Archives April 2025

PvP Patch v5.3 Beta Update

The third major beta update of version 5 is now released, sporting a few new system-related enhancements and other combat changes.

If you are already on version 5, you DO NOT need to update your save data.
Make sure to always patch using an unmodified, USA-region backup of your FFT WotL ISO, and do not override an already patched copy!

To download this update, please visit Download.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where Steal Limelight/Glitterlust/Snort would sometimes display -20 CT instead of -30 CT in the forecast (visual bug fix)

Quality of Life Updates

  • Melee Mode
    • Midlight’s Deep multiplayer map variants now have their lighting fully restored, while ensuring campaign variants still require crystals for brightness
    • Increased the Timer from 12 to 13 minutes (this affects all Tactics League competitive rulesets)
      Based on feedback, I want to compromise in the middle by adding an extra minute, but am still wanting to have a slightly shortened timer due to improved time-per-game. I will be monitoring both replay and spoken feedback in the future.
  • Systems/Limit Level System (Cloud & Aerith)
    • Cloud and Aerith now start battles with Limit Level 1 unlocked. Some changes occurred to Level 1 abilities now that they are no longer initially locked:
      • Braver – Decreased damage bonus from 10 to 5%, still evadable
      • Seal Evil – Decreased Range from 3 to 2
        This is a change to the LLS I want to explore. Going into v5, I suspected that players would try to “not go after” either of these characters to avoid triggering their limit (and rightfully so), which ends up making their unique effectiveness a bit less than I would like. Weary of this and currently seeing these results happening, the goal is to test both of these uniques with their Level 1 abilities unlocked at battle start, still giving you merit to preserve Limit Level if so (and reaching lv. 4 faster too as a result), but also they can use their initial skills right a way as well.
  • Systems/Traps
    • Improved the traps found on tiles for both campaign and melee formats. Thank you to Tzepish for this hack and improvement. Here are the following changes:
      • Degenerator – No change, still -1 Lv.
      • Death – Inflicts: KO instead of Doom
      • Hypnogas – No change, Inflicts: Sleep
      • Sten Needle – Inflicts: Immobilize & 25% max. HP damage instead of only 20% max. HP damage
      • Mine – Inflicts: Oil & 50% max. HP damage instead of random minor damage & Oil
      • Mossfungus – Inflicts: Poison and 25% max. HP damage instead of only Poison (will not deal damage if poison immune)
      • Cursed Stone – Inflicts: Curse instead of Undead
      • Updated the Help menus for each trap during the Trap Placement screen (melee) with these changes
        These improvements to traps should make them a bit more impactful and dangerous during encounters, especially for melee when played for fun.
  • Systems/Mechanics
    • Bow Arrow Animations
      • Improved the animation queuing with abilities that have an effect assigned. Abilities with an effect will no longer display the “arrow” and will only play the effect on target one time (to continue to remove double damage display/effects). Abilities with no effect, such as Attack, Take Aim, or Barrage, will still display its arrow visually en route to the target
    • Added missing status text for Veil and Curse in the Reequip – View List screen

Jobs

  • Bard
    • Increased HPM from 100 to 105% (generic 285 to 299 HP)
    • Increased MPM from 50 to 100% (generic 50 to 101 MP)
      These stat adjustments to Bard are to ensure that the job can better compete against the recent Garment Knight builds to provide better “stat” options on job choices. The intention is that though Bard is less bulky than Knight, they have Performing Arts innately, so they can build more into HP Boost or any other support option than Garment Knight can. This also puts Bard in a better position for spellcasting. 

Action Abilities

  • Break Arts
    • Sunder:
      • Increased PWR from 4 to 6
      • Increased Range from 2 to 3
      • Updated the spell quote
        During Alpha, Sunder was originally 6 PWR, but it was scaled down due to the +HP armor difference change that is no longer active in crush abilities, so I am reverting the PWR to its original state to enforce this as the hardest “hitting” single-target Break Art. The range buff is to get it up to standard with other bladed weapons’ range, especially with recoil.
  • Piracy
    • Tides of Fate – Changed animation to use Waterja’s effect
      This was changed due to not getting proper hit reactions when it hit multiple targets in the cone.
  • White Magicks
    • Regen – Increased PWR from 170 to 180 (approx. 3% increased hit rate)
  • Black Magicks
    • Bio – Decreased MP cost from 60 to 48
  • Time Magicks
    • Hasteja and Slowja – Increased MP cost from 30 to 48
      Ability cost increases to justify their wide-area impact, excellent hit rate even without Faith, and ally/enemy only targeting capabilities. This also puts pressure on non-caster jobs to build a bit more for MP.

R/S/M Abilities

  • Reflexes – Additionally increases your Class Evasion (C-EV) by 8% while slotted
    With Reflexes being half the value than vanilla, this buff is to fit the theme of improving your endurance by strengthening your class evasion automatically which in turn is also factored into the increased evasion rates. This is the only method that can enhance class evasion.
  • Bravery and Faith Boost – Both abilities additionally now increase your Bravery or Faith by 10 while slotted
    This is to improve these abilities and provide an option to augment your Bravery or Faith stat pre-battle as the only means of doing so.
  • Celerity – This ability now grants Initial: Invisible
    This was added to give it a “passive” effect like Ward and Earplug, albeit this isn’t an immunity.

Equipment – Weapons

  • Magick Guns – Decreased WP standardization from 20 to 19
    Mag guns are overperforming slightly, so I am going to dial down the WP a tad and re-assess from there, keeping in mind they are still stronger due to Black Magicks.
  • Staves
    • Nirvana – Added +1 Power and Magick

Practice Mode

  • Ashley Team (West)
    • Improved Ashley’s decision making to use more of his abilities and not focus mostly on Items

PvP Patch v5.2 Beta Update

The second incremental update during the version 5 beta phase hopefully addresses a KO bug that causes failure to revive fallen members, monster improvements, some human job adjustments, and ability balancing.

If you are already on version 5, you DO NOT need to update your save data.
Make sure to always patch using an unmodified, USA-region backup of your FFT WotL ISO, and do not override an already patched copy!

To download this update, please visit Download.

Bug Fixes

  • Might have resolved the “false KO” bug that would affect reviving KO’d units
    I was unable to replicate this bug but several code adjustments were made that may have resulted in fixing the issue. As always, please record beta gameplay to help with leading towards replication/reporting. 
  • Fixed the Warriors Guild “Max.” value from 24 to 28 as intended

Text Updates

  • Added damage calc to Beam’s Help text
  • Added an exception to Lv. 3 Black Magicks for Magick Counter (they aren’t counterable or reflectable, but evadable) Help text
  • Added Agrias’s innate to the job wheel
  • Fixed Delita’s job wheel text
  • Added text to Critical: Flee’s Help that the Move bonus persists even outside Critical

Learn on Hit Functionality

  • Removed the Yes/No prompts and force set it to Yes instead. The prompt will now state “Learned (ability)!” and proceed. Note that this prompt still does not activate under certain statuses but the ability is still being learned (Mind Blast or Goo for example)
    This change is to speed up Learn on Hit and to remove any possibility that you misclicked on No causing an event to be missed not only with Blue Magicks but also Zodiark or Ultima. 

Spell Quotes

  • Increased the text delay if a quote is active from 1 to 2s
    Based on feedback, quotes are going away a bit too fast, so I am upping the delay time by an additional second, with the caveat of avoiding having quotes slow down an active multiplayer game. 

Melee Mode

  • Clash (formerly Special Controls):
    • Renamed to put more emphasis on what this setting does
    • Significantly updated the Help menu for this Melee Option to improve the messaging on what this feature does
      Note: This setting is to be set to OFF in Tactics League multiplayer formats.

Jobs

  • Netherseer/Marach – Increased job HPM from 100 to 112% (+37 HP)
  • Skyseer/Rapha – Increased job HPM from 100 to 110% (+29 HP)
    These job HP adjustments are to help them survive a bit better for melee builds.
  • Witch of the Coven/Valmafra – Increased job HPM from 100 to 106% (+16 HP)
  • Knight – Increased MAM from 96 to 103% (+1 MA to most uniques, no change for Generic Male, +1 MA for Generic Female 14/14)
    This MA increase is due to the PWR reduction of Saint Cross to offset some of the difference (and emboldens the job with better magic-speccing).
  • Geomancer – Increased MAM from 105 to 112% (+1 MA to all)
    This increase in MA is to improve starting Geomancy potential on the job and to ensure a better stat difference compared to similar jobs.

Monsters and Monster Abilities

  • Squid Family:
    • Piscodaemon
      • Increased PAM from 90 to 105% (avg. +4 PA)
    • Squidkraken
      • Increased SPM from 101 to 114% (+2 Speed)
  • Bird Family:
    • Jura Aevis
      • Increased PAM from 105 to 115% (+1 avg. PA)
    • Steelhawk
      • Increased PAM from 108 to 122% (+2 avg. PA)
  • Ahriman Family:
    • Floating Eye – Added Beam as a 2nd ability
  • Pig Family:
    • Pig
      • Increased HPM from 120 to 140% (avg. +93 HP)
      • Increased PAM from 70 to 105% (avg. +7 PA)
      • Squeal (hidden ability) – Increased Range from 1 to 2
    • Swine
      • Increased HPM from 110 to 152% (avg. +176 HP)
      • Increased Move from 4 to 5
    • Wild Boar
      • Increased HPM from 102 to 132% (avg. +114 HP)
  • Dryad Family:
    • Elder Treant
      • Increased SPM from 100 to 112% (+1 Speed)
  • Malboro Family:
    • Added Blind, Oil, and Poison immunities to all
    • Malboro – Replaced Counter with Bonecrusher
    • Ochu – Replaced Counter with Ward
    • Greater Malboro:
      • Increased SPM from 100 to 111% (+1 Speed)
      • Replaced Counter with Replenish
      • Malboro Spores – This ability is no longer evadable

Abilities

  • Break Arts (Ashley)
    • Shadoweave – Increased Range from 2 to 3
    • Sunder – Decreased Recoil from 60 to 40%
    • Ignis Wheel – Increased status chance of Oil from 19 to 30%
      These are subtle buffs to specific abilities. With Crush Armor no longer dealing the +HP gear difference and Sunder being single-target, the recoil damage can be less. Ignis status chance was increased to entice it, especially as a recoil ability. Oil’em up 😉
  • Arts of War
    • Saint Cross – Decreased PWR from 20 to 18
      Some PWR was lowered from this ability to increase MA demand notably. Note that female Knight did get 1 more MA that directly helps offset this PWR loss. Saint Cross is still performant when pushed to its upper potential.
  • Darkness
    • Unholy Sacrifice – Decreased the HP percentage scaling from 29 to 3%. To provide contextual differences between earlier versions and this one with the v5.2 female Knight (which got a +1 MA increase):
      • v5.1 – 617 HP + 21 MA + Boost: Dark w/ Arc Strength = 986/638
      • v5.2 – 617 HP + 22 MA + Boost: Dark w/ Arc Strength = 864/576
        This ability has been on my radar for quite some time but I wanted to carefully assess where its upper potential lies and even though the percentage difference is a drastic drop in scope, the damage difference isn’t a massive nerf but rather to bring this ability more in-line with the caveat that it can be boosted with a 19% Slow chance.
  • Steal Limelight, Glitterlust, Snort – Increased the -CT from 20 to 30
    These bump in CT reduction further entice these abilities in the need to gain ahead of the target when the opportunity comes.
     
  • Shirahadori – This reaction no longer reduces the hit rate of Monster “basic attack” abilities like Charge, Talon Dive, Tentacles, etc. as they are already subject to physical evasion

Equipment – Gear

  • Mirage Vest – Increased +HP from 70 to 80
  • Ninja Gear – Increased +HP from 20 to 40
    With Ninja Gear being limited in Standard, and the overall need for better bulk in demand, this item has a slight HP bump though limited due to +2 Speed and Invisible.