Introduction
The Final Fantasy Tournament uses the loved/dreaded preset teams. With a preset team, it helps even the playing field as no one can gain an advantage via specific cards or combos. However, it does dramatically cut down on creativity and also results in more “luck” when trying to min-max your score as skyfalls/bad boards will play a massive role in determining how well you place. With this post, I will try my best to help give my readers a slight competitive edge based on my own experience running the dungeon.
In these ranking dungeons, we are scored based on 3 criteria:
- Average combos made: 5,000 points per combo
- Time Remaining: 500 points per second remaining
- Maximum damage: up to 10,000 points if you hit 40 million.
Clear videos
115,708 score
Mantastic commentary
—talking about the dungeon itself—-
Your team
Everyone will be using the same team (max skill and max awoken) and it is important to understand how your leader skill functions along with any combo synergy you may have.
Noctis at a glance
This is based off the current form and does not take into consideration the future Yama P buff.
Noctis
Physical / Attacker
6 star base
—-
4 
+1 combo for 1 turn
7 turn CD
—-
1.5x HP/ATK/RCV but cannot erase 3 connected orbs. 3x ATK with 3 combos. 6x with 6+ combos
2.25x HP / 81x ATK / 2.25x RCV
Noctis’s Scaling Leader Skill |
||||
| # combos | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Multiplier | 20.25x | 36x | 56.25x | 81x |
This may seem like an amazing leader skill, but you have to remember you cannot match 3 connected orbs. Thus, every match must be at least 4 and it is wise to match primary colours in a TPA fashion (4 connected) and dead orbs in any number you can.
Based on the floor you encounter, you can make fewer combos in order to save time. Remember, you can always use Noctic’s active skill to increase you combo count by 1.
Cards and relevant damage awakenings
The only thing that matters in this tournament is your damage output so I will only be highlighting their relevant awakenings along with their total attack value.
Elemental Brawl Tournament Team |
|||||
2,372 |
 2,648 |
 2,797 |
 2,285 |
 2,273 |
2,372 |
Despite the fact that Sephiroth has 3 Killer awakenings, none of them are relevant in this dungeon. On the other hand, your two Noctis will be dealing 3x damage to all bosses except for the fourth floor.
You are forced to always match 4+ connected orbs and you should always form a TPA on dark and light matches (as Noctis will benefit from the light TPA). Your other colours/elements can be matched in any pattern you wish and it may be advantageous to match more than 4 connected to better remove them from the board.
Your team has an outrageous amount of time extend and you should get into the habit of preemptively dropping your orb once enough combos have been formed.
Dungeon Strategies
The goal of any ranking tournament is to clear the dungeon as fast as possible and only take one turn on every single floor. Thus, speed is crucial to your success and the less actives you use, the better your score will be as they add additional time to the end result. However, you should always use an active if it can save you from wasting a turn.
The information displayed always assumes a TPA match and shows the lowest combo count required to sweep that particular floor.
Final Fantasy Ranking Tournament |
|||
| Floor | Spawn | HP | Notes |
| 1 |  |
1,028,121 | 4 combos, light No dark |
| 2 |  |
2,632,612 | 4 combos, 1 dark or 5 combos, 1 light |
| 3 |  |
3,082,804 | 3 combos, 1 dark |
| 4 |  |
3,169,249 | 5 combos, 1 dark |
| 5 |  |
2,013,846 | 50% damage reduction 5 combos, 2 dark + 1 light 6 combos, 1 dark –  Noctis (if needed) |
| 6 |  |
24,634,530 | 6 combos, 3 dark will hit damage cap –  Cecil +Use one of the following:  Sephiroth Noctis |
In an ideal world, you only use Cecil on the final floor; however, you rarely will have things going your way and if you are simply going for a top 10% clear, you can use actives as listed above. If you are orb trolled on floors 1-4, use Lightning to reset your board.
Using an active skill will drain your time as you have to go through the animation along with the haste component hindering your score. Furthermore, due to the randomness of your actives, you will not be able to plan ahead and will be more rushed when matching.
Additional advice
Remember to turn off the skill confirmation animations through Others -> Options -> Dungeon -> Skills Off to save a couple extra seconds!
My current placings
These are my two highest scores that I achieved within the first hour or so of the dungeon being released. I am uncertain what the cutoff point will be and what kind of movement I can expect:
Conclusion
Hopefully this overview will help shed some light on how to better approach the Final Fantasy ranking dungeon. Many players are thrilled to have a preset team, but it does cut down on the creativity along with forcing players to use a playstyle that is possibly foreign to them.
One last pro tip is to use the same team I used 😉
Happy puzzling!
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
Really good, was having issues because I didn’t quite know the minimum required to kill each floor. Here’s hoping I can get higher than my current 105k… Thanks!
LikeLike
Well 105k is hopefully safe in the top 10%!
LikeLike
First try blind got 25%, after reading this and trying again got up to 2.5%, this post really helped, thanks
LikeLike
Glad I could be of help and well done!
LikeLike
First try was around -7k points 😀
Now I reached 71302. I hope to reach 30% after a lot of training.
LikeLike
Just keep at it and I wish you the best of luck!
LikeLike
I hate this dungeon. Currently sitting at 109K/8.9%. I know I should try for the crown but, I just really, really hate this dungeon.
LikeLike
Ranking dungeons are a huge stamina sink. Unlike playing normal content, you are not guaranteed anything and more often feel frustrated
LikeLike
I can’t even finish the dungeon. This has been the most frustrating thing ever. I guess I just suck at making the required combos but I’ve also just been getting skyfall trolled every single floor. Maybe the ranking dungeons just aren’t possible. After 20-30 attempts don’t even care about getting a great score or a crown or anything I just want to be able to beat it. I feel like the fixed teams should have been the best chance. I’m at 298 and while I have a decent box/lineup those fixed teams are usually stronger in respect to the specific dungeon. I was just hoping to see that I’m not completely alone in not even being able to complete this but apparently everyone else is just zipping through it. Just super discouraged.
LikeLike
The thing that really helped me was knowing I had more time to move the orb. I also wait and look at the board. I count each color to see if I have four orbs.
Here is a thought to practice. Build a team for practice. put on your team every monster with jazz hands (time extends) that you can. Run super cheap dungeons, like the very first normal dungeon, and just practice lining up orbs in different ways. See if you can dig a blue orb out of the corner. Stuff like that. Try that about 5 times, and then go back and see if you have more success!
LikeLike
Oh, and using Cecil for the boss is a must for us *normal* people :D. Some may not need him, but I needed every help I could get to make 6 combos
LikeLike
It is kind of needed to pop Cecil on the boss to have a chance at hitting damage cap XD
LikeLike
My advice is that the first time you go through, don’t worry about the score and take your time. Noctis is a weird leader so you will need some time to get used to his “you can’t match three orbs” gimmick. also use Noctis often if you have trouble, you can stall on anything (except the boss who eventually hits for 50k) in this dungeon, plus you have 3 turns of haste (Seph and Yuna).
Don’t forget to use Cecil and Noctis on the final boss for the kill.
And don’t worry about not doing so well. I have been playing on and off for a few years (although I only restarted 3 months ago) and despite reaching 3.9% in the last ranking dungeon, I started this one off with 45%, so it happens to everyone.
Good Luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very well said!
LikeLike
r u going to try again to get higher than now
LikeLike
Still trying, hit 1.1 and now dropped down to 1.8
LikeLike
at .5 now gonna be my first crown still wish i could get a grand predra
LikeLike
Congrats on your crown!
LikeLike
Thank you Mantastic! My score went from 65% (my usual for team ranked dungeons) to 31.6 (temporary, I know, at 90k plus! Thanks so much for the help!
kenneth
LikeLike
What do you expect the @5 cutoff to be, I’m now 118,984 and I hope that’s enough for me to get my first crown
LikeLike
Apparently the cutoff for top 2% was 121000 in JP or something, so my guess is around there! (currently at 5.6% myself, with 114,400 points, so I need to shave off like 15 seconds from my best run…)
LikeLike
You can presume NA will be a tad lower than JP (as per the trends) so many 120.5k?
LikeLike
I’m currently at 48.5% (94sec) and I keep getting stuck on the last two floors. There are plenty of times where orbs are just completely not near each other. Do you have any advice for arranging the 4s on the board. As it is now, I can only sometimes one shot either one.
LikeLike
Form vertical matches instead of horizontal ones is the best advice I can give
LikeLike
this tournament is so frustrating orz all those time u lose while waiting that annoying quickstrike message and dead message i combo to quick so i only get 4,5-5 max combos orz
LikeLike
The hardest thing for me is placing the TPA matches efficiently and doing vertical instead of horizontal matches
LikeLike
the team isnt bad just the tournament is frustrating in overall i have 103,8k points and i am only at 21,5% in EU ranking orz
LikeLike
If you can sweep every floor in one turn, you will get top 10% =)
LikeLike
i will try it to get at least 6 combos constantly currently i only get 5 combos constantly but sweeping the floor isnt the problem xD
LikeLike
Then I guess it comes down to speed =(
LikeLike
120-130-sec on a 5combo standart i think the dmg was less but well *shrugs* europa is frightening …
LikeLike
Just got a really lucky run with perfect boards. Max damage, 4.8 avg combo, and about 180 second clear time. Scored 123950, top 0.1%.
Good luck to the rest of you! grind grind grind~!
LikeLike
Congrats no your crown!
LikeLike