This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Says you. I never get as much damage with Pirates' Wrath.
Tanto: Captain's Hat + Berserker Armor + Increm = Crazy Pirates' Wrath damage.
Except that Prophecy and Blue Rogues unlock FAR earlier than the above would have you believe-It unlocks about mid-way bthrough the game, and though Blue Rogues is likely nowhere near full strength(and is the weaker of the two options even with full crew, paying off in an auto-heal for your party), Prophecy is always massively powerful and is only topped near end-game. Makes going through the dungeons and bosses far easier.
Tanto: Yes — damage-wise. But it's insanely hard — not to mention more trouble than it's worth — to get up to full SP without anything horrible happening even in the mid-game. The difference in damage isn't enough to make up for that extra effort, which is what this trope is all about. Pirates' Wrath is just better (and, assuming you're allocating your Moonberries properly, comes even earlier than the Crew Commands).
Trust me on this. Fight the Ixa'ness Demons using Prophecy, then reset and fight them using Pirates' Wrath, and tell me which is easier.
Also, Conversation In The Main Page.
Fusion Dragon: The bits on Command And Conquer 3 are outdated, based on the game prior to later patches. The Mammoth wound up getting nerfed and the resulting loss to speed and turn rate caused most players to switch over to the more maneuverable Predators. The Avatar got a significant cost reduction and firepower boost, making it much more cost-effective.
Donomni: The Ninja 2-hour of Final Fantasy XI does get a lot of use for the examples listed. A Dark Knight's Blood Weapon, on the other hand...
There are far more useless final smashes than those. Those two are darned useful if you know how to use them. Now Captain Falcon actually gets a cutscene in the middle of battle, unheard of in smashbros, with his final smash...if you can hit with it. Similarly, all of the Zelda characters AND Marth get a useless final smash. You have one single instant to hit with each one. Ganon is slighly less useless, but still.
- How has NOONE mentioned the Street Fighter themed attacks in the Mega Man X series that you unlock by collecting all of the items? Not only were you completely decked out by the time you could get them, they were difficult to find unless you knew where to look, and they required Street Fighter type action commands that seemed really silly. Add into that that the Dragon Punch was about as effective as a wet towel, and the Fireball was about as powerful as 4 X Buster shots, it was ultimately very useless.
- The Fireball killed bosses in one hit. But I think you needed to be at full health to use it.
Tanto: No one mentioned them because they don't count. They're easy-to-use one-hit kills — go watch a speedrun sometime.
This page could use some serious cleanup, incidentally, but I don't have enough knowledge of many of the games in question to do it.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. It appears it has a use.
- The Prophecy Spirit Bomb attack from Skies Of Arcadia. It does deal quite a lot of damage to all enemies, but it requires that all four characters be able to act and that you max out your Spirit Meter, which can take as many as five or six turns just for one use. A buffed-out Vyse attacking with Pirates' Wrath (which can be done every other turn at late levels and deals as much or more damage, albeit to only one enemy) is almost always a better strategy.
- This troper found it useful during some of the optional bounty hunter fights that require you to fight multiple enemies (like the Vize the Impostor or Lord Zylvan Bane fights.)
Tanto: It does not. Trust me. Anything you can do with Prophecy, Pirates' Wrath can do better. Player error doesn't count as a use. Putting it back in, minus the natter.
Besides, the trope isn't "This attack/item/spell is useless". It's more "This attack/item/spell is suboptimal, and is much less useful than its legendary reputation would suggest."
Tanto: GAH THE NATTER
- The fireball in Megaman X. Just getting it requires the player to first beat the 8 mavericks and collect all subtanks and heart tanks in the game. Then, the player must collect at least five extra lives and go to the Armored Armadillo stage. They must then get to the door to the boss room at the end of the level, but instead of entering it, climb up the wall at the side and collect the health up at the top, then jump into the chasm. After repeating the process four times, the player must climb up the side one final time, and instead of the health up, there will be a capsule that gives the player the fireball. The fireball is the strongest move in the game, but requires that the player has full health before they can use it, and even then, it can only be used on the ground, reducing its usefulness further. Add that to the fact that the player must have played through the majority of the game (and therefore beaten the eight mavericks and obtained every other weapon in the game) before they can get it and the fact that every boss in the game has a crippling weakness to one of the previously obtained weapons, and this weapon fits the trope to the "t".
Tanto: The Hadoken is not an example. It lets you tear through Sigma's Fortress without breaking a sweat — go watch a speedrun and see what the key weapon in the latter parts is.
- On the subject of Star Wars, one of this troper's pet hates is the Double Ended Lightsaber. Less useful in every possible way than wielding two lightsabers (apart from being kinda cool), it does in fact give a wielder many more ways to be killed by their own weapon, given how much less freedom they have to block and parry without cutting their own legs off.
Debatable. Practically speaking, a double-bladed lightsaber would function much like a bo or quarterstaff. While the grip options would be limited, certainly, both weapons can be used very effectively in denfensive manner. It being a lightsaber would of course also negate that a wooden staff would be cut to pieces by a sword or other blade. Take, for example, Kilik in Soul Calibur: frustratingly difficult to beat because of the speed, reach, and defence provided by his staff, which, because it's a video game, doesn't break when struck by, say, Nightmare's Big Freaking Sword. (Odd example, certainly, but this is a Video Games trope.) So, a dual-bladed lightsaber isn't necessarily less effective, just different. Certainly not opposed to the opinion; possibly this belongs on the discussion page instead?
- This troper, after hearing how godly the Dark Planet set is, did some massive grinding to get them all...and realized that her "Fry them all with Lightning spam" set was much, much more effective.
Shrikesnest: I just spent an hour digging the natter out of the Video Games section, and I'm not even half done. I'll be back!
Shrikesnest: Alright. Returned and finished my cleanup with a little help from my forum pals. Thanks to everyone who helped me out! Special thanks to Taeraresh and Dookie2 who did some huge edits.
Shrikesnest: In the midst of my cleanup, I removed this:
- Starcraft 2 has the Protoss Colossus that is supposed to be incredible anti-infantry unit, and looks pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, it cannot target air units and is so big that it can be targeted by both anti-air and anti-ground =attacks. Also, every time the thing has been fielded except in its opening debut, it proved pretty useless, either getting destroyed by air units or being controlled by the Infestor without dealing any significant damage to the enemy.
Come on, guys. Can we at least wait until the game is out to declare this thing impractical? Sure, it gets whipped in demos of other units, but the unit demos are supposed to showcase the combat prowess of the unit in question. If nothing else, the fact that they keep choosing the Colossus as a target shows that it's supposed to be a huge threat.
Prfnoff: None of these moves really fit the trope:
- Banjo-Tooie. Banjo's uses of his backpack without Kazooie in it were generally useful, but the Taxi Pack can only be used to transport certain characters and items to the intended places. Kazooie can learn the Hatch move, but it can only be used on certain eggs and has no real use thereafter — performing it anywhere else just leaves Kazooie sitting awkwardly on the ground. Finally, we have the Breegull Bash, where Banjo can pull Kazooie out of his pack if she's in it and slam her against the ground. While it does harm enemies, it is a completely unnecessary move that can only be learned by bringing the Pink Secret Egg to Heggy the Hen.
- To be fair, the Breegull Bash is mostly meant for humor value.
Shrikesnest: To whomever added the new pic, I say hell yes.
I'm not quite sure that the Blake's 7 reference is an appropriate example of this trope. The thing that made that weapon practical was that once the instability was introduced, it was permanent. The key was designed so that it could be set to either provoke the instability over a rather large area, or to activate it in one specific target. The idea was that you could invisibly tag someone at any time, and then remove them the moment they became a threat or wandered somewhere they shouldn't have while making it look like a freak accident. It was intended to allow a government to weed out potential revolutionaries or undesirables the moment they arose or to force them to operate so far from their sphere of influence that they might as well have been dead. It was never intended to kill someone standing directly in front of you. Rather it was something you tagged them with the moment they walked through a metal detector or got a flu shot, well before you even thought you would need to kill them. While it was used incorrectly by the antagonist in the episode, that doesn't change the fact that it's still a frighteningly effective assasination tool.
Daisy: Is anyone else annoyed at the overwhelming horde of noobs adding techniques/items they can't grasp the function of to the video game folder? "Impractical" means "unwise to implement or maintain", and scrolling down I see too many instances in which practicality is determined by the difficulty of properly executing the maneuver, or worse, on misconceptions of impracticality fostered by consistent misuse of a unit, move, or other facet of gameplay. We should consult the experts to sort the legitimate claims from the scrubwash.
Silurian King: While adding the Medievil example, I noticed that everything from video games down is broken. I don't know why and couldn't fix it, so WTF?
- AVK: I think I figured it out. There seems to be a limit on how much stuff there can be in a folder before it breaks itself and all the folders beneath it. I'll try to split it up.
- All right, I un-broke it. Rearranging it should be a lot simpler now.
- In Fallout Tactics we get the Punch Gun, a glove with a micro-shotgun mounted on the back with a trigger activated by punching someone. Sounds effective, right? Wrong, it takes the entire clip of shells to kill one raider from the start of the game, on easy, with max skill. A regular shotgun only takes 1 or 2 shots.
AVK: According to a few sources, the Punch Gun is the second-most damaging Unarmed weapon in the game, beaten only by the Power Fist. Either the game is cripplingly buggy even after a quarter of a version number later or the editor just didn't realize that the weapon checks Unarmed instead of Small Guns.
Xenon Zaleo: I removed the reference to Doomsday in FFIX. As the game gives you multiple ways to both absorb and nullify shadow damage, Doomsday is far from impractical. It's incredibly efficient. This isn't 'Awesome but you have to take some effort'.
