Also, in the original Japanese version, the auto crossbow was called the "auto bowgun" - Which 11 year old me thought was the coolest sounding weapon in any RPG ever.
The Chainsaw would've been so much better if worked like Odin's Zantetsuken in IX, where, if you have the Odin's Sword ability, the summon will always deal damage if the instant death effect fails.
When I played this as a kid I would always bring Edgar to the desert that only has Hoovers and Cactuars in the WoR and use the Drill to take out the Cactuars.
Edgar is overpowered as hell in the beginning of the game; AutoCrossbow deals way more damage to each individual enemy than anything that Locke or Terra can dish out most of the time (I personally don't even have Locke attack anything - I just have him steal things as much as possible instead, or stand ready to throw potions, at least until he can dual-wield Hawk Eyes), and his Bio Blaster and NoiseBlaster tools are basically free multi-target versions of Bio and Muddle. You can even boost Edgar's damage quite dramatically by giving him Hyper Wrist and Atlas Armlet, which you can get in the South Figaro basement and on Mt. Kolts before you even fight Vargas.
He kind of has to be. Until you unlock Espers like 3-4 hours into the game you're essentially stuck using the attack command 90% of the time. Apart from casting a few dinky spells and the occasional sweet Blitz from Sabin. Honestly Edgar and Sabin are the only things making the first few hours tolerable, and I still think they're pretty awful personally.
@@shawnfanning6566 Gau has some really awesome Rages almost immediately; some of the best Rages that are available right away on the very first Veldt visit are probably Stray Cat, Marshal, Templar and Hazer. Then there are of course the slightly later Rages such as SlamDancer, Aspik, Anguiform, General and ChickenLip.
I'm not familiar with the pixel remaster version, but I've always preferred Flash and Drill over the Bio Blaster simply because the animation for the Bio Blaster is just too long. One fun thing you can do with it is late game when you have Gogo, you can use Debilitator twice in a round on a boss until it becomes weak to poison. Then just blast them with it for an easy fight!
In every version other than PR damage ticks only happened during a "turn" or every so often between attacks based on a timer, in the pixel remaster nothing stops or interupts DoT's or HoT's, so during a single attack animation a DoT can trigger 2-3 times, and during longer animations even more than that, and since they usually are max % HP based(aside from a few enemy one), that means during a single attack like Flurry following up a Bio Blaster anywhere between 40-60% of every enemies HP ticked down during the flurry animation in just DoT damage.
Edgar is my guy! He's so good Early to Mid game, I don't think I've ever done a playthrough of this game without using Auto Crossbow like a million times lol
Same. I always feel a little sad later on when I invariably relegate him to C team. He just can't hang with the likes of Terra and Sabin anymore later on huh?
Imp Edgar + back row + dragoon boots+ dragon horn. You can solo the Triad and could solo Kefka if it wasn't for the unblockable death counter in the third stage.
As a person who only played the SNES version, the Bio Blaster beating out Flash is what surprised me. With how it works in the Pixel Remaster though, I am not surprised the bio Blaster slaps. Makes me want to pick it up and give it a run through. I more or less agreed with the list. I used to love arguing with friends when I was a child about how the Drill is better because of the potential wasted turn of the Chainsaw on Bosses.
That is exactly something I had to explain to a friend of mine who had watched this video and hated how low the chainsaw was rated. Granted, his top 3 were (in order) Chainsaw, Drill, and Auto-Crossbow.
Totally! Death spells and effects feel like such a trap in FF6. I remember all the times I'd get excited that it worked, seeing the animation, only to quickly realize it was just going to heal the amorphous weird thing that was apparently undead.
Bio Blaster is super useful during the 3 group war in Narshe, it's so powerful against the empire troops that you can litteraly put Edgar alone in one group. Autocrossbow carries the whole game from Figaro to Lete River, it's so strong you don't even have to use Terra and Locke.
I think you're sleeping on the Noiseblaster dude. Against Hoover for example (who can be grinded for solid EXP at that point, and a ton of Gil). Early on, your choice is either: -Suffer a potential Game Over due to a double Sandstorm Counter. -Watch Hoover wallop itself with it's Crush Special, or Sandstorm itself for zero damage (you can safely chip in with Ice spells then).
and by VANISHING the ENTIRE party they ONLY counter with Crush for when Doom/Death FAILS to KILL it but I'm not sure if they will counter Banish/X Zone with Crush since it has a even LOWER rate to kill them.
Part of the issue with the chainsaw is that it seems to always hit the instant death when fighting enemies immune to instant death (especially bosses). It’s a great tool against solo hard hitting random encounters, though.
Yeah, for me it always used the spin attack against normal enemies and as soon as I used it on a boss, it would pull out the Jason mask and spear it right in..... for nothing.
This was fixed in the pixel remaster to not miss (maybe console improved or patch as abysmal mobile was buggy and lacked original music), and buffed to kill undead without regenerating them. It does get power crept in world of ruin, but Edgar is the best world of balance character next to Gau’s crazy Templar lol stray cat is nice too. 8:10 flash with esper magic stat boosts yay. Glad console boost lets you toggle off random encounters and half or zero exp until getting espers to quadruple everything, and gold for auctions and that guy you overpay for early access to an esper. Wish I could see damage in vid for bio blaster though, but yeah regen is better in pixel remaster too.
My one use for the Noiseblaster, is to get Strago to learn Traveler before WoR. Go to the valley by the Returners' Hideout, and use on the Unseelies. They will sometimes use Traveler when confused.
The noise blaster and camera really shines when tracking down the 3 Dreams Stooges! An enemy uses an attack called Evil Toot that can inflict all kinds of status ailments, and flashing and confusing them makes this hard maze quite a breeze!
The problem i have with characters such as edgar and locke are that as soon as Gogo becomes available towards the end game he can completely fill both of their roles at once and while his stats do not reach the same level due to a lack of esper bonuses... It doesnt matter as im going to have specifically str and mag based characters in my party anyway, he just provides whatever support coverage is needed.
In the SNES version my tools of choice were the drill and auto-crossbow. Edgar is more of a strength character than magic, and when he builds levels later in the game I found that the autocrossbow did more damage than the flash or bio-blaster. And with the bio-blaster, you have more enemies late in the game who are either immune to or boosted by poison damage.
I actually prefer the Noiseblaster. Sometimes, I encounter enemies that have a nasty ability like Break, and just make them use it on each other. I can also avoid tons of damage from them too. Like those hard-hitting Gore attack.
Noiseblaster is great in WoB and early WoR, especially when you reach difficulty spikes like the Magitek Factory and Floating Continent. Pairing it with Sabin using non-physical Blitzes like Fire Dance will result in a ton of no damage battles. I'd put Noiseblaster solidly in mid tier above Air Anchor and Autocrossbow.
NoiseBlaster I could see being more useful if there are sections early game, if there are any parts where encounters with enemies have large groups instead of just 1-4 monsters. Since confusing everyone in a large group of enemies could mean negating a lot of damage that you would have taken before you were able to clear out a few of them and making them far more managable. Regardless, I still use it occasionally just for fun. It's nice to mix things up when you know the situation isn't a problem in the slightest.
I didn't mess much with the bioblaster in the pixel remaster, but definitely agree about drill and flash being up there. I did like that for human typed enemies, too, that bioblaster just destroys them. Edgar can solo pretty much the entire Kefka in Narshe battles because of this, and only really needed to have some assist for the dogs and magitech armor that sometimes accompanies the enemies there.
I've been using that strategy since the SNES days. Edgar runs around the map with Locke for backup obliterating everything with the Bio Blaster while the other 4 characters stay fresh for Kefka.
Hard to argue with this list. Auto crossbow is a great tool, having a free multi-target attack as soon as you get Edgar is hard to pass up. Drill over chainsaw is understandable. Gotta appreciate that consistency. Flash being basically a magical auto crossbow, very nice. And bioblaster does seem OP in PR. Those ticks add up! Great list, Bdewd!
Flash #1 for me. Edgar really shines in world of balance and it's far and away his best weapon there, since it gets a 50% boost from the earringx2 (Hero rings work too) relics. No other tool gets as much of a boost (Atlas Armlet doesn't stack, and Hyper Wrist has a relatively small effect). With this boost, Flash will one shot entire packs, and will even one shot your party if you get a bad confuse lol. Flash falls off in world of ruin but so does Edgar in general. World 1 is where he rocks the hardest and Flash is his best tool there.
Worth mentioning: AutoCrossbow, Drill, and Chainsaw scale off of strength, while BioBlaster, and Flash scale off of Magic. Some builds will want AutoCrossbow over Flash et al.
Noise Blaster has _some_ uses early on (Mt. Kolts specifically comes to mind with the bird enemies loving to Break their teammates when confused), but yeah. If you don't know what an enemy can do when confused, typically it won't be the biggest contribution.
Noiseblaster is easily 5-6/10 usefulness. No cost, guaranteed confusion to all enemies who aren't immune. This means they're attacking each other instead of you. Absolutely vital in the early game to keep you from being dead. Much better than Air Anchor.
Bio laster for early game. Plus. Bio damage stacks and multiplies. Makes the gamr a little busted, honestly. I always use virus in ff2 and bip in ff3. Sucj a satisfying spell.
debilitator's main flaw is that it is masked by elemental strengths. If it overrode them, it'd top tier. Broken, even. But if it picked an element that it could do something to, it'd at least be useful. Noiseblaster is really useful as defense, often more useful than taking out one enemy entirely.
Was this changed in the PR? In the SNES version, it does override elemental strengths. I still don't consider it that great since it's generally overshadowed by other options.
@@Lockirby2 Are you sure? I remember seeing a mob that absorbs Holy, using debilitator and getting Pearl element, then casting holy on it and it absorbs. It might be able to override 50% damage or 0% damage, but absorbs was definitely higher priority. I'll see if I can do an experiment. I'm working solely off SNES, here.
@@drachefly I'm 100% sure. I even used it against Dullahan to make it weak to Ice in my most recent challenge run. The only enemy it fails against is Girl in the final battle, but that's because she's flagged to be *weak* to the elements in addition to absorbing them, which does make the Debilitator fail.
Flash is such a weird Tool because you don't think something called "Flash" does damage. I always switch to Flash first opportunity that I get it. I also agree with Drill. The Chainsaw could give you a course of bad luck if it's constantly doing Insta-Death attempts.
I'm sorry to say it on multiple videos, but bro, have a friend proofread/edit for you or something. "Accessibility" I love your content. Even when I disagree, I get your view. Like I said before, I'm still watching. 👍
I was a bit surprised to see Bio Blaster at #1 but what said about the changes in the remaster make sense. I've never played that version so I wouldn't have known. You had Drill and Flash high too and they were by far my most used tools in the SNES version.
My opinion on Edgar is basically the same as 20+ years ago: A Black Mage with no MP restrictions, ability to equip good weapons and armor AND stay in the back row, while only having access to a limited number of elemental attacks. Completely busted in the early game (falls off a bit once stronger Espers come around). Honestly, I've rarely used him in SNES playthroughs just because I wanted more of a challenge.
BUT on the Pixel remaster the Chainsaw CAN kill the undead and won't cause them to auto revive so for me the worst tool is the Air Anchor itself if I really want to kill 1 target instantly I'll just use the actual Death spell itself.
Oh boy, I gotta see if I can rank these before watching. 1. Auto Crossbow: Falls off quickly. But before it falls off, whoo is it great. Cleans up the early game and is still useful until Magitek Facility. 2. Drill: Good old reliable single target defense ignoring damage. Falls off at end game, but everything falls off at endgame to 8 Atma Weapons or Ultima spam. 3. Air Anchor: If you know the enemy is vulnerable to Instant Death, Air Anchor is 100% going to work. If the enemy likes to counter, you can force a counter and the enemy will die after the counter. 4. Flash: Edgar's magic sucks. A shame, too, this is a nice AoE non elemental magic ability that works immediately. 5. Chain Saw: 25% chance of Instant Death is unreliable. 75% chance of being Drill means I should just use Drill. 6. Noiseblaster: Confusing all enemies is okay... ish? Nice to trick Katanasoul into killing himself. Useful if you suddenly need to stall for time and recover. 7. Bio Blaster: Just use Auto Crossbow, it's faster and you won't trip into Poison immune enemies. That being said, this will wreck humanoid enemies and bosses like Phunbaba. The damage ticks do add up. 8. Debilitator: Randomly selected weakness means this takes too long to be useful. Good for natural skill runs where you don't have easy access to fire/ice/lightning. Can't even use it against Magimaster in vanilla playthroughs.
I am ok with where the chainsaw is, I am just unsure about the noise blaster. I felt like it was great for mobs, particularly on Mt Kolts. I could confuse all the enemies, then focus on killing one at a time. Sometimes the birds would cast break on another enemy and make the fight even easier.
Edgar is challenging to use, man. Like everyone says, his tools are outclassed by Magic later in the game. I wish there was a key item to buff his tools...like the technical manual you find in Cyan's cave. Edgar can also use Dragoon Boots and the Dragon Horn and get crazy repeating jump damage at the cost of speed, but if he's hitting multiple times on the jump, does it matter? He's crazy versatile but in the end, like everything else, he doesn't stand up to X-Magic Ultima. I'm currently playing T-Edition and the Bio Blaster is just crazy useful in that mod.
Fun video and I liked your reasoning on the efficacy of the tools. HOWEVER, considering how early you get something doesn't really paint a clear picture of which item is "best". I don't think that should be factored in because it can cause a tool to win by a technicality over a more effective tool, which only really serves to muddy the waters. I guess I might only consider that factor when comparing two tools that are nigh-on identical in terms of efficacy. Still nice vid man! I learned some interesting details about some of the tools!
In order for me (ill be using snes/ps1 names) 1. Drill 2. Chainsaw 3. Auto Crossbow 4. Bio Blaster 5. Flash 6. Noise Blaster 7. Debilitator 8. Air Anchor
I have always thought that the Drill is Edgar's best tool in the game. It does nearly as much damage as the Chainsaw without going for the instant kill attacks all the time. Early game the Auto Crossbow is a really useful tool for doing a decent amount of damage to all the enemies on screen at one time. The Auto Crossbow does lose some usefulness later on in the game, though, as you can just use magic attacks to damage all the enemies on screen at one time.
So for a casual run i would mostly agree with this list especially for the the PR version. As I'm a randomizer player my list would be slightly different putting the FLASH at number 1 since it is magic aoe non elemental and this is the big part, defense ignoring. the FLASH will break through magimaster defense AND magic defense. The DRILL being number 2 as it only lacks being magic damage and aoe damage. It is also defense ignoring. BIOBLASTER in the randomizer has its uses, and thus is always an instant buy and lands instelf firmly in 3rd place. Katana Soul (snes) Samurai Soul (PR) is wildly weak to poison and muddle/confuse ailments making this boss a pushover with BIOBLASTER and any confuse causing spell/attack. Making this tough boss fight a walk in the park.
You can't USE anything but Esper spells/Items on the Magicmaster itself besides even with 100 Magic Flash still SUCKS since it still won't hit for 9999 damage by Str 70+ Auto Crossbow still may for the Kefka's tower bosses.
you can use any weapon you want plus the beserk spell but armor peirce weapons will actually kill him since he has the highest armor in the game so try lockei with the valiant knife or setzer with the fixed dice and beserk both them and the boss try it it works@@veghesther3204
The worst part about Noise Blaster is that... it'd actually be the best tool in the game if the game was punishing enough to warrant using your turns to mitigate damage instead of going all-in on damage all the time.
I usually love the chain saw or drill, but I can understand your reasoning for picking bio blaster, drill and flash; also, I would love to get the art of the ladies in the speed run counter
here's the secret about Final Fantasy 3/6 cast invisibility on your enemy then Doom guaranteed 100% death chance regardless if they're immune or not on the Super Nintendo version that works with all weapons or skills that cause death
in the SNES version the noise blaster will un-confuse confused enemies as will the spell if cast on a confused target. Seems in your version that doesn't happen. *dry look*
The chain is a tie with the drill for me so I am okay with your stats. Also random death is an effect of the chain saw so I would place it above the drill
i can't imagine figaro pronounced any other way than the way it is in italian, [FIG] + [UH] + [ROH] not trying to shame pronunciation in a game where we definitely can't know for sure
Auto crossbow always carries my runs with edgar. I dont need poison ticks, i need 1 shot aoe. Get some free lvls from the raft trick n auto crossbow your way through a majority of the game. 😊
I have never found the flash or bio blaster to be useful at all!! It's interesting how different folks can play this game and come away with a different list. I'd put the drill as number 1. It's the only tool I find myself using later in the game.
Im sad to see the chainsaw did not get an extra point of two for style.... The Jason Voorhee mask is so much cooler then the drill helmet. Not saying it should be be higher just edging out the drill.
Flash also works on the few enemies who use Vanish like ninjas and Intangir. It always hits. If you are fighting deadites, use an item instead of tools. Instant win.
As someone who likes to gamble I really enjoyed the chainsaw. Like I'm not gonna say it's the best weapon in the game or anything. But I was doing a low level run when I played 6 for the first time and it took out like 5 bosses for me. I do know that is a totally rng thing and I probably got more lucky with it than anything and if that's all I was using then of course I'm bound to get a few insta kills on bosses
Noiseblaster is my favorite for making enemies do silly stuff in battle they normally wouldn't. It's like you said great early game to lower the damage your team is taking. I use it alot just to see what silly stuff enemies can do.
*Shrieks like a banshee when you said, "Pixel Remaster is the Definitive edition"* BLASPHEMY! (Don't worry, I won't garrote you.) Also I'd argue that even in a casual playthrough unless you're the grindy type, that the Tools and character abilities are actually better than magic once you factor in the time it takes to learn magic. Cause if you don't stop to stew around and learn magic, then you don't have it, so it's not all that great. Like in all these fun lists you've made, the logic is always sound with the accessibility ranking, and you should basically be ranking almost all magic accessibility as 1/10. Cause a lot of the magic takes ages to learn. On top of that, magic costs MP. As demonstrative type dealio, if you try to learn most of Gau's Rages, you can get pretty much most of his rages by the time one party of characters will learn all of the standard magic in the game. Luck depending, of course.
I would agree in not making the chainsaw #1. If the instant death still did damage it would be a different ballgame. If I had a quarter for every time I got a failed death-attack in my many and long playthroughs of the game on the SNES, I could solve the student debt crisis.
Forgot to say this, given your explanation on how DoT works in the remaster, I agree with the bio blaster as #1. I will have to pick that version up sometime.
no the speedrun tools would be drill/flash/autocrossbow as the top 3 which makes it pretty boring. casual also hits a larger chunk of the ff6 community :)
Autocross bow is very useful before you got espers. I also liked Chain Saw as long as i figured out its caused miss hits 33-50% of the time and drill caused nearly same amount damage with 100% hit rate. So i´ll prefer drill myself, because 100% hitrate. In magicite factory flash & bioblaster work much better than autocrossbow. So there is few expect where autocross bow is less good. Air Anchor suck. Is this tool missrate 90% or more? I never are caused any hit about it. Just always goes miss. Yeah later game Edgar tools come somewhat pointless, when you learn powerfull magics (like ultima/flare) or when you pick up Sabin Boom Rush and especially when you use quick spell with this so double boom rushses in one go, its nearly make Edgar tools very weak a late game.
In the end auto crossbow is the best because it hits all enemies for nearly 9999.
Also, in the original Japanese version, the auto crossbow was called the "auto bowgun" - Which 11 year old me thought was the coolest sounding weapon in any RPG ever.
The Chainsaw would've been so much better if worked like Odin's Zantetsuken in IX, where, if you have the Odin's Sword ability, the summon will always deal damage if the instant death effect fails.
😂 won’t lie though, I love that Hockey Mask that Edger puts on though lol
The drill also kills cactuars by ignoring their crazy defense
….That….that makes sense tbh.
When I played this as a kid I would always bring Edgar to the desert that only has Hoovers and Cactuars in the WoR and use the Drill to take out the Cactuars.
Air Anchor works against them Slagworm
Great for milking them for XP and magic points
Edgar is overpowered as hell in the beginning of the game;
AutoCrossbow deals way more damage to each individual enemy than anything that Locke or Terra can dish out most of the time (I personally don't even have Locke attack anything - I just have him steal things as much as possible instead, or stand ready to throw potions, at least until he can dual-wield Hawk Eyes), and his Bio Blaster and NoiseBlaster tools are basically free multi-target versions of Bio and Muddle.
You can even boost Edgar's damage quite dramatically by giving him Hyper Wrist and Atlas Armlet, which you can get in the South Figaro basement and on Mt. Kolts before you even fight Vargas.
He kind of has to be. Until you unlock Espers like 3-4 hours into the game you're essentially stuck using the attack command 90% of the time. Apart from casting a few dinky spells and the occasional sweet Blitz from Sabin. Honestly Edgar and Sabin are the only things making the first few hours tolerable, and I still think they're pretty awful personally.
100%
Edgar with atlas armlet (or hero ring) and hyper wrist, then Sabin with 2x Earrings puts the game on easymode.
Just for clearing out all the randoms it should have had a higher score for usefulness
Gau most overpowered early
@@shawnfanning6566 Gau has some really awesome Rages almost immediately;
some of the best Rages that are available right away on the very first Veldt visit are probably Stray Cat, Marshal, Templar and Hazer.
Then there are of course the slightly later Rages such as SlamDancer, Aspik, Anguiform, General and ChickenLip.
It was really funny to me how, when talking about the Noise Blaster, right as it misses, the narrator says "it has a 100% success rate"
that enemy was already confused.
it doesn't work against enemies immune to confuse
I'm not familiar with the pixel remaster version, but I've always preferred Flash and Drill over the Bio Blaster simply because the animation for the Bio Blaster is just too long. One fun thing you can do with it is late game when you have Gogo, you can use Debilitator twice in a round on a boss until it becomes weak to poison. Then just blast them with it for an easy fight!
they did something funky with the damage ticks during battle and they go absolutely crazy, especially on very fast battle speed. it's way to good lol
In every version other than PR damage ticks only happened during a "turn" or every so often between attacks based on a timer, in the pixel remaster nothing stops or interupts DoT's or HoT's, so during a single attack animation a DoT can trigger 2-3 times, and during longer animations even more than that, and since they usually are max % HP based(aside from a few enemy one), that means during a single attack like Flurry following up a Bio Blaster anywhere between 40-60% of every enemies HP ticked down during the flurry animation in just DoT damage.
Vanish + Death
@@21mushroomcupcakes33 that only works in like SNES and maybe PS1
Edgar is my guy! He's so good Early to Mid game, I don't think I've ever done a playthrough of this game without using Auto Crossbow like a million times lol
Same. I always feel a little sad later on when I invariably relegate him to C team. He just can't hang with the likes of Terra and Sabin anymore later on huh?
@@MondoJohnny maybe not but I still use him anyways haha, Terra Edgar Sabin Celes are my favorite 4 to use
Right on! B ) @@Collin255
Exactly the same goes for me bro
Imp Edgar + back row + dragoon boots+ dragon horn.
You can solo the Triad and could solo Kefka if it wasn't for the unblockable death counter in the third stage.
As a person who only played the SNES version, the Bio Blaster beating out Flash is what surprised me. With how it works in the Pixel Remaster though, I am not surprised the bio Blaster slaps. Makes me want to pick it up and give it a run through. I more or less agreed with the list. I used to love arguing with friends when I was a child about how the Drill is better because of the potential wasted turn of the Chainsaw on Bosses.
Air anchor sounds like a fist of the north star "You're already dead" meme
You rated chainsaw higher than I would have, that 25% death is 100% on immune/healed by death enemies 😂
loooooooool
That is exactly something I had to explain to a friend of mine who had watched this video and hated how low the chainsaw was rated. Granted, his top 3 were (in order) Chainsaw, Drill, and Auto-Crossbow.
Totally! Death spells and effects feel like such a trap in FF6. I remember all the times I'd get excited that it worked, seeing the animation, only to quickly realize it was just going to heal the amorphous weird thing that was apparently undead.
Bio Blaster is super useful during the 3 group war in Narshe, it's so powerful against the empire troops that you can litteraly put Edgar alone in one group. Autocrossbow carries the whole game from Figaro to Lete River, it's so strong you don't even have to use Terra and Locke.
Edgar: Kefka you monster, using poison to kill people!
I think you're sleeping on the Noiseblaster dude.
Against Hoover for example (who can be grinded for solid EXP at that point, and a ton of Gil). Early on, your choice is either:
-Suffer a potential Game Over due to a double Sandstorm Counter.
-Watch Hoover wallop itself with it's Crush Special, or Sandstorm itself for zero damage (you can safely chip in with Ice spells then).
I just spam Death at Hoover until it lands. It's quite vulnerable to it, even without the Vanish-Death exploit.
and by VANISHING the ENTIRE party they ONLY counter with Crush for when Doom/Death FAILS to KILL it but I'm not sure if they will counter Banish/X Zone with Crush since it has a even LOWER rate to kill them.
Part of the issue with the chainsaw is that it seems to always hit the instant death when fighting enemies immune to instant death (especially bosses). It’s a great tool against solo hard hitting random encounters, though.
Yeah, for me it always used the spin attack against normal enemies and as soon as I used it on a boss, it would pull out the Jason mask and spear it right in..... for nothing.
This was fixed in the pixel remaster to not miss (maybe console improved or patch as abysmal mobile was buggy and lacked original music), and buffed to kill undead without regenerating them. It does get power crept in world of ruin, but Edgar is the best world of balance character next to Gau’s crazy Templar lol stray cat is nice too.
8:10 flash with esper magic stat boosts yay. Glad console boost lets you toggle off random encounters and half or zero exp until getting espers to quadruple everything, and gold for auctions and that guy you overpay for early access to an esper.
Wish I could see damage in vid for bio blaster though, but yeah regen is better in pixel remaster too.
My one use for the Noiseblaster, is to get Strago to learn Traveler before WoR. Go to the valley by the Returners' Hideout, and use on the Unseelies. They will sometimes use Traveler when confused.
Me too.
The noise blaster and camera really shines when tracking down the 3 Dreams Stooges! An enemy uses an attack called Evil Toot that can inflict all kinds of status ailments, and flashing and confusing them makes this hard maze quite a breeze!
The problem i have with characters such as edgar and locke are that as soon as Gogo becomes available towards the end game he can completely fill both of their roles at once and while his stats do not reach the same level due to a lack of esper bonuses... It doesnt matter as im going to have specifically str and mag based characters in my party anyway, he just provides whatever support coverage is needed.
To be honest I always forgot his tools existed once he went full Dragoon mode.
In the SNES version my tools of choice were the drill and auto-crossbow. Edgar is more of a strength character than magic, and when he builds levels later in the game I found that the autocrossbow did more damage than the flash or bio-blaster. And with the bio-blaster, you have more enemies late in the game who are either immune to or boosted by poison damage.
I actually prefer the Noiseblaster.
Sometimes, I encounter enemies that have a nasty ability like Break, and just make them use it on each other.
I can also avoid tons of damage from them too. Like those hard-hitting Gore attack.
I use Noiseblaster in the Sable Mountains. The Cirpius uses Break and Beak for instant kills.
In my opinion flash is better then bio blaster because some enemies can be healed buy the bio blaster. And that makes it a real pain in some areas
noiseblaster's gotta be way higher. you're basically invincible up until WOR with it
Noiseblaster is great in WoB and early WoR, especially when you reach difficulty spikes like the Magitek Factory and Floating Continent. Pairing it with Sabin using non-physical Blitzes like Fire Dance will result in a ton of no damage battles. I'd put Noiseblaster solidly in mid tier above Air Anchor and Autocrossbow.
I got an ad for Lowe’s tools before this video.
Very apt lololol
NoiseBlaster I could see being more useful if there are sections early game, if there are any parts where encounters with enemies have large groups instead of just 1-4 monsters. Since confusing everyone in a large group of enemies could mean negating a lot of damage that you would have taken before you were able to clear out a few of them and making them far more managable.
Regardless, I still use it occasionally just for fun. It's nice to mix things up when you know the situation isn't a problem in the slightest.
I didn't mess much with the bioblaster in the pixel remaster, but definitely agree about drill and flash being up there. I did like that for human typed enemies, too, that bioblaster just destroys them. Edgar can solo pretty much the entire Kefka in Narshe battles because of this, and only really needed to have some assist for the dogs and magitech armor that sometimes accompanies the enemies there.
I've been using that strategy since the SNES days. Edgar runs around the map with Locke for backup obliterating everything with the Bio Blaster while the other 4 characters stay fresh for Kefka.
Great video! The only thing that was painful was the pronunciation of Figaro.
Hard to argue with this list. Auto crossbow is a great tool, having a free multi-target attack as soon as you get Edgar is hard to pass up. Drill over chainsaw is understandable. Gotta appreciate that consistency. Flash being basically a magical auto crossbow, very nice. And bioblaster does seem OP in PR. Those ticks add up! Great list, Bdewd!
Here's a video I wasn't expecting in the algorithm but glad it showed up
"Move, and this one's toast!" Love Air Anchor's Woolyism.
This may be outside your wheelhouse, but this video made me think of Jeff from EarthBound and a comparison of his gadgets would be fun.
I havenr delved into EB much but once I finish up the ff6 projects chrono trigger is next. Maybe I'll learn EB by then haha
EarthBound is still one of my all time favorite games. I imagine you'd have a good time picking it apart. =-) @@Bdewd
Flash #1 for me. Edgar really shines in world of balance and it's far and away his best weapon there, since it gets a 50% boost from the earringx2 (Hero rings work too) relics. No other tool gets as much of a boost (Atlas Armlet doesn't stack, and Hyper Wrist has a relatively small effect). With this boost, Flash will one shot entire packs, and will even one shot your party if you get a bad confuse lol. Flash falls off in world of ruin but so does Edgar in general. World 1 is where he rocks the hardest and Flash is his best tool there.
Worth mentioning: AutoCrossbow, Drill, and Chainsaw scale off of strength, while BioBlaster, and Flash scale off of Magic. Some builds will want AutoCrossbow over Flash et al.
Noise Blaster has _some_ uses early on (Mt. Kolts specifically comes to mind with the bird enemies loving to Break their teammates when confused), but yeah. If you don't know what an enemy can do when confused, typically it won't be the biggest contribution.
Noiseblaster is easily 5-6/10 usefulness. No cost, guaranteed confusion to all enemies who aren't immune. This means they're attacking each other instead of you. Absolutely vital in the early game to keep you from being dead. Much better than Air Anchor.
Bio laster for early game. Plus. Bio damage stacks and multiplies. Makes the gamr a little busted, honestly. I always use virus in ff2 and bip in ff3. Sucj a satisfying spell.
I just opened with Drill for the debuff and then spammed Chainsaw after and it worked beautifully.
debilitator's main flaw is that it is masked by elemental strengths. If it overrode them, it'd top tier. Broken, even. But if it picked an element that it could do something to, it'd at least be useful.
Noiseblaster is really useful as defense, often more useful than taking out one enemy entirely.
Was this changed in the PR? In the SNES version, it does override elemental strengths. I still don't consider it that great since it's generally overshadowed by other options.
@@Lockirby2 Are you sure? I remember seeing a mob that absorbs Holy, using debilitator and getting Pearl element, then casting holy on it and it absorbs. It might be able to override 50% damage or 0% damage, but absorbs was definitely higher priority. I'll see if I can do an experiment. I'm working solely off SNES, here.
@@drachefly I'm 100% sure. I even used it against Dullahan to make it weak to Ice in my most recent challenge run. The only enemy it fails against is Girl in the final battle, but that's because she's flagged to be *weak* to the elements in addition to absorbing them, which does make the Debilitator fail.
@@Lockirby2 It's… possible that I did this test on 'Girl'. After all, I really wanted her to stop asborbing them.
Flash is such a weird Tool because you don't think something called "Flash" does damage. I always switch to Flash first opportunity that I get it.
I also agree with Drill. The Chainsaw could give you a course of bad luck if it's constantly doing Insta-Death attempts.
I'm sorry to say it on multiple videos, but bro, have a friend proofread/edit for you or something. "Accessibility"
I love your content. Even when I disagree, I get your view. Like I said before, I'm still watching. 👍
I was a bit surprised to see Bio Blaster at #1 but what said about the changes in the remaster make sense. I've never played that version so I wouldn't have known. You had Drill and Flash high too and they were by far my most used tools in the SNES version.
btw you can also get the Air Anchor through the Dragon's Neck Coliseum, by betting Genji Armor (and winning).
My opinion on Edgar is basically the same as 20+ years ago: A Black Mage with no MP restrictions, ability to equip good weapons and armor AND stay in the back row, while only having access to a limited number of elemental attacks. Completely busted in the early game (falls off a bit once stronger Espers come around). Honestly, I've rarely used him in SNES playthroughs just because I wanted more of a challenge.
BUT on the Pixel remaster the Chainsaw CAN kill the undead and won't cause them to auto revive so for me the worst tool is the Air Anchor itself if I really want to kill 1 target instantly I'll just use the actual Death spell itself.
Oh boy, I gotta see if I can rank these before watching.
1. Auto Crossbow: Falls off quickly. But before it falls off, whoo is it great. Cleans up the early game and is still useful until Magitek Facility.
2. Drill: Good old reliable single target defense ignoring damage. Falls off at end game, but everything falls off at endgame to 8 Atma Weapons or Ultima spam.
3. Air Anchor: If you know the enemy is vulnerable to Instant Death, Air Anchor is 100% going to work. If the enemy likes to counter, you can force a counter and the enemy will die after the counter.
4. Flash: Edgar's magic sucks. A shame, too, this is a nice AoE non elemental magic ability that works immediately.
5. Chain Saw: 25% chance of Instant Death is unreliable. 75% chance of being Drill means I should just use Drill.
6. Noiseblaster: Confusing all enemies is okay... ish? Nice to trick Katanasoul into killing himself. Useful if you suddenly need to stall for time and recover.
7. Bio Blaster: Just use Auto Crossbow, it's faster and you won't trip into Poison immune enemies. That being said, this will wreck humanoid enemies and bosses like Phunbaba. The damage ticks do add up.
8. Debilitator: Randomly selected weakness means this takes too long to be useful. Good for natural skill runs where you don't have easy access to fire/ice/lightning. Can't even use it against Magimaster in vanilla playthroughs.
Bio Blaster has faster damage ticks in the PR. Oh, I see now. I'm used to the SNES version.
With enough Str Auto Crossbow can do 9999 damage to EVERTHING NOT immune including the Kefka's Tower bosses.
faster ticks and do the max damage off the hop, no ramp up at all. it's busted
I am ok with where the chainsaw is, I am just unsure about the noise blaster. I felt like it was great for mobs, particularly on Mt Kolts. I could confuse all the enemies, then focus on killing one at a time. Sometimes the birds would cast break on another enemy and make the fight even easier.
Another + for Flash is it causes Blind/Darkness, so it also renders physical attackers useless.
Edgar is challenging to use, man. Like everyone says, his tools are outclassed by Magic later in the game. I wish there was a key item to buff his tools...like the technical manual you find in Cyan's cave. Edgar can also use Dragoon Boots and the Dragon Horn and get crazy repeating jump damage at the cost of speed, but if he's hitting multiple times on the jump, does it matter? He's crazy versatile but in the end, like everything else, he doesn't stand up to X-Magic Ultima. I'm currently playing T-Edition and the Bio Blaster is just crazy useful in that mod.
I used the Noiseblaster a lot early on to keep enemies from attacking me while I try to steal from them
Bio Blaster make it where you can have Edgar as his own party on the Defending the Esper Battle at Nashe
Fun video and I liked your reasoning on the efficacy of the tools. HOWEVER, considering how early you get something doesn't really paint a clear picture of which item is "best". I don't think that should be factored in because it can cause a tool to win by a technicality over a more effective tool, which only really serves to muddy the waters. I guess I might only consider that factor when comparing two tools that are nigh-on identical in terms of efficacy. Still nice vid man! I learned some interesting details about some of the tools!
Fantastic content, Bdewd! The passion and info. is all there! I love the creativity as well!
Much appreciated!
In order for me (ill be using snes/ps1 names) 1. Drill 2. Chainsaw 3. Auto Crossbow 4. Bio Blaster 5. Flash 6. Noise Blaster 7. Debilitator 8. Air Anchor
I do feel like the bio blaster was the most used tool when I played the game back in the SNES Era. All honesty, I forgot about a few of those weapons.
I have always thought that the Drill is Edgar's best tool in the game. It does nearly as much damage as the Chainsaw without going for the instant kill attacks all the time. Early game the Auto Crossbow is a really useful tool for doing a decent amount of damage to all the enemies on screen at one time. The Auto Crossbow does lose some usefulness later on in the game, though, as you can just use magic attacks to damage all the enemies on screen at one time.
So for a casual run i would mostly agree with this list especially for the the PR version. As I'm a randomizer player my list would be slightly different putting the FLASH at number 1 since it is magic aoe non elemental and this is the big part, defense ignoring. the FLASH will break through magimaster defense AND magic defense. The DRILL being number 2 as it only lacks being magic damage and aoe damage. It is also defense ignoring. BIOBLASTER in the randomizer has its uses, and thus is always an instant buy and lands instelf firmly in 3rd place. Katana Soul (snes) Samurai Soul (PR) is wildly weak to poison and muddle/confuse ailments making this boss a pushover with BIOBLASTER and any confuse causing spell/attack. Making this tough boss fight a walk in the park.
You can't USE anything but Esper spells/Items on the Magicmaster itself besides even with 100 Magic Flash still SUCKS since it still won't hit for 9999 damage by Str 70+ Auto Crossbow still may for the Kefka's tower bosses.
you can use any weapon you want plus the beserk spell but armor peirce weapons will actually kill him since he has the highest armor in the game so try lockei with the valiant knife or setzer with the fixed dice and beserk both them and the boss try it it works@@veghesther3204
The worst part about Noise Blaster is that... it'd actually be the best tool in the game if the game was punishing enough to warrant using your turns to mitigate damage instead of going all-in on damage all the time.
God FF6 is so broken and all the characters are completely OP. There's so many powerful attacks in this game and Edgar has alot of them.
And they're free and no messing around with button prompts like Sabin or mana
I usually love the chain saw or drill, but I can understand your reasoning for picking bio blaster, drill and flash; also, I would love to get the art of the ladies in the speed run counter
Terra: anti_(untea9)
Celes: bucchake_(asami)
Those should be the appropriate artist tags if you know where to look.
need more content like this. also do you play the FF6 Worlds Collide randomizer?
I've done a few. Not my jam but speedrunning vanilla I can't get enough of!
i used the debilitator a lot. i generally just do natural magic runs, so its kinda important.
i just use that, and the drill.
here's the secret about Final Fantasy 3/6 cast invisibility on your enemy then Doom guaranteed 100% death chance regardless if they're immune or not on the Super Nintendo version that works with all weapons or skills that cause death
in the SNES version the noise blaster will un-confuse confused enemies as will the spell if cast on a confused target.
Seems in your version that doesn't happen. *dry look*
I forget if the chainsaw instant kill can heal undead, I feel like I have a buried memory hating it doing that.
The chain is a tie with the drill for me so I am okay with your stats. Also random death is an effect of the chain saw so I would place it above the drill
Its because of that effect that I dropped it down actually. Hate when it procs on a boss and I lose out on the damage hahaha
i can't imagine figaro pronounced any other way than the way it is in italian, [FIG] + [UH] + [ROH] not trying to shame pronunciation in a game where we definitely can't know for sure
my argument is until i see a musical in that castle, im calling it how i do :P
I was about to flip when I saw you had bio blaster in the top slot until I knew the reason why
Auto crossbow always carries my runs with edgar. I dont need poison ticks, i need 1 shot aoe. Get some free lvls from the raft trick n auto crossbow your way through a majority of the game. 😊
The only time I ever use Noiseblaster is on Mt Kolts on the Zagrems. They'll use Stone on all enemies and win the fight for you.
I have never found the flash or bio blaster to be useful at all!! It's interesting how different folks can play this game and come away with a different list.
I'd put the drill as number 1. It's the only tool I find myself using later in the game.
I would swap the chainsaw and auto crossbow...but do very much like the bio blaster
Im sad to see the chainsaw did not get an extra point of two for style.... The Jason Voorhee mask is so much cooler then the drill helmet. Not saying it should be be higher just edging out the drill.
Flash also works on the few enemies who use Vanish like ninjas and Intangir. It always hits.
If you are fighting deadites, use an item instead of tools. Instant win.
As someone who likes to gamble I really enjoyed the chainsaw. Like I'm not gonna say it's the best weapon in the game or anything. But I was doing a low level run when I played 6 for the first time and it took out like 5 bosses for me. I do know that is a totally rng thing and I probably got more lucky with it than anything and if that's all I was using then of course I'm bound to get a few insta kills on bosses
Edgar, Sabin, Celes, MOG, is my ideal party.
Noiseblaster is my favorite for making enemies do silly stuff in battle they normally wouldn't. It's like you said great early game to lower the damage your team is taking. I use it alot just to see what silly stuff enemies can do.
Edgar is a free group target Bio from early game what a powerhouse 💪 💪 💪
The ones that hit for AoE and no split damage are OP, for free, and full power from the back row. The brothers are too OP
The crossbow is my fav because he hits multiple enemies and hes strong af
Waiting for Gaus Rage list of all 256 monsters lmfao
I'm NOT that crazy to learn all the rages though even in the PIXEL version only 253 of them are actually USABLE for IN battle use.
To be honest I barely used any other tools other than the bioblaster, so Im glad I was accidentally optimal, I just liked the animation the best lol
its a pretty cool animation fwiw
*Shrieks like a banshee when you said, "Pixel Remaster is the Definitive edition"* BLASPHEMY! (Don't worry, I won't garrote you.)
Also I'd argue that even in a casual playthrough unless you're the grindy type, that the Tools and character abilities are actually better than magic once you factor in the time it takes to learn magic. Cause if you don't stop to stew around and learn magic, then you don't have it, so it's not all that great.
Like in all these fun lists you've made, the logic is always sound with the accessibility ranking, and you should basically be ranking almost all magic accessibility as 1/10. Cause a lot of the magic takes ages to learn. On top of that, magic costs MP.
As demonstrative type dealio, if you try to learn most of Gau's Rages, you can get pretty much most of his rages by the time one party of characters will learn all of the standard magic in the game. Luck depending, of course.
Bio Blaster is a hilarious hard counter to the green infantry units in the Battle of Narshe.
2:43 im so sorry the cough made me cackle like a witch
NOO I MISSED IT IN POST NOO
And here's me never using Flash and using the Auto-crossbow at endgame, lol.
Clicked to hear where the Bio Blaster was
Hope you were happy :)
Noiseblaster is one of the best early game tools in the game.
Wait.. wait.. wait... I cant be the only who pronounced Figaro like from a play,right?
You pronounce it correctly
I would agree in not making the chainsaw #1. If the instant death still did damage it would be a different ballgame. If I had a quarter for every time I got a failed death-attack in my many and long playthroughs of the game on the SNES, I could solve the student debt crisis.
Forgot to say this, given your explanation on how DoT works in the remaster, I agree with the bio blaster as #1. I will have to pick that version up sometime.
the biggest flaw PR has is not having GBA extra content that makes me a bit sad
>Magic being the Best Stat
What is this? Shin Megami Tensei?
Accessibility is spelled wrong. Something that nags at me every time it comes up on screen.
i may have been tired doing the finishing touches on this and that is one thing that slipped through the net D:
Dude, I never use the bioblaster.
I guess this is just during a casual playthrough, not in a speedrun.
no the speedrun tools would be drill/flash/autocrossbow as the top 3 which makes it pretty boring. casual also hits a larger chunk of the ff6 community :)
@@Bdewd Oh, so you do agree. Gotcha.
The auto crossbow and drill are the best.
I will never do MagiTek Factory without Edgar for Flash. Everything as stupid perma protect and its the easiest cheap magic attack.
Autocross bow is very useful before you got espers. I also liked Chain Saw as long as i figured out its caused miss hits 33-50% of the time and drill caused nearly same amount damage with 100% hit rate. So i´ll prefer drill myself, because 100% hitrate. In magicite factory flash & bioblaster work much better than autocrossbow. So there is few expect where autocross bow is less good. Air Anchor suck. Is this tool missrate 90% or more? I never are caused any hit about it. Just always goes miss. Yeah later game Edgar tools come somewhat pointless, when you learn powerfull magics (like ultima/flare) or when you pick up Sabin Boom Rush and especially when you use quick spell with this so double boom rushses in one go, its nearly make Edgar tools very weak a late game.
Its Fee-gah-row not Fig-are-oh.
Nah uh it's fih-GAR-o, silly.
You wrote accessibility wrong...
i was totally tired last night putting it in, but let's pretend it's a pun! access to an ability, ergo now named accessability!
How isn’t Autocrossbow first??
Why are the comments in the bottom are the worse
nice