[SD3] Your Notes and Thoughts on Teams

[Jia Li Labyrinth]

Recently I've played a few rounds of this game, and had some thoughts on some of the teams I played. So I thought I'll just share some of them. Anyone else had have something to say for any team they've played, please join in for the fun Note this can be more than "How should I do the class change for this team"

List of all 20 team combinations, just for reference:
Duran/Angela/Carlie
Duran/Angela/Kevin
Duran/Angela/Hawkeye
Duran/Angela/Lise
Duran/Carlie/Kevin
Duran/Carlie/Hawkeye
Duran/Carlie/Lise
Duran/Kevin/Hawkeye
Duran/Kevin/Lise
Duran/Hawkeye/Lise
Angela/Carlie/Kevin
Angela/Carlie/Hawkeye
Angela/Carlie/Lise
Angela/Kevin/Hawkeye
Angela/Kevin/Lise
Angela/Hawkeye/Lise
Carlie/Kevin/Hawkeye
Carlie/Kevin/Lise
Carlie/Hawkeye/Lise
Kevin/Hawkeye/Lise


Anyhow, to start things off.....

Kevin/Hawkeye/Lise
My best team with this combo so far is Starlancer Lise, Nightblade Hawk, and Warrior Monk Kevin.
Starlancer can boost up your whole team's stats within an efficient time, then use Nightblade to further weaken the enemies - especially if you ran into one of the nastier opponants (the Silencing Needles had been a favorite for this job ). Warrior Monk can heal all, not to mentions the nifty Leaf Saber. (<-Honestly, people! By the end of the game, I have my team casting spells like crazy, yet I never get to use any of my Magic Walnuts. Thank you, Kevin ) Kevin may not heal as well as Carlie does, but if you have Lise and Hawkeye do their stuff, it should be good enough as well

Another team I did, for sheer fun, is the Wolve Pack team. That is, Warrior Monk Kevin, Rogue Hawkeye, and Fenrir Knight Lise.
Kevin could have been any class for this to work. But I was a wuss who won't dare to go without a healer, so Warrior Monk he is. Rogue has equipments such as Silver Wolf Pelt. And Lise.... well, I think she goes without saying
Anyhow, for the game play, I usually start off with Lise doing stats down on all the enemies. Rogue's trap will come in handy when facing enemies at far distance or with high physical defense; some of his traps will come with elemental alignments as well. Basically, Hawk will be the one who can attatck with majic, if the situation calls for it (just don't expect him to replace Angela, though). I personally find little use of his Sleeping Flowers and Body Change; perhaps someone else would like to disagree on this?


Duran/Angela/Carlie
The typical RPG team. Duran hacks the enemies and keeps them away from the girls, Angela blasting spells, Carlie heals whoever is/are dying. Pretty straight forward there It's a well-balanced team that covers both melee and magic assults, with healing taken care of as well.
The one time I played this team, I had Duelist Duran, Archmage Angela, and Bishop Carlie. Kinda regret it, as I have a good amount of redundant Saber Spells between Duran and Carlie. If I were to do it all over again, I would have made Carlie gone Dark; either the Black Curse (Necromance) or Demon Breath (Evil Shaman) can mess up the enemies pretty good.


That's it for now. I'll write more in the future. And I'm really curious to see other ideas on any of the 20 teams.

[Dr. Sheexy]

Heh, when I saw you on the online list I figured you were coming to talk about teams XD


The only real team I've worked through was a team of Kevin, Angela and Duran.

Kevin was a Warrior Monk so I'd have a healer.
Angela was an Arch Mage for unknown reasons.
Duran was a Sword Master because he isn't too good as a healer in his light choices and also I wanted his Sabres.

If I would have been thinking I would have used Riesz instead of Angela. I didn't really use magic much, and Riesz as a Star Lancer would have been really nice. All those pumps would have been awesome, and Riesz is a pretty good Melee character herself.

This team would be pretty good at Melee, wooooo!
I tend to like Melee in SD3 more than magic, because enemies don't get as mad when you're beating them down with weapons.


And I'll cut and paste my idea from Dekky's help topic for the all guy team:
Duran should be a Sword Master so you can get all those crazy Sabres to cast around. Since everyone has pretty awesome attacks that'll be your main strength, just Melee people to death.

Take Kevin to be a Warrior Monk, that way you can use a multi-cast Heal Light on the team, he's gonna be your only healer, he should more than cover you though. He'll mostly just be a fast attacker for Duran to throw stuff onto though.

And just to mix things up, make Hawkeye into a Wanderer.
I've never messed around with Hawks light classes, but I think with this team you could have some fun with this class.

Hawk's Counter Magic will protect your team from magic spells, since they're all a bit weaker to that than the girls.
He can toss Energy Balls to everyone to increase their critical like crazy (If you have the rom where they fixed the critical stats anyways, in the normal game they're kinda screwed up) and you can also throw out some Aura Waves to fill your tech bar up.
You'll flippin' romp the enemies!

Not to mention you have all those annoying status effects with him. Drop their HP by half, change them into shell hunters, put them to sleep. It could be fun!

[Magus_Melchior]

Hmm, I tend to use spells only in boss battles, because the animation eats a lot of time. In places where the enemy's strength/spells are particularly annoying (Earth area near God-Beast, Glass Desert), I do use either stat-ups (scales-- ack, coins are low-level attack magic, my bad-- Lise's stat-up spells) or stat-downs (Hawkeye's Nightblade/Ninja spells, Lise's stat-down spells) and hack away. In boss battles, Angela, who has the strongest spells (and 200+ damage is always better than 30) often gets the spam-casting thing from me, while I fight with another character (this way, my input isn't locked, and the 3rd player, who only starts fighting when you do, isn't locked either).

[Dr. Sheexy]

Yeah, you've got a point there Magus, I do remember myself abusing Angela's magic like crazy when I got to bosses.
The bosses are gonna use huge spells on you anyways, so there is no fear for retaliation like there is from normal enemies XD

Doi, I hate when I cast a spell with my first character before I get done doing stuff with the others, that input lockdown is so annoying! It also sucks when enemies are spamming spells or abilities that lock your menu also, has gotten me into a few bad positions.

[Deques]

If no one have any objections, we could put the team description in the sd3 section. expanding its information.

that could be a part of improving the sd3 section project

[Dr. Sheexy]

I was thinking the same thing.

It is good info that people would like to read I am sure.

Anyone wanna help out?

[Magus_Melchior]

The select button is your friend... Ze select button vill not bite you und kick you in ze head.

So is L and R in the ring menu (select left/right character's ring menu... I think).

... Maybe a general gameplay section? << better at ideas than doing stuff

Edit abuse

Duran/Angela/Carlie
Advantages: As Duran, you get to hack and swing all you like while your partners throw spells all day. With excellent power from Angela and healing support from Carlie, micromanagers out there will have a field day.
Disadvantages: Although their spell power and magic defense are very strong, be prepared for much-less-than-ideal physical support from the girls... as in "1 damage" hits when your foes are upgraded. Even with equipment upgrades, they will rarely hit above 100 (non-ST) without stat mods. This means many battles will go slowly, as you're completely dependent on Duran and Angela for your enemies' destruction.
Suggestions: Since you'll be locked out while throwing spells (and the #3 character as well if you haven't swung your weapon yet), never put Angela or Carlie in the leader position. You may want to play with the reduced "action grid" in the player menu so that the girls won't be cornered by grunts. Although I went all Dark/Dark for this team (and paid for it), I think a good combo would be Sword Master (nearly all saber spells), Grand Divina (best offensive spells in the game, excellent Light spells), and Bishop (Saint Saber, no need for saber multitargets, Magic Shield). You'll lose a lot on defense, but in some cases, the best defense is a great offense. Besides, you can make up for deficiencies with scales purchased at the Black Market. Since you have two pure mages in your team, you'll probably want a lot of Magic Walnuts.
Other comments: I've played this team before, and I haven't finished with this team yet-- it's really painful when you go with a button-mash style like I often do in SD3. It'll take finesse, it'll take time (especially with all those spell animations), but there is potential for real power here.

[Lampflower]

My original team and the only one I actually spent time on consisted of Angela, Hawkeye and Kevin (in that order). Angela ended up becoming a magus, Hawkeye a nightblade and Kevin a warrior monk.

Part of the reason I picked those three was their stories/character- I thought they were more interesting than the others. And luckily for me, they worked wonderfully in battles too.
I've always been gravitated towards magician type characters as my primary characters (as long as there are others to back them up, of course.) Even though I didn't use Angela's magic that often with regular monsters, I found it very useful against bosses.
At one point, I kind of regretted not having a healer because I had no idea Kevin could heal. But when he learnt that spell, I thought it's a perfect group.

I'm not sure about all the different classes, I haven't tried all of them. But those three have been the greatest combination I've tried so far.

I also like Lise's weapon and class options (not that I didn't like Duran and Carlie, mind ye- they just weren't my preference). If I really HAD to replace someone with her, it would have probably been Hawkeye. You would need a balanced character to poke away at the monsters while the other two are casting.

[Jia Li Labyrinth]

I was thinking the same thing.

It is good info that people would like to read I am sure.

Anyone wanna help out?

How are you going to do this, exactly?

The select button is your friend... Ze select button vill not bite you und kick you in ze head.

So is L and R in the ring menu (select left/right character's ring menu... I think).

Just to add on this: Pressing the L and R button during game play will temporarily give you control over your teammates. 'Tis a nice trick to use when you want to move a spellcaster to his/her post before chanting spells.


Let me add in more team comments while I'm at it:

Angela/Carlie/Lise
I think I've said somewhere else on this site that this team has a good usability over majic The one team I did with these three gals is Bishop Carlie, Starlancer Lise, and Magus Angela.
Angela casts spells as she always do, Lise is the major fighter plus stat booster of the group, Carlie is the healer and second fighter (<- oh boy.....)

With Angela and Carlie, the team is destined to suffer a lack of physical power. To counter this with Lise as Starlancer, a Power Up on all can be ordered swiftly; the damage these girls do after that is actually quite impressive. Another way would be to have Lise as a Vanadis instead. I never tried that, but that is her strongest fighter classes out of the four.

This team will have a lot of spellcasting, with all three girls having their share. When two of them needed to chant spells at the same time, it's best that you control the remaining girl, just so she can fend the baddies away. I normally do that with Lise, but there are times when she needed to cast stats-up first, for which case I'd have to distract the enemies with Carlie and have Angela do a multicast spell, just to blow the enemies away


Angela/Carlie/Hawkeye
So you think the All-Gals team is weak? Well, get a load of this~~! This is a team where you truly had to rely on majic to do the major damage.
I once tried this team with Grand Divina Angela, Necromancer Carlie, and Wanderer Hawkeye.
I chose Angela's class purely because I never played her as a Grand Divina before. For Carlie, her Black Curse will come in handy when fighting bosses or heavy-hitting enemies.
Again, Angela and Carlie on the team will leave Hawk being the major fighter (he ain't a heavy one, for that matter). If you really want to max out on Hawk's melee ability, make him a Nightblade. Becasue with Hawk as Wanderer, this team truly becomes a Majic-Nut team.
...... Well, one neat thing about Wanderer is that he, technically speaking, has infinite MP. And if Angela ran out of MP, Hawk can throw Aura Wave on her, so that she can at least pull off some techs (which isn't that good, but hey, when you ran out of MP, what else do you have to lose?)

All in all, this team will depend on Angela's majic to do the heavy damages. Needless to say, in order to keep the team's offense ability to its best, you will need lots of ammos = MP = Majic Walnuts

[Kassidy]

Making 20 pages with the notes on possible strategies for that character combo would be easy enough. Then as part of the classes page there could be three drop-down menus that allow you to select the characters in your team and take you to that page. How this would be done code-wise I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Saves making 120 entries across the 6 character pages (which would be, I believe, the number of possible total combinations of character taking into account character order).

[Danny]

My classic team was always Duran as a paliden, Angela as a Grand Divina and Hawkeye as a Nightblade in that order. I'm pretty sure everyone knew that since I always talk about it. Anyways, here's why:

Duran can heal and has light saber which is good for the God Beast of Darkness and the enemies in the glass desert (the dark ones). Angela is great for combat spells and her double spell looks sweet, does a lot of damage and takes very little mp to use. As for Hawkeye, his good for fighting like Duran and his spell skills also do a nice bit of damage and lower an enemy attribute (except for flame breath and black rain which don't).

This is the beat team that I've ever had and I know since I played with almost all the character combos. This group party was the most balanced in terms of skills and power.

If your the character that's casting a spell, you can't move until he or she finishes it. Which is kind of bad since you can't cancel or change your character. The Black Rabite casts spells like crazy and you can't bring up the menu to heal. And it's funny that he can do it so fast and your party takes more time. Hawkeye as a nightblade seems to cast spells a tad faster then anyone else. Is this beacuse of his speed?

I would like to help out with the SD3 area since it's my favorite game in the seiken series and one of the games of my expertise along with SoM and SwoM. But I would also like to know more of how your going to do this.

[Magus_Melchior]

@Jia Li: Good point about the L/R temporary mind-control, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, I hate control schemes where one must hold down a button, even if it doesn't involve my thumbs. I'd just cycle through them with Select, even if it means that the other players move out of position. I'm pretty sure the spellcasting lock also disables L/R (haven't played in a while, so someone can correct me if I'm off). However, since the AI doesn't have the same shuffle in combat problem that the player does, a temporary player change might speed up the battle.
A Drake's scale (or Lise's STR-UP) and optionally a saber spell can do wonders with Hawkeye's double hit. Add his fast recovery time to this and you'll see why I think a Hawk/Carlie/Angela team is more efficient than Duran/Carlie/Angela. Then again, I'm often dependent on Black Market items.

@Kassidy: It'd be a snap (design-wise) with a RDBMS; but that shouldn't be necessary, as long as there's a sensible way of naming the files.

Okay, now for my first team:

Kevin/Angela/Lise
Advantages: Kevin's strength, double-hit capability, and inhuman constitution (well, he is half-Beastman), combined with Angela's powerful spells and magic resistance, and Lise's long range and versatile physical combat. At night, your foes tremble because Kevin's attack is augmented by his lycanthropy.
Disadvantages: The team may be lacking in physical defense, which can really hurt when you run into things like Death Machines (or whatever those Golems are called, that throw Rust Hurricane on you). Making Lise a Star Lancer would solve this problem (quick Def-Up on all allies)-- too bad I made her a Vanadies the first time around. Because this team is balanced by having 3 very different fighting styles (fast, magic, strong), you might find yourself in hot water if one of your characters is unavailable (I know, I'm grasping).
Comments: I kinda like this team, and I'll probably play it again, even if I don't get two characters in the same storyline.

[Jia Li Labyrinth]

@A Drake's scale (or Lise's STR-UP) and optionally a saber spell can do wonders with Hawkeye's double hit. Add his fast recovery time to this and you'll see why I think a Hawk/Carlie/Angela team is more efficient than Duran/Carlie/Angela. Then again, I'm often dependent on Black Market items.

Point taken. I normally don't use the scales until the boss battles, but I suppose a Nightblade Hawk plus a Bishop/Sage Carlie will do the trick.


More teams from me~~~;)


Duran/Angela/Lise
Played this team with Vanadis Lise, Lord Duran, and Rune Master Angela. This team has good offense power from the very start. Lise and Duran are both powerful when it comes to physical attatcks. (Okay, so it might have been even better if Duran were a Paladin. But the Lord can heal all ???) I also made Angela into a Rune Master because I wanted her status-altering spells. (Can't you tell that I just love messing up the opponants? )

[DeadWolf]

I usually use Duran/Carlie/Kevin or Duran/Kevin/Hawkeye with Kevin as my main. Most of the time I keep Kevin as God hand and sort of play around with the others. I haven't found a perfect team though(haven't played that much to find one).

[teatea]

???/Angela/Carlie

Out of habit, I almost always have anyone at the start because of difficulty reasons. For me, it truly does not matter because I tend to use Carlie the most anyways for her special spells and have Angela take the path of Dark->Light for her special spell, death spell and other various status inflicting spells.

I always try to get Carlie to become a Necromancer I think it was. She gets the black curse spell which lowers all the enemies status. Very useful spell. Or simply be a Dark Shaman and use the turn undead spells against the undead.

My character preferences are used simply for the purposes of spells. So choosing someone like duran wouldn't suit me all that much because I could make Carlie stronger than Duran offensively by use of spells to lower all status and mass spells. Duran would be best at his sabre spells that can be cast at everyone at once.

If i chose Hawkeye, then there is a chance I might try for the spells like the pumkin grenade and the like for MP regen. Also the fact that traps can be used by him makes it funny. His jutsu's are ok but they dont deal so much damage. Since Carlie already has the status inflicting spell if she becomes a necromancer, jutsu's are pretty much worthless.

If I had chosen Kevin, I wouldn't really know what I'd use him for. Hi fast attacking speed is useful at times, especially when it's night. But mostly, he's only good as a fighter.

If I chose Lise, there is a high chance i'd aim for the Dark -> Dark as her summon of the dragon is really useful at it poisons the opponent. However, it is near impossible to get the item that would lead her to the second dark level. i.e. very hard.

But I'd definately have chosen a random, Angela THEN Carlie because if you had chosen Carlie last, you end up with 3 characters at the start before the first boss. Not very hard to defeat the first boss but at least it makes the start easy.