Johann

Oh yeah clients are the worst thing ever. Right out of college, I worked for a few months as an environmental consultant and it put me into a heavy depression. Was eating worse and less often, less sleep too, and didn't have the time to do any of the things that give me genuine joy, like acting. Also a lot of bee stings, but that's like cartoonish suffering so I could laugh at that at least. Even though I teach science courses, I heavily emphasize to the kids that everything in college (and a career, and life) is about getting good at identifying and solving problems. Communication is like half of that since it doesn't help if nobody else understands the problem. It's hard enough with college kids but I can't imagine how crazy it is with high schoolers.

Yeah I imagine few people who don't have Dark/Anima heroes are going to pull off a max reward score. Incidentally, last week I had a perfect scoring week for Defense, and it felt like a tease given how the season concluded before the update kicked in.

Games like this are designed to capitalize on your short-term feelings. Maintaining collections, fear of missing out, the "well, that sounds like a good deal" offers, status symbols, flashy new stuff, whatever. It's all a ploy to get you to internally rationalize your spending. It's a predatory system and the best thing you can do is push back on those feelings and think about all the other things you can do (or need to do) with your money.

Nah, it just takes your 3 worst Def losses for the week and adds them up. 240 is the lowest it can go, and if you have two Yunes and a full Dark/Legendary team, your minimum score is going to be 120.

Emergency Management, so like FEMA/first responder/public health/national security type stuff. Got it for free through the college I teach at, and I really enjoyed the program. I'm extraordinarily fortunate that things worked out so well for me. How far along in your adult life were you before you came to the conclusion that this was what you wanted to do?

With your build, yeah Special Spiral is where it's at. Everything else is solid. Note that with Gunnthra, if a foe is debuffed and has a Panicked buff, it'll pick the lower of the two for the Atk bonus, so the same will probably apply to Matthew. Dunno if Ploys, Feints, Chills, or Aversa are your bag, but those can go a long way.

no lie, I never finished high school, but I do have a master's degree anyway

I'm 32 years old but yes

Oh, you mean how you'd ideally want a real Bolt Trap to cover as much ground as possible, right? That's a good thing to keep in mind, though I never guess the traps. I always have contingencies.

I'm not sure I've seen or heard of people placing them off to the side, unless you mean just on separate paths so the player has to commit extra time in order to disarm them. Usually it's more like what you have on your right-hand side where they're clumped together, with the dilemma of how to get past them or even trigger them safely. If they're close together near the enemy, stuff like Reposition and Dance become less of a safe option, after all. You could put the fake Heavy Trap with the others like that, but I think it might be best to give Yune that little bit of protection. A lot of them, yeah. Only a small handful are available in the normal 5* pool, which is dumb cuz it's really just a skill for convenience edit: random thought, but maybe swap the locations of the Bolt Tower and Aether Pot in my example picture. This would give the attacker more immediate incentive to break the structure, helping Hrid/Sigurn get the opening they need.

What works so great is that the player pretty much HAS to come in from the left to clear that trap, since there's like no room on the right, and they can't use Smite to land on it to keep their turn. Valor skill seals should be a thing, says I. At least TT is starting soon, so you could get a bit from grinding there.

I ended making a mock-up anyway just to remember, and in case anyone wants to learn from it: I don't have all the units you do, so uh, just pretend everybody's here. It occurred to me that your Bolt Trap placement is perfectly done, since it requires a lot of work to disarm safely (assuming a player doesn't have the Disarm Trap skill). As for the SP, yeah it's lame as hell to have to grind it out. At least it's easy enough to just keep restarting GHB maps if you need a bit more, I guess

Looking much smoother now. For a Rallier thing, there's a lot of ways to do this, so here's what I'd suggest: Put Yune where Azura is currently, and given her any Rally (I'd recommend Atk I guess since it'll target Hrid). Put Azura where your Healing Tower is currently. Put Sigrun where Yune is currently Give either Rally Def or Res to either Hrid or Sigrun Healing Tower should be moved south (or replaced with a different structure, see below) Now, in action, there should be two things that work uniquely about this: If your enemy tries to bait Hrid, Yune will fly over and Rally him. Azura will then warp next to Yune and dance her, giving her the full buffs and movement bonus. If your enemy tries to bait Yune, Hrid or Sigrun will run over and Rally her. Azura will then warp next to them and dance them Literally any Rally works as long as it's not solely a stat their target is already getting buffed with (like Berkut won't ever be the target of Rally Res if his Res Wave is active that turn). The Rally itself isn't the main thing, so don't fret over which one you're using, it's really about getting the teammate to zip over, get danced, and then catch the opponent off guard. Other ideas: YUNE: Her A skill could be swapped out for something like Fury or whatever if you have any to spare, which helps her B and C skills as well as her offense. AZURA: Give her any Fortress skill for her A slot (like even Fortress Def 2 from 3* Seth is fine). You want her to have less offensive power, because if she can deal enough damage, she'll attack instead of dance. You can also swap out her B skill for something like WoM or whatever. Earth or Water Dance 3 are also great choices for B or seal (probably seal) since they make her dances give +5 to all stats (great for the cavalry since they aren't currently buffed) SIGRUN: Change her special to something like Moonbow, Glimmer, or Bonfire. Her Atk is too low to get much from Draconic Aura. Giving her Iote's Shield seal is not a bad idea too, since some people might try to pick her off with an archer. GUNNTHRA: Give her a more supportive C skill like Ward Cavalry. Ploys are not going to work very often due to your enemies getting major Res boosts from Eir. You can also give her a more offensive A skill like Deathblow, Darting Blow, or Fury. Her seal is fine but Darting Blow or a raw Atk or Spd boost would be worth thinking about too. BERKUT: Give him a different B skill, perhaps Swordbreaker to deal with Eliwoods. He probably won't need the Warding Stance seal either, could use the QR seal if you want, which would help against a lot of foes. Use the Dark Shrine. Since half of your team depends on debuffs, going all in with structures that contribute to that is one of the best things you can do. Healing Tower could go where Bolt Tower is currently, I suppose. Alternatively, consider using the Dark Shrine or Panic Manor instead, for extra debuffing potential, both of which would be better in different locations entirely. Bolt Tower is hard to use in Light Season since Eir will usually heal up that damage. Still worth keeping, though, but at the very least, I'd suggest maybe swapping it's location with the Cavalry School so it reaches further south (the schools have unlimited vertical range, but the Bolt Tower only hits 3 spaces up/down) Move the Flower Bed someplace else, it currently allows players to safely bait Gunnthra while Hrid can't get past it. I'd suggest putting it just below where the Aether Pot is currently. Move the Aether Pot as well, you'll want that space open for Yune if the Rally trap works. Could probably put it where the Fake Heavy Trap is, which could itself be moved up to next to the Bright Shrine If you need me to, I can whip up a visual of how this layout would look.

@Anacybele I'd say move Hrid down one space and put Gunnthra in the top right corner. This prevents Gunnthra from being lured out my herself, and most attempts to bait Hrid would require baiting Gunnthra as well. I have to head out so I can't analyze it further, but I think using a Rally in there somewhere could be a very clever way of catching people off guard when they try to bait certain units (Rallier moves in to Rally the baited unit, Azura dances the Rallier, the Rallier now has super buffs and can attack the enemy).

Thanks! He's the unsung hero of AR defense and I'm surprised that nobody uses him. The issue with Springwater is that the ponds on the sides give the player two places to hide, unlike the Desert's one space. It made enough sense to me to use back then since I only had 4 units anyway, and it was before Eir and Legendary Azura so few players could risk flying over the ponds. I used to figure Springwater's best use would have been a map like that, but lately I've seen some good ones that use a more typical setup (like with pre-nerf Abandoned Castle) and rely on the water to make the approach more difficult.

Rokkr Sieges was very fun with the two of them doing x4 attacks + Galeforce

Once Eir was added, my logic was to build defense teams around targeting her since she's the one constant. This means archers, and finding ways to get them into a position where those Eirs are either sniped or cornered. Most people are fond of Brave Lyn cuz hey, cavalry range, but I've been using Takumi (and sometimes Legendary Lyn) for months now and he's incredibly reliable due to Fujin Yumi expanding his movement dramatically, especially on a tree map. I don't have pictures of it, but I came up with the same kind of map like back in November or December, but with fewer units because of the lower tier, I tried it on Springwater. My units were nowhere near as optimized either and the structures were much weaker back then, so it went pretty poorly. I do think it's possible to make it work with a much lower investment than some of the other big meta Defenses though (like the Pulse setups).

Unless there are a bunch of Firesweep Lyns, I'm not super worried about it. It's kinda surprising how many people still stick to using Res-targetting Def teams in Light season after all these months.

Oh yeah most people are probably in trouble against something like this, no doubt. It's going to require a lot of people to rethink their setups. Panic (particularly on cavalry healers) has been growing in popularity late, so even without these map layouts, not having flexibility with your buffs can be a bit dangerous. You know, I'd actually prefer to face that team in Light/Dark season since it's mostly magic damage against a Res boost, they'd have 3 less Atk, Eir tanks healers without issue, and she can heal the Savage Blow damage. The Spd boost could make it harder to kill some of them, but a TA Raventome with QR would still have no issue against anything that can be countered. I'm also a big Hrid fan so Spd is usually not an issue for me.

I dunno if you have experience with Gunnthra, but she's a real powerhouse when you get those debuffs on someone. It might not seem like the most useful refine now, but play with it, and you might find that high offense/low defense units become much more manageable, especially if you're using Chills and stuff on his teammates (Aversa, Gunnthra, Hrid, anybody with Chills or even bonus units hanging back with Chill seals). Just think of how often you encounter a high Atk/Spd mage with juuust enough HP/Def that he gets countered and needs to double them.

It stills blows my mind that they even gave them all personal weapons, let alone that the one I cared most about turned out to be absolutely phenomenal for how I play. That said, as characters, I think they're all charming enough, and charm is generally what drives me to +10 anyone

So, none of the 3-4* ones really click with you, and any 5* ones you might want are, well, not exactly easy to get more of, right? If so, I think most of us can relate to that regarding many unit categories

Yeah, it's weird that axe cav (or all green cavs) are just so limited. I do happen to have a 4+10 Gunter with a Brave Axe+ (the game gave me a lot of Camilla pitybreakers back in the day), and he's basically just there for AA every now and then. Surprised you don't have sword cavs, or maybe I just assume everyone has one built up for some reason. Funny you mention Roderick because his refine helped me settle on his asset just now: He's also got a Slaying Lance+ and Brave Lance+ so I can be pretty flexible with his skills.

Gosh, ya know, it's almost like I never said anything about trivializing the map with a single unit

It's definitely possible to get it down to only having one unit hit the rest of the team, and most of those units aren't even that dangerous alone. I'll grant that it's harder in Anima season when you don't have Eir and they're all getting an Atk boost, but it's kind of a player's own fault if 4/5 units on all 5 of their teams can't take a hit.