Aether Raids General Thread

[redlight]

18 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

How about putting, y’know, a summary of the video when you’re linking to it?

Apologies. Will do. Also, how about putting datamined info from general topic in spoiler

Edited December 5, 2018 by silveraura25

[DehNutCase]

Hmm, I actually should've lost a unit this run (got away with minor misplays because my fort level was 1 higher than the opponent):

Spoiler

Meant to have a 100% safe initiation by dancing Cordelia into killing everyone but Veronica, who both Lyn and Cordelia easily survives. Ended up not being able to do that because Cordelia Galeforce'd the first combat, so I had to just bank on Veronica prioritizing healing over everything else, and Horse Lyn surviving one of Chrom's hits.

Edit: Then again, Lyn also would've survived if she had my Summoner Support like she usually does. *Shrug*

Edited December 5, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Johann]

Having Galeforce is absurdly helpful. I can only imagine that next week, those who have him will field Surtr as a means of countering it.

[DehNutCase]

18 minutes ago, Johann said:

Having Galeforce is absurdly helpful. I can only imagine that next week, those who have him will field Surtr as a means of countering it.

If anyone cares enough about Surtr they can just Axe-Breaker Eliwood or Brave Roy, who are both natural Galeforce users. (Eliwood has Axe-Breaker naturally and is fairly simple to +10, but Roy has Galeforce and Blazing Durandal naturally, so they're both reasonably viable choices.)

 

Personally I counter Galeforce by taking advantage of the fact that nobody with Galeforce has more than 4 threat range, meaning they're fairly simple to dismantle at unit parity. (6v5 is another matter, though, Galeforce becomes a lot more threatening when you can overcome the melee mobility disadvantage by positioning advantage of having more units---more units = more threatened squares.)

[Johann]

7 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

If anyone cares enough about Surtr they can just Axe-Breaker Eliwood or Brave Roy, who are both natural Galeforce users. (Eliwood has Axe-Breaker naturally and is fairly simple to +10, but Roy has Galeforce and Blazing Durandal naturally, so they're both reasonably viable choices.)

Personally I counter Galeforce by taking advantage of the fact that nobody with Galeforce has more than 4 threat range, meaning they're fairly simple to dismantle at unit parity. (6v5 is another matter, though, Galeforce becomes a lot more threatening when you can overcome the melee mobility disadvantage by positioning advantage of having more units---more units = more threatened squares.)

Consider that Surtr's default kit (which is arguably his best for AR) is going to prevent Galeforce, not just because of Wary Fighter, but the Guard effect on Steady Stance 4. He's as anti-Galeforce as it gets.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

It won't prevent it entirely if Heavy Blade or its ilk are in play—just slow it down to normal speed. There are other ways around the problem, as well, such as stacking Quickened Pulse and Ostian Pulse.

[DehNutCase]

12 minutes ago, Johann said:

Consider that Surtr's default kit (which is arguably his best for AR) is going to prevent Galeforce, not just because of Wary Fighter, but the Guard effect on Steady Stance 4. He's as anti-Galeforce as it gets.

Just to double check, do you mean Surtr on an offense team or on a defense team? On a defense team he's an armor that doesn't really do anything except stall for turns. (Which would work against teams running people like Surtr himself, since they're slow to do things, but Galeforce teams shouldn't have turn-count issues.)

 

On an offense team the problem isn't that the Axe-Breaker guy has Galeforce, it's that he has Axe-Breaker, which should bring Surtr into ORKO range if you try to bait with him---unless it's a badly setup defense team that doesn't have overlapping threats---and even if he works it's still an armor in a mode that cares about turn count, which is pretty painful.

[Ice Dragon]

43 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Just to double check, do you mean Surtr on an offense team or on a defense team? On a defense team he's an armor that doesn't really do anything except stall for turns. (Which would work against teams running people like Surtr himself, since they're slow to do things, but Galeforce teams shouldn't have turn-count issues.)

I understood it to be Surtr on a defense team.

And stalling for turns is a very viable strategy in Aether Raids. About half of my successful defenses are due to the challenger running out of turns, and 2 of my 3 failed offense runs were due to running out of turns.

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

I understood it to be Surtr on a defense team.

And stalling for turns is a very viable strategy in Aether Raids. About half of my successful defenses are due to the challenger running out of turns, and 2 of my 3 failed offense runs were due to running out of turns.

I guess I just have a bit different view since turn-count is not my problem when it comes to Raids. (Haven't lost a raid so far, but if I do lose it'd be because I played like a chipmunk and lost a map critical unit by accident.)

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

I guess I just have a bit different view since turn-count is not my problem when it comes to Raids. (Haven't lost a raid so far, but if I do lose it'd be because I played like a chipmunk and lost a map critical unit by accident.)

Considering the number of successful defenses I had due to the opponent running out of turns, it appears to be a problem for the general population when dealing with tanky units that are difficult to bait.

[Qilin]

I keep fluctuating between tier 13 and 14, and there's a markedly different difficulty. It seems everyone with fully developed team of legendary units are currently at 14 and above, and that's the cutoff for this season.

[Robert Stewart]

Almost had a perfect win today but I'm dumb and both forgot to put galeforce on a unit that needed it and prioritized waiting to destroy aether pots and let two of my units die when they really shouldn't have. Derp.

[Qilin]

These singer Reinhardt Future Sight Lucina teams are a cancer, and I'm seriously considering building a similar team to make others suffer.

[Johann]

21 minutes ago, Qilin said:

These singer Reinhardt Future Sight Lucina teams are a cancer, and I'm seriously considering building a similar team to make others suffer.

Have you tried going crazy with stat boosts on a bonus unit? These past few seasons, I've been using Ursula with as much support as possible (Summoner Support, Hone Cavalry, Def Tactics, Drives, and the Res Dance from Azura), she's been able to take on a surprising amount of stuff, including Brave Bows, Hautecleres, and TA Gronnravens.

[Alkaid]

Ran into another nasty cav map today. Not the worst interation of it I've encountered, though. I've been seeing a lot of similar ones this week. 1-2 ranged cavs and 1-2 Lunge melee cavs with a dancer on this exact type of map arrangement seems to be catching on. It's pretty annoying.

Spoiler

No real way to safely trap check for any of my teams, even with my Aversa carrying Smite. Luckily I managed to just avoid bothering with the traps at all.

Spoiler

Spent a while thinking before I realized I could get Camilla into that corner spot if I used a few turns to break the items.  She baited just Azura and Rein while Seigbert was nothing afterwards. Loki kept Veronica busy while I grabbed the other fountain before killing her. Finished on turn 7 in order to grab the fountain, so all according to plan.

I should probably try to make a team dedicated to countering this type of map since I'm seeing so many of them, but I don't really know what that'd be with my units on hand. I feel uncomfortable changing one team to Cavs and dancers since mine may not be strong enough to kill the enemies with bonus stats and merges. Like this team was +4 stats since I didn't buy the offensive Panic Manor this week. (saving for 5th defense slot) My fliers are really the only ones capable of handling whale maps (not that this one was).

Also a shout out to the Judgralbro who made this themed map so I could get a break from all the cancer ones.

Spoiler

 

Edited December 6, 2018 by Alkaid

[Garlyle]

Having the same defense team as last week, since the bonus units and buildings are there that I need.

Only won 1 defense so far, got more attacks in general.

Also I already hope that Veronica never becomes a bonus unit in this mode, as that would be cancer.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Garlyle

[DehNutCase]

9 hours ago, Alkaid said:

Ran into another nasty cav map today. Not the worst interation of it I've encountered, though. I've been seeing a lot of similar ones this week. 1-2 ranged cavs and 1-2 Lunge melee cavs with a dancer on this exact type of map arrangement seems to be catching on. It's pretty annoying.

  Reveal hidden contents

No real way to safely trap check for any of my teams, even with my Aversa carrying Smite. Luckily I managed to just avoid bothering with the traps at all.

I don't know if you've seen my post above yet, but maps like this are actually way more open than they look at first sight. If you're comfortable spending turns to break buildings first the traps can be more or less ignored completely---if you open the spoilers you'd see what the map looked like after I spent a few turns clearing the necessary buildings.

(I messed up a little on my run---I wasted Reinhardt's turn repo'ing Azura up, not taking into account the fact that Cordelia would Galeforce first combat. If I didn't I could've just walked him into the bolt trap I triggered and danced him to kill Chrom, leaving only Veronica alive like I originally planned.)

 

Edit: If you have a good Galeforce Flier lying around you should be more or less fine on maps like this---but honestly Galeforce is kind of annoying to use properly, so I'm not sure if you'd want to do that.

Edited December 6, 2018 by DehNutCase

[XRay]

14 hours ago, Qilin said:

These singer Reinhardt Future Sight Lucina teams are a cancer, and I'm seriously considering building a similar team to make others suffer.

That should be the norm in my opinion. An easy offense win is doing no one any favors. Sure, the offensive player may get a win now, but they will learn nothing and will not improve their game play.

[Alkaid]

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

I don't know if you've seen my post above yet, but maps like this are actually way more open than they look at first sight. If you're comfortable spending turns to break buildings first the traps can be more or less ignored completely---if you open the spoilers you'd see what the map looked like after I spent a few turns clearing the necessary buildings.

(I messed up a little on my run---I wasted Reinhardt's turn repo'ing Azura up, not taking into account the fact that Cordelia would Galeforce first combat. If I didn't I could've just walked him into the bolt trap I triggered and danced him to kill Chrom, leaving only Veronica alive like I originally planned.)

 

Edit: If you have a good Galeforce Flier lying around you should be more or less fine on maps like this---but honestly Galeforce is kind of annoying to use properly, so I'm not sure if you'd want to do that.

I have a Galeforce Peri and Galeforce Cordelia on separate teams (though Cordelia's got Firesweep, since Peri's the Heavy Blade seal holder). Guess I'll have to put an extra dancer on Peri's team as I see you have 2. Hopefully that'd be effective enough without other horses on the team. (my Lyn and Rein are not worth using)

Thankfully next week my ill-bought catapult will finally be the bonus structure so these maps won't be quite as bad as with +4-8 enemy stats.

[Raven]

Turns out, we actually can activate lift protection even with a defense victory. I'd previously assumed only losses would activate the protection.

[DehNutCase]

2 hours ago, Alkaid said:

I have a Galeforce Peri and Galeforce Cordelia on separate teams (though Cordelia's got Firesweep, since Peri's the Heavy Blade seal holder). Guess I'll have to put an extra dancer on Peri's team as I see you have 2. Hopefully that'd be effective enough without other horses on the team. (my Lyn and Rein are not worth using)

Thankfully next week my ill-bought catapult will finally be the bonus structure so these maps won't be quite as bad as with +4-8 enemy stats.

Mind that horse teams like this are actually my team's worst match-up, and you'll lose units left and right with a single mistake---it's why I was hesitant about suggesting a Galeforce user.

 

The 'easy' solution to horse teams is probably having an ultra-strong defensive unit bait and just face-tank like 2 or 3 hits. Which is both expensive and I think would need you to devote multiple teams to the plan, based on unit match-ups, but honestly defense teams aren't my specialty so you should ask Ice Dragon instead if you'd prefer to use tanky defensive units instead.

Edited December 6, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Johann]

Hmmm... thinking about it, it'd be neat if there was a weekly bonus Terrain or two, which reduced the amount of Lift lost on Defense results. This would encourage people away from sticking to the same layouts.

[Zelgius]

At the end of this week I'll be able to get a fifth unit slot for offence, though it will cost me not being able to get a defence bonus building for next week. By the time I would be able to get the defence bonus building, it would be Friday, so I'm going to just leave it to save up for a fifth defence unit slot.

[Ice Dragon]

46 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

but honestly defense teams aren't my specialty so you should ask Ice Dragon instead if you'd prefer to use tanky defensive units instead.

@Alkaid If you need a ranged tank, I highly suggest Faye or Legendary Lyn, preferably with a refined Guard Bow and as much Drive/Ward/Guard stacking as possible.

Melee options for ranged tanks are pretty much anything with 30+ in both Def and Res, stacked with as much Distant Def, Berkut's Lance, or whatnot as you can find, preferably with as much of a focus on Res as possible since I've found that a danced Veronica is the most troublesome enemy to deal with.

If you feel like you have your damage output down pat and don't need your tank to contribute offensively, feel free to give them Wary Fighter (or Deflect Magic) to further reduce the amount of damage you take. The goal is pretty much to be able to survive one turn's onslaught through Pain and Moonbow as much as possible.

 

If you have Loki, consider stacking as much HP as you can on her and using Thokk's "Gravity Ploy Ranged" to keep enemies immobile, which allows you to initiate combat more easily and reduces the number of enemies you need to fight when baiting to just enemies that didn't get hit by Gravity and enemies that got danced.

 

Seal Atk and Seal Spd can be used to try to cripple enemies that get danced and come in for a second attack since Seal skills activate after combat regardless of who initiates and regardless of if you could counterattack. Smoke skills do the same for the enemies behind the initial attacker.

Halloween Kagero can also run refined Smoke Dagger (preferably with Wary Fighter) for a similar effect. Flora, Felicia, Kaze, and Halloween Sakura can do the same if the enemy doesn't have a bow user.

 

EDIT: Okay, so why exactly do I not have a team with Halloween Kagero on it already?

Edited December 6, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[daisy jane]

is anyone NOT getting the Feh Statue, Flower Bed and Street lamp? (It just occurred to me that they are a different currency - so i might as well right?)