Aether Raids General Thread

[Usana]

58 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

I see. Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever pulled anyone who has Null C-Disrupt. Special Spiral came from a bad IV Lewyn and I thought it'd be handy to make Ike proc Aether more and keep himself healed to help his tanking stuff.

Yeah, I don't have Nah. You might be thinking I had her because I have Halloween Myrrh (who also has DC btw. I gave it to her when I pulled a few male Byleths when he debuted. Maybe Halloween Myrrh would be a good idea to try on an Astra team then?)? I dunno. xP

As for Surtr, I like using my Bunny Palla to take care of him and other armors because she also kills traps.

Yeah don't think he needs Null-C Disrupt or anything. In fact even if you get a spare Nailah at some point I don't think I would recommend using her up. Ideally you would use her for BOTH DC and Null-C. Brave Ike can work just fine with other things(and in fact Special Spiral is probably his best B if you don't have a source of Infantry Breath, which you don't). Other B's I have seen him with are Quick Riposte, Null Follow-up(to get past Wary Fighter probably), Guard, and even Windsweep or Watersweep so that he can safely attack into a slower threat to spread attack or pulse smoke around.

But yeah for your purposes Special Spiral is almost certainly the best choice. And I might even want it eventually to help out with Guarding foes or foes with Hardy Bearing effects. They keep messing my trigger timing up. Thankfully they don't come up super often.
 

[Anacybele]

56 minutes ago, Usana said:

Yeah don't think he needs Null-C Disrupt or anything. In fact even if you get a spare Nailah at some point I don't think I would recommend using her up. Ideally you would use her for BOTH DC and Null-C. Brave Ike can work just fine with other things(and in fact Special Spiral is probably his best B if you don't have a source of Infantry Breath, which you don't). Other B's I have seen him with are Quick Riposte, Null Follow-up(to get past Wary Fighter probably), Guard, and even Windsweep or Watersweep so that he can safely attack into a slower threat to spread attack or pulse smoke around.

But yeah for your purposes Special Spiral is almost certainly the best choice. And I might even want it eventually to help out with Guarding foes or foes with Hardy Bearing effects. They keep messing my trigger timing up. Thankfully they don't come up super often.
 

Yeah, that would be ideal for sure if you fodder a Nailah.

And I see. I hardly ever see the sweep skills used much beyond obviously the Firesweep weapons.

Yeah, exactly.

[Humanoid]

Against the odds, I'm at 10917 lift with one day to go, and 30 stamina in the bank. That means either one boosted or two normal battles to make up at least 83 points, and probably 138 once taking into account a probable 55 point loss through my next defense defeat.

My offense wins are worth 123 points each, 246 with the boost. I have no ladder uses left. Hard to tell whether it'd be better to go all in on one battle and hope for the best knowing defeat is certain failure, or do two battles instead and hope the average score between the two is sufficient. Decisions, decisions.

 

EDIT: Took the safe route and did two battles. First one was Reinhardt cancer so I felt vindicated in doing so. But then I managed to do it with only losing one unit, so using the boost on that would have been sufficient, if nerve-wracking. As it is, I got 103 points of the required 138. Fortunately there was no sting in the tale - the second battle was much easier and I easily picked them off for maximum points. At 11088 lift and with a defense loss suffered just an hour ago, that means I'm now officially T21 for next week. We'll see how much of a difficulty jump after the reset I suppose. Given the mechanics, I certainly have no ambition to get any farther.

For what it's worth, my offense team was Aversa+10, Eir+3, Lazura+2, Nailah+0 and bonus unit was LMarth+2 who might have attacked a grand total of twice over the course of the week. Up until today the ladder covered all my losses and all my successes were perfect 246 point wins, which has never happened before. Huge element of luck in getting that to happen.

I think I was also extraordinarily fortunate this week in that I was only attacked for points four times this week: 2x75 losses before I bought the two extra defense slots and getting another 2x55 losses. Essentially this whole thing feels like a fluke and I wasn't even contemplating the possibility before Saturday.

Edited November 18, 2019 by Humanoid

[Vicious Sal]

3 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Against the odds, I'm at 10917 lift with one day to go, and 30 stamina in the bank. That means either one boosted or two normal battles to make up at least 83 points, and probably 138 once taking into account a probable 55 point loss through my next defense defeat.

My offense wins are worth 123 points each, 246 with the boost. I have no ladder uses left. Hard to tell whether it'd be better to go all in on one battle and hope for the best knowing defeat is certain failure, or do two battles instead and hope the average score between the two is sufficient. Decisions, decisions.

 

EDIT: Took the safe route and did two battles. First one was Reinhardt cancer so I felt vindicated in doing so. But then I managed to do it with only losing one unit, so using the boost on that would have been sufficient, if nerve-wracking. As it is, I got 103 points of the required 138. Fortunately there was no sting in the tale - the second battle was much easier and I easily picked them off for maximum points. At 11088 lift and with a defense loss suffered just an hour ago, that means I'm now officially T21 for next week. We'll see how much of a difficulty jump after the reset I suppose. Given the mechanics, I certainly have no ambition to get any farther.

For what it's worth, my offense team was Aversa+10, Eir+3, Lazura+2, Nailah+0 and bonus unit was LMarth+2 who might have attacked a grand total of twice over the course of the week. Up until today the ladder covered all my losses and all my successes were perfect 246 point wins, which has never happened before. Huge element of luck in getting that to happen.

I think I was also extraordinarily fortunate this week in that I was only attacked for points four times this week: 2x75 losses before I bought the two extra defense slots and getting another 2x55 losses. Essentially this whole thing feels like a fluke and I wasn't even contemplating the possibility before Saturday.

Congratulations on making it to T21! 

It won’t be a breeze now that you’re here, but all your matches will be so much less stressfull knowing that you only have to maintain. T23 is easily reached with minimal effort.

 

i m glad you made it and now you’re abe to reap the rewards. =]

[Humanoid]

11 minutes ago, Vicious Sal said:

Congratulations on making it to T21! 

It won’t be a breeze now that you’re here, but all your matches will be so much less stressfull knowing that you only have to maintain. T23 is easily reached with minimal effort.

 

i m glad you made it and now you’re abe to reap the rewards. =]

Thanks. I didn't actually believe it possible based on my calculations, but I never accounted for the possibility of only needing to defend four times. I've never even come close to promoting, and so I've never actually checked my defense losses before. I'd assumed one failed defense a day and were that to be true, it'd have been literally impossible.

I'm still steadfast in my rule of making no effort to defend because I don't want to frustrate other players. I did make the concession of finally increasing my defense team from size 4 to size 6, but they're still junk unbuilt units backed up by no buildings, so it doesn't make for any real difference in effectiveness.

[XRay]

3 hours ago, Humanoid said:

EDIT: Took the safe route and did two battles. First one was Reinhardt cancer so I felt vindicated in doing so. But then I managed to do it with only losing one unit, so using the boost on that would have been sufficient, if nerve-wracking. As it is, I got 103 points of the required 138. Fortunately there was no sting in the tale - the second battle was much easier and I easily picked them off for maximum points. At 11088 lift and with a defense loss suffered just an hour ago, that means I'm now officially T21 for next week. We'll see how much of a difficulty jump after the reset I suppose. Given the mechanics, I certainly have no ambition to get any farther.

Nice! Maintaining Tier 21 should be a breeze, and getting into Tier 22 should not be too difficult either since it is only 400 Lift.

[Humanoid]

I have zero Astra and Anima mythics so even if I just manage to stay T21 I've be very content. Getting some extra rewards during Light/Dark weeks will be plenty good enough for me.

 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Humanoid

[Vicious Sal]

And we are in T26 this week, missed a few matches, but i am content for this week. Hardly had any time for planned out matches, so half of the yolo’s worked out fine.

[Usana]

@Humanoid Congrats on Making 21! Now you can sit back and have yourself a nice stiff drink! Wait. . . that's the wrong 21. Nevermind.

But yeah that is effectively how I made 21 too. Mostly not trying unless it looked close towards the end, but always missing out regardless of trying or not.  Then one week I was just ambling along minding my own business and bam I am standing right at the gates to T21. WIth no idea how the heck I got there. I'll just blame my terrible sense of direction. Took that wrong turn at Albuquerque don't you know.

On topic though, I will parrot what others have said. Maintaining 21 is usually not that bad. Though in your case, your refusal to frustrate others may make it a little bit harder since you probably eat a full 55 ever time you are hit since you aren't focusing on getting at least 1-2 kills per fight. But time will tell and hopefully it won't be too bad.



Anyways thanks to light blessed Ike this is my best week so far. Though I wish my rank today was the same as yesterday's. Yesterday I was rank 777. Best. Rank. Ever. Today I am sadly at 765 after spending my Aether. Will probably drop out of top 1000 by end of day. I don't bother with pots nor surrendering when I lose 1 unit so my lift is no where near maxed out. Plus this has been a REALLY bad week defense wise. My Cav Line seems to get eaten alive once I start hitting T23+. Took 2 full losses this week. Would have taken some partial but a lot of folks were surrendering after losing one unit.


Final note. Checked my rank again before hitting submit replay and had already dropped to 817. As said I will not be at all surprised if my 13,272 lift isn't enough for top 1k. That said I should at least get a Golden Throne.

[Humanoid]

@Usana Fortunately the drinking age is 18 over here, and even then that was reached half a lifetime ago. 😛

Next week I won't just be copping the 55 point loss every defeat, but the full 100. I figure though that if I can win 1 in 2 battles (outside of ladder escape acts), I should be able to maintain, but no idea if I can do that vs T21 opposition. I'll do the day-one trick of waiting for the initial defeat before my first attack to get an easier matchup of course.

 

[Azuni]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

 😛 I should be able to maintain, but no idea if I can do that vs T21 opposition. I'll do the day-one trick of waiting for the initial defeat before my first attack to get an easier matchup of course.

Considering that there's roughly 23k people in t21 now, you'll surely find a lot of trash defenses. Even a thousand or more past the 11k mark there's plenty of junk that is a joke to fight with a proper offense team.

[Rinco]

2 def losses this week, so -78 lift only.

Pretty safe on tier 26.

[Landmaster]

Why can't this shizz ever happen during an Astra week LOL~ My offense was complete ass this week but I guess I will take it that the new Defense is alright for now~

13 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Against the odds, I'm at 10917 lift with one day to go, and 30 stamina in the bank. That means either one boosted or two normal battles to make up at least 83 points, and probably 138 once taking into account a probable 55 point loss through my next defense defeat.

My offense wins are worth 123 points each, 246 with the boost. I have no ladder uses left. Hard to tell whether it'd be better to go all in on one battle and hope for the best knowing defeat is certain failure, or do two battles instead and hope the average score between the two is sufficient. Decisions, decisions.

 

EDIT: Took the safe route and did two battles. First one was Reinhardt cancer so I felt vindicated in doing so. But then I managed to do it with only losing one unit, so using the boost on that would have been sufficient, if nerve-wracking. As it is, I got 103 points of the required 138. Fortunately there was no sting in the tale - the second battle was much easier and I easily picked them off for maximum points. At 11088 lift and with a defense loss suffered just an hour ago, that means I'm now officially T21 for next week. We'll see how much of a difficulty jump after the reset I suppose. Given the mechanics, I certainly have no ambition to get any farther.

For what it's worth, my offense team was Aversa+10, Eir+3, Lazura+2, Nailah+0 and bonus unit was LMarth+2 who might have attacked a grand total of twice over the course of the week. Up until today the ladder covered all my losses and all my successes were perfect 246 point wins, which has never happened before. Huge element of luck in getting that to happen.

I think I was also extraordinarily fortunate this week in that I was only attacked for points four times this week: 2x75 losses before I bought the two extra defense slots and getting another 2x55 losses. Essentially this whole thing feels like a fluke and I wasn't even contemplating the possibility before Saturday.

Congrats on making T21! Should be a lot easier now~

[Vicious Sal]

I saved all my defense replays and tomorrow I should be able to get my computer from the shop. That means plenty of uploads, one of which is a great example of how to fight vs my flier ball.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

My defense held out well enough to get me into T27 for the third time this week (gotta step up my game during Astra, though, since I haven't gotten it there yet). Out of nine defenses, there were only two matches where my team killed less than 2 units, both of which my opponent actually got a flawless win. Take a wild guess which matches actually counted for score.

Final score of 13516, no offensive deaths, only 1 pot that could have mattered missed because I was dumb and distracted, with -76 from defenses. Final rank: 442.

[Usana]

Well 13,272 was rank 1405.

On 11/18/2019 at 9:28 AM, Humanoid said:

@Usana Fortunately the drinking age is 18 over here, and even then that was reached half a lifetime ago. 😛

Next week I won't just be copping the 55 point loss every defeat, but the full 100. I figure though that if I can win 1 in 2 battles (outside of ladder escape acts), I should be able to maintain, but no idea if I can do that vs T21 opposition. I'll do the day-one trick of waiting for the initial defeat before my first attack to get an easier matchup of course.

 

Oh. I did forget that your mythics are the same season aren't they? Yeah that might make it trickier. I believe I had a Duma by the time I was trying to maintain so my experience is with defense loss reduction one season and boosted offense scoring on the other. Here is to hoping it won't be too painful. At least it can be as bad as trying to climb up. . . right?


Edit- Boy was day 1 this week rough. 3 ladders down. 2 due to really bad matchups for a vantage team, and 1 due to me forgetting my planned move order once I actually went to play the map and accidentally blocking off my reposition which messed everything up.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Usana

[XRay]

Lost all my ladders today, won one battle, and wasted another 150 Lift losing battles.

Too many maps have Hardy Bearing now, so even if I run Null C-Disrupt, it is not going help Kronya much.

[Zeo]

8 minutes ago, XRay said:

Lost all my ladders today, won one battle, and wasted another 150 Lift losing battles.

Too many maps have Hardy Bearing now, so even if I run Null C-Disrupt, it is not going help Kronya much.

Ironically enough, I usually do pretty terrible but I only lost 2 ladders and won all the other battles with my bootleg Matthew/Naga/Hrid/Gunnthra/Aversa team (no one is even blessed properly here). Your bolt trap Vantage strat works great. Just about every map had HB Ophelia or Lillina. I would just position/smite Matt over to her, blow her up and proceed to Vantage kill the rest of the team with him. A struggle or two where the last enemy might kill him but the rest of the team mops up might have happened once or so but that's about it.

Probably the best Astra season I've had despite my low score ceiling. Only time I had trouble was when Ophelia was blocked off by a Firesweep Lyn who was bolstered by both NY!Azura and L!Azura. I didn't even bother trying for that one.

[XRay]

38 minutes ago, Zeo said:

Ironically enough, I usually do pretty terrible but I only lost 2 ladders and won all the other battles with my bootleg Matthew/Naga/Hrid/Gunnthra/Aversa team (no one is even blessed properly here). Your bolt trap Vantage strat works great. Just about every map had HB Ophelia or Lillina. I would just position/smite Matt over to her, blow her up and proceed to Vantage kill the rest of the team with him. A struggle or two where the last enemy might kill him but the rest of the team mops up might have happened once or so but that's about it.

Probably the best Astra season I've had despite my low score ceiling. Only time I had trouble was when Ophelia was blocked off by a Firesweep Lyn who was bolstered by both NY!Azura and L!Azura. I didn't even bother trying for that one.

Most maps I faced today had an Ophelia or another unit with Hardy Bearing as well as Festival in Hoshido Micaiah. I tried sniping one of them, but then the other one always manage to get to Kronya and then the rest of my team would basically die since Nagas and A Monstrous Harvest Hectors are not really running a meaningful combat set.

[Zeo]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Most maps I faced today had an Ophelia or another unit with Hardy Bearing as well as Festival in Hoshido Micaiah. I tried sniping one of them, but then the other one always manage to get to Kronya and then the rest of my team would basically die since Nagas and A Monstrous Harvest Hectors are not really running a meaningful combat set.

Ah, HF!Micaiah also has HB built into her weapon. I forgot about that. I didn't have to deal with 2 HB units so that does really suck. Matthew can generally take a hit from her regardless, but that's light season where he's juiced into a supertank. In Astra season all he's got to rely on is tactics buffs until I get a proper Astra supertank made.

[Humanoid]

I'm getting crushed pretty badly <40% win rate, all ladders gone and my only wins have only had 3 survivors each. 3x120 = 360, so that means I have enough points to absorb 4-and-a-bit losses for the week (not from now, the entire week) , but I'm going to need a couple of ladder-less victories over the rest of the week to guarantee not demoting.

Going to have to keep plugging along as-is for now as I'm not yet prepared to summon for any of the available Astra/Anima heroes.

[Diovani Bressan]

I may have to build my Hawkeye for Astra Season. My main unit during this season is Laevatein, but it's still a lucky shoot to have a enemy team that accept her. I could build another dragon, liek Nowi, for Astra, but Thrasir...

I won a double aether match without getting the pots, which means -20 Aether this season. Sigh...

At least I had pretty good matches the first 2 days, so demotion from Tier 21 is not a thing for me.

[Usana]

13 hours ago, XRay said:

Lost all my ladders today, won one battle, and wasted another 150 Lift losing battles.

Too many maps have Hardy Bearing now, so even if I run Null C-Disrupt, it is not going help Kronya much.

Part of me gives you my condolences. The other part of me is relieved that I am not the only one suffering this week. Sharing is caring right?

Lots of anti-vantage setups running around so far this week from what I have seen. Or maybe I have just been lucky in previous Astra Seasons. But it seems like every team now has 2-3 sources of vantage countering going on. And of course said counters are well hidden so you have to cut at least one, if not more of the non counters down before you can get to the counters.
 

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Teams that go that hard on anti-Vantage typically sacrifice their ability to deal with super tanks. Might be a good time to dust those off.

[XRay]

27 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

Teams that go that hard on anti-Vantage typically sacrifice their ability to deal with super tanks. Might be a good time to dust those off.

Not sure who to build for Astra. I am thinking of Fae, but I am a little concerned about dragon Effective Weapons.

Healing is also more difficult without Eir.