MaskedAmpharos

And you're being told right now that many people do. I guess it's a matter of perspective. It's true that the majority of the playerbase cannot get deathless streaks consistently. However, it is also true that several thousand people do manage to get those streaks consistently, and I consider that a lot of people. It splits people into stratified tiers based on performance, and now, instead of all players competing with each other in Arena, you only compete with the rest of your tier, which adds a level of competition. If you're on the high end of your tier, you move up to a higher tier. If you're on the low end, you get demoted to a lower tier. Higher tiers get higher rewards every week, and now rewards include both feathers and orbs.

You say it's impossible to get deathless, but this in itself is evidence that it isn't. It's precisely because so many people are getting deathless Advanced wins that a single death costs you so much. If several hundred or several thousand other people have units with close to the same BST/merge level/skills as you, then of course it makes sense that if you get a death and they don't, they'll all rank higher.

They're not as important in lower tiers, but at anything over rank 10k, they begin to matter a lot more. At where I am, a single death could cost me several hundred ranks, which could be the difference between being rank 1000 and rank 1400. One death would cost me 500 feathers, and that's not insignificant.

Goad Cavalry would stack, yes. If it says "during combat" anywhere in the skill description, then it stacks with itself and all other "during combat" buffs.

The Arena tier change would make deathless runs more important, not less. Also, if that's what you're doing, then you're dragging around a unit you're barely even using for most matches. You may as well just run four functional units instead of three plus a backup. Not to mention avoiding deaths at higher tiers is so crucial that if I lost even a single unit, I would much rather forfeit the entire streak than try to win the match.

Spurs stack. Hones/Fortifys do not. All in-combat buffs stack, and no out-of-combat buffs stack.

There are 20 tiers. There are tens of thousands of ranks. I exaggerated, of course, but you'd definitely lose several hundred spots at least. One death is not insignificant enough to ever justify taking a character that sacrifices themself.

Considering how many thousands of ranks you drop from even a single death, this would most definitely not be worth it.

Not on offense, perhaps, but they'd be damn annoying to deal with on a defense team. Oh you killed Vantage Hector? GUESS WHO'S BACK >:D

@Vaximillian @Ryu Yuki @Ice Dragon and anyone else on Team Julia: I'm planning to put this guy as my rep for the gauntlet (especially since we're against Sanaki first), but feel free to request someone else (my hero list is in my sig).

Tfw a dedicated mage killer is -Res The problem is that, even with +Spd, she only reaches 31 speed, which is...not great. The problem is less her speed and more her other stats though. Most units that have mid to low speed either have really high offensive power (like Reinhardt), really high defense (like Beruka), or both (like Hector). Florina has an unimpressive speed stat, and on top of that she has a low base attack and defense stat. Even though she's -Res, her resistance is still one of the highest in the game and is the main thing going for her, so though some of her matchups could change ever so slightly, I would still recommend the same build as earlier.

Florina's tricky to optimize. She has one of the lowest base attacks of any flier (only Caeda, Clair, and Subaki have lower attack), but she's also one of the slowest fliers in the game (Michalis, Cherche, S!Camilla, and Beruka are all slower), meaning an offensive build is out of the question. However, all of those other fliers have something else going for them. Caeda and Clair have really high speed, Michalis is hella tanky, Cherche is a powerhouse, etc. Florina has....high resistance? That's honestly it. If you had the resources, you could always make her a dedicated mage killer with Distant Counter, but I assume the vast majority of people do not have a spare Hector to feed. Aside from that, I would still recommend mage killer (because she doesn't have the stats to do much else), but without Distant Counter she would be a strictly inferior option to other mage killers like Felicia because she can't counter on enemy phase. The best I can recommend you is to give her a Tomebreaker and a Killer Lance + Iceberg for burst damage, but past that I'm not entirely sure either. It just makes me really sad that she got shafted so hard since she's actually one of my favorite pegasus knights in Heroes from a character and design standpoint (though I'm certain it's nowhere near your love for her).

Nice Lyn :D As for Desperation, Shanna gets Desperation 3 at 4*

Fair enough. If you have the resources for it, Camilla is best used by taking advantage of her high res to be a mage counter with Silver Axe and Distant Counter. If you wanted to stick with her default Brave Axe, giving her Life and Death and Desperation for a quad set gives her a better matchup spread than her default skillset. I would also recommend replacing Draconic Aura with Luna or Iceberg for more damage output.

The answer is to feed her Brave Axe+ to Cherche

I mean if you don't have a +10 Merric then you haven't summoned enough Merrics yet :P You should take notes from @Ryu Yuki who got Nowi up to +10 as a F2P with sheer dedication.

There isn't really such thing as an "ideal assist" since just about all of the positioning skills are arguably equally good and depend largely on player preference. If you want to get her safely into Desperation range without combat, then I'd go Reciprocal Aid. Otherwise, I'd probably go with Reposition (which, now that I think about it, has pretty solid synergy with Noatun's teleportation). You get less than half the amount of kills compared to a LD + Desperation build. I wouldn't recommend it.

Everyone's freaking out over how difficult it is now to calculate optimization of feather gains, but I'm just going to continue backing my faves instead of worrying about feathers, as I always have :D

The problem with Vantage is that it's best one slower units with high attack since if you can't OHKO the enemy with Vantage there's no real point to it, and Anna's base attack is on the low end. She makes up for it with her blisteringly high speed, which allows her to double or even quad almost everyone, but she won't be doing much damage in a single hit, even with Defiant Attack. So I don't really think any Vantage builds with her are ever going to be optimal :/

Whatever happened to "seals are for squares"? :P

Honestly I don't find Horse Emblem particularly dangerous on a defense team since it runs into the same issues as a standard blade team: the AI's too dumb to stick together for buffs.

Luna actually has a slightly better matchup spread than Iceberg because she already kills most squishies and really only struggles against tankier characters, which Luna helps her with. Iceberg is her second best proc though.

@GuiltyLove Can confirm that Death Blow isn't a very good choice on Anna. I personally favor ditching Noatun for a Brave Axe/LD/Desperation build, but even without the Brave Axe, LD + Desperation with Noatun gets her a far better matchup spread than running Death Blow on any of her sets.

Leo is best on a cavalry team with an inherited blade tome from Tharja, which greatly boosts his offensive power and lets him OHKO a huge chunk of the metagame. Death Blow is probably his best A-slot since he really wants to be able to OHKO opponents when he attacks (since he isn't doubling anyone with that speed). For his B-slot, I would recommend either taking a breaker to grant him ORKOs via doubles he wouldn't normally get (such as Swordbreaker) or Wings of Mercy for the extra mobility. The C-slot is entirely team dependent, so just take whatever aura benefits your team most. On a cavalry team, he'll probably want one of the cavalry buffs to give to his other teammates. Otherwise, his default Savage Blow is fine. If you're using him with Raudrblade, then you'll want to take Moonbow as his special since the blade tome increases cd (making other moves have charge times too long to be useful). To be honest, I'd still take Moonbow even if he were using his default tome since he basically never doubles, which causes his skills to charge slower, but Draconic Aura is another option over Moonbow if he isn't running a blade tome. Finally, the assist skill is mostly personal preference, but I personally think Reposition and Draw Back are the assists with the most utility on a ranged unit, especially if they have as much movement as he does. tldr - I recommend running Leo on a cavalry team (with Hone/Fortify Cavalry buffs, of course) with: Weapon: Raudrblade Assist: Reposition or Draw Back Special: Moonbow A-slot: Death Blow B-slot: Swordbreaker C-slot: Savage Blow or Hone/Fortify/Goad/Ward Cavalry Seal: Atk +1

Tfw I didn't manage to collect my feathers before Arena closed for the day. Hopefully I'll still be able to collect my rewards when it reopens tomorrow.