GamePress

Feasibility of Arena Core Focused on Player Phase

I've been revisiting the question of my arena core and I'm increasingly convinced that I want to restructure to make the team more player phase focused while still having some coverage for enemy phase as a backup strategy.

My reservation is that I'm not convinced that it's feasible, and I want to hear from people who play galeforcers whether I'm worrying unnecessarily. Here are some reasons:
- Lots of PvE maps are designed to outnumber us, often 2-to-1, and maps often do not favour player phase play. The options are to field multiple galeforcers, which can get problematic if more and more wary fighters show up or any opponent is too bulky to get through without some cutting or burst special, and/or to block or create choke points using tanks and to shield player phase units.
- Lots of PvE maps insist on getting the first hit on you unless you dive in and accept that they'll double or triple team the unit that you lead with. (Well, they often insist on double teaming us even if it's an enemy phase unit, but enemy phase units are more likely to be built for that.)
- In arena, dancers + ranged horses (or even just dancers in general) give the enemy team so much mobility that there's no way to charge in and take them all out in one go.
- Enemy phase units seem to be the focus of the meta at the moment. Even if they are not, anytime we see them it's generally disadvantageous to attack into them because you activate all their close/distant def, steady breath, etc.
- Of all the soloing I see on YouTube, it's (understandably) usually units that have some strategy for tanking a lot of hits, which of course is not how I intend to play a player-phase focused team, though if that's the only way to make it work with such a team then of course I'll do it.

Here's a team I might like to build, if it could be made to work:
Cordelia: firesweep, galeforce, heavy blade+QP, chill spd, ward fliers
Caeda: Wing Sword+eff, fury+desperation, goad fliers, galeforce or moonbow, some seal (def ploy, spd ploy, atk smoke, ...)
Camilla: prf+eff, DC+Iote's Shield, either QR or renewal, goad fliers
Bonus unit with panic ploy or B.Nininan: hone fliers, wings of mercy (or R Tomebreaker, but probably WoM is better), rest is up for debate

So please, if you know something about this matter, advise me.

Asked by Seeker5 months ago

Report

Answers

It is feasible, but dealing with calvalry (if you see them at where you score), Myrrh, and Wary Fighter can be a pain. I run a mixed phase arena core, but when I can't afford to take a hit with my defensive units I have my Soleil to fall back on that runs essentially the same build as your Cordellia. I am able to deal with Myrrh due to having Defense Smoke, however, and I have Swift Sparrow alongside Heavy Blade as a seal and an ally with Infantry Pulse to guarantee a Galeforce proc upon doubling. As long as you have ways to deal with the aforementioned potential issues, you should be fine.

Thanks for the tips. What scoring range are you in?

Around 720-728 each match. My core is a +6 Fae, +5 Soleil, and a +3 Nowi (though if I ever pull one I might swap her out for Shigure for more player-phase fun and sub out Fae for Hector to potentially enable Soleil's on Shigure if I can figure out a way to accelerate his special trigger).

My general advice on building an Arena core is to build 1 Player Phase, 1 Mixed Phase, and one Enemy Phase unit more than focusing on the weapons triangle. For example, my arena core is Soleil (PP), Fae (mixed phased with a speed focused build and QR seal), and Nowi (EP). If you swing too hard in one direction, you will eventually run into defense teams that exploit that (Chill Atk/Spd teams with lots of Sweep units for example).

Cordy/Caeda/Camilla fits this model quite well as Caeda is, while not the tankiest of units, capable of having an EP against a good chunk of meta threats. In an ideal world someone like S Y Tiki would be a better fit, but most of us don't have the $1000 lying around for that lol.

For some time I've been working with Marth, (fast) Nowi, and Felicia. The team plays mostly enemy phase via Nowi being kind of indestructible and Felicia being able to bait the faster mages. Marth gives a lot of buffs and refills HP if needed; he can also take on green dragons which constitute most of Nowi's hardest matchups as well as axes with really high attack. It's like you say; weapon triangle isn't even the main thing; Nowi wins against a lot of greens but Felicia handles the mages and Marth takes the axes if they're too tough. Felicia also tends to be quite good against anti-dragon weaponry unless Tiki uses DC, which might be too much for Felicia to tank. If I run into chill spd Felicia shields Nowi from it, so Nowi avoids doubles quite well.

The issues I'm experiencing are
1. I'm not so keen on merging Marth because he plays his support role perfectly fine without merges
2. the way speed is getting powercreeped, Nowi might not be able to block doubles with 46 spd at max merge (based on my conclusions from the study I did on spd powercreep in the past 3 months)
3. It's feeling a bit passive. I don't especially like sitting behind Nowi all the time. Maybe there's not a better choice when the AI is idiotic and is allowed to be idiotic like some drunkard flailing a sword recklessly at us while we need to protect ourselves and still find a way to neutralize him. I just find so frustratingly stupid that we're not allowed to trade blows - such an unrealistic model of combat.

The fact is that we need to find some way to beat every unit that can be thrown at us, and given the imbalance I just explained, suicidal aggression is a very viable tactic for an arena defense team and I consider that I need to be able to tank it because dancers and singers exist. If they didn't I could probably find some way to dive in and wipe enough of them in one turn that the rest won't matter, but with dancers and singers the team can't position close enough to do such a thing, so my priority is being able to take anything on enemy phase, and after that to have as much player phase as I can while doing it. Maybe it's just time for me to accept that the only thing to do against an overly aggressive opponent is let them hang themselves?

Short answer is you kind of have to let overly aggressive teams (unless they run Firesweep) just suicide against a tanky DC unit like Nowi. But after a while you kind of get good at baiting units out of position and then cleaning them up. 46 Speed on Nowi is pretty safe for avoiding doubles (I think with all my buffs I get mine up to 45ish effective speed during combat).

I am currently running a flyer team in Arena, and I move back and for between tier 19 though 17 at times.
I use +spd Clair, +res Caeda, +spd Camilla (all 3 with prf weapons) and then bonus unit, or one of the flying dancer/singers.

The three of them hugely compliment each other. All three can take a hit from anyone of their color or their strength in player phase or enemy phase. They are all inherently player phase, but can all serve both well. Caeda with Camilla nearby can OHKO all versions of Hector, which is very noteworthy. Caeda frequently can enemy phase kill hectors, M!Grima, F!Grima, and she has the res to hold back most mages. Clair wipes out BK, Sword Rein, and many other popular reds, and also can take a mage hit. Camilla is super support, guaranteeing doubles vs everyone for the other units, and she takes hits from any blue with HP to spare. The bonus units nearly always have a flier to choose from, recent ones that have crushed teams are flying Nino, flying Ninian and flying Takumi. My only issue is archers, of which I only see BLyn with any frequency, but having crazy mobility with 4 fliers, I can usually get Caeda or Clair close enough to kill and then retreat with the other units.