Aether Raids General Thread

[Anacybele]

Wow, Seliph definitely sounds incredibly annoying.

[Tree]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

All the more reason to try harder, then, if you want those rewards. Maybe I'm just turning into an old geezer, but rewards should be earned, not expected to be handed out for free.

Before AR, getting the characters you wanted involved saving or buying orbs. Nearly all free orbs are highly obtainable though easy events or simply given out as gifts. If you really want more orbs, you can also buy them directly. To reasonably merge grail exclusive characters, you will want to reach Tier 21. This is fairly easy to obtain if you are fielding a full four mythics, but virtually impossible without mythic units. This means players have to spend saved or purchased orbs in an attempt to gain rare mythic units they might not even want. This is followed by many episodes of AR where every single mistake can cost grails. The various arenas avoid this problem by not gating a summoning currency.

I guess I just want a casual, single player experience. I don't have an issue with rewards requiring effort to obtain. However, I think character selection should not be limited by competition with other players. I don't understand why AR is being pushed on casual players?

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Your first crown. There is no displayed counter for how many first crowns you've received. You either got one or you didn't. People in the Arena thread like to post screenshots of them receiving their first crown, and we congratulate them for it because such fanfare is well-deserved. 

A first green throne would be a better analog to a first Arena Crown since it is technically the first throne. AR Thrones and Arena Crowns are both based on ranking and have limited capacity as a result. AR Tiers have no connection to ranking which grants them unlimited capacity.

 

2 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

Other than that Ice Dragon has said all there is to say. It is also certainly not Pay2Win, since many F2P people have made it and are thriving in T21.

AR is definitely pay to win at the very top tiers. (Doesn't matter to me.) As for Tier 21, you can get there without paying money, but you will have to "purchase" mythic units. I haven't heard of anyone reaching it without mythic units. Getting there with the one free Eir might not even be possible any more now that players have had a chance to continually upgrade their AR defense structures.

[Hilda]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Tyrfing's base effect after refine (free Miracle if he starts combat with 50% HP or more) prevents you from killing Seliph in one round of combat unless you can do enough damage to drop him to 1 HP in the first hit. This makes him incredibly hard to bait because if you can't drop him to 1 HP in your first hit, you're stuck with a 1 HP Seliph right in front of your units ready for all of the enemy's Wings of Mercy units to teleport to him.

And if Seliph has Distant Counter + Vantage + Vengeance, then you're basically unable to kill him unless you have Firesweep or Hardy Bearing.

Ophelia, but not many use her on Offense and rather on Defense. But yeah Seliph is a pain in the ass to deal with. Especially if you fail to kill him and he recovers 45 HP on the start of the next round....

[XRay]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Being Tier 19+ is supposed to be an achievement and not something that everyone and their dog can attain. Reaching Tier 20 or Tier 21 in Aether Raids is deserving of the same kind of fanfare as getting your first Arena crown.

4 hours ago, Tree said:

Before AR, getting the characters you wanted involved saving or buying orbs. Nearly all free orbs are highly obtainable though easy events or simply given out as gifts. If you really want more orbs, you can also buy them directly. To reasonably merge grail exclusive characters, you will want to reach Tier 21. This is fairly easy to obtain if you are fielding a full four mythics, but virtually impossible without mythic units. This means players have to spend saved or purchased orbs in an attempt to gain rare mythic units they might not even want. This is followed by many episodes of AR where every single mistake can cost grails. The various arenas avoid this problem by not gating a summoning currency.

As long as the player has good resource management skills, I do not think reaching Tier 21 requires too much tactical ability. I got into Tier 21 with minimal investment into my super tank team, and I am not exactly a skilled tactician, although I did need some luck though. In terms of Orbs, it only requires enough to summon one copy of Distant Counter fodder and a second copy of Eir. It is no different from spending Orbs on Duel skills or Distant Counter on Arena babysitters/cheerleaders and Arena Assault Team 1 to score higher.

[Hilda]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

As long as the player has good resource management skills, I do not think reaching Tier 21 requires too much tactical ability. I got into Tier 21 with minimal investment into my super tank team, and I am not exactly a skilled tactician, although I did need some luck though. In terms of Orbs, it only requires enough to summon one copy of Distant Counter fodder and a second copy of Eir. It is no different from spending Orbs on Duel skills or Distant Counter on Arena babysitters/cheerleaders and Arena Assault Team 1 to score higher.

Tbh super Tanks like Surtr, Caneighis and co. are a thing of the past as soon as you run into a rally trap Alm beefed up with Infantry pulse and Sturdy impact. Unless you have Bride Fjorm to dismantle the Rally Trap. All Super tank attempts this and last weak were wins for my Defense Team because of that, the only one that lost, was this week with a Bride Fjorm Dismantling the Rally Trap.

There is not much you can do against an Infantry Pulse Team with a Sturdy Impact LAlm and 3 beefed up Wings of Mercy Mages (Ophelia, Lilina and Sonya). If he attacks your tank will die, if your tank survives, he is in wings of mercy range and will get danced by the 2. Dancer which means either your super tank dies or one of the other units, which triggers a chain reaction of Wings of Mercy procs and results in 3-4 units lost that round.

Only successfull attempts were with Bride Fjorm, or offensiv tactics, which used Vantage tanking (taking out Ophelia first) or Galeforce.

Although i doubt one counters many of this setups until Tier 21

[Humanoid]

As a definitive old geezer, I think all material rewards should be handed out for free. Intangibles such as achievements, cosmetics, high-score screens and a sense of pride and accomplishments can be the reward for difficulty. Difficulty levels are there to tailor your enjoyment of the game, not to determine the magnitude of rewards.

In the context of FEH, I think crowns, thrones and golden accessories are the right way to go about it.

[Vicious Sal]

7 hours ago, Tree said:

Before AR, getting the characters you wanted involved saving or buying orbs. Nearly all free orbs are highly obtainable though easy events or simply given out as gifts. If you really want more orbs, you can also buy them directly. To reasonably merge grail exclusive characters, you will want to reach Tier 21. This is fairly easy to obtain if you are fielding a full four mythics, but virtually impossible without mythic units. This means players have to spend saved or purchased orbs in an attempt to gain rare mythic units they might not even want. This is followed by many episodes of AR where every single mistake can cost grails. The various arenas avoid this problem by not gating a summoning currency.

I guess I just want a casual, single player experience. I don't have an issue with rewards requiring effort to obtain. However, I think character selection should not be limited by competition with other players. I don't understand why AR is being pushed on casual players?

A first green throne would be a better analog to a first Arena Crown since it is technically the first throne. AR Thrones and Arena Crowns are both based on ranking and have limited capacity as a result. AR Tiers have no connection to ranking which grants them unlimited capacity.

 

AR is definitely pay to win at the very top tiers. (Doesn't matter to me.) As for Tier 21, you can get there without paying money, but you will have to "purchase" mythic units. I haven't heard of anyone reaching it without mythic units. Getting there with the one free Eir might not even be possible any more now that players have had a chance to continually upgrade their AR defense structures.

That does not make it Pay2Win. If you want to reach T27 consistently, yes you do need to have two eirs and two naga. This much is true, but as you said yourself, many orbs are given freely. Someone who wants to reach t27 needs to mnage all their resources well, this includes orbs. 

The average for eir/ naga is around 180 orbs, which is roughly two months of free orbs. Is it a lot, yes, did IS give plenty of time to save before releasing Naga? Also yes. So no, I do not consider this mode pay2win. Especially since f2p players have proven that it is possible to compete at the highest levels. 

Does spending money make it easier to get there? Partially yes, since you have more resources at your disposal. But this is the same for every game mode. 

 

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Humanoid said:

Difficulty levels are there to tailor your enjoyment of the game, not to determine the magnitude of rewards.

From a game design perspective, this is entirely not true, especially in a game that is intended to be competitive.

Not all players are motivated intrinsically, meaning without any form of extrinsic motivation, you'll potentially lose out on a sizable portion of your player base. Having achievements be completely immaterial works fine for games that you're supposed to pick up, log 40-100 hours, and then put back in the shelf forever, but it doesn't work for a game that intends players to be continuously involved for a long period of time.

[Humanoid]

4 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

From a game design perspective, this is entirely not true, especially in a game that is intended to be competitive.

Not all players are motivated intrinsically, meaning without any form of extrinsic motivation, you'll potentially lose out on a sizable portion of your player base. Having achievements be completely immaterial works fine for games that you're supposed to pick up, log 40-100 hours, and then put back in the shelf forever, but it doesn't work for a game that intends players to be continuously involved for a long period of time.

While FEH has always had an element of competitive gameplay in arena, the bulk of competition has been something creeping into the game over the course of its life. That process can also just as easily turn people away from the game, as the effective penalty for not engaging in competitive gameplay becomes greater over time. It's not a matter of appealing to a large subsection of people versus appealing to a small subset of people, but rather it's appealing to different subsets of people. I'm certainly not qualified to estimate how large each of those subsets are, so I have to settle for simply stating which of them I fall into.

[Anacybele]

I've solidified my spot in tier 19, I don't think there's any way I can drop now! ?

Oh, and yeah, I was wrong on the sixth offensive team member thing. See? I'm not allergic to admitting that I'm wrong. xP I still think we should be allowed a sixth on offense though.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Anacybele

[MrSmokestack]

11 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

That does not make it Pay2Win. If you want to reach T27 consistently, yes you do need to have two eirs and two naga. This much is true, but as you said yourself, many orbs are given freely. Someone who wants to reach t27 needs to mnage all their resources well, this includes orbs. 

The average for eir/ naga is around 180 orbs, which is roughly two months of free orbs. Is it a lot, yes, did IS give plenty of time to save before releasing Naga? Also yes. So no, I do not consider this mode pay2win. Especially since f2p players have proven that it is possible to compete at the highest levels. 

Does spending money make it easier to get there? Partially yes, since you have more resources at your disposal. But this is the same for every game mode. 

Amen to that.

After almost a year of being inactive, I started following a guy who regularly makes top 1k in AR without spending a single cent.

Managing resources is very important. There are a lot of units I’d like to get, but almost none of them are impactful; they won’t improve my score in competitive modes, they won’t help me in Abyssals...stuff like that. Skipping banners and just rolling with free summons becomes so much easier when you look at it that way. It also means I get to have more resources saved for units I like, which is a plus.

I had 883 orbs saved up by the time Naga’s banner dropped. It took 505 to get 2 copies of her. If I remember correctly that’s below average luck, and other people have spent more than me for one or no copies. But that’s not much of an excuse to not maximize your chances at pulling important units. If I had rolled every bait banner earlier this year I’d probably have 100 orbs and only gotten a Brave Hector or something. Instead, I’m set to do well in AR without spending any money.

[Johann]

2 hours ago, Anacybele said:

I still think we should be allowed a sixth on offense though.

It'd definitely make the actual fights easier, though there would be a side-effect in how it would change scoring, creating a larger gap between players who have extra Mythics and those without.

16 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

I had 883 orbs saved up by the time Naga’s banner dropped. It took 505 to get 2 copies of her. If I remember correctly that’s below average luck, and other people have spent more than me for one or no copies. But that’s not much of an excuse to not maximize your chances at pulling important units. If I had rolled every bait banner earlier this year I’d probably have 100 orbs and only gotten a Brave Hector or something. Instead, I’m set to do well in AR without spending any money.

That's how it went for me, a little over 900 orbs saved up and I only got one Naga. Without spending a penny, I've been able to get in the top 1k every season since AR began, but these Astra seasons are probably going to end that streak.

[Anacybele]

21 minutes ago, Johann said:

It'd definitely make the actual fights easier, though there would be a side-effect in how it would change scoring, creating a larger gap between players who have extra Mythics and those without.

Yeah, but there's always gonna be a downside to everything. It's just a matter of how big the downside is and whether the pros still outweigh the cons.

[Johann]

6 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Yeah, but there's always gonna be a downside to everything. It's just a matter of how big the downside is and whether the pros still outweigh the cons.

I guess it comes down to, would you take a hit to your ranking for increased score and easier battles, to which I think most people would be cool with

[Anacybele]

Just now, Johann said:

I guess it comes down to, would you take a hit to your ranking for increased score and easier battles, to which I think most people would be cool with

Yep, exactly.

[Hilda]

2 hours ago, Johann said:

It'd definitely make the actual fights easier, though there would be a side-effect in how it would change scoring, creating a larger gap between players who have extra Mythics and those without.

It would make defense Teams actually pointless, because the AI is just dumb. The reason why we have 6 on defense and 5 on offense is to even out the dumb behaviour of the AI. So in that case you might as well delete the whole defense ordeal crap.

In general AR is not very well thought out imho.

[Johann]

6 minutes ago, Hilda said:

It would make defense Teams actually pointless, because the AI is just dumb. The reason why we have 6 on defense and 5 on offense is to even out the dumb behaviour of the AI. So in that case you might as well delete the whole defense ordeal crap.

In general AR is not very well thought out imho.

Yeah, it's an example of a mode where it's too established for them to be able to resolve it's biggest problems with tweaks rather than a complete overhaul

[Ice Dragon]

25 minutes ago, Hilda said:

It would make defense Teams actually pointless, because the AI is just dumb. The reason why we have 6 on defense and 5 on offense is to even out the dumb behaviour of the AI. So in that case you might as well delete the whole defense ordeal crap.

In general AR is not very well thought out imho.

On the other hand, your first paragraph shows that they have it quite well thought out.

[Tree]

AR Tier 21 can certainly be obtained with just two Eirs. (I did it.) However, players that focus more on collecting favorites would probably struggle to get in Tier 21 with only two Eirs. Four mythics make access straightforward, but that's a somewhat expensive investment. For that matter, even the second Eir can be elusive. I've skipped summoning for new characters I wanted, and also delayed merges just to grab as many mythics as possible. I've spent around a thousand orbs chasing units I didn't particularly want just to have a reasonable chance to merge grail units. (I did try to get as many Bow Lyn merges as I could during Golden Week, but I'll have to pay for it in AR since that's fewer orbs for mythics.)

•   A couple hundred orbs for a first try at Duma (none)
•   A couple hundred orbs for a second try at Duma (got two, but one was the free 25% anniversary summon)
•   A couple hundred orbs for Yune (none), but I finally got my second Eir
•   A couple hundred orbs for Naga (none)

I don't even enjoy playing AR. I just want mythics so that I can play AR less. With four mythics it's possible to maintain tier with as few as two battles a season. (A simple surrender is adequate to collect the daily rewards afterwards.) Eight mythics and you're all set to avoid the mode.

AR is the only significant source of grails. There is no way to avoid this competitive mode if you want a grail exclusive character even if you are willing to spend money for that character. Many players might also like to have thrones for their AR resort (especially for that castle room). I'm limited to just blue and green chairs, and would have a red one if my second Eir had arrived earlier. (Probably will never get a red one at this point.) Many players won't be able to have any decorative thrones for their resort.

Casual players won't care much about Arena Crowns, and the other arena rewards are easily obtainable in large quantities elsewhere. There is no reason to invest in arena if you don't actually enjoy it. (I don't invest in arena at all. In fact, I fell to Tier 17 because I got tired of it. In Arena Assault, I start with one unit in the first battle and autobattle the easy difficulty for participation rewards. I've already got 1000+ refining stones and 2300+ dew. I don't really need any more.)

 

[edit]

5 hours ago, Johann said:

I guess it comes down to, would you take a hit to your ranking for increased score and easier battles, to which I think most people would be cool with

I would definitely sacrifice ranking for greatly reduced effort in AR.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Tree

[Rezzy]

Looking at the bonus heroes for next week, it's going to be rough for bonus Hero selection.  I like to run tactics teams, so Fliers are straight out.  One Infantry is taken up by dancer, leaving one possible slot for them.  The only non infantry bonus heroes are Berkut and Tiki.  Both already got a Blessing, and I hate to waste them, but I might have to, considering I'll be below point threshold otherwise.  My first thought it Tiki, since she would synergize better with the rest of my team which is currently Fae/Fjorm, Olivia, Nagax2.

[Tree]

11 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Looking at the bonus heroes for next week, it's going to be rough for bonus Hero selection.  I like to run tactics teams, so Fliers are straight out.  One Infantry is taken up by dancer, leaving one possible slot for them.  The only non infantry bonus heroes are Berkut and Tiki.  Both already got a Blessing, and I hate to waste them, but I might have to, considering I'll be below point threshold otherwise.  My first thought it Tiki, since she would synergize better with the rest of my team which is currently Fae/Fjorm, Olivia, Nagax2.

How are you managing blessings? It seems that it's better to eventually put AR blessings on everyone for a larger pool of potential bonus units. I wonder if they will increase the usefulness of the original four blessings now that the Gardens are complete. That could make switching everyone to AR blessings premature.

[Azuni]

59 minutes ago, Tree said:

I just want mythics so that I can play AR less. With four mythics it's possible to maintain tier with as few as two battles a season. (A simple surrender is adequate to collect the daily rewards afterwards.) Eight mythics and you're all set to avoid the mode.

I would definitely sacrifice ranking for greatly reduced effort in AR.

This is a reasonable attitude for people who don't want to deal with the mode much imo.

Even someone like me, who has had max Red Thrones since they came into existence, has finally thrown in the towel per say for Astra season.
I refuse to buy into the Astra mythic mechanic (even if I ignore the horror stories of people getting 0 Nagas in hundreds of orbs), however I've gladly sunk a few hundred orbs so far into trying for Bride Fjorm, since her utility would cut most maps down to a handful of minutes to set up a win.

Granted, my opinion on the matter probably is biased since I've already completed my main goal in AR (+10 Winter Cecilia), who I enjoy using in both AR and many other modes.

[Rezzy]

51 minutes ago, Tree said:

How are you managing blessings? It seems that it's better to eventually put AR blessings on everyone for a larger pool of potential bonus units. I wonder if they will increase the usefulness of the original four blessings now that the Gardens are complete. That could make switching everyone to AR blessings premature.

I've really tried to avoid using the AR blessings unless they were part of my core, or I had to use them as a bonus unit that week.  Now the the old blessings are mostly useless, I'm not sure what I'll do going forward.

[Johann]

1 hour ago, Rezzy said:

Looking at the bonus heroes for next week, it's going to be rough for bonus Hero selection.  I like to run tactics teams, so Fliers are straight out.  One Infantry is taken up by dancer, leaving one possible slot for them.  The only non infantry bonus heroes are Berkut and Tiki.  Both already got a Blessing, and I hate to waste them, but I might have to, considering I'll be below point threshold otherwise.  My first thought it Tiki, since she would synergize better with the rest of my team which is currently Fae/Fjorm, Olivia, Nagax2.

This week I'm using Saias with Smite and a Light Blessing. Working pretty well since his Res is through the roof, and he'll be the target of Chill Res. Next week I'm gonna just give him an Anima Blessing, I figure as long as we get a new one every two weeks, it shouldn't be a big deal.

[Rezzy]

7 minutes ago, Johann said:

This week I'm using Saias with Smite and a Light Blessing. Working pretty well since his Res is through the roof, and he'll be the target of Chill Res. Next week I'm gonna just give him an Anima Blessing, I figure as long as we get a new one every two weeks, it shouldn't be a big deal.

The only problem is that another infantry would nullify my Tactics strategies, at least until they finally give us a Cavalry dancer.  With the 3-move herons, it wouldn't be that gamebreaking.