Part 97: Agent: 30 GOTO
Agent: 30 GOTO GUN
A hybrid of 2020's Hacker and Trickster's Gun skill tree, the Agent can choose between dealing high damage with their gun skills, or utterly debilitate enemies with their hacking skills.
Stats
The Agent, as you might expect from Trickster's successor, has middling numbers in everything except SPD, including the lowest MN count out of all eight classes.
Innate Ability
Normal attacks hit twice for 0.55x damage. EX Gain is multiplied by 0.75x per hit.
Tier 1 Skills
Hide
Places a buff on the user that increases crit rate and evasion, and decreases the chances of being targeted for attacks.
Changes from 2020-II: Crit chance buff reduced from 100% to 30%. Evasion buff reduced from 21% to 20%.
An unfortunate casualty of the crit rate rework, Hide's crit chance boost has been cut by 70% to keep it from being a permanent 1.5x damage increase to everything an Agent can do. You'll still be using it to mitigate your Agent's fragility, but it makes any crit-focused strategies much more inconsistent.
Bush Trap
Only usable when Hide is active. When any member of the party is attacked, user will counterattack with ranged ATK-based aerial damage with a chance to inflict Null Action.
Changes from 2020-II: Can now counter if user is attacked. Base infliction rate increased from 20% to 40%. Attacks are no longer guaranteed to crit.
Bush Trap itself, however, is a mixed bag. Going off when the Agent is hit means that bosses that spam AOEs can no longer skip around the counters, but the loss of auto-crits means the damage it deals takes a noticable hit. On the plus side, the 40% chance of landing Null Action means you'll have, at worst, a 16% chance to stop even the strongest bosses in their tracks.
Jump Shot
Targeted enemy takes ranged ATK-based aerial damage every turn. This move is canceled if the user dies or is petrified. EX only applies to the turn an attack lands, and not the initial turn. Attacks have priority.
Changes from 2020-II: Damage is no longer reduced every turn. Effective damage increased from 11.2x to 16x.
Here, have a nearly 5x boost to a mid-game 2020 skill right off the bat! As the Agent doesn't have nearly as much time to actually attack compared to the Trickster, squeezing this in between hacking attempts can add in a good bit of damage over the course of a fight.
Aiming Shot
Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based aerial damage. Cannot miss starting at level 5. Can inflict Blind starting at level 6.
Your basic attack skill. Blind has always been a bit of an eh ailment to apply, but not missing once you have it half leveled will give it a use against the evasive Queen Rabi.
Knee Break
Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based aerial damage and a chance to inflict Stun. Has priority.
Changes from 2020-II: MANA cost reduced from 6 to 5.
Just like with Samurai, Stun is a trash ailment. Knee Break doesn't even get a token attack boost like what Hidden Shadow got!
Hack
Attempts to inflict Hack on all enemies.
Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies instead of just one.
The real reason an Agent won't have much time to spare for shooting things.
Multitarget Hack is insane! Even if you don't bother setting up a TROY first, throwing out a Hack against a group of enemies has a sizable chance of at least one target getting nailed.
madstrife.exe
Forces all Hacked enemies to target random enemies, including themselves. Does nothing against Sleeping enemies. Effects carry over into any extra turns the target may obtain. Attack is flagged as ranged ATK-based damage. Self-attacks cannot crit, but attacks against other enemies can. Has priority.
Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies. Damage reduced from 7.5x to 6x. MANA cost reduced from 4 to 2.
A small cut in damage from 2020, but being able to lock out a boss' moves for a turn is still just as much of a godsend now as it was back then.
An enemy hit with Null Action or Sleep takes zero actions for the turn, so any turn based strategies the AI has will go on pause for the turn. madstrife.exe, however, lets them choose those moves properly and advance their AI, but still cancel them out. Properly timing a Hack can let you bypass a deadly move a boss has if you know exactly when they'll use it.
Sadly, Curse infliction got shuffled to another class, so an Agent can't inflict ludicrous damage with the old Curse -> luvshock combo on their own anymore. It isn't entirely dead, but you'll have to dedicate two party slots to pull it off.
scapegoat.exe
Deals ranged MAT-based damage on one Hacked target. Restores MN based on damage dealt. Has priority.
Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 1.5x to 3.2x. MANA cost reduced from 4 to 3.
I mentioned this earlier, but that damage buff effectively buffs scapegoat.exe twice over compared to noiztank.exe, as doubling the damage also means doubling the MN restoration. This makes it trivial for an Agent to keep a party topped up over the course of a dungeon run.
TROY: Fire
Places a debuff on one enemy that deals ranged MAT-based fire damage with a chance to inflict Burn every time the enemy is hit with a fire attack. Also applies Hack Weakness. (odds of Hack succeeding increased by 2.2x)
Changes from 2020-II: No longer deals fixed damage. Base infliction rate increased from 18% to 75%. Burn damage increased from 61 to 141.
TROY: Ice
Places a debuff on one enemy that deals ranged MAT-based ice damage with a chance to inflict Burn every time the enemy is hit with an ice attack. Also applies Hack Weakness. (odds of Hack succeeding increased by 2.2x)
Changes from 2020-II: No longer deals fixed damage. Base infliction rate increased from 18% to 75%. Freeze damage increased from 61 to 141.
TROYs in 2020-II had a hilarious oversight where they could insta-kill any Seed in the game, thanks to their fixed damage, so the change to a normal damage formula just fixes that. In practice, it actually heavily boosts the damage of every single TROY proc! Granted, you'll need a team that actually makes use of fire or ice to make use of this.
Now, Hack Weakness going from a 1.5x boost to a 2.2x boost looks like normal VFD powercreep, but a big change made to Agent is that Hack Weakness is no longer applied from anyone landing crits/weakness/ailments; the only things that apply it are the TROYs and an Agent's Buddy skill. The intent behind the bump was to make it actually worthwhile to use compared to just using Hack twice.
In practice, however, you can now just combine Hack Weakness with EX to get something like a 400% infliction rate on Hack, effectively making it guaranteed to land.
Withdraw
User attempts to escape with 5x better odds compared to running normally. Boost is applied to all allies that attempt to escape that turn. Has priority.
This basically gives escaping a fight a 100% success rate. And even if it doesn't work the first time, the other two party members can also run!
Trick Hand
Improves the effect of items for the entire party. The increase stacks with EX.
In terms of pure numbers, Trick Hand is unchanged from the 2020s.
However, this is your daily reminder that items have priority in VFD, so anything that makes them better is buffed by default. Trick Hand is good.
Quick Hack
The Agent has a chance to attempt to inflict Hack on a random enemy at the start of battle. Targets all enemies starting at level 4. The Agent restores 15% of their MN per target on use.
Changes from 2020-II: Targets all enemies at level 4. Now restores MN.
Oh, so clearly the multitarget Hack wasn't good enough, so now we get free MANA restoration to go with it. And that's not even considering the fact that you can follow this up with scapegoat.exe for even more MN. Agents have the lowest MANA pools in the game because they don't need more.
Tier 2 Skills
Air Assault
Hits all enemies with ranged ATK-based aerial damage. Has priority.
Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 2.1x to 5x. EX Gain increased from 0.5% to 9%. Now has priority.
The damage has been more than doubled, and it builds 18 times more EX. You know, for funsies.
lostpower.exe
Deals ranged MAT-based damage to all Hacked targets and applies a debuff that reduces ATK, MAT, DEF, and MDF. The debuff is separate from other debuffs and can be stacked.
Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies. Damage increased from 4x to 5.5x. ATK/MAT debuff increased from 0.8x to 0.6x. DEF/MDF debuff increased from 0.8x to 0.75x.
Hehe.
Hehehh.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
How many times have I said it!? Stat changes in VFD are extremely important, and this slaps some unlucky son of a bitch with some of the biggest debuffs in the game! The 60% attack modifier alone can push an enemy into dealing chip damage against tankier party members! And that's before you start using other debuffs to drive things down even further! One of the most cracked skills in an Agent's kit, maybe even the entire game.
Surprise Hunt
At the start of battle, there is a chance to force the fight into a pre-emptive attack. Negates ambushes starting at level 3. Cannot force a pre-emptive against bosses or dragons, but ambush negation still works.
Don't want to deal with ambush RNG or ornery dragons? Take this to level 3 so you're always a single Withdraw away from safety.
Cheetah Burst
At the end of the turn, the Agent has a chance to give all allies priority 3 for next turn. Actions above priority 3 are unchanged.
Changes from 2020-II: Gives priority, instead of maximum SPD.
Giving priority is a niche change compared to just maxing SPD, but the end result is still the same. Take this so occasionally you just don't have to worry about speed.
Assassin's React
Applies a buff that gives the Agent a 100% chance to gain an extra turn every time they land a critical hit.
In a sort of reverse Trick Hand, Assassin's React is unchanged from 2020, but is significantly worse in comparison. Hide being cut down to a 30% boost means landing crits is now inconsistant, and you won't have a lot of chances to actually attack if you're focused on hacking the enemy. Considering you need 3 turns for a hacking play, (TROY -> Hack -> any .exe) you're saying goodbye to half of this skill's duration for a single hack.
I honestly would have prefered Hacking React.
Tier 3 Skills
Rush Shot
Deals a number of ranged ATK-based aerial damage attacks to a single enemy. Critical hits from this skill deal 1.1x damage instead of 1.5x.
The crit bonus still being reduced here is weird, considering every other skill gets the standard 1.5x bonus. I guess Hiding makes it almost guaranteed to crit at least once for Assassin's React?
sleepmode.exe
Attempts to inflict Sleep on all enemies. Hacked targets are guaranteed to be afflicted, bypassing immunities.
Changes from 2020-II: Duration increased from 2 turns to 4 turns. Base infliction rate reduced from 80% to 75%. Can bypass immunities again.
You know what's better than shutting down anything in the game for 2 turns? Shutting them down for 4. Want to safely set up? Want to kill time to let your backrow build support charges? There is not a single thing an enemy can do to stop you.
And if you want to get really degenerate, Hack resistance caps out at 0.3x on a single DLC boss, and 0.35x everywhere else. This means you can slap a boss with this, set up a TROY on the now sleeping boss, and have, at worst, a 66%-77% chance without EX of Hacking them again, letting you follow up with another sleepmode.exe the second they wake up!
EX Skill
Indra's Flames
Deals ranged MAT-based damage with a chance to inflict Hack to all enemies.
Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 7x to 16x. Chance to not act increased from 30% to 80%. Hack duration increased from 2 turns to 3.
So on top of more than doubling the damage it deals, and giving the Agent two turns to hack with instead of just one, Indra's Flames also acts as Super Paralysis.
The boost to Hack's duration isn't that much of a buff, honestly, as losing Hacking React means that this is the only way the Agent can get two .exe skills off in a single Hack aside from Quick Hack.
Team Skills
Charge Time: 1 turn
Agents are unique is that they're the first class to have a blisteringly fast charge rate on their Team Skills. This means that they're ready for a Support in just one turn, and can break buffs with a Buddy skill in two!
Buddy
Deals two hits to the target. Each hit deals 1.5x ranged ATK-based damage and has a base 40% chance to inflict Burn for 5 damage and a base 40% chance to inflict Freeze for 13 damage. Inflicts Hack Weakness. (Chances of Hack succeeding increased by 1.8x.) All ailments last for 2 turns.
So, being able to dispel enemy buffs every other turn is already godlike, but everything else here makes the Agent's Buddy skill the best in the game, hands down.
First, each hit rolls their own chance to break buffs, so stronger bosses with harder to dispel buffs still have a sizable chance of losing them. Second, and most importantly, while the damage on the DoTs are pitiful, it doesn't change the fact that they still apply stat debuffs. That's two chances at cutting all stats by a sizable chunk, and by the time they wear off, the Agent is ready to do it again.
The smaller Hack Weakness, however, is bizarre, as the only possible way to make use of it is if you intentionally run two Agents in your party. An Agent in the front can't use a Buddy skill to inflict it, and an Agent in the back can't use Hack to exploit it.
Support
Increases party SPD by 1.2x for 1 turn.
Their Support skill, meanwhile, is far less impressive. Speed just isn't really a stat that gets a lot out of buffs. Most classes are either fast enough that they'll be going first anyways, or so slow that a 20% boost won't make a difference. Treat it as more of a way to always make sure the Agent is ready to fire off a Support with other, more potent party members.