Tempest Trials: Invisible Ties!

[mcsilas]

Consumed some potions to get to 5 star Gerome, so I can SP train him while double SP is on.

I really am having fun in this TT actually. Flier Emblem dominates the maps, for bonus points I use Summer Corrin, Gerome, Skyzura and Masked Marth for the Grima kill. Gerome's Rally Atk/Def actually helps Blade Scorrin a lot.

@Vaximillian I think I can do a Minerva Emblem for fun actually...Gerome, Minerva, Cherche and... Maria ("Just like Minerva!")/Michalis I guess?

[mampfoid]

In my last run I did some stupid errors and lost Valter and Gerome early. F!Morgan and Caeda had to enter the last map alone, but they did it! 

[Zeo]

Up to 23k. Running F!Morgan/Chrom/Cherche/Serra for Lunatic 7 and swapping Chrom out with Donnel for Lunatic-5 Auto. Pretty easy to manage as long as I don't do something stupid. When Cherche caps HM I might just give Jerome a Brave Axe and swap her out with him. 

[Hawk King]

11 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The actual rating of 9.0 being the same for all dancers is definitely coincidence. But what this actually means is that all dancers are rated extremely well within their colors despite significantly inferior combat performance as other same-color units in their tier.

I don't see the problem with ranged dancers being at the top of their weapon type because all weapon types of the same color are still compared against each other.

If Inigo places the same as Performing Arts Azura, which he does, Performing Arts Azura places the same as Minerva, which she does, and Minerva places above Nino, which she does, then Inigo should naturally place above Nino.

While Minerva is clearly superior to Azura in combat performance, the amount by which she is superior is being argued to be the worth of the ability to dance. What this means, then, is that while Nino is superior to Inigo in combat, Nino is less superior to Inigo in combat than Minerva is superior to Azura. And I don't see a problem with that.

I think that both Inigo and Shigure are inferior enough to the other green and blue mages that there should be some above them. And PA!Olivia absolutely should not be in a tier of her own at the top of the daggers. Sothe is significantly better than her. Enough that he should be in the same tier if not a tier above her. Bride Cordelia and even all of the Brave Bow Boys compared to her also confuses me. PA!Azura has an amazing offensive stat spread and the best dance skill by far with the Uror buffs. That's why she is in the same tier as Minerva and the Armor Axe girls. Inigo, Shigure, and PA!Olivia don't come close to being as good as her when compared to the other units in their groups. Especially Inigo who is in the same color as her.

12 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's because they are also being compared against bows and daggers and not just among themselves.

The more I look at the colorless group the more I don't like it. All of the mounted healers should go down a tier or all of the infantry healers should go up a tier. The bows are basically just who does the Brave Bow the best, and it doesn't consider alternate builds which can often times be better. I personally feel that Brave Bow builds are really easy to deal with. Nidhogg!Innes and Slaying Bow!Leon are right on par with anything Bride Cordelia is doing. Then there is NY!Corrin who is four tiers below Leon (who already should move up a tier) just because he can't have IVs? Once again the Brave bow build is the only one being considered here as that means +Atk Leon has 5 more Atk than NY!Corrin even though NY!Corrin can do other builds just as well if not better than Leon can.

 

How do you feel about Raven's and Nephenee's placements?

[Vaximillian]

This all happened:

   

Welp. I already replaced Maria with Lachesis, but Martha is basically irreplacable because my other Falchion user, Marth, is HM-capped as well. Faye is really good here thanks to triple DD3 and all the fliers flapping around. What to do.

[Ice Dragon]

6 hours ago, Hawk King said:

I think that both Inigo and Shigure are inferior enough to the other green and blue mages that there should be some above them.

Are you suggesting that Inigo and Shigure be moved down (to around 8.0) or that the other tome users be moved up? Neither of those options make sense.

Moving Inigo and Shigure down doesn't make sense because of the utility that dancing provides. Dance and Sing are literally "the unit most suited for the job gets to move again" in addition to being a more flexible mobility assist.

Moving the other tome users up also doesn't make sense because they are all positioned relative to the lances and axes in their color category. Tome users without access to movement-type-specific buffs are having a much more difficult time dealing with the current threats. Distant Counter is more common, and with it bulkier units that can survive the first hit and kill on the counterattack.

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

And PA!Olivia absolutely should not be in a tier of her own at the top of the daggers. Sothe is significantly better than her. Enough that he should be in the same tier if not a tier above her.

Once again, moving Sothe up is overvaluing his performance relative to the bow and staff users, and moving Olivia down is undervaluing the utility of dancing. Are you able to make an argument as to why Dance is weak enough to drop below Bride Cordelia to Leon and Innes's tier or that Sothe is strong enough to be bumped up to Bride Cordelia's tier?

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

PA!Azura has an amazing offensive stat spread and the best dance skill by far with the Uror buffs. That's why she is in the same tier as Minerva and the Armor Axe girls.

Azura's offensive spread is as great as you say it is. Compared to other infantry, she's a full 3 Atk below Ogma and has abysmal physical bulk, even worse than Hana. There aren't many infantry axes to compare her to, but she's slightly faster than Barst and slightly weaker than Raven. And still has abysmal physical bulk.

If they were all locked to Silver weapons without refines.

If you mean with Triangle Adept, other units can pull off the same Triangle Adept builds better than she can.

Furthermore, Urdhr's effect is not as significant as you are arguing it to be. It does not stack with Hone, Fortify, and Tactic passive skills, and also does not apply to the unit's first action before having Dance used on them. I would personally argue that its effect is good enough to make her better than other infantry dancers, but not enough to put her a full tier above over infantry dancers.

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

All of the mounted healers should go down a tier or all of the infantry healers should go up a tier.

Why?

And the answer had better not be "because 8.5 is completely empty".

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

The bows are basically just who does the Brave Bow the best, and it doesn't consider alternate builds which can often times be better. I personally feel that Brave Bow builds are really easy to deal with. Nidhogg!Innes and Slaying Bow!Leon are right on par with anything Bride Cordelia is doing.

If you read the patch notes, you'd know they're being judged by both their Brave Bow and Firesweep Bow builds.

What does Nidhogg or Slaying Bow do that make them superior to Brave Bow or Firesweep Bow? Can you substantiate your claim that those options produce results on par with Bride Cordelia's Brave Bow or Firesweep Bow builds?

The fact that bows are colorless is now less and less advantageous when in the hands of a player because they cannot use weapon triangle advantage to break through all of the recently added physical tanks. Similarly, colorless has always been a very difficult sell for enemy phase because they similarly cannot use weapon triangle advantage to mitigate damage, meaning they need to stack higher defensive stats than other weapon types to perform the same job. Being ranged weapons also means they have fewer points of stats to use, making mixed bulk nearly impossible for non-armors.

Because of all of this, Guard Bow and Slaying Bow, as well as pretty much all of the unique bow weapons, are more suited for Arena Assault as dedicated counters and not for Arena offense because they sacrifice general performance.

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

Then there is NY!Corrin who is four tiers below Leon (who already should move up a tier) just because he can't have IVs? Once again the Brave bow build is the only one being considered here as that means +Atk Leon has 5 more Atk than NY!Corrin even though NY!Corrin can do other builds just as well if not better than Leon can.

As I mentioned previously elsewhere, the lack of access to non-neutral natures isn't a detriment in itself. If you want to read the entire argument, you can find it at the bottom of this post.

Corrin is functionally a unit with 37/29/30/34/21 level-40 stats locked to a nature of [+Atk, -Res]. This means he effectively has the same Brave Bow performance as Setsuna or Rebecca, but without the Spd to make a follow-up.

As mentioned above, Corrin being able to run Guard Bow or Slaying Bow better than Leon is not something that matters for an Arena offense tier list because those builds are meant to be specific counters.

 

7 hours ago, Hawk King said:

How do you feel about Raven's and Nephenee's placements?

I'm not sure how I feel about Raven. He definitely belongs either in 8.5 or 8.0 right now, but I'm not sure which. I haven't done any recent numbers to see how he compares to Cherche, who is effectively the gatekeeper of 8.5 for player-phase units.

Nephenee is probably fine where she is, though I can see an argument for her to move up a tier. Her stats are very similar to Catria's and trades Catria's flying mobility for access to Breath skills and Wrath.

 

[Cute Chao]

Decided to burn some stamina potions 'cos I wanted to play some more. I have over 400, so it wasn't a huge loss xD 

I now have my beautiful 5* Gerome, I've finished the S Support with Raven I had been building, got Gerome to 40 (alone with Shiro, Clarine and Chrom - the normal since the helpful one hid behind M!Morgan) and am now finishing off my stamina in the trials. I'll probably dial back on later runs, but who knows. Maybe I'll stick to my 8k a day goal still. Haven't decided yet. Still not going for ranks. 

[mampfoid]

50k. Don't know if I can play tomorrow though. 

[DLNarshen]

In the era of TT stat bonuses, FH!Robin has got to be worst final boss yet for auto-battling.  Bulky as hell, and his entire skill set might as well be one big middle finger to the aggro-happy AI. 

[silverserpent]

Gerome is finally home. I'll work my way up the rewards tier first before I switch out Grima for him. The synergy of Morgans, Horse!Chrom and Grima is amazing. They make the perfect father/son and father/daughter teams. Btw, anyone else find it funny when Grima called out F!Robin for being a girl? XD

[Alexmender]

I'm slacking a lot here. 25k and planning on getting to 30k after 2 stamina pots. 

Grima is still a joke even though I changed Caeda for Chrom (he suffers a lot if he's at full HP, otherwise he one shots Grima). I may use my dragons+Genny for auto battle because they did well enough yesterday when I was doing some tests so see who could survive Lunatic 5. Falchions are an annoyance but that's better than gimping Nowi by equipping her TA3. Then again, I still don't feel like burning tons of stamina pots.

[Usana]

For lunatic 5 my horse team is actually doing pretty good. The issue is when they hit a snafu, BOY DO THEY HIT SNAFU. As in a bad map will completely wipe them with the enemies either taking minimal damage or no damage. Though I really wish it would stop attacking blue lances with Chrom and Red swords with Frederick. Guys. . . I think you are a bit confused about something.

That said they do work well as a team

Spoiler

I paused it to snap a picture. What a smart Auto-Battle AI. Do you think it deserves a cookie?

Also I think Ephraim should be ashamed of himself. Freddy just has to pick up your slack, doesn't he?

Spoiler

Okay so just about any unit could have picked up his slack. Ephraim I think was the only one who couldn't kill the guy. Which is just sad. . . Everyone except the blue can kill the red.

 

[Vaximillian]

6 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Once again, moving Sothe up is overvaluing his performance relative to the bow and staff users,

But you aren’t supposed to compare across columns. The relative position in the column is compared to the other units of the same type, not to the other units full stop.

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Vaximillian said:

But you aren’t supposed to compare across columns. The relative position in the column is compared to the other units of the same type, not to the other units full stop.

You're not supposed to compare across colors.

[Anacybele]

Yayz, another Freddy user! ^^ At least some see how amazing he can be! I wish I could see more people that make him 5 star though. I do get the idea of merging a bunch of 4 stars, but still.

I'm getting a bit more comfortable with lunatic 7 myself, and I can also confirm Freddy makes a good team with his lord. :P Though it also helps when that Freddy can take just about any physical attack and not even get scratched. XD

And I actually haven't even given Chrom a C skill yet, so he's not buffing Frederick or anything right now. I will give him one when I can though.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Anacybele

[Reddazrael]

Uggggh 35,586 points and the grind is starting to get to me. On the whole, my team of E!Chrom/B!Lucina/M!Morgan/F!Robin can auto-battle through Lunatic 5 just fine... until the final map, because the AI insists on putting them within range of Grima before ending the player phase, and it's like, why. WHY. He's not a nice dragon.

[Stroud]

10 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Yayz, another Freddy user! ^^ At least some see how amazing he can be! I wish I could see more people that make him 5 star though. I do get the idea of merging a bunch of 4 stars, but still.

Freddy is one of the few male units who capped 4000 Hero merit in my case. And he eloped with Olwen. 
Honestly, I think he is a pretty good unit and Brave Axe user. He is basically Cherche on horse, also thanks to Chrom I know that they both have another thing in common. Their best friends are not human. 

[eclipse]

Gotta hand it to IS - Gerome gets everything except a weapon at 5*.  That means I can use him at 4*, if I really must.

[Rafiel's Aria]

Finished off Genny and Azura! So I think that brings up my total of maxed out HM units (during this TT) to 6. Priscilla, Cecilia, Ursula, Brave Lyn, Genny, and Azura. Still working on Helpful Chrom, Olwen, LA!Lilina, and now Bride Lyn. Chrom's about halfway to 4k and Olwen is just behind him. Lilina needs less than 1k...and Bride Lyn just hit her first 500, so she's got a way's to go. I have Lachesis, Sakura, and Mist all at around 3k HM, but Bride Lyn really needs the SP, so I might as well work on her while I can. I want enough SP to get her the Wrathful refine for her staff!

I'm almost at 55k for this TT which is surprising because I normally don't move this fast, but I think having grindy stuff to do has kept me pretty occupied. I kind of want Chrom to max out HM ASAP so I can move onto M!Morgan for a little bit. I might even see if I have enough time to give Gerome and Flier Emblem a shot.

[Korath88]

30k now. I'm in no rush to get to 40k since I'm 31 coins short of fully upgrading def tactic. Delthea, Inigo and Olivia have capped HM though so I'm running Fjorm and Shigure for my blue and dancer slots now. Lucina's about 1k from cap, once she hits it I'll use masked Marth instead.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to accomplish by giving Gerome armored blow though. I just don't feel like investing that much into a unit I'm not going to use.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Korath88

[Anacybele]

17 minutes ago, Stroud said:

Freddy is one of the few male units who capped 4000 Hero merit in my case. And he eloped with Olwen. 
Honestly, I think he is a pretty good unit and Brave Axe user. He is basically Cherche on horse, also thanks to Chrom I know that they both have another thing in common. Their best friends are not human. 

Chrom's best friends are people though... At least, I thought Robin and the others were his best friends... xP Also, I headcanon that Frederick has a human best friend from childhood, but that's just me.

But yeah, Freddy's great and underrated overall imo, not just in this game. I run him with Slaying Axe though, as I decided to make him a super tank that'll counter with QR and Ignis.

[Usana]

@Reddazrael It is probably because what position I have Unstoppable Chrom in, but it likes to run him up to that space 1 down 1 left from Grima. That way he can get attacked by Grima and both units up in that corner in the same turn. And the game really likes to toss Sully up there. Still doesn't stop him though. He just can't stop.

@Anacybele I don't really use Freddy all that much, but he is one of my designated anti-armors for AA or cavalry quests when facing armors. Unless the armor is red he is the main go to. The other Armor Slayer units are just a bit too squishy to be taking hits from armor. I actually let Selena keep her TA for that very reason. Freddy though doesn't need gem help to deal with blue armors. And even the Green ones need to watch out around him. Not sure if he will do as well now since I actually gave him bonfire. I was using luna, but it kept missing kills on mages in the TT due to grossly inflated HP. But yeah I keep debating on if I should up him to give him slaying hammer+ or keep him at 4*+10. The catch is I have far too many things demanding feathers so he won't have merges at 5*. Mostly though I am waiting until I get a 5* pity breaking Hawkeye or Sheena so that he can get a nice Slaying Axe. He is pretty much at the top of the list to receive that weapon.

Though while on the topic of Freddy. . . he survives the 2nd most often. Chrom survives the most often, probably due to all the TT buffs. Those are pretty huge. Eirika and Ephraim just go down like flies. Freddy and Unstoppable Chrom often have to complete the final map on their own. The AI usually runs Chrom up the left hand side and Freddy up the right hand side and has them each solo a wing. And this is what gets Freddy killed sometimes. It'll charge him straight up that line when there is a Sanaki waiting for him. That. . . well. . . lets . . . just say that it doesn't end well for Freddy.

[Anacybele]

3 minutes ago, Usana said:

I don't really use Freddy all that much, but he is one of my designated anti-armors for AA or cavalry quests when facing armors. Unless the armor is red he is the main go to. The other Armor Slayer units are just a bit too squishy to be taking hits from armor. I actually let Selena keep her TA for that very reason. Freddy though doesn't need gem help to deal with blue armors. And even the Green ones need to watch out around him. Not sure if he will do as well now since I actually gave him bonfire. I was using luna, but it kept missing kills on mages in the TT due to grossly inflated HP. But yeah I keep debating on if I should up him to give him slaying hammer+ or keep him at 4*+10. The catch is I have far too many things demanding feathers so he won't have merges at 5*. Mostly though I am waiting until I get a 5* pity breaking Hawkeye or Sheena so that he can get a nice Slaying Axe. He is pretty much at the top of the list to receive that weapon.

Though while on the topic of Freddy. . . he survives the 2nd most often. Chrom survives the most often, probably due to all the TT buffs. Those are pretty huge. Eirika and Ephraim just go down like flies. Freddy and Unstoppable Chrom often have to complete the final map on their own. The AI usually runs Chrom up the left hand side and Freddy up the right hand side and has them each solo a wing. And this is what gets Freddy killed sometimes. It'll charge him straight up that line when there is a Sanaki waiting for him. That. . . well. . . lets . . . just say that it doesn't end well for Freddy.

Ah, that's fair. He is a good armor killer if you don't intend to invest a whole lot in him like I did. :) I mean, that's basically what I had him doing before I was able to give him a Brave Axe and later Slaying Axe.

And yeah, the buffs are great for horse Chrom here. Mine reaches 41 Spd with Frederick and his Hone Cav sitting next to him. Way to support your lord, Freddy Bear! ^^

Edited March 18, 2018 by Anacybele

[silverserpent]

Decided to burn a stamina pot for the sole reason of running a trainee team through the TT. Geromex2, Mathilda, and Jaffar. 4* Gerome just got his Goad minted and waiting on another 9k feathers before he can merge with his other self. Mathilda and Jaffar are both reach 30 rather spectacularly.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Grinded to get 5 star Gerome and train him before double SP ends. He will join Chrom, Donnel and a healer for the auto battle team.