Final Fantasy Class Warfare Team Tourney, Round 3

[SnowFire]

Results.

Knights vs. Squires
Thieves vs. Dragoons
Ninjas vs. Samurai (3-5)
Dark Knights vs. Monks

Bards vs. Monsters
Time Mages vs. Dancers
Summoners vs. Blue Mages
White Mages vs. Black Mages

More classic clashes this week, such as Honor vs. Greed, and... Evil vs. Japan?  I guess.

Knights (FF1 Knight, FF5 Knight, Squall, Steiner) vs. Thieves (Locke, FFT Thief [female], Zidane, Rikku*)
Samurai (FF5 Samurai, Cyan, FFT Samurai [male], Auron) vs. Dark Knights (FF3 Dark Knight, DK Cecil, PC Gafgarion, PC Seifer)

Monsters (Gau, Cait Sith, Vincent, Red XIII) vs. Time Mages (FF5 Time Mage**, FFT Time Mage [female], Tidus)
Summoners (Rydia, FF5 Summoner, FFT Summoner [female], Garnet) vs. White Mages (FF3 Devout, Rosa, FF5 White Mage, Eiko)

* Rikku: Has FFX Common Steals, see Dungeon list from F1-F7
** Time Mage: No Reset.

Short form:

Knights vs. Thieves
Samurai vs. Dark Knights

Monsters vs. Time Mages
Summoners vs. White Mages

[SnowFire]

So...  if any team can handle the Time Mages, I suspect the Monsters might be it, thanks to good ol' FF7 limits meaning the straight-up damage blitz strategy doesn't really work.  Cait as usual is a big problem.  The FF7 crew blocks ID too, so no X-Zone shenanigans to get around that.  FFT TM can twink for magic to get around limits better and actually does excellent damage this way, around ~.83 PCHP, although she also becomes made of paper if any random limits are triggered.  So ideally the TMs want to chip Cait down then finish with a FFT TM Meteor, all before Cait takes a turn.  Can they do that?

Assuming that 10 Speed is average for FFT and Tidus opens with Initiative Hastega and magic damage-twinked Time Mage...
9 spd / 10 average -> 1.8 average speed post haste.
Short Charge Meteor has a CTR of 7 -> roughly equivalent to 14.3 FFT speed -> 1.43 average speed.  So heh, TM will waste a turn charging her Meteor since post-Tidus Haste she's faster than the charge time.  It will go off at…  100/1.8 = 56 DL clock ticks to get a turn + 100/1.43 = 70 DL clock ticks to cast her spell = 126 clock ticks total.  Un-slowed Cait has .91 speed, so gets a turn after 100/.91 = 110 clock ticks.  Okay, so FFT TM needs support from a Tidus Slowga.  (Side comment: Gau arguably immunes Slow for free depending on your FF6 relic interps.)  But...  if Tidus goes Init Hastega -> Slowga, he's not actually chipping before Cait's turn, I don't think!  Is he?  I think Tidus needs 2 Quick Hits for Meteor to be deadly anyway (Cait is ~1.10 PCHP, QH is ~.20 PCHP, so a single QH + Meteor isn't fatal).  Okay, so that leaves FF5 TM to chip, but TM's Meteor is unfocused!  Cast it too much and wake up a FF7 limit which will horrifically murder the charging, frail magic-twinked FFT TM, cast it too little and it might never hit Cait.  There's also a strong desire to kill Gau ASAP with Quartr before any nonsense from him can come out, and that can miss or get MBlocked.

There's also the fact that FFT Meteor hits a gigantic area and has friendly fire.  That might wake up another FF7 limit if it hits someone else but doesn't kill them, alhtough if Cait is dead that's probably a good trade...  unless it somehow gets Tidus too, and he's established to be wanting to Quick Hit Cait potentially which would mean he's nearby.  Ack.  This looks like a messy fight worthy of further analysis on how likely FF5 TM is to chip to the right range with Meteor, but I'm actually leaning pro-Monsters at the moment.  (Unlimited Reset hax would of course allow FF5 TM to perfectly chip Cait and wield Meteor like a damage-optimized scalpel, but no go here.)

[Pyro]

Regarding the Time Mages, wouldn't Quick be useful for getting around Limits? Quick -> Quarter -> KO should bypass the "Auto-grant a turn via limit" thing.

Also if most/all of the limits are subject to evade, then Void -> Tidus switch to Caldabolg is a win.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Graviga makes the exact same immunity check as X-Zone so I dunno how I feel about hyping one and not the other? Arguably this more means that X-Zone checks gravity immunity, not ID immunity... same would be true of Odin if I hyped this. I'm not sure what I make of any of this. Probably just easier to use defender's definition here even if it inflates Graviga a bit.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Knights (FF1 Knight, FF5 Knight, Squall, Steiner) vs. Thieves (Locke, FFT Thief [female], Zidane, Rikku*): Between Rikku MT status and Zidane there isn't a knight who is going to get a (useful) turn here.
Samurai (FF5 Samurai, Cyan, FFT Samurai [male], Auron) vs. Dark Knights (FF3 Dark Knight, DK Cecil, PC Gafgarion, PC Seifer): DK Cecil is going to do some bad things here probably, although he's turn 2 to ID the tastiest target so maybe not. This is tricky and I'll await others. EDIT: As per below, I think FF5 lives to get Iainuki off, and either gets a second turn to do more terrible things or the team focuses on her to the exclusion of the others and likely get killed by FFT stalling + Cyan using Cleave.

Monsters (Gau, Cait Sith, Vincent, Red XIII) vs. Time Mages (FF5 Time Mage**, FFT Time Mage [female], Tidus): Screw X-Zone, with Reset banned it's not all that accurate and the monsters all want to block slow... except FF7 can't so yeah, sure, they block ID, whatever. Tidus opens with Slowga which only Gau blocks, Gau gets a turn and does whatever, we'll get back to him. FFT time mage can now safely drop Meteor before anyone on the other team gets a turn.. but that triggers a lot of limits, probably a bad idea as such. FF5 TM will obviously Hastega on her turn, and do something else. ... oh, I know! Stop on Cait Sith. That wins the fight pretty handily. So Cait Sith blocks stop instead, actually, since the ID isn't nearly as accurate. TM could also use her second turn for Void, as Pyro notes, though I'm leery about hyping that given how it is randomly immuned by the battlefield. Otherwise, I dunno. Regardless, due to haste one turn into the battle, Tidus can get a barrage of quick hits off before FFT Meteor hits, I would think, and Cait Sith is going to die anyway. Gau at this point gets the fatal turn with a rage, maybe charming someone or whatever... except charm's probably turn 3 here overall, certainly is if it targets FF5 who has some MEvade, and the other two being charmed isn't THAT big a deal as once Cait is gone the other two can pretty safely nuke Gau before he does anything else. It's certainly possible that monsters pull this out thanks to Gau, but I'm kinda inclined to vote against them... doubly so since this is a slaughter if Reset is allowed and it feels arbitrary that it isn't. *shrug*
Summoners (Rydia, FF5 Summoner, FFT Summoner [female], Garnet) vs. White Mages (FF3 Devout, Rosa, FF5 White Mage, Eiko): Garnet is the fastest one here, uses Odin to wipe out two of the white mages. One of Rosa and 5!WM will live and MUST stop FF5 Summoner from living to get a turn... but that still leaves Rydia. Yeah, think Garnet winning the crucial quickdraw here is too much for the white mages to come back from.

[Nephrite]

I think if they were to go the Void strategy, then Gau could just invoke the Barb-E rage for Love Token? I dunno.

[Pyro]

Gau would have to die first. Quick->Quartr -> Comet or whatever to off Gau, then on the next turn that TM gets (Init Hastega is cool) he Quicks -> SOmething -> Void.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Knights vs. Thieves: Speed and accurate status
Samurai vs. Dark Knights: Faris charges up !Slash.  Auron Power Breaks Gaf or Seifer.  Dark Knights can not stop Faris from launching MT death.  They also lack anything defense piercing so allowing FFT Samurai to have a turn puts them further behind in the damage race.

Monsters vs. Time Mages: Quick has priority over Limits.  Still with two tanky targets to neutralize, thinking the monsters can turn this around.  Time Mages have few options for decisive damage.
Summoners vs. White Mages: Odin coasts, take 3.

[Pyro]

Gau will likely need two turns to do anything somewhat decisive. By then, TIDUS has probably killed him (Switch Caldabolg and smother in ITD damage). Init Slow/Haste is crazy good, and I doubt that Vincent+Red alone can kill anyone (Gau is unreliable).

The "Kill Gau first" strategy is only tried if Team Time is going for Void. Otherwise Cait dies first and the team leisurely(?) takes down the rest. For extra humor I guess FF5 Time Mage can do something with Quick/Regen to get healing if he wants it.

Team Monster is good but it's almost all because of Cait Sith being awesome with the heal limit, and Quick -> Quarter -> KO gets around that. Otherwise this would be rather amusing!

Knights (FF1 Knight, FF5 Knight, Squall, Steiner) vs. Thieves (Locke, FFT Thief [female], Zidane, Rikku*): MT Blind, ST Mini... the fast, daming status is strong with the thiefs.
Samurai (FF5 Samurai, Cyan, FFT Samurai [male], Auron) vs. Dark Knights (FF3 Dark Knight, DK Cecil, PC Gafgarion, PC Seifer): All the Dark Knights get a shot at Samurai. Surely they can KO her? Well... Let's say FF3 Dark Knight hits since Cecil hitting would be game-over and ONE of them will hit, PC Gaf/Seifer ignore evade too . SO then... Auron will Power Break whoever it is most damaging, and between the 3 (or 2.5) can they take down the 150% Pdur Samurai? Probably not! Especially since Auron will Power Break the 'best' one for damage.

On the other hand, let's say that instead of Physicals both FF3 DK and DK Cecil opt for the wave of darkness move. Then between those two, PC Gaf , and PC Seifer they surely KO? I would need to do some numbers to see that and am lazy right now.

Monsters (Gau, Cait Sith, Vincent, Red XIII) vs. Time Mages (FF5 Time Mage**, FFT Time Mage [female], Tidus): Init Slowga/Hastega, FF5 TM Quick KOs Cait Sith. FFT Time Mage drops a Meteor when it is convenient to do so. Quarter Gau (no need for Quick) and KO him, while Quick->Quarter KOing Red... or just Stop/ID him. Team Monster does not have the time to stick controllable damage. Cait really is the heart of the team.
Summoners (Rydia, FF5 Summoner, FFT Summoner [female], Garnet) vs. White Mages (FF3 Devout, Rosa, FF5 White Mage, Eiko): Garnet goes first and does the ID thing. It's hard to recover from that. Beyond that Garnet herself is a decent White Mage and there are just TOO MANY targets and not enough reliable status.

[Nephrite]

Knights vs. Thieves
Samurai vs. Dark Knights

Monsters vs. Time Mages
Summoners vs. White Mages

[Dark Holy Elf]

On Samurai vs. DK, rough estimates of the DK damage potentials, assuming you agree with all assumptions in the stat threads (a bit of an if, but here we go anyway):

FF3: 51% dark with physical, 26% MT at full HP with Souleater
DK Cecil: Slightly above average? ID on a hit is the obvious value he has. I remember Dark Wave being a fair bit weaker, like half the damage of his physical or so.
Seifer: YMMV as far as temps go... stat topic suggests around 53%.
Gafgarion: Another big YMMV with temps, stat topic has him at about 28%.

too many temps

Anyway in response to Pyro, no I don't think two dark waves + two attacks will drop FF5 Samurai. Iainuki doesn't win the fight right away, but it probably softens the team enough such that FFT Samurai can turtle until CYAN finishes the job or something like that. Cecil can cut down Cyan quickly enough I suppose (to the point where he probably should turn 1 lest he die to Iainuki which more or less instantly loses his team the fight) but that gives FF5 even more time to be annoying by throwing money, using Iainuki again, or hasting.

[hinode]

Time Mages over Monsters: The FF7 crew can't block Stop and ID at the same time, and they really need to. Even if the status isn't the most accurate (in the case of X-Zone, and FFT TM's Stop) doublecasting via Quick improves the odds, and none of the monsters have the short-term limitless damage to actually stop the hasted Time Mages. Gau can immune everything with the right rage, but he doesn't do much in the short term and Tidus has ITD damage at his disposal.

Other three matches don't seem remotely close at the moment, I'll edit in votes later if they'll be relevant later on.

[Random Consonant]

Knights vs. Thieves
Samurai vs. Dark Knights

Monsters vs. Time Mages
Summoners vs. White Mages

[superaielman]

Still thinking on votes. I edited in Dark Knight Cecil notes into the latest post in the FF4 topic.

[SnowFire]

So what's the blocker Elf was hyping for Cloud vs. Cloud then in Futurama?  I thought he was claiming Safety Bit got Stop + Death, but is it Petrify + Stop / Death + Petrify that gets blocked at once then?

Also, how is FF5 Time Mage killing Cait, even if Quick > Limits?  Comet is a princely .12 damage.  Cait has ~1.06-1.07 PCHP w/ Transform, which is sent to .13 PCHP if Quartr hits.  Okay, Comet has high variance, but since it's utterly horrible if Cait gets that turn...

I'm also unsure if I'm down with equip change hype for FFX.  I'm probably inconsistent here since I have no problem with it in most systems (DQ8 most notably the case it comes up) but letting Tidus simultaneously get both Initiative + Caladbolg feels "too good."  Even if there's no mechanical reason to disallow it.  Sigh.

Elf, as for Reset banning being arbitrary, the short version:
A) This tourney is a vague spin-off of Nyarlie's Dungeon, and Reset got banned there.
B) If Reset is allowed, then FF5 TM probably would have been booted for power level concerns, because Reset is totally insane in a team setting.  Perfect dodging / criticals / status hax with full Reset hype and all - if nothing else, Sonic Steel Tidus + ResetTM gets an assured 100% hit-rate X-Zone at nearly initiative speed, which makes Rikku look fair & balanced.  FF5 TM is fun and iconic though so I wanted to let her loose - she's still insanely strong!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah that's fair, re Reset.

FF7 Safety Bit is petrify + death. They can't block stop at all.

[SnowFire]

If FF7 can't block Stop, then sounds like the Bards got totally robbed last week.  Oh well.

For Monsters vs. TMs, then, I suppose FFT TM can charge Short Charge Stop on Cait...  hmm.  No need for chipping then, but it can miss, so TM probably does get 2 tries before Cait gets a turn if Tidus opens with Hastega->Slowga.  That will let Gau get a turn, but something like FF5 TM Quick->Quartr -> Comet might kill Gau, and Gau should only get 1 turn before eating more Comets.  MP is a bit of an issue for FF5 TM - Quick eats MP like crazy - but if Gau can be neutralized and Cait stopped, then infinite QH shenanigans -> FFT TM meteor might still work...  but bah, even with the 4x turnsplit, that might give the other team time to respond, and Red XIII surely OHKOs a charging FFT TM with his physical.  I suppose I can see a path to victory for the TMs, but still seems a bit unsteady.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bards are so completely and utterly inept at killing Gau (immune to status + gravity) that I think I would have kept my vote the same way, but yes it does merit further analysis. I always forget there's a status FF7 misses.

[superaielman]

Short form:

Knights vs. Thieves
Samurai vs. Dark Knights- Samurais need for Cecil to miss the ID and for Samurai to hit Cecil with ID back. Pretty sure they get both of those though.

Monsters vs. Time Mages- Stop should do the trick.
Summoners vs. White Mages

[SnowFire]

Knights vs. Thieves - Mini + ID, then it's 4 on 2.  Throw in some Steal Heart for flavorful extra fun.
Samurai vs. Dark Knights - Gil Toss / Zenigage seems like it'd be badass, but it also sets up Seifer for a Limit...  although I guess Auron can Power Break Seifer too?  But yeah, I suspect that even despite FF5 Sam's anti-physicalness Cecil can take her down, and Seifer's Limit is MT, and if FF5 Samurai went for !Slash then it probably never resolved and the DKs are too healthy and the Sams lose the slugfest.  Close match though.

Nice notes on DK Cecil as well, super.

Monsters vs. Time Mages - Stop blitz or X-Zone blitz depending on what FF7 blocks, sigh.  I thought FF7 got both at once.  I'd vote Monsters if TMs were stuck with #YOLO Meteors, though.
Summoners vs. White Mages - Odin hungers.

[Dark Holy Elf]

and if FF5 Samurai went for !Slash then it probably never resolved

Cecil has only a 40% chance at best of landing ID on Samurai first try and they can't one-round her with damage, so Slash/Iainuki should get off. Who it kills is debatable and since Samurais do need to pass that 60-65% chance (should Cecil go for that instead of killing Cyan) I am fine with assuming it kills less useful people overall... just not sure how much this helps the Dark Knights.

Auron can also Armour Break people to make Zeninage pretty nasty (79% to average HP, if we assume that Zeninage checks defence twice as hard as average). Might be better off Power Breaking someone though. Also may be better off waiting to see who survives Slash and then crippling whoever the most dangerous target left is. He can do this safely since with Deathproof he's ensured to live through the Dark Knights' opening round unless they all gang up on him, which they won't. Actually, now that I think about it, Auron is really annoying for the Dark Knights because they're mostly physical and thus trigger his every-nastier counters as they try to take him down. They probably need to hope Seifer lives through Iainuki and then can set up a limit to deal with him... but options like Protect and Power Break make that very difficult.

[SnowFire]

This is your official last-call-for-votes/edits, will close this tomorrow.  (Extra day due to the breaks & all.)

Elf, I don't normally take this too much into account, but FF4 is a multihit system, right?  I can see that seen mostly as a property of FF4 defense (e.g. evasion is secretly the defense stat since you dodge half of the 8 hits and thus take half damage), but if it's taken into account even vaguely, I think that pushes Cecil's ID odds up decently vs. FF5 Blade Grasp (say it's just 2 attacks, well, only 1 has to hit).  Granted if Cecil still fails to kill FF5 Samurai the DKs are beyond screwed for all the reasons already mentioned.  And fair enough point that Auron is actually surprisingly dangerous with Deathproof if the Sams can off Seifer without triggering a limit, which is certainly doable (although perhaps at the cost of leaving other threats alive).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, each hit of FF4 status weapons only has a % chance (not 100) to add the status, so if only 1 of X hits is landing the status chances still fall somewhat. You're right that taken that way they probably fall by less than 60%, but I'd still imagine it's easily by enough for me. If you use a 50/50 threshold for status... maybe not.