So, let me preface by saying this is all based on things that I've witnessed, and a lot based on personal opinion. But there's also a good portion of it that's just straight up fact, and I'll back it up when I can. Also, I apologize for what will probably be a gigantic wall of text. With that out of the way...

Hi! I'm a random reddit user that's been lurking and helping out on the help thread here and there. Lately, I've come across some people wondering things like how their units compare to unreleased ones, or units that are clearly better at one specific role than the other make their units obsolete (the most recent of which was WoL versus Cecil), but the people posting these things seem to disregard exactly why those units are good. So, here I am, trying to explain how people overvalue or undervalue units through a game feature that a lot of new players seem to overlook: Team Composition.

Team comp is something that usually only starts to matter in games with multiple players or units at the higher levels of play or when someone just wants to better themselves/play optimally (League of Legends is a great example). However, it's always a thing that can be relevant, especially in a game like this where players are sometimes forced to work with what they have for a difficult trial. The reason team composition is so important is because it can make absolute crap units become really good (granted, the number of situations in which a better unit wouldn't outperform said crap unit given the same team composition is very limited) or waste the potential of a really good unit, if done poorly.

So let's take the WoL and Cecil example from earlier to start with, shall we? What exactly makes Warrior of Light the undisputed king of tanking (when he gets his 6 star, at least)? Well, he has AoE breaks, a Raise (very important), somewhat reliable self-healing, innate provoke, and an AoE cover....while Cecil basically only brings Focus and the capability to off-heal in comparison, since his 70% single target cover is arguably outclassed by WoL's raid-wide cover. So, clearly Warrior of Light is the winner for basically every scenario where Cecil's buffs don't matter, right? That would be true when taking into account only enemy units (Gilgamesh, Europa, the likes). But now we get into what this post is truly about. The comment that sparked this post had a Ling Cecil Refia trio, with a physical DPS and a magical DPS. That comp is a fairly versatile one, covering pretty much every role that you can think of at least once. However, he was wondering about Warrior of Light and power creeping his Cecil. Let's take a look at how this would impact his team, shall we?

Warrior of Light brings the same things I mentioned earlier over Cecil, but at the cost of leaving his mage unbuffed (as losing Cecil would mean losing Focus as well). The main issue with Warrior of Light in this situation, however, is that Ling already brings everything that Warrior of Light does, without the AoE cover or provoke, but maintains her utility through an AoE esuna, status support, innate status immunity, and longevity in a decent evade rate. Doubling up on functionality is generally a bad thing, as buffs and debuffs of the same type don't stack, and therefore the potential that each unit brings is hampered because their role is already being covered on the team, and in this specific scenario, WoL would still be able to function as a tank after his debuffing was complete, but Ling would have pretty much nothing to do as her entire purpose is to break and provide utility, save for doing more damage to the enemy (and in arena, her damage is pretty significant to be fair). Therefore, bringing Warrior of Light into the mix as is would be a bad move because of the efficiency of always being able to do something relevant with your turns.

What if, however, we could replace some of the other units in the team? We established that losing Cecil would mean losing Focus, leaving our mage unbuffed. But if we didn't have a mage, then that wouldn't matter too much, would it? The SPR buff can be covered in other ways, if we're replacing multiple units. So let's say we replace the mage with an arbitrary physical DPS, say, Luneth. Focus would have still brought an SPR buff for tougher trials, so defensively it would have been a boon. However, half of the buff would be wasted, as none of our current units would be able to use MAG effectively. So from an efficiency standpoint, WoL is better purely comparing him to Cecil. But how do we fix the aforementioned problem of doubling on Ling's functionality? Assuming that Ling isn't a permanent member of the team, all she brings to us seeing as WoL now purely outclasses Cecil (since off-healing isn't usually a necessity) an AoE raise, cleansing, and status support. The Raising is already covered twice at this point, with Refia's full-life and WoL's Raise. Status support is invaluable in arena, but cleansing can be taken care of by a dualcasted Refia in most scenarios, although Ling would still have her place. So when we don't need those specific boons (especially since pretty much all of our current units have some form of status immunity or resistance) then Ling's slot would be better served by another DPS unit.

With that said, an analysis of whether to replace a unit given all this information largely depends on the rest of your team. For the vast majority of players though, seeing as this game is pretty much a gamble, replacing the unit with a more efficient one isn't always possible thanks to RNGesus. So, that's what we need to work on: Working with what we have.

I've come up with a list of team compositions that are fairly generic, and that most people can probably find some way to fit their teams into. Hopefully these can be used to figure out what makes our units what they are, and if we were to add another unit, what team composition we would need to go for to maximize the potential of not only the new unit but the rest of our units as well.

• 2 Chain Builders Chain Finisher Tank Healer (The Chaining Comp): This is the most common composition right now in higher levels of Arena and PvE play (March of the Beasts, in specific, since Gilgamesh requires very specific team planning). The chaining meta is real right now, especially with Orlandu supposedly around the corner, so this comp is pretty much 2x Chizuru Finisher right now. So ideally given this composition, you'd give yourself 2 chain builders (Edgar and Cupid Luna's Chainsaw abilities are very good) and hopefully with matching elemental weapons in the fights it's viable in so that the chain can reach its peak quicker. The last DPS slot would be filled with a finisher (Olive is the premier choice right now) who can take advantage of the high chain with a hard hitting attack. Mages also work very well in this slot, especially with Ring of the Lucii, because Alterna already hits like a truck. You won't be able to elemental chain Alterna, of course, but just imagine a dualcasted spell with a normalized modifier of 6.8 (almost 7 times a normal attack!) plus a full chain bonus of 4 times. That's pretty much a modifier of 56x, if you can keep the chain going that long. That's pretty insane, and that's before buffs. This comp is more difficult than most people think it is, but a couple users have created some good guides to help utilize this composition as we head into the GL meta of chaining. To clarify, chain builders need to have multi-hit moves that hit really fast, like Phantom Shadow or Chainsaw, and finishers need to have high modifiers on a decent base attack unit.

• 0-1 Support 3-5 Mages 0-1 Healers (Dualcast Spam): This is a really good composition for Arena (not so much PvE, as mana is always an issue) and is also based around chaining, but is much easier since your mages are pretty much gonna be the same unit. Exdeath spam is a thing. Support is optional but usually always there for buffs or breaks, and Healers are there as a safety measure in case you don't just completely wipe out the opposing team in one turn (which is highly unlikely). It's not focused so much around chain building, as much as just spamming the hardest hitting attack you can and watching it chain into itself effortlessly.

• Physical DPS Mage Support Tank Healer (The Goodstuffs Comp): This has a little bit of everything, and we touched on it earlier in the post as well. It excels at absolutely nothing, and chain building is pretty much out of the question. However, this type of team generally provides great longevity and damage at the same time, which chaining comps generally forgo in favor of more damage. The tank in this comp is usually Cecil because the off-healing is awesome in a party meant to outlast more than finish the fight early. Generally you'll want a mana battery like Bartz, Ling, or Noctis in the mix as well because the fights are obviously going to be much longer by forgoing a DPS in favor of buffing a couple of them. At first glance this might seem inferior to the aforementioned compositions, as killing things super fast generally removes the need for any of this longevity stuff. However, this is actually pretty great for new players, as you'll generally need a bunch of TMRs to make the most out of a chaining comp (assuming the bulk of your damage comes from the finisher of course, which it likely will) and without them your fights are gonna take a long time anyways. March of the Beasts and Gilgamesh (with a whale friend) are fairly challenging and daunting for players without those TMRs, so they'll probably use something similar to this one in order to outlast the fight that'll be constantly pumping out damage.

• Whale/God tier DPS 2 Support Tank Healer (Protect the Carry): Obviously this isn't League of Legends, you don't -really- need to protect your carry to the extent you need to in that game. However, if all your damage comes from one unit (ahem Gilgamesh trial ahem) then you need to be able to support that unit as well as you can. Support is less about debuffing and buffing in this composition, and more about doing everything that your overpowered God tier DPS can't do (which, if it's Noctis, isn't very much besides buffing) or building a chain to help them deal more damage. It's a more generic version of the Chaining Composition mentioned earlier, but it's effective in a different way.

• 5 Physical DPS (The Cheese Comp): The only reason you run 5 DPS is to just straight up cheese the shit out of a really hard trial by building a chain and finishing it up to 6 times. In the same turn. This requires a ton of TMRs to accomplish effectively and if you don't hit your damage requirement (say, you mess up the chain somehow) then your team is pretty much dead, especially going against 4 thresholds at once if Gilgamesh happens to survive with like, 1% HP. High risk, VERY high reward if accomplished, but this is not something a new player should try in tougher trials. For story stuff though, go ham. Take along whatever you want.

As I said before, team composition doesn't really matter until higher levels of play, and honestly having one or two super powerful units can take care of pretty much all current content except Gilgamesh, so take this all with a grain of salt. This is only a few of the ones I could come up with that are common enough to mention, but I feel like it's a fairly usable list with the 4-5 that I have here. Anyways, to all of you that read this far, thanks for sticking around, and give me some feedback on what you agree or disagree with (as again, this is mainly my personal opinion mixed in with some real facts) because this is the mentality I've been playing the game with for a while and I just felt like it would be beneficial to share it. If there's a better way to go about things, of course, let me know lol. Again, thanks to all of you reading this and have fun pulling for Noctis in a couple days.