Arena battle videos and discussion

[Dokurider]

All Thieves here

[Reks]

Bards and Dancers!

Bards and Dancers!

[TrueLight]

You guys are way over your head, my Mime team is going to dominate every one of your teams!

In all seriousness, I'll probably make a Ninja team.

[Otabo]

13:50

FFT Arena Gauntlet - Eternal (Guests)

[Eternal]

Thanks for the video, Otabo! I'll watch it and comment on it a bit later!

[reinoe]

We have confirmation that Transparency DOES NOT cause a unit to lose it's evasion.  Confirmed in the Truelight vs Eternal match during the Ninja Duel.

[Otabo]

We have confirmation that Transparency DOES NOT cause a unit to lose it's evasion.  Confirmed in the Truelight vs Eternal match during the Ninja Duel.

spoiler

That ninja duel was pretty epic, actually.

[TrueLight]

spoiler

Ninja vs. Ninja combat! Eternal hung on for quite a while, but those two De-cap procs really turned the tide. GG Eternal. 

[formerdeathcorps]

What are you all talking about?  Transparent causes the defender to lose his evasion, not the attacker.

[The Damned]

(Oi vey. After seeing how "I Was Serious About Stealing Everything" just performed, I'm fine with Dokurider "stealing" the "all-Thief" team if we're having this many tournament...even if it's really obvious he's probably going to just make two Two Hand Air Knife Thieves.

I'll just call "dibs" on the all-Time Mage team, if not the all-Samurai one [too], partly because I said it'd probably suck before 139 and because I still can't think of an all-Wizard team.)

Okay...so now I'm really glad I didn't get around to recording any matches with Guests in it yet.

spoiler: Gauntlet - Eternal (Guests) - Heh

As said on Youtube, yes, Focus works. Not that I'm sure why the Squire using it that much though considering he wasn't anything aside from running around using Items. Looking at Eternal's team...there's literally no reason for him to have Focus. Perhaps Eternal meant Accumulate, because if so, then the Squire would be better and actually dangerous....

spoiler: vs. Reks (Mind Over Muscleheads)

The Squire wondering away from the Ninja is what lost Eternal this ultimately considering his Breaks could have turned thing around. Life Song obviating the Kiyomori attempts didn't help, especially since she wasn't really do anything else while the Bards with Chirijiraden and Zodiac ran wild. On that note, Eternal might have also won if his Knight had more MP or a way to get it back considering how much his Shuriken were hitting for. Having Nurse and Reraise on top of having so little MP already did not help that.

Revival in general seems to be a weakness for Eternal's new team, as in Eternal's team doesn't have good revival or any beyond the Squire, who's the front unit.

spoiler: vs. Dokurider (Chrono Storm)

This actually wasn't as hilariously one-sided as my match against Dokurider, which was surprising since Air Knife obviously needs to be weakened. Hitting for 956 due to Oil and, hell, 500+ even without it obviously shows that. I think it just got extended because Stop kept backfiring despite the Mediator having Short Charge.

spoiler: vs. Truelight (Little Devils)

Rather weird seeing all that Oil without something to hideously abuse it for once.

Anyway, this match is a reason why I currently loathe Hidden Knife, especially since its evasion "weakness" isn't working as it's supposed to. Additionally, this reminds me that I really don't like Battle Axe's Decapitation proc, if only because it being so high basically means you must be at full heal to survive a hit from it if the procs goes and somethings not even then. Decapitation's hideous damage might need to be lowered or avoidable or...something. Maybe "only" 50% damage?

Other than that, I'm not really feeling the Geomancer having Balance--weird how it's becoming "popular" lately--and the Chemist having both Nameless Dance & Last Dance is redundant since she's only going to ever use one or the other. Still, it's nice to see someone else (trying) to use Throwing Knife. Cursed thing.

spoiler: vs. Myself (I Was Serious About Stealing Everything)

...What the hell? Refuting away the first Cheer Song? ...Why? Oh well, she'll just lose it for...something else. Same with the other female Thief's superfluous White Magic and the subpar Faiths. I need those Raises at 100%, thank you.

Anyway, this match showed that Eternal's team has a big revival weakness seeing how my crappy team managed to win despite doing almost everything wrong due almost entirely to Death Sentence.

spoiler: vs. CT5Holy (Mono-Squire Midrange)

Oh, damn...Phoenix Blade Jumps hurt more than I thought they would. "Ironically", those powered-up Ultimas actually hurt less than I thought they would, maybe that's just because the last time someone really used Ultima was when it was ovepowered and doing like 200+ damage.

Not really much else to say about this match except that it was closer than I expected it would be and it's nice to see Basic Skill get for all its abilities, Yell included--I mean that last part generally.

I'll see if I can get something up before midnight.

Thankful EDIT: I forgot to say. Thanks, Otabo.

We have confirmation that Transparency DOES NOT cause a unit to lose it's evasion.  Confirmed in the Truelight vs Eternal match during the Ninja Duel.

We've actually had confirmation of this for a while. There was an example shown two or three weeks ago that caused me to comment on it in the Balance thread.

It's just that Truelight vs. Eternal's match was a really blatant example of it.

What are you all talking about?  Transparent causes the defender to lose his evasion, not the attacker.

While you were gone (and it's nice to see you back), FFMaster revealed in the Balance thread about a month ago that Hidden Knife is supposed to be "balanced" out by also making it so that defender/user's evasion is also voided. Or, at least, I'm pretty sure he did and everyone else seems to have gotten that impression.

[reinoe]

I think that's the cause of the confusion on my part. 

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=5431.msg181630#msg181628

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d Trifecta Series - formerdeathcorps

FFT Arena 1.38d - Otabo (Stolen Property) vs DomieV (Famous Knights)

[DomieV]

spoiler: me vs otabo

holy crap so much breaking and charming going on!. well every team has its weakness and this certainly was one of them. GG Otabo. You must have really thought of a perfect counter for my team considering you were the first one to showcase it lol. But I'm worried though because I should do well in the upcoming mono tournament.

[The Damned]

(Thanks, Barren.)

Well, that went as I expected on both parts more or less.

spoiler: Trifecta Series - The Unnameable formerdeathcorps

The Scholar easily seems like the weak point here, in part due to her having Worst compat. with the Samurai. If it Scholar wasn't one of the sources of Revival on the team given the whole MA Save thing, this wouldn't really matter as much, but as the Second Match showed, it really helps to screw the team over.

As for the Samurai, while Nameless Dance was somewhat useful if it hit Slow, pretty much everything else doesn't really benefit this team. When combined with the fact that the unit will prioritize Nameless Dance over doing intelligent things like just attacking in a lot of cases...yeah.

spoiler: vs. Wiz (S1)

Ironically, if the Thief hadn't had Echo Grass and only Antidote, that initial Berserk might have given formerdeathcorps an advantage, however brief, and possibly the win since that Samurai already hits rather. She would have easily killed the Mediator if the Thief had attacked her and then one of Wiz's Thief would had to revive her or attack the Thief instead of being able to whore Quickening.

Aside from that, it was weird to find out that Scholar didn't have Defense Ring. I didn't notice that until after she got Berserked way after formerdeathcorps has already lost.

spoiler: vs. Dol (Counter)

Yeah, I'm increasingly not sure Battle Axe's Decapitation proc should hit for 80% life, especially given how the AI is blind to reactions. That said, Dol's team is quite interesting and it's nice to see someone use Zombie without also using Raise 2 for once.

Not much else to say here except that I'm surprised one of formerdeathcorps's Thieves got up that often.

Oh, I almost forgot: I noticed that, in this instance, Concentrate seemed to be affected by Blind since one of the Paladins kept missing the Scholar towards the end of the match. So Concentrate is affected by Blind then? Because I could sworn FFMaster said it wasn't--even though it was "supposed to be"--and that it hasn't been affected by Blind in other matches.

spoiler: vs. Myself (Double Vision)

Ugh. This was embarrassing. For both of us really, but a lot more for me.

I honestly don't know why I bothered with this type of team when my luck is horrible and when the AI insists on being confounding. Neither of my Thieves even bothered trying to use Steal Heart, my male Thief didn't use Quickening despite having more MP than most Thieves that use Quickening & not doing anything for at least two turns, the female Geomancer just kept Dancing until she got hit by Bizen Boat and the sole reviver decided to run forward constantly but not use Raise more than once. Hurray.

Not that I can say that formerdeathcorps's team did much better, at least initially. The Thief's insisting on targeting the people that they had a much harder time of hitting than the dancing Geomancer who should have 0% evasion. Similarly, the Scholar just randomly decided not to attack a few times and the Samurai also insisted on whoring Nameless Dance, which only really worked because formerdeathcorps had much better luck with it than me. I figured I'd lost as soon as that double Slow on both Geomancers happened, especially since both Thieves were going for futile Knife stabs than using any of their abilities sans the female Thief decided to focus on Armor Break for...some reason.

Speaking of oddities, I maybe should watch the last bit of that when the Samurai started finally acting, but it seems like she somehow able to hit both my Thieves with 100% Draw Outs despite them both having a lot of M-EV. Maybe I just misread that.

Oh well. Oddly, despite it being such a piece of excrement, I actually know how--in theory--how to fix this team compared to all the other teams I currently have on "hiatus" still.

Good game, formerdeathcorps, even if it took your units WAY too long to kill such a crappy team.

spoiler: Otabo (Stolen Property) vs. DomieV (Famous Knights)

Yeah, I expected Otabo's team to win this. It seems a bit...uncharitable to say that Famous Knights is "weak" to equipment breaking though since pretty much every team is "weak" to it unless they have 2+ Monks, 2+ Mimes, Maintenance, Martial Arts or, in this case, Projectile Guard. Still, I suppose saying that DomieV's team is "especially vulnerable" is essentially the same thing, especially Balance is utterly tied to equipment the most out of all spells in ARENA.

That Otabo's team had advantages on both maps only helped, what with the Archer having Concentrate and Teleport & an Ice Bow--nice to see someone use both of the latter. Round 1 gave him an especial advantage, really, considering how high the castle entrance is. Can units even get through the gate to get up there otherwise?

Round 2 was a bit odd since Otabo's Archer quickly gave up the high height advantage despite being able to just perch up on that archway and probably hit most, if not all, of the field from there. The AI is so dumb at times.

Regardless, both times, the Weapon Break did in Arthur and it was more or less a "cakewalk" from there since the Mediator and Monk were more concerned with status than attacking, so no one "set off" lethal Balances.

One thing I noticed that bothered me, though, is that it seems like Mage Masher actually has a 100% chance of proc'ing Bizen Boat. That or Otabo just got really lucky with the 50% chance.

I'll try to get something up tonight since I'm not going anywhere today. I can only "hope" that I don't end up recording the same thing as Barren or Otabo by coincidence.

[Malroth]

Damn archer action skills are expensive.   Not a single one less than 200 and most cost twice that

[Otabo]

Probably worse than Time Mage skills.

[The Damned]

(Yes, Archer is the most expensive class JP-wise, with skills being 260 JP average.)

That said, Archer skills are so expensive because they can have a ton of range and break 4 out of 5 equipment slots permanently with skills that benefit from Concentrate & can't be blocked by anything but Maintenance. Getting your stuff broken from twice as far away, i.e. a range of 6, that you can probably move isn't terribly uncommon when it comes to Snipe. On top of that, the only skills to take MP are the arguably overpowered Hawk's Eye & Cover Fire.

Compare this to Time Mage, where the average skill costs about 210 and, outside of Comet, you still have to worry about Faith, MP, speed syncing up especially as the fastest mage class and not having nearly as a good an equipment choice as Archer. (I'd probably argue Archer has the one of the best, if not the best, equipment choice.)

So...yeah. It's expensive for good reason.

[formerdeathcorps]

I feel like you're comparing two incongruous things; Time Magic is mostly a support skillset, but Snipe is mostly an offensive one.  Snipe will do more damage, but Time Magic offers more versatility.  Damaging skillsets can be doubled up for a linear increase in power; support skillsets like Time Magic should not be duplicated on any team as the increase of team effectiveness from the second unit is minimal.  Thus, we cannot directly conclude that because snipe exists on more units in Arena than time magic, it is automatically better than time magic.
Damned, you're also confusing the Snipe and Time Magic skill commands with the Archer and Time Mage jobs.  The Time Mage job is awful (and probably could use 10 base SPD to make it easier to build a SC'd Haste2 user or staff spammer), but the time magic itself is not that inferior to snipe.

Faith is mostly irrelevant.  Ever since the changes to faith (+45% to base), any status spell other than odin usually has at least 50% hit outside of bad compats, high M-EV, or innocent.  Usually, it takes M-EV (or bad compat) and low faith to decrease the chance to less than 33%.
The only disadvantage for faith dependency is that a squad using haste/haste2 must then use either compats or faith of at least 50+ to ensure the hit, but the only thing that precludes on your team is ninjitsu spammers and 70/40 unit with DEFUP/cherche.
MP is a worthless consideration.  If your mage unit can't heal his own MP either passively or actively, then your mage wasn't built right.  Even spending one turn to reload MP is worth it as long as you aren't doing it every 2 or 3 turns.
You forgot to mention reflect, which impedes most status spells, but Time Magic is lucky to have Slow2 (arguably its strongest spell) pierce reflect.
Spell synchronization isn't a problem as long as you aren't using the Time Mage job (any 8 SPD job with the MP will do).

Now for the actual skillset comparison:
1) Status infliction favors Time Magic.  Stop is a stronger status than Don't Act and fewer people null it but has a lower hit chance than Arm Aim to compensate for its AoE.  Leg aim has about the same hit chance as Don't Move, but Don't Move has the AoE.  On top of this, Time Magic has slow and haste at mass AoE (which you simply cannot compare to the highly situational seal evil and execute).  TM >> Snipe
2) After some initial setup damage, balance is strong on a knight with no other ranged options.  Although its use is mostly restricted to mediators and armor users, its strength makes an equal to hawkeye (which sets up for a powerful attack).  TM = Snipe
3) The % HP attacks are fairly easy to absorb and while the HP breaks, despite their lower hit chance, are not blocked in the metagame and are permanent.  Snipe also has weapon and shield break, while two swords units with transparent get two chances to break, regardless of evasion.  TM << Snipe
4) Comet and sinkhole function as suppression attacks mostly meant to interfere and cut off enemies.  Cover fire's damage on a martial arts monk is on average stronger and at AoE.  TM < Snipe

[Barren]

Here's a preview video that I didn't get a chance to post on FFH, for some reason the link on the upload page didn't show up which was weird. So here it is

FFT Arena SCC A I Tournament Preview

[RavenOfRazgriz]

* RavenOfRazgriz looks at his two most recent Arena teams.

Gonna go out on a limb and say Time Magic is pretty legit in the right hands.