star fucking stroke

lol

So anyway, we got further (durr) and I got that arte setup changed finally.  Learned Cavalry only to discover that it's next to useless as it only affects Natalia.  It would have been nice if the Arte FAQ on GameFAQs had mentioned that, but all it says is "Prevents staggering for a period of time." and that's what I was going off of.  Therefore I just figured it was a general use status effect much like Sharpness or Barrier.

Now all I need to do is figure out how exactly single target spells that become multi-target on FOF change work.  Like, for instance, Heal.  Do I get to target it, or does it just affect all allies, or what?  The only time we're ever in a situation where the entire party could need healing is in a boss battle, but it's still a good thing to know since it happens on some of her other FOF changes as well.

It's kind of funny reading some of the threads on the GameFAQs forum for Tales of the Abyss.  I guess most people just play the game by themselves.  It does have a lot of features to ease doing that, but overall the game is a lot more playable if you have all party members controlled by a player.  You can coordinate a lot better in battle with humans controlling all characters.  It's easy to develop strategies when you can change the basic behaviors of each character just by saying "hey, keep him distracted while I cast this spell" or whatever.

Also reading the walkthroughs for the part we just went through, it seems like nobody knows that in the Meggiora Highlands, you can turn off the flames on the blocks in the second entrance with Mieu Attack.  The puzzle is balls easy and Flame Burst is a way better spell to disable than Splash since Splash is more easily avoidable.

Four more levels and I get another arte, and then we have to get through certain events for me to get my final arte (which is a healing spell)...

I've said that I play Natalia more like a healer who also has a bow than an archer who can heal, but honestly her skills skew towards party utility much more than damage.  Having the ability to remove bad status effects mid-battle and provide good ones basically makes her a better healer than Tear.  At least, a better player-controlled healer.  Tear focuses much more on damage and making FOF rings, but has a healing spell and a resurrection spell.  Resurrection doesn't need to happen very often (I mean, if you don't suck), and targeted heals > AoE heals that unattentive allies can move out of.  We can live with using Life Bottles when Sync pulls his Mystic Arte out of nowhere and takes Luke and Guy from full health to zero.  God fucking dammit, I'd just healed Luke when that happened too.  At least Sync an heroes after that fight.  Spoiler warning: you just read a spoiler.