MaskedAmpharos

Yeah I saw, and I want to cry for them ;__; I may not have gotten Hector specifically, but I did get some other 5*s. I guess I can't complain too much.

Reinhardt, Linde, Ursula, and Spring Lucina are all capable of soloing Arcanite's entire defense lmao. Heck, even a properly built Nowi could probably do it. If it makes you feel any better I spent literally 220+ orbs without getting Hector

Reinhardt, Linde, Ursula, and Spring Lucina are all capable of soloing Arcanite's entire defense lmao. Heck, even a properly built Nowi could probably do it. If it makes you feel any better I spent literally 220+ orbs without getting Hector

My vote goes to Life and Death. A +Spd Nino has the luxury to choose between LD and Fury (though many still go LD because you really can't go wrong with optimizing her stats as a glass cannon), but if your Nino is +Atk, then the extra speed offered by LD is even more crucial. That said, I went with LD under the assumption that she wouldn't be surviving much with or without the Def/Res drop, but I haven't done a ton of calcs. If there are things she barely survives with her neutral stats but not the LD def/res drop, then I would consider Swift Sparrow instead. Either one works though. EDIT (to avoid double-posting): Also @crazy_man @eclipse I would really recommend against running a Brave Bow set on Rebecca. Brave Bow users want high attack, and Rebecca has one of the lowest base attacks in the entire game. Niles and Setsuna are the only bow users with lower attack, but Niles gets most of his damage from Iceberg procs with his Killer Bow while Setsuna is fast enough to run a quad Brave set. Rebecca does not have the stats to run a proc set like Niles nor the speed to run a quad Brave set like Setsuna. She certainly does not have the base attack to run a vanilla Brave set like Klein can. The problem with Rebecca is that she has fairly balanced stats across the board, but in a meta where every unit is hyper-specialized for a specific role or niche, being balanced is not a good thing. There is not a single set she can run that could not be run better with a different archer. The best thing you can really do with her, if you don't have a +Spd Setsuna, is to try and emulate Setsuna's Life and Death + Brave Bow + Desperation quad Brave set since +Spd Rebecca has the same speed as neutral Setsuna, but I question whether that set is worth the investment for a Brave Bow+ on a unit like Rebecca. (I'm sorry if I come off sounding really negative because that's not my intention. But I don't want to sugarcoat things because that doesn't help anyone. Rebecca simply isn't at a very good place right now compared to other archers in the current meta. That said, if anyone else has a set that works better for Rebecca than on anyone else that I somehow didn't think of, it would be awesome if you corrected me. I don't hate Rebecca or anything; in fact, I want her to be good. But unless you're dedicated to making her good regardless of optimization (in which case absolutely go for it! This game should be more about using your faves than just units who are "good" anyways), then I wouldn't recommend using Rebecca because every other archer does her job better)

Looks like you've got some competition @DehNutCase (unless this is you? No idea what your reddit is or if you even have one)

@Ice Dragon Idk if this has already been researched or not, but do you know whether or not Heavy Blade will lower CD with every hit of a Brave weapon? EDIT: Upon further reflection, I realized that, even if it did, it wouldn't be nearly as useful as I first thought, which is a shame. I'd still be interested in knowing though, just out of curiosity, though I can't think of a reason it wouldn't.

Reinhardt says hi Vantage doesn't matter if they die in one round :P

Ryoma: Takumi:

Depending on merge levels, I would agree that it matters if you want to rank in the top 1000, but I can assure you from personal experience that having QR 2 (and other skills at level 2) is sufficient to secure top 5k.

Isn't it precisely because you're paranoid that you would want QR 2? It seems strange to me that you would have moments of paranoia like "if I had QR 3 instead of QR 2 then this would have never happened" but don't have moments of paranoia like "if I had QR 2 instead of [default B skill] then this would have never happened", which is far more likely to happen. Unless you just don't use that 5* entirely until you get QR 3 fodder, but then that leads to scenarios of "if I were using X character instead, then this would have never happened".

While it's certainly true that there may be situations where you would have needed QR 3 to secure the kill when QR 2 wouldn't have been enough, it's far, far more likely to run into scenarios where having QR 2 would have served you better than not having QR at all. If you decide to wait to pass on QR in general until you get QR 3, chances are you'll ultimately lose out on more than if you just went QR 2.

While QR 3 is certainly more Arena points than QR 2, the difference is so minuscule that it really only affects the people that are baaaaarely on the edge of a cutoff, which does not apply to most people.

Even at level 2, Quick Riposte is one of the best B skills in the game and is often a better choice on certain characters than level 3 of a breaker. You can also grab a free Subaki from the rotation and train him up for fodder. You should have more than enough shards to get him to level 20 instantly, but if not, it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to level him from 1 to 20 manually. And the upgrade costs 200 feathers (220 if you're upgrading from 1* to 3* and not from 2* to 3*), which is honestly pretty close to synonymous with "free".

Definitely +Atk The -Def doesn't hurt him too much, but the +Atk lets him OHKO a lot of squishy mages before they get a chance to double and ORKO him. Meanwhile, +Res isn't enough to save him from anything, really. EDIT to avoid double posting: @salinea I personally favor a 3-cd skill since, with QR and Heavy Blade, he'll be able to proc those every round of combat assuming his attack is high enough for Heavy Blade to activate. On Ike, usually Bonfire or Draconic Aura are the best choices. Your specific Ike probably wants Draconic Aura, but even with a -Def nature, he gets more damage output out of Bonfire than Luna in most cases. So that's still an option if you don't have DA fodder. Not counting buffs, +Atk Ike gets 16 bonus damage from Draconic Aura, and -Def Ike gets 14 bonus damage out of Bonfire. His enemy would need 34 def or more for Luna to outdamage DA (30 for Bonfire), which is uncommon enough that I prefer DA/Bonfire, but sticking with Luna isn't a bad option necessarily.

@BANRYU Imo your best best is to go with a team of Reinhardt, Gronnblade Cecilia, Titania, and Eliwood. Either Titania or Eliwood should have Hone Cavalry, and the other should have Fortify Cavalry. I don't think it's particularly important who gets what since it'll mainly be just Rein and Cecilia that see combat, but if Eliwood/Titania need to fight, Eliwood probably gets slightly more out of Hone than Titania so he should probably get Fortify while Titania gets Hone. Optimal formation would have the Hone/Fortify buffers next to Cecilia at all times, of course, and Reinhardt is mostly good by himself but would do well with a Hone Cavalry buff. If you can, try to stay in a square formation where Cecilia has Hone/Fortify next to her and also Goad from a Rein that's one square away diagonally while that Rein is also next to the Hone unit. If you have to split the team for whatever reason, it's overall better to have Rein with the Hone user and Cecilia with the Fortify. This is because Rein makes use of the Hone buff but not the Fortify buff. Meanwhile, even though Cecilia would prefer the boost from Hone, she still gets +12 damage from Fortify, so it's the overall more efficient spread of resources.

Rank 1114 with a score of 4846 Guess I'm not breaking top 1k this week either :/

@Rezzy Welcome to the -Atk Effie club :'D

I pulled a shitton of reds and blues on this banner for Ryoma and Azura but hoped to at least get a Hinata/Subaki or two for Fury/QR fodder. Instead, I have 6 Laslows, about 5 each of Henry, Raigh, and Palla, and 11 freaking Ests (along with various other duplicates I won't bother listing) 0 Hinatas and 0 Subakis despite blowing 220 orbs. Amazing.

I, uh, hate to break it to you, but most mages are fast enough to double him. You might not have run into many besides Nino and Linde, but they're out there. Just in general though, you don't want Frederick tanking mages at all, but I'm sure you know that already. Also, I agree with what others have said about using Robin over Azura (even though Azura is great) because not having ranged/magic damage makes things a lot harder for you. If you're proficient enough at using dancers, then you can get away with using all-melee teams by utilizing Azura to grant your melee units the range to rush down mages from outside of their range, but it takes some practice. Also, 670 is a pretty decent score range. Assuming a deathless run that gets you to almost 4.7k, which is a pretty decent score (though, of course, that's assuming deathless, and it doesn't sound like that's happening any time soon). You have a very solid set of units though, especially Ike, Azura, and Klein, who are all considered high tier units, so if you get better at positioning and playing around with them, I'm sure you'll be able to slowly improve your performance in Arena as well.

Short answer: Luna Longer answer: The difference isn't honestly that large between the two, but Luna secures slightly more kills. In general, a quad Olwen is going to be ORKOing anything except high res targets (and def/res affect Brave units more than other units bc of how damage is calculated), so you want a skill to help you break through that. Also, just in general, Luna is best on relatively low base atk units like Olwen. You would only want Bonfire/Iceberg if the corresponding defense stat is high enough to where the proc scaling would do more than the average def/res Luna would break through, and though there's no exact number to always rely on, I would say that a good estimate would be to use Bonfire/Iceberg if the corresponding stat is in the 30s. The fact that Olwen is -Res only solidifies this choice for your Olwen specifically.

38 from Life and Death instead of Fury still doubles a fair amount, and ideally she'll have a Hone Spd buff on her for 42 Spd since you want to be stacking buffs on blade mages anyways (and Hone Atk + Hone Spd are generally considered the minimum).

I would argue that Life and Death is still better than Death Blow because +5 Atk and +5 Spd are more valuable than just +6 Atk, especially on a Desperation build. Also, to answer your question: She survives any red physical unit with less than 56 atk, any blue or colorless physical unit with less than 56 atk, and any green physical unit with less than 47 atk. If we're taking Brave weapons into account, she survives any brave red with less than 49 atk, and any brave blue/colorless with less than 39 atk. She's not going to survive any physical Brave green users. This is all assuming she isn't doubled, but at 39 speed (36 + 3 from Fury), that's extremely unlikely barring B Tomebreaker.

Eh, I preferred fighting merged teams due to Fury because that was the only real way a non-whale like myself could get into the top 1k without having merged units of my own. Now that the Arena has changed, there's no way for players like me to get into the top 1k anymore unless we have higher merge levels on our 5* units, which takes both a great deal of luck (and potentially money). The update has essentially made it harder for F2P to rank well :/

This is mostly directed at @Arcanite But I also want @Vaximillian @Ryu Yuki and @Ice Dragon to see it :D

*shrugs* Even without his special up, he still OHKOs roughly 80% of the entire cast unbuffed, which is more than you can say for most other characters.