Tier Challenge - Omega and the Azure Witch's Revenge
The Tier Challenge for Omega and the Azure Witch's Revenge is officially open! Please post submissions here. Feel free to post suggestions and other things here as well.
What is the Tier Challenge? Well:
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This is a community event, with the main goals being fun & motivating new players & f2ps to compete without getting demotivated by Supreme cards and all sorts of things. The goal is to clear the ranking event with jobs and cards others might deem weak or unpopular, to show that you don't actually need the shiniest Supremes & Early Acquisition cards to compete!
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To enter, post screenshots showing you have cleared one stage of the current Coil, with the stage being "high enough" (as detailed below) and the decks having few enough points that you qualify (as also detailed below).
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You do not need to play only that deck for your entire climb, it is enough to clear a single stage with it.
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Rewards are handed out in the form of badges next to your reddit account name. Nothing excessively fancy, but then again this challenge is mostly for fun~ As per usual, all old badges have been removed. Gotta earn your keep! ^^
The system works as follows: Each card has a points value. Ability cards are worth the listed value, job cards are worth three times the listed value. Every copy of a card must be "paid" for separately. You're aiming to make a deck with as few points as possible, and then clear a Tower floor with it! Points table:
| Tier | Points | Jobs | Abilities | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supreme Tier | +500 | - | Minwu, Aerith, Unbreakable Bonds, Neo Exdeath, Duncan, Xezat, Yiazmat. | Self-explanatory. |
| Limited Tier | +4 | Heretic Knight, Judge Magister, Thief of Tantalus, Moogle Suit, Balamb Mercenary, Tonberry Suit (?!), Moogle Suit, Hope's Guide, Unbroken Hero, Knight of Etro, Last Hunter, Amalthea, Master Monk, Lightning Skin (in addition to the job it's on!). | All summoned event cards older than the FFXIII event (exceptions up to debate). Certain Early Acquisition cards: The Meiajas (Nyx, Dira etc.), Black Widow, the Meia CRD/BDDs (Ghost Ship, Evil Eye etc.), the FFXIII early acquisition buff/debuff cards (The Proudclad: FFXIII, Orphan: FFXIII etc.). 5* Egg cards. | Cards and jobs that are hard/impossible to obtain for new players, players with limited resources and players with no luck in Ability Summons, especially if these cards are regarded as particularly powerful. |
| High Meta Tier | +3 | Paladin, Rogue, Occultist, Bard, Tactician, Highwind, Mythic Sage, Mythic Knight, Mythic Ninja, all Hall of Fame jobs (Warrior, Mage, Ranger, Knight, Hunter, White Mage, Dark Knight, Black Mage, Thief). | All dropped & free event cards unless noted. Knights of the Round, Hell's Gate, The Undying. Centaur. All cards with "Legendary" in their name (e.g. Legendary Dragonlord, Legendary Mimic etc.). All summoned event cards from the FFXIII event. The Meia single targets (Thetis, Lorelei etc.) and AoEs (Bark Spirit, Vampire Thorn etc.). The Early Acquisition Reckoning cards (Sphinx, Nemain, Scathacha, Humbaba). The FFXIII Early Acquisition damage focused cards (Fal'Cie Atomos: FFXIII, Barthandelus: FFXIII etc.). | Cards and jobs available to most, but considered powerful, popular or particularly difficult to max out for newer players. |
| Meta Tier | +2 | Samurai, Dancer, Dragoon, Soldier1stClass, Berserker, Grappler, Hermit, Pugilist, Fauviste, Esmeralda. | All AoE BDD/CRDs (e.g. Leviathan, Mateus, Amon, does not include single target variants), Gargoyle, Iris. The Trance cards (Crom Dubh, Dhampyr, Bastet, Incubus). The free Lightning: FFXIII event card. | Cards and jobs fairly easily available to all players, but somewhat popular or considered slightly above the power curve. |
| Standard Tier | +1 | The Azure Witch, Scholar, Devout, Viking, Monk, Ace Striker | All shop cards not otherwise noted. All dropped cards from the FFXIII event. | Cards and jobs that are easily available and don't stand out much in either direction. |
| Anti-Meta Tier | +0 | All Onions (not including The Azure Witch), Red Mage, Assassin | The Terra Battle cards except Echo Lambda. The old shop single targets (e.g. Mephistopheles), cones (e.g. Belias), AoEs (e.g. Syldra) and main target AoEs (e.g. Brothers). All Sicarium. Gigant, Cait Sith, all -shifts, Carbuncle, Lancelot, Hades, Artemis, Moogle, Amaterasu. All shop Fast Learners. "Blank" card slots. The Gilgamesh fodder card. 4* Egg cards. | 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. Remember: If you use multiple copies of a job/ability card, you pay for every copy. Example:
- Main deck: Paladin (+3 x 3 = +9), Fat Chocobo (+1), Ultima Sicarius (+0), Cait Sith (+0), Gigant (+0).
- Subdeck: Devout (+1 x 3 = +3), Fat Chocobo (+1), Hermes (+1), Belias (+0), empty slot (+0, allowed but not recommended!)
This totals up to 9+1+0+0+0+3+1+1+0+0 = 15 points.
In order to qualify for a badge, you need to get at least 46 boss kills. Depending on how many points your deck is worth, you enter the following weight classes:
- Echo class: 15-20 points.
- Mog class: 8-14 points.
- Garland class: 1-7 points.
- Blank class: 0 points. This is the "Life is suffering" class, and I'm not honestly expecting successful entries~
- Turtle class: 0-20 points, but turtling. You know who you are, and so do I.
If you go higher than 46 kills, then you can subtract points from your deck total, making it "easier" to qualify with your deck. For each 5 full kills over 46, you can subtract 1 points from your deck total, so if you have 51 or more kills you'd have -1 points on your deck, 61 or more kills you'd have -3 etc.
If you're unsure whether you're turtling or not, there are possible definitions here and here - but generally, you know it if you're turtling (hint: When killing even sub-bosses takes ages).
As I missed out on the last Tower for various reasons, there's a lot of "new" jobs&cards in the pool this time - including a whole new character! As a result, I decided to be as lenient as possible with the restrictions - most of the Meia jobs are probably placed irresponsibly low in the table (except Amalthea, who's rare and particularly well suited to this Tower), and several old jobs&cards have been shifted down to encourage revisiting them. I debated bumping up some of the Monks to cover for the heavy Light/Dark theme going on right now, but, again, being lenient. Similarly, all the Hall of Fame jobs got placed in +3 tier - which is hopefully low enough to encourage experimentation, but high enough that they don't overshadow the non-Hall of Fame jobs.
I also think I put the minimum kill requirement pretty low; I admit I my meta evaluation skills are a bit rusty, so I decided to err on the side of caution. If the global opinion is that it's too easy, maybe I'll quickly bump it up, but I'm super not fond of increasing difficulty mid-event - although I'll happily make certain jobs&cards cheaper, if there are good arguments for it!
Finally, sorry for the late thread. I wanted to do it on the day the Tower started, but Wednesday is a really rough day at work :p
Best of luck to all players, whether you're entering the Tier Challenge or not! Let's see what fun strategies people come up with this time ^^
Edit: Late-floor scaling was apparently way more lenient than I originally assumed; reduced the number of minus points you can get for climbing to 1 per 5 (was 2 per 5). If you think this is too little, I will take your opinion into consideration!
Posted Nov 23, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC · edited
Lightning Skin?
Thanks, must have deleted that by accident. +4 (i.e. 12 points) and the job it's on counts as normal for points, so pretty hard to pull off. Yell if you see any other misses; pretty huge cardpool to keep track of nowadays!
Just wanted to say that I entirely agree with how you rate the Lightning skin. After having receive it, yeah it is good but it's no Supreme. It also has a much higher pull rate than Supremes so it makes sense to be lower.
Shock cards are OP
Are they? I admit I've been using only Sicarium with my Monks so far, so never saw any point in raising a Shock, but on paper they're not that different. Do you see a reason to put the Shocks in +2 instead of the +1 they're currently in?
Ult charge. Allows ult spam for master monk, enables easy chain breaks, rainbow shift, and the ability to max damage vs Omega without the need for letting him get a turn.