Aether Raids General Thread

[Hilda]

52 minutes ago, Javi Blizz said:

Hey guys, could you help me to improve this map?

Veronica has her default set plus ATK+3 in A and ATK+1 in S, and +1 merge 

Mia has Pain+ Double Savage Blow

Rein has QP Moonbow Lancebreaker

Axura has the standar dancer set

 

Their ranges are: Veronica reaches the tile next to the fortress, Mia reaches the next one and Rein the following one and the last one (only not covered the one under the breakable wall). I'm not sure were to place the tactic room, but I'd like it to be in the middle it's now (or swap its half of the map with the panic building). 

 

Right now I have too many defense loses and not a single win :(

swap Azuras and Veronicas places

place your fortress to the right of the building right next to Reinhardt to block his path

That way the enemy hasnt an easy way to bait Reinhardt without eating Veronicas wrath

and Mia takes care of the left side anyway due to wrazzle dazzle

 

I would also like to point out that your Defense Team will be fighting against offense Teams that have at least +8 to all their stats, because you have not fielded the bonus building for defenses and your fortress isnt prolly lvld up. So chances of you getting Defense wins are rather very low, because none of your units will deal sufficent dmg prolly.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Hilda

[garrisoncade_3576]

I don't know if this will work for everyone else but I've been constantly updating my skycastle team and been getting a lot of challenges. Mostly losses.

I think users who are not getting any challenges should try this. 

It is either updating my castle units often brings new challengers or I just have bad luck by having a lot of users successfully invade my castle. 

[SuperNova125]

I am late but it doesn't matter, it is one the modes I had the most fun with for a long time. It gave me the chance to use units I never expected to use and change my team without caring about scores and BST (I am not sure if has to do anything with the ranks and stuff though) . Also the map building  part is great. I got one complaint however, the aether thing, which is mentioned in this thread. I have a 200 max and restore 50 every day but use 22 right now which means that soon enough I will be playing only one or two matches per day which is bad. Why not make aether something like stamina or dueling swords. I don't see any way to upgrade the are restoring facility is the bad thing and with all the math done above it gets even worse. Hope that they fix this with a future update or with some special structure.

[Icelerate]

So what are your scores? I'm currently ranked 69190 with a lift of 1260. 

 

[DehNutCase]

14 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'll probably switch Ninian out for flying Olivia once I get mine trained up and see if that's less likely to do dumb things, even if it wouldn't have helped in this particular case.

Something I've noticed with Dancers is that they won't attack if they do literally 0 damage, so something like a TA Raven Ninian should be pretty smart about not hitting people she'd suicide against, while still being a ranged dancer (and therefore being able to dance ranged units---melee dancers go before ranged units unless ranged units don't have assists\have rallies, so they tend to be trivial to deal with). Not sure if 28/33 offense is good enough to kill things even with TA, though---and you definitely want your dancer to be able to kill things, otherwise the opposing team would just kill the other 3, end turn, and then nab your 2 aether pots before killing your dancer.

 

Off-topic:

My score's like this right now (haven't lost a single unit or raid, but since I play at midnight a lot I'm usually too tired to care about grabbing the pots if it'll make things complicated):

 

edit: @SuperNova125 IRRC you can upgrade Aether regen starting from rank 11 or so. (When I went through the tutorial the Aether regen upgrade was grayed out, saying you need rank 10/11, rather than being invisible. That said, it seems likely they'd lower the rank requirement to upgrade the regen building once we finish this season---the rank 11 thing was probably just so that we can't unlock it this season, letting them wait and see how soon they should unlock regen upgrade.

Edited November 11, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

23 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Something I've noticed with Dancers is that they won't attack if they do literally 0 damage, so something like a TA Raven Ninian should be pretty smart about not hitting people she'd suicide against, while still being a ranged dancer (and therefore being able to dance ranged units---melee dancers go before ranged units unless ranged units don't have assists\have rallies, so they tend to be trivial to deal with). Not sure if 28/33 offense is good enough to kill things even with TA, though---and you definitely want your dancer to be able to kill things, otherwise the opposing team would just kill the other 3, end turn, and then nab your 2 aether pots before killing your dancer.

This isn't entirely correct, but the behaviour should go approximately as stated. What the AI does, is prefer to do any other action first if their damage output would be less than 5. This means that, if a TA Ninian is within range of a green, she'll still attack the green if she doesn't have a meaningful target for Dance. Where this can get a little tricky in a way that people often exploit for their Arena defense teams, is that rallies can then be used to manipulate units into getting favourable match-ups more often.

Let's take, for instance, a TA Ninian hanging out with a Marth that knows Rally Def/Res. Let's say we're in a situation where we have something like (Marth), (Ninian), (blank tile), (blank tile), (enemy Hector). If Marth wasn't there, Ninian would charge straight into Hector. In fact, if Marth had Reposition or Draw Back or its ilk, Ninian would still charge right into Hector. However, with Rally Def/Res, what will happen is Marth will move in front of Ninian and rally her. The AI will then look at Ninian's options, since it was about to have her charge into Hector. However, she now sees that Marth is in range of Hector, so she Dances Marth and Marth attacks Hector.

The key here is Marth moving forward in front of Ninian, though. If we'd had a situation such as (Marth), (Ninian), (forest tile), (enemy Hector); such that Marth cannot move closer to Hector while rallying, then Ninian would still ram face first into Hector. Granted, this does become a little more complicated with more party members. Let's say that there was also a Caeda on the team within two tiles of Marth. In that case, if the AI was planning on moving Caeda into range of the enemy, then the sequence in this second positioning would be Marth rallying Ninian, Ninian Dancing Marth, then Marth rallying Caeda, before Caeda charges into enemy range (for better or for worse).

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

This isn't entirely correct, but the behaviour should go approximately as stated. What the AI does, is prefer to do any other action first if their damage output would be less than 5. This means that, if a TA Ninian is within range of a green, she'll still attack the green if she doesn't have a meaningful target for Dance. Where this can get a little tricky in a way that people often exploit for their Arena defense teams, is that rallies can then be used to manipulate units into getting favourable match-ups more often.

Let's take, for instance, a TA Ninian hanging out with a Marth that knows Rally Def/Res. Let's say we're in a situation where we have something like (Marth), (Ninian), (blank tile), (blank tile), (enemy Hector). If Marth wasn't there, Ninian would charge straight into Hector. In fact, if Marth had Reposition or Draw Back or its ilk, Ninian would still charge right into Hector. However, with Rally Def/Res, what will happen is Marth will move in front of Ninian and rally her. The AI will then look at Ninian's options, since it was about to have her charge into Hector. However, she now sees that Marth is in range of Hector, so she Dances Marth and Marth attacks Hector.

The key here is Marth moving forward in front of Ninian, though. If we'd had a situation such as (Marth), (Ninian), (forest tile), (enemy Hector); such that Marth cannot move closer to Hector while rallying, then Ninian would still ram face first into Hector. Granted, this does become a little more complicated with more party members. Let's say that there was also a Caeda on the team within two tiles of Marth. In that case, if the AI was planning on moving Caeda into range of the enemy, then the sequence in this second positioning would be Marth rallying Ninian, Ninian Dancing Marth, then Marth rallying Caeda, before Caeda charges into enemy range (for better or for worse).

I'm ~40-50% sure I saw a TA Nohr!Azura not attack my Aversa on a fort tile despite nobody else being closer to Aversa. (I'm sure it happened, mind, what I'm not sure of is whether the person above Azura had a rally or a repo skill, I'm 40-50% sure that it's a repo skill.).

Also, if you're getting your info from the wiki I should warn you its AI rules are incomplete and occasionally wrong.

I moved Aversa to A, Azura was on red 4, and some random (pretty sure it's CYL Celica) was right about above Azura. Celica stayed in place, but got danced, and then stayed in place again.

When the turn ended Azura was still on red 4.

Edited November 12, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Qilin]

Do you guys save your aether to rematch raiders or just go spend it all to raid random matchmade players?

As for my own score, I have 1420 lift and never lost a raid, but I also never successfully defended either. Apparently I am the only one who can't beat my map.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Qilin

[dethneer]

@Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi Why would Marth move in front of Ninian before Rallying her? Is it to protect her from Hector? He could just as easily Rally her from where he is, right?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I'm ~40-50% sure I saw a TA Nohr!Azura not attack my Aversa on a fort tile despite nobody else being closer to Aversa. (I'm sure it happened, mind, what I'm not sure of is whether the person above Azura had a rally or a repo skill, I'm 40-50% sure that it's a repo skill.).

Also, if you're getting your info from the wiki I should warn you its AI rules are incomplete and occasionally wrong.

I moved Aversa to A, Azura was on red 4, and some random (pretty sure it's CYL Celica) was right about Azura. Celica stayed in place, but got danced, and then stayed in place again.

When the turn ended Azura was still on red 4.

Personal experience. The wiki is what started me analyzing the specific behaviour for damage < 5, though. I've used these observations to successfully turn enemy refreshers against their team hundreds of times in the upper tiers of Arena and AA.

That's really strange. Celica not moving before rallying probably means she wasn't interested in targeting Aversa (where was your green, assuming you field one?), but there's no reason she should have stayed in place after getting refreshed. In the very least, she should have moved toward something, even if it wasn't Aversa (since Azura is now no longer a valid rally target).

1 hour ago, Qilin said:

Do you guys save your aether to rematch raiders or just go spend it all to raid random matchmade players?

As for my own score, I have 1420 lift and never lost a raid, but I also never successfully defended either. Apparently I am the only one who can't beat my map.

I tend to forget about the rematch option and just choose the random battle. It's all the same in the end to me.

13 minutes ago, dethneer said:

@Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi Why would Marth move in front of Ninian before Rallying her? Is it to protect her from Hector? He could just as easily Rally her from where he is, right?

He's moving toward Hector because he's a red unit seeking a favourable match-up against a green. If Hector was off to the side, Marth would more than likely move to Ninian's side for his rally instead (the exception is usually when there's a target he can do more damage against that he'd rather move toward).

[DehNutCase]

2 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

Personal experience. The wiki is what started me analyzing the specific behaviour for damage < 5, though. I've used these observations to successfully turn enemy refreshers against their team hundreds of times in the upper tiers of Arena and AA.

That's really strange. Celica not moving before rallying probably means she wasn't interested in targeting Aversa (where was your green, assuming you field one?), but there's no reason she should have stayed in place after getting refreshed. In the very least, she should have moved toward something, even if it wasn't Aversa (since Azura is now no longer a valid rally target).

Flying Azura was behind like 2 layers of rocks, so Celica probably just straight up didn't bother. (Rocks messes with AI a lot, and I still don't have enough experience to fully predict AI on rock maps.)

Mind, if Celica had rally it's possible she just rallied the person above her after getting danced. But I usually check assist skills before baiting dancers (to avoid the rally + move forward + dance into losing my bait unit situation), so I'm pretty sure she didn't have rally.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

That would be very interesting if the rocks did indeed break the AI like that (it'd probably be too hard to recreate, but if it could be...). Based on my own experience with the map, Celica should have moved all the way left and attacked the rock that would give her the shortest path to your flying Azura. I really can't think of any normal reason for a unit to stay in place through two actions other than a rally, though. Well, aside from being an armour without Armor March getting body blocked by the rest of the team (happens hilariously often with full armour teams all trying to chase their optimum target), anyway, but that situation doesn't apply to Brave Celica (even if she was hit by Gravity, it would've come off after the first action).

[Robert Stewart]

Does surrendering before starting a map still cost aether?

[Johann]

9 hours ago, Azuni said:

Earlier I saw some other people talking about it, they think if someone lost unit(s) on day 1 or day 2 and ended up at say 1180, their next fight would cost less aether than someone who landed at 1200 to reach the new tier. This means they'd effectively gain one extra run today, which could explain the 1680 score for rank1 today. In comparison, someone who went deathless and broke all aether pots/fountains is stuck at 1600 cap for today, but has ~20 aether leftover to use tomorrow (I am one of these).

@Azuni@Hilda@Maaka Doing some calculations, it seems you can still achieve a final score of 3,680 even if you're currently at 1,600 now. Just do one (and only one) successful run without a bonus unit, ideally your first one tomorrow. This should be doable since the mode lets you pick from your 5 Raiding Parties after your foe's map is shown, so make a few teams that are capable of handling a variety of match-ups. The only disadvantage here is that a player who has 1,680 now has much more room for error when it comes to missing the Resources (they'll end up with 12 more Aether if they got 80 on their very first battle). Getting a final score of 3,680 will require getting a vast majority of Resources, with less room for error than if you're gunning for 3,600.

[XRay]

5 hours ago, Icelerate said:

So what are your scores? I'm currently ranked 69190 with a lift of 1260. 

 

I currently have a Lift of 1,420. Tier 3 was filled with decent defense maps yesterday; although I managed to win all of them, I did lose a lot of units.

[Ice Dragon]

I'm still pissed at myself for not realizing you received 20 extra lift for using a bonus unit, so I'm down 120 points from the max possible score due to my first 6 runs.

Currently ranked 3,657 with 1,560 lift. It's probably a stretch to hope that enough players will make enough mistakes for me to be able to reach top 1,000.

[Qilin]

Just lost my first raid. This is humiliating.

I would also feel better if I stop getting matched with P2W people or just people who have way better units than I can possibly own.

[DehNutCase]

20 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm still pissed at myself for not realizing you received 20 extra lift for using a bonus unit, so I'm down 120 points from the max possible score due to my first 6 runs.

Currently ranked 3,657 with 1,560 lift. It's probably a stretch to hope that enough players will make enough mistakes for me to be able to reach top 1,000.

1600 is rank 541, so you should be fine if a lot of the top people are lazy asses like me who don't always do all their runs every single day. The less lift you had the less your matches cost, so the people who are ahead for now, but skimped on breaking pots & doing runs every day will eventually lose enough aether that they might not get their last run in---pretty sure I'll end up behind you, possibly a lot behind you, just because I won't be spending my Aether efficiently.
 

(Not being at a round number means that you'll be ahead of everyone who's, e.x. 1500, but your runs cost the same as theirs. So the people ahead of you has their runs costing more, but the people right behind you will never catch up, as long as you play perfectly. Technically everyone ahead of you can just lose one unit to get the same bonus, by being at xx80 rather than xx00, but I imagine a lot of people, me included, simply don't care enough to do that.)

[Ice Dragon]

26 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

if a lot of the top people are lazy asses like me

Almost by definition, the people at the top are the least likely to be lazy asses.

[DehNutCase]

21 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Almost by definition, the people at the top are the least likely to be lazy asses.

1600 is a special case, though, since it's the people that didn't care enough to go down to 1580 instead---even though 1580 is almost as good but costs 1 less aether/run, which means it should end up 80 ahead of the people who are 1600 right now, assuming there's enough aether left that it'd give you an extra run.

 

(That said, since you're at 1560 you also have to get through the 1580 people, which is the real problem. Didn't you say you only lost 120 points?)

[Hilda]

Time to invest into bulky raventome triangle adept users with obstruct. each color one. Seeing more and more cancer healer defense teams. Occasionally mixed in with either Brave Lyn or the Reinhardt. 

What are the best candidates? Red is peolly sophia, blue is Oliver or Odin and green? boeys res is garbage. omg we have no green tome user with high res and def?

[DehNutCase]

5 minutes ago, Hilda said:

Time to invest into bulky raventome triangle adept users with obstruct. each color one. Seeing more and more cancer healer defense teams. Occasionally mixed in with either Brave Lyn or the Reinhardt. 

What are the best candidates? Red is peolly sophia, blue is Oliver or Odin and green? boeys res is garbage. omg we have no green tome user with high res and def?

Healer teams are stomped by Galeforce, not TA. Dazzle Pain or Dazzle Gravity will ruin you regardless of TA Raven, and Lyn has CA access.

 

Regarding Green Tomers, though, F!Robin is both a bonus this week and a fairly decent Raven Tome user. Edit: If you need to 0 damage wall healers, though, there's pretty much only Armored Henry.

Edited November 12, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

1600 is a special case, though, since it's the people that didn't care enough to go down to 1580 instead---even though 1580 is almost as good but costs 1 less aether/run, which means it should end up 80 ahead of the people who are 1600 right now, assuming there's enough aether left that it'd give you an extra run.

 

(That said, since you're at 1560 you also have to get through the 1580 people, which is the real problem. Didn't you say you only lost 120 points?)

I said I'm 120 behind the top. No one is at 1,700. So I guess I actually fucked up 7 runs instead of 6.

Either way, I did some calculation and I should be able to fit in exactly one more run than anyone at 1,600... except for the fact that I need to win every single match from here on out while breaking both Aether stores every time to do so. Failing to break a single Aether store prevents me from running that extra run because my margin for that extra run is 1 Aether.

Fuck these stakes. Or steaks. Whatever floats your boat more.

 

And on the topic of breaking Aether stores, that's easily the most stressful part of this mode. I'm less worried about Myrrh and Tiki not being able to reach the Aether store so much as Myrrh and Tiki completely wiping out the enemy before they can reach it. I'm not sure if it will be easier to work around by switching out Tiki for Valentine Lyn or by switching Myrrh and Tiki's Swap out for Reposition.

 

3 minutes ago, Hilda said:

omg we have no green tome user with high res and def?

Halloween Henry is the absolute closest we have at 26/36 defenses.

[Hilda]

14 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Healer teams are stomped by Galeforce, not TA. Dazzle Pain or Dazzle Gravity will ruin you regardless of TA Raven, and Lyn has CA access.

 

Regarding Green Tomers, though, F!Robin is both a bonus this week and a fairly decent Raven Tome user. Edit: If you need to 0 damage wall healers, though, there's pretty much only Armored Henry.

last i checked melees cant reach cavalier healers without baiting them unless you want to leave a melee in the dust. Because wings of mercy wont proc for your dancer and escape route neither.

I am not putting all 3 tome users in   one Team, but i need a fail proof way of baiting them without loosing a unit. Each team has one color raven tome user so can send in the one that does it best.

Maybe its Time to also unpack my double distant def Clair

I cant even beat my own fucking map against Veronica Aversa Fjorm and Gunnthra.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Hilda

[DehNutCase]

6 minutes ago, Hilda said:

last i checked melees cant reach cavalier healers without baiting them unless you want to leave a melee in the dust. Because wings of mercy wont proc for your dancer and escape route neither.

I am not putting all 3 tome users in   one Team, but i need a fail proof way of baiting them without loosing a unit. Each team has one color raven tome user so can send in the one that does it best.

Maybe its Time to also unpack my double distant def Clair

Galeforce means you only need 3 units to kill a team of 4, that's why it stomps healers. You have a unit-turn free for mobility. The key is that you only run one Galeforcer, everyone else can be whatever they want. (Ideally 2 ranged horses + a dancer, though. There's a reason my main team's my main team, it beats pretty much every possible PvP team.)

 

If WoM won't proc that means you're fighting the easy mode team without CC, meaning your units can just tank one round of combat after killing 3 dudes so that you can break some pots after. Unless your units are actually getting ORKOd by solo healers, in which case, yeah, I guess ravens would help.

 

Edit:

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And on the topic of breaking Aether stores, that's easily the most stressful part of this mode. I'm less worried about Myrrh and Tiki not being able to reach the Aether store so much as Myrrh and Tiki completely wiping out the enemy before they can reach it. I'm not sure if it will be easier to work around by switching out Tiki for Valentine Lyn or by switching Myrrh and Tiki's Swap out for Reposition.

I mean, if we didn't need to break Aether Stores it's pretty much an arena match where the enemy team spends 6 turns during nothing while you set up the one-turn-kill. And that's if you had no way to hit and run or just bait one at a time.

 

Mind, I do like the mode in the sense that it values consistency more than anything. Breaking both pots is worth about 20 extra points (it's, what, like a 15-20% refund if you break both?), so we can pretend that not breaking pots is basically losing one unit. The key of the format isn't being able to run 5 in a row losing nobody, it's running every match without losing people---or at least without losing more than the people around your rank. So being consistently good is what's measured.

 

But I have a issue with it in the sense that it's the pure performance based metric I talked about before. I'm not sure it's a good idea to show people that they're doing badly compared to so many others---since pure performance needs you to be actually good at the game, and not just own units that score high. It's still whale favored, but skill matters a lot more than unit-pool.

Edited November 12, 2018 by DehNutCase