Between summoning the 5⭐ unit 2B and obtaining the Toxic Rain materia upon completing the Octopus Teacher Trial last week, my arena squad has recently been vastly upgraded. After replacing Tidus with 2B on my raid squad, that freed up my (only) dual wield materia so I gave it to 9S for double chaining in the arena.
I currently have these units on my arena team:
[1] Rikku: Her TMR is SO powerful. She can recover the whole party’s ailments with Panacea and cast random ailments and debuff all enemies with Chaos Grenade. I’m so glad I prioritized her TMR and also lucky that I got multiple copies of her to be able to farm it quicker. When the battles don’t go my way (e.g. enemy keeps going first each turn or the status ailments don’t proc), her Limit Break really comes in handy to automatically revive the party members who end up dying.
[2] A2: She’s my main attacker/chainer. She has an AOE skill (Horizontal Sweep) that applies paralyze with a 20% chance. She can counter multiple times with a strong attack and can also avoid death sometimes. She’s so strong… I love this unit!!! So happy I got her 😀
[3] Mercenary Ramza: I put him on my squad because he has full ailment immunity. Since I only have one ribbon at the moment, which is pretty much permanently reserved for Tilith, his immunity is very much needed. He covers his allies from attacks (yay Genji shield!) and can also counter attacks, which is awesome! I gave him the Toxic Rain materia so that he can always inflict 3 random status ailments at 100% to all enemies. If there’s only one unit left to be killed, his Blade of Justice skill works pretty well with A2’s and 9S’s chaining skills.
[4] Amelia: She is THE best for the arena!! I love that her ricochet fires off TWICE each turn because of her dual guns. That’s 2x the number of chances of stopping enemies. Mwhahahaa it’s pretty funny seeing the enemy’s entire party stopped.
[5] 9S: I’m so intrigued with 9S and want to make more use of him. I love that his Balance Hack skill has a 40% chance of inflicting Stop or Paralyze on all enemies for 3 turns. The more chances of stopping enemy units the better, I’d say! I ended up replacing my tank (Warrior of Light) with him on my raid squad and it has worked out really well. One of his debuff skills lowers enemy ATK/DEF by 50%, which is higher than WoL’s debuffs! I was able to score over 11 million damage with this debuff on the last raid boss(!!).
Here’s what I usually start the arena battle with:
Turn 1
Rikku: Chaos Grenade (Random Ailments + Debuff)
A2: Dash Attack (Attack to unlock the skill Heavy Attack to chain with on turn 2)
Mercenary Ramza: Toxic Rain (3 Random Ailments @ 100% chance)
Amelia: Ricochet (Stun @ 30% chance)
9S: Balance Hack (Paralyze or Stun – both @ 40% chance)
Usually after turn 1, most of the enemy units are somewhat disabled (paralyzed, stopped, stoned, etc.). On turn 2, if A2 and 9S are not incapacitated, then what I usually do is this:
Turn 2
A2: Heavy Attack (strong 10 hit AOE attack)
9s: R020: Mirage (from Pod 153 TMR for chaining – procs twice from Dual Wield)
Rest of the units on a chaining skill or REPEAT from previous turn
Most battles don’t last past the 2nd turn after the AOE chain happens unless the opposing team has really great defense. And if for whatever reason I’m unable to debilitate the other team, I go on the defensive and make sure to pop Rikku’s Limit Break in case of emergency. Some battles have gone over 5 turns long but so far I’ve always ended up surviving.
It’s really fun trying out different types of combinations and trying to completely debilitate the other team on the first turn. I’m excited to see what other combinations there are to keep pwn-ing in the arena. And as I just pulled Veritas of the Waters from the latest banner, I’m looking forward to leveling her up and using her 100% chance paralyze skill to wreak even more havoc in the arena mwahahaahaa!!! 😈
I hope you’re kicking butt in the arena, learning how to kick butt, or feeling inspired to try out some new builds. Game on!
– V