Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Man, Spring Lucina may be considered the poor man's Linde, but Skill Inheritance and the banner focus actually makes her much better if availability is taken into account (which it should be, since barring mega whales who drop tens of thousands of on the game, getting a Linde +10 is prohibitively expensive or luck-based). I keep running into the Spring Lucina +10 with Blarblade+, even though I dropped my BST and am running my crappy base build Spring Lucina. 43 base Spd (47 after Sparrow and 51 after Hone Spd) is just terrible to play against. This completely removes the baiting option and depending on stats, it might not even be possible to separate her without taking a loss (refresher with Lancebreaker typically screws with manipulation hard and causes the refresher to also chase Sharena when normally the mage will chase Sharena and the refresher will chase Marth).

[Anacybele]

Finished with a score of 2,842. It's not as high as I'd like to get someday, but it'll do for now. At least until the April updates, I now have a way to get more than just a measly few hundred. I used 5 star Frederick, and 4 star Sakura, Palla, and male Robin, all at lv. 40. I previously had Bunny Xander as my bonus unit, but for the sake of some balance, I switched him out. However, I do put him back for the defense team.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Anacybele

[Dual Dragons]

4/4/2017 - offense 4,570; rank 275 (3:07AM PST) [deathless]
4/5/2017 - offense 4,570; rank 1,433 (2:57PM PST) [deathless]

Team:
(all Level 40 and 5*)
+Res/-HP Ryoma (173; +Vantage 2)
+Atk/-Spd Ninian (163)
neutral Sharena (174; +Threaten Spd 3)
+Atk/-Res Spring Chrom (183; +Fury 3)
BST: 696

 

22 hours ago, Eridras said:

It may have been you who I stole the team from. I read your post and thought, "Well shoot, I have those units except Fury is on Ninian instead of Chrom!  Let's go!"  Worked out perfectly, so thanks!  

I've gotten essentially the same score the past three weeks and gotten ~3900 each time, so we should be safe. 

Haha. You're welcome then! I debated putting Fury on Ninian or Spring Chrom, but that 35 Speed without dropping bulkiness... couldn't resist.

Yeah, then I shouldn't worry about my score. No need to try harder if I'm not going to invest for top 1K... and heck no can I fight against top 1K units, considering the likely skill inheritance going on there. I shudder.

 

18 hours ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

Found this nifty guide on reddit and decided to post it here in case anyone benefits from it: https://imgur.com/a/ka8FY

I really needed this. Thanks.

[Kiran]

Seriously whats with the defense wins? None last week and now suddenly 3 in a row today? I didn't even change the team composition. 

Got a score of 4,346 due to two deaths. One death could have been totally avoided as I misread the enemy range and got Ephraim killed. Whoops. Currently ranked 15,070. If I'm lucky I might be able to pull a deathless run this week. Michalis has been very useful even at 4*. His defenses ensure that he will survive hits.

[Fly_or_Die]

Sigh ... still no defense wins. This might be the longest time (excluding week 1) that I've gone without a defense win. Running Azura/Reinhardt/Kagero/Lucina.

[Katrisa]

10 hours ago, Othin said:

I tried to have Hector jump over one of my units to escape, but accidentally used both Escape Route and Pivot and jumped right back to where he originally was and got killed.

I laughed fairly hard when I read this.  But I'm sorry for your accident!
 

Sigh ... still no defense wins. This might be the longest time (excluding week 1) that I've gone without a defense win. Running Azura/Reinhardt/Kagero/Lucina.

I'm kind of surprised with that lineup.  The maps have been fairly open each day this week though, so ranged units have been relatively easy to deal with.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Katrisa

[Mackc2]

I have gotten a defence win consistently every round, I suppose people just underestimate my cavalry squad. 

[DehNutCase]

15 minutes ago, Mackc2 said:

I have gotten a defence win consistently every round, I suppose people just underestimate my cavalry squad. 

Cavalry is pretty hard to deal with in general. 3 Move means you have to be very careful with positioning. That said, Cav teams are hard-countered by just having a high BST, and you won't run into team.

[Ice Dragon]

18 minutes ago, Mackc2 said:

I have gotten a defence win consistently every round, I suppose people just underestimate my cavalry squad. 

 

3 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Cavalry is pretty hard to deal with in general. 3 Move means you have to be very careful with positioning. That said, Cav teams are hard-countered by just having a high BST, and you won't run into team.

On the reverse, the low rating of cavalry teams means your opponents are likely to be non-cavalry teams with even lower ratings. Those teams are probably not built to handle a decently built full cavalry squad.

[Katrisa]

Rating and how you end up matched is an interesting and weird mechanic right now.  10 point nudges to my offense or defense teams BST can greatly change who you're facing (reducing the number of ranged units you face, or the number of merges to tango with your group).  

I think even with their planned changes there is going to be quite a bit of weirdness in arena matching.  It will take notable tuning for them to find a healthy balance between offensive and defensive teams.

[MaskedAmpharos]

Sigh, Wings of Mercy catch me off guard every time. 

Also, does anyone know if there's a cap on the max amount of Defense wins you can get per week? I always seem to cap at 10 Defense wins :/ then again, the season just started, so I guess I'll see if I get any more than these initial wins by the end of the season. But last season I also capped at 10 so idk...

It doesn't actually matter, since only one victory matters, but I was just curious. 

Edited April 6, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[Ice Dragon]

Well, this was an interesting week so far. I'm very pleasantly surprised to see that Sophia (+Triangle Adept 3) is doing so well in Ryoma's stead. She can't one-round kill anything worth squat, but she takes single digit damage (even counting the double attack) from any green unit and can two-round kill them back with Ninian's dance support. It's amazing. I'm now seriously considering giving her Raudhrraven+ so she can eat Takumi and Klein alive, but I don't think I have enough SP for that yet.

I ran into my first mono-green team (which got utterly crushed by Sophia and Julia) consisting of Spring Chrom, Hector, Julia, and Minerva. I also ran into a Draug and a Sheena. That's new.

Currently have a score of 4,598, which is only 2 points lower than last week's. Waiting for the hour for my ranking to update.

EDIT: Currently rank 905. Probably dropping to around the 1,500-2,000 range by the end of the week.

 

52 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

Sigh, Wings of Mercy catch me off guard every time. 

Also, does anyone know if there's a cap on the max amount of Defense wins you can get per week? I always seem to cap at 10 Defense wins :/ then again, the season just started, so I guess I'll see if I get any more than these initial wins by the end of the season. But last season I also capped at 10 so idk...

It doesn't actually matter, since only one victory matters, but I was just curious. 

The display only shows the 10 most recent defense wins. There's no limit. You just can't see all of them if there are more than 10. (If you pay close attention to the names, you'll see them move down the list as you acquire more wins.)

Edited April 6, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[XeKr]

Hmm..Linde, Eirika (Fury 3), Anna (Fury 2), 4* Palla manages 4554 without additional inherited fury, which is just 10 points below last week’s 5* Robin(M) variant. It’s rank 2571 right now and might stay in range if bans were significant. 

Ran into +10 Klein with B Tomebreaker and other merged friends on the last match, but Anna clutched it with some rewarp shenanigans.

Brave Bows/Poison Daggers might get more popular if stat total ends up mattering less for matchmaking, so Robin(M) might find his way back into the core. He’ll be able to use his –Raven tome without a minor penalty too. 

Maybe will try some runs with Michalis for squeeze a few more points. I think Palla is slightly better colorwise for AI purposes (brings blues to Anna while Linde/Eirika are teaming up somewhere else) and is less deadweight since she can solidly beat Green, but Silver Axe is 3 more pts(!). 

[Anacybele]

Got a new high score of 3,072! That's not too far off from my minimum goal of 3,500, but I bet if I could've made this run deathless it would've been that high or close to it. >_< Gotta be a bit better next time!

I even managed to win a battle that was all reds on the opponent side by sweeping with male Robin and keeping him healthy with Sakura. lol

Also got a defensive score of 251 for the second season in a row! W00t. I think people have trouble getting past my wall named +def Freddy! lol

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Score of 4513

• Ground Zero (6PM PST Apr 6) - #5392

Single death. Still getting used to using Hector without Sharena, so got pinned on the wall map where either Spring Lucina's useless ass was going to get murdered (I just have her with Hone Atk 3 to let the others do things), so it was basically let Azura run her down or let Azura WoM in to a lured Ryoma, sacrificing my Marth, but putting both in a terrible situation where they would be murdered without mercy. Hopefully the next run will go smoother. Still pretty happy, since I had to deal with a +10, +9, +5 and +1 team and came out without losses on that one.

If I get to a point where I think I can try to push against the higher BST again, I'm thinking of running BBGG, by subbing Marth out for Sharena and Spring Lucina out for Spring Chrom. Gotta get the lower deathless run first, though, since I can easily do 4570-ish if I pull it off.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[Phoenix_Kensai]

This is the second season in a row I just haven't been able to get any defense wins. Before that, I was fine; it was even common that I'd get one within hours and switch out my team to give other players an easier time. But now... I have no idea what happened.

I guess I should try switching out my team more often and see if something sticks. A pity I don't have any good sudden death characters like Reinhardt.

[Rafiel's Aria]

Hm...at least I'm not the only one having trouble getting defense wins. I think this is the third week I haven't gotten any which is really odd because last week was the first week I felt like I had a really solid Arena team. Your team for the Arena is the leftmost one, correct? Or am I just crazy?

That being said, I'm getting closer and closer to a 7 streak-deathless win. Off the top of my head, my score was somewhere around 4,298 (a personal best) that placed me around 27,000 in ranks. I'm hoping to inch up just a little bit more before the season ends. Right now, my team is:

-5 Star M. Robin with Triangle Adept 3 and Vantage 3
-5 Star Lucina with Swordbreaker
-5 Star Peri with Swordbreaker (The week before I used Priscilla)
-5 Star Michalis - haven't decided what to give him yet; ideally Quick Riposte; I'm saving feathers at the moment, so I don't want to upgrade my Subaki quite yet...

[Phoenix_Kensai]

5 minutes ago, Rafiel's Aria said:

Hm...at least I'm not the only one having trouble getting defense wins. I think this is the third week I haven't gotten any which is really odd because last week was the first week I felt like I had a really solid Arena team. Your team for the Arena is the leftmost one, correct? Or am I just crazy?

That's correct. For defense, anyway; you can enter the arena with any team.

Seems like a lot of people are having trouble recently. Maybe it's skill inheritance? I don't know. I can't be the only one that hasn't made much use of it yet, though... but maybe that's a part. And maybe I should see if I can use it to put together some hard to counter characters.

I've been thinking they should rework defense so that you get points for each match based on the number of characters your team defeats, not just from winning. Right now it seems like there's not much granularity between defense wins, and one is enough to get the maximum possible reward. If they changed it to count partial victories, so to speak, it would be easier to score some points and show you a bit more of how well your team is doing.

[Rafiel's Aria]

38 minutes ago, Phoenix_Kensai said:

That's correct. For defense, anyway; you can enter the arena with any team.

Seems like a lot of people are having trouble recently. Maybe it's skill inheritance? I don't know. I can't be the only one that hasn't made much use of it yet, though... but maybe that's a part. And maybe I should see if I can use it to put together some hard to counter characters.

I've been thinking they should rework defense so that you get points for each match based on the number of characters your team defeats, not just from winning. Right now it seems like there's not much granularity between defense wins, and one is enough to get the maximum possible reward. If they changed it to count partial victories, so to speak, it would be easier to score some points and show you a bit more of how well your team is doing.

I guess i need to up my game or something. I've fiddled with skill inheritance mostly with my "main" characters. But I could probably use it more.

I totally agree with your idea though... I feel like we should get points for at least doing SOME damage. ...I wouldn't mind just having notifications about battles. Right now, it feels like my team hasn't been in any fights. I'd love to know how many teams go up against mine in a week.

[MaskedAmpharos]

@Phoenix_Kensai @Rafiel's Aria 

I'm unsure if this will be of any help to you, but just in case:

Also just gonna put my new rank update here in spoilers so I don't have to double post:

Spoiler

New high score of 4642 :DDD shall update with rank when the server updates

 

[Fei Mao]

^Nice Ampharos

Earlier this week I managed to get a score of 4,402 with one death using Felicia/Abel/Sharena/Selena. Currently at rank 16,344, was hoping to improve it today by substituting Abel with Cherche who has a higher BST but all I ended up with is frustration and getting tilted to hell due losing too many people or losing the streak. Fuck this game sometimes

Edited April 7, 2017 by Fei Mao

[Vaximillian]

On 05.04.2017 at 6:26 PM, Vaximillian said:

4,359 with two deaths now. Fuck Linde and Tharja. Mages shouldn't be so fast.

The previous score was worth rank 20,795; let's see how high does this one. rank 10,970 at the moment.
Still I can go higher.

I happened to improve and present my newest highest score:

 

My previous score of 4,359 was worth rank 21,915 at the time of posting; new score of 4,532 should place me in top 10k, at least for a while. Let's see after the ranking updates.

Five-star Michalis is a flying fortress: the man tanked Ryoma and Lyn, helped to take out Robin, opened Effie's cans. He's as awesome as he is supposed to be. Glory to the King of Macedon.

I hope Sharena will be a bonus hero next rotation so that I can keep the dude on my team. I'm so fond of him now, I see the feathers were well-spent.

(On the other hand, I still got no defence victories. Oh well, there's still time left.)

EDIT: yeah, score of 4,532 is worth rank 4,516 at the moment. I'm pretty sure I will stay in top 10k. That's cool.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Vaximillian

[ExKalibur]

Got a new score of 4506 (deathless). This moved me from a rank of 13k to 6845.  BST= 673

[Elieson]

I'm having a super rough go this time /round, due to not having a high BST green infantry unit to run and relying on either my 4* -Atk/+Res Selena or my 4* Alfredo to get the job done as a red. I've seen more Fury units and Ninians in the past 30 battles yesterday than I have all the way until now, and my BST hasn't changed by more than 1 point since last round. UGH

[Vaximillian]

3 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

EDIT: yeah, score of 4,532 is worth rank 4,516 at the moment. I'm pretty sure I will stay in top 10k. That's cool.

Fell to rank 4,700 after three hours. I'm still excited after breaking the 4,500 points milestone.

13 minutes ago, Elieson said:

I'm having a super rough go this time /round, due to not having a high BST green infantry unit to run and relying on either my 4* -Atk/+Res Selena or my 4* Alfredo to get the job done as a red. I've seen more Fury units and Ninians in the past 30 battles yesterday than I have all the way until now, and my BST hasn't changed by more than 1 point since last round. UGH

I ran into a dragon team (Fury Vantage Nowi, Ninian, young Tiki + Takumi) right after finishing my record streak. I wasn't prepared for this.

High stat green you say? What about Michalis? He's not infantry but he can get shit done.
Also, Alfredo <3 autocorrection is fun.