Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Hawk King]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm not sure there are enough super whales out there to actually do such a thing, though.

I typically still rank between 300 and 700 in both Arena and Arena Assault, meaning the number of whales bigger than me cannot be all that much higher than a few hundred, and I've been much more casual of a whale as of late.

Of the current bonus units (and on average) how many of them do you have at +10?

There may only be a few hundred people who +10 a new unit or two from every banner, but there is also a lot more like you who have enough +10s that they can have 2 or more high scoring bonus units every week just from the regular rotation. With even just two it shouldn't be too hard to get 4 bonus kills in each match. I know that I very frequently get all of my kills with just two of my units.

Another thing is that if you have enough crests to do a lot of fishing for scores, your 4th unit can be as low as +2 or +3 and you can still find high scores. So having 2 or 3 bonus units per week doesn't seem too improbable for ~800 people.

Are there some bonus units on a regular rotation like there was for the first year and a half? 

[DLNarshen]

Season 80 Results:

Score: 3,678
Defense: 608
Rank: Tier 20 --> 20

I was concerned about score inflation, so Narcian took a break this week.  As a result I'm put in the rather precarious position of not having a green unit in the face of all the Hardins, Effies, and Nowis that tend to populate my arena matches.  Physical blues were not as much of a problem as I anticipated -- as you can see, Tiki goes all in on Def, and Shanna and Caeda's SS choices help bolster her up even more.  Normally Close Def is overkill on Tiki I find, but she needed every tool she could get to tank Black Lunas and BF lance armors.  If she could get on a defense tile, even matchups like this were trivialized:

 

Hell, even Caeda could stand a fighting chance against Effie/Hardin provided they're weakened a little (Effie isn't running Wary).  Nowi was the real threat this week, and would usually require Shanna.  Especially variants that invest in Spd -- Tiki can take a hit or two, but she can't keep up if she's being doubled. 

Once Tier 20 thins out after next week, I'll probably run Narcian again if only to make my life easier.  I'm really not looking forward to bonus-unit kills counting towards score...

Arena Assault:

Rank: 3,492

Happy one year AA anniversary folks.  52 weeks of nerve-wracking 6th/7th battles and sometimes barely scraping by.  Not really sure what they could do to overhaul this mode, but I'm not exactly itching for 52 more weeks of much of the same. 

Previous Season Results:

Spoiler

Season 12: 4,678 | 284 | 25,513
Season 13: 4,740 | 0 | 19,082
Season 14: 4,794 | 289 | 6,331
-----------------
1.3.0 Update
-----------------
Season 15: 4,820 | 576 | 15 --> 17
Season 16: 4,788 | 568 | 17 --> 16
Season 17: 4,719 | 568 | 16 --> 17
Season 18: 4,776 | 0 | 17 --> 18
Season 19: 4,780 | 0 | 18 --> 17
Season 20: 4,796 | 578 | 17 --> 18
Season 21: 4,806 | 594 | 18 --> 19
Season 22: 4,792 | 560 | 19 --> 18
Season 23: 4,836 | 288 | 18 --> 19
Season 24: 4,828 | 288 | 19 --> 20
Season 25: 4,838 | 582 | 20 --> 19
Season 26: 4,822 | 578 | 19 --> 20
Season 27: 4,808 | 580 | 20 -->19
Season 28: 4,792 | 580 | 19 --> 18
Season 29: 4,830 | 582 | 18 --> 19
Season 30: 4,822 | 582 | 19 --> 20
Season 31: 4,806 | 584 | 20 --> 19
Season 32: 4,820 | 584 | 19 --> 20
Season 33: 4,812 | 582 | 20 --> 19
Season 34: 4,836 | 582 | 19 --> 20
Season 35: 4,822 | 582 | 20 --> 19
Season 36: 4,838 | 578 | 19 --> 20
Season 37: 4,788 | 580 | 20 --> 19
Season 38: 4,854 | 580 | 19 --> 20
Season 39: 4,830 | 582 | 20 --> 19
Season 40: 4,908 | 0 | 19 --> 20
Season 41: 4,920 | 580 | 20 --> 19
Season 42: 4,922 | 580 | 19 --> 20
Season 43: 4,914 | 582 | 20 --> 19
Season 44: 4,966 | 582 | 19 --> 20
Season 45: 5,006 | 600 | 20 --> 20
Season 46: 5,016 | 600 | 20 --> 20
Season 47: 4,976 | 596 | 20 --> 19
Season 48: 4,972 | 596 | 19 --> 20
Season 49: 4,988 | 600 | 20 --> 19
Season 50: 4,984 | 598 | 19 --> 20
Season 51: 5012 | 604 | 20 --> 19
Season 52: 4,990 | 598 | 19 --> 20
Season 53: 4,848 | 600 | 20 --> 19
Season 54: 4,994 | 602 | 19 --> 20
Season 55: 5,002 | 600 | 20 --> 19
Season 56: 5,050 | 606 | 19 --> 20
Season 57: 5,016 | 608 | 20 --> 19
Season 58: 5,014 | 608 | 19 --> 20
Season 59: 5,052 | 608 | 20 --> 20
Season 60: 5,064 | 612 | 20 --> 20
Season 61: 5,066 | 618 | 20 --> 20
Season 62: 5,088 | 614 | 20 --> 20
Season 63: 5,100 | 610 | 20 --> 20
Season 64: 5,070 | 610 | 20 --> 20
Season 65: 5,068 | 618 | 20 --> 20
Season 66: 5,086 | 309 | 20 --> 20
----------------
2.5.0 Update
----------------
Season 67: 3,642 | 606 | 20 --> 20
Season 68: 3,648 | 614 | 20 --> 20
Season 69: 3,646 | 612 | 20 --> 20
Season 70: 3,668 | 604 | 20 --> 20
Season 71: 3,672 | 618 | 20 --> 20
Season 72: 3,654 | 312 | 20 --> 20
Season 73: 3,658 | 307 | 20 --> 20
Season 74: 3,652 | 616 | 20 --> 20
Season 75: 3,654 | 614 | 20 --> 20
Season 76: 3,654 | 0 | 20 --> 20
Season 77: 3,682 | 616 | 20 --> 20
Season 78: 3,674 | 614 | 20 -- > 20
Season 79: 3,672 | 305 | 20 --> 20

 

[Alexmender]

I finally stayed in tier 20. Funny that it was the week before the bonus unit craziness starts. I don't think I'll be able to mantain it but getting there at least once is nice. 

For AA, I got the usual ranking just shy of the top 5k. I was at rank 5,086 to be precise, I could've fished for a better score but I really didn't feel like doing another full run this week. We'll see next week. 

[Ice Dragon]

41 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Of the current bonus units (and on average) how many of them do you have at +10?

On average, about one and a half nowadays:

• Legendary Lucina from the next set.
• Mae and Fjorm from the most recent set.
• Legendary Hector from the set before that.
• Camilla.
• Soleil. Didn't get Nephenee to +10 until after the set ended.
• Zelgius, Effie, and Fjorm. Didn't get Bride Ninian or Bride Tharja to +10 until after the set ended.
• Amelia.
• Titania. Maybe Lilina, but I don't think I had her +10 yet.
• Male Robin and Ephraim (not built). I'm not sure if Priscilla was +8 or +10 at that time.
• Fjorm.
• Hinoka and Kagero (not built).
• Male Grima, Hardin, Sheema, Nowi, Lukas.
• Legendary Ike, Soren (not built), Tharja.
• Myrrh, Raven, Peri.

 

41 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

With even just two it shouldn't be too hard to get 4 bonus kills in each match. I know that I very frequently get all of my kills with just two of my units.

How often is it the same two units in each match, though?

Furthermore, most of my units aren't built to be able to take down common Arena opponents like Zelgius, Hardin, Effie, Fjorm, Grima, Myrrh, and Hector. In general, my unboosted core units are the ones doing most of the work, and I don't see that changing much in the future. In this past week, Fjorm landed a total of 1 kill over 8 matches.

If the bonus units happen to be dragons and armors for a week, sure, I can feed them all 20 kills, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

 

41 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Are there some bonus units on a regular rotation like there was for the first year and a half? 

The only ones now are Alfonse, Sharena, Anna, and Fjorm.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[LordFrigid]

I became busy this past week and didn't end up recording teams faced, but managed to hold T20.

I'll likely field Arvis this coming bonus rotation and see how many KOs I can feed him. Earth week means that I can run 3/4 of my Earth team and have Hector and Effie just weaken people with Wary Fighter equipped, so that may help a little.

Edited August 14, 2018 by LordFrigid

[mampfoid]

@Jingle Jangle Ah, I didn't notice. Too bad, I like to check the teams of other SF members. Do you have a screenshot of your team?

It was most likely the third duelling sword of the day, which I use to give free wins. If it was on Tuesday (I tend to complete my streak early), your team got a regular win from me. This week I lost a lot until I got my streak completed. 

[Rafiel's Aria]

10 hours ago, Astellius said:

For my first and main run in the Arena this week, I got 3,666, which I believe was a new high score for me. However, that still wasn't enough to remain in T20, so I did some fishing just now, and managed to bump up my score to 3,678. With just a couple hours left, this should be more than enough to keep me in T20, since I'm ranked 3,904 out of 6,181 to stay. I used my team of Tiki+10, Est+10, Fir+10, and Fjorm+0. I had Cherche sit this one out, since she's only +8. It went surprisingly smoothly even without any greens on my team.

For Arena Assault, I finally handed out a significant amount of blessings to my team to help boost my score. I also decided to give Cherche and Fir Aether and Dual Rallies. My efforts netted me a new high score of 5,165, which looks sufficient for the 3k-5k bracket. That's more or less where I was before, but I'm much more comfortably positioned within the bracket.

Also, @Rafiel's Aria I saw your team in the Arena today! While I was tempted to fight them, I ended up passing since they were below the score threshold of what I wanted to face. Still, I think it's pretty fun to see familiar names pop up.

Whoa that's cool! Do you remember what my team was ranked? I was running a slightly different team (Mae, Leon, Merric, and Lucius) who got me a TON of defense wins so I'm curious to know where they were sitting at. 

 

As expected, my scores for last week were good enough for tier 20 + the top 3k in AA. New Arena changes are in play now. Gonna be interesting to see how things work out. This week I'm running my Legendary Lucina with wind-blessed Raven, Merric, and Lucius. Lucius is in charge of ATK/DEF ploy debuffs as well as helping with chip damage and heals. I managed to make Lucina get 3+ kills for each map which helped my score despite the fact that I couldn't seem to get above a 740. Ended my first run with a score of 3751 which feels pretty good. I have no idea how that's going to rank, but I've got more than enough crests to try again later in the week.

[LordFrigid]

Well, feeding Arvis every kill wasn’t too bad. Chip damage from Wary Fighter armors worked perfectly, and being in a score range where the enemy teams were mostly armors with dual rallies certainly helped with the baiting process.

Recover Ring is great.

Edited August 14, 2018 by LordFrigid

[Humanoid]

I had a vain hope that the bonus point system would be capped to one kill per map, but that was wishful thinking. Died a couple times trying to feed Freddy some kills, so I gave up and just treated the points as a bonus. Arena has always been relatively chill for me unlike AA, so I'm not going to let this change ruin that. Hopefully with my new merges, a couple bonus kills average per map will be enough. If not, and if that means sacrificing T20, then so be it.

One nice perk of getting my run done early is that most defense teams are still fielding Fjorm from last week, so that's one free kill per match for Freddy. Ended with 3617 which is obviously a high score (previous best 3588), and it will be interesting to see where that lands. I can improve over the course of the week by adding some merges (potentially +1 to Nino and +3 to Nowi) and giving Freddy a 200 point B-skill (currently using his default 4* WoM2) and better seal.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Humanoid

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Did my first set of Arena and it went about as I expected it to. Alfonse utterly obliterated any greens he fought and Swordbreaker let him get sword kills, too (first map I did was Alfonse causing the enemy a full team wipe! Too bad that fell to 2 kills on average following that). Pretty much no chance at blue kills, though, since they usually had 40 or so Def and the one Fjorm that only had 32 Def had Vantage, so I couldn't get her. 3707 is currently about 2/3 of the way to falling out of going up, so I'm expecting to have fallen down to staying in T20 within two days.

[mampfoid]

Wow, with getting points for bonus units kills and my additional merges (each +1 on Cordelia, Cherche and M!Marth), my arena score got a big boost to 3,652.

I think also running a legendary unit helped, Lucina was able to kill 2-3 units per map. Sadly none of my current core got a Wind blessing. I'm curious were this will get me. With the whaliest of the whales going to tier 21, perhaps I can stay in tier 20 for the first time. 

I burned a lot of Crests though, trying to give Lucina many kills made me try silly things which often ended in getting killed at match 4. 

/Edit: Also my AA highscore got a boost, nearly 20 more than last week: 5,143. 

730+ matches are pretty crazy because non of my Earth and Wind blessing teams got armor-effective weapons. 

Edited August 14, 2018 by mampfoid

[Hawk King]

13 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

How often is it the same two units in each match, though?

Nowi and Caeda get 3 or 4 kills in every single map. Amelia doesn't move that well and relies on Caeda's Guidance seal to get anywhere, plus I haven't given her Bold or Vengeful fighter so she is mostly for score. The bonus unit just sits back giving a Def Tactics buff to the others unless I want to go out of my way to feed them a kill. When they do get one, it could have just as easily gone to Caeda or Nowi.

I didn't realize that it was 20% moving up and 10% staying, I thought it was the other way around. The super whales at the top getting 20 bonus unit kills should only account for the top ~8% I would imagine so I think I could make it to tier 21. Although I will most certainly fall back to tier 20 in the following week, but eventually as it grows I think I will be able to stay.

1 hour ago, mampfoid said:

With the whaliest of the whales going to tier 21, perhaps I can stay in tier 20 for the first time.

It is still the top 30% moving up or staying so the threshold to stay in tier 20 won't be any easier. If anything it will be more difficult with people giving it their all to see where they stand with going up or staying.

[Alkaid]

I'm not gonna lie, while I still don't like what the new system means for scoring, trying to get Alfonse to kill everything was still kind of fun. I'm really glad I went with the Def refine instead of the TA effect, since he had little trouble nuking even bulky blues. With the arena bonus stats and buffs he could still take on Grima and Myrrh just fine. I even had him survive a Nowi and kill her the next turn with a Bonfire. Not bad. I think Alfonse is the only Askr I can see myself getting this kind of performance from, though. Don't think I'll be refining Anna or Sharena(she's still 3* even) to use them as a bonus unit in the future like this.

I'm only around rank 680-ish which will certainly drop a lot more, so I'll probably just stay in t20 and not move up. I tried my best and used a ton of crests, but the hardest part was getting the game to give me the higher value matches for my range. I wasted like 50 crests trying to get non-low-end range matches, but the game didn't want to cooperate. I had to settle with about 4 points under my max range for each match. At least I got Alfonse all but 3 kills during my streak.

[mampfoid]

1 minute ago, Hawk King said:

It is still the top 30% moving up or staying so the threshold to stay in tier 20 won't be any easier. If anything it will be more difficult with people giving it their all to see where they stand with going up or staying.

Then it'll be easier next week perhaps, when the biggest part of whale-land went to tier 21 already? 

 

[Hawk King]

8 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Then it'll be easier next week perhaps, when the biggest part of whale-land went to tier 21 already? 

Most likely yes. Most if not all of the whales will be gone.

[Baldrick]

Managed to get 18/20 on Lucina. This new mode is pretty fun as long as you have a decent bonus unit. Still, I scored "only" 3688, which seems to be on the verge of dropping back already.

[mampfoid]

Ouch, my new highscore didn't last even the first day in the treshold to stay in Tier 20. 

/Edit: I don't get the new tresholds. In the notification they write 20% emerge to tier 21 and 30% stay in tier 20, but the number of players to reach tier 21 (~2,200) is higher than the numbers to stay (1,100). 

Edited August 14, 2018 by mampfoid

[Astellius]

9 hours ago, Rafiel's Aria said:

Whoa that's cool! Do you remember what my team was ranked? I was running a slightly different team (Mae, Leon, Merric, and Lucius) who got me a TON of defense wins so I'm curious to know where they were sitting at.

Yes, actually, I do. They were worth 730!

[Ice Dragon]

2 hours ago, mampfoid said:

Ouch, my new highscore didn't last even the first day in the treshold to stay in Tier 20. 

/Edit: I don't get the new tresholds. In the notification they write 20% emerge to tier 21 and 30% stay in tier 20, but the number of players to reach tier 21 (~2,200) is higher than the numbers to stay (1,100). 

Top 20% is the threshold to move up to Tier 21 and top 30% is the threshold to stay in Tier 20.

That means 0-20% move up and 21-30% stay, and not 0-20% move up and 21-50% stay.

[mampfoid]

6 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Top 20% is the threshold to move up to Tier 21 and top 30% is the threshold to stay in Tier 20.

That means 0-20% move up and 21-30% stay, and not 0-20% move up and 21-50% stay.

Ok, that makes sense indeed. Thanks for clarifying.

Means staying in tier 20 is the smallest group of all tiers. Didn't think I was so far away from staying with +8 M!Marth, +9 Cherche and +8 Cordelia. 

[Alexmender]

Annoying. I used Alfonse to kill whatever reds/greens he could but I ended up facing hordes of blues in my matches. My final score is 3,671 which is frankly pathetic. I'll try again later, after all I also need to fish for the 734+ matches instead of just taking whatever. I still hate this change and hope that IS puts a cap on the number of kills instead of this shitshow. 

Good news is that I got a Def win when I woke up so that's nice. I'll do my AA run later, although this season won't make thing easy for me.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

So, this was costly in terms of Dew, but I decided to give the double Brazen plus Def refine a go on Alfonse (from TA3-DB3). It's not like I was really using all of that Dew anyway (I already buffed all the specialists and vanity projects I'd want to, barring maybe Caeda and Clair, but they do pretty well even without the refine, so I dunno). With the proper setup, this actually let him muscle through several Effies, allowing me to boost my score to 3730. The trade-off for this is that M!Grima was really god damn scary for him. Had a really close encounter against a Bold Fighter one where Alfonse was left with 3 HP. The only reason he survived was because Nowi was sitting beside him with a B support and Drive Res 2 (and Draug would have also died, while Sheena could have tanked him, but done jack all for damage and left me with little progress in beating him).

Would definitely recommend the double Brazen Atk/Def 3 and Def refine for general Arena. The other set would be better for Tempest and AA, though.

[Astellius]

This is beautiful. I happened across this team when I was handing out Arena wins with my extra crests:

Spoiler

And, yes, they are all +10.

Also, I finished up my Arena Assault run for the week... it was such a pain. Almost every team ran a Legendary Lucina or a dancer. Future Vision definitely gave me some trouble, and I always hate facing dancers. My score was 5,189, which is a new high for me.

[wizzard of soz]

2 hours ago, Alexmender said:

Annoying. I used Alfonse to kill whatever reds/greens he could but I ended up facing hordes of blues in my matches.

a streamer i watch was joking about how with the new system whales would stack blues on their defense teams to keep down all the F2P's using Alfonse as their bonus ? 

 

is frustrating though how it's pretty luck of the draw unless you have a bonus unit with super coverage. stat-stacking could be good strat, grind SS, give Fury, and with the bonus stats that's +9 total...give 'em the good 'ol outstat...

he'd have 60/34/41/31 statline and with his Brazen refine active 67/34/48/31, plus whatever stat refine you give him. slap on Desperation Brash Assault combo with a 20-24 damage Bonfire and damn. works well with Fury too. but that's way too much investment for myself and probably a lot of people /looks meaningfully at my 3* Alfonse and 4k feathers, no dew

[Hawk King]

Holy shit, I had 2 defense wins before I switched L!Lucina onto my defense team, and I have gotten 5 already with her on it. Future Vision must be getting people.