This is a Comprehensive PVP Guide based on the Japanese Server Meta by VirtualScepter (Causew#5130) from the Blue Archive Community from reddit & Discord, all credits belong to VirtualScepter.
“Where’s my tier list?”
There is no good tier list for PvP. Yes, some units are stronger than others, but there is a counter pick to every single unit in this game. There is no possible way to faithfully rank each character in Blue Archive on a single catch-all list. This goes for all game modes, not just PvP. Take any tier list you see for Blue Archive with chunks of salt.
“I want my tier list dammit”
Ugh, fine. But you’re going to get 3 small tier lists. 1 for each type of terrain because the meta can change drastically between each season. I’m also not going to include the dark horse or anti-meta picks because – I repeat – there is no way to faithfully rank these characters on a single list. If a unit is not on the list it does not mean they are unusable – they are just un-rankable. If you decide to read the rest of this doc, you will find these tier lists are simply a TL;DR summary of the contents.
Do not take these tier lists out of context. They are completely worthless on their own. At least link the whole doc if you plan to share this.
URBAN PVP TIER LIST
OUTDOORS PVP TIER LIST
INDOORS TIER LIST
(not out yet)
With all that said, this guide aims to teach less experienced players about the various types of decision making you can take to improve your PvP experience. I attempt to explore all aspects of Blue Archive’s PvP in a digestible manner without pages upon pages of fine detail.
If you are a top ranker in one of JP’s busiest brackets, then this guide won’t help you.
Thank you to all the regulars of #jp-pvp in BA’s community discord for months upon months of PvP discussion, fact checking, and memes.
Link to said discord: https://discord.gg/bluearchive
If you have any PvP questions then feel free to direct them to #jp-pvp.
Contact Causew#5130 or /u/VirtualScepter for any doc related feedback.
Introduction
What is PvP in Blue Archive?
The concept of BA’s PvP is fairly simple. You form a team as you normally would in other game modes, and then you send them to attack another player’s defending team. If an attacker wins against a defender with a higher rank, the attacker and defender swap ranks.
As an attacker, you get 5 free attempts every day to attack someone for a chance to climb the ladder. You can choose to do these attacks whenever you like, and you can swap the teams however you want as you see fit. You are also allowed to be picky (to an extent) about your defending opponent.
You can also choose to purchase more attack attempts – but this is intentionally more expensive than any marginal reward you can get from PvP and is definitely not recommended. These purchases are for people who enjoy climbing ladders – they will not optimise your rewards.
As a defender, you set yourself a defending team to protect your rank… and that’s it. There is no limit to how many times you can be attacked, meaning you may see 0 defends one day and 9 defends the next. You can change your defending team at any time, but there are no replays of the battles to help you adjust your defending strategy. The only information you have access to as a defender are damage graphs.
In the middle of a battle, your units are controlled by the AUTOPLAY AI rather than yourself. A battle is over after one team’s strikers have all been eliminated, or the timer runs out. If the battle times out then the team with the most remaining HP wins.
Are there rewards?
PvP has rewards in 3 forms: Credits, Pyroxenes (Gems), and Coins. These rewards are handed out in different manners:
- Per battle
- An attack win rewards 1000 credits
- A defence win rewards 3 coins
- Minutely
- You passively generate credits based on your PvP rank. This ranges from 30creds/min at the absolute lowest rank, and 120creds/min at rank 1
- Daily
- Everyday you can claim a daily reward based on your rank. Note that these rewards are based on your current rank from when you click on the claim button, so you should climb as far as you can for the day before claiming
- Claim time is on a different schedule to daily reset
- You can claim up to 45 Pyroxenes and 125 coins every day for first place
- Season highest placement
- You will earn Pyroxenes as you reach rank milestones for the first time in a season. This totals to about 2490 Pyroxenes for reaching rank 1
- As the name implies, you can re-earn this every time PvP is reset and a new season comes
- Overall highest placement
- You will earn Pyroxenes as you reach rank milestones for the first time. This totals to about 5660 Pyroxenes for reaching rank 1
- These rewards are not ever reset
Coins are spent at the PvP shop, which refreshes every day. You can also spend an additional 10 coins to refresh, up to 3 times a day.
Even if you don’t care about PvP, you should at the very least aim to earn enough coins to be able to buy out 90 AP every day. AP is important for progression, and you’ll be noticeably slower in leveling if you don’t utilise this free AP daily.
Your PvP Bracket
PvP wouldn’t be very rewarding if every player shared the same ladder. Players are separated by brackets, and each bracket has their own leaderboard. These brackets are initially determined by account creation date; so an account made today would probably share a bracket with other accounts made today and tomorrow, but you should not see 1 week old players in your bracket.
Brackets are also reset between seasons. When a season resets, all players are shuffled around to ensure the competition remains active. You are likely to be replaced into a bracket of players with a similar level to yours.
To make the climb possible in a new bracket, the leaderboard is initially filled with bots. Bots are identifiable when:
- Player ID is the same as a student
- Profile pic and the first character of their team are the same unit
- Their team composition makes no sense
“PvP is too RNG and I never win”
Sure, randomness sucks and not being able to control your units can be a frustrating experience, but there are a couple of factors within your control. These factors matter, and I hope to be able to educate you about how you can use them to influence your win rate and place higher on the ladder. After all, if PvP was purely decided by randomness, then everyone would have a 50/50 win/loss rate, and that is simply not true. In the appendix is an analogy liking BA’s PvP to Trading Card Games.
If you don’t want to participate, that’s fine too as it won’t harm your progression drastically. At the very least you should think about earning enough coins daily to buy the stamina in the shop. Don’t worry, this is a really low bar.
Glossary
Some terms that will appear in this document going forward:
- Pos(X)
- Refers to Position X, with X meaning the slot the character is in on the team building screen. Yes, it matters.
- Number 1-4, left to right
- A(X) or D(X)
- A stands for Attack. D stands for Defence. X refers to Position X.
- For example, A2 will refer to a character in the Attack team on Pos2
- AA
- Auto attack.
- CC
- Crowd Control
- Includes Stuns, Taunts, Fears
Author: VirtualScepter (Causew#5130)
Source: Comprehensiven’t Blue Archive PvP Guide
For the latest version, please check out the original article
