LordFrigid

One death on offense (I was trying to be a little more conservative with my ladders, but ended up with 3 left over) and -85 on defense got me a T27 finish. Having at least one bonus unit (Peony) on every team really came in handy. I have decided that it’s much more fun to be on the delivering end of the bonus unit Winter Sothis experience than the receiving end. Hopefully next week will put an end to my string of meh performances in Astra season...fingers crossed.

Divide and conquer, as they say. Elise’s firepower was juuuust enough to take out the G Tome Flier to kick things off, nice. Ooh, nice themed duo clear! Backed up by their (slightly) younger selves, no less, even if they just sat in the back. I might have to swipe that idea for a future battle (but with Marth & Caeda) if the occasion arises... Also divide and conquer, that impassable pillar really doesn’t help the enemies. Great work on both! ~ @Diovani Bressan Thanks! Nice clear, yourself. Saizo, protector of all the worlds’ Sakuras, did a great job crushing those enemies (though that Lance Armor looked like it was giving him some trouble for a bit). I, too, particularly enjoyed the Sword Dragon’s foolishness at the end.

Travant’s mistake was challenging me to Flier Emblem. @Landmaster

They could also just give her an AoE healing skill, akin to Heron Wing, reflecting the Saint class passive (the name of which escapes me...Absolve, maybe?). That frees them up to implement her assist as Rescue+Dance: pulls the target ally to a space adjacent to her and then refreshes them. Totally not broken at all.

770 was slated to move from T13 to T14, but it was pretty close. I went ahead and tweaked a couple things to hit 772, which currently results in a move to T15. I wonder if that will hold up. Regardless, it looks like I’ve got some rough Light/Dark and Dark/Light experiences in my future.

Free pulls for this banner went to Red...or they would have if two of the circles actually had red orbs. The 3rd ticket landed a Flying Olivia, so that’s nice. I haven’t actually gotten the 4th ticket, because Ced is apparently not interested in being my friend. Well, I have Wind, but it’s not the greatest. I actually did this week’s Arena run by stealing 3 of my other teams’ units and running them with Fire blessings alongside Celica. Not needing Arena blessings for anything else anymore is nice.

Hm, easy indeed. The Elises barely even moved after turn 1. Nice work!

Well, if nothing else, I suppose it is the most terrifying, on par with such horrors as giant spiders, the solo violin arrangement of Der Erlkönig...and perhaps even the thought of Fire Emblem without Caeda. *shudder* Jokes aside, I did wind up with some copies of Celica. I’m unsure whether I want to merge, or save them on the off-chance I want to give Swift Sparrow 3 to someone. I already have very solid Water and Earth teams, so unless I decide to make her into a long-long-term project unit to phase out my shoddy-ish Wind team, the only place I would really use her is hero battle clears, for which she won’t need merges. idk, I’m still thinking about it. In other pull-related news, I ended up with a +Spd/-Atk Alfonse duo, which should come in handy next Astra season. I wonder if he can one-round Seliphs. That’d be nice.

Ah, I see what you mean...I too was treated to the bonus unit Winter Sothis experience. I could do without another round of that. Actually, now that I think about it, my own Dark defense map has that same terrain. I should probably change it. No way is my cobbled-together defense team going to be able to deal with that. I see Legion’s Axe Raven allowed you to add more Infantry Pulse fun. Highlights for me were Alfonse & Sharena taking out every Altina, and Naga marveling at Thrasir’s power every time the latter defeated her (don’t ask why that caught my attention, because I have no idea). Honorable mention to the Draw Back loops. I was surprised that more of the Altina users didn’t go up the left edge and stick her on the other side of the Healing Tower (though it looks like she’d need some support to eat the Luna). Sure, Alfonse & Sharena take Silvia’s dance and blow her up, but at that point she would already have dispatched Alm, Celica, and Thrasir. Seems like a better option than, say, sticking Donnel in range of 2 tank-busting green mages. Nice job catching that vulnerability, by the way.

Pretty bleh week for me. I played far too sloppily at the end. I could probably blame the fact that I tried to play AR on Friday afternoon instead of taking a nap that I really needed (it did not end well), but there's really no excuse. I wound up in T26 thanks to a solid -18 performance on defense. ~ Congratulations! I'm jealous that you got a defense setup to work well on Wintry. I've always low-key wanted to have a defense map on that terrain, for thematic purposes. > Implying that it's even possible to be too obsessed with Panic. Tsk. Edit: Happy to be of assistance! I have to edit something really quick, but I'll be sure to check it out!

I think this is the only one that has actually made me want to wash out my eyes. I'm jealous of your Thrasir. I kinda wish the number of Edelgard vs Thrasir copies I ended up with were reversed, but I can't really complain.

Oh, don't worry. I can be that terrible on behalf of both of us, though that Kagero set sounds pretty evil too. Good point on the Flashing Blade thing. She does effectively get +9 when Ífingr and Killing Intent are active, but then again fast tanks are slowly becoming more of a thing...I think Winter Sothis has 46 Spd at neutral +0 with her weapon effect active?

You do not need to level her up before merging. You can merge your existing +9 into the new +Atk base, which will become Lv. 1 +10. Any skills the +9 has learned will already be unlocked on the Lv. 1 +10. The blessing of the +9 will be carried over unless you already have one on the Lv. 1 copy. Edit: You do need to make sure that you 5* the Lv 1 copy first, but no further action is required.

Or you could run them both on your Anima defense team and make the people who attack you regret their life decisions. For Thrasir, I'm pretty sure my claim was that the two assets are competitive (which I've verified to my own satisfaction through combat simulation and actual practical experience). I do have a strong preference for +Spd, but I honestly don't think you'd observe a significant difference either way.

I tried a quick mock-up with my own units. I don’t have Larum, so I had to work with Olivia (Savage Blow C, Hardy Bearing Seal). The conclusion I drew is that if a refresher is capable of dealing at least five damage to any unit in their range, then they must attack one of them. However, outside of the fact that they must attack, they seem to use the same priority order as anyone else (i.e. they don’t necessarily attack the unit they can deal at least 5 damage to). Savage Blow doesn’t seem to make a difference. I would agree with Landmaster’s assessment that you should try reducing her Atk. Here are the tests I ran:

Interesting. I wasn’t expecting Hardin to actually hit “Same”. I figured they’d still have the multiplier in the last hour. I wonder if he can cling on to that 100m lead. My initial instinct is no...we’ll see, I guess.

I can’t speak on the matchup, since I’m on Team Edelgard, but from what I can tell by looking at the standings, there’s no way to avoid Veronica getting a multiplier at the turn of the hour (or ~3 minutes after, I think is about when the standings update in-game). If I were in your position, I’d be either using my flags or saving them for next round. That’s some unfortunate timing for Team Chrom though.

Unlike last time, I decided to continue playing after completing chamber 20. At the end, the team looked like: Marth Lv. 40 +0: Slaying Axe+ (Res), Rally Def/Res+, Ruptured Sky, Swift Sparrow 3, Atk/Spd Ruse 3, Hone Spd 4, Res Tactic 3 Caeda Lv. 40 +10: Blarblade+, Reposition, Iceberg, Atk/Spd Solo 3, Null Follow-Up 3, Atk/Res Oath 3, Brazen Atk/Def 3 Draug Lv. 40 +0: Slaying Edge+ (Res), Shove, Galeforce, Close Def 3, Atk/Def Link 3, Joint Hone Atk, Spur Def/Res 2 Merric Lv. 40 +3: Excalibur (Eff), Rally Atk/Def+, Glimmer, Warding Stance 4, Null C-Disrupt 3, Drive Atk 2, Speed +3 Draug had to go a pretty long way to get to his final spot, the poor guy was still only Lv. 19 after I cleared all the chambers. He never did end up rolling anything worth replacing Galeforce with...

They need to be more careful with the pre-battle dialogue. I almost died. Hard/Lunatic Map: Infernal Map: ~ Nice of the enemies to be so close. Less nice of Idunn to be so bulky that she survives and one-rounds Naesala. @Landmaster

How dare you. *Starts pondering what skill fodder Satsuma might be worth sacrificing for* I’m kind of coming at it from the other direction: my initial guess is that if Thrasir can perform competently at 33, then Celica’s Atk is mostly enough. I freely admit that I tend to have a bit of a Spd bias, though. I say we just agree on “either way, Celica is crazy good”. If you thought this was bad, you should’ve seen what happened when I tried bringing that team into the Naga battle. Naga and Idunn barely did anything, and Duma basically just dropped Upheaval and went off to relax. Or corrupt some souls. Or whatever he does with his spare time. ~ @Zeo Nice work on that clear! It looked a little dicey, getting cornered in the bottom left like that. Good to see the team was able to fight their way out.

Cute video, but I got really thrown off when they called Azura’s weapon a “hagiota”. I honestly thought I’d been misreading it for an entire year, until I went and looked: sure enough, it’s “hagoita”.

I gave it another round after the changes. You really built up that Alfonse fast O.o . I actually didn’t notice at first, and as a result he ate both of Altina’s attacks and smacked her with Open the Future. I had to have instant-Bonfire Jaffar deal with him. He even managed to barely survive Flora, which was pretty impressive. I think Draw Back on Alm plays better with the more mobile Duma. He tends to get stuck in Draw Back loops with Duma or Silvia now, which is actually a little annoying. How’s it holding up against the masses?

Wrong Caeda 😉. Alm was actually one of the units that I didn't deploy that raiding party against anyway, though now that you say it I'm almost tempted to reassemble it and see what happens. Results, using my raiding party setups for this week: I would honestly recommend switching out Duma's QR for Armored Boots. He's so tucked away that by the time he gets to the point where the enemy can engage him, he's likely the last one alive, and QR isn't going to save him from getting Divine Fang-ed to death. If you do that, you'll probably want to give him an assist so he doesn't consume Silvia's refresh. I would also give some consideration to leaving Lunar Flash on Alm, unless you can get the Blazing fully charged. The structure of the map is fine, though as the Altina test showed, it's a little susceptible to Vantage if you just stick a unit at the bottom of Celica's range, because Alm can't get the refresh. I don't know how many people are actually running Altina alongside Brave Lucina (I suspect that Delthea would give her some trouble otherwise), but that setup proved to be a sure way to weather the assault of the ranged units. I'm assuming Alm's Draw Back serves some purpose, but he may be better off without it.

Got you. I took the liberty of peeking at your defense map, which I’m assuming is somewhat influenced by the types of maps you’ve been facing (a guess based on the screenshots you’ve posted). You usually don’t want to box up your units like that, it gives the enemy a lot of freedom while restricting your own units. It looks like you’re trying to get a refresher lined up for defense, that’s a good start. Cool. Sent you a request. You’ll know it when you see it =P . I’ll check out your map after I beat up some more of these Jaffars my Rokkr Sieges world people are so...kindly...leaving alive.

Well, going into this season with a new “try to care about bonus units” mentality made me a bit apprehensive, but it worked out pretty well. Brunnya mostly just sat on the sidelines and watched. She did have one clutch play in the final match, taking a QR-less Seliph down to his Miracle, allowing Roy to eat the Vantage+Vengeance to set up the Galeforce sweep. Hopefully Jaffar can pull off the same sit-on-the-sidelines-and-Watch shtick, because I have no idea how to build that guy. I guess I can switch Sothis to Astra for the season if I’m really having issues. ~ @TEKWRX If you need more mock battle practice, feel free to send a request my way: 8566518658. Briefly glancing at your description of your offense raiding party setups, 3 for Brave Ike seems like a lot. I would generally recommend committing to one play style for your Raiding Parties; you may be able to get some mileage out of splitting up that Mage team into (1) Ophelia + Refreshers and (2) CC/Vantage Tharja. Is that an open-ended invitation to potential map-testers?