Final Fantasy Hacktics

I love the addition of a co-caster. I've wanted to do that myself, so if anyone wants to do that, hit me up.

I'm still reading over the 131 changes, so I may put up a couple vids a week from now. I've already seen two teams with twohanded poles. Have I started something? Haha. Whale Whiskered Scholars using 108's and two hands? 400 damage pokes(and a monstrous bio).

Real life has been quite demanding and traumatic as of late, so I may or may not post more videos. I haven't been keeping up with the goings on in Arena. I don't even know if 131 is out yet as of this post.

In regards to the pronunciation of ninjitsu, I don't think I've said any of them other than shuriken. The extent to my descriptions of the ninja skills is "I think that's the fire one and that one's yellow so I think it's lightning" I pretty much just call them as 'element' ninjitsu unless it's shuriken. And yea, the missing text entries are a considerable reason for that.

And if I ran any games with units that didn't have a second skillset(I think there were two), the owner may want to review those games. I didn't know not having a secondary set caused problems. I thought everyone was being saved correctly, and still think they were. If you'd really like to help, don't add extra spaces in your entries between your movement skill and first hand weapon. I just copy and paste the first chunk of players and one Bard almost slipped by with body armor in his Acc, and a hat for underwear.

Thanks for the uploads, Barren(foriner v bum rushing for me) and Wiz(spoiler).

I'm going to put this off a day so that someone can have a chance to pm me back. (and for my own time off since it takes the better part of an evening to get everything going)

Sorry for the delay.

It's CT5Holy night.

Eternal248(Fisticuffs) VS CT5Holy(Do Not Disturb)

CT5Holy(Standstills) VS Eternal248(Longshots)

CT5Holy(Do Not Disturb) VS Zxpr0jk(Toros) *warning: contains considerable wiz spam. If that pisses you off, then you probably aren't going to like this video.

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Tomorrow I have Heroes vs Dawn Brigade Planned. If anyone wants to request a specific match for their team, I'm in the irc channel most of the day. Come in, pm me, we'll get it arranged. But for now, enjoy.

Mando (Hindu) vs CT5Holy (Do Not Disturb)
(If nothing else watch the first round)


CT5Holy (Do Not Disturb) vs Eternal248 (Longshots)

*Unfortunately, CT5Holy informed me that his Ninja shouldn't have Raiton. My mistake. It's JP legal, but if either Eternal or Mando would like a rematch, I'll let them request it.

Barren(Big Assault) vs DomieV(Song and Dance and Punch) 1/2
Barren(Big Assault) vs DomieV(Song and Dance and Punch) 2/2

And also, when I was uploading this, I was informed I can upload videos over 15 minutes in length.

This is where the recording for Eternal's Longshots versus My inquisition should have been, but for a variety of reasons, it won't be.

In place of that, have this:

He won 12 of the 15 games across three attempted five round recordings. I won the very first recording at 3 to 2, but ever since my thief has been incapable of evading more than 2 crossbow bolts all game. And getting hit with a Don't Move bolt was an instant loss, pretty much.

My Oracle couldn't seem to hit any charms or zombies outside the first 5 matches, and the Scholar only seemed to use Mad Science on herself in the fifth match of every series, but never used her 300+ damage pokes.

Because of the lack of Zombies, the Paladin and thief were incapable of doing their most useful attacks, Consecration and Seal Evil, and the majority of games ended with the Paladin alone with 3 or 4 archers picking at him. Because he's packing a Murasame, he could do no damage to them and inevitably fell.

Overall, the Longshots have excellent speed, damage, range, and status superiority. While I have some strong status effects, if I got them off, I couldn't capitalize on them before archers got turns, or they didn't get off, and it resulted in a wasted turn. Another weakness would be my single unit having raise skills. Once the scholar dropped, it was a downhill fight for the rest of the match. Often a Beguile would be set to cast on an archer with P Down, but because of the 40 faith on all the archers and neutral compat, I was flipping a coin on all status effects.

Well done eternal, I'll expect the Longshots to snipe several more people in the future.

I'm still chugging them out extremely slowly since I'm getting used to the process and finding what works, and what doesn't.

Mando(Blinding Light) vs DomieV(Song and Dance and Punch) 1/3
Mando(Blinding Light) vs DomieV(Song and Dance and Punch) 2/3
Mando(Blinding Light) vs DomieV(Song and Dance and Punch) 3/3

Because of the pruning of the submissions thread, I've decided to change things before I get underway. Instead I'll have every team go at it 5 times. Creates plenty of footage, in my opinion, gives a more honest portrayal of how a team functions.

And I don't know why I end up running a Mando match first everytime... Hope he'll forgive me for using him as a test subject.

But don't worry guys, I'll pick up speed as time goes on.

Here's Vigilanti v Mando

And something I recorded about a week ago: Undeath vs Typical.

New videos will be the size of the second, and I'll add music after the fact.

I've got a sort of "mini-tourney" setup going.

I chose 8(7) players on the submissions thread counting back from the finish. Rolled for bracket locations, and then chose a random team of theirs. I'm going to do best of fives, single elimination. So it helps me keep a schedule. At the moment, I'm having conflicts with youtube since I can't upload anything over 15 minutes and my mic is god awful. For now, I'm just going to upload videos with just game sound and sped up as needed. Afraid I'll need to nix the "intros" for now since I don't have a mic and showing them would take more time but I'll provide links to the teams in the descriptions. I'll provide the memcard if anyone wants it.

But I'll make sure to put you in when I start the next "mini-tourney". So you'll be in there, probably next week? Make a note of which team you want entered, and I'll make a point of putting it in. Other than that, random position, and random maps(sans pub) against 7 people. I also plan to do a "highlight reel" and post-round analysis for the three rounds of the tournaments.

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I'm not making any plans until I'm able to record, encode, and upload at least three matches a day.

Haha! Exciting(relatively speaking) conclusion.

I'd never attribute a win to "whomever has more units" since that encourages turtling and you'd end up with more teams stalemating. And in this case, it wouldn't have mattered if he had 3 people up, Mando would not be able to kill the Monk. With his paladins working against him, and the monk having multiple forms of regen, and the oracle's frequent misses, it wouldn't be fair to say he "won". That'd be saying "whomever had more units with Holy Absorption won"

There was a decided victory though in round 5 after 4 draws. So glad to be through with that match up...

I've started doing some local games, and I'm into game 4 between Vigilanti vs Mando...

Neither of you can kill the other... Talk about draining to watch...

It always ALWAYS ends up both paladins vs one monk. Sometimes one oracle survives, but the paladins can't hurt the monk in any way, and can practically full-heal each other. They also grand cross the monk which results in him full-healing as well because the AI doesn't recognize his absorption.

So I don't know how to call it. I'm not going to call it a draw, and as it stands, I'm leaning toward saying Vigi wins because at least his team can hurt the enemy. When it's those paladins v the monk, they literally can't damage him in any way. Any ideas? I'll be uploading the likely 5 game streak this afternoon for other people to see. Prior warning though, absurdly boring. I'm going to probably triple speed it in order to get it under 15 minutes.

Just got back into town. Was at a funeral. Forgive me for watching my matches first.

I was under the impression Martial Arts only provided bonuses if you were Unarmed. Was that changed or was it not like that in vanilla? And I have no idea how Grand Cross works apparently. How does it calculate damage? What does it do? I'm going strictly by the Master's Guide which is so incomplete, I had no idea it healed.





Keep them coming. I won't be changing any of the teams for a little bit though. I'm going to have an unofficial minimum matches with them before I make changes. Good stuff though, learned a lot.

PS. Celdia's team also had iron boots, which I consider a handicap more than anything else as it quickly became 2v4 each time. After I get enough info with this team, I'll run trials with the other dances. I've got everything setup so I can do local tests. I want considerably more data with almost every class and item before the next tournament begins.

I've added two teams. One is Wiz spam+summon magic, the other is a more traditional spread of physical, magic, and status offense.

Quote from: Pride on August 06, 2011, 04:22:21 am
Some stuff...

Quote from: DomieV on August 06, 2011, 04:19:02 am
Some stuff...

Yea, I saw her team in the mem generator and plugged your team in to see who would win. She won 5 of 6 rounds, but it was always pretty close. I'd have to agree that the iron boots really held her back. Dancers have considerable PA and should move about near the end of a match to close it out, imo. I've created a Dancing Team and tried to incorporate the most valuable assets from both versions. Not requiring people to face it, but I'd like to see more tests of Dancing Teams either to provide evidence of necessary nerfs, or expose weaknesses. As it stands, I feel the opposition has to either 1) KO the Mimes during the second turn, or 2) Get a lucky RNG within 5 turns. Every round, it will get harder for them to come back.

I was under the impression the purpose of arena was to test the ruleset for imbalances and collect data before the next tournament. That's how I've been treating it anyway. Not to say I don't enjoy the battles.

Wiz does less damage than I previously thought, but still at an average of 25 damage per tic, multiplied by 3, it is 75 mapwide damage to each enemy. Multiplied by 4 enemies amounts to 300 damage to the team. That's not extreme. But as was already mentioned, it is extremely fast and consistent. Because of that speed, the enemy team will eat two wiz volleys before they make significant contact with the enemy. 600 damage before the two teams have even begun to clash. 1200 if there are two dancers and two mimes. It's funny that you say you've never seen a Wiz team win, because I have seen one win 4 times in the last month. Someone here is talking a bit of fluff.

I wish I had more games to reference, but I've only seen Domie's team in two matches. Nothing against Domie, btw, I'm glad his team exists so I have something to reference. With respect to his team, I adjusted the dance counts above, but in a 2d2m setup, that'd be 25*6*4=600 damage. That's double the damage for one more dedicated dancer. Two volleys of that will cripple/kill any team. That's not even calculating DPCT(Damage Per Clock Tic) when you consider, the longer the match goes on, the more damage is piled on the enemy team. In order to win, the enemy has to have a solid grasp on the win by their third turns or get an extremely lucky proc somewhere.

The fact that they are easily hit while performing is negated since they maintain distance from the enemy while performing. Only on small maps would the enemy team have a chance to attack the dancers, and that's if they have opted to ignore the mimes(strong units themselves). Which brings me to my next point, That's not 300 damage being done by three characters, that's 300 damage done by one character because it doesn't eat any mime actions. They still have considerable PA and life themselves as well as solid innates. So, again to reference Domie v Squidgy, It did about 300 damage to the enemy team in the first few turns. Then an additional 250ish from Mime punches. So if there is a bottleneck, the Dancing team has pumped out at least 500 damage to the enemy team while the enemy has returned effectively nothing. And, if there were an additional Dancer, the damage would be upwards of 850 damage. Before any real clash could happen.

I would advise against using words like "effortlessly" when talking about counters if you're not going to give each counter the genuine scrutiny it deserves. I have seen the Domie's wiz team win 4 out of 5 times. So let me "effortlessly" explain why those counters are weak/too costly in comparison to Wiz spam. Really... horrible choice of words.

Speed Save) Speed Save on Sguidgy's Paladins kept him in the game, but never gave him an advantage despite proccing almost every single time. What it did do, is give his Paladins a turn to heal before being hit by the next Wiznaibus volley. It didn't counter at all. On more range capable units like archers, it has a shot, but not much of one as the enemy team will still be keen on taking out the mimes first since they're already close. Even then, missing a mime could be an instant loss.

Damage Split) If Damage Split even can proc on it, it won't proc every time. So the max it can return is 25(wiz)x3(casts)x2(max damage split)/2(half damage)=75 damage. To be fair, it will drop the damage from the Dancers by 75 as well. So it becomes 225 damage against the enemy team. Output was 225(about 53 per unit) damage, return was 75(about 25 per unit). Spread among three on the enemy team. Damage Split does not counter Wiz spam. It does, at best, as well as Speed Save, getting you an extra turn, but arguably less effective since it doesn't have stacking benefits.

Regenerator) Simply put, it doesn't stack and requires the unit to get a turn before it regens. It can't keep up. Even on tanky units, that's what 50 hp restored per turn? When you're eating 60(actually more since two volleys will happen before a paladins next turn), how is Regenerator "effortlessly" countering again? Btw, the unit will still use a turn to heal/run since the heal happens after their turn completes.

Dragon Spirit) Again, doesn't stack. And has the added weakness of bringing people back with barely enough hp to survive a volley. If they have enough, they'll enter an endless loop until they don't proc a Dragon Spirit on the first hit. Otherwise, that Reraise didn't help at all. Their first turn will always be used to run/heal so that's a lost turn as well. And don't forget, this damage is ignoring the output of Mimes and completely disconnected turns allowing them to go ahead and kill them with one punch when they reraise if their CT lines up before the next Wiznaibus.

HP Restore) Gotta Admit, this one has potential. But it won't proc most of the time so only the tankiest of units will be able to get a chance. Not to mention only two people have it. And in addition, it would cost 750jp to actually get, or 1500jp for two characters in order to counter 350 on one unit of the enemy team. So you have two units(1500jp, hp gear, and specific reaction) countering 1 unit(350jp, varied gear, varied reaction), that won't work 100%. When it works, it'll be nice, but I am not going to rely on HP restore to win games for me. For every 25 games HP Restore will win, 75 games will go to the Wiz team. Especially if there are large maps in the rotation.

Which brings me to my final point, large maps or obstructed maps give the dancers a minimum 300hp lead before the game even starts. That's about the HP of an entire unit. For no risk. No loss, and while advancing their melee forces. In fact, if the mimes ever chose to just chill next to the dancers, it'd be 600+ unreturned damage. The longer it takes the enemy team to close the gap, the deeper in the whole they go. They don't have to die, just have to get low enough to enter sandbag mode. If they ever close on the Dancers, they still have tremendous PA and are still entirely capable of finishing someone with their scarf.

There's no such thing as an effortless counter. There are convenient counters, but anything that is bought with the express purpose of defending against one tactic is far from effortless, and in this case extremely costly or fails to counter at all. Be a little bit more respectful with your word choice and do the small amount of homework if you're going to refute something. I'm all for hearing how I'm incorrect, but you didn't give anything to support your argument. I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, but I have at least 2 molehills and some math to support my claims.

If Domie wouldn't mind explaining why he opted for a Bard and a Dancer instead of just two Dancers, that'd be nice too. He likely knows something I don't, because if I were to build the team, I'd get the second dancer and double my damage output in the first two turns. Could always put throw item/Raise 2 on a Dancer and have her pick up a mime.

Surprised I won even one game with that team. I only entered them so I had a team at all, and to test individual things before putting them into a real team.

That said, I can't get the bad taste of dancing mimes out of my mouth. Dancing mimes on a large map = 1 or 2 rounds of free damage considering +movement is scarce. Wiznaibus x6 before the enemy ever gets close. If they hunker down and defend, they take another wave of wiznaibus. If they attack, they'll get mopped up by wiznaibus a couple waves later. It can do enough damage to anti-sandbag full map, always hits, and afaik can't be countered. So eating 6 40-60ish damage per character will amount 240damage per character, per wave, or 960 damage to the whole team after a single volley. That wouldn't be disgusting if it weren't so fast and 100%. So by the time your team has even reached the enemy, they're already in grave danger.

And maybe I haven't seen their true potential, but the paladin moveset is very lackluster and a little confused. The only ranged skill it has is MA based, yet Paladin MA is abysmal, as well as the adjusted damage for the target's Faith. It also has the holy element which can be absorbed/negated by fairly solid items while still doing no extra damage to anyone since undead is so costly that +1 Stats across the board isn't enough. It can't fight on a larger map because of the least move potential in the patch. As a secondary, it puts an otherwise offensive unit into a mixed role where, it would otherwise be offense all the time. Now you waste a solid damage turn to survive, which gives the enemy a turn to survive as well. I consider the paladin class both weak and counter-productive. I'd love an example of paladins being used effectively. Other offensive physical outclass it. Other defensive healers outclass it. It has almost no status utility. It obviously isn't an MA monster. Their large HP pool and defensive ability would be useful if the enemy targeted high HP units over squishies but they don't.

Those are just my thoughts, I could be missing something that makes them amazing, but from what I've seen, Paladins are a burden on any team and DancingMimes do absurd damage at no risk. Unless you're making a team of Woody Allens wearing breastplates.

Quite disappointed in the paladins.  Wasted turns using Accumulate. I figure they couldn't get into melee range, so the next best option was to retreat and use Accumulate. That will be addressed. I'd like someone to clarify something for me. Because knight-swords are forced two-hand, do they get the two-hand damage modifier? I wasn't sure if Chaos Blade's WP would be 16 or 32. So do all forced two-hand items get the damage modifier built in or does it require having the two-hand support to get the benefit even when using forced two-hand weapons?

The wizards did as expected. As well as could be expected anyway, when the enemy team has a floater and seal evil. Death was really supposed to be saved to rez the paladins, but since they didn't rush in round three. Derp.. They'd have more draw outs, but they were heavily burdened by the JP cap.

I'm making a couple changes and updating. I would like to have at least one small map each time though. That was three medium-large maps in a row. Paladins had no choice but to fall back since they couldn't reach their targets.

I'm not really concerned with getting a rematch. Even when I did tests against AeroGP before the tourney started, I lost 10 to 1 matches. So the the move hp probably wouldn't have saved me. It's all in good fun and mistakes happen.

I'm surprised I made it as far as I did considering how out of wack my move and speed stats were. Definitely winning by the grace of the RNG many times. The tourney was a good pressure keg to refine. No idea why Underdog refused to use good compat charms in that last match though. Think I could have won that if she had.

Best of luck to everyone else. Looking forward to the next season.

FDC is definitely my favorite caster. The second round took a while to get uploaded, but no big deal. Just sort out the mic issues somehow and keep the pregame from dragging on too much and it'll be perfect. He doesn't parrot every little thing going on during matches, and tries to keep everything in perspective in the grand scheme of the match instead. Keep up the good work, FDC. Hope you get my matches in the future.

(Underdog will return after she visits the soldier office for some new recruits)