Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[Raven]

Well my team of 3 horses and Hector seems to do reasonably well, depending on the matchup. Broke 4,000 because half the run was done and had deaths before I changed to this team. I'll try another 7-win streak with this new team and see how that goes.

[pianime94]

Managed to nab a score 4458 with Ursula (140), Seliph (178), Vantage Ryoma (173), and Julia (165). Ranked at 3616 atm. Though, I'm not really sure I'll stay in top 10k. It's not a big deal if I don't make it.

Actually met 2 Hectors with Wings during those run. Good Naga, Julia was able to tank him right to the face. Ain't she great.

[Raven]

2 minutes ago, pianime94 said:

Managed to nab a score 4458 with Ursula (140), Seliph (178), Vantage Ryoma (173), and Julia (165). Ranked at 3616 atm. Though, I'm not really sure I'll stay in top 10k. It's not a big deal if I don't make it.

Actually met 2 Hectors with Wings during those run. Good Naga, Julia was able to tank him right to the face. Ain't she great.

I met a Hector with Wings in my 2nd battle and he jumped to a low enemy and one-shot my Ursula. My own hector was already damaged, and would've lost the fight. Gunter and Jagen didn't stand a chance, either. I really should start checking skills before doing anything else on the map.

[ExpendableExtra]

9 minutes ago, Raven said:

I met a Hector with Wings in my 2nd battle and he jumped to a low enemy and one-shot my Ursula. My own hector was already damaged, and would've lost the fight. Gunter and Jagen didn't stand a chance, either. I really should start checking skills before doing anything else on the map.

Yeah, arena now keeps me on my toes in make sure I check the enemies skills, just today, I saw a Hector with bonfire instead of Pavise which would of probably flown under the radar until it was too late since it has the same charge time as Pavise. 

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Score of 4476:

• Ground Zero (3AM PST Mar 22) - #3221

Bah, the low team values, they hurt. Getting bombarded by ranged opponents. Thankfully, Ursula's a pretty good magic tank, so baiting isn't too iffy. Also had a moment where a Ninian-propelled Eldigan thought he could get cute. Ursula turned him into a smoking crater (2x 39 damage).

Edited March 22, 2017 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[hunty]

First time I was able to use a Lvl. 40 bonus unit for arena - achieved a deathless run with a score of 4.444. Currently rank 4.683. I used Ninian +1 (BST 164), Rally Resistance Eirika (BST 173), Fury 2 Nino (BST 168) and Kagero +1 (BST 155).

Really content for my first try-hard arena run but hoping to improve my score by the end of the week~

Edited March 22, 2017 by hunty

[Othin]

Managed to get my first 7-win streak for the week, although with a few deaths because the arena is brutal this week. 4,381 points, currently clocking in at rank 8,173. My team rating is the highest it's ever been, particularly due to having Priscilla as a 5* bonus unit: I think if I can get a deathless run, it'll be at least 4,550 points, but that's going to be difficult.

[Vaximillian]

5 hours ago, pianime94 said:

Gotta ask @Vaximillian on his secret hmm.

He got like 8 defense wins last time, which is holy mousey cat mackarel.

If only I had an idea myself.

[MrSmokestack]

I initially did a run with Klein / Ninian / Lucina / Ephraim and locked in at 4494 points, but yesterday I took the dive and upgraded my +Spe -Def Nino to 5* and finished training her today, so I took another shot at Arena, swapping out Klein to squeeze an extra 8 points from every game. Ended with 4524 points, no deaths. The only inheritance I had on my team was Fury 2 and Rally Speed on Lucina, Atk+3 on Nino and Ephraim, and Hone Attack 3 on Ninian. I ran Rally Speed to keep Ephraim from getting doubled by Tiki-Young and to let Nino OHKO Nowi after buffs. Currently ranked 1,918 with one defense win. I beat my score from last season by 6 points, so I'm pretty happy about that.

 

The sheer number of Nowi's I've been running into is disgusting, but thankfully Nino makes short work of her. I also ran into Triangle-Adept / Bowbreaker Robin (M), who did a whopping 1 damage to her. That was pretty cute.

[MaskedAmpharos]

Noooo, 4560 has dropped all the way down to rank 961. I'm probably not staying in top 1k this season :/ 

Eldigan was my bonus last season, which is why I scored so high, but none of the bonus heroes I have for this season are particularly high (Ninian's the highest I have, and she's like 20 BST below Eldigan RIP)

[Ice Dragon]

9 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I ended up replacing +2 Reinhardt (153) with Ninian (162) for the bonus and teaching Robin Close Counter and Quick Riposte.

Managed a personal high score of 4,584 (old personal high of 4,564), no doubt due to the +9 increase in my stat total, which is apparently currently rank 364. Pretty sure that'll drop to maybe the 1,000-3,000 range by the end of the week.

Robin is pulling some serious weight, though. Holy crap. Tanked and killed a low-merged Takumi and a low-merged Ryoma and still had Quick Riposte unbroken to destroy a low-merged Fury Lyn.

It seems like I'm running into a ton of chumps units with Fury now.

Rank is now 622. Only two new defense wins since last night.

I wish the game would give me more Ninians and Ryomas to merge. I've gotten no new Ninians in the past 300 pulls or so (granted, maybe only about 2/3 of those were blue), but 3 5-star Nowis who I already have at +10. Mrrgrr.

[MrSmokestack]

3 hours ago, MrSmokestack said:

I initially did a run with Klein / Ninian / Lucina / Ephraim and locked in at 4494 points, but yesterday I took the dive and upgraded my +Spe -Def Nino to 5* and finished training her today, so I took another shot at Arena, swapping out Klein to squeeze an extra 8 points from every game. Ended with 4524 points, no deaths. Currently ranked 1,918 with one defense win. I beat my score from last season by 6 points, so I'm pretty happy about that.

Dropped to 2,089. Hopefully I can stay in top 5k? I want to do another run with Fury 3 Nino / Lucina but I don't know if I should save the life upgrade for another season.

Edited March 22, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Ether]

Ahh, to be able to take F!Robin out of my arena team and add back in my shiny new 5* Nino. Running with Lucina. Sharena, Nino, and Rebecca, a deathless streak brought me to an offense score of 4512, which at the time or writing puts me at rank 2642. Now I just need a good defense win to round out the round, and hope that I stay in the top 10k(5k would be nice but it's a pipe dream)

[MaskedAmpharos]

What do you guys do after you get a good deathless run? Do you continue to try and reach a new high score or just mess around with random teams or whatever else?

If I think I know who the next season's bonus characters will be, and I have one of them (in other words, if a new banner came out and I pulled someone from it), I might experiment with team comps using them. Otherwise I kind of just mess around with random teams that I wouldn't use for serious ranking (stuff like an all-cavalry team or an all-ninja team or an Awakening-themed team, etc) just for fun.

Edited March 22, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[Elieson]

2 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

What do you guys do after you get a good deathless run? Do you continue to try and reach a new high score or just mess around with random teams or whatever else?

If I think I know who the next season's bonus characters will be, and I have one of them (in other words, if a new banner came out and I pulled someone from it), I might experiment with team comps using them. Otherwise I kind of just mess around with random teams that I wouldn't use for serious ranking (stuff like an all-cavalry team or an all-ninja team or an Awakening-themed team, etc) just for fun.

I just work on Quests, or grinding up other units that I think will be useful later on, like Fliers/Cavs/etc. Since some missions have "Bring X unit (like one right now has bring Hana to 7-4), I'm just working on getting most units up to Level 30-33 while trying to handle other quests, or working on topping out some other units like my fliers and stuff for the current stupid Tenth missions. You know they're eventually gonna hit us with a "Beat X chapter with 4 Staff users, and none can die" quest soon enough

[Ice Dragon]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

What do you guys do after you get a good deathless run? Do you continue to try and reach a new high score or just mess around with random teams or whatever else?

I mess around with random teams (or do game mechanics testing or gather level 40 stats data), but then again I'm not particularly starving for feathers.

Since I play favorites to a large degree, I don't really have any interest in changing my roster for a higher stat total team to try for better, and my usual position on the lower end of the 1,001-5,000 reward tier is pretty hard to break out of for just 500 feathers.

[MaskedAmpharos]

2 minutes ago, Elieson said:

I just work on Quests, or grinding up other units that I think will be useful later on, like Fliers/Cavs/etc. Since some missions have "Bring X unit (like one right now has bring Hana to 7-4), I'm just working on getting most units up to Level 30-33 while trying to handle other quests, or working on topping out some other units like my fliers and stuff for the current stupid Tenth missions. You know they're eventually gonna hit us with a "Beat X chapter with 4 Staff users, and none can die" quest soon enough

Oh sorry, let me clarify. What do you do with your Arena swords? 

After I'm done with Arena, I also usually grind up units, but I'm not sure what else to do during Arena (which I do every day for the daily quests). Unless you meant you grind levels during Arena as well?

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

I mess around with random teams (or do game mechanics testing or gather level 40 stats data), but then again I'm not particularly starving for feathers.

Since I play favorites to a large degree, I don't really have any interest in changing my roster for a higher stat total team to try for better, and my usual position on the lower end of the 1,001-5,000 reward tier is pretty hard to break out of for just 500 feathers.

Yeah, that's fair. I focused on building a good team first, not necessarily of favorites (though I don't dislike any of the characters) to get a steady feather income so that I can upgrade my actual favorites faster, whom I then use after securing a decent rank. 

It's definitely pretty hard to break out of the 1001-5000 tier though :/ I've only managed to do it twice, and that was only because one of the bonus characters (Eldigan) also happened to have a really high stat total. Since I have to squeeze in a different bonus character every rotation (many of which have meh BST), I'm probably not going to rank that high for a long, long time. It already seems like I'm going to fall out of top 1k by the end of this season :(

[Elieson]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

Oh sorry, let me clarify. What do you do with your Arena swords? 

 

Stock em, and dump them when I feel like I could do better. With the new arena coming out soon, we might have more stuf to use em for, and eventually, some bonus unit runs are gonna feature shitty units that saddlebag us. I burned through 12 last week with F!Robin, trying to improve my score for more feathers (which totally work out btw,  i breached a 500 feather gap for the crest burn).

[Phoenix_Kensai]

15 hours ago, Elieson said:

 

Such is the case apparently. I didnt waitnlong enough, as i am currently 1,836 in rank with my score. I have never seen it give me one score and another later...scared me!

That's a relief. I thought everyone was plowing through the upper ranks with Fury now or something.

I'm doing a whole lot better now that I've swapped Tiki for Nino (only one death so far thanks to a Klein/Olwen duo I approached carelessly), letting me handle a lot of opponents I just couldn't counter before, even without good buff support. I'm not sure who I'll use for that yet.

[MaskedAmpharos]

5 minutes ago, Phoenix_Kensai said:

That's a relief. I thought everyone was plowing through the upper ranks with Fury now or something.

I'm doing a whole lot better now that I've swapped Tiki for Nino (only one death so far thanks to a Klein/Olwen duo I approached carelessly), letting me handle a lot of opponents I just couldn't counter before, even without good buff support. I'm not sure who I'll use for that yet.

...in hindsight, that's probably why Arena's more competitive this season. Everyone's strapping Fury on all their units, which boosts their BST by a hefty amount. 

[Phoenix_Kensai]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

...in hindsight, that's probably why Arena's more competitive this season. Everyone's strapping Fury on all their units, which boosts their BST by a hefty amount. 

That's probably a factor, yeah. Fury isn't too hard to come by (especially for top players who are willing to spend money, I imagine), and it gives a pretty big bonus. I haven't seen many units with the skill, but I'm not in the top tiers. And maybe it's not often used on defense.

I don't think I've managed a single deathless run yet, actually. Maybe I need a better and more balanced team (currently Lyn, Takumi, Nino, and Ursula, all 5* but the last), or... I'm just careless and bad at the game. How do you all manage it? Is it relatively easy once you know what you're doing, or do you have to burn a lot of crests?

[Othin]

Once I get a deathless run with a decent team, I spend my remaining free arena attempts for the week trying again with a team more optimized for ratings than effectiveness. In particular, while Marth tends to be my most effective red, Tiki has a slightly higher rating, so if I already have a score I'm satisfied with, she gives me the best chance of getting a better score if I can pull it off.

[MaskedAmpharos]

8 minutes ago, Phoenix_Kensai said:

That's probably a factor, yeah. Fury isn't too hard to come by (especially for top players who are willing to spend money, I imagine), and it gives a pretty big bonus. I haven't seen many units with the skill, but I'm not in the top tiers. And maybe it's not often used on defense.

I don't think I've managed a single deathless run yet, actually. Maybe I need a better and more balanced team (currently Lyn, Takumi, Nino, and Ursula, all 5* but the last), or... I'm just careless and bad at the game. How do you all manage it? Is it relatively easy once you know what you're doing, or do you have to burn a lot of crests?

I think your team is decently balanced, though it's difficult to optimize your units with your current team comp. Lyn and Takumi don't give Nino any buffs, and without them Nino is just decent. Ursula honestly functions way better with Blarblade than her default tome, but again, buffs. 

I wouldn't say it's "relatively easy", but good positioning will generally help a lot more than specific changes to your team. 

That said, if you posted your available units, we might be able to help you with teambuilding (probably on the questions thread instead of here though). 

Edited March 22, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

If I think I rolled exceptionally low on enemy team scores, I'll usually have another go to improve the score. Otherwise, I'll experiment with worse comps that have higher ratings to see if I can get something out of it or just keep practicing to improve my overall play. The Arena quests had been doing much to encourage the latter. If I'm feeling generous and have absolutely no desire to finish my current streak before the Arena closes on Monday (due to either a death or already having a good score and the current streak having subpar enemy rolls), I'll just take the remainder of my swords into random matches and throw them to give people defense wins. I tend to do this with a completely random leader, so if anyone sees a bizarre win with Sophia or Gunter in the lead, that was probably me.

[Ether]

After a deathless, at least recently, I just run the daily arena quests until the next season comes around. I figure there's a chance I might roll a better set of opponents and bump my score up a few points, but it's not something worth blowing through a bunch of crests on luck. The daily quests ask for one crest, but they also return said crest, so they're a fairly harmless way to get a bit of extra SP on my 5* 40s