Still trying for tier 20

Want to hear something upsetting? You missed the cutoff by 2 points.

4798 got into 20 this time round.

I recommend using hector, he's so OP if you use him right (which is easy to do) plus he'll boost your score. I run hone attack on one character and 2 others with spur attack. The movement is rough but give him swap, then at least one teammate reposition. Suddenly he becomes very mobile, think of every possibility before moving him such as reposition then swap with anyone teammate. He'll cover a lot of ground. I finally decided to give up Sol on him for Ingis, wish I would have earlier. He usually destroys his "weakness" characters in one hit with it on vantage. Ryoma and Ike have been getting swatted down left and right.

Hector / nowi / bonus unit / 4th??
Should net you a nice score. That's what I currently run, used sharena as my bonus and Cordelia as my 4th. I dread entering arena without Cordelia, she's fast and hits hard. Being a flier, reposition is amazingly useful and has saved me many times. That team just bumped me back to tier 19 with a score of 4808, got a 7 streak with ease.

I've been in the 18~20 range for some time now and I usually use 2 ranged, 1 armor and 1 melee infantry, all 5* without merge. This time I was rank 19 and tried using 5*Hector, 5*Effie+1, 5*Zephiel and Delthea, so 3 Armored units and 1 mage, all 5* and only one merged +1. The results surprised me, I usually barely go from 19 to 20 and sometimes drop to 18, but this time my position was around the 300s. I guess using high BST units (armor or high merged units) is what you have to do to gain ranks. It was kinda difficult though because I kept getting high merged horse or flier emblem teams and it was pretty difficult to do a deathless run with 3 armored units without distant counter on everyone (only Hector had it).
But I mean it's possible to rank up even without merges, you just have to use high BST units.

The new team you proposed (with full skill inheritance) should easily get you a much higher score. Zephiel and Hector are both tied for second highest BST in the game, and Nowi isn't far behind them. On top of that, Zephiel and Hector both wield legendary weapons, and Hector's A skill costs more SP than other A skills, all translating to higher arena scores.

I am bouncing around 20-19. I just use tradition red, blue,green+bonus heroes setup. Even though I have tons of five stars (around 70), I feel too tedious to level up a new hero plus all the resource to make it work in the arena. With that being said, my main setup is fury Ryoma (+spd,-res), to check green, Hector and Rein( +atk,-spd) plus bonus hero, I prefer to add spur res with fortified res seal to help Ryoma and Hector to better counter mages.

I haven't made it into tier 20 either. I was at 18 this week but posted my highest score yet with 4818 after I made a change from Olivia to Zephiel who I had 5*'d already but hadn't been using in arena. My team was Zephiel, Linde+1, Fae, and Leon. I was getting 686-692 with the occasional 684 and 694 using this team. With Olivia (fully decked) in this same team I was getting mostly 680-684. Zephiel, Linde, and Fae are fully decked out but Leon has nothing except for what he came with since he's going straight to inheritance once his time as a bonus unit is up. I actually just got my first Hector today from the Celica Army banner and he already got inherited over to Zephiel ?