Usana

Well. . . . The successes are rolling in after some changes to push my Attack stats even higher after Hilda's talk of Vanguard Ike. Sadly this means I have completely neglected Sue. She has a whole terrifying 36 attack now since I dumped the ATK boosting seal she had elsewhere to try and insure kills from my main killers. Have noticed two weaknesses though, three if you count Sue being there at all. 1 - I knew Lyn had a weakness against special blockers since she relies so heavily on Quad Luna, but turns out Steady Stance 4 shuts down Claude too. I was really hoping he would be able to punch through. Going to have to come up with a method of breaking those who block specials from going off. Or put both Brave Lyn and Claude on the same side. Swap her and Louise. But then Louise and Sue are going to be the clear side to bait. And putting Lyn and Claude on the same side may not matter. The foe could still do what they did here. Leave a sacrificial unit in Claude's range and then they won't double team the tank even if they could bring it down together since Claude will take the easy target. The most recent defense had a Fjorm that could wall either, but not both in one turn. But of course I have them split up, so she didn't have to as long as she wasn't shoved too far forward. Still won though since Fjorm and Legendary Azura could not beat down Yune and Sue. 2 blues vs 2 greens. Great match up, yes? 2 - I really need to read up on Reciprocal Aid AI use. Apparently it is better to quad for 0 damage on a steady stance 4 user, fully charging their special, then it is to heal poor Claude who has been hammered down to 18 HP. That would have changed the play a bit. Not a lot, but Claude would eat up two unit turns to drop, instead of one. And that can be rather significant.

. . . well I got blessed with another Summer Leggy just as I used up the last of my orbs. One will almost certainly be used as Swift Sparrow 4 fodder. Though one of my prime candidates, Brave Lyn, would be kinda disappointing to inherit to since it would literally only be Sparrow 4 that is inherited. Anyways they are both +SPD, so my choice is of bane. The first one I got that is now leveled and built is -HP. The other is -DEF. Obviously the -HP hits both sides so on the surface it seems like the -DEF would be slightly better since it only hits 1 defense? Worth taking the the time to level the -DEF one up to take the -HP one's place? Honestly I am not sure it matters much since she doesn't have to survive a hit to get into desperation thanks to her weapon and her HP is too low to avoid panic type effects anyways. But figured I would ask.

Yeah I am not expecting to get a lot of wins, already have ran into a couple super tanks that just soak everything. The idea is to get kills due to not being able to hide. Goal is at least 1 kill per map. And that it has been doing really well at so far this week. I am curious on your Ike build. The builds I ran in the simulator tend to give Claude the Victory as long as Cunning is active. Which is why my team is just saturated with Chills/Sabotages/Dagger Effect/Yune Chaos/Smokes/Rallies. Plus Quad Luna Sacae Brave Lyn just slaughters him unless he runs Null-C :D. Edit- at work it occurred that I had forgotten he was a bonus unit. Also forgot that a lot of folks run double Eir. That would probably flip the Claude engagement. Edit 2- Looks like if I change up his seal to ATK/SPD +2 he might still be able to take the win, though that is far too close to comfort.But then who gets Chill ATK? I suppose I could swap it to Brave Lyn. But this discussion indicates I kinda need to give her a speed seal. Looks like Ike can actually avoid her quad if he is highly merged or is +SPD or is carrying darting stance.

Got my first success this week. And it may have been due to a misplay on the foe's part? Not sure, but he smote, or is it smitted? Well whatever. He threw Tiki forward too far. She ended up in range of Claude and he could bring her down before she could bring any of my team down. She may not have been enough to tank everyone anyways, and he was going to lose some units no matter what(my dark defense is a cav line type defense). But throwing Tiki that far ahead made me wince. That wasn't going to end well. You do not want to end your turn in both Claude's and Brave Lyn's range. You better have one darn good super tank if you are going to try and pull that. This is what they thought was a good idea to try.

@Zeo@mcsilas Hey! You two are Tibarn Bros! Same boon and bane even! Congrats! My free pull on the 3h banner. I figured blue or green. I don't have a flying blue dagger yet I don't think and Null Follow-up is rather rare. Overall though I don't care much here. 2 colorless, 2 red, 1green. Bam. Hilda. I actually got an on banner unit as a free summon? +DEF/-ATK. I suppose the good news is her defense even boosted is low enough to boost a lot of units and 34 attack is still quite respectable. Not super excited, but this is a rather painless way to fill up a Hilda shaped hole in my collection.

@Zeo Geez. When you hit 12+ that just feels terrible. I wonder if the sting would be taken away a bit you could see your historical 5* rate. Most of us don't keep track of that, but it might take a bit of sting out of a round of bad luck if we can easily look and see that our rate is/was historically high. Of course it could have the opposite effect too, if you have had terrible luck from the get go. Anyways since my last posting my luck has returned to normal. Until today that is. Figured I would go for Ayra since mine is -SPD. And Keaton shows up! Neutral, so that is perfectly fine. That alone wouldn't make me suspect unusual luck, I have gotten 19 heroes inbetween 5stars(Which means he came at about 90 orbs, assuming roughly 2 pulls per session and counting the free summon as 5 orbs. And that is rather normalish). And then today's 9 orbs from login and arena got me Summer Lilina. +RES/-DEF. Refine her dagger for RES. Give her Fury 3 and that puts her at 44 RES. That might be enough to debuff folk even during light season. Fury 4 would be better, but I have no Fury 4 access. I do have Fortress DEF/RES, but that seems kinda wasteful given how useless her DEF stat is. However, it seems like my luck is still unusually high since that comes out close to 50orbs each. A historical rate would be really interesting right now. Is this putting me well above the standard rate or am I only now catching up?

They could have introduced her with Live to Serve 4. Question is. What would 4th tier Live to Serve do?!

Well. . . I got off work to another success today. It is outside the lift control window, so I am pretty I have 0 loss lift this week. I didn't think that was possible with my team. Though my last offense push went horrible. Mostly because of my insistence to use only the one team. I really can't be bothered. But dang was my team pretty much hard countered in the last two matches. I thought I might be able to push through with some smart play, but I lacked the damage/number of dancers needed to pull it off. Oh and Defense results. 9 Successes 5 Failures 3 of those successes all in the last 20 or so hours! Seems I wasn't the only one having a rough final push.

You had to go that far too? Stupid blue mage!

. . . I just realized. I forgot to finish the Forging Bonds. So all I have is the EX Hat from Byleth! How could I have forgotten?! I also forgot to keep up with the Voting Guantlet, but that has been happening for a while. As long as I get the orbs, I don't care.

@Landmaster I actually haven't been hit too many times by people with Naga this week. But those Naga players I have run into almost always keep her way in the back and only bring her forward to hammer Myrrh. My team is Duma, Amelia +10, Halloween Myrrh, Halloween Jakob, Brave Hector, and Veronica. Amelia seems to always be the one that causes the foe to surrender. People keep underestimating her. Pretty sure they forget to factor in her weapon's +5 SPD/DEF for having march in effect. Though my most recent success was something else since speed and defense didn't come into play. They apparently misjudged how hard she would hit their Surtr. They surrendered the moment he dropped. Maybe they forgot to account for Duma's Blessing? Anyways this team has done well enough this week that I am still at 0 lost lift. It is crazy! Though to be fair I have only succeeded a little over half the time last I counted. I have just been lucky that every time the window opens a success lands before the failure.

@Zeo Jeez you just throw Matthew in face first. I thought spies were supposed to sneak around behind not walk right up to your face! The Serra clear reminds of Final Battle Fantasy. The boss fights in that game seem to always be race to try and out heal the damage you are taking and you are constantly nearing death only to refill back to full/near full HP. Anyways seeing your themed clears made me curious if I could do a Sacred Stones Armor clear now that I had the rhythm for an armor clear down pat. Plus you mentioned the armors being OP. Those are my second stringers that are hardly invested into. Well other than Jakob. All of them lack merges(other than Jakob) and for the most part run their default kits(again other than Jakob). If you look here, Ephraim redeems himself by showing Hector that he isn't the only one who can one shot Sothis. And unlike Hector he charges in alone and needs no goading to do so. Like last time the blue mage and the green cav mage were royal pains. Do you know how hard it is to get Amelia up to 57+ Speed? Who's brilliant idea was it to give a unit with Abyssal HP levels Wind boost, Odd Speed Wave, 40 base speed, AND Null Follow-up?! Oddly enough putting Wary Fighter on Eirika causes the green cav to move differently even though she is on the opposite side of the map. I needed him to move where he did in the vid, so she had to have Dazzling Staff equipped. Even though she was well away from him he must have been taking the damage he could do to her into account for if he moved towards her a bit or just straight down. Anyways all I have to say is that Sothis is really squishy. Everyone just keeps taking her out in one hit. Weakest Mythic yet! /sarcasm Edit- And yeah my phone is still lagging. I guess it just isn't fast enough to do recording and playing? That or I have too much crap on it which can cause flash memory to slow down noticeably.

Interesting idea but I realized when I got to that point that Jakob only has 25 HP at that point. This did help me kill Sothis and I'll include my process in a spoiler. Just text of what I tried, but not everyone will want to read it. It dies! But then. . . There is always a butt. I will put a screenshot of the aftermath and my thoughts in a spoiler. Again because some folks may just want to scroll past. @ChickenBitsAnyways thanks for the Idea on how to beat down Sothis. I wouldn't have thought to try using a heal assist since I rarely use them. I actually forget they exist most of the time. Edit- Well I managed it. Turned out healing wasn't at all necessary. At one point I needed more speed so I bit the bullet and sacked 100 grails to give Ike Goad armor. This and changing the Heart Blade to DEF was apparently enough to not only have Hector have his special charged but also to have just enough oomph to knock her out in one hit. So yeah. All that healing inheritance on Jakob was unneeded. However, switching Ike's C to Goad caused the Staff to target him instead of Jakob. And I needed that TA on Hector. I had to swap out Amelia's and Ike's seals. Which gave Ike just enough Res to make him less appealing. But then Amelia got taken out by the Green mage cav. So I ended up giving her the HP/SPD seal to give her enough HP to survive since the drive spd seal was no longer needed due to goad on Ike. There was a bunch more stuff like this. Each change causing a cascade that required more changes, until I ended up with this. Which makes it look a lot easier than what it was. Anyways here is the video. Don't know why my phone is lagging, but it has been doing that lately. Also the sound went tinny after being converted to a reasonable size with Window's Video Editor. No idea why and VLC would just desync. Don't feel like spending the time and energy to troubleshoot it.

Well as I had feared, no matter what I try I can't quite manage this with my clearing team. I even sacked a Rutger and a LA! Eliwood for skill inheritance and still nothing. A big reason why I dislike inheriting for these. You burn limited resources up for no gain. Anyways about the only other thing I can think to try is to dump Goad on Ephraim. I do have a Hector sitting around cooling his heels. So I could give Ephraim both DC and Goad. With goad that would open his seal slot up for a bond. ATK/RES bond would leave him with enough attack to finish the Green Axe(without a bond skill the axe lives with 1 HP). The problem here is that Ike just barely survives the brave bow. I do have his heart blade refined with a defense refine so I could switch there, and I know the Blue mage will die regardless, but. . . the simple fact is the lack of ward will be leave me a bit more vulnerable. And finally, Sothis. I have no idea how I would kill her even if I manage all the reinforcements. Brave Hector can kill her if he can survive her counter. She will deal 31 damage to him if he is affected with TA. So he needs 10 more bulk from somewhere. More if I lose the ward. Also with the ward up he would need another point or two of defense after eating Sothis's counter. The lancer down there does 2 damage to him if memory serves. So he needs to be able to survive that. I dumped the attempt in the spoiler if anyone wants to see where I am at. The final turn just has me showing the damage numbers for engaging Sothis. I suppose time to go hunt down abyssal clear videos. I want those glasses, so I am going to have to copy someone.

Well it looks like Lyn had a very noticeable lead, so barring shenanigans I should have a bonus unit for the final round. Phew.

My first thought was to dismiss the boots idea since this team has plenty of Armor March to go around(I also have my Amelia and Halloween Jakob(whom I gave armor march) on it, it is basically my highly invested unit showcase that I have been trying to make useful). But there have been a few people who have managed to split them up, so it could still be useful. Anyways my team got another win. And it was just after the lift loss window opened. So I am still on track to have 0 lost lift from defense. I have no idea how this is happening. My luck is just apparently good this week. Anyways I have done some serious redesigns to how it is set up. The way I had my structures set appeared to be how folks were separating people, so I opened everything up a bit. Anyways once I feel like it I will go ahead and give Duma the boots. Problem is my team has non-standard setups so I will have to reload everyone's equips/seals and I don't feel like doing that right now. Plus I am debating on whether I should change out Amelia's seal. I currently am just lazy and gave her the ATK/SPD +2 seal. Gives her 63ATK and 46SPD(assuming you haven't separated her to disable her Axe). But 46 SPD while nifty isn't exactly enough to guarantee a double or to deny all doubles. I am really wishing I had used a +SPD Amelia as my base instead of a +ATK. But at the time I made the decision SPD creep hadn't happened so 34 base was quite workable. That and it was before the merge changes and all my spd boons had atk banes or defense banes. Well maybe someday I'll get a +SPD variant. Anyways Fierce Stance might give her a better shot at one shooting something that attacks her, but I doubt it since mythic blessings give so much bulk and Naga also boosts defense. 69-72 ATK(with a drive) just won't cut it. The Darting Stance Seal meanwhile can push her up to 50-53 with a drive, but am not sure if that is enough to be worth it. I need more QR seals :D.

And my luck continues to be stupid. I have no idea what my 5* rate has been the last week or two, but it is insanely high. The con is. . . nothing is on banner. -So for the countering banner I decide to pull on green. 2 green orbs. I open both cause why not. And I get . . . a 5* Brave Ephraim. Umm. . . you don't look like Hector. +SPD/-RES. But I do think that was my first Hector's boon/bane combo. That or it was -HP, I don't remember exactly and he has long since been sacked. I do know it was +SPD though. -On the Nohrian Summer banner I pull red to see if I can get a Leo since he is the one I am missing. 1 Red orb. No Leo, but I got a Stahl! That is exciting right? -On A Sketchy Summer I figure I'll pull blue since I don't have Camilla yet. I get . . . a 5* Selkie. Well you are a lot cuter than Camilla and I am sure your father appreciates having you around now. +ATK/-DEF. I also open the red cause merging away that ATK bane would be nice. Nothing there though. -Ticket for hero fest brought up one colorless orb and 4 blue. It would be nice to see if I could get a +SPD Tiki. But if red had appeared I may have gone after Sturdy Impact instead. Anyways I got. . . a 5* Mist. Really?! +SPD/-HP. I suppose at least I didn't have her yet? So long story short. Pulled 6 units over 4 banners. Got 3 5*'s out of it. but not a single one was on banner. So I guess I am going to complain about having a 50% 5* rate. . . it just sucks soo much. Woe is me! I fear the day the reckoning for all these 5*'s come.

Ooops I missed the last hour because I forgot it ends before the day change. Well hopefully the difference between Leggy and Lyn was big enough that I don't feel bad about not throwing in what I had at the end. Lets see. If Wolt beat Laev, that means Lyn is the only option. Yikes.

@Zeo Uggh. I hate it when you get at the 11'ish mark on these banners. Thankfully it doesn't happen often, but when it does. . . @Nimrod Maybe good bye to F2P, but we had about IAP back in 2017 that had a fun chart. Here ya go. Just don't go Pingu on us and I think you will be fine :D. Anyways since I figured I wouldn't get lucky enough to get another Edelgard I just went ahead and threw my handful built up from the other day on the Mythic banner. Banner really doesn't want to give me colorless. But I figured why the heck not on dropping a 13 dollar pack on it, cause why not. And lo and behold a Legendary Alm makes his appearance. I finally have a Pair Up Hero! +HP/-RES. So pretty much neutral. Anyways the fact that I had to buy a pack means that I need to back off of summoning a bit because clearly I am out of orbs.

Well this week is good so far. Defensively anyways. Day 1 absolutely killed me and ate all my ladders. Haven't had any issues the rest of the week though. Managed rank 5k so far and still have enough Aether for 1 more match. So doing better than usual despite the first day. 4 Successes - Amazingly every one has landed free of the Lift Control and thus I have yet to take any lift loss at all. 4 Failures - Problem. Only one of the failures actually had the foe take losses. This is a problem and I'll have to look into it. I want at least 1 loss inflicted on average. Problem appears to be Duma and the fact that Naga teams just completely body him. Problem 2. I included Halloween Myrrh on the team since she is one of my bigger focused characters. Obviously that works poorly. I really hope we get another Anima Mythic soon so that I can at least get Duma out of the way. He doesn't add much. Never gets a kill and just seems to take up space/get in the way. But yeah 2 dragons on a defense team against Naga is at least 1 dragon too many. If not 2 too many.

That is hilarious. Never trust someone with a big stick. You'll never know when they'll stick it to ya! @Anacybele Well I fixed the graphical glitches, thankfully Vimeo has a replace feature so no need for me to do anything else other than replace the source. But apparently trying to add an audio track causes it to lag and skip frames(but no ugly discoloration!) for some unfathomable reason. So no audio. I could figure it out if I wanted to. But it isn't worth the time. I mostly threw it up so that I could reference the movements just incase I try and tackle Abyssal with the same team. Plus it doesn't hurt just incase someone struggling sees something that helps them. Anyways I can't see these guys tackling Abyssal, but who knows I'll give it at least one shot once I am done with Forging Bonds.

In spoilers since it isn't topic relevant(and apparently you can't spoiler a quote?). Moving on. This one was a tricky cookie to handle with my main clearing team. But eventually I managed all but Abyssal. I will have to look up clears for that since those glasses are nice and I have long since given up the hope that my standard clearing team can handle Abyssal. So here is my cheap and quick Infernal Clear. Nothing really special, other than the fact that I was able to use my standard story chapter clearing team with only a few changes. Hector needed to have extra speed(if only he didn't have a speed bane!) and he needed to have swap. Valentine Ike needed more speed as well. I also needed him to have just the right amount of attack. So if you try and copy this Ike needs to be +SPD. And finally I needed Ephraim to have a buff on the first turn even though the dang game splits your units up. I really hate that about this game. I really wish our starting position/options were more flexible so that you could better set yourself up. AND. I realize I didn't double check the video after VLC converted it. Well crap. I need to go to sleep. If folks really want a clearer version I can probably try again tomorrow.

@Humanoid Right, I forgot you can't rely on Anima/Dark reduced defense loss to help keep ahead. Because of that I only really needed 1 win per ~2 losses, at least during Anima(Thank goodness I got a Yune recently so now that is the case both seasons). There were a couple close calls during dark season, and that is what you are looking at all the time. But still, I say if it is going to happen let it happen naturally rather than intentionally sandbagging. Some weeks can be really rough and some rather easy. So you could fluctuate around. No shame there. But of course the decision is yours.

So if picking a boon for Edelgard would go with +SPD or +RES. I have ran some calcs against the default lists on the duel simulator and the +RES/-DEF comes out ahead over the +SPD/-ATK unmerged. But once merging occurs it almost appears to be wash. I had thought she would more clearly prefer +RES for dragon encounters. But I guess her bulk is enough at neutral that it doesn't make a difference. Anyways my gut says +RES/-DEF and the calcs agree, doubly so if I decide to use the other one for skill inheritance. Can anyone think of anything that would gainsay my gut? Also, I did catch on to something that I hadn't actively realized before. Though I am pretty sure if asked to think it out I would have realized it since it is pretty obvious. I just never bothered to think much about it. The +RES would climb ahead in the hard list if it were -ATK(though it would still be a wash). The bane changes what order the merge points come in. As such for just a +1 it determines on whether she can beat swordhardt or not. And whether or not she can survive against Amelia(though she can't win that one). Basically -ATK gets a point of defense instead a point of ATK and that leaves her with 1 HP against swordhardt and 2 HP against Amelia.

And with this last influx of orbs I am out. Managed to get a 2nd Edelgard with my last 10 orbs. Two greens. 1 orb left. This one is +RES/-DEF. So I have to decide if merging is worth it, or if I can live with 34 defense and use the -ATK/+SPD one for skill inheritance. I'll have to run some calcs. And man, you people are making me really glad I skipped this mythic banner. Boy does that banner not like people. You all have my condolences.