Arena battle videos and discussion

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d - SoySauceMaster (Smiles and Frowns) vs feeldawrath (Team of Graces)

[Otabo]

spoiler

Wait, don't Cursed Ring users always revive on 0 count 100 CT?

Anyway, feeldawrath's team hung in there for quite a bit there, but Charm + lethal jumps from lancers eventually did his team in. Not a bad team for a first timer; can definetly be improved.

Some tips for feeldawrath though: IMO, Paladin could be much better; should've run a straight PA setup if you're gonna run Warpath, or at least a Kaiser Plate instead of Crystal Shield, as mentioned in the video. Bard and Summoner should have definetly had Short Charge. The gun on summoner was interesting, but I don't think it's worth losing Short Charge over. Also, Item puts her in close range which is bad; I'd say ditch Item, and run Fairy + Moogle, and a secondary like....Yin-Yang or Time Magic or Lore or something. Something to keep her away from enemy melee units. Ninja was decent; might as well give him 70 brave, though.

[The Damned]

(Currently not in Opera, so I'll wait to watch the videos.)

I'm just replying to answer Otabo's question about Cursed Ring: No, the Undead aren't guaranteed to arise the turn that they would otherwise Crystallize or turn into Treasure even if they're immune to both. That unit's turn comes up and the camera will go over to it as if it's going to get up since it can't Crystallize or turn into Treasure, but whether or not they actually get up is still determined by the 50/50 aspect of Undead; the 50% "Crystal or Treasure" just turns into "stay Dead" if you block both of them. So, theoretically, even if you let a match go on forever, an Undead unit that's immune to Crystallized and Treasure can still never get up. It just gets more and more likely as evidenced by statistics, but it's never guaranteed.

And, yes, this is one of the few things that I'm actually sure about since I extensively tested it a couple of years ago and seem to be the first person who brought it up on the board in general.

That said, it's nice to know that Cursed Ring is usable now that you don't have to worry about that 50% chance of losing the unit you can't revive happening.

[feeldawrath]

Thanks, Barren and Otabo, it was very much a 'rough draft' for me, and I'll keep your tips in mind.
Just be sure to watch for both a revision for ToG and a new team coming my way 

And about the crystal shield, you should have seen my face when I was watching the video, I finished the team last night, around 3 a.m. And I've been sick for weeks, so I don't remember putting it in there 

And the summoner with gun was something I wanted to try out because I hadn't seen it yet in any of Barren's videos, wanted to see how it would hold up.

Anyway, thanks guys, I'm loving this so far, be on the watch 


EDIT: In regards to the summoner/gun combo, I also thought that maybe the summoner wouldn't get anywhere close the the Melee units if it had decent range, but was outclassed by their speed and move anyway, so it didn't do much for me.

[Malroth]

well a spell gun would give a faster, longer ranged option that runs off a stat you're using for summons anyway (faith) but physical guns work off fury so unless you're  leaving your unit extremely vunerable to both physical and magical assaults by running 70/70  a mirthril gun won't do a lot of damage.  A better idea that works off the same concept is a Chemist or Mediator that uses summon magic as a secondary so you can use your support slot for equip shield, magic attack up, magic defense up Unyielding  or short charge.

[feeldawrath]

well a spell gun would give a faster, longer ranged option that runs off a stat you're using for summons anyway (faith) but physical guns work off fury so unless you're  leaving your unit extremely vunerable to both physical and magical assaults by running 70/70  a mirthril gun won't do a lot of damage.  A better idea that works off the same concept is a Chemist or Mediator that uses summon magic as a secondary so you can use your support slot for equip shield, magic attack up, magic defense up Unyielding  or short charge.

Never even thought of that, silly me.
I opted toward mythril gun because I was worried that I would get a team that would have absorb for whichever element I went with (thought of fire, definitely should have).

But the fury for mythril calculation didn't even cross my mind. Damn 

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d - feeldawrath (Team of Graces) vs TrueLight (Overdrive)

[TrueLight]

Thanks for the video, Barren 

spoiler

That crit by my Chemist...wow. GG feeldawrath. Once you take some of Barren's suggestion, your team will be a force to be reckon with.  :)

[feeldawrath]

Thanks from me too, Barren, especially for showing my team twice ^^

spoiler

And thanks TrueLight! Really GG to you too, I might update that team once more (minor things), but I'm gonna start focusing on my next team.
Oh, and those ninjas were kickass, dealt TONS of damage!

[The Damned]

(Hmmm...so that's why I couldn't response to Youtube a week ago. Stupid changes.)

Thanks as always Barren.

As for feeldawrath, aside from what Barren said....

spoiler: Take This Advice With Enough Salt to Cause a Coronary

...The first thing is that you somehow don't have (mass) MP restoration for the units that need MP despite having a Bard AND a Summoner on your team, who have access to Magic Song and Carbunkle respectively. Please fix this, especially since your Bard ended up being relatively useless for long spans despite having a sliver of MP left in two rounds after casting Holy multiple times. The Paladin happening to be near him is what kept him from being dead weight the second time around and arguably is what won you that match (or at least kept it from dragging). The Bard has more room for Magic Song than your Summoner does for Carbunkle.

He has room because Bards only really ever need one of Cheer Song, Battle Song, Magic Song, Nameless Song (if they ever use it) or Last Song. All the others become redundant since the AI will either ignore them or randomly switch focuses if the priorities are equal--Cheer, Battle & Magic have equal priority while Last trumps them all and Nameless tends to have far less unless it has the chance to add Haste (or, for some reason, Defending), which case it shoots to above the stats but still below Last. The same goes for Dancers and their respective, mirror Dances to the above Songs. This except they also have to worry about being somewhat dumb with both Wiznaibus and Witch Hunt as well since those focus on enemies whereas Life Song and Magic Song don't and thus are allowed to be more situational; that and they'll use Nameless Dance unlike Bards and Nameless Song. So the AI will actually be smart about Life Song and Magic Song most of the time; the AI isn't that horrible with Witch Hunt in the majority of instances either...unless you want it to be using another Dance from the beginning of the match, in which case....

When it comes to the Summoner, you're probably better off ditching Ifrit on her in general, especially if you're already using both Silf and Odin. Silf is already unavoidable & has excellent secondary effects despite its element being somewhat commonly absorbed due to Magic Ring--though less now with Water-absorbing Defense Ring. That and Odin & Ifrit are both absorbed by Black Costume, which is still somewhat common as well. That way you can just get away with a Prism Rod as your weapon if you want and something else, like Robe of Lords, as your body armor/Robe. You could even just get away with Golden Hairpin as your hat since, for now, it also gives +1 MA in addition to strengthening both Odin and Cyclops; the +1 MA part is finally dying next version. Then you could use a Wizard Rod or even a Faith Rod instead unless you really care about strengthening Silf too; similarly, if you really want to proc something from a rod, then Dragon Rod is still better than Flame/Fire Rod for your team.

If you really want to pick one of Ifrit, Shiva or Ramuh, then you're better off going with Ramuh or Shiva and probably best off with Shiva at present even with Santa Outfit absorbing both her and Silf. Ramuh is still quite acceptable given your Paladin already has no way to get around Ice Absorb, it's just that there's a decent amount of Mace of Zeus use at present, though a lot of those units don't absorb Silf.

Similarly, I'm guessing you have Crystal Armor on the Ninja just to stop Charm? If so that seems like the waste of a lot of JP when you're not wearing a Helmet since you just use N-Kai Armlet instead, which allow your Ninja to heal himself as well with Meiton. Granted, that it would end up losing quite a lot of evasion and pretty much obviate Abandon, which would "force" you to use Thief's Awareness instead if you wanted to keep up dodging at a much lesser rate. Therefore, you should probably use a Helm(et) over Flash Hat since you're not using any of the elemental tons. You're already using the JP on Equip Armor and Cross Helmet, even as it is now, has both better HP and MP than Flash Hat. Sure, it technically has "less" HP when it comes to not having Initial: Innocent when it comes to magic, but since the Ninja has 70 Brave/Fury and 40 Faith, he's not going to be taking much damage from spells anyway. It's better that he gets targeted for by spells, even if he wouldn't before, than the Summoner or Bard since it's a less than optimal use of the enemy's MP in most cases comparatively. The loss of Innocent also keeps him from being murdered by enemy Ninja with Fuuton, Suiton or Meiton since he doesn't even have those. None of that's mandatory, though.

Comparatively though, while not mandatory either I'd suggest at least ditching the Ninja Edge. It just seems kind of redundant with Kagesougi, even if it's nice to have a option should your MP runs out, which is what yours kept doing. Either go with another Ninja Knife (or the currently overpowered Hidden Knife), one of the Knives that work with Two Swords so that you can get even more evasion from Abandon or even a Flail. Flail-wise, Scorpion Tail works if you still don't want to use the elemental Ninjutsu since at least its proc is 200% more likely to happen than Ninja Edge and they have the same WP; also, Poison helped you a lot in the second round, with it pretty much winning you the round by killing the Time Mage half a dozen times. As such, it's a better redundancy to fall back on than Don't Move even if it doesn't benefit from the +1 PA outside of Kagesougi like Ninja Edge does.

There are other potential issues, but it's better to not change everything at once if possible, especially since you already have to rely on the still somewhat-unknown, capricious AI to do work for you.

All that said, for the most part your Paladin is fine and your team has only moderate at best flaws for a new person. Good job and such. [/don't read too much into this]

[reinoe]

spoiler: feeldawrath vs Truelight

Match one
Feeldawrath:  He had some synergy issues because of the things Barren already highlighted.  It was an uphill battle because of that. I noticed that in every instance that the summoner used haste, she would have been better off with Masamune.  It also would have saved MP, which the entire team was short on.

True Light: His sandbagging ability definitely came through.  Also to highlight the synergy, at 7:29 the Truelight's chemist unleashes an Angel Song while feeldawrath's Bard us unable to cast raise because he's out of MP.  I thought it was ironic.

Match Two
The early poison proc on the Time Mage won feeldawrath the match.  She was stuck in a 'rez loop but kept dying after the initial raise because of poison.  Because Truelight's team wasted time on her, it gave feeldawrath plenty of time to finish off the team.

Match Three
Truelight's Ninja's were absolute beasts.

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.38d Rivalries - Dokurider vs The Damned

[Dokurider]

Ah, I've been waiting for this one for a while now. Thanks in advance Barren.

spoiler: Dokurider vs The Damned

Match 1: I think it's finally spelled itself out that Counterflooding as an offensive just doesn't work. Even if I had full brave and faith, it'd still be a suboptimal strategy. Perhaps it's high time to retire the team. I'll remake them again for next season. Also, this was the one team of The Damned I was looking forward to crushing the most. Eh, I'll get 'em next time.

Match 2: I knew I was in serious trouble the moment Protagonist dinked that dancer for 130 or so. Without Protagonist, I'm left turtling. My Protagonist needs a make over, right down to changing his class. Wily Sage might need a secondary change as well; Fairy is undercutting his aggressiveness. Dance Water, Dance. Also, I can't remember if it was the first match or this match, but those Cover Fires were hitting hard.

Match 3: I didn't have high hopes for Villainous Bad Guys and I was this close to retiring them, but lo and behold, my previous adjustments paid off. Even against 80% charms, Bounty Hunter proved himself to be a new excellent addition to the team. A little lower on the damage side then I was hoping for. I think I need to up his Brave. Adding Stone Gun finally put that troublesome Chancellor in his proper place. Had I not given the Dark Knight Tactician's Blade, this could have been a troublesome map for him. Instead, he really shined. And Antagonist really put the Demis to work. Does Boosting Dark boost the success rate, the damage, or both aspects of Demi?

Match 4: Finally, my anti-Gun team goes up against a Gunner team. It became an all out Item Break war towards the end. Finally got to see Whale Whisker in action. Seeing Dismember deliver that 374 damage poke made me beam with pride, only to watch it get shattered on the next turn...But yeah, Whale Whisker, attached to a Samurai, becomes a beast of a weapon.

Match 5: Once again, I don't get to see my Poison/Dragon Rod combo in it's entirety. Poison Rod only connected once! Well, that Bio spam was pretty decent at least. Tough break on Water destroying your own Faith, Damned.

Match 6: And my Air Knife team finally sees the light, and what a showing. 744 damage might as well be the highest damage output Arena has seen this season just from melee. And it could have easily been 999 had it not been for that Magic Ring. I have to really call attention to the initial startup of Chronostorm. It masterfully undid the Damned's efforts, like he never even did anything at all. Welp, better get ready for that Air Knife nerf coming up.

Match 7: Let me just say I'll be happy when Speed + 1 finally becomes a movement, because I've just

Match 8: Those changes from the last time this team seen battle really helped out, particularly with switching Night Killer for Poison Bow. Bizen Missile proving herself to be the Elmdor. This map in particular was advantageous to her because she could ignore it's notorious chokepoints with ease. It might have been a different story if the Damned got that Blackmail off in the very beginning.

[The Damned]

(Ugh. My "advice" to feeldawrath was typo'd to hell, not that I suppose it matters since it's been thoroughly demonstrated yet again that I'm still utterly rubbish at making teams.)

First and foremost, thanks Barren. Also, GGs Dokurider--I should really say that on Youtube as well--even if those last couple of matches weren't really "games", but more or less slaughters.

Sigh. I'd been expecting that for a while as well. However, that managed to go even worse than I thought it would, which is saying something.

spoiler: Dokurider vs The Damned

Of course, going 2-6 isn't pleasant to begin with, but might be have been less demoralizing if I wasn't already feeling like crap for other reasons. Well, that and if those 6 losses hadn't happened in a row in increasingly one-sided match-ups. It doesn't exactly help that I feel like my only two wins were due to the terrain either.


First Match: I think I only won here because of the initial distance, especially since the lower Scholar proved how incredibly stupid she was to try to the monk over Thunder Flare herself to both heal and do damage despite the AI being able to obviously see that. I'm kinda surprised that even with Faith Rod and Mace of Zeus, Thunder Flare seemed to do little damage.

Second Match: I think also won here only because of the terrain bunching everyone on Dokurider's team up at the beginning. Even then, I probably still would have lost if that Petrify hadn't been interrupted by Charm though. I'm beginning to want to take back what I said to Malroth about Nameless Dance being useful as it is now, though that's probably just my crappy luck. It kinda helped against the Thief and to overkill the Oracle, but otherwise it was useless and rather pointless to have two Dancers in the first place.

Third Match: I lost this as soon as the Samurai decided to charge forward like an idiot and then get screwed over by Stigma Magic after hitting that much needed charm. Aside from that, I'm surprise I lasted that long between having lousy luck with the Knight and having half of my internal healing block; it seemed like Fuuton got blocked more heal-wise than freaking Arrows through Projectile Guard did.

Fourth Match: Well, I got completely fucked over by the terrain here since I might have had a decent chance of Sniper Mark 2 hitting the Chemist or the Priest (and killing them) if it wasn't for the damn houses in the way. I swear, I forgot that the Berserk makes the AI even dumber when it comes to distance weapons. There really has to be someway to fix Berserk to "teach" them that stop them from trying to shoot through obstacles. The unfairness of this is highlighted even more by the fact that Samurai somehow can shove Whale Whisker through a building. I'd bitch about this more considering I just think that map's shitty in general, but considering I said that I thought I won the first two matches through terrain, it would be hypocritical. Still rather annoying though. Oh well. The Ninja at least showed an improvement, even if Repel Knife is deceptively advertised in the Master Guide at present as Don't Act and Haste as was originally discussed, not either or.

Fifth Match: Sigh. Stupid "comedy" of errors and fucking Reraise and Death Sentence not negating each other or doing...something that doesn't make the AI even more of an idiot. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that Water would negate Faith. It would annoy me that this happened if didn't save the male Wizard's life for a bit. Still, I just had to miss that Revive.... Anyway, this match is proof that "Fairy Tale Fairness" falls apart if the Thieves aren't in front of them.

Sixth Match: Of the matches I lost, I feel the least bad about this despite it being a total curb-stomp. It was in part because it was a total curbstomp and so I didn't have to get aggravated by seeing the AI lose being doing completely stupid shit when it could have done something better and potentially ended up winning. Admittedly I am a bit annoyed that Dokurider's Nameless Dance worked a lot better than my own and that the Lancer was a useless cunt though. Still, it was nice to see someone use Air Knife--which I'm just now realizing is strongest weapon in terms of 2Handed-ness even before being able to Strengthened and benefiting from Oil--and Stop after lamenting that they weren't seeing use.

Seventh Match: This match, on the other hand, was utterly dumb and ire-inducing. Outside of seeing that Bards will indeed use Nameless Song now, but only do so when they should be using Life Song, it was just a drawn out, inevitable affair that didn't yield any interesting data. Even more frustrating since the inevitability aspect could have been avoided if the Paladin stopped Nursing her superficial flesh wounds and Luxord stopped whoring Slow 2, which is what I expected would happen; it's why I almost never use Slow or Haste in general and why I need to stop using Nurse since for some reason whenever I use it, the AI prefers to that and that only instead of attack as often as other Paladins with Nurse. Seriously, I could have won if Luxord decided to use Comet more since then he and the Paladin, dumb as she was, could have probably killed the obnoxiously speedy Thief since she has Consecration. It would just taken Luxord Cometing the Dancer and Gambler Pascal physically attacking the Chemist with Moonlight. It was pretty much over as soon as the Bard decided to be extra stupid though and get himself killed when he could have easily survived a gunshot if he had just Life Song'd. HP Restore going off multiple times against me, as tends to happen, didn't help matters. We'll see if my original plans for this backfire as horribly as I feared because I doubt they could be even worse than this....

Eighth and Final Match: Not much to say here except that I'm not sure if Mimic Daravon would have done much if it didn't hit the Monk and another character considering the Chemist. The Squire getting hit by Berserk, my own Monk being more interested in Singing than doing anything useful (which I wouldn't say if he had managed to turn the Geomancer Undead the single time he attacked) and the team as a whole generally doing crap damage (that seems to be a constant problem for me) made losing to hit-and-run Chirijiraden inevitable, especially when I didn't dodge any of those.

Welp. I remember why I took a break from ARENA earlier this year. Maybe I should do that again, at least on the team building side since I still suck at it and it's been a waste of my time thusly. It's also unnecessary frustration to see the AI fuck up so badly again and again and again, even when I manage to win, at a time when I really don't need the extra stress.

That said/blathered/whined/cried, I'll try and see if I can get things recorded on my laptop though, Barren, since I said I'd at least "try" to look into it and I finally got CamStudio to install on this damn thing about a week ago. Maybe I'll even check tonight, but again, I promise nothing.

Regardless, thanks again. I apologize if I seem to be somewhat ungrateful, but these last couple of weeks have made me even more acerbic in general at the moment. Sorry if it seems like I'm taking it out on guys (again).

[reinoe]

spoiler: Dokurider vs TheDamned

spoiler: Match 1

That map screwed over Dokurider in multiple ways.  His characters with revive would have had a hard time no matter what because of the uneven ground.  T.D. also benefitted from having his spammers get Haste.

spoiler: Match 2

I was really impressed when Dokurider was down 1 vs 4 and then used sandbagging to go back up to 4 v 4.  Of course when "Best Friend" the Paladin got turned into a frog on a 26% chance spell it was all over.  Unfortunately that map greatly favors teams with A.O.E. effects i.e. spellcasters.

spoiler: Match 3

The knight on Villainous Bad Guys was an absolute beast.  The mediator had a couple of timely Blackmails hit.  If I could attribute this victory to anything it would be V.B.G. ability to hit harder.  TheDamned's team wasn't able to take advantage of Wind Synergy, which was one of the reasons I gave up on a wind element team.

spoiler: Match 4

Well it's a gun team going up against an anti-gun team.  At least T.D. can  take comfort in the fact that Gun Neutralizers are the only team in the field like that.

spoiler: Match 5

In an ironic twist, the Wizard hitting himself with Water probably saved his life.  Charm may have been able to swing it for T.D. but it got broken too quickly.  Speaking of which, those thieves far outperformed their wizarding counterparts.

spoiler: Match 6

I know that the thief hitting for 400+ and 700+ was impressive, but let's not forget the Nameless Dance that put oil on those units.  For some reason Dokurider's team was dragging it out near the end.

spoiler: Match 7

I was really looking forward to this one since I love Mimes being combined with Singing and Dancing.  But I think we've all learned something about the uselessness of Nameless Dance.  I recall seeing the reflect hit.  And I just looked at how Doku wasn't even using any spellcasters.  The upside though is that Counter+Moonblade worked very well. 

I particularly enjoyed the 1-1 duel between the Oracle and the Paladin.
This match was really bad because Doku was able to win despite the fact that the thief was out of range and unable to do anything for most of the match. 

spoiler: Match 8

Teleporting Female Geomancers.  It's a trend that seems to have just started overnight.  How long will this new reign of terror last?

[Otabo]

FFT Arena 1.38d - Zalbagg (Dark Fire)

[Barren]

spoiler

Zalbaag vs reinoe

Round 1 - Definitely the wide open map did Zalbaag in due to mimic summons. silence proc in the beginning from nameless dance rocked that oracle in a hard place too.

Round 2 - reinoe went down quicker than I expected thanks to that wizard and samurai's AoE. I guess small maps are better for this kind of squad.

Round 3 - Silence and slow procs galore! But not a bad match overall.

Zalbaag vs Barren

Round 1 - I would have figured your archer can take full advantage with the high ground your team was near and have your samurai keep guarding your oracle while your wizard did the damage but my team thankfully soaked up whatever damage your wizard did just to make your units pay for coming in too close to my bard's black magic and my archer's hawk's eye.

Round 2 - A repeat pretty much of the last round except my units decide to DERP for a little bit. But yea it seems like your wizard could use more firepower than what she was able to do.

Zalbaag vs CT5Holy

Round 1 - Damn these last song's and spin/repeating fists did too much damage for you to come back from

Round 2 - I was actually surprised you got CT5 on this one, I guess it goes back to how you beat reinoe on a small map which what seems to be your team's strength.

Round 3 - Early charm proc got you in the beginning, your team did make a nice attempt for a comeback but another charm and petrify proc and missing those raise 2's got you in the end. Good job though

I think for a first time you didn't do that bad, just need to revamp your team a little and change some setups around and I think you'll do better than you did before. GG Zalbaag

[reinoe]

Nice job for your first outing Zalbaag.

spoiler

First match
That first match, my Mime and Bards were being dumb with how they were facing.  Still, thanks to timely Nameless Song it paid off, since that Oracle was helpless because of Silence.  Magic Song hit also.

Second Match,
I thought for sure the AOE of summon magic + Mime meant that I had a really good shot on a small map.  Unfortunately that Oracle put a stop to that pretty quickly with her Silence Song.  It was all downhill from there.

Third Match.
STATUS STATUS EVERYWHERE!!!  Triple Silence means I lose.  I call shenanigans.  BARDS SINGING WHILE SILENCED FOR ADDITIONAL SHENANIGANS.  After the triple panel Silence I knew it was over.  In an ironic twist I knew I would lose to silence but I didn't bother to run any counter because "nobody uses Silence".

gg Zalbaag

[Otabo]

spoiler

If anything, this shows that more full-time casters need to run silence protection. Granted silence isn't as common as, say, don't act, it can still be a huge problem if they run across teams that do use silence.

Anyways, my thoughts on the team. Team is all around decent. From what I see, the team severely lacks status removal and MP restoration. Granted the wizard practically has no MP problems and the archer + samurai don't need it period, the oracle definetly needs it because she seems to be a good sandbagger with those Raise 2's, but once's she's out of MP, she's basically boned, and the team starts falling apart. I would consider running either Move-MP Up or Absorb MP, Ether or Hi-Ether on Archer, or, at the very least, run Spell Absorb. Or you could try running Summon Magic on Wizard and running Carbunkle. Something to restore her MP when she runs out (or if against a team that's packing Bizen Boat). Archer I already mentioned in the video; Barbuta not really worth running Equip Armor for. I would say Crystal Helmet because quite a number of teams have some form of don't act on them somewhere, usually Paralyze (or Arm Aim/Blackmail/Kagesougi if it procs don't act, and there's even a few Silfs here and there), and you don't want him don't acted because he's one of your better damage dealers. And he's the only one on your team that can cure don't act. But that's just me. Samurai is fine basically; I'd try Koutetsu Knife instead of Kiyomori since he's already got MA Save and can keep himself alive decently well though.

Overall, not bad for your first team though. Your team did good overall. But as said before, switch some stuff around and they'll be better off. Also, just keep in mind that dark and fire are two of the more common elements found on other teams. Just my two cents. Welcome to Arena, by the way.

[Avalanche]

Hi,

those where great Matches. Pretty good first Team, it lacks a bit of consistency but that will come, im sure.

I got some nice ideas for new Teams myself so be prepared, if i find time i come up with them in the next days.