Game Swap, Week 2: Tied Approved (Wild ARMs 4 vs Final Fantasy X)

[Cmdr_King]

So Wild ARMs 4 managed to slay the heroes of Phantasy Star IV.  But are Wild ARMs 4's heroes made of as stern of stuff as the game?  Let's ask FFX.

http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,5921.0.html  The Final Fantasy X boss topic, which doesn't seem to be in the master list and will be most helpful in your quest.

As before, vote on bosses as literally to their in-game performance as possible.  Voting on the WA4 cast at scaled levels is awesome but not required.  No ambiguity here, Jude Maverick, Yulie Ahtreide, Arnaud G. Vasquez, and Raquel Applegate will take on what I believe is a representative cross section of the Final Fantasy X boss cast.  Enjoy.

WA4 vs Sinspawn Gui
WA4 vs Spherimorph
WA4 vs Seymour Guado (Macalania Edition.  Please refer back to 'as literally to in-game as possible'.)
WA4 vs Evrae
WA4 vs Seymour Flux
WA4 vs Spectral Keeper
WA4 vs Yunalesca
WA4 vs Braska's Final Aeon

[SnowFire]

WA4 stat buffs basically work on everything to me short of amazing immunity, so I don't particularly care which bosses have immunity to FFX Slow for Slow Down's effectiveness.

Also, not scaling down boss HP, not that it really matters vs. Team WA4 (either they get set up with their buffs, or they don't.)

WA4 vs Sinspawn Gui
Slow Down the main body so that Yulie gets a turn in to heal the Head's damage.  Slow Down the rest.  Win in whatever fashion is desired.
WA4 vs Spherimorph
"Struggles to do damage in a duel" is not what you want in a team match.
WA4 vs Seymour Guado (Macalania Edition.  Please refer back to 'as literally to in-game as possible'.)
Depends on if Anima / Seymour are dropped into the same hex with teh whole summoning thing!  Not really, though, pretty sure Anima doesn't get an interrupt turn, so Slow Down, get 100 FP, chip Seymour, have Raquel go on a killing spree so that Anima never sees a turn and Seymour is horribly wounded.
WA4 vs Evrae
Elf and I disagree, but insert "lol Evrae" interp here.  WA4 keeps them at range while Jude & Arnaud have a shooting gallery vs. his terrible, unfocused attacks.  But hey, he's probably immune to Slow Down & other hex status!1!!
WA4 vs Seymour Flux
Lance of Atrophy -> Full Life Yulie -> lol.  I'd even allow Jude to mystic up some zombie healing items if there was time but it doesn't matter.  For extra humiliation, while I'd let Slow DOwn work on him, he'd counter with an MT FFX Slowga, which is about as brutal as WA4 Slow Down.  Owowowow.
WA4 vs Spectral Keeper
If Berserk doesn't land on Yulie turn 1, SK has problems, as Yulie heals, Arnaud Slow Downs, and Raquel POIZN BITEs Mr. Hex system.  If Berserk lands Yulie gets herself murdered on a counter of course.  By SK's 2nd turn, both Jude or Yulie should be ready with status healing, so.  Inclined to tiebreak against bosses on such matters.
WA4 vs Yunalesca
There is one and only one way WA4 wins this: you throw the WA4 cast a bone and allow at least one ID blocker, since hey, uniqueness isn't a worry now and you probably found 1 in a treasure chest?  Give it to Raquel.  Chip Yunalesca down to 82% health.  Then have Raquel go on a killing spree and tank the Megadeath counter.  (Don't let Yunalesca get turns in her status whore phase from 45% HP -> 82% HP either.).  Yunalesca has ~10 PCHP, so she gets chipped to 8.3 PCHP, then Hyper -> 100 FP worth of Intrudes sunk, so 5x Raquel turns at double damage.  Maybe 6x, she's building FP as she attacks too.
Yes, Yunalesca's attack dispels Hyper, but just wait for the turn order to line up right, there's no hurry at the beginning of the fight.
WA4 vs Braska's Final Aeon
Block Petrify via Black Market, set up Raquel killing spree before he Overdrives.

Pretty good, Seymour Flux is the only slam-dunk loss, though Yunalesca requires some interp calls in WA4's favor.

[Tide]

WA4 vs Sinspawn Gui - Estimated levels are about 14ish (right around where Belial is my kneejerk for an equivalent in-game standpoint). This means Arnaud can grab Illusion if necessary. It isn't (see Snowfire), but it's pretty much a guaranteed win at that point. Even taking a -10 stat penalty, Arnaud will still be faster than the main body and can Illusion it, which renders the fight more or less neutered. Jude is faster than the Head so he keeps it locked to only Thunder spamming, which scares nothing. On free turns, the team damages up the arms so once Raquel is ready to go with metre, she waltzes in with Smash hit and crushes Gui.
WA4 vs Spherimorph - Estimated levels are about where Cerulean Tunnel is, so low 20s. Doesn't matter much though. Yulie throws down Protect. I'm not sure Spherimorph does to get around this.
WA4 vs Seymour Guado -  Estimated levels are about where Skyway is, so Raquel gets a huge power spike from the Macha Brand. Team is about mid 20s here. Not considering the guardians. The most important aspect of the battle is Anima. Seymour's dual cast elementals are nasty, but Yulie of the extreme Mdur kinda lives past it with ease and it doesn't do much better trying to handle Arnaud. This gives the WA4 team all the time in the world to buiild  FP, revive Raquel and buy her a turn. Since CTB isn't reset, she kills Seymour on the first Intrude swing and unloads 4 more on Anima. Should be enough to do the job.
WA4 vs Evrae - Estimated levels are about where Etemananki is (mid-late 20s). The team keeps Evrae as far away as possible and builds FP slowly by having Jude chip it down and Arnaud cast the occasional Blast. Once they have enough FP, move in, Raquel intrudes and smashes past Haste limit.
WA4 vs Seymour Flux - Lance of Atrophy is ITE, so Illusion is out. They are also faster than Arnaud and have a Slow counter, which you may see it triggering, so that's not an option either. Oh, and cross slash deals like 97% of Yulie's health and adds delay AND is ITE. Killing the subpart doesn't slow it down, so there's no way to stop Flux from killing Yulie and then slowly pick the team off respectively. They can't do this at end game levels, so any scaling back isn't helping (would be about Forbidden Valley is my estimate so mid 30s).
WA4 vs Spectral Keeper - See Snowfire. Estimated point in the game is Airport, which means team is around low 40s. Coin flip on whether or not Yulie lives. I don't think it matters regardless because Jude/Raquel combo seems to handle this fight too well. Glyph mines are out because REMOVE TRAP hype and if he goes for KOing Yulie, this means Arnaud's first move is to buff Raquel with Hyper, who will do horrible horrible things to him with the Princess Sabre.
WA4 vs Yunalesca - See Snowfire. Estimated point in the game is Airport, which means team is around low 40s.  You will have at least 1 Holy Grail at this point (possibly more from stealing? Have to check). So the team employs exact strategy that Snowfire has covered. Arnaud buys Hyper and the team mucks around the turns until they get one where Raquel gets a turn immediately after Arnaud. Arnaud then casts Hyper and Raquel enters Intrude state with Hyper in play. It's possible he can toss Reinforce as well via  double with Quicken from Yulie or Slow Down. Both is preferable. Once they are ready, Raquel goes into Intrude and proceeds to smash Yunalesca. No other strategy is viable due to Hellbiter (there's no equivalent cure in WA4), which then leads to bad times as Yunalesca proceeds to OHKO Raquel with relative ease and then the team has no offense forever. I guess one could argue that Raquel could also use Goat Doll for auto-reviving on death, but that's pretty much the exact same strategy sans a death added in.
WA4 vs Braska's Final Aeon - Estimated point in the game is at Prison part II, so about level 50. Anyway, there's a free petrify accessory as well. Standard delay strategy in phase 1 to build FP before Raquel goes on a rampage on form 2. Slow Down/Quicken will help the team get the action economy needed and Raquel has Moonlight plus a free badge slot to keep her offense up anyway, even when blocking stone. In fact, she can probably *solo* this since Dragon Edge will help her Heal too.


Interesting team synergy, but we already know about this. Raquel obviously is the damage cannon, so a lot of late game bosses with scary limits or what not get met with Intrude spree + Hyper. Nobody really has any fights where they don't contribute. Arnaud's always good for offense support, Yulie has healing and revival, which diverts attention on to her and even Jude has a few shining moments (Gui head sniping, Long range battle with Evrae and REMOVE  TRAP hype). Only battle I can't think of a way to win is Flux. Everything else is most likely doable.

[SnowFire]

Reading Tide's comments...  on second thought, for the Spectral Keeper fight, Team WA4 might even survive berserked Yulie turn 1 anyway.  (no need for the defense-ignoring Princess Sabre either!)  While Berserk Tail is ITE, the counters are not.  So...  Jude moves to set up some Ley Boost (probably Fire, ideally, or Wind.)  Arnaud casts Slow Down.  Berserk Tail hits Yulie.  Yulie suicides into a counter.  Raquel uses Moonlight.  Now, SK is insanely slow, so Arnaud throws down Illusion, and then the team goes apeshit.  The Berserk Tail damage is not killing Raquel any time soon, the counterattacks all miss, and now Arnaud can toss down Hyper as well, and Raquel should get a least 3 smashes off Hyper'd Intrude on turn 2 (1 from Moonlight, 1 from FP advance, 1 from her turn) before SK can respond.  Raquel is threat #1, but SK probably needs to go berserk Jude first to stop MYSTIC BERRY HEALING which is actually scary vs. SK's terrible damage, and meanwhile his HP is sailing downward and he's horribly slow.  So yeah.  Even 4 PCHP with damage halving won't last long against that when he's uh 5HKOing Raquel & 6HKOing Jude or something while Slow Down'd.  Oh and SK's attacks might even ram into a Raquel Hi-Counter for fun as well.  Good times.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I see levels a bit lower than Tide does. I'm using PC defences average in the stat thread... they start at 9, they finish at 33. This is assumed to correspond to WA4 PC levels going from 1 to 50. It only matters for a few fights, perhaps, which I'll note. WA4 can, and frequently will, dump HP/MP to get abilities early, such as Slow Down (needs two GC spent) for Sinspawn Gui.

WA4 (Lv 12) vs Sinspawn Gui: Slow Down does its thing. FFX bosses are probably going to have a lot of trouble with this, because I agree with Snowfire about Slow Down hitting damn near everything (see also Spellbinding Eye, Charm, etc.).
WA4 (Lv 18) vs Spherimorph: lol Spherimorph.
WA4 (Lv 20) vs Seymour Guado (Macalania Edition.  Please refer back to 'as literally to in-game as possible'.): First form is dangerous here potentially, due to guardians and their confuse. They also auto-potion away damage well and that kinda destroys WA4 since after Protect, nobody has enough damage to break it! But wait, Jude has ITEM STEAL. So uhh shremedies are still problems though. Confused Raquel does nasty things to her own team, and this is going to happen, with no real way to heal it? Yulie can try attacking if she wants to brave the evade... still eh, yeah, that probably does work since confused Raquel can't counter, but a missed de-confuse is bad. I'm not really sure about this. Assuming they conquer this phase, there's Anima to deal with, who now has a monstrous 7.5PCHP. Intrude chain hype is NOT working, it only barely works if you scale boss HP and we don't here. Still, they do go into this phase with 100 FP, which means two revivers. So... yeah, slow Anima, Yulie and Jude revive each other as need be, Raquel smites. Anima can still potentially grind the team's FP down here and certainly drains a bunch of their resources. Seymour, by contrast, is easier; his spells unfocus and all that. He can probably one-shot the fighters but can't do that much to the mages, so they may take him down with time... if they don't run out of MP. Still, this is rough. Resources are a serious concern here. Abstain.
WA4 (Lv 24) vs Evrae: As usual, only Rikku and Tidus can command the airship, so that's out. Anyway this is very, very tricky. Evrae has 2.7PCHP for his limit phase, so with 100 FP Raquel does barely kill that. Evrae will be using petrify a lot, which Arnaud can only heal at a big HP/MP hit (14 levels' worth), and Jude at a 25 FP cost. Running Arnaud out of MP is still pretty hard, so use it on Arnaud to force the FP down. In the meantime, Jude will attack three times, Raquel twice, and Yulie thrice or so? That's enough to generate the FP needed for Mystic. Yulie can also drop her HP/MP a ridiculous amount to cast Quicken, which helps certainly... probably enough to swing things, since she's barely not OHKOed this way. So, sure. Crazy the team manages this, I was convinced they'd have no chance. And the team is only just far enough in the game to buy Pygmalions (stone cure), even!
WA4 (Lv 32) vs Seymour Flux: Seymour can pick off Yulie right away. Arnaud however can slow Mortiorchis down and then Jude can revive once the needed FP is built up, same as with Evrae only Seymour is MUCH slower past his first turn. So that strategy is out. There's Dispel but the team won't be buffing. There's Cross Cleave but it fails to OHKO Yulie. There's Total Annihilation, but that only OHKOs Jude if Protect is on the others (and it will be, with that charge time). Yep, think WA4 has this. Mystic, everyone, Mystic! edit: Oh wait, slow counters. Okay, leave the mortiorchis alone, just slow down Seymour proper. Still, that makes things really hairy, since Mortiorchis can fire off Cross Cleaves every so often. Hum. I... don't think that makes the difference? The team just has too much healing/revival and gains oodles of FP (Cross Cleave has the annoying side effect of giving out 16). But it's close.
WA4 (Lv 38) vs Spectral Keeper: In theory, Berserk Tail turn 1 to stop slow/dispel, then Glyph Mine away two PCs... depending on the turn order, possibly even both revivers! Fortunately Berserk is only 50%, so usually this won't happen and slow down shenanigans are go. SK is still going to try to keep Arnaud berserked, though, and glyph mines at the wrong time are still pretty bad. Spectral Keeper can't be poisoned (and FFX bosses immune poison about as often as WA4 bosses), not sure about that hype. In general, I think SK will take this at some point, since the battle is long (8.7PCHP to cut through, Raquel ain't ITD yet) and there are too many chances for something to go wrong. I'd flip my vote if I saw anything from mystic curing berserk, but I don't.
WA4 (Lv 38) vs Yunalesca: Big, big problem with Snowfire's analysis: Yunalesca's counters dispel Hyper, she doesn't need turns. And Yunalesca has 6.8PCHP to cut through there at the end. Raquel's damage doesn't really get crazy good like it is in the DL (still good, mind, but we're talking 60-65% to average, not 80%), and even 1 hyper + 4 non-hyper physicals (needing one to kill the final form, but getting one from her own FP gains) aren't good enough here.
WA4 (Lv 50) vs Braska's Final Aeon: Yeah this is so much easier than the last few fights. How like in-game! Raquel has ITD now, petrify blocking is more available, Jecht doesn't have nearly the needed HP.


It's worth noting that if you see FFX slow immunity covering slow down, team WA4 is so fucked. (Don't worry, they still beat Spherimorph at least!)

[SnowFire]

Random sanity check: according to your own notes, Yunalesca's counters "removes Haste/Protect/Shell."  Is it actually an all-dispel, or is it just specifically those buffs?  (Even if it's just those, those are the "good" statuses, so there can be an argument that Hyper is a "good" status and gets removed, while minor stuff like Regen / NulFire / etc. continues.)  There's also the fact that Hyper is technically a hex status, although that's not a huge factor to me.

Also, Yunalesca is really, really late in FFX, so I have hard time imagining Raquel's damage as being THAT different from the stat topic levels.  You've got one boss, one strange final dungeon, and then the final left after her (along with whatever postgame grinding you want, Yojimbo's cave, etc.).  Seems pretty comparable to right before Illsveil in WA4.

If Spectral Keeper berserks *Arnaud* first, then first off, his counters to Berserk Arnaud miss a bunch, and secondly Yulie can just heal Arnaud as he uselessly pounds on SK.  I suppose that Berserk Arnaud -> Berserk Yulie and have both hit on the first try could be really bad for Team WA4, but not inclined to respect that overly much, nor respect the mines vs. Jude the Minesweeper player.  Not inclined to allow perfect boss AI to include "pick the mines that are about to explode."

[Dark Holy Elf]

Re Yunalesca's dispel, it misses regen and reflect, and gets the other buffs. Actually I'm not sure about the Nuls, never tested them. I'd see it getting hyper certainly ('lesca wouldn't even -want- to dispel regen the way the fight works) but big YMMV there.

I think you're underestimating how big and exp-rich FFX's final dungeon is (much bigger than Illsveil)! In general, FFX's gameplay is backloaded compared to its narrative, and it showed in the stat gain conversion I made. Anyway, Raquel's damage is reliant on a kinda rare drop, to boot, so I'm not inclined to make any tiebreaks for it. Yunalesca doesn't face all the difficult-to-get ITD legendary weapons of endgame FFX (nor Anima, which would be the way to punch through phase 3 in-game if you had it), I'm not making her face the difficult-to-get ITD endgame weapon of WA4 either.

Spectral Keeper doesn't berserk people to kill them (which it can do with glyph mines) but to fuck with WA4's game since SK has lots of durability here. Berserking Arnaud is the -only- worthwhile option, as everyone else gets Dispelled by Arnaud. Berserking Arnaud has the added benefit of helping against Slow Down; if he lands it before Arnaud's first turn, he's looking good to win right away, but even if he lands it later, since WA4 can't cure it, it means that Spectral Keeper will break free of slow down and can work on berserking/killing other people from there. Obviously the match goes the other way if you don't let Spectral Keeper choose the hexes he mines, but I certainly do; he'll always mine an aeon when able after all.

[Luther Lansfeld]

WA4 vs Sinspawn Gui
WA4 vs Spherimorph
WA4 vs Seymour Guado (Macalania Edition.  Please refer back to 'as literally to in-game as possible'.)
WA4 vs Evrae
WA4 vs Seymour Flux
WA4 vs Spectral Keeper
WA4 vs Yunalesca
WA4 vs Braska's Final Aeon

[Cmdr_King]

So I think I'm going to move on to a new tourney this week rather than play out more of these. It's an interesting format, but I imagine the rest of the voters would like something to do soon.  that said, I think I'll keep this in reserve anytime I want to space things out a week or two in the future.

As such, some notes on ideas from chat to follow up on at that time.

XF vs FFT
BoFIV vs MMXCM
Grandia/Grandia II vs Grandia III (note: we'd want more boss notes for Grandia III, in particular the Melc Crystals.)