Arena Discussion Thread (inc. Assault)

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

All-in buffs on Nino means you've used up multiple units on that turn just to buff Nino---if you built a team around S!Lucina like you just did for Nino, adding people to pick off people S!Lucina hates etc, I imagine they'd turn out about the same anyway.

Eh, not really, considering how a team of Eirika/Azura/Nino already gives Nino +3 Atk, +4 Spd and +4 Res without any effort or skill inheritance. Of course, you have to have those units.

[DehNutCase]

3 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Eh, not really, considering how a team of Eirika/Azura/Nino already gives Nino +3 Atk, +4 Spd and +4 Res without any effort or skill inheritance. Of course, you have to have those units.

Eirika & S!Lucina gives her buffs, too. And the combo still has +4 speed over Ninos +7 attack. (Which rises to 11 once you factor in Azura's +Res, of course).

And then you still have a third slot free.

 

Edit: That's basically the thing you're doing---you're assuming that if something doesn't cost an action, it's free. Team-slots aren't free. : /

Edited April 17, 2017 by DehNutCase

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

10 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Eirika & S!Lucina gives her buffs, too. And the combo still has +4 speed over Ninos +7 attack. (Which rises to 11 once you factor in Azura's +Res, of course).

And then you still have a third slot free.

 

Edit: That's basically the thing you're doing---you're assuming that if something doesn't cost an action, it's free. Team-slots aren't free. : /

I put Azura up as the example because she's so good anyway, anyone would probably want to run her any time. If I had put up Sharena instead, then you could say she cost an extra team slot to make Nino good.

Also, isn't that actually +10 Atk just from Eirika, because Attack bonuses are basically doubled (applied to tome then applied to Nino)?

Edited April 17, 2017 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[DehNutCase]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I put Azura up as the example because she's so good anyway, any time would probably want to run her. If I had put up Sharena instead, then you could say she cost an extra team slot to make Nino good.

The thing is, your team has to have a supportive bent, so to speak, to have Nino be favored over S!Lucina.

A team of all-stars, for example, who all do well solo would prefer S!Lucina instead if her 4 speed advantage was an factor.

They're better than the other depending on the team around them, and thus belong in more or less the same tier since their high-ends and low-ends are both about the same. (4 speed matters, 2x damage on the relevant units can be worth more than +20 against all units.)

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

11 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The thing is, your team has to have a supportive bent, so to speak, to have Nino be favored over S!Lucina.

A team of all-stars, for example, who all do well solo would prefer S!Lucina instead if her 4 speed advantage was an factor.

They're better than the other depending on the team around them, and thus belong in more or less the same tier since their high-ends and low-ends are both about the same. (4 speed matters, 2x damage on the relevant units can be worth more than +20 against all units.)

I just ran it actually, and with just Eirika buffs and no inheritance, Nino blows up 84 people to Bunny Lucina's 69 (also with Eirika). Nino has more losses (6 to 3), but they're expected losses (e.g. vs Ryoma). She destroys 70% of the game with one partner, so I'm sure that one partner is worth it. If you don't have access to Eirika, then sure, Bunny Lucina is better.

Edited April 17, 2017 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[DehNutCase]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I just ran it actually, and with just Eirika buffs and no inheritance, Nino blows up 84 people to Bunny Lucina's 69. Nino has more losses (6 to 3), but they're expected losses (e.g. vs Ryoma). She destroys 70% of the game with one partner, so I'm sure that one partner is worth it. If you don't have access to Eirika, then sure, Bunny Lucina is better.

That's with Eirika, is the key here. Sure, Eirika's great as a buffer if you needed a buffer, but what if your team didn't need one? (The closest I had to a buffer on my original team was Lucina, who doesn't interact with _Blades at all, other than the normal +4 to damage.)

 

If you have Eirika or Ephraim on a team your team is already leaning towards buffing your units, which obviously favors _Blades. (And the faster Braves, of course.)

[Arcanite]

38 minutes ago, GuiltyLove said:

Huh really? Why? Sounds risky

Because not a lot of people have a green unit able to counter 4 blue units and with enough diversity in skills it can overwhelm the enemy 

Except maybe hector 

Edited April 17, 2017 by Arcanite

[Lyrai]

I'm wondering why I meet a lot of fury units in Arena nowadays as a rank 11. I literally have no one that I used Fury with, so... sometimes, it's a little unfair to see myself get obliterated by all-fury, cavalry, and flyer teams with a Dancer, especially Ninian. They all have things like Death Blows, Brave units, and many more, while all I did was placing some specials and a few skills.

Essentially, right now, I'm in quite a pinch. I struggle to get the 7-win streak as my best units are not performing as well (For example, my +DEF Sanaki gets OHKOed by Fury 3 Ryoma, otherwise she could take a hit), my tank units can't even tank much (Michalis taking much more damage than expected from Cordelia because of Death Blow + Hone Flier), and my Jaffar and Seliph didn't get much use (positioning disadvantages). Certainly ever since 1.2.0, arena just got much, much harder.

... maybe unequipping the inherited skills can help in some way?

[Ice Dragon]

45 minutes ago, GuiltyLove said:

Huh really? Why? Sounds risky

The point of arena defense is to win at least one battle, not win every battle. Since arena offense teams tend to be color balanced in order to counter a larger number of threats, a team of all one color can potentially overwhelm the opponent's one or two counters to that color.

[DehNutCase]

21 minutes ago, Lyrai said:

I'm wondering why I meet a lot of fury units in Arena nowadays as a rank 11. I literally have no one that I used Fury with, so... sometimes, it's a little unfair to see myself get obliterated by all-fury, cavalry, and flyer teams with a Dancer, especially Ninian. They all have things like Death Blows, Brave units, and many more, while all I did was placing some specials and a few skills.

Essentially, right now, I'm in quite a pinch. I struggle to get the 7-win streak as my best units are not performing as well (For example, my +DEF Sanaki gets OHKOed by Fury 3 Ryoma, otherwise she could take a hit), my tank units can't even tank much (Michalis taking much more damage than expected from Cordelia because of Death Blow + Hone Flier), and my Jaffar and Seliph didn't get much use (positioning disadvantages). Certainly ever since 1.2.0, arena just got much, much harder.

... maybe unequipping the inherited skills can help in some way?

I don't think inheritance, as in, whether a unit has inherited skills factor into score calculation at all, and score calculation is what determines matchups. Edit: That said, no unit has all skill slots filled prior to inheritance, so a unit with inheritance would usually have more score than a unit without, because it has more skills equipped.

 

That is, Selena with TA 3 and Selena with Fury 3 gives the same arena score---so you're just as likely to run into the latter as the former.

If you reduce your skills equipped, your score would go down, and, logically speaking, you should see less teams with skills equipped. (That said, Arena score is a mix of factors, so you could just face, I don't know, lower leveled, lower rarity units with kitted out skills instead.)

Edited April 17, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Lyrai]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The point of arena defense is to win at least one battle, not win every battle. Since arena offense teams tend to be color balanced in order to counter a larger number of threats, a team of all one color can potentially overwhelm the opponent's one or two counters to that color.

I certainly encountered a few of these kind of teams. Here's my experiences so far:

Sometimes they would rely on units like Vantage 3 Ryoma or (and) Vantage 3 Takumi, and then fill the rest of the slot with either Nowi, Tiki, Reindhart / Olwen, Nino, Eirika, and then the last unit tends to be a dancer. Problem is, the dancer is "always" Ninian, and usually has Fury to boot, so even the dancer is very strong against a green. Ever since 1.2.0, I rarely encounter Hector.

Other times, they would rely on a certain combo. A flier team with Bunny Camilla, Hinoka alone can be very scary without a red tome unit. They could add Minerva to the mix. And then a full cavalry team, even without a blade tome, is already just as scary.

It led me to numerous defeats, and sadly they're quite plenty.

17 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

I don't think inheritance, as in, whether a unit has inherited skills factor into score calculation at all, and score calculation is what determines matchups.

That is, Selena with TA 3 and Selena with Fury 3 gives the same arena score---so you're just as likely to run into the latter as the former.

If you reduce your skills equipped, your score would go down, and, logically speaking, you should see less teams with skills equipped. (That said, Arena score is a mix of factors, so you could just face, I don't, lower leveled, lower rarity units with kitted out skills instead.)

I am in the 686 range. That must've sound like a lot to bear... now that I think about it. Last time I was around 642 with the exact same lineup.

(I also tried using my 3* level 40 Cecilia with inherited skills and it resulted in around 5-10 difference, replacing my Seliph, so yeah, it's certainly possible.)

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

36 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

That's with Eirika, is the key here. Sure, Eirika's great as a buffer if you needed a buffer, but what if your team didn't need one? (The closest I had to a buffer on my original team was Lucina, who doesn't interact with _Blades at all, other than the normal +4 to damage.)

 

If you have Eirika or Ephraim on a team your team is already leaning towards buffing your units, which obviously favors _Blades. (And the faster Braves, of course.)

Just saying, Nino doesn't really need a full team supporting her to be really good because of Eirika, and is much better than Bunny Lucina when that one push is present. It goes without saying that Nino and Bunny Lucina do completely different things, and thus fit on different lineups. You're obviously not going to put Nino on your team when you have Hector or Minerva already, and need someone to take care of Reds, just as how we don't talk about making Bunny Lucina break her face on Julia.

[DehNutCase]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Just saying, Nino doesn't really need a full team supporting her to be really good because of Eirika, and is much better than Bunny Lucina when that one push is present. It goes without saying that Nino and Bunny Lucina do completely different things, and thus fit on different lineups. You're obviously not going to put Nino on your team when you have Hector or Minerva already, and need someone to take care of Reds, just as how we don't talk about making Bunny Lucina break her face on Julia.

But is being better with multiple hones\fortifies good enough that having worse pre-buff and 1-buff coverage worth an entire tier increase over S!Lucina?

I'm not arguing S!Lucina > Nino, I'm arguing that they belong in the same tier.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 minute ago, DehNutCase said:

But is being better with multiple hones\fortifies good enough that having worse pre-buff and 1-buff coverage worth an entire tier increase over S!Lucina?

I'm not arguing S!Lucina > Nino, I'm arguing that they belong in the same tier.

Oh, I already realized that earlier. I admitted that Nino was probably not S+ because she needed help, and that my Bunny Lucina being -Spd probably affected my experience.

[DehNutCase]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Oh, I already realized that earlier. I admitted that Nino was probably not S+ because she needed help, and that my Bunny Lucina being -Spd probably affected my experience.

Derp. We were arguing over nothing, then.

Edit: That feeling when you argue for 3 pages only to find out we agreed in the first place.

Edited April 17, 2017 by DehNutCase

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Derp. We were arguing over nothing, then.

Edit: That feeling when you argue for 3 pages only to find out we agreed in the first place.

Isn't understanding a beautiful thing? :^)

[Quintessence]

Whelp, so I did another deathless run at the arena with S!Camilla, Nowi, Klein and Sharena and got 4.786 points. Currently ranked at 2.312 and still 0 def points :(

Kinda curious that with a small difference of points I was bumped more than 4k on ranking position.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Well I must be blind, because my Arena score was 4762 all this time. For some reason I thought it was only ~4500. I'm rank 6167 rn. I also have more defense wins than usual for some reason. I changed my Defense team from Azura/Kagerou/Ninian/Reinhardt to Lucina/Azura/Kagerou/Reinhardt instead, but idk if it's related. In any case, Kagerou seems to be doing better than Julia for Defense.

[Lyrai]

3 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Well I must be blind, because my Arena score was 4762 all this time. For some reason I thought it was only ~4500. I'm rank 6167 rn. I also have more defense wins than usual for some reason. I changed my Defense team from Azura/Kagerou/Ninian/Reinhardt to Lucina/Azura/Kagerou/Reinhardt instead, but idk if it's related. In any case, Kagerou seems to be doing better than Julia for Defense.

Kagerou is the bane of infantry units. I would have troubles dealing your Kagero with my team if I ever see you around. She'll probably kill at least one unit before dying. That's just how powerful she is. One has to play "very" carefully around her, and with the right team it can be nigh impossible to not make a sacrifice for killing Kagero without positioning tools. And then, one mistake will cost everything, so that nets you the defense wins.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Lyrai

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

11 minutes ago, Lyrai said:

Kagerou is the bane of infantry units. I would have troubles dealing your Kagero with my team if I ever see you around. She'll probably kill at least one unit before dying. That's just how powerful she is. One has to play "very" carefully around her, and with the right team it can be nigh impossible to not make a sacrifice for killing Kagero without positioning tools. And then, one mistake will cost everything, so that nets you the defense wins.

I haven't even fully decked out my Kagerou yet, actually. She has Life and Death 3, which I guess is the best for her since for Defense Kagerou just goes all-in. My Lucina has Swap, and my Reinhardt has Drag Back, so maybe there actually is tricky stuff going on when people fight me. I wish we could fight ourselves for testing, like how in Fates you could fight your own Castle team.

[Lyrai]

5 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I haven't even fully decked out my Kagerou yet, actually. She has Life and Death 3, which I guess is the best for her since for Defense Kagerou just goes all-in. My Lucina has Swap, and my Reinhardt has Drag Back, so maybe there actually is tricky stuff going on when people fight me. I wish we could fight ourselves for testing, like how in Fates you could fight your own Castle team.

(Kagero's already decked out with THAT inherited skill XD)

Let's see. Ideally, My 3* Raven Cecilia with TA would take care of your Kagero. Then your Reindhart would come in and get killed by Cecilia as well. Then I bring in my Swordbreaker Sanaki to take your Lucina out. Cecilia's my saving grace. :)

(Actually, I think I should use Cecilia more and actually promote her)

Edited April 17, 2017 by Lyrai

[DehNutCase]

18 minutes ago, Lyrai said:

Kagerou is the bane of infantry units. I would have troubles dealing your Kagero with my team if I ever see you around. She'll probably kill at least one unit before dying. That's just how powerful she is. One has to play "very" carefully around her, and with the right team it can be nigh impossible to not make a sacrifice for killing Kagero without positioning tools. And then, one mistake will cost everything, so that nets you the defense wins.

Just run a flier. Fliers have the same BST (and thus the same offenses and bulk) as infantry. Cordelia, for example, has 35/35 offenses, which is Lucina level (34/36). That's the glass cannon choice, however---Kagero can put a serious dent into Cordelia even with Poison Dagger+ thanks to her Atk stat. Minerva, on the hand, just laughs---just don't run L&D, it makes her so much more vulnerable to getting 1 rounded by random mages, L&D 1 at most if you must, and run a Hp seal.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

2 minutes ago, Lyrai said:

(Kagero's already decked out with THAT inherited skill XD)

Let's see. Ideally, My 3* Raven Cecilia with TA would take care of your Kagero. Then your Reindhart would come in and get killed by Cecilia as well. Then I bring in my Swordbreaker Sanaki to take your Lucina out. Cecilia's my saving grace. :)

(Actually, I think I should use Cecilia more and actually promote her)

I guess, yeah, that should work. Horses, muh only weakness...

With L&D3 and Attack Seal, my Kagerou reaches 46 Atk, which is 69 against infantry. That's enough to one-shot Lucina... Mhmm yes.

[ILikeKirbys]

@Lyrai Kagero's only scary if you're running all-infantry tho. If you have a cavalier, or an armor, or a flier (not a dragon tho, those count as infantry), then Kagero isn't such a threat.

@SatsumaFSoysoy How does your Reinhardt have Drag Back? Do you mean Draw Back? Because I'm pretty sure Drag Back is melee-units-only.
But yeah, being able to face your own defense team would be nice, if only as a way to pass time when you don't have enough Stamina to do other stuff.

So, I decided to take my Horse Emblem team (Stahl, Bunny Xander, Reinhardt, Frederick) for one final run before this Arena team stops having any bonus units on it and I have to reshuffle it a bit...

And they did it. My first all-Advanced, all-deathless Arena run. I got 4,620 points (which somehow puts me at Rank 30,699, also the highest I've ever gotten) for this feat that somehow happened despite only getting the Bridge map and a couple of close calls (fortunately, Horse Emblem comes with 3 tanks and THUNDER'S FIST, so it really just came down to putting whoever had WTA in position to tank, buffing with Frederick and Stahl if possible, then watching the tanking and having Reinhardt annihilate people... really the only time I had a serious problem was one fight that had an Ursula, who probably would've fried any of my cavs on her attack... but then Reinhardt dropped her, and everything was easy from there). I'm gonna miss this team... though maybe I'll just train up my Gronnblade Cecilia a bit to replace Bunny Xander, since she's a bonus unit next season, and keep running Horse Emblem...

Edited April 17, 2017 by ILikeKirbys

[Lyrai]

Just now, ILikeKirbys said:

@Lyrai Kagero's only scary if you're running all-infantry tho. If you have a cavalier, or an armor, or a flier (not a dragon tho, those count as infantry), then Kagero isn't such a threat.

@SatsumaFSoysoy How does your Reinhardt have Drag Back? Do you mean Draw Back? Because I'm pretty sure Drag Back is melee-units-only.

Correction. Drag Back has two versions. One as an utility skill, one as a B skill. One that drags your teammate back, and one that drags back your target after initiating.

My interpretation of Satsuma's Kagero is that she's scary against anything, and obliterates any infantry units.