Junction, Redux

[Skyblade]

Whenever I think of this game, I think of the Junction system, and how poorly it was implemented. I almost always then think of Golden Sun, which I still feel accomplished everything that FFVIII was trying to do, but failed at. However, it seemed to me that it should be possible to rewrite the Junction system to make it functional and enjoyable, without completely junking everything that has come before. So I sat down and started tweaking. Before I knew it, I had sort of completely overhauled the system, but I am rather happy with what I wound up with, so I thought I would share it, and let you guys tear it apart.

Just keep in mind, that should this idea be implemented, enemies would have to be completely rebalanced. The game is easy enough as it is, and this system will wind up making it easier if you don't adjust the enemies and stats to account for it.

Change #1:
Increase the effectiveness of magic. This is one of the most obvious changes that need to be made to this system. The concept is based on the idea that using your magic will weaken your character's stats, presenting a double-edged sword and a gameplay tradeoff. Unfortunately, your magic is essentially never powerful enough to make that tradeoff worthwhile. Your physical attacks are always stronger, and don't cost your stats. And your GFs serve much better as emergency beatdown machines, again without weakening your character completely. So make magic more powerful.

Change #2:
The first time you draw a spell, you receive 100 of that spell. This is to keep down on the unnecessary drawing off mass quantities of a spell when you first discover it, which is a huge hindrance to the game. Boss fights are supposed to be hard and thrilling, but, during most of them, you spend most of the boss fights mindlessly drawing rare spells, which is rather anticlimactic. It also makes the early game go faster.

Change #3:
You can only cast spells you have Junctioned. We'll let you go ahead and hold every spell at once if you want (seriously, you can get so close to this anyway that it's silly not to be able to), but to cast a spell, you have to have it Junctioned. Thus, anytime you cast a spell, you will take a hit in your stats. But we've boosted spells so that they should be worth the tradeoff. The objective now becomes a case of balancing what spells you have, against what the enemies carry, what they are weak against, and how they affect your stats.

Change #4:
You cannot refine a spell until you have drawn it. While my system is probably going to cause the entire refining system to have to be rebalanced, I feel this one is particularly important because of just how easy it is to refine the high level magic spells early on. So you have to get the spell first, either from an enemy or a draw point, before you can refine it.

Change #5:
Casting most spells requires consuming more than one of the spell. Perhaps the biggest change I introduce, I also feel that this one is one of the most necessary. There was a reason you could only cast Knights of the Round 3 times in FFVII, under most circumstances. A spell like Ultima should be a powerhouse that you only use once every so often, not a spell that you can just cast indefinitely (that's what the GFs are for!). Another big problem with the current system is that when you cast, you cast 1 spell, but when you draw, you usually draw 7 or so. There is no reason not to cast spells (aside from the fact that your physical attacks are better), because the tradeoff of losing a single spell is miniscule, and can easily be negated. So make most spells consume a larger number of the spell, esentially making the spells work off a percentage system. Casting Fire may only consume 1% of your Fire reserve, but casting Fira consumes 3% of your Fira reserve. Firaga might consume 5% (or more, these numbers are just for examples, I haven't crunched them or balanced them too much). And Ultima may take 20% of your Ultima reserve (but it should be worth it!).

Thus, casting Fire is easy. You can cast it several times without a huge cost in your stats, and it will be reasonably effective for the cost, especially against enemies weak against Fire, and until you start upgrading your weapons (and, really, they need to keep you from getting Ultimate Weapons during the first disc, the difficulty is broken enough without completely ruining the weapon progression).

Once you get up to Firaga, the cost becomes a little more serious. Sure, it does a ton more damage, but it also provides a larger stat boost, and taking away 5% of that larger boost will be quite a bit more costly than taking away 1% of Fire's much smaller stat boost. And a spell like Flare would give a much higher boost, but cost even more, like 15%, resulting in a higher stat cost for casting the spell.



Practical Application:
Squall is facing a Ruby Dragon, who carries Firaga and Flare (for simplicity's sake, he's the only one in the party). He draws Flare, instantly getting 100% Flare reserves, then kills the Ruby Dragon.

Squall goes into his Junction menu, and Junctions Flare to Magic, giving him a Magic Stat of 200 (we're ignoring the way Junctioning works off base stats for this example, because it makes the numbers much easier to follow), and allowing him to cast Flare 6 times without Drawing/Refining more.

Squall gets into a fight with another Ruby Dragon. He casts Flare on the Ruby Dragon, reducing his Flare capacity by 15%, leaving him with 85%, and a Magic Stat of 170 (casts left: 5).

Squall draws Flare from the Ruby Dragon, gaining 6% of his Flare capacity back (pretty average draw there for this game, I think). So Squall now has 91% Flare, and a Magic Stat of 182 (casts of Flare left: 6).


And this is how the system plays out. Spells will be more powerful, but come at a corresponding higher cost. When dealing with a spell like Ultima, which you can only cast (with my admittedly uncrunched numbers) 5 times before you run out, and with each cast taking a 20% chunk out of the game's largest stat boost, it becomes a last resort type spell, and has a power corresponding to that.



Anyway, that's a basic outline of the system, I hope I explained it clearly enough. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share!

[Slothy]

Looks cool. I was a little confused at first because I misread where you said drawing the first time gives you 100 of a spell and thought that meant when you drew everytime it'd give you 100. Obviously things would be fairly broken by doing that and it wasn't until your example that I realized I had definitely read it wrong.

Just for clarification sake, I'm assuming it's only the first time you draw that that happens. So if you used your entire supply of a spell and had zero it wouldn't go back to giving you 100 the next time you draw?

I don't have a lot of time to go into too many comments on it right now, but I do think it looks cool. One thing I'm not sure about is item refining. I do agree that it needs to be better controlled so you don't have early access to some of the strongest spells in the game, but I think that could actually be better accomplished by doing a better job of allocating certain refinement abilities to different GF's so you control when you get the abilities, and probably change what some items refine into and where and when they're available.

Tents for example probably shouldn't refine into Curaga. Certainly not at the rate they do at least. Make tents expensive as hell and make five of them refine into one Curaga or something. Then maybe have some items which become more common in the late game that refine at a better rate. It should serve the same purpose, but without it seeming like refinement abilities are arbitrarily locked out until you draw some of a spell (not to mention I'd be a bit worried about some people not understanding it, even if you explained it to them in a tutorial or something).

[Skyblade]

Looks cool. I was a little confused at first because I misread where you said drawing the first time gives you 100 of a spell and thought that meant when you drew everytime it'd give you 100. Obviously things would be fairly broken by doing that and it wasn't until your example that I realized I had definitely read it wrong.

Just for clarification sake, I'm assuming it's only the first time you draw that that happens. So if you used your entire supply of a spell and had zero it wouldn't go back to giving you 100 the next time you draw?

Correct. First time acquisition only. If you run out, you have to grind it back up the old-fashioned way. However, it is a per-character thing. If Squall draws Fire, he gets 100, and if Quistis hasn't obtained a Fire spell yet, she can pick up 100 immediately as well.

Since you can't equip a brand-new spell, there's no stat reason to not let you collect as many as you want from battles (especially bosses), because you can't Junction them until after you win. It doesn't affect fight balance, just grind time. And if you choose to blast through your entire reserve of a spell, clearly you thought it would be worth it, and, hopefully, will know a good place to draw more, or have some refining ready. And you can always Junction up a new spell in the meantime.


I don't have a lot of time to go into too many comments on it right now, but I do think it looks cool. One thing I'm not sure about is item refining. I do agree that it needs to be better controlled so you don't have early access to some of the strongest spells in the game, but I think that could actually be better accomplished by doing a better job of allocating certain refinement abilities to different GF's so you control when you get the abilities, and probably change what some items refine into and where and when they're available.

Tents for example probably shouldn't refine into Curaga. Certainly not at the rate they do at least. Make tents expensive as hell and make five of them refine into one Curaga or something. Then maybe have some items which become more common in the late game that refine at a better rate. It should serve the same purpose, but without it seeming like refinement abilities are arbitrarily locked out until you draw some of a spell (not to mention I'd be a bit worried about some people not understanding it, even if you explained it to them in a tutorial or something).

I chose "pick up the spell first" for a couple reasons. First, it smooths things over between refining and the new draw process. If you find a draw point or enemy carrying Curaga, for example, you get a full Curaga loadout. Not a problem, since you're probably at a point where it is availible through regular means, so letting you load up at first isn't a problem.

But the refinement would not work that way. If you chain-refine a ton of items into an Ultima spell, giving you a hundred Ultimas at that point would probably still overpower and unbalance you. And just giving you one would bring us back to having to do the boring grind to collect them all. I think this is the easiest way to both balance out the refining so that it won't overpower you early on, but can still be useful for keeping your stocks up when you're in areas where enemies don't have a good draw selection, or other similar issues.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll have to think more of this to give my own idea of how to fix things but, I think the only critique I have is that I don't think your system fixes the imbalance of melee vs. mage in the game. Melee will still be dominating because they are not losing stats every turn, while mages become sitting ducks after awhile. I'm also curious about where the GF summons and Draw/Cast fall into this whole deal because I feel they would still be better alternatives than sacrificing your own stats, by casting Junctioned Magic. I think you need to address a balance for those two applications to make the system you propose work.

As for the Draw 100 spells the first go around, I feel its still a bit imbalanced, especially with the above critique. Granted you have a good point about it not being of any use until after the battle, but I think its a bit imbalanced that after leaving Balamb Garden, I go into five battles, that only take five minutes top to complete, and now I suddenly have a really beefy Quistis and Squall who can coast until the end of the Dollet Mission if I stuck to melee and summons. I feel a much better alternative is to simply limit the amount of spells you can draw from a monster. Basically, a Bite Bug has 15 Spell charges of Blizzard I can draw from, and then after 15 are drawn between my party, we can't get anything out of him. This would drop battle time significantly while still creating a sense of accomplishment when you finally draw enough spells to make meaningful Junctions, and it would keep refinement as a viable option.

[Skyblade]

I'll have to think more of this to give my own idea of how to fix things but, I think the only critique I have is that I don't think your system fixes the imbalance of melee vs. mage in the game. Melee will still be dominating because they are not losing stats every turn, while mages become sitting ducks after awhile. I'm also curious about where the GF summons and Draw/Cast fall into this whole deal because I feel they would still be better alternatives than sacrificing your own stats, by casting Junctioned Magic. I think you need to address a balance for those two applications to make the system you propose work.

As for the Draw 100 spells the first go around, I feel its still a bit imbalanced, especially with the above critique. Granted you have a good point about it not being of any use until after the battle, but I think its a bit imbalanced that after leaving Balamb Garden, I go into five battles, that only take five minutes top to complete, and now I suddenly have a really beefy Quistis and Squall who can coast until the end of the Dollet Mission if I stuck to melee and summons. I feel a much better alternative is to simply limit the amount of spells you can draw from a monster. Basically, a Bite Bug has 15 Spell charges of Blizzard I can draw from, and then after 15 are drawn between my party, we can't get anything out of him. This would drop battle time significantly while still creating a sense of accomplishment when you finally draw enough spells to make meaningful Junctions, and it would keep refinement as a viable option.

I always forget about Draw/Cast. I never really used it, because it always seemed to do like 1/10th of the damage of a regular cast. I'll have to think about that.

If your characters are expected to pick up 100 of several spells immediately, enemies can be balanced with that sort of stat total in mind. Thus, you won't just power through the game, because you'll be facing enemies with much higher stats of their own.

GFs are something I'm not sure how to address though. They're an even bigger problem than physical attacks, to be honest. The viability of physical attacks should be easy to balance so that magic is at least a viable option. But summons have always been among the biggest damage dealers in FF games. They just usually come at a price, and there is no corresponding price in FFVIII, especially compared to magic. I'm still working on them.

[Slothy]

I think the only critique I have is that I don't think your system fixes the imbalance of melee vs. mage in the game.

I'm not sure any system that's going to base stat values on how many spells you junction to them can address this as part of the system. The only way I see it being possible is by balancing enemies well and upping the difficulty. More enemies with elemental weaknesses, or who resist physical attacks (and I don't mean some piddly amount of damage reduction, I mean throw in some guys who take 25% damage, or possibly negate it entirely if you want to be really dickish), and make enemies throughout the game much tougher so they pose a very real threat, forcing the player to rely on magic in some situations.


I'm also curious about where the GF summons and Draw/Cast fall into this whole deal because I feel they would still be better alternatives than sacrificing your own stats, by casting Junctioned Magic.

Simple solution for draw/cast: get rid of it. If you want to cast a spell then you have to use the ones you stocked. That way you can't simply sit on 100 of everything and cast magic with no consequence.


As for the Draw 100 spells the first go around, I feel its still a bit imbalanced, especially with the above critique. Granted you have a good point about it not being of any use until after the battle, but I think its a bit imbalanced that after leaving Balamb Garden, I go into five battles, that only take five minutes top to complete, and now I suddenly have a really beefy Quistis and Squall who can coast until the end of the Dollet Mission if I stuck to melee and summons. I feel a much better alternative is to simply limit the amount of spells you can draw from a monster. Basically, a Bite Bug has 15 Spell charges of Blizzard I can draw from, and then after 15 are drawn between my party, we can't get anything out of him. This would drop battle time significantly while still creating a sense of accomplishment when you finally draw enough spells to make meaningful Junctions, and it would keep refinement as a viable option.

While I don't dislike the idea of limiting how many draws you can get from an enemy (at least after the first one. It may create an interesting dynamic if you can't take a few turns in a battle where you used a spell and re-stock it before finishing the enemy off), I do agree with Skyblade that drawing 100 of a spell the first time you draw it isn't imbalanced, especially if you balance enemy stats with that in mind. That's already going to happen in the game as it is anyway, the only thing it changes is that the player spends five minutes doing it instead of the first 30 minutes to an hour.

I also think that if you solve the issue of making using magic worthwhile, then you can have this system and still keep refinement as a viable option since it can let you re-stock without having to take the time to draw like crazy.

As for GF's, that's definitely a conundrum. Anything that limits how many times they can be used would be good, though it's be nice if you pay some sort of penalty for using the strongest attacks in the game. The idea of their HP replacing yours during summoning so they could actually die was neat, but never really a serious threat. Off the top of my head, I'd say limit summons to once per battle (for each character), and have the act of summoning physically drain the character by causing damage equal to a some amount of HP.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm not sure any system that's going to base stat values on how many spells you junction to them can address this as part of the system. The only way I see it being possible is by balancing enemies well and upping the difficulty. More enemies with elemental weaknesses, or who resist physical attacks (and I don't mean some piddly amount of damage reduction, I mean throw in some guys who take 25% damage, or possibly negate it entirely if you want to be really dickish), and make enemies throughout the game much tougher so they pose a very real threat, forcing the player to rely on magic in some situations.

This would have to be the case, but the issue comes with GFs once again. If I run into a normal enemy with high Physical defense and weak to magic or an element, then I can just use a summon and be done with it. Get the same result, save my stats, and get on with my life. Outside of bosses and some beefier enemies, this will waltz you through most of the game, without some balance.



Simple solution for draw/cast: get rid of it. If you want to cast a spell then you have to use the ones you stocked. That way you can't simply sit on 100 of everything and cast magic with no consequence.

It's a shame to get rid of it, I actually liked it, but I also feel it would give more breathing room to mage type characters, so you can save the powerful spells for the big bads, and just use very weakened spells to get through the normal encounters.


While I don't dislike the idea of limiting how many draws you can get from an enemy (at least after the first one. It may create an interesting dynamic if you can't take a few turns in a battle where you used a spell and re-stock it before finishing the enemy off), I do agree with Skyblade that drawing 100 of a spell the first time you draw it isn't imbalanced, especially if you balance enemy stats with that in mind. That's already going to happen in the game as it is anyway, the only thing it changes is that the player spends five minutes doing it instead of the first 30 minutes to an hour.

See, to me that is boring. After that first encounter I get what I need and then every time I encounter that enemy its going to be a waste of my time and feel like padding, until I use a spell. I mean, I'm not getting levels anymore, and I only need to draw when I'm forced to use a spell,but even with 1x GF uses, I can use items to supplement and drastically reduce my need to draw. I prefer the idea of accumulative growth over instant gratification. It feels more natural, and requires more effort on the players part.


I also think that if you solve the issue of making using magic worthwhile, then you can have this system and still keep refinement as a viable option since it can let you re-stock without having to take the time to draw like crazy.

You know, I'm kind of on the opposite end here, I actually feel we should do away with refinement because it makes Drawing spells obsolete. While abolishing it all together might be too intense, I would rather limit it much more like you were suggesting early, maybe even drop Forbidden Magic refine altogether.


As for GF's, that's definitely a conundrum. Anything that limits how many times they can be used would be good, though it's be nice if you pay some sort of penalty for using the strongest attacks in the game. The idea of their HP replacing yours during summoning so they could actually die was neat, but never really a serious threat. Off the top of my head, I'd say limit summons to once per battle (for each character), and have the act of summoning physically drain the character by causing damage equal to a some amount of HP.

I think the best solution that would work with Skylade's idea is to have GFs cost 100 equipped spells each use, meaning its an instant downgrade and limits your magic arsenal, while also limiting the amount of time the spell could be used.There's no reason you can't just translate the MP system into VIII terms. Perhaps weaker summons cost a certain percentage of a spell, while higher tier ones like Alexander and Bahamut will cost all the spells in one slot.

[Slothy]

This would have to be the case, but the issue comes with GFs once again. If I run into a normal enemy with high Physical defense and weak to magic or an element, then I can just use a summon and be done with it. Get the same result, save my stats, and get on with my life. Outside of bosses and some beefier enemies, this will waltz you through most of the game, without some balance.

Which is why the penalty for using GF's needs to be severe enough that you're only going to use them when necessary. I think costing HP would do that (since using them every battle now means you have to heal even more every time, costing either more cure spells, or more healing items, and by extension, gil). But I think you're idea of costing a certain amount of spells could work as well, so long as the amount is fairly significant.


It's a shame to get rid of it, I actually liked it, but I also feel it would give more breathing room to mage type characters, so you can save the powerful spells for the big bads, and just use very weakened spells to get through the normal encounters.

A fair enough point. Perhaps a good middle ground would be to keep it, but assign each enemy a stat which determines the success rate for regular draws and draw/cast (I guess something probably determines it already but I'm not sure what). Have a noticeably higher failure rate for cast than for stock, but have the success rate still be reasonable for weaker enemies, but a lot lower for bosses and harder enemies. It should give mage characters more of a buffer to handle regular battles without crippling themselves, or requiring undue time to stock up again, while forcing them to use their stocked spells for the harder fights.


See, to me that is boring. After that first encounter I get what I need and then every time I encounter that enemy its going to be a waste of my time and feel like padding, until I use a spell. I mean, I'm not getting levels anymore, and I only need to draw when I'm forced to use a spell,but even with 1x GF uses, I can use items to supplement and drastically reduce my need to draw. I prefer the idea of accumulative growth over instant gratification. It feels more natural, and requires more effort on the players part.

Fair enough I guess. I'm the sort of person who absolutely hates grinding myself, so when I see something that has the same net result but in less time, I'm naturally going to gravitate to it. But if you're getting rid of leveling, which I would, it's probably not a terrible idea to keep the gradual stocking of spells for those who need that sense of progression. With proper balancing, people like me who don't want to spend a lot of extra time just grinding should be able to get through fine without it. I'd still prefer just getting the 100 spells outright, but with game design you've got to keep the desired experience of all players in mind.


You know, I'm kind of on the opposite end here, I actually feel we should do away with refinement because it makes Drawing spells obsolete. While abolishing it all together might be too intense, I would rather limit it much more like you were suggesting early, maybe even drop Forbidden Magic refine altogether.

See, I don't think it needs to make drawing obsolete altogether. Make the items which can be refined appropriately rare at different points in the game (or give them other useful purposes) and it could easily be a supplement rather than a replacement. I do agree about not being able to refine high level magic from items. The best stuff in the game should be damn hard to come by.


I think the best solution that would work with Skylade's idea is to have GFs cost 100 equipped spells each use, meaning its an instant downgrade and limits your magic arsenal, while also limiting the amount of time the spell could be used.There's no reason you can't just translate the MP system into VIII terms. Perhaps weaker summons cost a certain percentage of a spell, while higher tier ones like Alexander and Bahamut will cost all the spells in one slot.

Like I said above this could work really well as well. I might even like to see the number of summons not only limited, but require replenishing. Such as use them once and then have to sleep at an inn or use a tent to be able to summon again. But that may just be my desire to make them far less of a crutch for players while being able to keep them very powerful, and useful in the right situation. There was almost no downside to using them in VIII, so adding any limitation, or negative consequence is an improvement.

[Skyblade]

I think the best solution that would work with Skylade's idea is to have GFs cost 100 equipped spells each use, meaning its an instant downgrade and limits your magic arsenal, while also limiting the amount of time the spell could be used.There's no reason you can't just translate the MP system into VIII terms. Perhaps weaker summons cost a certain percentage of a spell, while higher tier ones like Alexander and Bahamut will cost all the spells in one slot.

Or have certain powerful ones, like Eden, take a percentage of all your spells currently Junctioned, weakening you across the board.

Funny, I had actually been thinking of that idea, but I hadn't put it in the thread yet. Scary telepathic Wolf Kanno!

[MJN SEIFER]

I never really had a problem with the Junction system, probably because I played this right after I completed FFVII.

[Wolf Kanno]

This thread is more for the munchkin players on the forum who obsess over mechanics and balance and silly things like that...

[Jiro]

It's actually very interesting to think about the different and potentially better ways it could have been implemented.

[Skyblade]

I never really had a problem with the Junction system, probably because I played this right after I completed FFVII.

Really? I think that makes it worse. The Materia system was so simple, and so visual. The color-coding and streamline nature made it very easy to pick up and work with.

Then the Junction system rolls around, and it junks that beautiful interface for a very unfriendly, text-based UI. It felt like a step backward.


True, the whole concept of magic augmenting your stats was an extension of Materia's stat changes, but, really, the Junction system seems overall much less polished than the Materia system. More tedious, less involving, more unbalanced, and nowhere near as good of an interface.

[MJN SEIFER]

I never really had a problem with the Junction system, probably because I played this right after I completed FFVII.

Really? I think that makes it worse. The Materia system was so simple, and so visual. The color-coding and streamline nature made it very easy to pick up and work with.

Then the Junction system rolls around, and it junks that beautiful interface for a very unfriendly, text-based UI. It felt like a step backward.


True, the whole concept of magic augmenting your stats was an extension of Materia's stat changes, but, really, the Junction system seems overall much less polished than the Materia system. More tedious, less involving, more unbalanced, and nowhere near as good of an interface. Funny, I thought it was pretty close to the Materia system. I guess sometimes it just depends on your perceptive of everything I guess - I just went into it with Materia in mind, and was like "Yeah, I get it."

[Vincent, Thunder God]

Speaking of the Junction system as it currently stands, do any of you have pointers on how to use it properly? Is it completely broken or can it be used efficiently at all? All I ever did was spam the GFs. What should I do differently?

[Slothy]

The thing that most of us mean when we say it's broken is that the junction system is so easily exploited to make your characters really powerful that there ends up being no challenge to the game.

It's very easy to get fairly high level magics early on by quickly teaching GF's the refinement abilities. Even just teaching them mid magic refinement and later high magic refinement, or whatever it was called in the game makes it easy, if somewhat cumbersome, to get more powerful magic than you should have and start junctioning it to your stats to up your HP, attack, and everything else.

The example I always use is that once you gain the ability to refine healing magics from items, Curaga becomes absurdly easy to get since you can refine it easily from tents.

Basically, if you want to make your characters more powerful, the key is to learn the refinement abilities and status junctions as early as possible, and draw from enemies while keeping an eye on what new items can be refined to make, and where you find them. Even without a lot of experience with the game you can make your characters strong enough that you'll probably never die.

[Vincent, Thunder God]

Ah I see! I never even knew a refinement system existed in the game - but I still almost got all the way through with GFs alone! Next time I play I'll have to try it out, thanks for the info. BTW I see you're a Neil Peart fan! He's one of my favourite drummers and Rush is one of my favourite bands. Never thought of him as James Bond, but it's pretty funny. Alex Lifeson is in the background too! xD

[Mirage]

All of these changes are unnecessary except making magic spells more powerful relative to physical attacks. The problem here, of course, is that physical attacks are extremely overpowered, especially when it comes to limit breaks, and because almost every mob that actually is resistant to physical attacks can just be Meltdowned.

The best way to make magic more worthwhile is to make more enemies be resistant to physical attacks, and also resistant to meltdown.

Or actually, I guess one change that the game could make is to tell the player about magic refinement in the opening tutorials.

[Wolf Kanno]

^ I think that would only partially fix the problem, the other issue is the fact you can make yourself defensively overpowered as well. I mean getting near max HP by the end of Disc One and having high defense and elemental/status resistance kind of kills the fun as well. Even if you nerf physical, it won't change the fact you can make an invincible tank with the system as well.