Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Thor Odinson]

Vantage Ryoma just saved a fucking run again, bless this lobster

So team was Eirika (thank god no Tharja), Tiki, Takumi, and Hector. So I look at Takumi, didn't really look at his stats too hard but he must've been either +HP or +Def because Ryo was about 2HP short of ORKOing him and I was like, okay, i can do this, tried to move in Nino but then I notice Takumi has Vantage--I should really check for this kinda shit /beforehand/ so I get everyone out of the way for now, turns out Hector has wings but luckily nobody in range but that could've been really bad 

Anyway so next turn I use Nino to chip Tiki from across the Lava because Ryo doesn't have enough HP left to deal with Tiki. I look at Hector's damage on him. He can live Hector. k good. Now Tiki has 9hp and Takumi has 2hp and there's a Hector and Ryo just destroys all of them it was beautiful

and then Nino and Ryo team up to take down Eirika I win

Now just for tomorrow's swords to see if I can beat my score

[Okigen]

Can someone explain to me the awesomeness of Reinhardt?  Just seen that he is now SS tier on Altema. I have like, 5 of him and would like to put him to some better use than vantage fodder.

[Infinite Dreams]

My score of 4734 is currently at rank 12,646.

I did very, very poorly the first night.  I was using the same team that I used last season (Lucina, Takumi, Sharena, and 4* Palla), and blew through like, 10+ dueling crests trying to get minimal deaths.  On average, I just couldn't win a match without at least 1 or 2 deaths and kept running into a lot of mage teams, especially Reinhardt+Ninian, which destroys me, haha.  I was so mad at the game that night.  My boyfriend convinced me to stop playing for the night because I was so salty. 

The next day, I changed my team around to Lucina, Olivia, Olwen, and Carrot Xander (who I had just finished leveling to 40 to replace Palla).  Carrot Xander was so much more useful for me than my 4* Palla, who could hardly lay a scratch on anything, aha.  I got a deathless streak on almost my first try!  I suspect I may have been lucky because I didn't run into a single Reinhardt+Dancer team that time.  I dunno if it was the team change or luck that helped me.  

I'm a pretty casual player, usually just aiming for the 10k-30k bracket, which I'm in now, so I'm happy.    Last season I had a score slightly above 4500, which put me in the same bracket I'm in now with this score of 4734.

Honestly, I'm not really a fan of the arena changes so far.  Running into characters like Reinhardt and Kagero more often is such a pain in the butt!  I've also noticed more +1/+2 units are popping up for me, and I'm not really sure why because I don't have any merged ones?  Oh well, just gonna have to get used to it!  

[Thor Odinson]

23 minutes ago, OKigen said:

Can someone explain to me the awesomeness of Reinhardt?  Just seen that he is now SS tier on Altema. I have like, 5 of him and would like to put him to some better use than vantage fodder.

If you have 5 Reinhardt's they're probably 4*s, which does nothing to show how awesome he is. 5* Reinhardt has a brave tome (Dire Thunder) that, as a prf weapon to him and his sister, you can't Skill Inherit on to other people, and so they're the only brave tome users in Heroes right now. He also has a shitton of atk and will just remove units from the face of the earth. While having 3 movement. 

You know that gross thing that's 9-5 Xander? Yeah, Reinhardt just removes him. Doesn't take damage. Doesn't give a fuck. Pair with Death Blow 3 for even more ridiculousness. Works well both in a cavalry team and without one. 

Basically anything red dies to him and a good portion of blues and colorless die to him and even some greens

If you got one that's +atk, especially +atk -spd but any +atk will do, promote him asap.

[Ice Dragon]

29 minutes ago, OKigen said:

Can someone explain to me the awesomeness of Reinhardt?  Just seen that he is now SS tier on Altema. I have like, 5 of him and would like to put him to some better use than vantage fodder.

5-star Reinhardt is one of two characters with access to Dire Thunder, which is a Brave-type blue tome. His role is "delete button", and he is by far the best unit in this role.

+Atk Reinhardt has 44 Atk when equipped with Dire Thunder. Due to Reinhardt's already absurdly low Spd, he doesn't care about Dire Thunder's -5 Spd penalty and also doesn't need the additional Spd from Fury or Life and Death, meaning he can run Death Blow with no worry of losing his follow-up attack (because he basically never had one to begin with).

With +Atk and Death Blow 3, Reinhardt has 50 Atk on player phase that targets Res with a guaranteed two hits before the opponent can retaliate and has cavalry mobility and access to cavalry-specific buffs on top of that. With just Death Blow 3 under his belt, Reinhardt is capable of erasing any red unit off of the map as well as the vast majority of blue units. Adding Lancebreaker guarantees kills against the few lance users that survive, leaving only the +Res (or neutral Res with Fury) variants of Odin, Ninian, and Nowi alive.

If this weren't already enough, Reinhardt also one-round kills several low-Res green units, as well.

Finally, because Reinhardt dumped Spd almost completely, he also has decent 38/27/25 defenses in case he needs to take two hits.

 

Oh, and that's before adding Hone Cavalry and Goad Cavalry into the mix.

 

EDIT: Really, I have no idea why wiki puts him only at A+. He's hard walled by Julia, Nino, and Hector, but that hardly matters when he erases 95% of the game's units without support and without risk of counterattack.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[MaskedAmpharos]

40 minutes ago, OKigen said:

Can someone explain to me the awesomeness of Reinhardt?  Just seen that he is now SS tier on Altema. I have like, 5 of him and would like to put him to some better use than vantage fodder.

Thor and Ice Dragon more or less answered this already, but basically Reinhardt (at 5*) is one of the most devastating player-phase nukes in the entire game. 

A +Atk Reinhardt with Death Blow has enough firepower to cleanly remove all reds and nearly all blue and colorless units from the game (and even several greens) in a single blow with no buffs or specials. 

Add in a Draconic Aura proc (which will proc on his second round of combat since Brave tomes charge specials really quickly), and he can take down all but 8 units in the entire game at neutral (those being Anna, Arthur, Camilla, Fae, Hawkeye, Julia, Narcian, and Sheena). 

That's 111 units out of 119 who can be OHKOd by a single unit, which is absolutely ridiculous. 

He even OHKOs neutral Hector despite being a blue unit!

tldr - Reinhardt is an offensive monster and one of the most devastating player phase nukes in the entire game. 

Edited April 16, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

9 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Really, I have no idea why wiki puts him only at A+.

The English wiki references sites other than Altema, and personally I think the other sites have less idea of what they're talking about. Altema isn't always right, and their GHB tutorials are usually pretty bad (use Hector!), but their tier lists are fairly spot-on imo.

 

I run Fury on my Rein because of his +Res. It lets him tank buffed up Tharja more comfortably, so I get a little bit more freedom with Enemy Phase compared to normally. Also I can't get him DB3 anyway. My Arena scores are sitting at like 4500 though, since my units aren't super high stat total other than Lucina. Gonna have to slap Fury on Azura too, and find some way to fit Effie on my team maybe.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Honestly i legit feels like Reindhart is the only unit who deserves S+ Tier which should have been filled by Olivia, Ninian, and Azura

 

[MaskedAmpharos]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

The English wiki references sites other than Altema, and personally I think the other sites have less idea of what they're talking about. Altema isn't always right, and their GHB tutorials are usually pretty bad (use Hector!), but their tier lists are fairly spot-on imo.

 

I run Fury on my Rein because of his +Res. It lets him tank buffed up Tharja more comfortably, so I get a little bit more freedom with Enemy Phase compared to normally. Also I can't get him DB3 anyway. My Arena scores are sitting at like 4500 though, since my units aren't super high stat total other than Lucina. Gonna have to slap Fury on Azura too, and find some way to fit Effie on my team maybe.

I honestly don't like Fury on Reinhardt, but the way I play him is to go full glass cannon. 

I just did a quick comparison of Death Blow and Fury, and Reinhardt with Fury loses out on nearly 20 OHKOs that he would have gotten with Death Blow, which is not an insignificant number. Sure, Fury helps him tank Tharja, but there's no reason he should be tanking Tharja (or anyone) in the first place. 

Also, with the changes to Arena, high BST matters a lot less since all units' BSTs have been more or less equalized. Armors get an invisible penalty, while mages and cavalry get a boost so that everyone's BST hovers pretty close to a similar range. As such, you're rewarded a lot less for using a stat stick like Effie and penalized less for using someone like Kagero.

Unfortunately, I can't really source this since people are still doing research, but the general consensus seems to be that merge levels matter a lot more for scoring than BST. 

I think @Ice Dragon knows more about the subject than I do though, so I'll divert the rest of this to him (or whoever else wants to pitch in). 

[Okigen]

Thanks guys. One more question please... How does his low bst affect arena score after the update? 

I just looked at all 5 Reins and none of them is +atk damnit.

[Ice Dragon]

Complete side note, NEXT WEEK'S BONUS HEROES ARE UP!

 

Time to pull out your Quadsunas (and watch as they do no damage).

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Just trained up Sharena right now and then Cecilia shows up in the list so lol

 

[MaskedAmpharos]

5 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Complete side note, NEXT WEEK'S BONUS HEROES ARE UP!

 

Time to pull out your Quadsunas (and watch as they do no damage).

Oh good, Sharena's there as expected.

I'm still sad that I spent as many orbs as I did on the wyvern banner with no Cherche of any rarity to show for it, but alas :/

Looks like I'll just be replacing Ephraim with Sharena this season, which is a pretty easy fix that doesn't change up my playstyle in any way. 

[Vaximillian]

As expected, Sharena will be the next two weeks' bonus hero. This means I can get away with not changing my team, yay!

[Fei Mao]

Finally managed to get a deathless run with a score of 4,758 and is currently ranked at 6,259. Looks like I'm set next season as well since I'm using Sharena and Cherche. i don't think I'm getting a defense win this season unless it's a pity surrender, I don't have any good ranged killers like Linde and Reinhardt.

Also, does anyone know why sometimes the AI moves their dancer before their ranged unit? I was on the bridge map and had placed a unit hoping Ninian would dance Jeorge and bait him out, but it didn't work and cost me the match. Normally I could dance bait a mage character easily, but it seems to be colorless units that have a chance of not taking the bait.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Fei Mao

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

I honestly don't like Fury on Reinhardt, but the way I play him is to go full glass cannon. 

I just did a quick comparison of Death Blow and Fury, and Reinhardt with Fury loses out on nearly 20 OHKOs that he would have gotten with Death Blow, which is not an insignificant number. Sure, Fury helps him tank Tharja, but there's no reason he should be tanking Tharja (or anyone) in the first place. 

Also, with the changes to Arena, high BST matters a lot less since all units' BSTs have been more or less equalized. Armors get an invisible penalty, while mages and cavalry get a boost so that everyone's BST hovers pretty close to a similar range. As such, you're rewarded a lot less for using a stat stick like Effie and penalized less for using someone like Kagero.

Unfortunately, I can't really source this since people are still doing research, but the general consensus seems to be that merge levels matter a lot more for scoring than BST. 

I think @Ice Dragon knows more about the subject than I do though, so I'll divert the rest of this to him (or whoever else wants to pitch in). 

I know DB is the best for him, but with no way to acquire DB3 (without sacrificing my only Ursula left, fuk dat) atm, Fury's pretty much the next best thing imo. It also cuts his Enemy Phase losses by half, so if I mess up he can do something on EP I guess.

Really, Limit Break as the score criteria now? If so, that's super lame. But I see a lot of people here don't have merged units and still get higher scores than me, so I'm not sure what the story is (my run was deathless). I'm using Julia/Lucina/Azura/Bunny Lucina as my offense team right now.

 

Guess I didn't have to train up Clair after all...

[Korath88]

I've been surrendering my arena matches to give away some defense victories since I already have my highscore. 

Looks like I'll be swapping out Michalis for Alm. Not sure if running 0 greens is a good idea, but Ephraim, Lilina and Ninian are practically irreplaceable at this point.

[Ice Dragon]

7 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

I think @Ice Dragon knows more about the subject than I do though, so I'll divert the rest of this to him (or whoever else wants to pitch in). 

I honestly know no more about this than anyone else, really. I just regurgitate what I've read on the matter.

 

5 minutes ago, OKigen said:

Thanks guys. One more question please... How does his low bst affect arena score after the update? 

For the most part, all 5-star level 40 units of the same merge level are counted the same in terms of base stats, meaning you can basically use any unit you want in the arena without being penalized.

 

9 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Complete side note, NEXT WEEK'S BONUS HEROES ARE UP!

Feels a bit weird quoting my own post, but they really aren't being kind to my team composition.

I might have to completely scrap my old team and start from scratch this time. Maybe it's time to get Spring Camilla up to scratch and run Flier Emblem with double Hinoka and... uh... Palla? Ugh.

We need a bigger pool of bonus heroes. Maybe run each set for four weeks with two sets overlapping at any given time to make it easier to transition between sets.

[Okigen]

17 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Complete side note, NEXT WEEK'S BONUS HEROES ARE UP!

 

Time to pull out your Quadsunas (and watch as they do no damage).

Ooh awesome Sharena is there so I can ditch Navarre!

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

I guess I'll just run Julia/Lucina/Sharena/Reinhardt and drop Azura? Hm...

[Vaximillian]

23 minutes ago, Korath88 said:

I've been surrendering my arena matches to give away some defense victories since I already have my highscore. 

Too bad you don't get matched against me :(

[pianime94]

1 hour ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

He even OHKOs neutral Hector despite being a blue unit!

Did this in the Arena with Luna Reinhardt (I forgot to give him Dragon Gaze orz) and boy was that really satisfying.

For the next Arena I'll probably run Julia, Seliph, Ryoma, Sharena. Seliph is there since he's merged.

[Mehdi2277]

The only 5* from the next season I have is Lukas and there isn't anyone I want to swap him for at all. Ninian, tiki, nowi, and egg chrom was my current team. Mostly worked except it'd be nice to have a 2 range attacker. I think I'll just upgrade my 4* cherche and then give her a brave axe, so that I can change egg chrom with a new green axe.

[mcsilas]

I guess I'll just promote my lv 32 4* Sharena now just to I can quickly level her up with her unique weapon (I've got enough SP now anyway)

@Thor Odinson Also, the Reinhardt discussion is reaaaaally tempting me to promote my only 4* one but he is -HP/+Res. I know the min-maxer in me is telling me not to promote a unit unless he has a great nature (or +Atk in this case), but it's so tempting haha. Still a great Player Phase unit but the Dire Thunder sounds so good and I don't have any orbs to hunt for another Reinhardt (only 1 Lunatic mission left for an orb...)

[MonkeyCheez3K]

They really dropped the ball on Rheinhardt (Olwen too, I guess). In what world is it a good idea to give phenomenal nuking capabilities, the longest range + movement, decent defenses and irrelevant speed stats on a blue unit in a red filled roster. It blows my mind they think he is a well-designed unit (Skill Inheritance was on the horizon as well, so it double-baffles me)

@mcsilas Depeding on the amount of feathers you get and your future plans (I have planned ahead on what I want to achieve and, with my current feather income, will be able to get that stuff at an acceptable pace) it doesn't have to be a bad investment, even if you do get a +Att Rheinhardt in the future. Merging is a thing (now even transmits all skills, so it's really not that bad either way) and you'll still get use out of him regardless of boon/bane. If you have no other priorities, go for it.