Johann

Spring Loki's not a bad unit to toss a Light Blessing on to if you have one to spare. Her Res is formidable, and getting the boost from Eir allows her to take on mage heavy maps pretty safely. I rationalized using a Light Blessing by the logic that we get one every 2 weeks anyway.

Got absolutely hammered on Defense this week and ended with a final score of 12,220 (ranked currently at 887), even though my Offense was flawless. I'll need to rethink my map for Anima season and non-school seasons since people aren't using Aversa, which is preventing my map from triggering (or at least on the Def matches that matter). The threshold for top 1k is requiring a stronger showing in Defense, especially with Duma and Yune around. Getting 1 kill on average across 7 Def matches isn't going to be enough without them. edit: looking at the results, it seems the 1k mark will be between 12,200 and 12,210. Duma merges are barely saving some people, it seems. I think I'll need to conserve my orbs for the May banner, and not just for the Astra hero.

Depends what you mean. I think a "here's every unit in my barracks, someone make some teams for me" would be asking too much from others, but saying "here's some units I have in mind, what kind of builds should I consider for them?" is good and encouraged. Ideally, once the guide is finished, there should be enough information in there to guide players to the highest score they can achieve, and the ongoing discussions we all have should help give more ideas and answer questions.

Weirdest thing I've seen was an Adrift F Corrin at level 34 in what was otherwise a full team of threatening units

Aversa you can only really handle by having more HP, positioning, or using Dance, if possible. At least she's terrible as an attacker, so it's easy to tank her damage, even with greens. For Veronica in particular, there are a few tricks: If she has a heal equipped, she will prioritize healing over damage, provided she can do at least 10 HP recovery (8 with Physic), restore if using Restore, and can't get a kill. This is usually only possible with Bolt Tower/Trap, Pain, Savage Blow, or Deathly Dagger. If you're baiting multiple enemies and Veronica on the front lines, you can have two units baiting; your super tank is in whatever spot you want to use, while a unit who would take more damage baits Veronica from a safe spot. This will cause Veronica to run her full distance to that unit with less Res to attack them, ignoring your main tank. Most importantly, not only can this be used to prevent your main tank from getting debuffed and enemies buffed, but if done right, she'll be too far from any dancers. I'll whip up an example image if you need it. Gravity (especially Tactics Room). I put my TR in the 2nd slot from the left and it catches a considerable number of Veronicas and other ranged cavalry. Of course, unless you have Loki, this is a matter of luck. Gravity staff works too, but it's usually too difficult to safely use on the approach. Box her in. Depends entirely on the map you're against. Sometimes this means sending in a Galeforce+WoM crew (often Cavalry) to trap her, or baiting her into a position where she's nearly all boxed in anyway. I can get some pictures of this too, though it usually requires some knowledge of positioning assists to keep her from getting pulled back to a dancer. High Res units who don't care how much she's doing. Usually more of a thing either when super tanking in Light season, or at the end of a fight when she's the only one left. With Aversa, there are some matches where I don't mind sending in Robin, Hrid, Fjorm, etc to just take the hits since she won't do much damage, and her buff effect can end up harming her teammates, while having the dancers go on her instead of dangerous foes like Ophelia or Reinhardt. Eir's B skill also works great since it reduces the damage Eir (or inherited unit) will take and they'll recover 6 HP, making it unlikely that they'll die even with repeated hits.

@Rezzy Though I haven't played Sacred Stones, I've come to really appreciate Seth since pulling him as a 5* pity breaker once, and I've thought about building him to +10 as well, but have yet to decide on how. Cool to see you did and what you've given him, which is more or less what I have had in mind for him as well.

Thanks I should also add that I'll also take Def maps that you encounter, they don't just have to be your own

Legendary effects apply in AR as well. I use Hawkeye (Fire) with Legendary Marth pretty regularly in Astra season. ----------------- If anyone's interested in helping provide some pictures for the Aether Raids Offense Team Building Thread, please feel free to send me any pictures of the following types of common Defense setups: Horses in a Corner: Those teams where there's a bunch of horses packed into the top-right corner of Spring Breeze or something, arranged in a way where it's hard to approach safely due to traps and obstacles. Armors in a Box: Teams where a bunch of armors are stacking Wards, Wary Fighter, and other defensive skills, boxed into a hard-to-reach corner and doing everything they can to survive the 7 turn limit. Fliers in a Ball: A group of fliers stacking Goads/Wards, making them extremely hard to pick off while they're together. They also tend to have offensive builds making it dangerous to let them approach you. Infantry Pulse Party: A group of infantry, usually mages, that are equipped with enough Pulse-type skills (Missletainn, Infantry Pulse, etc) that allow them to all (or nearly all) have fully charged specials on turn one. Firesweep Lunge Trap: A unit or two at the forefront of the enemy base equipped with Firesweep Sword or Lance and Lunge, with the intent of pulling back any would-be baiters onto a Bolt Trap, triggering Wings of Mercy from the remaining team members (usually high offense units like Lilina, Ophelia, plus dancers). Slight variations on these setups are fine too. I just don't have the common units (Reinhardt, Ophelia, Camilla, etc) in order to whip up a mock Def map myself.

Thanks. Somewhat related, I figure you can unsticky my old Weapon Refinery thread since it's pretty obsolete at this point. Made more sense when the refinery was new and the info wasn't consolidated too well on the big resource sites. Legendary Robin is one of the best AR units. Not sure what options you have, but generally for a build: Expiration Reposition Aether or a special of your choice (I prefer Aether for the recovery) Dragonskin Dull Ranged 2 (I'd get 3 if it weren't 20k feathers) Atk Smoke 3 Distant Def 3 seal If you can spare a little bit of time to Auto-Battle the Chapter 1&2 Chain Challenge on Normal, you can build her S Support as well, which goes a long way for such a well-rounded unit (I usually just slap Renewal and Distant Def seal on her and she can pretty much solo it). Anyway, for supporting teammates in AR: Eir: Dunno how many you have, but she's essential in Light Season, and the +5 or +10 to HP and Res is an absolute treat for Robin. Her default kit is fine, and the healing effect from her C skill is very helpful for a super tank like Robin. Of my two Eirs, I give one Draw Back + Savage Blow seal, and the other Smite + Poison Strike seal. This helps in case I run into Surtr or Idunn or something. Aversa: An S+ Tier AR unit. With a low effort build she can give Robin Fortify Fliers, Ally Support (if you want), and best of all, the Panic effect. Many teams pack Atk Tactic, and with Atk Smoke + Panic, you can inflict them with a massive -13 Atk, making Robin laugh off almost any threat (barring effective weaponry and some specials). Can give Aversa Axebreaker to help in case there's a Surtr, or Renewal in Astra season in case of Duma. A dancer or two: Should already have at least one dancer with Light Blessing, though if you're struggling to succeed and you have her, Legendary Azura is a good choice (it won't be Water season next week though, so she won't get a score boost). Wings of Mercy is a must. Aerobatics or Flier Formation seals are nice to have as well for flying dancers, if you have any. Bonus unit: I'll be using Spring Loki with Light Blessing and Smite. I didn't give her anything special for a build beyond feeding her a 4* Bartre for Fury 2 and Smite, as well as a Res refined bow. We'll see that works out next week I guess. Halloween Mia?: Another great option if you're lucky enough to have her. Such a team would be Robin, Eir (in Light Season), Aversa, a dancer, and the last slot being the bonus unit. Since Eir and the bonus unit are essential for scoring (depending on the week), you may need to consider having multiple teams set up with some variation on this (ie: one team replaces Aversa with another dancer). Don't need to use Eir this week of course, in which case you can try some more flexible options. In practice, the strategy involves buffing Robin as best you can, debuffing the foes as best you can, and then sending her in (often with Smite/Dance) to pick off any frail but threatening units like Ophelia.

I just realized the Edit Raiding Parties screen now gives away the next week's seasons if you have the Light/Astra season team feature on and check an off-season team. Not a major thing since usually it's easy enough to predict, except at the turn of the month sometimes. Neat.

My Fortress (O) is 4 and will be 5 on Monday, my Fortress (D) is 3. Additionally, I've put very little into my Def structures, only last night upgrading Tactics Room (D) to 2. I enjoy the traps though, since my opponents can't tell how strong they are and the effects are so powerful. Jakob uses CC well, but Vantage not so much unless he's against fliers. Might be better to focus on some kind of survival oriented skill set that allows him to take on a variety of units, rather than trying to one shot stuff. He'd do fairly well as long as you don't run into armor-effective units, but those are quite common due to people wanting Surtr counters (especially Dancing Micaiah, who ignores Vantage anyway). I'm not fond of armors on Offense if just for that, but I also don't have many well built armors either. I do actually use him on Def sometimes, with that exact build as sort of a bait unit against Galeforce users, and maybe pick off an Eir. One of the best counters to Ophelia is Aversa. Even after pulling Halloween Mia, I find Aversa's Night to be usually more worthy of a slot if I can pull off things like this in Light season:

There's only so much you can do with Def units, really. AI and the player's ability to deal with it can make a far bigger difference than stat boosts. My key players for getting Def wins are Legendary Azura, regular Takumi, and Clarine. Today they beat a guy who had a 5+1 fort and +10 Winter Fae, and it's entirely because the guy fell into my trap and panicked. But that doesn't matter cuz they lost first to a guy who happened to have a super buffed Eirika with Kaden support. Always focus resources on offense, save for Fortress (O) level 5 because it's of greater value to have better offense results, especially if you have Duma. If you want to improve your Def map, there are a variety of ways you can score extra kills here and there without making crazy investments. That's what I do too. I stand by it!

I guess the exception with Anna is that there are so many of them, including the Heroes version, even if CYL considers them all separate. So let's say Fates Anna placed as well next year, would they give us yet another Anna in that banner slot? Factoring in her role as a main character in Heroes makes me think they may put her in a different position than someone like Owain or Severa, who only have a single alter ego.

I keep forgetting about Awakening Anna, but part of me thinks that she's also a special case for this kind of banner and they might not bother.

Since both Lif and Thrasir were voted highly in CYL, it's possible that they are skipped over or instead introduced in a Book III Generals banner, in which case we'd see Jill in November as part of the "Farfetched Heroes" banner

With Dark and Anima heroes existing, I'm increasingly frustrated by how regularly my first Def match is a total loss and the second a total win

That could be pretty nice for some players on those GHB quests edit: oh wait, can't use it in GHB

Wonder if it affects quest clears, like if you pair a non-infantry unit to Roy for Tenth Stratum quests

It's best to prioritize Offense over Defense; you want to give yourself less stress in this mode by making your Offense runs easier, whereas focusing on Defense might maybe help you save a little Lift. Note that T21 isn't drastically different from 19-20, so if you've reached it, you're not really at risk of demoting assuming you keep playing as well as you have been. I'll be updating my thread a bit more tomorrow, and don't be afraid to ask any questions there as well.

Built an Inn and got 30 Aether Stones, and a ducky gave 2 stones, so it's 10% of the Affinity for stones. I'm guessing they only give them out when you spend on stuff, putting a limit on how much you can get and giving people who spend the orbs a way to get those stones quicker.

Now this is a refine I can get on board with: Brave effect as long as there's a melee cav within 2 spaces

Got over 1000 stones saved up, but I'm waiting for the update in case they increase the max level on something important like Tactics Room.

The only major issue I see is that the inevitable Forging Bonds won't include Haar's Eyepatch accessories

It's definitely Dull Ranged when foe initiates only, just gotta see where they place the commas.

Pretty rad, I figured Mordecai was gonna be one of those "never gets their chance" forgotten units *reads further* OH SHIT HAAR GHB