PvP Patch v4.0 Beta – Overview
Greetings and cheers! It has been an exciting time here at Tactics League; we just completed our first-ever cup, and back in October 2023, our first-ever tournament. With it, a growing community has reached new landmarks in competition, and people are eager to come check out what Tactics PvP is all about.
Now the future of the Tactics League’s PvP Patch is almost here! Today, I want to share a high-level overview of what to expect in the upcoming version 4.0 beta update. This isn’t everything, but you will see more focused articles about certain changes to follow as well leading up to the public beta release.
🤩 Meet Our New Uniques: Alma and Valmafra
- This hefty update adds both Alma Beoulve and Valmafra Lenande to the uniques roster, replacing Ovelia and Balthier respectively!
- Alma – A glorified Cleric, uses her supportive Holy Magicks to provide powerful status effects to allies and additionally has access to some high-level White Magicks as well. With her base 87 Faith and innate Arcane Defense, Defense Boost, and Charm immunity, Alma is ready to provide aid and comfort on the battlefield.
- Vamlafra – A Witch of the Coven, has learned the trades of White, Black, Time, Mystic Arts, and Ja-Magicks and is likened to that of both a Red Mage and Elementalist. With her Magicks using a blend of all 5 skill sets, she can cast damaging magicks quickly thanks to her innate Swiftness.
- Both of these new characters will be available in both Standard and Rendezvous formats.
⏫ Quality of Life Updates and Practice Mode
- The Starter format (the competitive/slot 3 save) has been renamed to Standard to follow other naming conventions used in other competitive games and to set the tone that this is the main competitive format; it is still the Esports-driven format you have come to expect!
- Araguay Woods is the new home of Practice Mode – where all 8 encounters (depending on how you enter Araguay Woods) are a team of 5 led by a unique character each, tailored similarly to popular and niche setups from Standard. This is the perfect place to practice and test your new squad offline before venturing out into Melee! You might even come across a rare 5 unique character team encounter…
- You can now rename your unique characters at the Warriors Guild!
- Iaido and Unholy Sacrifice now properly show their damage/status in the damage preview.
- Night-time conditions no longer penalizes Bows and Crossbow attacks.
- Improved AI behaviors, such as better decision-making with casting Protect/Shell.
💤 Status Effect Updates
- Protect & Shell:
- All equipment that provides Equip: Protect/Shell now all provide Initial: Protect/Shell, meaning that gear provides Protect/Shell in a duration the same way Kiyomori or Barrier does.
- This also means that gear-sourced Protect/Shell is now interactable with abilities or attacks; such as War Cry, Harmony, and Giant’s Axe.
- The duration of Protect/Shell has been increased.
- Protect/Shell now persists while KO’d so you can return to the fight with it intact (but they are still on a duration).
- Veil (formerly Invulnerable) – Renamed to fit the theme better and it now has a status pop-up when it has expired from Steadfast Ring (rejoice!)
- Invisible – Doubles your evasion rates while active (until you take an action or get hit) and NPCs can now target you but at a lower priority to do so.
- Atheist, Sleep, and Charm have had their status durations reduced to lessen the duration they have over a single game, but are still impactful and worthwhile to inflict.
👥 Base Stats and Gender Equality Updates
- The base HP, MP, PA, and MA of all generic squires in all Tactics League formats have been increased to improve their stat spread transition to other jobs.
- Almost all generic jobs have also received a slight increase in their MA/PA, resulting in better viability of male magical or female physical setups with the total stat spread being no more than 2 points between either gender; you can play any job on any gender and they all can now perform well!
🧙♂️ Jobs Updates
- Many jobs received a slight boost in their PA/MA multipliers to better offset the disparity between male magical and female physical setups. Note that while these are stat increases, these don’t “add” any further power to any job.
- Chemist received a hefty boost to their HP and now innately increase Potions and Ethers HP/MP restore by an additional 50.
- Summoner received a boost to their maximum MP and now boasts the highest MP out of all caster jobs.
- Sage’s base Speed has been increased from 10 to 11.
- Mimes can now equip a limited set of gear and gain a new functionality in “copy weapon,” allowing them to slot the previous acting ally’s weapon temporarily; there’s a lot more potential and tricks with Mimes!
- Dark Knight now has innate Lifefont instead of Immune: Faith to reduce highly situational passives.
✨ Abilities Updates
- Meliadoul’s Unyielding Blade has been renamed to Unyielding Strike and now works with any weapon!
- All 8-range abilities have been reduced to 6-range: Dispose, Shockwave, and Kiku-ichimonji. This change is to promote engagement.
- New Ja-Magicks and further additions to Wind, Water, and Earth abilities: Aeroja, Waterja, and Quake!
- Ninja’s Throw is no longer evadable and the quantity of shuriken-type items have been reduced in Standard.
- Fixed the unarmed attack calculation and buffed the damage potential via Brawler.
- New Reaction/Support/Movement abilities: CT Boost, Critical: Flee, Replenish, Monkey Grip, Nimble, and Dexterity!
- Shirahadori has returned but has been reworked – it no longer affects normal attacks, but it now sets the hit rate of unevadable physical abilities to 60%.
- MANY improvements to underutilized abilities, such as Magick Counter now being able to trigger off of unique magic abilities, Bravery Boost and Faith Boost being guaranteed to trigger, and Lifefont and Manafont now being stackable.
🗡️ Equipment Updates
- A plethora of new weapons have been added: Apocalypse, Caladbolg, Tiny Bee, Zanmato, Kunai, Thief’s Knife, Zephyr Pole, Crown Scepter, Nirvana, and Flametongue!
- Many existing weapons have received updates to improve their viability, such as Nagnarok functioning like Ribbon but with positive status immunities included, or all Poles now scaling with the
greater of your PA or MA * WeaponPower. - Ringmail (clothing) and Peytral (heavy armor) are new additions that provide Initial: Protect/Shell as options; this greatly expands on gear-sourced selections, especially for jobs that need it!
- New additional gear as well, such as Chaos Helm and Cursed Garb.
- All “Boosts” or “Halves” element equipment that previously affected Fire, Lightning, Ice, and Wind now affect all elements, except Holy and Dark.
- New accessories to deck out your team, such as the guaranteed weapon cast/status effect with Chantage, increase your Bravery over time with the Bravely Armlet, and some evasiveness while gaining +1 Speed with the Elven Cloak. Also, look out for several reworked or improvements to existing accessories.
📝Addressing Community Feedback
- This update’s long-term goals are: to further expand theorycrafting, improve game or match resolution in competitions, and improve many underutilized abilities/jobs/gear.
- The Protect/Shell changes are from feedback about the typical desire to need always gear-slot Protect/Shell. The <Initial> change, increased uptime, and persistence on death are all about improving these vital buffs as a whole. Additionally, Ringmail and Peytral (alongside Lordly Robe) provide all jobs access to gear-sourced Protect/Shell so you can further your theorycrafting without making sacrifices.
- Addressing revivals or chain-resurrection: The potency of Ramza’s Encourage, Martial Art’s Revive, and Summon’s Faerie have all seen a slight reduction to create a margin of error to reduce chain-resurrection and to demote the push for draw games. Phoenix Down has also been reduced to 3 in Standard, but now restores 20% of your maxHP to compensate. Reraise’s spell speed has been reduced slightly to incentive pushing towards bestowing the reraise status but with more counter-plays.
- Bardsong’s Life Anthem has received a slight potency reduction to reduce total healing done in situations where you get back-to-back casts.
- Forbidden Dance and Nameless Song’s hit rate increased significantly, though Forbidden Dance is slower now but more consistent. Nameless is also more consistent, but Protect or Shell has been re-added to reduce the opportunity for constant Reraise or Haste rolls.
- With changes to incentivize weapon attacking and the reworked Chantage accessory, evasiveness will play a more important role in the future.
