Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[DehNutCase]

Feels like 4.7k is really easy to get to, now. (I barely missed it since I think I lost 1 or 2 units over the course of my run, but I can't be arsed to try harder this week.)

 

Need my time and resources to build up a reliable defense team, first. Offense being easier = harder defenses.

[DLNarshen]

This morning I finally got a deathless run, still using my Eldigan/Gunter/Ursula/Catria team.  4,678 points, which currently puts me snugly in the top 30k at 18,641.  Have they revealed who the bonus heroes are for next week?  I don't want to jump the gun on any 5* promotions until I know what I'll be working with. 

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, DLNarshen said:

This morning I finally got a deathless run, still using my Eldigan/Gunter/Ursula/Catria team.  4,678 points, which currently puts me snugly in the top 30k at 18,641.  Have they revealed who the bonus heroes are for next week?  I don't want to jump the gun on any 5* promotions until I know what I'll be working with. 

No announcement yet. It'll probably be tomorrow.

[DLNarshen]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

No announcement yet. It'll probably be tomorrow.

All right.  I'm just hoping I won't be forced to use Navarre, though the current pattern would indicate that Sharena might be a bonus character as well.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Score of 4768 (all new matches)

• Ground Zero (1AM PST Apr 13) - #979
• 14 Hours Later - #1535
• 38 Hours Later - #2453
• 62 Hours later - #3693

Gah, now it's dropping faster. May or may not get edged out, though Mondays are typically slower, so who knows? Decided not to bother trying to improve my score. My first run already had fairly decent rolls on point values, so odds are against me getting better without spending a bunch of crests to reroll matches. I just don't think it's worth the cost. Been toying around with the Cherche, Cordelia, Nino and Sharena team that I hope to use next week. Finding it a lot more mobile and fun to use. Cherche and Nino just kinda delete most things and Cordelia covers what they can't. Sharena gets to be budget Eirika. >.>

[Birdy]

Anyone else still dissapointed with the way Arena scoring works? I like being competitive, but I don't like that you're pushed towards a direction of using armors/manaketes if you want to rank highly. I can understand that merging gives more points, it gives the incentive to spend money on the game, but you can also achieve that with hard work over time. But even if you have a +10 Nino, you might aswell have used a +2/+3/+whatever Effie/Hector to achieve the same goal. If the point of this is that they're compensating for the increased difficulty of using armors because of 1 Movement, then I'd personally prefer to crank up their stats even more to balance that if it means I could use my favorite units.

What is everyone elses opinion of this? (P.S. Apologies if this was already handled earlier, I'm on not here every day anymore. If I could get a link to it, I would be very thankful =))

[Korath88]

14 minutes ago, Birdy said:

Anyone else still dissapointed with the way Arena scoring works? I like being competitive, but I don't like that you're pushed towards a direction of using armors/manaketes if you want to rank highly. I can understand that merging gives more points, it gives the incentive to spend money on the game, but you can also achieve that with hard work over time. But even if you have a +10 Nino, you might aswell have used a +2/+3/+whatever Effie/Hector to achieve the same goal. If the point of this is that they're compensating for the increased difficulty of using armors because of 1 Movement, then I'd personally prefer to crank up their stats even more to balance that if it means I could use my favorite units.

What is everyone elses opinion of this? (P.S. Apologies if this was already handled earlier, I'm on not here every day anymore. If I could get a link to it, I would be very thankful =))

I thought this update made BST weigh much less in arena scoring. A +10 Nino should score much higher than +2/3 armours since merge levels are very important in scoring now.

I'm actually very grateful for this new scoring system since I'm no longer unnecessarily penalised for running a dancer and mage, and not using fury on all my units.

The old scoring system pushed using armours and manaketes, not the new one. Units with low BST are now given a scoring compensation to allow them to be as viable in high level arena as high BST units. If anything, this new system just made armours worse in the arena.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Korath88

[MrSmokestack]

9 minutes ago, Birdy said:

Anyone else still dissapointed with the way Arena scoring works? I like being competitive, but I don't like that you're pushed towards a direction of using armors/manaketes if you want to rank highly. I can understand that merging gives more points, it gives the incentive to spend money on the game, but you can also achieve that with hard work over time. But even if you have a +10 Nino, you might aswell have used a +2/+3/+whatever Effie/Hector to achieve the same goal. If the point of this is that they're compensating for the increased difficulty of using armors because of 1 Movement, then I'd personally prefer to crank up their stats even more to balance that if it means I could use my favorite units.

What is everyone elses opinion of this? (P.S. Apologies if this was already handled earlier, I'm on not here every day anymore. If I could get a link to it, I would be very thankful =))

I'm not entirely sure how up-to-date this post is at this point, but if you'd like to see some discussion about the new Arena elsewhere, this offers some interesting theories and observations. It notably proposes that the system incurs a scoring penalty to armors and a bonus to ranged units, which is pretty curious in my opinion.

Me personally, I feel the new system is fair. Not ideal, but fair. IS's goal at the end of the day is to get people to spend money on Heroes, and for an F2P to have a chance at ranking as high in arena as someone who pays out regularly for orbs seems to defeat the purpose. The new system essentially separates the two sets of players, with the P2P set getting their "reward" for supporting the developers, without much hope for F2P. Then again, most of the former's base plays the game casually, so the arena meta, and all the competition to get the high score, would hardly affect them at all, while people who are spending money are clearly more inclined to invest more of their time into it as well.

That's my $0.02.

Edited April 16, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Birdy said:

Anyone else still dissapointed with the way Arena scoring works? I like being competitive, but I don't like that you're pushed towards a direction of using armors/manaketes if you want to rank highly. I can understand that merging gives more points, it gives the incentive to spend money on the game, but you can also achieve that with hard work over time. But even if you have a +10 Nino, you might aswell have used a +2/+3/+whatever Effie/Hector to achieve the same goal. If the point of this is that they're compensating for the increased difficulty of using armors because of 1 Movement, then I'd personally prefer to crank up their stats even more to balance that if it means I could use my favorite units.

What is everyone elses opinion of this? (P.S. Apologies if this was already handled earlier, I'm on not here every day anymore. If I could get a link to it, I would be very thankful =))

It is believed that the update earlier this week equalized the differences between unit classes for the purposes of scoring and matchmaking. The average ranged cavalry unit should now count for the same rating as the average armor, for example. Individual differences (such as neutral Ryoma having 1 more point than neutral Lucina or neutral Tiki, Nowi, and Fae having 5 or 6 more points than other melee infantry, including other non-dancer dragons) probably still count, but the game no longer penalizes players for using ranged attackers, cavalry, or fliers, and the game no longer gives armors a bonus over other units.

Note that this is still speculation. I don't think anyone's collected enough data to properly verify that this is the case yet.

[Rezzy]

4 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Feels like 4.7k is really easy to get to, now. (I barely missed it since I think I lost 1 or 2 units over the course of my run, but I can't be arsed to try harder this week.)

 

Need my time and resources to build up a reliable defense team, first. Offense being easier = harder defenses.

I wouldn't say it's easy to get 4.7K, just possible.  I got 4794, but that was facing nothing but Skill Inheritance Teams.  The old ceiling for me was usually 4500 give or take 50, depending on my team.

[DehNutCase]

7 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

I wouldn't say it's easy to get 4.7K, just possible.  I got 4794, but that was facing nothing but Skill Inheritance Teams.  The old ceiling for me was usually 4500 give or take 50, depending on my team.

Well, I didn't use a single sword to get my 4,682, and Michalis was 4*, so I assumed it'd be easy with a bit of investment.

Either 5* Michalis or actually being serious about going deathless would've been enough. I think lost a unit or two in the first couple of rounds, when I was still getting used to Cordelia.

 

Edit: My Michalis was completely Vanilla, too. His Def does work as long as you never put him near anything magical, fast, or a color other than blue. (lol)

Edited April 16, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Birdy]

Thanks @Ice Dragon, @MrSmokestack & @Korath88 for the info and explanations! I used to be able to able to get top 1.000 (Granted, with 3/4 Fury users), however this week I've been pushed out of top 5.000 already while using a fully skilled team (Nino/Eirika/SChrom/Tharja with a total of 8 merges and a deathless run. Can I assume that, if these theories are indeed correct, other people have more merge levels than me? 

It is strange though, since I was sure I was getting more points using Effie and Nowi instead of Nino/Tharja, though it might have been just the 'luck' of finding higher points opponents I guess.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Birdy

[MrSmokestack]

@Birdy tfw you don't get tagged.

Seems like merges are the biggest factor for scoring right now. I typically score 4500 points deathless for ~top 5k but am now lost in the sea of top 20k. Then again, I finished my run for this week before the update rolled out. Looking forward to raising up Sharena as a bonus unit to get a better score next season.

What poses a greater enigma to me, though, is how the difficulty of arena matches has fluctuated from player to player. While it could just be a matter of luck, some players with stacked teams have reported getting defense teams that are much easier than what they're used to, while others have recieved a rather abrupt reality check now that they're facing fully stacked teams, complete with Fury and the like. It makes me wonder whether the devs will make additional improvements to matchmaking in the future, though as of now I think it's fine as it is.

[Birdy]

1 minute ago, MrSmokestack said:

@Birdy tfw you don't get tagged.

Seems like merges are the biggest factor for scoring right now. I typically score 4500 points deathless for ~top 5k but am now lost in the sea of top 20k. Then again, I finished my run for this week before the update rolled out. Looking forward to raising up Sharena as a bonus unit to get a better score next season.

What poses a greater enigma to me, though, is how the difficulty of arena matches has fluctuated from player to player. While it could just be a matter of luck, some players with stacked teams have reported getting defense teams that are much easier than what they're used to, while others have recieved a rather abrupt reality check now that they're facing fully stacked teams, complete with Fury and the like. It makes me wonder whether the devs will make additional improvements to matchmaking in the future, though as of now I think it's fine as it is.

Ah, apologies! I'm not sure why the tagging didn't go through.

The game has been much easier for me than before, though that was mostly because I was running Fury units and didn't have the SP to have all skills unlocked. With the new merge system, I've unlocked all their skills and I don't run into +10 units (actually ran into Ice Dragon's team) anymore that I used to before because of Fury. 

[DehNutCase]

9 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

@Birdy tfw you don't get tagged.

Seems like merges are the biggest factor for scoring right now. I typically score 4500 points deathless for ~top 5k but am now lost in the sea of top 20k. Then again, I finished my run for this week before the update rolled out. Looking forward to raising up Sharena as a bonus unit to get a better score next season.

What poses a greater enigma to me, though, is how the difficulty of arena matches has fluctuated from player to player. While it could just be a matter of luck, some players with stacked teams have reported getting defense teams that are much easier than what they're used to, while others have recieved a rather abrupt reality check now that they're facing fully stacked teams, complete with Fury and the like. It makes me wonder whether the devs will make additional improvements to matchmaking in the future, though as of now I think it's fine as it is.

Well, arena 'difficulty' had been BST based in the past, and now it's score based---I imagine it's the shift in scoring system that caused the difficulty spike. A low BST, but high score team would face far 'harder' teams. Whereas a high BST, but low score (very few inheritance, equipped skills etc.) team would actually have it easier.

Unless, of course, like BST, there're certain score thresholds where teams are just pure cancer.

Edited April 16, 2017 by DehNutCase

[MrSmokestack]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Well, arena difficult had been BST based in the past, and now it's score based---I imagine it's the shift in scoring system that caused the difficulty spike. A low BST, but high score team would face far 'harder' teams. Whereas a high BST, but low score (very few inheritance, equipped skills etc.) team would actually have it easier.

Unless, of course, like BST, there's certain score thresholds where teams are just pure cancer.

Pretty sure anything below 660 BST prepatch dropped you into arena hell with Reinhardt and friends, but fortunately I never found myself in that cesspool.

What's the difference between scoring and BST, exactly? I know Fury's bonus stats don't factor into scoring anymore, but how does SI factor into how many points your team gets per game? For reference, my planned team for next season has a BST of 711. How would this play into it?

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

Pretty sure anything below 660 BST prepatch dropped you into arena hell with Reinhardt and friends, but fortunately I never found myself in that cesspool.

What's the difference between scoring and BST, exactly? I know Fury's bonus stats don't factor into scoring anymore, but how does SI factor into how many points your team gets per game? For reference, my planned team for next season has a BST of 711. How would this play into it?

As best as we can tell right now, start with the stat total of your units with no skills (including weapons) equipped. Add or subtract the modifier for the units' classes. Add some unknown value for skills, rarity, and merges.

[Vaximillian]

Attack me, I beg of you!

In other news, I'm still above the 5k threshold. Can I cling on there?

[Quintessence]

4 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

 

Attack me, I beg of you!

In other news, I'm still above the 5k threshold. Can I cling on there?

I'm in the same boat :(

I'm ranked at 4924, there's still hope!

[pianime94]

4744 will definitely kick me off 10k. Not that I actually mind.

Please, someone on my defense team, kill somebody.

Or else I'll run Tharja, Rally Eirika, Nino, and Sharena for keks.

[Vaximillian]

5 minutes ago, pianime94 said:

Or else I'll run Tharja, Rally Eirika, Nino, and Sharena for keks.

Hmm, I have Eirika and Nino. Will them and Sharena with a dancer (Ninian?) help my chances for a successful defence?

[Team Rocket Elite]

1 hour ago, Birdy said:

Thanks @Ice Dragon, @MrSmokestack & @Korath88 for the info and explanations! I used to be able to able to get top 1.000 (Granted, with 3/4 Fury users), however this week I've been pushed out of top 5.000 already while using a fully skilled team (Nino/Eirika/SChrom/Tharja with a total of 8 merges and a deathless run. Can I assume that, if these theories are indeed correct, other people have more merge levels than me? 

It is strange though, since I was sure I was getting more points using Effie and Nowi instead of Nino/Tharja, though it might have been just the 'luck' of finding higher points opponents I guess.

I think your problem is you need to skip lower point battles. Your team should be capable of a score of 4830+ which is competitive for Top 1000. The arena match up system gives out a wide range of opponents with a tendency to give opponents on the lower end. If you only fought the 690+ teams, your score would be higher. However, you'll likely have to spend a lot of dueling swords to keep rerolling for high point match ups. I have a friend with only 2 merge levels that is in the 4830 range. If you have 8, you should be able to go even higher.

[pianime94]

22 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Hmm, I have Eirika and Nino. Will them and Sharena with a dancer (Ninian?) help my chances for a successful defence?

We can only hope.

[Ice Dragon]

On 4/14/2017 at 5:27 PM, Ice Dragon said:

Score is still 4,894 (1 death).
Rank is now 355.

I think it's safe to say I'll be around rank 600 by the end of the week. That's reassuring.

Old score is 4,894 (1 death).
Old rank is 432.

I spent a good portion of today cleaning up my character list so that I could pull some more skill inheritance food, managed to update my offense team, and took it out for a spin. I'm a bit short on SP, so not everything is fully ranked, unfortunately.

+0 Sophia [=] (Raudhrraven+, Dragon Fang, Triangle Adept 3, G Tomebreaker 1, Fortify Res 3)
+10 Nowi [+Atk, -Res] (Lightning Breath+, Rally Def, Triangle Adept 3, Quick Riposte 3, Fortify Dragons, S Atk +1)
+10 Ninian [+Spd, -Res] (Lightning Breath+, Dance, Triangle Adept 3, Escape Route 3, Fortify Dragons, S HP +3)
+9 Julia [=] (vanilla)

I am now thoroughly afraid of Nowi and Ninian's bulk. Ninian managed to tank an unboosted +? Spring Camilla's Gronnblade+ after I failed to properly split the enemy on the bridge map.

New score is 4,982 (0 deaths)
New rank is 211.

EDIT: Rank updated.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[Roflolxp54]

Awesome, new personal best score!

4566 (not deathless)