MaskedAmpharos

I'm doing my best to stay optimistic about the whole thing, at least until it's released. I'm telling myself that already-good characters like Takumi won't be able to get as much out of skills, but it could make currently meh characters viable in higher-ranked Arena, adding variety to the meta (which I imagine was the original intent behind skill inheritance in the first place). If worst comes to worst, and everyone has the potential to be OP, I'll still be happier with a character I really like having OP skills than a current top tier. In the words of Syndrome: if everyone's OP, no one is. Oh yeah, there are definitely maps that make good positioning really difficult (if not outright impossible). Fury units aren't optimal in all settings, I'm just trying to advocate for their good points in some areas.

Well, the idea is to not die (no duh, I know). If you space properly you can generally get in with a Fury unit, kill, and then be safe from retaliation. This is made even easier with dancers or units with Draw Back to get you out of the way or healers, but none of that's necessary with good positioning. Also, the extra defense/resistance from Fury can often more than make up for the nonlethal -6 hp. My Eldigan has Fury and because of that he takes about 5 damage from Hector, and Hinata with Fury takes 0 damage from Takumi, which I find to be hilarious.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Jagen. Anyways, people use Fury because it gives +3 in all stats, which usually makes up for the damage you take. You don't last as long, but you deal more hurt and get more kills while you do last.

Short answer: it's not. Obviously it depends on what other units you have, but for the most part Hinata subpar compared to most other sword units. The only thing going for him, really, is that he has high-ish BST because of Fury, but otherwise you're better off spending your time and effort on other units. This is just my opinion though, of course. If someone else on this forum thinks Hinata is a god and can convince me of such, I'm willing to hear them out.

3 iirc. Bartre, Hinata, and Eldigan.

The idea sounds interesting enough. Hell, the wiki already has a "guides" section, so it'd be fairly easily to add this onto there. I'm not confident enough in my game knowledge/expertise to necessarily do write-ups myself, but I'm all for the idea! But yeah, it'd probably be best to wait for Skill Inheritance to come out first as that has the potential to shake up the game quite a bit depending on what restrictions are or aren't put in place.

That sounds about right. -Spd, +anything is good for Hector though.

This basically. Stars and levels make a huge difference. Assuming equal rarity/level, any Robin absolutely wrecks any Takumi. Also @Anacybele, Arena in general is pretty red-dominated since most of the good units are red (which makes sense given that most Fire Emblem main characters are sword users), so greens will only get you so far (unless their name is Hector or Nino). I get that you don't want to part with your current team members, and obviously you don't have to. But if you want to rank higher in Arena it'd be better to focus more efforts on units you have that would solve your current problems, even if they're currently weaker than the rest of your team (thankfully it shouldn't take more than 2 hours or so, excluding stamina recharge time, to get a unit from level 1 to level 40 in Training Tower, speaking from personal experience). Robin, for example, seems to be the answer to a number of your problems. If you get his rarity/level up, he counters Takumi and 1-2 shots literally every healer in the game, he does good damage against the red units you see so much of, and provides both the ranged magic damage and high-ish res (for a mage his res is okay, but compared to your other units he should fare better against mages) mage counter you've been needing as well. I know Freddy and Palla are the current MVPs of your team, but if you have a Robin that's the same rarity and level as them, he should do quite well, often better than those two, in Arena. This is from my own personal experience (I also have Frederick and Palla, both at 4*) and the experiences of others. If you want to just play with your favorites, that's of course perfectly okay, but competitive play doesn't cater to that (not just in Heroes but in most games). If you want to do well in Arena you may have to use units you don't like as much, and if you want to just use units you like then you may need to set a lower goal for Arena. It's all about finding the right balance.

Tis true, I'm just excited to get 20 free orbs though :D Also, in case it hasn't been mentioned yet: Skill Inheritance is officially planned for release on 3/16!

In all fairness, I'm sure a good number of people blew most of their flags in that one day (but yeah, hopefully this will still be an easy 20 orbs).

Leo's currently at 562,657,654 (to Ephraim's 743,375,143)

I'm just imagining how weird it'd be to go back and play through the story against Veronica...as Veronica.

I've mainly been running Reinhardt, who is an absolute monster on offense (esp if +Atk like mine is). One-shots all Takumis and all sword lords and can often even one-shot Camilla or come close despite WTD. The only thing holding me back from using him in Arena is his low BST, but BST doesn't matter for event matches >:D

This is really neat, thanks for sharing!

@Elieson So I just checked the rankings in Team Ephraim for fun, and the #1 ranked guy atm is a dude named Eleison. Is this you by any chance?

Unlike Arena, BST isn't taken into account for scoring so you'd get the same number of points regardless of what team you use provided you win. From what I've seen, 110 is the max number of points, with points increasing based on how large your friend list is up to 100, and you get an extra 10 points from using the bonus character you're supporting. With flag multipliers, the max you can possibly get per battle is 11000 points.

I put Reinhardt as my rep since he's capable of one-shotting Takumi and basically any red on player phase :D

Team Ephraim: 257,227,145 Team Leo: 180,479,828 Wondering if I should be spending or saving my flags. Using flags later would be advantageous in later matchups, but Ephraim is leading Leo by a smaller margin than any of the other round 1 matchups so I'm a bit paranoid

So how exactly are points calculated? Do unit deaths affect score?

Holy hell! Pulled Eldigan so I'm running a new Arena team with a BST of 705 (Ryoma +1, Julia, Effie, Eldigan), and I ran into a team with Nino +10, Julia +10, Y!Tiki +2, and Eirika +5. That was the most terrifying match of my life. (I did win and gained 664 points though. Thank Naga for Eldigan and his special)

I'm still trying to figure out if I should be spending as many flags as I can or if I should do quests and save up (and if so, how many to save up)

Yeah I generally let Hector initiate. My Ryoma's -Def though, so that's probably why his survival's a bit shaky against two Hectors sometimes (admittedly I didn't bother to calculate exactly so for all I know I would have lived the second Hector with a small amount of HP but was too scared to take the chance)

Yeah I've started running two sword users on offense because I've started running into teams with 2 Hectors. Ryoma can kill one Hector just fine, but after that his HP is generally too low to tank a second one.

Idk where you heard this, but I most certainly wouldn't consider the maid/butler characters to be Jagens. That's pretty obviously Gunter. I can't speak for Jakob, but Felicia's the exact opposite of a Jagen. At least in my personal experience, she starts off with pretty pathetic damage and is really only a staffbot until you get the Flame Shurikens at which point she becomes one of the best damage dealers on your team.

Pretty much just echoing the others: everyone includes armors in Arena more for the bump to their stats (and thus their score and overall rank) than the units themselves. I have an Effie but tbh the 1-move really bothers me, and if I didn't need her to rank in the top 5k I'd use someone else. Hell I'm considering making my next 5* either Sharena or F!Corrin and using one of those as my blue tank instead. Less optimal than Effie pointwise, but I think I'd have more fun with the team.