DLNarshen

Yeah, I'll probably just wind up waiting. Olivia works for now.

Indeed. Thankfully, Zephiel's is one of the easier ones for most people it seems. I average around 500 - 650 per run on the highest difficulty, completing all the maps. Even so I'm not worried about getting all the rewards at my current pace, already sitting at 14K. It's nice to have those numbers though, so thanks for sharing! Those feather rewards though? It might get quite competitive to even get into the 2nd bracket, which is where I'm aiming.

First world problems to the extreme -- I somehow pulled Azura off-banner and want to train her up, but I need all my stamina for the Tempest Trials...

Currently sitting at 3,264 points after using all my stamina. Highest score so far is 631, getting a B in both Speed and Survival. My strategy is to get as far as I can with my Robin/Ephraim/Nino/Ike squad, hopefully making it to the final round. If not I just use other 5* squads until Gunter/Eldigan/Reinhardt/Camus can clean house in the final map. If Reinhardt or Olwen are present, I'll swap out Camus for Julia.

I finished my Blitzkrieg Hard Classic run just now in 351 turns, 391 if Act 5 counts. Clearly there is a lot of wiggle room in obtaining the medal, and I thought I'd list out my individual map turn counts if it helps someone else plan out their own run or keep track of their progress. Act I: Act II: Act III: Act IV: Act V: MVPs of the run were Alm, Faye, Kliff, and Mathilda for Alm's side, and Celica, Saber, and Leon for Celica's. Leon had the most kills at 117. I think I'll leave it that for now. Good luck to everyone on your Blitzkrieg runs.

Season 18 (1.3.0 S4) Results: Score: 4,776 Defense: 0 Rank: Tier 17 --> 18 Probably as close to a "primary core" as I've ever had. Like with most -blade tome buff teams, it is both effective and very easy to use. At my score range I rarely encounter super merges with this team, but as a consequence it doesn't score particularly high. It was more than good enough to increase my rank this time, but we'll see if that will be the case next week. Olivia, being a non-merged 4* with two empty skill slots, drags my score down a bit. I'm considering grinding up her SP some more and giving her two filler skills, but I'm not sure that will be enough to push 4.8K. Does anyone know if skills like Knock Back or Lunge give the same amount of points as the traditional 3-tier skills? Season 18 Hall of Fame: Previous Season Results:

I'm going for this on Hard Classic, and I'm currently at 54 turns after clearing Act 1. Some maps could have been cleared faster with more liberal Lightning Sword use, but I didn't want Gray hogging all the Exp I need to be feeding into Faye, Alm, and Kliff. I'm thinking 500 total turns is pretty lenient with minimal encounters, anyway. Using Merc!Gray, Mage!Tobin, Archer!Kliff, and Cleric!Faye. Anyone know if it's possible to prevent additional map encounters all-together by diligently saving/re-loading if one spawns? Or is the RNG for this per-determined somehow?

Went ahead and did a full pull on Battling Camus as celebration for his release.

Cleared Lunatic with a team of Ike/Nino/Ephraim/Catria, although the fourth slot could have been anyone capable of doing 4 damage or so to the healer. Nino one-rounds Camus, while Ike Repositions her to safety. Ephraim Swaps Ike in range of the healer and one of the Axe cavs, taking him out and leaving the healer with single-digit health on enemy phase. Catria finishes the healer, while Ike moves up to kill the red mage cav. The last axe cav suicides on Ike on enemy phase again. My first try failed because I neglected to kill red mage, thinking that Ike could tank both him and the final axe cav on enemy phase but sadly that was not the case. Now to train up Camus and 5* him. >=)

An official announcement tomorrow with a Friday launch seems likely.

I've been waiting for this! I mulled around the idea of promoting Sharena this week, but she'll have to wait. I'm thinking of running something like Gradivus/Swap/Bonfire/Fury/Vantage/Goad Cavalry. 42 Spd with a Hone buff is good enough to double most relevant arena threats at the 690~ level, so I'm not feeling the need for QR.

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: Previous Season Results:

This is what I'm hoping for. I have to know whether or not we're getting Camus this week.

I feel that in this case they should buck the trend of Dark Mages being Red units, and make him Blue instead. Julius having the upper-hand against Julia would be a little silly lol

Season 16 (1.3.0 S2) Results: Score: 4,788 Defense: 568 Rank: Tier 17 --> 16 This cycle was not kind to me when it came to bonus heroes. Normally I use whoever the GHB character is if I lack banner 5*s, but Xander is quite underwhelming as a 4*. I opted for Roy for this time around, and he did his job well enough aside from obviously tanking my score. A solid check/counter to any leftover greens, and if he wasn't contributing to combat he was a Spur Def bot. He has an arguably perfect nature of +Spd/-Res so I eventually want to 5* him, but there's too much else I want to do with my feathers at the moment. I went down in rank unfortunately, but I don't expect to go lower than Tier 16. Since it seems that the Askr trio are here to stay, I may just have to shift my focus over to them if I want to remain competitive... I probably could have hit 4,800 with this team had I been incredibly selective with my matches, but I wasn't sure if that would have been a productive use of crests. Best case scenario I would have remained in Tier 17, but...I'll take the L this time around, and I may just use next week as an excuse to play around with some of my newer 5* units. Season 16 Hall of Fame: Previous Season Results:

I haven't invested too much into any one character as far as 5* exclusive weapons or skills go, but I have raised an A!Tiki from a 3* to 5, as I've mentioned a few times on this board. My first character with a complete skill set was Nino, who remains a key member of my arena teams. I have a couple long-term goals in mind, but they hinge on things that may or not happen. Now that I've pulled Hinoka, I'd love to build a flying team around Narcian. I could get started on this already, but I'm really hoping they introduce an inheritable DC axe like a Tomahawk or something so Narcian can function beyond just over-killing blues. Eirika/Ephraim/Nino/Canas is another dream team of mine that I want to make a reality someday, but obviously this depends on a character who might get added at some point, but is by no means a shoe-in.

I was surprised they made a new banner but didn't bother to implement any associated quests. The longer we go without daily orbs, the more it's going to seem like the gauntlet orbs weren't much of a reward at all.

Of my 16 5* units, seven are +Res. For banes, -Hp seems to be the most common for me at six occurrences.

I was so happy to see Hinoka on the Lloyd banner this morning, so I used up my 45 orbs + 19.99 worth of purchased orbs to get her. +Def/-Atk. I'll make it work, but damn does that put a damper on what should otherwise be something amazing. Never went from being elated to disappointed so fast lol

Beat it with a squad of Ephraim/Hector/Reinhardt/Ike. I tried the Smite strategy someone posted since I actually had a Bartre trained up, but Hector couldn't survive both the Mage and Bow Knight (He could if he had Bonfire instead of Pavise, but whatever). Hector still works wonders here simply moving up the left side. I was surprised the Bow Knight could be singularly baited -- made this much easier than it otherwise might have been. The Cavalier's Reposition works against him as well, as it keeps Lloyd and the Mage back until the Axe Pegasus has been dealt with.

I used to have a Gunter-lead horse team as my defense for a few weeks, but it wasn't as successful as I was hoping. He's too obvious I think. People generally hate fighting horse teams, and no way Gunter is on anything but that. Hiding the horses behind Azura might be a better idea -- by this point we can expect most teams to have a refresher anyway, and might not scare as many people off.

Total haul was 7,500 feathers on Robin's team throughout the whole gauntlet, which is less than I would have liked. I got rank 95 within Robin's army last round (would have been top 50 had I not missed a multiplier match...), but it wasn't worth tanking my score in the first two rounds. It will depend on who the participants are of course, but I think next time I'll just aim for top 5k in the finals and choose underdogs for the first two rounds. Team Merric people must have made out like bandits for the cumulative score.

Got up at 4, then again at 6 this morning to take advantage of the multiplier, but I missed one match because I dozed too much and missed the last one by three minutes. :( Hopefully we'll still get one or two more chances, but there's no way I'm going to be able to use all my flags for them. It might have been a better idea to join Merric for the first round...

No one unit was particularly troublesome (with exception to a horse comp -Blade Leo I encountered who absolutely man-handled me), but I found there was a lot less room for error in my actions. People are getting wise to the fact that powerful green mages are a centralizing component of the current meta, and so are responding with team comps with more than one red. Ike can deal with the one Ryoma, but throw in a G Tomebreaker S!Camilla and a merged enemy Ike, and the solution is not as clear. This would work much better if I had TA on my Ephraim, but I must do without for now (or just put Reinhardt back on the team lol). Even on a defense tile, my own Fury Nino usually took around 20-24 damage from -Blade S!Camilla. If Camilla also had Fury or some kind of buff on her Res, the usual passive buffs are not enough to one-shot in return (a third buff could secure it in most cases). Enemy Ninos usually do slightly less, but enough to 2HKO my own. I still think it's worth fearing, but it's definitely a more case-by-case threat now. Julia probably doesn't need to worry about it as much.

Season 15 (1st since 1.3.0) Results: Score: 4,820 (New Record!) Defense: 576 (New Record!) Rank: Tier 15 --> 17 3,5xx? If running two greens seems like a bad idea, that's probably because it is. The only significant change I made this week was replacing Reinhardt to try out my new Hector, and I found this made my arena runs noticeably harder. Putting Hector on my team matched me with more super merges and DC Vantage users than I could shake an Armads at. My 4,820 score did not come easy, and I could not get a second deathless run while going through crests to fulfill gauntlet challenges. Part of the difficulty came from the new defense tiles. While easy to take advantage of on offense, Wings of Mercy gets a significant buff from their inclusion, forcing one to be even more precise with their positioning and calculations. Ephraim's A and B skills are filler right now, but eventually he's going to get Triangle Adept and Lancebreaker. One worrisome trend I'm noticing is on-color G Tomebreaker. Before I had Ike, baiting out with Nino was my most reliable way of dealing with enemy green mages. G Tomebreaker throws that possibility out the window, meaning that Ike will probably be a regular on my team for the foreseeable future. Season 15 Hall of Fame: Previous Season Results: