Arena battle videos and discussion

[Elmdork]

Thanks for the post WKW! The quality is excellent. Better order a pizza or something cuz we got armor, and shields, and perfumes nobody knows how to pronounce correctly (except for otabo. He knows what the ladies like)

spoiler: V. Some defensive team

That went a lot better than it should have. Nameless dance is incredibly powerful considering nearly nobody cares to carry defenses against those status and it's nearly impossible to get resistance to all of them. The dancers dancing in shifts is cute and all, but that's not what they were deigned for. I have virtually no experience with dancers in fft arena and I could use a hand programming them. At least one needs to reliably use stigma magic and revive. As I learned today, it sure as hell ain't the nameless dancer. I'd like to use either slow dance or witch hunt on the other, but using punch art when in range is a priority. If i can get 2 dances going, but one dancer reliably stopping to kill suff i will be very happy. Also losing repeating fist and buster gets a spell gun. I hate spell guns. AI doesn't acknowledge oil at all, so imma make em wave fist a bunch of flash hat thieves. Elmdor is special of course, he must be a samurai with the ability to blood suck charm an opponent. Again the reason why I crystal armor all my paladin/samurai: I can deal with don't act or petrify or slow, but charm can be outright nasty when the CT cosmos align a certain way. You should not be able to charm elmdor, you need to buy an n-kai armlet or grow some chest hair and learn to play the game. Stop bracelet wrecked my shit as a kid. Luckily jump+pray to CT gods is a viable end game strategy.

GG barren! what an odd matchup, but we saw some things today we may never see again (rip romada gun, consecrate finisher)

spoiler: Freddie v. Disrespect

That berserk thief.. I am both very happy and very scared that inital/always berserk is becomming part of the meta. It's a great way to force the team into an offensive position and keep it.

Otabo, give the girls stop. Just do it pleeease! Kiyomori+bag smack probably doesn't make it into the top 1000 things that could possibly occur (which is why I love them so) but insult has a higher % than stall, so they'll probably kiyomori, insult, stall which is a pretty nice progression if you ask me. Makes it easier for your thief to hump a toaster in the corner ... do things.. I fucking love them

spoiler: otabo

Now, that thief is precious. To the untrained eye, it looks like he humps a toaster in the corner until it's time to item bot and then proceeds to hump a toaster in the corner, but that is what victory ACTUALLY looks like. If you insist on tampering with perfection, it may be as simple as a secondary change to get his priorities where you want them to be. Who says you can't have 3 talk skill units?

Thanks TL!

spoiler: v. Silentkaster

I am honored to have inspired a team. Go forth my fools, and fuck everything. There's nothing specifically wrong with your changes but you made exactly the kind of team they were designed to squish. They have some hard counters like reflect and counter magic, but those are a bit rare to see. I was amazed to see they behave perfectly. There's always adjustments that could be made but I don't want to touch them. They make perfect use of ct with those abilities and are fairly smart with them all.

GG silentkaster! It's been a while but finally we get a match together. I must say we've come a long way since we started. 

[Otabo]

spoiler: vs. Barren

Gimped from the beginning since Barren entire team was immune to berserk. My lack of DPS did my team in ultimately, though. Folks are using berserk protection more and more which makes me proud. Time to update this team, too - those mediators need something else to do in case they can't berserk anyone. GG.

Otabo, give the girls stop. Just do it pleeease! Kiyomori+bag smack probably doesn't make it into the top 1000 things that could possibly occur (which is why I love them so) but insult has a higher % than stall, so they'll probably kiyomori, insult, stall which is a pretty nice progression if you ask me. Makes it easier for your thief to hump a toaster in the corner or discover a black soul gem depending on your perspective ... do things.. I fucking love them [/spoiler]

Ehh, I'm thinking AI prefers Stall over Insult, though. And with everyone with item units running Chronos Tear, I dunno. Maybe. I'll test them with Stall and see what the AI does with it. The thief is actually getting on my nerves what with him being so passive 80% of the time; he's a good support unit when he needs to be, but yeah. Nobody knows when he'll actually attack. Monk seems fine, but I might need more DPS than that. They going on the shelf for a little while until I can figure out what to do with them.

[Barren]

Funny thing rouroni is that im almost surprised no one came up with the berserk thief idea using two swords.  Now granted it wasn't the first unit I innovated. Those who remember me from a long time ago I was the first to use a draw out bard due to it's high MA stat and people later borrowed that idea from me and shaped it into their own form. Nowadays coming up with unique innovative units can be a challenge. so for that im glad my berserk thief is now a candidate for one of the most offensive metagame units in arena

[silentkaster]

I should have some time to record matches between tonight and Sunday so if there's any match up y'all want to see PM me and I should be able to record it.

[TrueLight]

FFT Arena 1.39C - Silentkaster (You Can't Fool a Fool) vs. Rouroni Elmdor (No Foolin')

[Reks]

Good matches all around. I finally remembered to take time to review and update my own teams, but so far one at a time.

[silentkaster]

spoiler: Vs. Rouroni Elmdor

Nice job...that's what I get for trying to change the original! Nice win, good team. Summon Magic and the like just isn't my forte...gonna come up with a new team soon but currently testing out ideas and wanting them to be a certain way. We'll see.

Recorded these today...keep your requests coming as I may be able to do some more this weekend.

FFT Arena 1.39C- Barren (Multi Absorb) vs. Reks (Till Death Do Us Part)

FFT Arena 1.39C- Anima Zero (Frozen in Time) vs. Shintroy (Corruption)

[Shintroy]

spoiler: Corruption vs Anima Zero (Frozen in Time)

Anti Undead vs Stop/Sleep

I used Frozen in Time to practice against a team with stop/sleep. Turned out to be a bad match up since I can rarely get things started unless the map is really small.

Round 1 - Evenly matched on this map. Would've slightly favored my team if I had P1 side. Got put on the defensive early on and couldn't recover especially with the 90% stops landing. RIP buffed stop % without factoring in faith.

Round 2 - Evenly matched again on this map. Even though I managed to land the Zombie on the ninja for a kill I was still on the defensive for most of the match. Could've been worse. Could've got wrecked by odin death procs.

GG. Stop and absorb destroys this team. Absorb because zombie units can still be healed. Stop because high % of it landing.

Thanks for the self refute tip silentkaster. Wasn't aware finger guard blocked self casts. Trying to motivate yourself with both fingers in your ear. That would make for a funny comic or pic.

spoiler: Barren vs Reks

Multi Absorb vs Multi Death
Barren's team is more solid since it doesn't rely on RNG and faith to score kills. Unless there are some compatibility going on between the teams Reks is going to have some problems.

Round 1 - No death for Reks this round and since this is a team that thrives on death procs it was an easy win for Barren. silentkaster's suggestion on the Fairy Harp is on point. Odin doing damage is great, but it's all about the death proc so MA isn't really that necessary.

Round 2 - Tons and Tons of death procs for Reks. No battle axe proc sadly. The map played a huge part in the win as well. Rek's team severely outranged Barren to the point where the wasted turns getting rid of poison didn't matter. In earlier versions of 139 or at least in 138 Z Swamp wasn't toxic.

Round 3 - Highlight of the match was easily the Frog being useful. Would've been even better if Romeo woke up Juliet. Guess it's not meant to be in any universe. Excellent tanking by Reks. Didn't realize he could outlast Barren's constant damage.

GG. Till Death always surprises me. Definitely my favorite of Reks' teams.

spoiler: Cant Fool a Fool vs No Foolin

Mime+Status/Summon vs Mime+Summon
Rouroni's team should be able to overwhelm silentkaster's with damage, and I don't think silentkaster will be able to compete with status since Item Mime isn't likely to be able to mimic status.

Just outgunned. silentkaster wasn't able to mount enough of an offense to compete with that kind of damage/healing potential. Didn't help that Rouroni also got more turn in with Masamune and charm.

GG.
Imagine this kind of match on a 2015 remake of FFT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_0OCZC8TVY

About recording matches and choosing stages, are there any illegal or stages to reroll on or are they all alright? Completely random from 1-120? I start recording real soon and wanted to know ahead of time.

[Anima Zero]

Thanks for the videos silentkaster!

spoiler: Me vs Shintroy

That went about as well as I could have hoped for.  Stop procs seemed to really disable Shintroy's team while the Monk & Ninja did work with some chip damage tossed in by the Priest.  I do feel that this is one of my better designed teams, but that's just me, heh.  Just a couple minor tweaks I want to make and I think it'll be set for a good long while.  GG sir, good match!

[Kurosabes]

None aren't allowed as far as I know. I reroll if I get the same map twice on the same match. I skip the odd checkboard one with the invisible water. I think it's for your own judgement to decide

[TrueLight]

FFT Arena 1.39C - Anima Zero (Seraphic Earth) vs. Joorum (The Police)

FFT Arena 1.39C - ShadowDragon15 (Fire Cross) vs. Shintroy (Quetzalcoatl)

[Reks]

spoiler: Vs. Rouroni Elmdor

Nice job...that's what I get for trying to change the original! Nice win, good team. Summon Magic and the like just isn't my forte...gonna come up with a new team soon but currently testing out ideas and wanting them to be a certain way. We'll see.

Recorded these today...keep your requests coming as I may be able to do some more this weekend.

FFT Arena 1.39C- Barren (Multi Absorb) vs. Reks (Till Death Do Us Part)

FFT Arena 1.39C- Anima Zero (Frozen in Time) vs. Shintroy (Corruption)

Thanks!~

Fairy Harp is a better idea, yes.

And Kiyo is there for the 'eventual death' part. No, he's not one-shotting, but even with a Throwing Knife he wouldn't ever do so without a Death Sentence. And Blind helps them evade if confronted.

[Otabo]

None aren't allowed as far as I know. I reroll if I get the same map twice on the same match. I skip the odd checkboard one with the invisible water. I think it's for your own judgement to decide

I always rule out quite a few maps when I'm using RNG to decide them. Some of them are just unfair for a lot of teams, mostly because of the initial starting positions. I absolutely despise maps 52 (Chapel of St. Murond Temple; both teams are separated and far spaced from each other), 107 (NOGIAS; just flat out bad altogether; team 1 starts at 24h, 17h, 7h, and 3h; while team 2 starts at 22h, 20h, 9h, and 0h - in other words, if you aren't running Teleport, Fly or Ignore Height - you're pretty much screwed if your team isn't mobile ), 114 (END; everyone starts at a 1v1 position, though mimes could be interesting on this map - depending on the setups), 41 (Besrodio's House, only because that stupid object in the middle is STILL there), 36 (Church outside of Town; that chokepoint is retarded if both teams cluster there) and 15 (Gate of Limberry 1; one team is pretty much screwed over if they don't have Float/Feather Boots) are the main ones. When I'm recording matches, I always try not to pick these maps; other recorders do things differently, but in my case, I'll usually pick a decent to good map for both teams to fight on if RNG picks a map that I don't like.

[Shintroy]

spoiler: Quetzalcoatl vs Shadowdragon (Fire Cross)

Balanced Team vs Absorb Fire
My team's pretty weak against casters and absorb teams and this isn't either one of those so I should be fine.

Round 1 - Slow start, but eventually Shadowdragon gets put in a sandbag loop. Not much to comment on.

Round 2 - Same thing, but with less balances going off.

Idk Fire Cross doesn't feel like a complete team since it's just a team that absorb fire. At least half of the units on the team need work. My team isn't perfect though. I need to find a way around absorb/caster teams because I am looking at a 5 minute match if Quetz ever gets matched up against one. GG.

The names of Quetz weren't updated. It's really important since Holy occasionally watches the vids I like.

Thanks for the input WKWeigraf and Otabo. I definitely feel the same way about the weird tutorial maps and all the maps Otabo listed except maybe 36 since there's a neutral start.

Great uploads all around. I'll be joining in around Monday or Tuesday.

---------

spoiler: Joorum vs Anima Zero

Team vs Earth Absorb
Anima's going to win since the video's 6 minutes long. Joorum doesn't have that kind of stopping power.

I wonder what happened to atheist bow/unfaith teams.

GG. CT1 Earth Elemental spell with an 9x MA multiplier.

What do you guys use to record? I'm using a laptop from 2007 and can't handle OBS and fraps so far.

[Reks]

A bit of self-examination for Till Death.

spoiler: My thoughts regarding them

The team itself is luck based. Of course it's not always going to work. But then, I'd rather kill instantly than do a bit of damage over and over that still has chances to miss. It's not perfect but my oh my has it worked so far.

Romeo: Initially, the team was meant to have all forms of a 'death state'. That's why he had an Ancient Sword.

As he changed, I realized it was still too proc-reliant and Petrify, while lethal, is mostly protected against in some form and can easily be cured.

My problem here are Bards themselves. They don't have a huge number of options available to them when it comes to equipment. Sure, they might have access to the potentially powerful Harps, but Harps are two handed weapons and it limits them even further in regards to evasion.

And Odin's proc is random. I can either boost his defenses and such so that he has to rely on that, or boost the damage so it's a threat even without the Death activating. And that leaves him open to getting midcharged and murdered.



Potential changes would probably be making him more of a support unit (after all, he spent a lot of rounds idling), but that would mean changing him from a Bard to a job more suited for it.

Juliet: Not to bite your commentary, silentkaster, but the fact that evasion doesn't work while charging is largely moot because 80% of the time, she isn't. And it's when she's not that it matters, as most of the hits she could have taken missed.

Weapon wise, she has the Main Gauche purely for evasion purposes. There's not a whole lot I CAN give to her to change her stabbing someone in the face (unless it's a Healing Staff, which might be useful for the +1 Speed), but her whole purpose is to either Death or disrupt. She does her job even if she suffers from an MP problem.


Potential changes... Aren't likely to happen. Maybe make it easier for her to restore her MP. I like her setup and will use more things like it in the future.

Marie: I like the tanky cleric style she has, as well as her weapon being deadly randomly.

Aside from potentially protecting her from Frog (as she's been Frogged quite often), I can't see much changing regarding her.

Edgar Allan Poe:Quothe the raven, evermore.

This guy follows more of the 'eventual death' theme than anything else. Whether Death-Sentencing or Poison, he's there to support and make it harder for others to survive, or at the very least force the opponent to waste a turn.

After Shintroy recommended I change him to a Chemist, I like him almost as much as Juliet, if not more.

He could use Ethers, though. Might sacrifice something to ensure he has more JP for items. Maybe Move-HP UP, as it doesn't restore as much HP as I'd like it to.

I'm going to systematically remove and readd my teams as I evaluate them and make changes that need to happen, or just scrap them.

So for the next few days the only team that will be up is Till Death.



Another match for them would be much appreciated, as I need to figure out what precisely to do with Romeo.

[silentkaster]

Juliet: Not to bite your commentary, silentkaster

No worries, it doesn't matter to me. I just offer it based on what I would do, but if everyone designed teams like me (or if everyone designed teams like anyone in Arena) we'd have a lot of the same thing over and over. So it's nice that you change things and trust me, I'm not that great. See the team I tried to mimic Rouroni's with and you'll see what I mean! Ha ha.

Anyway, couple of matches for you guys that I recorded.

FFT Arena 1.39C- CT5Holy (Soundbite) vs. Anima Zero (Midnight Platoon)

FFT Arena 1.39C- Anima Zero (The Raging Monk) vs. Rouroni Elmdor (Order of steel basilisk)

[Elmdork]

Thanks again silentkaster!

spoiler: V. The raging monk

I must say, that's a pretty powerful team, anima. The bard acts like a ninja, going balls deep in the enemy team before releasing a 200+ DMG chiri. Even my shelled magic def tanks have a hard time dealing with that-really, nobody wants to take that. Ideally, you'd want to paralyze or petrify that bard, but the chemist/mediator do their jobs well. The monk is nasty too.

I don't feel as if I ever had steel basilisk quite right, but this was by far their worst performance. I will need to give that ninja some kind of offensive ability. Not acting is fine, not moving is unacceptable. Sabi was a samurai with the 1.38 muramasa, I had to find a way to fulfill his role... but I'm having second thoughts on the faith up idea. I have seen a 956 damage ice spell hit a muramasa faithed, fire oiled unit, which is nice... but kind of pointless considering 50% of the time I faith up a bard with 20 ma and somehow not manage to kill it. Samurai are my favourite casters as they aren't back line units and can offer high damage magic and tank pretty well, but this one's a back-liner and that ninja needs to be up front taking aggro. The samurai version was about one bad game away from getting a genji helm slapped onto him...this ninja is even worse.. keep an eye out for an update.

GG anima zero! I expect to see some great designs from you!

spoiler: Soundbite v. Midnight platoon

Damn, anima. Watching your teams in action is a treat. Luck did and always plays a part in the victory, but if you set things up right enough times, you're bound to get lucky. GG

spoiler: Shintroy

Hey, don't talk smack about mah oracles *Genuinely offended
Save for gangsters, these are all old designs from 1.38 and I am indeed a bit crazy for samurai and oracles. I will try to go outside my comfort zone and come up with new ideas for teams made in this patch. Gangsters are getting there with my first ever dancer (and chemist) submission.

[The Damned]

(Blegh. I thought I was caught up barring Silentkaster's newest post, but I appear to have missed White Knight Wiegraf's last two videos. Damn it. Add that to backlog.)

In the meanwhile, I at least finally got up my teams again before going for exercise, so there's that at least. I still need to update that Mime thing, which I should do immediately after this, lest I forget yet again:

spoiler: silentkaster (You Can't Fool a Fool) vs. Rouroni Elmdor (No Foolin')

Ugh. Too many Mimes.

Beyond that, I concur with Shintroy's comment on Youtube in that we should be thankful that FFT was probably the last Final Fantasy with relatively brisk summon animations (though at least the longer ones were justified in FFX). Otherwise this match would have easily extended to like 40-50 minutes with how many Mimic Summons there were given how slowly (but surely) silentkaster's team lost this otherwise one-sided "fight". They might have actually won or at least come far closer to putting up an actual struggle if the Geomancer weren't so focused on being a klepto that she didn't really do anything of value of the entire time, even when her team was desperately behind.

spoiler: Anima Zero (Seraphic Earth) vs. Joorum (The Police)

Gee. Throw the new guy the wolves already why don't you. Seraphic Earth is a bit of harsh team to go up against for anyone's first time give how currently overpowered Quake, Earth Slash and Stop are at max power, but I suppose at least Joorum knows that firsthand now.

spoiler: ShadowDragon15 (Fire Cross) vs. Shintroy (Quetzalcoatl)

Aw. I thought this was going to be a Fire-elemental team versus a Lightning-elemental team given that names here, even with the...elemental scarcity on ShadowDragon15's team. Alas, that was not to be, though it was arguably for the better given that how rare and interesting the Ninja build Shintroy is using on this team is. The same goes for the Lancer build ShadowDragon15 is using. Both are unorthodox, but rather good (though Lancer would probably be better if Lancer's still had access to Robes).

spoiler: Barren (Multi Absorb) vs. Reks (Till Death Do Us Part)

This was closer than I thought it would be given how literally hit-or-miss Death is, especially in that third round where the A.I. team that starts at the back of the church tends to lose due to splitting up, being more open to rooftop sniping and being unable to pass the choke-point on the "left" side. Said choke-point almost ended up costing Reks since his Bard randomly decided to not Odin at the most advantageous times possible, such as when Stop had hit two units, but that's the (currently) A.I. for you (unfortunately).

Speaking of Stop, there was an immense amount of status from Geomancy in this match as a whole, to the point that it arguably outstripped Quake--of all things--as the bigger threat, especially since it's not dependent upon MP. This especially since it was the lack of MP that ended up forestalling the third round even though it was ultimately Barren's team's downfall rather than Reks's team's downfall despite the fact that Reks's team is the one that ran out of MP first.

spoiler: Anima Zero (Frozen in Time) vs. Shintroy (Corruption)

I'll fully admit that I don't remember much of what happened here beyond the fact that Anima Zero won, partially against due to Stops that were way too accurate for how fast they were and partially due to horrifically damaging Jumps. Shrug.

The Haste 2 and Slow 2 tug-of-war was mostly of what made my eyes glaze over, though watching this at like 5:00 A.M. after being for quite a while didn't help either.

[Kurosabes]

I'll definitely make it more visible next time

It should look like this:

Video below (click spoiler)
Player 1 (Team name) vs Player 2 (Team name)

spoiler

Or I give both the external link and the youtube embeds. Sounds like a better idea

[Shintroy]

spoiler: CT5Holy vs Anima Zero

Mimic Status/Tome vs Balanced Team
Berserk automatically makes this a bad match up for Holy. Don't think this will be close.

Round 1 - Slaughtered. Holy had no chance to retaliate. So many Odin procs. This map may favor Odin. Reminds me of the FF6 dungeon where you find Odin.

Round 2 - A better round, but still this mime team was out matched.

GG. That's a really hard team to make shine.

spoiler: Rouroni vs Anima Zero

Status vs Heavy Offense
I've been looking forward to the Raging Monk after the update. Anima has a speed advantage and is more likely to have stage control since his units all attack from different ranges. I like the Shell2/Protect 2 combo, but I dont think it will help against this much offense.

Round 1 - Probably my favorite map you don't get to fight on in vanilla. Waiting for the day someone goes up on the rooftops with a bow and starts shooting. Most teams won't be able to attack.  Starts out even, but the wasted turns start piling up for Rouroni. Petrify alone isn't enough against most teams. 

Round 2 - Goes down the same way, but way more Bizen Boat. The berserk monk absolutely destroyed this team. Basically free damage since no one on Rouroni's team can stop him.

GG. ODing on oracles over here Rouroni.

Thanks for the matches silentkaster.