Futurama 2023 Week 5 + Rankings!

[Cmdr_King]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)

Rankings

For each of these games, please indicate if you would like to add it to the pool of Ranked games


Persona
Persona 5
Triangle Strategy

[Cmdr_King]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)- I think, been a while since this one came up for me so I forget how I take it.

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)- I don't think evade/blocking is really a thing in Cthulhu?  So Mei-ling just needs to dodge one of Cthulhu's two opening turns via lightsaber abuse and he can't win again until turn 5, which Mei-ling should be able to swing.

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)- No vote

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)- Without crunching the numbers Ivy just clean 2HKOs them yeah?

Rankings

For each of these games, please indicate if you would like to add it to the pool of Ranked games


Persona
Persona 5
Triangle Strategy- Rank the lot.  P1 is a bit dicey for some but eh, I've worked with weirder, the other two are clearly clean fits.

[SnowFire]

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)
Dodgy, not inclined to hype up 4D pocket.

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)
Mediator has 1.07 PCHP, at least taken by the generic "overall best" HP average.  Ivy deals 24 damage with Bolganone.  This clearly won't 2HKO vs. the Silvers or Smash average, but vs. the Silvers with accuracy damage average (the nicest option), she deals 0.535 PCHP, or exactly a 2HKO.  I think I hold to the basic Silvers average myself when Smash weapons aren't in play (reflects that Smash does exist and accuracy isn't really a huge problem in the DL), but it doesn't matter, because even if the silvers-with-accuracy killpoint is used, that just means Solution does its thing instead.  Whether Mediator is telling himself or Ivy that magic isn't real, the effect is the same in shrinking Ivy's damage, and Ivy has 0 backup physical damage.

--
Abstain on Persona 1.
Rank Persona 5, I guess.  What the hell.  There's some pretty nasty interp issues (do they get auto-revives?  do we hype up obscura gun status that isn't that good in-game and dominates their DL performance profile if allowed?), but that isn't new.  My one preference is to *not* rank Joker, or at least consider Joker a Bluelikes-only nom.  A headache, but not in a cool way.
Rank TriStrat, sure.  Pretty straightforward.

[074]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4) - You know my stance on 4D Pocket outside of RPGVO.  And in RPGVO, Yuna wouldn't have access to Aeons anyway.

Middle

Minoriko Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses) - While Minoriko can safely attack (Warm-Color Harvest is MT), the problem is that she's going to be put on the defensive the entire time - she's not OHKOing (WCH is firmly in 3HKO territory) and Owotoshi is needed so she doesn't risk getting one-rounded.  ...even then her terrible HP means she gets heal-locked until either Owotoshi's buffs decay too far for her to heal, or she runs out of MP.  She's not doubleturning enough to make up that difference.  Good run for the harvest goddess but it ends here.,

Rankings:
- iffy on P1.
- If ranking P5, Joker is firmly in DNR territory.  Wildcards can fuck all the way off.  The rest are fine, I suppose, albeit with some interp hell.
- I don't see any real issue with TriStrat ranking, sure.  Rank it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4): Don't really see a problem hyping 4D Pocket here myself.

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas): His damage is dark, not physical, so I wouldn't see Deflect working. And while there's a chance LIghtsword buffs Mei-ling durability enough to not get one-shotted (would have to check), Mei-ling needs to heal on turn 1 to not get finished by this, and thus Lightsword turn 2, and then Cthulhu goes first on turn 3 and uses some other random magic damage.

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics): Yep, Solution is a thing. Mediator too much for Light.

Rankings

Yes to Persona 5 (DNR Joker?) and Triangle Strategy (DNR Idore? Weird case where he's apparently waaay better on a route which is extremely difficult to see outside NG+). Overall would prefer not to see P1 but could be argued.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4) - well I definitely allow 4D Pocket, so...

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas) - Sure, I'll bite

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses) - Dedue 2HKOs to her 3HKO. She can stall with healing, but he runs her out of MP long before he runs out of Brave Axe charges.

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)

Rankings

Persona - Not huge on this game in the DL. I'd have to replay it to even remember how most of the interesting bits worked...
Persona 5 - This is more fresh and more widely-known, though I'd agree about keep Joker in Bluelike
Triangle Strategy - Obvious rank

Sad that no NIS games made the cut... c'mon you guys, they're good actually. They've come a long way since D1's janky balance.

[Random Consonant]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4) - You know I was gonna be all like lol hyping temporary eject as match winning but the fact that 4D pocket does reset the turn gauge honestly is a legitimate secondary effect to go through (see also: Weissman's EP busting) so I guess Belial gets to go back to being complete DL cancer.  You win, assholes, happy now?

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas) - Yeah not really buying the supervillain evade powers saving her from getting wrecked by dark damage.

Middle

Minoriko Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses) - um Minoriko needs to buff to not get ORKO'd and it saves her from being heal locked basically never, so she needs to juggle that, refreshing the defense buff, and trying to find the room to 2RKO with Autumn Sky (no, Dedue is not switching to a thrown weapon to counter that, 3H thrown counters are trash).  Considering that 1) Dedue has a 17% crit rate and 2) Minoriko only enjoys a 11-10 turnsplit this uh does not actually work out for her.

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics) - Agreeing that Mediator is secretly too strong for Light.

Obviously rank both P5 (not sold on the Joker for Bluelike arguments but he's a massive research headache anyways so I'd be happy to silo him off) and Triangle Strategy.  P1 would need a revised stat topic badly and apparently no one can be bothered to fill that need so I won't say rank it but at the same time there's not anything particularly *unrankable* about it other than game not good (maybe I'll buy into that reasoning when we boot FF8.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4) - I mean, Belial is so accurate that even Arnaud has problems dodging Tank Drop and Yuna has -less- evade than Arnaud. She may not even need 4D Pocket on average. Not that it matters, 4D Pocket is a crazy PC killer either way because turngauge-resetting off nearly 300% average speed is just bonkers.

[Cmdr_King]

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X)- i vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)- iiiiii

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier)- i vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)- ii (changed my vote in the tally, misremembered Cthluhu's big damage as physical rather than dark)

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)- iii

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage)- i vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)- iii

Rankings

For each of these games, please indicate if you would like to add it to the pool of Ranked games

denominator- iiiiiii
Persona y- i n- ii (1/7 or 2/7, to Backburner!)
Persona 5 y- iiiii n- (5/7 in favor, Ranked!)
Triangle Strategy  y- iiiiii n- 6/7 in favor, Ranked!)