Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[daisy jane]

Holy Cow!
Or should I say HOLY CROWN?!

my very first crown! It was my goal that by new years I'd get at least one. I was extremely proud of myself this week! my first run using my Arena Core of  Soleil/Myrrh/Est/Halloween Hector, i managed to do a deathless run, but missed 3 kills by hector (because i wanted to ensure the deathless run vs. the perfect run). Myrrh was running Repo/Sol to boot, and it was good enough to be in tier 21 for a few days, but then i demoted to 20, and that was that. I was talking with @Maaka and @Diovani Bressan and they were both convinced that this would be the week i could do the impossible (for me) and get my crown. We made a few tweaks to my team - Myrrh got a duel rally and Aether(at the cost of 20K feathers since i didn't want to kill my OG Ike Book for aether in case i need heavy blade for someone, RIP Promotion for Ares), swapping Est for Fae (My little chicken!) and upgrading Guidance to full power (which came in so handy for every single match so that was 150 coins not wasted, - not to mention I really would like a Ryoma so Myrrh has it permanently and I can change her SS!). 

@Johann and @Tree i'm tagging you guys because this time last year, when i was just so overwhelmed in everything and had no idea what to do for arena you guys really took the time to get me started. I honestly thought it would take me ages for me to even be passible at this so to achieve this within a year is just so incredible. thanks so much for helping me out when i was just a FehBaby!
 

@Anacybele - i'm tagging you because I know that you are struggling with some aspects, but i just wanted to let you know that i didn't really use armours (I used Hector yes but that was the bonus unit). Had i not had him, I was prepared to do a 4*x10 Fred (which i was told would have actually given me a bit more wiggle room in terms of scoring.  and I know yours is probably 5*+10). I used a mixed of Infantry and Fliers with no Duels and the weeks of practicing using rallies instead of using movement skills because i knew i had to to get to 20-21 eventually. I'm only saying this because i truly do want you to get to a point that you can just do things with after a few tries, win more than you struggle. I struggle a lot but i really do keep at it, and ask for advice, and really work with the people helping me out. I do make sacrifices resource wise (fodder, dew, feathers what not) because in the long run it will help out. I honestly doubt i'll ever win a crown again unless Fae/Est/Soleil (or one of the other 3-4 pool i'm building) happens to be a bonus unit and i just get lucky  - (for example I only hit one Julia so running 2 dragons + a bonus unit with meh res meant a lot of fingers crossed!)

So i hope you can take advantage of Freddy-bonus week if you hadn't last week, and I know that eventually you'll do great. i truly do. and we will be able to help you. it will come. i promise. 

@Landmaster, @mcsilas, @Vicious Sal taah. daaaaaahhhh. 

(yeah, honestly. i'm not gonna hold my breath this is gonna be a constant thing. but i'm glad that's one thing scratched off my to-do list. next up: Silver throne in AR!)

[Anacybele]

9 minutes ago, daisy jane said:

i'm tagging you because I know that you are struggling with some aspects, but i just wanted to let you know that i didn't really use armours (I used Hector yes but that was the bonus unit). Had i not had him, I was prepared to do a 4*x10 Fred (which i was told would have actually given me a bit more wiggle room in terms of scoring.  and I know yours is probably 5*+10). I used a mixed of Infantry and Fliers with no Duels and the weeks of practicing using rallies instead of using movement skills because i knew i had to to get to 20-21 eventually. I'm only saying this because i truly do want you to get to a point that you can just do things with after a few tries, win more than you struggle. I struggle a lot but i really do keep at it, and ask for advice, and really work with the people helping me out. I do make sacrifices resource wise (fodder, dew, feathers what not) because in the long run it will help out. I honestly doubt i'll ever win a crown again unless Fae/Est/Soleil (or one of the other 3-4 pool i'm building) happens to be a bonus unit and i just get lucky  - (for example I only hit one Julia so running 2 dragons + a bonus unit with meh res meant a lot of fingers crossed!)

I'm not struggling to win in the arena. I just don't use units or skills that will score THAT high and I'm fine with that. I'm satisfied with going between tier 19 and 20 (with an occasional drop to 18). Crowns don't do anything except look pretty in your inventory and all anyway.

But congrats on your crown!

[Maaka]

@daisy jane Congrats!!! Glad the score held up! Now that you have gotten it once, that means you can get it again, so I hope you have a good bonus unit for the next season, or I might make you waste some more feathers.

[Diovani Bressan]

@daisy jane Congrats Daisy!!! I knew you was able to do it!

That crown looking pretty on you inventory is to show you and anyone else that you can do something that not everyone can! And I am sure that this will not be your first crown!

[XRay]

@daisy jane Nice! Crowns are fun bragging rights. I personally aim for deathless runs too since going for perfect runs is impossible for Anna, or it takes too much fishing with Sharena and Alfonse. As long as I get like 75% of the kills with Anna or 90% of kills with Sharena and Alfonse, I am content with the run.

[BoaFerox]

@daisy jane Congratulations! That's a great achievement. I lurked on this forum for a long time, and I actually remember reading posts with you learning how the arena worked last year, so it's really cool to see you reach the top now!

I managed to get back into tier 21 this week using Halloween Dozla as my bonus unit. I didn't give him any premium fodder or anything, but it was pretty fun to use him considering how high his stats got with double Fury 3 and bonus stats. He slayed a lot of Halloween Hectors, despite the effective damage in Hector's weapon.

[mcsilas]

@daisy jane Oooh congrats! I'm jealous of that extra orb lol, the maps I faced were too annoying last week and I was just trying not to drop to Tier 17 lol. Great result, enjoy it!

[daisy jane]

thanks everyone! 🙂  yeah the crown might not do anything but look pretty but i just think it's a sense of accomplishment of what i am able to do and that i grew (and am growing in the game). I'm happy with just maintaining, but now when i see my crown it shows i was able to do the #1 challenge. (same with AR it was such an accomplishment to get to tier 21. and when i get my chairs it just shows that i'm able to do really well, not just be content with being 'okay'. it's fine to be okay for every day stuff but i like to be able to challenge myself. 
 

thanks guys again!

[Usana]

@daisy jane Congrats!

I ran my 4*+10 Freddy, but he didn't do too hot. He kept missing KO's. So even if Hector may be less points, he may have made it easier to get bonus kills. That said mine is more geared for defense QR killing, so missing kills on green mages(NIno and Soren kept being able to survive with less than 10 HP) isn't super surprising. With his refined weapon and deathblow in the A he could have secured most of the kills mine was missing, but that isn't how mine is built.

@mcsilas Yeah a bunch of the maps were just awful for poor Freddy. I suspect he may have performed better for me with a different set of maps.

[Landmaster]

23 hours ago, daisy jane said:

Holy Cow!
Or should I say HOLY CROWN?!

 

Wooo congrats!!! Silver Throne will be achieved before you know it

 

[Humanoid]

Picked up my second crown, and my first in over a year on the back of Leif trivialising maximum bonus points. It was a close run thing though, I smashed my personal best score by 20+ to get to 3758, but that was within 50 ranks of the cut-off for promotion.

I don't expect it to happen again anytime soon as T21 for me essentially relies on being lucky enough to pull multiples of a given week's hot new unit, but once a year is fine by me.

[Ice Dragon]

Having to do both Arena and Arena Assault each week is getting really tiring. I wish they'd get rid of regular Arena or at least alternate between the modes each week.

I've gotten to the point where I no longer care about getting top 1,000 in Arena Assault because it's so goddamn tiring.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Having to do both Arena and Arena Assault each week is getting really tiring. I wish they'd get rid of regular Arena or at least alternate between the modes each week.

I've gotten to the point where I no longer care about getting top 1,000 in Arena Assault because it's so goddamn tiring.

I find doing Coliseum stuff on the first day of the week instead of the last day to be a lot more bearable since there is less time pressure.

[Ice Dragon]

12 minutes ago, XRay said:

I find doing Coliseum stuff on the first day of the week instead of the last day to be a lot more bearable since there is less time pressure.

Time pressure has never been an issue. Tedious things are tedious regardless of when you do them.

[daisy jane]

Ooooh I got my second Crown ever! yay me!
this one is more meaningful because i did this one all on my own! I dunno if i'm going to get back here again but knowing that i was able to do this myself is soo awesome I just feel that i've grown!

[XRay]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Time pressure has never been an issue. Tedious things are tedious regardless of when you do them.

I do not think it is that bad. Arena is pretty easy with the Askr Trio if they are bonus units; I set Anna and Sharena up as supertanks, and Alfonse as a Player Phase unit. For Arena Assault, winning the first battle is usually what takes me the most time since I have to fish for an easy team, but Teams 2 to 7 go by pretty fast.

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, XRay said:

I do not think it is that bad.

Of course it isn't that bad if you're not going for top ranking rewards.

[Maaka]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Having to do both Arena and Arena Assault each week is getting really tiring. I wish they'd get rid of regular Arena or at least alternate between the modes each week.

I've gotten to the point where I no longer care about getting top 1,000 in Arena Assault because it's so goddamn tiring.

I see people saying this a lot, but I really hope it never happens. Alternating or no arena means less rewards, which is super important for us poor f2p players, and less stuff to do. Aside from AR/AA/Arena, there is so little "new" content in the game now. I wouldn't have anything to do if they remove one of them. Of course I don't play any other mobile games, so I probably have more time for feh than you, but an occasional 5 minute map for new content every couple days is nowhere near enough for me. I suppose there is a ton of content for new players, but those of us who have played pretty seriously since launch likely have nothing to do aside from weekly stuff.

[XRay]

24 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Of course it isn't that bad if you're not going for top ranking rewards.

Maybe Arena would be tedious in that case if you need to fish to stay in Tier 21, but Arena Assault should still be pretty quick since you can use performance build units against scoring build units from Team 2 onwards.

[Azuni]

It was the first tedious stay-in-T21 week in many months for me, costing a decent chunk of time and over 60 crests as opposed to 5-15 crests with a smooth single run-and-done.
I'd attribute it mostly to the new units not being very Alfonse-friendly (Duo Ephraim among other things) and it being water season (LAzuras and LLeifs galore to dodge). Most weeks are not tedious at all though.

AA some weeks I get lazy and just do one run and leave it, which means top3k at best unless I got good rng throughout the chain with no lowball teams of 748-750 showing up.

If they were to take any steps to make the weekly game modes less tedious, I'd rather they leave the Arena modes how they are, and instead add a triple/quad lift option to shave more time off spent in AR instead.

[Ice Dragon]

48 minutes ago, Maaka said:

I see people saying this a lot, but I really hope it never happens. Alternating or no arena means less rewards, which is super important for us poor f2p players, and less stuff to do. Aside from AR/AA/Arena, there is so little "new" content in the game now. I wouldn't have anything to do if they remove one of them. Of course I don't play any other mobile games, so I probably have more time for feh than you, but an occasional 5 minute map for new content every couple days is nowhere near enough for me. I suppose there is a ton of content for new players, but those of us who have played pretty seriously since launch likely have nothing to do aside from weekly stuff.

No, they could simply roll up all of the rewards together into the one mode the same way they lumped the daily Colosseum quest rewards together into the weekly quest rewards.

Or if they alternate weeks, then they can just double the rewards for each mode to make up for the mode not existing the other half of the time.

 

42 minutes ago, XRay said:

Maybe Arena would be tedious in that case if you need to fish to stay in Tier 21, but Arena Assault should still be pretty quick since you can use performance build units against scoring build units from Team 2 onwards.

Doing what you're doing while going for ranking is strictly more tedious than doing what I'm doing while going for ranking.

I already don't have to sacrifice performance to get a good score, so using the Askr trio tanks both my performance and my scoring.

 

The main issue with Arena is fishing for score and weeks with poor bonus unit pools. This week I had Gunnthra as my bonus unit, and she's neither great for scoring (meaning I need to fish more) nor great at not dying to counterattacks (meaning I need to spend more time reading the AI's next moves to bait them into getting hit by Surtr's AoE).

The main issue with Arena Assault is simply the fact that I don't build a large number of dedicated counters. My units lean more towards general use, so I don't have piles upon piles of "free win" units.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[XRay]

18 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The main issue with Arena Assault is simply the fact that I don't build a large number of dedicated counters. My units lean more towards general use, so I don't have piles upon piles of "free win" units.

You do not need lots of dedicated counters. I use 1 Dancers/Singer and 1 Firesweeper for each team from Team 2 onwards, and the other two slots are either additional Dancers/Singers or whatever units that has color advantage against the most threatening enemy.

You do not need Firesweep archers either, as staff users should work, although they are bit harder to use since they do not have Reposition.

Edited November 26, 2019 by XRay

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, XRay said:

You do not need lots of dedicated counters. I use 1 Dancers/Singer and 1 Firesweeper for each team from Team 2 onwards, and the other two slots are either additional Dancers/Singers or whatever units that has color advantage against the most threatening enemy.

You do not need Firesweep archers either, as staff users should work, although they are bit harder to use since they do not have Reposition.

Firesweepers do squat against Azura-based teams, and about half of the teams I face on Water weeks have Azura in them. Staves also do squat without both Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff (and sometimes do squat regardless), and the lack of Reposition means you can't run Pain against most teams.

So I still have the issue that I don't have enough dedicated counters, even if you count Firesweepers as dedicated counters. Firesweep Bow, Wrathful Staff, and Dazzling Staff don't grow on trees.

[XRay]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Firesweepers do squat against Azura-based teams, and about half of the teams I face on Water weeks have Azura in them. Staves also do squat without both Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff (and sometimes do squat regardless), and the lack of Reposition means you can't run Pain against most teams.

So I still have the issue that I don't have enough dedicated counters, even if you count Firesweepers as dedicated counters. Firesweep Bow, Wrathful Staff, and Dazzling Staff don't grow on trees.

I send a unit to bait Azura: Vallite Songstress, and she is baitable on most maps. I usually use a nuke instead of a tank to bait VS!Azura to make sure she will deal damage instead of Singing, and she usually dies from my nukes' counterattacks.

While Firesweep Bow is expensive, I think Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff are more common. A lot of 5* exclusive staff users lately come with Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff combo straight out the box. Firesweep Bow should also be easier to acquire now assuming the revival Foci are a permanent thing, so players have a predictable schedule they can rely on to plan out their Orb budget.

[Ice Dragon]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

I send a unit to bait Azura: Vallite Songstress, and she is baitable on most maps. I usually use a nuke instead of a tank to bait VS!Azura to make sure she will deal damage instead of Singing, and she usually dies from my nukes' counterattacks.

While Firesweep Bow is expensive, I think Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff are more common. A lot of 5* exclusive staff users lately come with Dazzling Staff and Wrathful Staff combo straight out the box. Firesweep Bow should also be easier to acquire now assuming the revival Foci are a permanent thing, so players have a predictable schedule they can rely on to plan out their Orb budget.

Azura is unfortunately not trivial for me to bait for 2 reasons. (1) I lack units that I can use to bait her. Much of what I have either takes too little damage to trigger an attack or takes too much damage (+10 Legendary Azura [+Spd] happens to have 45 Spd before passive skills and buffs). Most of my fully built units are either dedicated tanks or glass cannons, after all. (2) I don't know what enemy teams are like for you, but the Azuras I face are often on a team with Ryoma or Leif (and on Water-Earth weeks, Alm and/or Julia). It is not safe to bait Azura in those team compositions, and if you fail to bait her on the first turn, she tends to hide in the back where you can no longer bait her.

FIresweep Bow is on a unit that is no longer in the standard summoning pool, and Faye still needs to be merged.

Dazzling Staff is only on Maribelle and Silque. Maribelle has not been on a banner in over a year and also needs to be merged. Silque is brand new and therefore also needs to be merged.

Wrathful Staff is only on Veronica and Camilla. Both of them still need to be merged. I have only 2 spare copies of Genny.

I currently do not have the budget to bother with any banners that are not for new characters, so Faye and Genny are not feasible targets for me. And don't even bother mentioning using seasonals for fodder.

And this still doesn't solve the fact that most staff users have Atk stats that are too low to be useful. Elise gets away with the fact that she's one of my few +10 staff units, is one of my few +Atk staff units, is one of the few staff units I have with Attack +3 on her build instead of Speed +3, and can receive Hone Cavalry buffs.