AI Team Building Guide 2.0

[RavenOfRazgriz]

(Many months back, CT5Holy wrote the AI Team Building Guide,  This is an updated version that aims to be more accurate and detailed.  While written with FFT: Arena in mind, most general information should be applicable to any FFT AI Tournament.  This Guide will have two sections, one for basic tips and AI help, and one for more in-depth ones.)

If you're new to FFT: Arena or AI Battling in general, this thread will help you better understand the AI and what goes into making a successful team.  For the Rules on making teams in FFT: Arena, Gear, Abilities, Stats, etc, you can check the Master Guide, which should always be up-to-date.  Don't worry about those until after you've read the Basic Team-Building Tips and Basic AI-Behavior Tips sections, though.

Basic Team-Building Tips

0. Observe other teams through the many videos of AI battles, here and elsewhere.  Even if they're not FFT: Arena videos, they'll give you a good glimpse into how the AI functions at least a basic appreciation of how to build good and not-so-good teams of various battle styles.  While the skills, classes, stats, etc. can all be different between Vanilla, Arena, and the many other FFT patches out there, core game concepts are universal.  Knowing your core game concepts is a key step in being good in any AI-Battle situation, and is what the "Basic" sections of this guide focus on.

1. Pick a plan, and stick to it.  Make sure every unit fills a role without being dead weight, and make sure you don't put too much importance on any one unit.  A team that can support each other well will do better than a team of four "good" standalone units.  You don't need any sort of involved concept, nor do you need stick to a basic rubric like Physical-Magical-Status-Healer, but you do need synergy among your team.  A team that isn't well-focused and can't support each other well is usually bound to fail.  Don't worry about having a full Primary/Secondary/Reaction/Support/Movement loadout on every unit, because this is secondary to ensuring the unit does what you need it to do.  There are many ways to give a team synergy, such as Elemental Absorption, Ability Combos (Zombie + Seal Evil or many others), screen-wide skills such as the Lore skillset being used to heal small values and trigger one's own Save or Up Reactions.  It doesn't need to be complicated like that, though - a simple team that does damage and keeps itself alive is fine too when done correctly.  Some concepts are definitely a lot more involved than others, but once you've chosen one you feel can be successful, stick close and don't stray too far from it.  That's the best way to ensure its success.

2. Don't give your units abilities they don't need to fulfill their roles, and don't feel forced to spend all your JP if your units all do what you need them to and still have some left over.  This is very much a part of the previous tip, but in reverse.  If the AI has skills you don't need it to have, you run the risk of it wasting turns on it at inopportune times and losing easily won games.  It's good to cover as many bases and flaws as possible on your team, but don't extend beyond your comfort zone to do so.  Cover too much, you begin losing to stuff you should beat because you lose focus.  The AI isn't a player like you - more options isn't always good.  Similarly, as I'll detail below, more Move and more Speed also isn't always good.  Constructing a team for the AI to use is far different from constructing a team for yourself or another player to use.  Remember this at all times.

3. You'll want some form of healing and resurrection on most teams you make.  Not every unit needs it, but its usually a good idea for 2 units (and almost required that at least 1 unit) carry some form of it, even if it's just a Phoenix Down.   Murphy's Law - everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the ability to recover and revive is your answer to that.  Make sure you keep this revival on a unit that's not likely to die early, either - especially if you only run one or two units capable of revival.  Being able to raise things is no good if the things casting your Raise Dead skills are the first things to kick the bucket.

4. Speed is important, as should be obvious.  More turns means more Tempo, which wins games.  The AI knows this, hence why Haste is one of its top priorities when its either idle or looking to cast a positive Status.  However, don't forget your other stats - if you don't have the MP to use your skills, or the PA/MA to do relevant damage, or the HP to live long enough to even see those additional turns, then getting more turns than the opponent is obviously not worth a lot.  This is why it's important to balance how much Speed you want to add with your other stats.  A 9 Speed unit that's constantly threatening is usually better than a 12 Speed unit that barely jabs for 70 damage and can easily go ignored.  An important note here is the concept of Speed Synching, or making sure your Speed is well-balanced between the individual units on your team.  If one unit runs forth before the rest, it'll likely die far too removed to be revived and spell curtains for the remainder of your team.  For that reason, a team with four 8 Speed units is usually better than a team with one 12 Speed unit and three 8 Speed ones. 

4.5. A note that specifically applies to FFT: Arena - Haste only boosts Speed by 25% and lasts for 32 CT, while Slow reduces Speed by 50% and lasts 24 CT.  This means that, unless you're running an uber-Speed setup to begin with (12+ post-ger Speed), Haste will only give you 2 Speed, and past 12 will only give you 3 Speed.  Slow, meanwhile, will undercut Speed by at least 4 no matter the target, leaving anything hit with Slow at 4-5 Speed for the most part.  Considering Speed changes are far more noticeable going down than up, this makes Slow very, very powerful when used correctly.  Haste is still powerful itself, because the difference between 8 and 10 Speed is very noticeable, but it's not a mandate for every team running 8-9 Speed, and units already running appreciable Speed (10+ base) are probably best off foregoing it entirely unless it's just something you can get without going out of your way.

5. Similar to Speed, Move is obviously important, for similar reasons.  The less turns you spend idly Moving into range, the more turns you get performing relevant actions and the more Tempo you gain.  Again like Speed, though, max Move isn't always good the way it is in single player, since the unit's other stats still need to be sufficiently fleshed out or their extra Move means little.  High Move also means your squad can become quickly divided, even if properly synched, so there's the risk of a unit going down and being unable to be revived before its permanent demise.  It also runs the same risk as Speed in that a team with one 6 Move unit and three 3 Move units is generally going to be worse than a team of four 3 Move units - the unit with 6 Move is essentially getting two-to-one turns to Move when compared to its allies, allowing it to make contact long before the rest of its team and get killed long before the rest come into range.  Move Synching, while not as important as Speed Synching, is still important to a team's success, so at least be sure the Move differences between units on the same team isn't too great.

6. If you're having trouble figuring out how strong or weak something is, WinCalc.exe is your bestest best friend in the whole world ever.  I mean it.  Outside of Critical Hits, nothing about FFT's damage is randomized outside of skills explicitly made to be so.  It's very easy to number-crunch your expected damage or hit rate in literally any and every possible situation in a matter of seconds.  Just remember that FFT always rounds a number down when a fraction appears (outside of Short Charge, which rounds up), and that with Protect/Shell/Attack UP/Magic Attack UP/etc, its your primary PA or MA factor that is multiplied against, not the final value.  The Arena-custom Supports Overwhelm and Unyielding (along with Fury/Faith) affect the final damage value instead, but they're the exception, not the rule.  Numbers are scary at first, yes, but FFT is fairly simple about them.  Even if you don't do the math "right", what you end up with should be close enough to give you the right idea.

7. Arguably, this is the most important tip.  Remember that sometimes you just need to get lucky to win.  This is important to know, important to remember, and important to accept as something that is perfectly fine.  No team is flawless, and as stated many times before, trying to extend too much and cover too many flaws will just make it cave in on itself.  The important thing is being aware of your team's weaknesses, and knowing which you can and cannot cover.  When interpreted in its broadest sense, this tip is true of almost every competitive game in existence.  Even the best player needs a little bit of luck.  Sometimes you don't get that luck, or your opponent does, and you lose.  It sucks.  That's when you examine your team, figure out whether there's something you can do to remove the need for luck in that kind of a matchup without weakening it in other areas.  If you can't, you can't, and it's a bad matchup.  You do what you can and just hope to be the one who gets lucky next time.  This goes right back to focusing on your strategy.

Basic AI-Behavior Tips

1. The AI is quirky, and has a tiny bit of randomness to it.  It'll usually use the best skill in its arsenal, and is very smart about knowing how to use many skills you'd expect it to be dumb with, such as MP Destruction.  The AI isn't "stupid" so much in that it merely has a different set of priorities than a player does.  Like I said though, it is quirky and has a very mild bit of randomness.  If you're using a status-based unit, such as with Talk Skill, and it decides it wants to do damage on a specific turn, and all it has is a 4 WP Knife for damage options, it'll run up and stab a bitch instead of using Mimic Daravon.  Even if the unit isn't geared for damage, remember the AI will sometimes do things like this when deciding what to do to an opponent.  This means that emaciating a unit's DPS won't cause it to spam non-damage skills all of the time, so you'll want your units able to do some kind of damage, even if it's only 80 or so. 

2.  Self-preservation is top priority.  People seem to misinterpret this as "healing/revival is top priority", but this is actually not true.  If a unit is going to kill the Acting unit, and the Acting unit can disable or kill the enemy before the enemy can kill it (such as with a Short Charge Paralyze), it will do that instead of casting Raise on a dead ally or healing itself, if the healing will not allow it to live through the skill.  If it is in Critical and there is a dead ally within range, it will heal itself instead of Raising the dead ally.  If the AI heals itself, it will always Move away from enemy units, even if moving past them would place it in range to Raise a fallen ally on the following turn.  If the AI heals an ally, however, it'll still be willing to move forward, as long as the recipient of the healing skill was not the casting unit. The AI does not pay attention to the Crystal Counter (3/2/1/0), but does pay attention to turn order on dead units.  If it has the choice of reviving multiple units, it will go for the one that will reach 100 CT first.  It will, however, prioritize both preservation of self and allies over the death of enemies, unless that enemy is the final enemy on the map and they have the DPS to kill it in a single attack.  Units with the Reraise status are generally treated as lower priority when healing, and won't be revived because the AI sees wasting a turn on making a unit get up that was going to get up anyway as a waste.

3. The AI will always use both its Move and Act command if possible, with rare exception.  Idle Acts will be used to cast things like Haste, Accumulate, etc. and the AI will usually Move away from an enemy unit after attacking if it attacked before Moving.

4. MP restoration is based on both the other things the AI can do at the time, and how important it feels the target's MP-requiring skills are.  Powerful skills like Flare and Slow Dance will usually see the AI using skills like Chakra and Ether to replenish MP, but if the AI views the target's skills as unimportant, it won't replenish MP, regardless of how important the skill may actually be to the current situation.  The same is true of some Status-healing, such as whether or not the AI decides healing Silence is worthwhile. This is part of the reason Move-MP UP (and in Arena's case, sometimes MP Restore) is such a staple on MP-using units in AI tournaments, even more than in the single player game, on top of the obvious bit of it being MP restoration without performing Actions.  The AI will still usually use skills such as Ether correctly, and whether it decides something as being worthwhile or not is at least partially based on the team its fighting.  I've had situations, for example, where my units are Silenced but the enemy is immune to most of the skills in my Talk Skill set - so the AI just won't cure Silence until something changes, which can be both a blessing and a curse depending on the situation.

5. The AI views most buffs as things to apply when a unit is somewhat damaged, as a form of light-medium healing.   Reraise, Protect, Shell, etc. will get applied not at full HP, but when damaged and in need of a light heal (or in need of a large heal, if one isn't available), or sometimes when the AI is idle and has no better Act to perform, though the latter is not guaranteed.  Haste, Transparent, and Wall are seen as proactive buffs that the AI will try to apply when it doesn't need to kill something.  In Haste's case, it knows Speed is good, so it tries to keep itself and allies Hasted when possible.  In the case of Transparent and Wall, it thinks these statuses make it invisible / invincible respectively, and will use them proactively as it sees those statuses as the best means to keep the party alive.  In Vanilla, applying these proactively is impossible, and in most mods, it is either also impossible, or the statuses are altered in some way to make the above no longer true, so be careful when making a team that can use one or both of these statuses proactively.  (In Arena's case, the skill Carbuncle comes to mind as a proactive source of Transparent.)  When buffing a unit, though, the AI is generally smart on knowing which buffs are most important.  Sometimes, it'll do something odd, like add Protect over Reraise, or add Shell instead of Protect if Protect is better for the situation and it has both, but those are similar to point 1.  Just make sure the AI can only access the buffs you need it to access and this behavior should be well minimized.

6.  If it has a choice between two enemy units, the AI will prioritize units with the lower Current HP, decided by its raw value.  This means that a 250/250 Priest will be targeted over a 300/450 Knight, because its Current HP or 250 is less than the Knight's Current HP of 450, despite the fact the Knight is technically at "less" HP in terms of a percent (100% HP Priest v 66.6% HP Knight.)  Going back to my point on keeping revival on units least likely to die, keep this in mind.  You probably don't want your primary revival on units with low Max HP unless they have something like Defense UP to compensate.  You can also use this trait of the AI offensively - if you want the enemy AI to ignore certain units on your squad, make them have higher Max HP and have it so that both that unit and a unit with lower Max HP enters the enemy combat range at roughly the same time.

7.  There are several things the AI cannot understand properly.  Firstly, it cannot properly compute Haste when it calculates the turn order, in respect to CT-bearing Spells like Flare.  This is another large part as to why Haste is so gamebreaking in single-player.  It also cannot properly compute when the Lancer's Jump skill will land, meaning it'll sometimes kill-steal from an allied Jumping unit.  It also cannot tell what Reactions a unit has equipped and what the result of triggering said Reaction would be.  For someone whose played through Vanilla FFT, this is probably the one thing on this list they've noticed if they've noticed nothing else in this entire Basic AI-Behavior section.  If I've forgotten one or two things, I'll edit them in later, but these three are the most important.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

(If you're a new player who just finished reading the previous post, stop reading.  Go build teams, test them and/or submit them to be tested, and go watch a few of the more recent matches to see what other players are doing and whose winning because of it.  This will give you a good idea of the metagame, and you can look over the teams that win and see how much they relate to the things listed in the Basic section of this Guide.  This next section will deal with more advanced tactics, and some of them may just make your head spin until you're more familiar with things.  Once you've gotten some experience, come back and read the rest of this.

...Back now?  Got your ass beat a few times, won a couple, now want to see how to win even more?  Good.)

Okay, unlike the previous section, this won't be divided into Team-Building Tips and AI-Behavior Tips.  This discusses a lot of concepts that cross the two lines, so I'll just be listing them in as much of an intuitive order as I can.  This will also get into some very meta shit.  You have been forewarned, and I really do recommend having some experience playing AI-Battles before reading on.  Things will make a lot more sense if you do than if you don't.

Advanced AI-Battling Tips

Most of these tips relate to one broad concept - Advanced Tempo Control.  This relates back to several points I listed previously, including Move and Speed.  While using higher but controlled amounts of Move and Speed increase your base Tempo, there are many other ways of boosting it.  An obvious one is the utilization of a skill with a wide Area of Effect - hitting multiple units is obviously akin to getting multiple turns as long as you're still doing respectable damage.  That's elementary shit though, you're here for the big-boy tips.   So, you're familiar with how to control game Tempo from the view of your own team - but what about from the view of the enemy team?  Yes, you can control Tempo from the other side of the coin as well, with proper planning.  These bullet tips should help you figure out the best way for your team to do so:

1. Going first isn't always best.  This is different from more Speed isn't always best.  Depending on what your team strategy is, you may want to get the jump on the enemy team, or you may want them to move into range first then fire the counter-attack.  This is obvious after playing some, but it gets taken for granted too much.  Be aware of which situation gives your team the most advantage, and do what you can to ensure the game plays out that way.  In FFT: Arena specifically, Speed Ties aren't resolved by P1 All Units/P2 All Units like in Vanilla, but in P1 Unit1/P2 Unit1/P2 Unit2/P1 Unit2/P1 Unit3/P2 Unit 3/P2 Unit4/P1 Unit4.  This adds an extra layer to manipulating turn order.  By rearranging your team, you can manipulate the result of Speed ties in your favor.  If you have a 9 Speed unit, for example, and want it to move after the enemy 9 Speed units, placing it in slot 4 will ensure it loses most Speed ties regardless of whether you're P1 or P2.  Again, this sounds simple, but the strategic ramifications often go completely ignored because most people are too busy worrying about how Speed ties resolve among their own units only.  While it's very important that your units get turns in the optimal order to support each other, remember, this is a two-player game.  If you ignore the fact your opponent is also getting turns and don't plan around how you want those kinds of Speed ties to resolve as well, you're going to lose.

2. Count turns.  This one's a big one that I'm sure few people realize.  I don't mean getting more turns than your opponent in the technical sense.  I mean making them miss turns, or have irrelevant turns.  This can be done in a number of ways.  The most common and well-known method is forcing a revival-loop.  While most people realize forcing the other team into a revival loop is good, most people probably don't realize why its so good.  The reason, put simply, is Tempo Advantage - or, as said previously, making the opponent land more no turns or null turns than you do.  You can easily equate this to other concepts - in Trading Card Games, its equivalent is Card Advantage, or having more relevant cards than the opponent, for example.  If you think of your favorite competitive game, you'll likely find they have a similar concept buried somewhere.  While this by itself doesn't result in a win, knowing it and properly utilizing it greatly increases your chances of obtaining one.  Going back to the revival-loop example, what is occurring is what card games would call a "+1" in advantage.  Put simply, you're trading the turn of one of your units (the one continuously KOing the enemy) for two of the opponent's units turns (the dead unit's turn is most likely missed due to it being a loop, and the unit reviving is also losing their turn to the loop).  This results in a 2-1 turn trade, or a "+1".  While one or two of these often won't mean as much in any form of Final Fantsy Tactics as they can mean in a card game, a continuously sustained loop will greatly increase your chances of winning.  As such, building your team to force the opponent into a revival loop can be incredibly powerful, and building your team to be able to easily neutralize a revival loop can be very important to having a flush and proper defense.

2.5 An offshoot of Tempo Advantage is Soft Tempo Advantage.  This includes things like Innocent, Reflect, and manipulated Element Defense - they can make units be forced to take null turns by making their skills no longer relevant to the battle at hand.  This is a generally riskier form of gaining Tempo Advantage, and another one people should have a cursory familiarity with.  However, its application is often only done halfway-well because its not being utilized to generate Tempo Advantage, but merely as some kind of offensive or defensive supplement.  Things that generate Soft Tempo Advantage are great for those things too - but don't forget their actual effect on the fight is a whole lot more than merely some piece of defense of a damage booster.

3. This one's simple - learn to Bait the Enemy AI.  This is fairly easy to do. as the AI will almost always go for the unit with the lowest CurHP, as detailed in the Basic section.  The strength of this knowledge doesn't just come from knowing how to ensure your healing and revival is most effective, though - you can make use of this knowledge offensively to ensure that your most powerful units don't get taken down early.  Those familiar with AI-Battles have likely either used this strategy in the past or use it now, but it's not one every player realizes they can do.  Use pulls to get the AI to focus on the units you want it to attack, and KO the enemy while they're using null-turns to take down units not relevant to the situation.  Like Soft Tempo Advantage, a strategy like this obviously has some risks, and is not always guaranteed to work (the AI breaks its usual patterns sometimes), but knowing it exists and knowing how to incorporate it into your team when possible is another way to boost your win rate.

4. This one's a contradictory tip - don't drag out games longer than they need to last, but be patient.  There's nothing wrong with a team that tries to slow-roll its opposition to victory.  It's my preferred method of winning, for anyone whose seen the majority of my AI-Teams.  However, even when slow-rolling, you need a way to end the game once you've won.  Not because it's courteous to the person recording the match (though it is), but it ensures that your opponent won't get a lucky comeback or that CT won't eventually align in such a way that the game can be reversed because you couldn't end it fast enough to capitalized on your slow-rolling team's strategy.  Defense is useless if you can't translate it into a consistent win.  This goes in reverse too - if you're a fast and hard-hitting team, be sure you can handle being slow-rolled without folding - being able to end the game is no good if you can't reach the end game at all.  If you can't win with a rush, make sure your team can be patient enough to force an opening.  If your team wins by slow-rolling an opening, make sure it can push the opening into a game win.  This one's not too advanced compared to the others upon reading, but its a common mistake to think four units that hit really hard or that take almost no damage by themselves constitute a good team that can have a solid win-rate.  The truth is, it does not.

One last one, though it's not related to Advanced Tempo Control or Tempo at all:

5. I've said this before, but it bears repeating - sometimes you just need to get lucky to win.  Never forget that.  Whether its the AI acting quirky and out of character, or landing a proc/Reaction at a key moment or more often than your percent to proc/Reaction says you should, or your opponent getting less procs/Reactions than their averages say they should, etc., you truly just need to get lucky sometimes.  Many competitive players find luck disdainful - myself included - but if you can't accept this, learn to live with it, learn to compensate for it, and learn to put it to work at your advantage, you're going to lose.  A lot.  There's no way around it.

That's it for now.  I'll likely update both sections of this Guide as more things come to mind, but this is all I've got so far.  Hopefully this will allow people to improve their AI-Battle Teams and not give up after a couple poor showings.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

This Guide is finished and both sections are good for reading now.  I'll obviously update both sections with more information as time goes on and as it becomes appropriate and/or I think of it, but this feels more than adequate for the time being.

[Dol]

A couple of things that I would like to contribute to the guide:

Elemental weapons can be a double-edged sword.  Nice pun there Dol.  Having elemental synergy can be a great thing for a team.  You have to watch out though, as the other team might have one (or many) people that can absorb that element.  If your unit doesnt have an alternate way to deal damage, they might end up being dead weight.  This isnt to say that you shouldnt run elemental weapons or anything, just be aware of what might happen.

MP is a stat too.  This one is here for my benefit if nothing else.  Many job classes have very low MP totals.  If you purely maximize damage output on a hybrid type of unit, there is a good chance they will use their ability a couple times and then be fairly handicapped the rest of the match.  With the AI's quirkyness about MP restoration, you might be better off sacrificing that 1 PA in exchange for a higher MP pool.

Elemental Guns.  This is a fairly common mistake with the Blaze, Glacier, or Blast guns.  There are 3 things in your control that effect elemental gun damage.  Your Faith, Magic Attack Up (or Overwhelm), and Strengthen(element).  The MA of a magic gunner is irrelevant.

Friendly Fire AoE.  Fairly self explanatory.  Be aware of what will happen with your units getting caught in AoE, either through redirection or just the AI deciding the risk to their own units are worth it.  Again, you might want to go ahead and reduce that PA on your melee unit by 1 in order to gain immunity to Sleep if you are running a unit with Mimic Darevon for example.

Melee units need 4 move.  If you have a unit whose sole job is to run up and hit someone in the face from 1 panel away, you really need to find a way to give them 4 move.  I've seen a bunch of kick-ass teams brought down because their melee guy is just moving and waiting every turn since he cant get in range to attack.

Thats it from me.  Feel free to use this however you want.

[CT5Holy]

So uh, why hasn't this been stickied?

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Because Eternal wrote his beginner guide thing and stickied that instead, forgot this existed, then never stickied this or edited it into his topic even after I explicitly reminded him to.  Also this section has a lot of stickies but I guess that doesn't matter since this entire subforum is basically 3 threads and random discussion threads when prompted.

I'll pin it for now.  If FFMaster doesn't want it pinned he can take it back down whenever he sees I pinned it.  And, though I don't really care much for Arena anymore, I'll still update this guide if people have anything they feel is lying around and should be added or that they want me to elaborate on if it fits the bill.

[savantopus]

Bump. The AI behavior tips are uber helpful! Thank you for writing this!

[Shintroy]

Getting back into arena recently and I was beginning to lose my way until I read this. I forgot about sticking to a plan or theme. I kept trying to make my team balanced by adding in unnecessary tools.
Pretty embarrassing to have a team you made in 30 minutes, themed after the power rangers best an uncapped JP limit team that's supposed to counter teams with no strength.

It wasn't even a green or white ranger team. Just a s1 red ranger team. To be honest I didn't realize melee units needed 4 move even though I chose geomancer as the red ranger for his mobility. I'm going to post that team after the update if I don't have to change anything like equipment.

[The Damned]

(I figure someone might as well do this and it might as well be the person who is still the wariest of Mime's worth, hence the Mime avatar and accompanying cynical text.)

I'm not exactly sure if this should go here since I vaguely remember another information thread that I don't feel like looking for right now. Regardless, comprehension information about Mime needs to go somewhere and this is stickied, so I'm just putting it here for now.

It will doubtless have to change once FFMaster answers the lingering question of whether Mimes can actually equip Bags or not. (Bagged EDIT: As of November 14th, 2014, it has been confirmed that they cannot equip Bags.)

The New Mime and You:

(I can't make that font bigger for some reason.)

With the release of the latest version of ARENA, 1.39/139, no class has changed more than Mime. In previous versions of ARENA, Mime was the class with the most HP, PA, MA and class-evasion in the game and 4 Move & Jump. Mime also had many innate characteristics with three innate RSMs of Concentrate, Counter Flood & Move-HP Up and innate immunities to Dead, Undead, Petrify & Berserk, far more than any other class had. They were given all this as compensation for also their inability to use any equipment, Secondaries, Reactions and Movements and general any inability to do anything except for a basic punch and the unique ability to Mimic most actions.*

(For those yet uninitiated to Mimes and Mimic, Mimic allows Mime to make a copy--not necessarily exact given it goes off Mime's own stats--of an ally's attack immediately after that ally ends its turn.)

As of the newest version of ARENA, this has all changed. Mime is now able to use all Secondaries, Reactions and Movements like most other classes.** Similarly, Mimes now generally have the most varied armor options in that they're able to equip all forms of head armor and body armor and accessories. This means they are the only other class besides Monk, which now has the least equipment options of any class, to be able to equip Headbands. This while still getting to keep their primary Mimic ability, which still remains exclusive to Mimes.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and rainbows--it never is in life--as logic demands that this radical change be balanced out by some type of equally radical--perhaps even mondo--sacrifice. As such, the new Mime no longer has any of the innates it once had and has greatly diminished stats, now being in a five-way tie with the classes of Wizard, Time Mage, Ninja and Scholar for second lowest HP overall; only Summoner has less HP. Mimes have at least kept their massive evasion, which they'll need, and 4 Move & Jump, but they also cannot equip any weapons except for perhaps Bags and can definitely not equip any Shields unless they use appropriate Equip Supports.***

On top of that, there are some far subtler aspects of this change, some good and some bad, which is what most of this "article" will be about:


1. Good News: Mimes cannot Mimic Mimes: This has always been the case since vanilla, but before Mimes' only possible actions were to either punch something, Mimic something or die to something. As such, it was perhaps easy to miss that Mimes didn't Mimic other Mimes' basic attacks even though Mimic allows Mimes to Mimic any other class's basic attack. With Mimes now capable of having Secondaries, it becomes a lot more necessary to state this fact: Mimes will not Mimic other allied Mimes because otherwise it would cause an infinite loop, even if there was only one Mime on a team. That drastically changing Mimes is still compatible with something that would otherwise break the game if it wasn't already kept in check is indeed good news.

2. Good News: Mimes are now usable on Absorb: Element teams without having them sacrifice themselves: Before the newest version of ARENA, if one wanted to use a Mime on an elemental absorption team, one basically had to be resigned to the fact that said Mime was most likely going accidentally kill itself Mimicking its allies. This was a large part of the reason why Mimes were relegated to merely being back-up Singers and Dancers despite Lore's map-wide spells being Mimic-OK and female Mime having the largest MA in the game: they would inevitably kill themselves, often even if great steps were taken to try to prevent that. With access to all armors and the concurrent improvements to many accessories, however, the new Mime can now quite easily avoid this fate and in fact become a more useful team player on elemental absorption teams. If nothing else, they can now be on the same team as a Grand Cross user and Mimic Grand Cross without being forced to both damage and 100% Blind themselves if the appropriate equipment is used.

3. Good News: Mimes have equipment continuity with themselves while Mimicking: This is basically a concise way of relaying what FFMaster explained about a month ago already. As such, any errors are my own: Any equipment, including weapons, a Mime has equipped will continue to be counted towards its Mimickry of an ability, even if that ability is a weapon strike or weapon strike-related move with a different, Mimic'd weapon. This is arguably a bit of bad news in a way as well (as I could argue for any of these if I wanted, really) given the example of Mace of Zeus that FFMaster uses in the link. There's also the fact it means that when a Mime Mimics any weapon that Strengthens its own element and thus itself, that weapon will always be weaker for the Mime unless the Mime already has something to Strengthen that element.

4. Good News: Mimes can now become Immune: Silence: This is mostly important for Mimicking magic rather than casting magic of their own for reasons I'll get into just below, though Silence and MP do of course still affect Mime in that regard. To briefly clarify though, Silence was something that even the old ARENA Mime was vulnerable to even though Silence prevented them from Mimicking any of the Faith-based magic skill sets and Talk Skill if it afflicted a Mime. This was another reason why old Mimes were mostly relegated to being Mimic-Song-bots given that, for some weird reason, Song/Sing is still not vulnerable to Silence just like it wasn't in vanilla.

5. Bad News: Given Mimes still Mimic pretty much everything*, many Secondaries are actually somewhat useless on them: Despite the fact it's a rather simple step of logic, this seems to be rather key mistake that a decent amount people keep making as of late, so it needs to be pointed out. Similarly, as such, I'll "credit" formerdeathcorps for being the first person to point this out about the new Mime in this post.

To put it simply, Mimes are bad with any ability that has a CT since they will Mimic anything and everything an ally does if they can* and that interrupts & cancels Charging (and presumably) Performing. As such, while not necessarily automatically useless on a Mime, especially since they can equip Short Charge now, the following abilities and skill sets should be probably avoided on Mimes:


1. Basic Skill's "Ultima".
2. Chivalry's "Reraise".
3. Snipe's "Hawk's Eye".
4. All of White Magic excepting "Cure", "Wall" & "Dia".
5. All of Black Magic.
6. All of Time Magic.
7. All of Summon Magic.
8. Steal's "Bad Luck".
9. All of Yin Yang Magic.
10. All of Lore.
11. All of Song/Sing.
12. All of Dance.


At the end of the day, this leaves only Item, Punch Art, Talk Skill, Elemental, Jump, Draw Out & Ninjutsu/Ninjutsu skill sets completely unaffected.****

While it's not entirely impossible for a Mime to get away with being able to quicker skills, such as "Reraise" (CT 1) or "Comet" (CT 1) or "Dispel Magic" (CT 2), especially if they have Short Charge, it's still unreliable at best and a very bad idea at worst.  This is quite significant aspect for several reasons and is in no way FFMaster's fault given it's rather logical that Mimes would function this way even in their vanilla settings--it merely never came up there. Some of the significant ramifications include that the Mimicking unit gets stuck in Charging status if interrupted and that this rends a Mime rather incapable of using magic as a (reliable) revival tool.

6. Bad News: Quick "status" still makes Mimes miss Mimics: Also first reported by formerdeathcorps, I'll merely report this issue verbatim: "Last Song will be mimicked ONLY IF no other action was mimicked after last song was cast.  In other words, if last song causes any unit (including the mime) to get a turn and make an action, the mime will "forget" to mimic last song." Given that Quick is a rather weird condition--not even an actual status, really--in general, it would not be surprising if giving a Mime or possibly even anyone else on a Mime's team the Time Mage Reaction "Critical Quick" also causes a Mime to forego Mimic. No one has yet to test this to my knowledge, however, so it remains to be seen. ...Actually, now that I think about it, I think my Mammonmas team did have Critical Quick go off; I'll have to go back check that match....

7. Good News? Bad News? Ugly News?: Quickening is supposedly even more capricious on teams with Mimes: Again, I'll quote formerdeathcorps verbatim: "If your mime has MP dependent skills, you [sic] entire team will not use quickening unless the entire enemy party is asleep or charmed or death sentenced." I've seen evidence to the contrary though, so it's difficult to say how much this actually applies. Regardless, I personally wouldn't count this as "bad news" anyways since I still think Quickening needs to die in a fire, but we're degressing.

(EDIT as of 12/14/2014:) 8. Bad News: If a Mime has a weapon equipped and an ally makes a melee attack, then the Mime's weapon will disappear for the rest of the round.: There's not much more to say that than, unfortunately, except that it's not all that apparent how consistent this is and if it applies to all weapons, including ranged ones. As such, I'll offer two example matches: FFT Arena 1.39C - Shintroy (My Me II) vs. Andante49 (Small Ball) and FFT Arena 1.39c - reinoe (Fire Team) vs Andante49 (Small Ball). Both of Andante49's opponent's Mimes have their weapons disappear. (Worse News EDIT: As of December 16th, 2014 and the match Andante49 (Try Outs) vs reinoe (Samurai Seven 3), it is now seemingly confirmed that use of any physical attack that makes use of weapon, normal attack or special ability, will get rid of an ally Mime's weapon.)

(EDIT as of 03/29/2015:) 9. Good News? Bad News? Ugly News?: Mimes Still Don't Use MP When Actively Using MP-Needing Abilities: Despite the fact that Mimes will be interrupted while using slow-actions, which pretty much all use MP, any other MP-using abilities appear to not deplete MP from a Mime even if a Mime actively uses them. That said, there appear to be two restrictions, which seem to analogous to the two restrictions for MP use that vanilla monsters face: Mimes can only use an ability with MP so long as it does not surpass their total MP and despite not using MP, they cannot use any MP-using abilities on their own if their MP is at 0.

10. Good News: Mimes Can Now Still Mimiced While Berserk: While the weird revival thing is still uncertain, it would seem that Berserk no longer makes Mimes unable to Mimic. If I had to wager a guess to why this is, it's probably because FFMaster toggled Berserk to allow Berserk units to react now. I'm not entirely sure though if that's what caused it to changed. Regardless, that has changed.

11. Good News: Jump still works as a Mimic ability: As Team One's fights in the current mini-game that TrueLight is generously recording show, Jump still works fine as an ability that can be Mimicked: FFT Arena 1.39C [Minigame] - Team One vs. Team Two.

12. Good News: Two Swords will actually Mimic with Mimes: Similarly, said mini-games show that Two Swords on a Mime work both for punches and for weapon-replicable strikes, though it's (thankfullY) probably limited to weapons that actually work with Two Swords naturally: FFT Arena 1.39C [Minigame] - Team One vs. Team Three.

(Presumably, one could extrapolate that the same thing would apply to Two Hands, though that doesn't work for bare-handed strikes. Still, at least Two Hands shouldn't actually be completely useless on a Mime if true.)


So, all things considered, the majority of this is "good news", though the Secondary aspect covered under "bad news" is quite extreme important unfortunately. It's arguably the most important aspect of the new Mime really just because of how much it limits Secondaries that a Mime can actually use effectively. Still, the new Mimes, for all its issues, at least has the potential to be something else than a back-up Bard or back-up Dancer and that's always good.

spoiler: *

In ARENA, every attack that other non-Mime generics can do is subject to Mimic unless the Mime is currently afflicted Dead, Petrify, Berserk, Frog, Stop, Sleep, Don't Act or, in the case of Faith-based magic & Talk Skill, Silence. It's also worth noting that if a Mime gets Charmed, then they will no longer Mimic their actual allies' actions and instead Mimic the actual enemies' actions for as long as they remain Charmed.

That said, Mimes will still sometimes just outright fail to Mimic actions for no apparent reason. This failure is different from a Mime attempting to Mimic and then being unable to because it has no valid target whether due to it being off of the map or having no one in the ability range. This failure is seemingly random and seemingly not predisposed to failing the Mimicking of one action over another. It has unfortunately been around since vanilla and yet I don't think anyone has ever looked into it still, though I can't imagine where one would start. Regardless, unless your luck is as horrible as mine, you'll maybe have it pop up once per every two (short) matches if you're using a Mime or two, even with as many actions as they Mimic.

Still, this is something to note if you're going to use Mime as it is one of the (many) risks of using one or more of them.

spoiler: **

Given the current equipment constraints of Mimes that forces them to use Equip Supports if they want to equip a weapon or shield at all, Two Hands is currently an effectively worthless support on a Mime for much the same reason as it is on Monk.

spoiler: ***

Actually, with Monk, you could at least use Two Hands with a Bag if you wanted to amuse yourself like that for some reason. Meanwhile, with Mimes it's still currently unclear if they can even use Bags. If they can't, then Two Hands goes from "effectively worthless" to "entirely worthless".

(****P.S. Typing all of this reminds me that someone should probably test to see what happens if you give the new Mime Jump Secondary and then have something that it can Mimic happen. It needs to be known if that either breaks the game or if Jump status ignores even attempts to Mimic. I'd do it, but I can't.)

(Mysterious Mime Mysteries EDIT: Two interesting and unsolved mysteries with regards to Mimes capabilities have popped up:

Malroth (Slightly Derp) vs Shintroy (Buff PA) - Extremely weird Necromonicon sharing by Mimes on different teams: http://youtu.be/7lxbkphFpxw.

TrueLight (Crossroads) vs Shintroy (Triple Breath, Squared) - Some weird Reraise animation goes off in the first round after one of the Berserk mimes gets back up and presumably does...nothing. What: http://youtu.be/F0FisO-ggjE.

Whether these are ever solved, much less any soon, is itself also a mystery.)

[The Damned]

(I do so loathe double-posting, but if I must....)

Kriss Kross, Make You Wanna...Lancet: A Lancer's Guide to Jump

Given it came up a while ago, I figure that I might as well post relatively comprehensive list of facts about Lancer's Jump even though most of this can easily be found in Aerostar's still useful "Final Fantasy Tactics Battle Mechanics Guide". Hereafter it will be referred to as the "BMG": http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876.

We might as well start with the obvious and work our way down to the esoterica:


1. Jump's Invincibility: While Jumping, a Jump user cannot be targeted or affected by anything other than already afflicted Slow or Haste, which merely affects CT earned as we will go over later. As such, a unit using Jump is completely invincible from it starts until when it resolves. Any spells targeted on them that go off while they're jumping will fizzle unless it potentially affected more than them, in which case it will act normally otherwise if there are any other valid targets. Even map wide abilities like Lore, Dance or Song will miss Jumping units, even if in the case of Lore or Song the ability hitting them would otherwise have been beneficial to them. Finally, Jump's invincibility is somewhat transferred to the space that user originally bounded from as no unit can move onto that space, even via knockback; moving through or targeting that space with delayed actions abilities still works normally though. [/so obvious it may verge on condescension]


2. Jump's JP Parameters: Level Jump skills control the horizontal. Vertical Jump skills control the vertical. These are the Outer Limits. Both skills make any values below them redundant to buy. And due to the nature of how Jump currently works, Jump is the only ability in the game where all four units on a team can have access to it. [/still so obvious it may verge on condescension]


3. Jump's Other Parameters: Jump is affected by Defense UP, Protect and presumably Unyielding as far as damage reduction goes. As far as damage boosting Jump goes, Jump is affected by Sleeping, Frog, being equipped with a Spear and Zodiac Compatibility. Jump is not affected by Attack UP, Martial Arts or Two Swords (in the sense that you'll strike with both weapons; upper/right-handed weapon takes priority) or Two Hands; Jump is supposedly affected by Overwhelm though. Jump cannot be evaded, but still counts as a physical attack and thus triggers Reactions that react to physical attacks as well as still triggering Counter Flood currently. Finally, Jump can (thankfully) only target panels, not specific units, though the A.I. is generally very good at Jumping only if it will assuredly hit the target.


4. Jump's Base Damage: With any weapon, its damage is [PA * K] * WP, where K is 1 unless the weapon is a Spear, in which case K is 1.5 (or 3/2). If the Jump user is barehanded, then Jump damage is [(PA * Br) / 100] * PA...or, at least, it was originally if FFMaster changed it. Also, for all the many other things it ignores, Jump is affected by the user (and the target's) Fury from what it seems, even when not barehanded.


5. Jump's Resolution Time: This is pretty easy to calculate actually since it is not affected by Short Charge and neither Haste nor Slow directly affect Jump's resolution time since, in fact, nothing can (currently): CT = [50 / Jump user's base Speed], rounded up.

For example, a 10 base Speed unit like a Lancer with a Javelin will have their Jump land within 5 CT. An 11 base Speed unit, such as a Lancer with a Javelin and a Zephyr Shield, and a 12 base Speed unit, such as a Lancer with a Javelin, a Zephyr Shield and Sprint Shoes, will also have their Jumps land within 5 CT. A 13 base Speed unit, however, such as a Lancer with a Javelin, a Zephyr Shield, the new Genji Armor and Sprint Shoes will have their Jump land within 4 CT; incidentally, 13 base Speed is the fastest a Lancer can get (now) without using Equip Clothes to get access to Thief Hat or, sigh, Quickening.

(Note: This is yet another way that Quickening breaks the game and why it should die in a fire between it both potentially decreasing Jump's landing time and making it more & more difficult to land Jumps, but I'll stop before I digress.)


6. Jump's Element: Jump is always, always non-elemental regardless of the weapon used. So a Holy Lance unit with Jump that otherwise can't strike a unit equipping a Chameleon Robe, Cursed Ring, Small Mantle or the new Diamond Shield can Jump on that same unit for damage. Similarly, given that Jump normalizes damage like Meatbone Slash does, Jump users with Blood Sword or Bloody Strings can Jump on an Undead unit without hurting themselves; they don't drain damage from the Jump though due to this normalization.


7. Jump's Interaction With Status and Movement for the User: As alluded to under the first point, Slow and Haste do still affect a Jumping unit, if only with regards to the CT when they land. Normal Jumpers generally land with ~50 CT, but Hasted Jumpers originally landed with ~75 CT; due to the necessary reduction in Haste's Speed boosting, this may have been reduced to ~63 CT--until now, it's never occurred to me to check. Similarly, Slow's effect--if any-- on the CT is rather nebulous currently given the BMG doesn't mention it oddly, but I'm at least fairly certain that it doesn't leave the user at a mere ~25 CT even with a crippling as Slow is. Then again....

Beyond that, most statuses maintain their normal effects with regards to Jump, though any status that allows you to Jump will have its CT countdown (if any) temporarily frozen while Jumping, including the aforementioned Slow and Haste I believe. The two big exceptions for "normal" relations with regards to Jump are Poison and Regen, of which Jumpers can avoid the damage and healing by Jumping since the normal checks for those don't get to go off; their CT countdowns are still presumably frozen though.

I suppose that Blind technically is an exception since while Blind will still affect the user (infinitely) as far as normal weapon strikes concerned, Jump's inability to be evaded trumps it and thus Blind is basically useless against a unit that can land Jumps.

(And, no, Death Sentence/Doom isn't affected since that counts down at the beginning of your turn, so even Doomed Lancers are dead (wo)men walking...well, jumping, current issues with the Immune: Dead equipment aside.)


8. Mimes and Jumps: Supposedly, Mime can instantly mimic Jump even in vanilla, but I can't personally ever recall seeing this happen. Similarly, despite the fact that FFMaster has generally kept all abilities able to Mimic'd in Arena currently, for better for worse, I can't recall seeing a Mime mimic Jump. It's probably happened, but I just don't recall it if it has.

Far more intriguing is the still yet unanswered question of what would happen if one gave the new Mime Jump secondary, said Mime Jumped and then something that could be Mimic'd happened.... I find it likely that nothing detrimental would happen in actuality, but it's also entirely possible it would break something and maybe even outright crash the game. Guess we'll never know though.... (Hint hint. Someone test this please.)


9. The Best Part of Waking Up...Is Not a Lance In Your Face:  As I'm sure most of us used to vanilla FFT have noticed at one point or another, the A.I. is rather...weird when Jumping on Sleep-afflicted units. The weirdness comes not from Jumping on enemies for often fatal damage, but that A.I. will very often figure it's somehow a very good idea to Jump on a Sleeping ally, often for fatal damage, to wake them up...dead. This despite the fact that it would pretty much always be both less damaging and quicker to just jab said ally awake with a regular weapon attack, especially if a Spear. As yet, no one seems to know why this happens--I'd wager it's probably a glitch or just bad coding--and thus no one has fixed. Thankfully, the A.I. will (usually) choose better methods of getting rid of Sleep such as Maiden's Kiss if the Jump user has them available, but just be mindful of this in as much as you can actually control it.


10. The Only Way that Jump Can Be Evaded: Since Jump, for all its oddities, is still a physical attack that takes the weapon (type) used into account, there is one way that Jump can actually be evaded in Arena: Projectile Guard. If the user of Jump has a Longbow, a Crossbow or a Gun as his/her weapon, then his/her Jump will have the same chance of triggering Projectile Guard as any other attack where that unit uses his/her weapon in the actual attack.

(Or, at least, this was the case in at least one previous version or Arena. I'm admittedly unsure if it's the case still, though I doubt that FFMaste would have changed it given it's only come up once in all of Arena and it was pretty hilarious. Regardless, try to avoid using either of those three weapon types with Jump unless your team really needs it for some reason.)


11. Lancer's Jump Card: Going back to Jump being the only skillset where everyone on a team can learn it despite Arena's limit of two repeats per team otherwise, I suppose I should mention the easily forgotten fact that Lancers also innately have access to Jump even if they don't buy any of the Level or Vertical upgrades. Indeed, all Lancers have access to a Range 1, Vertical 1 Jump from the word go. Despite the fact that much has changed in the transition from vanilla to Arena, this presumably hasn't. Whether the A.I. would actually use it (competently) though....


12. The Blind Jumping The Blind: Speaking of A.I. short-coming, the A.I. as a whole is rather blind to an unfortunate number of things and Jump seems to be one of them. "Seems" being the key word here is part of why I'm ending this list on what's ultimately a theory, but given my observances of the A.I.'s various failings, among them is the fact that A.I. will quite often "kill-steal" from a Jumping ally rather than choosing to do a (far more) productive option even if it has the choice. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I wouldn't entirely be surprised if A.I. was generally outright incapable of seeing how much damage Jump can do given the whole "LET ME WAKE YOU UP WITH DEATH!" thing Jumping units tend to have going as detailed in number 9. It thus wouldn't be surprising to me if we found out (eventually) that all the A.I. sees as far as Jump is concerned is "does damage" and "can't be evaded". It would certainly explain some things....


As for avoiding this and other A.I. stupidity, you can't unfortunately to be completely honest. So just like you'll face-palm for the A.I. basically always refusing to just Jump out of the way of an incoming spell or charged abilities even if it doesn't have a valid target in range, this too will often happen. Learn to cope (or weep completely silently).

In the meantime, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, so I'll probably have to edit this eventually.

[Tails_Doll_Prower]

Mine with allied Mine. that tells me to Group the Enemies and, spam that summoning magic! I guess it will be unfair in AI v.s AI battles. But hey just a Thought out there. (Maybe Velias (Belias) can be beaten easily now, or any other bosses for that matter.)

[Shintroy]

Spoilering until I test out left handed mimes more. Two Hands doesn't unequip mimes but some abilities and maybe shields might(?).

spoiler: Needs more testing

2016, Year of the mime

Left Handed Mimes
It's been over a year since 139 came out and everyone learned about mime's weapon bugs. It's also known that mimes can use shields in their left hand. Realizing this, I went and found out mimes can also equip weapons the same way they equip shields, in their left hand.

Attack Command
A mime will attack with his or her fist if they choose to attack over an ability. They will keep their weapon however, so no crippling issue there.

One Handed Weapons Only
Since the weapon must be equipped in the left hand it goes without saying having a weapon that uses the right hand will cause the mime to lose it's weapon.

Teammates must be right handed.
The main reason this will work. It probably works both ways, but it's been confirmed units don't get the full benifits of a weapon's evasion if it's in the left hand. Mimes have a lot of base evasion to spare so it's best to just have the mime left handed.

Teammates can not use Forced 2H weapons
Knight Swords
Stone Gun
Magic Guns
Gastrophetes
Longbow weapon class

Two Swords and Berserk Bug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkm96eFjVtE
It's not known exactly why this happens, but as far as I can tell berserked and/or weapon mimes mimicking two sword units will cause a mime to equip abilities thus rendering them useless depending on their secondary. The bug looks like a round shield and feather hat equipped in the main and offhand slots. If berserked the mime's attack command becomes a bugged ability graphic that will never actually connect with a target. If the mime isn't berserked it will always wait if they don't have any ability options.

Two Hands
As long as the weapon is equipped in the right hand it will not bug the mime. Samurai, Two Hand Thieves, Two handed Slashers are all fair game.

Multiple Mimes
The mime equipping other mime's weapon bug still applies. See The Damned's post for more details
Having a mime on on the same team as a weapon mime will equip that mime with said weapon. This opens new possibilities since it'll be possible to have 3 of the same type of weapon on one team without breaking rules.
As long as the team follows the rules above neither mime will lose their weapon

Enemy Mimes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lxbkphFpxw
I haven't tested this yet, but I'm guessing the first mime to use an ability involving their weapon will equip other mimes on the field with said weapon.  I'll confirm this later
Having a Grand Cross Mime equip a non-compatible weapon will be suicidal for the mime so know the risks in using some mime builds.

Charm
If a weapon mime gets charmed they have a chance of losing their weapon if the opposing team uses weapons listed above. Chakra Band prevents this, but it's still good to know.

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I didn't take the AI tournament like I wanted to this year, but it's looking like this year will be better for mime with this find. Good Luck to everyone using weapon mimes from this point on. Have a good mimeingful new year
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Unarmed Teammates Update
Having an unarmed unit will trigger the two sword/berserk bug as well. I had a martial arts, cover fire monk activate the bug in a test match. After giving the same monk an FS Bag and putting him in the same situation multiple times the mime would no longer lose it's monster dictionary.