Here we are, with our 7th batch of Ability Enhancements and my 2nd SYE post! With Enhancements for Trance Terra & Emperor, as well as very exciting Enhancements for last year's Halloween units, this is going to be a really cool batch! Without further ado, let's dive right in, starting with our Halloween units.

In case the order seems weird, I'm doing these alphabetically.

Black Cat Lid

Rarity: 3* - 5* 6*

Super cheap, decent Enhancements to the functionality of Hex Strike. Most bosses are immune to all ailments, but occasionally we get one that is susceptible to Disease, and the 2 will definitely help get that nice 10% All-Stat reduction to stick. Also, did I mention how stupid cheap this is? Should only be a problem if you enhanced Soleil (or are still trying to, like me^cries )

Holy Toledo, do thine eyes deceive me? Did Ultimate Blow, the strongest (I think) physical attack at the time BC Lid was released, just become an honest-to-God meta viable budget finisher? Why I do believe it did. With a normalized 6x modifier, Ultimate Blow 2 is now a stronger attack than Olive's True Shot (until Olive gets Enhancements^{fingers crossed..} ). BC Lid was a personal favorite of mine at the time of her release, and she just got some much deserved love in a big way. And it's surprisingly cheap, at least for a large power boost like that anyway, only requiring one T5 cryst and three T4 crysts.

Jesus. Not only did BC Lid get an extra bit of survivability with her 6* Awakening, but she's apparently been decking herself out with armor plates from Mechanoid enemies she's scrapped, 'cause that is some serious beefiness going on there. The five T4 Support crysts is unfortunate, but well worth it in my opinion. I mean, it's another 30% DEF and freaking 50% HP for crying out loud. Not counting crisis buffs and on-skill mitigation, I think this makes her tankier than Demon Rain...you know, the actual tank on the banner. :|

I guess doing 100% increased damage to Undead & Machines and 50% to Demons just wasn't enough. With 125% (counting her separate Undead & Machine killer passives) extra damage to Undead & Machines and 75% to Demons, along with a phenomenal 100% increase to ATK, Lid can do some serious damage now. This is hindered somewhat by the fairly limited (and crappy) selection of hammers we have available so far on GL, but the high octane killers and ATK increase should offset that a fair amount. Hopefully Soleil didn't take all of your Tech crysts!

Also, if you have Ruggles, you can give his hammer to BC Lid and have her cap Aileen chains (assuming you have her as well). Or, if you have the Mighty Hammer, you can give her that and cap some sweet Lightning chains like the ones from Bran Rikku.

Surprisingly good Enhancements all around for BC Lid make this guy a happy camper. Considering the disappointing state all of the Halloween units were released in, I don't think anyone actually expected good Enhancements for the units, but Lid's are quite fantastic in my opinion, and allow her to rejoin the big kids in conjunction with her 6* Awakening. Hex Strike is the only one that I would call mediocre, but even it has its uses. Priorities change depending on whether you intend to do any damage with Lid, or whether she's going to primarily be a support.

Damage:

1. Nature Protector 2
2. Ultimate Blow 2
3. Sturdy Cat 2
4. Hex Strike 2 (Optional)

Support:

1. Sturdy Cat 2
2. Hex Strike 2
3. Nature Protector 2 & Ultimate Blow 2 (Optional)

The long and short of it? If you have her and want to use her/are using her, hells to the mothafuckin' yes. Also, some folks have provided me with numbers by this point, and BC Lid is definitely an extremely viable budget finisher.

Demon Rain

Rarity: 5* - 6*

Wha....what the heck Gumi? Not even gonna buy the enemies dinner first, just gonna have D. Rain take them straight to pound town^{I guess we know what the D. really stands for now...}? And why is this so cheap? Oh well, at least D. Rain has too crappy of stats and no innate provoke to really make use of this.

Also, be aware that because of his 2.5x increase counter chance passive, Demon Rain will guaranteed counter every single physical attack that hits him.

This is...wrong. An unspeakable evil has been unleashed upon the land. Now D. Rain does have the stats to throw some weight behind those 3x damage counters. At least this one is appropriately expensive, costing three T5 and six T4 crysts: skip right over the 1 and grab that 2. Hope you Demon Rain owners still have some Tech crysts left over from Soleil's greedy butt. He has no good attacks to take advantage of his newfound damage though, and has no innate provoke and only a crappy ST cover for procing his newfound uber counters.

Aaaaand there it is. Demon Rain now has the 100% provoke that he has always needed, and can make full use of his shiny new counters. This enhancement makes him just as good of a Provoke tank as Willhelm, with 100% chance and 50% mitigation. Willhelm has better stat backing though, so he's still going to tank the hits better than Demon Rain: he also has basically nothing to do on his two turns in between recasts of provoke, unlike Willy.

This one is pricey, at one T5, three T4 and 1 Mill Gil, but it's (mostly) uncommonly used Guard crysts, so hopefully you'll have enough lying around.

*inhale*....*exhale*...Okay. Now Rain does have the stats to soak up large amounts of damage, having been given a permanent 30% HP and a permanent 120% ATK/DEF crisis buff. It's a little pricey, costing one T5 and three T4 Support crysts along with 1 Mill Gil, but it's really all-or-nothing on this one: go big or go home. He still doesn't have anything to do on his off-turns though.

*throws papers into the air and storms out of the room*^{That's it, I quit!}

*sits back down* Ahem. Stupidly good enhancements, giving Demon Rain literally every single thing he needed in order to be the absolute best damage-dealing counter-voke tank in GL to date. A bit on the expensive side^{for good reason...}, costing a total of 3.24 Millin Gil and a few T5 and T4 crysts across the Guard, Tech and Support types: but by the Gods are they worth it. With the powerful enhancements to his Doublehand, his 100% 3x damage counters, the permanent Soleil level ATK/DEF crisis buff and his shiny new 5x damage finisher, Demon Rain now can now churn out the hurt no matter what he's doing, so long as the enemy is throwing physical hits at him. If you have Demon Rain and can afford to replace your existing tank with him, abuse enhance the ever-loving hell out of him.

Also, you can combine him with the new Illusionist Nichol for a 100% voke & counter tank with a 100% chance to AoE cover the party from physical damage: if you want each turn in AoE physical heavy fights to take 10 minutes while Rain counters, that is.

Dracu Lasswell Batwell

Rarity: 5* - 6*

Look at that, a solid boost to Dracu Lassie's Batwell's ATK stat when wielding a katana, bringing his total passive ATK boost to 90%. Fairly priced at one T5 and three T4 Tech crysts along with 500k Gil, this is a solid enhancement if you want Bat Lassie Batwell to do any damage.

A super cheap, decent enough boost to Bat Lassie's Batwell's survivability. If you're gonna touch this one, no reason not to 2 it.

Ah, an upgrade to one of Bat Lassie's Batwell's damage skills....and it sucks ass. Don't let the relatively cheap cost fool you, this enhancement isn't even remotely worth the few materials it requires. This is like a weird Lance-on-a-stick...except Lance is already technically on a stick, and this extra stick is only marginally bigger than the original stick. Please don't bother enhancing this one: 2.5x is a terrible modifier for a hybrid skill on a unit with no MAG support, and Lance-like skills are a horrible form of sustain in extended fights.

Okay, first things first: why does this use Black crysts? Second: this is disappointingly bad. I mean yes, it's better than Darkside, but come on. The Sleep is literally pointless on like, >90% of content, Disease is only marginally useful, and Bladeblitz from Odin is arguably a better way to clear trash: cause let's be honest, that's all this is going to get used for. Seriously, don't bother with this one. Let's just hope his last enhancement is worth a damn.

*sigh* Seriously Gumi? As a damage dealer, this is awful. A 3x modifier is a joke for a finisher these days: I mean hell, Rain counters for 3x damage now, and he's going to have way more ATK than Bat Lassie Batwell. And while the 50% break on ATK/DEF and huge 75% Ice imperil are nice, Lass currently has no good way of taking advantage of said imperil. This is just a poorly executed mess, and isn't even remotely worth three T5 Power crysts. Don't enhance.

Bat Lassie Batwell got shafted. Hard. I haven't seen enhancements this bad or pointless since Cloud of Darkness and Exdeath. This is just sad considering how neat of a unit Bat Lassie Batwell could have been, but clearly Rain is Gumi's favorite. Someone was either seriously slacking when they came up with these or has some sort of grudge against Lasswell. I hate to say it, but it's an all around "no" for Bat Lassie's Batwell's enhancements.

Ziggy Stardust Emperor

Rarity: 5* - 6*

Major increase to both the sustainability and survivability of Emperor David Bowie. The extra HP is fantastic, the Auto-Regen, while small, is appreciated and the nuke prevention that can proc 3 times per life as long as he has >40% HP is just icing on the damn cake. If you have Bowie and want to use him, I highly suggest at least enhancing this to 1 for the extra HP.

Enhance this. If you are using or want to use Bowie, this is why. JP's version of these enhancements were good enough: the extra 25% Fire resistance debuff we got over them is just icing on the cake. Once the stacks start building up, Bowie becomes a monster of a finisher/solo damage dealer, throwing around an absolutely unholy max-stack 27.5x modifier on a 50% imperil for an effective 41.25x modifier like it's a god-damned game of Hot Potato. If you've seen Dr. Tran, these are the sort of hot dickings he wishes he could hand out. I'm not even going to talk about the cost, because cost is irrelevant when you're talking about numbers like these.

Ehhhh....I don't like this. Yes, it is an absolutely unrivaled MAG buff for Bowie with a nice SPR break for the enemies, but a 50% SPR debuff for your entire team minus Bowie is a very dangerous bullet to be playing Russian Roulette with: especially in the fights where the 200% MAG buff would be relevant. Unless you have a dedicated Stat Break resistance buffer or Stat Break cleanser (dispelling will remove the MAG buff as well, rending the whole thing moot) in your party, this is pointless. This is an incredibly niche trick pony, and as such I'm calling it as a pass.

Edit: I forgot that certain non time-limited units, like Earth Veritas, already have Stat Break prevention, and so I dismissed Control far too readily. It does require a lot more specificity in your party composition, but if you can accommodate it Control provides an unparalleled in-combat MAG boost to Emperor, with a 50% SPR debuff as a cherry on top. I still rate this as a low priority, however, until Stat Break prevention becomes more commonplace than it is now.

An awesome GL exclusive enhancement set for Insolent Fools! gives us another 50% MAG when wielding a rod, as well as some nice QoL immunities to Silence and Confuse. The immunities, while nice, are only slightly useful though, as Silence and Confuse only get thrown around in very certain fights: don't worry about this too much unless you can grab that sweet sweet 2. The fact that it uses the almost unused Green cryst type is just an added bonus.

Very nice enhancements to Emperor, especially with his GL enhancement to Insolent Fools! The 1 and 2 of I'll Never Die! help him to back up his claim with some much needed survivability boosts, the already nasty Fire From Below reaches nonsensical levels of damage with the modifier boost and imperil, and the 2 of Insolent Fools! grants him some very nice MAG. Control is such a gimmick that it can be safely ignored until Stat Break prevention and Stat Break cleansing becomes more commonplace Control, while it does require specific units to be viable, is a massive damage boost to Emperor on a super long duration.

Priority order should be:

1. 1 of I'll Never Die!
2. 2 of Insolent Fools! and Fire From Below
3. 2 of I'll Never Die! and 2 of Control

Garland

Rarity: 3* - 6*

What the actual fuck? This is a decent enough enhancement, providing Garland with a GL boosted 75% Doublehand increase, but by the Divines this is so unbelievably expensive. Demon Rain got a better Doublehand enhancement with 25% more ATK boost with any weapon, and his enhancements cost 1.5 million less Gil and the same number of crysts. Why this watered down version of a Doublehand enhancement is more expensive, I will never understand. This would have been great a few months ago, but we've got better, cheaper options now (for the most part).

Okay, these physical skills using Black crysts are getting really weird. Anyway, another set of expensive enhancements for Garland, but at least this one is pretty nice. A normalized 4x modifier with an 80% attached imperil to bring us up to a very solid 7.2x damage, which is for the most part relatively unmatched. The real prize here is the 80% Dark imperil, which is only outclassed by Dark Knight Cecil who is nowhere near as readily available. The fact that it's AoE is niche at best, and can even be a drawback in very certain situations.

Much more appropriately priced, and with an appreciated 50% GL boost to the ATK buff, Dark Awakening is a solid enhancement for anyone running Garland that either doesn't have a Dark element greatsword or Moonblade, or isn't bringing a bard/Soleil.

Short, but to the point, Garland's enhancements unfortunately are a little underwhelming. He's certainly in better shape here on GL than he was on JP, but aside from the nice 80% Dark imperil on Dark Spiral 2 he's honestly still a bit D.O.A. given the timeframe in which we're receiving these enhancements. Again, they would have been nice a few months ago, but these days better options are fairly prevalent: not only that, but finishers aren't something common in most team comps given the extra emphasis on survivability required by most high-end content.

Leon

Rarity: 4* - 5*

A pretty solid, GL boosted enhancement to Phantom, bringing it's modifier up to 4.8x from the JP 4x: we've even got a slight discount, shaving off the single T5 cryst on the 2. This skill really only has niche use in the Arena though, so it falls in at a "meh" for me.

A nice, solid little enhancement to both Leon's damage and survivability thanks to the additional 20% ATK here on GL. The Auto-Regen is meh. Cheap, but not terribly worth it on a 5* max unit you're pobably not going to use outside the Arena.

It sucks being 5* max in a 6* world, it really does. If Leon ever gets a 6* form (which, he should^eventually ) I would definitely recommend grabbing these cheap little boosts to his effectiveness, but as it stands there's just really no point in enhancing him.

Trance Terra

Rarity: 5* - 6*

Now that's what I call an enhancement. 20% HP, an unconditional 50% MAG and some QoL in the form of 30% Fire/Ice/Lightning resistance make for a more survivable, harder hitting Pink Ball of Doom. If Trance Terra is in your roster, this is a priority.

Super expensive, not all that great enhancements to Ultima. The 1 is literally just a QoL cost reduction: the 2 improves the effective modifier by 25%, but also changes it from a finisher to this weirdly weighted chaining spell. Considering that Trance Terra has Chaos Wave for chaining, there's no reason to spend materials on...well...either of these. Unless you really want that MP reduction.

Edit: While I personally would not spend the materials on this it has been pointed out to me that, in addition to the Arena, Ultima 2 is also useful for OTKO strats for Raids and MK events, as well as for non-dupe chaining with Dark Fina (and Seabreeze Dark Fina when her enhancements hit) in 10-man trials. I leave this one up to you.

Oh my, is it Chrismahanukwanzakah already? Buff increases aside, this is nice for one reason and one reason alone:

This beautiful little skill allows you to fire off Chaos Wave's like you're dual-wielding Nerf guns in a game of Humans vs. Zombies. The reason this is so nice is because of...

That's right boys and girls. With the 2 enhancement to Chaos Wave, the modifier and hit count increases from using Magical Activation become permanent. What this means is that you only need to use Magical Activation every 6th turn to re-unlock Successor - Maduin's Power for DC Chaos Wave madness. Absolutely worth every single cryst and Gil.

Epic enhancements have once again turned Pink Ball of Doom (not Kirby) into the leading magical damage dealer here on GL: unless you don't have a copy or friend! If you don't, Emperor likely takes that crown (if the enemy isn't resistant to Fire), as he doesn't need a clone to churn out his damage. But, if you do have a clone or friend, you can do dirty, nasty things like 2-turn Aigaion and make Blood Moon your biatch.

Priorities here are as follows:

1. Inherited Power 2
2. Magical Activation 2 and Chaos Wave 2 (you need both!)
3. Scoff at Ultima 2, as it's far too beneath you now Ultima 2, if you want it

White Witch Fina

Rarity: 4* - 6*

Pretty nice. While this does require WW Fina to have at least some LB gauge available, the Full Esuna and Auto-Revive are super nice and are fairly worth the Tech crysts it costs to upgrade this.

Best part is she doesn't have to kill herself to give Auto-Revive like Butz does. Seriously, Bartz, you're doing it wrong.

I love that it seems like Gumi is trying to shift some of the emphasis away from dual-wielding to single-wielding. This is a fantastic enhancement that's..actually oddly cheap, considering what a potentially massive boost this gives to Fina's total SPR. While she does lack a good innate healing spell (Cura or Curada are her options), the ungodly amount of SPR she'll have will offset that greatly: especially if you put Holy Wand on her for a ridiculous 240 SPR from just the staff itself and the Dual White Magic for DC Cura. Seriously, holy crap this enhancement.

So this is an interesting one. Supposedly the skill doesn't have actual Undead Killer on it: if it's used against Undead, it deals a separate 2.5x modifier on the physical hit, otherwise it just uses the normal 1x modifier. Same end result, essentially, but it's...weird. I dunno. Anyway, the second half of the skill on the 1 and 2 is the real prize here, as it allows WW Fina to use all of that raging SPR-peen she just acquired to dick over everyone and everything in sight with a potentially epic Light element magic finisher. The modifier itself is fairly mediocre, but with the SPR potential now on the table for her it should still be respectable damage. You know, assuming she gets a chance to use this while healing.

A very simple, solid enhancement to a unique skill. Buffing the HP recovery to 50% and MP recover to 25%, these enhancements significantly improve WW Fina's ability to heal your party and keep their MP topped off. The fact that it's percentage based, as opposed to Tilith's flat amount heal, has its pros and cons though: while it will heal more than Tilith on any units with more than 5k HP, Ritual will out-heal Tilith, but on units with <5k HP it will heal potentially significantly less. If your party is set on MP sustain, you might avoid this for the most part in favor of SPR boosted DC Cura/Curaga's (if you give her the materia for Curaga), as its efficacy is heavily dependant on the beefiness of your party. Definitely still enhance it though if you're going to use WW Fina!

A simple, solid enhancement that's super cheap to boot. If you're using/going to use WW Fina, grab it.

Awesome, unique enhancements to White Witch Fina put shame to all those who made fun of her previous hat. There's literally not a single enhancement out of the bunch that isn't worth the crysts, with the potentially epic Divine Burst 2 as the weakest of the bunch. I really don't have much else to say here, other than I bet some folks are really regretting getting rid of their WW Fina(s) (if they did).

Priorities:

1. Ritual 2
2. Witchhood 2
3. Raise 2 and Entrust 2
4. Divine Burst 2 (if you have the spare crysts and have Light chains to cap)

As always, let me know if you spot any mistakes or errors I may have missed!