Ryu Yuki

You know, this news is big enough that it might warrant its own thread. I'm sure many people would like to discuss about it specifically. But I'm not too familiar with the rules here; would news like this be allowed its own thread or would it have to stay here? Mostly asking because the mods seem quite vigilant here.

Apparently it's April, yes.

I feel like +Spd/-Atk is slightly more worth it just because he gets +4 Spd rather than +3, and even a small Spd increase tends to go a long way. It won't make him double too much, but it probably would save him from being doubled a fair amount. So it probably helps him tank better than +Def. I'm no expert on this though, so maybe someone else wants to chip in if I'm somehow giving bad advice here.

I am really glad about the Stamina thing. This means I don't have to wake up every 4 hours to make maximum use of my stamina. (I've actually been trying, just to SP train my Y!Tiki to hell and back) Also, the lower rarity = more exp thing is wonderful. I wish they implemented that mechanic (And Skill Inheritance) sooner. If they did, I probably would have raised Anna/Sharena to Lvl 40 each time before promoting them. I guess I could still do it for Alfonse, who I kinda want to raise despite have a lot of higher-tier reds.

99 MAXIMUM STAMINA!? DREAMS DO COME TRUE!! Also that Exp Boost is wonderful. With the new Inheritance mechanic, I've been making it a point to raise 3*s to 40 before ever promoting their rarity. And let me say, it is a huge hassle. Between their lackluster weapon making it hard to secure skills, and their lower stats making it hard to tank hits at the higher stratums, it also feels like they straight up gain less EXP or something. The last one might just be me hallucinating though, I have absolutely no proof of that. It just feels so much slower levelling them. EDIT: Oh and thank god for the preparations screen. I've had enough deaths due to terrible initial starting positions.

Holy duck. Here I am wishing I got a second, and you got 15 of them...? There's... so many... I didn't even think it was possible... Give me your address so I that I can hijack your account and take all them Ninian for myself But seriously speaking, I am so jealous of you. I wish I was done with college just one year earlier so that I could have whaled this hard for Ninian... She's totally worth it... Hopefully, between you and SoC and all the other whales, Intelligent Systems would feel inclined to bring her back in a future focus summon just because of how much money people blew on her this time around.

Congratulations! I know how good it feels to finally get that unit you've always wanted, so I'm glad for you! Also I totally fed mine to Lucina for Desperation 3

I'm... so sorry for you. If I couldn't pull dragons, then I'm not sure what I'd do anymore. My life would lose any meaning it had, and I'd probably be reduced to a shrivelling wreck. So I can really feel for you, man. I hope you manage to pull a few; you're missing out a whole lot on what life has to offer without them .

E-e-eleven...? S-surely, you have s-some to share around, r-right? I need a few extra for my manakete dream team...

It's a 40+10 Ninian with Lightning Breath +, Dance, Fury 3, Vantage 2 and Hone Speed 3 EDIT: Ampharos beat me to the punch.

We sure this doesn't belong to @Ice Dragon...?

Movement assists tend to be helpful. Reposition on my Nowi got me a lot of defense wins, and the poster right above you got Draw Back to work for him. Dancer(s) also consistently produce results. In general, a lot of people rely on the Danger Zone feature to tell if the enemy can reach them next turn, and Dance + Movement Assists tend to throw a lot of those predictions out the window. It's a lot easier to make mistakes and get someone killed when the enemy team has such capabilities. Otherwise, you'd want a team that's hard to play around. Close/Distant Counter makes it so that the opponent can't attack at a certain range to avoid taking any damage, and Vantage can make it hard for people to do the 'Bait on enemy phase and kill on player phase' tactic. Manaketes with the all-range breath weapon work just as fine as well. EDIT: Also my current defense team is basically Y!Tiki / Nowi / Ryoma / Takumi, every one of them loaded with a breath weapon or skill that lets them counter at any range, and packed with Defiant Atk 3 + Vantage for good measure. It works wonders for me.

Out of curiosity, what kind of bet is this? Sorry, this is 34 pages long and I don't really want to go through the entire history. Also, it's kind of cool that shadowofchaos is Twitter buddies with the 3*s dude.

I'm glad you found all that somewhat useful. Also, while it's true that dragons take a lot of investment and it'll take you a while to fully complete their builds, prioritizing certain skills (Such as the assists and Vantage etc) could potentially net you defense wins along the way without actually completing the builds yet. So it's ultimately up to you whether you want to go all the way with this, but you might not necessarily need the full builds (Though obviously it does help a lot if you complete them) if you're really worried about getting defense wins. In any case, you can get around 75 SP per 4 hours (Takes 4 hours to recharge fully; 5 units on Eight Stratum will net you 3 SP each, for a total of 15x5=75 on full stamina; Use the leftover stamina to 'refresh' via Starting Stratum) so if you put your mind to it, you can actually grind them relatively fast. Also, Hector is an excellent teammate to the dragons, as he's the strongest green unit in the game and can fell the likes of Julia rather handily. I would definitely go with him since you happen to have him. Well, that's one unfortunate side effect of using manaketes. They have inflated base stat totals, so you end up getting paired against really powerful merged units. I for example, constantly deal with 40+10 Lucina and 40+5/6/7 Julia in 70% of my runs, even though my only merged units are my 40+5 Nowi and the 40+2 Lucina that I'm gradually phasing out for my new Eliwood (His mobility and high-res makes a good complement to my dragons; also I just don't want Ninian to feel lonely). I can tell you that it wasn't fun at first, but I've learnt to deal with it over time. Since you're running Fury 3 on Nowi, your team's total base stat is artificially getting jacked even further and you're most likely running into even more horribly mismatched battles. There isn't much you can do besides maybe removing Fury, but that would mean the teams you fight against won't give as much of a score either. The April update will probably alleviate the issue somewhat, so I suggest just waiting it out until then, and you'll probably be facing teams that aren't over-merged by that point. And yes, as a Dancer, Ninian tends to throw off the enemy's sense of your effective Danger Zone, so she's really great for defense team purposes. As for dealing with dancers, there is really no better method than to simply observe them closely. Dancers give a lot of mobility to a team and there's no real good way to deal with them besides making decent predictions and picking off the enemy team fast enough that they don't completely swarm your team and make deathless positioning hard. I would like to say kill the dancers as soon as possible, but that's rarely an option given that they're almost always hiding behind another unit or two and reaching them means an incredible risk of losing one of your units. As for the Nino and Julia, there are two main ways that you could go about killing them consistently. The fact that you have a +Res/-Spd Adult Tiki is actually quite fortunate, and I highly suggest you go about raising her. Honestly speaking, Adult Tiki is so slow that any speed investment in her is really not worth it, and she's one of the few units I explicitly recommend -Spd for because of how little of a difference it'd make. I would personally say +Def or +Res goes the longest way in helping her, due to how often she's going to be doubled, and a +3 Def/Res means taking 6 less damage in your typical round of combat. I'm leaning on +Res as the superior option because it's much more helpful in the build you'd typically want for her. So in a way, you got one of, if not the best bane/boon combination on her. Anyway, I highly suggest running Triangle Adept + Green Tomebreaker on her, as it makes her surprisingly good at murdering any green unit in existence. To demonstrate, any axe-user is going to need 59 Atk to deal even a single point of damage on your particular Adult Tiki, assuming she's at 5* 40. That's almost never going to happen without big buffs, so she becomes practically untouchable on the physical side (Which is also why I feel +Res is somewhat more useful than +Def as anymore Def is just overkill on this front). She's a bit more fragile on the magical side, but she will still be taking hits very gracefully. Julia is arguably your biggest nightmare, because she gets a whopping 50% boost to her damage due to Naga's in-built effect. But with Triangle Adept and Green Tomebreaker, the typical Julia with neutral nature will only deal 17 damage to a +Res (i.e your) Adult Tiki, and Adult Tiki will completely destroy her in retaliation. This means your Adult Tiki can murder two Julia before finally dying to a third, assuming Julia is always the one initiating (Julia herself will die horribly with minimal opposition if you're the one initiating the attack). Even being very generous and assuming you're facing off against a +Atk Fury 3 40+10 Julia, she will deal a somewhat respectable 26 damage to your Adult Tiki before being horribly mauled to death by her. With Green Tomebreaker, Julia basically has no chance whatsoever of surviving an encounter with Adult Tiki. Looking at Nino, a +Atk Fury 3 40+10 version of her will only deal a laughable 7 damage to your Adult Tiki, before proceeding to be one-shotted in retaliation. Nino could technically deal more damage than that due to her Gronnblade, but you probably won't be taking too much more since I was using a very generously powerful Nino in that calculation, and you could probably play around the buffs against an AI team. No matter what though, even at her absolute strongest (+4 buff to Atk/Spd/Def/Res with the aforementioned 40+10 build) she will only barely manage 19 damage, which is less than half your full health, and she will still be one-shotted. So yes, one solution to your problems is this build of A!Tiki's, that will most certainly fry any green that stands in her way. Also keep in mind, I used an unmerged Adult Tiki that isn't buffed by Fortify Dragons in the above calculations. If you actually include Ninian's buff in the calculations, Adult Tiki is even more hilariously untouchable. If you're somehow not comfortable with the above solution, another way would be to include a Red Cavalry/Infantry on your team, and slapping Nowi with Reposition. I personally use Eliwood/Lucina for my Julia-killing purposes, but they aren't necessarily beefy enough to survive being deep inside enemy formation. As such, what I do is to send them in for the kill, and then have Nowi come in and use Reposition on them; this sends them behind her, leaving her to tank 1-2 hits which she could probably do as you've very likely killed the only non-Hector green on their team. From there on it's pretty easy pickings unless they have Falchion-wielders. Nowi is strong enough to survive one Falchion hit though, and if you have Spur Atk on your Red Cavalry/Infantry, there's a very good chance Nowi will simply one-shot them in her counterattack. So this method had worked fairly reliably for me, and it's something you can do if investing in A!Tiki is going to take too much time or something. All in all, looking at your potential candidates, I'd probably not include Corrin no matter what, because Nowi/Ninian are better blues and you really don't need more than two of those. I typically wouldn't recommend a completely pure dragon team, so I would suggest deciding between Fae/Nowi/A!Tiki/Ninian and choosing three of them to keep on your team, and throwing in a physical hitter because you don't really want a full magic team. Pure dragons can be walled by high-Res teams, and you rather avoid that scenario if possible. I personally would throw out Fae due to the abundance of reds in the arena, and the fact that her Def isn't super-respectable in a meta where you're more likely to see physical blues than magical ones, but she is one of your 5*s so I'm kind of reluctant about truly shafting her. If you really want, you could maybe throw Triangle Adept onto Fae/Nowi/A!Tiki, and you could maybe viably run a pure dragon team since the damage boost from TA might manage to make up for a lack of strong physical damage, and you've also managed to cover the entire color spectrum so there's no color that can truly wall you. (Besides colorless ninjas with super high-res like Felicia who don't show up too much) With Ninian in tow, it might work out, since TA will make your units tank certain colors extremely hard, and including Lancebreaker for Fae and Swordbreaker for Nowi can go a real long way in helping them murder the enemy team. It's ultimately up to your preferences though, as I think either of these paths could work out to some extent. Of course, if you happen to have the season's bonus unit though, you're going to have to throw one of them out, and if you absolutely must, I still say either Fae or Nowi. Fae for the prior-mentioned reasons, and Nowi because Ninian might be able to fill in for her despite her far lower natural stats. Hopefully with that, I've addressed most of your concerns. If there's anything I've said that confuses you or doesn't seem like it makes sense, do feel free to ask me about it, and I'll do my best to answer any questions. If you have any further concerns beyond that, feel free to ask about them, and I'll do my best to address them. I hope this provided some insight at least, and I apologize if it was a tad bit long.

I can promise you'll break into 1k; I'm currently in Rank 900 exactly with a score of 4,596. I just got a better score of 4,610 myself, but my rank hasn't been updated yet. Honestly I'd try for better, but I'd have to blow several swords and surrender a few times until I get paired off against higher-scoring teams. Give me a bit, I'll write something for you soon enough. Multi-tasking at the moment, but I'll definitely reply to you.

I'm waiting for Hone Dragons to become a thing so that a truly all-dragon team might actually be super-buffed enough to be viable. Goad/Ward Dragon would also be appreciated, although I'm holding my breath for that. Currently have Y!Tiki/Nowi/Ninian which I'm quite happy with, although I do want to pull a better Ninian. For my last team member on this hypothetical team... I'm kind of hoping Idunn is released as a Green Dragon or something, just because she looks cute and her dragon form is really (In the good way) sick. Also hoping for Manakete Roy to one day become a thing, although I realize that's really unlikely. I'm also waiting on Nagi, although she's probably going to be a Red like Y!Tiki and I'm not sure if I want to replace her. Also waiting on the Choose Your Legend Lucina and Roy, and if they're good enough, I might build a team around them.

My reply is a bit long, so I wrapped it in a spoiler tag. I apologize if the reply was a bit slow; I had to go out today to get several social obligations done. Hopefully I provided some insight, and do feel free to ask further questions if you are wondering about anything.

Aww, thanks for the compliment. It really feels good to be called that, considering I do love them dragons. Well, I've had plenty of successful defenses with my dragon team (If you're willing to define 270-280+ defense scores as 'successful'). If you're willing to share your exact units and maybe their natures, I could try to help you out there with suggestions and tips. I am rather prone to long walls of text though, so if you don't really like that, do tell me and I'll try to keep it to a more compact size. Either way, my main team is Y!Tiki/Nowi/Ninian and I've invested a whole lot into them (My Nowi is 40+5 after over 80,000 feathers) so I do believe I'll know what I'm talking about to some extent. And as for the Skill Inheritance issue, you will probably have to invest a lot for certain builds, although I can try to take it into consideration and see how you can cut down on spending them if possible.

Thank you xD I've raised a +Spd/-Def Eliwood myself, and he's currently sitting at 4* 40, waiting to be promoted to 5* when I have the feathers. I'm glad both of you liked it! I thought it was pretty neat and I'm glad that I shared it.

Yeah, he's clearly not meant to be taking physical hits. From what I can see, he's designed to be a mage-killer, with his excellent Res and great mobility helping him along for that purpose. His weapon is also very notable; I feel like Durandal is among the best swords in the entire game, right behind Raijinto. It can stack with Death Blow, and Eliwood's Atk is good enough that its combined might can seriously hurt.

Hm, I see. Yeah, I'm starting to respect Triangle Adept a lot more now, despite its potential drawbacks. I've always kind of feared Julia because she hurts even Y!Tiki immensely, and it was hard to do much about it due to Julia's range and naturally high Res. Even Falchion-users were a lot easier to deal with due to their limited movement and low Res. But after knowing all this, it does seem beneficial enough that I'd even pass up a Vantage build (I love Defiant Vantage on units that can counter at any range) for TA+GT/QR. Thanks for the statistics by the way, this was some pretty useful insight into manakete match-ups that I might have missed otherwise. Also, you bring up a valid point about Eliwood's Spd. After thinking about it a little, in the higher tiers, it really doesn't stand out too much after all. I do plan on giving him a Tomebreaker to compensate, since I'm mainly planning on using him to kill mages that are otherwise out of range for my manaketes. But even if it's not amazing, I do think that his 30 (33 in my case) Spd is salvageable to some extent, unlike say A!Tiki/Alfonse/Chrom/Julia etc. At the very least, it's enough to prevent a fair amount of doubles except from the likes of Lucina or Lyn. With a Rally or Spur, I imagine he could probably double a fair amount of Brave-users or even other manaketes (He has the Res needed to fight them). I'd give him Darting Blow, buuuut... Death Blow + Durandal just sounds way too awesome a combination to pass up.

Hm, didn't think Triangle Adept would make that much of a difference defensive-wise. I was kinda reluctant at first because the manaketes can actually tank and do decent damage against disadvantageous colors, but it might be worth investing in if this is the case. All the SP I'm going to have to invest in Y!Tiki will hurt though... (At least 750 for Lightning Breath+, then there's Triangle Adept, Green Tomebreaker and a C-Skill that isn't Breath of Life...) Also once the April Update rolls in, I'll probably replace Lucina with my +Spd/-Def Eliwood. Mostly because stat totals won't affect the score as much anymore, and also because he kind of feels perfect for my team. My manaketes have way more than enough Def to cover my needs, and I kind of needed someone that can take a few magical hits. He has more than enough Res to fulfill that role, and it helps that he's extremely mobile and can very easily murder Julia from a distance (Enemy AI is actually pretty smart at higher levels and don't really make it too easy for Lucina to reach Julia). His weapon is great too, and when stacked with Death Blow, he gets +10 Atk on initiates which is kind of amazing. He's not even one of those units gimped by a poor natural Atk or Spd stat, so he has a fair chance of doubling with his stats. Even more, it is far more realistic for me to reach 40+10 with him than with Lucina, who is god-forbiddingly hard to roll without a focus summon. Most importantly I just don't want Ninian to feel lonely...

Well, I don't blame you. Lucina and Julia are unbelievably common once you start scoring over 650 points per battle, and it will quickly feel like everyone wants dragons dead there. Not to mention, a truly pure dragon team will probably never be viable, because you inevitably need someone to deal physical damage on your team if you don't want to be stonewalled by a potential high-res enemy. Even I run Lucina on my Y!Tiki/Nowi/Ninian team because I need a physical damage-dealer, and also because I need someone capable of absolutely murdering Julia. However, it's worth noting that with a buff or two, Nowi can OHKO Lucina and Marth pretty consistently, so they aren't actually that much of a problem. In fact I run a Defiant Atk 3 + Vantage build, which allows my Nowi to pretty much slaughter(one-shot) all Falchion-users not named Chrom (Who barely ever appears) that come to attack her. Her natural bulk pretty much ensures that she will survive even a Falchion hit rather handily, and once Defiant Atk 3 and Vantage kicks in, she kind of becomes a powerhouse that will deal massive damage to the enemy before she ever goes down, regardless of range. I plan on doing something similar for Y!Tiki, but the SP costs to put everything on her hurts like hell and will take time. Julia on the other hand, is indeed a huge problem that isn't easily overcome. She has such a high Res that Y!Tiki can only barely take out half her health at best per attack, and this will become even harder if you run Lightning Breath+ on her. A!Tiki does somewhat better due to her higher natural Atk, but she can never double Julia without external help in exchange. In fact I would personally rather take on 2 or 3 Falchion-users than one Julia; that is how much she bothers me. Her long reach just makes planning your movements rather difficult. She's also the main reason you'd probably want at least one red sword on your team, because otherwise you kind of have to go out of your way to manage murdering her. But still, an Atk buff + Green Tomebreaker can very consistently destroy her if you're using A!Tiki, so there's that for you. All in all, I can definitely understand your doubts in a dragon team due to the current meta, but there are ways to alleviate the problem and while I would advise against a pure dragon team, using 1-3 is actually rather viable. If you want a healer no matter what, using 2 dragons, a melee unit, and a healer in the last slot should work rather handily. Rehabilitate is really good on dragons since they're tanky and last a good while, so I can definitely understand your desire for one. Yeah, I had a lot of problems raising Ninian as well. I would suggest having one healer, and two buffers (My Y!Tiki has Rally Atk and Spur Atk, while my Lucina also had Spur Atk) to complement raising her. It went a long way in helping me, and in your case maybe you want slightly more defensive buffs if everything is really one-shotting her. I really wish they granted EXP for dancing, because besides Azura it can be quite the pain to raise them by manual battling...

They're really great! They give you high Arena Scores with their bloated stats, and they are an extremely reliable counter to armor units (My Tiki regularly does 40x2 against Hector and takes 0 damage in return, for example). Any non-Falchion melee unit is also pretty much free game to them, with really rare exceptions. Their Res tends to be respectable but lower than their Def though, and their reach is the same as sword/axe/lancer-users, so they do have slight problems against lots of mages. But yeah, other than that and Falchion/Naga-users, they are a really reliable composition that I'd recommend if you ever get the opportunity to use them. Ninian is an amazing support unit (You can check my other post for why I personally think she's better than Azura on manakete teams) for them, so it's a great start if you already happened to roll her. Nowi is also fairly common, so you'll probably get her at some point down the line. Y!Tiki is the only issue if you don't already have her. She's a 5*-only red unit in a game filled with red units, so you might have to wait until another focus summon for her. [Also keep all A!Tiki(s) you happen to roll. They make good food since they have the same all-range counter weapon as Nowi and dragons of any color can inherit them]

Yeah I can definitely understand that. I'm not really an "efficiency" player either, I just happen to really like manaketes, so I try to make them work regardless of how viable they happen to be. Really sorry if I came off as trying to force my views on you or something, but my point was simply that Ninian isn't completely outclassed and can be a bit more useful depending on what team she's in. I can respect that Azura is generally better more often than not, and that your personal team probably has a better use for Azura than Ninian.