Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

Oh yeah, tried to get into arena to pick up feathers, but of course it's closed.

Have I lost those feathers when it updates?

1 hour ago, wizzard of soz said:

how are people getting their feathers? the arena is just greyed out for me. can't even enter and get the message that it's closed, i guess that's just a new thing?

They were available for a short while before the update. If you haven't already picked them up, you'll have to wait until it opens again. You'll receive your rewards the next time you enter the arena.

[ignis_z]

1 hour ago, Katrisa said:

You want a few things when building a good defense team.
  1) Characters that are difficult to kill safely: Melee with ranged counter or Ranged with close counter are great.  Brave and Dire weapons are scary and can score kills. Dance is unpredictable and often results in killing someone.  High mobility (horse units) are great at causing problems.  And finally having at least two high damage ranged units significantly threatens melee/tank compositions.
  2) Teams with good synergy: All of one color is often easy to kill unless those units are back breakers (4 Hectors for instance is really painful for most people to clear safely), instead having a good mix of colors is good.  Having a good assortment of buffs (attack and speed) helps generate kills.  Likewise having a good assortment of movement/speed/attack assists helps generate unpredictably and causes your team to stay clumped together more (rather than running off doing their own job). 
  3) Reducing your overall team points means you will fight people who are less generally less skilled at the game: Reducing team points is simple, using 4 star characters that are well designed, mixing 4 star with key 5 star threats, or equipping skills they don't need.  Alternatively you can use the lower level version of the skill (Swordbreaker 1 is nearly as useful as swordbreaker 3 for instance).  Quite a few mages don't need B slots to still tear faces off.

Looking at your units I can roughly see the problem you're facing.  Nino can be unreliable in the arena (due to buff spreading).  Likewise Gordin is highly reliant on attack power (if your Gordin is +Atk then he may be worth having on defense otherwise I would skip him.  This puts your highest threats as Ryoma and Lilina.  Ninian having dance is fantastic and potentially worth a slot.  The question for me would be should you run Camilla or Nino.  Glancing at buff coverage With Ryoma, Lilina and Ninian, Nino would get buffs from anyone in which case I would give this a try. Camilla with her brave weapon can be highly dangerous, but I find fliers to be very predictable and easy to bait (making them generally bad for defense unless you have a full flier team transferring buffs).  

So I would try Ninian as your lead, Ryoma in the middle, Nino third, and Lilina last.  In theory this will result in Ninian throwing Ryoma out front frequently with two ranged off to his side tailing him.  This should generate a moderately threatening composition capable of pulling in some kills.

In terms of skills you would want to disable in theory.  Lilina's special won't be very good on defense.  Nino's A slot resistance (he should have some kind of fury/attack/deathblow there instead).  Ninian's escape route while unpredictable probably will not activate often... none the less I would keep the skill just in hope of a few random screw ups which mess with the other team.
 

thanks dude there are my gold players:

Lilina - at + def

Gordin + speed- res

Nino+ at - hp

Camilla - at + res

Azura + hp - def

Ninian + at - res

Fae - def + res

Clair + hp - speed

ryoma -hp + res

 

4 stars i got, Eirika, MArth Zepyrh, Michalis, Sheena, Sharena Cordelia Olivia 40 (+2) MErric, Navarre, Xander and Eliwood can i make a good defence team with them? 

Then i dont put skills in level 3? only 1 or 2? Thanks

Edited May 8, 2017 by ignis_z

[Hawk King]

31 minutes ago, ignis_z said:

Lilina - at + def  not good

Gordin + speed- res pretty bad

Nino+ at - hp great!

Camilla - at + res terrible

Azura + hp - def highest rating for her but meh for killing stuff

Ninian + at - res pretty good

Fae - def + res meh

Clair + hp - speed not good

ryoma -hp + res decent, especially dangerous for mages.

This is how I would rate their natures.

Although, you can make almost any nature work with the right teambuilding. That -atk on Camilla is the worst thing you could have for her. compared to +atk, that's 14 less damage per attack (7x2). You should definitely consider using her for fodder to give a high Atk axe user the Brave axe+. If you have a +atk Cherche at 3*, it might be worth investing the feathers into to make 5*.

39 minutes ago, ignis_z said:

4 stars i got, Eirika, MArth Zepyrh, Michalis, Sheena, Sharena Cordelia Olivia 40 (+2) MErric, Navarre, Xander and Eliwood can i make a good defence team with them? 

A lack of 5* weapons makes all of them pretty underwhelming. However, Sharena can still be a good buffer and Olivia's dance works regardless of rarity.

49 minutes ago, ignis_z said:

Then i dont put skills in level 3? only 1 or 2? Thanks

Enemy difficulty is based on how strong your team is. He was just saying that, if you give your team weaker versions of their skills, or no skills at all, you might get easier match-ups. I wouldn't worry about this too much.

[Katrisa]

1 hour ago, ignis_z said:

Then i dont put skills in level 3? only 1 or 2? Thanks

I would just do this with your skills and use level 3 for the rest:

In terms of skills you would want to disable in theory.  Lilina's special won't be very good on defense.  Nino's A slot resistance (he should have some kind of fury/attack/deathblow there instead).  Ninian's escape route while unpredictable probably will not activate often... none the less I would keep the skill just in hope of a few random screw ups which mess with the other team.

If you add any Sword/Axe/Lance/Tomb breaker skills to your characters those function great at level 1 (most B skills operate this way).  So if you pickup any B skills like this I would run them at level 1.  Until you start finding a mix of skills and characters that pull in at least one kill each week.

Hawk Kings assessment on your skills is spot on.  Good news is out of your 5 star characters I listed the only one who has a bad roll is Lilina with her -Attack+Def... on the bright side she still will have an impressive 50 attack. and will do 60 damage to Greens - their Resist. So she should oneshot quite a few.  She's still a better option than your others.

In terms of improving your current comp Linde would be a great addition to your current team.  She's the blue female mage draw for the next 10 days.  She's exceptionally dangerous and would benefit pairing with Ryoma and Nino really well.  If you were to get her I would essentially pass a Spur Atk 3 to her for her C slot and let her and Nino be the danger twins.  

[ignis_z]

40 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

This is how I would rate their natures.

Although, you can make almost any nature work with the right teambuilding. That -atk on Camilla is the worst thing you could have for her. compared to +atk, that's 14 less damage per attack (7x2). You should definitely consider using her for fodder to give a high Atk axe user the Brave axe+. If you have a +atk Cherche at 3*, it might be worth investing the feathers into to make 5*.

A lack of 5* weapons makes all of them pretty underwhelming. However, Sharena can still be a good buffer and Olivia's dance works regardless of rarity.

Enemy difficulty is based on how strong your team is. He was just saying that, if you give your team weaker versions of their skills, or no skills at all, you might get easier match-ups. I wouldn't worry about this too much.

Aha, only one thing, wich team i put on arena Defense with this units? 5 and 4 star or a mix heheheh.

 

[Othin]

4 hours ago, Terrador said:

I did some tinkering with the new arena reward system tonight, because I evidently can't be trusted with math or reefer. Here's some notes on what I found out.

The distribution of players between ranks will quickly normalize; even after a handful of seasons the distribution should look like how I've described it, even with the huge cluster at Tier 15 right now. Playerbase growth and retention matter, but the top three groups barely change size at any reasonable values (if you're reading this, odds are that's where you're ending up!) If we take the assumption that there are at least 100,000 teams participating at T7 or higher, we can peg rank the original arena ranks roughly to what we can expect moving forward. Here's the breakdown!

Tier 20: ~top 5% (~top 2% to remain)
Surprisingly attainable. If you were getting 5~10k rank you've got a shot of getting in now and again, and any higher and you should be in T20 more often than not. If you're one of the lunatics holding down the top thousand, you'll be here.

Tiers 19 and 18: ~35%
The four-orb tiers punt down more players than they pull up, but they're still entirely possible. If you get ranked in the 30~50k group, you might visit Tier 18 sometimes; if you're consistently above 30k, expect to live here. Congrats! You've won arena if you don't care much about the extra thousand feathers.

Tiers 17 through 12: ~55%
These tiers are the highest that buoy players upward (that is, 50th percentile performance still eventually moves you up). If you're seeing good scores, but not getting ranked yet (or only seeing the bottom half of the rankings), odds are you'll live here for awhile. Around half this group settles at Tier 17, so most players in this group will still be getting decent feather rewards alongside the three orbs.

Tiers 11 through 7: It's complicated. ~5%
Here's where things depend greatly on playerbase growth. In a stagnant base, about half a percent of players are in this group. Obviously, the share of players here will balloon when tons of players are joining at once, but... you shouldn't care too much. I can't accurately describe the strength of the players here, but it's well below that of a decently mature account. Keep playing and you'll catapult out of here.

Tiers 6 through 1: NOOB TUBE
No joke, that's what these are. These tiers squeeze players up and don't receive demotions, and will dry up completely without new players joining on. The rewards are crap, but... at this point, you have story maps to do. Go do those!

 

I am not a mathematician, just some chump dumping rank criteria into gdocs and eyeballing the results. Note that these are conservative estimates: if the Arena playerbase is already significantly larger than 100,000, getting into the highest tiers could be a breeze!

That's good to know. I've often been getting into top 5k, so I guess that means I should expect to be bouncing between 19 and 20 if not staying in 20? That could actually mean a slight increase in feathers per week rather than a decrease, so that makes this seem a lot better. Wonder if it works out that nicely for other ranking levels, although anything that was earning past 3k feathers per week will have to see a decrease, so it'll hurt the top players. They might do some re-adjusting over time to account for that.

[Ice Dragon]

17 minutes ago, Othin said:

That's good to know. I've often been getting into top 5k, so I guess that means I should expect to be bouncing between 19 and 20 if not staying in 20? That could actually mean a slight increase in feathers per week rather than a decrease, so that makes this seem a lot better. Wonder if it works out that nicely for other ranking levels, although anything that was earning past 3k feathers per week will have to see a decrease, so it'll hurt the top players. They might do some re-adjusting over time to account for that.

Yeah, the grumbly part of the new arena tiering system is that it's going to take at least 4 weeks (2 ranks up the first week from 15 to 17, then 1 week per rank after that) to reach tier 20 to get the same number of feathers that I got with the old system.

[Othin]

Looking at it in more detail, once things even out, only the top 100 players will necessarily be hurt by this due to getting above 3000 feathers per week, if it's that universal to be able to reach tiers corresponding to rank. Meanwhile, lower-ranking players will be helped a lot, since even if they couldn't rank at all before or could only reach low ranks, they should be able to reach at least Tier 7.

[MaskedAmpharos]

Tfw I didn't manage to collect my feathers before Arena closed for the day. Hopefully I'll still be able to collect my rewards when it reopens tomorrow. 

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Don't see why you wouldn't. The Arena makes a point of saying that rewards are collectable for the duration of the current season every time rewards are claimed (now that I think about it, it's a little weird to have that message for people who are collecting it right that moment, but eh).

[Elieson]

So before the major arena update shut it down, I broke 20k for the first time (that I remember at least) with a rank of 19,876. Hot diggity!

[Othin]

Huh, I actually ended up with slightly more optimistic numbers for the tiers. Wonder what the difference was.

[Silith13]

So the top 44426 players are going to get the max amount of orbz.

[Othin]

14 minutes ago, Silith13 said:

So the top 44426 players are going to get the max amount of orbz.

If my numbers are correct, the top ~44.4% of players in Tier 7+ should get the maximum amount of orbs. This is based on an assumption of 100k players in those tiers, but it'll probably be plenty more. I think my numbers are correct, but I'm not certain. They're a bit different from the previous estimates, but in the same ballpark.

[Terrador]

Othin, I spitballed figures because I knew I couldn't account very accurately for change in the player base. Your numbers are exactly the same as mine for a consistent group; I just didn't think they were quite as good a representation of what we would see in practice.

[Othin]

12 minutes ago, Terrador said:

Othin, I spitballed figures because I knew I couldn't account very accurately for change in the player base. Your numbers are exactly the same as mine for a consistent group; I just didn't think they were quite as good a representation of what we would see in practice.

That makes sense, then.

[ignis_z]

Mmm yesterday i was at 26500 in Coliseum, i just enter and 50060 and 1000 feather Orly? It is bugged? I had 4655 and finidhrd 50060?!

Edited May 8, 2017 by ignis_z

[Taim Meich]

They reopened the arena, pay time!

I got 4500 feathers (2500 + 2000), and it's a pity, since not getting the 500 from defense (no defenses this season) gets me the same feathers as last season when I ended up in the lower rank tier. I was secretly hoping I got a last minute defense win before they closed, but of course, nothing. Time to give WoM to Olivia and make an insufferable defense team.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Taim Meich

[Vaximillian]

3 hours ago, ignis_z said:

Mmm yesterday i was at 26500 in Coliseum, i just enter and 50060 and 1000 feather Orly? It is bugged? I had 4655 and finidhrd 50060?!

There's a very tight cluster at 4,6xx. Very, very, very tight. It's not surprising.

[ignis_z]

2 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

There's a very tight cluster at 4,6xx. Very, very, very tight. It's not surprising.

In a day 26000 to 50000?. 4655 is god not for top but good.

[Vaximillian]

4 minutes ago, ignis_z said:

In a day 26000 to 50000?. 4655 is god not for top but good.

It's more likely than you think. A difference of one point means a difference of thousands of ranks in this bracket.

[Othin]

I decided to take a closer look at how old arena ranking rewards will translate to new arena tier rewards once things settle, assuming something reasonably close to the equilibrium I calculated and the assumption of at least 100k players in Tier 7+.

• Top 100: Currently earning 3500+ feathers. Will end up in Tier 20 for 3000 feathers and will therefore lose feathers.
• Top 1000: Currently earning 3000 feathers. Will end up in Tier 20 for 3000 feathers and will therefore keep the same amount of feathers.
• Top 5000: Currently earning 2500 feathers. Will end up in at least the Tier 19-20 limbo, alternating between them for an average of at least the same 2500 feathers.
• Top 10,000: Currently earning 2000 feathers. Will end up in at least the Tier 19-20 limbo, increasing the feather count to at least 2500.
• Top 30,000: Currently earning 1500 feathers. Will end up in at least the Tier 18-19 limbo, increasing the feather count to at least 1900.
• Top 50,000: Currently earning 1000 feathers. Will end up in Tier 17+, increasing the feather count to at least 1700.
• Top 100,000: Currently earning 500 feathers. Will end up in Tier 7+, increasing the feather count to at least 700.
• Not in Top 100,000: Currently earning no feathers. Will end up in at Tier 7+, increasing the feather count to at least 700.

Some people (myself included) will have a bit of a reduced feather income for a bit, but once things settle, everyone outside the top 100 should be getting at least as many feathers per week as before, with most people getting more. Plus the added orbs. So this really does seem to be a step up in rewards for almost everyone, despite the fears that it would be hard to maintain previous feather income.

[MaskedAmpharos]

@ignis_z It's really not that surprising. 4.6k is where a huge portion of the playerbase is, and there's a sort of bottleneck around that range. 

Dropping that far in a day isn't anything outlandish at that score range. 

EDIT: Also, thank you @Othin for the numbers. I was a bit worried that I'd be losing feather income, but hopefully that won't be the case. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[Korath88]

First run with the new maps!

Can I just say that these new maps are really fun to play on? Even the bridge heaven one.

Also, Zephiel+fort tile=GG

 

Edited June 2, 2017 by Korath88

[rockocalypse]

20 minutes ago, Korath88 said:

First run with the new maps!

Can I just say that these new maps are really fun to play on? Even the bridge heaven one.

Also, Zephiel+fort tile=GG

Ya. Its like you're standing on a WTA but its all purpose and +5%.

So, no old maps still exist huh. A shame. I think SOME of the old ones were fine.