Arena battle videos and discussion

[The Damned]

(Yeah, I can't say that I like Phoenix Blade either, but removing it already probably isn't necessary. Yet.)

I could probably stand to lose a bit of evasion and its immunity to Dead & Death Sentence. This especially since the only ability that adds Dead that sees any use is the now evadable Odin and that there's armor that blocks Dead (and Petrify) that still isn't seeing use.

However, all talk of that should be saved for the Balance thread really.

spoiler: FFT Arena 1.38d Trifecta Series - Reks (Late to the Party)

It seems like it's already been a while since "Late to the Party" fought. While Geomancer is kinda ineffectual as anything other than a resurrection & buff bot and the Samurai has the Haste 2 problem that Barren out in the second round against Raven, it's otherwise decent enough in terms of focus; oddly, the Haste 2 thing didn't really bite Reks in the ass anyway until he started fighting Avalanche's team. I must admit that I was surprised to see that AI have both Protect 2 & Shell 2 and yet use them both more intelligently than I'd previously thought.

As with most teams, there's still room for possible and reasonably non-specific-counter improvement. At the very least, the Geomancer seems like he could use a better sword (offense-wise), if not a different weapon entirely like the still-OP-presently Battle Axe.

spoiler: Reks (Late to the Party) vs. RavenofRazgriz (Y CHICKEN SO DERICIOUS)

Not much to say here except that I am again reminded that Defending's evasion might need to be reduced like Abandon's was, especially with Nurse's buff. Aside from that, I'm actually not that surprised the Monks didn't use Stigma Magic, at least when it came to the Monk that was Dancing Nameless Dance.

I am a bit surprised that the Geomancer and Summoner kept trying to hit at single-digit odds. Never have I been so glad to see both Petrify and Comet.

I do find it odd that Silence Song missed again. It's been missing a lot lately despite generally being above 60~% at worst.

spoiler: Reks (Late to the Party) vs. Otabo (Flying Dragons)

This match was easily the most entertaining one, and not just because it was the only one to go to three rounds. For starters, as I mentioned on Youtube, this match was literally the first and only time that Don't Move has gotten used so far in 138 and it was actually decently effective even if Otabo would have won without it in the second round. Speaking of which, I never even thought that Counter Magic might be useful against Balance, especially given how often Counter Magic tends to backfire.

The Samurai being so interested in using Time Magic(k) rather than just attacking starts to bite Reks in the ass here, though it doesn't really bite him as hard as it does in the next match.

spoiler: Reks (Late to the Party) vs. Avalanche (MeDeum)

Ugh. This is partly why I'm not sure that Battle Song (or Magic Song) need to be 66% in terms of hitting. PA +3 a turn on average is pretty damn brutal. When combined with Reks team's lackluster offense aside from the Summoner, it's little wonder his team quickly lost both rounds. This especially with the Samurai finally/suddenly deciding to try casting Haste 2 at the beginning of both rounds and only hitting two people at best because she moved first. The Muramasa doesn't really mean much if she's barely going to attack people.

Reks might have actually been able to win the second round due to the split up, but he basically lost as soon as the Mime got off that horrific criminal on the Summoner. He might have been able to still win after that if the Oracle would gone for Petrify on the Paralyzed, Faithed Thief instead of screwing around with Life Drain. Even if Monk had Stigma Magic, it would have at least been something to allow her and the Samurai to regroup a bit while the Geomancer was stuck constantly reviving the Summoner.

Oh well.

Thanks as always, Barren, especially since Reks only asked for this last night and that obviously took a while to record just due to that first match.

[Reks]

Thanks for the matches, Barren. They did indeed make me feel better, since it's been a while that Late has been used. Your advice over them is noted, too.... Samurai did nothing but HASTE everything more than half of the time in each match. Will be fixed soon enough, maybe after I get this longbow-idea done.

[Otabo]

MP Starvation.

FFT Arena 1.38d - The Damned (Donate Blood Today!) vs. Jumza (Reaction, Support, Blank)

FFT Arena 1.38d - Reinoe (Speed Savers) vs. Dokurider (Heroic Good Guys)

[reinoe]

MP Starvation.

FFT Arena 1.38d - The Damned (Donate Blood Today!) vs. Jumza (Reaction, Support, Blank)

FFT Arena 1.38d - Reinoe (Speed Savers) vs. Dokurider (Heroic Good Guys)

spoiler: S.S. vs HGG

Lesson learned...
1)If I'm going to have Tornado and it's massive AOE then I need to put some power behind it.
2)I thought Concentrate would work right through Blind but it doesn't.
3)The A.I. will occasionally choose a low damage spell over revival.
4)That blaze gun was doing a megaton of damage.  Gives me nightmarish flashbacks to Elebreak's team.  The rest of Doku's team was doing decent damage as well.

[TrueLight]

spoiler: Damned vs. Jumza

Damned's team grouped up and they couldn't withstand the damage from Bahamut/Holy. Mediator hit some key Mimic Daravons/Blackmails that sealed the match.

spoiler: reinoe vs. Dokurider

Well, that was a slugfest for the most part.

Also, what's the first song playing in Damned vs. Jumza?

[Jumza]

I thought concentration would work through Darkness as well... Oh well, just a couple things to fix for my team.

[Otabo]

Also, what's the first song playing in Damned vs. Jumza?

FFX "White Skies Club Mix" by bLiNd

[The Damned]

(Oh, I was right in thinking it was something from FFX. Good to know.)

So...0-5. I can't say I'm surprised, but at least that one was kind of close.

Now I just need Malroth to get on tonight or find someway to generate memory cards myself.

Regardless, I'll just comment on things going from memory:

spoiler: Myself (Donate Blood Today!) vs. Jumza (Reaction, Support, Blank)

Hey! I want a re-match due to Jumza's team's false advertising! That Summoner obviously has a Movement, which is blatantly cheating!

...Seriously, though, the Summoner was a pain in the ass due to my team being completely idiotic about group together for AoE. Hell, my team was idiotic even about Masamune, what with perpetually Hasting only one Paladin and not the other. Also doesn't help that Wish is currently pathetic and suicidal, as proved by getting taken out by a Bag shot for a mere 15 HP of all things. It's pretty clear that it at the very least needs some type of range if it's going to possible heal less than the 100% assured Phoenix Down, but I digress.

Speaking of expected disappointments, since I'm a master at identifying and being involved in those, I figured that Two Hands would be disappointing and I should probably have some M-EV on at least the Paladins. So it's "nice" to have that confirmed.

Regardless, the Mediator was easily the biggest threat on Jumza's team considering how unlucky I got against here. Got it by literally every Refute and only dodged one of the Mimic Daravon and Blackmail out of all the time used them. So it's not like M-EV would have helped there.

Damn, even when I steal someone's team I fail. Hurray!

Regardless, as I said on Youtube days already, GG Jumza. It was for the most part an enjoyable match, my facepalming at team repeatedly grouping for Bahamut like they taking a group photo aside.

Also, as I said, I was surprised to see Zigolis Swamp be used. I had thought it was banned, but I'm mostly glad to see it wasn't/isn't.

spoiler: reinoe (Speed Savers) vs. Dokurider (Heroic Good Guys)

Ugh, that Blaze Gun still seems like it hurts like hell a bit too much for something that gets strengthened even more by Oil and Pilgrimage. This even if the rather ineffectual Chemists had 70 Faith.

Not really much more to say about this that reinoe himself already didn't say. However, I am reminded that Dokurider apparently responded to something, so I should check that really quickly....

*checks*

...Oh. ...I really don't like the sound of that....

I'll probably holding on editing that team until tonight, partly because I don't want to bother making getting dragged into trying to think of two new teams in addition to the mono-Time Mage one I sent to Barren yesterday. This especially when a version change to 139 may or may not be nigh.

[The Damned]

(Sigh. This totally figures.)

So, I patched everything and pretty much recorded almost every match I had from the memory card that I had Dokurider give me. Only now...it would seem that Youtube refuses to process anything for me despite everything being in .avi format, which should process easily.

Ugh.

Not really sure what the hell do to get this since I've tried seven times since yesterday only to be met with the exact bullshit excuse every save for one instance where it seemed like it was processing and then never finished. Any help would be appreciated.

[Dokurider]

Hard to give a decent answer without more information. How did you edit your videos and what size are they? Try uploading a small test video.

[The Damned]

(I use Camtasia and they're generally like 1 GB in size on average.)

I'm actually having trouble with one of the shorter ones (repeatedly), which isn't exactly boding well for the longer videos.

[Dokurider]

Well there's your problem. They probably aren't compressed. You can obtain VirtualDub for free, download Xvid MPEG-4 codec and then compress it in the video options. That's one option.

[Dokurider]

Or doesn't Camtasia support compression? I forget...

[The Damned]

(I see.)

Camtasia possibly supports compression, but considering it's been screwing up on me as it is, I'll just try the VirtualDub thing. Thanks.

[The Damned]

(Arggggggggggggggggh! [/Charlie Brown])

So...after figuring out the compression issues--apparently making them MP4s instead of AVIs helped a lot--and such, I appear to now be unable to annotate any of the videos I've uploaded easily. Either the annotation function won't work in Opera at all or it will work in Chrome but at so glacial a pace that it will literally probably take me an hour just annotate a video that's 12 minutes.

So, despite being such a lazy perfectionist, I've decided to say "fuck it" and finally link to the videos I have up since they seem like they're working otherwise and I promised Barren he could take the weekend "off":


1. FFT ARENA 138d [Unpatched] - AeroGP (Snow Pirates) vs. Celdia (My Hat in The Ring) [12:20]

2. FFT ARENA 138d [Patched] - Malroth (Magic Dudes) vs. Gaignun (Patch Me) [12:03]

3. FFT ARENA 138d - Eternal (Guests) vs. dragonblade (Lost Souls) [33:16]

4. FFT ARENA 138d - CT5Holy (Ele Break) vs. Dokurider (Air Krieg) [08:26]

5. FFT ARENA 138d - Dokurider (Secret New Team) vs. Wiz (S1): Part 1 [25:36]

6. FFT ARENA 138d - Dokurider (Secret New Team) vs. Wiz (S1): Part 2 [16:13]

7. FFT ARENA 138d - Dokurider (Heroic Good Guys) vs. The Damned (On if Maces of Zeus Should Lose Strengthen) ["Special" Best of 5 Match for reasons explained in description] [15:55]


Please tell me if there are any problems with the videos. Feel free to mute them and play your own music since, unlike everyone else who has recorded so far, I'm not using a microphone; I may be a horrible person, but I'm not going to subject everyone to horrible voice, especially with all the other audio issues I'm having.

As for the format of the videos, I plan to try to record all matches as 3-ofs in a Large/Small/Medium setting regards of if one team wins the first two matches. This is to better see how teams perform on the different sized maps and partly as a way of both sating my own curiosity and making up amends for not doing this earlier; of course, my techbane would probably have been just as strong back then.

Finally, last but certainly not least, I will thank a few people here, especially due to the annotation issue. So, thanks to Malroth and Dokurider for making memory cards for me, thanks to Otabo and especially Barren for both helping me get set-up and put up with constant tech questions and thanks to reinoe for moral support.

I'll try to get up at least a couple of matches later today and see if I can figure so way around the damn annotation issue. Maybe Firefox or even Internet Explorer (ha!) will work where the others have failed me. Or maybe I'll just have to wait until I can find some way to connect to the Internet from my much faster-than-this-faithful-dinosaur-desktop laptop.

Shrug.

Regardless, sorry for the wait.

[reinoe]

HAHA I knew you could do it T.D.

spoiler: Match 1:AeroGP vs Celdia

From Round 1:  It looked like it would be over quickly for Celdia when it was 4v1 disadvantage.  Multiple Reraise made it look like a comback was possible but it was a false positive.  From Round 2.Recognized Stardust Speedway immediately.  I always knew that Ice Brand weilding Squires was potentially the most powerful Grand Cross/Southern Cross users.  I just didn't have a team concept to exploit it  Also Celdia had a Monk with Song.  I don't like mixing/matching Song w/physical/magical units.  But Celdia's problem wasn't synergy, it was the fact that thaose squires were way powerful.

spoiler: Magic Dudes vs Patch me

Interesting how starkly the matches went re:small map vs large map.  PATCH ME won handily on the small map and  "Magic Dudes" won just as easily on the Large.  Interestingly "Patch Me" won just as easily on the Medium map.  "Patch Me" had too much magical evasion

spoiler: Guests vs Lost Souls

At 9:03 when the Knight hits the Samurai, procs Decapitate but the Samurai doesn't die, then the knight moves and dies by poison.  That was my favorite sequence of events in the match.  My second favorite starts at 16:10.  Lost Soul's Paladin tries to kill Vossler. and almost succeeds but Vossler blocks the second attack.  Vossler then gets PA save. Then Larsa undoes all the damage with a well placed Hi-Potion.  And during this time the poisoned Priest dies from infection.  These two sequences just showcase that Lost Souls while closely matched with Guests, was just a little bit outgunned and a little too unlucky.  I also enjoyed Archer named "Dargo" from Lost Souls constantly shooting the Samurai named "Amalia".  He hated her something fierce.  And not only was she constantly being shot for 255.  She only died from it once and when she did she simply reraised.

[Dokurider]

spoiler: Me versus Wiz

The biggest mistake I made with Bomb Squad was that I placed too much faith in my Lancer's ability to Jump. One of the biggest mistakes a team can make is having only one source of major damage. Even with Quickening, he just wasn't fast enough to get a good jump on them and they just walked all over him. Truth is, this wasn't actually my "secret team". I had to shelf the actual team I was working on because it was too similar to another team already out there. Don't lament too much, it was quite the eye roller. So, I just shoved my other unlisted team out there and the rest is history. It didn't help that I didn't test this team as rigorously as I should have because the mono tourney was in the works and I ended ignoring this team in favor of perfecting my thief team.

[The Damned]

(Yes, I could do it...apparently a dozen times slower and worse than it should have taken.)

So...since I can't annotate still (yet?), I'll just give commentary on the matches commented on in the forums so far.

I'll probably put up at least four more videos without annotation before tonight is over since I've decided I'm not going anywhere unlike what I planned. As for combatants, I tried to get as many different people as I could on one memory card and try focusing on the people who hadn't fought in a while, so the newer guys like feeldawrath & Zalbagg as well as some of the more ignored people like AeroGP. Only reason I even have myself there at all is because Dokurider wanted a rematch against that particular team and I had already planned to "prove a point" against AeroGP's "Inferno" team.

I basically got everyone save for Dol, Ahong & Jumza I think, though I can remedy that.

Anyway, now for match commentary...in reverse:

spoiler: Dokurider (Secret New Team) vs. Wiz ({S1})

Yeah...I was rather "hoping" this wasn't the team you were talking about in A.I. Behavior thread, namely because of that Lancer having MP for only one Quickening, the Chemist being extremely ineffectual and the Mediator having way too many skills. You would have at least probably won against Wiz in the Second Round if the Mediator ONLY had Mimic Daravon & Refute rather than having Death Sentence as well. One of Wiz's team's relatively few vulnerabilities is being put to Sleep, at least when it comes to the Thieves.

Since his Mediators both lack revival and tend to focus on other things if they're even remotely hurt or not Hasted, if your Berserk Lancer (and/or Chemist, with a much better weapon or the ability to block Berserk) had been able to kill the other Thief, it would have been a slow grind to victory most likely. But, alas, the Priest had to be an idiot and move back (not even far enough) when healing herself just like the Chemist had to move forward far enough to get hit by Insult. Joy.

Insult probably does need a bit of an accuracy nerf, but honestly that's like the least problematic thing about Wiz's team on an individual level; Insult is currently just what allows for him to get Quickenings off more unmolested. If Berserk get a CT, much less allows for evasion, then Insult instantly becomes a lot more fair anyway unlike, say, Quickening (or Unyielding or even Masamune).

If nothing else, this was more evidence that Lancers should maybe get Robes (back?).

spoiler: Eternal (Guests) vs. dragonblade (Lost Souls)

First and foremost, I have to commend dragonblade for making a good team right off the bat, even as much as I dislike Spellguns. To be frank, the only reason that Eternal was even able to win this, especially with large gap in comparative damage output, was because Kagesougi's kinda OP and Amalia's a tank. Even then, Amalia still has problems since she has relatively little direct offense or distance ability, but at least she can soak tons of damage unlike the likewise armored Vossler.

Similarly, unlike the first time I recorded (with sound, sigh) before I had to reshuffle the most of the maps between match-ups, Eternal's team stayed together and the Vossler didn't get put down permanently with Larsa playing personal butler to him this time. That's something I find rather darkly amusing considering what Vossler tries to do in-game, but I digress.

But, yeah, even with the fix from Focus to Accumulate, Larsa needs a better weapon, even if Parry Edge gets the slight EV boost, since he does absolutely pathetic damage for not having a Bag. Also the very least, Vossler needs more MP so he can be a lot more threatening and not have to wait for Ethers as much even if he loses a bit of power or status protection.

Eternal does get respect, however, both for being one of the few people to have a character survive a Decapitate proc and for having what I think is the highest damage Bag shot ever. Also, that was probably the most spell gun blasts any unit had taken to the face...at least until Barren had to record AeroGP vs. Dol for the SCC tournament. It's probably the most without said unit dying though despite that Archer trying his damnedest when not OHKO'ing Vossler.

Another thing I find of amusing is the Ninja never chose to try to Weapon Break the Archer, though now that I think about it, it was probably because the Ninja realized the Archer couldn't hurt him (without hitting an Armor Break).

spoiler: Malroth (Magic Dudes) vs. Gaignun (Patch Me)

Interestingly enough, thefirst match was the only one aside from the first three of my matches against Dokurider to take place on the same map when I had to re-record. I say this is "interesting" because Malroth lost the first time around. Horribly.

He won against Gaignun on the Balk II match almost solely because of that abysmal percentage Beguile actually hitting the Ninja second time. In the first time, the Ninja both rushed forth unimpeded and Kagesougi'd the Scholar and Oracle into oblivion while the Bard & Geomancer held out a bit longer because both Archers kept getting lower end Cover Fires. This time, the opposite kinda happened with the Bard dying a lot earlier due to higher end Cover Fires and the Oracle living through the entire thing instead of dying first.

Just goes to show the potential power of chance and Charm I guess.

Not much to say about the other two matches really. Malroth's team got rushed down and it really doesn't help that most half of his units are vulnerable to Silence, even if the Undead Scholar can cure himself of Silence.

spoiler: AeroGP (Snow Pirates) vs. Celdia (My Hat in the Ring)

I felt kinda bad recording this as a 3-of considering all the maps I generated random numbers for (using Gaignun's list) weere kind of crappy for Celdia's team. That the last one where the Phoenix Blade Squire & the Berserk Samurai started separated was especially bad, even before they promptly got Slept off the bat. Oh well, we all know how the RNG likes to give people the finger.

Celdia just got kind of unlucky in general in this match between that "crucial" Wish missing in Round 2 (even if it might have changed anything) and AeroGP's Chemist getting so many Gun criticals.

Getting hit by that many Mimic Daravons didn't help either of course, especially with Monk refusing to use Stigma Magic for some reason. If he had woken up the Berserk Samurai instead of Singing like an asshole (since Sleep blocks Song & Dance anyway), then that first round might have gone way differently. At least it wouldn't have been so curbstomp-y despite AeroGP's Squire's power.

I'll probably comment on the other two matches when I post up the other videos later tonight.

[Malroth]

I'm not paticulary vunerable to silence,  the oracle and the Scholar aren't carryig silence protection because they've both got secondaries capable of healing it, while the geomancer and bard should both have silence immunity

[The Damned]

(Ah, right. That was been amended.)

You're correct. I was thinking of Berserk. My apologies.