Robot's Deconstruction Hour: Cheerleader
May 1, 2016 2:10:30 GMT
flamefist96 and Faithless like this
Post by Robot on May 1, 2016 2:10:30 GMT
Overview
Cheerleader is the first of the Battling Style classes in PTU's 1.05 edition. Each class in this set aims to give a defining strategy or more identity to the way a trainer chooses to do battle. Cheerleader is the "I fight for my friends." style support class. It operates mostly on free action steroids to orders features or ally-targeting Moves and Abilities from it's Pokemon. The playtest packet I've been told cripples the class in all the worst ways, but as I haven't read it, I won't be tending to it here.
Pros
-Unique boosts in terms of anti-status support, and temporary AP provisions.
-Good action economy.
-Stackable buff charges.
-Little to no AP costs.
-League Legal
Cons
-Leaning heavily on the Cheerleader's features tends not to put out as much damage as actually attacking with your pokemon round by round. As far as aesthetics go, there's nothing wrong with this. From a game play standpoint, as I've often stressed; The win condition is to knock out your opponent. Status and support abilities that don't do damage, don't build up to this goal.
-Currently under fire in the play test, and struggling with it's identity in sight of other classes such as Sage that perform it's duties better as a Combat Class.
-Like Commander, has a feature tax to become fully functional, and without Commander the only way to give your human allies your cheerleader buffs is through your Moment of Action feature.
Base Feature: Free Action, but attaches to an Orders Feature as a trigger. This means it's either costing your Standard or your Swift Action depending on the presence/absence of Commander's Voice. With the base feature, you can apply this to a single Pokemon each round using your Orders feature. Later this gains improvements where you can target human trainers with a class based Orders feature, or your Pokemon's Ally Target moves trigger it. This makes Helping Hand an extremely useful option for this class. This Feature grants stacking charges of either Cheered (Roll Twice on a Save Check, taking the better result), Excited (Gain 5 DR against an incoming attack of choice), or Motivated (+1 CS to a stat below default). DR stacking in the system, this becomes the strongest option of the three, with Cheered providing some possible protection against Para/Confu/Flinchhax prior to the status update packet. Costs an AP if you multi-target boost only.
Cheer Brigade: Friend Guard Tutored onto a Pokemon for 2 TP. This ability is a must have, as it allows an ally to resist a hit one step, once per scene.
Gleeful Interference: AP Cost, requires you to hit an opponent, inflicts -2 Accuracy. As I've mentioned in previous guides, debuffing accuracy isn't worthwhile unless your allies are stacking evasion, or you debuff all of the accuracy. If it comes between spending AP on this, or your base feature, Cheerleader is a better investment all the way.
Inspirational Support: The feature tax that allows a Cheerleader to function as a battling style class instead of as a Combat Class. Your Pokemon can now activate your Cheerleader effects using moves that only target allies. A must if you want to build charges of your cheers on target.
Moment of Action: Not quite a feature tax, the bonus is very worth it. Providing your allies with an infinite resource to power their 5/scene initial abilities can be useful. More importantly you can now target trainers with your base features. Reasonably useful in full contact fights. Very useful in parties that carry a lot of AP spenders.
Go, Fight, Win!: A Partywide Def or Sp. Def CS and Motivated, Partywide +8 Hp at Virtuoso and Excited, or +2 Evasion and Cheered for a Standard and a Swift Action. Cheerleader can spend an additional AP on this and add the effect of another cheer on top of it. The Combat Stages are situationally useful based on base stats, the Temporary HP will be better most of the time in that regard. The Evasion is only helpful if you're pushing up on that magic number 9 and aren't quite there yet. The effect is At-Will, but each of these can only be triggered once per scene.
Keep Fighting!: Really, really, really strong. A Daily x2 Endure that can be used on your Pokemon or an Allied Trainer, doesn't cost an action, and grants twice charm in temporary HP after allowing you to survive a hit. With recovery this turns into ludicrous comebacks. The action economy of this effect is overwhelming, allowing for all sorts of counter-KOs in even matches.
Cheerleader is the first of the Battling Style classes in PTU's 1.05 edition. Each class in this set aims to give a defining strategy or more identity to the way a trainer chooses to do battle. Cheerleader is the "I fight for my friends." style support class. It operates mostly on free action steroids to orders features or ally-targeting Moves and Abilities from it's Pokemon. The playtest packet I've been told cripples the class in all the worst ways, but as I haven't read it, I won't be tending to it here.
Pros
-Unique boosts in terms of anti-status support, and temporary AP provisions.
-Good action economy.
-Stackable buff charges.
-Little to no AP costs.
-League Legal
Cons
-Leaning heavily on the Cheerleader's features tends not to put out as much damage as actually attacking with your pokemon round by round. As far as aesthetics go, there's nothing wrong with this. From a game play standpoint, as I've often stressed; The win condition is to knock out your opponent. Status and support abilities that don't do damage, don't build up to this goal.
-Currently under fire in the play test, and struggling with it's identity in sight of other classes such as Sage that perform it's duties better as a Combat Class.
-Like Commander, has a feature tax to become fully functional, and without Commander the only way to give your human allies your cheerleader buffs is through your Moment of Action feature.
Base Feature: Free Action, but attaches to an Orders Feature as a trigger. This means it's either costing your Standard or your Swift Action depending on the presence/absence of Commander's Voice. With the base feature, you can apply this to a single Pokemon each round using your Orders feature. Later this gains improvements where you can target human trainers with a class based Orders feature, or your Pokemon's Ally Target moves trigger it. This makes Helping Hand an extremely useful option for this class. This Feature grants stacking charges of either Cheered (Roll Twice on a Save Check, taking the better result), Excited (Gain 5 DR against an incoming attack of choice), or Motivated (+1 CS to a stat below default). DR stacking in the system, this becomes the strongest option of the three, with Cheered providing some possible protection against Para/Confu/Flinchhax prior to the status update packet. Costs an AP if you multi-target boost only.
Cheer Brigade: Friend Guard Tutored onto a Pokemon for 2 TP. This ability is a must have, as it allows an ally to resist a hit one step, once per scene.
Gleeful Interference: AP Cost, requires you to hit an opponent, inflicts -2 Accuracy. As I've mentioned in previous guides, debuffing accuracy isn't worthwhile unless your allies are stacking evasion, or you debuff all of the accuracy. If it comes between spending AP on this, or your base feature, Cheerleader is a better investment all the way.
Inspirational Support: The feature tax that allows a Cheerleader to function as a battling style class instead of as a Combat Class. Your Pokemon can now activate your Cheerleader effects using moves that only target allies. A must if you want to build charges of your cheers on target.
Moment of Action: Not quite a feature tax, the bonus is very worth it. Providing your allies with an infinite resource to power their 5/scene initial abilities can be useful. More importantly you can now target trainers with your base features. Reasonably useful in full contact fights. Very useful in parties that carry a lot of AP spenders.
Go, Fight, Win!: A Partywide Def or Sp. Def CS and Motivated, Partywide +8 Hp at Virtuoso and Excited, or +2 Evasion and Cheered for a Standard and a Swift Action. Cheerleader can spend an additional AP on this and add the effect of another cheer on top of it. The Combat Stages are situationally useful based on base stats, the Temporary HP will be better most of the time in that regard. The Evasion is only helpful if you're pushing up on that magic number 9 and aren't quite there yet. The effect is At-Will, but each of these can only be triggered once per scene.
Keep Fighting!: Really, really, really strong. A Daily x2 Endure that can be used on your Pokemon or an Allied Trainer, doesn't cost an action, and grants twice charm in temporary HP after allowing you to survive a hit. With recovery this turns into ludicrous comebacks. The action economy of this effect is overwhelming, allowing for all sorts of counter-KOs in even matches.