Part 101: Banisher: Should have brought an Air Balloon, idiot

Banisher: Should have brought an Air Balloon, idiot





The final VFD original, the Banisher is a bit of an odd duck. They have an alternate resource like the Duelists; but unlike Duelists who start with a few cards and constantly get more, Banishers start with a full stack of Bombs but needs to spend turns restocking should they run out.

To that end, their skills are most divided into two types: Bomb skills that range from decent to incredibly good, and Bombless skills that range from decent to really, really bad.

Stats



Fittingly for a massive suit of armor, Banishers have the highest LF and second highest DEF of all classes, but have the second lowest MDF. They also have the highest ATK, but all of this is balanced out by having the lowest SPD of everyone.

Innate Skill

The Banisher begins all fights with 3 bombs. This can be increased with Bomb Bonus.

Tier 1 Skills

Bomb Bonus



Increases the number of bombs the Banisher starts battle with, as well as their cap.

Unlike Duelist's starting hand skill which you can compensate for with Draw skills, Bomb Bonus is straight up mandatory for Banisher. A lot of their skills cost more than 3 bombs, so not investing in this makes them utterly unusable.

Clap Trap



Randomly hits enemies with ranged ATK-based fire damage and a chance to inflict Burn.

Random targeting makes Clap Trap a bit iffy to use on crowds, but at max level this does 4.55x damage if there's only one target, which is fairly good for a starting skill! Each hit also has its own chance to inflict Burn, which is also really strong.

Hey, remember how Samurai and Agent's multi-hit attacks got slightly weaker every time they got a new hit? Yeah, add a new entry to the 'things VFD managed to powercreep' chart.

Burst Attack



Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based fire damage three times and a chance to inflict Burn.

Burst Attack, meanwhile, is straight up worse than Clap Trap against one enemy. Only use it if there's something in a crowd that you really want to kill first.

Dragon Buster



Hits all enemies with ranged ATK-based fire damage. Deals increased damage to dragons. Damage is modified by the size of the enemy: small takes 0.6x, medium takes 0.75x, large takes 1x, and extremely large takes 1.3x.

Dragon Buster is unique in that its the first skill in the entire series that deals bonus damage to dragons, but beyond that it falls fairly flat.

5 bombs is fairly pricey right off the bat, needing two ranks in Bomb Boost to even start using, and you'll need to max it out if you ever want to use it more than once. 2.5x damage as a trash clearer is decent, but with the Banisher's abyssmal speed you'd be better off using someone else for the job. While it deals good damage against dragons, the AOE aspect will only ever come into play if a dragon breaks into a fight. And even then, the damage against dragons is nearly matched by just using Clap Trap twice for significantly less bombs.

Javelin



Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based damage. Damage has a high variance.

And after the decent to good showing of Banisher's bomb skills we have... Javelin.

The damage is horribly unreliable and that's all it has going for it. At the very least it has a dirt cheap SP cost.

But hey, even Javelin can be good when your competition is...

Over Spear



Hits one enemy with melee ATK-based damage and a chance to inflict Instant Death.

This piece of absolute garbage! The only other source of Instant Death players get, and the damage is even worse than Javelin with a piddly chance to actually land it! And for the cost of getting Over Spear to level 2 you could instead fully max out Javelin!

Assault Spear



Hits one enemy with melee ATK-based damage.

Assault Spear hurts things. It hurts things slightly more than a single-target Clap Trap, sure, but the Burn damage will easily push things in Clap Trap's favor.

Deafening Roar



Debuffs the ATK and DEF of all enemies.

Actually a fairly useful debuff! The ATK debuff won't help if you're fighting something focused on MAT, but cutting enemy DEF will give the Banisher and any other physical attackers in the party a healthy boost. Having priority also means you don't have to worry about the Banisher going after everyone else gets to act.

Smokescreen



Inflicts Blind on all enemies.

It's Blind, it's bad. Next.

Bomb Scatter



Places a buff on the party that increases fire damage dealt and the chance of inflicting Burn.

Fairly middling for the Banisher themself, as most of their better skills are non-elemental, but giving fire-heavy classes like Duelist or Mage a free 30% attack boost is incredibly helpful.

Exterminate



At the start of battle, the Banisher has a chance to attack random enemies with ranged ATK-based fire damage three times.

Compared to Samurai and God Hand's opening AUTOs, the intent behind Exterminate is to be more useful against single enemies (like, say, dragons) compared to clearing trash.

In practice, Fighting Spirit is only 0.4x weaker and has no added effect like Pre-emptive God setting up G-Depth.

However, much like how Mage had two mid-battle AUTOs, Banishers instead get two battle start AUTOs.

War Cry



At the start of battle, the Banisher has a chance to buff their ATK and DEF.

And boy what an AUTO it is.

With a 1.4x boost to ATK, War Cry is the single highest ATK buff in the game, aside from charge moves like Solid Stance. If this goes off, the Banisher will be able to kill things with an harsh glare.

Reload



The Banisher replenishes their bomb count.

The first of four ways a Banisher can get more bombs, and the only reliable and readily accessible one. Once you run out, you get to spend at least three turns doing nothing but Reloading to get back up to your cap of nine.

At a glance, you can see that the Banisher is meant to be class that wants to quickly blitz down enemies with their bomb skills, with their usefulness tanking as soon as you have to choose between plinking with Javelin or spending several turns Reloading. I sure hope they don't have any skills which utterly trivialize this flaw!

Killing React



For a number of turns, the Banisher has a 100% chance to gain an extra turn when they kill an enemy.

Returning from the original game after being Nyala's gimmick for three games straight, Killing React is... just as bad as it was in 7D1!

Trash fights don't last nearly long enough to warrant spending a turn to set this up, dragons fight alone the majority of the time, and bosses in this game never have adds to kill for a quick proc.

The worst React in the game.

Tier 2 Skills

Tier 3 Skills

Carpet Bomb



Hits all enemies with ranged ATK-based fire damage and a chance to inflict Burn.

Now this is much better! Hits harder against trash and is significantly cheaper in terms of both MN and bombs!

Rush Spear



Randomly hits enemies with melee ATK-based damage five times.

Far and away the Banisher's best bombless option, you're looking at 7x damage against a single target.

Granted, that's still faint praise, because the next two skills are far, far better.

Comet Spear



The Banisher jumps for one turn, making all attacks and effects targeting them to miss. Next turn, the Banisher lands on a random enemy and deals ATK-based damage. Deals bonus damage to dragons.

Against normal enemies? Utterly useless, just stick with Rush Spear. Against dragons? Incredibly good. 30x damage is hitting harder than EX Skills, plus complete immunity from attacks with priority that lets them ignore their slow Speed.

Comet Spear's only downsides are that you can't use it back to back without reloading, and that it isn't as good as-

Earthquake



Hits all enemies with ATK-based damage. Damage scales with the number of bombs consumed. Normally cannot be used with 0 bombs, but can be done during Unison.

This ludicrous son of a bitch. For only slightly less damage than Comet Spear, you can instead nail everyone on the field for massive damage regardless of species.

And on the off chance something manages to survive that initial volley, a single Reload will immediately let you bust out a 17.5x damage Earthquake, making it more damage efficient that Comet Spear ever will be! Literally every other skill in the Banisher's kit is inferior to just chaining Earthquake into Reload back into Earthquake forever.

Even if most of Banisher's other skills are mediocre, Earthquake alone puts them right next to Rune Knight as one of the most powerful classes in the game. Give the Banisher some gear to make up for their miniscule Speed, and laugh as they can effortlessly wipe every random encounter for the rest of the game.

Bomb Switch



Gives the Banisher a buff that makes them take 0.8x fire damage and reload bombs when hit with a fire attack.

Now, at a glance, Bomb Switch seems really good. A hefty damage cut and free bombs, what's not to love!

Well, the issue with a skill like this is that it is utterly dependant on how often you do run into enemies that use fire skills. How many of them are there?

In total, there are 518 enemy skills in the game.

Of those, 26 of them deal fire damage.

Of those, only 12 of them belong to dragons.

Of those, we've already fought and killed 4 types of them, meaning there are exactly 8 types of dragons that this might be useful against.

The only major boss with fire damage is Nyala with his Golden Flames, and he's kiiiiiiiiiiinda dead right now.

So yeah, Bomb Switch is a skill that sounds great, but is completely sabotaged by the overall game design.

Auto Reload



Banisher has a chance to reload bombs at the end of the turn.

It has a greater than usual chance to go off, and gives free bombs. Take it and laugh as every proc gets turned into a one bomb Earthquake.

EX Skill

Ultimate Lance



Hits one enemy with melee ATK-based fire damage. Reloads all bombs on use.

Much like Rune Knight's EX Skill, you don't use Ultimate Lance for the damage.

You use it for the free reload to do another nine bomb Earthquake next turn.

Team Skills

Charge time: 2 turns.

Buddy

Hits one enemy with 1.5x ATK-based melee damage and a 100% chance to debuff target DEF by 0.8x for one turn.

Banisher is already specced for ATK, so the Buddy skill itself will do respectable damage. Enabling even bigger numbers from Samurais or God Hands is just gravy.

Support

Increase party DEF by 1.2x for one turn.

A free DEF boost, while useful, still runs into the issue where your Team charges would be better spent on Unison attacks.