, because it isn't backed up by anything spectacular. He's got only average stats and skills beyond that, and has no special damage boosting skills like heavy damage or continual attack. So compared to Hugo and Chris, he's slower, get less attacks, won't critical as much, and will miss attacks even at level 60. You can set him up with a double strike and a fury rune, and he'll do solid damage, but it's not actually going to end up being all that different from what chris or hugo can do on their own, and it certainly won't be all that much different from what he could do with his true rune.

Hugo's probably the best physical attacker. He's built a lot like Chris, but with more focus on doing damage. He's got the same high damage and heavy damage skills, plus continual attack, and he can combine with Fubar, thus giving him a major advantage on the damage dealing front that Chris and Geddoe can't compete with. If you're looking to make the most physical damage, hugo and fubar are going to win every time.

for all three of them, keep in mind two things. First is that skills matter a lot. An S in damage for example is equivalent to having a fury rune attached. An S in Continual Attack gives a 90% chance of getting to make another whole round of attacks. Second is that you have allies who can cast either Berserk with a Shield Rune, or Song of Madness with the Jongleur rune, making it less important that an individual character actually have certain runes attached. In fact, you'll need song of madness playing for you to get up to the crazy high numbers in damage.

in the end, none of the 3 main characters are really going to be the strongest physical fighters on their own. You'll need to build the right party around them. Get great physical attackers like Yuiri, Lucia, Ayame, or Augustine and then great physical supporting characters like Juan(who is also a solid attacker in his own right) and Nei, and then put Jefferson in support. Then you'll have the solid physical fighting force. Seriously, it'll do crazy damage. It's probably one of my favorite parties to run, because it does so much damage.

[Punkaiser]

K, thx. I save at the trinity site for chapter 4 anyway, gonna pick Hugo this time then.

[Punkaiser]

I've just beat the game and realized the flame champion is so worthless for the last boss fight As an attacker FC can't target WindRI during the 1st round, lucky i still have my team members...By the way isn't WindRI's defence too low? Child Unite hit it 7.3k while Adonis hit it for 9999(must be at least 15k if there was no limit)

[eldrasidar]

well, the game didn't anticipate you power gaming its final boss. but really, when has suikoden ever been known for being a hard series?

[gildedtalon]

the first suikoden was really hard for me no matter what characters I chose

[Punkaiser]

well, the game didn't anticipate you power gaming its final boss. but really, when has suikoden ever been known for being a hard series?

Yeah i know that, but my concern is about last boss defence is worse if compared to other guardians. For exemple: i used Child unite on Ghost Knight at Mt.Senai, the result was 5.3k but with same Melville/Alanis (level, skills,gear,weapon ..etc..) the WindRI suffered 7.3k.

the first suikoden was really hard for me no matter what characters I chose

Um, I don't know details but you must have done something wrong with your team. My order of difficulty is
most of other classic RPG > S2=S3 >S4>S1>S5

[eldrasidar]

I'm mostly surprised you even brought Melville, Alanis, Futch, Franz and Fred into the final battle. Not the most obvious party, or even close to the most efficient in terms of dishing out the damage, as noted by adonis hitting the damage cap, negating a lot of damage it would have done.

The final boss defense deficit could be countered though by the fact that it has more hp, and then 5 true runes fighting for it as separate targets, so if a lot of characters could easily be wiped out by a single attack or round of attacks whilst trying to manage all that. The ghost knight, by contrast, isn't all that offensively powerful or full of hp, so it makes sense for it to have some more defense to balance that out.

[Punkaiser]

Hehe, you're right. The only reason i use that pt is to finish the boss in 1 round (im quite obssessed with this style for suikoden series). Before that, there were yuiri,nash,emily,juan,lucia in my pt, and kinda enjoyed the auto command at that moment but since most of them cant target Windri , no choice but i gotta kick them out for the full unite pt. Still testing out other combos though. And the pt of child+adonis party isnt as bad as you think, it still wipes out any normal encounter with auto attack in 1 turn, but surely less enjoyable than the previous one seeing juan and emily do kungfu hustle. Gonna try emily+sharon+sanae along with fred+rico next.

[KFCrispy]

you can also make abusive parties with the Jongleur Rune boosting all physical attacks ridiculously high. with Jeane as support, it initiates faster (I think it beats Condemnation?), giving you more options in terms of what unites or special attacks will trigger after Jongleur starts.

[Punkaiser]

I tried Nei before but was not impressed since most of chars in my pt merbers attacked before her chant, it may be better with Jeanne as you say. But no point to tag jongleur user with an unite pt since the boss would be dead without chant anyway(adonis x 2.5, child x2, girl x2, maxillian x2... and there are always some participants have 2 free rune slots to set up fury+dbl strike) i never seen adonis unite do anything different than 9999. Windri alone must be the most vulnerable to physical attackas among final bosses in suikoden, imo.

A naive question: in jongleur description it says no buff for archers and magicians. Archers are obvious to see, but how does the game recognizes someone as attacker or sorcerer? For exemple: i always build Mel as attacker but she's perfect to set up as thunder mage as well. Is the result based on rune or gear equipped or character nature?

Back to the original subject. I tested damage for chris/geddoe/hugo with full skill/title/equipment. Chris is only good during part of game where her true rune get stolen, i affixed dbl strike in that slot then she outdoes Geddoe's damage and remains inferior to Hugo(when his rune was stolen he got 2 free slots for fury+dbl strike). When their rune stuck in, chris is the worst damage dealer and Hugo still claim the best in average.

[eldrasidar]

Nei is substantially faster with jeane in support. She'll go at the 37 mark(a turn goes through a 100 marks). That puts her faster than all but Alna Kinan, Condemnation, and Ninja Attack Unites. It will also put her ahead of a lot of the command runes, with the most notable exception being Shrike(Ayame is just super fast, nothing to be done about it), but still faster then one's like red rose. I believe by magicians, it means characters using magic attacks, as it won't definitely boost magic. Alternatively, it could also mean any character's equipped with rods or rings, but I'm not really sure about this, since I rarely attack with them anyway.

Still a very solid rune though, you could have easily substituted Adonis for Dragon Knight A or Maximilian, plopped in Nei, and done a little extra damage I suspect, even if it wasn't necessary.

[KFCrispy]

the Jongleur Rune description is not very clear due to the language (we should probably clarify it in the runes database). it boosts ALL characters' physical damage including archers and mages, and only turns warriors into "berserkers" - which just means they will attack instead of defending (just like Landis and oftentimes Fred). i am not sure what they mean by magicians--is there some hard-coding in the game knowing certain characters are designed to be mages? (likely for AI-usage in strategy battles...) or does their skill build influence whether the character is a 'magician' or not. but really, you will not likely ever have a problem with the berserker effect because you're likely commanding everyone to do some sort of attack every turn!

we do have an article on the Jongleur Rune and Song of Madness here: http://suikosource.com/games/gs3/indepth/jongleur.php