Reflux

Reflux (バイカ Baika) is a Mars Djinni found in Golden Sun:  The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Reflux is the sixth Mars Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Reflux and all other Mars Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Mars 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, Reflux is the thirteenth Mars Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the sixth.

Reflux is the eighth Mars Djinni in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Reflux increases base HP by 9, base Defense by 3, and base Luck by 2.

When Reflux is unleashed in battle, the user is affected for the entire turn by a unique effect which has the "always strikes first" property; the user does nothing for the rest of the turn unless the user sustains some form of damage from an enemy's  action, in which case the user will automatically perform a Mars-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack. The user will hit as many times in the battle as they sustain damage from separate actions taken by enemies in this turn.

In The Lost Age, Reflux's unleash animation visually resembles a red image of a Mars Djinni floating in front of the party, and it and a set of red energy orbs gather into an oval-shaped red whirlpool of energy in front of the Adept briefly. When the counterattack is triggered, this whirlpool while rematerialize extremely briefly, and the Mars Djinni will shoot out of it and very weakly detonate on impact at the enemy's position. In Dark Dawn, the 3D presentation of these two segments is almost identical to The Lost Age otherwise.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as the counterattack of Reflux 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

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


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

To word this in prose, each time Reflux counterattacks, the hit is simply the base damage of the user's normal physical attack 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 Reflux's counterattack damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 300 and a Mars Power of 130 unleashes Reflux on a monster with a defense of 80 and a Mars Resistance of 80:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 - 80) / 2) * (1 + (130 - 80) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = * (1 + )
 * damage = 123.75

Therefore, if Reflux were to be unleashed and end up counterattacking the aforementioned enemy, it would deal 123 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Reflux is found in Tundaria Tower, in a sliding-ice puzzle room you  drop into. The room itself is reached when you get to a room with three stairwells going up; go up the center bottom stairwell and proceed to  this room. Then from where you drop into, slide left, up, right, up, left, down, right, up, and right to bump into Reflux, then slide right so that you can then battle and acquire it. See here for enemy statistics.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Reflux is automatically acquired in a cutscene later in the game, once the Grave Eclipse begins at Belinsk. When the game directs you to Belinsk's pier, follow along and board the sailing ship, and win the battle against three Gloom Skorpnas. In the story-relevant cutscenes that transpire after this, Eoleo permanently joins your party. He brings with him this Djinni along with four other Mars Djinn - Wrath, Chili, Glow, and Stoke.

Analysis
General: Reflux is a unique effect in each of the games it appears in, but in this case that is not a good thing. Put bluntly, this is an inferior option to select in battle for a variety of reasons. Since it only works if an enemy ends up using a damaging attack and that ends up damaging the user on the turn Reflux is used, the chance that the Reflux user won't do anything this turn is definitely there. Once it happens to be triggered, all that happens is the user performing their normal physical attack aligned to Mars. To put this in perspective, the user has a far more reliable alternative in simply selecting and using the Attack command on a specific enemy, and this is not to mention the benefits of that attack potentially becoming an enhanced Unleash effect from your weapon. Unleashes cannot trigger on a Reflux counterattack.

Reflux is essentially worthless as a battle option because the only possible, theoretical scenario where it could be viable is if the Adept that Reflux is Set onto is the only Adept in the battle's current party row that's not Downed, and there are still multiple enemies. With Reflux, each of the multiple hits the user would be sure to take from enemies would be met with counterattacks, which may be potentially stronger than using an area-of-effect offensive Psynergy if the user's Attack rating is high. Reflux's viability is crippled by there being barely any conceivable way to get enemies to aim their attacks at the reflux user that turn.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: There is most likely no specific instance in the game where Reflux's traits can be made notably useful. However, as a Djinni, when the game is being played "perfectly", Reflux can either be the sixth Mars Djinni the party obtains before making the trip to Lemuria, or contribute to that number (all four party members can have six Djinn of their respective element before they make the trip to Lemuria). This means that if everyone is being played in their mono-elemental classes, Jenna will graduate to the Fire Master class, which is very useful to have against the boss Poseidon right before Lemuria. In an ironic bit of trivia, Reflux basically emulates what is otherwise Poseidon's unique monster skill, Counter Rush.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Like before, Reflux essentially has nothing to offer to the party as a battle option. The only silver lining to Reflux in this game is that it happens to be one of the "free" Djinn that the game's story progression automatically gives you - it will be one of the five Mars Djinn that Eoleo brings with him when he joins up. Reflux will contribute to Eoleo's class by remaining Set on him.

Name Origin
Reflux is a process that involves boiling the contents of a vessel over an extended period of time. It is very widely used in industries that utilize large-scale distillation columns and fractionators such as petroleum refineries (petroleum is highly flammable). The name may also be a pun on "reflex", since it is based on the user instinctively counter-attacking any attack used against them. Also the main symptom of gastroesophageal reflux disease is pyrosis also known as heartburn, both terms making allusion to the burning sensation in the sternum after ingesting some meals.

Trivia
If this Djinni's effect is used against Poseidon, one might assume that if an Adept unleashes Reflux the same turn Poseidon uses its similar ability, Counter Rush, and then Poseidon proceeds to attack that Adept, the opponents will volley counter attacks back and forth until one of the two is felled. This is not the case; the two abilities will not counter attacks from each other.