I've been playing for 2 months and started to think about starting my first merge projects.
All the advice I find is focused towards maximizing the score from the 3 hero core, using armors to push the BST as high as possible. However, those are from before the points for killing as the bonus unit were introduced.
I heard getting those is crucial.
However, the bonus unit most of the time is not highly merged and we'll built and needs babysitting.
I wonder whether securing bonus points is worth the BST loss of going from, let's say A.Tiki l/Effie/Sheena or even A.Tiki/Nowi/Fae to something like Triple tactics Titania / M.Corrin with his weapon refine and a support with the bonus unit and a debuffer like dark breath F.Corrin. (not a dagger unit nor B.Veronics since they score lower for being ranged)
What do you think?
You can still get into t21 even if you don't have the highest BST units on you core, right now I'm in t20.5 and I'm here even thought I have a mage in the team, as my core is composed of Nowi Nino and Eirika.
But I don't recommend using 5* esclusives in your core if you want to be competitive as you won't be able to merge them easily, and do not absolutely use ranged cavaliers as their BST is way too low
Not even close. The BST loss is too large for the max 60 points to make up for it. If you take multiple units out of your dragon/armor core. The best way to do it is to use your dragon/armor core, make them more into support characters that won't always kill, and let your bonus unit pick up as many kills as possible, without sacrificing BST. F2P and I got up to 3731 this season by doing that.
You can do that by giving wary fighter to your armors to make sure they weaken the enemies without killing them, also Eirika and Marth are a great choice for support characters, as they don't have too much atk and end up not killing the enemies, for example this is my Eirika, she can tank and weaken enemies, but she misses the ko cause of her low atk
Mixture of both. Find great supporters that can defend against attacks. Marth with his refined Falchion is probably the best you could go with without putting in a thousand dollars for specific units that have Drives & Tactics. Micaiah with Sacrifice & Renewal is another great supporter.
BST isn't as great of a difference as some people might believe. For every bin there is, the one below and above is a difference of half a merge. So having a unit +10 with a BST of say, 162, will score the same as a unit +9 with a BST of 172 (So long as they have the same skill costs). While Micaiah scores lower because of being ranged, she has Thani (A Prf weapon) and Sacrifice (An exclusive Assist). Both of those boost her score more than your average unit.
Lastly; from my experience in scoring, every two merges(Or the equivalent of) will boost your score range by two. Take that into factoring on how you build your team trio and bonus character.
Yeah, I've gotten lucky with her during the summons. Also I can't tell you how many Marths I've sent home only to realize that he could've been the deciding factor in winning a lot of my Arena matches... it hurts a lot. Especially because the game isn't giving me any more of him ):
I promoted Marth and refined his falchion just for more bonus kills. I will reset his ally support to my bonus unit each season. He is stacked with whatever drives and rallies I can find which makes him flexible on any team. Or use him as a healer/ dragon slayer.
I’m also thinking of building Sheena to tank hits and maybe give her some debuff skills like attack and speed smoke.
Windsweep FCorrin also seems like a great option to set up kills. All of these units are easy to get enough copies got merges, once you farm enough feathers that is
If you're serious about score, I would say you probably want to merge +spd Sheena, give her ardent service, DC, and wary fighter and probably galeforce just to make sure she doesn't kill someone by accident with aether, and maybe put two ploys because she's one of the best armours when it comes to ploying. (Whenever you're actually playing the game and not this mockery of a mode where you make all units do what they aren't optimal for, just switch her to something like slaying axe+def or wo gun+spd with the idea of using 36 spd to block doubles outside arena, aether, vengeful fighter, ward armour, atk smoke)
Repeat with Gwendolyn, also +spd, and this time put two tactics because while your third core unit will probably be also an armour and nullify your the ability of the armours to use the tactics, your bonus unit will almost always be infantry, and he/she will receive the tactics. (A build for playing Gwendolyn seriously might use Berkut's lance+res or +spd, ignis/aether, special fighter, armour march, and QR seal.)
Repeat with Draug or Effie, or I suppose you could also put a second Sheena for more ploys. The other option is to use a legendary hero if your blessings match, which probably means Fjorm because scores are inflated during water seasons because lots of people merge Fjorm for precisely this purpose.
At a wider level, I would recommend reconsidering how much you're willing to invest in a minigame as ridiculous as the main arena. Making one unit kill everything is antithetical to good team building; it's so ugly to turn Sheena into a wary fighter buffbot. It tortures what is good about the unit to make the unit do something it's not that good at. It's like boiling the flesh of a chicken to make broth, throwing away the meat, and then using the broth to try to cook the bones until they become edible. I'd like to hear what Gordon Ramsay has to say about that idea, because the way to succeed in arena under the current ruleset is to do the FEH equivalent of that.
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