Avestus

I'm currently using Olwen-Tharja-Xander-Olivia team. Tharja: +spd -def, fury 3, desperation 2, reciprocal aid, hone def, vengance Olivia: Hone atk, Wings of Mercy 2 Xander: fury 3, quick riposte 2, Hone cavalry, Bonfire, Reposition Olwen: +atk -hp, Life and Death 2, Desperation 2, Hone cavalry, Reposition, Luba The idea is that Tharja can relatively safely get herself into desperation, then swap hp with Olwen, getting her into desperation and so on. In the long run her ability to swap HP and drain her own pool is amazing. The rest is pretty obvious: Olwen and Tharja destroy everything in desperation mode, Olivia is there to warp and dance them. Xander is kept for some extremely speedy and res-heavy units which can't be dealt with by Tharja and Olwen. I got a relatively steady stream of 705-points games coming now. Thus i think blade- or brave- tomes + desperation are the way to go if you have them, of course.

I've beaten it on hard/calssic. Some simple tips: Killer Bow and Zweihander are cheap and overpowered. Get at least one of each on your team and abuse their abilities Take at least 3 clerics. Warp/Rescue combos are super-useful. Invoke/Silence can disable some enemies for a while A non-obvious thing: entombed are simple terrors. They can be expelled, despite their ridiculous stats. If you have a unit with "Expell" and Faye with "Anew" they pose no problem. Mage ring users (Mae and Delthea in my case) are very useful and efficient The first time i went up to B8 floor. Then I got scared of my depleted turnwheel and returned. Next time I came with Killer bow instead of Parthia on heavily statboosted Tobin and with Zweihander wielding Gray. The rest of the party were: Alm, Celica, Faye, Tatiana, Genny, Mae, Delthea. I also took Conrad for his pretty good overall stat spread, but he didn't do much.

They don't just "run away", they move to the healing tiles. If all of the healing tiles are occupied, they won't flee. I don't know the exact threshold for enemy to move to the healing tile.

Both fates and awakening get hated not for their gameplay innovations but rather for one-trait characters, silly supports and, these things mostly in fates, non-existent world-building on top of extremely bland/stupid plot. This hate is very well-deserved. So, what I want to see in new fe: No time manipulation. Seriously, STAHP that nonesense. Flowing from the previous point, either no children, or time gap like fe4 Well-thought medieval society with fleshed out hierarchy, multiple powers with complex motivation Quality over quantity in supports. From gameplay perspective, IS almost always get their innovations right (like pair-up system which was interesting in awakening and got extremely good in Fates), so I believe they will be fine in this regard. The story and characters concern me greatly though.

I don't think so. Even on the picture Sharena should have Hone skill but judging from Alphonse, it hasn't buffed him yet. Probably all buffs will activate strictly when you start the mission.

The only problem with Ignis is that it can activate when you don't want it. Of course you'll have options tom play around it (not aggroing wrong units e.t.c.), but in some situations you may have to block someone with Mihalis and get off Ignis on enemy phase when you don't really want. Well, it's about preference. Ignis is very good since it adds values to raw damage. A very powerful skill, I do agree. If I'm not satisfied with native, I'll probably go for Ignis.

I already have him as 5* lvl 40 with 1000 sp and quick riposte 2 and Swap taken from Subaki. I decided not to change his active skill because the chances of being doubled are high which means that with the right baiting he can both kill the unit which engages him and get 4 ticks for his monstrous native skill. I'll see if that works out. Anyway, I think that Moonbow is solid choice, but it may be not optimal. He probably will kill lancers/blue mages anyway. For targets like Hector though you'd probably need more firepower on the active skill to one-shot them (which could prove important). Dunno about best teamates, I'm going with my highest-BST setup again (Effie-Eldigan-Fury3!Julia).

IV's (boon/bane) matter a lot here. If your Robin is +atk I'd go for him and sacrifice Roy to give him triangle adept, since you have no decent mage range unit and it's pretty useful in arena. Michalis is a safe bet (just slap Quick riposte from Subaki on him) and he'll be bonus in two seasons which is good. So if your Robin is not +atk i'd go for Michalis. Whichever you chose (if you do), don't forget to grind for sp on the way.

Everything that gives 1.5 atk damage. AoE is nice but what matters the most is massively crushing unit ahead of you completely disregarding triangle effects.

Is there any datamined info on bonus characters for future seasons?

It's absolutley true. Look here (all characters are 3*): (btw this youtuber is always good reference for heroic battles)

Eldigan facetanked lunatic under rally defense from Ephraim for me. Got some help from Julia too. Effie just kinda stood there for additional speed buff on Eldigan, lol. It's very advantegous to set up everyone on left flank with no flyers so that enemy can't drag back you.

I'm really glad I got my solid place in top1000 in the beginning of the season. If not for that - I would've burned several chairs under me already. Like: -Oh, nice, that Nino can't get two shots at my Effie with wary fighter and one shot is not enough for kill. *Effie gets doubled and killed* WHAT? And then I see lancebreaker.... This is actually fun, i like it, but I really wonder how my nerves will deal with it next season....

Yep :( Let's hope anyone interested looked up this thread or the youtube translation.

@eclipse it's probably too late, but the news on the main site has wrong time :/ This thread has it right. Can be confirmed by this preview of youtube translation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL4QXzpNZLo1_qoY_byNzcEknBZJc1wuOP&v=ZFxXMAOQiRY Can you correct that somehow?

Hmm. I seem to recall that lvl 40 units don;t get sp at all when they kill lvl 1s. What should the difference be to gain sp?

4650 offense 268 defense, rank 171 as of now. Julia with fury and green tomebreaker, Effie with glowing ember and hone speed, Ephraim with rally defense and bowbreaker... Eldigan still moves with his native skills. What a time to be playing Heroes! :) Btw, I have seen at least one team with all 4 characters having fury on them, lol. Takumis are surprisingly not numerous. Probably not that many of them on this high BST after cheaters were purged.

For me rehabilitate is the only worthy healing skill, so it's Wrys and Lissa both being top healers. I'd probably say Wrys is better since affecting enemy's speed is good as well as extra heaing for the whole party. Lissa's atk buff is not so cool since too many units have it anyway. If the arena scoring ever changes, allowing for taking lower-ranking teams and still getting strong opponents, I think it's the two of them who will shine. With the ridiculous damage everyone does in most cases their heal recovers the whole hp bar and that's exactly what matters. Currently though my best "healer" is Julia, since she actually has a nice rating and can do damage, which makes her viable for high-scoring arena runs.

I had the same problem last season and it was solved only when I went with Tharja-Ephraim-Takumi-Julia setup. Actualy, Eirikia is amazing since she buffs both your Nino and Tharja better than, for example, my Ephraim does. I think that Tharja-Eirika-Nino-Takumi/RobinM should solve your problems, but well, I could be mistaken and there's not much time in this season. But in the next one I think it's worth trying it at least for two days.

Hmm. The most arguable thing is the healer. Did you take off her weapon so that she doesn't aggro and kill herself? Also, dancers are situational and they're really good only in teams with exactly the same or at least 1-2 movement, otherwise enemy can bait your Ursulla, using your own dancer on the team. I'd advice to switch both Ursula and the healer for two nice ranged units and you'd probably be good, all-ranged teams supported by dancers are probably the biggest problem for anyone in the arena. Though using 3 ranged + 1 bulky tank also has some benefits for defense. upd: Jeez, I should learn to read :( Anyway, even if it's not the defense team in the screen, general formula "3ranged + 1 tank/dancer" stays the same.

For anyone interested, I've gathered some statistics on the variance of max rating of enemy teams: Here is my post on reddit. I think it could be interesting for arena min/maxers like me :)

Well, I'm fully f2p and I'm third there :) I got lucky with my pulls and spent 20k feathers on beefy Effie though...

My Ephraim is +1. Btw, it should be 707 in my total stats if i didn't miscalculate. Nice topic :)

Phew... I'm kind of proud I did this as fully f2p player.

When I'm at WTD I use RoundDown(atk/1.2 - def) and it has always worked for me.