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I've noticed a serious divide over Aether Raids.

Some people are willing to defend it to the death, some hate it, while others are indifferent. What group are you in and why?

I will admit I am in the group that hates it, at least for now because of people abusing mechanics, serious unbalance, and aether taking way too long to charge and costing too many points to play thr mode.

Asked by TheMeep1 month 2 weeks ago

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I wanna hear other thoughts and opinions so that we all can come to some kind of compromise and understand everyone's persepctives. After all, healthy communication is important to the health of a fandom.

Couldn't say this enough. I aim to be a mediator and peace-maker in this fandom.

Lol ya should see tumblr. People there are so afraid of opinions or debates that they regularly chase people they don't like out of fandoms and bully and spread rumours. Its crazy. Some people on there even tracked down my discord just to harass me there.

Geez. My tumblr doesn't really get exposed to hate, so I wouldn't know.

Yep. But being stuck in the past isn't gonna help me. Gotta do what I can do to change stuff for the better and unfortunately keep my identity kinda secret lest i have to deal with more bs.

How old are they, 7?

Many claim to be adults and whatnot but act like middleschoolers. A bunch have also claimed to have mental disorders without having any knowledge in regards to it and have even told me my depression is fake! :3

Why do you spend time with people like that o_O

I like the game mode, and the potential it has, but there are some serious issues at this moment in time.

At least it's nothing like those defense maps that had enemies with 70+ HP.

Lol and enemies practically spawning on top of your castles.

I'm one of those on the fence right now with slightly leaning toward hating it. While AR is their best attempt yet at a soft PvP it still fails to allow players to make fully use of many of the new skills in the game. Part of the fun of new units is being able to make full use of their play style whether that be a new skill or an awkward weapon (eg. Kliff). AR is extremely prohibitive in this regard, while it has succeeded in opening things up for more units to be used it fails to allow for flexibility so units can shine.

I will assume balance for AR will get better so there's no reason to panic about that yet. Personally I would like to see them put a little more thought into content than just copying and pasting a game mode from Fates.

Why do you think units aren't able to be themselves?

Simple, the obstacles/traps/structures directly interfere with the viability of certain units in this mode. Then factor in that most defense teams focus on just creating a choke point and stalling and this automatically forces the attacking player to only use a certain group of units. Ultimately there are just design flaws with a mode like this that no amount of "tuning" can overcome. Unless they were willing to make some significant changes, which is doubtful this early in the mode's life.

It is what makes more thought-provoking strategies. It's not fun to go in and autobattle and the AI takes out both aether structures and all 4 team members without a loss. I don't think there's limitations on any units or unit types. Yes, there are trenches, traps, etc. There are ways around them if you have some proper teams. I've used my flier team and it has been very dominant on offense, especially these past 2 days. Seriously, watch some Akariss stuff if you are having trouble approaching these maps.

You've completely missed my point. I'm referencing the weapons/skills themselves. The current design trend is continuing to place an increased importance on positioning of units in order to get the effect of said weapon/skill and the structure of this game mode directly prohibits that. I've never once mentioned that these maps aren't beatable, they are. The point of releasing new units/skills is to encourage people to use them. This mode conflicts with that objective as it currently is.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature." Bond skills are very powerful, and it makes sense to give defense players ways to inhibit them. If you want to push your point, Aversa's broken beyond repair.

Maybe not "beyond repair" but currently yes Aversa is mostly broken, but she is also one of the first units to use that kind of effect so we could see things in the future that offset or add to that kind of effect. As for inhibiting other skills sure, but that's also what other skills are for. Aside from the Aether costs which we all agree is a problem I think modifying the turn count might help some of the other issues. Last time i checked the point of this game (other than making IS money) is combat. So why discourage that with prohibitive mechanics.

Make no mistake, Aversa is extremely annoying, but I don't think she's broken. She's fairly fragile and she has a hard time hitting super-hard if she's going to use her prf and boost her HP. 99% of Aversas don't use Iote's shield, so one strong arrow will take her down, and of course, if you're really having that hard of a time, there's R tomebreaker. If she's going to be a force in the meta (and in any case, I expect panic manors to become very influential in the meta, especially coming from defense teams), raiding teams in general will need to focus on invisible buffs.

Just to make completely clear, just because a unit is a massive headache to deal with doesn't mean they're broken. Just because we don't like dealing with that unit doesn't mean that unit should be nerfed.

As for turn limit, this is an interesting issue. I think it's one of the more debatable points about this mode. I personally think 7 turns is actually a really good number. Defense teams can usually stall out 5 or sometimes 6 turns pretty easily. I have a second-rate defense setup and I can stall a lot of people for at least 5 turns. Meanwhile on offense, I find that 7 is a challenging number within which to try to get their aether structures if they split them on opposite corners.

I think it's potentially an oversimplification to say that the game is all about combat. I consider this game to be about strategy, starting with the management of resources (orbs and feathers first, followed by sacred coins, heavenly dew, aether stones, divine dew, and refining stones), progressing through the building of units and teams to the construction of general strategies for each battle as soon as opponents are revealed, and ending with the tactical decisions made on the field, on the fly. Within this perspective I think it's fine to impose a 7-turn limit because it forces raiding players to strategize well in those middle stages, especially that part of the process which happens immediately after seeing opponents and the map. What I don't like about the turn limit is that it rules out strategies which like to play slow, maneuver around a lot, maybe chip down opponents a bit here and exchange a single hit there, just jostle for a favourable position and force the opponent team to do stuff they don't want to until their position crumbles. That's a valid strategy and one that turn limits disallow. But to some extent, I think it's valid to rule it out, because the AI is stupid and about 99% guaranteed to screw up and lose given an infinite number of turns. So unless they're going to change the way the AI works, I think the current turn limit is actually very reasonable.

First off with Aversa i'm mostly referring to her weapon, by no means is the unit itself broken as you stated she is very easily baited and killed. As for them ever nerfing something on a unit in this game, never gonna happen. They haven't done it yet and they won't start now. With regards to combat being the basis of this game, it kind of is. No matter how much strategy, positioning or unit development you use if ultimately you can't win the inter-combat battle than the rest won't help you. Obviously the conditions for these battles vary greatly but since most modes penalize you for losing a unit it comes down to "Did your unit win that round of combat or not".

The turn limit thing is really subjective at this point since we have such a small sample size to this point that sweeping changes might not be needed yet. I merely questioned whether 7 is the right number or not. It's completely fair to ask the question of them, did they intend to limit the usable units in this mode through a turn limit because in reality that's exactly what has happened. It takes turns to not only position units, destroy structures, spring traps even before you begin baiting enemy units (which in most cases you aren't going to kill them all in on turn). The turn limit as you stated removes the Grind it Out strategy which some units are best suited for and not a more offensive based approach. Is 7 the right number? Maybe it is maybe it's not but it is something they should revisit if they're serious about making this mode successful.

Maybe because I've found the workaround, I don't feel like traps really shut anything down? They can stall but that's it. For example, if you want to use ranged glass cannons, just put reposition on them and a dancer. Step into the trap, and if it's not a fake, dance them and reposition back out.

I'm having a harder time with people who play defense like it's arena defense and they can win by taking out one of my units so I need to try so hard just to avoid losing a unit.

It's not like there's one correct way to build a defense map right now. I agree though i've found that the ole Reinhardt+B!Lyn+Dancer combo is more troublesome to deal with on these maps than some of the stall tactics. The difference between AR and Arena is unlike Arena where most of the time you can easily bait units here you can't because of the other factors involved. That and in arena you also aren't battling a turn count.

I want to like it, but I'm having a hard time caring about the mode.

1. The rewards are...meh
2. I can only play a couple of times each day as Aether is limited
3. I need to spend some time figuring out what strategy works.
4. I'm not sure I understand the rules. For example, should I try and protect my Aether Amphorae? Does it matter if the enemy destroys it (am I penalized)? I'm assuming lift score carries over week-to-week. Am I going to get to a point where my failed defenses cancel out all progress?

I'm at 1,800 lift. The top person on my friends list is 2,120. The top player overall is 2,440. So, I'm playing...and doing pretty average. Time will tell if I get into the mode. At this time I don't really care.

you does not get penalized for getting your aether broken.
but that does not mean you should just let the attacker break yours easily.
if they broke your aether, they get an extra aether, which means they can play once more than you can by breaking enough aethers.
if you confident that your team could win the match, you can use that aether pots as a bait too, as they dont get the aether if they lose.
lift will reset to your tier base score, for example if you have 500 lift in tier two, you will get back to about 200 iirc, the base lift for tier 2.

for defence, i believe after 4000 lift, you will be penalized by 80 lift if you failed defending, and i think you get an increased lift when you succeed.

Lack of clarity in rules is indeed an issue, I think. People needed time to figure out the rules. I wish we had a few days to play around before any scoring really started.

Most of the doubts I'm seeing are explained in the bulletin board, so I'm gonna blame players for most of these.

The wording often leaves unanswered questions, and with skill descriptions being as inconsistent as they are I don't have too much confidence until I see the thing in action.

Those unanswered questions are fine, that's why I said "most". But if I keep seeing people asking things like "does losing on defense do anything?", well, I'm probably gonna ignore them.

My problem with AR is that the defense team has advantage over the attacker team.
-Turn limit (lot of preasure, and need a very optimised strategy to clean the map without diying and take care of the aether pots)
-Choke points with traps and getting in range for 2 or 3 attacks at the same time, if you add a dancer then it gets worse.
-The defense team doesnt move, so you need to bait or attack first and then survive the rest of the team attack.
-Looks like the defense team has access to the bonus stats from the season aswell.

Yeah its a huge issue... Although my defense team moves when enemies are nearly in range. Lol.

Imo, the offense team that has advantage over def team.
offesive fortress has 1 level more than your defensive fortress, which means if the defender somehow didnt put bonus fortress, you will get an extra 8 points to all of your stats on all of your unit. that is basically 4 +20 units in your possession.
even if they did, you still get +4 to all stats.
so defending team actually fighting a +50 units in total with bonus unit.
if you have 4 +10 unit on your defense team, then yeah they are almost at equal, but if you don't then just pray that the attacker misplaced their unit, because you wont be able to scratch their unit that way.

Well not in my case, i got the misfortune to encounter defense teams with fortress equal my level so i didnt have access to bonus stats, and then the enemy has an Aversa with 60+ hp and a team with their specials ready.

what ? is that even possible ?
defensive fortress cost 500 dew to upgrade iirc, I dont think we already got 500 stones ?
60 HP aversa is pretty common, since she is a bonus unit.
and yeah she is annoying af.

I think making Aversa a bonus unit so early into this new mode's life span was a dumb decision.

I find hard to say whether offense or defense is at an advantage.

Offense advantages:
- pick any of your five raiding parties
- AI is stupid

Defense advantages:
- turn limit, so you don't actually need to kill them all. This potentially makes up for AI stupidity and more.
- set up the map. Also helps cover AI stupidity
- you can lose units and not suffer in score (not confirmed). Offense cannot.
- eventually, extra member compared to offense team
- defense buildings seem to be stronger? Panic manor for instance

I like the mode, how it has been thought and all that, but there are some things I don't like. Mainly, that I've gotten so accostumed to how Arena works, with the enemies going after you and all that, that sometimes it's hard for me to plan accordingly to try and destroy the buildings, defeat the enemy in seven turns and at the same time keep my whole team alive, because if I don't there's a score penalty(not that there's no penalty in Arena, so I understand that). Then it also has a main problem compared to Arena: BST is not taken into account. In Arena I can find a full armor team, or a full dragon team, easily enough, and barely face ranged units apart from the highly merged Reinhardts, Lyns and Ninos. But in Aether Raids I'm constantly being forced to face the classic Lynhardt and now also Veronica, which makes it just unbearable to me. Like, I understand that people want their defense wins and all that, but they just don't think too much out of the box and go for the easy wins. This I can understand, but I expected not to see them that much anymore, and when I have to face at least one or two of them every single map, it just becomes boring and unoriginal. It was what I hated from Arena the most. Maybe it just happened today, because last week I saw Aversa mostly, but still. Then you also have the fact that it doesn't give that many Grails, but that's for now, maybe in the future they will provide more ways to give Grails, I hope.

Apart from that, I like the concept, and I love that it's a new thing and more content for the game overall.

Yeah... Bst is the biggest issue. I have encountered teams that have a good 100 combined bst over me

This problem should be temporary. Such teams will tend to rise higher in lift, so once we all settle into lift ranges that we can maintain, I expect that you would stop seeing teams that overwhelm you with stats. (Also, use a bonus structure and upgrade your fortresses.) It's because we're all starting out that teams which will eventually score very high can get paired against teams that wouldn't be able to rise as high.

I don't see how long we can remain in a meta full of B.Lyn+Reinhardt+Veronica. We can prepare one or two of our five raiding parties to hard-counter it, and as more and more people figure this out, it's either going to get confined to certain lift ranges where players tend to get stuck if they don't figure this out or it's just going to get squeezed into a marginal corner of the meta.

Generally, anything that becomes too meta will get hard-countered because people will know to expect it, whether it's bold fighter, wary fighter, healers, daggers with null follow-up, ranged horses, or anything else.

I just wish the Aether cost increase wasn't so steep, like my lord... I'm at 30 a match rn.

FRIENDLY REMINDER: This is only Aether Raid's first appearance. They've made quality of life changes in other modes before. You have every right to be critical about what works and what doesn't, but don't write it off so early. A single instance is a good basis for arguments, but it's only when multiple instances occur that you can make a solid comparison and decide what to think from there.

I'm surprised that some people hate it and not the part where they can't play more than like 3 times a day. That's an issue and one I don't expect to be hard to fix - they just need to add an unrated mode.

I'm in the group that will defend this mode. It's better arena:
- no BST or SP or merge BS, only what's effective and what's not
- no bonus unit kill BS. Bonus units are maybe a bit of an annoyance, but it's way more tolerable.
- defense teams can't aim just to hurl themselves at you like foolhardy rageaholics because you'll finish them even if you lose a unit (unlike in arena)
- defense teams can actually set themselves up to work with how stupid the AI tends to be, especially with a turn limit
- the turn limit does make attacking harder, but it's doable.
- every win and loss matters for the most part. Players who play carelessly can't get off without a penalty; players who actually have skill and think carefully during the small number of matches they play will indeed get rewarded over players who are less creative or less invested
- just the fact of being able to design our own maps
- bonus structures force players to vary their defensive setups a bit. I think it's fine.

As to abusing mechanics, I want to hear what you mean specifically. I have no idea what you mean; nothing seems broken to me in this mode especially when it's possible to prepare five raiding parties and pick after seeing the enemy setup.

It probably has a lot to do with preparation with different raids. I'm guilty as I only have the 1 group I'm using. However, I'm also in the camp that enjoy the new mode. But I fully see that people likely haven't properly prepared.

Same can be said for arena assault, and not having proper teams to deal with the units you face at your tier level. I'm guilty of that as well and throwing together units that may or may not work together.

It's simple really. If you see are seeing too many Reins, Brave Lyns, Veronicas, it's time to bring out those raven tome units, or even some wolf tomes. There's no reason they can't cover 1 or 2 spots on the attacking team.

Yep... We were totally unprepared. As for abusing mechanics, using the fortress to hold a checkpoint since you cant move past it, and then setting up a ton of traps over the only area available to move over. This only works on certain maps of course, but it comes across as kinda bad, especially when everyone will start doing this just like how everyone started abusing reinhardt.

I don't believe that forming a choke point using the fortress creates any issues. That's one single square of completely impassable terrain available for the defense team to set up, and I think one is fine (and possibly the limit for some of the terrains they offer us). They can maybe try to cover the only passable area with traps, but I've never seen it done effectively and is there really anything a defense team can do about raiding teams that just walk into the trap and back out, or even just put a tank there and say "joke's on you, gravity or 10 damage doesn't matter to me."

Creating choke points is a big part of good defense; I think it's probably necessary given how strong the AI's tendency to overextend. When it's going to be a common strategy, the case will be very hard to make that there is a balance issue. Raiding players need to learn how to break through.

I've gotten through everything without losing a unit other than in one of my first matches before I knew that it affected lift increase at the conclusion of the battle, and I could easily have avoided that loss if I was intent on it. I had taken out 3 opponents and I had complete control of that battle. I've seen a range of stuff involving dancers, Veronica, Aversa, flying mages (that was a hard battle - I wasn't able to break both their aether structures), also very campy and turtle-y setups designed to stall out the 7 turns. The only thing that really scares me right now is running into a bunch of cavalry healers, and I was afraid of this before I saw Lu Bu's videos. I have B.Celica with galeforce and Lewyn in case I do run into it, but I'm honestly not sure whether I would be able to get through in 7 turns. And even for that, I have theoretical counters in mind, it's just that I'm not sure I can afford the feathers. I've thought a fair amount about worst case scenario, and I think every defense is breakable with proper preparation and accurate play, which shouldn't be too much of an issue when we only need to play 2-3 matches a day. Lacking feathers / fodder is one issue but one that's common to pretty much all modes in this game; the rest is about player skill, and if people can't figure out how to break common constructions of chokepoints, I think it's fair that their lift is going to be lower.

That's a point that I think people have yet to understand about this mode. Unlike arena, where you can screw up more or less as much as you want and just start another run, this mode actually tests your ability every match and rewards you accordingly. Nobody is entitled to an easy win or even a win at all depending on your preparation, and I think a lot of people have difficulty accepting that. The one part I disagree with is that players who have been in the game longer will be able to prepare better, not just due to having more experience and skill, but due to having collected more lifetime orbs and feathers and therefore more units/merges/fodder. But as I said, that issue is common to all modes of this game, so even though it's an issue with this mode, I don't think of it that way very much.

I guess im with the indifferent group since this game mode is new and IS has time to fix the kinks out. At least we can +10 limited units. What i do want though is a yearly 20 limit/grail cost back to 100 reset so we can have the chance of 4 40+10 units meme teams, wont surpise if this is added down the road

What is fun for me is the video replay and improving the def. I see people bait my unit at a certain spot, I block it or set a trap. Reinhart one rounding my red armor unit? Better put on Deflect Magic 3 Seal on him. Stupid Aversa lowering all the Armor units stat? Leave the lighting trap closer up front to lower her health early.

Little step by step improvements makes me happy. It's kind of like being a dungeon master.

I totally forgot about replays! Those are so cool, when they work! It is great not only for finding holes in defense but also cool to see how others think!

Holy crow... I leave for 2 hours and return to 36 messages!

Yeah! Shame on you for starting this thread.

Why? Jealous i could make a topic everyone is enjoying?