Arena Teams for top 4 tiers?

I'm in teir 19 just short of tier 20 last season. The team that would give me the most trouble out of what you have is..
Reinhardt (-hp/+atk)
Cecilia (+atk/-def;3-star for now)
Thajra (+atk/-def;4-star)
And your Azura for more unpredictability. It wouldn't affect me as much now that I have a counter measure but for sure this is the most obnoxious team I ever faced due to the cecilia and reinhardt threat range overlapping.

I'm in tier 18, but I'm probably going to drop to 17 right now. To get from tier 17 to 18 requires a no death run, and I got 4716 points last week. Not sure what I need to get into tier 19. Most of the teams are either highly merged teams, or teams with good SI units. The most popular units I have seen so far are Reinhardt, and Vantage Ryoma.

Honestly Im fluxuating between 18 and 19, I get to 19, get a perfect run with a mega score but then can't get higher cause I don't have enough merges on the units I use, but Im happy with the orbs I get. But anyway, tbh most teams have a dance, normally azura, followed by Olivia and then Ive seen ninian once but shes a niche pick, Most teams have hector, and then a good red followed by a unit with desperation, linde, cordelia etc.

I personally run l;ike semi horse emblem, so I run xander and cecilia. Xander takes cares of greens and physical threats, especially with defence buffs from Cecilia, and then she handles the blue threats and reinhardt cause bluetome breaker is a gift. then normally I have like the bonus and bridal cordelia, tho this month Ive had to change so Ive got my old linde back and summer tiki with a brave axe set with axe breaker to quad hector.
Id suggest use azura with wings of mercy its good on defence, bridal cordelia wrecks most things, then do what i do cecilia and reinhardt or like use nino and erikia together.

Honestly Im fluxuating between 18 and 19, I get to 19, get a perfect run with a mega score but then can't get higher cause I don't have enough merges on the units I use, but Im happy with the orbs I get. But anyway, tbh most teams have a dance, normally azura, followed by Olivia and then Ive seen ninian once but shes a niche pick, Most teams have hector, and then a good red followed by a unit with desperation, linde, cordelia etc.

I personally run l;ike semi horse emblem, so I run xander and cecilia. Xander takes cares of greens and physical threats, especially with defence buffs from Cecilia, and then she handles the blue threats and reinhardt cause bluetome breaker is a gift. then normally I have like the bonus and bridal cordelia, tho this month Ive had to change so Ive got my old linde back and summer tiki with a brave axe set with axe breaker to quad hector.
Id suggest use azura with wings of mercy its good on defence, bridal cordelia wrecks most things, then do what i do cecilia and reinhardt or like use nino and erikia together.

Honestly all u need is reinheart, cecilia w/ blade tome and xander, xander should have hone calvary and swap, with the res seal. The fourth should be the the bonus unit that will net you the most points.

My "perfect" team was olivia/azura, cherche, reinheart +bonus

But when i tried a random calvary team with 4 star blade tome cecilia, xander, reinheart and of course gunther i realized my foolishness. Their moblility allong with reposition and swap allows you to bait a problematic enemy away from the rest and either finish him of or leave him for later.

Your sucess rate will definetly go up with it

Seems like you have some great units to work with, so if you can get them with full SI i dont think you will have problems getting to tier 19, though you will need to do advanced runs deathless.
Out of all your units, i would go with nino, eirika, azura and bonus unit/bride cordy.
Right now im getting to tier 20 with a score if 4836, which puts me at rank 800ish.
Hope that helps

Atm, I am (though w/ 3 days left, pos might change.) currently at the required value for rank 19->20. My own team I use Celica, Azura, Soren+1, and FLEX (Bonus unit: but because it always includes the starter units it seems [Sharena, Alfonse, Anna] all 3 of them are at 5* for me)

I'm tier 18 this week. I was tier 17 last week and the highest I've ever been was tier 19. I've never seen a real armor emblem team with all distant counter and most horse emblems that I see aren't complete. I only play advanced unless I'm doing a quest.

If you want to advance further you should think about playing advanced. You might make it out of 16 on intermediate but probably not 17 and definitely not 18.

I've been running Olivia, Linde+1, Fae, and Setsuna all at 5* and level 40 and with significant skill inheritance. If one of them isn't a bonus unit, I'll switch out Setsuna for a bonus unit. This week I only had 4* Peri available so I did a deathless run with her in place of Setsuna and got 4754 as my arena score. It looks like my score won't hold up. It's only Friday morning and I'm rank 5237 and need to be top 11280 to advance to 19. If I don't advance it will only keep me from getting 1 extra orb and 300 extra feathers. Not that big of a deal.

For defense, I'll pay attention to what maps are being used and I'll target a specific one and put my units in the best order for that one particular map. Sometimes I get lazy and just not look up maps and just switch the order of my units up if I haven't gotten a win by the middle of the week.