Arena battle videos and discussion

Otabo · January 10, 2015, 09:21:13 am

Quote from: Shintroy on January 10, 2015, 05:06:33 am
I'll try Lancer out then. Maybe make a team themed around mediocrity. Ended up liking what other classes could do after giving them a chance. I don't see why I can't give Lancer a shot. I don't know about female Lancer though..

Thanks for the help. I'll definitely start using Lancer. Maybe start with a team themed around mediocrity split between squire and lancer. Does haste also quicken jumps though? No idea if jump CT is based off base SP or not.
-----
Pretty sick Otabo. Makes it seem like a Masamune bot Lancer would be great in a 2v1 scenario. 10-11 speed and haste definitely has something going on.

Yeah, you can easily check when jump is going to land by using that formula. The average lancer (assuming he/she has a spear equipped that gives at least +1 speed) jump is about 5 or 6 CT which is the same as, say, a non-Short Charged Frog or Death spell. It's usually a good idea to give speed item(s) to lancers if you're planning on running Jump with one, or even if not, like Malroth mentioned, they're good itembots as well when they're set up with both speed equipment & anti-status equipment. At the end of the day though, it all depends on the team(s) and the AI on how effective the lancer's going to be in a match.

Hopefully, when spears get reworked, and whether or not they get robes back remains to be seen, but if so, then they'll be even better units.

Shintroy · January 10, 2015, 09:41:56 am

I didn't read your post until after I made the Jump team Barren, but I did include everything needed to make jump super effective. Stop, Slow, Don't Move, Sleep, and 10-12 SP units all around. Wasn't aware jump didn't include elemental damage of the weapon. Pretty odd seeing as how there are only two 2 Hand-able spears as is. I don't think elemental jumps would be OP, but that's coming from a guy who never used jump (successfully) anyway.

High hopes for the team. Sorry to use this thread for questions. There isn't a team discussion or general non video arena question and discussion thread.
-------
I don't know, Lancer with innate equip robe with the current spears seems OP. They'd have low MA, but we're looking at some fast support units with 10-12 speed easily. I'm all for it though. Lancer doesn't seem to fit on a high end team.

Has jump ever had weapon element damage in arena, or vanilla? Never actually thought about it until reading about holy lance being used.
-

PA, SP, and Mime Buffing vs Balanced team.
Betting on mime because Anima has a couple of awkwardly built units on his team.

Round 1 - Really came down to silentkaster being able to penetrate Anima's defense or not. The mime vs bard side match was the highlight of the match.

Round 2 - After that spin fist it was pretty much over for Anima. 6 Range gun on a mediator/whitemage doesn't work well for mediator because she's only likely to shoot and cast because she'll rarely be in range to use talk skill. Orichalcuk, or as TrueLight said, C Bag would be a better option if you want talk skills.

Round 3 - Destruction only because the mine landed everything in this round.

GG. I really like the changes you made to your team silentkaster. PA and SP. Pretty good. Still would prefer a female mime though, 59% blackmails would look so much better than 57%. Besides on a large and maybe mid map, you're likely to get off 1-2 PA anyway. It is just 2% though lol.

Anima check out the description of the vid when you get the chance. Lots of good points made there.

Bard would definitely benefit from orichalcum and/or Red Shoes
Mediator needs to lose the gun for either a bag or Orichalcum. 4 Move casters shut down 3 move melee units sometimes. Plus she would go for talk skills. I liked her being at max range for raise and cure though.

Chemist could definitely be more tanky.with defense up/unyielding.

Monk could definitely use Save the Queen since he has 3 Move. You want Warpath and Salty Rage so you're stuck with the 3 move though. If he had the suoport from the mediator he would've been showcased better.

Only a little more tweaking and you're golden..

...I wonder how a 22 PA, 2Sword ,Move+1, Kagesougi Dancer would work...?

Otabo · January 10, 2015, 12:19:06 pm

Quote from: Shintroy on January 10, 2015, 09:41:56 am
Has jump ever had weapon element damage in arena, or vanilla? Never actually thought about it until reading about holy lance being used.

Jump damage has always been non-elemental, even in vanilla. So having an elemental weapon on a lancer doesn't matter if the lancer is designed for jumping because the element won't be included for damage.

TrueLight · January 10, 2015, 02:48:26 pm

FFT Arena 1.39C - Silentkaster (CT5Holy's Favorite) vs. Anima Zero (The Raging Monk)

Anima Zero · January 10, 2015, 07:03:16 pm

Many thanks for the video TrueLight!

Surprisingly long video with some good back and forth going on there...even if I did want to smack my Bard for attempting a Chiri with my Monk right in front instead of a Kotetsu in round 3. Wonder if the AI is thinking it can do more damage with Chiri than Kotetsu at times.

Regardless, good match silentkaster! Loved every minute of it.

TrueLight · January 11, 2015, 06:15:30 am

FFT Arena 1.39C - CT5Holy (Delay Buster) vs. Shintroy (The F Word)

Shintroy · January 11, 2015, 07:29:23 am

What song is that starting at 16:50ish? Thanks for the early AM (EST) vid. I can't stop waking up at 3am. Spiders love 3am. Such is the life of a floor sleeper..
Do you prefer posts here or YouTube?

Jump vs "Fast" physical mime team
Wow. That is one annoying looking Mime team. Annoyingly good. Looks like SP is useless once they get dances going and start double turning teams. Really well built. My squires are the key to taking this one. Never bet against yourself as I always say.

Round 1 - Love it when teams split up into complete 2v2 fight. Item bot and undead time mage proved too much for Holy's offense units. On the other side Death sentence bests tanky units. Charge time and Jump won this round.

Round 2 - Showcase match of Holy's team strengths and my weaknesses. All I could think of was stop.jpg and why.jpg because the Lancers just did not want to participate in the match.

Round 3 - Great round thst could've gone either way. About half way into the round where my time mage keeps both the monk and dancer at bay was the highlight of the entire match.

When Don't Move and Don't Act run out, then you have my permission to die

GG. So attack up doesn't boost jump damage (anymore)? I definitely questioned that one poke on the mime over a jump last round. Either way great match up. Really even imo. I only saw one major weakness TrueLight pointed out. Item bot has 5jump and 12 SP, but no move. In the second round I could've really used the extra move to revive the squire.
Holy's team is extremely good at what its meant to do. I don't see anything to change really. Maybe make the mime undead? Guaranteed to have a permanent itembot with that. If mime keeps shields in mimicking others then its a great build with quickening.

Crystal Shield
Chakra Band
Gold Armor
Cursed Ring

If mime doesn't lose shields like they do weapons, which i dont think they do, then I definitely think this build will take off with quickening on another unit. Immune to petrify as an undead? Don't act and charm? Steal accessory aside, a incredibly strong unit. Class evade with crystal shield too? Omg. Donut Steel.

Thanks for the vid TrueLight. So Two Hands AND Attack UP don't boost jump damage? Only overwhelm? How come only overwhelm?

Why is liking Lancer so hard in all final fantasy games? In 3 its forced on you in one of the worst parts of the game (nes). Kaine in 4. XI and XIV dragoon is a joke class. Didn't play anything after 12. Freya best dragoon. Kimarhi was better as a blue mage. Why was jump an overdrive?

Barren · January 11, 2015, 10:45:12 am

Overwhelm does more damage with jump than attack up because by calculation overwhelm does 20 percent more damage which includes abilities and magic. Jump being an ability gets the added damage. Attack up mean while only does more melee damage so lancers in that case do more damage with regular melee attacks than jump.

As for kimahri it is a mystery why jump is considered to be a overdrive but I guess to defend confusing thought process a bit, jump tends to always do extra damage after a delay, I.E. Kain from FF4. In that sense overdrives opt to do more damage than a regular attack so the developers must have thought that physical overdrives in general is the way to go like Tidus' Spiral Cut. For some reason I can't get the timing down anymore like I used to playing the ps2 version. But that aside I think they just wanted to do something different with jump

TrueLight · January 11, 2015, 01:07:34 pm

Quote from: Shintroy on January 11, 2015, 07:29:23 am

What song is that starting at 16:50ish? Thanks for the early AM (EST) vid. I can't stop waking up at 3am. Spiders love 3am. Such is the life of a floor sleeper..
Do you prefer posts here or YouTube?

Final Fantasy VII - Frozen Landscape (OC Remix)

As for posts, it doesn't really matter. I can respond to both pretty well.

CT5Holy · January 11, 2015, 02:36:37 pm

Two big points:
1. When my Monk went to revive Dancer instead of going for Spin Fist on your crit big damage Lancer and TM Squire (or at least Repeating Fist on lancer).
2. Your big damage Lancer dodges my Monk's Wave Fist.
/sigh gg

Also shit most of the Last Dances had minimal effect cause it went off right after all your units went (or were in air from Jump).

Shintroy · January 12, 2015, 04:33:48 pm

Got the laptop working so I'll be joining in on the arena uploads. I'll probably lose half my subs, but hopefully it'll help out the mod and this site.

Thanks the the track TrueLight. Going to be tough finding music to use with the matches. At least. until I get a Mic and start commentating. Any tips? Never recorded pc game footage before. Recommendations?

The Damned · January 12, 2015, 05:04:13 pm

(Despite probably being the class I use the least, the Lancer stuff, even if it's something I already knew, has been illuminating. Someone should probably put it in the Guide just to be clear given that Jump is rather atypical as an attack/skill set. I suppose I could do so though.)

Okay. So I am finally caught up with videos after having fallen behind way before New Year's Day. Granted, I've been pretty much or less caught up for the past week or so, but I was putting off watching Malroth's "Slightly Derp" team's matches given how freaking long they were. That's done now too though.

Regardless, as always, thank you for the recordings, Barren, CT5Holy, TrueLight and now Malroth too. I'd try to get back into things, but I'm still expecting my Internet to go out soon for one reason or another, so yeah.... It will be another month at best before I can get started recording myself, if I ever can:

Given it's already been a couple of weeks at least since I watched this, I honestly don't remember much outside of the third round being a fine example of why I think that map where you get that hint from Zalbag about Dorter (I) is a bad and why I dislike it: the team that doesn't start on the bridge always loses. It's because the A.I.'s keen intellect causes the non-bridge team to split up and then have half of the team try to trek through middle of the map in order to regroup. Given that the middle of the map is made of water, this maps that a failure unless the units coming from that side have Fly, Teleport, Float, Walk on Water (read: have Ninja as primary) or Move in Water (read: have Samurai as primary). Given that those are all at least decent options, it might be so bad if the bridge team tended to, more often than not, stick together and funnel to the left towards higher ground, further giving them an advantage that I don't think anyone has yet to surmount.

That said, I fully except that Night of the Comet was a crappy team as a conceived, being too dependent on the Time Mage staying alive and being offensive despite being the main healing. Coupling that with a Mime and a Squire often being too busy (preemptively) to attack with Necromonicon and...yeah.

Man, RedWorld got hugely unlucky with HP Restore triggering basically every time it could for Shintroy in the first round. She might have even still won if it wasn't for her Scholar being an idiot towards the end there and charging towards the Monk while Charging Cure 2 after her Reraise went off. Sigh. A.I., why are you so dumb about so many things?

Still, I suppose that RedWorld barely lost there was rather telling that she would go on to win the next two rounds, even if the Squire meandering away from everyone in the second round somewhat helped with that. Sure, Shintroy's team got to set-up quite a bit during the round due to the larger map in general, but the Mimes charged ahead and got themselves killed first and repeating, which is what ultimately won RedWorld that one. As for the third round, she won the straight-out slugfest because, for the most part, Shintroy didn't get to set up anything.

His team still hits pretty hard off the bat though, and it's nice to see Chaos Blade and Asura being used, even if I'm still a bit bummed about Asura being so meh on male Samurai even with the change compared to other classes. Speaking of male Samurai, RedWorld's set-up for hers is a bit...odd, but it seems to actually work for the most part, at least as male Samurai go. It's kind of telling that you have to use the new Muramasa with Two Swords though. The sheer amount of irony there....

...Well, this match was basically made bearable solely by CT5Holy's amusing style of commentary on it. This is especially true of the first round given it's rather...annoying how despite that map easily being the fairest of the three Dorter maps that exist, it is conversely the worst one for spectating given how often the houses will block the screen if units are on that one end of the map. The A.I.'s various idiocies only extended both rounds (much) longer than they "needed" to be.

At least it wasn't nearly as boring as the matches with Raven's "Derp" teams, though his version of Phoenix Blade being dead helped prevent that tremendously. It was also yet more evidence that Mimes are probably more trouble than they're worth to keep around unfortunately. The Necromonicon sharing by the enemy Mimes was extremely weird though. I'll have to note that in "guide", even if I'm not sure what the hell to say about it.

I'm not going to lie. I skipped at least a quarter of this just because it was clear the first round was going to take a while when it got down to two weapon-less Paladins vs. a Talk Skill Priest who couldn't do anything against them due to Genji Shield acting up and an Undead Archer hitting for low damage. So I can't say I'm surprised the first round dragged for half an hour.

The second round, from what I paid attention to of it, at least seemed more bearable if one was to watch all of it. All of Malroth's team stayed up. Otabo's Berserk Thief basically impaled himself on them repeatedly until he finally stayed down, though he at least got 400+ fatal critical hit on the Mime. Otabo's Archer ran away for most of the map and refused to move from the corner even after everyone on her team died, which extended the match for eight more minutes that it didn't need to be going; I think she may have merged with the wall or gone beyond the boundary or...something since the lower part of that map is buggy. And Otabo's Squire and Priest did support that obviously wasn't enough in the face of only the Thief doing damage and Malroth seeming to get inevitably "lucky" with Zombie from Necromonicon, CT = 0 from Last Dance and -1 Speed from Slow Dance.

Well, this went about as well as could recently be expected on my end given it was two really squishy themed teams, with one side being universally faster and harder hitting than the other on top of having better status and instant abilities. Yeah...not much to say about this one at all aside from the fact that getting killed by the fall damage from the first critical hit was actually pretty amusing. That certainly hasn't happened in quite a while.

So much Dance used in this match, which is especially jarring after the utter lack of it in Arena 1.39 thus far. A bunch of Death Sentence flying around in yet another match too, yet again made awkward by the whole "Genji Shield isn't working as it should" should thing that's generally been extending matches longer than they should be. Of course, the lucky Sleep status from the Counter Flood Gusty Wind in the first round only needlessly extended things given Dance hasn't changed from vanilla when it comes to being unable to affect the Sleeping.

This generally just took way more time than it needed to since reinoe's team doesn't really do significant damage even as many times as Wiznaibus gets repeated and the PA Save-having Dancer never got to directly attack for one reason or another despite being the most damaging person on Malroth's team. It's rather telling that the final round basically came down to Local Quake.

Speaking which, I'll say this in favor of this match: that Counter Flood Local Quake from the Mime in the third round that simultaneously healed and Petrified the Geomancer was hilarious, especially since he never got healed from it. How monstrously strong the Dancer got in that round was also pretty comical too. Shame that it was of no avail given the Paladin does no damage and at the same time has no resurrection. Malroth would have most likely been able to win if either his Geomancer had gotten healed from Petrify or if the A.I. chanced using Revive when Wiznaibus was on-going.

Oh well. Listening what I presume was Yuki Kajiura during the end of the third round made it far more bearable.

[Litany of curses redacted.] Rosa's chance to hit Raise 2 is supposed to be 100% for that very reason since my luck is obviously completely crap; I guess my bad math extends in everything nowadays if I screwed up that calculation too so as to be off by one (percent). Of course, my generally horrible luck is also further evidenced by getting hit by Death Sentence when it actually matters and having Charm only hit for me when it never will matter. Good times.

Sigh. Good to see Witch Hunt actually be relevant though. Figures that going for more MA on Rydia instead of MP, which is part of the reason I forego being an even squishier Summoner, may have screwed me over in that second round. "Weird" that Rydia that didn't bother going for Ice when she got enough MP back, but given she was acting like the dumbest person on the team and Black Magic users in general suddenly seem even dumber than usual when targeting in this version of Arena, I can't even say I'm surprised.

Man, Andante49's luck is almost as bad as my luck given how that third round just slipped away from him and how the second round just snowballed from the start. Still, that 700+ HP shot might be the strongest damage from a Flail there's been, so, uh, congrats there I guess.

Sigh. I'm still rather tired of seeing Cursed Ring Thieves, though that's in part because of their (and Scholars') sprites being so "off" still.

[Insert usual complaints about Kagesougi being overpowered, especially since it can still inflict Don't Act for some reason, here.]

To be honest, I expected TrueLight's team to win here even before Kagesougi given that Shintroy's team needs (a lot) of time to set-up since Mimes' stats sans evasion are frankly pitiful now. Given that Shintroy's team never got that time...yeah. That the team also got rather unlucky with Counter Magic didn't help things either.

Also, part of the reason I expected TrueLight's team to win was because I expected Shintroy's White Magic Mime to be utterly ineffectual given that any Mimic would interrupt Raise. Curiously, that never happened, though it obviously didn't change the outcome.

I find it darkly amusing that pretty much the only element that Otabo's Squire on this team doesn't have any resistance against is Ice given the team's name and theme. That arguably ended up being her undoing, at least in the end of the second round since it was probable that the Undead Archer was going to revive yet again.

Redworld's team took this more smoothly than I thought she would given that her Samurai was essentially reduced to a Masamune bot with only the Otabo's Thief not Absorbing Fire. Of course, given Otabo's team sans said Thief is basically support units for said Thief, once said Thief went down, Otabo's team tended to get stuck in sandbag mode very easily. [/"said thief"]

That said, Redworld's team also did get a tad lucky against Talk Skill in the first round and against the Thief's would-be-OHKO shots in the second round.

[Insert usual complaints about Kagesougi being overpowered, especially since it can still inflict Don't Act for some reason, here.]

For being a match against two gimmicky theme teams, this was...kind of decent. Reks might have been able to win if the Berserker Archer could get through evade like the Berserk Ninja could. Either that or if Berserk didn't eliminate the afflicted's evasion. Either way his team was at a rather marked deficit as far as evasion goes, even before all the Don't Act that hit. His team actually wasn't too far behind at healing at least.

Thanks for this. I figured I would lose after seeing the massive chances reinoe made and indeed I couldn't compete with the superior healing, especially given how overpowered Murasame still is/can get. Meh. Not like I care since I was going eliminate this team anyway regardless of how it formed. I guess it did better than I expected all things considered, but that's not saying much.

Ugh. So much temporal status and so little offense during this match. Still, it wasn't as boring as it could have been, partly because Critical Quick ended up going off a lot due to Comet. It was also close for a while in the first round, though Andante49 did get kind of unlucky with Demi missing.

Still, there was entirely too much Haste 2 and Slow 2 including and that first round really dragged. Thankfully the Insult backfired just enough to Speed up that round.

Gods, you are an idiot, Rosa. Yes, let's charge forward just to hit a Raise 2 you could have hit by not going to towards the Dancer with absurd damage output in the first round. I guess it wouldn't have changed much that round given Mimic Daravon hates me, but still.

Only reason I even got to a round three is because Cecil actually blocked and Countered something in round two, which killed the actual problem on Otabo's team. Of course, afterwards everything went south between my team not being able to finish the Dancer quickly or avoid Mimic Daravon. And then Kain of course got hit by Charm. Sigh. Why do I bother?

(Also, Obelisk still kind of sucks, doesn't it?)

[Insert usual complaining about Quickening here.]

[Insert usual complaining about Mimic Daravon here.]

[Insert usual complaining about all-Thief team here.]

Really not much to say about this given how one-sided it unfortunately was. The only real (amusing) things of note that happened in the first round were the Mimic Fairy sending the Undead Scholar into Critical and Xemnas the Paladin instantly Reraising to get one last shot in before dying to Poison anyway, just like his boss encounter that refuses to end in Kingdom Heart II. Otherwise...yeah, rather one-sided unfortunately.

So, this match was a prime example of the problem with making a Projectile-using Berserk unit that I've been expecting to see happen again eventually. That incident of "friendly fire" in the first round happened at the worst possible time really since it just cascaded for Reks from there. That's ultimately what cost Reks the match as a whole given his team had no way of winning on the third map with that damn orrery in the way. At least friendly fire didn't happen in that round though I guess, especially since it happened even well after Reks's team had otherwise won the second round.

Ugh. The A.I. is so dumb in how it responds to Charmed units. That Antidote in the first round was literally the worst possible option that Lancer could have done in response to the Squire being Charmed. I guess it's on par with Andante having horrible luck.

This was rather one-sided so there's not much to say except verify that what Barren said about Meatbone Slash is true: if it activates, then someone's getting hit for a lot of damage.

Oh well. It's nice to see Speed Ruin and Magic Ruin used, even if Magic Ruin is still mediocre at best.

*eyebrow twitch*

So perhaps male Samurai aren't as bad as I thought and there's more just me being extremely bad. Anima Zero's team not having much in the way of offense comparatively though, especially from a distance, despite having squishy, mostly slower units isn't exactly swaying my opinion heavily though. This especially given the split nature of that second map caused his team flounder even more.

Sigh. Given I was behind on watching videos as it is, I didn't get a chance to change this horrible team before it got used again. There's literally nothing else to say here except that Mimes unfortunately still seem pretty damn useless for Dance, Song, Lore or Quickening spam despite their many changes. How disappointing.

Despite the issues that I think exist with the current version of Anima Zero's team, he really did get supremely unlucky with Projectile Guard not working against an all-Archer team more often than not. There's not much else to say about it since this team "just" fought against "Fallen Samurais" (for me). Oh well, at least Midnight Platoon lasted longer against reinoe's team and had a decent back and forth against it.

Did Anima Zero request to fight nothing but Mime teams?

I still really don't like Platina Dagger on Anima Zero's Berserk Ninja, but I figured that was going to be relatively inconsequential in this match-up since it seemed obvious silentkaster was going to lose just due being burdened by a Mime team that needed to set-up with no AoE for him to mimic. And then silentkaster's team proved me correct by getting extremely unlucky with being able to dodge very little despite all of the evasion it had and having Odin's Death activate on the Paladin twice. Granted, Hawk's Eye meant that the evade already didn't mean as much as it could have, but that Mime didn't dodge half of the things he "should" have.

Sigh. Mimes can't even pull off high evasion well it seems since they can't innately equip Shields and have some of the lowest HP in the game now. silentkaster's team might have been able to win the first round at least if his Mime had Death Sentence like the Mime with Talk Skill in the next match had since all those Blackmails hitting just weren't cutting it with nothing and no one to take advantage of Don't Act.

This Mime team, on the other hand, I expected to win from the get-go given the Mime had both Death Sentence and (really) damaging AoE back-up. That the Scholar on reinoe's team hit much harder with the appropriate overpowered elemental pseudo-Summon from Lore, in this case Tornado rather than Quake; that the Mime had Float also gave reinoe the advantage here. Still, it was a relatively even match despite the at least slight advantage that reinoe had, at least until Anima Zero eventually ran out of MP in that second round.

Sigh. The A.I. is so bad at handling Charm so much of the time. Honestly, I'm beginning to think they're programmed to be that bad despite healing themselves from Charm half of the time if they have Stigma Magic, Esuna or Heal. Granted, it's very difficult to respond well with much of anything else if a unit gets Charmed off the bat, but I'm talking more about the A.I. healing Charmed units and (literally) Fleeing behind them while still Charmed. Oh well. Shintroy's team still managed to win that first round despite getting hit by Steal Heart more, mostly because the Anima Zero's Oracle never got to do anything. It also doesn't help that Anima Zero's Berserk Thief is basically a liability against Shintroy's team in general.

Beyond that, Shintroy also had the Speed advantage over all even before all the Quickening that was going off, so yeah....

Weird that the audio for the very first round was slightly off. Thankfully it was only in that round though.

I'm guessing that part of the reason for changing the Berserk Archer over to Romanda Gun from Stone Gun was to lessen the amount of damage from him accidentally shooting people in the back. So, on that front, it was a "success". Too bad the Berserk A.I. is extremely dumb when it comes to targeting and both of the first two maps had a bunch of obstacles in the way of his shots. Of course, the lack of obstacles didn't much help in the third round, but Reks generally got more unlucky with status in that round anyway, which is why he lost it and ultimately the match.

This was a decently even match despite Reks being burdened with both a Mime and Singing Ninja, both of whom performed better than one would imagine they would. It was really a 3 vs. 3 given that Reks's Ninja and RedWorld's Samurai were generally stuck doing support, so it mostly just came down to RedWorld having more AoE and sandbag power since the Reks's team couldn't resurrect the Undead Thief whenever they wanted to.

Sigh, even with a completely one-sided round, I can't win a match because my luck is so bad that I can't past any M-EV. Apparently I can't avoid Death (Sentence) in any form or get lucky with hitting Stop like everyone else either. I can't say I'm surprised. I basically knew I was doomed given how often Barren said I had something in the bag.

This was another good back and forth, though I'd argue it was another 3v3 in essence given how much of a burden both Berserk units and Mimes can be. Neither were the most dangerous units on their teams anyway; the most dangerous unit on silentkaster's team was the Monk and on Anima Zero's team it was easily the Bard. The Berserk Monk might have been more dangerous had he been able to hit anything half of the time, but most of silentkaster's team has pretty good evasion and his Chemist just doesn't give a damn about physical damage, so ultimately Anima Zero's team had more dead-weight.

As such, it's kind of appropriate that the third round was mostly decided somewhat early the Mime finally hitting a Talk Skill that wasn't his rare success with the overpowered Mimic Daravon. I'm a bit annoyed he didn't try for Insult on the Bard much earlier since then silentkaster might have won the first round, but that's the A.I. for you.

Oh well, at least silentkaster's Mime(s) have damaging AoE support now since Mimes honestly aren't worth using with that unfortunately.

Whoa. I had to rewatch the beginning and end of this given I was up for more than 24 hours, so I kind of...zoned out while watching it the first time around. Looking at the set-ups in the beginning, I'm not surprised that Shintroy ultimately won between my increasingly viewing Mime as a crutch and the fact that everyone Shintroy's team has 10 or greater Speed, which somewhat obviates any true effectiveness Last Dance could have. The latter also meant that Shintroy had the Speed advantage in general even as many times as Last Dance hit. The last round also showed how easily the female Monk will run herself out of MP if she's ignored in terms of damage, especially since she's still vulnerable to at least Sleep and Death Sentence.

So, yeah, Shintroy's team winning isn't too surprising even if his Time Magic Squire couldn't really hit a spell to save her undeath. Guess I'm not the only person who can't hit Stop (currently).

Of course, CT5Holy might have been able to win the last round had his male Monk gone to raise the Dancer right after female Monk's last Last Dance hit. Even with the Mime dead and effectively already doomed to becoming a Crystal, the Dancer certainly hits hard enough for to have helped quickly kill any of the Shintroy's units save for the Cursed Ring one and for that one she at least has Item.

Shrug. All I know is this match showed how annoying Last Dance can be with the buff that it did frankly deserve due to Mimes, but I'm not entirely sure if Last Dance can be any more than "annoying". After all, it's really easy for any unit to hit 10 or more Speed, which is part of when Last Dance's foothold starts slipping. Still, a valiant effort by CT5Holy and it's nice to see a couple of people at least trying to use Last Dance now. Too bad Dance is just a kind of terrible skillset, probably the worst, right now.

(Unrelated, but Wave Fist not being a Direct attack has always rather bugged me, even going back to vanilla. It just looks...weird at the very least.)

I can't say I'm surprised I lost every single match I had. Way to be useless, self.

I also can't say I'm surprised there are so many remixes of "Corridor of Time" or whatever the name of that one particular song from Chrono Trigger is. I still wonder whether that or Guile's theme has more remixes.

Quote from: Shintroy on January 12, 2015, 04:33:48 pm
Got the laptop working so I'll be joining in on the arena uploads. I'll probably lose half my subs, but hopefully it'll help out the mod and this site.

Thanks the the track TrueLight. Going to be tough finding music to use with the matches. At least. until I get a Mic and start commentating. Any tips? Never recorded pc game footage before. Recommendations?

I'm sure Barren or someone else will chime in as far as recording stuff goes, but if it's (video game) music you want, then I'll give you (video game) music:

http://vgmdb.net/db/main.php An excellent source for album info.

http://www.vgmusic.com Awesome site for VG MIDIs.

http://www.mirsoft.info Great place for more MIDIs, especially if you want to DL a whole freaking batch of MIDIs from a particular game.

http://www.shadowhaxor.net Really good site for OSTs. We love Shadow and his crew. They hook us up.

http://gh.ffshrine.org MIDIs, OSTS, everything. [THIS IS DEFUNCT NOW SADLY.]

http://bluelaguna.net/ For RPGs in mp3 format.

http://ocremix.org/ The ultimate place on the net for gaming remixes.

http://www.zophar.net/music.html Good place for getting all kinds of music on just about every system out there.

http://remix.thasauce.net/ Remixes. Wonderful, beautiful, sexy remixes.

http://www.myspace.com/armcannon This particular myspace page specializes in rock music. Pretty good stuff.

http://downloads.khinsider.com/ Like Galbadia Hotel this place has nearly everything.

http://www.eightecs.com/infinitegamemusic/ A site that puts together compilations of a lot of old-school game music. Gotta love the CD covers they come up with. And really, who doesn't love free DLs?

http://8bitpeoples.com/index.html You'll love this site. They've come up with original music... using 8-bit NES hardware. Freaking excellent stuff here.

http://www.xocmusic.com/ A page with sweet site with remixes and links to other cool places.

http://www.lonian.se/deadzombie/ A good remix site with fully downloadable albums. This guy works on stuff that doesn't get remixed too often in addition to the regular stuff. Sounds pretty sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=coNsPirAcy83&p=r con's YouTube remix page. He likes to make remixes but keep them close to the original form.

http://explod.tumblr.com/ Specializing in classic gamesoundtracks.

http://www.ptesquad.com/ Chiptunes off the chain!

http://www.sound-test.org/ mp3s, midis, arranges, remixes. DL whole albums or single songs. Don't even need to register!

http://www.redwingsmusic.com/ A UK band that does video game covers in rock.

http://www.mrmonkeyman.com/treasure/music.html Your source for music from Treasure games.

http://www.ost-center.fr/ost/jeu-video/all.php
This site has game music as well as anime music.

http://sorasoundtracks.blogspot.com/search/label/Videojuegos Sora's Animation & Video Game Soundtracks.

http://soundtracks-mp3.blogspot.com/search/label/game soundtracks Another blog with game soundtracks.

http://serenesforest.net/music/ Your source for Fire Emblem soundtracks

http://sonixgvn.blogspot.com/ Another sweet soundtrack blog

http://www.soahcity.com/music/index.php Sonic music source.

http://music.mslugdb.com/dl/index.html Metal Slug music source.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NightShader1 NightShader1's YouTube Channel. Guy has some great piano versions of VGM.

http://www.gaming-gen.com/vgsounds/ Not as big on the selection as other sites, but it's growing.

http://soundtest-rizen.blogspot.com/ Soundtrack blog.

http://www.gamemp3s.net/ One of the best sites out there for those that love VGM in torrent form.

http://einachi.blogspot.com/ Old-school anime music.

http://hi.92wy.com/vgm/ A Japanese site that has a nice selection of music.

http://go-go-gst.tumblr.com/ This one seems fairly new with a selection of older and newer gamerip soundtracks.

Most of those links should work, though I haven't (needed) to check most of them save for being reminded that ffshrine has been "down" for a while now unfortunately. I could recommend more stuff, but that should be more than enough to start off with.

Anyway, speaking of extremely common music....

Quote from: Shintroy on January 01, 2015, 01:29:49 am
*snip* Never really played Mega Man 1-7, but it sounded like a remix from the series was thrown in somewhere.

...What.

Malroth · January 12, 2015, 09:13:29 pm

Was going to start recording a video for The Dammed in thanks for his insightful commentary but I can't find his teams.

silentkaster · January 12, 2015, 09:41:25 pm

I hope to be back recording by next week. No guarantees, but laptop was repaired and is working great now. If you have any match requests and/or music requests, PM me. I just use stuff from games I grew up with usually, but open to suggestions. I saw the lists The Damned put up but I've got more reserves for now unless someone has suggestions

TrueLight · January 12, 2015, 09:54:49 pm

FFT Arena 1.39C - Barren (World of Balance) vs. Silentkaster (Meet the Staff)

FFT Arena 1.39C - Reks (Till Death Do Us Part) vs. Otabo (Line Up Single File)

The Damned · January 12, 2015, 11:28:32 pm

(Oh, I forgot to say some stuff before. Might as well do that even though I haven't watched the latest two videos yet.)

I forgot to say that I rather like the summary paragraphs of units that you've put (back, apparently) in your video descriptions, TrueLight. It's quite interesting and helpful as well as a way to get your opinion on certain things without necessarily having to "take up" space in here or the Balance thread. That's always useful, at least in my eyes.

I also forgot to say "good game" to everyone who curb-stomped me. I was admittedly...annoyed after getting through the last one given I watched most of the last 20+ matches in a row, so...yeah. Kind of demoralizing, that.

Quote from: Malroth on January 12, 2015, 09:13:29 pm
Was going to start recording a video for The Dammed in thanks for his insightful commentary but I can't find his teams.

Speaking of, I took my teams like a week ago, partly so ones that I didn't want to get reused--like Night of the Comet--didn't get used again without me able to chance them, as happened with the aforementioned team and partly because I was rather demoralized as I said above. I basically give up on Mimes again already and trying to be "creative", given I spend way too much time on teams as it is, especially for ones that ends up being dud due to one thing or another.

For now, I'm going to focus on bringing back older teams, like "Give Me Some Space, Roxas!", so it's going to take a while to update them to 1.39 Arena for some reason another. Given I'm finally cleaning my room now for something that happens tomorrow, the earliest they'll be back up is Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks for the offer though.

(Also, I think the text idea is fine for videos obviously given it's what I use. However, if you're going to use text that isn't on a mono-colored back ground, then I would personally suggest going with black colored text rather than white. White can be hard to see on the formation screen, but whatever works for you. Thanks again for recording.)

Malroth · January 13, 2015, 04:52:28 am

on my screen black text is invisible, I could go with some bright magenta or cyan.

Otabo · January 13, 2015, 09:48:14 am

Funny I find that for a team that uses a lot of Death Sentence/instant death, it sure didn't work out for them when my team (read: the mediator) was the one handing out the Death Sentences. But a good matchup nonetheless; although I very rarely run Witch Hunt on any team due to its current issues, running Witch Hunt here was a good choice; low MP totals on Reks's team overall meant that Move-MP Up wasn't going to do a whole lot, and with Witch Hunt draining 21 MP per cast, it turned out to be effective enough to stop the Deaths from the samurai and keep the paladin's spellcasting down to a minimum. Would have been a different story had the samurai and/or paladin had Absorb MP. Bard did his job, which is nice. Thief's Houkouton damage was actually quite solid, which is nice too. Also loved the Counter Magic Death in R1. Death still doesn't seem worth using, IMO. Lots of high percent charms, too - but charm didn't really do a whole lot in this match overall. But GG, Reks.

Mythril Gun vs. C Bag. I was contemplating which of those to give to my mediator. But...this was one of those cases where the Mythril Gun was the better choice if only to cancel Phoenix Down and/or Wish sandbagging. Gave Mythril Gun to her for a reason. Also, I know Phoenix Blade's reraise doesn't work with Cursed Ring, I only used it for its WP to help with Houkouton damage.

Shintroy · January 13, 2015, 11:12:52 am

Reflect and Time Magic vs MA Melee team
Barren seems to have the advantage due to having a more versatile units while silentkaster has OHKO potential and raise 2. Betting on Barren because his units have a bit more depth to them.

Round 1 - Close round. silentkaster takes it due Barren being unable to recover with slow phoenix down sandbagging.

Round 2 - Large map so both teams start off buffed with both haste and increased stats. Barren's Geomancer almost single handedly won this round with stop and don't move. The samurai probably ruined silentkasters chances this round. Not a bad unit, its just the flaw of slower berserk units.

Round 3 - Same deal with he samurai dying at the start and costing the game for silentkaster. Probably git set back 2 turns at first. Charm and stop on the 2 remaining units made the match unwinnable.

GG. Stop on high faith units at its finest. Should definitely lose 5-10% base accuracy due to being influenced by faith.Stall is fine though. Talk skill is pretty balanced atm. Off topic though.

Both teams are well built except for one unit at most. Barren your Lancer could, and probably should use one of the 12 wp +1 SP spears. Your Lancer has the ability to play at least 3 roles(jump?) Unless +1 SP hurts your turn order I'd make the switch so he has a chance to swap roles mid match instead of having to stick to one based off the first few turns in the round.

silentkaster Idk. It's a tough call since you have to keep your staff theme going on (i like teams like this). Your scholar could probably use an equipment change since its likely she'll run out of MP due to your priests needing to support the samurai. I'm suggesting Linen Robe and 108 gems because she uses tornado and quake. She doesn't truly need absorb because she has item and is likely to potion herself and run away instead of quake/tornado heal. This also makes her less squishy at the cost of 1 ma.

Life and Death theme Vs linear damage
Betting on Reks since its unlikely his team will line themselves up.

Round 1 - Wow those 3 unit houkoutons tho. Witch hunt did a good job shutting down Reks' recovery options as well.

Round 2 - Insanely long round due to death sentence and the squires omg SCIII? Best theme too.

GG. Surprised Reks lost this though. Things just kept lining up for Otabo, and Reks doesn't have any ko potential outside of death and ds. Slight advantage to Otabo. If I still had my death team, I'd request a match vs rek's team even though I'd lose.

Barren · January 13, 2015, 04:51:00 pm

Yea I knew that there would be hiccups with my team but what I was going for is just enough speed to make the turn order in my favor. I'll fix my lancer like you suggested shintroy and hopefully make a team that is based on just having enough speed to sneak in better timed reflected spells

News:

Arena battle videos and discussion

January 10, 2015, 09:21:13 am #3780 Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 09:27:24 am by Otabo

January 10, 2015, 09:41:56 am #3781 Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 03:59:50 pm by Shintroy

January 10, 2015, 12:19:06 pm #3782

January 10, 2015, 02:48:26 pm #3783

January 10, 2015, 07:03:16 pm #3784

January 11, 2015, 06:15:30 am #3785

January 11, 2015, 07:29:23 am #3786 Last Edit: January 11, 2015, 07:45:04 am by Shintroy

January 11, 2015, 10:45:12 am #3787

January 11, 2015, 01:07:34 pm #3788

January 11, 2015, 02:36:37 pm #3789

January 12, 2015, 04:33:48 pm #3790

January 12, 2015, 05:04:13 pm #3791

January 12, 2015, 09:13:29 pm #3792

January 12, 2015, 09:41:25 pm #3793

January 12, 2015, 09:54:49 pm #3794

January 12, 2015, 11:28:32 pm #3795

January 13, 2015, 04:52:28 am #3796

January 13, 2015, 09:48:14 am #3797 Last Edit: January 13, 2015, 09:58:18 am by Otabo

January 13, 2015, 11:12:52 am #3798 Last Edit: January 13, 2015, 11:43:42 am by Shintroy

January 13, 2015, 04:51:00 pm #3799