Arena Meta Seriously Broken, Needs a Duplicate Clause

[Rezzy]

The Arena is seriously pissing me off right now.  Strategy can only take you so far against people who are insanely lucky or are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to field a team full of Takumis.  Against one, you can deal with, but having the whole Meta revolve around this bastard is getting annoying.  I unashamedly use one Takumi on my team, as he's the best 5* you can get arguably, but having a team full of him is just being cheap.  There's no real counter to him, and with one, you can work around him, but a team full of them is like seeing a team full of Mewtwos in Gen 1 of Pokemon.

I've seen a team with two Takumi's before, and now I just ran into this.

Spoiler

It isn't even a simple matter of "try again", since you only get 3 goes in the Arena a day without paying extra.  For reference, my team is 5*Takumi, 5*Camilla, 4*Roy, 4*Lilina.

 

They seriously need to implement a "no duplicate unit" clause, so people have to actually think about team composition and not just cheese their way to victory. 

[Fly_or_Die]

I agree that "no duplicate" should be necessary.

At this point, it's probably worth including in your team somebody with the specific purpose of countering Takumi (ex. Kagerou, Setsuna, or even Robin), just because ... Takumi is everywhere. Multiple times.

[Busterman64]

Dang! That...looks nasty man.

While a "no duplicate" clause would be great, I think having a "one type" clause would be better. That would both eliminate duplicates and it would give you more a chance with units that aren't good at say magic(because A LOT of characters suck against magic).  

One red unit, one blue unit, one green unit, and one gray unit only. 

(Of course, that makes constructing a team a bit harder to do, but it would balance things more.)

Oh lord...I fear running into a team of all 5*Star Robins...*shiver*...

[eclipse]

Just now, Busterman64 said:

Dang! That...looks nasty man.

While a "no duplicate" clause would be great, I think having a "one type" clause would be better. That would both eliminate duplicates and it would give you more a chance with units that aren't good at say magic(because A LOT of characters suck against magic).  

One red unit, one blue unit, one green unit, and one gray unit only. 

(Of course, that makes constructing a team a bit harder to do, but it would balance things more.)

Oh lord...I fear running into a team of all 5*Star Robins...*shiver*...

As cool as that would be, I don't think it would fly, due to the gacha system.  My blue pulls have been fairly underwhelming, and I'm sure there's others who have lopsided colors.

IMO the best fix would be a separate arena team, with the various clauses in it (like the no duplicate unit thing).

[Rezzy]

8 minutes ago, Fly_or_Die said:

I agree that "no duplicate" should be necessary.

At this point, it's probably worth including in your team somebody with the specific purpose of countering Takumi (ex. Kagerou, Setsuna, or even Robin), just because ... Takumi is everywhere. Multiple times.

I've started trying to raise a Robin, but it will be a while until I get him to speed, since he's a 3*.  Part of the nature of the game is you can't just train up a counter if you don't have it available.  I've spent some cash on Orbs, and I still don't have a good Blue unit besides Est, and with Takumi everywhere, I fail to justify a single Flyer on my team, let alone two.

2 minutes ago, Busterman64 said:

Dang! That...looks nasty man.

While a "no duplicate" clause would be great, I think having a "one type" clause would be better. That would both eliminate duplicates and it would give you more a chance with units that aren't good at say magic(because A LOT of characters suck against magic).  

One red unit, one blue unit, one green unit, and one gray unit only. 

(Of course, that makes constructing a team a bit harder to do, but it would balance things more.)

Oh lord...I fear running into a team of all 5*Star Robins...*shiver*...

I think limiting to only one of each color type might be a bit too limiting.  Like I said, I don't really have a good Blue to use, and even though I have two Reds, Roy and Lilina fill very different niches.

1 minute ago, eclipse said:

As cool as that would be, I don't think it would fly, due to the gacha system.  My blue pulls have been fairly underwhelming, and I'm sure there's others who have lopsided colors.

IMO the best fix would be a separate arena team, with the various clauses in it (like the no duplicate unit thing).

Yeah, I've only got one good Blue, in Est, but with her weakness to arrows, I don't even bother using her in Arena anymore.  That leaves me with no real Blues.  I've got a few decent Reds, and Green is covered by Camilla as well as Nino.

Competitive Pokemon has a no duplicates clause in pretty much every set of rules.  I'm not familiar with any other games to compare it against, but it's not even like you can have different strategies with Takumi, since pretty much all of them have the same set of skills.

[Busterman64]

Just now, eclipse said:

As cool as that would be, I don't think it would fly, due to the gacha system.  My blue pulls have been fairly underwhelming, and I'm sure there's others who have lopsided colors.

IMO the best fix would be a separate arena team, with the various clauses in it (like the no duplicate unit thing).

yeeeaaahhh...I kinda figured that. Out of all my rolls, I have mostly Reds and Blues. Minus special maps(and Virion because I think EVERYONE gets him starting out), I have 2 greens and 3 grays. Thankfully, I have one great unit of each one, but still, everyone won't have that kind of luck. 

I do like the multiple clauses for the arena idea! It would make it less of a overpowerfest(kinda)! 

[Rezzy]

1 hour ago, Busterman64 said:

yeeeaaahhh...I kinda figured that. Out of all my rolls, I have mostly Reds and Blues. Minus special maps(and Virion because I think EVERYONE gets him starting out), I have 2 greens and 3 grays. Thankfully, I have one great unit of each one, but still, everyone won't have that kind of luck. 

I do like the multiple clauses for the arena idea! It would make it less of a overpowerfest(kinda)! 

I've actually gotten a ton of Greens and Colorlesses.  I've actually not gotten that many Reds, but the few I have gotten have been good enough.  Blue's my only real deficit at the moment.

[Punished Dayni]

Considering I pulled twice, I'm pretty lucky to have a 5* Robin to work with, though my next best is the lone *4 I've got. Otherwise... Yeah, 1 Takumi is bad enough to deal with, never mind multiple. I would love to see a separate setup area for the arena, with whatever limits imposed there as necessary.

[Jayvee94]

The arena is broken; I blame Takumi.

Takumi is officially the first Uber tier unit.

[Alpha Wolves]

I think the general consensus on the thread I posted about this exact same topic was:
Hector counters Takumi.

[Rezzy]

Just now, Alpha Wolves said:

I think the general consensus on the thread I posted about this exact same topic was:
Hector counters Takumi.

Unfortunately, he's ridiculously rare, and there should be more than a single 5* unit that can counter any given unit.  If you aren't lucky with pulls or dish out a ton of real money, you're SOL.

[Alpha Wolves]

Lmao, no, there are more than 1 Takumi counters in the game, but the only unit that can counter 4 Takumi in a row is rather sad.

Moreso the fact that this whole discussion was talked about in the other thread (less salt, more content and theory) that There is a reason why all Counter Attack units are S-rank Minimum on the Tier list, with Takumi and Hector being the only SS tier characters.

Personally, I propose that "Incorrect Counter Attacks" deal 50% damage, or cause the counter attacker to suffer a 50% penalty. (i.e.: Takumi vs Swords would only do 50%, or Tiki/Hector/Ryouma vs Bows would only do 50%).

Edited February 9, 2017 by Alpha Wolves

[Rezzy]

I think I'll drop Camilla from my Arena team.  I took my 3* MRobin and promoted him to 4*, and I got lucky and got a 4* Kagero.  Guess I'll design my team around Takumi until they add a duplicate clause or the meta changes.

[Sylphid]

duplicate clause would be good.

While Takumi brigade is the most obvious reason, duplicates of any 1 character can be really annoying if you're not prepared for just them, which could mean not being prepared to someone else. Got my face wrecked by team of two tikis, though I admit that's more because of wonky starting formation which repositioning could have fixed. To be more precise, it's the same map in the picture you have on first map, with my toilet paper armor wearing ninjas in one corner and melee guys on the other. Guess where the tikis went!

 

There's also something to be said about FE main games making your characters feel more unique and then Heroes... Allowing cloneworks.

I will say, however, that should a duplicate clause happen, Legion needs to be exempt of it

[Vaximillian]

18 minutes ago, Sylphid said:

I will say, however, that should a duplicate clause happen, Legion needs to be exempt of it

Team of four Legions would be glorious!

[Dual Dragons]

Perhaps I'm not high ranked enough to see the Takumi's? Rank 15,903 currently and I've never faced that many Takumi's. I keep doing Advanced matches as well. There's the occasional one but my Robin + Olivia usually puts him in his place.

I guess I should be scum and try for a Takumi... Swords and Colorless, here I go.

[Shadow Mir]

14 hours ago, Rezzy said:

The Arena is seriously pissing me off right now.  Strategy can only take you so far against people who are insanely lucky or are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to field a team full of Takumis.  Against one, you can deal with, but having the whole Meta revolve around this bastard is getting annoying.  I unashamedly use one Takumi on my team, as he's the best 5* you can get arguably, but having a team full of him is just being cheap.  There's no real counter to him, and with one, you can work around him, but a team full of them is like seeing a team full of Mewtwos in Gen 1 of Pokemon.

I've seen a team with two Takumi's before, and now I just ran into this.

  Reveal hidden contents

It isn't even a simple matter of "try again", since you only get 3 goes in the Arena a day without paying extra.  For reference, my team is 5*Takumi, 5*Camilla, 4*Roy, 4*Lilina.

 

They seriously need to implement a "no duplicate unit" clause, so people have to actually think about team composition and not just cheese their way to victory. 

Ouch. Sounds about as painful as Deo-A spam in Balanced Hackmons (yes, that was a thing). Anyways, I'd like some rules implemented to rein in Arena combat, because as is, it's overcentralized around Takumi - either you prepare for him or you just lose, and as a bonus, you just might lose anyway because preparing for him leads to being unprepared against other big Arena threats. Whoopee. It's made even worse since you can't tell who your opponents are until after you begin fighting.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Rezzy]

3 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Ouch. Sounds about as painful as Deo-A spam in Balanced Hackmons (yes, that was a thing). Anyways, I'd like some rules implemented to rein in Arena combat, because as is, it's overcentralized around Takumi - either you prepare for him or you just lose, and as a bonus, you just might lose anyway because preparing for him leads to being unprepared against other big Arena threats. Whoopee. It's made even worse since you can't tell who your opponents are until after you begin fighting.

Yeah, my team and I'd imagine most balanced teams can handle one Takumi, but having a team of nothing but Takumi counters will leave you open to almost everything else.  It's like a Gen 4 team of nothing but Garchomps.

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Rezzy said:

Yeah, my team and I'd imagine most balanced teams can handle one Takumi, but having a team of nothing but Takumi counters will leave you open to almost everything else.  It's like a Gen 4 team of nothing but Garchomps.

Yeah. As an aside, since you brought up Garchomp, which had sets designed to beat its counters, is Takumi that effective as well?

[Birdy]

8 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Yeah. As an aside, since you brought up Garchomp, which had sets designed to beat its counters, is Takumi that effective as well?

Takumi is just hard to counter because he is a neutral character. The only thing that counters him is specific things like Robin (WTA against colorless) or Kagero (Bonus against infantry) and even they can't one-shot him (unless favorable boons/banes on stats). Aside from that, he's one of the few characters that can counter from both 1-2 ranges.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Birdy

[Shadow Mir]

26 minutes ago, Birdy said:

Takumi is just hard to counter because he is a neutral character. The only thing that counters him is specific things like Robin (WTA against colorless) or Kagero (Bonus against infantry) and even they can't one-shot him (unless favorable boons/banes on stats). Aside from that, he's one of the few characters that can counter from both 1-2 ranges.

Yeah. Stinks of overcentralization to me. Also, knowing he's counterable does you no good if you don't have the counter (or if the counter ain't strong enough).

Edited February 9, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Surge247]

Takumi is probably the only unit I reliably lose against. My robin is only a 3*, but I may have to promote him now. My only 5*, Roy, counters anything green, so Hector and Camilla aren't an issue. The problem is that I'll have to remove my Peri or Felicia, because I'm for sure keeping Olivia.

[Roflolxp54]

Arena mode is already pretty stupid given that the metagame is based on RNG, making this less of a game of strategy and more of a game of reaction:

-Luck of the draw on what characters you pull from the gacha

-RNG on stat gains during level ups; even 5* units can get terrible level ups and can be defeated by 4-star or lower units.

-Can only see the lead unit of any opposing team (you're blind to any other units that may be on that team until the battle starts)

-Cannot see stats, skills, and equipment of opposing team until the battle starts -- even a Beginner team can easily destroy (or come close to destroying) your team even if you have a balanced team composition simply because the enemy team just has much more power when compared to your team even on the same Arena tier.

-You have no say on what map and unit placement you want to run for the battle; you are going in blind

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Roflolxp54

[Ice Dragon]

7 minutes ago, Roflolxp54 said:

-RNG on stat gains during level ups; even 5* units can get terrible level ups and can be defeated by 4-star or lower units.

Ahem. My research says otherwise. Stats gained on level up follow a pre-determined pattern.

[Roflolxp54]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Ahem. My research says otherwise. Stats gained on level up follow a pre-determined pattern.

I'm hearing different things like RNG being tied to the account/device (likely to prevent savescumming) or units having different boon/bane combos to make it so that no two units of the same name, portrait, and rarity have the same stats. Like I've seen 5* Lyns with better Speed stats than my 5* Lyn does despite her being at a higher level.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Roflolxp54