Fire Breath (Psynergy)

Fire Breath is a stand-alone Mars Psynergy introduced in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Basic Characteristics
Fire Breath is an offensive, ranged Psynergy. The total amount of damage is determined by comparing the user's Mars Power to the target's Mars Resistance and using this value to modify the base power of the particular Psynergy. Fire Breath will do reduced damage to secondary targets in comparison to Psynergies of equivalent power.

Visually, Fire Breath features a stream of fire being blasted at the targets.

Damage Calculations
Elemental Power attacks such as Fire Breath use a set base power as the base damage to be modified. For example, the base power of Fire Breath is 85. Thus an unmodified Fire Breath would do around 85 points of damage. Fire Breath's attack takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * final damage = (base damage) * (1 + (User's Mars Power - Enemy's Mars Resistance) / 200)

To word this in prose, Fire Breath takes the base damage of the particular attack, and then modifies this by how much higher or lower the user's Mars Power is than the target's Mars Resistance. The difference between the user's Mars Power and the user's Mars Resistance is then divided by 200, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what the Psynergies' damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with a Mars Power of 150 casts Fire Breath on a monster with a Mars Resistance of 50:
 * damage = (base damage) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 200)
 * damage = (85) * (1 + (150 - 50) / 200)
 * damage = * (1 +  / 200)
 * damage = (85) * (1 + )
 * damage = 85 *
 * damage = 127

Therefore, a Fire Breath cast under these circumstances would deal 127 points of damage to the targeted enemy. Since Fire Breath is a ranged Psynergy, adjacent targets take a percentage of the total damage, with the percentage decreasing as distance from the main target increases. However, this percentage is much lower than Psynergies of equivalent power.

Availability
Fire Breath is unique to the Pierrot class series, an Item-dependent class accessed by equipping the Mysterious Card to the appropriate Adept. Since the Mysterious Card is only found in The Lost Age, Fire Breath is available only to the eight playable Adepts of that game. Fire Breath is learned at Level 22.

Analysis
General: When learned, Fire Breath will be the strongest Mars-based Psynergy available to the Pierrot until Fiery Juggle is learned at level 37. While possessing decent power when learned, it may sometimes be bypassed in favor of the weaker Heat Juggle, due to the lesser damage Fire Breath does to secondary targets. However, the Pierrot does have a lower PP pool, and thus Fire Breath is the more efficient Psynergy, as it has greater base power for the same PP cost as Heat Juggle. Once the Pierrot learns Fiery Juggle, however, Fire Breath will have little reason to be used.