Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Fei Mao]

11 hours ago, Rezzy said:

Your current team is all physical and melee.  You might want to switch out Narcian for Fem Robin or Cecilia to get a mage in there, as well as ranged.

Camilla is good, but suffers from a Takumi-heavy meta right now.  I notice you have 5* Abel, I might even suggest adding him in place of Camilla.  It would give you two Lance users, but Reds are the most common type in Meta right now.

Thanks for the tip, it's a tough choice since I need Narcian for the point bonus, I'll probably replace Camilla with Abel though.

4 hours ago, Korath88 said:

Don't. Unlike what some whales think, you don't need SS units to do well in the arena. Just because a unit requires half a brain to use well doesn't make it bad. The top ranks are usually filled with hackers and whales and their +10 units, which f2p players cannot compete with. My entire team consists of mostly "A-tier" units(completely subjective) and I can break 4.3k easily, and broke 4.4k this week. Make do with what you have, you don't need crutches to succeed in the arena. After all, this is a strategy game.

Alright, I'll try to manage with what I have. Thanks for the words.

 

41 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

So, 5* level 40 Sharena is a monster. First attempt of the night with her replacing Gordin netted me a deathless Advanced 7-chain that greatly improved my score. Of note is that with Hone Atk 3, she can one-round most Julias through sheer raw power. Scary stuff. She was also the fast bruiser that I needed, so that she could bait without getting doubled, often double the enemies, and hit like a Mack truck. She could also go toe-to-toe with a lot of blues that gave me pause before, while at the same time totally shutting down the reds. I was worried about going triple melee when my only ranged nuker was a shaky -Spd M!Robin, but Sharena took enough pressure off of him that I was generally in advantageous position. Also, stacking Fortify Def with Spur Def is borderline unfair. In my final match, there was this poor Hector who was doing 0 damage to Seliph because Fortify Def + Spur Def + the debuff from Sharena's spear gave Seiph a whopping effective Def of 42. After weapon triangle, Hector had nothing.

 

Anyway, my new score is 4488:

• Ground Zero (1AM PST Mar 3) - #6207

Nice, promoted Sharena to 5* as well, was definitely worth the investment.

[Nastya]

Wow, it seems like many people got banned because I just went up from Unranked to 79,600-ish with paltry 3555 offense...

Edited March 3, 2017 by Nastya

[rustie]

1 hour ago, Nastya said:

Wow, it seems like many people got banned because I just went up from Unranked to 79,600-ish with paltry 3555 offense...

Wonder does that effect the higher ranks, been seeing my 4,393 score dropping from ~5,000 to 13,826, which is quite disheartening lol

 

Also I been getting zero defensive wins this season, & am wondering what's up with that? It's basically the same team as last season's (except that Tharja got bumped up from 4* to 5* halfway through the current season), but got several defensive wins last season. The team consist of an Ephraim, Camilla, Tharja, & Lyn, all 5*.

[Rezzy]

2 hours ago, Nastya said:

Wow, it seems like many people got banned because I just went up from Unranked to 79,600-ish with paltry 3555 offense...

I'm still barely above 10K.  Depending how motivated I am, I might try to put together a deathless streak, but I'm beginning to really hate the lava map.

[Soulkey]

19 hours ago, Katrisa said:

Yikes that 4843 score you have is monstrous.  I did the math to see what is going on and see that Minerva carries a whopping base 174 stat score as a flyer, holy heck.  Combine that with Effie and two of the highest score non tank reds and I see how you did it.  Very impressive.  I'm actually very curious what your clears looked like as your team suffers the same problems as my own (no magic damage and no ranged).  At a glance I'm suspecting you are using Effie's smite to help shove your units around to generate favorable splits.  

The part I'm having trouble figuring out is how your team deals with Takumi in general.  If I'm not mistake Minerva gets her special up after only one attack.  Does Minerva's special pop against Takumi's counter attack?  Or is she able to survive a single counter attack?  If neither of those are true then I assume you are baiting Takumi to Effie and then finishing him off.  Which is probably fine if they don't have another green or blue tomb user.  

I get the feeling your arena battles with that composition are very intense and hit and miss on 7 clears with zero deaths.

 

Well, before I completely switch to zelda botw today I`m gonna open your eyes when it comes to playing competitive in the arena. It all comes down to two points:

• AI Understanding
• Total Stats

We are playing against a really stupid artificial intelligence. So we need to understand how it behaves. For example, it attacks units in the attack range regardless of how effective the attack actually is. If nothing is in attack range, they move towards the units they can deal the most damage to. The healing units tend to heal the closest ones first and prefer their heal skills. Other utility skills just like pulling units around happens randomly without any reason.These are the most important ones, also it goes far deeper than that. If you master your ai understanding, you are able to anticipate all your opponent moves and react accordingly.

 

All the sweet stuff you mentioned like dumping time into thinking about unit skill compositions or inherent skills later on etc. does not matter. It would, if we actually could fight real players with a brain. But that will most likely never happen.

 

What else does matter then to get the top spots at the ranking ladder?

Pretty simple. Arena points are calculated from your team totals stat points, bonus hero effect, difficult mode and winning streak without losing a unit (that would be the highest score, indicated at the far right. For my run yesterday at 4.914 points I got per round 702 points in advanced mode, which means the opponent team is 20 ~40 total stat points up). So we have to aim for quite high total stats to gain the top ranks. That ´s  all there is to it.

 

/sidenote: I'm highly disappointed that my thread containing the top score ranks got closed. It supposed to provide one-view information about the top scores player reached at a certain date including their team setup and of course their total stats to gain those ranks (people should be interested in that). This raw information does not provide this thread in any way. In my humble opinion this thread (beside it's misleading title) does not deliver any relevant information.

Soulkey ~

 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Soulkey

[XhenD]

9 minutes ago, Soulkey said:

/sidenote: I'm highly disappointed that my thread containing the top score ranks got closed. It supposed to provide one-view information about the top scores player reached at a certain date including their team setup and of course their total stats to gain those ranks (people should be interested in that). This raw information does not provide this thread in any way. In my humble opinion this thread (beside it's misleading title) does not deliver any relevant information.

Soulkey ~

 

 

 

I, for one, would love to know how many orbs you used to get the super special awesome " Effie +9, Lucina +10, Eirika +9, Minerva +8 " setup. That's 40 gold heroes you've pulled, if I've calculated correctly.

Edited March 3, 2017 by XhenD

[Raven]

8 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I'd say that's an benign nature for her.  Nino's pretty frail, so she's not going to take many hits anyway, but it's not a nature that hurts her, like a -Atk or Spd would.

My Nino is +Spd,-Def, which is one of the best possible Natures for her.  It allows her to Double just about everybody, and she's pretty much dead if she gets hit by melee anyway, so the -Def is an acceptable trade-off.

My own 4* Nino is +spd -Res. Not the best bane because she'll probably be going up against a number of magic range, but hopefully the speed will be enough. With the unexpected gift of 3,333 feathers today, I am now sitting on 15,254 feathers and should have her 5* by the end of the next arena run in about 10/11 days, assuming we don't get any more random feathers gifted to us.

Edit: As it stands, current Off: 4,444 Def: 265 (is Def score even relevant towards total rank?) I'm sitting at rank 9877.

 

1 hour ago, Soulkey said:

/sidenote: I'm highly disappointed that my thread containing the top score ranks got closed. It supposed to provide one-view information about the top scores player reached at a certain date including their team setup and of course their total stats to gain those ranks (people should be interested in that). This raw information does not provide this thread in any way. In my humble opinion this thread (beside it's misleading title) does not deliver any relevant information.

Your topic was primarily dished out to extend e-penises as opposed to actual discussion on what units work best, and served only to show us what kind of crazy teams are needed to reach such high ranks. It's fairly obvious that the biggest whales and luckiest of f2p will have the biggest scores. There's no need to make a whole new topic to showcase this. This topic's focus covers pretty much what your topic wanted to do, which is to show us your scores and teams. With a little intuition, any and all discussion regarding the arena can be made in here.

I'll agree this topic's title is rather dull and the topic's focus is not primarily discussion. I'd suggest this topic's title be changed to something simple like "Arena discussion and help" or something equivalent, which will imply we talk about our units, their ranks and levels, and provide help and guidance to eachother regarding which units are best with regards to availability, etc.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Raven

[Katrisa]

1 hour ago, Soulkey said:

We are playing against a really stupid artificial intelligence. So we need to understand how it behaves. For example, it attacks units in the attack range regardless of how effective the attack actually is. If nothing is in attack range, they move towards the units they can deal the most damage to. The healing units tend to heal the closest ones first and prefer their heal skills. Other utility skills just like pulling units around happens randomly without any reason.These are the most important ones, also it goes far deeper than that. If you master your ai understanding, you are able to anticipate all your opponent moves and react accordingly.

You totally missed what I was asking.  I completely understand how to take advantage of the AI, splitting, baiting, point stacking etc.  I've been in the top 3000 the last two weeks without dropping a dime on the game.  I simply mis-assumed your characters were not 9+ stacked.  Glancing at your team if they were not heavily stacked you might have problems with Takumi due to your current composition (no ranged, no counter attack, no brave double hit, etc).  

Functionally if you have no one who can bait counter Takumi or instantly kill him while safely away from the other units, Takumi teams can effectively wedge you on some maps potentially resulting in a death. Its a functional problem with team comps with no counter or ranged.  As your scores have shown though, you can effectively brute force a crappy matchup through raw stastics and good planning vs the AI.  

I simply was asking if you were brute forcing Takumi by using Effie to bait Takumi close and then counter kill.  Or dealing with Takumi with Minerva's by either sacred cowl activating on his counter attack, or if she could take a single hit from him.  

I functionally am curious if Minerva can take one hit from Takumi essentially.  Its an exceptionally good question because if she can take one hit then she is able to bait kill a single Takumi to avoid general wedging problems when the rest of your team is relatively immobile.

[pianime94]

1 hour ago, Raven said:

I'll agree this topic's title is rather dull and the topic's focus is not primarily discussion. I'd suggest this topic's title be changed to something simple like "Arena discussion and help" or something equivalent, which will imply we talk about our units, their ranks and levels, and provide help and guidance to eachother regarding which units are best with regards to availability, etc.

Tbf, I created this thread with the purpose of estimation in mind, i.e., if I am to aim the score of X, will I be able to stay in top Y? (Because I was trying to know that back then). This thread may have delved deeper than my initial intention akaderaillol (like the occasional defense team discussion) and maybe it really does need a name change(?).

If it's any better for you, I'll change it to "Arena Discussion (Rank, Defense, Team, etc)"

Suggestions are always welcome, of course.

Edited March 3, 2017 by pianime94

[Soulkey]

28 minutes ago, Katrisa said:

You totally missed what I was asking.  I completely understand how to take advantage of the AI, splitting, baiting, point stacking etc.  I've been in the top 3000 the last two weeks without dropping a dime on the game.  I simply mis-assumed your characters were not 9+ stacked.  Glancing at your team if they were not heavily stacked you might have problems with Takumi due to your current composition (no ranged, no counter attack, no brave double hit, etc).  

Functionally if you have no one who can bait counter Takumi or instantly kill him while safely away from the other units, Takumi teams can effectively wedge you on some maps potentially resulting in a death. Its a functional problem with team comps with no counter or ranged.  As your scores have shown though, you can effectively brute force a crappy matchup through raw stastics and good planning vs the AI.  

I simply was asking if you were brute forcing Takumi by using Effie to bait Takumi close and then counter kill.  Or dealing with Takumi with Minerva's by either sacred cowl activating on his counter attack, or if she could take a single hit from him.  

I functionally am curious if Minerva can take one hit from Takumi essentially.  Its an exceptionally good question because if she can take one hit then she is able to bait kill a single Takumi to avoid general wedging problems when the rest of your team is relatively immobile.

 

well, I take everything nice back. you are as retarded as the red writing QQ kid

any tactics you want to hear are not relevant, only in real pvp. what kinds of units you use does not matter, only their total stats do.

 

besides that, let me tell you, there is no viable neutral unit option in arena ranking above 4.850 ~. bloody amateur omg >:D

[pianime94]

I'm actually really surprised myself that a score that high still doesn't place you in top 50.

What a hellzone lol.

[Korath88]

15 minutes ago, Soulkey said:

 

well, I take everything nice back. you are as retarded as the red writing QQ kid

any tactics you want to hear are not relevant, only in real pvp. what kinds of units you use does not matter, only their total stats do.

 

besides that, let me tell you, there is no viable neutral unit option in arena ranking above 4.850 ~. bloody amateur omg >:D

Wow the elitism is real. Seriously, did you just make an account here to show off your e-peen? 

Maybe not everyone here is a whale like you. Maybe some people want to play the arena for other reasons than topping the ranks. The fact that most of us here can achieve high scores without fused SS tier units should show that we're not "bloody amateurs", thank you very much.

[Skala_Bundet]

Now, now. It would be nice to be more civil (we are aware calling people retards doesn't contribute to good discussions and furthering understanding. Some people have legitimate questions) 

 

@Soulkey: I'm curious. The current rankings experienced a reversed shift and you had a real good score. Were able to improve your rank more after the recent night? It would be nice to see how things changed at the whale forefront

[Katrisa]

I love how you try to ask a basic tactical question about someones composition and you get called a retarded armature. Ignore for the win... not that I think he's going to survive long here.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Katrisa

[Raven]

2 hours ago, Soulkey said:

 

well, I take everything nice back. you are as retarded as the red writing QQ kid

any tactics you want to hear are not relevant, only in real pvp. what kinds of units you use does not matter, only their total stats do.

 

besides that, let me tell you, there is no viable neutral unit option in arena ranking above 4.850 ~. bloody amateur omg >:D

Neat. Tell me more about how I'm being a retarded QQ red text kid. Why not reply in a reasonable manner and try having a nice discussion instead of throwing insults like a fucking child who didn't get his way.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Score of 4488:

• Ground Zero (1AM PST Mar 3) - #6207
• After 13 Hours - #7023

Given same rank/hour decline, I expect to drop out of the top 10k and end at #11 605. Close, but no cigar, yet still way better than previous weeks.

[ExpendableExtra]

5 hours ago, Katrisa said:

I love how you try to ask a basic tactical question about someones composition and you get called a retarded armature. Ignore for the win... not that I think he's going to survive long here.

From what I gather Soul just basically saying that he doesn't plan for Takumi, because he just doesn't get a match up against Takumi or perhaps any ranged characters at all with Advanced Arena pitting you against higher stat total and base Takumi and other ranged character having lower stats then any of his units on his team before merges. I imagine he just facing Armored units and melee infantry (and Minerva here and there) almost exclusively if the enemy is to have a higher stat total then his team at this point. So the question of how to deal with Takumi with this team comp is a point moot for Soul as he just out stat totaled Takumi from ever having to fight him.

I imagine if everything being 1-2 move melee units at the extreme upper tier, the game just devolves to simple color matching exercise at that point.

Anyways, Off. Score 4344

Yesterday #16041

Now #19419

[eclipse]

8 hours ago, pianime94 said:

Tbf, I created this thread with the purpose of estimation in mind, i.e., if I am to aim the score of X, will I be able to stay in top Y? (Because I was trying to know that back then). This thread may have delved deeper than my initial intention akaderaillol (like the occasional defense team discussion) and maybe it really does need a name change(?).

If it's any better for you, I'll change it to "Arena Discussion (Rank, Defense, Team, etc)"

Suggestions are always welcome, of course.

Since arena rank is directly tied with your team, I'd change the topic title. That way, it'll allow for strategies to up one's arena score as well.

[Katrisa]

7 minutes ago, ExpendableExtra said:

From what I gather Soul just basically saying that he doesn't plan for Takumi, because he just doesn't get a match up against Takumi or perhaps any ranged characters at all with Advanced Arena pitting you against higher stat total and base Takumi and other ranged character having lower stats then any of his units on his team before merges. I imagine he just facing Armored units and melee infantry (and Minerva here and there) almost exclusively if the enemy is to have a higher stat total then his team at this point. So the question of how to deal with Takumi with this team comp is a point moot for Soul as he just out stat totaled Takumi from ever having to fight him.

I imagine if everything being 1-2 move melee units at the extreme upper tier, the game just devolves to simple color matching exercise at that point.

Yup that's what I figured out today after doing some heavy math (which I put in a new post).  Its rather funny that because of stat matching the counter which would cause serious problems to his team and others like it, isn't in his matching list.  I concur heavily that from what I'm gathering at this point that the very top arena tier sounds like some horrible joke of melee punching bots.   

It makes me wonder if the developers didn't think about the impact or if the financial people didn't care.  Its rather sad because they could have still had the arena whale biased simply by having higher scores = more merged units and have stats ignored.  Actually that probably would drive the whales to buy more since if the top arena is dynamic, then they need more purchases to have a dynamic +10 group and not just a +10 tank facepunch group.  

[LordFrigid]

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.

[pianime94]

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Since arena rank is directly tied with your team, I'd change the topic title. That way, it'll allow for strategies to up one's arena score as well.

Roger that, madam.

EDIT: Hopefully this title reflect better.

OTOH, got what could be said my absolute peak score of 4510 with Lyn, Ryoma, Julia, and 4* Sharena (no death). Currently placing at  rank, 5400.

I suppose it's safe to assume you need to get 4450+ to stay in the top 10k until the end, if my last season score proved anything (4480).

I'll probably be aiming for top 30k for next season, considering I'll be switching Julia with Fem Robin for the bonus.

Edited March 4, 2017 by pianime94

[Rezzy]

My Offense score of 4451 has fallen out of the Top 10K.  I'm at 10,071, now.  I think I should be safe to stay in the top 30K, but who knows.  I might use a couple Crests tomorrow, to knock the rest of the March Arena Quests, but I won't go all out trying to beat my score this week.  I don't think I'll be able to top my score from last week.

Strangely, I've still only got the 2 Defense Wins that I got on the first day of the new season.  D is random.

1 minute ago, pianime94 said:

Roger that, madam.

Heroes needs to get Rogered, so we could get another Armor unit.

[Fei Mao]

3/2  Score: 3,954  Rank: 45,397

3/3 Score: 4,015 Rank 56,565

I swear this game makes me salty AF, deathless run always ends on the 7th....causing me to use swords out of salt and getting more tilted.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Fei Mao

[Korath88]

Just successfully defended against a tiki led team for 273 points. With that kind of stat total, I honestly wonder how he lost to me.

[eclipse]

27 minutes ago, Korath88 said:

Just successfully defended against a tiki led team for 273 points. With that kind of stat total, I honestly wonder how he lost to me.

It's possible that they started the match and immediately surrendered, especially if they've already had their deathless streak.  I'll probably do the same.

Speaking of, my team finally pulled one, with a grand total of 4,286.  Not bad if I say so myself!  I'll edit my ranking in fifteenish minutes.