New banners announced: Alm's Army/Celica's Army

[Ice Dragon]

5 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

You're deliberately asking me for crappy units that don't work in the meta---because you want to run defensive units when the best offensive units also have the defensive matchups of the best defensive units.

I'm deliberately asking you for not-Litrblade-cavalry. Not everything weaker than the top 5 units is crap.

 

6 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

If a low unit can beat high tier units consistently, then either the unit should be high tier or the high tier units should be low tier. Of course my examples are niche because they're picking from low tier units.

That's not how tiers work.

Low tier units are low tier because they beat fewer high tier units, not because they can't beat high tier units.

This isn't comparing Sunkern to Mega Rayquaza in AG. This is comparing Therian Landorus with Mega Venusaur in SM OU.

 

13 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Then I guess you don't run Hector unless you have a +Atk Hector. *Shrugg* Not sure what's the point of facing optimal arena enemies while pretending you're shackled to =IV units.

You can always expect your opponents to be running more optimal natures than because they will always be stronger than you. More access to merges means a higher chance of one of those being optimal or near-optimal.

You can't always expect your own units to be optimal or near-optimal. +Atk Hector, for example, has a 1 in 2,332 base pull rate from Ylissean Summer when pulling green.

[Rezzy]

8 minutes ago, Lushen said:

But Reinhardt is the best

In all seriousness, he's really not.  I was one of the few who pulled him on his original banner as a 5* and used him like crazy before horse emblems were really in play.  At the time, he was a god, capable of destroying everything.  Now, however, he really kinda sucks just because so many people specifically build against him.  All it takes is a green unit, a brave bow unit, or another blue mage to take him down.  And his horse mage status makes him very easy to lure from long distance away from all the other units if he's not on a horse emblem.

On my cavalry account which I have recently retired, I actually found myself using him to KO units less and less in favor of Xander and Camus who were superior in most cases due to their fantastic stat spreads.  Reinhardt was only really used on high def units. 

I think most of the hype around Reinhardt is he is one of the best units you can get as a 4*.  Most of the other units as good as him are only available as 5* or require a lot more SI so most people don't have them built.  If you're a whale, there are better units in most cases.  

I'm not sure if I'm exactly a whale, maybe a dolphin, but most of my best units are either available at 3-4* or are free.  My Horse Emblem team is a core of Ursula, Xander, Camus, Titania, and Cecilia.  The hardest one to obtain would be Titania, and she's probably the weakest link on my team.

[DehNutCase]

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You can't always expect your own units to be optimal or near-optimal. +Atk Hector, for example, has a 1 in 2,332 base pull rate from Ylissean Summer when pulling green.

You can expect that the units you actually use to be optimal, though. I have Optimal Cordelia, Optimal Nino, and =Azura & 'optimal' Askr Trio as my current Arena core, with Azura being the most likely unit to be replaced any given season (so my team meshes better with the current bonus).

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's not how tiers work.

Low tier units are low tier because they beat fewer high tier units, not because they can't beat high tier units.

High tier unit's advantage in this game is that they have comparable attributes in the specialist's specialties compared to specialists, not that they out-do specialists at everything. the CC Vantage build, for example, is still: Weaker in offensive than 'pure' glass cannons who take a stat A-slot, a breaker/TC B-slot. Weaker in bulk compared to armors, stat A-slot DC Prf users.

It's just that the bare advantage the specialists have in their specialties doesn't matter when the high tier units are covering multiple roles all at once. You don't need the 'best' green defensive unit vs. blues when a 'good enough' green defensive unit would do, same for offense. (Barring exceptions like Cordelia where being Cordelia means you can run Galeforce to be 1.5 times as good as every other offensive unit, thanks to dancer support.)

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

This isn't comparing Sunkern to Mega Rayquaza in AG. This is comparing Therian Landorus with Mega Venusaur in SM OU.

Eh... I feel like horse cavalry are the definition of S tier, while most units in the game are C rank, that is, face significant competition from higher tier units who can do their jobs better, and do other jobs, while requiring less support.

That is, it's more like Landorus-T to Dragonite, S vs. C, rather than S vs. B.

This is also ignoring exactly how many pokemon aren't even ranked in OU's viability rankings, because they simply aren't viable.

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm deliberately asking you for not-Litrblade-cavalry. Not everything weaker than the top 5 units is crap.

I mean, there's also S!Camilla with flier buffs. (lul)

 

But the thing is, everything weaker than S rank in our game would be B at best, simply because, to keep up with the S rankers, they need either more support or do the job almost strictly worse.

A ranks are:

Excellent at what they do with small flaws but aren't outclassed by other pokemon. -Tome cavalry outclass basically everyone at everything relevant, so we don't have an A rank at all.

B ranks are where the 'best of the rest' units go:

This is Cordelia, great at sweeping with dancer support, this is B!Cordelia, low support needed, decent mobility thanks to 2 range, but her sky high offenses suffer from the fact that cavalry have the same offenses but better mobility, this is DC Wary Effie, always good, great chance of OHKO vs. opposing mages, at the cost of no player phase due to mobility issues and needing team support to go places. This is Camus: Excellent player phase, decent mobility, excellent enemy phase, but still outclassed by Reinhardt who out does him in all respects.

C rank:

This is where most of our people go. This is TA-3 dragons if I had to rank them, this is weird stuff like L&D Brave-Bow Setsuna who are perfectly outclassed but still 'viable.'

D rank:

R.I.P. Selena, this is where you belong.

E rank (or unranked):

Probably just Azama and Henry, fuck those spreads.

[Falcom]

I need to stop living under a rock. I nearly didn't know about this until now (yes even when notifications popped). It's weird how Echoes is getting a lot of attention. You'd think it'd be when the game releases but I guess not. I ain't complaining.

However, I screwed myself really badly. Fell for the temptation to summon for skills from the Summer banner. If I do get the chance though, Gray and Mathilda are my top priority. I don't plan on summoning from the banner for Celica's army (I say that now, and then I'm probably going to summon from that banner anyways).

I don't think I can make much use of the new skills sadly. (Help me. I'm too addicted to inheriting skills)

[DehNutCase]

1 minute ago, Falcom said:

I don't think I can make much use of the new skills sadly. (Help me. I'm too addicted to inheriting skills)

My theory on things like addiction isn't that you should stop being addiction, but rather you should be so good at making money that the addiction doesn't matter:

You can afford to spend 10k/month on gacha games if you make 100k/month, after all, and it should be less, proportionally, than the guy who spends 1k/month but makes 10k/month. (Since, unless you're utterly terrible at financial management, your expenses grow slower than your income.)

 

In this, as in everything else, the solution is the git command 'gud.'

[Ice Dragon]

10 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

You can expect that the units you actually use to be optimal, though. I have Optimal Cordelia, Optimal Nino, and =Azura & 'optimal' Askr Trio as my current Arena core, with Azura being the most likely unit to be replaced any given season (so my team meshes better with the current bonus).

I think @Rezzy might have something to say about that.

Statistically, you can't expect enough of the 5-star units you use to be optimal if you aren't spending money on this game. That applies a hundred-fold for 5-star exclusives that don't appear on banners often. In any practical situation for where most players are, you can only expect someone to have a unit that isn't strictly negative. Four out of every 5 Hectors is not +Atk, 399 out of every 400 green pulls is not a Hector, and 4 out of every 5 sparkly umbrellas is not green.

 

13 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

You don't need the 'best' green defensive unit vs. blues when a 'good enough' green defensive unit would do, same for offense.

And there's the problem we started at. Cancel Affinity leaves you with so few green defensive units that are "good enough" that "good enough" is the same set as "the best".

What Triangle Adept does is give you a sufficiently large pool of defensive units that are "good enough" that you actually have a choice so you aren't forced to pick the best option to fill the role simply because no other option can fill the role. Triangle Adept lets any unit with passable defenses become extremely fat against one specific color (or two with Litrraven) at the cost of dying horribly to another color and having weaker defenses when neutral when compared to the alternative.

[DehNutCase]

18 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I think @Rezzy might have something to say about that.

Statistically, you can't expect enough of the 5-star units you use to be optimal if you aren't spending money on this game. That applies a hundred-fold for 5-star exclusives that don't appear on banners often. In any practical situation for where most players are, you can only expect someone to have a unit that isn't strictly negative. Four out of every 5 Hectors is not +Atk, 399 out of every 400 green pulls is not a Hector, and 4 out of every 5 sparkly umbrellas is not green.

Eh... You can't get the particular unit you want, but I think it's fairly simple to get the optimal IV of enough units to make a viable team. Every unit summoned has a 20% or 40% (depending on whether you need exactly +Atk/+Spd or if either would do) of getting the best boon, and then a 60% (for people who literally don't care about defense stats) or 20% (-hp only or -res only) for the best bane. That's ~ 30% * 40% which is about 12% chance of a 'optimal' unit per pull.

12% is then multiplied by the chance of the unit being viable, which, interestingly enough, a great many are. We might not have any A-rank units (I guess you can make a case for Galeforce Brave-users having a niche that's not completely outclassed by -blade, but that's shaky at best due to the necessity of having dancer support), but our B and C ranks make up the vast majority of the cast.

All GHB units are by definition 'optimal' as well, and, recently at least, some have stats comparable to optimal IV pull-ables. Legion is comparable to +Atk Raven, Camus is comparable to Peri (if only due to his ridiculous physical bulk).

18 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And there's the problem we started at. Cancel Affinity leaves you with so few green defensive units that are "good enough" that "good enough" is the same set as "the best".

What Triangle Adept does is give you a sufficiently large pool of defensive units that are "good enough" that you actually have a choice so you aren't forced to pick the best option to fill the role simply because no other option can fill the role. Triangle Adept lets any unit with passable defenses become extremely fat against one specific color (or two with Litrraven) at the cost of dying horribly to another color and having weaker defenses when neutral when compared to the alternative.

Fury 3 also does that TA-3 does, though. Bulk all around and extra speed means the slower (and generally speaking, stronger) units fail to double. Fury 3 is worse in grindy matchups, but +3 all stats is damn good for single fights, or even two fights in a row. TC also means that same color matchups are worse for the TC user since breakers are now forbidden, and, conversely, the Fury 3 user can pack breakers himself.

 

Mind, I mostly feel this way because I've literally never used TA-3 to make 'meh' units 'excellent' against their advantage color. My Selena doesn't even have TA-2 learned. I feel like TC is on the level of Guard: You can run Guard on Cordelia to fuck up Killer Bonfire (or Silver Moonbow) Lukas or the like, orrrrrrrr you could pack something actually relevant most of the time like WoM, drag back, whatever.

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[r_n]

22 minutes ago, Falcom said:

I need to stop living under a rock. I nearly didn't know about this until now (yes even when notifications popped). It's weird how Echoes is getting a lot of attention. You'd think it'd be when the game releases but I guess not. I ain't complaining.

However, I screwed myself really badly. Fell for the temptation to summon for skills from the Summer banner. If I do get the chance though, Gray and Mathilda are my top priority. I don't plan on summoning from the banner for Celica's army (I say that now, and then I'm probably going to summon from that banner anyways).

I don't think I can make much use of the new skills sadly. (Help me. I'm too addicted to inheriting skills)

echoes did get a lot of content up front. Japanese release+world wide release. It's probably still getting play (Tempest, special battles with Alm & Celica, etc) to constantly keep it in everyone's minds during the 3ds' off months. I suspect that any other game would have gotten the same attention had Heroes released near them

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Eh... You can't get the particular unit you want, but I think it's fairly simple to get the optimal IV of enough units to make a viable team. Every unit summoned has a 20% or 40% (depending on whether you need exactly +Atk/+Spd or if either would do) of getting the best boon, and then a 60% (for people who literally don't care about defense stats) or 20% (-hp only or -res only) for the best bane. That's ~ 30% * 40% which is about 12% chance of a 'optimal' unit per pull.

12% is then multiplied by the chance of the unit being viable, which, interestingly enough, a great many are. We might not have any A-rank units (I guess you can make a case for Galeforce Brave-users having a niche that's not completely outclassed by -blade, but that's shaky at best due to the necessity of having dancer support), but our B and C ranks make up the vast majority of the cast.

And this is also exactly why requiring very specific counters don't work. While it is not uncommon to have near-optimal characters as a whole, it's definitely uncommon to have near-optimal natures on at least one of a small collection of characters.

The more restricting "good enough" becomes, the harder it is to get counters that work.

 

7 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Fury 3 also does that TA-3 does, though. Bulk all around and extra speed means the slower (and generally speaking, stronger) units fail to double. Fury 3 is worse in grindy matchups, but +3 all stats is damn good for single fights, or even two fights in a row. TC also means that same color matchups are worse for the TC user since breakers are now forbidden, and, conversely, the Fury 3 user can pack breakers himself.

Mind, I mostly feel this way because I've literally never used TA-3 to make 'meh' units 'excellent' against their advantage color. My Selena doesn't even have TA-2 learned. I feel like TC is on the level of Guard: You can run Guard on Cordelia to fuck up Killer Bonfire (or Silver Moonbow) Lukas on the like, orrrrrrrr you could pack something actually relevant most of the time like WoM, drag back, whatever.

All-round bulk doesn't serve the same purpose as targeted bulk. Against the hardest hitters, like Reinhardt and non-infantry Litrblade, you're almost guaranteed to be out of the running after soaking up a single hit with Fury. Triangle Adept allows you to last multiple rounds of combat while taking negligible damage, which helps significantly against mono-color teams.

The units that can afford to run Cancel Affinity (CA, by the way, not TC) do so because they don't need the same-color Weaponbreaker that other units might really want. Ephraim and Robin, for example, benefit greatly from Lancebreaker, but Cordelia, Reinhardt, and Peri, don't really care all that much due to their overwhelming offenses at neutral weapon triangle.

Furthermore, Cancel Affinity appears to be designed specifically for use by the AI and defense teams. Players don't care much because they can pick their battles and bait at advantage, and that's where Weaponbreakers help, but the AI does not pick its battles. A skill that eliminates dedicated walls and makes it harder for the player to pick a team apart one by one through baiting is a huge boon for the AI to have available to it.

[Falcom]

26 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

My theory on things like addiction isn't that you should stop being addiction, but rather you should be so good at making money that the addiction doesn't matter:

You can afford to spend 10k/month on gacha games if you make 100k/month, after all, and it should be less, proportionally, than the guy who spends 1k/month but makes 10k/month. (Since, unless you're utterly terrible at financial management, your expenses grow slower than your income.)

In this, as in everything else, the solution is the git command 'gud.'

I think what I meant to say is that I'm too addicted with the skills from the summer banner but the costs outweigh the benefits.

I have to struggle with even pulling the right unit (which who knows how long that'll take). On top of that, some of the I'm making choices are pretty stupid in my opinion (right now I'm trying to put Close Defense on my Ninian when I should probably put triangle adept because she's +Atk).

So in conclusion, none of this is benefiting me that much. I'm not entirely sure on your theory though.

12 minutes ago, r_n said:

echoes did get a lot of content up front. Japanese release+world wide release. It's probably still getting play (Tempest, special battles with Alm & Celica, etc) to constantly keep it in everyone's minds during the 3ds' off months. I suspect that any other game would have gotten the same attention had Heroes released near them

I suppose. I was just thinking that it's been two months (nearly three if we include Japan) since the game released, so I thought discussions for the game have died down a bit.

[DehNutCase]

52 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

All-round bulk doesn't serve the same purpose as targeted bulk. Against the hardest hitters, like Reinhardt and non-infantry Litrblade, you're almost guaranteed to be out of the running after soaking up a single hit with Fury. Triangle Adept allows you to last multiple rounds of combat while taking negligible damage, which helps significantly against mono-color teams.

An arena team tends to collapse once a single unit of the starting 4 dies, though---less map coverage, less buffs, less bodies to throw at a single unit. 3 v. 4 tends to be very easy, and 2 v 4 is a cake walk unless you really fucked up and those 2 have some insanely good Vantage OHKO potential.

52 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And this is also exactly why requiring very specific counters don't work. While it is not uncommon to have near-optimal characters as a whole, it's definitely uncommon to have near-optimal natures on at least one of a small collection of characters.

The more restricting "good enough" becomes, the harder it is to get counters that work.

You wanted a very specific type of counter though, countering a player phase unit at their very strongest, their phase, rather than hitting them on your phase. The classic glass cannon offensive teams are basically unaffected by any increase to the opponent's coverage, because they'll never get a chance to use them anyway.

"Good enough" is only restricting when it comes to units that can handle themselves on EP, and only if you're always comparing against freaks like Reinhardt, PP units have a far laxer requirement---hence why Setsuna is 'decent' rather than dumpster tier.

52 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

All-round bulk doesn't serve the same purpose as targeted bulk. Against the hardest hitters, like Reinhardt and non-infantry Litrblade, you're almost guaranteed to be out of the running after soaking up a single hit with Fury. Triangle Adept allows you to last multiple rounds of combat while taking negligible damage, which helps significantly against mono-color teams.

I mean, lasting multiple rounds of combat while taking negligible damage is literally the hallmark of all-out offensive teams. Defensive units are either: Sit on a fort or abuse huge stat advantages or have crazy stat spreads that allow Renewal in the B slot. (I'm not sure any unit has that kind of spread, though. Selena only gets away with Fury 3 Renewal in TT because she actually out-stats most of the enemies and Renewal is stealth buffed by the turn 1 trigger on every map.)

 

And, with 14 MT Killers, Sol/Noontime & QR builds might be viable so a defensive unit can always heal a bit of hp every fight. It only works against big losers that barely deal damage, but 20 damage a hit is 10 hp/round for Sol, and 6 hp/round for Noontime, which mitigates most of the damage that TA 3 was supposed to anyway, without costing the A-slot. Anti-synergy with Fury 3, but the build probably works best on armors using DC anyway, to stack a whole bunch of wards.

Yeah: I just checked, +12/+12 =Sheena with 14MT killer, QR, and Sol, takes all of 7 damage from +Atk, DB3, Moonbow Pulse, +6/+6 Reinhardt, and 2HKOs him in response for doing something that retarded. She takes 9 from +10 as a +0, but that's Moonbow Pulse. Everyone not running Moonbow Pulse does 0 damage after her bullshit healing.

Edit: Mind, Sheena will probably only reliably get +10/+10, but, somehow, I don't think 13 damage from Moonbow and 4 damage from everyone else even matters, assuming the non Moonbow even does 4 damage. 13 damage doesn't even break QR, lul.

Double Edit: R.I.P. arena run if it's Ward Sol Armor Emblem v. Ward Sol Armor Emblem, though, unless you brought a hammer along.

 

@Falcom I was mostly just joking, don't take that crap too seriously.

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[bethany81707]

Meanwhile, as long as my Fury Nino can still handle a Reinhardt (she's annoyingly -Res, but that rarely matters), I'm set. Fun fact: Nino likes being at low health.

[DehNutCase]

4 minutes ago, phineas81707 said:

Meanwhile, as long as my Fury Nino can still handle a Reinhardt (she's annoyingly -Res, but that rarely matters), I'm set. Fun fact: Nino likes being at low health.

Moonbow Pulse Reinhardts consistently 2HKO Fury Nino.

Edit: I actually ran into like 4 of them (Pulse Reinhardt) for my run this week. The 680 tier is so derpy.

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Rezzy]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I think @Rezzy might have something to say about that.

Statistically, you can't expect enough of the 5-star units you use to be optimal if you aren't spending money on this game. That applies a hundred-fold for 5-star exclusives that don't appear on banners often. In any practical situation for where most players are, you can only expect someone to have a unit that isn't strictly negative. Four out of every 5 Hectors is not +Atk, 399 out of every 400 green pulls is not a Hector, and 4 out of every 5 sparkly umbrellas is not green.

 

And there's the problem we started at. Cancel Affinity leaves you with so few green defensive units that are "good enough" that "good enough" is the same set as "the best".

What Triangle Adept does is give you a sufficiently large pool of defensive units that are "good enough" that you actually have a choice so you aren't forced to pick the best option to fill the role simply because no other option can fill the role. Triangle Adept lets any unit with passable defenses become extremely fat against one specific color (or two with Litrraven) at the cost of dying horribly to another color and having weaker defenses when neutral when compared to the alternative.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Eh... You can't get the particular unit you want, but I think it's fairly simple to get the optimal IV of enough units to make a viable team. Every unit summoned has a 20% or 40% (depending on whether you need exactly +Atk/+Spd or if either would do) of getting the best boon, and then a 60% (for people who literally don't care about defense stats) or 20% (-hp only or -res only) for the best bane. That's ~ 30% * 40% which is about 12% chance of a 'optimal' unit per pull.

12% is then multiplied by the chance of the unit being viable, which, interestingly enough, a great many are. We might not have any A-rank units (I guess you can make a case for Galeforce Brave-users having a niche that's not completely outclassed by -blade, but that's shaky at best due to the necessity of having dancer support), but our B and C ranks make up the vast majority of the cast.

All GHB units are by definition 'optimal' as well, and, recently at least, some have stats comparable to optimal IV pull-ables. Legion is comparable to +Atk Raven, Camus is comparable to Peri (if only due to his ridiculous physical bulk).

Fury 3 also does that TA-3 does, though. Bulk all around and extra speed means the slower (and generally speaking, stronger) units fail to double. Fury 3 is worse in grindy matchups, but +3 all stats is damn good for single fights, or even two fights in a row. TC also means that same color matchups are worse for the TC user since breakers are now forbidden, and, conversely, the Fury 3 user can pack breakers himself.

 

Mind, I mostly feel this way because I've literally never used TA-3 to make 'meh' units 'excellent' against their advantage color. My Selena doesn't even have TA-2 learned. I feel like TC is on the level of Guard: You can run Guard on Cordelia to fuck up Killer Bonfire (or Silver Moonbow) Lukas or the like, orrrrrrrr you could pack something actually relevant most of the time like WoM, drag back, whatever.

Roughly half of my 5*s are - Atk.  Including freebies and ones I've promoted, I've got about 80 5* units.  About half or so at level 40.  Most of my main units are GHB who are neutral, but would be - Atk if they found a way to do it.

 For the first few months of the game, pretty much all my units had terrible IVs.  - Atk Camilla and Baby Tiki, - Spd Takumi, - Spd Julia.  For me, I hardly ever get good natures, and if I do, it's at 3*.  I mostly have to build my Teams around crappy stats, but that's why I like Hones so much.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

but her sky high offenses suffer from the fact that cavalry have the same offenses but better mobility

Even the best ponies have nowhere near the offensive power of B!Cordelia without heavy support. In merge+10,  B!Cordelia only needs one Eirika buff to kill the entire neutral cast sans Zephiel. Olwen needs two Cavalry buffs to approach B!Cordelia's fire power. B!Cordelia also does not have to worry about color disadvantage outside of Raven tomes.

[DehNutCase]

5 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Roughly half of my 5*s are - Atk.  Including freebies and ones I've promoted, I've got about 80 5* units.  About half or so at level 40.  Most of my main units are GHB who are neutral, but would be - Atk if they found a way to do it.

 For the first few months of the game, pretty much all my units had terrible IVs.  - Atk Camilla and Baby Tiki, - Spd Takumi, - Spd Julia.  For me, I hardly ever get good natures, and if I do, it's at 3*.  I mostly have to build my Teams around crappy stats, but that's why I like Hones so much.

@ 50% -Atk rate you still have more =Atk and +Atk 5*s than I do---I still only have around 20 5*s at the moment, and my own share of -Atk units.

 

Just now, XRay said:

Even the best ponies have nowhere near the offensive power of B!Cordelia without heavy support. In merge+10,  B!Cordelia only needs one Eirika buff to kill the entire neutral cast sans Zephiel. Olwen needs two Cavalry buffs to approach B!Cordelia's fire power. B!Cordelia also does not have to worry about color disadvantage outside of Raven tomes.

Two problems: 1, You've brought Eirika, who's nowhere near as good as B!Cordelia, whereas bringing Reinhardts to buff Reinhardt is bringing twice or thirce the Reinhardt. (Although, naturally, you'd want 2 colors in your horse emblem---Rein & Leo is perfect color coverage)

2, 3 move matters, having the matchups doesn't matter if you don't have the mobility to get to them.

Basically, B!Cordelia has a lower score in mobility and support needed---because her supports either: A, are copies of herself, meaning they can't kill her counters, or B, aren't copies of herself, meaning they don't have her ludicrous matchup spread.

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Rezzy]

6 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

@ 50% -Atk rate you still have more =Atk and +Atk 5*s than I do---I still only have around 20 5*s at the moment, and my own share of -Atk units.

I think I have 5 +Atk 5*s, and 2 of them are healers.

[DehNutCase]

4 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

I think I have 5 +Atk 5*s, and 2 of them are healers.

I don't have any healers at 5*, however, the only 2 +Atk 5*s I can remember are:

Klein, who's -Spd.

And Cordelia, who's perfect.

The majority of my 'good' IV 5*s are +Spd, like my -Atk/+Spd Leo*, or my +Spd/-Def Lucina.

 

Edit:

*This is sarcasm.

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

49 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

An arena team tends to collapse once a single unit of the starting 4 dies, though---less map coverage, less buffs, less bodies to throw at a single unit. 3 v. 4 tends to be very easy, and 2 v 4 is a cake walk unless you really fucked up and those 2 have some insanely good Vantage OHKO potential.

There's this certain character named Reinhardt that doesn't lose much in terms of coverage or buffs when the other Reinhardts go down.

 

51 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

You wanted a very specific type of counter though, countering a player phase unit at their very strongest, their phase, rather than hitting them on your phase. The classic glass cannon offensive teams are basically unaffected by any increase to the opponent's coverage, because they'll never get a chance to use them anyway.

"Good enough" is only restricting when it comes to units that can handle themselves on EP, and only if you're always comparing against freaks like Reinhardt, PP units have a far laxer requirement---hence why Setsuna is 'decent' rather than dumpster tier.

The thing is that without Cancel Affinity to worry about, defensive units can counter player phase units at their strongest.

All of your responses basically assume that building a wall that literally takes no damage from the strongest of attackers is somehow difficult or out of the ordinary. It's not. That's exactly what Triangle Adept was for and that's exactly why Cancel Affinity is such a huge blow to defensive gameplay.

Hyper offense wins because you don't give the opponent a chance to attack. In return, you need to scram your ass out of there if you leave anything alive that you can't take a hit from. Dedicated defense wins because you take no damage when the opponent attacks. In return, you need to always be at weapon triangle advantage and prevent enemies from landing their special skills.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I mean, lasting multiple rounds of combat while taking negligible damage is literally the hallmark of all-out offensive teams. Defensive units are either: Sit on a fort or abuse huge stat advantages or have crazy stat spreads that allow Renewal in the B slot. (I'm not sure any unit has that kind of spread, though. Selena only gets away with Fury 3 Renewal in TT because she actually out-stats most of the enemies and Renewal is stealth buffed by the turn 1 trigger on every map.)

And this is exactly what I mean. You don't have a full picture of how defensive units work if that's how you see them.

You don't need fortifications. We did fine before those were implemented. Actually, we did better before they were implemented because the enemy didn't have access to them to tank our hits better.

You don't need to use armors for their massive stat totals. Sophia is the premier tank against green (that isn't Tiki) (because Draug can't tank magic worth shit, and Zephiel is only slightly better) and is an infantry mage.

You don't need Renewal because you simply take no damage through Triangle Adept. Even if you do, you can shake it off with Reciprocal Aid.

[DehNutCase]

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And this is exactly what I mean. You don't have a full picture of how defensive units work if that's how you see them.

You don't need fortifications. We did fine before those were implemented. Actually, we did better before they were implemented because the enemy didn't have access to them to tank our hits better.

You don't need to use armors for their massive stat totals. Sophia is the premier tank against green (that isn't Tiki) (because Draug can't tank magic worth shit, and Zephiel is only slightly better) and is an infantry mage.

You don't need Renewal because you simply take no damage through Triangle Adept. Even if you do, you can shake it off with Reciprocal Aid.

TA-3 is a 20% Atk swing for both directions---that's stat advantage to me. (Assuming 50 Atk on you, that's +10 Atk, assuming 70 Atk on the opponent, that's -12 Atk a 22 Atk swing from 1 A-slot.) I find it a bit odd that AC is in the B slot for this reason, but I guess they're following the 'counter' skills going into B-slot rule. Guard counters Specials, breakers counter weapon types, AC counters TA.

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You don't need fortifications. We did fine before those were implemented. Actually, we did better before they were implemented because the enemy didn't have access to them to tank our hits better.

TA-3 units aren't the only defensive units. Alfonse counts as a defensive unit for me because man is he good on a defense tile, despite the fact that he kept his default DB 3.

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You don't need to use armors for their massive stat totals. Sophia is the premier tank against green (that isn't Tiki) (because Draug can't tank magic worth shit, and Zephiel is only slightly better) and is an infantry mage.

That's an issue with stat spreads---a Sophia spread armor would be better than Sophia herself in terms of tanking greens. The fact that Sophia exists and a Sophia spread armor doesn't exist doesn't mean: red tomes are better defensive units than red armors. (Also, how is Zephiel only 'slightly better' than Draug when he only has 5 less res than Sophia while also having Wary Fighter, huge hp, and class buff access? Do you go +Res Sophia or something? If Sophia can drop her A-slot for TA, so can Zephiel, and he doesn't have to because he has Ruby Access. Now he's even better, since TA gets countered by AC, meaning raw stats matter more, since you can't cheese a -12 Atk debuff and a +10 Atk buff via TA3 for free anymore.)

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You don't need Renewal because you simply take no damage through Triangle Adept. Even if you do, you can shake it off with Reciprocal Aid.

Well it's nice that you can abuse huge stat advantages.

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There's this certain character named Reinhardt that doesn't lose much in terms of coverage or buffs when the other Reinhardts go down.

Reinhardt falls off very quickly when he's not optimal, as my Sheena calcs demonstrate. The strongest possible Reinhardt*, of which there can be only 1 in an Arena match, does less damage than needed to break Sheena's QR despite Sheena having 10 less +levels. Any other Reinhardt actually heals her if they hit her.

Without Moonbow Pulse---which, after you kill the only one, no other Reinahardt has Moonbow up, meaning random people like -Res Nino start being able to tank him.

 

*The strongest commonly seen Reinhardt, mind. +6 -blade tome rapes everything.

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The thing is that without Cancel Affinity to worry about, defensive units can counter player phase units at their strongest.

All of your responses basically assume that building a wall that literally takes no damage from the strongest of attackers is somehow difficult or out of the ordinary. It's not. That's exactly what Triangle Adept was for and that's exactly why Cancel Affinity is such a huge blow to defensive gameplay.

Hyper offense wins because you don't give the opponent a chance to attack. In return, you need to scram your ass out of there if you leave anything alive that you can't take a hit from. Dedicated defense wins because you take no damage when the opponent attacks. In return, you need to always be at weapon triangle advantage and prevent enemies from landing their special skills.

Defensive units still can, TA-3 can't, but that's an issue with TA-3 units and their reliance on putting a -12 Atk buff on enemies to tank properly, as well as needing +10 atk to kill enemies in time.

With +8/+8 (Fort Res, Fort Def, and Ward Armor, 2x Ward Armor, or similar combination), =Sheena, +0, 14 MT killer weapon, DC, QR, Sol:

Maximum damage taken from default blue units:

26 from +10 Est, who wields heavy lance.

Non-effective weapons max out with:

9 damage taken from +10 Catria.

 

For Catria to have a shot at killing =Sheena, she'll need to do 27 damage with a special, and that's for a 2RKO. Sheena doesn't have 54 defense (if she did then she'd take 0 from Catria.)

Also, funny story about trying glass-cannon builds against Sheena (trying to Dragon Fang, perhaps): L&D Catria does 1 more damage, 10, in exchange for being 2HKOd by +0 Sheena. (Because Sol is damn strong when the opponent is helping you hit like a truck.) L&D Brave Lance with Luna does even worse: 8 damage.

Edit:

Even perfect Cordelia +Atk/-Nothing, +10, L&D, Luna, Atk seal, only manages to bring =Sheena with +0 levels to 27 hp. +Def variants keep 32 hp, because def works even against special damage if you were taking less than 0 damage without specials. (32 hp is enough to keep QR, even, lul)

 

Linde does quite well, though, +10 Linde, Atk Seal, +Atk, L&D, -blade, +3/4/4/2, manages to bring +0 =Sheena down to 6 hp.

(-Blade Reinahrdt actually manages the 2HKO because L&D and +6 to all stats stronk. +0 Sheena simply can't survive the bullshit that is +6 all stats Reinhardt with +Atk, L&D, and Atk seal. Then again, no-one survives that bullshit unless you can OHKO before he doubles your ass. TA3 Fae used to be able to, but R.I.P. that dream now. Two of those Reinhardts kill even TA-3, +12/+12 Fae if one of them were packing Moonbow Pulse, though.)

Edited July 13, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

5 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

(Also, how is Zephiel only 'slightly better' than Draug when he only has 5 less res than Sophia while also having Wary Fighter, huge hp, and class buff access? Do you go +Res Sophia or something? If Sophia can drop her A-slot for TA, so can Zephiel, and he doesn't have to because he has Ruby Access. Now he's even better, since TA gets countered by AC, meaning raw stats matter more, since you can't cheese a -12 Atk debuff and a +10 Atk buff via TA3 for free anymore.)

Ruby Sword+ Zephiel with Distant Counter and G Tomebreaker or Quick Riposte fails to kill Fury Spring Camilla without a buff to Atk. Ruby Sword+ Zephiel with Distant Counter and Wary Fighter takes 25 damage (minus Res buffs) from a fully buffed Fury Spring Camilla and also leaves Spring Camilla with less than 50% HP, opening him up to be finished off with Wings of Mercy because Cordelia, Hinoka, and Cherche don't have a B skill they really care to have.

Sophia also has the ability to initiate combat at range, has a movement range that actually exists, and has access to Raudhrraven+ (and enough Atk after Triangle Adept 3 to one-hit kill the most common bow users without needing to resort to Bowbreaker or Quick Riposte).

 

20 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Defensive units still can, TA-3 can't, but that's an issue with TA-3 units and their reliance on putting a -12 Atk buff on enemies to tank properly, as well as needing +10 atk to kill enemies in time.

You give Triangle Adept flack for needing to reduce damage taken by 12 points to "tank properly" and then follow up with a counter-example of a "defensive unit" with 8 points of defensive buffs to achieve results. Okay.

Furthermore, most of the higher-tier Triangle Adept users don't need the boost to their own attack, so no, they don't need the +10 Atk to kill enemies. The dragons, for example, do fine offensively at neutral weapon triangle with Lightning Breath+, one of the weakest weapons in the game, with no offensive buffs.

The weaker Triangle Adept users obviously use it to bolster their Atk to comparable levels in addition to the added bulk, but that's hardly enough to justify a blanket statement that all Triangle Adept users need the added Atk.

[Korath88]

Updated the OP with datamined stuff

[Ice Dragon]

Oh, god. Mathilda

Spoiler

has the most disappointing stat spread ever. It's literally Peri, but worse.

 

As for Cancel Affinity, it looks like the interpretation of the Japanese skill description is correct based on its effects at levels 1 and 2.

Spoiler

Level 1 negates the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon always.
Level 2 negates the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon only when the user is at disadvantage.
Level 3 reverses the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon only when the user is at disadvantage.

 

EDIT:

Delthea

Spoiler

Has the highest Res in the game tying Wrys at 36 and the highest Atk of any mage tying Sanaki and Lilina at 37. And still has not shit for Spd at 33.

And is adorable as fuck.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[TheTuckingFypo]

19 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As for Cancel Affinity, it looks like the interpretation of the Japanese skill description is correct based on its effects at levels 1 and 2.

  Hide contents

Level 1 negates the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon always.
Level 2 negates the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon only when the user is at disadvantage.
Level 3 reverses the opponent's Triangle Adept and gem weapon only when the user is at disadvantage.

I'm still a little shaky with Cancel Affinity. To me, if the skill functions exactly as described, wouldn't that objectively make Cancel Affinity 2 worse than CA 1 and 3?

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

You give Triangle Adept flack for needing to reduce damage taken by 12 points to "tank properly" and then follow up with a counter-example of a "defensive unit" with 8 points of defensive buffs to achieve results. Okay.

Furthermore, most of the higher-tier Triangle Adept users don't need the boost to their own attack, so no, they don't need the +10 Atk to kill enemies. The dragons, for example, do fine offensively at neutral weapon triangle with Lightning Breath+, one of the weakest weapons in the game, with no offensive buffs.

The weaker Triangle Adept users obviously use it to bolster their Atk to comparable levels in addition to the added bulk, but that's hardly enough to justify a blanket statement that all Triangle Adept users need the added Atk.

Sheena was fighting people with +10 merge levels on her. +4/+4 versus equal merge level opponents is strictly better for her, and very easy in terms of buffs. If it's +10 Sheena versus +10 units, then naturally she wouldn't need the extra +4/+4, she gets that much from +levels. (+6/+6 from Fort, or even +4/+4 form ward would be enough) Or do you tank with Fae without buffing her?

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Furthermore, most of the higher-tier Triangle Adept users don't need the boost to their own attack, so no, they don't need the +10 Atk to kill enemies. The dragons, for example, do fine offensively at neutral weapon triangle with Lightning Breath+, one of the weakest weapons in the game, with no offensive buffs.

And how, exactly, is limiting unit choices to 'higher-tier' TA units better than limiting unit choices to higher-tier units in general? Part of TA-3's advantage, or so you say, is letting the less viable units do things. If you have to limit your self to the top tier either way, might as well go Horse Emblem.

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Ruby Sword+ Zephiel with Distant Counter and G Tomebreaker or Quick Riposte fails to kill Fury Spring Camilla without a buff to Atk. Ruby Sword+ Zephiel with Distant Counter and Wary Fighter takes 25 damage (minus Res buffs) from a fully buffed Fury Spring Camilla and also leaves Spring Camilla with less than 50% HP, opening him up to be finished off with Wings of Mercy because Cordelia, Hinoka, and Cherche don't have a B skill they really care to have.

Sophia also has the ability to initiate combat at range, has a movement range that actually exists, and has access to Raudhrraven+ (and enough Atk after Triangle Adept 3 to one-hit kill the most common bow users without needing to resort to Bowbreaker or Quick Riposte).

...Fully buffed Fury 3, +Atk Spring Camilla also survives Sophia without a buff to Atk, and pulse Moonbow sets 2HKO Sophia. This is at +10.

At +0 Sophia's hp drops enough that she's 2HKOd naturally.

 

Sophia has a huge advantage on player phase, true, but Zephiel's strong enough to do to ranged units what Sophia does to melee. He can: Keep Prf, take TA-3, keep Wary, OHKO fully buffed Camilla on player phase (this needs a buff to attack or a special, though---or just panic or no buffs on S!Camilla), still being above half hp after S!Camilla's first hit. Moreover, Zephiel's hp advantage is high enough to run Panic consistently vs. S!Camilla, completely neutering the threat of -blade---S!Camilla does 5 damage to TA3 Zephiel after Panic. (Sophia only has 1 hp on S!Camilla, making panic ploy a much riskier proposition.)

Panic ploy is also general purpose utility---it neuters all buffs, not just greens, off of Zephiel's highest base hp in the game. 

Mind, I don't use armor much, so I don't know about the next bit, but people who use Hector keep telling me pivot is enough for him to keep up, so *shrugg.*

 

 

Vs. Archers, Zephiel can do something similar: Brave Archers don't activate their special in time unless it's Moonbow Pulse (which, admittedly, hurts like bloody hell coming from something like buffed B!Cordelia, but not lethal unless B!Cordelia has 10 levels of merge advantage and a +6 buff to Atk. Sophia does much better here, naturally, since she has better player phase and bulk thanks to -raven. But tanking colorless seems a bit unrelated to tanking greens.