Final Fantasy Hacktics

Arena League III

Northern Division

Save Me                        6-0
RAMROD                         4-2
Frozen Fist of the North Star  4-2
Electrifying                   3-3
Femme Fatale                   2-4
TIB                            2-4
Join the Frogs or Die!         0-6

  Ba Me PX SA Sh Sq Za
Ba -- L  L  L  L  L  L
Me W  -- L  W  W  L  W
PX W  W  -- L  W  L  W
SA W  L  W  -- L  L  L
Sh W  L  L  W  -- L  L
Sq W  W  W  W  W  -- W
Za W  L  L  W  W  L  --

Save Me
As we already knew, Franz is a terrible ninja monster.
RAMROD
High-powered Draw Out is effective - sure, one of the kills in the quad-kill Chirijiraden was friendly, but it got the job done.
Frozen Fist of the North Star
Pretty wicked ice absorb machine, Cirno got plenty of kills but regen Lore can't keep up with Speed Save Lore. Fun use of Distribute. (Fun fact: when you're charmed, you Distribute to the other team.)
Electrifying
Better damage output, but still only one unit with real stopping power. MA-based Paladin and Thief not getting the job done.
Femme Fatale
Not much luck with Elemental and low damage. Teams are getting better!
TIB
40 Faith Bahamut procs are very underwhelming, PA Save doesn't help flails.
Join the Frogs or Die!
No Frog casts, maybe four Javelin/Octagon whacks with no procs: an AI disaster, as the computer favored Silf over Frog, Ruins over Steal Heart, and Life Drain over Paralyze.

Southern Division

We Will Rock You      6-0
Bloody's Devils       5-1
Do Not Disturb        3-3
Xtreme Sandbagging    2-4
Gotwald and the 613's 2-4
World of Ruin         2-4
Future So Light       1-5

  CT DV Go Ot Po SS TD
CT -- L  W  L  L  W  W
DV W  -- L  L  L  L  W
Go L  W  -- L  L  W  L
Ot W  W  W  -- L  W  W
Po W  W  W  W  -- W  W
SS L  W  L  L  L  -- W
TD L  L  W  L  L  L  --
We Will Rock You
Different approach than the Lore-Save teams, but similar results.
Bloody's Devils
When the Paladins decided to stick around and guard the nest, indomitable.
Do Not Disturb
Clever Mime usage and an effective Ninja, but Cheer Song didn't have the oomph Battle Song did.
Xtreme Sandbagging
Lowish damage output and much harsher competition than previously.
Gotwald and the 613's
Good healing from Lore, but 40 Fury/base PA Monks are not a threat.
World of Ruin
Not a lot of healing or rez. Lots of elemental equipment and a subsequent lack of damage.
Future So Light
Polka Polka not so hot compared to Nameless Dance - the AI will spam it even after everyone's at 1 PA. Alia the only heavy damage character after hitting 30+ MA from Lores, but rooted and unable to rampage.


Good
Speed Save (significantly outclasses PA Save and MA Save)
Basic Skill (haste/revive/Ultima/utility physical)
Concentrate (aside from Shurikens six feet in diameter, quite a lot of bypassing physical evasion going on)
heavy hitters (between Move-HP Up, potions, and elemental healing, dropping bodies requires dedicated attackers)
Lore (much more effective this time with Save teams and optimized setups
Haste (becoming more mandatory as teams get better)
buff teams (too hard to catch up with on medium/large maps)

Bad
Silf (For some reason the AI loves this, possibly it expects both statuses)
wimps (as in FFT 1.3, the way to win is to score a kill and get your opponent spending turns on Phoenix Down)

Ugly
Iron Boots (very clever, and useful to keep a Scholar from hammering himself with Lore, but what's the point of Protect/Shell on a unit not in the fray?)

Having a lot of upload issues - I actually ran that exact match before you posted, The Damned, and have been trying to put it up since, finally gave up (edit: until now!). Don't expect a lot of match videos from me in the near future. But if you can run ePSXe the cards are there and there's no tomfoolery required, just patch and play!

Re: current changelog

Cloths are nice - since the Fury and Defend hacks conflict (right?), Always:Defend is innate Abandon, which is very strong but also a fitting Dancer trait. I think they should be forced 2-hands to prevent Abandon/Equip Shield/Escutcheon and lose some W-EV, and maybe separate Defend and Protect/Shell, but definitely worth playing with now.

I love Iron Boots conceptually, but in practice they're kind of a drag - a mandatory equip on Singers/Dancers/Scholars that encourages turtling. That's aesthetics though. I'm kinda worried about the cloths for the same reason, but Performing/Charging should negate Defend, and Iron Boots already provide Protect/Shell, so it's not as bad.

The rest seems good, looking forward to trying it out.

Otabo, I tried to run your team against PX and The Damned and gave up a couple minutes in both times. Two ice teams? Lore, Polka Polka and Battle Song running simultaneously, are you kidding me?! I'm uploading one against CT5Holy but I'm seriously not doing any more Lore matches until the next patch.

"Ying-Yang Magic" (sic)

I like having MP be hard to get on armor, so I think that discrepancy is fine. But with Paladins having minimal MP, maybe Cross Helmet could stand a lil' buff.

Lancers aren't very effective, because they have lowish PA and because spears are really, really bad. Buff spears.
Papyrus Plate is so much better than the other books that it keeps sidetracking my Zombie team, I get miffed that I have to give up 1 WP to use Battle Dict. Unless Choco Meteor is like MA*10 these need balancing.
Two-thirds of staves are weak, the 25% proc rate is not high enough for the "love tap" paradigm to work out unless it's MBarrier or something, or it's also a mild heal like Healing Staff.
The status crossbows and elemental bows are pretty weak.
Cloth is not good.

Yeah, nice catch on Float, it's that dang bug from S3 again.  Shade, your Monk had no Punch Art due to another bug.

PX's team is pretty sick indeed*, I think Squidgy had a similar lightning-absorb team in his gag slot previously.  Nuking with magic is pretty effective on small maps!

* it beat my monks

The spreadsheet doesn't seem to deal perfectly with empty secondaries - Shade's Monk had an empty secondary and didn't have the Punch Art skills I entered into the spreadsheet. This is a pretty easy fix though, I can just give these units an empty secondary.

These two skills are both still in, so occasionally I paste in an extra space and get the broken Float we've seen in S3/S4.
"Float " 150 JP (the bad Float)
"Float"  300 JP (the good Float)


Well, it's a major kludge, but you could just give every class all equips innately.  Not sure if that's really what you're looking for though.

How to balance Equip Armor? Leave it Support? Change it to Equip Helmet? Raise the cost? Reduce Helmet/Armor HPs by 10? It does basically cost 850 JP now, since it's the only good Paladin ability, so it's not out of the question to leave it as is.

I think letting Paladins/Lancers/Samurai have Equip Armor + Move-HP Up is fine; previously they were the only ones who could have Equip Armor + any support which is vastly scarier. This might actually be the nerf that keeps my teams from being 50% Paladin by weight!

ST. AJORA Speed Save, Damage Split
STRONG    Auto-Potion, Counter, HP Restore, MP Restore, C.Flood, Dragon Spirit, Abandon
WEAK      C.Tackle, Arrow Guard, Regenerator, C.Magic, C.Quick, Awareness, Meatbone, PA Save, MA Save
TRASH     Caution, Finger Guard, Absorb Used MP, Distribute, Brave Up, Faith Up
ST. AJORA Concentrate
STRONG    E. Armor, MD UP, MA UP, Short Charge, Defense UP, Attack UP, Two Hands, Two Swords
WEAK      E. Shield, Throw Item, Martial Arts, Unyielding, Overwhelm
TRASH     E. Clothes, Defend, Maintenance, E. Ranged, Half of MP, E. Blade, M. Talk, E. Polearm, E. Magegear, E. Heavy Blade
ST. AJORA Move-HP Up
STRONG    Move-MP Up, Move +1
WEAK      Teleport, Fly, Ignore Height
TRASH     Jump +1, Jump +2, Float
Here is a tierlist I threw together. I don't want to provoke four pages of arguing about tiers, this is just my own opinion and a sloppy reference for what needs buffing/nerfing.

It's fine to have stronger and weaker abilities, some stuff I have in weak is more niche. The God tier and especially trash is what needs action.  Obviously movement is a special case, I would just lower Move-HP Up and Move-MP Up to 5-7% and move on.

The Equip X abilities, strictly speaking, don't need to occupy the support slot. You could make them freebies that don't need to be equipped, since we're directly editing equipment. Or you could put them in the less useful movement slot. I think these abilities could be balanced by adjusting the class growths and items themselves, but this is another option, although one of Arena's strengths is avoiding these kinds of arbitrary rules and metapatching.

Quote from: "Melancthon"Not one stick attack from my Samurai though.

They don't have their innate anymore, so might as well Draw Out - Two Hands Scholar is where it's at.

Quote from: "The Damned"Hmm...I wonder why the graphics for the crystals and the treasures were acting up.

It's a bug with the alternate palettes (you'll see it in the S4 1.3 tourney too), which we tolerate because the palettes are completely amazing (thanks again mav, cold52, and everyone else!)

I will run your match tonight, no worries, but I hope you take your love in the form of instakill Throw Stone because that's what you're getting.

Quote from: "Barren":/

That's a pain, thanks again for running the matches - I hate making videos on this computer and it's great to see someone doing testing with commentary.

Good changes.

Concentrate is a superpower and needs a nerf or a huge price tag.  Abandon is pretty strong and will be a superpower if 90% of physical attackers can't ignore it anymore.  Transparent is a neat status completely overshadowed by Concentrate. So you want Concentrate around, but not quite so mandatory. I think having W-EV or C-EV unaffected by Concentrate is a good starting point.

If Concentrate is affected by Darkness, Abandon + Darkness means 0% CtH always, which is sick (it was the original theme behind my Secret Hunt team). I guess it's risky to bring a team without Cancel: Petrify and it should be risky to bring a physical team without Cancel: Darkness.  I honestly can't remember how rigorous the AI is about cleansing, but I guess I've seen it use Eye Drops or Stigma Magic to do it before.

Shuriken's basically Throw so Concentrate-Throw is badass here like it is in S3/S4.  Gotta figure out a way to keep WP lower though.

Nicking 1 WP from Stone Gun is actually a decent nerf - 11 WP and Attack Up does maybe 10 more damage than unmodified 12 WP. I was originally going to run it with Salty Rage so we'll see how that goes.

I actually love Grand Cross as-is, although maybe it needs a slight buff to get the AI using it. But adding an element is going to make Paladins into combine harvesters, Defender/Diamond Helmet/108 Gems is a 240 splash that selfheals for 290 after Fury.

I didn't realize Barren was swapping out the teams for new ones, that is a much more clever thing to do than stopping the tourney.

The new Lore animations are an improvement.  Cover Fire is still wicked (it was marked as evadeable before I thought) but lots of people are running it so it's getting tested.  Have to remind myself the point of balance is not to remove all effective abilities!

Many JP costs, especially R/S/M, could be overhauled.  I don't think lesser Reactions will ever get used until you have to make harder choices to get Speed Save or Damage Split.

The movement slot is kind of terrible and not much can be done about it (I'm assuming they're a pain to hack).

All of The Damned's changes seem reasonable.  I am going to run a Death Sentence team soon because I think adding Cancel: Death Sentence to Cancel: Dead items is a huge buff to the status, and Holy Water might be a good balance to that.

Right now a Monk can hit 19 PA out of the box, which is pretty sick - I would either drop the 2 PA handbag or revert Monk PA or both.

Critical Quick, at least, is bugged to check every hit instead of just hits in Critical, like the new MP Restore.

I am already away from a computer that can handle the editing, but the spreadsheet's there with every team already for anyone who doesn't want to input them. I think Jump is non-elemental rather than weapon-elemental, though, for no good reason.

Yeah, do whatever you want goes without saying, I'm not your boss!

In other news, Stone Gun is worse than gigacharms, I already reequipped my team with Romanda Guns:


Skip puts up a good fight, but you can see that they are too powerful, even on a small map.  Either change them to Range 3 or WP 10, maybe?

New patch!

I will make new cards Wednesday with any fresh teams and then I'm away for the holiday.  Barren, maybe you should run your own new tourney on the new patch?  Even if you just ran best-of-one with eight teams that are new and/or tough, it would probably tell us more than finishing out playoffs, sad to say - that's life with a responsive dev cycle.