LordFrigid

Welp...just faced my first ever full cav team. Legitimately scary lineup of Reinhardt, Eldigan, Olwen, & Gronnblade Cecilia in that annoying underground map with the water & pillars. They all had Reposition, which probably helped me more than them lol. Ended up winning because Vantage Nino is the coolest...but wow...I don't think I've come across another team that scared me quite that much.

Killing Edge is fine, though imo Iceberg works better with it, since her Atk is low enough that she wants the proc in one round of combat to secure the KO.

Huh...good point on Drag Back. Admittedly I hadn't even thought of that (I've seen plenty of Drag Back fliers in the arena though...I mostly just looked at them and thought "well ok then"). The flier team I run borderline needs a lot of Wings though, otherwise I'd give it a shot...hm. For laughs, I had a look at Clair's +Spd Brave matchups against reds (the whole thing was basically Brave, Life and Death, Desperation, and Luna)...the build write-up says she can "take care of" Lucina, Eirika, and Ryoma, but I literally have no idea how whoever wrote it arrived at that conclusion. She can 3HKO them without buffs, sure, but the author seems to have ignored the fact that unless she does have buffs, she can't even double neutral Spd no inheritance variants of those three...and buffs are never mentioned, so...lol. The +Atk matchups don't look half bad though...cleanly drops neutral, no inheritance variants of common reds, and +Spd/Fury & +Def/Fury variants of all reds with Hone Fliers. Granted...you'd probably be better off using Cordelia or possibly Hinoka, so it's a moot point.

Yeah, Hit and Run does look pretty interesting. Pity you'd have to get it off of a 5* (atm, idk who of these four would be changed to 4* after the focus ends). On the Brave build...yeah, at this point I'll admit that I'm just looking too hard for people to stick it on. The requirements (+Atk, specific buffs, not to mention the sheer SP cost) are really high, I just wanted to make use of Caeda, which is maybe not at the top of most people's priority lists lol. I kinda do want to go run the matchups for Clair now though...I'm curious. Oh...funnily enough, one of the builds on the Wiki for Clair is Brave lol. Idk why it's recommending +Spd though...

Yes you can. Edit: ninja'd.

lol. Clair strikes me as a flier team unit; she could probably pull off Brave/Desperation/Iceberg with that stat line and Hone Fliers, actually. Except I had enough "fun" getting together enough SP for that on Caeda...I don't even want to think about doing it again. My Nino is already prepared, complete with a long track record of OHKO'ing Fury Ninos of all shapes and sizes. She says: "bring it on" ;) .

Yeah, I've got the Eirika + Ephraim + Nino core going. Way back when I decided to try and pull Azura, it just happened to be during the Family Bonds focus, from which 3 of the 4 units are still insanely strong picks. I just want to use Julia again 'cause Julia. I'll probably run Sharena next season though, yeah. I might also do a few matches with Faye, since I went through the trouble of building her up and everything.

Yeah, mine's +Atk/-Res. Still has default Res +3 though. I'll have to see if I want to just stick with Nino or feed Julia a 4* Klein (literally the reason I started pulling colorless orbs again lol).

THERE ARE LESS SCARY WAYS TO TEST PEOPLE. Also, how's DB Julia working? I went back to Nino because Takumi was annoying me, but I did notice that Death Blow would solve that issue (in most cases).

Whew...I've been freaking out over here D: . I was also wondering how she even got 12 damage, since unless the Palla wasn't lv. 40, there's literally no boon/bane/merge/seal res combination that would yield 12 damage (or at least...none that I could think of). I believe I got the Dragon Fang mechanics from a post on Ice Dragon's thread.

Dragon Fang's description is a bit flawed, yeah. Instead of applying +50% to your Atk (which would then be affected by weapon triangle and any related multipliers), it adds 50% of your Atk to damage...and when you have Julia's disgusting Atk stat...I'm not complaining though, not when it was part of how she carried my arena team for three weeks straight =P .

I was referring to Rally or Fortify Def*, not Tyrfing. You will not be able to stack either of the former two with Defiant Def. *Edit: or anything else that's an actual buff, that will show when you tap the stat in battle. Light Breath is the only one I can think of atm.

I'd say it depends on what else he's doing with Ephraim, who can deal with Falchions much more effectively than Lucina. I may just be heavily biased toward any-range counters though, after my experience with Adult Tiki =P .

Oh...also on the other team members...I haven't gotten that far yet, admittedly =P . I was thinking mage + brave axe/lance, but dragon + Klein would work, I think. You might be able to do 2 ranged nukes, but I think that might be riskier, depending on how the enemies are grouped. I may be overestimating the power of warp → Draw Back/Dance combinations here, I'd have to actually use a team with it to see (I've only really needed to do it once with team flier). I've got some other team projects I need to finish up first, but Seliph is definitely on my radar (I've only got one Catria though, and I'm hesitant to sacrifice her to Seliph). Eirika would be cool, but that's a lot of red.

Ideally he won't be in range of enemies on the EP once Brash Assault goes active, and Armored Blow lets you stack a +4 buff. Defiant Def won't.

Off the top of my head...keep Brash, toss him Armored Blow, run him on a team with a magical nuke, a physical nuke, and a dancer/singer. The latter three all have Wings of Mercy, and the nukes have Draw Back. One of them has Fortify Def, to bring him to 44 on offense (30 with neutral Def + 4 from the buff + 6 from Armored Blow + 4 from Tyrfing) when at 50% or less. Then, you use him like a portal to rush down the enemy team. There are loads of port → Draw Back/Dance/Sing combinations that you could employ in any given situation. At least...that's what I've been thinking about doing with him. I've kinda got that going on my flier team, except I'm running a Desperation user instead of a Brash Assaulter. Edit: Your pick of Bonfire or Ignis for a proc, though I kinda wonder if Reprisal would work on him, with that HP stat...

Q1: I'm personally in the camp of Ephraim > Effie 'cause movement, I'd recommend gathering more opinions on this. Q2: Looks ok. On the buff question, all of the passive team buffs are tied to the C slot. In general, A passives are self oriented, B passives are combat oriented, and C passives are team oriented. There are exceptions for each (Wings of Mercy isn't directly combat-related, but is a B, for example). So most characters can carry two buffs: one in the C slot and a Rally in the assist slot. Eirika and Ephraim are cool because their weapons have built-in Hone Atk 2, so they can run three buffs. I'd actually recommend finding a spare Matthew or someone else with Hone Spd (4* Eirika does too...maybe one or two others, there's a pinned thread on this board that will give you a full list of which Lv 3 passives can be found on which 4* units, if any) and giving it to Ephraim, then running Ephraim, Nino, Tiki, Olivia. You may want to switch out Olivia's Hone Atk for another buff, unless you're dead-set on the +4 over Siegmund's +3. That team gives you solid color coverage and adds in Dance power. Q3 & Q4 were answered by Kiran, though I would note that the Armor's effective damage negation skill is actually Svalinn Shield, Grani's Shield is the cavalry version.

You and your cinnamon rolls =P . Also, that moment when your Takumi is +Res/-Spd . I may outsource the bow if I end up with another Faye, but since I don't plan on pulling from this focus again, I doubt that'll happen anytime soon. Those numbers are pretty nice though.

Eirika's topping the boards at 598 atm, because she's literally on all of my teams except for the flier one. Azura is a close 2nd at 523, since she's on the training teams & team flier, but not my main offense arena team. Elise is sitting at 446 due to being on every training team. Then it's a scattering of 200-300 for the main arena team (for some reason Ephraim is a clean 100 above the rest of the main arena team...and I have no idea why), and 100s for the trainees...and 0 for the vast majority of my units =P .

Oh, QR was just the first thing that popped into my head based on the suggestion I was given. I think I put something together a couple pages back just throwing out random stuff that bubbled up while I was training her lol...the 2nd option, which I was leaning more towards because of the Killer Bow's low Atk and -Atk, was Firesweep/Tomebreaker (imo breakers go better with Firesweep than a bow that allows counterattacks anyway). I'ma just pretend the 3rd point didn't exist. I didn't realize her matchups were so good against swords with +Atk though O.o ... admittedly I didn't look at those very hard because Atk is the bane on mine...R.I.P. dreams.

Thanks! Good to know I was on the right track lol Henry's sacrifice was not in vain. You'd only really need the breakers at lv. 1, right (mostly in case I find out I don't actually need G Tome counters...I think I do, based on my experiences these past few seasons, but you never really know...)?

Well, just got that exclusively 690+ streak. fwiw, after hitting a total merge level of 10, most of the matches I was getting were 690s, with a sprinkling of 680s, and one ~670. Total score is 4868, currently holding rank 586. Meanwhile, Caeda & co. continue to put in work on the defensive end. I have never personally had 10 defensive wins in a single season, so it's kinda satisfying...it might just be this map set (lava looks flier friendly, but idk since I faced a few flier teams on it and didn't have any issues...bridge also looks flier friendly, but I've never faced a flier team on it so I really couldn't say), I'll see next season I guess lol.

That, or just him flying in the air [Marvel] Thor style. Spinning Armads over his head for maximum effect.

Interestingly, that stat line is pretty similar to Caeda's...clipping a bit from Res and adding to HP & Atk. Based on that, I'm going to say that Darting should work fine for Navarre, because it works fine for her, using a very similar build (Brave + Desperation + Iceberg). He'll need Atk and Spd buffs though. And maybe the Spd +1 seal. He'll have trouble with +Spd/Fury and maybe +Def/Fury variants of common sword units, but he should beat greens handily.

I'm looking for input on what to do with a +Spd/-Atk Faye. She'd be run alongside Eirika, Nino, and Ephraim in the event that I don't have any other bonus heroes for the next two Arena seasons. Currently, the things that give my team the most trouble are red and green mages. Eirika and Ephraim are both basically buff-bots right now. I'm actually liking the redundant Atk and Spd buffs, as they can now give them to each other as well as the other teammates. Plus it gives me more options as far as starting positions, but I digress. So far, I've been considering a few different options: Switch out the bow to something else (Killer Bow/Iceberg has been suggested). I like that idea, possibly tossing in Quick Riposte, but I'm worried mostly about -blade tomes, and the most worrying users of these tomes will double and KO her before her 2nd attack. I could give her a Breaker instead, for whichever color I find scarier, which leads me to... Keeping her standard Firesweep Bow and giving her a breaker on her B skill. I think breakers fit better here, because she can get two attacks off unanswered. It looks like, with an Atk buff, she'd be able to 2HKO Nino, Julia, and non-bow-countering variants of Spring Princess Camilla with G Tomebreaker. I'm honestly more worried about green tomes than red because greens are simply more common, in my experience. Also, I don't have any spare Odins. Keep the Firesweep and give her a Spd boosting skill, Seal Spd, and park her next to Eirika or Ephraim. Attack a mage without having to worry about the counterattack, and watch as Seal Spd (probably) stops them from doubling her on the EP, since she hits a reasonable 35 with +3 Spd and a buff. I'm not opposed to also sticking the Spd +1 Seal on her if that's what it takes to not get doubled. Still slow-leveling her while I mull everything over (hardcore babysitting team of Eirika, Azura, and Elise are on the job). Honestly Eirika, Nino and Ephraim can carry a bonus unit, I'd just like to make her usable if possible. Any suggestion helps...especially since right now most of my considerations focus on the B/special slot. I'll probably go with a positioning skill for her assist if I end up giving her one, since Spring Exalt Chrom's Shove was actually pretty handy every now and then during my matches these past couple seasons (also I've got a +4 buff for everything except Atk already, so no dire need for her to carry a Rally).