The Final Fantasy Tactics Autobattle Tournament thread

The shops FAQ on GameFAQs has a good list.

Here's the complete list of items that are excluded from chapter 3. There was talk about banning the Heaven's Cloud Draw Out on top of that.

Here's a question: Would it make a shorter list to give what's banned or what's allowed?

Also, I haven't actually played Tactics, so I do have a question. Is it possible to get equipment in Chapter 3 that you normally wouldn't be able to buy until later/at all? If so, would those be allowed?

You could get nearly anything in the game by level grinding and stealing/catching it during random encounters (because the equipment NPCs use in randoms is based on level, and their level is based on yours).

But we're going to be sticking to stuff from the stores. I'll make a list of what's available sometime this week and work out the official rules hopefully this weekend.

The list of what's relevant is fairly short.

http://www.slimesalad.com/wiki/FFT:Equipment has all the tournament-viable items for Chapter 4 and unrestricted formats. Here's what changes for the Chapter 3 format:

• Knives: Remove Air Knife
• Swords: Add Platinum Sword (12 WP), remove Rune Blade and Ice Brand
• Ninja swords: Ninja Knife (9 WP), ignore other ninja swords
• Katanas: Kiyomori (12 WP), ignore other katanas
• Guns: Romanda Gun (6 WP), unless Destil doesn't restrict Mythril Gun (8 WP)
• Crossbows: Add Hunting Bow (6 WP), remove Gastrafitis
• Spears: Partisan (11 WP), ignore other spears
• Sticks: Add Gokuu Rod (10 WP, Add:Innocent) and Iron Fan (9 WP), remove Octagon Rod
• Bags: Remove H Bag
• Axes, rods, staves, flails, longbows, harps, dictionaries, and cloths are untouched.

• Shields: Add Diamond Shield (34% Ev, 15% M-Ev), remove Crystal Shield
• Helmets: Circlet (100 HP), ignore other helmets
• Hats: Add Green Beret (48 HP, +1 Speed) and Holy Miter (64 HP, 20 MP, +1 MA). Remove Thief Hat and Flash Hat. Golden Hairpin and Twist Headband are still in.
• Armor: Platina Armor (90 HP), ignore other armors
• Clothes: Remove Black Costume and Earth Clothes. Power Sleeve is probably the best option, but Judo Outfit still exists.
• Robes: Remove Light Robe
• Accessories: Add Dracula Mantle (28% Ev/M-Ev), remove Angel Ring, Feather Mantle, and Red Shoes

Bracers were available in chapter 3? Interesting...

Yeah, Bracers and Power Sleeves are gonna be popular.

Thing is, I had a lot of the characters I was going to use planned in advance, once I started learning stuff about the AI. Those things were always in the cards.

What is the current thinking on duplicate items? IIRC, the first tournament was duplicate items but not abilities, and the second was neither.

Four characters with no duplicate items might help provoke some oddball strategies.

The original pitch only restricted Mythril Gun. No duplicates at all would be tough with three units, let alone four; max two of any equipment would be more doable.

No offense to Mogri, but with the amount of mistakes that end up being made, keeping the ruleset as clean as possible is probably a good idea for everybody.

I think teams of 4, no overlapping abilities, whatever chapter 3 equipment you want, and no changes allowed once submitted would probably work out best for all.

None taken, but the difficulty is all data management (getting everything right in FFTastic to begin with, then wrestling with memory card stuff). The ruleset has very little to do with any of this.

Any equipment restrictions?

It's still rendering, but here we go.



You're gonna hate me.

This is a great example of what I was talking about earlier. I have the Chiris in the save file, but it didn't import into the emulator correctly for some reason. I'll rerecord later, though for the record, it wouldn't have mattered for the first match.

I thought it was supposed to be "unlimited drawout", but you distinctly limited her to Chirijiraden and Kikuichimonji. If she had Muramasa as an option, she'd have used it. She would probably have even used Masamune and Kiyomori.

If Chirijiraden were available, there's no point in giving her any of the other damage draw outs aside from arguably Kikuichimonji. I only had Muramasa on her before; if I had a chance to practice and see what they did, I'd probably only put Chirijiraden on her now. That's what I did with her in the first tournament before I realized it wouldn't work with equipment restrictions.

As awesome and ridiculously overpowered as Chiri is, it wouldn't have been a huge difference from Muramasa. Not on a character like Cersei.

At least we'd have gotten a better idea of how the battle would turn out with Chiri, since she could have landed more Draw Outs. The reason she landed fewer is cuz she was limited to nothign but Kikiujimonji.

I disagree! With Mogri's lancer here, it's the difference between ~256 damage and ~426. With the former, it's two shots to kill the lancer regardless of any holies; with the latter, it's only one shot after one holy. I don't think she could get the lancer down without Chiri.

It would make the same difference with any character with Shell and more than ~380 HP.

Muramasa still would've been better than the nothing that she used a lot, because she had neither. Yea, ~426 is a lot better than ~256, but ~256 is better than ~0 by even more.

Then we'd at least be able to tell if you lost the fight because your unit was too dumb to attack, or if it lost because it's attack wasn't strong enough. Being able to see how a unit behaves is just as important as how strong the unit is. Even if Cersei is capable of dealing tons and tons of damage, she's not a useful unti if she's too dumb to function in this format. Batman was "a better unit" when he had more Punch Arts, but he was too stupid to use his options effectively. Once I took them away, he was objectively a worse unit, but his performance improved drastically.

As a side note, I really don't see why Kikuijimonji was banned in this format. Math Skill Holy was legal, what's the problem with Kikui? Seeing it used here didn't exactly make me think it was "too good".

Yes, a key component of something working is having the ability to do it. No argument there.

You can build against Math Skill. Low Faith, Holy absorb, Ribbon, M-Ev, and so on to prevent it from doing anything.

There is no counterplay for Math Skill. The closest you get is piling on HP and MDU/Robe of Lords, and even that only takes you to two hits instead of one.

Put another way, my Lancer has an ideal build to deal with Draw Out, and it's all she can do to survive a direct assault. Kiku would unbalance the meta because it would more or less force teams to have a unit like that in order to be competitive.

But we just saw in that video that it was almost a complete non issue for you in that battle. You guys were even on a map where Kikui was literally as useful as it ever could be, because it's a big ol space that's mostly flat. The problems with it aren't really the range, it's just Draw Outs in general. And since Muramasa was still legal, I don't really get the distinction.

Saying that it would impact the metagame too much is kind of a dumb arguement, because Math Skill certainly impacted the metagame to the point that literally everyone was building their teams around it. Yea, there were ways to counter it, and because of that, everyone had counters for it. Out of all the teams in the tournament, how many used Math Skill? All but 2? How many actually used Draw Out? Just the one? If Draw Outs affected the metagame, then people would have to choose between countering Math Skill, and countering Draw Out. And that, sir, is a metagame with depth.

It was workable because I literally have the perfect setup to deal with it. Even so, Kikuichimoji deals 224 damage to my Lancer, enough to kill her in two shots. There is nothing else in the format that can kill that unit in two shots. Against a unit that does not have Shell + MDU, it deals 512 damage. That kills any unit in the format. Nothing else can do that.

Fun fact: Kiku actually does less damage than Muramasa. Why do we allow Muramasa but not Kikuichimoji in the standard formats? Because Kikuichimoji has the range of Earth Slash with two to three times the power*.


Not the winning team. If Math Skill could put out anywhere near those numbers or if everyone without Math Skill had been instantly eliminated, then I'd be saying the same thing about Math Skill. The fact that Math Skill didn't dominate the tournament despite most teams using it says it's more balanced in this format than a lot of teams suspected.

Countering Draw Out? You can't counter Draw Out. That's the point. Literally every offensive skillset besides Draw Out has a counter. Evasion, elemental absorption, status immunity, whatever. There's no way to avoid Draw Out. You can only survive it, and only if you're set up specifically to survive it.

The most prevalent offensive option in the tournament was Holy. It was capable of one- to two-shotting most units. Kikuichimoji deals two and a half times as much damage but can't be absorbed.

*An optimal Earth Slash build with a perfume in the accessory slot (Ninja with Martial Arts, Twist Headband, Power Sleeve, Chantage) does 252 damage. A male unit could optimize that to an impressive 507 by giving up the accessory slot -- nearly as much as Cersei's Kiku -- but he dies to a slight breeze. Even so, Earth Slash does nothing against units with Float or Earth Clothes.

Slight quibble here: Sol's monk had 800-some HP, and there were some lancers with 600-some HP. Also plenty of Knights with Robe of Lords that it doesn't one-shot.

It also should do 528 max (I think), only because Cersei is not completely MA-optimized (21 base + 2 wiz rod + 1 robe of lords + 1 flash hat =25; MA Up makes it 33. It was 36 before I swapped stuff around). Had to get that Chantage on there. Who knows why I moved the Robe of Lords to her; it makes no sense.

But your points stand. If her AI was better she'd be unstoppable with Kikuichimonji. I can't blame you for banning it; I can only blame myself for a build that the AI can't deal with.

What accessory would increase the output by that much? 108 Gems? In that case, wouldn't it be better to use Earth Clothes instead of a Power Sleeve, and wear a Bracer on the accessory slot? I totally wanted to build that unit for the next tourney, but alas, no Earth Clothes. I've made do, however. I'm curious though, does AttackUp apply to Earth Slash?

Bracer. The male also has a native +4 PA.

Strengthen is a 5/4 modifier to PA. Switching Power Sleeve for Earth Clothes on the male unit brings him to a stupid 720 damage, but without Reraise or Haste, he won't be doing that very often. On the female unit, it brings her to 336 damage, which is actually really good, even if it's still much weaker than Kiku. Earth Clothes has the side benefit of thwarting enemy Earth Slashers.

We didn't see any Earth Slash builds, though, which is too bad.

re: format for next tournament...

I don't like the idea of switching your build when you enter loser's bracket. Is that normal? A person should be able to win based on the merit and strength of their idea. Plus it allows us to see a bracket. You can see who you're facing next but can't "metagame" against them.

That's great in theory, but the AI tends not to care what your idea was.

If anything I would be tempted to try best 2/3 for each match with no losers bracket, but we'll see what the turnout's like.

As this thread dies down, I want to say thanks to Mogri for running the tourney. As a noob I really appreciated it. And Whaddayaknow! I made it farther than I expected too.