Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Ice Dragon]

2 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I have to say, I really don't like the new ranking system.  The demotion cutoffs are way too unforgiving.  I got a deathless streak for a score of 4818 which gives me a rank of 3350, which is way below the 40% cutoff to get bumped down from Tier 18.  It seems that only the biggest of whales have a hope of maintaining anything above Tier 18, which rubs me the wrong way.

It's going to be really cutthroat for the first few weeks, and then the top tiers will start to fill out and it'll be easier to make your way back up. At equilibrium, we're expecting Tier 20 to have the top 2,000 players stay there permanently, but it'll be only about 300 players for the first week that it's reachable.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Oof, I got booted from Tier 15 in the final hours. Well, I didn't do a thing to stop this, so I shouldn't complain.

[Jedrus Lilac]

3 hours ago, Eridras said:

@Jedrus Lilac

I can't read Japanese, but there are dates on this Twitter post. 

Interesting!

Bonus heroes until the 20th. What kind of a season will that be...????

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Ahh, I've been waiting for the two free to play bonus units to include Olivia. Good deal.

[Othin]

23 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's going to be really cutthroat for the first few weeks, and then the top tiers will start to fill out and it'll be easier to make your way back up. At equilibrium, we're expecting Tier 20 to have the top 2,000 players stay there permanently, but it'll be only about 300 players for the first week that it's reachable.

Top 2,000 was based on a lowball estimate of 100k players in the tiering system, since we knew there were enough to fill out the 100k spots in the old system and then some but we didn't know how much more. Based on adding sizes of individual tiers, I believe the actual number is at least 200k, so it should be at least twice as big. So even at the relatively conservative estimates, that's about 4k players staying there permanently while 10k players drop from 20 to 19 each month and get replaced by 10k players rising from 19 to 20 the same month. So while the size of Tier 20 itself should be about 14k (or more) and only 4k of that will stay there every week, there should be 24k players spending at least half their time in Tier 20.

[Roflolxp54]

18 minutes ago, Jedrus Lilac said:

Interesting!

Bonus heroes until the 20th. What kind of a season will that be...????

Yay! I don't need to change either of my offense and defense teams!

[DehNutCase]

5 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I have to say, I really don't like the new ranking system.  The demotion cutoffs are way too unforgiving.  I got a deathless streak for a score of 4818 which gives me a rank of 3350, which is way below the 40% cutoff to get bumped down from Tier 18.  It seems that only the biggest of whales have a hope of maintaining anything above Tier 18, which rubs me the wrong way.

About ~80% of the player pool is below tier 17 right now, I think, so if you wait a few weeks the cutoffs will feel a lot more lenient, as more people come in, not all of whom are try-hards.

[GinRei]

Ugh, rank 12,519 in Tier 17, cutoff for not advancing to Tier 18 is 12,744.  Been steadily losing rank all day.  Just have to hold out and not lose more than 100 ranks an hour now.  This is too close.

[Rezzy]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

About ~80% of the player pool is below tier 17 right now, I think, so if you wait a few weeks the cutoffs will feel a lot more lenient, as more people come in, not all of whom are try-hards.

Yeah, it will be easier, but 60% getting booted from the tier every week is still a bit unforgiving.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Oops, kinda stopped paying attention to my ranking because I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of moving up. And I was right, since in this final hour, a Tier 18 score of 4826 is #3118 when the cut-off is #1867. Things will be more interesting to track again climbing back up from Tier 17.

Managed to snag 16 defense wins this week, the highest of which is still 580. Gonna have to swap Nowi out for Sharena next week (on defense; dropping Xander for Sharena on offense), who isn't nearly as good on defense as offense. But, I don't want to break up the Xander/Rein combo and cutting Nino to give the AI triple melee doesn't strike me as a good idea.

[Rezzy]

I won't be able to run Horse Emblem at all, since there's not even one horse unit that I could train up from the bonus units.  I might leave my Horse Team to get at least one Defense Win before I switch over to my Sharena team, since even if it's not a bonus win, it will be A win.

[eclipse]

I am NOT looking forward to the next two weeks, especially since anyone with a bit of foresight will shove Olivia on their defense teams. ;/

I'm set to move to tier 17, unless I lost 6,000 ranking spots in three hours.

[Othin]

1 minute ago, eclipse said:

I am NOT looking forward to the next two weeks, especially since anyone with a bit of foresight will shove Olivia on their defense teams. ;/

I'm set to move to tier 17, unless I lost 6,000 ranking spots in three hours.

My understanding is that this bonus hero rotation will last for three weeks, actually.

[eclipse]

Just now, Othin said:

My understanding is that this bonus hero rotation will last for three weeks, actually.

This makes it even worse.  Three weeks of AI-controlled dancing teams is not my idea of a good time!

[a bear]

Definitely fucked up. Kept getting single death runs all week, telling myself I'd just get the deathless run in on Monday, no rush.

Fast forward to one hour ago where I just realized I still haven't done it yet. Well haste makes waste, and I kept getting single deaths because of stupid mistakes instead of taking my time. Made it to the last fight in a deathless streak with like three minutes until the cutoff, and finished it in what felt like two.

Apparently not. Game said it was time for maintenance and immediately slammed the door on my face. Pretty sure I would've promoted to Rank 18 with a score of about 4820-ish, but I guess I'm a Deadlord again. Lesson learned I guess, fuck Mondays, where the Garfield gifs at, etc.

[Roflolxp54]

I can easily see Donnel being a popular choice among whales for the next Arena season; out of all of the bonus heroes, Donnel has the highest BST (162 BST; 163 BST if +Res). With a small loan of XXXX currency, he will make Arena great again.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Roflolxp54

[GinRei]

12 minutes ago, a bear said:

Apparently not. Game said it was time for maintenance and immediately slammed the door on my face. Pretty sure I would've promoted to Rank 18 with a score of about 4820-ish, but I guess I'm a Deadlord again. Lesson learned I guess, fuck Mondays, where the Garfield gifs at, etc.

While it probably won't make you feel better, you definitely would have made it to Tier 18 if in the 4800s.  I'm at like 4766 or something and (last I checked about 20min before the maintenance) was barely in the promotion area.

[Rafiel's Aria]

Nope. Just as I thought. No defense wins. Oh well. I just have to figure out how to troll the Arena a little bit more. I may run Titania, Ursula, Xander, and Olivia for next season or I may mix it up and try Mage Emblem plus dancer. Or I could give Sharena another shot and build a team around her. I have the feathers to promote her to 4 stars finally as well as a build I want to try. 

I'll just have to see how much effort I'm willing to put in to this week. XD

[Dual Dragons]

Looks like Olivia or Sharena will be my bonus coming up.

Five minutes before Arena closed, I was at rank 11,505 in tier 17 with offense 4,770. Considering how close a score it was just to advance, I'll probably be moving down when I enter tier 18. I think it'll be fine, though. The Orb reward is minor and I'm not looking for Feathers currently.

[Fei Mao]

@MrSmokestack Thanks, unfortunately I dropped to the 18,000's so I"m getting demoted but it's w/e, good luck in T18.

 

[Roflolxp54]

Results:

Offense score: 4782 (2500 feathers)

Defense score: 572 (900 feathers)

Tier rewards: 1800 feathers + 4 orbs + promotion into tier 18.

[MrSmokestack]

@Fei Mao Sorry to hear that. On the bright side, you'll more than likely end up back in T17 And I'll be demoted from 18 because of how the system works

[Kiran]

Looks like I'm stuck in tier 17. Didn't get a defense win either....oh well. I now have enough feathers to promote Anna. That leaves Alfonse the only one left. I'll definitively have enough feathers for him before his season rolls around. Hopefully Olivia being a bonus unit will net me some wins this time around. Also it seems that the next arena set is going to last 3 weeks instead of the usual 2. Not sure how I feel about that. 

[DLNarshen]

Season 17 (1.3.0 S3) Results:

Score: 4,719
Defense: 568
Rank: Tier 16 --> 17

Narcian was the first unit I ever promoted to 5*, and since pulling Hinoka in the Lloyd banner I finally have a good excuse to start using him more.  It goes without saying that this team is an unoptimized mess, with little real synergy outside of the two fliers combined with the lack of a decent bonus unit.  Thankfully a strong team was not necessary for Tier 16 this week, and I’ll be moving back up despite incurring one death in this run.  Try as I might, I simply couldn't put together a deathless streak this time around, and there was little pressure to burn crests to force it.

The Narcian build is a standard blue-killer.  Fury complements his well-rounded (and mediocre) stats, but I may replace Swap with another Reposition once I have the tools to make a full flying team.  There are better options than Vengeance as well, but it worked well enough with Fury recoil.  He hits 39 Spd with a Hone Fliers buff – enough to double non +Spd Takumi, and avoid getting doubled by most Nino.  Speaking of which, Vantage Takumi was the scourge of this team, and it didn’t help that I had to fight at least one almost every day this week.  In theory Narcian is able one-round most variants, but he must eat a big hit to do so, and isolating Takumi on the cramped, defense tile-ridden maps was no easy business.  Ideally Hinoka should be able one-round him before he can even attack, but sadly this was rarely the case, as my Hinoka is -Atk.

+Def/-Atk Hinoka with Atk Seal and Goad bonus from Narcian is just able to secure the 20x2 necessary to one-round a neutral Takumi with vanilla skills and no seals.  With exception to -Def/most -Hp variants, even a +1 merge level on Takumi will survive under these same conditions.  It felt like I’d been whisked back to February, when I lived my arena life in fear of this character lol

Like last week, Roy was mostly dead weight outside of checking Hector and occasionally taking a hit from something.  Ike’s job was to bait and delete green mages, as well as taking out other reds if Hinoka was preoccupied. 

Overall I was not a fan of the maps in this rotation, particularly the one with the zig-zagging defense tiles and breakable blocks.  Cavalry is easy to bait out here, but trying to get the enemy off the defense tiles and isolated is a tall order, and Takumi is absolute hell.  The boat map is very cramped.

Season 17 Hall of Fame:

Spoiler

WoM on powerhouse range units like this is low-key scary, and is way harder to work around than something like WoM Hector.  It really reinforces the current of one-rounding the enemies at any cost. 

Nothing spectacular, but it does make wish sometimes that I went a little harder on the Hero Fest banner for spare Hectors.  I'm really torn what to put in my own Ephraim's A slot.

Maybe they're looking to catch someone off guard with an earlier Bonfire proc?  I don't know.

I wasn't expecting to find infantry melee merges this high with my team.  I suppose I have the incomplete SI work to thank for that.

A bulky Reinhardt with some EP utility.  Also, first time I've encountered QR3 on a unit that doesn't naturally get it.

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
Season 15: 4,820 | 576 | 15 --> 17
Season 16: 4,788 | 568 | 17 --> 16

 

[DehNutCase]

7 minutes ago, DLNarshen said:

Season 17 Hall of Fame:

  Reveal hidden contents

WoM on powerhouse range units like this is low-key scary, and is way harder to work around than something like WoM Hector.  It really reinforces the current of one-rounding the enemies at any cost. 

Nothing spectacular, but it does make wish sometimes that I went a little harder on the Hero Fest banner for spare Hectors.  I'm really torn what to put in my own Ephraim's A slot.

Maybe they're looking to catch someone off guard with an earlier Bonfire proc?  I don't know.

I wasn't expecting to find infantry melee merges this high with my team.  I suppose I have the incomplete SI work to thank for that.

A bulky Reinhardt with some EP utility.  Also, first time I've encountered QR3 on a unit that doesn't naturally get it.

 

Has 7 Reinhardts, doesn't run 4x Reins with Vantage, -blade tome, close counter, and both cav buffs. Someone doesn't understand the point of Reinahrdt Emblem.

Edited May 30, 2017 by DehNutCase