Arena battle videos and discussion

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d Showcase Series: The Damned

Sorry if the videos seems slow at times. This is recorded off a asus laptop with a intel(R) pentium(R) CPU B970 @ 2.30 GHz

I will try to find ways to record videos at the normally fast rate even with camtasia studio 8.0.2 and the epsxe 1.6 emulator.

Something better perhaps? Well enjoy!

[The Damned]

(Seriously never thought Chrome would be useful for me. Hunh. Only good news that came out of today aside from the video.)

First and foremost, thanks for the videos as always Barren. Don't worry so much about the slowdown unless it was something was extremely consistent. It seems more or less fine to me, especially since you're doing this on your own time.

I'll use spoilers for once and actually try to be concise:

spoiler: Match 1 - Blinded by the Light vs Dokurider (Wizard Warriors)

It would seem that Dokurider is my nemesis considering I think is the fifth time we've fought already. This was easily the closest match. I doubtless would have won if the Raise 2 was somehow prevented, but for some reason the Knights were concerned about Stigma Magic. This despite Concentrate supposedly still ignoring Blind and someone saying earlier that units supposedly weren't healing themselves of just Blind. Damn irony.

As I figured, though, the most dangerous unit on Dokurider's team is damn Two Swords Scholar. Ugh.

spoiler: Match 2 - Dance Water, Dance! vs Barren (Final Fantasy Mystic Quest)

Well, that was completely demoralizing. I expected this team to get beaten up by a physical team, but to get curb-stomped so thoroughly by another magic team, even with the expectation that Defense Ring on other mages would be a problem. I think I might have put too much stock in just one Nameless Dance. Hmmm....

Regardless, I continue to have horrible luck with HP Restore. Hurray at it almost never working for me!

spoiler: Match 3 - Fairy Tale Fairness vs Otabo (Girls That Will Piss You Off)

I honestly thought I'd lose this considering how close the units started and how that initial Charm was dispelled. I might have lost had the Dancer been successful in Charming the male Wizard off the bat. It's difficult to tell.

Regardless, this is easily my favorite match of the bunch, and not just because I won. It was nice to see some lesser used equipment and skills actually be useful, especially Refute. That skill really seems like it would see a hell of a lot more use considering it gets rid of almost everything, but nope.

spoiler: Match 4 - Give Me Some Space, Roxas! vs DarkxFatal (Frost Marchers)

The matches I won, this is the one that I was least surprised to win given everyone focused on Dusk and then Sniper to little available (as is supposed to case). This let Sniper Mark 2 run--well, fly--wild and shoot the hell out of everyone...even the empty space of a Jumper, who eventually Stopped him as I expected.

...Yeah, that Jumping thing with a Bow was odd; I've never seen that before either. I thought DarkxFatal's Archer didn't even have Jump really, but instead just had Lancer Secondary to "pay" for Dragon Spirit and Ignore Height.

spoiler: Match 5 - Gone With The Wind vs Eternal (Judgment)

Hunh, didn't expect to win this given the Ninja went down so damn easily and then proved useless the rest of the match, but my "paranoid" decision to give Mai Dear--"My Dear"--Bizen Boat won this for me. Well, the two 55% Arm Aims hitting off the bad helped, even if they didn't really do much.

It was nice to see Eternal's Judgment team finally (?) in action too. I've been waiting to see how the dead FFXII Judges stacked up and they did well enough.

spoiler: Match 6 - Plastic Knight vs Celdia (My Hat In The Ring)

Of the matches I lost, this was easily the most frustrating, especially since I realized I was going to lose off the bat between Focus supposedly not working and the Squire with Phoenix Blade being able to get off two or three Quickenings without consequence. It was especially frustrating between AI stupidity, getting crit at least twice when I would have otherwise lived and the fact that probably any other team I had, even "Dance Water, Dance!", would have likely won. Not that Celdia's team is crappy or anything. It's just all my other teams are way better at long distance fighting whereas Plastic Knight is not...good at anything apparently.

Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

Thanks again Barren. GGs everyone.

[Malroth]

There's nothing wrong with refute its just that adding in a command set for status removal and status adding is usually a lower priority than adding in status removal + revival that you'd get from Item/punchart/White magic/Basic skill

[The Damned]

(Yes, I am aware.)

This isn't really the thread to get into this, especially since I'd argue that Basic Skill isn't really competition given that Wish, well, sucks, especially with the change to Poison. It just seems that weird that Refute's not been used more considering that Talk Skill seems like it got more use when Talk Skill early on in ARENA, when Talk Skill was worse and didn't have Refute.

Just a musing is all.

[Dokurider]

Is it true that the Purple palette is glitched? If so, it should be removed from the palette listing in the master guide.

[The Damned]

(Yes, it's true.)

If I recall correctly, the actual problem wasn't with the Palette itself as applied to the character sprites, but rather the palette as applied to the crystal. That crystal didn't "exist" properly or something and thus caused the game to eventually crashed if the AI tried to pick it up, which the AI tends to do.

I vaguely remember this being a problem with the Yellow and Brown colors as well, but it's been a while, so I can't say I remember with certainty. FFMaster or something else can probably answer more definitively.

[FFMaster]

I've only found 05 crystals to be glitched. And it only sometimes happens.

[Malroth]

Ran a few matches for Otabo's Cloak and dagger team results below,  No video posted because I can't figure out how to get any capture software working

spoiler

Vs My team "Magic Doods"
5 wins 3 losses Otobo's favor
His physical attacks diddn't do much but he out sped me by a good margin, He has incredible Sandbag power and several times made a complete comeback from having 2 units dead and 1 petrified.  While the early match was quite even, once my bard ran out of MP I couldn't cause enough harm to keep up with his sandbag power so I lost momentum and eventually died to chain-zodiacs.

Vs "First strike"
5/0 My favor
First Strike has a Brutal initial Volley that will deal a minimum of 250 damage to any unit without bolt/water/earth absorbtion that's lacking auto-potion.  if this is enough to cause more than 1 of your units to stop to heal themselves then you're probably going to be in an effective 2 on 6 match very quickly.
Every time you lost a physical attacker on the first wave of Lore spam thanks to your high movement leaving you in the mimes physical attack range. This first wave also leaves your Mediator in critical so a second attacker falls back to heal her.   This leaves 1 character a free turn to use offense before the second wave of lores/wizanabus kills everyone.

Vs YUSODERP
1/1  but then i realised it was an out of date version so information gained is questionable.
It was fun seeing your Physical attack team shift gears effortlessly to being an effective status team once you were up against an opponent nearly immune from damage,  Don't Acts, Charms, and Deathsentances were the name of the game on both sides, and the winner was always in doubt,  The Dancers Ruthless wearing down of your speed however eventually caught up with you on the second match and eventually you weren't able to revive as fast as the immortal chemists were able to kill you.

Reccomendations.

Your Squire and Ninja are fairly solid units who do their Jobs well and are hard to take down with most attacks The inclusion of Secret fist on a physical unit was unusual but it did help you greatly in the matches you won. However both are very vunerable to enemy units with Concentration or guns. 

Your Thief Is an Incredible Healer and has brought your team back from multiple near defeats,  However once he goes down usually the rest of the team begins to fall apart.  Since he has incredible speed, Self MP restoration and Quickening I would reccomend swapping out ChronoTrigger for Auto-Potion and possibly drop his brave some so that he'll tank hits better.

Your Mediator Is an incredible source of damage but She's fragile and vunerable, She also easily  Gets conned into summoning moogle when she can be Zodiacing somebody.  I'd replace her Orihalcum with a P-Bag and Her Dracula Mantle with a Setiemnson so she's less vunerable to enemy casters 1 or 2 shotting her.

spoiler

[Otabo]

Ran a few matches for Otabo's Cloak and dagger team results below,  No video posted because I can't figure out how to get any capture software working

spoiler

Vs My team "Magic Doods"
5 wins 3 losses Otobo's favor
His physical attacks diddn't do much but he out sped me by a good margin, He has incredible Sandbag power and several times made a complete comeback from having 2 units dead and 1 petrified.  While the early match was quite even, once my bard ran out of MP I couldn't cause enough harm to keep up with his sandbag power so I lost momentum and eventually died to chain-zodiacs.

Vs "First strike"
5/0 My favor
First Strike has a Brutal initial Volley that will deal a minimum of 250 damage to any unit without bolt/water/earth absorbtion that's lacking auto-potion.  if this is enough to cause more than 1 of your units to stop to heal themselves then you're probably going to be in an effective 2 on 6 match very quickly.
Every time you lost a physical attacker on the first wave of Lore spam thanks to your high movement leaving you in the mimes physical attack range. This first wave also leaves your Mediator in critical so a second attacker falls back to heal her.   This leaves 1 character a free turn to use offense before the second wave of lores/wizanabus kills everyone.

Vs YUSODERP
1/1  but then i realised it was an out of date version so information gained is questionable.
It was fun seeing your Physical attack team shift gears effortlessly to being an effective status team once you were up against an opponent nearly immune from damage,  Don't Acts, Charms, and Deathsentances were the name of the game on both sides, and the winner was always in doubt,  The Dancers Ruthless wearing down of your speed however eventually caught up with you on the second match and eventually you weren't able to revive as fast as the immortal chemists were able to kill you.

Reccomendations.

Your Squire and Ninja are fairly solid units who do their Jobs well and are hard to take down with most attacks The inclusion of Secret fist on a physical unit was unusual but it did help you greatly in the matches you won. However both are very vunerable to enemy units with Concentration or guns. 

Your Thief Is an Incredible Healer and has brought your team back from multiple near defeats,  However once he goes down usually the rest of the team begins to fall apart.  Since he has incredible speed, Self MP restoration and Quickening I would reccomend swapping out ChronoTrigger for Auto-Potion and possibly drop his brave some so that he'll tank hits better.

Your Mediator Is an incredible source of damage but She's fragile and vunerable, She also easily  Gets conned into summoning moogle when she can be Zodiacing somebody.  I'd replace her Orihalcum with a P-Bag and Her Dracula Mantle with a Setiemnson so she's less vunerable to enemy casters 1 or 2 shotting her.

spoiler

Thanks, Malroth. I knew all along that guns and concentrate units were bad against this team; found that out from multiple tests against multiple teams before I introduced them. Even though this is a theme team (knives & mantles), and they're not really meant to be optimal in the first place, I'll see what I can do to improve them.

[Gaignun]

I've only found 05 crystals to be glitched. And it only sometimes happens.

Have you tried swapping palette numbers and checking whether the problem remains with 05?

[Barren]

Let me know if you guys like the new concept for FFT Arena

FFT Arena 1.38d Rivalries - CT5Holy vs Otabo

[Malroth]

Fun concept i liked it

[Eternal]

Great video as always, Barren. I liked the concept.

[Otabo]

A trifecta of matches for Barren. Lots of green and red.

FFT Arena 1.38d - Barren (Six Move)

[Dokurider]

spoiler

Oh god lol evade everywhere. Hero Archer all over the place. Also I needed actual damage. Overall didn't fail as hard as I thought it would. Bizen Missile? More like Kiyomori Missile.

[The Damned]

(Well, I certainly failed as hard as I expected, so I got you covered Dokurider.)

Sigh, of all times I don't have status removal or block Petrify on one of my units.... Ugh.

Anyway, thanks for the video, Otabo. You too as always Barren.

[Barren]

spoiler

Well that Six Move team could use some work and tweaking, but still can't complain about my geomancer :)

[Ahong]

I only can say Good Game Barren. And thank's to otabo too.
And, my bard support -_-, Short Charge. -_- why i put it in there. -_-.

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d Rivalries - DarkxFatal vs Malroth

[Malroth]

Comments on the last video

spoiler

Match 1.  Yeah i knew i was going to loose as soon as i saw how close their melee guys started to my scholars,  actualy ended up  a lot closer than i thought it was going to be and if i had 1  lucky frog proc or you had 1 less blade beam proc i actually would have one that.

Match 2.  Actually was surprised by the outcome,  i diddn't expect my best attacker to get 1shotted before he even got a turn,  and apparently Ice is the one element that my Healer doesn't negate or absorb.  In short lesson learned  Ice gun >>> faith casting

Match 3  Close match, if your super tank paladin had revival or your dancers had punch art for self MP restoration I might have lost that one.  your Wizanaibus dancers were hitting for a lot  and it was a full time job for my team of walls to keep themselves healed for as long as the Wiz spam kept up.

Match 4  Scholar had me worried at the beginning since I'm weak vs AOE but only single element and total lack of self MP restoration solved that problem after a few  witch hunts  and the rest of his units were just high damage single target attackers which my team renders moot.  Seal evil was an unusual pick but turned out being a good investment since its pretty much the only way to permanently stop my samurai.