DehNutCase

Derp. No idea why I thought Stratum ended in an -us.

How much over Navarre's level were you fighting? He's fast enough that he shouldn't ever be doubled, and his bulk, while not that great, isn't bad enough to get 1HKOd unless it's a gem weapon or something. It helps that F!Robin can chip melees, while Navarre usually one rounds ranged. (I picked the highest level strati that outleveled Navarre by at most 2---not by the levels shown, but by the strati's max level: 1st counts as 5, 2nd as 10, 3rd as 15, etc.) Edit: My team was just Navarre, F!Robin, Azura and a level 10ish Sakura (I was leveling her). That said, a major reason I had it easier than you might've been the Hone Atk 3 on Azura. Navarre usually doubles, so that's +8 damage to pretty much everything, +12 if he has his proc up.

Personally I had a pretty easy time of it because I leveled F!Robin alongside Navarre. One hits Def, one hits Res, and between them have full neutral coverage against the combat triangle. It helped that my dancer was Azura, I guess, since she stabs the really dangerous reds to death.

The more I use swap, the more I like it. It's basically +1 move on a unit at the cost of using another unit's action. Also makes healing and dancing a LOT easier. (Considering a 'grind this guy up asap' team will be a carry, a dancer, and a healer, giving the carry swap makes everything so damn simple.)

Obviously you have to crystal him up to 20 and 5 star him first, kappa. Edit: TBH the main problem with Navarre is that Killing Edge is a really, really shitty sword for a desperation user. Silver is so much better.

Carried.jpg

Well, the task isn't hard---Klein alone can solo even Lunatic without issues, so Robin can be left for Navarre really easily, but I just don't want to level his sorry ass, cause I'm lazy.

: O, Missed that. Not sure if I'm going to even level him for it : /

He only has to be on your team, so you can just have the rest of the team carry his level 1 ass.

Full melee is... very easy on this map, because armors suck nads. The team only needs: someone to kill the mages, a reposition unit, and then 3 people with T-Adept. (Selena, Arthur, Donnel, and Subaki will do nicely.) Donnel to murder both mages, reposition units swap him out of the way and tank brave weapons. 1 move means armors can't go after the people they have advantage against, and are forced to suicide while doing 0 damage. Reprisal is literally the only dangerous thing on the map. Edit: Note that you'll need to be careful with positioning, Donnel needs to start out of range of the mages so armors don't swap them. You reposition him closer with Selena, and use Subaki or Arthur's swap to get him out of danger. Donnel even has reciprocal aid for a full heal if needed (2, actually, Arthur has so business taking damage on this map, so he can reciprocal Arthur after he used it once to heal himself, and then heal either Selena or Subaki.)

Noontime and Sol function 'best' with Brash Assault, since, if the skill is primed, you can trigger it on the first hit to help tank the counter, and then follow up with a KO. Of course, most people who can do that can also just run Dragon Fang to 1HKO instead. Sol and Noontime are mostly useful when you can juggernaut, which is difficult to do when stat total are the same. (If reinforcement maps have lower stats on enemy units compared to your own, they can become useful, however.)

Huh. Looks like I'll be able to grab all the GHBs I missed, then, since it seems like they'll be back in packs of two. (Weird that they're re-releasing Navarre, though, given how recent he was.)

Partly my fault---questions tend to be missed when walls of text start flying. That said: Both Nino and Rein are fine. -Atk Rein is still quite usable, 29 Atk looks bad, until you remember that Dire Thunder has 2 Atk on Brave bows, making it basically 31, =Klein tier, and that Res is usually the dump stat anyway. (+Spd Nino is also good, of course, but Rein's going to be a bonus unit next arena season, so might as well use him now. Not like you can't promote Nino later.)

Thinking about it, Alfonse might be one of the better Brash Assault users: When he's in BA threshold, he gets +5 Atk from his sword. He also has Death Blow to maximize player phase damage. And his bulk is enough to often survive 1 single hit even at low hp. (The reason he's squishy is that everyone and their grandmothers double him, but you can't double if you're dead.) Lastly, he can use Sol or Noontime to heal during the initial hit to trigger BA while being higher in HP. (Noontime has the far better CD for this, since it's fully charged with hitting once and getting doubled back, but he starts with Sol.) Edit: Pity the fact that Chrom exists means that Alfonse will only be viable during bonus unit time. (Assuming he's in 1/3 of the seasons, however, that's actually not bad at all.)

L&D Niles with Silver Bow and +Atk can simply 1 shot the faster mages who try to double him, since they have to be using L&D as well. (Fury 3 builds aren't fast or strong enough to kill L&D Niles, dude has a lot of res and spd.) The problem with that particular build is Reinhardt, who can manage to 2HKO Niles with L&D 3 or better and an +Atk boon. (A 'normal' Fury 3 or just A-skill less Niles does turn Rein into a pincushion, however.) Every other mage mostly just dies because L&D Silver Bow+ hurts like hell, but some of them need a player phase hit. (Robin and Henry are the major exceptions, and Sanaki and Lilina can 1HKO with a Raven tome inheritance and T-Adept. That said, T-Adept Raven tomes ruin Niles in general, so that's no big surprise.) Note: Niles needs a Speed S-Seal to counter Nino and Linde with Swift Sparrow and Speed S-Seal, but those are rare enough that it doesn't matter if sealess Niles die to them. The biggest downside is that the build really needs HP to function, meaning it's probably best paired with a healer. Which also means that the pair would prefer to be inside a team that relies on attrition via healing and counter-killing. (The healer can carry a fort Res buff so Niles can counter-kill Rein.) That said, the Fury 3 QR build is probably best for normal use, simply because it covers the 'meta' threats better. (None of the glass cannons can kill a properly IVd Niles, and he counter-kills everyone relevant with Killer Bow+ & Iceberg) Edit: Niles doesn't actually need Fury 3 to keep himself alive, incidentally. The only person who ever gives him trouble even without an A-skill is Linde. +Atk kills the +Spd version, +Spd kills the +Res version.

(Full disclosure, I actually have no idea what I usually get. My 3* Sharena is throwing off my arena #s so much this week.) I'm pretty sure the adjustment makes the 'average' unit of every class about the same. That is, Cavs get +4, mages get +7, armored get -10, Cav Mages get +11, etc. (Don't quote me on that, though, I haven't spent the dueling swords to actually check the adjustment.)

The 670 number isn't a 'real' number, per se. I actually have no idea what the most common arena score to challenge is. : / (I only picked 670 because that's more or less what I usually get for advanced.)

I think defense teams are more a matter of quantity of challengers rather than the quality of the defense team: Even a defense team that wins 100% of the time gets 0 wins if no one is in the score range to challenge them. That is, it might be best to first make sure your defense team is in the 670 (or whatever range is most common to challenge), and then make sure it's a cancerous pile of units.

Klein really enjoys mobility. Would you happen to have a reposition unit or a dancer? Either would make him a lot better.

If you're playing this game at all you're playing for either 'power' (that is, ability to complete content) or 'eye-candy' (that is, using units you like). The more 'power' you have the more 'eye-candy' you can afford to run. I can afford to drag a 1Hp/1Atk/150Spd/1Def/1Res unit through arena, but only because the rest of my team would be able to trio every single team. (And also because Draw Back even on the worst possible unit is still pretty damn good.) If I had to pick a direction, I'd say I lean more towards 'power' than 'eye-candy,' though obviously I do have huge biases towards certain units. There's no functional difference between the guy who whaled 2k USD for a team of Hector Takumi Ryoma Azura or the guy who re-rolled for it. If the first guy breaks, say, 5k in rank with that team and is proud of the achievement, the second guy has just as much reason to be proud of the same achievement, should he achieve it. Luck is most certainly something that can be acquired, given that rerolls effectively roll your 'LUK' stat anew every single time you reroll. (Not for long, because of regression towards the mean, but 1 particular unit can be easily guaranteed, and you can easily set the bar to be some minimum 'power' level or rarity level.) The 3* GHB guy certainly has reasons to be proud: He's clearing in-game content in basically the strictest possible conditions. But, according to you, so long as you cleared the content, it doesn't matter if the team was 4 5* +10s or 4 3*s. Which, of course, is perfectly correct, in a way. Of course, this also means that the guy who makes, say, top 5k in arena with all S-tier 5* only units that have never been in a banner is just as good as the guy who made it up there with, say, only free units promoted to 5*s. (In this case, it doesn't matter whether you used -Atk Niles or +Atk Takumi, result matters more than process.) Alternatively, you can say that the guy who did GBH with only 3*s has far more reasons to be prideful than the guy who used 5* +10s, given that the first person had the far more difficult set of conditions. (Which, in your case, would be similar to shining in arena with a -Atk Spring Lucina. In this case, the -Atk Niles is far superior to the +Atk Takumi, the more difficult process with equal or similar results trumps the simpler process.) Alternatively, you can say that the guy who who did GBH with only 5* +10s and left it on auto-battle had far more reasons to be prideful, given that he completed the content with the barest minimum of effort. (Similar to an ultra S-tier team that doesn't even require thought: let's just pretend, for a moment, that it's a team which could manage to auto battle their way to the same rank as your -Atk Spring Lucina team. In this case, the +Atk Takumi is far better than -Atk Niles, because the simplicity of process---the very thing that promoted 'brain-deadness' in its user---is what the owner should be proud of.) Strictly speaking, the three points of view should be logically exclusive, but I've rarely met people who behaved that way. Anyway, the first one favors results, the second one favors tactics, the third one favors logistics. Ignoring the first one for a moment, the second one is the brilliant general who can win against 10 to 1 odds, and the second one is the logistician (usually the general) who manages to bring 10 people to your 1. Personally, while I do value all 3 view-points, I believe I lean closer to the logistical side in most cases. That is, I respect more the general that managed to field 100k people against a 10k army than the general that wins with 10k people against a 100k army. That said, I do value more the general who wins, so I guess my ranking would be winning > logistics > tactics.

Oh, I'm well aware that the in game content are very reasonably completed with minimal resources. (I do all the GHBs without problem on all 3 of my accounts, and all of them have relatively limited character pools---I think my main has like 10 Edit: Exactly 11 level 40 units, the other 2 in single digits.) But I obviously have an easier time of it on the 'blessed' account, simply because of the logistics factor. For a lot of the niches, the 'blessed' account simply has the best possible unit for it---whether because the unit is flat out the best at it, or because the unit is very good at it while still being a good unit in general. Because of that, I always use that account to lead my GHB attempts, and it often completes them in one try. (I had the hardest time this GHB on my main, ironically, since my best mage was a level 37 Olwen, who couldn't kill anything on the counter.) Some things can be bought with feathers. Close Counter, Distant Counter, Rajinto, Naga, Mystletainn etc. can't. The thing about re-rolls is that rolling 2 ultra-rare units isn't actually all that less common than rolling 1 single ultra-rare. It's just a weird quirk of math, I suppose, that a huge amount of the 'average-odds' of pulling a unit is stored behind the times when you pull multiple copies versus the times when you pull only one. Unless I'm misunderstand your argument, and what you actually meant was: "The only reward from arena is feathers, and thus anything that helps you in the arena only gives you feathers." A team that's whale enough to score in the tip-top of the arena only gets around 1k or 2k more feathers a season compared to the vast majority of teams (I think this because a theoretical 'cheap-knockoff' team of Virion, Olivia, Hana, and bonus unit should have very comparable performance to my standard arena team, requiring at most 3 more swords a week to achieve an identical score), so that part's right. You simply don't get very many feathers for rerolling---though the feather to time ratio is actually very good for rerolling. You pay all the cost up-front, but you also save more time fighting (easier runs since your units are more forgiving of mistakes, allowing you to take less time planning each team and planning each team). But... no one at the tip-top of the arena does it for the feathers. You had to spend a lot of the potential feather rewards just to get up there in the first place (every 5* +10 is 11k feathers that could've been obtained just from sending them all home, one of the least efficient ways to use 5*s). To put it another way, people care about rank for more reasons than just the in-game reward. (I personally don't care all that much, given that I try not to even use swords while doing my weekly run. A nice rank is nice, but anything about 4k is 'good enough,' and I can do that easily.) Rerolls, like basically everything else in life, is trading time for time. The reroller pays a certain up-front cost in time to roll up a couple of high-tier, but very rare units, (high-tier, but relatively common units don't need to be rerolled for, everyone will get a couple over the course of playing), in exchange for saving a lot of time later during team construction for various events (arena, GHB, etc), and a lot of effort---a high tier box of units is not only very forgiving during team construction, they're also very forgiving during battles. Yeah, everything can be done with just F2P stuff, but that's not exactly the same thing as saying everything is just as easily done with a limited box. (For example, the 3* guy had to grind every single F2P character to level 40, I don't even do that for every single one of my 5*s)

Never use someone like Rein as fodder. Keep all extra copies to merge him up for more arena score. (Goad cavalry isn't even that useful, anyway. Hone and Fortify has better synergy with Blade-Tomes, and the fact that they're 'start-of-turn' effects means they're easier to keep active for high mobility units like cavalry.) I mean, if you really wanted to lose the only advantage horses have over armors---their mobility---you can go ahead and use goads and wards, but, personally, I'd keep all my Reins until I had 11. Edit: My comment was referencing -Atk rein, who's still decent. Definitely use a neutral Rein, he's great.

Luck is more or less the same thing as being a full-on whale. A lot of the rarest characters (Hector, Ryoma, Azura etc.) also happen to be the best characters. A few days of rerolling's worth of luck (or just good luck in general), is worth hundreds, if not thousands of USD in orbs. I was mostly joking about her team (a person might not get every good but rare character, but it takes atrocious luck to never get any rare but good character, given---ironically---how many rare but good characters there are), but Takumi and Ryoma are more or less the banner children of logistics beating strategy. (Logistics, in this case, being the ability to obtain the characters in question.) Takumi is literally the best archer for almost every 'good' archer set---the best offenses, a great bulk despite that, and, of course, Close Counter to take advantage of both. (Not that he needs it, mind, a brave bow+ Takumi beats every other brave bow user out of the water.) Ryoma is Ryoma, somehow manage to have similar offenses to Lucina while keeping 27 defense and an HP stat on top of a Distant Counter stapled onto his weapon. He would've been the Takumi of swords if 'sword-lord' wasn't such a diverse and strong group of units. Takumi starts better than every archer save Klein (who outdoes Takumi in the raw offenses department), and stays better through inheritance, because of his amazing stat spread. Ryoma is the same way, except having an A-slot free makes him even more flexible after inheritance compared to other sword-units who want distant-counter. (Lucina---and Hana, though she lacks L & R's bulk---still out-does him in full-out offense, but his sword and stat-spread means that he's quite possibly the best 'all-around' sword unit.)

Your team has officially graduated from F2P random stuff to full on whale-mode. Off-topic: One of these days I need to pick a couple people I like and start stacking Merges for more Arena points, or maybe I should just run Donnel and Nowi etc. because BST.

At least it's a whole bunch of Lightning Breath+ if even more dragons you want to use come by.