Sizzle

Sizzle (シズラー Sizzler) is a Mars Djinni found in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Sizzle is the sixteenth Mars Djinni in Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Sizzle increases its Adept's base HP by 11 and base Attack by 3.

When Sizzle is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Mars-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 60 damage points added to the result. Then, there is a chance that the target will have its Defense rating lowered by 25% temporarily.

In Dark Dawn, Sizzle's unleash animation visually resembles the user summoning the 3D model of Sizzle in front of the enemy's face. Sizzle holds in this spot while the enemy is engulfed in a small field of flames, and Sizzle disappears as the enemy takes a hit.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Sizzle 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 60) * (1 + (Attacker's Mars Power - Target's Mars Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Sizzle takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 60 to it, and then this result is modified 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 target's Mars 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 Sizzle's damage is multiplied by.

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


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 60) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 - 120) / 2 + 60) * (1 + (150 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 60) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 60) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 168

Therefore, if Sizzle were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 168 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Sizzle is a Djinni that is fought and earned by random encounter at a specific area in the overworld that otherwise appears to be featureless scenery. It is located on Nihan, the island that Yamata City is located on, immediately south of the large mountain with the opening like a volcano. Players of Golden Sun: The Lost Age may recognize this spot as where the entrance to the Gaia Rock dungeon would have been located. Fight in this patch of forest until Sizzle appears, and defeat it in battle to add it to your inventory. See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: Sizzle is a solid attacking Djinni, having a good set damage bonus of 60 and a chance for a good side effect, which is lowering the target's Defense rating. Lowering the target's Defense, and thus raising the damage your party's subsequent physically-based attacks will do to the enemy, is generally a better effect in a random encounter than lowering an enemy's Attack rating or increasing your party's defenses, because you have better control over your capacity to capitalize on the lowered enemy statistic. When an enemy's Defense is lowered, you can focus multiple physical attacks on that enemy afterward make use of the lowered defense, whereas lowering the enemy's attack might not always end up applying itself because the enemy might end up using a power-based move like a Psynergy.

By game
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Sizzle, unusually enough, is identical in battle effect to the Mars Djinni Lava, found much earlier in the game. While Lava is a very good attacking Djinni for a while, Sizzle is found very late in the game, when other, even stronger attacking Mars Djinn have already been collected. Primarily, the Mars Djinni Chili is the most useful attacking Mars Djinni for having a great 80 set damage bonus, and players who are into attacking for potentially faster results also have Wrath to use, which may instantly kill an enemy. These Djinn make Sizzle and Lava somewhat "forgotten" by this lategame point.

Even so, none of this is to say that these are subpar attacking Djinn by the end of the game. 60 bonus damage is solid, and lowering the enemy's defense in the process is a good way to get physical damage on that enemy piled up - this is especially true of the lategame, when higher enemy defenses means more defenses that are cut down by this side effect. Lava and Sizzle can be used interchangeably as solid "runner-up" attacking Mars Djinn to the aforementioned Chili and Wrath.