LordFrigid

If Sharena attacks first in a vacuum, she'll lose to Ephraim 100% of the time. Hopefully Ephraim won't have too hard a time with Chrom, looks like we'll need all the flags we can save if we lose I'm totally going team Lucina. I wonder how much of the Lucina votes came from flag users vs. the sheer number of players backing her.

Desperation I'll agree with, yeah. And it is nice to have a buff of that magnitude all done "in-house"...could be nice if you don't want to be bothered with running Hones to set up the -blade ex. your favorite characters don't have them =P (though...if you've built up a team around a -blade, you've generally built a pretty well-balanced team, by virtue of which characters have the Hones/Fortifies).

-blade will double a Defiant buff. Odin already does it. Edit: Nuts...ninja'd. Edit 2: Sorta depends on who it is, really. Odin I'd say it's fine because he can take a hit or two pretty well. Tharja and Nino have kinda papery defenses though, so setting up the Defiant is pretty situational. Probably more worth it on Tharja because she has Vengeance, but tbh she & Nino both have enough Atk to get pretty reliable one/two-shots with run-of-the-mill Hones and/or Sieglinde/mund.

Similarly, Brash Assault on Lyn would probably be pretty fun. I was actually thinking Desperation for Lucina, because of her Defiant.

A wild Haitaka appears!

I did initially want to run some flavor of "in-a-vacuum" combat prediction, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I think it actually takes just about everything into account except those two things (I'll get around to taking Odin's Defiant out of hard-code land eventually)...oh, and Threatens. I don't even want to think about how I'd do that. Now that I've got what I do have down, I might be able to take a more educated crack at it. Right now it is a little...info-vomit-y =P . Edit: on second thought...I'm not sure that info-vomit-y is such a bad thing considering what I wanted to do with it (basically check atk & spd thresholds for x-HKOs and doubling). In fact...a full-on "in-a-vacuum" simulation would probably be more info-vomit-y, given that there would have to, essentially, be one for every possible IV case. So maybe, at least for now...just leave the user to draw conclusions.

Does anyone know if Breaker skills beat out Quick Riposte (ex. if Arthur attacks Subaki with both at full HP, would Subaki be able to perform a follow-up)? Semi-related note, would anyone find something like this useful?

Kiran: 8566518658

Update for 4580 Offense (missed the usual time by 2 updates...whoops): Day 2 (1 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 545 Day 3 (2 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 790 Day 4 (3 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 1007 Day 5 (4 Mar) 20:00 PST - Rank 1199 It's looking like I'll end up somewhere between 1500 and 2000.

Another pro for that team - amazing positioning options. Between Pivot, Draw Back, and Sing, even some of the most evil team splits can be remedied (except possibly the bridge map, but at least on that one your enemies have their movement equally restricted). For example, the Lava Map:

Update for 4580 Offense: Day 2 (1 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 545 Day 3 (2 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 790 Day 4 (3 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 1007 That drop was pretty big, actually, a much more significant drop than I saw at the end of the last season. So either more people are scoring high, or 12 points is just that big of a deal.

Yeah, no need to worry about Nowi unless you plan on having Nino eat a hit from a Takumi, or similar (doesn't look like your team needs her to fill that role). She takes under 10 damage from her, from my experience (I usually see a lot of 6s).

A couple notes for this, actually. Gronnblade doesn't count Spurs as buffs. Also, Gronnblade damage is actually affected by Weapon Triangle (idk why, you wouldn't think so given the wording on the tome...or maybe I'm being too strict about wording). So you'd be looking at, effectively, 69 Atk vs blues. (Still enough to one-hit every Linde, which is always immensely satisfying)

That's fair. I'd love to see how a +Spd Nino goes, actually. I've been wondering whether +Spd or +Atk is better on her. I'll probably end up running some numbers over the weekend. tbh as long as she doesn't have her Atk or Spd hit she'll tear up the Arena. As something of a benchmark, mine's +Def/-HP, will one-shot +Res or +HP Takumi if the buffs are done right, and can eat one hit from him otherwise (she'd actually survive one hit from even +Atk Takumi, but obviously straight up one-shotting him is preferable). However, since she's just a 3*...I'd strongly consider waiting to get a better combination.

NEVER, NINO EMBLEM FOR LIFE! ALL PRAISE THE SPARKLY-EYED SLAUGHTERER I'm in a similar boat on the bonus heroes, really. I decided to track down an Azura, and ended up with the entire Family Bonds focus as a side-effect. Once they get dropped from the bonus hero rotation...Optimistically I'd still be in the 10k range, but I really have no idea.

For 4580 Offense: Day 2 (1 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 545 Day 3 (2 Mar) 18:00 PST - Rank 790 I don't think I'll try bumping the score back up near last week's, I'd rather spend the rest of my matches playing with a team that I enjoy using.

Alrighty, put together a score of 4580, currently sitting at Rank 545 as of the last update. Probably not going to stay top 1k like last week, unfortunately, as I had only just squeaked by on 4592. Still, I'll be perfectly satisfied if I can stay under 5k. This is probably the last week I'll be able to do it too, at least for the foreseeable future. Scraped together a few Defensive wins too, with the highest at 269.

Well...eventually you'll run into a Hector or M!Robin. Then you're in for a bad time. Edit: Hector's possible Atk values are 49, 52, and 55. Even -Atk Hector will demolish the first person that attacks him that isn't named Gordin. +Atk Hector will demolish everyone except +Def Gordin (and even then, I think he'll still ORKO +Def/-HP Gordin). Even assuming Gordin survives, he won't deal too much damage (20 at most with +Atk Gordin and -Def Hector). It'll get rid of the Armads passive, sure, but you'll still need 1-2 other people to finish the job, and the requirements vary heavily based on Hector's boon. Depending on the map, you might have a hard time even getting the space to have 3 people hit Hector in the first place. After that, there's the issue of starting the enemy phase with 2 units that have a "Kill Me!" sign taped to their back...though it's not unlikely that Hector was the last enemy on the map due to his one movement. M!Robin shouldn't be too horrible, actually, running Kagero. She has a hard time doubling him though, depending on boon/bane combinations. That, plus the fact that he (unlike Hector) is unlikely to be the last unit standing on the enemy team, make him pretty capable of directly or indirectly causing a death or two in any given match.

Ephraim doesn't strike me as someone who particularly likes -Atk, since he's got Spd issues and really wants to swing hard on the one hit that he does get. You'd have to look at Def/HP benchmarks to see what kinds of things he'd be one-shotting to be sure though. For example, +Atk Ephraim with a Hone Atk buff will be one-shotting a Lucina that's not +Def or +HP, whereas -Atk Ephraim would have to have to have a teammate chip her on the offensive end, or just eat the doubling on the defensive end. Julia's +Spd/-Def (for reference, you can check this stuff on the wiki's calculator). +Spd might help her not get doubled, but tbh you don't normally want Julia to be on the defensive end of a fight. +Atk serves her better because her job is to drop a massive hit on whoever she's attacking. -Def is fine as, again, she really shouldn't be put in a spot where she can be attacked...though I suppose it's noteworthy that she can still eat a hit from Takumi (she'll need a Spd buff if the Takumi is +Spd, and make sure he doesn't start his turn within two spaces of her or Threaten Spd will ruin her day) and will 2HKO him back. Wouldn't be my first choice for Takumi handling, but it's definitely an option.

Yup, Wings of Mercy is what I've been planning/hoping for (well...one of the things I've been planning/hoping for). Even if they restrict it to currently empty slots...Azura's B is the open one. Most healers have an open B too, so they're also reasonable candidates (if just for story/tower/grand hero battles) if you have the people to pull it off of must find more Cains.

Fury & Defiant are both "A"s, sadly (unless they plan on breaking that boundary). I was hoping to run Fury/Defiant on someone too...though I can't remember who it was for the life of me. I don't think that will, or should, happen. Dance/Sing just doesn't feel, to me, like something that should be able to go on anyone but a character who was a Dancer/Singer in the game they appeared in. It's kind of in keeping with the idea of unit uniqueness. Also, imagine a Cav/Flier with Dance (chuckling to myself just thinking about how strange that would look irl...like...who's dancing? The rider? The mount? Is the rider doing a jig atop the mount?). The mobility + utility factor would just be...evil.

I think it's either +Atk or +Spd, and -Res. He basically doesn't want his Def to be bane'd because Bonfire, or his Spd to be bane'd because he's already relatively slow. I'm not 100% sure if +Spd lets him escape doubling by enough common threats to make it a better boon than +Atk though (leaning toward no, but I'd have to look).

To expand a little on Nino's "like" list - Eirika is one of the better ones if you ever end up pulling her. Sharena is great as well (and free for everyone), if you have her leveled. I don't believe there are other people with double-buff potential floating around atm, but they'd play nicely with her too. She also likes Song/Dance power. A second action will let her a) retreat to a position adjacent to her buff-buddies or b) get another attack off with an insane buff setup that might not be available on the next turn, depending on where your units moved. That, plus draw back or attack → song/dance → draw back shenanigans are always fun. The fact that both Olivia and Azura come pre-equipped with a buff is icing on the cake. It's noteworthy that Azura is strictly better because a) Nino hates Reds, and Azura eats those alive and b) Nino's favorite buff-buddies (Eirika and Sharena, from above) both buff Atk. Olivia's Hone Atk is redundant with these (slightly less redundant with Eirika because Sieglinde is only equivalent to Hone Atk 2), but Azura's Fortify Res is not. Unfortunately Azura is also a really rare pull. She also plays pretty well with F!Corrin, though the synergy is less pronounced than with the characters mentioned above. Corrin's Seal Res can help secure a one-shot, and/or Dark Breath can secure a one-round by allowing Nino to double a particularly fast opponent. 5* Nino with neutral Spd and a Spd buff sits comfortably at 40 (38 with 4* Nino isn't too shabby either). That's good enough to double most people, but there are some faster people that can escape that (I actually had a case where there were two Marths standing next to each other, Spurring each other's Spd, which put them just out of double territory). Dark Breath fixes that up nicely. Corrin's Hone Atk doesn't hurt either, but again, it's redundant with her favorite buff options.

4592 finished at Rank 985. For this week, I probably won't have a score until tomorrow or the day after - I don't plan on burning Dueling Crests until the March Quests (general & arena) come up.

Are they below 5*? If so, you can level them to 20+ and look up the stats for their next star rank using "Unlock Potential", and run those numbers through whatever boon/bane calculator you're using. If not, I'm pretty sure the only way is to take them all the way to 40 (though you can make some pretty accurate guesses a few levels before then).