Ballista Tournament

That's true... but imo /sch is overall better for pvp 1v1's due to sublimination alone. Being immune to sleep is a very big plus in this kind of tournament.

If I learned anything in this tournament it's that /sch = haxs.

True. I guess the allure of /SCH is Drain/Aspir, sleep, AoE's for wiping shadows, and situational sleep immunity. Although it has alot of JA cooldown for my taste...

It's definately worth playin around with. Especially since I like fighting "overpowered" jobs like RDM or BLU.

Oh sounds cool :D

cliamain hey i had asked to see the set u used in the ballista but forgot to PM u lol just curious as to what you wore

watch the first video back on page 10 , it shows the gear of both people before they fight.
Cliamain's gear starts at the 3:50 mark :)

Nothing is fundamentally perfectly balanced, even in chess one side gets to go first.


Instead of focusing on impossibilities and breeding an atmosphere that frowns up 1v1 and not taking into account, new gear that has come into play since your extended break (not to mention you haven't activley balliste'd in a while), focus on helping people augment themselves with magian gear or out of the box strategies to beat popular jobs.

You seem to be placing your argument that FFXI is more "Team Based" however what it often comes down to is which team has a Corsair and if a team doesn't, that team loses.

1v1 is more balanced then its being credited for and requires a high degree of skill if both participants know what they are doing.

That was entertaining to watch. :3

First off, not the same set as what i would used against a blue as in the first video. Different sets for different situations my friend. PM me for my set i'll tell you or if you can get me another idea i'd love to hear it. As for the Resist sleep, kinda lame to try to sleep a PLD that is charging at you, unless you are 100% sure that you can sleep that PLD and there are resist gear made for PLD that gives you a better chance of not being in the sleep mode. Sublimation or however you spell it is just for a restore MP after the fight when its finished so i get back what i used, as like /RDM you get Refresh I thats like 5 MP per tick or something. As i said, there is no real for sure sub job for some people as they make the best of what they have and you never know what you will come out with. Though /SCH is new :D

Fail my comp wont give me that tab function.

Oh man, watching this makes me wish someone would do this on Asura.

Need more Balista liaisons for servers other than phoenix D:

(*'-') <- Liaisaon.

There is a plethora of resist sleep options:

PLD Sub -> Resist Sleep II
Insomnia Earring
Flawless Ribbon


I think thats all BLM can wear.


This can provide a pretty sturdy resistance to sleep, assuming the /pld sub would be used versus some martial jobs, not really sure why it would be.

Maybe Vs samurai or something* - using earth magic + terra's staff.

Anyone know in the downloadable music that Upbeat gave, which one is the WotG battle remix that's playing at 40:40 in part 5 of the stream?

Fixed this, lol. ^^ I wouldn't be too sad if I miss what gets said about me later on..

I will say I'm inspired to actually learn about PvP now, and prepare/practice for future tourneys. Was an awesome experience overall, and thanks to everyone that organized it. I haven't seen that many people get together and have so much fun in a long time. ^^

This Rough General Purpose Tier list (Very open to discussion) is based on a jobs ability to win a 1v1 tournament where your main job is locked for the entire tournament. This mainly takes into account the skill set of the job along with any sub job you may wish to choose. You may be able to pick out certain cases where a job in a lower tier can defeat a job in a higher tier, but the job in the higher tier is there because it still is much better suited for play against the remaining jobs in the field. Keep in mind my area of expertise is in public team ballista so there may be many 1v1 specific strategies/tactics I have not considered, in which case discuss away!

This tier list basically represents my appraisal of how strong I feel certain jobs are relative to others i.e. if you asked me to recommend a job for 1v1 PvP, I would start by directing you to this tier list. There are still many possible strategies/gear/sub job choices etc that cannot all be taken into account in a single tier list so I am not going to attempt to do so.

PvP is very different on paper than in practice, there is lots of room for jobs in lower tiers to defeat jobs in higher tiers. I would not recommend preventing certain gear/strategies from being used, as this is where new ingenuities can arise for jobs to overcome other jobs that may otherwise have seemed difficult, it is just too difficult to think of all possible scenarios so the tier list must have its scope restricted, such restriction is not present in actual PvP play.

This Tier list is based on the following assumptions:

No food.
No medicine style items.
No dynamis/nyzul/abyssea relics.
No other super crazy gear that enable certain jobs to do things they normally can't do (mentioned above it sounded like there was H2H that has added effect flash, the ability to keep your opponent near-perma flashed is not what defines the MNK job and equipment like this should not be considered, kraken club falls in this category too)
Jobs can enter the fight pre-buffed.
As much kiting can be done as desired.
The ability for certain jobs to gain certain resist traits through gear is not considered since I don't know how effective of a strategy that is at this time.

Tier 1: RDM SCH
Tier 2: PLD BLM BLU
Tier 3: DRK NIN DNC
Tier 4: MNK WAR THF SAM DRG RNG
Tier 5: BRD

Not 100% sure which tier they belong in: COR PUP BST SMN WHM

Reasoning

Tier 1

RDM will dominate almost all jobs with its enfeebling power, the only jobs which can counter this are placed in the upper tiers. With its innate resist petrify trait and the ability to sub SCH for resist silence and sublimation, RDM has hope to stand up to the three deadliest enfeebles: Sleep, Break, and Silence. Combined with solid damage either from DOT spells or nuking and great sustain power with Cure IV, Refresh II, and Convert, it is incredably difficult for most jobs to take down a RDM.

SCH is also in Tier 1 basically for similar reasons to RDM. They are the only other job who can accomplish the trifecta resistance to Sleep/Break/Silence through subbing RDM for resist petrify. If a SCH were to fight a RDM I think the winner would be determined by whoever snuck a fluke silence or break through. If you assume perfect immunity to those three spells, the SCH may have the edge due to the greater ease in landing gravity (SCH can AoE cast gravity to also wipe Blink shadows, whereas RDM may have to diaga first), this would be a very interesting match to watch for sure.

Tier 2

PLD can cover 2/3 of Sleep/Break/Silence, but has the unique abilty Fealty to grant immunity to all status ailments for a full minute which can give PLD some chances vs other jobs whose strategy relies on enfeebling the opponent early on in the fight to gain the advantage. Asside from this, PLD is just generally great at absorbing all kinds of damage and healing it back and just outlasting the vast majority of other jobs they may face in the lower tiers. In addition to being a natural tank, PLD is able to put out lots of respectable damage with Enlight and Atonement, and Holy can be a clutch finishing move.

BLM in my opinion is a slightly lesser version of RDM or SCH. They can't gain resistance to all of Sleep/Break/Silence through passive traits alone, and there sustain is not nearly as good as a RDM or SCH (no Cure IV or Refresh II/better Sublimation).

BLU has a very wide arsenal that I don't even know the full potential of, but its damn good. Great defense with cocoon, great magic defense with saline coat, incredible burst damage, has many different enfeeble affects at its disposal as well.

Tier 3

In general the jobs in this tier I feel are above average and do have more dimension to their game than their lower tier counterparts (i.e. can make effective use of magic/enfeebles, or in the case of DNC has terrific sustain vs most lower tier jobs). Based on personal experience I would not expect any of the jobs in Tier 3 or lower to win a 1v1 tournament based on the restrictions noted above.

Tier 4

I feel these jobs are pretty one dimensional and easy to deal with. Generally they suffer from poor sustain and can be easily outlasted by almost all of the jobs in the higher tiers.

Tier 5

I've never really seen a battle bard in action, I can't see it being able to beat any of the jobs in Tier 4 or above. Lullaby builds resistant pretty fast and it won't even benefit the bard that much, maybe the bard can get some free cures off awhile their lullabies still keep the opponent slept for several seconds. Elegy is a pretty brutal debuff for melee jobs but I still think the Tier 4 jobs would be able to output sufficient damage to kill the BRD before the BRD can kill them.

Not 100% sure which tier they belong in

COR semi-recently got a lot of new things that I don't have much first hand experience with, like regain rolls, and with new af3 gear I think their back to back quick draws can do a lot of damage. Probably around Tier 3 or 4.

PUP is also a more rare job that can employ many useful tactics with the puppet that I do not have much experience with.

BST is in the same boat as PUP, I havn't seen many pet jobs in a 1v1 setting so tough to guage how strong they are.

SMN is again a pet based job, with an enormous range of blood pacts it can use. SMN is generally not very durable though, probably Tier 4.

WHM is a job with incredable sustain and can cast some decent enfeebling magic. My main problem is I'm really not sure how much damage a WHM can dish out, so not sure where they will fall. Since they have access to magic, I'd say they are close to tier 3.

Granted that anyone can make great use of scholar sub. Pup/Sch would be very strong if you know how to do it. I'd put that in rank 2 going along with your doing. I'd also put whm in the 3 at least. They can use enfeeblings and very strong enhancing and healing magic anyway.
About cor, you can basically start the fight with 300 tp and if given the chance you can kill any enemy in just 3 seconds.

First off, Tier 1: Urteil

I kid, I kid, on to "serious" things . . .

======================

Note many people with incredible gear often are terrible in combat, which is oddly enough why you didn't see many large-talker One Dimensional players, with relics, mythics, dual relics, joining.

Gear does not make a player but it brings out their potential if they had any to begin with, most suck at this game, and won't bring an Ochain to where someone else bravely and boldly brings a Dagda's shield. Its quite funny, isn't it?


In ballista we see the most ingenious examples of gear selection, ability use, and mechanic demonstration, in displays of mastery that are never seen, needed, and unnecessary in the gear grind that is the rest of the game.

The set roles that hardly tap into 50% of what a job offers are brought to light and shine. (god knows 90% of what I do in abyssea is auto attack and rotate TP, PDT, and WS sets /puke)

It is here where we can see in some rare individuals the ability to work hard and efficiently to attain the tools, and the even rarer ability to actually be able to use them, and not be HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

I implore you to not be one dimensional, but a complete and best player you can by aspiring to master the intense and deepest aspect of the game: PvP. To go out into Vana'diel and shape your own victory by attaining the mainstream and hidden tools that are available to you.

Go do team matches, start up OMs!
Beat up your friends!

Then use this new found affluence to work hard, to be the best you can, to understand the mechanics and finer nuances to the game. To to help your friends and yourself to get the best gear and be the best and well rounded that you can possibly be.

However there is nothing more fearsome than the human AI, and at the end of the day that is where the true challenge and test awaits you - Maat is but a joke.

"Everyone loves PvP, they might not admit it, but nearly all of them will talk about it and live vicariously, they simply hate to lose. Ironically this dooms them to the fate they seek to avoid." - Urteil
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Banning gear is stupid and you are correct Zirk in saying it should never happen.
Being the best at PvP or PvE FFXI means putting in the effort to get the best gear for the job.

Best can mean:

Odd, situational, or niche pieces of gear that are incredibly useful in providing counters to specific jobs and covering your weaknesses.

Ironically many of these pieces of gear are easily available and much easier to get than strictly "PvE" gear. There is no excuse.


But let's not beat around the bush, excellent PvE gear can equate to great PvP gear, you simply have to search and find the tool for the job.

However we are advocating the joining of PvE and PvP holistically where your expierience in PvP and PvE will reflect the other by mastering the advanced reasoning and tactical skill sets needed in PvP to compliment your work and time to attain your gear in PvE.

That being said it is important to remember that the above tier list is not actually indicative of what would happen often of the between two very knowledgeable opponents. It is an ease of use reference that dictates what job would be best to pick up and play easily.

Gear is a very powerful tool that allows one to take away the enfeebling advantage and cover their weaknesses.

Gear can be incredible in providing resistance to enfeebles, any job that is not a RDM will have little hope of landing an enfeeble you gear specifically against. Good news: resistance gear is rather plentiful and powerful augmented gear is available in many abyssea areas.

Resistance gear is crucial and changes up many things, and allows jobs perceived as inferior to regularly achieve victory.

=================
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WHM needs to be in Tier 2 if not tier 1.

Natural enfeebling ability, amazing survivability and the ability to do both physical and magical damage. High DMG clubs are easy to get and with magian clubs the WHM can further boost their Holy/Holy II damage, to ridiculous levels.

Native barspells and barenfeebles the /sch job furthers the WHM's efficency and sleep resistance.

Do not underestimate their ability to do physical and magical damage especially if using the right sub job for the main job they are fighting.

Expanding with gear:
WHM can easily outlast many jobs, simply by gaining silence immunity and healing itself.

Has access to strong PDT gear via genbu's shield or dual -pdt clubs, dark rings, twilight torque, the basic ***.

By capitalizing on resist gear WHM is a force to be reckoned with.

It also has a light based sleep meaning Paladin is 100% susceptible.
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PUP needs to be in Tier 1 if not 2.

PUP is by the far the hardest job to play correctly.

The only thing that truly limits a PUP is player skill and its incredibly deep style of play. PUP has the ability to custom make a pet that can be fit for nuking/tanking/healing/enfeebling and coming with the new updates if truly harnessed in combat PUP has the ability to be unstoppable.

The master when geared with evasive magian weapons or using the right set of gear for the occasion can easily pick a strategy based on the dynamic style of their puppet to whittle away at their enemy and retreat while the puppet either blasts them with powerful magic, heals, or tanks for them.

If the player can master the synergy between their automaton, and the abilities for TP swapping, Bursting with dual master/pet WS, the tactical chances and adaptation PUP has seems almost limitless.

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BLU - Tier 1 no doubt about it. BLU can has flexiblity in its job/traits and spellsets for whatever enemy it has to fight. Its own native enfeebles, and access to at four dispel spells Natively: Osmosis (also absorb buff), Geist Wall, Blank Gaze, Voracious (Trunk).

It has amazing defensive capabilities, having stoneskin, and a spell that gives MDB+50.

MP efficient and able to either choose magical or physical spells for the occasion, it is the utility and adaptability that places this job in Tier 1.

Out of the box they can destroy most melee jobs with one to two physical spells, are harder to kill than nearly any mage due to cocoon.

Expanding with gear:
Further expanding upon this a BLU mage with two CHR +3 magian swords has a magic evasion of +40 this coupled with any resistance gear /traits takes much of the utility away from mages that NEED to keep them away.

Because ultimately gear is a factor the ability for BLU to rotate gear and traits, and how it can form itself to the enemy is so great, native enfeebles, enhancing and powerful heals. It really is just a different take on RDM and has many of the tools it has with some limitations that can be worked around with proper use of Gravity, Magnetite Cloud or other forms of CC.

Also regardless of being a glitch or not BLU spells are not subject to the 50% damage decrease.

----------------

BLM has two forms of petrifiction and Sleep, if SCH is tier 1 BLM should be too as they both need to sub RDM to gain access to enfeebles like silence, paralyze, and slow etc.

It has more offensive power and the ability Mana Wall can turn the tides of battle as it gives -50% damage taken, and they cannot be interrupted with physical damage.

BLM's can often kill even moderately magic defensive opponents in two to three nukes, even putting dents into Aegis wielders themselves and obliterating enemies who make even single mistake.

It namely is the fact that because a single mistake often means absolute death vs a BLM that it deserves to be higher. Their elemental casting speed borders on lunacy.

Expanding with gear:
There is really not a big enough disparity between the capacities of SCH and BLM to place it below, and due to the gear BLM has accessible its mp efficiency to raw damage far exceeds the other two jobs with the use of magian magic damage staves.

Expanding this a smart BLM can easily focus on earth magic using a Terra's staff, maximize their break accuracy and do more than enough damage with more mp efficient earth magic and cap PDT easily at -50%. This combined with mana wall is a nightmare to get through, mana wall is a job ability that jobs with MP pools can only dream of.

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COR is at least in Tier 2 if not 3, maybe even 1 COR can be powerful.

Though all duels start at 0% tp even if the COR simply waits for tactician's roll they can easily lightshot most opponents with ease, or quickly burst them down with elemental shots to sleep them, and finish up with a powerful WS.

Feasibly a corsair can have regain 3/4 full time.

Its bolter's roll allows COR to kite easily, and make quick work of nearly all jobs.

Lighshot is light based, meaning nothing can honestly resist it.
Subbing Scholar COR has access to two forms for Dispel, Dispel and Dark shot.

Rank A defensive stat of parrying, corsair has little need for spells and can destroy people with the use of JA's and selective buffs. Its damage output is mostly magic based, although against Aegis it would run into a problem, after kiting/dispelling the MDT would be more managable and since you don't build resistance as fast to lightshot sleep/, the tactic of ws the paladin from behind is 100% feasible a they have potent regain.

However they are doing magic damage which mitigates blocks so this wouldn't be necessary.

There's amazing MDB gear for corsair, Wildire is just HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE powerful and a new ammo slot that gives them +20(or 30) mdb. <--- WTF

Even still COR can augment its PDT/MDT levels with gear needed for what job it's fighting, though it lacks healing capabilities and native MP, COR is very aggressive and can output far more damage than many give it credit for.

(Wildfire!)


COR is so powerful I am surprised I don't see more of them. On a side not a COR is probably the most valuable job in team pvp.

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Tier 1

SAM - Samurai has insane DPS and decent archery, allowing them to easily silence/paralyze/sleep mages/platemail targets with ease with the use of a bow. The status effects from these arrows are very potent often lasting up to 5 minutes per duration.

SAM has access to three of the most powerful enfeebles, in very potent
formats simply through the use of an auxillary weapon, to even rub it in harder they can use the killer shortbow. Giving them access to "Resistance to All Status Ailments" AND the ability to enfeeble. *** amazing.

A samurai can open up with two skill chains, first meditating and using Konzen-Ittai, and then Sekkanoki after 3-4 hits.

When fighting evasive targets they can easily switch to GKT elemental WS to do enough damage to turn the tides of battle, instead of one shotting their enemy immediatly.

Amazing defensive and offensive capabilities, samurai easily has the ability to make slow swinging jobs like Dark Knight worthless in the melee department, and switch to hasso for faster TP gain during mages after pressuring or zerging them.

Subbing Scholar a samurai can sleepga, drain, aspir, stoneskin, blink and aquaveil themselves while gaining access to being able to start a fight with 0% tp and perform a self skillchain in roughly 12 seconds.

Furthermore they can magic burst drain off their own skilchain for some added hp/damage recovery in the initial onset, and if they choose Gekko you in the process.

All jobs are forced to slot resistance gear against them wasting precious pdt/mdt slots, further opening themselves up to physical damage.

The status effects form Samurai WS are incredibly potent and I believe they just got a new JA that lets them WS for 0% tp.



Expanding with gear:
Samurai can augment its gear vs a martial or magical job, and run easily 40~% pdt vs jobs that mean it physical harm, silence magic users via a bow/ws, and also have access to a GKT with enpetrify.

Vs evasive jobs they can use high accuracy gear or a magian weapons, or simply the relic GKT Amano, twilight mail for +25 more accuracy, and as a 2hander gain a huge bonus from the 2h formula.

This job is fantastic and if geared to resist enfeebles, and subbing scholar, is a nightmare to deal with.

Tier 1, Tier 1, Tier 1, why weren't there any at the tournament.

I know it's been said a million times, but SE just needs to make a pvp zone where you can fight people from other servers and make decent rewards for winning so people will actually play it. Honestly, I've never really been a huge pvp fan even in games where it is the reason to play the game at all but these have been rather interesting.

wow... you realy did rip into that ninja.... lol im gonna hate it when you get to my fights. :/ (This was my first time going into pvp so i didn't know much about it)

Just to note Urteil, I disagree on one point. Though Ballista is in fact a fun system, just because one can't ballista doesn't mean they aren't good players. I've ballista'd enough in my time to know I know very little. Perhaps it was my job choices from the start, or the climate of ballista when I started doing it, what have you, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad player. I certainly won't claim to be anywhere near the best, especially in ballista, but I know that if my server had the right amount of people and I had the interest, I could get back into the swing of things easily. Ballista is a whole new system that people have to learn. Going into it and thinking PvE is equivocal to PvP is silly, and people do it thinking they're awesome, but Ballista really isn't a standard for anything but Ballista. It's a system within a system, and it needs to be learned.

The NIN had the right idea, just had no idea how to execute it.

Building for nukes is far superior to evasion, and /RDM or /SCH would of just completely destroyed the MNK. /DNC shouldn't even be considered at all... ever in 1v1 PvP.

His gear was lacking, but you could see he was trying to get somewhat of a nuke set going on.

He was trying to cast San nukes while kiting, should of just stuck with Ni, and only use San when Futae was up.

With /RDM, 26% haste, AF boots, and a couple fast cast pieces MNK should never be able to get past your shadows unless they have the 2~4 H2H weapon, making evasion gear less than special outside of that situation.

/SCH you could stay in dark arts and just sleep nuke them to death.
Ni nukes will hit for 200~300, Futae San nukes will hit up to 800.

I agree. I don't think I'm really -bad- per se, but I did pretty badly here, and a lot of people (myself included) here came without any Ballista experience.

Very little PvE skill comes into play here, besides knowing stats and job abilities. Being good at PvP seems to be a lot harder than PvE though, and a good portion of that difficultly is there because we have few opportunities to practice because very few people do it anymore.

I love this guys commentary.

Practice is easy to come by. I personally have RDM/SAM/NIN/BRD/THF/RNG/DNC that you can practice against. My WHM's Divine magic skill is terrible or I'd add it to the list.

As for anything else... check the Brenner guy in Upper Jeuno and pull a friend in there. Test out gear/strats/etc. I bet even some people would join once they saw some people were in there.

well the 2nd vid is up so I'm sure acorn will post it here shortly.

..........................he had no shihei.

Wow that guy really did suck... that's like a mage not bringing echo drops but worse.

nvm (reason in quoted posts after this one)

I dont even want to hear my commentary on me vs the blue :( the blm vs blm one gonna be even worse haha