MaskedAmpharos

Officially hit 90k :D Progress is slow since I'm not running a bonus hero anymore, but since all the ones I own have reached max HM, I didn't want to waste all the potential HM gains. I'm still getting 504 points per run without a bonus hero though, so I shouldn't have any issues getting 100k before the end.

Nice, that's exciting! Though...the downside to all this is the increased probability of Defense teams running full horse emblem too... There are going to be a lot of horses this week, huh?

Camus bonus season is upon us! I can't wait to use my full cavalry team in Arena. Next two weeks are gonna be fun >:D

That's basically me but with reds. I've been searching for Hinata for so long (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

That's understandable. You can't get Desperation 3 from Navarre unless he's 5* anyways, so you may as well wait for a Shanna.

Outside of favoritism or collection purposes (both of which are perfectly legitimate reasons), there's really no reason to keep Navarre. Athena does everything Navarre can do better.

9 times out of 10, you can use the optimal builds for a character without having the "optimal" IVs. A neutral Athena runs the same set as a +Atk or +Spd Athena just fine, only missing out on a few more ORKOs but ultimately doing the same thing. As for what that build is: her base kit is already really good. The main thing I would add is giving her Desperation on her B-slot and Life and Death (Fury and Swift Sparrow also work well here) for her A-slot, and she's pretty much set as a better Karel. Assist and C skills are flexible and largely based on player preference. For her Assist, I'd give her either a positioning assist (like Reposition) or Ardent Sacrifice to get her into Desperation range. Team-oriented Hone/Fortify/Spur skills are generally preferred for the C slot, but if you want a skill that benefits her more directly, you can give her Threaten Def.

The problem isn't so much getting into Tier 20 but staying in there. Getting into 20 isn't as bad because most of the whales are already in 20, so you aren't competing with them to get in. But once you're in 20, you're actively competing with all of the whales, which makes not getting knocked back out way harder than just getting in. I don't anticipate ever getting enough merges to actively compete, so I'll probably spend the rest of my days bouncing back between 19 and 20.

If last week is any indication, 4850 (or even a score in the 4830s) is enough to get you into Tier 20.

There's a difference between being politically correct and simply not being a dick.

Luna of Dragonblood

Yeah sorry, I meant Brave Axe. If you already have a +Atk Raven then I suppose there's no real point in promoting Legion outside of favoritism :/ He's there for the people that don't have +Atk Raven, but you seem to be covered.

He has a better offensive spread than regular Cordelia (36/35 to her 35/35), so he actually runs a quad set like her (Brave Bow + Life and Death + Desperation) to great success, and it's what I personally consider his best offensive set.

It's hard to say until her stats and skills are confirmed, but if the datamining is to accurate, then I would say "it depends". If the datamining is to be believed, her offensive stats are 31/34, which makes her largely inferior to other offensive Brave Bow users like Cordelia (35/35) and Takumi (32/33). Those other Brave Bow users also have a chance of being pulled at +Atk, which widens the gap since Clarisse can only be neutral. You can try to build a quad set on her like with Setsuna, but I personally would not recommend it since multiple other archers do the job better. However, (again if datamining is accurate), she has a different niche from those other archers. Her signature bow appears to have the same effect as F!Corrin's Dark Breath, which debuffs enemy attack and speed in an AoE around her target. This leads me to believe that her role is meant to be a support unit rather than a purely offensive one. Her specialty would be to debuff enemies from the sidelines with her bow (possibly in tandem with Poison Strike or a Seal skill and Savage Blow) to set up for the rest of your team to come in and sweep. This could also be good if you build your team around it, but it's a different play style. tldr - Hard to say without skill/stat confirmation, but if datamining is accurate, she's a supportive debuffer rather than an offensive nuke. Her niche is different from Setsuna's, which makes it hard to compare the two directly.

I'm sure he's a cool guy, but I've never talked to him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

B!Cordelia and Nino make a pretty good pair, so I would suggest those two along with Olivia. I'm admittedly less sure about the fourth slot, so you could try rotating between Takumi, B!Caeda, and Tharja (switch out every few hours or so tomorrow) and see what sticks. I don't claim to be an expert or anything, so of course the floor is open for other people to chime in with their thoughts.

Of those options I'd probably say Takumi. Xander's also a decent option. Definitely not Lukas though. Lukas isn't a bad unit, by any means, but he's a lot more effective when controlled by a player on offense and is easy to take advantage of when the AI controls him on defense.

@Ice Dragon I can't believe I'm friends with T20 Rank 1 What an honor. Seriously though, that's really impressive! Congrats :D

It's hard to give good advice for Defense since we can't actually see what the AI is doing, but here are some general pointers: 1) Dancers I cannot express how many times an enemy dancer has screwed me over in Arena. It's difficult to always account for the extra range they give units, especially dangerous ones like Reinhardt or Kagero that are difficult to bait and tank unless you happen to have a counter unit, and the added mobility helps you corner enemies a lot faster. Having a dancer on your Arena defense team is a pretty generally good way to increase the number of wins you get. 2) Leroy Jenkins You need to have a different mindset when building your defense team than offense. On offense, you lose points for every unit that dies, so you want to be careful and avoid taking needless risks. However, on defense it's a different story. Since you don't lose any points for unit deaths, all you care about is making sure one of your opponents dies no matter what (this is especially true in higher tiers of Arena where players automatically surrender the match if they lose even a single unit). As such, you generally want to forego defense and caution for glass cannon offense. You want units to rush the enemy down and take down a unit no matter the cost. Added mobility also helps with this, which is why Reinhardt is an ideal defense unit, being a highly mobile, high damage glass cannon. It doesn't matter if he dies right after charging in as long as he takes someone out first (or severely weakens them for one of your other units to finish off). 3) Color stacking Going off of the previous point, the goal of your Arena Defense team should not be to survive or to beat as many teams as possible. All you need is to take down that one team to get your points for the season. As such, a popular tactic is to fill your team with primarily one color. If you stack all blues, your team will probably get decimated by a single Hector. But you don't care about that because eventually a team will come by with one or two reds that simply cannot handle four of your blues rushing them all at once. 4) General pointers Ranged units are usually more effective than melee units on defense Mobility is king. Don't ever put armored units on your Defense team because by the time they join the fight, the rest of your Defense team will be dead. You want to rush the opponent down as quickly as possible, which is also partially why all-cavalry teams are so popular on defense Wings of Mercy is another skill that often catches opponents off guard and is all-around great on Defense Units that can counter at all ranges (like Takumi or Camus) are great for Defense (anywhere really but especially defense) since no matter your opponent is going to be taking damage from them. Vantage on these types of units is extra great for Defense (on offense I prefer Quick Riposte for these units though, but the AI on a Defense team has trouble taking full advantage of that) I'm sure I've forgotten to mention some stuff, but other forum regulars are welcome to fill in the gaps. Also, if it helps at all, my current defense team is Ryoma, Sharena, Ninian, and Reinhardt, which generally gives me 5-10 (sometimes 10-20 if I'm lucky) defense wins per season. Blue stacking + dancer is great for Defense, and Ryoma is there to make sure a single Hector or Nino can't run through my entire team. Tbh though I think a large number of my wins is due to the Reinhardt + dancer combo alone. Sharena is filler, really, since I needed a bonus character in my defense team. Next week, I intend to run my cavalry team of Camus, Cecilia, Reinhardt, and Xander and see how that works. tldr - Dancers + color-stacking + balls-to-the-walls offense = defense wins. Ranged + high mobility helps.

I mean I already beat the GHB on all difficulties, so it wouldn't be for that. Truth be told, I just like Hana and was considering building a Brave Sword Hana for a while anyways. This is just convincing me even more is all. Still waiting to pull a +Atk Hana though.

Apparently I need to get myself a Hana Infernal GHB with all melee units

Does the forum have a consensus on useful units? Anyways, I'm just grasping at straws. I really have no idea.

Maybe because they thought it would be difficult to choose a handful of units that would be helpful because of the huge variety of units compared to other GHBs (because of all the reinforcements)? Though I'm not sure that's a good enough reason since Laslow and his Axebreaker would definitely have been useful against the horde of Legions.

Anyone in Tier 20 have a general idea of what the cutoff for staying in Tier 20 is? I'm not sure it's possible with my team's merge levels, even if I fish for points, so I wanted some idea of the cutoff to know if I should try for it or just take it easy this season and drop back to 19.

There's absolutely no reason to run Quick Riposte on Reinhardt since you never want him to be getting hit on enemy phase in the first place. Lancebreaker is the most commonly run B-slot on Reinhardt for extra coverage, but Wings of Mercy is also an option for mobility. Bride Cordelia is an absolutely terrifying ranged unit with a better matchup spread than Reinhardt. I don't think she's going anywhere lol