XRay

When I see things like "S" and "+" as tiers, I just ignore it and relabel it in my mind with the top tier being A, the second tier being B, and so on. I think they include "S" and "+" so the readers do not feel as bad if the character they like is rated C instead of F. Gamepress's inheritance tier list is a lot cleaner and better than the Wiki's. Wiki's tier lists are a mess.

As person with a nearly full barracks, I try to give my good units as many useful skills as possible. Sending 3 stars away for a measly amount of feathers does not seem like a good idea to me. For example, my B!Cordelia has learned all her native skills and her Arena skill set (in my signature) and a ton of other skills. Her other Assists include DB, Shove, AS, and R. Aid. Her Specials include Astra, D. Aura, D. Fang, G. Wind, and Miracle. Her B Passives include Van. 3, Desp. 3, Renewal 3, B.breaker 3, and D.breaker 3. Her C Passives include BoL3, S. Atk 3, H. Atk 3, H. Spd 3, T. Spd 3, and T. Def 3. She also learned a lot of other skills half way, like Poison Strike 2 and Seal Atk 1. She still has 8706 SP and more coming from Tempest Trial.

I would invest in your Cavalry first to make the Arena easier. In my opinion, the most important step is to give them all H./F. Cav. and positioning Assists. Additionally for cavalry mages, give them Blades (normal version is fine, "+" can wait) and LnD2 (or 3 if you can afford it). All other skills can wait. That should let you rake in the feathers every week to pursue other projects or continue to develop your cavalry. In my opinion, your cavalry team is pretty much all ready to go, since Cecilia is the only one who is nature dependent and you have one of the best natures. If you plan to merge Cecilia down the line, -Res would be the better bane when merged to +10 facing against other +10 neutral units. After your cavalry, you might want to build up your infantry glass cannons next. You have the best Celica there is, so I would invest in her immediately after your cavalry since she is your best red mage on the list. Her most important skill to inherit is L&D3, although 2 is fine if your budget is tight. Fury 3 will also work and it synergizes well with Desp., but it is inferior to L&D. B Passive is her next most important skill, and depending on your playstyle, you can either go for Desp., Renewal, or S.breaker. Her special is the least important, but probably the easiest to get since Frederick, Odin, and Palla carry New Moon as 3* units, and Odin and Palla carry Moonbow as 4* units. B!Cordelia outclasses Setsuna by a mile, but Setsuna is a still a decent colorless glass cannon. Most mages in the Arena uses the Blade builds instead of Raven builds, so Setsuna will have a great time sniping them down along with enemy flyers. Since she is also colorless, you do not have to worry about WTD except for Ravens. With that being said, if you get a non-red mage with a good nature before you get to Setsuna, I would prioritize the mage first since Resistance is often the weakest stat in the Arena. I would hold off on promoting the Askr trio since they are perfectly useable at 4*, and Anna and Alfonse do not get much from being 5*, unlike Sharena. The only other ones I would invest in after your ranged glass cannons are Sharena, Masked Marth, and F!Robin. Sharena is a good blue melee glass cannon. Lucina is a great combat medic. F!Robin can be your dedicated colorless check for story mode or events. I do not see a dancer on your list, so if you have not trained them yet, I highly recommend training one as soon as possible and I would prioritize her over your cavalry. At the very least, train Olivia to 4* level 40 with Ruby Sword, Moonbow, Fury 3, and Axebreaker 3 so she can take on Hector. With Olivia around, you have a lot more flexibility in team composition and tactics. A lot of GHB strategy videos on YouTube also require a dancer, so having one can save you a bunch of headaches.

Yeah, LnD is one of the best A Passives, the other being Death Blow which is more suitable for slower Brave users. I personally prefer Breakers over Desp. since they can knock out a few more enemies; both are great and have their niche.

Replace Lissa with Alm. Falchion and Renewal 1 will give him 20 HP at the start of every battle and you can use Reciprocal Aid to heal whatever unit is injured. Renewal 3 is not needed. It is better to kill the enemy immediately than to let them attack you to activate QR. Healer and QR should be replaced with a glass cannon and dancer, as that will allow you to take out two units on your first turn, kill one unit and retreat safely, or allow you to screw up and undo the mistake with a dance. Hana is much better than Alm as a sword unit, but Alm is sufficient for killing Veronica and healing. If you can forgo the healing, then keep Hana. Can you get Blárblade on Robin? If not, then he should not be your primary glass cannon, since Nino would be better for that role as she comes with Gronnblade and you can give her Fury or LnD. Depending on how good Nino is, you can leave Robin with his Raven and TA if you are struggling with colorless. Nino should not have a problem with sword units if you buff her up. Desperation will also be great on Nino if you have it. For the Hone skills, give Azura Hone Attack or Speed, and give her the Hone Resisitance Seal. Alm can get Hone Attack or Speed, whichever one Azura does not have. On the last map, you do NOT want the mage cavalry to attack you at all on the first turn unless you have TA. The loss of HP to delay its advance is not worth it. It is better to attack the armor unit and retreat to the side, and then let the enemy along with the mage cavalry come to you. If you have Savage Blow on your main glass cannon, you want the mage cavalry to advance with the rest of enemy so they clump in the middle. If the melee cavalry unit on the top left is green, if you have either Alm or Hana, you can send him or her to break the block to the left, and then dance them again to break the block above that so the green melee cavalry will suicide on your sword unit. None of the other units will be able to reach your sword unit so it should be safe. You do not have to worry about keeping all your units alive on the last map. Do not hesitate to sacrifice a dancer or two as meatshields to guarantee a win. The survival bonus does not track how many units are lost, it only tracks how many teams are lost. Using two dancers will significantly speed up the first six maps and give you time to turtle and position on the last map. But if you can manage without two dancers, that is fine too since one should be sufficient as I see many people use only one dancer and are still able to get consistently good scores.

How much do you use Lissa and Michalis? What level is your Alm? You might want to replace Lissa with Alm since he can do combat and heal if you really need a healer. Michalis is not bad, but the only stage I can think of where he is useful is the map with enemy fliers. In my opinion, Nino can do that just as well and be a good glass cannon. Balancing your team usually is not necessary if you employ Blade tomes because they are absurdly powerful. I think you can try Robin, Nino, Alm, and Azura first and see how it goes. If Robin is your primary glass cannon, he can keep TA if you keep a red unit, but LnD and Fury are much better for increasing coverage. Alm covers Robin and he would be your man for taking down Veronica and healing your party; you might also want to get rid of Windsweep and give him a better skill if possible. Nino ideally should be your primary glass cannon since her stats are more suitable for that role. Azura is a dancer, so she has a lot of responsibilities. On Veronica's map, you can use your glass cannon to take a shot at the armor unit, then have Azura dance the cannon out of danger. On the map with flyers, Azura will allow Nino to strike twice per turn, so that map should be a breeze. On the map that many people seem to hate (the one with two paths leading up, the middle right path has a bush/forest and the left path is all the way to the left), there will usually be an enemy unit near the bush, and Azura's job will be to dance the glass cannon into the bush so it can get a free kill on that enemy unit. If you can, try to replace Robin, Nino, or Alm with Olivia. I do not recommend Robin since you need him for the bonus. Getting rid of Nino might cause you problems on the flyer map, but if you have two dancers, Robin might be able to do that job well enough. If you get rid of Alm, you most likely will need to level up Olivia and give her a Ruby Sword, since she will take over Alm's role of killing Veronica if Nino cannot do that job reliably enough. Edit: I just realized Renewal replaces Windsweep.

What is your current team? And what units do you have that are level 40 or in the high 30s? In my opinion, using two dancers and two glass cannons is the cheapest way to get consistent decent scores. Two Olivias are given away for free and they do not need to be at a very high level either. Most people also already have one or two glass cannons from their Arena team. It does take some practice to use two dancers, but once you get used to it, it is very easy to use and actually very forgiving of mistakes since you can always dance and "undo" the move. Dancers also make great meat shields since losing one is not huge deal breaker and you still have a chance of getting decent scores with only three units left.

With more practice, you will eventually get perfect scores over 90% of the time. It took me a day to figure out my best team and about another day to master it. Have you tried using two dancers instead of one? You can drop Eirika and let the two dancers use Hone Attack, Hone Speed, and give one of them the Hone Resistance Seal. The extra dancer allows me to kill one or two opponents safely; retreat and Reposition the dancer(s); and finally kill the rest of the enemies next turn. If you need that extra oomph, you can give your secondary glass cannon the fourth Hone. Savage Blow is also very helpful on your primary glass cannon to weaken clumps of enemies and make them easier to knock out. I do not have a good Tharja, so I use Bride Cordelia and Lucina instead, along with Azura and Olivia as my two dancers.

I already covered Reinhardt (and Setsuna and Linde for comparison) in my topic about B!Cordelia so I did not want to cover him again. Your build is really good and will probably suit most players better than me. Personally, I am not a big fan of enemy phase builds since it is just easier and less risky to kill the enemy before they get the chance to attack you. Overextension can always be fixed with a dancer or Reposition, so I do not find compromising attack even slightly is worth it for a boost in defense. To me, not getting hit at all is a better defense. I love Blade and LnD though. I have not really explored his potential beyond Dire Thunder and Death Blow, so I will definitely make one of my Reinhardts get that build and replace Vantage with WoM. I only need one of my Reinhardts to ruin somebody's perfect Arena run, and players being killed by Reinhardt who is not even using Dire Thunder sounds very appealing to me.

Do you have the numbers to back it up? Bride Cordelia may be the only archer who has a role, but she is an archer nonetheless. Defense and Resistance are not really relevant since initiating against an enemy is almost always preferred over being initiated on by an enemy. B!Cordelia with full Eirika buffs is currently the ONLY character who can exterminate the entire neutral, non-SI cast sans Effie. In the right hands, B. Bows are just as good as Blades since they reliably activate Specials and completely ignore WTD besides the uncommon Ravens. Here is the topic I made about Bride Cordelia. Here are the numbers for waifus and lil bro on steroids riding ponies. And what can a real waifu do again? Keep in mind Cordelia needs only a little TLC from Eirika (Ephraim is disgusting) to reach her potential, while ponies need a ménage à trois. You do have a point about defensive tiles. Using previous setups, B!Cordelia loses to Olwen and Ursula, ties with Cecilia, and outperforms Leo. However, baiting enemies out of defensive tiles is not exactly hard.

It is most definitely "plot" related. Did you hear how much louder Garon groaned when he saw dark Azura vs white Azura? And do not forget the face he made; it was like he saw pure beauty.

I love her dark dress too. I wish they made that her default dress instead of the white one.

I did not even realize Cordelia maxed her SP. I have taught her everything she has, but she still has over 7,000 points left.

As of 10:48pm EST on June 15, 2017, my score is 4904 and my rank is 652. Since there are three more days left, if I am lucky, I think I might be able to slip into tier 20.

Twin dancers team is the best core in my opinion. My Azura and Olivia together trivializes the first six maps. You do need good glass cannons though. My Cordelia also has reposition so she can retreat and reposition the dancer back as well. They also make good fodder if you are really desperate. Losing one usually is not a deal breaker. I can still get perfect scores half the time when I lose one of the dancers.

Oh yeah. Definitely those two as well. I forgot about them since my Cordelia is merged and can take them on fine, but I can imagine them to be a huge pain for regular Cordelia.

You could have a gotten similar results. B!Cordelia is great, but not even my B!Cordelia+10 can handle Veronica on the final map without Savage Blow dealing chip damage at least twice I think. She cannot handle Hector either. I could swap out her S.breaker for Desperation since I have both. She can kill almost everything else though. My ideal team would be Tharja, Azura, Olivia, and Soren/B!Cordelia, but I do not have a perfect Tharja, so I went with Lucina, Azura, Olivia, and B!Cordelia instead.

Depends on your playstyle, build, and what your team needs, but I prefer the +Atk/-Res... I think. I have to check the calculator to be sure but I feel so sleepy right now. Here is the calculator and here is the topic I made about planning builds. Obviously, you do not have to follow all the steps I outlined in the topic since that build process is tailored to suit my own playstyle.

This is how I built mine: Brave Bow+, Reposition, Luna, Life and Death 3, Swordbreaker 3, Savage Blow 3. You can give her B. Bow (the normal one without the "+") and LnD 2 and she will still be pretty usable. Fury and Desperation are good alternatives if you do not have LnD or S.breaker; they also synergize well with each other but is a bit less powerful. Any positioning Assist skill will work, Rep. is just my personal favorite. Her C Passive depends on your team, I chose S.B. because it allows her to kill even Veronica and Hector if they have enough fodder around them. I did not choose Threaten Defense because it does not work well against ranged enemies. As for the stinginess, you just have to reframe the situation to make the stinginess work for you. Once you have the resources, not feeding Bride Cordelia a B. Bow+ immediately will make it harder to earn more Feathers in the future, so it is better to be stingy in the long run than being stingy in the short run. I do not use the Askr trio often enough to really recommend anything, and it depends on your play style. If it were me, I would give Anna B. Axe and LnD2, and give Alfonse B. Sword and Death Blow 3. I need to check the calculator just to be sure, but I think those are the right skills for my play style based on my gut feeling.

I use the calculator to determine which one is better for a particular build for a particular character. I run Life and Death so I have a bias for Luna, but I do not like to assume Luna is better than Bonfire or Iceberg without seeing the numbers first. In my opinion, it is always better to tailor all your characters' skill sets than to blindly give them all the same skill set. If Luna and Bonfire/Iceberg both perform the same for a particular build for a particular character, I reduce the cooldown by 1, rerun the calculator, and see if there is a difference. If their performance is the same again, then I will feel comfortable enough to default to Luna. I am a big fan of Luna, but I just do not think it is one of those skills where it is a good idea to slap it onto everyone. Quick Riposte and Counter skills, however, are skills that I feel comfortable slapping onto every character that uses an enemy phase skill set. Besides Braves and Blades, there are not any skill that I recommend to slap on to every character for player phase builds; Life and Death comes pretty close in that regard, but Death Blow is superior for slower units using Braves.

I run two dancers so I never had issues with turn counts, especially with the first six maps. I agree that it does suck for people who do not have broken glass cannons to utilize two dancers though.

Yeah. I guess it really depends on the player's team composition. I just love abusing dancers in the Tempest Trials since enemies cannot fully take advantage of skill inheritance to counter glass cannons.

I actually like the cliff and forest map. There is usually a unit near the bush/forest near the bottom right that is a free kill for my Bride Cordelia. The cliffs also prevent the enemy units from rushing me. The layout also funnels the enemy slowly through the bush in the middle or the long path on left, and with two dancers, I can kill them in quick succession. If there are enemy fliers, it is even better because they are usually near their allies on the second or third turn so Cordelia kills them in one hit AND Savage Blow sometimes deals enough chip damage that she can kill Raven tome users without receiving damage in return.

I am assuming you are just changing the weapon, A passive, and Special on Navarre. Using the calculator: Navarre Level 40 Wo Dao+ Life and Death 2 Desperation 3 Threaten Spd 3 Moonbow 89 wins, 6 losses, 44 draws Navarre Level 40 Wo Dao+ Fury 3 Desperation 3 Threaten Spd 3 Moonbow 82 wins, 4 losses, 53 draws You are giving up seven wins using Fury 3. But, if you are using him for the Arena, the extra score from Fury 3 might be more important than an extra seven wins since Navarre will have his teammates to back him up.

Bride Cordelia gets most of the glory. Lucina heals her allies with the light of justice and penetrates Veronica with the Pointy Demonspanker. However, the MVP title goes to my two dancers, Azura and Olivia. Together, they make my strategy viable. Cordelia and Lucina can be replaced by other nukers or Veronica killers, especially Tharja who can do both roles to free up an extra slot.