Tag PvP

The Tactics League official game settings and map pool is getting some changes today that we are going to go over. As a reminder, these settings are for use with our official save data it isn’t necessary when playing a few casual games with a friend.

Game Settings Changes

We have added a 40 Action Limit to all premade and starter formats. This was done in preparation for future tournaments; to reduce stalling and make each turn more impactful in the course of the game. The new game settings are as followed:

Map Selection – Manual

Time Limit – 15 minutes

Action Limit – 40

Special Controls – Off

Trap Placement – None

Arithmeticks – Allow (this setting needs to be allowed for premades that use it)

Map Pool Changes

We have also changed our map pool selection. We have removed maps classified as large-size as they tend to cause games to take much longer and can also be used to promote stalling. We have also added 2 new maps and re-classified Gariland as a medium-sized map, making its return instead of being removed. Here are the changes:

Removed large maps:
Araguay Woods, Balias Swale, Monastery Vaults – Level 3, Zeklaus Desert

Added maps:
Mandalia Plain (small), Dorvauldar Marsh (med), Gariland (med)

We hope that these changes provide positive changes to PvP Tactics. We are always looking at feedback, so make sure to post in our Discord if you have any.

For the new map pool and game settings, visit game settings.

As we continue the Tactics PvP Job Series, we will have a look at the viability of the Knight job as the main role in PvP for competitive use.

PvP Performance Statcard

Based on the above performance, Knights are a solid job role, making them one of the better choices for PvP. Let us focus more on that below.

For more information on this job visit the link: Knight.

Abilities

A Knight’s biggest focus is their Arts of War ability tree, which focuses on rending or breaking various equipment or lowering the stats of their target. To make the most use of Arts of War you will need to be behind the target and have a notable amount of Physical Attack (PA) as their abilities use that in part in calculating the success rate of their kit. In addition to that, the better their weapon’s Power, the better the odds of successfully breaking the targeted gear. We won’t focus on each action ability as they function similarly to each other but we will highlight the more commonly used ones:

Rend Weapon (action) – This is the bread and butter ability to break an opponent’s weapon. Most jobs rely on their weapon to deal greater damage and some, especially the uniques like Cloud or Beowulf, lose a lot of their functionality to their skillsets when their weapons are broken. As always, your best results is striking from their rear.

Rend Shield/Rend Helm/Rend Armor (action) – Breaking a target’s shield will reduce their evasiveness, making it easier to get attacks and other abilities to hit. Breaking a target’s helm or armor is ideal if the have gear that is nullifying status effects or are providing them buffs like Protect, Shell, or Haste.

Parry (reaction) – This reaction ability is very good when coupled with weapons that have high parry rate such as Defender or one of the cloths as this unlocks their ability to act as a form of evasion from the front or sides. This ability is always on and does not require a trigger for it to proc.

Equip Swords (support) – Notably, this ability allows for other jobs to use swords (no Knight’s Swords or Fell Swords). This tends to find its way on builds that want to access the variety of different swords and it was worth mentioning because of that.

Stats

Stats as a primary job: HP: 120% | MP: 80% | Speed: 100% | PA: 120% | MA: 80% | C-EV: 10 | Move: 4 | Jump: 3

Can equip: Swords, Knight’s Swords, Shields, Helm, Armor, Robes

Besides being able to break weapons and lower the stats of others, Knights also have a good mixture of stats and with a C-EV of 10 coupled with a shield, they can also become agile against incoming damage. Their base Move of 4 helps with quickly getting into position for rending. Notably, their PA is a good starting ground for raising their physical power more to become more successful with their Arts of War.

Conclusion

Knights are a solid option for primary jobs looking to make tankier setups and wanting to add some control elements through their action abilities. Their abilities’ range is also based on their weapon so you can even use Arts of War from afar and you can also get another chance to break by dual-wielding.

As we continue the Tactics PvP Job Series, we will have a look at the viability of the Archer job as the main role in PvP for competitive use.

PvP Performance Statcard

Based on the statcard, Archers are effective in PvP as well as having decent primary job stats for an early job option. Their biggest advantage is the versatility of bows, being the only generic job besides Onion Knight that can equip it. We will break down the scoring below, starting with abilities.

For more information on Archer visit the job link: Archer.

Abilities

Archers’ biggest feature in PvP is the ability to equip bows as a job. The bow’s advantage is using height to reach distant targets and the “arc” of the arrow projectile getting around certain objects. However, they are probably not going to be scoring much out of their own action abilities as there are innate issues with their ability tree, Aim, that we will highlight:

Aim (action) – The concept of Aim seems cool in story content, but it has some real issues in PvP that have some similarity to casting magicks. Each version of Aim, from Aim +1 through Aim +20 requires charging and while you are charging up your Aim attack, the Archer cannot move or the Aim will fail and if the target moves before the ability goes off, the Aim will likely result in no damage (it is tile-targeted). This also poses a risk in that while charging up, the Archer will take increased damage due to casting (other cast time abilities share this penalty as well). All in all, it is ideal to avoid using really high Aim variants altogether and either focus with just Attack or no more than Aim +2 unless the game play is very slow in nature. Checking the turn order is important in the success of casted abilities.

Adrenaline Rush (reaction) – Adrenaline Rush is a fairly good reaction ability in general, increasing the character’s Speed by 1 each time it procs (the chance is based on their Bravery). Increasing Speed helps a unit get their turn faster and some abilities also do increased damage based on Speed, like Ninja’s Throw.

Concentration (support) – Concentration causes the target’s evasion stats to be ignored most cases (there are a few things that this does not apply to like Arts of War) so that even if they are using Reflexes or running high evasion gear, most of it does not count. This ability can be handy for melee builds that want to ensure their hard-hitting attack always connects.

Stats

Stats as a primary job: HP: 100% | MP: 65% | Speed: 100% | PA: 110% | MA: 80% | C-EV: 10 | Move: 3 | Jump: 3

Can equip: Bows, Crossbows, Shields, Hats, Clothes

Though Archers are not considered a starter job (they require Squire job to be Lv. 2) they are a good job in general for having instant ranged damage. Their job stats aren’t really going to excel in any particular area, but their decent PA and Speed and 10 C-EV can be handy, especially in slower formats.

Conclusion

The Archer job is a decent spec for ranged damage in PvP. Their job ability probably won’t see much effective play, but some of their other passive abilities may find their way into other builds. Their access to bows leaves a set of options for playing from safety; taking advantage of the high ground on certain maps.

As we continue the Tactics PvP Job Series, today we will be discussing the merits of Chemist as a primary job in PvP and outline their abilities and functions for competitive use.

PvP Performance Statcard

Chemists can be fairly decent in PvP as highlighted above. Probably not the best option for high-level play, but they do bring a few things to the table which we will highlight more below.

For more information about this job, visit the job link: Chemist.

Abilities

Chemists’ biggest advantages in PvP are being able to equip guns and having an innate ability to Throw Items. Guns excel at having a far range to deal damage and with their magic variant you can possibly cast higher-level magic of that weapon’s type (such as Blaze Gun having a 30% chance to cast Fira, or a 10% chance to cast Firaga). With that being said, there are a few other abilities we should highlight:

Throw Items (built-in due to job) – Throw Items allows the Chemist to toss restorative consumables to allies within 4 tiles. This can be very handy in getting X-Potions, Remedies, or Phoenix Down usage without having to be directly in battle.

Safeguard (support) – This ability protects equipped gear from being destroyed by Arts of War or stolen via Steal or Piracy. This is a great support ability for builds that are reliant on weapons to use their abilities, such as Dark Knight or Cloud’s Limit command without fear of the gear being removed.

Auto-Potion (reaction) – Though there are probably better reaction abilities to slot, Auto-Potion is a notable one when coupled with high Bravery as the higher the Bravery of the character, the higher the chance they will consume the weakest potion available after taking damage. You can manipulate this by carry only X-Potions in your inventory so that when you proc this reaction, you will heal for 150 each time!

Stats

Stats as a primary job: HP: 80% | MP: 75% | Speed: 100% | PA: 75% | MA: 80% | C-EV: 5 | Move: 3 | Jump: 3

Can equip: Knives, Guns, Hats, Clothing

As a starter job, Chemist isn’t going to be an ideal main job for PvP. Their stats don’t offer much to work with, but their Speed is decent while you progress towards the advanced jobs, such as Ninja.

Conclusion

Similar to its other base job counter-part in Squire, Chemists aren’t an ideal main job to bring in most PvP matches. However, they do offer some flexibility with having innate Throw Items and can equip guns so they may find some niche uses as a primary job on the team. They only have 3 Move and 3 Jump so they will need investment in those areas to not fall behind the group, but they can make up for that by having access to ranged options in their kit.

With the introduction of the Tactics PvP Job Series, our focus will be on discussing the merits of different jobs in a competitive environment. In this article, we will start on the role of Squire in PvP as a primary job and outline their abilities and functions for competitive use.

PvP Performance Statcard

As you can tell from the ratings, Squires isn’t the best pick for competitive play but let’s dive further into why that is the case.

With each passing turn in PvP being ever-important, the Fundaments ability tree leaves little to be desired in bringing you one step closer to victory. We will go into more detail below.

For more information about this job, visit the job link: Squire.

Abilities

The Fundaments ability tree only has a few options that are primarily useful for PvP scenarios. Instead of listing each one and doing a breakdown, we will go over the ones that are likely to be usable.

Focus (action) – This ability increases the character’s Physical Attack by 1. This is very good for physical-based builds and is especially good for the pre-engagement phase (the time it takes to actually start dealing damage to your opponent) to build up your power to ensure you are going to deliver moderate to high damage once you do start engagement.

Rush/Stone (action) – One particular reason to use these abilities is to knock a friendly out of either confuse, charm, or sleep statuses since they require to take damage and these abilities scale poorly with damage. Stone is useful for that regard since it can be thrown at range whereas Rush can potentially move a unit into poor positioning.

Defend (support) – Instead of using the Wait command to end the unit’s turn, it is better to use Defend if you have it slotted to get less Charge Turn gauge penalty and to also double their evasion rates until their next turn. This in general isn’t the best support abilty to slot especially with only one slot, but it can be handy if factoring other sources of evasion.

As you can see, Focus is likely going to get the most use out of the Fundaments ability tree, and that is likely not worth sacrificing an Action ability slot for even using Fundaments in the first place unless you are catering to an off-meta style set up.

Stats

Stats as a primary job: HP: 100% | MP: 75% | Speed: 100% | PA: 90% | MA: 80% | C-EV: 5 | Move: 4 | Jump: 3

Can equip: Swords, Knives, Axes, Flails, Hats, Clothing

As it is a starter job, Squire isn’t going to be an ideal main with it not having any notable stat values. Having a Class Evasion (C-EV) of 5 is very little flexibility to invest in their evasiveness, but they do have a 4 Move enabling them to get around the map quicker. At best, they can probably be used for utilizing their range of Swords, Knives, Axes, and Flails but that can only go so far too.

Conclusion

Squires in PvP are not ideal for most scenarios, especially when playing with free-play scenarios like the Starter format. As a base job, they serve primarily in helping unlock other jobs for later use in the game, but they do not bring much to the table in competitive formats.

Tactics League has 2 main official formats: premade and starter. The premade formats are split into 3 different types:

Premades:
These various formats are designed builds catered to three different roles: damage, tank, and support.

● Generic – A roster that consists mostly of generic units with the choice to select 1 unique unit for your party.
To view the roster: generics premade

● Uniques – A roster that consists only of unique units that composes your party of five.
To view the roster: uniques premade

● Monsters – A roster that consists only of monsters and 4 “unique” Tamer units to unlock their hidden monster abilities.
To view the roster: monsters premade

Starter:
The second format type is the starter format. The starter format allows for theory-crafting and team-crafting freedom which is what Tactics is designed for while having some limitations to create some balance for the sake of Player vs. Player.

If interested in downloading the official save data that host these formats, go here: Download