Tier Challenge - Scorpion Sting - Preliminary Discussion

Last Tower, I issued a little challenge. It was received much better than I expected, but it was definitely not perfect. For one, there were some - fair! - complaints about me referring to it as a "F2P Challenge". Additionally, there was a lot of stuff that was unclear in the "mission description", so to say.

As such, I decided to do what many reasonable people have done over the years - blatant plagiarism. Following u/Arashmin's great suggestion, I decided to take inspiration from the FFRK subreddit's Tier Challenges. Of course, some things had to be modified to match Mobius, but all over it seems serviceable.

The main idea is as follows: In these days of Supreme cards and new players who have missed old event cards, there have been many who have expressed sentiments of the sort "You can give up on actually competing in the Tower events unless you have all the power cards and Legend jobs and whatnot." My claim is that this is not the case. Thus, the main purpose of this challenge is to motivate those who would otherwise have given up. As a bonus, it should also provide a fun bonus challenge to those who would have participated anyways - I maintain that Tower events should be fun, and not just a boring grind ^^

The format of the challenge is that every job & card choice is penalized by a points "cost" - in this case, you want as few points as possible. The point values are largely made up and are subject to change - feedback will be appreciated and heeded until I lock things down a day or two before the Tower - but they are based on three main factors:

• Availability - Old event cards and current Early Acquisition cards are penalized, since there are many players without them. Supreme cards are out entirely. Current event cards may temporarily be less penalized, assuming they're relatively easy to get.

• Perceived Power - Many cards and especially jobs are often considered as "innately better" than others. Justification may or may not be present, but at any rate - if a job/card is deemed by the majority as strong, it gets penalized for the Tier challenge. If it's discounted by the majority as weak, it gets encouraged for the Tier Challenge.

• Popularity - There are plenty of jobs and cards that actually have some fans, but that still don't show up in large numbers in the Tower rankings (cough Red Mage cough). Conversely, some jobs are just excessively popular despite not being judged as particularly strong (cough Soldier 1st Class cough), and seeing fewer of those isn't a bad thing.

Each card is assigned a tier that determines its point values; job cards are worth three times as much as their tier indicates (e.g. White Mage is 3 x 1 point = 3 points). If you end at 21 points or more, you're disqualified!~

Here's the tier list. Bolded jobs&abilities indicates I'm debating putting them one category up. Italics'd jobs&abilities indicates I'm debating putting them one category down.

#Disclaimer: This is not a power ranking. Do not use it as such.

Tier	Points	Jobs	Abilities	Comments
Supreme Tier	+50	-	Minwu, Aerith, Unbreakable Bonds	Self-explanatory.
Limited Tier	+4	Mythic Sage, Mythic Knight, Mythic Ninja	All summoned event cards older than FF7 Remake & Moogle event (exceptions up to debate). Current Early Acquisition cards without farmable fodder: Knights of the Round, (Dark) Bahamut: FF7, NEO Bahamut: FF7, Bahamut ZERO: FF7, Hanuman, Amon, Choco&Mog: FF7, Kujata. The Egg cards that are awarded from Tower events.	Cards and jobs that are hard/impossible to obtain for new players, players with limited resources and players with no luck in Ability Summons.
High Meta Tier	+3	Paladin, Ace Striker	All summoned event cards from FF7 Remake and FFXV event. All dropped event cards from events older than the Moogle event (currently none). Current Early Acquisition cards with farmable fodder: Stolas, Affanc. All shop BDD/CRDs without currently farmable fodder: Ultima, the High Seraph, Leviathan, (Fire) Bahamut, Odin (not Sicarius), Anemone, Tempest	Cards and jobs available to most, but considered powerful, popular or particularly difficult to max out for newer players.
Meta Tier	+2	Knight, Mage, Samurai, Dancer, Dragoon, Soldier 1st Class, Berserker, Rogue	All cards from the Moogle event. Hermes, Fat Chocobo, Yasha, Nekomata, BDD/CRDs with farmable fodder: Ashura, Ramuh, Titan, Ixion, Deathgaze, Mateus, all single target BDD/CRDs.	Cards and jobs fairly easily available to all players, but somewhat popular or considered slightly above the power curve.
Standard Tier	+1	White Mage, Dark Knight, Black Mage, Scholar, Devout, Viking	All shop cards not otherwise noted. All Sicarium. All dropped cards from the FF7 Remake event and the Pupu event, as well as the "free" cards from the FFSV event - Regalia & Cindy.	Cards and jobs that are easily available and don't stand out much in either direction.
Anti-Meta Tier	+0	All Onions, Warrior, Ranger, Hunter, Thief, Red Mage, Assassin, "Blank" job slot	Shop cones (e.g. Belias) and AoEs (e.g. Syldra). Gigant, Cait Sith, all -shifts, Carbuncle, Lancelot, Hades, Artemis. All shop Fast Learners. "Blank" card slots.	Cards and jobs that are easily available and are unpopular or considered below the power curve. Note that this does not mean they are objectively weak!~

You pay for both main deck and sub deck. If you use multiple copies of a card, you pay for every copy. Example:

• Main deck: Paladin (+3 x 3 = +9), Fat Chocobo (+2), Ultima Sicarius (+1), Cait Sith (+0)
• Subdeck: White Mage (+1 x 3 = +3), Fat Chocobo (+2), Hermes (+2), Belias (+0), empty slot (+0, allowed but not recommended!)

This totals up to 9+2+1+0+3+2+2+0+0 = 19 points.

Sketch-wise, I was thinking of having "weight classes" for different point sums, but these values & names might change. There's also a "suggested minimum floor" requirement for the different classes, also subject to change:

• Echo class: 15-20 points. Requires you to pass at least floor 100 with this deck (?).
• Mog class: 8-14 points. Requires you to pass at least floor 75 with the deck (?).
• Garland class: 1-7 points. Requires you to pass at least floor 51 with the deck (?).
• Edit: By "popular request", there's now a Turtle class. You turtle & you're under 21 points, you're here. You know who you are, and so do I.
• Edit: Also by popular request, there's now a Blank class: 0 points. Requires extreme disregard for own safety.

To clarify: In order to participate, you need to post proof of completion of a floor equal to or higher than the minimum floor indicated by your class. You do not need to use only that deck for all floors, it's enough to clear one floor that is "high enough". Proof of completion is ideally at least three screnshots - one in-battle picture of the two jobs you use, at least one of them showing you defeating or close to defeating the final boss of the floor. Additionally, one screenshot showing the "results" screen that showed which floor you ended up at after completing the floor (to confirm the floor number), either directly after the battle finished or from the Social tab. A full video of the clear is nice, but in no way required.

Now you might ask, "This sounds like a stupid game, why would I participate?!" Well, twofold. First of all, I might or might not have made a hellish deal with the mods that I would sell my soul if they provided something fancy for participants. I'll let them confirm or deny whether they'll follow through on this. Additionally, as a sort of "bonus incentive", I would like to announce that once per year - until and including the year I grow tired of Mobius - I will hand out reddit gold to one person who's particularly impressed me. There's no hard-and-fast on how this works, but a 0 point top 500 finish is a good start~ I'd love to do more than once a year, but economy and all that. Decision is made after the December Tower ends!

Some might remember I had some annoying extra rules including weapons, overboosting, turtling etc. for the previous challenge; these rules are now gone. Might make a separate weight class for turtles, though Done. I'm also considering a separate category for first-timers clearing floor 50, regardless of deck, because first-timers need love!

I know I've forgotten some things - jobs, cards, rules, links etc. - so this thread is mostly for checking and discussion. If it doesn't get completely shut down, I'll remake the post in a new & orderly variant shortly before the Tower starts.

Edit: Rogue tentatively moved to +2.

Edit 2: Some cards added, tiers tweaked and Turtle & Blank class added.

Edit 3: Eggs at +4 due to the difficulty in obtaining them.