Altepa: owned

Finished off the rest of 32 last night and went ahead and got 33 and halfway to 34. Very nice Altepa party, NIN, PUP, DNC, THF, SMN, SCH. Although NIN starts to become a very questionable tank in the mid-30's (until they hit 37 and get Utsusemi: Ni), we had a pretty good one, and with a THF stapling hate back and forth between him and the DNC, everything went pretty smoothly with no deaths and only one close call.

The March update was very good to SCH, giving them Addendum: White and Addendum: Black, giving them access to a bevy of spells they didn't get before. Additionally, the change made to the Strategem recharge time makes all the difference in the world. For a 75 SCH, being able to store up to 4 Strategem charges, when each one took 4 minutes to build up, was pretty much worthless. With it now taking 4 minutes to build up to your full complement, that means a 75 SCH is getting a fresh charge every minute.

Even at 30, with a Strategem complement of 2, this makes a big difference, as getting a fresh charge every 2 minutes instead of 4 vastly increases my output. It also has all sorts of potential applications for endgame. I'd imagine that most SCH's will be focusing on nuking/support from within BLM parties at endgame, with Addendum: Black up pretty much all the time (to have access to the Tier IV nukes, making them comparable to a BLM in nuking ability, minus the pimp gear that BLM's get). But, every two minutes, swapping over to Light Arts, popping off Accession/Thunderstorm (or whatever element is primarily being used to nuke), giving the whole party the relevant weather effect, and popping back to Black Arts/Addendum: Black. As two minutes happens to be the duration and recast time for the "Storm" spells, a good SCH should be able to maintain nearly perpetual weather for his party at 70+. That's huge.

Additionally, the SCH artifact pieces are pretty pimp; they give +73mp total, I think, and with the two pieces that enhance Light Arts and Dark Arts, you get a total of +15 skill on *every* magic skill type. Then there's the piece that enhances Sublimation, which might prove to be a very useful self-Refresh. I can't wait to play around with it in a couple of levels.