General Team Building Guide - Arena Defense

Every season, a player will be able to get 900 feathers from Arena Defense. This meant an actual player losing to your team which will be controlled by the beloved artificial intelligence built into the game (AI for short). This battle could be either from the main arena mode or in assault, however defenses in assault are scored significantly lower.

This guide is meant for players who are struggling to find a defensive win, and help players to craft a team to screw a person’s day, because let’s face it, ruining someone’s day is always fun.

Winning Conditions for Arena Defences are very different from standard Arena. Most of the time, you only need to kill 1 out of 4 units of your opponent, as most of the time a player would surrender if you ruined his/her arena run. This is because most of the higher level players are usually going for a perfect arena streak.

Understanding this winning condition will allow players to not only understand why certain units seemed so powerful in Arena, but also know how to select your units accordingly.

Understanding of the Meta.

Understanding the common units that are used in Arena allows players to pick units to specifically counter those units. As statistically speaking, if your team is specifically targeting those common units, there is a higher probability that you will face those teams, and chances of winning are much higher. Understand the current bracket in arena that your team will be in, and counter those units accordingly.

Unpredictability

This is not surprising (ZING!). If you pack a team that is unpredictable by nature, players have a higher probability of making mistakes. This does not only involve using a dancer, but also having an unpredictable skill, an unpredictable character, or both. Skills such as Wings of Mercy, Escape Route and Vantage preys on opponent’s mistakes, and characters that are rarely used are sometimes difficult to deal with due to the lack of familiarity with that character.

Synergy

Your team should share some synergy with each other. This is the reason why Horse Emblem, Flier Emblem and Armour Emblem are so popular in arena defenses, and have decent success. However, most of the time these movement based units forsakes being unpredictable, as most of these emblem based teams have a fairly standard team layout. A team could also synergize in a similar way to normal arena teams; covering as much relevant threats as possible.

The following are examples of how a player could break-down units when being considered in Arena Defense. Note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive, as it should only serve as a reference on how a player could judge a character’s role in defense.

Reinhardt is a very powerful unit that is very good at doing 1 thing; Kill a single target. With that said however, due to how common he is, it is very common for players to pack a good counter for Reinhardt, so unless you flood your team with multiple Reinhardt(s), using a single Reinhardt in Arena Defence without any additional horses is mostly not a good idea, as Reinhardt is a predictable unit that is frequently countered by most Arena Team.

However, this could be covered by using pure synergy to bring out Reinhardt’s best potential. By using more horses in the team, Reinhardt could continue to do what he do best; dictating a player’s first move of the game. Even if a team could successfully deal with Reinhardt, your other members could back him up and corner the opponent team. Dancers are also another way to add a level of unpredictability in his movements.

This is the reason why Reinhardt, Brave Lyn and a dancer is a highly effective 3-man core defence set-up. Reinhardt and Brave Lyn although common, can back up each other as most units cannot deal with both units at the same time, and could leave players cornered sometimes. Bringing more horses in the table is also valid to further corner the opponent, which is what Horses does best with their extra movement.

There is no better time to bring Fae to the table, as she can be considered as an “anti-meta” unit. Just by herself, she has a lot of potential to check Reinhardt due to her very good amount of RES and colour advantage. She could also bypass Brave Lyn’s Sacae’s Blessing, which means running BowBreaker on Fae is an excellent idea to check these common threats in arena.

Fae’s glaring weakness is Sword units, as she does not boast high enough DEF to take a sword in her face. Surprisingly enough, Falchion is not a huge issue, as there is no difference compared to other swords as she dies to them anyway. Furthermore, Distant Counter Sword units are also heavily favoured over Falchions, so Fae’s weakness is somewhat easy to address.

Fae could either go for pure anti-meta by going for a Triangle-Adept BowBreaker set, or a more generalist (but expensive) Steady Breath Quick Riposte set. Fae’s trainee stat boosts meant that anything that is not of her colour disadvantage will have trouble finishing her off. Players will have second thoughts when attacking Fae, possibly leaving them in a vulnerable position.

Virion is neither a Meta nor an anti-meta unit. This meant that he has one thing going for him; being unpredictable. Due to Virion being underutilised in Arena, not many people know of Virion’s strengths and weaknesses. This meant that players have higher probability of making mistakes.

Virion’s main weakness is his pitiful RES stat. However the laughably low RES stat is actually a good thing, as this meant that he does not waste his stats points in a mediocre stat, and go for something else instead. He has a high HP pool and a respectable DEF stat, making Virion surprisingly difficult to take down physically. His offensive stat distribution of 31 ATK and 31 SPD could also deal a surprising amount of damage.

As such, putting a Virion inside an Arena Defence team could lead to 2 unfortunate scenarios for the opponent; underestimating Virion and accidentally leave him open, or tries to kill him like how many player deals with archers (especially Brave Bow ones), and realise that he is so bulky only when he got into range.

Here are some of the common pitfalls of fielding an Arena Defense team.

Being an ignorant Meta Slave

Being a Meta slave without understanding the true nature of the unit is not a good mind set for arena defense. Just slapping a Reinhardt into a team of infantries is not the way to go. Similarly, running a cookie-cutter arena offense team as arena defense is not as effective, as those very same Meta units can be easily countered by another cookie cutter arena offense team.

Not playing into AI’s strengths

Certain builds (including the ones in Gamepress) are excellent when controlled by a player. Glass Cannons usually come to mind in this one. However, some of these builds are very easy to counter when controlled by AI, as a human player can deal with these units with relative ease.

Setting your offense arena team as defense

Certain concepts such as possibly colour coverage could be brought over; however one should always remember that the winning condition of offense and defense is different. Unless you genuinely thought it through about your arena offense team as your defense, it would be better to go back to the drawing board for a separate team specifically for defense that adheres to the ideas stated above.

• Separate your arena offense and defence teams.
• 3 ideas of defenses; Knowledge of Meta, Unpredictability, Synergy.
• Be creative with your unit builds.
• Think your defense team through, and enjoy the process! (It’s quite satisfying.)

This article is updated by Maskilraid. Original arena team-building series from takaminacchan