i mean,,, the meta isn't that bad. i just want to hate on it due to how absolutely annoying powercreep is.
here, a clear example of powercreep is hector. all. three.
first, you have the possibly strongest unit it the game, with distant counter and qr2 built into his weapon. and what's this? another hector? with wrath and a slaying effect? and 40 def? and reaching 42 atk with a superboon? and with strong HP and decent res? okay, well now we have a LEGENDARY hector, which actually breaks the game with 44 attack with a superboon, while having 38 def and 26 res, but slightly lower spd and hp. and his prf. his behemoth of a weapon,, having an insane wary fighter bond type weapon that also grants +3 def (which brings him to the highest def in the game, tied with arden). now green armors are true meta, with grima also existing. but what about everything else?
at this point, the terrible arena point system pretty much favors one type of movement: armors. they may have terrible mobility, but their skills and bloated BSTs completely make up for this - but is it too much?
bold fighter might be hard to proc, but it is so devastating due to all the high attack units. sure, it would have been fine if all it did was guarantee an extra hit, but no. IS took it further, with a heavy blade-esque special +1 to it.
im sorry, i'm really frustrated due to armor units (and merges) being the only key to staying in tier 20.
does anyone think that armor has been getting too strong?
Honestly, I wouldn't mind powercreep if they actually gave weapon refines to the units that needed that. Lon'Qu, Odin, Henry, hell, even Azama could use a refine (if they actually took the time to make staff weapons, or more staff refinements).
Instead, they want to give refinements to units that are already super powerful, like dragon units.
I'm still salty that dragons were some of the first units to get refines. xD
The units you listed could use a refinement, but they shouldn't have gotten a refinement, in my opinion, before other, more desperate units got one, at least some of them shouldn't have.
Raven was fine without one, to be honest, but people didn't actually look at him until he got one.
Hinoka didn't really need one either.
Tiki definitely didn't need, as well as dragons in general, again in my opinion.
I agree that the heroes you listed didn't need a refinement too much, but I'm glad that they did. After weapon refining became a thing, brave weapons got completel shafted, so I see the reason why they replaced the brave weapons on some heroes with a prf variant (r.i.p Ogma, Draug and Donnel). I don't know by what logic they chose the specific heroes, but I hope that we'll get refines to all the old units. Lon'qu especially, since it's so difficult to justify using him when he is pretty much just stuck with slaying edge or other inheritable weapons.
Hinoka and Raven, two of the units you listed, were heavily outclassed by many other units of their type (namely cordelia for hinoka), but newer refines actually evened it up more for both, allowing hinoka's lower speed to actually catch up to tana and cordelia with her reverse goad. Raven became insanely strong with his LaD 3 built into his weapon, easily making him the best offensive axe infantry.
There are a few aspects of powercreep that I find especially irritating and perhaps wrong:
- as Krazytre said, units that really need refines, such as Henry and Sophia, are getting ignored in favour of units like Linde who were doing fine without them.
- Armours' ability to throw speed out the window is getting a bit ridiculous as of Thunder Armads, especially when QR and bold fighter can show up on the same unit, especially if he's always blocking your double anyways using Thunder Armads. It's hard to deal with except using guard or your own armour skills.
- units are now getting to 40+ spd without weapons or skills. One or two, especially if Regnal Astra is involved, already puts a lot of strain on the meta. Now they come in many varieties - swords obviously, lances, axe fliers, flying mages, infantry mages...this game will blow up. How many units can defend themselves without investing heavily and getting team support on top of it? Can they afford to invest that much, since that's not invested in other stats?
- it's happening very fast. Ayra and Mia used to be the two big speed threats; now we have Karla (at least swordbreaker can cover her too), flying Nino, Ishtar, the whole slew of new summer units, and Legault, who is maybe still ok because his attack isn't super high and his speed doesn't translate directly into damage as it does with Karla or Ayra.
- None of this deals with the monstrosities they made in blade tomes or horse emblem's whole-map coverage with sing/dance. If anything, the speed powercreep makes blade tomes even more dangerous.
On another note, yes the arena scoring system is absurd and doesn't really reward good building so much as spamming of BST and SP, which plays rather conveniently into the broken armour skills issue
My problem isn't with armors being strong, although I would consider the Bold Fighter + Steady Breath/QR combo OP (seriously, why doesn't Bold Fighter have a health threshold?). It's with the way arena points favor armor teams due to BST + SP, as you touched on. There's zero variety in arena in the higher tiers, either dragons or armors every match. And in the highest tier it's literally only armors, with stupid builds like Distant Counter Zelgius purely for the extra arena points, which is just ridiculous.
If I had one wish for this game, it would be to change the arena system to create more variety. Otherwise it'll get boring, well, even more boring real fast. Sure, you can build a unit like Tiki + Lukas specialized in dealing with Bullshit fighter (SB+guard+QR seal) but there's only so much entertainment and satisfaction I get watching Zelgius kill himself without proccing Black Luna.
And yes, agreed that some of the character choices are questionable as far as refinements go. I think Fir, Alm, Merric, and Felicia were fantastic choices and they benefit greatly from the changes. But there's still some outliers like Matthew, Sully, and of course, everyone's favorite Moonbow fodder.
As someone who noticed the powercreep a long time ago, and still play this game, I'd say the only thing you can really do is to just keep on playing. If you don't see tier 20 worth the time you spend repeating a bunch of arena matches for a perfect no death win streak, then just stop. At most you're missing out on an extra orb, and a bit of feathers so there's not much of a difference. Save some time, and reduce some frustration. If you see that as "admitting defeat" to the game, then what about all the f2p that will never reach the realm of tier 20 +10 perfect IVed monsters with max level SS on each of them?
Honestly, I find armored emblem less frustrating than horse emblem.
Armored unit have (at most) 2 movement and 4 atk range if they are ranged unit.
Horse have 5 atk range, coupled with somes cancer skills like the B slot of B!Lyn, I fucking hate thoses horse emblem, even when you bring counter for this, the range of thoses thing make it difficult to not loose a unit to an WT!Olwen/B!Lyn/rein when they have a dancer with them.
Armored emblem are more relaxing, more predictable for me, and armor emblem without armor march are just a joke for me.... Yes they have powerfull mixed phases builds, but only one unit in the team can, and there is a lot of thing for countering this : firesweep weapon, healers, guard, weapon advantage, anti-armor weapon, etc...
But i agree on the fact that the scoring system is really shitty. If you want to stay in T20, you'll need to pack your units with high SP skill regardless of their synergy.
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