Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Vaximillian said:

There’s this strange blue aura on Reinhardt’s portrait. Is this mould?

I’m almost sure the update changed the calculations. 

Maybe you lose 30 points per round for sending home a Spring Camilla.

 

Maybe Beginner difficulty is just volatile? I notice my scores per round in Advanced difficulty jump around all over the place when I only field a single unit (range of something like 710-746 for fielding only Amelia).

Or they lowered the scores for Beginner because it was too easy.

[Vaximillian]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Maybe you lose 30 points per round for sending home a Spring Camilla.

Or they lowered the scores for Beginner because it was too easy.

D:

That would be a sucker punch. I’m still projected to land into my usual 1400–1500 feathers range, so I’m not as pissed yet.

[MrSmokestack]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

7250-point run

~1036 points per match

does not compute

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

~1036 points per match

does not compute

7 is a good number. My finger gravitates towards it when I try to hit 5.

[Vaximillian]

19 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

~1036 points per match

does not compute

 

4 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

7 is a good number. My finger gravitates towards it when I try to hit 5.

A team with quadtails Severa/Selena would give no less than 1036 points per match!

And yes, I’m going to milk this until it’s dry.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Vaximillian

[Rezzy]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

It looks like blessings count for score (roughly 3 points before doubling) if the legendary hero that provides the bonuses is also on the team. There are now some really weird teams up in the 746-point range.

It also looks like I cannot find the player with the 750-point team. Either the matchmaking score range is narrowed at the top, or I'm suspecting collusion since currently only one player has a 7250-point run on the leaderboard.

 

Also, it seems like they've finally fixed the fact that Amelia's score overflows if she has too much SP in her build, meaning I can now run my Amelia with a 240-point Sacred Seal.

 

EDIT: I found the team. It's Fjorm, Hector, Amelia, and Amelia, all with blessings.

It's also hilarious seeing a Fjorm with Distant Counter.

How do you get more Blessings?  I have the one we got for free, but granted I haven't played a ton since 2.0 launched.

I thought they were limited, so that's why I haven't given mine to anybody yet.

[DehNutCase]

25 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

How do you get more Blessings?  I have the one we got for free, but granted I haven't played a ton since 2.0 launched.

I thought they were limited, so that's why I haven't given mine to anybody yet.

You get one every time you get a legendary hero. (If you pull 10 Fjorms, you get 10 blessings.)

[Rezzy]

Just now, DehNutCase said:

You get one every time you get a legendary hero. (If you pull 10 Fjorms, you get 10 blessings.)

So much for Heroes not being pay-to-win.

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Rezzy said:

So much for Heroes not being pay-to-win.

I mean, it's always been that way for sheer arena points. +10 Merged Armors with either Trainee, personal skills, or Prfs are hard to come by.

[Rezzy]

Just now, DehNutCase said:

I mean, it's always been that way for sheer arena points. +10 Merged Armors with either Trainee, personal skills, or Prfs are hard to come by.

Maybe, but this is all the more blatant, since all the other "resources" you got through playing the game and whaling got you more of units and skill fodder, but F2P still had hopes of getting to the top Tiers.  My team could easily be replicated by a F2P player.  There's people with +10 Ninos and Laslows in Tier 20, but I doubt any of them are going to be getting multiple Fjorms any time soon.  This serves to further separate the whales from the rest of the players.

[DehNutCase]

1 minute ago, Rezzy said:

Maybe, but this is all the more blatant, since all the other "resources" you got through playing the game and whaling got you more of units and skill fodder, but F2P still had hopes of getting to the top Tiers.  My team could easily be replicated by a F2P player.  There's people with +10 Ninos and Laslows in Tier 20, but I doubt any of them are going to be getting multiple Fjorms any time soon.  This serves to further separate the whales from the rest of the players.

I mean, it's not like you can't divert resources to grab legendary heroes.

In any case, because ranking in this game is based on other people, rather than an absolute scale, being the tip top tier is mostly a matter of:

Is the top tier big enough that F2P can get in. (Like, if score is purely based on orbs spent efficiently (OSE), then 20% whales with a tip-top tier of 5% of all players obviously has all F2P out of luck, because you can spend orbs at 5% efficiency and still have more OSE than all F2P players because you have 20x as much orbs).

And, if it is, how efficient are you (willing to be) at spending orbs?

 

You don't have to beat the whales, just the F2P with the same resource limitations to get to top tiers, and that usually just means getting better OSE per orb spent. (And generally speaking, you do that by not pulling on crappy banners like this 8% one, lul. 8%/3 is really bad odds for trying to get a focus unit of a particular color.)

 

Mind, I personally don't care about arena rankings past tier 17 (or whatever gives +4 orbs) because arena score mostly costs feathers, the same resource you get for ranking higher. And, in terms of actual team strength, heroes is a game that rewards having boatloads of options as well as a few exceptionally strong ones, so you can pretty much do whatever.

(AA is a different beast, and, honestly, I prefer being able to chillax my way through it than nabbing the best possible score, so I'm working on nabbing multiple dancers/brave bow archers/etc. before merging up single units like crazy.)

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

(And generally speaking, you do that by not pulling on crappy banners like this 8% one, lul. 8%/3 is really bad odds for trying to get a focus unit of a particular color.)

You should actually explain your reasoning before you start babbling on about things that can be easily misinterpreted.

This banner is 1/5 less efficient than a 4-character banner and 1/3 less efficient than a 3-character banner if you are aiming for one specific character and only that character, but has way better consolation prizes if you aren't.

 

EDIT: Well, this is interesting. It seems everyone has now figured out that blessings add to your score because a bunch of the usual teams I face have now switched up their teams.

The interesting thing is that a team of Amelia, Hector, Fjorm, and Ayra with less-than-maximum SP on nearly all characters has the same score as a team that is maxed to the teeth.

I think there's a hard cap at 750 points per match.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[wizzard of soz]

sadly this is probably my best achievement in this game, deathless run for AA score of 4900. as a side note i'm surprised at how well my three sword team worked out for the first match. they're all so tanky the weapon triangle doesn't even matter lmao

[Ice Dragon]

Fuck my life, that was probably the toughest run of Arena Assault I've ever had. I badly need more Ayra counters.

Spoiler

And more copies of Fjorm.

[mampfoid]

Now that everybody is giving blessings to their arena teams: Can a unit get more than one blessing? 

[bethany81707]

New Arena record- 4900 exactly. There were a lot of 700s, especially early on, so I thought they made the matchmaking more consistent.

 

EDIT: And I got a new defence win that wasn't there last time I checked this week: Duke Tanas.

Using a Tana on my team helped me forget what that's a reference to. Doesn't help that I'm only slogging through PoR (though I've passed his scenes).

Edited November 30, 2017 by bethany81707

[Ice Dragon]

9 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Now that everybody is giving blessings to their arena teams: Can a unit get more than one blessing? 

No. Giving a unit a second blessing permanently erases the first.

[mampfoid]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

No. Giving a unit a second blessing permanently erases the first.

But at least the blessing can be erased. Thanks for the info. 

[DehNutCase]

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

You should actually explain your reasoning before you start babbling on about things that can be easily misinterpreted.

This banner is 1/5 less efficient than a 4-character banner and 1/3 less efficient than a 3-character banner if you are aiming for one specific character and only that character, but has way better consolation prizes if you aren't.

Fair, but I kind of assumed the context was 'how good is this banner at generating Hectors.' (It's not a bad banner, and I won't say anyone's stupid for pulling on it, hell, I'm pulling on it with full pulls, whenever I get 20 orbs.)

Also, regarding the consolation prizes, the other banners don't actually trade focus unit quantity for consolation prize quality, at least, not when you're sniping.

 

Like, if we napkin math all colors to be equal:

1/8 non-focus red + 1/8 non-focus green + 1/8 non-focus blue + 1/8 non-focus gray = 1/2 non-focus.

And, let's say it's a 2:1:1 banner with 2 good reds, 1 bad green, 1 bad gray.

1/4 focus-red + 1/8 focus green + 1/8 focus gray = 1/2 focus.

 

That is, our 5* units are distributed: 3/8 red, 1/4 green, 1/8 blue, and 1/4 gray.

 

Out of 100 pulls, we'll pull 6 5* units (3% banner).

 

This gives us: 2 1/4 reds, 1 1/2 greens, 6/8 blues, and 1 1/2 greens.

Let's napkin math to all colors getting 25 orbs of a color per 100 orbs.

And we get red 5* odds at 2.25/25 = 9%

Green odds at 1.5/25 = 6%

Blue odds at .75 / 25 = 3%

And Gray odds at 1.5/25 = 6%

 

Red, the color worth sniping on (since this imaginary banner had 2 good reds and 2 crappy other focus units), has 9% focus odds. And, of that 9%, 6% are focus units. ([1/4]/[1/4 + 1/8] * 9% = 6%).

 

A 4 unit banner with 2 units sharing a color isn't even particularly good, and you still get 9% 5* odds when sniping, with 6% of all units being 5* focus units. (And then you multiply the leftover 3% with the odds of getting a good 5* unit from red.)

 

Honestly, while this 8% banner is kind of a blatant---but good PR---cash grab, it's fairly in line with the other banners we get in terms of 5* odds and focus odds, at least when you're sniping efficiently.

Edited November 30, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

22 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Honestly, while this 8% banner is kind of a blatant---but good PR---cash grab, it's fairly in line with the other banners we get in terms of 5* odds and focus odds, at least when you're sniping efficiently.

Actually using actual numbers helps, especially because the advantage that green has on an evenly distributed banner is significant.

Assuming you are sniping efficiently:

Trick or Defeat! (1 red, 1 green, 2 colorless, 3%/3%) had an 8.1% base rate for 5-star characters when pulling colorless and a 2.9% base rate for pulling a single colorless focus character when pulling colorless.

Tempest Trials: Genealogy of Light (2 red, 1 colorless, 3%/3%) had a 9.7% base rate for 5-star characters when pulling red and a 3.2% base rate for pulling a single red focus character when pulling red.

Legendary Heroes: Fjorm Princess of Ice (3 red, 3 blue, 3 green, 3 colorless, 8%/0%) has a 10.5% base rate for 5-star characters when pulling green and a 3.5% base rate for pulling a single green focus character when pulling green. (Other colors are worse at 6.8% for red, 7.7% for blue, and 7.8% for colorless, but those aren't relevant because we are assuming efficiency.)

[DehNutCase]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Legendary Heroes: Fjorm Princess of Ice (3 red, 3 blue, 3 green, 3 colorless, 8%/0%) has a 10.5% base rate for 5-star characters when pulling green and a 3.5% base rate for pulling a single green focus character when pulling green. (Other colors are worse at 6.8% for red, 7.7% for blue, and 7.8% for colorless, but those aren't relevant because we are assuming efficiency.)

???????

How does a banner with exactly 12 5* units, 3 in each other, give different odds per color?

Edit: Unless you mean when you're sniping green? That is, doing some kind of weird green focus per 5 orbs spent calculation.

Double Edit: Oh I see, you're factoring the fact that green has less normal units, so, while their 5* orbs are the same, they have less 4* and less orbs to pull from.

Edited November 30, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

???????

How does a banner with exactly 12 5* units, 3 in each other, give different odds per color?

Edit: Unless you mean when you're sniping green?

Yes. Sniping. Because efficiency.

[DehNutCase]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

Yes. Sniping. Because efficiency.

Sorry, I just misunderstood, I forgot that green has less 4* and less characters to dilute the pool.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Sorry, I just misunderstood, I forgot that green has less 4* and less characters to dilute the pool.

Yes. Green is amazing like that.

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Yes. Green is amazing like that.

Yeah, I kind of assumed that all colors would equalize over time, as they add more and more new characters.

 

But I forgot FE is kind of all swords, all the time, even when Axe is pretty much the most broken weapon type in every single game---at least of the ones I played.