Katrisa

Oh shoot Ice Dragon is right. If you're going Gronnblade+LifeOrDeath then +Spd is delightful on her. If you're going Gronnraven+Triangle Adept then its a wash +Atk will net more solo oneshots, while +Spd will help overcome times where you don't one shot (high Res Fliers) and a number of general green units where you will double them instead.

The only character I know who really benefits from Brash Assault is Lyn. When she hits the HP threshold for it she will proceed to sweep the enemy team. Other than her I'm not sure anyone else combos off the skill well.

Ice Dragon mmmmm dat score!

Delete me... double post sorry!

The tank build for FCorrin was: Default Weapon or Lightning Breath+, Moonbow, +2 Atk/Def Or Triangle Adept, Seal Resistance, and Threaten Attack. Traingle Adept is probably the better of the two allowing her to do her job the best, while +2Atk/Def is just comical vs All non Dragon slayers. This build works best with +Spd Corrin. But basically her high defense and speed prevents virtually all units from doubling her while allowing her to face tank. I've literally had my +Spd FCorrin kill Hector in the arena which is really funny to watch. She's tricky though because she acts as a tank, but is frail to magic and Falchion users. And likewise she needs to be able to kill her targets. But I've found this build works fairly well at getting the job done. I went with +Atk -HP Cecilia with Gronraven +TA and I'm loving her. Every once in a while I'll wish I had +Spd, but most of the time +Atk was the right choice allowing her to oneshot her targets without extra buffs. None the less have Xander passing her Hone Cavalry and Goad Cavalry which allows her to kills targets outside of her normal range, specifically high res defensive Pegasus riders. Fortunately they are not popular in the arena.

I have the opposite problem with S!Chrom... i drew 6 of the bloody idiot. I could merge them all but he isn't exactly a spectacular without some serious inheritance and my Hector outclasses him by a large margin. I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one to come to this silly plot though o/

I've had Eirika on my team for a long while. I was very lucky with an +Atk -HP roll. On her I ran Fury, Dragback and Moonbow. Sitting at 39 Speed she outspeeds nearly everyone in the melee meta, so she ends up procing Moonbow basically every fight. She's still stupid fun and its impressive what she can kill. With this said without +Atk and moonbow I've heard people complain about her inability to get kills. --- Also thanks for the thoughts on Xander everyone. I think I've settled on trying out a tank build I was looking at for FCorrin. The build looks perfect for Xander due to his amazing attack, low speed, and awesome defense. Xander: Default Weapon, Bonfire, +2 Atk/Def, Quick Riposte, and Threaten Attack. So instead of trying to reduce doubles you keep your low speed and instead try to increase your defense and reduce damage as much as possible. If another horse unit tosses Xander Fortitude with this build he can literally drive red unit damage down between 0-5 damage a hit. Likewise he can tank blue melee with this build and kill them in return with Bonfire. Likewise with damage reduced you can pull of two Quick Ripostes at level 3.

I hadn't considered Bonfire and its impact. For units who Xander doubles and only takes one hit from, you HIGHLY want moonbow or Fury. Without Moonbow or Fury you will miss killing some red units. So that's fairly notable + for Fury if you don't use Moonbow on Xander I concur with Icedragon especially on Dragback. I've been using dragback on Cordelia my brave lance user, and its really nice. It allows you to better pick someone off and back out to safety. Especially if you have someone with dance, drawback or reposition to move them one more space out of the way.

Well Xander will take less damage in situations with Fury. Xander will take less overall damage with just +3Speed. He actually benefits relatively little from the entire Fury buff since his defense will rarely fair him when being doubled by a green or red unit. As noted there are only a few scant situations with red sword wielders where +3Speed and Fury have a different outcome. You are right that if Xander is passed a Hone Cavalry buff he'll push up to 33 speed. Which is important to note. On the other hand if you keep his Armored blow and he gets a Fortify Cavalry buff he literally only takes 4 damage per hit from a non+attack Lucina. So I guess the question comes in with how your Xander is being used. I do agree after looking over all the numbers that Fury provides the largest coverage for Xander. I do think that +3Speed provides almost the exact same coverage but reduces the damage you'll take in single attack situations (and single blow kills). Anyway though I figured out what I wanted that Fury does have legitimate uses in terms of coverage for a number of fights.

Thanks for the metrics Smoke. You gave me enough doubt to check the numbers myself. Your note on Vantage is probably the most interesting, Vantage may have better raw use on Xander than Quick Riposte in the arena letting his counter and high attack stretch. Please note my rant below isn't pointing that you're wrong on anything rather exploring how much additional coverage Fury actually nets on Xander. --- Fury only increases your bulk if you would have died otherwise (since recoil is very damaging) or if you avoid being doubled. The primary reason to take fury is to increase damage, increase your speed bracket, and attempt to bulk up just enough to avoid being one or two shotted. Its been a popular skill for most red sword users because many have low bulk and are in competitive speed tiers. Xander though is stupid bulky from a defense viewpoint. So the primary bulk changes in Xander dying with or without Fury is from the speed bump. Xander's red Speed tier (Fury Xander can avoid doubles from the following units): Neutral Alm, Eliwood, Young Tiki(dragon), Ike, and Palla +Spd OR Fury Stal, Laslow, and Sanaki(Mage) +Spd and Fury Adult Tiki(dragon), Eldigan, Hinata, Seliph, Chrom, Alfonse, and Lilina(Mage) So above is the answer to the question I was trying to ask. Those are the matchups which have the potential to change for Xander vs Fury Xander. I did the computations for his bulk and he literally can survive two hits from neutral or +Spd Lucina with Fury and Moonbow... with or without Fury 3. So I guess what is occurring as people look at Xander is I want to counter hit everything twice. Which is a solid reaction and Quick Riposte does this job great. The problem is if you eat one or two hits and eat Fury recoil you've taken some serious damage. And I checked the numbers. From most double sword hits Fury Xander is going to be essentially between 1-10 hitpoints depending on if they had Moonbow and or Fury/LifeOrDeath (or another +Attack skill). So he won't be able to do another fight. --- Anyway after looking at the numbers I think I've come to an interesting conclusion. +Spd Xander and +Fury Xander achieve almost the exact same result with the widest possible counter coverage using Quick Riposte. The only exception I can find is if Lucina or Ryoma have Fury3, Moonblow and the +1 Attack seal, in which case +Spd Xander will die and +Fury Xander will live. I think there is another exception with +Atk Lucina and Ryoma with Fury3, Moonblow and the +1 Attack seal where +3Hp seal +Spd Xander will die and +3HP seal +Fury Xander will live. (The HP seal is nice on Xander!) --- But after looking things over Fury Xander does appear to have the widest counter coverage set, at the cost of coming out maimed. I'll have to consider how this would work with my comp. I'm tempted to skip Fury with him and go with his default Armored blow (or raw +3 defense) and Sword breaker. He gives up some coverage (mostly counter doubleing archers) but could easily handle most reds and greens killing more than one per arena match.

I've been looking at Xander and matchups. And I'm a bit surprised Triangle Adept isn't being considered on him (especially paired with sword or bow breaker). Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Standard Xander build appears to be Fury + Quick Riposte + Moonbow/Bonfire: Which would allow Xander to tank and kill archers, green mages, and green melee. He'll loose almost all red matchups though. Most swords will outspeed him and red mages/dragons will outspeed him and trash his resistance. Likewise when fighting anything (even when he wins) he's going to come out fairly hurt from incoming damage AND fury recoil. Making two kills of anything sketchy at best. Triangle Adept Xander build would be Triangle Adept + Sword Breaker OR Bow Breaker + Moonbow: Which would allow Xander to easily tank/kill Green mages and green melee. With sword breaker he would win most sword matchups, but require two turns to kill an archer. While with bow breaker he would slaughter archers but loose most sword matchups. Overall he'll take minimal damage from green fights and low-moderate from sword or bow battles so he should be able to get two kills without much of an issue. Glancing at this functionally I think Triangle Adept Xander should fair better in most cases with you choosing bow/sword breaker based on the gap in your team comp. Am I missing something here or overlooking a common use/matchup that people are using Fury Xander for? The only notable green matchup change I see is he would not one turn counterkill Cherche, Minerva (without LoD) and Hector. Hector you would just take two turns (and kill last) while Minerva without LoD would be super rare and Cherche you would have to two turn.

Thanks for the feedback! Both your thoughts is roughly what I was expecting of Cecilia from what I've seen of her. I suspect I'll go with Raven first and maybe blade Cecilia longer down the line if I enjoy her.

Question for folks. I was rocking the arena really hard up till the scoring change. Which then caused my high BST team to now face many more ranged units (yuck). So now I'm reconsidering the following two comps: Counter Comp: FCorrin - Reposition Lightning Breath+, Triangle Adept, Seal Res, Threaten Defense OR Lightning Breath+, Life or Death, Desperation, Threaten Res Xander - Swap/Reposition, Base weapon, Triangle Adept, Quick Riposte (or Sword Breaker), Speed Buff Hector - Swap, Base weapon, Distant Counter, Vantage, Attack Buff Horse Emblem: Xander - Swap/Reposition, Base weapon, Triangle Adept, Quick Riposte (or Sword Breaker), Buffs Reinhardt - Swap/Reposition, Base weapon, DeathBlow, Lance Breaker (or Quick Riposte), Buffs Cecilia - Drawback/Reciprocal Aid, Gronnraven, Triangle Adept, Flexible, Buffs OR Gronnblade, Life or Death, Flexible, Buffs Anyone have thoughts or see holes? My primary concern with the counter comp is if I run FCorrin with TA I'm going to lack a sweeper. On the other hand if I run FCorrin with Life or Death... I'm going to get hit hard by Falchion users but at 42 spd FCorrin will pretty much double almost everyone (45 after merging her once). So she should proceed to sweep after taking a single hit. None the less being all melee without dragback I'll sometimes get stuck with melee+ranged units that won't separate and are not possible to tank. My concern on the horse comp is if Cecilia is better built with Gronnraven+TA or Gronnblade+LoD or Deathblow. My fear is while Gronnblade will be stupid fun, you essentially give up your ability to counter attack much of anything with her low speed. With horse buffs you'll be able to nip a hit of this or that but not much. Does anyone have experience with these two rough builds of Cecilia?

Your whole topic basically points at one of the huge pain points in this game. Skills being so highly valuable and being unable to pass them around more freely results in seriously hard decisions which do NOT promote healthy play. Essentially by binding abilities to another unit on one and only one transfer, no one is able to practically experiment. On one hand this design is probably advantageous to people who are built for incredible strategy, plotting and calculating, and forming extremely well formed parties. But the other 95%+ players likely survive on trial and error. So how do I feel about single player hacking. When a game is online, I hate it in all its forms. But when a game fails to grant players legitimate control of changing builds/abilities etc within reason.... then I don't frown so hard on the hacking. Because internally I'm pissed off at the bad game design. So the long about answer is I think people will continually hack the single player game often separate of their core account) in order to explore what the developers failed to grant in terms of build design/support. Personally I think they should have had a more reusable system... where say every character had "training points" enough to teach another unit say three core abilities. And then on skill inheritance the training points are consumed. The training points could then be restocked by, killing things with the ability owners unit. Well tuned enough this would be a much more FUN and fair design. Problem is it consumes of their monetary value... but as I've stated before I think their monetary design is horrible IMO.

Rating and how you end up matched is an interesting and weird mechanic right now. 10 point nudges to my offense or defense teams BST can greatly change who you're facing (reducing the number of ranged units you face, or the number of merges to tango with your group). I think even with their planned changes there is going to be quite a bit of weirdness in arena matching. It will take notable tuning for them to find a healthy balance between offensive and defensive teams.

I'd say the legitimacy is somewhere in-between. Many of the groups are front lined by names which scream "I'm a hacker". F1n@L F@nt@sy 7!! and other names filled with special characters or whatever teenager hackers can hammer into their names are almost certainly not the choice of a legitimate whale who has income to kick around for this game. I've absolutely run into a number of whale accounts where I look and they have all +10s or a core +10 surrounded by fills to drop BST. I frown but its what the system is right now. The problem as you noted is regardless if the account is a whale or hacked, is that +10 triple ranged matchups with an unmerged unit is clearly a horrible match making problem. I'm glad they've already announced they intend to take a shot at fixing this problem.

I laughed fairly hard when I read this. But I'm sorry for your accident! I'm kind of surprised with that lineup. The maps have been fairly open each day this week though, so ranged units have been relatively easy to deal with.

Your description of this made my laugh really hard =-)

I saw you post this elsewhere. So some folks are still running into the weird hacked teams. So quite a few have apparently been banned but quite a few still exist... and no doubt some of them are legitimate. Though from how Icedragon has noted his defense team (Ice is kind of like my marker for what to expect from a legitimate whale), these teams you're describing (and what I saw last week) seem completely illegitimate. Hopefully Nintendo continues to squash them out.

Thanks for the peek into the darkside. Well that would make sense given what I'm observing. It definitely made my clear this week MUCH easier. I'm glad to see the big N putting forward work to keep play fair. I don't mind getting taken down by an interesting and creative team, honestly it makes me smile. Side note I saw something REALLY weird this week. Someone had a tank team with no skills loaded except fury and one other +3 stats on two of the non-tanks. It almost looked like someone loaded their alternate account with a defensive placeholder with specific stats, maybe to match the BSM their offensive team... It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. The team consequently died in a blink, the fight was a give me.

I concur mages with crazy speeds are so dangerous. Its the reason most of my characters at this point essentially demand very high speed or Triangle adept... so they can tank one mage hit and then execute them.

I'm split on putting Fury on anyone as well. The primary issue being with upcoming arena changes taking out stat boosts from skills. So I'm trying to look at my A slot more long term, and only pass out Fury to someone who really needs the skill. None the less its a very good skill on Julia, regardless. Thanks I love seeing unusual units in the arena too. Its actually kind of interesting because with the current Arena mechanics (being based off BST) some characters are horribly undervalued. Palla is one of them, sporting 170 in total stats while carrying a Triangle Adept weapon making her insanely deadly to greens. Unfortunately her speed is meh at 31, so she'll require sword breaker to cross swords with many other red units. I think using her has probably demonstrated to me how nasty Triangle Adept weapons are, freeing up your A slot for additional bonuses.

Congrats, you're sporting a very nice BST on that team, though a bit challenging to clean clear as you noted. You posted a huge score though, very nice! I had a very good run this week with Palla on my team. I'm going to give it a go with Spring Chrom next. I still need to fill out Corrin's skills, but still heavily debating about her roll on the team. I'm thinking about going with Triangle Adept, Reposition and -Attack in her C slot. Then she would tank Red and blues exceptionally well. I'm still not entirely sure though because Corrin can actually tank greens. She actually tank killed Hector which was extremely awkward... none the less without Triangle Adept tanking Red Falchion hits is painful.

That is super nasty mean. Glorious but mean. I'm happy to say my offensive team deals well with teams like yours but I no doubt would come out bloodied. I have three dream teams currently. Two of which I have the core parts for and the third I can't draw what I need (and the passives are too steep). 1) Dragon Defense (YTiki, Nowi, FCorrin, and Fae) All with Counter breath except Corrin with her regular debuff breath. And all with fortify dragons. I'm fairly certain it would be painful and amusing. Unfortunately I lack Fae, Nowi OR YTiki let alone four spare fortify dragon skills. 2) Mounted Defense (Leo, Reinhardt, Celilia, and Ursula): Everyone but Reinhardt gets +stacking tombs and sports +Att+Speed Hone Cavalry. This team is just cruel and may require one or two melee riders (like Eliwood/Abel) to balance out its BST some. But this team pretty much guarantees a kill on most maps. They simply get to you too fast to organize and counter defend properly. I do think well balanced teams can survive the assault but you will almost always loose one or two people due to the massive incoming damage. I have all the parts for this team just need the feathers to construct it! 3) Flying assault team (Cordelia, Palla, Spring Camilla or Minerva, Bonus): I currently have all the parts for this (except Spring Camilla). The members of this team are fun individually, but super fun together. With Spring Camilla with Gronnraven and Triangle adept you can destroy bow users. Likewise Cordelia with +attack buffs or Deathblow can also solo kill Takumi and all other archers. The key to making them work in the Arena is sporting Drag back on your primary attackers, and Draw back/Reposition on your Buff units (like Palla). Their mobility gives you super wonderful baits, and since maps cycle each day you hit your arena clearing hard on a day with favorable maps for fliers.

Is anyone else noticing less Weird +10 merged characters/teams in Arena this week? Last week every other team I fought was riddled with HIGHLY doubtful combinations of +10 units. I run Hector, Eirika (with Fury), Corrin (F) and my Bonus character (my BST is 710 this season). So with stat matching my current lineup requires some fairly substantial merges to see more than one ranged unit and other weird troll combinations. Last week every other team seemed to have +10 merged units, with some crazy combinations. The worst of which was Tharja+10, Takumi+10, Nino+10 and an unmerged Ninian. Another was a +10 Minerva with three other lightly merged fliers (one of the few odd lineups that may have been legitimate... outside of the poor matchmaking). Quite a few of these teams had character names which just screamed of a 12 year old with some downloaded hacks. This week I was able to swap Ninian for my 5 star Palla (adding 10 points to my overall stats). And literally all of these weird teams have disappeared. I didn't run into any teams in the last two days that were questionable. Merges were virtually all between 1-5, and equipped skills across each team looked organized but not (I have the power of everything at my disposal). I'm not sure if I was just lucky, if the +10 stat points pushed me out of a terrible bracket, or if Nintendo tossed out some more bans. Just curious if others are noticing any differences this week in their Arena team match ups?