MaskedAmpharos

Currently at rank 508 with a score of 4642, which is a new personal best for me :D Here's hoping that I'll actually be able to stay in top 1k this season!

I mean, it's quite handy a lot of the time because you can have a higher level unit be a meatshield for weaker units while they're training up without stealing any kills. It's also a free way to level healers up in lower levels of the training tower if you have someone with Fury since they'll lose 6 HP every round of combat even from enemies that deal 0 damage, which you can then heal for exp. Unfortunately, any mechanism that can be exploited will be exploited :/

@Phoenix_Kensai @Rafiel's Aria I'm unsure if this will be of any help to you, but just in case: Also just gonna put my new rank update here in spoilers so I don't have to double post:

She sounds great :D good against Subaki, other M!Robins, and pineapples. Bonus points if she has Triangle Adept (though it's not strictly necessary ofc)

*GASP* THEY'RE SO PRECIOUS! NINTENDO WHERE ARE MY EASTER DRAGONS??? Also literal bunny Lucina gave me a pretty good laugh, so thanks for that :'D

I actually need several Lancebreakers, so I'm down to trade :P

@Lyrai @Motendra :OOOO That was quite informational, thank you. She sounds like quite the honorable and inspirational ruler. I look forward to fighting alongside you two for her honor!

@Arcanite @Astellius Okay so, I was planning on joining Minerva anyways because 1) she's the only one I even have at 5* besides my 5* Brave Axe+ fodder, 2) she has the most realistic chance out of everyone else to beat the Brave Axe+ fodder, and 3) I've honestly been the most entertained by the enthusiasm of her supporters compared to those of anyone else. That said, I've never actually played any of the Archanea games, so I know nothing about her. Would you two (or anyone else, really) care to fill me in on what kind of a person she is and why you support her so passionately? (I don't mind story spoilers, but if you include any, be sure to keep them in *spoilers* for anyone else viewing the thread)

The perfect song to round off this first round of hard-fought battles:

All I want in life is Hinoka riding around on a crimson loftwing (LoZ Skyward Sword)

Oh dear, perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. Nope, she lost :/ I meant to say something more along the lines of "I have no regrets supporting her even though I never really thought she would win"

Welp, I wasn't exactly expecting Cherche to win, but I have no regrets supporting my fave till the end. Onto the Minerva train I go! If anyone on here is Team Minerva and wants to add me, my ID is 161-430-7301 :D (Just PM me or let me know on this thread first so I know it's not some random person from Arena or the Gauntlet) My rep is currently Julia with Bowbreaker, but I have plenty of other 5*s of every color to switch to if you request it.

Blue specifically because the 3 dancers currently available are two blues and a red, so they'd all be easily taken care of by a capable blue unit. Wings of Mercy only activates when your non-dancer is at 50% HP or lower. If your only offensive unit is already at 50% HP or lower, refreshing them a bunch of times generally won't help very much (maybe if they're a ranged character and the rest of the opponents are melee or vice versa, but it seems too niche to work out properly). Feel free to experiment with such a team and let us know how it goes though.

I mean you can do that, but I wouldn't recommend it because a) your team would be squishy as hell, b) once the non-dancer unit dies it's basically GG, and c) chances are, after the first dancer lets the non-dancer move farther out, that unit will be too far away for the rest of your dancers to get to anyways, which seems like a bit of waste.

There's no surefire way to get defense wins, but here are some things to consider when building a defense team: 1) Dancers Speaking from personal experience, dancers are among the units I fear most on an enemy defense team, even more than a Hector with Vantage or a +10 Nino, because a lot of my offense strategy involves baiting enemies from outside their range. Dancers often catch people unawares by extending the range of a ranged unit beyond the danger area and letting them KO or heavily damage a unit that you thought was kept out of harm's way. (To a lesser extent, running Wings of Mercy also tends to catch opponents unawares) 2) Mono-color teams Generally, you're recommended to run a balanced team of different colors: one red, one blue, one green, one colorless or perhaps one red, two blues, and a green. Something like that. However, that applies to offense. Defense teams run under a different mentality. You aren't trying to get every win possible: one is all you need. Stacking a color (such as having your team be 3 or even 4 blues) makes it more likely that you'll catch someone off guard. After all, most balanced teams are built to be ready for other balanced teams. Very few teams are equipped to take on a bunch of one color. 3) Kamikaze units As I said earlier, the goal of a defense team is different from that of an offense team. On offense, you don't want to lose a single unit and often play defensively because of this, not just charging straight into the enemy team. On defense, however, you don't give a shit. It doesn't matter how many of your units die because that doesn't affect your score at all. All you want is the opponent to die. In fact, in higher tiers of Arena, many people will surrender the match as soon as they lose a single unit, even if they COULD win the match with the remaining characters because it isn't worth it to continue a non-deathless streak. As such, your Defense team's goal is to "take out one of the enemy at any cost". This allows you to run more fun stuff like having Eldigan just run in with Lunge or Drag Back to drag a victim closer to the rest of your team at the cost of his life or having Reinhardt or Klein just run in with their Brave weapon guns blazing to take out or severely weaken someone, even if they may not get out alive on the enemy's phase. Anyways, these are not foolproof strategies by any means nor are they the only factors that go into building a defense team, but these are just a couple pointers that have consistently helped me get defense wins every season. EDIT: Also, just as an extra tip: don't put an armored unit on your defense team unless it's Hector. Just don't. Most of the time, on a defense team, your units will run off as far as they can, leaving poor old Effie dragging her ass to the front slowly, one square at a time. By the time she gets there, the fight's already basically over, letting the remaining enemy units easily focus her down 4v1. Again speaking from personal experience, an enemy Effie is probably my favorite thing to face because I essentially have a free 4v3 for most of the match and can then nuke her down with ease at the end. Double EDIT: If you have any movement assist skills like Shove or Smite that pushes allies away, just unequip them from your defense team. 9 times out of 10, the AI doesn't use it strategically and just shoves people whenever they can just because they can. It's hilarious watching an enemy Effie save your ass by Smiting Tharja to the other end of the map when she COULD have killed your Julia (but now can't because Effie shoved her to the other goddamn side of the map). It's not so funny when your own defense team screws up a match they could have won by doing that.

I'd personally look at it by weighing the gain of a +1 Effie vs a Cherche with Death Blow. Making Effie +1 will give her +1 in two stats, and you don't even know which two. Giving Cherche Death Blow gives her +6 attack on player phase. In terms of sheer stat gains, Cherche wins out.

Statistically, you have a higher chance of pulling a 4* Klein than another 5* Effie. But tbh I think giving Cherche Death Blow is more important than having your Effie be +1 (though I'm pretty biased for Cherche)

I assume it is since there'd be no reason for 250 to be the highest cutoff for rewards otherwise.

You say weird, but I actually find it really cool to have the fire and ice particles together :O

True that. Also (Birthright spoilers)

Though I do think they'll probably be added eventually, I feel like adding Beastkiller weapons is largely unnecessary as cavalry units aren't really a threat except in the lower BST ranges where they're viable (you can kind of see this with how niche beastkiller tomes are now). What I do think would be cool is if they added Sting Shurikens for armors and weapons like Levin Sword or Bolt Axe to let melee units deal magic damage (still somewhat upset that Felicia didn't get the Flame Shuriken as I think it would have been perfect for her. Maybe Flora will get it if/when she's ever put in Heroes?)

Oh no that's perfectly fair. I'm not here to try and convince anyone to love Camilla (or even to not hate her) so much as I wanted to express my disappointment that she's seen as nothing more than fanservice by a large portion of the fanbase when I think there's more to her. I do also want to add that I don't think having a traumatic past ever excuses a person's actions, but I do think it adds more complexity to the character ("she's crazy because X happened and messed her up" is a lot more interesting than "she's crazy; deal with it").

@BANRYU Thanks for the insightful post (and by extension letting me discover that video, which I'm extra happy about as a psychology major). It basically sums up my thoughts about her: Camilla has a lot of potential as a character, and you can see bits and pieces of it, but it's largely overshadowed by the way the game developers use her as fanservice. I don't dislike Camilla so much as I dislike her wasted potential (and just in general, female characters being degraded or oversimplified to be just fanservice bothers me so, so much).

I'd probably be on Team Sain. He just has such a fun personality, and he was also one of my best units in FE7 :D (I can't believe Kent and Sain aren't already in Heroes though, as I've always thought of them as two of the more iconic FE7 characters).

I honestly don't dislike Camilla at all; I just think it's fun to be the underdog and fight against the clear winner (I also liked Lucina but had a blast backing Ephraim). The thing about Camilla is that she actually has a fairly complex personality, but it's largely overshadowed by the immense focus put on her physical characteristics and her obsession with Corrin, blown even farther out of proportion by the fanbase largely oversimplifying her character as it tends to do with most characters (like Ephraim's defining characteristics having turned into being a siscon and a memelord). Camilla never knew love as a child, being the daughter of one of Garon's concubines who didn't particularly care for her. As a result of growing up with this kind of upbringing, she developed her mothering and nurturing nature to care for the younger siblings, Leo and Elise, because they came from similar backgrounds, and she didn't want them to feel the kind of lonely abandonment that she suffered through. She eventually grows close with the Nohr siblings and Corrin as they grow up, and they become her source of love, warmth, and acceptance. This also contributes to her fierce protectiveness of her siblings, to the point of obsession or brutality, because they filled her heart, left cold and empty after her mother's neglect, with warmth and provided her with a place where she could finally, truly feel loved and she'd be damned if she let anyone take that away from her. She's normally seen to be incredibly warm and nurturing with her siblings, but she's shown through various supports and the story that she's merciless and coldhearted when it comes to protecting her loved ones. Is she a perfect character? Good heavens no, not by any means. Her sense of familial love is incredibly warped to the point of obsessiveness, but that's because she never experienced love as a child and so doesn't know what it really should be like. She can't love normally because she was never shown how. Camilla is broken, shown by her brutal lack of emotion and merciless brutality for her enemies, with her only solace being the family that saved her from loneliness and gave her a reason to live, so it makes sense for her to be extraordinarily protective of them. Wow. I wasn't expecting to type out so much. Anyways, Camilla isn't my favorite Fire Emblem character, not by a long shot, and I won't be fighting for her in the gauntlet. But I don't dislike her, and I think the amount of flak she gets sometimes is a bit unfair. Yes, she's overly obsessive with Corrin, but I feel like that's because she was neglected in the past and doesn't quite know how to love normally. There's also the whole issue of how fanservicey she is, and I'm certainly disappointed by how much focus has been put into that. However, I personally interpret it as her wielding her sex appeal as a tool or a weapon to get her way (as she was very obviously trying to do with Corrin in Chapter 13 of Birthright) rather than her being a particularly sexual woman herself. But I'm not going to go into more detail here as this post has gone on quite long enough. tldr - Camilla deserves better than the hate she gets. I'm not a fan of the way Nintendo uses her to throw fanservice in our faces because I genuinely think there's more to her than that and that she deserves better than to be treated as just a piece of fanservice.