Succubus (Psynergy)

Succubus (サッキュバス) is a stand-alone Mercury-based support Psynergy featured in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Basic Description
Succubus restores a set amount of Hit Points to a single Adept that has not fallen. When used during battle, only members of the actively battling party may be targeted. The amount of HP recovered depends on the Mercury Power of the caster, as well as the actually Psynergy being used.

Visually, the Succubus Psynergy features the caster summoning a monster to heal the targeted party member. As the monster heals the target, blue sparks of energy enter the target. Despite the name coming from the Succubus, a boss of Crossbone Isle in the first Golden Sun, the monster it summons is actually a Siren, the weakest member of Succubus' monster line.

Recovery calculation
As previously stated, the exact strength of the Succubus Psynergy depends on the caster's Mercury Power. To be specific, the outcome can be represented with the following formula:


 * HP restored = Base HP recovery rating * (Power / 100)

The caster's Mercury Power is divided by 100 and multiplied by the base HP restored; the Power rating is effectively treated as an exact percentage. As a result, an Adept with less than 100 Mercury Power would heal less than the advertised amount of HP, while an Adept with more than 100 Mercury Power would heal more. If an Adept has 124 Mercury Power, the Psynergy literally heals 24% more than what is listed in the game. The highest any Power rating can reach is 200, so if the user has 200 Mercury Power, the healing potency of Succubus is doubled.

Availability
Succubus is exclusive to the Tamer class series, an item-dependent class series accessed by equipping the Trainer's Whip. The Trainer's Whip is only found in The Lost Age. Thus, Succubus is only available to the eight playable Adepts of The Lost Age. In order to access Succubus, the player must have progressed through the class to have accessed the Beast Lord stage, which requires that the Adept have 9 Djinn divided equally between the three elements other than the Adept's own element. Succubus is available at level 24.

Analysis
The Succubus Psynergy functions as a slightly stronger variant to the more commonly used Ply Well; instead of restoring 200 HP to one character for 8 PP, it restores 250 for 9. Theoretically, this makes it quite a bit more useful when the extremely low PP of the Beast Lord class is taken into consideration. However, Succubus is available at a slightly higher level, 24 compared to Ply Well's 16. Succubus, however, is the highest powered single-target heal available to the Tamer class.

In practice, however, Succubus is somewhat impractical. Since the Psynergy is only available to the Beast Lord class, it requires the player to collect almost all the Djinn in. Thus, by the time Succubus is available, the player will have access to the powerful Pure Ply, as well as strong mass-heals like Pure Wish. In addition, the low PP pool of the Tamer means that the amount of healing is extremely inefficient for drawn-out battles.

Trivia

 * Sirens are called Succubi in the Japanese version of Golden Sun, which explains why the Succubus Psynergy counter-intuitively summons Sirens.