Arena battle videos and discussion

[Celdia]

spoiler: Vipers vs. Blood

"While formerdeathcorps' team focuses on sucking..."

The emphasis in that sentence was not lost on me. Also, I never get tired of watching Vie being Vie.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

spoiler: Big Assault v Above & Beyond

Big Assault earns its name in this match, damn.

spoiler: Clan Corvus v Chew on This

Third game was surprisingly split.  When you picked that claustrophobic clusterfuck I was expecting SUMMONSUMMONSUMMONHUURRRRRR, but Clan Corvus almost took and it went back and forth quite a bit.

spoiler: Heartbreakers v A Team

Shits just got pushed in there... wow.

spoiler: Requisition v Get on Status!

Stickstickstick.  Bit of luck on Charming on FDC's part, but I don't think it affecting things too severely since he just had the raw power to put down ALL THE THINGS.  A couple Charms probably aided in the win but the rest seem like they just helped the match skip some formalities.

spoiler: Playground Pioneers v Games

300 damage Jump, QQ.  Terrible luck on HP Restore that first game with these guys just not being as bulky as their Paladin counterparts kind of did them in.  I'm going to need to rethink the Playground Pioneers a bit.  The final solution may just surprise everyone, I think.  The fact they all have 420 HP is dumb luck though, actually.  That was honestly and 100% completely unintentional and I laughed my ass off when I saw it.

spoiler: Vipers Harem Ending v Blood

Vie does Vie-like things.  Shoot them walls, cap that Ninja, need to give the other team a chance to win to keep things interesting, after all.  I think Rellia just might have too much move for larger maps, but I'm not sure how much I should be concerned since she results in free KOs on smaller maps too.

spoiler: Weapons of Mass Destruction v Heroes

Buggy Platina Dagger fucks Heroes out of a win in that third game, I think.  If it had been working properly those procs would have denied that comeback, I'm sure.  Instead, Heroes' Thief was kind of pissing around uselessly for large sections of each fight.

[formerdeathcorps]

This settles it.  Last Song sucks unless you have a very FAST squad (preferably with a mime).  I'm remaking A Team and Blood to no longer have it.

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.35b Angelus (The Norm Team V2) vs CT5Holy (Delay Buster)

FFT Arena 1.35b Barren (Phantasy Star) vs Dol (Sticks)

FFT Arena 1.35b Celdia (Doublemint) vs Dol (Plagiarized)

FFT Arena 1.35b CT5Holy (Do Not Disturb) vs Vigilanti (Get On Status!)

FFT Arena 1.35b formerdeathcorps (Plantation) vs RavenOfRazgriz (Santa Christ's Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannons)

FFT Arena 1.35b formerdeathcorps (Rogue) vs FFMaster (Thank You For The New Shoes)

[Celdia]

spoiler: Doublemint vs. Plagarized

Fucking ow, man. GG. I want a rematch with my updated team.

spoiler: Phantasy Star vs. Sticks

WTF is with that damage?! O_O 715 FFS!

spoiler: Plantation vs. Santa Christs Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannons

ORBITAL CANNONS ALIGNED! FIRE!!! Round 1 was like watching the Death Star blast the fuck out of Alderaan. Maybe if the MA values weren't so damned high across the classes that wouldn't have been such an amazing festival of rape. Maybe.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

spoiler: The Norm Team v2 v Delay Buster

CT00!  That was nifty.  I'd been considering that but not had a good place to try spamming it.  Don't matter how fast you are if that CT bar's never allowed to fill.

spoiler: Phantasy Star v Sticks

That may as well have been Solo Wizard and 3 cannon fodder units, goddamn.  Sticks got their sticks shoved right up their asses rather painfully with some Fir3.

spoiler: Doublemint v Plagiarized

I think the most surprising thing was the fuckton of damage that Ninja on Celdia's team did to Dol's Time Mage.  I'm too lazy to check but I can only assume Best Compat was involved, there.

spoiler: Do Not Disturb v Get on Status!

CT5Holy had these fights really locked nice and early.  All that sandbagging just ensured his win.  Maybe if Vigilanti could've got a late-game Charm on the high-speed Mime or Thief, he might've had a small chance, but I honestly doubt it.  The only way he was winning that was to dig his heels in fast and early, and it just wasn't happening either game.

spoiler: Plantation v Santa Christs Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannons

I don't think I can say it any better than Celdia did, really.  Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannon, FIRE!

spoiler: Rogue v Thank You for the New Shoes

Gotta love dat damage on those Axes.  Those Raise 2s just ensured there was nothing to be done on FDC's part except be on the wrong end of RIP AND TEAR, though Greased Bolt seemed to get used adequately.

[CT5Holy]

spoiler: Me vs Angelus

Argh, does the AI not realize that Blood Sword will heal? Stupid Squire spamming Chakra... =/
I must say though, Chaos Blade Thief and 2H Prismatic Rod Samurai was very cool to see.

Well, one glaringly obvious change has been made for Delay Buster...

spoiler: fdc vs Raven

Yikes.

spoiler: fdc vs FFM

It was funny that the Paladins more or less stood back for round 1. 10 Speed TM with Short Charge Holy is quite strong...

spoiler: Celdia vs Dol

A Paladin that actually didn't do anything! And the ending was funny, too - the Wizard sneaking in a Bolt right before the Petrify

spoiler: Barren vs Dol

And a Lancer that did very close to nothing! XD
Fun near-max damage crit, but one revive missing in each round hurts.

Whoa, I actually watched all the vids in this batch. Rather, I will once I watch me vs Vigilanti later.

spoiler: Me vs Vigilanti

Vigilanti's knight did nothing but absorb damage round 1 - no charms landed, and basically all my hits went through abandon. Kinda similar to round 2, actually. Charming the Mime or Bard is most problematic (although the Bard is slow) imo. Monk doesn't really care due to Stigma Magic, plus he's fast enough that the wasted turn usually isn't too big of a deal.
I like how the Bard just gets so few turns cause the only speed points he's getting are from the initial Cheer Songs. And if he manages to break 11 speed, he can't even use Cheer Song anymore cause he'll interrupt himself.

[Angelus]

spoiler: Me vs CT5Holy

That was a close one mate...your delay buster team was really something. GG CT

[doriantoki]

Arena 1.35b doriantoki (Vampire Hunters Extraordinare) vs FFMaster (Thank you for the new Shoes)

Testing it out.  Using 1.35b, modified Vampire Hunters (hasn't been updated in the team thread ... yet).  I can also add commentary, but I wanted to test this out first.  Is the quality "good enough"?  I do appreciate a good quality FFT Arena vid, and can understand if the group doesn't feel this is up to the standard.  This is as good as I could get camtasia to run on my system.

Special music selection just for FFMaster and New Shoes team

[Celdia]

Quality is fine. Music is hilarious considering the team. Commentary would be great and if you do add it you'll have to turn down the music just a bit, of course. Its good to showcase the teams before the fight just so people can see who's got what so you might want to note adding that bit on at the start (when I did videos for CCP:AI I just recorded that as a separate piece and tacked it on before I finished editing the video.)

[Wiz]

Picture Quality's good. Just the constant slowdown turned me off XP

If that were fixed, you probably could reduce the time by 25-50%, so in this case, the vid could've been 6-9 min long as opposed to 12 had this been remedied. Your computer's not the greatest and/or your settings for your emulator aren't up to par, but I'll let you figure that out

[FFMaster]

Can you post the specs for your computer? I'm not sure if it's your computer, lack of hard drive space or bad settings, but the video is very jerky, likely from low recording FPS.

Also, for a screen recorder, I would suggest dxtory. It eats up very little resources compared to camtasia.

If the worst happens, you can just reduce the screen record resolution I guess, but once again, I would say minimum 640x480.

[doriantoki]

Just tried the dxtory trial.  Works much, much better than camtasia.  There is still some slowdown when spell animations go off in epsxe, however.  It's a little annoying when you're used to the program going at wicked speeds, but it's not unbearable.  Computer specs,

AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-Core Processor 2.1 GHz
4 GB RAM
280 gig HD, of which there is 170 remaining

I am running epsxe 1.7 with Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.6
Everything is set to 0
640 x 480 res
Auto-detect FPS at 60 (well regardless, I switch FPS limiting off when running the emulator)
Screen Filtering is checked

Sound is Eternal SPU Plugin 1.41

Anything else ... ?

[FFMaster]

Unfortunately, that is really the most you can do. Set recording to 15 FPS and minimum quality. Since it's FFT, you will barely notice it. Hardware is holding you back(specifically, the processor), and there isn't much to do other than upgrade or overclock, and neither is likely feasible unless you suddenly have some money or know enough about computers. A bit of slowdown isn't terrible though.

[Barren]

FFT Arena 1.36 FFMaster (Thank You For The New Shoes) vs Celdia (Doublemint)

FFT Arena 1.36 Barren (Big Assault) vs CT5Holy (Axe Funsies)

FFT Arena 1.36 RavenOfRazgriz (Playground Pioneers) vs CT5Holy (Stand Still)

FFT Arena 1.36 True Light (Spiral of Dreams) vs DomieV (Vengeance)

FFT Arena 1.36 Vigilanti (I Kin Hurt You!) vs RavenOfRazgriz (Vipers Harem Ending)

FFT Arena 1.36 Angelus (The Norm Team V2) vs True Light (Above & Beyond)

FFT Arena 1.36 Barren (Deep Dungeon) vs DomieV (Song and Dance and Punch)

FFT Arena 1.36 Barren (Phantasy Star) vs True Light (Chew On This)

FFT Arena 1.36 CT5Holy (Delay Buster) vs RavenOfRazgriz (Santa Christ's Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannons)

FFT Arena 1.36 RavenOfRazgriz (Y U SO DERP) vs CT5Holy (Do Not Disturb)

[Celdia]

spoiler: New Shoes vs. Doublemint

When I saw the match up I thought for certain I was going to get curbstomped. Those battles were completely insane. Sinkhole is the most annoying thing in the world. I want to see New Shoes go up against Santa Christ. XD   GG, FFM. Gave me a run for my money there.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

spoiler: Thank You for the New Shoes v Doublemint

Hilarious side-effect to the Innocent constant... I honestly like it, though.  I was expecting Celdia to get floored, but her range/area just didn't let FFMaster get in before it was too late despite the Germinas Boots.

spoiler: Big Assault v Axe Funsies

Hey look, Geomancers don't suck anymore!  It looks like Jumping Lancers are also trending upward now that you can choose to run them with 8 Speed.  Can't say I blame anyone, they're pretty nice.

spoiler: Playground Pioneers v Standstill

I saw that first map and expected to get owned.  Thank god I switched back to something more reminiscent of my original setup, all that evasion and Dragon Spirit saved my ass big time while trying to force my units through that 1-block chokepoint.  Second game was hilarious, all that marshland made chasing his Archers hell by reducing all my units' Move to 1 and we actually got all the way up to the top of the map.

spoiler: I Kin Hurt You! v Vipers Harem Ending

Game 1: Map Geometry blocking Phoenix Down on Rellia for the loss (literally).
Game 2: Fire 2!  Triple Kill!
Game 3: Double Short Charge on poor May... and Lyra constantly trying to get her up instead of Rellia. 

spoiler: Delay Buster v Santa Christs Religious Orbital Bombardment Cannons

CT 00 can be painful when done right... but thankfully his DPS wasn't high enough to capitalize.  This time the Flare and Petrify casts put in most of the work.  Being able to switch freely between single-target and Area skills with this team is definitely showing its usefulness so far.

spoiler: Y U SO DERP v Do Not Disturb

...How did I fucking win that first game?  The RNG told me to piss off and my Chemists got split up.  Small Maps <3.  Dancers <3.  This is why I think the map size I detest the most is probably medium.  Those Dancers are the perfect bait on Small Maps and the Dances get to haze all the things on Large Maps.  Medium Maps are just kind of eh but this team's hardy enough to last usually.

Gonna watch the last few in a bit.  Also just updated my teams to 1.36 and added Win/Loss Ratios for the curious and such.

[FFMaster]

There are a few cosmetic issues (spell names and effects) in 136. I can release a quickfix if people want.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

There are a few cosmetic issues (spell names and effects) in 136. I can release a quickfix if people want.

I would.  Since it's non-essential, better to release a quickfix done and have it done for when you go to do 1.37 then to get bogged down doing actual balance changes and forget to fix the cosmetics a second time, personally.

[doriantoki]

This is just an oddity I've noticed from testing teams, but I have my Oracle set up with Sleep, but during battle, she uses and has access to Dispel Magic.  Is that an error in the excel sheet?