Whorl

Whorl (スー Suu) is a Jupiter Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Whorl is the eighth Jupiter Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Whorl and all other Jupiter Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Jupiter Djinn from the original Golden Sun, most likely because all the Djinn from the original game can be gotten all at once late in The Lost Age. However, the original Djinn are ordered before all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age in the Djinn inventory screen while they are allocated to characters. By this order, Whorl is the fifteenth Jupiter Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the eighth.

Basic description

 * "Take a deep breath, and strike!"

When Set, Whorl increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base Attack by 4, and base Defense by 2.

When Whorl is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Jupiter-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 40 damage points added to the result. This happens if the target does not get affected by Whorl's side effect of instant death.

Visually, Whorl's unleash animation resembles the user summoning the transparent purple image of a Jupiter Djinni above the party. Then, an intricate purple whirlwind-like effect that is thickest at the enemy side and stretches across the screen to the point the Jupiter Djinni is at will manifest and churn, representing the Djinni sucking in the enemy toward it. The enemy will be lifted off the ground toward the Djinni a short distance; if the enemy is not instantly felled, it will take the hit and drop back down to its spot on the ground, but if it is instantly felled, the enemy's sprite will decrease in size as both it and the Jupiter Djinni disappear off the top of the screen.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Whorl use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. The total amount of damage dealt by a normal physical attack is half the difference between the attacker's Attack statistic and the target's Defense statistic, as this equation shows:


 * ''base damage = (Attacker's Attack - Target's Defense) / 2

Whorl's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 40) * (1 + (Attacker's Jupiter Power - Target's Jupiter Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Whorl, if it doesn't instantly fell the enemy, takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 40 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Jupiter Power is than the target's Jupiter Resistance. The difference between the user's Jupiter Power and the target's Jupiter Resistance is divided by 400, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what Whorl's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 300 and a Jupiter Power of 150 unleashes Whorl on a monster with a defense of 120 and a Jupiter Resistance of 100:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 - 120) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (150 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 40) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 40) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 146

Therefore, if Whorl were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal  146 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Whorl is located in Jupiter Lighthouse, specifically the right tower. In the room where it is located is a puzzle where you are to move pillars into holes in the ground to fill up tiles of floor to connect conduits for the Hover-based energy (similar to types of puzzles seen in Venus Lighthouse). Two such pillars are present, one a "corner" pillar and one a "line" pillar. Get up to the Corner Pillar with Hover, and move it over to the hole in the ground that the purple line of energy is feeding into, which causes the inactive hovering circle to the top center to be active. Use it to get to the line pillar, and move it off down to the ground level. Hover to the Poundable pillar to the other right and Pound it, ejecting the corner pillar from its slot in the ground. Now move the corner pillar to the lower left hole and the line pillar into the lower center hole, which will allow the lower left hovering tile to become active. Use that to hover to Whorl's position, save, and defeat it to acquire it. After that, simply use the lower left hovering tile to float to the upper left stairwell to progress to the next floor (you do not need to redirect energy flow again for the sake of activating the top left hovering tile). See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: Whorl is a considerable attacking Jupiter Djinni because, while its actual attack isn't anything impressive, it has a chance to instantly fell the target (provided it is not a high-luck target like a boss). In practical terms, the chance to instantly defeat the enemy in battle is technically better than any other status condition you can inflict on an enemy, because the point of status conditions is to help the player render an enemy dead sooner with less difficulty to begin with. Whorl may be often used depending on the player's taste, but on the occasions it fails to instantly down the target it is only an average attacking Jupiter Djinni. Whorl doesn't have an identical counterpart in Dark Dawn; the closest equivalent it has is the Mars Djinni Wrath.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Whorl, in a "perfect game", ends up the eighth Jupiter Djinni the party collects, which of course benefits an Adept greatly in terms of their class series - Sheba would become the final Sorcerer class of her Wind Seer class series if she has all eight Jupiter Djinn Set onto her, for example. As an offensive measure, Whorl is essentially more preferable than the already good Jupiter Djinni Wheeze, which has 10 more damage and a chance to inflict a powerful Deadly Poison effect. While Wheeze ends up slightly stronger than Whorl in situations where neither Djinni's side effect triggers, Whorl ends up the superior attack Djinni in situations where the effect does trigger. The biggest reason Whorl is generally overlooked is the presence of the Mercury Djinni Serac at the end of the game, one of the game's best attacking Djinn, because it has the same instant death chance but 30 more bonus damage to make 70.

Name Origin
Whorl is a type of spiral pattern, possibly a reference to tornadoes. Suu is the japanese sound of inhaling or breathing softly.