FFT Arena: Discussion Thread (12/29/09)

[boomkick]

Hamedo/Counter with two-handed/sworded Blood Sword=destroys melee.

Hamedo/Counter with two-sword Long Sword/Blood Sword=destroys melee and spears. Wait does the long sword attack at only two range or is it like a spear?

Zodiac is waaay too strong, one cast could destroy an entire team.

[Shade]

melee means also gun shots, arrow shots and another skills

zodiac is imposisble to get with short charge. only thing that you can reduce is mp cost and maybe MA UP. CT 10 is long time to wait.

I think meteor is ALOT better since you can get it with short charge.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Neither can be obtained with Short Charge.

[AeroGP]

When you say 250jp to unlock a job, is that a straight-to-job cost? Or do we just substitute 250 for each job cost in the original prerequisites?

[logus]

straight-to-job.

example: I wanna have a thief using 2 main gauches, break skills and move-HP Up. I'll have to spend:
250 to open thief.
250 to open monk, +270 to open move-hp up
250 to open ninja, +900 for two swords.
250 to open knight, + whatever for break skills.

that's 2170 + whatever for break skills on knight.

Also, ffs, read what other people have already posted so you don't make redundant posts (looks at blood sword whining). Yes, pretty much everything above 2000 jp is unusable/too situational. hamedo/counter ideas are not exactly as strong without golem and balanced damage(ranged weapons being almost as good as melee weapons). No one even tried throw yet (pretty sure I should), so counter/hamedo is not viable as a strategy yet.

[Zaen]

Actually... I tried throw, but it didn't work out too well.

[Shade]

50 jp less and you could get meteor and short charge.


Edit:

I made my own team based on one idea for the hell of it.

spoiler

Name:Ovelia
Gender:female
Zodiac:capricorn
Br:50
Fa:40
Primary Class:Summoner
Primary abilities known:holy, raise 2
Secondary:white magic
Second abilities known:moogle, fairy, lich
Reaction:restore mp
Support:half mp
Movement:
~~~
Right Hand:faith rod
Left Hand:
Head:golden hairpin
Body:chameleon robe
Accessory:108 gems

~~~~


Name:Alma
Gender:female
Zodiac:capricorn
Br:50
Fa:40
Primary Class:Summoner
Primary abilities known:holy, raise 2
Secondary:white magic
Second abilities known:moogle, fairy, lich
Reaction:restore mp
Support:half mp
Movement:
~~~
Right Hand:faith rod
Left Hand:
Head:golden hairpin
Body:chameleon robe
Accessory:108 gems

~~~~


Name:Balbanes
Gender:male
Zodiac:cancer
Br:70
Fa:50
Primary Class:knight
Primary abilities known:speed ruin, magic ruin, weapon break
Secondary:item
Second abilities known:Hi-ether, remedy, pd
Reaction:counter
Support:attack up
Movement:any ground
~~~
Right Hand:excalibur
Left Hand:
Head:grand helm
Body:crystal mail
Accessory:vanish mantle


~~~~


Name:Orlandu
Gender:male
Zodiac:cancer
Br:70
Fa:50
Primary Class:knight
Primary abilities known:speed ruin, magic ruin, weapon break
Secondary:item
Second abilities known:Hi-ether, remedy, pd
Reaction:counter
Support:attack up
Movement:any ground
~~~
Right Hand:excalibur
Left Hand:
Head:grand helm
Body:crystal mail
Accessory:vanish mantle


~~~~

[logus]

what's the point of making a team using stuff that will obviously be changed *looks at vanish mantle*.

@zaen: yea, but in our fight, I don't remember seeing you use throw. You also gotta take in consideration that I was using Draw Out (broken) and  bahamut with short charge/faith rod/setiemson(broken). Draw Out already has a proposed solution, setiemson will probably gtfo, and I don't think anyone found a good idea for bahamut (faith rod stays, maybe a drawback for it).

[Zaen]

It was on the lancer. He died too fast.

[Xifanie]

As you already ignore, Arena will use a group of 8 colors for generic human palettes...
But what about monsters? I know it can create confusion for some monsters:
Black Chocobo
Red Chocobo
Black Goblin
Dark Behemoth
Blue Dragon
Red Dragon
etc.

But I think it would be fun to see monsters of other colors too. However I'm still uncertain about this whole matter.

[MiKeMiTchi]

For the Chocobos,
maybe we could just change the eye and leg color for them.
For example, A yellow chocobo having black eyes and legs, then having blue eyes and legs.. etc..
How's that? It'll look strange but I think it's worth a try..

For others as well, we could just change their secondary colors..
Hmm.. I don't really know..

[mav]

8 palettes per monster, as opposed to per group? That could be very interesting, though a challenge to pull off.

[The Damned]

8 different pallettes for monsters seem as though it could be interesting, but since it's ultimately fluff (and fluff that would take some time AND potentially be confusing), it's a staggeringly low priority IMO.

"We" should focus on trying to make so that people will potentially use more than just the types of monsters that absorb Fire or have Ulmaguest or have Nose Bracelet. I mean, besides those, the only ones that currently seem usable are Blue Dragons and, though none of these got used in S3, Black Goblins, Black Chocobos and, maybe, Ghosts with their Blade Grasp.

So...are there any plans on about how do this? Monsters will always have less abilities than any human, so it seems like one would have to focus on stuff like innates, immunities and elemental affinities (or lack thereof, since I'm assuming quite a lot of the reason that some monsters didn't get used at all was because of weakness to all the [Ice] magic that was flying around).

Otherwise, good job in spearheading this PX and Zodiac.

[Skip Sandwich]

what if we just made all monsters like byblos or worker 8? That too would also solve the palette issue, since instead of 'Red Dragon' or 'Blue Dragon' it'd just be 'Dragon', though this would probably require some re-imagining of the dragon monsters, since their abilities are so integrated with the elemental variant traits. , All the other monsters lack such large variance between tiers, excepting maybe the skeleton monsters and the various -soul attacks.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Okay, time to take this slowly. One part at a time. So let's start off with daggers. Discuss what you want changed here and what you like.

I'd say we have to lower their WP a little bit since everything else got slashed more, while these got buff. I'd also like to change one of them into a Glacial Blade: Ice Element, Chance to add slow.

Daggers
Daggers lose +1 SP
Dagger is now 11 PA and +1 SP and 0% W-EV and Non-Two Swords able
Mythril Knife is now Poison Knife: 10 WP, 15% W-EV, Chance to poison on hit
Blind Knife is now 10 WP and 15% W-EV. On hit chance to cause Blind
Mage Masher is now 6 WP, 15% W-EV, 25% to cast Magic Ruin on hit
Platina Dagger is now Azoth Blade: 2 WP, +2 MA, 15% W-EV, 25% Chance to cast on hit a spell that deals ((MA+6)/2*MA)
Main Gauche is 9 WP and 35% W-EV
Orichalcum is now 8 WP, 20% W-EV, On hit cancels Protect/Shell
Assassin Dagger is 7 WP and 25% W-EV, Chance to cause Death Sentence on hit
Air Knives are 8 WP and 25%, W-EV Wind Element
Zorlin Shape are 9 WP and 15% W-EV, Chance to hit causes Sleep

[The Damned]

I'm not sure if everything need a WP slash across the board. In fact, the only Knife that I think "needs" a WP reduction is Dagger since the user can still equip Shields and Mantles and Abandon to have godly evade. Maybe Mythril Knife, Blind Knife, Main Gauche and maybe Zorlin Shape stand to lose a WP point. Mage Masher could see a WP point increase maybe.

As for your Glacial Blade, you can just use Orichalcum's spot, since as someone said earlier, the computer has no way of taking advantage of the "cancels Protect and Shell" on hit. (Although, admittedly, I'm not sure if the computer takes advantage of most weapon procs.)

That or Assassin Dagger since the computer acts stupid with regards to Death Sentence, though we've at least seen that with S3 that Death Sentence can be built around.

Regardless, Skip Sandwich's proposal for monsters sounds interesting.

[logus]

well, daggers should serve mainly as a status proc source.

@Damned: yea I said that, but you misunderstood it a bit. The problem is not that the ai can't take advantage of procs (it can and does so quite often), but that the ai is not smart to use protect/shell in the first place, and you can't break something like "Always:shell", making the orichalcum we have now just useless.
Also, which class can equip a dagger and a shield? Squire only iirc, and I don't see it being usable any time soon.

Now, some ideas:
I completely agree with the orichalcum = glacial blade.

Assassin Dagger should be 0%EV, 0 wp if possible (would it be possible to do 0 damage so you can combo sleep +ds? since charm +ds is useless now), else 1WP and regardless of the case, add proc "Dead" (yes, 25% chance to add DS and another 25% to add dead, if possible). It'd give a bit more consideration for status protection.

Dagger is dumb, I don't see any real reason  to use it over the ninja knife with 12 WP except for the +1 speed (and when you take in account that such speed point is counting half towards damage...eeh). Sure, +1 speed is quite good, but women still got bags and you probably want harder hitting males.

I still disagree on main gauche having 35% EV. Make it 30% or lower wp, imo.

still have to see azoth/platina being used...

and this pretty much summarizes the rest:

Maybe Mythril Knife, Blind Knife, Main Gauche and maybe Zorlin Shape stand to lose a WP point. Mage Masher could see a WP point increase maybe.

the only disagreement is that "maybe". Zorlin shape NEEDS to lose wp. Sleep is very powerful imo, much better than other status in AI fights (only because charm is nerfed though).

[Zaen]

Well, the reason we're not seeing use of things is because of the narrow range of user play styles. I don't think 8 people is enough to gauge what will be used or not. Maybe if there's a larger scale of testing, say 16 different people, or whatever works, there doesn't even need to be a bracket.

Once large scale testing is done, we'll know what to change. Also, it's like getting used to a new game. 1 match isn't enough to get used to everything. I mean, there's no storymode for this, so it might take some time to adapt.

[logus]

@zaen: a lotta ideas were given after the first tourney, let them all be changed before we make another one. And this, taking it slow, seems good, since px is probably just as busy as anyone else here. This gives us quite enough time plan equipments decently and allows more input. So please, give your input on the daggers, use your imagination of what could be abused and what just seems to have no use, criticise it and everyone thinks a solution out.

[The Damned]

Also, which class can equip a dagger and a shield? Squire only iirc, and I don't see it being usable any time soon.

For the record, I had meant Equip Shield since it's pretty decent with Abandon.

Otherwise, I agree that Zorlin Shape needs to lose WP definitely. Still not sure about the others. Thank you for correcting me about the Orichalum thing though.