With the dust settling down after the largest update yet in Tactics League’s history, it’s time to put your skills with the plethora of new and exciting changes to the ultimate test: another live competition!
This competition utilizes Tactics League’s tried-and-true competitive Standard format, where players have access to an array of different unique characters, equipment, abilities, and jobs ALL at their disposal with limitations baked right into the patch and format. As the third competition, we have new and returning competitors looking to take on the challenges of both time, intellect, and strategy as they make their way through a single-elimination style bracket that is targeted to take approximately 5 hours.
In PvP Patch version 3, many gender equality changes were made to close the gap between male and female build varieties; hair adornments, bags, perfumes, and the Tynar Rouge accessory were now accessible to males. Additionally, the reaction abilities, Fury and Magick Boost, that were gender-locked to Bard and Dancer were added so that either gender could use either ability. These improvements were well-received and opened up build diversity in a positive way. However, there is one outlier that version 4 is addressing – the gap between male magical and female physical specs.
The changes you will read more about are centered around improving the male and female Squires in both Standard and Rendezvous and have minimal impact on unique characters.
To resolve this task, this required a two-pronged approach:
First: Fixing the stat disparity by adjusting PA/MA values of the base Squire stats – the result is that male Squire will now have 13/12, and female Squire will now have 12/13, a +1 stat increase from version 3.
Second: Fixing the PA and MA multipliers (also known as PAM and MAM) marginally; most jobs received a 5% bonus to these multipliers depending on needs. For example, White Mage’s MAM was increased from 110% to 115% which resulted in generic male White Mage specifically getting an extra +1 MA.
Combining the base Squire stat increase and job PAM/MAM resulted in: Male White Mage – 11/14 (+1 MA) Female White Mage – 10/15
Lastly, to make sure being a male or female gender still played a role in the higher HP or MP spread, male Squires received +8 HP and female Squires received +9 MP.
The accomplished goal of these changes is that the total stat spread (between PA and MA) is no more than 1 point between either gender. You can still build “optimally” and use a female White Mage, or you can choose for whatever reason (aesthetics, sprite design, wanting to use the additional PA) and go male White Mage instead and perform well and with a bit more added bulk!
The result of these adjustments to male White Mage for example is:
Male White Mage – version 3Male White Mage – version 4
Another example of these base stat and job PAM/MAM adjustments are female Monks. In version 3, running a female Monk was very much not desirable, because there was realistically little to be gained from doing so (comparing Martial Arts, a female Monk had a marginally better Doom Fist).
In version 4, this changes quite differently, as you will now see that a female Monk is viable and even plausible for running secondary Dance or Arts of War:
Female Monk – version 3Female Monk – version 4
And lastly, to quell any worries about how these job PAM/MAM changes affect unique characters let’s compare Agrias as a Dark Knight in version 3 and version 4:
Agrias Dark Knight – version 3Agrias Dark Knight – version 4
Dark Knight’s PAM was increased from 130% to 135% resulting in a +1 PA value for female Dark Knights. This ultimately sets generic female Dark Knights to 16/11 while male Dark Knights retain 17/10 and the +1 PA translates as a minimal difference here with Agrias.
In PvP Patch v4.0, you can truly play any gender, and any job and perform well competitively. I look forward to seeing new builds and creations once we enter public beta on March 12th!
Another competition is in the history books as our first-ever cup, a single-elimination style competition was a success!
To watch (or rewatch) the tournament in its entirety with chapters to jump to specific matches:
WngMan and YoshnJa had a post-event interview talking about February 11, 2024’s event, which can be found here:
The 2024 Starter – Winter Cup #1 Champion, WngMan
WngMan has successfully fought to maintain his champion title, though it wasn’t a breeze; Pista, the 2nd runner up, took a win during their 3-game series with their first game and it really set a shocker throughout. WngMan was met with a tough opponent, one who was his first time competing in a Tactics League competition!
Pista’s team had an overall successful run through the event, and he proved that faith-based magicks are definitely viable in the metagame. Using the zoning potential of Summons and Time Magicks, Pista was a force to be reckoned with, lowering his opposition’s mobility options by controlling sections of each map he played on and enabling his power stacked Agrias to move in and sweep for the finish.
Jokerfisch, a returning player from the 2023 Opener, performed very well with his new team; definitely pushing more aggression against his opponent and even ran an interesting set up on his main unique, Cloud, which was equipped with the Steadfast Ring, an accessory that gives its bearer a short period of invulnerability, allowing Cloud to be able to engage with his arsenal of AoE attacks in Limit when he was able to do so early without fear of retaliation initially.
We also had a new competitor finished 4th, Mistral! Mistral led her female-only team (with a Bard included but he was dubbed “Fayt(Girl)” so that counts :p) to the semifinals where she put up a gracious fight against Pista for the chance to take on WngMan directly. Though she was bested this time, I am positive she will be coming back in full force for the next competition.
Dr. Jay, known for his innovation and antics with team compositions, brought a new team into the competition led by a 20-Speed Mustadio, which was capable of casting turn-one Hasteja due to blistering high speed and Swiftness, enabling his team to get the leg-up on his foe. Though he was bested by Jokerfisch in Round 1, he put up a fight that pushed to Game 3, though ultimately finishing in 5th. He truly is one of the best theorycrafters in our community and I can’t wait to see what else he has cooking in the future.
Rumer, another returning player from the 2023 Opener, brought a team that followed inspiration from the Golden Sun series, led by Meliadoul. His first match was against WngMan, so he had a tough ladder to climb automatically. Though he didn’t succeed in stopping WngMan’s winning streak, I love the fact that a thematic-esque team put up a fight especially in their first game which you can find here: https://youtu.be/GEYg79T42KI
Lastly, for our 7th and 8th ranked competitors; Space Monkey and Hew, both came into the event as first-timers with ambition to perform well and get a first-time experience in Tactics PvP competition. Space Monkey has taken a lot of effort to ask questions, reiterate, and improve as a whole to do his best within the days leading up to the event. Hew is also new to the Tactics League Discord, but he has shown some very interesting builds before and even during the event. I would definitely keep my eyes on them in the future.
Results and Registered Team Rosters
With our second ever-event and our first-ever single elimination cup completed, it is once again proven that people enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics and even more so, a fierce, live competition. We also had a phenomenal uptick in viewership, both on Twitch and the Discord’s streaming channel, and we are just getting started!
The upcoming event will be our first-ever cup, focused on faster runtime by being single-elimination and with less Competitor Point distribution.
This Starter format-focused event is scheduled for February 11, 2024, with check-in starting at noon EST and kick-off starting at 12:30 PM EST. This tournament will be live-streamed via the Tactics League Discord and the Tactics League Twitch channel.
The 1st and 2nd place winners of the event will be invited to participate in a future Update 4 Exhibition (date is TBD) that will give them early access to PvP Patch version 4 beta while showcasing the match on the Tactics League’s Discord and Twitch channels. Keep an eye out for when this event will happen!
What a special previous Sunday we had! After talks and hopeful planning for years, we have finally completed the first-ever Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions live PvP tournament! Let’s go over some of the finer details of the competition.
To watch (or rewatch) the tournament in its entirety with chapters to jump to specific matches:
The 2023 Opener Champion – WngMan
The predictions around the Tactics League Discord were indeed true; WngMan would make it to the end and claim Champion of the 2023 Opener. Having succeeded through the Winners bracket, WngMan would later face off against Jokerfisch who crawled through Losers originally for the Grand Finals where he struck a 2-0 victory against Joker.
However, Jokerfisch had a surprise ending too, claiming 2nd place, as the prediction would be that WngMan would face off against Dr. Jay in the Grand Finals, but Jokerfisch pushed through a three-game Winners Round 3 victory, causing an upset against the predicted final battle and went up against the ultimate challenge.
Dr. Jay, who claimed 3rd, pushed an inspiring new setup that revolved around using the Squire’s Reequip ability to change his Ramza’s (dubbed “Combat Mode”) gear to adjust to the situation at hand. His handy Thief, “Dayspring,” wielded her Durandal and played some very intriguing spellcaster plays that many would say are very “off-meta” or “not fit for the job,” but in the game of Final Fantasy, anything is possible if you put your mind to it.
Rumer, a recently joined member of the Tactics League Discord, finished 4th, eager to learn the ways of the PvP Patch and the evolving metagame, placed well for having just gotten involved with PvP.
And lastly, our friend and one of the server’s most senior members, Mikey from Tactics Live Tournament, took the 5th place spot. Though Mikey made quirks about finishing early, it wasn’t about the competitive push for 1st in the end, but just the fact that one of his YouTube channel’s goals of having a Final Fantasy Tactics tournament has finally reached fruition.
Results and Registered Team Rosters
As a momentous occasion to etch in video game history, the 2023 Opener proved that there is definitely an interest in Tactics PvP. People from all over different social networks, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other Discord servers, joined the event presentation and stream and witnessed history for the first time.
While the event is over, the match data and team rosters are now publicly available to view on both Google Sheets and PDF format which can be found below:
