I've been playing for a few weeks now and I'm starting to wonder if maybe I've been doing a few things wrong. Don't get me wrong, everything's going well enough that with determination I could probably beat the game but it's clear I'm not getting everything out of this that everyone else is, and perhaps I'm simply misunderstanding a thing or twelve?
For starters, I've never been in a fight that defeated a Raid Boss. Ever. I realize Japan is asleep when I tend to play, and that was what I assumed was the problem, but even a recent bout of insomnia never brought me into contact with teammates that were fighting the boss. It's not like they're not playing - there are several people ahead of me on the Lux charts - but generally only one other player from Vulpes 264 (it's consistent, right?) will ever be attacking the Behemoth alongside me. It would be one thing if I had teammates that just didn't care, I mean you can't win them all, but our opponents seem almost as disinterested, no matter the hour or the faction (after Vulpes' recent dip from 1st to 5th). I can't help but feel I missed a step somewhere, for a while I wondered if I actually wasn't on a team and was accidentally fighting the Raid Boss solo in the midst of the Japanese night... I'm not part of a party, is that possibly what's hurting me? I just assumed that did nothing but boost your AP.
Second, my damage output just seems low.
This video shows a Level 28 fighting the Darkside raid boss and doing ~3000 more damage than I do with my cards at 4x and a Keyblade Bonus, and I'm Level 31. Now, maybe that's not such a huge advantage, there's a lot of luck in card distribution, but her defence is much higher and she seems to be lopping off that Darkside's HP, while my Behemoth's goes off in slivers. Does the Behemoth just have more HP than the Darkside? Even at Level 1 it's never going down. And her HP also seems a fair chunk higher. My deck is made up of a few ~Level 30 Rs and R+s, and the Totals on the deck edit screen are 13 277 HP, 29 307 of presumably attack (the second number) and 30 421 defence (the third). Does that strike you as low? Average? I hear the cards lurch ahead in power once they reach the upper tiers, especially with a few level extensions, but I'm not there yet, and I'm out of Moogle Points for the moment.
If the Raid Boss never dies, I'll never get the prizes for killing him, and won't get any stronger, which means the raid boss may never die. Yeesh. MMOs. And the game wanted you to kill 50 in a week last week? I imagine that was supposed to be hard but shit, I haven't killed one in two weeks, and the plot bosses keep near-steamrolling me. These super-challenging watermelon 'Orchestras are going to be humiliating.