Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Is doing well in Arena really worth it at a certain point?

As worth it as any other achievement in any other game. If you care about the achievement, then yes. If you don't, then no.

[Junkhead]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As worth it as any other achievement in any other game. If you care about the achievement, then yes. If you don't, then no.

So nothing to say in terms of actual currency gains?

[Ice Dragon]

Just now, Junkhead said:

So nothing to say in terms of actual currency gains?

You get more feathers. You get more orbs. But if you had to spend feathers or orbs you wouldn't have otherwise spent to get up there, it takes time to break even on the investment.

I personally still see it more as bragging rights than anything else right now.

[Humanoid]

Used to be that T19.5 required minimal investment and was therefore a clear advantage in terms of feather income vs expenditure. Now though, I no longer think that's the case. I've only just recently returned to that level thanks to HM farming, and in order to recoup the feather cost, it would take several *years* at least. So yeah, from that point of view, it is an absolute false economy.

It's a pretty basic calculation. T18.5 is 1900 feathers a week on average (alternating between 2000 and 1800). T19.5 is 2500 feathers on average. Over the course of a year, that's barely over 30000 extra feathers from arena. T18.5 requires no merges. Therefore if T19.5 requires more than 1.5 merges to achieve, you won't pay back the feathers over the course of a whole year. It requires a hell of a lot more merges than that, and realistically, FEH will die before you can recoup the costs.

[Junkhead]

12 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You get more feathers. You get more orbs. But if you had to spend feathers or orbs you wouldn't have otherwise spent to get up there, it takes time to break even on the investment.

I personally still see it more as bragging rights than anything else right now.

I would understand competitiveness, which is not something I see as "bragging rights" (unless sarcasm). It legit feels more satisfying when your characters beat competent threats.

3 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Used to be that T19.5 required minimal investment and was therefore a clear advantage in terms of feather income vs expenditure. Now though, I no longer think that's the case. I've only just recently returned to that level thanks to HM farming, and in order to recoup the feather cost, it would take several *years* at least. So yeah, from that point of view, it is an absolute false economy.

It's a pretty basic calculation. T18.5 is 1900 feathers a week on average (alternating between 2000 and 1800). T19.5 is 2500 feathers on average. Over the course of a year, that's barely over 30000 extra feathers from arena. T18.5 requires no merges. Therefore if T19.5 requires more than 1.5 merges to achieve, you won't pay back the feathers over the course of a whole year.

I barely made into T20 this week with a +7 CC Bonus Unit Henry, two +3s (one being girl Grima) and a 5+5*-equivalent in Florina (4*+10). And that was after I gave everyone dual Rallies, Charlotte with double Spurs+Wrath, girl Grima's Prf, etc.

3 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

It requires a hell of a lot more merges than that, and realistically, FEH will die before you can recoup the costs.

Don't say such dumb things.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

I would understand competitiveness, which is not something I see as "bragging rights" (unless sarcasm). It legit feels more satisfying when your characters beat competent threats.

"Bragging rights" is anything you can brag about. A crown over Feh's head is something you can brag about. Your definition of satisfaction may not the the same as others' definitions of satisfaction.

 

4 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Don't say such dumb things.

30,000 feathers is one and a half promotions over the course of a year. It costs 220,000 to make a +10 merge with promotions alone if you don't count skills, which will therefore take over 7 years. It would take 29 years to recoup the costs of making a whole team through promotions alone if you don't count skills still.

According to Extra Credits, the typical periodically updating game has a planned expected lifespan of 5 years.

[Alexmender]

Finished my AA run with a score of 5,140. Non Water weeks suck. I found at least 3 teams with nothing but blues (with at least 2 of them having TA or Sapphire Lance), it's obvious people are going for destroying everyone trying to use Alfonse. More proof that the bonus unit change was a mistake. Luckily that kind of stuff doesn't matter in AA so they were free wins for me.

[Vaximillian]

18 hours ago, Usana said:

Well my defense win is kind of poor. 290 something. I guess the person played through even after losing a unit to me?

Might have been arena assault. There are no bonus units in arena assault and thus no doubling of the defence score.

[Humanoid]

4 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Might have been arena assault. There are no bonus units in arena assault and thus no doubling of the defence score.

Until recently I thought so too, but following this conversation from a few pages earlier seems to indicate this is not the case.

[Vaximillian]

2 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Until recently I thought so too, but following this conversation from a few pages earlier seems to indicate this is not the case.

Huh. When was it changed?

[Humanoid]

6 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Huh. When was it changed?

I have no idea, all I have is just the anecdotal evidence from that conversation. The system for defense scoring is so arcane that the wiki openly admits it has no idea how it's calculated, and I don't remember ever reading the system being changed, either from official or unofficial sources.

Maybe AA defense wins were never halved in the first place, and that the halved points have always come from people attacking you with incomplete teams as mentioned by Azuni a page back. I don't know.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Humanoid

[Stroud]

3 hours ago, Alexmender said:

Finished my AA run with a score of 5,140. Non Water weeks suck. I found at least 3 teams with nothing but blues (with at least 2 of them having TA or Sapphire Lance), it's obvious people are going for destroying everyone trying to use Alfonse.

We could think more positive and just say they just want to help those who have a *4 +10 Frederick.
I regret a bit for not doing a 4* +10 project. At least I can do this with Bartre and Fir.

My Ranking in normal Arena seems to be stable now with 3,726 points. I am rank 1,722/3,458. Almost at the half.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

4 hours ago, Junkhead said:

I would understand competitiveness, which is not something I see as "bragging rights" (unless sarcasm). It legit feels more satisfying when your characters beat competent threats.

Go far enough and you will be fighting stuff that has both the score and the performance. That is, Bold Fighter +10 armours with other fun surprises tacked on. I find taking those down while having to field armours that are comparatively only semi-optimal, all the while feeding as many kills to Alfonse as possible, to be quite satisfying.

[Javi Blizz]

Well, it seems that my defense team of Sapphire Lance Swordbreaker 4* Clive, 5* Lancebreaker QP Moonbow Rein and 5*+1 Ninian, with Alfonse as the bonus unit is working better than my last Rein/B!Lyn/Axura/bonus, since I’ve got a def win! I think I’ll start to do this, 3 units to counter the bonus + the bonus unit

[wizzard of soz]

20 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

As best as I know, the AI should treat Future Vision exactly as it would treat Swap. The difficulty comes from the fact that players are generally not used to needing to predict the usage of mobility Assist skills because Swap, Draw Back, and Reposition are not immediately threatening to the player, but Future Vision is.

It seems like it is. I don't really understand what factors into the AI deciding to swap either. My Corn runs it so when i autobattle TT i see it in action a fair amount, and i can't really find anything...at one point i thought it would definitely Swap when it would remove another ally from enemy range if the Swapper has a better matchup than the Swapee...but i saw instances of this situation where instead Corn just moved behind the ally and sat there smiling uselessly as his teammate died in front of him..

[Humanoid]

19 minutes ago, wizzard of soz said:

It seems like it is. I don't really understand what factors into the AI deciding to swap either. My Corn runs it so when i autobattle TT i see it in action a fair amount, and i can't really find anything...at one point i thought it would definitely Swap when it would remove another ally from enemy range if the Swapper has a better matchup than the Swapee...but i saw instances of this situation where instead Corn just moved behind the ally and sat there smiling uselessly as his teammate died in front of him..

https://old.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/93rhh1/with_the_advent_of_future_vision_here_is_a_quick/

[wizzard of soz]

28 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

https://old.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/93rhh1/with_the_advent_of_future_vision_here_is_a_quick/

Huh..well i guess the situations i encountered the potential Swapee could still move. Good to know, thanks. Should've known the AI wouldn't take matchups into account and just swaps regardless considering how suicidal it is at times ?

[Hawk King]

9 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Maybe AA defense wins were never halved in the first place, and that the halved points have always come from people attacking you with incomplete teams as mentioned by Azuni a page back. I don't know.

Defense wins I get are either full scores in the 600s or half of that in the 300s. I've never seen 1/4 or 3/4 scores so it would appear to be bonus unit based.

13 hours ago, Alexmender said:

I found at least 3 teams with nothing but blues (with at least 2 of them having TA or Sapphire Lance), it's obvious people are going for destroying everyone trying to use Alfonse. More proof that the bonus unit change was a mistake.

I disagree. I think this is a good thing. Allowing players to counter the common bonus unit and keep each other from doing well is good. Like any other developing meta, it forces things to change.

[Humanoid]

Could it be that both the attacker and defender require bonus units for full defense score to be awarded? Hmm.

[Javi Blizz]

So I’ve made a new run now that my Alfonse has double brazen. 3660, a new highscore, but not enough to keep T20 it seems (~6200). However, now I’m even happier to have given Alfonse his Def refine. With bonus stats, he has even survived 5*+10 Hardin (a sudden Galeforce ended with Hardin Bold Fighting my Alfonse, who survived). In some matches he even murdered all the enemy team (2/5 I think). Just, wow. 

Btw, I think I’ll be able to give Masked Marth another merge before this season ends, so who knows if I could improve that score. If only I had dual rally and swordbreaker fodder for Alfonse. Currently running this set:

Fólkvangr/Pivot/Growing Wind

Brazen Atk/Def - Axebreaker - Drive Res

Heavy Blade

 

Also, seeing how Alfonse can even survive Hardin, it seems that I’ll have to work a bit more on the counter defense team ?

 

 

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I would recommend swapping Growing Wind to Blazing Wind (or any Blazing AoE, for that matter). The Atk x1.5 with no regard to WTA is fantastic for getting around Triangle Adept enemies. It basically gives you the power of Bonfire without needing to sacrifice the 100 SP (and isn't any more janky to proc than Growing Wind, anyway).

[Javi Blizz]

17 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I would recommend swapping Growing Wind to Blazing Wind (or any Blazing AoE, for that matter). The Atk x1.5 with no regard to WTA is fantastic for getting around Triangle Adept enemies. It basically gives you the power of Bonfire without needing to sacrifice the 100 SP (and isn't any more janky to proc than Growing Wind, anyway).

I’ll consider it, although I’m happy with the Area covered with Growing since it makes easier to break QR range in the enemies that are not the attacked one

[Humanoid]

Took my max scoring team without thinking into AA. Bloody hell, the merges on the enemy team got way more oppressive than I thought, and the whole run probably took more than twice the usual time, and required the judicious use of all my items.

For all that effort, I ended up obliterating my previous high score by almost 80 points, ending with 5057. Despite that, by last week's thresholds this would just fail to get into the top 10k, and therefore it's all too likely that my extra effort will yield me exactly no extra reward. If that's the case, it'd probably be smarter to dial back and aim for high 4900s like I usually get, since the battles seem significantly easier that way and I'd be able to save my good units like Nino and Nowi for later fights.

There was also an, uhhh... incident where I took an unarmed Celica into a battle. Kinda amazed I survived that one because she was the designated counterpick for a pimped out M Corrin.

 

EDIT: It'd probably help if I handed out some blessings. I probably only got a single-digit number of bonus points from those.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Humanoid

[Hawk King]

So my Arena score of 3751 has me at rank #710. I didn't even have to fish for scores at all and L!Lucina hasn't inherited Aether yet. I was only able to feed her 15 of the 20 kills too. Maybe I will be able to be a permanent member of Tier 21 after all. I thought for sure I would fall out during the first week we all move into it. As it stands there will be ~1100 people who will stay that first week and my current rank of 710 looks promising. Especially after I fully optimize L!Lucina for scoring and fish for high score. With 30% staying in Tier 21, it is basically going to be the new Tier 20 in a few weeks time.

Meanwhile, the Defense wins keep pouring in. I'm starting to think that it isn't just L!Lucina throwing people off. My team has some old meta on it that I think people just stopped preparing for/ looking for. Funnily enough, I didn't even plan on making it a tough defense team. I just quickly built some +10s and slapped them onto a Wind blessing team because I needed to.

[Ice Dragon]

Looks like I can get an Arena offense score of 3,734 with my standard team (feeding I think 10 or 12 kills to Lucina), which puts me at rank 1,515 right now or in the top 9%. It looks like it should be safe to move into Tier 21 next season, but I'll need to make some changes if I want to stay there the week afterwards (like actually optimizing some units or replacing them with higher-scoring units).

I'm so glad Lucina is actually a competent unit.

+10 Mystery Tiki [+Spd, -HP] (Breath of Fog [unique], Reposition, Aether, Distant Counter, Quick Riposte 3, Fortify Dragons, Res Ploy 3)
+10 Nowi [+Atk, -Res] (Lightning Breath+ [Def], Reposition, Aether, Triangle Adept 3, Quick Riposte 3, Fortify Dragons, Distant Def 3)
+10 Fae [+Atk, -Def] (Lightning Breath+ [Def], Reposition, Aether, Triangle Adept 3, Quick Riposte 3, Fortify Dragons, Atk Ploy 3)
+10 Legendary Lucina [+Atk, -Def] (Thogn, Future Vision, Luna, Swift Sparrow 2, Guard 3, Distant Guard 3, Flashing Blade 3)

It looks like I have 7 defense wins so far this season.