Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[sdgj1994]

11 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

You have a pretty strong team there. I guess Reinhardt, Hector and VL!Ike are your core team? 

On first glance Micaiah seems to be your nemesis, but vanilla neutral +0 VL!Ike (with QR or QR seal) can tank and counter kill vanilla neutral +10 Micaiah (not +ATK +10 Micaiah though). Myrrh is another thing, Ike would need 2 rounds to kill her, but can't tank her at low health. 

I can see what's causing you trouble. While things changed in my favor (playstyle-wise) because I see less Reinhardts, things became worse for you because Reinhardt kills less things than before and is hindered by trenches. Do you have many merges on him? 

Well, I don’t really have a “core” per se, it’s... whatever works, I guess. But they each cover one of the colours so yeah, it deffo works like that.

My VL!Ike doesn’t have QR, Nowi has the seal and I have no fodder for either. And I’m not pulling at the moment cos I’m waiting for Summer Elise to be rereleased. I spent way too many orbs on the last LH banner and need to start saving up again!

Nope, I don’t generally go for merges. They are usually a last resort for me as I would rather inherit premium skills on other units if I pull a dupe 5*. Like I pulled two Legendary Ephraims and decided to give my Xander Sturdy Stance 2 as a result. But if I ever did get pitybroken by a 5* Rein then yes I would merge rather than inherit Goad Cavalry.

[mampfoid]

10 minutes ago, sdgj1994 said:

Well, I don’t really have a “core” per se, it’s... whatever works, I guess. But they each cover one of the colours so yeah, it deffo works like that.

My VL!Ike doesn’t have QR, Nowi has the seal and I have no fodder for either. And I’m not pulling at the moment cos I’m waiting for Summer Elise to be rereleased. I spent way too many orbs on the last LH banner and need to start saving up again!

Nope, I don’t generally go for merges. They are usually a last resort for me as I would rather inherit premium skills on other units if I pull a dupe 5*. Like I pulled two Legendary Ephraims and decided to give my Xander Sturdy Stance 2 as a result. But if I ever did get pitybroken by a 5* Rein then yes I would merge rather than inherit Goad Cavalry.

If you don't have merges, then it'll be easier to switch out members that don't perform well at the moment. It's difficult to give a general advice, because I don't know what you are generally facing. Personally I don't like to use armors because of their movement restriction and Reinhardt gets scoring penalties because he is a horse mage (and every new change in FEH seems to put him further in disadvantage). It's pretty common to use a 4*+10 Olivia, because her merges boost the score and she makes many situations easier with her dance. 

[sdgj1994]

42 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

If you don't have merges, then it'll be easier to switch out members that don't perform well at the moment. It's difficult to give a general advice, because I don't know what you are generally facing. Personally I don't like to use armors because of their movement restriction and Reinhardt gets scoring penalties because he is a horse mage (and every new change in FEH seems to put him further in disadvantage). It's pretty common to use a 4*+10 Olivia, because her merges boost the score and she makes many situations easier with her dance. 

So I tried a new team of VL!Ike, Shanna, Nowi and NY!Azura and it was going well until the 6th match, when I came up aginst a team consisting of a refined Hinoka, a refined Michalis and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I surrendered and am staying away from Arena for the forseeable future. Remind me not to go back there.

[mampfoid]

5 minutes ago, sdgj1994 said:

So I tried a new team of VL!Ike, Shanna, Nowi and NY!Azura and it was going well until the 6th match, when I came up aginst a team consisting of a refined Hinoka, a refined Michalis and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I surrendered and am staying away from Arena for the forseeable future. Remind me not to go back there.

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Good luck for your next try (whenever). 

[Charmeleonbrah]

4 hours ago, mampfoid said:

I know that feeling well and it occurs to me when arena doesn't want to let me win (happens every 2nd or 3rd week). Somehow I'm meeting less Cavalry teams and less teams with ranged units + dancer. This is helping a lot and made the situation better for me personally. What I don't like is the fast inflation of scores, because I don't want to invest all my resources into merges. I'm curious what IS will do if everybody is running three 5*+10 plus bonus and only highest BST units can enter tier 20. 

Winning against über-armor and dragon teams is pretty fun, but I hope they won't get stronger with the next iteration of powercreep, since winning is becoming a very close thing. For example I met a mono-blue armor emblem today and my Cherche couldn't kill Hardin as fast as usual. Even without his buffs (required baiting), she needed 3 rounds to kill him.

My observation is Tier 20 is basically a semi-exclusive club for whales, more or less the Skull and Bones of mobile games.  I don't whale and probably won't relinquish another ruble to this game, so my "strategy" of making Tier 20 is to heavily merge the dragons summonable at 4-star rarity, as well as merge Effie.

[Vaximillian]

4 minutes ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

I don't whale and probably won't relinquish another ruble to this game

Whoa, another countryman. There are more of us than I’d thought!

[mampfoid]

4 minutes ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

My observation is Tier 20 is basically a semi-exclusive club for whales, more or less the Skull and Bones of mobile games.  I don't whale and probably won't relinquish another ruble to this game, so my "strategy" of making Tier 20 is to heavily merge the dragons summonable at 4-star rarity, as well as merge Effie.

Dragons would have been a good idea (too late for me). It would be a sad thing if only whales and armor-emblem fans would be able in the future to get the biggest rewards from arena. 

[Charmeleonbrah]

7 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Dragons would have been a good idea (too late for me). It would be a sad thing if only whales and armor-emblem fans would be able in the future to get the biggest rewards from arena. 

Adult Tiki and Nowi are readily available, why not go with one of them?  Together, they make quick work of most armor units, like Hector, Winter Tharja, and Black Knight/Zelgius.  With their high HP they can proc Panic Ploy for all the Armor-buffed units as well.

[mampfoid]

3 minutes ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

Adult Tiki and Nowi are readily available, why not go with one of them?  Together, they make quick work of most armor units, like Hector, Winter Tharja, and Black Knight/Zelgius.  With their high HP they can proc Panic Ploy for all the Armor-buffed units as well.

Because I already have a red unit at 5+ and a blue unit at 6+ and I plan to +10 them first.

My Cherche is 4*+10 and sooner or later I'll start a green merged 5* unit. My first idea was Nino, but to get a higher arena scoring than my 4* Cherche, she would have to be at least 5*+7. The big effort to bring her to 5*+10 would let me score only slightly higher. Fae has got higher BST than Cherche, at 5*+5 she could reach the same score as Cherche 4*+10. 

The other thing is: Even if their BST is low, I like to play fliers and I wouldn't give units expensive merges if I don't like to play them (i.e. most armors and some infantry units). 

[Ice Dragon]

6 hours ago, sdgj1994 said:

Anyone else think that the Arena is too forced of a mode? Personally I don’t like it. I never do well there and it’s gotten to a point where I can’t even go past Tier 18 anymore. I try to do well, I get destroyed, I get stressed out and get nowhere. Every time I play in the Arena I think “why did I start doing this again?” Because for me its nothing but a vicious circle and I’d just rather leave it alone, but I can’t when certain things can only be gotten through there...

No one's mentioned it yet, but if your biggest problem is getting a deathless run (or simply clearing all 7 matches), you should prioritize getting a deathless win first, then work on improving your score.

Losing a single unit in one match costs you 60-75 points, whereas reducing your team's equipped skills by 1000 SP only costs you 35 points over the course of the entire run. Needless to say, losing a match entirely costs you at least 600 points at round 7 and obviously more if you lose earlier.

Try de-equipping skills that are not essential to how a unit functions, using first- or second-tier skills instead of third-tier skills, or using units that score lower in general, such as replacing an armor with an infantry that covers the same role.

[Noir]

So outta curiosity, if you have the fodder, would it be worth saccing 3 low bad IV'd Reinhards for their AoE specials, and a bunch of spare Tailtu for that Rally Res/Spd to all units? I tend not to need the movement skills, and AoE specials can do as much damage as regular ones. It would only take Double Lions Alm two dragons to get his special out, which would basically get a free kill on anything. And Tier 20 is just filled with those annoying dragons. 

Just trying to make sure I understand the formula properly. 

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Noir said:

So outta curiosity, if you have the fodder, would it be worth saccing 3 low bad IV'd Reinhards for their AoE specials, and a bunch of spare Tailtu for that Rally Res/Spd to all units? I tend not to need the movement skills, and AoE specials can do as much damage as regular ones. It would only take Double Lions Alm two dragons to get his special out, which would basically get a free kill on anything. And Tier 20 is just filled with those annoying dragons. 

Just trying to make sure I understand the formula properly. 

Every 100 SP adds an average of 0.5 points per match. Using three Blazing Thunders instead of in-combat second-tier Special skills adds an average of 10.5 points over 7 matches. Using Rally Res/Spd over a first-tier Assist is either 0.5 or 1 point per match depending on the SP cost of your other skills (depends on whether or not you hit the next point tier, which is every 100 SP).

The main problems with area Special skills are the fact that they can only activate a maximum of once per turn without dancer support and only on player phase and their long cooldown. Without Heavy Blade or another skill to speed up your Special charge rate, it can be difficult to activate the skill at all in a single Arena match because it would typically require too many rounds of combat with a single unit.

[mampfoid]

13 minutes ago, Noir said:

So outta curiosity, if you have the fodder, would it be worth saccing 3 low bad IV'd Reinhards for their AoE specials, and a bunch of spare Tailtu for that Rally Res/Spd to all units? I tend not to need the movement skills, and AoE specials can do as much damage as regular ones. It would only take Double Lions Alm two dragons to get his special out, which would basically get a free kill on anything. And Tier 20 is just filled with those annoying dragons. 

Just trying to make sure I understand the formula properly. 

Check this out:

 

[Noir]

13 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Every 100 SP adds an average of 0.5 points per match. Using three Blazing Thunders instead of in-combat second-tier Special skills adds an average of 10.5 points over 7 matches. Using Rally Res/Spd over a first-tier Assist is either 0.5 or 1 point per match depending on the SP cost of your other skills (depends on whether or not you hit the next point tier, which is every 100 SP).

The main problems with area Special skills are the fact that they can only activate a maximum of once per turn without dancer support and only on player phase and their long cooldown. Without Heavy Blade or another skill to speed up your Special charge rate, it can be difficult to activate the skill at all in a single Arena match because it would typically require too many rounds of combat with a single unit.

 

11 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Check this out:

 

Thank you both! I think this is still more appropriate here than in there - is it actually going to be worth all this investment? Every arena season I go 19-20-19-20-19-20, and I end up bottom of the 10,001 ~ 20,000 AA one (mostly due to the fact that I always end up having a unit die)

Like, I don't really have an arena core. I have all four legendary heroes, so building cores from there sounds good so I can always get the blessing BST boosts, and some are just naturally good partners, but this does mean I constantly shuffle my team every two weeks or so. 

[Alexmender]

I forgot this isn't Water season so my usual team is scoring a lot less than usual, thankfully this is the chill week so it's not that big of a deal as long as I get a 4001+ score.

Arena Assault is quite finicky, I need to play again with my teams to increase my score because 4946 is pretty low.

[Roflolxp54]

Even Grima couldn’t resist the magic.

[mampfoid]

3 hours ago, Noir said:

 

Thank you both! I think this is still more appropriate here than in there - is it actually going to be worth all this investment? Every arena season I go 19-20-19-20-19-20, and I end up bottom of the 10,001 ~ 20,000 AA one (mostly due to the fact that I always end up having a unit die)

Like, I don't really have an arena core. I have all four legendary heroes, so building cores from there sounds good so I can always get the blessing BST boosts, and some are just naturally good partners, but this does mean I constantly shuffle my team every two weeks or so. 

Tier 19/20 is fine, the difference is only 1k feathers every second week to stay in tier 20 (what I never managed btw.). 

AA could be better, but while it's one of the rare sources of refining stones, the reward differences to higher tiers are not too big. 

The problem is the score inflation. If you don't increase your score with merges constantly, it's very likely you'll have trouble to get into the same tiers in some months. 

[Cute Chao]

4 hours ago, Roflolxp54 said:

Even Grima couldn’t resist the magic.

It's things like this, and the fact scores don't bother me so much as long as I can bounce between 18-19, that keeps Reinhardt and Xander on my core team for the arena xD 

[Tybrosion]

Yeah she did 10 damage thanks to Draconic Aura, but seeing a 0x4 from a Brave Lyn felt so damn good. The Ignis overkill made it even better.

Anyways, just finished a deathless streak and proved I can do so without ToD!Henry. This team I did use (+0 Grima, +1 Soleil, +2 Fjorm, +4 Cordelia) did net a lower score compared to what I had been running with, but still don't have the means to stay in Tier 20 after this week anyways so I thought a little experimenting couldn't hurt since ToD!Henry (+0) can't be a part of my core forever if I want to aim to take up permanent residence in Tier 20.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Tybrosion

[Hawk King]

12 hours ago, Noir said:

I end up bottom of the 10,001 ~ 20,000 AA one (mostly due to the fact that I always end up having a unit die)

Level up some 4* units who would be good for counter picks. Arthur is great for taking out lances etc...

the more options you have the easier the later matches will be.

[pullofthebush]

I stayed in Tier 20 for the first time! This week I went for 5048 points again, hope it'll be enough.

I still have to do my AA run, but it got a bit harder for me lately. I guess I'm just unlucky with my matches and often I'm afraid to send out my most powerful units in case I still need them later... Also this week is annoying with so many Nowis running rampage in AA and I only have so many units that can check her even though I'm blessed with both Julia and Deirdre and +ATK Alm. But recently I found out that even an unbuilt W!Lissa is a good check against Nowi.

[mampfoid]

6 minutes ago, pullofthebush said:

I stayed in Tier 20 for the first time! This week I went for 5048 points again, hope it'll be enough.

Congratulations! I hope I'll arrive at that point too, but the pace is high. 

7 minutes ago, pullofthebush said:

Also this week is annoying with so many Nowis running rampage in AA and I only have so many units that can check her even though I'm blessed with both Julia and Deirdre and +ATK Alm. But recently I found out that even an unbuilt W!Lissa is a good check against Nowi.

I found Anna very useful against Nowis. Fae, Hawkeye, Titania and both green Azuras work as well. Didn't try Sheena yet, I guess she needs some skills. Myrrh usually has some other work to do. 

[Hawk King]

Does anyone else not run a green unit in their main Arena team? The only time I do is if it is a bonus unit that I have. Running +10 Nowi, Lukas and Caeda with +8 Ike and I am doing just fine.

[Hilda]

1 hour ago, Hawk King said:

Does anyone else not run a green unit in their main Arena team? The only time I do is if it is a bonus unit that I have. Running +10 Nowi, Lukas and Caeda with +8 Ike and I am doing just fine.

mmm depends allways have at least one green unit (Nowi and Rein and others) usually i ran redless but lately i have been incorporating 1 red unit at least or bride Lyn to deal with Grima Myrrh and double wrath Hector

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

6 hours ago, Hawk King said:

Does anyone else not run a green unit in their main Arena team? The only time I do is if it is a bonus unit that I have. Running +10 Nowi, Lukas and Caeda with +8 Ike and I am doing just fine.

Mostly because my units merge are slanted on Reds yeah